This play by Tom Swift is the reenactment of a trial that took place one hundred years ago, the nation’s first successful prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan, sending men to prison for acts of violence. It is performed in the actual courtroom in which the trial was held in 1923, in the Williamson County Courthouse in Georgetown, Texas. First presented in 1998, it has had seven revivals and has been seen by more than 14,000 theatregoers. 

In addition to Moody, a key role is traveling salesman Robert W. Burleson, a lodger in a widow’s boarding house. A jealous klansman, whose advances toward the widow have been rejected, accuses Burleson of an immoral relationship with her. Testimony in the trial includes dramatic descriptions of the assault on Burleson, pulled from his car, pistol-whipped, kidnapped, beaten, and tarred. With persistence, patience, clever questioning, and luck, Moody, Sheriff Lee Allen, and craggy Constable Louis Lowe disproves perjured testimony and affirms what Dan was taught as a young boy: you can’t hurt people – ever!