66. When he was elected, the Dallas Klan had recently received a "self-ruling charter" from the Atlanta-based leadership and was the group's largest chapter. The same year, Evans was appointed to the position of "great titan" (executive) of the "Realm of Texas" and proceeded to lead a successful membership drive for the state's Klan. Evans initially supported violence against minorities, remembering a lynching he witnessed as a child. With the Texas Klan, he sought to create "black squads" to attack minorities. He joined several Klan members in kidnapping and torturing a black bellhop, ostensibly because they suspected he was involved in pandering prostitutes. Atlanta-based leaders pressured Evans to curb racial violence in Dallas; around then, the Texas Klan had received significant negative publicity after castrating an African-American doctor. Although Evans was not morally opposed to violence against minorities, he publicly condemned vigilante activity because he feared that it would attract government scrutiny and hinder potential Klan-backed political campaigning. The change of stance led the leader of the Houston Klan to accuse him of hypocrisy. Although Evans later took credit for a decrease in lynchings in the Southern United States during the 1920s, several Klan members claimed that he surreptitiously encouraged and presided over acts of violence against minorities. In 1921, Evans was assigned to oversee the Klan's national membership drive at the behest of their publicists, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke. In 1922, the group's leadership made Evans the "Imperial kligrapp", a role similar to national secretary, in which capacity he oversaw operations in 13 states. He received a base salary of $7,500 and traveled throughout the country, regularly meeting with local Klan leaders. Early national leadership In 1922, Evans joined a group of Klan activists, including Tyler, Clarke, and D. C. Stephenson, in a "coup" against William Joseph Simmons, the group's leader. They deceived Simmons into agreeing to a reorganization of the Klan that removed his practical control; Simmons said that they had claimed that if he remained the Imperial Wizard of the Klan, discord would hamper the organization. Evans gained power and was formally ensconced as Imperial Wizard of the Klan at a November 1922 "Klonvokation" in Atlanta, Georgia. Although a legal battle between Evans and Simmons ensued, during which time Simmons was the Klan's titular "emperor," Evans retained control of the Klan. He initially said that he had been unaware of a pending coup until after