A Fever in the Heartland, page 31
Johnson quote, James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (New York: Penguin, 1990), 308.
Steve joined Klan in 1921, “Stephenson’s Life Told in Press,” Indianapolis Star, Aug. 13, 1924.
Attack in Dallas, sheriff quote on attack, Darwin Payne, “When Dallas Was the Most Racist City in America,” D magazine, May 22, 2017.
Evans’s views on race, Thomas R. Pegram, One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011), 32.
Castration, other Texas attacks, Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 41.
Evans on immigration, “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism,” North American Review, March 1926.
Disenfranchisement, Perman, Struggle for Mastery, 48–70.
Alabama vote, “Alabama Begins Removing Racist Language from Its Constitution,” New York Times, Sept. 19, 2021.
Dixon comment to Woodrow Wilson, from https://wwplblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/birth-of-a-nation/.
Facts on film, “Writing History with Lightning: The Birth of a Nation at 100,” Time, Feb. 8, 2015.
Simmons, Klan founding, “A Preacher Used Christianity to Revive the Ku Klux Klan,” Washington Post, April 10, 2018.
Simmons statement on Klan principle, undated, on file at Bracken Library, Special Collections, Ball State University.
One in three Americans enemies of the Klan, from 1920 census: Blacks, 13 percent; Jews, 3 percent; Catholics, 17 percent.
Blacks at Harvard, “Attacks Harvard on Negro Question,” New York Times, Jan. 13, 1923.
Clarke and Tyler hatreds and origins, Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 31–36.
Klan membership growth, ibid.
40 percent of adult males belonged to fraternal order, Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Atlantic, Nov. 1964.
Klan start in Evansville, “Indiana Reminds Everyone: State’s KKK Charter Started in Evansville,” Evansville Courier & Press, June 17, 2016.
Quote from preacher in Bloomington, monroehistory.org, April 22, 2019.
Steve’s plan to use clergy, Edgar Allen Booth, The Mad Mullah of America (Columbus, OH: Legacy Reprints, 1997), 4.
Steve hires Blair, Lutholtz, Grand Dragon, 59–60.
Blair speech, “Rev. Blair Speaks of Ku Klux Klan,” Fiery Cross, Feb. 9, 1923.
Steve cuts a deal, his own account in 1926 grand jury, D. C. Stephenson Collection, on file at Indiana Historical Society, hereafter IHS.
Steve making $12 a week from Klan, “Stephenson’s Life Told in Press,” Indianapolis Star, Aug. 13, 1924.
Klan charter in Evansville, on file at IHS.
Assault on Violet Stephenson, details in divorce granted Feb. 28, 1924, Summit County, Ohio, IHS.
3. Men with Badges
Origin of Horse Thief organization, “The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana,” McClure’s, May 1924.
Declining power of HTDA, historicIndianapolis.com, Oct. 13, 2013, https://historicindianapolis.com/friday-favorites-the-national-horse-thief-detective-association/.
Steve’s idea to co-opt HTDA, Wade, The Fiery Cross, 225.
Klan language, governing philosophy, Klansman’s Manual, 1924, published by Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, https://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/AmRad/klansmansmanual.pdf.
Quote from Wilson on unlawful searches, etc., “Long, Hot Summer in Indiana,” American Heritage, Aug. 1965.
Kern County torture, “The Kern County Local KKK Members, Including Bakersfield’s Police Chief, Were Outed 90 Years Ago,” Bakersfield Californian, May 7, 2012.
New York World exposé, “Secrets of the Ku Klux Klan Exposed by the World,” three-week series, Sept. 6–26, 1921.
Simmons testimony, “Hearings Before the House Rules Committee,” Congressional Record, 1921.
Klan growth after hearing, Simmons obituary, “William Simmons of Ku Klux Klan,” New York Times, May 22, 1945.
“unofficial constabulary,” and four recorded horse thefts, “Horse Thief Detectives,” Indianapolis News, Oct. 9, 1922.
How Klan recruits and the oath, Ezra A. Cook, Ku Klux Klan: Secrets Exposed (Berlin, OH: TGS Publishing, 2009), 25–45.
Steve’s winning combination, Asher quote, “Dragons in Indiana,” Chicago Tribune, March 15, 1936.
Asher quote on hiring ministers, “Court Asher Tells How Stephenson Ruled State,” Richmond Palladium, Oct. 13, 1926.
