Max's Reviews > A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

Egan gives us an account of an important chapter in American history highly relevant to events today. He describes the rise and fall of the Jim Crow Klan in the early 1920’s. He focuses on the Midwest Klan centered in Indiana where it took control of the state government under its pathological cult leader, David C. Stephenson. Stephenson’s blatant abuse of power and sexual predation of women led to his downfall in a dramatic trial. The revelations led to the Klan’s steep decline across the nation. It’s an engrossing story of how an individual can get away with so much evil, of how easily a massive white supremacy movement could flourish in America, and of how greedy and corrupt politicians embraced it for personal gain. The narrative is rich in personal detail keeping the reader engaged. My notes follow.

The Ku Klux Klan started immediately after the Civil War quickly growing to half a million members across the South murdering and threatening Blacks, depriving them of their civil rights. The Klan had free reign until Grant became president in 1869. Grant cracked down with federal troops and crushed the Klan. When Hayes became president in 1877, he withdrew federal troops from the South allowing white leaders to subjugate Blacks with local law enforcement.

The Klan was reborn on Thanksgiving night in 1915 in a cross-burning ceremony on Stone Mountain in Georgia. The original Klan did not burn crosses. The founder of the new Klan William Simmons was the son of an original Klansman. He was inspired by tales of the old Klan and a new movie, The Birth of a Nation which vilified Blacks and glorified the Klan. The new Klan expanded its targets from just Blacks to include Jews and Roman Catholics and regionally adapted to threaten Asians and Mexicans. It was anti-immigrant excepting those from the “Nordic” countries. Simmons booklet “A White Man’s Nation” laid it out. The Klan supported prohibition although Simmons himself was a heavy drinker and it railed against promiscuity to better align with evangelical Protestants. The Klan was a money-making proposition selling memberships, clothing, and gear. It started slowly but in 1920 the Klan grew to 100,000 and expanded nationwide thanks to a couple of very able recruiters who got substantial cuts.

Klan leaders brought in Stephenson in Indiana who like them had great ambitions and saw the wealth and power it would bring. Stephenson quickly went to work recruiting preachers and ministers bribing them to bring in their flocks. Stephenson promoted the Klan saying it stood for Christian principles, wholesomeness, and decency and that it protected Real (white Anglo) Americans from the threat of degenerate races. Stephenson came out in full support of the growing eugenics movement including forced sterilization for those deemed “mentally deficient.”

In October 2022 Stephenson convinced the Horse Thief Detectives Association to join the Klan. With automobiles taking over from horses The HTDA was in search of a new gig. The members were given tin badges and set out to enforce the Klan’s attack on the immoral. Within a year 14,000 badged enforcers in Indiana were smashing bars, breaking up parties, invading people’s homes, beating those they didn’t like with a focus on the uncorseted flappers with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank and danced to black jazz. The police looked the other way, many were in the Klan. The HTDA became the Klan’s military arm and began keeping files on Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Bolsheviks, bootleggers, and enemies.

Stephenson got Indiana judges, policemen, politicians, newspapermen and ministers to join the Klan including the chairman of the state Republican Party and Indiana’s Secretary of State. By 1923 Indiana had over 300,000 Klan members more than any other state in the country. Those who opposed him were intimidated or beaten up by his goons. Stephenson was both charming and violent. He repeatedly beat his second wife who finally left him. He had abandoned his first wife and child years earlier. Stephenson formed a women’s auxiliary which grew to a quarter of a million members in Indiana in its first year. He had found a charismatic female preacher to lead the auxiliary who was an effective recruiter. Lists of approved and unapproved stores were promulgated so the women would know where to shop. The unapproved stores were those owned by Blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, and anyone opposing the Klan. Stevenson established a children’s Klan the Ku Klux Kiddies which taught the Klan’s creed.

