A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, by Timothy Egan
Most of us probably associate the Ku Klux Klan with the years immediately after the Civil War. And indeed, that was when the KKK was originally founded, in Tennessee, to intimidate blacks who had recently gained their freedom at the end of the Civil War. Chapters popped up all over the south, in an attempt to suppress the black vote and intimidate blacks into not running for political office, and for a few years, it was very successful. After President Grant came into office in 1870, laws were passed to suppress the Klan and prosecute members for their illegal activities, and Klan membership dropped.
However, in the early 1920s, the KKK experienced a resurgence, and Klan chapters were created all over the country, with a large following in the northern states. This book is about this second wave of the KKK and one of it’s most influential leaders, D.C. Stephenson. D.C. Stephenson was a drifter, an abuser, and a deadbeat husband, but somehow his charisma still managed to get him appointed as the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan and the lead recruiter for seven other states in the Midwest.
The KKK during this period grew to a membership of between 3 and 8 million members. They gained this following by presenting themselves as a family values fraternal organization, that fought for women’s rights and sought to weed out the undesirables. Who did they consider undesirable? Well, in addition to Blacks, there were the Jews, the Catholics, the Communists, and any number of recent immigrant populations, including the Italians, Russians, and Lithuanians, among others.
Timothy Egan focuses this book on Stephenson’s rise to power, the corruption with which he ruled his section of the Klan, and his ultimate downfall. Stephenson was a raging alcoholic, and as is frequently a problem with heavy drinkers, he just couldn’t control his behavior. After a number of attempted and completed sexual assaults of women, where he was able to buy their silence, he attacked a young woman whose silence he could not buy.
Madge Oberholtzer was a young woman working for Stephenson, and after he attacked and raped her, she attempted suicide by poison while she was still his captive. He did nothing to try to help her, and eventually dumped her back off with her family. She didn’t die quickly though, and over the next few weeks, gave a detailed account of her time with Stephenson, and the assault. When she died, he was charged with her murder.
The book details all of this, from the events leading up to the assault, her suicide attempt, her lingering illness, and her eventual death. D.C. Stephenson’s arrest and trial were widely publicized, and considered the scandal of the time. Even so, a conviction wasn’t a sure thing. It’s tough to call yourself a man of family values after all that.
Egan did a great job of researching and writing his book, holding my interest throughout as he told the story of the rise, and eventual fall of Stephenson and the Klan.
4 stars.
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