The federal government crushes the original Ku Klux Klan through a massive campaign of prosecutions under President Grant.

D.W. Griffith's film glorifying the Klan as noble protectors sparks a national revival of the organization.

Stephenson joins the Indiana Klan and envisions transforming it from a night-raiding terrorist group into a mainstream political force.

Stephenson and Evans blackmail Imperial Wizard Simmons into resigning, seizing control of the national Klan's leadership.

Stephenson builds enormous personal wealth by skimming 40% of every new Klan membership fee collected.

A massive Klan gathering in Kokomo draws over 100,000 members, and Stephenson is celebrated as Grand Dragon.

Stephenson's political machine installs fellow Klansman Ed Jackson as Indiana's governor, cementing the Klan's grip on state government.

Stephenson kidnaps Madge Oberholtzer at gunpoint and forces her onto a midnight train bound for Chicago.

Stephenson rapes and savagely bites Oberholtzer in a sleeping car while his associate is present.

After being checked into a hotel under a false name, Oberholtzer secretly buys poison at a pharmacy and ingests it.

Stephenson returns the gravely ill Oberholtzer to her Irvington home and abandons her, leaving her for dead.

Oberholtzer dies after nearly a month of suffering from toxic poisoning and massively infected bite wounds.

DA Will Remy builds a second-degree murder case against Stephenson using Oberholtzer's recorded deathbed statement as his central evidence.

A jury finds Stephenson guilty of second-degree murder, and he is sentenced to life in prison.

Klan membership collapses by 90% within three years of Stephenson's conviction as the organization's corruption is fully exposed.

The first Ku Klux Klan was destroyed by President Grant's federal prosecutions, but the seeds of racial hatred lay dormant for decades. D.W. Griffith's propaganda film reignited the Klan, and D.C. Stephenson seized on that revival to build a personal empire in Indiana, skimming membership fees and installing allies throughout state government. His political power reached its peak at a massive Kokomo rally, where he was crowned Grand Dragon before a crowd of over 100,000. Stephenson's unchecked brutality ultimately led him to kidnap, rape, and fatally wound Madge Oberholtzer, a young woman who had sought only to save her literacy program. Her death and deathbed statement gave prosecutor Will Remy the weapon he needed to convict the most powerful man in Indiana. Stephenson's life sentence shattered the Klan's credibility and triggered a national collapse in membership.

The rise and fall of D.C. Stephenson's Klan empire.

Confederate veterans found the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee as a terrorist organization targeting freed Black Americans.

Federal troops are withdrawn from Southern states, clearing the way for Jim Crow laws and Black voter disenfranchisement.

Hiram Evans publicly leads the late-night kidnapping and torture of a Black man in Dallas, advertising the crime as a warning.

Klansmen barge into an Evansville Methodist church service and hand the minister an envelope of cash to preach favorably about the Klan.

Stephenson appoints evangelist Daisy Douglas Barr as 'Imperial Empress' to lead a dedicated Klan recruitment drive targeting women.

King Oliver's Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong, records in Richmond, Indiana while a Klan rally of 36,000 marches just outside.

Patrick O'Donnell's newspaper Tolerance publishes the names of over 12,000 Klan members following a raid on their Indianapolis headquarters.

The National Origins Act passes with bipartisan support, closing American borders to Jews, Africans, Asians, and southern and eastern Europeans.

Stephenson breaks from Evans and declares himself Grand Dragon of an independent Northern Klan, separate from the Atlanta organization.

Madge Oberholtzer secures a government position running a state-funded literacy program for poor communities across Indiana.

Stephenson threatens a woman at gunpoint and beats a hotel bellhop, but faces no legal consequences when his victim refuses to testify.

Attorney Asa Smith records Oberholtzer's dying statement and delivers it to District Attorney Remy, triggering Stephenson's arrest on bail.

Stephenson is indicted for second-degree murder and held without bail as other women come forward with stories of his sexual assaults.

