Transcripts For CSPAN3 Timothy 20240705

Chronicler of American Experience and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist timothy egan jims multiple books have inspired popular documentaries and have found their way into many classrooms. His book, the worst hard the author today is Pulitzer Prizewinning columnist timothy egan. His multiple books have inspired popular documentaries and a found their way into many classrooms. His book, the worst hard time, the untold story of those who survived the dustbowl, won the National Book award and inspired the ken burns film the dustbowl. His other books include program which to eternity. Tim was previously a New York Times opinion columnist and is a reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for the series how race is lived in america. He is here with us to discuss his recent book, fever in the heartland, the plot to take over america and the woman who stopped him. It tells the story of a murderous conman in the 1920s and the woman who led to their downfall. Booklist calls it riveting. Please join me in welcoming timothy. [ applause ] before we get going, i want to give a big thank you to the state of tennessee for making my wife and i feel so welcome. People really are friendly here. Unless i have misjudged you. Every place weve been, they have been welcoming. I will put on 10 pounds in two days, but thats okay. I will have my surgeon check my heart, my cholesterol after i leave. Thank you to tennessee humanities and for this wonderful turnout today. Lovers of story, lovers of truth and the written word, we are all here. This is our tribe. Thank you for making me feel at home. We are glad you are here. I am curious, whenever i read a book like this, a book that is historical. I am always curious who the keeper was of this story before you came upon it and how did you come to write the book . Let me start there is a quote from harry truman. He said the only thing new in this world is a history we do not know. This is a history i did not know, the rise of the ku klux klan in the 1920s. 100 years ago they came this close to taking over the country. Harry truman, back in the 20s, like 6 million americans, joined the klan. As soon as he found out who they were , that he would have to hate one third of his fellow americans, he turned in his sheets. I did not know that 6 million americans 100 years ago put their hand on a bible and swore the oath to forever uphold white supremacy. I did not know that 75 members of congress were in the klans circle. I did not know there were four elected governors who were sworn clansmen or four senators. The biggest source of my ignorance, now, we know the clown, the klan of fortunately started in your state in 1866. There was the first grand dragon started by a halfdozen men in pulaski, tennessee, ex confederates really on ward and upset by the simple fact that 36 of the People Living in their midst had been enslaved, and now they were citizens. The 20 is klan got a hold in the state of indiana were one in three white males took the oath. How i heard about this was, i am a Pacific Northwest dinner, and i always heard about the klan of oregon. They had a governor in the 1920s and were the only state in the United States to vote to outlaw Catholic Schools. Why do they want to do that . Because the klan of the 20s expanded the range of hatreds from the earlier klan. The earlier klan hated blacks. The new klan hated catholics , hated immigrants, hated socially liberated women, the flappers. It was a 20s, the jazz age. These women had just been given the vote. The outlawed the Catholic Schools in oregon because they were largely full of immigrants, mainly italians from southern italy, and the irish. I am in oregon working on this piece. Someone said, you know colorado had a klan governor. I started researching that. His motto in the election was every man under the capital dome a klansman. He tried to fire every black, catholic , and every jewish person. I kept moving east. Stories in indiana. It was a literal klan republic. That is what they called it. All members of congress belonged to the klan. The governor took the klan oath. It was run by one evil grifter. But this history had been completely forgotten. We americans are really good at celebrating are good parts, as well we should, but we practice historical amnesia. We are afraid of some of the bad parts. In indiana, i get so many notes every day from people saying, i did not know any of this. They dont teach it. I am a student of american history. To use my harry truman quote, i did not know this. Every author is excited about the chance to tell a new story, the chance to tell something. This had almost a biblical, fable like quality to it. A beginning, a middle, and tragic end. It is quite amazing. In the epilogue, i will jump to the end here, you mentioned a treasure trove of information that was found. It was kept in archives, and it was there was some debate over who would be able to look at it. I am curious, thinking about that, how much of the Historical Documents were you able to look at . What process did you go through to collect all those and get access to that . This is the interesting thing about the story. It is largely there are. Except for that trunk. This is what happened. The town of noblesville, indiana where the trial takes place, the last third of the book is a trial of this awful monster who drove the indiana klan, d. C. Stephenson, the grand dragon. He ran the state. He was a serial liar, a rapist, a drunk , but he ran the state. He would put out a slate of klan backed candidates to vote for, and everybody knew what they were doing and voted for them. He is on trial for this horrible crime of raping and cannibalizing a woman, he chewed her nearly to death. A horrible monster. This is the guy who dropped out of the sky what fourth of july in kokomo, indiana, the largest gathering in the history of the world of the ku klux klan. 200,000 people showed up to greet the sky. After the trial was over, they sort of forgot. Things just close down. Klan crater. In noblesville, indiana where the trial happened, a lovely town about 35 miles north of indianapolis, they put all the robes and documents and the weird hats in the rituals and the owes and put them in this trunk. Was found by a builder in 1995. Out plops secrets. Grandpa, grandma, my neighbor. 10,000 names of this town of only 20,000, almost half the people belonged to the klan. They decided to close the trunk. [ laughter ] were not going to let anyone see this. It was closed another 20 years. When i started my research, it have been opened again. It is interesting. I have hosted sessions for years, and i was a 75 of the authors are journalists by trade. Im curious how your journalistic skills played a part in this. You were looking at things in the past, but i am sure that played a huge part. Well, so i am primarily a storyteller. I like to think of these irish storytelling tradition. I got into journalism because you cant make a living as a writer unless you have a day job. Journalism allows you to see the world and have powerful people return your phone calls. The average person cannot do that. A great opening for me. Some authors, when they have had success, do not do their own research. I love the research. So many surprises. When i was doing research on the dust bowl, i would go town to town, these really small towns in the Southern Plains and meet up with a circle of old ladies, almost all women, because they outlive the been. There in their upper 90s. They lived through the dust bowl. Every once in a while, i would be so likely. One of these women would go back and bring back the shoebox , open up the shoebox. There were the letters, diaries, pictures of that hard time. As a journalist, that is your wow moment. Of a storyteller, you try to put the things together. One quick story, one thing i didnt know. Is the gentleman wearing the notre dame shirt, go irish. [ laughter ] i have to tell you a story. Part of my family grew up here, and i shouldve known this. In 1924 when the klan was at its absolute peak and ran every office in indiana, there remained one source of opposition. The naacp came in is a we are of voting republican a more. They were loyal republicans. They said unless you, president coolidge, announce what has happened here in indiana, a klan republic, we are not voting republican. It didnt go very far. It is start the shift away from the republic and party. But the real source of institutional opposition were catholics. And that source was the university of in order dame. So klans four, this awful pillaging, rapist, line, murdering grand dragon, he did not have a single good quality, he says i will show those irish kids. He arranges a big klan gathering in south bend specifically to put those kids down, to show them who runs the state. What happened . The chancellor of notre dame, the priest says, dont leave campus. They disobey him. They had a riot. Back and forth. These kids, mostly irish kids, one of the funny things, they ended up throwing potatoes [ laughter ] at the klansmen. They are fleeing a barrage of potatoes. Legend has it, one of the shots came from the notre dame quarterback. A direct shot on their flaming cross. The next day theres a big headline, chicago tribune, i was students route klansmen, like a football game. From then on , they were known as the fighting irish. [ applause ] that is one of the stories i did not know. Be proud of your irish. I dont want to interrupt, but my grandfather was there and talked about a. Thats great. Way to go. Thats fantastic. He was very proud of that. As i read the book, it actually reminded me of, when oliver stone, the documentary series on netflix, the untold history of america. A lot of it was the people who came in second or third in elections or the history will wanted to forget. One thing this book pointed out to me that i do not know about, and i knew about the klan and its atrocities, but i did not know what he had done to catholics, jews and other races. I did not know about that. That is an interesting part of amnesia that america has taken on. It is also our basic struggle. Are