How Superman Defeated The Ku Klux Klan
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Summary

November 1, 2009: An article on the Mental_Floss website, reprinted from Mental_Floss magazine, tells about a writer and activist named Stetson Kennedy who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan during the 1940s. He was unable to get the local police or district attorney interested in his findings. Although the authorities might have been afraid to take on the Klan, Superman wasn't.

Kennedy approached the writers of the Superman radio show, who were looking for script ideas. World War II had just ended, and so Superman couldn't fight Nazis any more. So they ran a storyline in which Superman tackled the Klan. The story featured Kennedy's research and inside information, including code words and Klan rituals. The exposure from the series did much to discredit the resurgent Klan and rob it of its mystique.

Source

Bibliography
2. NonFiction: Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, has a chapter on Superman, Stetson Kennedy, the KKK, and Real Estate Agents.

Game and Story Use

  • In a Pulp Era campaign: A popular radio program is revealing the secrets of a criminal organization, and the criminals aren't happy! The PC's need to find out where the writers are getting their information, and perhaps protect the show when the crooks try to silence it!
  • Of course, you could just as easily false flag this - any organisation could be attacked in this way and the portrayal (especially in something marketted as fiction) need not be true… merely convincing enough to win the propaganda battle.
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