Ku Klux Klan

===Second Klan: 1915–1944===

====Refounding in 1915====
In 1915, the film ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan and its endeavors. The second Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915 by [[William Joseph Simmons]] at [[Stone Mountain]], near Atlanta, with fifteen "charter members".<ref name="time">{{cite news|title=The Various Shady Lives of the Ku Klux Klan|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|quote=An itinerant Methodist preacher named William Joseph Simmons started up the Klan again in Atlanta in 1915. Simmons, an ascetic-looking man, was a fetishist on fraternal organizations. He was already a "colonel" in the [[Woodmen of the World]], but he decided to build an organization all his own. He was an effective speaker, with an affinity for alliteration; he had preached on "Women, Weddings and Wives", "Red Heads, Dead Heads and No Heads", and the "Kinship of Kourtship and Kissing". On Thanksgiving Eve 1915, Simmons took 15 friends to the top of Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, built an altar on which he placed an American flag, a Bible and an unsheathed sword, set fire to a crude wooden cross, muttered a few incantations about a "practical fraternity among men", and declared himself Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.|date=April 9, 1965|access-date=August 1, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090806144942/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html|archive-date=August 6, 2009}}</ref> Its growth was based on a new anti-immigrant, [[Anti-Catholicism in the United States|anti-Catholic]], [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibitionist]] and [[anti-Semitic]] agenda, which reflected contemporary social tensions, particularly recent immigration. The new organization and chapters adopted regalia featured in ''The Birth of a Nation''; membership was kept secret by wearing masks in public.

=====''The Birth of a Nation''=====
[[File:Dixonfp.jpg|thumb|left|Frontispiece to the first edition of Dixon's ''The Clansman'', by [[Arthur I. Keller]]]]
[[File:'The Fiery Cross of old Scotland's hills!'.jpg|thumb|"The Fiery Cross of old Scotland's hills!" Illustration from the first edition of ''The Clansman'', by Arthur I. Keller. Note figures in background.]]
[[File:Birth of a Nation theatrical poster.jpg|thumb|Movie poster for ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'', which has been widely credited with inspiring the 20th-century revival of the Ku Klux Klan]]
Director [[D. W. Griffith]]'s ''The Birth of a Nation'' glorified the original Klan. The film was based on the book and play ''[[The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan]]'', as well as the book ''[[The Leopard's Spots]]'', both by [[Thomas Dixon Jr.]] Much of the modern Klan's iconography is derived from it, including the standardized white costume and the [[Cross burning|burning cross]]. Its imagery was based on Dixon's romanticized concept of old England and Scotland, as portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir [[Walter Scott]]. The film's influence was enhanced by a false claim of endorsement by President [[Woodrow Wilson]]. Dixon was an old friend of Wilson's and, before its release, there was a private showing of the film at the [[White House]]. A publicist claimed that Wilson said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson strongly disliked the film and felt he had been tricked by Dixon. The White House issued a denial of the "lightning" quote, saying that he was entirely unaware of the nature of the film and at no time had expressed his approbation of it.<ref>{{cite book|author=John Milton Cooper Jr.|title=Woodrow Wilson: A Biography |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xOZVsyO4K2cC&pg=PA273|year=2011|publisher=Random House Digital, Inc.|pages=272–273|isbn=978-0307277909|access-date=June 27, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150414055749/http://books.google.com/books?id=xOZVsyO4K2cC&pg=PA273|archive-date=April 14, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref>

====Goals====
[[File:Ku Klux Klan Virgina 1922 Parade.jpg|thumb|Three Ku Klux Klan members at a 1922 parade]]
[[File:KKK - St Patricks Dau (cr).jpg|thumb|In this 1926 cartoon, the Ku Klux Klan chases the Catholic Church, personified by [[St. Patrick]], from the shores of America. Among the "snakes" are various supposed negative attributes of the Church, including superstition, the union of church and state, control of public schools, and intolerance.]]

