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by
Timothy Egan
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April 28 - May 16, 2025
told a Klan rally in 1924 that the United States should “build a wall of steel, a wall as high as heaven” against immigrants.
It was an absurd idea only to those who believed that a vibrant young democracy could never be given over to a gifted charlatan.
Time magazine had put Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans on the cover, and dubbed the GOP gathering the “Kleveland Konvention.”
when he was exposed two years later as the highest-ranking elected official in Indiana to wear “the shroud of the terrorist and the mask of the highwayman,” as a crusading Irish American journalist put it, he shrugged it off. As did voters in the 1924 election. Jackson was one of us—a neighbor, son of a mill worker, war veteran, small-town lawyer relatively new to the big city, a Disciples of Christ Protestant in good standing, not a shred of
“I did not sell the Klan in Indiana on hatreds,” Stephenson said. “I sold it on Americanism.”
He then announced an amnesty proclamation for ex-Confederates, an unconditional pardon, restoring all rights except property ownership of human beings.
the new Klan would build its foundation with the blessing of Protestant clergy.
For those who liked their hypocrisy cut with pleasure, the forbidden vices of a Midwest under moral lockdown were gifts he could bestow.
he paid off a dozen or so ministers to evangelize on behalf of the Klan, spreading the word of hate along with the word of God. Those sermons were then widely reported in the Klan’s new Indiana weekly, the Fiery Cross.
“The Klan is not against the Negro, but against social equality,” he said from the pulpit. “Not against Jews, but against only the Jews who are trying to gain control of the world; not against the Catholics, but opposed to their systems. It is time for the scum to be thrown from the melting pot.
In the America of 1922, fear of others generated a lot of anxious energy. This collective unease had only to be corralled, sanctified, and monetized.
compile dossiers on local public servants, dissenters, and troublemakers. He also ordered them to create a file on every person of voting age, with particular emphasis on those who might be enemies of the Klan.
He understood people’s fears and their need to blame others for their failures. He discovered that if he said something often enough, no matter how untrue, people would believe it. Small lies were for the timid. The key to telling a big lie was to do it with conviction.
“They are idiots, insane, diseased criminals!” As Barr framed the big picture, she said, “This is a struggle for the rebirth of the White Race and the preservation of civilization.” Within a generation or two, she warned, white Protestants would be replaced by an inferior breed.
Stephenson had embraced the maxim of Machiavelli—it is better to be feared than loved.
The Klan prided itself on how quickly it could spread a lie: from a kitchen table to the whole state in six hours or less.
“The fight against the Klan is not a Jewish fight or a Negro’s fight or a Catholic’s fight, but an American fight.” Within a few weeks, community leaders from all three camps had signed on, opening a new office of the American Unity League—an Indiana foothold inside the Klan of the North. O’Donnell was not bluffing. He would not rest until the Empire was crushed. —
A trick of his was to grab a girl’s breast and fondle it in front of others. The shock effect gave him power, and revealed to him at a young age that he could get away with things as others could not—simply because he dared to cross a line.
Congress was drawing up a bill to close the door on nationalities debased from birth.
But even if the Fourth of July celebrants in Kokomo knew about the Big Lie of Stephenson’s life, would it have mattered? They believed because they wanted to believe.
Trump
These people needed to hate something smaller than themselves as much as they needed to have faith in something greater than themselves.
Many chose selective amnesia, in service to the
greater good of the Invisible Empire and what it stood for.
News accounts of the riot would give rise to a story that still lives, that the “Fighting Irish” nickname was forever set by the clash of Notre Dame against the Ku Klux Klan on May 17, 1924.
“We’ve gone a long way in this country,” he said to his son. “But apparently we haven’t freed men and women of their suspicion of each other, their prejudices, their intolerance. I think it’s going to be a big battle in this century. My little fight here in Indiana is just a preliminary skirmish.”
Congress passed an immigration measure that slammed the door on those who could never meet the Klan’s definition of one hundred percent American. Strict quotas on shunned countries slashed new arrivals from eastern and southern Europe to a bare trickle, shutting out Jews and olive-skinned Catholics.
The National Origins Act of 1924, a Klan-blessed master design for the future of America, passed in the House by an overwhelming margin and sailed through the Senate with only six dissenting votes. Though historic moments often slip by without notice at the time, this huge plot point in the national narrative was marked by a banner headline in the New York Times: AMERICA OF THE MELTING POT COMES TO AN END The law’s
Though the Klan took credit for “wielding a mighty influence” in Congress, they had plenty of help from people who never took the secret oath. Voting with the Klan was the easy thing to do, for the backlash against immigration had reached a point where a majority in office was ready to close the gates.
the Klan prevailed by a single digit, getting 542 against the resolution condemning Klan values to 541 for it. That was a day, said Will Rogers, “when I heard the most religion preached, and the least practiced.”
Under Prohibition, people with a doctor’s note could buy a pint for all that ailed them every ten days at a drugstore. This business made a wealthy man out of Charles Walgreen, whose Chicago-based chain of drugstores grew from nine in 1920 to 525 by the end of the decade.
When hate was on the ballot, especially in the guise of virtue, a majority of voters knew exactly what to do.
“We’ve passed this immigration bill and built a stone wall around the nation so tall, so deep, so strong, that the scum and riff-raff of the old world cannot get into our gates,” he said.
