Happy Sunday! Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at ReaderBuzz. Check out her post and the links to see what other bloggers have been up to in the last week.

One hundred years ago, this Monday, will be the 100th anniversary of the start of the 1924 Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Panorama of the convention’s opening session at Madison Square Garden. By The Boston Globe.

The Ku Klux Klan, at the zenith of its power, impacted the Convention in two ways.

The first was about the platform. Senator Oscar Underwood of Alabama led an effort to oppose the Klan.

Underwood put forth a plank in the party platform … condemning the Klan’s philosophy. The language was simple: The Democratic Party would pledge to oppose efforts by any organization to “interfere with the religious liberty or political freedom of any citizen or … body of citizens because of religion, birthplace, or racial origin.” Yet affirming this basic statement of American principles turned the convention upside down. (p. 174, A Fever in the Heartland)

The Klan prevailed in the tally by just one vote.

That was a day, said Will Rogers, “when I heard the most religion preached, and the least practiced.” (p. 175, A Fever in the Heartland)

Franklin D. Roosevelt placing Al Smith’s name into nomination

The second way that the Klan disrupted the Convention was in the selection of the presidential candidate. The two top contenders at the beginning of the convention were Governor Al Smith of New York (hated by the Klan for being Roman Catholic) and William McAdoo, a prohibitionist who had the support of the Klan but publicly neither affirmed nor denied affiliation with the KKK.

When neither of the frontrunners secured the nomination, the process went on and on and on.

It took 103 ballots and sixteen days — the longest political convention by a major party in American history — to arrive at a candidate. At last, an unassuming former ambassador to the United Kingdom, John W. Davis of West Virginia, was named the standard bearer. He would be crushed in November. It didn’t matter to the Klan. Its members left New York feeling smug and victorious. They were on a roll. They’d shown they could nearly bring down one of the two major political parties (p. 175, A Fever in the Heartland)

This is my fourth post inspired by the book A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s plot to take over America, and the woman who stopped them by Timothy Egan.

Here are the other three:

• Research about the KKK in Tipton County, Indiana, where my grandfather participated
• A book review, after discussion with my book group
• A look at the 100th anniversary of the Immigration Act of 1924

Did you know about this piece of American History? I remember hearing references to the “longest convention” in the past, but not the role that the KKK played in that. If you’re under age 50 or so, you may have no memory of contested conventions. Here’s a terrific article about them from the Pew Research Center.

We won’t have contested conventions this year, but if you’re wondering when the two major parties will meet, here are the details:

• Republican National Convention, July 15 to 18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Democratic National Convention, August 19 to 22 in Chicago, Illinois

Given the current fervor in the US, it’s worth looking back at a previous time when the Democrats were in Chicago: 1968 Democratic National Convention.