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How in the world?
On a May evening in 1925, how in the world could 5,000 people have flocked to New South Road in Hicksville, in order to attend a nocturnal Ku Klux Klan rally, complete with burning cross?
On a night two months earlier, how in the world could 700-plus white-robed Klan members have proudly marched into the auditorium of the as-yet unopened new high school on Jerusalem Aveneue, and been welcomed by the President of Hicksville's Board of Education?
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 28, 1925, page 1
To see if we can understand - and there are no guarantees that we will - let's begin by looking back at Long Island in the 1920s, when for many people my age, our grandparents were starting to raise our parents' generation.
