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.

A former reporter with The New York Times, Egan brings a journalist’s eye for detail and a fiction writer’s sense of narrative to his tale of D. C. Stephenson and his rapid rise to power. He not only incorporates meticulous research—he cites directly from “court testimony, oral histories, autobiographies, letters, diaries, and newspaper quotes” (i)—but he augments it with the literary devices of fiction—setting, dialogue, and character—to create an account of Stephenson’s rise and fall. The author of nine previous books, Egan has won a host of awards, including the National Book Award and, in 2001, the Pulitzer Prize for his co-reporting in a series for The New York Times, “How Race is Lived in America.”

As he endeavors to recreate historical events, Egan forgoes his journalist’s objectivity to depict a struggle of good versus evil, tolerance versus hate: Madge Oberholtzer is a martyr to the cause of justice, and O’Donnell and Dale are depicted as noble crusaders crushed under the wheels of the Klan’s powerful political machine. Egan is writing narrative nonfiction rather than traditional reportage, and the demands are different. In a June 2023 interview with University of Washington Magazine, Egan confirms that his primary goal in writing A Fever in the Heartland was not to draw intentional parallels between the contemporary political atmosphere and that of a century prior, but to bring the reality of the Klan—namely, that it was not isolated to the South—to light, saying, “I think we’re stronger as a nation for knowing this history and seeing how we overcame it” (Sudermann, Hannelore, “Pulitzer Winner Timothy Egan, ’80, Writes of KKK’s Rise and Fall in the North.” Washington University Magazine, 2023).

Egan paints a portrait of itinerant drifter David C. Stephenson as belonging to a uniquely American category of charlatans and conmen who use charisma to swindle, persuade, and influence their way to fame and fortune. While his true motives were murky at times—was he more interested in furthering the Klan’s agenda or building his own fortune?—Egan depicts him as a man who was not one to pass up an opportunity, and he saw a golden one in the newly reforming Indiana Klan. As a child of poverty, Stephenson, who distanced himself from his family from a young age, quickly discovered his oratorical skills. He could sell anything, especially himself, and with his ability to recruit new members, he rose in the ranks and became the leader of the Indiana Klan in only two years.

Egan also highlights Stephenson’s lack of moral consistency, as he preached one gospel but lived by another. While selling the Klan as an organization built on abstinence, temperance, and Protestant virtue, he drank heavily and sexually assaulted nearly every woman who drifted into his orbit. Like so many powerful men who believe themselves immune to consequences, however, Stephenson pushed his advantage too far and was ultimately destroyed by his own hubris. He died in 1966, an obscure figure living in a small-town in Tennessee and forgotten by the majority, who had moved beyond his message of hate. Stephenson’s story serves as a cautionary tale for those tempted to seek salvation in a charismatic leader.

Thoroughly modern, Madge Oberholtzer exemplified the early-20th-century feminist movement—she was young, educated, career-driven, and free to move about (day or night) without a man on her arm. She took a cross-country road trip with a girlfriend (a rarity), dated without the obligation of marriage, and exhibited empathy for the less fortunate by working for a government-funded literacy program. It might be argued that Oberholtzer’s desire to save her job obstructed her view of Stephenson’s true character, but more than her job was on the line: Without her income, her parents would have likely lost their house. Oberholtzer was not naïve enough to fall for Stephenson’s aura of power; she knew who he was, if not the full, dark extent. She was, in a sense, like Stephenson himself. She was willing to use his power to get what she wanted, and Stephenson could have granted her request easily. When their worlds collided, Oberholtzer could not have conceived of the path the Grand Dragon would lead her down.