A Stephenson loyalist attempts to bribe two jurors during the trial but is stopped by tight security around the sequestered jury.

Governor Ed Jackson is convicted of corruption after Stephenson, denied a pardon, hands prosecutors a cache of incriminating documents in retaliation.

The Ku Klux Klan was born from the defeated Confederacy and survived federal suppression when troops were withdrawn from the South, allowing Jim Crow laws and racial terror to take root. In Indiana, Stephenson rebuilt the Klan's image through calculated alliances — bribing ministers, recruiting women through evangelist Daisy Barr, and skimming profits from a swelling membership. Opposition voices like Patrick O'Donnell fought back with their own press, but the Klan's financial and legal power crushed most resistance. Stephenson's abuse of Madge Oberholtzer set off a chain reaction: her attorney brought her dying statement to the one prosecutor who had refused to swear fealty to the Klan. The trial exposed the full extent of Stephenson's crimes and political corruption, drawing other assault victims into the open and putting the Klan permanently on the defensive. Even after Stephenson's conviction, his retaliatory exposure of Governor Jackson's corruption revealed just how deeply the Klan had infected Indiana's government.

The forces that built, challenged, and ultimately broke the Klan's power.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, a pardoned Confederate general who ordered the massacre of surrendered Black soldiers, becomes the Klan's first Grand Wizard.

Stephenson beats his wife nearly to death while drunk, establishing a pattern of violence he is never investigated or prosecuted for.

Stephenson exploits an antiquated horse-thief law to form a deputized vigilante force, giving the Klan legal cover to act as a morality police.

Stephenson begins secretly compiling detailed dossiers on every potential enemy of the Klan, categorized as Jews, Black Americans, and Catholics.

A Klan march in Carnegie, Pennsylvania turns violent when residents fight back — a Klansman is shot and Stephenson vows political revenge.

O'Donnell unknowingly publishes a falsified document accusing a prominent Chicago businessman of Klan membership, is sued, and is driven into bankruptcy.

Notre Dame students charge into a Klan march, tear off hoods, and rout the Klansmen from Indiana's only major Catholic campus.

NAACP leader James Johnson meets with President Coolidge to press him on the Klan's threat to Black Americans and finds him coldly indifferent.

Oberholtzer visits Stephenson at his compound to seek help saving her literacy program but is deeply unsettled by his drinking and erratic behavior.

Oberholtzer seizes Stephenson's gun while he sleeps but decides that killing him would only destroy herself legally and bring shame on her family.

Stephenson's boast — 'I am the law in Indiana' — surfaces in Oberholtzer's deathbed statement and is widely reported in the press.

Hiram Evans publicly banishes Stephenson from the national Klan for 'conduct unbecoming a Klansman' as the scandal threatens the entire organization.

The trial judge rules Oberholtzer's deathbed statement admissible as evidence, delivering a decisive victory to the prosecution's case.

Remy, having learned of Stephenson's assassination plot against him, delivers a closing argument that turns Stephenson's own boastful words into his indictment.

Stephenson is released from prison after decades behind bars, later convicted of molesting a teenage girl, and dies forgotten in a small Tennessee town.

The Klan's history was shaped by a series of pivotal choices — from Forrest's leadership of a Confederate terror campaign to Stephenson's decision to use a legal loophole to build his own vigilante force and begin compiling dossiers on enemies. The opposition's most visible efforts, from O'Donnell's crusade to the Notre Dame students' physical defiance, created cracks in the Klan's armor but failed to topple it. The critical turning point came when Madge Oberholtzer, held captive and raped, chose to take poison rather than submit — a desperate act that set in motion the legal case that would finally break Stephenson. Her deathbed statement, ruled admissible by the judge, transformed a he-said-she-said defense into an airtight case for the prosecution. DA Remy's decision to weaponize Stephenson's own boastful words in his closing argument appealed to jurors' civic pride and sealed the conviction. Stephenson's eventual release from prison decades later led only to further crimes and an obscure death, a final confirmation of his irredeemable character.