Average factory worker salary in 1920, from Internal Revenue Service tables, https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/20soirepar.pdf.
Steve’s profits, a study by Roland G. Fryer, Jr., and Steven D. Levitt, “Hatred and Profits: Getting Under the Hood of the Ku Klux Klan,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Sept. 2007.
Campaign against film, Melvyn Stokes, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 129–40.
“as inhuman,” Derek Hickerson, “The Relic of a Barbarous Age: James Matthew Townsend and Indiana’s Black Laws,” Black History News and Notes, Winter 2009, a newsletter of the IHS.
William Stern, “W. H. Stern Makes Pleas for Colored Race: Thinks They Should Be Recognized Same as White People,” Noblesville Ledger, Sept. 24, 1927.
Steve’s Machine, dossiers, field command, Richard K. Tucker, The Dragon and the Cross (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1991), 88–100.
Mecklin quote, Klan attraction, John Moffatt Mecklin, The Ku Klux Klan: A Study of the American Mind (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 95–98.
4. A Coup and a Clash
“foremost mass psychologist,” Wade, The Fiery Cross, 229.
Steve and Mussolini, “What the Klan Did in Indiana,” New Republic, Nov. 16, 1927.
Evans on immigration, a pamphlet, “Attitude of Knights of the Ku Klux Klan toward Immigration,” published in 1923, https://books.google.com/books/about/Attitude_of_the_Knights_of_the_Ku_Klux_K.html?id=uNMNSwAACAAJ.
More than fifty beatings in Dallas, Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 41–42.
Majority of Dallas police officers Klan, Dallas history site, www.hometownbyhandlebar.com.
Quote from Malcolm X, Adam Fletcher Sasse, “A Biography of Malcolm X in Omaha,” https://northomahahistory.com/2019/03/13/a-biography-of-malcolm-x-in-omaha/.
Steve works to defeat Beveridge, Wade, The Fiery Cross, 230.
“the damn Ku Klux Klan,” Feightner’s oral history, ISL.
Steve sends questionnaire, Joseph M. White, “The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana in the 1920s as Viewed by the Indiana Catholic and Record,” graduate thesis, Butler University, 1974.
Background of George Dale, column quotes, George R. Dale Collection, Ball State University Digital Media Repository, https://archivessearch.bsu.edu/repositories/5/resources/651.
Dale sometimes exaggerated, Ron F. Smith, “The Klan’s Retribution against an Indiana Editor,” Indiana Magazine of History, Dec. 2010.
Steve v. Dale, “The Grand Dragon,” Muncie Post-Democrat, Nov. 12, 1925.
More on attack, “George Dale Dies; Ku Klux Klan Foe,” New York Times, March 28, 1936.
Blacks segregated in Muncie, Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929), 479.
Judge Dearth sentencing, “It Is Somebody’s Business,” Muncie Post-Democrat, June 1, 1923.
Klan wanted to gain control of America, Booth, Mad Mullah, 45.
Sandal, “Clarke and Tyler Arrested,” New York World, Sept. 19, 1921.
Coup, Simmons’s own account, “The Fiery Double Cross,” Collier’s Weekly, July 28, 1928; Wade, The Fiery Cross, 186–91; and Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 14.
“nobody from nowhere,” Karen Abbott, “ ‘Murder Wasn’t Very Pretty’: The Rise and Fall of D. C. Stephenson,” Smithsonian Magazine, Aug. 30, 2012.
5. Woman of the Year
Daisy Douglas Barr, Stephen J. Taylor, “A Ku Klux Quaker?,” Sept. 28, 2015, https://historicindianapolis.com/a-ku-klux-quaker/.
Alcohol consumption, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance113/tab1_17.htm.
Billy Sunday quote, Okrent, Last Call, 2.
“father and mother of the Ku Klux Klan,” etc., Thomas R. Pegram, “Hoodwinked: The Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Prohibition Enforcement,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Jan. 2008.
No lobby more powerful than ASL, Okrent, Last Call, 2, 34–42.
Steve’s deal with Barr, Dwight W. Hoover, “Daisy Douglas Barr: From Quaker to Klan ‘Kluckeress,’ ” Indiana Magazine of History, June 1991.
Barr speech in Rushville, “Urges Women to Join Klan Body,” Rushville Republican, March 2, 1923.
Barr quote on whites and Jews, ibid.
