<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Before I decided that Geography and Earth Science were going to be my major areas of study in college, History was also in my top three areas of interest.\u00a0 The maps of historic migrations, battles, and geographical provinces included in the text books we used from elementary school through high school fascinated me to no end.\u00a0 It was the \u2018cartography\u2019 part of being a Geography \/ Earth Science major that finally tipped the scale in that direction.\u00a0 I am still interested in history. Not only the history of past events, but also how events of today will be remembered one hundred years from now.\u00a0 Historians often spout some version of the old saw, \u2018Those who don\u2019t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.\u2019\u00a0 This never sounded quite right to me, so I finally looked up the original quote.\u00a0 In <\/span>The Life of Reason<\/span><\/i> (1905), writer-philosopher George Santayana actually said, \u201cThose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.\u201d\u00a0 Looking up Santayana\u2019s quote also cleared up another question for me:\u00a0 why his name is included in Billy Joel\u2019s <\/span>We Didn\u2019t Start the Fire:\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>\u00a0\u2018<\/span>Eisenhower, Vaccine, England\u2019s got a new queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye\u2019.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Evidently, Billy is also a history fan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Santayana\u2019s words are generally interpreted to mean, \u201cwithout knowledge and understanding of history, people are likely to make the same mistakes or face the same problems that have occurred in the past\u201d (and yes, Wikipedia gets the credit for this little detail).\u00a0 With the \u2018<\/span>those who cannot remember\u2026\u2019<\/span><\/i> framework in mind, let me share with you an excerpt from Timothy Egan\u2019s fine book <\/span>A Fever in the Heartland<\/span><\/i> (2023 – Viking Press):<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201c<\/span>The talented D.C. Stephenson had proved to be quite the prodigy, as he said so himself.\u00a0 He had the touch and the charm, the dexterity with words and the drive.\u00a0 He understood people\u2019s fears and their need to blame others for their failures.\u00a0 He discovered that if he said something often enough, no matter how untrue, people would believe it.\u00a0 Small lies were for the timid.\u00a0 The key to telling a big lie was to do it with conviction.\u00a0 He had once listed himself as a lawyer when he joined a Masonic order, though he\u2019d never passed a bar exam.\u00a0 Now he began to describe himself as the world\u2019s \u2018foremost mass psychologist\u2019.\u00a0 He became a fan of Benito Mussolini, reading up on his speeches and the parallels to his own rise.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Il Duce (Mussolini) came to power in Italy in 1922, the same year that Stephenson began his own campaign to rise to his own position of power.\u00a0 As a writer observed in a profile about Stephenson at the time, \u201cMussolini\u2019s methods were, to [Stephenson\u2019s] mind, the model for men\u00a0 of action like himself.\u00a0 The difference between the two men was a matter of geography.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Mussolini seized control in what would be the first act that would lead Italy into Hitler\u2019s Axis (and their eventual defeat in World War II).\u00a0 Stephenson\u2019s power grab took place in Indiana, of all places, and he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.\u00a0 He then set his sights on doing the same in Michigan, Kansas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.\u00a0 Perhaps if I share the subtitle of Egan\u2019s book, it will help clarify how this ties in with the Santayana quote above:\u00a0 <\/span>A Fever in the Heartland – The Ku Klux Klan\u2019s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Yes, a hundred years ago, D.C. Stephenson was going to fix what he perceived as \u2018problems\u2019 in this country by putting the KKK in charge of the \u2018solutions\u2019.\u00a0 In truth, his whole plot was nothing more than a power grab to give himself prestige and make him wealthy wrapped in a cloak of lies and deception.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0To understand how this happened, one needs to go back to the original formation of the Ku Klux Klan in the post-Civil War South. \u00a0 The first version of the Klan came together in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866 when six young men gathered to form a new, secret club.\u00a0 Two of them were former Confederate officers, two were lawyers, one a newspaper editor, and the last was a cotton broker.\u00a0 They were bitter that four million formerly enslaved people in the South would now make up 35 percent of the population.\u00a0 They needed a name for their little secret society:\u00a0 they based it on the Greek word \u2018<\/span>kuklos<\/span><\/i>\u2019 (which represented a circle) and <\/span>\u2018klan\u2019<\/span><\/i> (to echo the Old World roots for their Scots-Irish Protestant family ties).\u00a0 They designed a costume with a conical top (it made the wearer look taller), a white mask with eye holes cut out, and a long white robe with symbols attached.\u00a0 Like some real life version of the Flintstone\u2019s \u2018Royal Order of the Water Buffalos\u2019, they invented “silly titles and silly rituals’ ‘ according to Egan.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In a bit of revisionist history, one of the original members, James Crowe said, \u201cWe would frequently meet after the day\u2019s business was over in some room or office.\u00a0 We would have music and songs.