A Fever in the Heartland with Timothy Egan

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon talks with Timothy Egan, a Pulitzer Prize—winning reporter, lifelong journalist, and the author of ten books, most recently the highly acclaimed A Pilgrimage to Eternity and The Immortal Irishman, a New York Times bestseller. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. His account of photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction.

Hosted by: Sharon McMahon

Guest: Timothy Egan

Executive Producer: Heather Jackson

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

Researcher: Valerie Hoback

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey friends welcome so glad that you're here today because I just finished reading a book
0:09.6	and I could not wait to speak to the author about it. It is called a fever in the heartland.
0:16.0	The Ku Klux Klan's plot to take over America and the woman who stopped them and when I tell you
0:24.7	what Timothy Egan has written reads like a compelling novel you have got to find out what happened
0:32.8	that is the truth so cannot wait to dive in to this conversation. I'm Sharon McMahon
0:41.4	and here's where it gets interesting. Thank you Tim for being here today. Oh it's my pleasure
0:48.8	thank you for having me. We have to set the stage. This is a book about a woman who brought down
0:57.6	the KKK. Yeah often history is about great men or great women who do great things and because they
1:04.9	have powerful armies behind them or they have governments behind them or they have corporations
1:08.5	behind them. This is a woman who was a school teacher who worked for a lending library in the state
1:14.0	of Indiana who was really a quote nobody as her villain said and she goes up against just because
1:20.0	an accident has thrust her into this she goes up against one of the most powerful monsters in American
1:26.0	history. People that I think a lot of folks have never heard of named DC Stevenson. He was the
1:31.2	grand dragon of the largest realm of the Ku Klux Klan the world had ever seen in the state of Indiana
1:38.2	in 1925 one in three white males sworn oath to the Ku Klux Klan and they were on their way. I mean
1:47.1	they had 75 members of the United States Congress followed them a dozen senators at least four governors.
1:55.5	Now when you're sworn clans, you put your hand on a Bible and you take an oath to quote forever
2:00.0	uphold white supremacy. The clan of the 1920s was very different than the earlier clan too. They
2:05.1	hated Jews. They hated immigrants. They hated Catholics. Really hated Catholics because a lot of
2:12.3	more Irish and Italian and Southern Europeans are the associated with otherness. It's this one woman
2:18.8	madj overholtzer to get to your question who ultimately brings down the clan at its peak at a
2:25.0	point where I'm not exaggerating. They they had the White House within their site. They were marching
	...

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