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Grand Dragon: D. C. Stephenson and the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. By M. William Lutholtz. (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1991. xx + 362 pp. $25.50, ISBN 1-55753-010-6.)
The rise and fall of David Curtis Stephenson surely constitutes one of the darkest sagas in American political history. The son of poor Texas sharecroppers, Stephenson drifted from job to job prior to arriving in southern Indiana in 1920. The following year, he joined the recently revived Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and soon became the hooded order's chief organizer in the Hoosier state. Possessed of great personal charisma and burning ambition, Stephenson within a two-year period had forged the Klan into a powerful political machine. By early 1925, he lived in an opulent mansion, owned expensive cars and...