\u201d\u00a0 After the group marched for the first time in a public parade in Pulaski (with their numbers now swelled to 75), the local paper ran a piece about this, \u201cmysterious new club.\u00a0 What was the purpose?\u201d\u00a0 By early 1867, the \u2018music and song\u2019 had been replaced by \u2018arson and whipping\u2019.\u00a0 The answer to the question about their purpose became clear:\u00a0 brotherhood, mystery, and power.\u00a0 Power to spread fear to those groups they declared were unworthy of sharing \u2018their country and ideals.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Klan spread rapidly across the former Confederate states\u00a0 After a prominent Tennessean named Nathan Bedford Forrest declared himself to be the first Grand Wizard, he told a reporter the Klan\u2019s purpose:\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a protective, political, military organization.\u201d\u00a0 As word spread about their violent assaults on blacks, immigrants, and religious groups whom they did not approve of, the headlines shocked Northerners.\u00a0 Many began to realize, as Egan puts it, \u201cThe North had won the war but the South was winning the peace.\u201d\u00a0 Lincoln\u2019s plan for reconstruction were scuttled by his Vice President and successor (Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson) who had been put on the ticket as a gesture of unity.\u00a0 The quarrelsome, foul-mouthed, frequently drunk, and once impeached president was sworn in six weeks after Lincoln\u2019s death.\u00a0 Egan explained that Johnson, \u201cWould have none of his predecessor’s vision.\u00a0 He ignored pleas from civil authorities to go after the Klan, and he urged Southern politicians to balk at expanding the Constitution.\u00a0 He tried to veto the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (which congress overrode) and gave amnesty to all ex-Confederates while restoring them all their rights except that of property ownership of human beings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0President Ulyssys S. Grant was elected President in 1868 and he promised to smash the Klan.\u00a0 Grant said this group, \u201cwas trying to reduce the colored people to a condition closely akin to that of slavery.\u201d\u00a0 With his Department of Justice taking the point, the Klan\u2019s crimes were prosecuted as federal offenses and by the end of 1869, they formally disbanded.\u00a0 Fredrick Douglas, one of the most widely known Black authors of the post-Civil War era wrote:\u00a0 \u201cThe scourging and slaughter of our people have so far ceased.\u201d The reign of terror was over, for now.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Klan would rise again in the early years of the new century when southern states passed Jim Crow Laws that wiped out Black voting rights.\u00a0 Even the United States Supreme Court, save one dissenting vote, let these laws stand.\u00a0 Jim Crow Laws prevented one in every three citizens\u00a0 from owning property in middle class neighborhoods, eating, sleeping, traveling, shopping, or going to school with whites.\u00a0 Other outposts began to spring up across the country in places like Anaheim, California (dubbed \u2018Klanaheim\u2019), in Bremerton, Washington (aboard a Naval vessel anchored there), Texas, and Oregon.\u00a0 Oregon\u2019s governor showed his KKK leanings by using the slogan, \u201cKeeping America a Land for Americans\u201d in his campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This new KKK is the one most of us associate with the name now – the cross burning started with them, not the original post Civil War version.\u00a0 In 1915, a wandering hell-fire and brimstone preacher named William Simmons had seen the movie <\/span>Birth of a Nation.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The movie was yet another historical reimagining of the Civil War with Black stereotypes a plenty.\u00a0 It fanned the notion that only the Klan could save the country from evil, promoted white supremacy, and introduced the ritual of cross burning.\u00a0 On Thanksgiving Day 1915, Simmons and fifteen other men climbed Stone Mountain in Georgia.\u00a0 The son of a former Reconstruction era Klansman, he had had a vision.\u00a0 Simmons felt he was called to re-create this uniquely American hate society guided by God.\u00a0 The men on Stone Mountain constructed an altar, laid a bible on it alongside an American flag and a sword.\u00a0 They burned a cross and swore an oath to the new Invisible Empire which Simmons proclaimed \u2018had awakened from the slumber of a half century.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As their numbers grew, the new Klan set their sights north of the Ohio River.\u00a0 They began sending out organizers to start cells in areas to \u2018naturalize\u2019 citizens by having them take an oath. \u00a0 They swore allegiance to what soon became the largest secret society in the land.\u00a0 The political field was rife with Klan backed candidates as they worked toward their ultimate goal:\u00a0 \u201ca Klan from sea to sea, north to south, anchored in the White House.\u201d\u00a0 Their influence on the 1924 national Democratic and Republican conventions was so pronounced that <\/span>Time <\/span><\/i>magazine featured Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans on the cover and dubbed the GOP gathering the \u2018Kleveland Konvention\u2019.\u00a0 There was a plan for the KKK to gain enough power to inflict their brutal agenda on the entire nation.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0D.C. Stephenson arrived in Indiana at just the right time to take advantage of what he saw as an opportunity.\u00a0 It would change his life, he hoped, for the better.\u00a0 He had wandered around and tried his hand at a multitude of jobs, but \u2018Steve\u2019s\u2019 stock and trade centered around selling himself.\u00a0 He looked prosperous and sounded educated but was neither – his college credentials changed with each telling.