The Lumpen-Bourgeoisie

 “A Fever in the Heartland – the Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America and the Woman Who Stopped Them” by Timothy Egan, 2023

This is the story of the 1920s Klan in Indiana, which became the biggest section of the national organization under the leadership of a drunken, violent and charismatic greed-bag named David C. Stephenson. At the time most of Indiana was known as 'north Dixie' due to its proximity to the real Jim Crow Dixie, along with it's rural and very Aryan population. Segregation was practiced there and hatred extended beyond 'people of color' to Mexicans, Chinese, Jews, Catholics, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Finns and Bolsheviks.  The “New” 1915 Klan was a continuation of the Know-Nothings, the 1860s old Klan and the White Leagues. They were forerunners to the Black Legion, Silver Shirts, the German-American Bund, the John Birch Society and now the Trump MAGA movement. It's obvious from the book that these movements are all connected by ideology, methods and class leadership, having existed for much of U.S. history.

What Stephenson tried to do was to link midnight terror with political power and a moderate image of a Rotary-style civic club. This book makes it clear the leadership of this Klan was a 'higher' class of leading citizens – lawyers, shopkeepers, businessmen, dentists, bank presidents, civil servants, prosecutors, judges and salesmen. Stephenson himself lived in a mansion near Indianapolis, had many automobiles, a summer home, a yacht, a plane and the rest. 

 He was a hypocrite who drank heavily but endorsed Prohibition, brutalized his wife and women as a 'family values' kind of guy and bribed many Protestant ministers to spread the Klan's message. Stephenson ran drunken bacchanals at his mansion and repeatedly sexually assaulted women. He turned a legal Indiana horse thief patrol into a morality police. They punished sexual 'deviance' like necking, parties, drinking, dancing, divorce, abortion and any illicit contact with 'real Americans' and the rest. The Klan formed an alliance with a female temperance leader and the Anti-Saloon League, which led to a ladies Klan auxiliary. The Klan shut down shops run by Jews or Catholics and promoted 'white's only' shops while attacking dark-skinned folks trying to live in the 'wrong' neighborhood.

Stephenson was part of a coup that deposed the original leader of the Klan in Atlanta and he became it's exalted national Grand Dragon. Stephenson's innovation in Klan policy was to get the judges, politicians from both Parties, newspapers, preachers, businessmen and cops to back him in a bid for political office in Indiana, then the U.S. Presidency. He was probably the most powerful person in the state for awhile, as his word was 'law.' The stage was set.

Problems in Paradise

In opposition, an Irish anti-fascist from Chicago named Patrick O'Donnell organized an anti-Klan front and rallied in Indianapolis, a hotbed of Klan power. They outed Klan members, doxing them by stealing their secret membership lists, which included a leader of the Republican Party in the state and a number of state officials. A newspaper editor in Muncie repeatedly denounced the Klan and was ruined for it. An NAACP official in Indianapolis organized against them. Elderly Union Civil War vets who had fought the Confederacy publicly opposed the Klan. Students at Catholic Notre Dame defeated the Klan in a pitched battle on the streets of South Bend, which is where the name 'Fighting Irish” actually comes from. And the Klan still grew in Indiana and Northern states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado and Oregon where European immigrants or dark-skinned Southerners were moving for work.

1925 Klan Parade in D.C. of 100s of Thousands

Stephenson's next idea was to take over Valparaiso University, which was almost broke, and create a white nationalist KKK school to challenge Harvard. He never graduated from high school, though he claimed he had gone to college. The rest of his self-serving biography about being rich, a war hero and having no family was a fraud. The Klan's Grand Wizard in Atlanta vetoed the move, and this made Stephenson plan a break with the national Klan. In 1924 the U.S. Congress passed a restrictive immigration bill that the Klan applauded, stopping those from southern Europe, Africa, Jews, Chinese and others from entering the country. Among those stopped was the family of Anne Frank. The Klan promoted eugenics and sterilization, along with segregation in housing, work and federal jobs and were successful. In public schools they pushed teaching the Bible and banning evolution.

In the elections of 1924 the NAACP broke with Indiana's Klan Republicans and voted Democratic, signaling a nation-wide trend. Nevertheless the Klan's candidates won the 1924 Indiana election from Senator and Governor on down. Their national high point was the massive 1925 march in Washington, D.C. attended by 100s of thousands of Klan members and a good number of members of Congress.

Trials & Tribulations

But Stephenson's flaws were becoming worse. A brutalized and raped young woman Madge Oberholtzer, who died by her own hand, was able to narrate her story for a legal Affidavit before succumbing. The crime became public through many witnesses and landed Stephenson in jail and court. Other women came out to tell their stories of being drunkenly raped or attacked by him and 500 women in Indianapolis demonstrated outside his jail cell. The 'family man' was exposed and expelled from the national Klan as part of their faction fight. 

Nevertheless he expected that the local Klan-backed Indiana judges, media and politicians would free him. They cut funds to the prosecutor's office, threatened the prosecutor's life, began purchasing witnesses and eventually chose the jury – middle-aged white farmers, 3 of whom were Klan members and 2 of whom they tried to bribe. Yet the Judge allowed Oberholtzer's dying declaration into evidence. The defense resorted to victim-blaming, painting the dead woman as a loose floozy and a depressed suicide. The jury saw through the deception and sent Stephenson to prison for second-degree murder. He filed 40 appeals, all rejected, and served his long sentence.

Madge Oberholtzer & Stephenson

As to the book's title, it's an exaggeration, as the national “Invisible” Empire continued for many years after that, though in a shrunken state. Nor is Indiana in the middle of the West - Midwest – it's in the North and was during the Civil War. The story is a paean to the U.S. justice system, something we know is not always true at all, but sometimes it works. A cascade of legal trials after this trial convicted Klansmen in a number of states of sexual attacks, bribery, racist violence and perjury, with national Klan numbers dropping by 90% according to Egan. Their last lynching in 1930 in Indiana went unpunished however.

This book has color, with Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Malcolm X, Clarence Darrow and John Mellencamp getting mentioned. The 1921 massacre of African-Americans in Tulsa, OK was in a city with a very large Klan presence. Woodrow Wilson actually segregated the federal workforce, partly under Klan influence. An Indiana law for forced sterilization of various 'undesirables' was put into place by Klan politicians and that law was imitated across the country and by the Nazis. Even Prohibition was partly their work.

This is a riveting story of a certain reactionary lumpen-bourgeois type that we all know. If the history sounds familiar, it's because the author is aware of the similarities between Trump and the MAGA movement, along with every other right-wing monster to stride across the U.S. stage. Trump has been a reactionary, life-long fraud who has escaped a reckoning so far. Will Stormy Daniel's be his Madge?  Instead of a white hood his allies wear fatigue militia caps. I suspect that in order to defend ourselves from Trump and his militias we will need a new Anti-Fascist Front come November - no matter who wins. Be prepared!

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “The Worst Hard Time” and “The Immortal Irishman” (both by Egan); “Fascism Today – What It is and How to Fight It,” “A Confederacy of Dunces?” “Struggle & Progress,” “BlacKKKlansman” (S Lee); “Drivin' Dixie Down,” “Monument – the Untold Story of Stone Mountain,” “U.S. Army Bases Named After Confederates” or 'Jim Crow.'

May Day has many anti-fascist books.  Be prepared!

And I got it at the Library!

Red Frog / April 13, 2024