A HISTORY OF THE KKK IN MIDDLE AMERICA IS FASCINATING And I've got the author of A Fever In the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them Timothy Egan on today at 12:30 to talk about his most excellent telling of how one man's cult of personality helped the KKK take over Indiana politics, law enforcement, and governance in the 1920s. It's a great book, I highly recommend it and you can buy it here. It makes a great companion to this book about the KKK in Colorado. Timothy is going to be at Tattered Cover in Aspen Grove this Sunday, click here for more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I was just going to dip mytoe into Timothy Egan's book of Fever in
the Heartland, the ku klux Klansplot to take over America and the woman
who stopped them. But the bookis so good and you just want to
know what happens next. It almostreads like a crime thriller, but is
a historical book, and Timothy Eganknows a lot about that. He's written
(00:20):
a tons of books, actually,and has won a ton of awards.
He's a former op ed columnist forThe New York Times, a journalist,
and this new book is about therise of the KKK in an unexpected place
in Indiana in the nineteen twenties.Timothy, welcome to the show. Well,
thanks, Nadia. I appreciate youhaving me, and I'm also looking
(00:42):
forward to seeing everyone on Sunday atTattered Cover in Littleton and Aspen Growth.
I love Colorado. I've got adaughter there and a sister there as well.
I just came back from Preston toa week ago as well. I
was yeah breathing Colorado are Yeah,So you're high on life right now here
from Colorado. I like doing there, Colorado connections. I want to ask
(01:03):
you what inspired this book at thistime. So you know, when you
do time traveling, which is whatI do as a historian, you're not
only looking for a great story.And that's what this was. I mean,
this is a point where this America'soldest domestic terror group nearly took over
this country, where they had millionmembers one hundred years ago in the nineteen
(01:23):
twenties, where they had a mayorin Denver Stapleton, where they had a
governor early in Colorado whose model wasevery man under the Capitol Dome a Klansman.
He was the elected governor of Colorado. You look for stories that are
untold, and you look for storiesthat have residence to today. Mandy and
I, you know, I justkept I just kept wholly surprised at how
(01:48):
much the past was repeating itself inthis story. I will tell you it
jumps out in several different ways.But one of the things that I think
this book really is is kind ofa study on this side Ikey, of
what eventually becomes mob mentality. Right, when when you get to a point
in a small town where it seemsthat everybody of note, right, everyone
(02:12):
who is somebody is part of thisorganization, It gets really easy to sort
of fall into participating in things thatI think good Christian, god fearing people
should not be participating in. That'san excellent point. So the Clan of
the nineteen twenties, on the surfacewas kind of a Mayberry plan. I
(02:32):
mean in Indiana where I focus mystory, where one in three white males
belonged to the terror group. Therewere ministers, there were coaches, there
were lawyers, there were merchants.They were the pillars of the community.
They preached clan verities, you know, from the pulpit on Sunday afternoon.
They had you know, merchants hadthese trade with clan stickers on their car
(02:53):
stores so that they can sure that, you know, you'd only trade with
fellow clientsmen and avoid Jewish enterprise.And you're absolutely right, man. It
was a mob mentality in a strangesort of way that if you didn't belong,
you felt like you were missing something. Well was there. And you
do a great job in this bookof laying out some of the absolute horrors
(03:15):
that were perpetrated by the Klan.So I want to make sure that we're
not giving any impression that this wasjust a civic organization but I think there
were probably people that were part ofthe clan that viewed it as just a
civic organization. Do you think that'saccurate that everybody knew all of the bad
stuff all the time. Well,it was the largest fraternal organization in America
(03:37):
one hundred years ago this year,at a time at the peak of fraternal
organization, you know, the Elks, the odd Fills, all of that.
They had up to six million members. And again Colorado was one of
the states they most controlled. Nowyou ask a very good question, because
they had a ku Klux kiddies,those little children would go put their robes
on it, going to their densand learned how to hate their fellow neighbor.
(04:00):
They had a women's auxiliary. Theyhad more than two million members.
So again on the surface, itlooks very much like Americana. But every
single one of those clansmen in thoseclans, women who was in the auxiliary.
But it was an all men's group. In the actual Klan had put
their hand on a Bible and swornto quote forever upholled white supremacy. Now
(04:25):
their vision of the Klan had expanded. Everyone thinks to the clan is a
bunch of toothless groups who hate blacks. Well, they do hate blacks,
but in the twenties they expanded theirrange of hatreds to Catholics, which is
what they really went after in Coloradobecause they were mostly immigrants and Jews and
new immigrants from Southern Italy places likethat. But they didn't like and socially
(04:46):
liberated women, so called flappers fromthe jazz age. So they had this
whole range of new hatreds. Andthe Colorado governor, the Morley, who
was the clansman, he tried tofire every Jew or Catholic or Black who
was somehow associated, you know,who was somehow a stand of fish something.
I couldn't get away with him,but that was his plan. Well,
(05:08):
this book features quite the antagonist,and we'll call D. C.
Stevenson the antagonist. Tell me alittle bit about the man who was a
one one person clan explosion machine.I mean, he he must have been
something to see. That's all Icould think of. Yeah, the villain
(05:29):
of this book is a monster,and he's a classic American archetype. He's
a con man. He's very goodwith words. He says things that people
want to hear, he blames people'sfears on others. There's always another.
It's not your fault that your failing. It's not your fault that your business
or marriage fell apart. It's theseothers, these Jews, these Catholics,
(05:49):
these blacks, these others that arethat are coming to get you. Now,
he had the gifts that all conmen have. He's rolled into town
and so in Indiana knowing nobody,having a past that he fled, a
wife, that he'd fled, adaughter, that he'd fled, a mother
that he'd abandoned, and in fouryears he owns the state. And how
(06:11):
did he do that? He said, he knew how to play to people's
fears, he knew how to speakto them. But at his core,
so he was against He was forprohibition, but he was a raging alcoholic
and bootlegger. He was for protectingthe chastity and sanctity of women, but
he was a sexual predator and arapist. He was for, you know,
(06:32):
all the biblical phrases of goodness,and he was a guy who told
twelve lives Before noon and Mandy.On the fourth of July nineteen twenty three,
two one hundred thousand people turned outin the prairie of Indiana. It's
a little town of Kocobult to watchhim drop out of the sky, and
they greeted him like he was God. So he had this grip on people
(06:55):
because he was any good demagogue orany good con man could do. He
knew how to play to people fearsand to make them feel good. And
at the height of his power,he does something that is absolutely so horrific
that he has finally held to accountand it involves a horrible attack on a
woman, I mean a really horribleattack on a woman. And the reading
(07:16):
of the trial. And you,how did you research this book? Because
this book is obviously you got alot of detailed kind of quotes and stuff
from the trial and things of thatnature. Did you go and talk to
people? How did you get somuch of this information? Yeah, I
spent three years, almost all duringthe COVID time in Indiana. I'd live
(07:38):
in the Northwest and I had tofly to Indiana and I would just go
and try to relive this experience fromall one hundred years ago. I'll tell
you something you touched on something reallyinteresting. This history is there, this
story is there? It was itwas like the Scope's Monkey trial. It
was a sensation. And when hefinally was brought to his trial by this
one woman, this one woman,everyone else had failed to bring the guy
(08:00):
down. And that's why my subtitleis The Woman who Stopped Him. One
woman ended up giving the hardest thingyou could ever give up to bring this
guy down. But that was allknown. And so what shocked me,
and I really did shocked me,was that this thing was there. You
cannot open a newspaper in the nineteentwenties without seeing a banner headline about how
the clan controlled huge swaths of Americaand in particularly the Midwest. But it
(08:24):
fell into the American memory hole.It fell into our collective amnesia because it
was such an awful event. Youknow, these characters rise and fall,
they come and go on our history, and this he was one of them.
So what I did was I justI read all the trial transcripts,
I read diaries from the time,I read oral histories of people. And
(08:46):
you know, one more thing.Somebody opened up a chest and they found
it in an attic in the lateabout twenty years ago, and this little
idyllic town of Indiana. Inside thatchest were the names of all the clansmen
and women from the nineteen twenties,and people are shocked because like, oh,
my grandma, my grandpa was amember of the klan, so it's
(09:07):
there, And yeah, go ahead. Don't you think that's why it's been
memory hold because nobody wants to thinkabout their nana and their papa being a
part of the clan. So youjust don't ask, don't tell. We're
going to pretend this ugly story neverhappened because it reflects so poorly on the
people of the state. Because itdoes. You know, that's exactly right.
(09:28):
And it's a thing issue that's ragingright now in our country, which
is how much of our history thatwe don't like should we learn now.
I argue that there are heroes,There are hoosiers who did the right thing,
prominently this one woman who was gotalmost written out of history, who
lived at the Margins, who wasa quote nobody according to this monster.
(09:50):
But I argue that you know,we were stronger if we could look at
this kind of history, that we'rebetter Americans if we can understand how these
bad guys could rise and how webring them down. But you're right,
people think it reflects wrongly. AlthoughI have to say I've been back to
Indiana three times to read to largecrowds, and a significant portion of the
state is trying to understand how thishappened. Well, I think if you
(10:13):
don't understand how it happens, itcould easily happen again. But this is
for me. This book really demonstrateshow the culture personality can manipulate large groups
of people. And I mean becauseDC Stevenson, the guy we're talking about,
he was solely, almost solely responsiblefor exploding the size of the clan
in Indiana and really the North.I mean he had machinations to take over
(10:35):
the entire country. Time magazine putthe Ku Klux Klan on their cover after
the Democratic and Republican national Conventions innineteen twenty four because the Klan was that
powerful. I mentioned they had sixmillion members, governors in Colorado, senators
from places like Texas and Indiana andOregon. They were this close from running
(10:58):
a nominee who could get the WhiteHouse, and you put your finger on
it. What it is is thecult of personality. J. C.
Stevens said, the bad guy atthis said the monster. I mean,
this guy was not just an alcoholicand a sexual predator. I hate to
say this, he was also cannibalistic. I mean as he got ever more
evil and darker, as his powerincreased, he was like Oz. He
(11:22):
would appear, you know, theycall him, there's the old Man,
and he would appear and he wouldissue these statements and everyone would fall the
old Man has spoken. Oh God, And you know it's just shocking,
freedom loving, opinionated Americans can fallfor such an awful person. But you
know we I call him a musicman of hate. That's a great way
(11:43):
to put it. The book isa fever in the Heartland, the ku
Klux clans plot to take over Americaand the woman who stopped them. I
put a link so you could buyit today on the blog. Timothy Egan,
Thank you so much for your greatwriting. I loved, I enjoyed
the heck out of this book.Very very well done. I look forward
to the next work you come outwith, and thank you for having me.
(12:03):
And again I look forward to seeingeveryone in Denver on Sunday at Tattered
Cover. What time are you goingto be there? I should have put
that. I'll put that on theblog as well. What time is your
appearance. There's four pm and it'sthe tattered cover in Littleton and naspin Grove.
All right, we got it.Thank you, Tim, Thank you
so much,
I was just going to dip mytoe into Timothy Egan's book of Fever in
the Heartland, the ku klux Klansplot to take over America and the woman
who stopped them. But the bookis so good and you just want to
know what happens next. It almostreads like a crime thriller, but is
a historical book, and Timothy Eganknows a lot about that. He's written
(00:20):
a tons of books, actually,and has won a ton of awards.
He's a former op ed columnist forThe New York Times, a journalist,
and this new book is about therise of the KKK in an unexpected place
in Indiana in the nineteen twenties.Timothy, welcome to the show. Well,
thanks, Nadia. I appreciate youhaving me, and I'm also looking
(00:42):
forward to seeing everyone on Sunday atTattered Cover in Littleton and Aspen Growth.
I love Colorado. I've got adaughter there and a sister there as well.
I just came back from Preston toa week ago as well. I
was yeah breathing Colorado are Yeah,So you're high on life right now here
from Colorado. I like doing there, Colorado connections. I want to ask
(01:03):
you what inspired this book at thistime. So you know, when you
do time traveling, which is whatI do as a historian, you're not
only looking for a great story.And that's what this was. I mean,
this is a point where this America'soldest domestic terror group nearly took over
this country, where they had millionmembers one hundred years ago in the nineteen
(01:23):
twenties, where they had a mayorin Denver Stapleton, where they had a
governor early in Colorado whose model wasevery man under the Capitol Dome a Klansman.
He was the elected governor of Colorado. You look for stories that are
untold, and you look for storiesthat have residence to today. Mandy and
I, you know, I justkept I just kept wholly surprised at how
(01:48):
much the past was repeating itself inthis story. I will tell you it
jumps out in several different ways.But one of the things that I think
this book really is is kind ofa study on this side Ikey, of
what eventually becomes mob mentality. Right, when when you get to a point
in a small town where it seemsthat everybody of note, right, everyone
(02:12):
who is somebody is part of thisorganization, It gets really easy to sort
of fall into participating in things thatI think good Christian, god fearing people
should not be participating in. That'san excellent point. So the Clan of
the nineteen twenties, on the surfacewas kind of a Mayberry plan. I
(02:32):
mean in Indiana where I focus mystory, where one in three white males
belonged to the terror group. Therewere ministers, there were coaches, there
were lawyers, there were merchants.They were the pillars of the community.
