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

Timothy Egan

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 4

Part 1, Chapters 5-11

Part 2, Chapters 12-15

Part 2, Chapters 16-18

Part 3, Chapters 19-23

Part 3, Chapter 24-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

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Important Quotes

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Part 2, Chapters 12-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Monster of the Midway”

Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary: “Lord of the Manor, 1924”

Madge Oberholtzer grew up in Irvington, Indiana, four blocks from Stephenson’s guarded mansion. She was “bright, quick-witted, and strong-willed” (140). She came of age as women had just won the right to vote, and Oberholtzer, an independent spirit, took advantage of her new freedom. She bought a Model T and embarked on a cross-country trip with a friend at a time when women travelling alone was rare. When she returned, she secured a job with the Young People’s Reading Circle, a literacy program that served poor communities. The program, however, was on the legislative chopping block. Reports of Stephenson’s political influence caught Oberholtzer’s attention—perhaps he could rescue the program and save her job. Despite her abhorrence of the Klan and its tactics, she was swayed by the newspaper’s “fawning” profile of the Grand Wizard and decided to ask her neighbor for a favor.

Stephenson’s parties were lavish, hedonistic affairs, violating every Puritan principle the Klan claimed to stand for. His “vulgarian” presence was an affront to the restrained neighborhood, and the Klan even began terrorizing Butler, the local college. Soon, the once-welcoming college restricted Black admissions to a fraction of its previous admissions. Meanwhile, Stephenson’s indulgent lifestyle caught up with him. Engaged to several women simultaneously, one of them found out and ended the relationship. Also, his drinking landed him in the hospital with serious withdrawal symptoms. His immunity to consequences, however, made him more violent and sadistic over time. After threatening a woman at gunpoint and beating a hotel bellhop, the police arrested him. He spent 25 hours in a jail cell, and the press ran the story. Still, his victim, fearing Stephenson’s power, refused to testify against him, and he suffered no consequences.

Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “Rage of the Resistance, 1924”

Patrick O’Donnell’s anti-Klan crusade continued, but when he unwittingly publicized a falsified document accusing prominent Chicagoan William Wrigley of KKK membership, he was sued and driven into bankruptcy. With O’Donnell out of the way, Stephenson aimed to drive Notre Dame—Indiana’s Catholic university—out of business. He planned a large march against the university, and despite efforts by police and university president Matthew Walsh to keep the situation contained and peaceful, students refused to be intimidated. They charged into the Klan march, tearing off hoods and sending the Klansmen fleeing. After a day of student assault on KKK headquarters, the police finally dispersed the crowd. Playing the victim, the Klan threatened reprisals. The confrontation earned Notre Dame the nickname “Fighting Irish.”

Other voices of protest rose up as well. NAACP leader James Johnson, believing the United States was at a tipping point—either allowing great progress for Black Americans or retreating into the past—met with President Calvin Coolidge. He found Coolidge cold and detached, uninterested in the plight of America’s Black citizens. In Muncie, George Dale continued to fight despite being driven into bankruptcy and numerous threats to his life. Rabbi Morris Feuerlicht prevented the construction of a hospital for white Protestants only. Daisy Barr grew rich by skimming profits from Klanswomen membership, but Dale’s exposé on her corruption drove her out of Indiana. The damage was minor, however, and Stephenson, aiming to install fellow Klansman Ed Jackson as governor, took advantage of the current governor’s financial problems by offering him a cash bribe—$10,000 in exchange for a KKK district attorney in Indiana’s most populous county. The governor refused, appointing William Remy instead. He vowed to “drive [the Klan] out of politics in Marion County” (168).

Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary: “The Klan on Top, 1924”

By 1924, the Klan held undisputed sway over many aspects of American life—popular culture, education, law enforcement, and soon, politics. The National Origins Act of 1924 (passed with bipartisan support) closed the borders to Jews, as well as people from Africa, Asia, and eastern and southern Europe. It was a legislative slam dunk for the Klan. When Stephenson tried to install Indiana Senator James Watson as vice presidential nominee, the backlash forced him to put the nomination on hold. At the Democratic National Convention, the Klan had several opposition forces to contend with—New York governor Al Smith, a Catholic; a plank in the party platform condemning discrimination based on race, religion, or birthplace; and strong opposition to their candidate, William McAdoo. Their eventual candidate was “crushed” in the general election. The Klan was confident in their ability to control elections at the national level.

Meanwhile, the feud between Stephenson and Evans reached a critical point. Evans didn’t approve of Stephenson’s personal behavior, and Stephenson refused to be controlled. Stephenson staged a coup, naming himself Grand Dragon of a Northern Klan, distinct from Evans’s branch in Atlanta. When Klansmen terrorized Black communities and Republicans in office remained silent, Black voters—long Republican stalwarts—shifted en masse to the Democratic party. While Johnson urged Black voters to protest at the ballot box, Stephenson bribed Black officials to suppress the vote of their own people. Although Indiana elected a Republican (Klan-backed) governor, a massive shift of Black votes to the Democratic party signaled a “tectonic political realignment” (180). At the new governor’s inaugural ball, Stephenson’s and Oberholtzer’s paths crossed for the first time.

Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary: “Hoosier Hysteria, 1925”

In Kentucky, a towering black obelisk was unveiled, a monument to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America. In Indiana, the majority Klan legislature planned an ambitious, morality-based agenda touching everything from education to baseball to the prohibition of sacramental wine during the Catholic mass.

Relishing his total control of the state, Stephenson entertained a visit from Oberholtzer, who made a plea to save her literacy program. He asked for a favor in return: ghostwrite a textbook on nutrition—one of the Klan’s educational goals—and join him for dinner. She deferred. Eventually, however, eager to save her job, she consented, careful to keep her emotional distance. Although she was wary of his boasting, it was his drinking, guns, and increasingly bizarre behavior that most unsettled her.

Part 2, Chapters 12-15 Analysis

In these chapters, Egan introduces Madge Oberholtzer, the young, progressive woman whose embrace of modernism set her up for a direct conflict with Indiana’s Grand Wizard. In many ways, the narrative explores the tension between modernism and traditionalism. With part of the country diving headlong into the 1920s—its parties, its less restrictive moral atmosphere, its defiance of Prohibition—and the other part clinging to a quickly fading past, these kinds of social, cultural, and legislative battles were to be expected, but with an erratic Stephenson in the mix, this particular battle was headed for violence. For his part, Stephenson’s egocentric behavior grew with every unchallenged transgression, and by the time he met Oberholtzer, he saw her as just another conquest. Oberholtzer, however, was no naïve dilettante. She sensed something menacing about Stephenson, but she put aside her fears for the greater good: to save her literacy program and her job.

Although O’Donnell and Dale’s crusades rallied the opposition, they failed to make any significant dents in Stephenson’s empire. However, as Stephenson’s grasp extended to the national stage, he was stymied by forces within the Democratic party, which was itself embracing a progressive turn. Many Republicans—the party of Abraham Lincoln—were fully on board with the Klan, but the Democratic party, which had for decades held power in the South and contributed to the enforcement of Jim Crow laws, revealed a new plank in its platform that soundly renounced hatred and bigotry. Stephenson retreated back into his comfort zone in Indiana, at least for the time being, where his hand-picked legislature pushed their white supremacist ideology. A symbol of this ideology is the Jefferson Davis memorial erected in Kentucky. The refusal of die-hard Southerners to accept responsibility for their own defeat or for the humanitarian causes of the war itself led to a revisionist mindset—often called the Lost Cause narrative—one that Stephenson and Evans were keen to use to their advantage. In this mindset, Davis was not a traitor, but a hero, and the Civil War was not about slavery, but about Northern aggression. In the North, the Klan’s contemporary message of racial purity (coupled with the blessing of clergy) firmly planted the Klan’s roots in soil that, only 50 years prior, shed blood to oppose those very ideals.