A Fever in the Heartland

I got A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan from the library on audiobook after my friend Rebecca (a history teacher) recommended it. The book description says, "The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson. Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees."

This was such a great book. The story was completely engaging, and it was so alarming to read about this time in history and the grip of the Ku Klux Klan. I was so sickened by Stephenson and so impressed by those who had the audacity to stand up to the KKK (like a newspaper editor/reporter who continually wrote stories and published lists of names trying to bring them down). I just couldn't believe how many people had such terrible ideas and thought the KKK had things right. There are a lot of parallels to Nazi Germany and even to people in the US today who believe in white supremacy. The subtitle of the book is a little bit misleading since really Madge doesn't come into the story until you are more than 50% done with the book, but I really liked how the author highlighted her and the impact she had. (I found after reading this that there is a book called Madge just about her story, written by a different author, and I may be interested in reading that.) I sometimes got lost in some of the details of this book, but it may have been because I was doing audiobook. Also, as a warning, the book can be quite heavy at times, especially with some content about rapes.

Rating: * * (2/3 = Liked it)