Question: The first successful U.S. prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan took place in which Texas county?
Answer: Williamson County. In the spring of 1923, Klan members attacked a traveling salesman for staying at a widow’s lodging house, accusing him of moral impropriety. District Attorney Dan Moody pursued assault charges despite reluctant witnesses, winning convictions that shattered the Klan’s impunity. Moody was elected governor of Texas in 1926, and the following year, he declared, “The Ku Klux Klan (in Texas) is ‘as dead as the proverbial doornail’.”
