THE BINDING OATH BEHIND THE SCENES A history buff, I've always been fascinated with the early part of the 20th century. There was a vitality in the country then that fascinated me. New ideas were being debated on the front pages. The Progressives believed government had an obligation to address social problems such as working conditions. Industry was overtaking the family farm. Automobiles, movies, the "gramophone," even airplanes were changing the pace of every day life. In the early 20s, bobbed hair was coming in style; skirts were at shin level. Emily Post's "Etiquette" book was a best-seller. Pittsburgh's KDKA broadcasted its first regular radio program in 1921. That year New York won the World Series. Yet the country still hadn't fully recuperated from World War 1. Prices were high; wages low. Prohibition was voted in, but bootleggers were thriving. Seeing its chance to "go national" the Ku Klux Klan moved its message of hate and terror north of the Mason-Dixon line. Strangely, nowhere outside the south and Indiana was the Klan stronger than in Colorado. Strangely, because Colorado was a state with barely one million people, only one major city and few blacks. Undeterred, the KKK targeted Jews and socialists. But its main focus was the Catholics, particularly the Italians who had helped build the railroads and worked the mines. None of this came as a surprise. I'd grown up on a family story about how Tom Patterson, my great grandfather had confronted a KKK offspring, the American Protective Association, in the 1890s. A national organization its mission was to gin up hatred for foreigners, particularly those who were Catholic. Leaders stopped in Denver, primarily to secure newspaper editorial support. Top on their list was the Rocky Mountain News, then owned and edited by Patterson. Though not a Catholic, my great grandfather had been born in Ireland and never forgot the signs of his youth in Indiana store windows that said, "No dogs or Irish allowed." Not to my surprise or yours, Patterson's reaction to the APA's visit was to promptly show them the door with a sharp warning never to come back. But acts of individual bravery often come with a price attached. His was the loss of every major advertising account for over a year. Did he regret his decision? Not for an instant. Yet he was enough of a pragmatist to know that some other kind of persecution would rear its ugly head. And it did—though, fortunately, after his death—this time dressed in the white robe and conical headdress of the Klan. Years later, I decided it was high time to sit down and write what became The Binding Oath.