A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes graphic discussions of racism, violence motivated by racism, alcohol addiction, suicide, domestic violence, and multiple acts of sexual assault, including rape.

“’No one can deny that the United States is a white Protestant country,’ wrote the Fiery Cross, the weekly newspaper of the Indiana Klan.”

The founding premise of the Klan is a fallacy, but one that is taken as sacrosanct. In fact, the idea of the United States as a white Protestant country—with everyone else undeserving of a place at the table—is so rooted in Klan ideology that it’s stated simply as an undeniable fact. This kind of fundamental certainty—without the open-mindedness to entertain any other perspective—breeds the kind of far-right ideologues that led the Klan’s resurgence in the 1920s.

“’I did not sell the Klan in Indiana on hatreds,’ Stephenson said. ‘I sold it on Americanism.”’

One of the key differences between the first and second incarnations of the Klan is that, by the 1920s, its leaders had rebranded it. No longer was it a terrorist organization that dragged Black men from their homes under cover of darkness lynched them. The modern version advocated solid “American” values—sobriety, fidelity, and religion. Of course the hate underlies all of it, but the revamped rhetoric assuaged the conscience and patriotism of its membership.

“In 1880, 50 percent of Black men in the former Confederacy voted. By 1920, less than 1 percent exercised this fundamental right.”

Formerly enslaved people (who were newly freed) understood that their power was at the ballot box, and they took advantage it. However, under Jim Crow, restrictive legislation reduced Black voter turnout to almost nothing. In a South free from federal oversight, Southern states ran roughshod over the rights of its Black citizens.