They preached clan verities, you know, from the pulpit on Sunday afternoon.
They had you know, merchants hadthese trade with clan stickers on their car
(02:53):
stores so that they can sure that, you know, you'd only trade with
fellow clientsmen and avoid Jewish enterprise.And you're absolutely right, man. It
was a mob mentality in a strangesort of way that if you didn't belong,
you felt like you were missing something. Well was there. And you
do a great job in this bookof laying out some of the absolute horrors
(03:15):
that were perpetrated by the Klan.So I want to make sure that we're
not giving any impression that this wasjust a civic organization but I think there
were probably people that were part ofthe clan that viewed it as just a
civic organization. Do you think that'saccurate that everybody knew all of the bad
stuff all the time. Well,it was the largest fraternal organization in America
(03:37):
one hundred years ago this year,at a time at the peak of fraternal
organization, you know, the Elks, the odd Fills, all of that.
They had up to six million members. And again Colorado was one of
the states they most controlled. Nowyou ask a very good question, because
they had a ku Klux kiddies,those little children would go put their robes
on it, going to their densand learned how to hate their fellow neighbor.
(04:00):
They had a women's auxiliary. Theyhad more than two million members.
So again on the surface, itlooks very much like Americana. But every
single one of those clansmen in thoseclans, women who was in the auxiliary.
But it was an all men's group. In the actual Klan had put
their hand on a Bible and swornto quote forever upholled white supremacy. Now
(04:25):
their vision of the Klan had expanded. Everyone thinks to the clan is a
bunch of toothless groups who hate blacks. Well, they do hate blacks,
but in the twenties they expanded theirrange of hatreds to Catholics, which is
what they really went after in Coloradobecause they were mostly immigrants and Jews and
new immigrants from Southern Italy places likethat. But they didn't like and socially
(04:46):
liberated women, so called flappers fromthe jazz age. So they had this
whole range of new hatreds. Andthe Colorado governor, the Morley, who
was the clansman, he tried tofire every Jew or Catholic or Black who
was somehow associated, you know,who was somehow a stand of fish something.
I couldn't get away with him,but that was his plan. Well,
(05:08):
this book features quite the antagonist,and we'll call D. C.
Stevenson the antagonist. Tell me alittle bit about the man who was a
one one person clan explosion machine.I mean, he he must have been
something to see. That's all Icould think of. Yeah, the villain
(05:29):
of this book is a monster,and he's a classic American archetype. He's
a con man. He's very goodwith words. He says things that people
want to hear, he blames people'sfears on others. There's always another.
It's not your fault that your failing. It's not your fault that your business
or marriage fell apart. It's theseothers, these Jews, these Catholics,
(05:49):
these blacks, these others that arethat are coming to get you. Now,
he had the gifts that all conmen have. He's rolled into town
and so in Indiana knowing nobody,having a past that he fled, a
wife, that he'd fled, adaughter, that he'd fled, a mother
that he'd abandoned, and in fouryears he owns the state. And how
(06:11):
did he do that? He said, he knew how to play to people's
fears, he knew how to speakto them. But at his core,
so he was against He was forprohibition, but he was a raging alcoholic
and bootlegger. He was for protectingthe chastity and sanctity of women, but
he was a sexual predator and arapist. He was for, you know,
(06:32):
all the biblical phrases of goodness,and he was a guy who told
twelve lives Before noon and Mandy.On the fourth of July nineteen twenty three,
two one hundred thousand people turned outin the prairie of Indiana. It's
a little town of Kocobult to watchhim drop out of the sky, and
they greeted him like he was God. So he had this grip on people
(06:55):
because he was any good demagogue orany good con man could do. He
knew how to play to people fearsand to make them feel good. And
at the height of his power,he does something that is absolutely so horrific
that he has finally held to accountand it involves a horrible attack on a
woman, I mean a really horribleattack on a woman. And the reading
(07:16):
of the trial. And you,how did you research this book? Because
this book is obviously you got alot of detailed kind of quotes and stuff
from the trial and things of thatnature. Did you go and talk to
people? How did you get somuch of this information? Yeah, I
spent three years, almost all duringthe COVID time in Indiana. I'd live
(07:38):
in the Northwest and I had tofly to Indiana and I would just go
and try to relive this experience fromall one hundred years ago. I'll tell
you something you touched on something reallyinteresting. This history is there, this
story is there? It was itwas like the Scope's Monkey trial. It
was a sensation. And when hefinally was brought to his trial by this
one woman, this one woman,everyone else had failed to bring the guy
(08:00):
down. And that's why my subtitleis The Woman who Stopped Him. One
woman ended up giving the hardest thingyou could ever give up to bring this
guy down. But that was allknown. And so what shocked me,
and I really did shocked me,was that this thing was there. You
cannot open a newspaper in the nineteentwenties without seeing a banner headline about how
the clan controlled huge swaths of Americaand in particularly the Midwest. But it
(08:24):
fell into the American memory hole.It fell into our collective amnesia because it
was such an awful event. Youknow, these characters rise and fall,
they come and go on our history, and this he was one of them.
