On Fever In The Heartland by Timothy Egan

Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan was a captivating read on the true plan behind the KKK's rapid ascension to power in the 1920s and its second wave. The Klan's first wave of popularity was in the South, post-Reconstruction between 1866 and 1872, before President Grant declared it "the most atrocious organization that the civilized part of the world has ever known," (p20). This book focused on how the Klan rose to control an entire state, Indiana, and was on its way to controlling significant parts of the North in its second wave of membership.

The 1920s are typically characterized by ideas of Gatsby-esque parties and flagrant defiance of social norms, and the KKK is typically characterized by the South. This book demonstrates that neither was truly the case. The KKK's most rapid expansion of membership and power was in the north and midwest, in Indiana, Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. This book primarily follows the ascent and personality of D.C. Stephenson, head of the Indiana KKK in the 1920s. He was a sketchy character who lied compulsively and turned on a dime. The people who followed him didn't know who he really was and they didn't need to: '"I did not sell the Klan in Indiana on hatreds,' Stephenson said. 'I sold it on Americanism.'" (p12). Stephenson found weak pockets in Indiana institutions: he bribed ministers and politicians, exploited a law legalizing vigilantism, and played to people's fears. Through his financial scheme ($10 to become KKK, and he'd take $4), he used his tremendous wealth and the organization's tremendous wealth to control politics. Meanwhile he kept the machine going by bribing community members to preach the Klan and drive membership. 

The Klan was successful in a number of its policy goals including Prohibition and immigration quotas, the latter of which ended up having significant impacts on Jewish safety pre-, during, and post-Holocaust/WW2. The Klan was behind the Scopes trial in Tennessee, preaching that evolution was part of a Jewish plot (p191). According to the KKK, the Jews controlled movies, jewelry, clothes and banks; the Greeks controlled all restaurants and bakeries, Italians the fruit and produce, and the Catholics were controlling politics and religion (p199). 

Remarkable parallels to today, as always. The flu pandemic of 1918-1919 had taken tremendous lives, the Great War as well, and so people were looking for social connection, and the Klan advertised as such. Historians went so far as to say that the rising membership was rooted in "the deadly tedium of small-town life,...The KKK filled a need," (p105). Before long, people were joining because their neighbors were, and didn't fully realize the goals of the KKK, or didn't realize how wrong they were.

Facts about Colorado:
By 1924, one in seven voters in Denver were members of the Klan. 

"In Colorado, an open Klansman, Clarence Morley, won the governorship," (p8) and at the same time, Benjamin Stapleton, another open Klansman, won the Denver mayoral seat. This is why the neighborhood Stapleton is no longer named for him. 

This mayor, "elected in 1923, named fellow members of the Invisible Empire as police chief and city attorney. One night alone, the Klan set seven crosses ablaze throughout Denver. They would soon be 'the largest and most cohesive, most efficiently organized political force in the state of Colorado," (p113).
"The Klan terrorized Jewish, Italian, Black, and Latino neighborhoods in Denver, and could count on brothers under the sheets in law enforcement to avoid arrest," (p139).

 
The Colorado Klan "referenced scientific evidence as proof that 'descendants of savage ancestors or the jungle environment' along with certain immigrants were unfit to ever govern the United States," and urged passage of their own forced sterilization law (p96).

Miscellaneous
I knew Woodrow Wilson was a racist, but I did not realize he was roommates with the creator of Birth of. A Nation and even said "The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation...until at least there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country," (p29). Keep in mind this was POST-Civil War. 

Our eugenics, racism, and hate, was pre-Hitler, and even inspired Hitler (p54). 70,000 people across the US were forcibly sterilized due to the work of D.C. Stephenson and the laws enacting this were models for Hitler (p94). 

The nickname "Fighting Irish" for Notre Dame stuck after Notre Dame students physically fought the Klan, who tried to march on and intimidate the Catholic students. 

An optimistic quote about the Klan: "the air of America is too friendly to permit such a disease to last," (p278). 

Big thanks to my dad for recommending this book. I learned a lot and liked it so much I finished it in 4 days!

On Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner is all about John Wesley Powell and his plans for the West. It starts with his first expedition on the Colorado River and chronicles his career as he eventually becomes a DC bureaucrat who provided order to governmental science. This book ended up strongly relating to Cadillac Desert and partially to Progress and Poverty, both 2022 reads. Fundamentally, this book demonstrated that John Wesley Powell's ideas about land use planning were too far ahead for the late 19th century. 

Value of first survey

Reading about John Wesley Powell's 1864 expedition was exhilarating; I am glad the book was written in 1954 when the author could describe the rapids as they once were because all of the rivers they rafted have been dammed. John Wesley Powell assembled a motley crew of random people from relatives to people he found along the way; I think one of the most impressive parts was that there was no mutiny. Powell also uniquely built relationships with Native Americans: "Powell respected them, and earned their respect, because he accepted without question their right to be what they were, to hold to the beliefs and institutions natural to them," (p169). 

Politics 

After John Wesley Powell's first survey in 1864, he delegated additional surveys to his trustees and began focusing on the work in Washington: "he began to care more about efficient organization and the public good which federal science ought to serve," than carrying out that work personally (p.257). Powell led the charge to revolutionize the system of land surveying, policy, and farming tailored to the West. The West received minimal rainfall, especially compared to the East Coast, creating challenges that could not be approached with the same policy making as the East Coast. Powell's career was made in land management policy for the West. He had fears, later realized, that land speculation around irrigation projects would occur and that poor parcels would go to the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer but great parcels would go to big corporations. His primary plans included a recommendation of 80 acres for homesteads with irrigation and 2560 acres for pasture farms versus the standard 160 acres to everybody. However, those numbers accounted for native grass species and their growth rates (p.275). Additionally, he wanted to close all the public domain until reservoir locations were decided, so as to prevent speculation.

Although Powell had the expertise and data to back these suggestions up, the idyllic dream of all pioneers becoming successful farmers persisted. Politicians like William Gilpin, first Governor of Colorado, spread lies about the soil quality and rainfall to lure more settlers. When the droughts finally came, it was the little guys who suffered the most. Ultimately, Powell's ideas were taken down by Western politicians, worried about their states viability: "The wise system of land laws had marched the West swiftly and directly toward homesteader failure and land and water monopoly by corporations and individuals...there would be fewer...happy farmers in large parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas in 1940 than there were in the peak year of 1890," (p.403). While Powell's foresight was ignored by those "who feared government sponsorship of science," his work with the US Geological Survey, Bureau of Ethnology, and more, became the models for the Forest Service, National Park Service, and Soil Conservation Service, (p.410). This book showed that John Wesley Powell did tremendous work for government science and the public, in addition to being the non-Native person who 'found' the Grand Canyon (which is pretty cool). 

Miscellaneous

There were a couple of interesting tidbits to this book: 1) John Wesley Powell, Abraham Lincoln, and Mark Twain were all cut from the same cloth of a homegrown midwest education. John Wesley Powell "had unlocked a region" (p.149). Powell's view of land management was anti-speculation, so it was highly influenced by Henry George, who published Progress and Poverty around the same time. 

Thanks to my brother, Jeremy, for the recommendation.