and the Klan: A Review Essay

Leonard Moore*

The Dragon and the Cross: The Rise and Fall of the in Middle America. By Richard K. Tucker. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1991. Pp. xi, 224. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50.) Grand Dragon: D. C. Stephenson and the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. By M. William Lutholtz. (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue Uni- versity Press, 1991. Pp. xix, 362. Illustrations, notes, sources, index. $25.50.) Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. By Kath- leen M. Blee. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 228. Illustrations, map, tables, notes, postscript on sources, index. $24.95.) Historians of the Ku Klux Klan movement of the 1920s are quite familiar with David C. Stephenson. As leader of the Indiana Klan, Stephenson presided over the largest and politically strong- est state Klan organization in a massive national movement that may have included five million members. He became powerful enough to threaten national Klan leaders for control of the organi- zation as the movement reached its zenith between the summer of 1923 and the fall of 1924. Stephenson was so successful at working his way into the inner circles of the state Republican party that he became a powerful political boss when the Klan swept the state election of 1924. Perhaps most significantly, he was so well known that the scandal surrounding his convictions for rape and second degree murder in 1925 played a large part in undermining the Klan movement not only in Indiana but throughout the nation. Journalists M. William Lutholtz, in Grand Dragon, and Ri- chard K. Tucker, in The Dragon and the Cross, have produced

* Leonard Moore is assistant professor of history at McGill University, Toronto, and the author of Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klwc Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991).

INDIANAMAGAZINE OF HISTORY,LXXXVIII (June, 1992) 1992, Trustees of A Review Essay 133 books intended to bring the story of Stephenson’s rise and fall to the general public. Both represent vast improvements over the Na- tional Broadcast Company’s shallow, frequently inaccurate mini- series on Stephenson produced in 1989. Both present lively narra- tives describing the Klan’s origins in Evansville, its bigoted ideals, Stephenson’s rise to power, his sensational trial, and the accompa- nying political scandals. Tucker’s book is particularly successful in synthesizing traditional sources into a readable, concise format. Lutholtz’s Grand Dragon relies on much more original research than Tucker’s book and presents new, interesting information about Stephenson’s life, about his relations with other political leaders in Indiana during the Klan era, and especially about Ste- phenson’s trial. Yet, while readers unfamiliar with the saga of Stephenson would have good reason to find these books worthwhile, scholars will encounter little new evidence or analysis concerning the deeper question of the Klan’s enormous popularity. Tucker and Lutholtz both accept the traditional view (first proclaimed by old guard Republican leaders in Indiana in an attempt to distance the party from the Klan after the scandals of the mid-1920s) that Ste- phenson was an evil genius who had masterminded the Klan’s suc- cess by manipulating and deceiving a vast army of loyal Klan foot soldiers. The traditional view greatly exaggerates Stephenson’s power and significantly distorts the role of a single leader, and leadership in general, in a grass roots social movement. One con- sequence of viewing the story of the Indiana Klan as the story of Stephenson is that those who actually joined the Klan fade into the background, appearing as little more than the hapless dupes of a huckster and as backward people who needed an organization like the Klan to vent their aberrant views. Perhaps the clearest expression of this view comes in another recent book by Wyn Craig Wade. According to Wade, the Klan succeeded in Indiana primar- ily because of the “clannishness and backwardness” of the people of Indiana, a state that had been populated to a large degree by the “displaced, uneducated Southern rustic.” The ingrained “sim- plicity” and “narrow minded arrogance” of Indiana’s citizens rep- resented, according to Wade, “the weakness that the Ku Klux Klan would exploit to the hilt.”’ While Lutholtz and Tucker do not state their views in quite this way, they paint a similarly simplistic pic- ture of the Klan movement.

Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York, 19881,219-21. For a review of the literature on the 1920s Klan movement see Leonard Moore, “Historical Interpretations of the 1920’s Klan: The Traditional View and the Populist Revision,” Journal of Social History, XXIV (December, 19901, 34 1-57. DWIGHTC. STEPHENSON