Even as a hostage who had been raped and battered, Oberholtzer was defiant, choosing to take her own life rather than submit to her captor. While she had the option to kill Stephenson, she was savvy enough to realize the legal predicament she would be in if she did kill him. The likelihood of a fair trial for killing a man who owns much of the state’s judiciary and law enforcement apparatus would have been slim, and not much different from drinking the poison that eventually killed her. She also feared bringing shame on her family if she was convicted of murder, a sign of the times that a woman’s self-defense would be counted against her in favor of the sexual “prerogatives” of a predatory man. In the end, however, Oberholtzer got her justice from beyond the grave, and her death galvanized a movement that would eventually topple one of the most powerful men in the state.

Stephenson’s collaborator in hate, Evans led the national Klan based in Atlanta, Georgia. Evans realized that the survival and steady growth of the Klan was dependent on its perception as a virtuous organization, closely allied with the Protestant Church and its community service. In Evans’s PR universe, the Klan represented not hate, but racial pride. The terror tactics continued under the radar—with Evans’s official sanction—but the public face of the Klan was benevolent exclusion. While no less racist or inflammatory in his rhetoric than Stephenson, Evans despised his counterpart’s behavior, seeing it as a public relations stain on the organization. In fact, as news of Stephenson’s crimes came to light, Evans spent much of his time doing damage control, crisscrossing the country and disavowing Stephenson’s behavior and eventually, disassociating his organization from the Indiana chapter.

Evans’s initial feud with Stephenson arose when he refused to allow his Indiana subordinate to buy Valparaiso University. Stephenson had grand, long-term plans for the Klan, plans that Evans did not share, and that initial schism widened over time until the two men became bitter enemies. As Stephenson’s conviction began to deplete membership, Evans was powerless to stop the turning of the tide. Without the title and power of Grand Wizard, Evans took a job with a construction company. The hate of his membership was all that kept him solvent, and Evans died in 1966.

As a young prosecutor, Remy stumbled into the biggest case of his career when he learned of Stephenson’s potential liability in Oberholtzer’s death. Staring across the courtroom at Stephenson’s high-profile legal team, Remy was the inexperienced newbie in a room full of pricey legal talent. He was, however, a testament to dedication to a righteous cause. While he brought on help, he was the strategic mastermind behind the state’s victory. His decision to make the case about Stephenson the predator and not about the Klan proved vital to his win. As a native Hoosier who knew his home state, he understood that to vilify the Klan would potentially alienate its many members, some of whom were likely on the jury. His strategy was risky because had to convince the jury that, although Oberholtzer ingested the poison herself, Stephenson was still culpable. He may have been helped by Inman and the rest of Stephenson’s defense team, who assumed their case was a slam dunk. They were unable to envision that in a town owned by the Klan—due to Stephenson’s influence—Stephenson wouldn’t be forgiven. Remy’s other strategy was to appeal to the jurors’ sense of civic pride, believing that Stephenson’s boast—"I am the law” (243)—might be a line his proud fellow Hoosiers wouldn’t allow Stephenson to cross. Remy’s strategy proved correct, and Stephenson, who counted on political favors to exonerate him, finally got the justice he has long eluded.

While Remy was victorious, the victory took its toll. The long hours, the stress of possibly losing the case—and thus, losing justice for Oberholtzer—and the death threats all affected his health. He was, however, tenacious. As one of the few public officials who did not swear an oath to the Klan, the young, frail-looking district attorney’s moral code and devotion to the cause proved the determining factors in bringing down not only Stephenson but a legal team that felt assured of victory.

Muncie newsman George Dale, like Remy, defied the threats and intimidation of the Klan to wage a one-man journalistic war against a force that threatened everything the Constitution—and the country—stands for. In a modern environment of “fake news” and shifting news delivery platforms, Dale was a throwback to the age of the newspaper as community watchdog and public conscience. He understood that journalism is a sacred public trust, one vital to a healthy democracy, and his personal moral code pushed him to keep going in spite of being driven into bankruptcy by a Klan with vastly superior financial resources. Although his diligence didn’t convert many Klansmen, his efforts were noteworthy for his passion and his willingness to see past the rhetoric and fear-mongering to the very un-American (in theory if not practice) racial exclusion behind it.