\u00a0 Stevenson read about the Klan parading into a church service on March 26, 1922 in Evansville, IN.\u00a0 They presented the preacher with an envelope stuffed with cash (it was front page news so not exactly a secret). \u00a0 The KKK wanted to normalize their view of \u2018America is for Americans\u2019 by buying the endorsement of the clergy.\u00a0 Some dutifully obliged with sermons of support in exchange for the cash given \u2018in the interest of the work you do here\u2019.\u00a0 Evansville was ready to accept the KKK and Stepheson saw the set up clearly.\u00a0 Engage the church and they would bless the formation of new Klan chapters.\u00a0 In that Evansville was already the most segregated city in the state, it only made it easier for the KKK to accomplish thier stated mission to clean out those they determined to be \u2018undesirables\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Stephenson joined up in 1921 and his zeal for organizing soon put him above the man who brought him into the fold, Hiram Evans.\u00a0 Organizing a cell came with a twenty-five dollar fee and a ten dollar per head surcharge.\u00a0 There was also a charge for their uniform and Stephenson made sure he got a cut from every dollar collected for them and from the other dues.\u00a0 That was quite a sum so one can imagine it wasn\u2019t the poor who were signing up by the thousands.\u00a0 D.C. leveraged his organizing skills into a money making machine and gained more political power as he enlisted well healed Hoosiers.\u00a0 He declared himself to be above the law.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Steve employed muscle men as his personal vigilante force to set things right and to punish those who did not conform to the Klan\u2019s ideals.\u00a0 Even though the number of cases of horse theft in Indiana had dwindled (so few cases per year they could be counted on one hand), Steve managed to reorganize the Horse Thief Detective Association into his own \u2018deputized\u2019 police force to do his bidding.\u00a0 If you rankled D.C. Stephenson, it was only a matter of time before he sent his minions to harass and intimidate.\u00a0 The local officials (who were most likely brothers under the hood) turned a blind eye.\u00a0 One sure sign that a group had earned D.C.\u2019s scorn was a cross burning in front of a church, home, school, or business – a warning meant to strike fear into the hearts of those who were not falling into step with \u2018the Klan way\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Stephenson put on a good public show – touting family and church values while explaining the Klan was only \u2018protecting the American way\u2019.\u00a0 Behind close doors of his mansion, however, he was anything but the pious, flag waving \u2018hero\u2019 he wanted everyone to believe in.\u00a0 Even as his Klan preached the benefits of prohibition, he hosted lavish parties that featured any form of drink one could imagine.\u00a0 With enough ingested to free even the most straight-laced soul, debauchery followed.\u00a0 Steve employed a photographer to make sure he had incriminating evidence to hold over the heads of the powerful people he invited to his den of bacchanalia, just in case they became less Klan friendly.\u00a0 D.C.\u2019s motto very well should have been, \u201cLive as I say, not as I do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Stephenson\u2019s bodyguard and valet, Court Asher, had a front row seat.\u00a0 Court had his own ideas of how his boss was able to gain such a foothold for the Klan in Indiana.\u00a0 According to Egan, \u201c[Asher] marveled at his boss\u2019s talent for mass manipulation.\u00a0 Court said, \u2018Billy Sunday was a great spellbinder.\u00a0 Steve was a better one.\u2019\u00a0 He was particularly amazed at how many preachers he\u2019d been able to fool, concluding that men of God were easy marks.\u00a0 \u2018Sometimes we\u2019d leave a wild party, slip into the robes, and go to a church to pray with a bunch of new Klansmen,\u2019 Court said.\u00a0 \u2018Stephenson would kneel down and pray as convincingly as any minister.\u2019\u00a0 Asher knew of the Old Man\u2019s (Steve\u2019s preferred title) true character.\u00a0 He\u2019d seen the violent rages, the battered and bloodied woman who fled hotel rooms in tears and torn clothes, the Grand Dragon passed out and smelling of bourbon and tobacco.\u00a0 Steve could flip on a dime, from benevolent shepard of a vast crowd to an intoxicated monster.\u00a0 \u2018It was the (expletive deleted) thing I ever saw, how this guy could spread the bunk and make the hicks eat it up.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Thus D.C Stephenson rose to the pinnacle – he was the beloved leader of a large hate group.\u00a0 His aim was nothing more than to gain enough political power to rule the land with an iron fist in his own twisted image of a \u2018pure America\u2019.\u00a0 Rearranging the Constitution of the United States to \u2018Keep America for Americans\u2019 was high on his agenda.\u00a0 If all went according to his twisted plan, a run for the White House was coming closer every day.\u00a0 In Part II of <\/span>History, <\/span><\/i>we will explain how our country escaped being ruled by the KKK.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video – I don’t know if there is a ‘good song’ about the KKK, but back in the late 1960s Roger McGuinn took a stab at it – this is a live version from a 1969 concert at the Fillmore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Before I decided that Geography and Earth Science were going to be my major areas of study in college, History was also in my top three areas of interest.\u00a0 The maps of historic migrations, battles, and geographical provinces included in the text books we used from elementary school through high school fascinated me to 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