The first and third Klans were primarily Southeastern groups aimed against Black people. The second Klan, in contrast, broadened the scope of the organization to appeal to people in the Midwestern and Western states who considered Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American.<ref name="HCUA" />

The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. According to historian Brian R. Farmer, "two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers".<ref>Brian R. Farmer, ''American Conservatism: History, Theory and Practice'' (2005), p. 208.{{ISBN?}}</ref> Much of the Klan's energy went into guarding the home, and historian Kathleen Blee says that its members wanted to protect "the interests of white womanhood".{{sfn|Blee|1991|p=47}} Joseph Simmons published the pamphlet ''ABC of the Invisible Empire'' in Atlanta in 1917; in it, he identified the Klan's goals as "to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism".<ref>{{cite book|last=McWhirter|first=Cameron|title=Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America|date=2011|publisher=Henry Holt and Company, LLC| location=New York|isbn=978-0805089066|page=65}}</ref> Such moral-sounding purpose underlay its appeal as a fraternal organization, recruiting members with a promise of aid for settling into the new urban societies of rapidly growing cities such as Dallas and Detroit.{{sfn|Jackson|1967}} During the 1930s, particularly after [[James A. Colescott]] of Indiana took over as imperial wizard, opposition to [[Communism]] became another primary aim of the Klan.<ref name="HCUA" />

====Organization====
New Klan founder [[William Joseph Simmons|William J. Simmons]] joined 12 different fraternal organizations and [[Ku Klux Klan recruitment|recruited for the Klan]] with his chest covered with fraternal badges, consciously modeling the Klan after fraternal organizations.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html |title=Nation: The Various Shady Lives of The Ku Klux Klan |magazine=Time |date=April 9, 1965 |access-date=December 24, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090806144942/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html |archive-date=August 6, 2009 }}</ref> Klan organizers called "[[Kleagle]]s" signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and received KKK costumes in return. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with an area, he organized a rally, often with burning crosses, and perhaps presented a Bible to a local Protestant preacher. He left town with the money collected. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations and occasionally brought in speakers.

Simmons initially met with little success in either recruiting members or in raising money, and the Klan remained a small operation in the Atlanta area until 1920. The group produced publications for national circulation from its headquarters in Atlanta: ''Searchlight'' (1919–1924), ''Imperial Night-Hawk'' (1923–1924), and ''The Kourier''.{{sfn|Jackson|1967|p=296}}<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://archive.org/details/ImperialNighthawkVol.1No.77 |magazine=Imperial Nighthawk |volume=1 |issue=8 |date=January 1, 1923|location=Atlanta, Georgia |publisher=Knights of the Ku Klux Klan|via=Internet Archive|title=Imperial Nighthawk Vol. 1 No. 8 }}</ref><ref>{{OCLC |magazine=The Kourier |date=January 1, 1924 |oclc=1755269}}</ref>

====Perceived moral threats====
The second Klan was a response to the growing power of Catholics and [[American Jews]] and the accompanying proliferation of non-Protestant cultural values, as well as some high-profile instances of violence against whites.{{sfn|Baker|2011}} The Klan had a nationwide reach by the mid-1920s, with its densest per capita membership in [[Indiana]]. It became most prominent in cities with high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, as rural Protestants flocked to jobs in [[Detroit]] and [[Dayton]] in the Midwest, and [[Atlanta]], [[Dallas]], [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]], and [[Houston]] in the South. Close to half of Michigan's 80,000 Klansmen lived in Detroit.{{sfn|Jackson|1967|p=241}}

Members of the KKK swore to uphold American values and Christian morality, and some Protestant ministers became involved at the local level. However, no Protestant denomination officially endorsed the KKK;{{sfn|Jackson|1967|p=18}} indeed, the Klan was repeatedly denounced by the major Protestant magazines, as well as by all major secular newspapers. Historian Robert Moats Miller reports that "not a single endorsement of the Klan was found by the present writer in the Methodist press, while many of the attacks on the Klan were quite savage.&nbsp;...The Southern Baptist press condoned the aims but condemned the methods of the Klan." National denominational organizations never endorsed the Klan, but they rarely condemned it by name. Many nationally and regionally prominent churchmen did condemn it by name, and none endorsed it.<ref>{{cite journal|jstor = 2954550|title = A Note on the Relationship between the Protestant Churches and the Revived Ku Klux Klan|journal = The Journal of Southern History|volume = 22|issue = 3|pages = 355–368|last1 = Miller|first1 = Robert Moats|year = 1956|doi = 10.2307/2954550}}, quotes pp. 360, 363.</ref>

