James M. Cox

James Middleton Cox (March 31, 1870 – July 15, 1957) was an American businessman and politician who served as the 46th and 48th governor of Ohio, a two-term U.S. Representative from Ohio, and the 29th President of the United States.

Early life & career
WIP

Congressional tenure
WIP

Governor of Ohio
WIP

Presidency
Main article: Presidency of James M. Cox

1920 United States presidential election
WIP

1924 United States presidential election
WIP

Attacks against the Ku Klux Klan
Despite gradual growth under the prior administration of Albert Beveridge, the revival and rapid growth of the second Klan began under the subsequent administration under Cox. Having witnessed their "electoral" strategies to suppress the vote of the non-white and poor population in their states be repeatedly undermined by Progressive judges appointed during the Roosevelt and Beveridge administrations, white supremacist groups began focusing their efforts on using open intimidation and massacres to suppress the growing non-white and "non-native" electorate.

Such campaigns against African-Americans, immigrants, and the poor, were not limited to the civilian population, but also to judicial officials and elected officials hostile to the causes of the Klan. While there had been disturbances under Beveridge, it was in 1921 that the first series of massacres began in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Raleigh, North Carolina. In response to racial violence instigated by groups such as the KKK, Cox signed an executive order designating the Klan as insurrectionists after the Bureau of Investigation revealed the involvement of several prominent businessmen and police officers in episodes of racial violence.

In Virginia, South Carolina, and Louisiana, where white supremacy had been deeply entrenched, the white establishment managed to discretely maintain dominance in the political landscape through a combination of intimidation, legal discrimination, and violence before federal officials could intervene. In numerous states, attempted massacres were revealed and local reports of "race riots" had been uncovered as being coordinated assaults against black businesses and political leaders.

Defying many in his own party, Cox aimed to destroy the group and arrest its backers or he would preside over a total breakdown of law and order. The Klan’s highest profile series of assassinations leading up to the 1926, with judges and politicians in Northern states targeted alongside their Southern peers, ironically proved to be their undoing; off the back of the outrage it caused, Cox won a huge expansion of the Bureau of Investigation and the high-profile leadership arrests that followed ended the Klan’s popularity in the national middle class. While organizations styled as their successors operated throughout the Depression, none would attain its power and national reach.

WIP

Foreign policy
WIP

Detente with Europe
WIP

Japan
WIP

French Civil War
WIP

Impeachment
WIP

Teapot Dome scandal
Main article: Teapot Dome scandal

WIP

Later life & death
WIP

Family
WIP

Legacy
WIP