A Black weekly printed the names of 23 aldermen who would not vote on the Klan

The St. Louis Argus of 14 October 1921 reported that an anti-Klan resolution failed in the city's Board of Aldermen because 23 members did not vote, then printed every one of their names and wards for readers to keep.

What the page prints

This is the opening page of the paper's second section. The lead story reports that a resolution asking the governor, mayor and police commissioner to act against the Ku Klux Klan in Missouri was lost, because 23 aldermen declined to vote. The page names the five who voted for it, then lists the 23 by ward. A boxed editorial reprinted from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sits beside it, and the rest of the page is Klan news from around the country. Excerpts from the FRAME transcription:

St. Louis Board of Aldermen Fails To Condemn The Ku Klux Klan

Resolution Calling Upon Governor, Mayor Kiel and Police Commissioner To Do All In Their Power To Lawfully Suppress The Ku Klux Klan Within The State Of Missouri Was Lost Because Twenty-three Members Refused to Vote.

[...]

Remember the men who voted to defeat the resolution are among those whom you voted for along with the "Straight Republican Ticket." They are those who have betrayed your trust and confidence.

[...]

Cut These Names Out and Save Them In Your Scrap Book. You May Need Them For Reference, Some Day.

Content note: the page carries headlines on Klan violence, threats to Black voters, and Black residents left homeless.

Who published it

The St. Louis Argus was a Black weekly in St. Louis that ran Associated Negro Press dispatches. The archive's scan is from an Internet Archive item drawn from microfilm held by the State Historical Society of Missouri and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, retrieved 2 October 2026; the page is public domain as a 1921 publication.

How to read it

This is advocacy, and it says so. The paper borrows two outside voices, a white-owned daily's editorial and a U.S. Attorney's statement in a headline, to show its readers they are not alone. Its strongest move is the list. Naming elected officials and the wards that sent them is the plainest kind of accountability, and "save them in your scrap book" is an instruction to remember at the next election.

That is a free press doing what the First Amendment protects it to do: tell voters what their representatives did. The resolution itself asked officials to "lawfully" suppress the Klan, and the word matters; how a government can act against a group without punishing association or belief was a real question then. The page does not settle it, and this one does not either. What the page does show is the threat the Argus's readers faced, and their answer, which was the ballot.

The case study A hooded order paid its salesmen by the head cites this page. The Klan's own voice from the same years is in The Imperial Night-Hawk.