A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

Today's Featured Book: 

A Fever in the Heartland:

The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America,

and the Woman Who Stopped Them

by Timothy Egan

Genre: History

Published: April 4, 2023

Page Count: 428 pages

Summary: 

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.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

The most powerful man in Indiana stood next to the new governor at the Inaugural Ball, there to be thanked, applauded, and blessed for using the nation's oldest domestic terror group to gain control of a uniquely American state. 

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

Now, the city attorney, four members of the town council, the chief of the fire department and the school superintendent were all Klan....Where did this all come from? What had calloused the character of so many of Stern's neighbors? What did they want? As W.E.B. Du Bois had written, behind "the yelling, cruel-eyed demons who break, destroy, maim, lynch, and burn at the stake is a knot, large or small, of normal human beings, and these human beings at heart are desperately afraid of something." Noblesville had just a few dozen Black residents, a mere ninety-four Catholics, and no Jews or recent immigrants as far as anyone could tell....The menace, as the preacher said, was just beyond the reassuring predictability of the town, somewhere in the urban churn and the moral flexibility of the Jazz Age. And those alien forces were closing in on the Noblesvilles of America.

Everyone needs to read this book.

A Fever in the Heartland follows the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the heartland of America during the 1920s, a movement that centered on hatred of Blacks, Catholics, and Jews, resulting in a gangster-like organization that bullied and beat up and killed people in order to concentrate power and money in the hands of a few. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan was led by a charismatic charlatan, D. C. Stephenson, who lied, never paid what he owed, and sexually abused scores of women. He gathered around him many people who he could bribe or scheme to do his will. And common people, wooed by his charm, came in droves to join the Klan.

Stephenson wanted to be president. He would not be president, he later revealed, but a dictator.

I cringed as I read about the thefts, the beatings, the murders of innocent people, about the lives destroyed, about the atmosphere of hatred that prevailed, about the way democracy was almost ousted, replaced by Klan rule.

Everyone needs to read this book.

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

October 31st - Have you ever been haunted by a book's plot or a character? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

Yes. Often. 

I often think about Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and the central character, preacher John Ames, 76, who is dying and is writing a letter to his young son about all the meaningful things he wishes he could to talk about one day with his son. I often think about The Count of Monte Cristo and the character of Edmond Dantès, a highly-regarded young man who has everything stripped from him, who plots revenge on those who wronged him, revenge he feels he will never live to carry out. I often think about the loneliness of the four women who go to stay for a month in Italy in a castle in The Enchanted April and how the companionship of the stay changes all four for the better. I often think of the life of O-lan, a poor woman who works incredibly hard with her poor husband in The Good Earth, and who sacrifices to bring her husband great wealth, but who is abandoned by him for other women and other distractions...

So, yes, many books and their characters haunt me.