Madison Grant’s book, The Passing of the Great Race (New York: Scribner, 1916).
“What a thrill,” Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 101.
Ideals of women’s Klan, Kelli R. Kerbawy, “Knights in White Satin: Women of the Ku Klux Klan,” master’s thesis, Marshall University, 2007.
Creed of Klanswomen of America, Primary Sources: The 1920s: Ku Klux Klan, Christopher Newport University, https://cnu.libguides.com/1920s/kukluxklan.
Women’s state convention, Madison, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland.
Run the Jews out of the state, Blee, Women of the Klan, 147.
“Intolerance was everywhere,” Leibowitz, My Indiana, 208.
Number of Jews, Blacks, and Catholics in Indiana, U.S. Census, 1920.
Germans and Vonnegut, a talk by Ray Boomhower, reprinted in Traces, Spring 1999.
Shapiro’s Kosher Foods, Madison, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland, 143.
Rabbi Fink, his obit, “Dr. Joseph L. Fink, Rabbi, 69, Is Dead,” New York Times, Nov. 27, 1964.
Leo Frank hanging, Steve Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank (New York: Vintage, 2004), 3–17.
Dearborn headline, “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” Dearborn Independent, May 22, 1920.
Ford candy bar comment, Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, The Day the Bubble Burst (Open Road Integrated Media, 1979).
Rabbi Morris M. Feuerlicht, A Hoosier Rabbinate (Fort Wayne: Indiana Jewish Historical Society, 1974), 46.
Steve quote on White House, “Stephenson’s Fall Blots Out Dreams of U.S. Presidency,” Indianapolis Star, Nov. 16, 1925.
Court Asher background, “Ex-Klansman Tells His Story,” Indianapolis News, Aug. 6, 1965.
Steve’s armed associates, from a typescript, William H. Remy, unpublished memoir, undated, IHS.
Quote, “godsend,” “Junior Klan News Brings Enthusiasm,” Fiery Cross, Aug. 10, 1923.
Klan in high school, Charlotte Halsema Ottinger, Madge: The Life and Times of Madge Oberholtzer (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2021), 108.
Poison squads, Blee, Women of the Klan, 148.
Poison travels statewide in six hours, “The Fiery Double Cross,” Collier’s, July 21, 1928.
Steve’s quote on Jesus, letter he wrote to Ed Jackson, Jan. 17, 1925, IHS.
Steve’s abuse of Violet Stephenson, her reaction, infection from sexually transmitted disease—all from her divorce case, Feb. 28, 1924, on file at IHS.
Three million Klan members nationwide, Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 109.
Evans predicts 20 million Klansmen, Christine M. Erickson, “Boys in Butte: The Ku Klux Klan Confronts the Catholics, 1923–1929,” graduate thesis, University of Montana, 1991.
Barr’s poem, “A Ku Klux Quaker?”
6. The Other Indiana
Details of recording session, Rick Kennedy, Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Records and the Rise of America’s Musical Grass Roots (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), xix.
Number of Klansmen in attendance, “Local Cross-Burnings Recalled,” Richmond Palladium-Item, Nov. 6, 1979.
Louis Armstrong background, Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It (New York: Dover, 1966), 128–38.
First jazz recording, white musicians, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/was-first-jazz-recording-made-group-white-guys-180962246/.
Players and songs recorded on Oct. 5, 1923, The Syncopated Times, https://syncopatedtimes.com/king-olivers-creole-jazz-band/.
Hoagy Carmichael, https://riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu/?q=program/gennett-records-little-studio-could.
Studio recording logistics, thanks to IHS, which re-created the Gennett studio during a 2021 exhibition.
Particulars of the studio, from historical signage at the old studio site, Richmond, Indiana, “Walk of Fame.”
Richmond parade, quotes, “Dense Crowds at Richmond Meeting,” Fiery Cross, Oct. 19, 1923.
Madam Walker, from IHS exhibit, 2020.
Bios of Madam Walker, Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 14–15.
Madam Walker, from IHS exhibit, spring 2021.
Blacks forced out, “All Negroes Driven from Indiana Town, New York Times, January 21, 1923.
Fifteen Black physicians, Indianapolis Colored Directory and Yearbook, 1923.
Dr. Meriwether and the fence, Paul Mullins, “Racist Spite and Residential Segregation,” Invisible Indianapolis, Jan. 20, 2019, https://invisibleindianapolis.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/racist-spite-and-residential-segregation-housing-and-the-color-line-in-inter-war-indianapolis/.
