12 Questions with Dr. Madison
We’d argue that James Madison is the foremost Hoosier historian. His work on Indiana’s history has helped shaped our understanding of our state; where we came from, who we are, and where we’re going. Dr. Madison’s most recent work, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland (Indiana University Press) explores the role the Klan played in Indiana during the 1920s. We asked Dr. Madison 12 questions about his new work:
DCHS: Dr. Madison, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! Your name comes up quite often in our board meetings as a possible presenter. We’re definitely looking forward to the post-COVID world when you can come and chat with us. You also have many fans among our members who will, no doubt, appreciate the insights into your new work.
DCHS: The topic of your new book isn’t part of our state’s history that we can be proud of, but the Klan was certainly once an influential player in Indiana. What was your motivation in writing The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland? And why is it important to explore this now?
MADISON: First, as I’ve taught at IU and spoke around the state, the questions I most often got were about the Klan.
Second, there remain myths about the Klan, some that impede our larger historical understanding. I hope this book provides new knowledge, especially that this Klan was not a marginal organization and not a fluke occurrence, but a part of our mainstream history.
DCHS: You’ve written about racism in Indiana several times before, most notably in A Lynching in the Heartland. How does the new work contribute or extend your previous research?
MADISON: I’ve become increasingly interested in our struggles with race and other differences. I think this is one of the most important issues in our past and present. We need to talk and think about it in serious and rational ways.
DCHS: Much of white America doesn’t want to be reminded of an immoral past and certainly not about any forebears (or family members) that participated in organizations such as the Klan. However, in this past year, race has reasserted itself, especially in a historical context, as part of the national discourse. Do you see your new work contributing to that discussion and if so, how? Is this work needed for Americans?
MADISON: As painful as it has been, I believe that recent controversies will eventually move Americans to embrace our differences in a positive way as one of the sources of true American greatness. I take the story of the Klan into the early twenty-first century. The Klan is dead today, mostly, but I argue that its ideals endure, perhaps more so in current times. Understanding what happened in the 1920s can be immensely helpful in thinking about where we are today and where we want to go tomorrow.
DCHS: Today, there’s a notion among some folks that the Klan in Indiana was full of poor whites. You dispel that myth in the new book. Can you, briefly, describe the ascendancy and influence of the K.K.K. in the Hoosier state?
MADISON: The opening sentence of my book reads: “The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was as dark as the night and as American as apple pie.” I offer lots of evidence for that seemingly contradictory assertion. One of the most important points is that the members were not the “hillbillies, great Unteachables,” as one journalist claimed. Rather there were among them good citizens, middle class and respected, lawyers, Protestant ministers, retail merchants, church women, factory foreman, men and women who willingly joined because they believed in the Klan’s goals to redeem America.
DCHS: The Klan was unfortunately quite active in Muncie during the 1920s. Can you provide a sense of how prevalent the Klan activities were in our community?
MADISON: Yes, the Klan was very active in Muncie (which claimed the best Klan marching band in the state), but also in New Castle, Anderson, Kokomo, Indianapolis, and across Indiana. There were Klaverns in all ninety-two counties. My hope is that some readers will move from my book to dig deeper into local Klan activity. We have some good scholarship on Delaware County, but far more is needed.
DCHS: Did the Klan cut across state party politics in the sense that both major parties had members in the Klan? Were the state political parties actively involved in Klan activities (beyond just D.C. Stephenson)?
MADISON: There were Democrats who embraced the Klan, but it was the Indiana Republican Party and candidates who really joined the cause, out of genuine conviction or because they saw the Klan as a path to office.
The 1924 elections produced a Republican Klan governor and majority general assembly majority.
DCHS: George Dale was a prominent local Democrat and Muncie mayor that actively fought against the Klan. Can you provide any context for his role in the Klan’s organized opposition?
MADISON: Dale was amazing, perhaps the most outspoken opponent of the Klan. His newspaper was full of reporting, often mocking them as “kookoos,” so much that he spent some time in the Delaware County jail. Voters elected him mayor in 1929, an important sign of rejection of the Klan.
DCHS: The K.K.K. in Indiana grew exponentially in the 1920s and then fizzled out. What caused this?
MADISON: The Klan began to grow in Indiana in 1922 and frizzled by 1929. That’s a long time, I think, for such an organization to wield so much power. I have a chapter on the downfall, which included the conviction of Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson (candidate for the most evil man who ever walked the soil of Indiana). But the Klan continued to have influence after Stephenson went to jail. The downfall was slow and painful, tragically so, and is part of the reason I argue the Klan was not marginal but mainstream.
DCHS: Can you discuss what role, if any, that films like The Birth of a Nation and historical events like the Great Migration played in the Klan’s development in the north?
MADISON: The Birth of a Nation was very important in extending white racial prejudice. It was a powerful statement of stereotypes that were deep in the culture and that enabled the Klan to rise to power.
The contexts of changing times in the 1920s are essential to understanding the Klan, including white fears as newcomers arrived from the South as well as from Eastern and Southern Europe. Klan propaganda was very good at playing on those fears.
DCHS: Over the years, you’ve done a great job of communicating the state’s history for the non-scholar, even when that history is ugly, inequitable, or downright racist. How do historians, particularly like the public historians at the Delaware County Historical Society, extend this discussion without glorifying the racist components of our past?
MADISON: That is the toughest question. I have no magical answer. I’ve often tried to explain how historians do their work. We must have primary sources to analyze thoughtfully. We bring to that analysis lots of education and preparation, even if we don’t always get it right. But scholars don’t do fake history, we don’t make it up, we don’t do patriotic history of the kind some have called for. We try to tell it like it was. I’ve had to accept the fact that some will disagree with me, even call me a variety of names. The challenge has become more difficult as sensitives on all sides sometimes shut down honest thinking and conversation. We are all in a long struggle but one absolutely necessary for our democracy.
DCHS: What lasting effects has the Klan played in the United States generally and Indiana specifically?
MADISON: We have come a long way in the last half century. Even in the 1920s there were challenges to the Klan from some who called for what we now label multiculturalism. We moved further ahead with the civil rights movement and other changes in more recent decades. Still, there has been a backlash, an unwillingness to try to understand concepts of systemic racism or white privilege, an unwillingness to walk in the shoes of someone different. Some of this is ignorance, including ignorance of our history, Some is selfishness, and some is evil. America is the last best hope of the earth, Lincoln said. I believe he was right, but only if we can think deeply about our true ideals, handed down from our founding era and modified in changing times.
DCHS: What’s next for you?
MADISON: I’m a historian. I like reading primary sources and the scholarship of other historians. I like to learn. So, if not another book (which can become an unhealthy obsession), some writing, some public history activity, some public speaking.
