Date of Award
8-1-2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Historical Studies
First Advisor
Bean, Jonathan
Abstract
Since the proliferation of Trumpism in American politics there has been newfound interest in Ku Klux Klan related studies. Scholars have turned to the rise of the “Invisible Empire” in the 1920s, and the massive political influence it yielded nationwide, to better understand and contextualize the MAGA Movement of Republicans currently dominating their own party, and American politics more broadly. This dissertation focuses on the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as a dominant force in Indiana politics throughout the 1920s. Indiana boasted one of the largest Klan groups at the time, and it was seen in popular culture as a model for what personified “real” America, and who personified “real” Americans. Unlike its southern chapters who dominated their state’s Democratic Party, the Indiana Klan engulfed the G.O.P., and created a massive Republican political machine, fueled in large part by stoking the reactionary sentiments white Protestant Americans felt towards immigrants, Catholics, African Americans, and the various forces of change at the center of the nation’s newfound modernization. This dissertation examines the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan as the most dominant, and most corrupt political power in Indiana from 1920-1929. It illustrates the profound grift and graft taking place as Klansmen and their allies gained control of the Indiana Republican Party, then the state government and several municipalities. Notorious Indiana Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, D. C. Stephenson was a central figure in the Klan’s success and studies have correctly situated him as a king-like figure in the making of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and beyond. This has led to a depiction of the Invisible Empire as being intrinsically linked to Stephenson. When the Klan leader was convicted of raping and murdering a young woman at the height of both his, and the organization’s reign, scholars have tended to depict it as the end of the Klan as well. That as went Stephenson, so did the Ku Klux Klan. The reality is that the Klan had already engulfed the state’s bureaucracy, and other opportunistic Klansmen had quickly filled the void created by Stephenson’s demise. As demonstrated in the following chapters, it was principled Indiana Republicans who engaged in the political and legal campaigns that ultimately removed the Klan from Indiana politics and government. Anti-Klan forces largely denounced the hooded order on the grounds that it was a corrupt super-government, and its members were involved in widespread graft at all levels. This dissertation also illustrates the connections between Ku Klux Klan and the state’s powerful radical Prohibition forces in the Indiana Anti-Saloon League. Their membership often overlapped, and many of those who preached Prohibition during the day adorned white hoods throughout the night. Just as much as D. C. Stephenson, the rise and fall of Prohibition was linked to Indiana Ku Klux Klan’s reign in mainstream politics and government.
Access
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