we a nation of immigrants . We are an experiment. We are one of those times where that experiment is teetering. We dont want anyone tried. We dont have a state religion. That was the genius of our constitution, to rebuild what europe had done and say, were not going to have a king, a monarch tied to a single faith. Any faith and practice here. That is still an experiment. When you open that to other tribes, other races, and you open that thing to other faiths , you will have trouble. You see this coursing through american history, hot and cold. What happened in the 20s, there was a huge surge of immigration , but these were immigrants from different parts of the world. They were Eastern European jews. Pogroms going on in Eastern Europe. People were coming in , people were forced out of their homes. They were chased and killed. 2 million jews came to our country in less than a 10 year period. Sicily had an earthquake in 1910. The next 10 years 800,000 sicilians came to our country. They were darker skinned. So you have Southern Italian catholics, you had Eastern European jews, and one more thing , the great migration. African americans were moving out of the jim crow south where they had no rights of citizenship, 36 of the population could not be a citizen, could not practice the normal rights of every american. They were moving north. So these three huge things, jews moving to the country, Southern Italians, did not look like the earlier immigrants, and blacks moving north, cause this real americanism. That is why they hated blacks, klans two, immigrants, catholics. They have this thing. You see the signs of businesses and say we serve only 100 americans. They took out signs, they took out ads in the Indianapolis Star saying that you can expect to be served only by one of percent americans. 100 of america, that meant just one thing, white protestants. So jews fought in the revolutionary war. 180,000 blacks fought in the civil war. 200,000 blacks fought in world war i. I think 40,000 of them were killed. When they came home after world war i and try to be part of this country in the 1920s, they were to citizens. That is the rebellion. Whenever you have social tumult like that, you have change in the face of america, it tests our basic premise. Are we a country that is not based on a tribe or religion . One of the great examples in the book about the migration is, i think, the story about the record studio. Can you convey the story and why that is important . Im glad you brought that up. I may not sound like this, but i have written 10 books. I am an optimist. I still feel very positive about the future of our country. I have twin grandkids. I hope they are here 90 years from now in a good country. I could not get out of bed if i did not feel optimistic. In the midst of this, i found this, lets not forget who they are, this is americas oldest domestic terror group. They were like a mayberry klan. They had a Baseball Team with ku klux klan across their jerseys. They would hire Band Christmas time they would give out candy to orphans. On the surface, they were very mayberry, but below the surface, they burned people out of their houses, they killed a couple of priests. They certainly harassed blacksburg and minneapolis, the buses would not pick up blacks going to work at the bus stops. They had segregated schools. There was a lynching, the last lynching of a black man north of the masondixon line happened in marion, indiana. They did some awful stuff beneath the surface of americanism. I was looking for some signs of our humanity. Where sponsored by the tennessee humanities. I believe in the humanities. So what happened . This is another great story. Louis armstrong goes to richmond, indiana, right on the ohio border, to record the only Recording Studio between los angeles and new york was in richmond, indiana. Some italianamerican immigrants started the piano making company and had a Recording Studio, a little shed by the railroad tracks. Louis armstrong was in chicago with his band. They wanted to cut the first black jazz record. They chose richmond, indiana. Unfortunately, they chosen on the day of the largest klan rally in the history of indiana. 40,000 people turned out. They had a plane too. Marching, proclaiming white supremacy. In the middle of all this, and this little 100 squarefoot shed his Louis Armstrong recording the first recording of american jazz. Record that went on to sell hundreds of millions worldwide. We gave the world this music form, american jazz. In part, it got its genesis in the middle of all this. Im glad you brought that up. Great part of the story. We should also mention madge. We have talked about d. C. Stephenson, but Madge Oberholtzer , you talk about being hopeful, she is a voice of hope. Her valediction is the hope that one voice represents changing america. A changes history. The subtitle of this book, the plot to take over america and the woman who stopped them, i will get to the woman in a second. Let me remind you how powerful they were in 1924. Democrats and republicans. Time magazine, right after the