Indiana Klan

The Indiana Klan was a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society in the United States that organized in 1915 to affect public affairs on issues of Prohibition, education, political corruption, and morality. It was most strongly anti-Catholic, but also opposed Jews and blacks. It opposed immigration from southern and eastern Europe, which was sharply reduced by a new law in 1923. In Indiana, the Klan generally did not practice overt violence but used intimidation in certain cases. Nationally it practiced racism and terrorism against minority ethnic and religious groups.

The Indiana Klan rose to prominence beginning in the early 1920s after World War I, when ethnic Protestants felt threatened by social and political issues, including changes caused by decades of heavy immigration from southern and eastern Europe. By 1922 the state had the largest organization nationally, and its membership continued to increase dramatically under the leadership of D.C. Stephenson. It averaged 2,000 new members per week from July 1922 to July 1923, when he was appointed as the Grand Dragon of Indiana. He led the Indiana Klan and other chapters he supervised to break away from the national organization in late 1923.

Indiana's Klan organization reached its peak of power in the following years, when it had 250,000 members, an estimated 30% of native-born white men. By 1925 over half the elected members of the Indiana General Assembly, the Governor of Indiana, and many other high-ranking officials in local and state government were members of the Klan. Politicians had also learned they needed Klan endorsement to win office.

That year Stephenson was charged and convicted for the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer, a young schoolteacher. His vile behavior caused a sharp drop in Klan membership, which decreased further with his exposure to the press of secret deals and the Klan's bribery of public officials. Denied pardon, in 1927 Stephenson began to talk to the Indianapolis Times, giving them lists of people who had been paid by the Klan. Their press investigation exposed many Klan members, showed they were not law-abiding, and ended the power of the organization, as members dropped out by the tens of thousands. By the end of the decade, the Klan was down to about 4,000 members and finished in the state. Efforts by some to revive it in the period of the 1960s and 1970s were not successful.