Four star review, originally posted here on February 20th, 2024.
This was a pretty thorough history of Indiana’s KKK at its peak in the 1920’s. I wasn’t expecting any story involving the klan to be anything other than absolutely horrible, but I was surprised by the way in which this particular way was horrible. I was prepared to read about racism, Jim Crow, segregation, rural frustrations at urban prosperity, resistance to the Great Migration, etc. And there was some of that in there.
But what this story REALLY was about, was about single evil man who saw a way to weaponize common people’s racism for his own personal gain. It is about a con man named D.C. Stephenson who realized that he could get a cut of white robe sales, and so encouraged everyone to put on white robes. Honestly, I’m not even sure if he himself was even racist. I mean, I’m not suggesting he was a fan of black people or anything like that, but he didn’t actually care about the cause. He just realized that people are always looking for a way to feel important, superior, and morally exemplary, and every time he realized there was a cause he could promote or a demographic he could exploit, he went for it. He wrapped together all sorts of stuff that he personally maybe did or maybe didn’t care about. Do you hate black people? Give me robe money! You hate Catholics? Give me robe money! You think alcohol is evil and want Prohibition? Give me robe money! Are you sad because you used to be deputized to round up horse stealers but nobody steals horses anymore so you have no way of being a dick to people? Give me robe money! Am I running out of men who are buying my robes but I noticed these suffragettes are looking for ways to feel important? Give men woman tax money for special robes that have cardboard in them to avoid crushing your hairdo! We know Stephenson didn’t care about morality (he threw drug-fueled orgies), women’s rights (he raped lord knows how many), sobriety (sooo much booze), or any number of other things that his organization claimed to be about. It’s absolutely chilling.
It’s not as if someone motivated by pure racism would NOT be chilling. I’m definitely not saying that! But at least pure hatred is honest. To me, it is even worse that someone is willing to weaponize other people’s pure hatred when your own heart isn’t into it. This is someone who knows exactly how terrible the effects of that pure hatred can be… and just straight-up doesn’t care.
There’s a pretty dang obvious parallel between Stephenson and a certain somebody in our current political landscape. Someone who realizes there are racist white people out there longing to feel important, ready to unite behind him, even when he clearly has nothing in common with them and couldn’t personally give two shits. Someone who has found folks who want to feel manly and important (today’s Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are the horse thief deputies of the 1920’s) that they’re willing to organize and cause pure anarchy. Someone who can somehow convince politicians and others in power that they should be bowing down to him even though he sucks. It’s all about personal power. I very much appreciate this book for reminding me, yet again, that history repeats itself.
My main problem with the book, though, was in the framing. Honestly, just fixing the title would do it. The title says this is about “The Woman Who Stopped [the KKK.]” This makes is sound like the woman involved actually did something active to stop the evil. I was looking forward to hearing all about this awesome lady. But [SPOILER ALERT!] it turns out that she’s a Stephenson victim. She died after he attacked her, and the murder trial involved testimony that brought to like what a scuzzbucket this guy is (like, by being a violent womanizing party animal, he was besmirching the klan’s squeaky-clean image.) Now, I’m really glad that the truth came out, and that things fell apart for the Indiana klan after that. But I think it’s disingenuous to claim the woman herself is the one who stopped them. Along those same lines, at the end of the book Egan claims that the klan might have been naturally ending anyway, because they’d actually managed to achieve all their goals. So the trial, while it knocked down the fervor (plus, obviously, Stephenson himself), might have not actually stopped anything. None of this would matter with a different title, which has me wondering why this inaccurate title was selected in the first place.
Helga without the H 