The second Klan was less violent than either the first or third Klan were. However, the second Klan, especially in the Southeast, was not an entirely non-violent organization. The most violent Klan was in Dallas, Texas. In April 1921, several members of the Klan kidnapped Alex Johnson, a Black man who had been accused of having sex with a white woman. They burned the letters "KKK" into his forehead and gave him a severe beating by a riverbed. The police chief and district attorney refused to prosecute, explicitly and publicly stating they believed that Johnson deserved this treatment. Encouraged by the approval of this whipping, Klansmen in  Dallas whipped 68 people by the riverbed in 1922 alone. Although Johnson had been Black, most of the Dallas KKK's whipping victims were white men who were accused of offenses against their wives such as adultery, wife beating, abandoning their wives, refusing to pay child support or gambling. Klansmen often invited local newspaper reporters to attend their whippings so they could write a story about it in the next day's newspaper.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web |url=https://oakcliff.advocatemag.com/2017/02/backstory-kkk-paraded-oak-cliff/ |title=Backstory: When the KKK paraded in Oak Cliff |access-date=March 17, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190327091648/https://oakcliff.advocatemag.com/2017/02/backstory-kkk-paraded-oak-cliff/ |archive-date=March 27, 2019 |url-status=live  |date=February 28, 2017 }}</ref> All the Dallas newspapers strongly condemned the Klan. Historians report that the ''Morning News'': "diligently published thousands of anti-Klan editorials, exposés, and critical stories, informing its readership of Klan activities in their community as well as from around the state and the nation."<ref>Amber Jolly and Ted Banks, "Dallas Ku Klux Klan No. 66," ''Handbook of Texas'' (2022) [https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dallas-ku-klux-klan-no-66 online]</ref>

The Alabama KKK whipped both white and Black women who were accused of fornication or adultery. Although many people in Alabama were outraged by the whippings of white women, no Klansmen were ever convicted for the violence.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.therandolphleader.com/opinion/columns/article_ba2ce3d7-16a0-5e6a-af20-d527135cd9b5.html |title=Baldwin: The Ku Klux Klan in Randolph County |date=March 3, 2010 |access-date=March 26, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190326234153/http://www.therandolphleader.com/opinion/columns/article_ba2ce3d7-16a0-5e6a-af20-d527135cd9b5.html |archive-date=March 26, 2019 |url-status=live  }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.therandolphleader.com/opinion/columns/article_d1c0b824-a217-57b5-ad03-509e0fe88125.html |title=Baldwin: Local Klan enforced their version of law here |date=March 10, 2010 |access-date=March 26, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190326234155/http://www.therandolphleader.com/opinion/columns/article_d1c0b824-a217-57b5-ad03-509e0fe88125.html |archive-date=March 26, 2019 |url-status=live  }}</ref> Anti-Catholicism was a main concern of the Alabama Klan, and [[Hugo Black#Ku Klux Klan and anti-Catholicism|Hugo Black]] built his political career in the 1920s on fighting Catholicism. Black, a Democrat, went on to the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Supreme Court.<ref>Daniel M. Berman, "Hugo L. Black: The Early Years". ''Catholic University Law Review'' (1959). 8 (2): 103–116 [https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3011&context=lawreview online].</ref>

====Rapid growth====
In 1920, Simmons handed the day-to-day activities of the national office over to two professional publicists, [[Mary Elizabeth Tyler|Elizabeth Tyler]] and [[Edward Young Clarke]].{{sfn|Newton|2009|p=70}} The new leadership invigorated the Klan and it grew rapidly. It appealed to new members based on current social tensions, and stressed responses to fears raised by defiance of [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]] and new sexual freedoms. It emphasized [[History of antisemitism in the United States|anti-Jewish]], [[Anti-Catholicism in the United States|anti-Catholic]], [[anti-immigrant]] and later [[anti-communism|anti-Communist]] positions. It presented itself as a fraternal, nativist and strenuously patriotic organization; and its leaders emphasized support for vigorous enforcement of Prohibition laws. It expanded membership dramatically to a 1924 peak of 1.5&nbsp;million to 4&nbsp;million, which was between 4–15% of the eligible population.{{sfn|Fryer|Levitt|2012}}