Kohcrt Van Hunkirk Collection; courtmy Slur, Indianapoli~. A Review Essay 135

KLANMEMBERS EXIT A CHURCH

Courtesy Indiana Historical Society Library. Indianapolis

One additional aspect of Lutholtz’s book is worth noting here. The author’s diligent efforts to uncover information about Stephen- son’s life are marred by an excessive focus on “unsolved mysteries” surrounding Stephenson’s trial, particularly the question of the moral character of the woman Stephenson assaulted and specula- tion as to Stephenson’s guilt or innocence. As Lutholtz’s own evi- dence shows, Stephenson inflicted severe bite wounds to Madge Oberholtzer’s face, neck, breasts, and other parts of her body. Those wounds became infected and contributed to a slow, agonizing death. And, of course, he also kept her away from medical help for what turned out to be a fatal period of time after she took poison in what she told her family doctor was a suicide attempt. In the face of these events Lutholtz’s extensive speculation about whether Oberholtzer really was the “virginal child” described by prosecu- tors, or whether Stephenson was actually set up by his political enemies, seems, at best, irrelevant. Kathleen M. Blee’s Women of the Klan represents a much more substantial attempt to explore the social roots of the Indiana Klan movement. Blee, who teaches sociology at the University of Kentucky, has made an ambitious first step in analyzing the role of gender in the 1920s Klan and in right-wing movements gener- 136 Indiana Magazine of History ally in modern American history. She uncovers a good deal of in- formation about the leaders of the women’s Klan in Indiana that escaped other authors, including this one.2 Similar to other recent studies of Klan organizations in various parts of the nation, Blee’s book argues that the Klan’s bigotry was mainstream rather than aberrant. Much of her evidence demonstrates the Klan’s commu- nity orientation, its role as a social organization, and its involve- ment in a wide variety of civic affairs. Her findings suggest very strongly that leaders in the women’s Klan were active in the suf- frage and prohibition movements. This is quite consistent with what historians have found about the Klan’s political orientation in virtually all of the communities and states that have been in- vestigated in recent years. A very close relationship existed be- tween the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, and the Klan in Indiana and throughout the nation. Mem- bership in each of these groups almost certainly overlapped signifi- cantly, and support for prohibition enforcement, it now seems clear, represented the single most important catalyst to the Klan’s mass popularity in the 1920~.~It certainly would not be surprising to learn that many or most of the women who joined the Klan had been supporters of the suffrage movement. The importance of Blee’s topic, her success in some areas, and the interesting questions she raises, however, are not enough to make up for a long list of major flaws. One of these is Blee’s in- ability to present any significant evidence about the size and social characteristics of the women’s organization. Blee attempts to com- pensate for a lack of any extensive membership records, a problem common in studying the Klan, by reporting information gathered about 118 Klanswomen whose names were taken from an undis- closed number of scattered, unidentified newspaper articles; one membership list of perhaps ten to twenty names (she does not re- port the total); an unspecified number of uncited obituaries from the Fiery Cross (the Klan’s state newspaper); and a number of other newspaper obituaries (which she does cite).4 It is impossible to draw any reliable conclusions from such a body of evidence. Blee also makes use of eighteen interviews and six written statements from “anonymous informants” who contacted her in response to ad- vertisements placed in a large number of newspapers and other community publications. While the informants provide what would

‘For another treatment of the same subject see Dwight W. Hoover, “Daisy Douglas Barr: From Quaker to Klan ‘Kluckeress,’ ” Indiana Magazine of History, LXXXVII (June, 1991), 171-95. A convenient sampling of recent research on the Klan can be found in Shawn Lay, ed., The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920’s (Urbana, Ill., 1991). See also, William D. Jenkins, Steel Va1le.v Klan: The Ku Klux Klan in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley (Kent, Ohio, 1990). Blee, Women of the Klan, 118-22. A Review Essay 137 be interesting supplemental material, they are too few, too poten- tially unrepresentative, and too far removed from events more than six decades old to merit the weight placed on them in this book. Unfortunately, the tendency to use evidence in highly ques- tionable ways-or simply not to document important claims-runs throughout the book. There are numerous examples, but some of the more significant include: a map indicating the location of Women of the Ku Klux Klan chapters throughout the state (no source cited); a claim that “historians estimate the total member- ship of Indiana’s WKKK as a quarter-million during the 1920’s, or 32 percent of the entire white native-born female population of the state” (no source cited-this figure would make the women’s Klan as large or perhaps even larger than the men’s Klan); and the use of uncited crowd size estimates of women attending public initia- tion ceremonies, parades, and other Klan events to calculate the percentage of Klanswomen among all native-born white women for forty Indiana towns and ~ities.~ Blee’s potentially important observations about the role of gen- der in the Klan movement are weakened not only by these prob- lems of documentation, but’ also by her failure to explore in sufficient detail the nature of the larger Klan movement. She by- passes such sources as the extensive membership documents that exist for the men’s Klan in Indiana; the state’s Catholic, Jewish, and black newspapers; and other evidence. Instead, she relies strongly on Wade’s account, the traditional emphasis on Stephen- son, and other journalistic and secondary sources. Blee proceeds too often on the assumption that the history of the men’s Klan is well known while the history of the women’s Klan is obscure. While there is certainly some reason for this assumption, it would appear difficult to examine the role of gender in a mass social movement without exploring the entire movement in greater depth. Perhaps the safest assumption that could be made by anyone interested in the social history of America’s modern right-wing and conservative movements is that there remains much to be learned about both the men and women who have taken part in them.

“Ibid.,124-28. .