Snopes: Did Clifford Walker Say at a 1924 KKK Rally That He Would Build a ‘Wall of Steel’ Against Immigrants?

On 8 January 2019, presidential biographer Jon Meacham tweeted what he described as a quote from the year 1924 made by then-Georgia Gov. Clifford Walker during a speech given at a Ku Klux Klan gathering.

The quote spread across the Internet, stripped of its context and in meme form, prompting some readers to query whether the quote and its description were real.

We confirmed that Walker did in fact make this remark in regards to immigrants at a KKK gathering. The statement was part of a speech called “Americanism Applied” and given by Walker at a “Klonvocation” in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1924. It can be found in a book called the Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvokation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.