A Fever in the Heartland* (The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them), by Timothy Egan (Viking - Penguin Randomhouse, 2023, 432 pp, $30) New York Times bestseller. Pulitzer and National Award-winning author. Review by Skye Anderson.
The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rose and fell in just four years during the 20s, due to one very charismatic character: D. C. Stephenson in Indiana, reminiscent of Harold Hill in "The Music Man," though the Meredith Wilson musical took place in Iowa, not Indiana. Both star an itinerant con artist who simply appears out of nowhere. Harold Hill eventually disappears while D.C. Stephenson (KKK) becomes incarcerated.
Why was this decade of the 1920s so ripe for a movement to spread widely and rapidly, a movement of hatred and hypocrisy, graft, and 'crime'? Why did it blossom in Indiana?
That charismatic Indiana leader, Stephenson (Steve), turned out to be brilliant financially in the beginning and at one point ruled a mob of 400,000 in Indiana, the most Northern home of the KKK. Did all that power and money go to his head or did he end up in town after having skirted ethics elsewhere or was he always a psychopath? Most KKK members never saw the real Steve, but those who did were in it so deep that they ignored the rapes and kidnappings (perhaps much like our current political situation?) After all, this was during Prohibition.
We think of the KKK as being active in the South, not the North, and being directed against Blacks even though their acts of hatred were also directed towards Jews, Catholics, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, etc.
Style
The first approximately150 pages could so easily be condensed into about 30 pages and more effectively so. This section details the history of the rise of the KKK in various towns and states (and the women's section and the Ku Klux Kiddies) and reads like a report. Much of it could be omitted.
Did You Know. . . ?
Famous people are mentioned by author Timothy Egan as being members of or sympathetic towards this mostly secretive organization with white sheeted uniforms and pointy hats: Henry Ford, Presidents Wilson and Coolidge. Others were affected by being 'on the other side' - Louis Armstrong, Malcolm X, Kurt Vonnegut.
Reading Fever may depress and disappoint you but in the end you will see the masses springing back to become wholesome welcoming ethical people once more. Thank goodness!
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*Also a Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction, an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Kirkus Review Best Book of the Year, a Chicago Review of Books Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, and a Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist
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