A Dark Reminder of What American Society Has Been and Could Be Again

It is common, when some atrocious statement or action born of hatred comes to the fore, to hear people solemnly intone, “This is not who we”—meaning Americans—“are.” That sentiment leans heavily on the most idealistic vision of the United States, expressed most familiarly in our Declaration of Independence—the truths that “we hold” about equality and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Of course, aspirations are necessary to strengthen the characters of individuals and societies. But it is equally important to face reality about weaknesses and flaws that contend with the will to be a better person or a better society. One of the best things about studying history is that it allows us to see examples of both tendencies, and to be vigilant about the choices we make.

This year, I served as a judge for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Timothy Egan’s “A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them” received an honorable mention in recognition of its over-all excellence and timeliness. Why is it especially timely? Because it tells the story of how an obsessive hatred of immigrants and people of color and deep-seated fears about the empowerment of women led to the rise of a form of fascism in Indiana.

I knew this story from a class I took in college. Back then, I saw it as a fantastical tale from a never-to-be-repeated past. Now, at a moment when hostility toward immigrants has reached a fever pitch in some quarters—“A caravan from Mexico is coming,” “They’re eating people’s pets”—and when disrespect for women’s bodily autonomy is driving policy proposals, what happened in Indiana back in the Jazz Age is a sobering reminder of just what American society has been and could be again.

The book recounts the harrowing story of the Ku Klux Klan’s dominance of nineteen-twenties Indiana. The Klan controlled the entire state, largely through the machinations of one man: David C. (D. C.) Stephenson. A grifter originally from Texas, Stephenson became the Grand Dragon of the Indiana chapter. Although he never held an official government position, at the apex of his power he could proclaim, without irony, “I am the law.” And many of the freeborn citizens of the American republic had no problem living under his dictates, even as he blighted the lives of their fellow-citizens.

The Klan had a strong presence in other states, too. Egan notes that the group “was the largest and most powerful of the secret societies among American men—bigger by far than the Odd Fellows, the Elks, or the Freemasons, and vastly greater in number than the original Klan born in violence just after the Civil War.” In 1925, in a show of force, thousands of Klansmen marched in Washington. But the situation in Indiana was notable for having a single charismatic figurehead to whom many people eagerly pledged their allegiance.

Stephenson helped put the governor of the state, the Klansman Ed Jackson, in office. He controlled police departments, judges, and politicians, and he allied with them to promote the Klan’s interests, which included terrorizing people whom he considered insufficiently American. He insisted that none of this was about hate; it was simply a matter of promoting Americanism. The presumptive outsiders included all nonwhite people, immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. Stephenson had his own private police force of thirty thousand men, who were given the authority to enforce the Klan’s “law” by means of physical intimidation.

I venture that when most people today think of the Klan they imagine a relatively small and distinct cadre of men who emerged in the night to burn crosses in the woods or, occasionally, to drag Black people from their homes for lynching. The notion that the Klan could operate as openly and as brazenly as its members did in Indiana, using the government as an arm of the so-called Invisible Empire without significant opposition, says a lot about what is possible in this country.

I found myself wondering about the role of the press during Stephenson’s ascendancy: Did the Fourth Estate do its job in exposing the extralegal control over Indiana? For the most part, it did not, except for one journalist, who, after writing about the state’s shadow government, was assaulted by Stephenson’s henchmen and jailed. (In truth, many members of the press didn’t report on the Klan because they were sympathetic to the organization.)

What broke the spell that Stephenson held over so many Indianans? It’s not that people came to their senses about the threat that he posed. It turns out that, in addition to being a grifter and an authoritarian, he was a murderer. In 1925, with the aid of his followers, he kidnapped a young woman named Madge Oberholtzer. According to Egan’s book, he sexually assaulted Oberholtzer and savagely bit her body, creating wounds that became infected. Some combination of those lacerations, and the poison she took in an attempted suicide when left alone by her kidnappers, led to her death. She lived long enough to give a statement about what had happened to her. The sensational trial and the public airing of details about the Klan destroyed Stephenson, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In the coming years, the system under which the Klan operated unravelled.

There’s no reason to think that the animosity toward immigrants and the determination to control women that sustained the Klan and Stephenson ever dissipated. Instead, in the years after Oberholtzer’s murder, people hid evidence of their association with the Klan and their enthusiasm for the man whom the law exposed as a monster. It is no surprise that the sentiments stoked during that period are still present, waiting to be aroused by the next authoritarian with a vision of “Americanism.” What happened in Indiana could happen again, on a national scale. ♦