Beck in November I read the excellent American Midnight by Adam Hochschild (my review on this site) which mainly covers the years 1917-1921 in the US.  Those years were full of fear, political repression, overt racism, anti-immigrant sentiments and a deadly pandemic, all seemingly unrestrained by governmental efforts. That was published in October 2022 and six months later Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland is released.  So now, more than a year after that I catch up.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America 
and the Woman Who Stopped Them
by Timothy Egan  2022
read by Timothy Egan. 10h 29m
Rating: 9.25 / Americana history

There is some overlap in the subjects of these books but Egan’s book uses a wider time frame for his narrower study while Hochschild’s book shows a number of threads being interwoven.  In Egan’s book we see how the Ku Klux Klan was tripped up by the Grand Dragon’s own excesses and the woman involved. (see subtitle) –  They’re both excellent books in part because it’s  a very interesting era in American history and also because both writers are award-winning word-smiths. 

Egan starts at the end of the Civil War when the original KKK got started in their lust for vengeance in Polaski, Tennessee – that attempt kind of fizzled but a new beginning was found in Indiana where they weren’t exactly up front about their doings.  This is where D.C. Stephenson, a poor but indefatigable young man with a swagger and a demented dream was hired by the KKK to increase the membership. Steve (as he was called) figured he could do better than that. The leader of the area’s KKK at the time hated blacks, Jews, immigrants. Catholics and all associated ideas which seemed to be spreading rapidl. Stephenson’s ideas were right in line with those of the KKK, except he wanted more material benefits. And he wanted to be the national leader.

There are lots of names, dates and laws and they all build up to a picture of an essentially lawless group of people (mostly men) who were involved in all aspects of racism from snubs to lynchings to burning buildings and general terrorism. Then one of the lower leaders took over in Muncie, Indiana which had an amazing amount of Klan Activity. 

And so we get to follow this guy, D.C. Stephenson, who thought of himself as above the law (“I am the law!”) but had some serious personal issues with women, money, and violence. 

The narrative at one point got somewhat lurid, but perhaps not. What happened happened and was used as evidence at the trial in Chapter 16. “The Last Train to Chicago.” Before and again after that it’s mostly about the Klan in a somewhat wider sense. I consider this to be True Crime. but Audible has it listed as American history – (which also applies and maybe is a better general category for it).  

Fwiw, Muncie Indiana was chosen for a landmark study called “Middletown” by two Columbia sociologists. In the 1920s they judged Muncie to be the “typical” American town/  I remember reading about that study in college but I don’t believe I ever there was so much Klan activity in Middletown Muncie! My goodness!  (And the studies go on even today.)   
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muncie,_Indiana

The Klan, via Stephenson, almost “owned” Muncie via their ideas, extreme racism, patronage, loyalties and violence. That sort of thing was present in many towns and cities north and south. There were also some anti-Klan folks and a few of them stood up for their ideas when trouble broke loose. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Klan
The Klan went national with a march in Washington DC in 1925 but that was the same year it came to the troubles in Muncie 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._C._Stephenson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Sterilization_Act_of_1924