convention, but the imperial wizard, the top of all the klan. The idolatry story said no Political Group is more powerful than the ku klux klan. They got everything they wanted. There was a resolution put forward to denounce what was going on in indiana, to and oxley was written, the resolutions that all americans are created equal. Basically what the decoration of independence said they could not pass that. This guy is on the cover of time. They are going to get there for governors and the plot is to get a president ial candidate. They have 6 billion sworn klansmen in 1924 incident think they will have 20 million by 1928. They are on the cusp of real power. One more thing. They staged a demonstration in washington d. C. , 50,000 people turned out openly walking from the Capitol Building to the Treasury Building proclaiming klan values. That is how powerful they were. Notre dame could not stop them. The naacp could not stop them. A handful of very brave rabbis who stood up to them could not stop them. Some very good, and i want to emphasize this, because religion was good and bad, but some very good protestant christian ministers denounce them from the pulpit. A lot of klan ministers were bought and paid for by d. C. Stephenson and did his bidding. One of his geniuses was to get the Christian Faith to sanctify the klan. He bribed all these ministers. But there were ministers who opposed him. Depressed approached them, but only a handful. One got the and got put in jail. You think the First Amendment applies to everyone . It did not apply in muncie, indiana. How dare you criticize the judge. He went to prison without a trial for the crime of practicing free speech. All these groups, leading up to madge, fell by the wayside. They fall to one accidental character of history, a 28year old woman living in irvington, indiana. She had been a schoolteacher, and now she was working for the state in a literacy program. She was a perfect woman of her age. She was liberated. She was a flapper. She cut her hair short and a bob like a lot of women did. She enjoyed going out and dated several men, but she was not ready to get married she did a very daring thing and drove across the country in a car, her and another girlfriend, in 1924 before the lincoln highway was even built. A very big deal. She goes to the grand dragon who lives 12 blocks from her in this giant mansion where he throws these parties of debauchery. Naked women pop out. This is a guy who proclaimed the sacredness of womanhood and why we should outlaw alcohol while he has every brand of booze flowing. She has to go see him to try to save her job. She gets entangled with him. He is attracted to her. She agrees to go out with him but i dont want to spoil the story, except to say that he commits an awful crime. He goes on to rape and nearly choose her to death. She lays in bed with a high temperature. Heels the police department. Up and down the midwest. She says, before i die, i want to see justice done. Her words in court ultimately bring this guy down. When he is brought to justice, the words of Madge Oberholtzer, with his awful man did , shocked the nation. It is the trial of the century in indiana. All the newspapers recovering this. This organization that proclaims the virtue of womanhood, the top leader is a rapist Practice Organization claims we should go full on with prohibition , but he is a raging alcoholic and bootlegger. This organization this is a practices christian values does anything but that. All the secrets are exposed at the trial. At the end of the trial, it goes from 6 billion members of the klan to under 100,000 the. People had seen the true evil face of this organization. That is one interpretation. Another interpretation, which i tease out at the end of the book, is that the klan got most of what they wanted in the 20s. They wanted prohibition, they got that. They wanted no more immigrants from Eastern Europe or southern europe, they got that with the 1924 immigration act. A blueprint for white people for the next 60 years. It made it almost impossible. They think up to 4 million trend 22 were killed by hitler, they probably would have found comfort in america if not for the 9024 immigration act. The third thing was jim crow. Jim crow moved north. Oregon, when i started my research, segregated neighborhoods and schools. Asians were not allowed to own property. There are two interpretations. One is that she brought them down, which i think is true, because she exposed the placard at the center of this organization, and they got most of what they wanted. Another question you ask is the idea of whether he called up the storm, whether he called up the storm of hate or if he was riding the wave of hate. Feelings that came out as hate. It is a great question. I dont like to leave too many questions dangling. I try to answer them in the book. One of the themes is, was there a vein of hatred, it goes up and down in our history, think of it as a vein underground. Sometimes it is closer to the surface and sometimes it is deep. The vein of hatred. He tapped into that vein, or did