"Who is an American?" asked the Ku Klux Klan. It is a question that echoes as loudly today as it did in the early twentieth century. But who really joined the Klan? Were they "hillbillies, the Great Unteachables" as one journalist put it? It would be comforting to think so, but how then did they become one of the most powerful political forces in our nation's history? In The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland, renowned historian James H. Madison details the creation and reign of the infamous organization. Through the prism of their operations in Indiana and the Midwest, Madison explores the Klan's roots in respectable white protestant society. Convinced that America was heading in the wrong direction because of undesirable "un-American" elements, Klan members did not see themselves as bigoted racist extremists but as good Christian patriots joining proudly together in a righteous moral crusade. The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland offers a detailed history of this powerful organization and examines how, through its use of intimidation, religious belief, and the ballot box, the ideals of Klan in the 1920s have on-going implications for America today.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Kirkus Reviews 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 • A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist "With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time." —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile “Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them. 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. A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.

The cornerstone of Lutholtz's narration is his account of Stephenson's trial, for which the 2,347-page court transcript has been missing for thirty years. Lutholtz has painstakingly culled material from archives and newspaper accounts to re-create the trial in all its dramatic detail.

On a hot summer night in 1930, three black teenagers accused of murdering a young white man and raping his girlfriend waited for justice in an Indiana jail. A mob dragged them from the jail and lynched two of them. No one in Marion, Indiana was ever punished for the murders. In this gripping account, James H. Madison refutes the popular perception that lynching was confined to the South, and clarifies 20th century America's painful encounters with race, justice, and memory.

Indiana had the largest and most politically significant state organization in the massive national Ku Klux Klan movement of the 1920s. Using a unique set of Klan membership documents, quantitative analysis, and a variety of other sources, Leonard Moore p

In the early 1920s there were about 250,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. Their principal organizer, and the man who profited most from their membership fees, was D.C. Stephenson, a mysterious drifter with a shady background who arrived in Indiana in 1920 with political experience and an acute sense of the showmanship required for political success, but no beliefs. He used his skills to move to the forefront of the Klan boom. But Stephenson's 1925 murder conviction, stemming from a bizarre and inebriated episode of abduction and rape, ended support for the Klan in Indiana, and discredited many of the state's political leaders. These two books, written for a general audience, tell the story of the rise and fall of the Indiana Klan and Stephenson. Tucker's book ventures more theoretical speculation about the Klan in the North, though he doesn't advance any sustained argument other than to stress, correctly, the Klan's anti-Catholicism. But Tucker exaggerates the Klan's hegemony and gives neither a real sense of the climate and the struggles of the time nor a convincing portrait of Stephenson, who remains a shadowy figure. Lutholtz's thorough book, though it has a sharper focus on Stephenson and Indiana, portrays the political struggles more completely. What is most pertinent is the picture that emerges of the quiet force of bigotry rather than overt Klan power. But Lutholtz resists all theory, so any conclusions about the broader relevance of the strange and fascinating story of Stephenson and the Indiana Klan in the 1920s will have to be drawn by the reader. Lutholtz's book is for larger public library collections.

Todd tells of the weekend in May 1924 when members of the anti-Catholic organization and students at the Catholic university fought in South Bend, Indiana. To that conflict he traces the decline of the Klan in Indiana and the acceptance of the university and Catholics more generally in the US. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews