Who would have hesitated to join an organization that fed the poor and opened orphanages and hospitals? A proudly Christian group that opposed drug abuse, condemned sexual promiscuity, donated Bibles to public schools, and supported the Salvation Army at Christmas. Some of its most prominent members were well-respected ministers and political and business leaders.
George Dale, editor of the Muncie, Indiana newspaper, wrote 100 years ago, “Hundreds of citizens here, many of them men of high character, are joining the Ku Klux Klan.”
Timothy Egan and a team of journalists won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles titled, How Race is Lived in America. His new book, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, benefits from that experience. Egan tells two stories in one: the story of a seed of violent hatred, and the fertile ground in which it spread. It’s a terrible story, hard to put aside – and long buried until Egan exhumed it.
Eventually, a third of the white men of Muncie would join the Klan. A quarter of all residents of Evansville, Indiana took the Klan oath. Quaker evangelist and prohibitionist Daisy Barr became the mother of the women’s Klan, focused on spreading innuendo, rumor, and disinformation. Henry Ford, an avowed antisemite, included an owner’s manual and an antisemitic pamphlet with the sale of every Model T. The Klan was everywhere on the rise – and respected.
From EncyclopediaDubuque: “A pamphlet entitled ‘100 Percent American Songs’ was distributed in 1920 by the Dubuque Kounty Klan Kuartette.” [Kute, no?] There was also a Dubuque Ladies Klan Drill Team. “The only organization in the 1920s that openly disapproved of the Klan in Dubuque was the American Legion.” At the time, the Legion members had served, not just in World War I, but also in the Civil War.
“We’re not against other people; we’re just pro-white,” said Klansmen who enjoyed positions of respect within their communities. Many obliged them by nodding with sympathetic understanding at such obvious nonsense.
The founder of the new KKK was one D.C. Stephenson. “Steve” to his friends, “The Old Man” to his followers. He was a wife beater and ne’er-do-well from Oklahoma. Compulsively lying and cock-sure, he arrived in Indiana and seduced the right people until, after only 4 years, he saw a slate of his chosen candidates handily elected, and declared himself to be the law. Almost no one objected.
How did he do it? He exploited the racism of the people, including some of the adult children and grandchildren of Union soldiers. With a dentist from Dallas he gave a rebirth to the KKK forty some years after President Ulysses S. Grant had broken them. (Hello Galena, and thanks!)
The first half of Egan’s book is devoted to Stephenson’s shocking success, the people who helped him and benefitted from associating with the Klan, and the tales of his blatant and contagious hypocrisy. The man who crusaded against booze was a falling down drunk. The man who preached sexual moderation was a known rapist and wife beater. Ministers loaned their pulpits to him, and then attended his bacchanals. The people closest to him knew these things, and helped him to hide his crimes. He had a few heroic, yet ineffective, opponents.
The second half of the book is the nail-biting story of efforts to bring Stephenson and his work to a just and ruinous end. There is grave doubt throughout that even this last crime would result in his downfall. Readers will be shocked to learn who, finally, brings down the Klan itself, which seemed prepared to thrive even without its founder.
How do monsters and charlatans get elevated by men and women of otherwise high character? The desire to make fun of them and their cosplay-like titles – Exalted Cyclops, Grand Dragon, Kleagle, everything but Ku Klux Kucks – conflicts with the awareness that these Kretins can be deadly to those they deem inferior.
What do we do about neighbors and relatives who follow absolutely heinous people? Like Germans with Nazi neighbors and relatives, cross burners are known to some of us. From EncyclopediaDubuque again:
“When the city council in May 1990 adopted a plan to attract 100 black families in hopes of adding diversity to the city of 58,000 people, a backlash of fear and intolerance erupted. Five crosses were burned around town between September and November.” [emphasis added]
That’s well within the memories of many Dubuquers. Some current residents know those who burned crosses here. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Nazi group National Alliance as still active throughout Iowa. You can see Confederate battle flags being flown without fear of reprisal, or even of anyone identifying it as the flag of treason against the Union.
Egan’s book is about America 100 years ago. But it’s also about how the soil remains fertile for hatred. The objects of hatred keep changing, or expanding to new groups.
What about white supremacists themselves? Are they evil? Misguided? Should we infantilize the eager members of the KKK, from the 1920s or 2020s? Forgive the poor dears, for they knew not what they were doing? How did Germany handle the guilt of those who enthusiastically joined the Nazis? Does freedom include the freedom to be Nazis, Klansmen, or Confederates? Can we set no higher standard for ourselves?
Additional books will add to the light Egan sheds on such questions. Trumbo’s unfinished yet riveting novel, Night of the Aurochs, is the story of how local bullies and sadists come to power and behave as you’d expect.
Bernhard Schlink’s novel, The Reader, is the tale of forming a close personal relationship with someone who once joined a group inspired by the KKK. She asks of those who would judge her, “What would you have done?”
The new memoir, Fatherland, by Burkhard Bilger, is the story of his grandfather, a Nazi official in a small town in occupied France. Can there be such a thing as a good Nazi, or a less bad Nazi?