( David C. Stephenson)

Today, we live in an America beset by racist groups who over the last decade seem to have been accepted by a significant element of society.  The anti-Semitic murders at a Pittsburgh synagogue and the murder of George Floyd are just two examples in a world where white supremacists and extremists engage in attacks against Jews, Blacks, Muslims, the LGBT community, Asians, and Hispanics seemingly on a daily basis.  If that was not bad enough, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the ACLU, and other civil rights organizations violence against minorities is on the rise along with malevolent  threats against what racists see as “the other” in our society, while many politicians, including an ex-president grant these groups legitimacy through their public support and commentary.  For some this period is an aberration in our history, however, the historical record does not support that conclusion.

One of the more interesting historical examples is the 1920s – the Jazz Age, a period which witnessed the height of a uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan.  Their region of support was not the south, but the heartland and the west.  They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants and would do anything to block these groups from entering the United States and achieving the American dream.  The group was led by a charismatic charlatan named D. C. Stephenson.  This era with its focus on the KKK and its “Grand Dragon” is the subject of Timothy Egan’s latest book, A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND: THE KLU KLUX KLAN’S PLOT TO TAKE OVER AMERICA, AND THE WOMAN WHO STOPPED THEM.  Egan, a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winner has written a number of excellent monographs including, THE WORST HARD TIME describing the depression and THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN which deals with the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s.   In his latest work he has produced a riveting historical thriller which deals with one of the darkest periods in American history.  The period under discussion is highlighted by a cunning con man and his supporters and the woman who stopped them.  The narrative evokes deep emotions as it reflects a deeper concern that we are now inside an even more dangerous period of racial hatred and violence.

(Wesley Hiram Evans)

Egan immediately lays out the problem in his introduction as in the 1920s the KKK controlled three state governorships including Indiana which Stephenson ruled as an autocrat, and a number of mayor’s offices nationwide.  In addition, the KKK had its own 30,000 man legally deputized police force, and the state of Indiana passed the world’s first eugenic sterilization law, something that Adolf Hitler noticed and studied.  In the South whites wiped out Black voting rights and imposed Jim Crow laws absolving government from supporting equal rights and was supported by a Supreme Court with only one justice dissenting.  Lastly, the KKK claimed fifteen US senators and 75 House members to impact Congress.

As in all of Egan’s works A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND is deeply researched and reflects the author’s command of the material.  From the outset Egan argues that the KKK problem began at the conclusion of the Civil War with its foundation in Tennessee under the leadership of the defeated Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest who unleashed a reign of terror throughout the south after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the accession of Andrew Johnson to the presidency who was an out and out racist.  Lynchings, murders, violence rampaged throughout the south until General Ulysses S. Grant assumed the presidency and by 1872 he had crushed the Klan and Forrest disbanded it. 

The Klan would rise again with a slightly different agenda beginning in 1921 sending recruiters throughout the Midwest providing employment for D. C. Stephenson was living in the segregated city of Evansville, IN with the hope of expanding the organization in the north.  Stephenson would soon move on to Indianapolis, a city Egan describes along with other midwestern cities and states as having become racially unhinged following WWI.  People were fed racist lies and religious bigotry with no basis in fact by the Klan under the leadership of  Stephenson, who Egan describes as a “drunk and a fraud, a bootlegger and a blackmailer,” a rapist and a man prone to lies, violence, using bribery to achieve his aims.  He left a family behind in rags and distress who he refused to support. 

(Madge Oberholtzer)

Egan explores Stephenson’s life and beliefs in detail and concludes he was nothing more than a huckster who traded in racial theories that were demeaning and dangerous.  He would help reconstruct the KKK in part as a business investment that eventually would make him a millionaire.  Egan lays out Stephenson’s strategy and the resulting machinations which would allow him to take over the state of Indiana leading to his view that “I am the law” which he would use as a basis for his actions.  He would help spread KKK doctrine to Texas, Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as his ultimate goal was to use the Klan as a vehicle to take over the federal government and gain the presidency.  Egan carefully develops the theme that racial hatred was not a southern phenomenon, but a northern one as membership in the Klan in the Midwest was rapidly expanding throughout the early 1920s.  This expansion was due to the Klan’s rejection of modernism and a belief the world was spinning too fast and the threat of the “other,” southern European, Russian, and Italian immigrants who were mostly Jews and Catholics were a threat to what they viewed as the traditional American way of life.

