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

by Timothy Egan

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

Imperial Wizard Simmons told another story in Washington. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am a churchman.” There was nothing wrong with promoting white supremacy—it was only “race pride,” he said. “I cannot see anything anti-American in that.” He dismissed the numerous stories of violence as the work of “a paper owned and controlled by a Jew,” and imposters trying to take down the Invisible Empire.

Stephenson organized recruiters in all parts of the state and trained them to appeal to three things: Love of mystery and ritual. Pride of race and religion. Hatred.

That simple. Just three psychological triggers.

“As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal,’ ” Lincoln wrote.

The Klan made life less dull; it gave meaning, shape, and purpose to the days.

“They paid ten dollars to hate someone,” said a Denver judge, “and they were determined to get their money’s worth.”

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.”

Steve’s 1922 epiphany in Evansville—that he could make far more money from the renewable hate of everyday white people than he could ever make as an honest businessman or a member of Congress—was brilliant. And true.