The Fellowship Forum was an anti-Catholic publication that was mostly read by white, Protestant fraternalists.[1] Historian Thomas R. Pegram has described the publication as a "Klan allied masonic journal".[2] The link between Masons and the Klan was first announced in the Fellowship Forum.[3] After the Klan hired the Southern Publicity Association to increase the organization's membership in the 1920s, Fellowship Forum readership increased—from 1,000 readers in 1921 to a circulation of over one million by 1927. The paper has been described as "an integral part of the resurgence of the KKK among white Americans in the 1920s."[4]
The first issue of the Fellowship Forum was published on June 24, 1921 by the Independent Publishing Company,[5] in Washington, DC.[6] The founders of the paper, who were both Masons, called it "The World's Greatest Fraternal Newspaper." Its stated mission was to disseminate "religious and patriotic doctrines."[7] When Justice Harlan Stone was nominated to the United States Supreme Court during the Prohibition era the Fellowship Forum wrote that he had a "fine record" and had been "very active in the enforcement of Prohibition laws" as Attorney General.[8]