The black hood of the Ku Klux Klan

the long version

In the summer of 1922, northeast Louisiana was not unlike any other rural agricultural area in the South. However, on August 24, events were to occur which would send a shock wave through the entire United States and rivet the attention of the nation on Morehouse Parish. On that day, two white men, Watt Daniel and Thomas Richards were kidnapped by the Ku Klux Klan. Their bodies were crushed by some unknown torture device before being bound in wire, attached to iron wheels and cast into a nearby lake. Jim Ruiz, a Louisiana police veteran and historian, provides an account of the brutal murder of these two white men in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana. The Black Hood of the Ku Klux Klan also delves into the investigation that followed the murders and demonstrated the iron grip of the Ku Klux Klan in the South during the early twentieth century.