D. C. Stephenson: An American Tyrant

Americans typically think of tyrants in the context of ancient Greece and Rome, royal France, or 20th century Latin America, but tyrants could never occur in the U.S.  Yet, we have seen our own kind of tyrants in the sense of political machine bosses and corrupt city and state autocrats.  They have acted like tyrants by insisting upon unconditional personal loyalty and obedience.  They are highly egotistical, mean spirited, and even cruel.  They manipulate patronage for family and friends and exploit public projects for personal gain.  They insist that all public affairs rotate around them as indispensable personalities.   They would put Louis XIV to shame as absolute rulers by divine right.  Paradoxically, American tyrants are most likely to emerge at the city, county, and state levels even though we believe that the best governments are local and closest to the people.  We have yet to see a tyrant at the national level.
    Examples of American tyrants include Boss William Tweed of Tammany Hall and the Tweed Ring in New York City and state in the 1860s, Tom Pendergast of Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri from 1925 to 1939, and  "The Kingfish" Huey Long, the governor of and U.S. Senator from Louisiana, 1928-1935.
     Another, equally evil but not so famous American tyrant was D. C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana during the 1920s.  By 1923, Stephenson, known as "Steve" or "the Old Man" at the age of 31, was recruiting an average of 2,000 new members at $10 each per week.  It is estimated that the Indiana Klan may have had as many as 262,000 hooded members, or one-third of all native-born white Hoosier men.  Stephenson packaged the Klan as a secret  fraternal society.  A master salesman, Stephenson peddled 100% Americanism, law and order, honest government, Protestant beliefs, traditional family values (with men as heads of households), and Prohibition.  He denounced corruption, Catholics, the Pope, and immigrants, especially low-life Irish.  Stephenson made a fortune off of the Klan and converted large amounts of cash into political power.The Grand Dragon captured the Republican Party in Indiana and set his eyes on the national party.  In the elections of 1924 Stephenson-backed candidates won the state's governor's office as well as a majority of the state legislature.  Plenty of county officials, too.  By 1925, Stephenson boasted, "I am the law in Indiana."
     Then the Grand Dragon fell even more dramatically than he rose.  In the spring of 1925 he was implicated in the death of a young woman who was a state employee.  He was arrested, indicted, and tried for the abduction, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer.  The defense argued that she died of self-administered poison.  The prosecution, however, showed that she died from a staph infection caused by human bites to her body.  Stephenson professed his innocence and exuded confidence that no jury in Indiana would ever find him guilty, but it did.  He was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.  He further asserted that he would get a pardon from his lackey, the governor.  He didn't.  In revenge  Stephenson exposed Klan-inspired corruption by state officials.  The Indianapolis Times subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Stephenson, the governor retired from politics, but the Grand Dragon remained in prison.  Meanwhile, the Indiana Klan collapsed as respectable men despite their agreement with Klan tenets rejected an organization associated with such a monster as D. C. Stephenson.

I have published a fictionalized history of the Indiana Klan in my recent novel, The Listener, which is available both as an e-book and paper copy at Amazon.com:

https://www.amazon.com/Listener-Novel-Stephen-M-Millett/dp/1731227310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546985622&sr=8-1&keywords=the+listener+stephen+millett


(c) 2019 by Stephen M. Millett  (All rights reserved)