he invent that vein . I think what he did was, because he was grifter, he was a con man, he was a music man of hate, he went from town to town saying, we have trouble right here in river city, and it is those catholics and those jews in those immigrants and those blacks and those dam women drinking until 2 00 in the morning. He blamed the mall. He shows up in evansville, indiana having appeared out of nowhere, seemingly out of nowhere, but what happened actually was he ditched his wife and newborn child, completely abandoned them, and he said, dont try to find me. This is in oklahoma. He shows up with a nice suit and a way with words, and within four years he is running the state of indiana. He was just looking for ways to make money. He never made any money. That was until he joined the ku klux klan. In four years he was worth about 15 million. He had a huge mansion in irvington. He had his own private plane. Had a 98 foot yacht on which he entertained senators and judges and members of congress, powerful men of business. He found that, unfortunately, hatred was a renewable resource. He could tap that. He said it is largely a white state. Still one of the most homogenous states in the country. Is a handful of jews. But they would preach these horrible speeches saying, lets boycott the jewish religion. They sent goons down to close jewish shops that were open on sunday. They had 30,000 people legally deputize to harass enemies of klan certified virtue. He saw very clearly that if he could play to the fear of others, this changing america, maybe it wasnt in indiana, but it would come to indiana, the blacks are moving into indianapolis, the jews will be here from new york city, god knows we are we have the irish and italians , these priests are loyal to rome, the nuns have secret rituals in the conference. He burned down several comments. Con vents. It made him rich. The question was, was that there . I think it was there, but it took a very skillful demagogue to bring it to life. In the bio i shared, you are a chronicler of the American Experience but also, as he put it, the american experiment. As we were talking before we started, we were talking about how history rhymes. I was wondering if you could comment on how maybe you hear some rhymes or what you have learned from the book that you could share with us. I dont want to take credit for that line. The line is history doesnt repeat itself, it rhymes. I did a documentary with ken burns on the dust bowl and spent a lot of time with him and his Little Village in new hampshire. It reminded me of the north pole. I spent some time there. He is a great guy. I thought, he is the one who said that like, history rhymes. It rhymes in the renewable hatreds. It rhymes and that our better angels are sometimes nowhere to be found. Lincoln coined the term about bitter angels. Sometimes the devils get a hold. You know, i never mentioned a certain 91 count indicted, twice impeached, serial prevaricating expresident , but everyone brings that up. But he is not mentioned. All i will say on that is that, unfortunately, i say this as a lover of all americanism, we occasionally in the 1920s we did, we have done it before, fall for a con man. We fall for somebody who says the things we want to hear and says them in a certain way. This is a shocking thing. Madge oberholtzer lay dying of fever from the affections from the bite marks this awful man left on her body after raping her on a train. Headlines every day , banner headlines all over the midwest, madge lives day 23. Everyone was following. You can make it. There were demonstrations and all that. As she lay dying, and d. C. Stephenson was charged by a brief prosecutor, because he owed most of the judges and prosecutors. There is a real hero named will revving. Remington. I met his grandson. This brought everything to life. He was the only prosecutor who did not go to swear loyalty to this monster, d. C. Stephenson. As madge laced on, we know how awful this is, d. C. Stephenson from jail, he issues here is favorite slate for state and city offices for the 2020 1924 elections. They all win. They knew how bad he was, but they still did it. So why do we do that . Why are we willing to overlook awfulness . It is not for the greater good, it is for the greater evil. You know, here is what i will say about that. I really struggle, honestly i dont like to leave too many things dangling, like i said. I struggle to come up the answers. What may the quintessential state turned to hate . Not just a hate, but a terror. I think i can say this by way of conclusion, i dont think i can answer the first part. D. C. Stephenson was a con man. He had no shame. He had no bottom. He was willing to go there were no man would go. I would bet every person in this room has a clique of conscience that happens when you do something truly bad. You feel bad. That is your conscience. He was a sociopath. There was no bottom to his shame. If you have no shame and you are willing to go there, unfortunately, you have a lot of power. I have concluded that a shameless person can go pretty far. The