Earle Bradford Mayfield

Earle Bradford Mayfield was a Texas lawyer who, from 1907 to 1913, was a Texas state senator. In 1922, he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. He was the first U.S. senator to be widely considered by the voters to be a member of the revived Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Mayfield quietly accepted KKK support but never said he had joined. He was defeated for reelection in 1928 when his opponent attacked his links to the KKK.