(President Calvin Coolidge)

Aside from Stephenson there are a number of important historical figures that Egan introduces.  Henry Ford, the catalyst for the rise in anti-Semitism through his newspaper the Dearborn Independent which had a circulation of over one million and the use of his wealth.  Patrick O’Donnell, bravely stood against the Klan using his newspaper, Tolerance to spread the truth about their beliefs and the danger they presented.  Hiram Wesley Evans, former Imperial Wizard who eventually shared leadership of the Klan with Stephenson and later had a falling out with him.  Daisy Douglas Barr, a Quaker preacher who held a broad vision of White Supremacy and worked to develop a role for women in the Klan.  President Calvin Coolidge who did nothing to offset the Klan’s popularity and used it for his personal political benefit.  Governor Edwin Jackson and Senator James Watson both from Indiana owed their political success to Stephenson.

Egan’s narrative is in two parts.  First he developed the strategies and actions of the Klan from 1920-1925.  The author drills deeply into Klan ideology and the personalities that spread their beliefs.  He points to numerous historical examples from the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, the acceptance of eugenics as science to justify Klan actions, Klan control of state legislatures to implement their programs, events designed to attract more members and reinforce their beliefs and goals, and the lack of response by state and federal officials to the violence against Blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants.  Egan will then shift his story to that of the events of March 1925 and introduce a series of new characters, the most important of which is Madge Oberholtzer, the manager of the Indiana Young People’s Reading Circle, a special section of the Indiana Department of Public Instruction.  When she heard  rumors that her job and program were about to be eliminated because of budget cuts she turned to Stephenson who she felt had the political power to assist her.  Stephenson would take a shine to her which in the end resulted in a brutal rape and the death of Oberholtzer.

Egan explores the events that led to Oberholtzer’s rape and murder and the trial that followed.  He introduces Asa Smith, Oberholtzer’s lawyer, and Will Remy, an unassuming prosecutor for Marion County, IN, both of whom wanted to destroy Stephenson and cut the Klan down to size.  Egan’s descriptions are disturbing because of the violence involved and the political system that Stephenson sought to manipulate to obtain his acquittal at a time when there were between two and five million Klan members nationwide.

(Prosecutor William Henderson Remy and jury that convicted Stephenson))

Egan writes with adept authority with an eye toward disconcerting detail as a White Protestant racial movement sought to take advantage of the historical racial animus that has existed in the United States from its outset.  Jeff Shesol’s New York Times book review of April 2, 2023, encompasses how deeply the Klan became ingrained in American society; “It offered a more expansive set of resentments, providing more points of entry for aggrieved white Protestants. Racial purists were armed with the so-called science of eugenics and stoked with fears of being replaced by “insane, diseased” Catholics and Jews. Moral purists and traditionalists were called from the pulpit to wage war against modernity — enlisting in K.K.K. vice squads that beat adulterers and smashed up speakeasies.  But the Klan did more, in this period, than raise the fiery cross. For a startlingly large number of Americans, Egan writes, the Klan “gave meaning, shape and purpose to the days.” It was possible to do your shopping at Klan-approved stores and cook Klan-approved recipes, to enroll your sons in the Junior K.K.K. and daughters in the Tri-K Klub, and to spend evenings singing Klan songs by the piano. The K.K.K., in later parlance, was an ecosystem. “Folks got their news from editors loyal to the Klan,” Egan explains, or from a disinformation network that spread lies with speed. Corruption kept the enterprise running and growing: The police and politicians were bribed; businesses owned by Jews, Catholics or Blacks were shaken down; leaders and recruiters — including pastors — got a cut of initiation fees, dues and robe sales.”

Egan’s main theme that Oberholtzer’s death and Stephenson’s conviction stopped the Klan before it could take over America  goes a bit too far.  Granted, it was a major reason why the Klan’s membership rapidly declined within a few years of the trial, but more importantly was the graft and public hypocrisy reflected in the rot exhibited by Klan leadership and organization played more of a role in its regression.  In addition, there were other actors who were emboldened to take on the Klan including Black editors, Jewish and Catholic groups which all contributed to the weakening and loss of influence by the Klan.

Despite Egan’s overemphasis of Oberholtzer’s role in the narrative the book is clearly written, well supported, and an addictive read.  Anyone with interest in understanding the rise and fall of the Klan, and perhaps the rise of White Supremacy today should take the time to read Egan’s work – it will be eye opening.