Indiana, the KKK, and me

Currently reading: A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan 📚

Despite being from Indiana, I feel like I’ve heard very little about this book, which covers the rise of the Indiana KKK in the early 1900s. The book’s central story revolves around the Grand Dragon, a bad man whose bad acts finally land him in enough trouble that the powers that be couldn’t ignore his non-KKK activities any longer. The point, however, is that they ignored most of his activities because institutional power was both in the Klan’s pocket and was leveraged to recruit members up and down the state. Egan takes a powerful, uncomfortable look at how the KKK organized white, Protestant people against everyone else using social and professional organizations and churches, and how they helped shape neighborhood vigilantes into police forces tasked with protecting property and morality.

Fellow Hoosiers will recognize a lot of familiar names, towns and players. That photo in the NYT book review was taken in Marion, Indiana, for example. I’m finishing up an anecdote that takes place in Logansport. New Castle, Muncie, Ft. Wayne, Terre Haute are also places of interest. A reader on Twitter reminded me that the KKK tried to purchase Valaparaiso University, once one of the most prestigious private universities this side of the Mississippi. Examples abound. It’s unsurprising to read that Indianapolis was nearly taken over by the Klan in the 1920s, considering how many in the statehouse openly endorse racist, exclusionary and eugenicist opinions today (including perennial media darling Mitch Daniels).