Dr. Meriwether’s life, “Dr. Lucian Meriwether, Leading Dentist, Dies,” Indianapolis Recorder, Jan. 30, 1982.
Quote from handbill, Richard B. Pierce, Polite Protest: The Political Economy of Race in Indianapolis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 59.
Great Migration, Blacks to Indianapolis, Thornbrough, Indiana Blacks, 33–46.
More than two hundred sundown towns, http://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntownsshow.php?state=IN.
Sundown laws, “Sundown Towns: Midwest Confronts Its Complicated Racial Legacy,” Christian Science Monitor, March 27, 2017.
“Klan Is My Friend If I Live Right, Says Negro,” Fiery Cross, Aug. 10, 1923.
Elwood (Indiana) headline, “All Black Coons,” Elwood Call Leader, Oct. 12, 1922.
Tulsa massacre, “What to Know about the Tulsa Greenwood Massacre,” New York Times, June 20, 2020, and report of the official commission, published in 2001, https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf.
Klan membership in Tulsa, quotes on “best thing,” ibid.
Klan horse-whipping in Tulsa, “Bares Terrorism of Tulsa Floggers,” New York Times, Sept. 7, 1923.
7. The Unmasking
O’Donnell speech, “St. Patrick’s Day Speakers Advocate Church Tolerance,” Indianapolis Star, March 17, 1923.
Klan manual on secrecy, “Why We Wear the Hood,” undated, IHS.
Chicago reaction, Chicago History Museum blog, Fall 2006, https://issuu.com/chicagohistorymuseum/docs/2006fall-chm-chicagohistory-vol34-no3/s/11440616.
Klan in South Bend, “Notre Dame Students Stage a Riot” and “Mayor of South Bend Gives Orders,” Fiery Cross, March 16 and March 23, 1923.
Klan members revealed, “Never Mind the Minnows: Get the Whales!,” Tolerance, April 1, 1923.
Green Gabbard raid, an affidavit on file in Cummins v. State of Indiana, State Court of Appeals, April 26, 1929.
Helen Jackson, ex-nun, White, “The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana in the 1920s as Viewed by the Indiana Catholic and Record.”
“Join the Klan” exchange, Niblack, Life and Times, 192.
8. Creating D. C. Stephenson
Steve’s early years, Harold Zink, “A Case Study of a Political Boss,” Psychiatry, Nov. 1938.
Steve stiffs creditors, lies to wife, prosecutor’s biography assembled in advance of his trial, Feightner, ISL.
Nettie Hamilton’s story, “I Wouldn’t Do Anything to Harm Him,” Indianapolis Star, June 17, 1927.
Steve’s military background, Zink, “A Case Study of a Political Boss.”
Steve lies about never being married, Ohio Marriage License, Jan. 6, 1920, IHS.
Valparaiso University, Stephen Taylor, “Ku Klux U: How the Klan Almost Bought a University,” Indiana History Blog, Indiana Historical Bureau, Indiana State Library, Dec. 8, 2021, https://blog.history.in.gov/ku-klux-u-how-the-klan-almost-bought-a-university/.
Steve’s wealth, “How Klan Dragon Flew to Power in Indiana upon Gold-Tipped Wings,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 10, 1926.
Headline, “Klan Will Take Over Poor Man’s Harvard,” Rushville Daily Republican, Aug. 16, 1923.
Klan baseball teams, Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 85.
Klan violence in Muncie, Dale’s account, “Outrages in Muncie Saturday Night Arouse Citizens,” Muncie Post-Democrat, June 8, 1923.
Dale spit on by women of Klan, W. A. S. Douglas, “The Mayor of Middletown,” American Mercury, Aug. 1930.
Morality campaigns, “Hammond Sounds Call of Crusaders,” Fiery Cross, March 30, 1923.
Steve and sheriff’s deputies in Ohio, June 11, 1923, testimony of the two officers who confronted him on June 10, 1923, Klan tribunal, June 23, 1924, ISL.
9. A Master Race in the Midwest
Steve eugenics speech, “Immigration Is Periling America,” Fiery Cross, Sept. 21, 1923.
Better babies, Alexandra Minna Stern, “We Cannot Make a Silk Purse Out of a Sow’s Ear: Eugenics in the Hoosier Heartland,” Indiana Magazine of History, March 2007.
