Arad Simon Lakin

[6] Lakin served as the Chaplain of the 8th Indiana Cavalry, Union Army, during the American Civil War.

The Bishop of Ohio sent minister Lakin to Alabama as a missionary for the national Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC).

[6] His goal was to establish a biracial congregation at MEC in Alabama and as a result, the Ku Klux Klan targeted Lakin.

Cloud were the subject's of a Klan cartoon published in the Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor.

[8] The cartoon featured images of the two educators lynched and hanging from a tree in the "City of Oaks" (or Tuscaloosa), with a KKK-labeled donkey below them, walking away.