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Offsite: Timothy Egan at SPL Central Branch
As part of the Seattle Public Library's Bullitt Lecture Series, award-winning author Timothy Egan discusses the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to power during the 1920s and the woman who stopped them, the basis of his recently released book A Fever in the Heartland.
The Roaring Twenties—the Jazz Age—has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.
Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows–their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman–Madge Oberholtzer–who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.
A Fever in the Heartland marries a propulsive drama to a powerful reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.
Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of ten books. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for nonfiction. His book on photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, was awarded the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction. He's also written several New York Times' bestsellers, including The Immortal Irishman and The Big Burn. He's a third-generation Westerner.
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/2022321-0
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2022321-2