So what I did was I justI read all the trial transcripts,
I read diaries from the time,I read oral histories of people. And
(08:46):
you know, one more thing.Somebody opened up a chest and they found
it in an attic in the lateabout twenty years ago, and this little
idyllic town of Indiana. Inside thatchest were the names of all the clansmen
and women from the nineteen twenties,and people are shocked because like, oh,
my grandma, my grandpa was amember of the klan, so it's
(09:07):
there, And yeah, go ahead. Don't you think that's why it's been
memory hold because nobody wants to thinkabout their nana and their papa being a
part of the clan. So youjust don't ask, don't tell. We're
going to pretend this ugly story neverhappened because it reflects so poorly on the
people of the state. Because itdoes. You know, that's exactly right.
(09:28):
And it's a thing issue that's ragingright now in our country, which
is how much of our history thatwe don't like should we learn now.
I argue that there are heroes,There are hoosiers who did the right thing,
prominently this one woman who was gotalmost written out of history, who
lived at the Margins, who wasa quote nobody according to this monster.
(09:50):
But I argue that you know,we were stronger if we could look at
this kind of history, that we'rebetter Americans if we can understand how these
bad guys could rise and how webring them down. But you're right,
people think it reflects wrongly. AlthoughI have to say I've been back to
Indiana three times to read to largecrowds, and a significant portion of the
state is trying to understand how thishappened. Well, I think if you
(10:13):
don't understand how it happens, itcould easily happen again. But this is
for me. This book really demonstrateshow the culture personality can manipulate large groups
of people. And I mean becauseDC Stevenson, the guy we're talking about,
he was solely, almost solely responsiblefor exploding the size of the clan
in Indiana and really the North.I mean he had machinations to take over
(10:35):
the entire country. Time magazine putthe Ku Klux Klan on their cover after
the Democratic and Republican national Conventions innineteen twenty four because the Klan was that
powerful. I mentioned they had sixmillion members, governors in Colorado, senators
from places like Texas and Indiana andOregon. They were this close from running
(10:58):
a nominee who could get the WhiteHouse, and you put your finger on
it. What it is is thecult of personality. J. C.
Stevens said, the bad guy atthis said the monster. I mean,
this guy was not just an alcoholicand a sexual predator. I hate to
say this, he was also cannibalistic. I mean as he got ever more
evil and darker, as his powerincreased, he was like Oz. He
(11:22):
would appear, you know, theycall him, there's the old Man,
and he would appear and he wouldissue these statements and everyone would fall the
old Man has spoken. Oh God, And you know it's just shocking,
freedom loving, opinionated Americans can fallfor such an awful person. But you
know we I call him a musicman of hate. That's a great way
(11:43):
to put it. The book isa fever in the Heartland, the ku
Klux clans plot to take over Americaand the woman who stopped them. I
put a link so you could buyit today on the blog. Timothy Egan,
Thank you so much for your greatwriting. I loved, I enjoyed
the heck out of this book.Very very well done. I look forward
to the next work you come outwith, and thank you for having me.
(12:03):
And again I look forward to seeingeveryone in Denver on Sunday at Tattered
Cover. What time are you goingto be there? I should have put
that. I'll put that on theblog as well. What time is your
appearance. There's four pm and it'sthe tattered cover in Littleton and naspin Grove.
All right, we got it.Thank you, Tim, Thank you
so much,
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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