Patrick O’Donnell formed the American Unity League to take on the Klan in the Midwest. He put out a weekly newspaper that reported the Klan’s activities. He had members infiltrate the Klan getting secret membership lists and inside information. He published the names of prominent members including the Indiana Chairman of the Republican Party who then publicly left the Klan. He exposed officials and ministers that took orders and bribes from Stephenson. While in the diverse city of Chicago he had success, in Indiana it backfired. Stephenson viciously disparaged O’Donnell and the Republican Chairman as unamerican and used the fight to rally his members adding even more. Stephenson expanded his Klan empire to Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with over 200,000 members each.

On July 4th 1923 the largest assembly of the Klan in history gathered in Kokomo Indiana. Well over 100,000 Klan men, women and children came from all over the Midwest. They held a parade with floats deprecating blacks as predators, Catholics as lechers and depicting the Klan as the way real Americans could defend themselves. Stephenson addressed the crowd basking in the adulation. The New York Times wrote “In no other state in the union, not even Texas, is the domination of the Ku Klux Klan so absolute as it is in Indiana.” The paper put the number of Indiana Klan members at 500,000.

Stephenson was a heavy drinker and womanizer. Not divorced he still entered into multiple engagements at the same time, breaking them when he tired of them. He repeatedly forced himself on unsuspecting woman raping some and sometimes drugging them. He would threaten or pay off those that he thought would talk. He held wild parties at his palatial home and on his yacht on Lake Erie. The yacht was a twin of the one Al Capone owned. Prominent people from the Governor of Ohio on down attended. The parties served liquor brought in from Canada. They had bands, dancing, naked girls popping out of cakes and descended into debauchery. Stephenson had photos taken. Never know when you need one. His security aide noted “These parties would have shamed Nero.” In an Ohio hotel in a drunken stupor Stephenson had a manicurist sent to his room. He demanded sex, offered to pay her then threatened to kill her when she refused. She ran out, sent up a bellman who Stephenson beat. He ended up in jail where he suffered severe alcohol withdrawal. His lawyers got him out of jail but the story revealing everything hit the Sunday morning Columbus newspapers. It didn’t matter to his supporters.

In 1924 the Klan was growing ever stronger across the nation, doing particularly well in Kansas, Colorado, and Oregon. In Indiana, Stephenson was ready to flex his political muscle. Rallying his members to vote for his picks and disparaging their opponents, doling out money and whatever it took paid off. His candidates filled the Indiana House and the governorship as well as local jurisdictions throughout the state. He took control of the state government. Nothing was legislated without his approval. He designated picks to appoint to state agencies that let contracts. Money was always a top concern. He expected the current US Senator to resign soon and the new governor to appoint him US Senator.

In March 1925 Madge Oberholtzer met Stephenson. Madge worked in state government and was interested in a nutrition bill passing. Stephenson was interested in Madge. After some more meetings, Stephenson had an aide call one night and asked Madge’s mother to have her call. She called Stephenson. He said he needed to discuss urgent state business that night. When she got there, he told her to get a drink. She said no. He had another man pour it and told her to drink it. She tried to make a call. It was cut off. She tried to leave. He grabbed her and told her she had to stay. With four drunk men standing around her she was forced to drink. She got dizzy and vomited. Stephenson told her he loved her and they were going to Chicago that night. They picked up their guns, showed them to Madge, and told her to follow. They drove to the train station. Terrified she tried to talk Stephenson out of it to no avail. Stephenson took her into a private compartment on the train where he raped her biting her all over her body including her breasts and thighs and chewing her tongue, things he had done to many other women. Bleeding all over she passed out. They got off the train in Hammond, Indiana, Stephenson deciding not to cross the state line. They checked into a hotel. Stephenson allowed Madge to go to a drug store under the supervision of an aide. She needed bandages and antiseptic, but also bought bichloride of mercury tablets, poison. She took it and soon felt very sick, moaning. Stephenson told her to stop it and she told him she had taken poison. Stephenson changed his plans. They got into a car and headed back to Stephenson’s home in Indianapolis. Stephenson found out Madge’s mother and an attorney had been there looking for Madge. Madge, in extreme pain, began screaming waking neighbors. Stephenson decided to have an aid take her home. The aid told a border who answered the door that he was from Kokomo and Madge had been in an auto accident and left.

