In September 1925, a month after some 30,000 hooded Klansmen paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in the largest Klan rally in Washington's history, the satirical weekly Judge declared the Ku Klux Klan effectively dead. What remained, the editorial argued, was a fraternal dress-up order, no more threatening than the Shriners. The Klan was at the peak of its power. The piece, titled "The Klan is Dead, Long Live," Etc. and written by associate editor William Morris Houghton, described an organization that had taken its operation public — robes, parades, hot-dog concessions, press photos on the Capitol steps. This was proof that the KKK was no longer a threat, said Morris. It is just one more "dress-up order" alongside the Shriners, the Tall Cedars, and the Veiled Prophets — fraternal clubs for grown men who, in the writer's words, have "forgotten how to play naturally." Judge, founded in 1881, was among the country's leading satirical weeklies.…