He opposed federal Prohibition as " an attempt to rob the states of their jurisdiction over police matters " and advocated local control of liquor regulation because " the improved conditions which we may naturally expect to find in the lives of the men and women who practice Temperance are not found to predominate in the state where Prohibition laws have been on the statute books for years as compared to those states where liquor is sold under a license system or where Temperance laws are controlled by the sentiment of the local communities . " Underwood led the anti-Ku Klux Klan forces at the 1924 Democratic National Convention . He was a longtime opponent of the Klan . In 1924 , when the Klan organized a parade in Birmingham during that year 's Democratic National Convention , Underwood called it an effort " to intimidate me , the Alabama delegation and the Democratic Party .... It will not succeed .... I maintain that the organization is a national menace .... It is either the Ku Klux Klan or the United States of America . Both can not survive . Between the two , I choose my country . " By 1924 Underwood was one of very few anti-Klan officeholders left in the South
1924 Democratic National Convention
1924 Democratic National Convention
Oscar Underwood