Doomed to Repeat History

Guest Opinion

By Karen Mulvahill | March 8, 2025

He walked into Evansville, Indiana in 1920 with nothing more than a fictional biography and outsized ambition. Three years later, D. C. Stephenson was the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan and controlled the state’s politicians, judges, police, clergy, and media.

The Klan’s message of returning America to “real Americans” resonated among people fearful of the rapid change of post-war America. The Klan’s targets were Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Italians, Irish, Asian—any group but American-born white Protestants. Klansmen burned crosses and beat, branded, and lynched those they hated and any who opposed them.

Stephenson was first hired as a recruiter for the Klan (known as The Invisible Empire), which was trying to grow its presence in the north. He quickly rose to head the statewide chapter, then became second in command of the national organization, vastly enriching himself with a cut of the members’ dues. Stephenson spread the Klan’s tentacles into Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. “I want people to be afraid of us,” he said.

On a personal level, Stephenson’s con was as outsized as his ambition. An eighth-grade dropout, he married at 24 and deserted his wife six months later. He remarried without benefit of divorce, abused his second wife, then abandoned her and their child. When he landed in Indiana, he presented himself as an educated, upstanding single man.

Like many charlatans before and after him, Stephenson’s success fueled his grandiosity. Parties on his yacht were attended by governors, senators, judges, mayors, and congressmen. He called himself “the embodiment of Napoleon,” compared himself to Jesus, and proclaimed, “I am the law.” He told people he was going to be the biggest man in the United States and planned to run for president in 1928.

In 1924, every Klan-supported politician in Indiana won their election. African American publisher George L. Knox wrote, “The Republican Party as now constituted is the Ku Klux Klan of Indiana.” The infection spread across the country. The Klan’s legislative agenda included enacting a eugenics law, outlawing Catholic schools, instituting criminal penalties for adultery or sex outside of marriage, censoring movies, and mandating Bible reading in public schools.

While many were cowed by the Klan’s threats, some stood up against them. Muncie Post-Democrat publisher George Dale was critical of the Klan and its activities. After Stephenson told an associate that Dale “must be knocked off,” Dale was beaten, threatened with death, thrown in jail, and sentenced to a penal colony. His paper was boycotted and vandalized, and he was spit on in the streets of Muncie. (He persisted and was elected mayor in 1929.)

Chicago attorney Patrick O’Donnell founded the American Unity League in opposition to the Klan and published a weekly paper, Tolerance, in which he “unmasked” Klan members, regularly publishing their names. Stephenson branded O’Donnell as “Mad Pat O’Donnell” and entrapped him into publishing a false statement. O’Donnell was sued and the League forced out of business.

James W. Johnson was the first African American to pass the bar in Florida and the leader of the NAACP. He tried to get Congress to make lynching a federal crime. He wrote to President Coolidge demanding that he condemn the KKK. After hearing nothing from the President, Johnson encouraged African Americans, who until that time had voted mostly Republican, to switch allegiance to the Democrats.

Far from embodying the Klan’s purported family values, D.C. Stephenson was a raging alcoholic who threw lavish, liquor-laden parties at his mansion, replete with underage nude girls. He regularly attacked, abused, and raped women. Bribes, threats, and blackmail ensured he was not held to account.

Finally, there came a singular moment of truth. Madge Oberholtzer, a vibrant young woman, was kidnapped, raped, and mauled by Stephenson. Despite offers of money and threats, with the support of her parents, Madge chose to make a statement on her deathbed, enumerating the horrors that had been inflicted upon her. Stephenson was jailed, tried for murder, and found guilty.

Others came forward and reported incidents of assault, rape, murder, political corruption, and alcoholism among Klan leaders across the country. Under the hoods and capes were found not only racists, but drunkards, womanizers, cheats, and thieves. Klan membership declined precipitously.

Enormous damage was done to individuals and democratic processes during Stephenson’s reign. And there remains in this country a dark strain of hate, currently being exploited by the Charlatan-in-Chief.

The lesson of D.C. Stephenson is that we must have courage and follow the examples of George Dale, Patrick O’Donnell, James Johnson, and Madge Oberholtzer to expose lies and corruption and protect the values upon which this country was founded.

(Facts excerpted from A Fever in the Heartland, by Timothy Egan.)

Karen Mulvahill is a writer living in northern Michigan.