D. C. Stephenson - Career

Career

In 1920 at the age of 29, he moved to Evansville, Indiana, where he worked for a retail coal company. He joined the Democratic Party and in 1922, ran unsuccessfully for a Democratic Congressional nomination. He was said to have already "married and abandoned two wives" before settling in Evansville.

Joseph M. Huffington, whom the Ku Klux Klan had sent from Texas as an agent for organizing in Evansville, recruited Stephenson to the group's inner circle. The historian Leonard Moore characterized them as both young men on the make. The Evansville Klavern became the most powerful in the state, and Stephenson soon contributed to attracting numerous new members. More than 5400 men, or 23 percent of the native-born white men in Vanderburgh County, ultimately joined the Klan.

Building on the momentum, Stephenson set up a base in Indianapolis, where he helped create the Klan's state newspaper, Fiery Cross. He quickly recruited new agents and organizers, building on news about the organization. Protestant ministers were offered free memberships. From July 1922 to July 1923, nearly 2,000 new members joined the Klan in Indiana each week. Hiram Wesley Evans, who led recruiting for the national organization, maintained close ties to state leaders throughout 1921-1922 and especially to Stephenson, as Indiana by then had the largest state organization. Stephenson backed Evans in November 1922 when he unseated William J. Simmons as Imperial Wizard of the national KKK. Evans had ambitions to make the Klan a political force in the country.

After Evans won, he officially appointed Stephenson as Grand Dragon of Indiana. Privately he made him head of recruiting for seven other states north of Mississippi. In the 1920s, Klan membership in these states grew dramatically. In Indiana, membership grew to nearly 250,000 or about one third of all white males in the state. Stephenson acquired great wealth and political power by leading the Klan; agents received a portion of fees paid by new recruits, and he began to wield other power. Evans appointed Stephenson as Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan at a 1923 Fourth of July gathering of the Ku Klux Klan in Kokomo, Indiana, with more than 100,000 members and their families attending. Stephenson said,

"My worthy subjects, citizens of the Invisible Empire, Klansmen all, greetings. It grieves me to be late. The President of the United States kept me unduly long counseling on matters of state. Only my plea that this is the time and the place of my coronation obtained for me surcease from his prayers for guidance."

Encouraged by his success, in September 1923, Stephenson severed his ties with the existing national organization of the KKK, and formed a rival KKK made up of the chapters he led. That year Stephenson changed his affiliation from the Democratic to the Republican Party, which predominated in Indiana and much of the Midwest. He notably supported Republican Edward L. Jackson, a Klan member, when he ran (successfully) for governor in 1924. Stephenson was noted for having claimed, "I am the law in Indiana."