Madge’s mother called a doctor who realized she was dying as did Madge. She told the doctor what had happened. Madge’s parents engaged an attorney who confronted Stephenson who denied any culpability. Knowing Madge was dying the attorney wrote a “dying declaration” he read to Madge in front of witnesses and a notary that she signed. He could use this in court after Madge died. The story leaked out and quickly spread. The county prosecutor knew the attorney and contacted him. Both despised the Klan. He quickly assembled evidence and took it to a grand jury getting an indictment on five felony counts. He had Stephenson arrested before he could leave town with the help of two Irish Catholic cops. Stephenson posted $25,000 bond to get out. In April Madge died. Days later Stephenson and two aides pleaded not guilty. Stephenson hired a prominent well-connected attorney. He got a Klan backed judge to move the trial to Noblesville, a Klan stronghold. In June the new judge decided that Stephenson could not stay out on bail. He was remanded to the jail next door. Since the court did not convene in the summer, he would be there until October when his trial was scheduled. The sheriff was in the Klan and gave Stephenson a private room and had his wife cook meals for him. He brought in the best liquor and whatever else Stephenson wanted. Visitation was very liberal. While in jail Stephenson met with reporters, some already in the Klan and others he bribed to run favorable stories.

From the court pleadings and leaks, details of the case spread quickly. People were shocked. His violent sexual appetite was one factor but equally damaging were revelations about his control of state government. Many women who had been assaulted and raped by Stephenson contacted the prosecutor telling their stories. These too leaked out. Stephenson in a fight over money had broken his Midwestern Klan away from the national Klan whose leader Hiram Evans was now an enemy who publicly attacked Stephenson. In August Evans led 50,000 Klansmen marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. 200,000 sympathetic onlookers packed the streets. President Coolidge left town making no comment. Evans then went to Indiana to make the case for the national Klan reminding people Stephenson was no longer a member in good standing.

In October the trial began with a jury of mostly farmers, some of whom were Klan members. The prosecutor brought in some high-powered volunteer legal help and presented the dying declaration and testimony from Madge’s mother, doctors, and other witnesses. The dying declaration laid out all the brutal details of what happened to her, showing Stephenson to be a monster. The defense presented Madge, who had a spotless reputation, as an impure party girl a flapper who went with Stephenson willingly for a good time. Bribed witnesses bolstered the defense with fabricated stories about Madge. What would sway the jury? Madge’s doctors testified Madge died from an infection due to the numerous deep bites Stephenson made all over her body. An autopsy confirmed infection as the cause of death. The defense said it was the poison. The distinction was key to the murder charge.

The jury took five hours to reach a verdict: Guilty of second-degree murder. Deciding between first and second degree took most of the five hours. The judge sentenced Stephenson to life. Although in prison, Stephenson still held power over those outside. He had kept records of his bribes and illegal deals with state officials including the governor. But it didn’t get him out of prison. Stephenson’s conviction was the tipping point for the Jim Crow Klan. It made national headlines with all the sordid details and newfound moralizing. Klan membership declined precipitously. The Klan’s Washington march in 1926 drew only 15,000 versus 50,000 in 1925. In 1927, Stephenson unloaded on the governor and other state officials, fed up with their failure to get him out of prison. He had two boxes of documents handed to the prosecutor. The governor and other top officials were charged with bribery. Stephenson’s former total control of state government was now on public display. Stephenson enjoyed testifying against his former allies. Investigative reporters had a field day. Klan membership nationwide declined to only 10% of its total three years earlier. In 1950 Stephenson was let out of prison. He would serve six more years for violating parole. He married again and in 1961 at age seventy was charged with attempting to abduct a young girl. He disappeared secluding himself in a private life in Tennessee where he took a fourth wife who had no idea who he really was. He died in 1967.