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

For his closing argument, Remy decided to use Stephenson’s own boast against him: “I am the law” (243). He highlighted all of Stephenson’s corrupt dealings—corroborated by his own words—and painted a portrait of a man so bloated with cash and power he believed himself above the law. Stephenson, as it turned out, had tried to arrange Remy’s assassination, but Remy got wind of the plot. After three hours of picking Stephenson’s story apart and pointing out its many inconsistencies, Remy rested.

The defense stuck to its main argument—that Oberholtzer took the poison of her own volition, and thus by definition, Stephenson could not be guilty of murder. Inman portrayed Stephenson and his associates as the real victims—victims who were in league with the “best people” of Indiana.

After closing arguments, the jury retired to render its verdict.

The jury was sequestered under tight security. One of Stephenson’s associates, Court Asher, tried unsuccessfully to bypass security in order to bribe two jurors. After five hours, the jury returned with a verdict: Stephenson was found guilty of second-degree murder. His two associates, Klinck and Gentry, both present during the crime, were found not guilty.

The defense planned to appeal, and as Remy drove home, he was followed, as per another assassination order from Stephenson. The police arrived and escorted him home safely. Two days later, Stephenson was sentenced to life in prison, a victory for Remy and for Madge Oberholtzer.

With Stephenson in prison, once-devoted Klansmen shed their robes. The organization they once believed represented virtue and morality now stood for “rape, murder, political corruption, for the monster of the Midway and his huddle of gangsters” (327). As more scandals emerged, Klan chapters across the country begin to topple. In Indiana, the state Democratic party vowed to purge every Klan member from its rolls. The Indianapolis Times chastised its readership for ceding such power to a man they knew was on trial for murder.

Remy, determined to crush the Klan in Indiana, uncovered a trove of documents proving the Klan’s grip on the state, on its legislature and judiciary. He reported his findings to the press. With the Republican party still under the sway of the Klan, party leaders railed at the press for reporting Remy’s disclosures, implying that it was all a plot by an international cabal of Jews.

Despite Remy’s progress in dismantling the Klan, Indianapolis’s city council effectively segregated white neighborhoods from Black. When a Black man challenged the law, the NAACP sued on his behalf. Klan rallies continued, but attendance was a fraction of its peak. Two years into his prison sentence, Stephenson maintained that his conviction was the result of a conspiracy, and his hand-picked governor, Ed Jackson, refused to help him. In retribution, Stephenson turned over a cache of documents to Remy that were incriminating to Jackson. Although Jackson was convicted—along with a host of council members and the Indianapolis mayor—the statute of limitations had expired on his crime. He retired from politics after his term was over. Meanwhile, an internal schism within the national Klan exposed its terrorism and brutality, forever tarnishing its image as a virtuous and peaceful brotherhood. Three years after Oberholtzer’s death, Klan membership was down by 90%.

Racist violence persisted, however. In 1930, three Black teenagers accused of raping a white woman were dragged from their cell by a mob and beaten. Two were lynched. Later, the white woman admitted that she fabricated the whole story. No one was indicted in the double murder.

A plaque in Noblesville, Indiana, commemorates the conviction of Stephenson and the end of his empire, but if not for the death of Madge Oberholtzer and the work of a few crusading attorneys, this stain on Indiana’s (and the nation’s) history may have remained buried. The “vein of hatred” that catapulted Stephenson to power (345), Egan argues, exists still, and the Klan’s legislative victories led to decades of disenfranchisement and exclusion. Sterilization laws remained on the books until, in some states, the 1970s.

All of Stephenson’s legal appeals failed. In 1950, after 25 years behind bars, Stephenson was released, although a parole violation sent him back to prison for six more years. In 1956, he married and took to the road, selling his new “type-cleaning machine.” In 1961, he was convicted of attempting to molest a 16-year-old girl. He was given a suspended sentence. He deserted his wife, moved to Tennessee, remarried, and took a job with the Herald & Tribune. In 1966, he suffered a seizure and died at the age of 74. A conman to the very end, his tombstone claims that he served in World War I as an infantry officer.

A subsequent attempt to revive the Klan by one of Stephenson’s protégés failed. Evans died the same year as Stephenson. Earl Gentry, who was present during Oberholtzer’s kidnapping and rape, was murdered in 1938.

After a term as mayor of Muncie, George Dale died in 1936. Activist and poet James Johnson, after a successful literary career, died in a car accident in 1938. James Cameron, the Black teen who survived the mob violence in 1930, founded three chapters of the NAACP. Will Remy died in 1968 at the age of 75. In 1928, the Indianapolis Times won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Klan.

In 2022, after 122 years, President Joe Biden signed a law making lynching a federal crime.