conscience does not stop them. The other part of the equation, how can good folks get drawn in by that . We all have to answer that. This is a good point to open the floor up to some questions. If anyone would like to ask a question, go to the microphone. Go ahead. I am curious about the relationship between the klan and prohibition. Why were they in support of prohibition is still drinking at the same time . It doesnt make sense. There was a lobbying group, the last call is a great story of the prohibition, pbs made a film out of that. The largest lobbying group in the late teens was the anti saloon league. It was a weird combination of, i will paraphrase, dogooder liberals who thought if we could take alcohol out of the equation, these men would not drink their paychecks away. And it had far right evangelicals who thought the grape in the grain was the biggest crime against humanity. They merged together. The interest from the the klan had to do with the fact that apple call that alcohol was the lubricant, the social lubricant, for the immigrant groups they hated, the irish, italian and germans. The germans are beer drinking people. I just came back from munich during the oktoberfest. My god. It makes your party street look like a scene at the picnic. [ laughter ] they drink a lot of beer. I saw a stat that said the irish german the average german drinks 80 liters of beer a year. When they moved here they did not stop making or drinking beer. Italians rick a lot of wine. The wine is safer than the water. With the irish, whiskey is known there is a gaelic word, it is known as the mothers milk. These people brought their drinking conditions traditions to this country. They also brought saloons. That is where they learned to vote. These bars and saloons, my grandmother in chicago owned a bar on the sell side Southside Park that is where irish americans gathered. Killing alcohol will kill the lubricant that holds these immigrants together. What happened was, we drank more in the 1920s than ever before. I will say upfront, i live in pulaski, tennessee. I actually grew up in a small town called lewisburg. My first understanding of the ku klux klan came from my grandmother. As you can tell, that was quite a long time ago. My grandmother believed the ku klux klan was a really good group of people. If her husband was unfaithful, they would come down on him. That was my first understanding of the ku klux klan. We had lots of stores in lewisburg, tennessee. We had one store that was always the jewish store. That was my childhood. Now i belong to a group of people that try to recognize the people that are deserving of recognition. So we have recently recognized the colored troops that fought in the civil war because they term to the status of the civil war to an end. That probably saved a lot of lives. We put into place in our county a statue recognizing those people. However, the black people that are on my committee, they say that people will not come even to visit our county because that is where the ku klux klan got started. None of the black people want to come out of indiana, illinois, all the different northern states because of that. That is a roundabout way of getting to my particular question. I appreciate your book. I think it is a worthwhile thing. It is all new to me. I have never heard a lot of this. All i have heard is what i grew up with and what is happening in my county. Do you even feel a responsibility toward getting that information out . Not just selling your book, but getting that information out to people so they realize the possible problems that we as a nation have when we try to encourage hatred across our country . I think it gives you a blueprint of opposition too. One of the things that these different groups of people who allied together to fight the klan , they started a newspaper called tolerance. Every week they would print a list of klansmen. They have people on the inside giving them the membership list. They would print the headline was, who is who in bedsheets . Here is what happened, unfortunately. Shows you how strong the klan was in the 20s. Instead of being shameful , this was validating. People read it and go, i didnt know that. The guy who delivers my milk, i better join. You would see all these people who are your neighbors. One more thing on that, your first point, i forgot to mention this. One of the things the klan did because they had 30,000 men legally deputized, they were called the horse thief protection association, their actual horse thieves in indiana. It was a Vigilante Group that was deputized. What they did was go after people who were drinking. They would go after men, especially in small towns, who were said to be unfaithful. They would threaten to hang them , tar and feather them, shame them. The great irony, of course, is that the guy at the head of this is a rapist and sexual predator who at one point was engaged to three different women. Is a horrible person. We have come to the end of the session time today. I want to thank tim for being here with us. [ applause ] thank you. Who god