David Curtiss Stephenson (21 August 1891 – 28 June 1966) was the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and the lead recruiter for the KKK in seven other states. In 1925 he was arrested for the murder of a teacher, ending the pretense of the KKK being law-abiding citizens, which helped in the downfall of the Second Klan.
Biography[]
David Curtiss Stephenson was born on 21 August 1891 in Houston, Texas, and he was active with the US Socialist Party until he joined the US Army in World War I. He never left the country, and in 1922 he entered politics by unsuccessfully running for a congressional seat with the US Democratic Party. It was that year that Ku Klux Klan member Joseph M. Huffington recruited Stephenson into the inner circle of the KKK, and he recruited 5,400 people in Vanderbergh County, Indiana (23% of the white men in the area) to the KKK. From 1922 to 1923, 2,000 people joined the KKK each week in Indiana. He backed Hiram Wesley Evans' accession to become Grand Wizard, and in 1923 he was made the Grand Dragon of the KKK in Indiana as a result. 250,000 people, a third of white males in Indiana, joined the KKK under Stephenson, but in September 1923 he formed a rival splintergroup of the KKK and joined the US Republican Party. In 1924, he supported Edward L. Jackson in becoming the Governor of Indiana, leading to the KKK holding political office in the state.
On 14 April 1925, schoolteacher and adult literacy campaign helper Madge Oberholtzer was kidnapped by Stephenson and raped in his private train car, and she was bitten and injured by Stephenson before she drank poison to kill herself. She remained conscious enough to give a statement to police before she died, and Governor Jackson sentenced him to life in prison for her rape and murder. In 1925, 5,000,000 people left the KKK, and the stronghold in the Midwest collapsed. In 1950 he violated parole and was later recaptured, and in 1956 he was allowed to be free as long as he never returned to Indiana. In 1961 he was accused of attempting to rape a 16-year-old girl, but he was simply fined and let go due to a lack of evidence. He died in 1966 in Jonesborough, Tennessee.