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

The KKK was founded in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee. Comprised mostly of ex-Confederate soldiers—never tried for treason—out for vengeance, the Klan operated under cover of darkness (and hoods), sowing terror across the South. Its first Grand Wizard—Nathan Bedford Forrest—was a former Confederate general infamous for slaughtering 150 Black Union soldiers after they surrendered. He was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson. In the wake of Reconstruction, the Klan turned to its night raids, whipping innocent civilians, burning property, and intimidating teachers. By 1868, KKK membership ballooned to 500,000 across the South with regional chapters sprouting up around the country. As acts of terror and murder increased, President Johnson—a Southern Democrat and admitted white supremacist—refused to take action. Johnson was impeached, and his successor, Ulysses S. Grant, vowed to “smash the Klan” (9). Using federal tools at his disposal, he embarked on a massive legal effort against the Klan, prosecuting and convicting thousands of Klansmen. The Klan soon disbanded.

In 1922 in Evansville, Indiana, a group of Klansmen barged into a Methodist church service and offered an envelope of cash to the minister. He accepted it and soon began to preach about the “high ideals” of the Klan. A young Stephenson read about the incident and saw an opportunity. He joined the Klan, dreaming of national glory and of extending the Klan’s reach into the North—of seeing it come out of the shadows and “bask in the daylight” (13). He exploited Evansville’s segregation and open racism, riding a tide of increasing violence against Black residents.

In 1921, a Black bellhop in Dallas, Texas, was dragged from his home, whipped and branded. The attack was led by Hiram Evans, a Dallas dentist who believed that only those of Nordic descent were true Americans. As the Dallas chapter of the Klan gained political power, Evans publicized his crime—which was never investigated—as a warning to other Black people.

When Rutherford B. Hayes won the 1876 presidential election, he withdrew federal troops from Southern states. Without the mitigating hand of the federal government, the South passed Jim Crow laws, and many states rewrote their constitutions, taking the vote away from Black citizens. Predictably, the percentage of Black men who voted dropped drastically between 1880 and 1920.

Although the Klan was not in the public eye, it was only lying dormant. Gradually, cultural institutions began to romanticize its history and purpose; the most notable example, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), portrayed Black people as subhuman sexual predators and the Klan as white saviors. The film added the ritual of the burning cross, nonexistent until that moment. The film was a sensation, a propaganda message that reached millions of Americans, including future president Woodrow Wilson and Methodist minister William J. Simmons. Obsessed by a vision of a reborn Klan, Simmons and his public relations (PR) team encouraged recruitment with financial incentives. Soon, membership exploded and Simmons became rich in the process.

In Indiana, Stephenson envisioned a Klan with political and social capital, no longer a Klan of night raiders with whips and guns but a moral organization promoting a rigidly narrow Americanism. He withdrew his Senate candidacy and focused on Indiana’s Protestant churches, bribing their ministers to preach favorably about the Klan. He pocketed 40% of all new membership fees. Frequently drunk and unhappy in his marriage, Stephenson became physically abusive, beating his wife nearly to death.

Taking advantage of an antiquated Indiana law permitting the formation of vigilante groups to stop horse thieves, Stephenson appeals fears and moral panic, recruiting “lawful” vigilantes into the KKK. New initiates swore allegiance to leadership and to the goal of “‘preserving the blood purity’ of the white race” (31). In a rapidly changing 20th century, the Klan sought to hold on to a Puritanical past. The deputized vigilantes became the Klan’s “morality police,” targeting sexual activity and bootlegging. A white dentist was dragged from his home and tortured for the “sin” of divorce. When the press exposes its crimes, Imperial Wizard Simmons claimed the moral high ground, claiming that reports of terrorism were false and that his members were God-fearing family men. Congress refused to take action, and Klan membership grew by 1.1 million. Despite fighting for the Union in the Civil War, by 1922, Indiana had more Klan members than any other state. With the deputized vigilantes acting as his own personal police force, Stephenson began to compile dossiers on all potential enemies of the Klan: “’All Jews, All Negroes, All Roman Catholics’” (39).

Stephenson, a rising star within Klan ranks, took his recruitment efforts to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. In Texas, Evans oversaw the late-night kidnapping and torture of at least 50 citizens. No legal recourse was available since many of the police were also members. By day, however, the Klan masqueraded as a charity organization, a PR tactic that “put a majority of supporters in the Texas statehouse” (43). In Indiana, violence was used to suppress and intimidate an unsympathetic press. Muncie, Indiana, was chosen by social researchers as the quintessential representative of “contemporary American life” despite its segregation (46). District attorneys who were also Klansmen effectively shut Black people, Jews, and Catholics out of jury service, insuring Klan crimes went unpunished.

Seven years after its rebirth, a robust Klan planned a national convention. Stephenson and Evans, dissatisfied with Simmons’s leadership, blackmailed him into resigning. Evans became Imperial Wizard, and Stephenson his second-in-command. As 1922 drew to a close, Stephenson set a new goal: recruiting women.