By the 1920s, most of its members lived in the Midwest and West. Nearly one in five of the eligible Indiana population were members.{{sfn|Fryer|Levitt|2012}} It had a national base by 1925. In the South, where the great majority of whites were Democrats, the Klansmen were Democrats. In the rest of the country, the membership comprised both [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] and Democrats, as well as [[Independent voter|independents]]. Klan leaders tried to infiltrate political parties; as Cummings notes, "it was non-partisan in the sense that it pressed its nativist issues to both parties".<ref>{{cite book|first=Stephen D.|last=Cummings|title=Red States, Blue States, and the Coming Sharecropper Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H4NNBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA119|year=2008|page=119|publisher=Algora |access-date=February 27, 2016| isbn=978-0875866277| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160416201847/https://books.google.com/books?id=H4NNBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA119|archive-date=April 16, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> Sociologist [[Rory M. McVeigh|Rory McVeigh]] has explained the Klan's strategy in appealing to members of both parties:

{{blockquote|Klan leaders hope to have all major candidates competing to win the movement's endorsement. ... The Klan's leadership wanted to keep their options open and repeatedly announced that the movement was not aligned with any political party. This non-alliance strategy was also valuable as a recruiting tool. The Klan drew its members from Democratic as well as Republican voters. If the movement had aligned itself with a single political party, it would have substantially narrowed its pool of potential recruits.{{sfn|McVeigh|2009|p=184}}}}

Religion was a major selling point. [[Kelly J. Baker]] argues that Klansmen seriously embraced Protestantism as an essential component of their white supremacist, anti-Catholic, and paternalistic formulation of American democracy and national culture. Their cross was a religious symbol, and their ritual honored Bibles and local ministers. But no nationally prominent religious leader said he was a Klan member.{{sfn|Baker|2011}}

Economists Fryer and Levitt argue that the rapid growth of the Klan in the 1920s was partly the result of an innovative, [[multi-level marketing]] campaign. They also argue that the Klan leadership focused more intently on monetizing the organization during this period than fulfilling the political goals of the organization. Local leaders profited from expanding their membership.{{sfn|Fryer|Levitt|2012}}

====Prohibition====
Historians agree that the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s was aided by the national debate over Prohibition.{{sfn|Pegram|2011|pp=119–156}} The historian Prendergast says that the KKK's "support for [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]] represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation".{{sfn|Prendergast|1987|pp=25–52 [27]}} The Klan opposed bootleggers, sometimes with violence. In 1922, two hundred Klan members set fire to saloons in [[Union County, Arkansas]]. Membership in the Klan and in other Prohibition groups overlapped, and they sometimes coordinated activities.{{sfn|Barr|1999|p=370}}

====Urbanization====
[[File:theendkkk.jpg|thumb|"The End" referring to the end of Catholic influence in the US. ''[[Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty]]'' 1926]]
A significant characteristic of the second Klan was that it was an organization based in urban areas, reflecting the major shifts of population to cities in the North, West, and the South. In Michigan, for instance, 40,000 members lived in [[Detroit]], where they made up more than half of the state's membership. Most Klansmen were lower- to middle-class whites who feared the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were mostly Catholic or Jewish; and Black and white migrants from the South. As new populations poured into cities, rapidly changing neighborhoods created social tensions. Because of the rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as Detroit and Chicago, the Klan grew rapidly in the Midwest. The Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.{{sfn|Jackson|1967}}

In the medium-size industrial city of [[Worcester, Massachusetts]], in the 1920s, the Klan ascended to power quickly but declined as a result of opposition from the Catholic Church. There was no violence and the local newspaper ridiculed Klansmen as "night-shirt knights". Half of the members were [[Swedish Americans]], including some first-generation immigrants. The [[Ethnic violence|ethnic]] and religious conflicts among more recent immigrants contributed to the rise of the Klan in the city. Swedish Protestants were struggling against Irish Catholics, who had been entrenched longer, for political and ideological control of the city.<ref>Emily Parker (Fall 2009). {{"'}}Night-Shirt Knights' in the City: The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Worcester, Massachusetts", ''New England Journal of History'', Vol. 66 Issue 1, pp. 62–78.</ref>

In some states, historians have obtained membership rosters of some local units and matched the names against city directory and local records to create statistical profiles of the membership. Big city newspapers were often hostile and ridiculed Klansmen as ignorant farmers. Detailed analysis from Indiana showed that the rural stereotype was false for that state:

<blockquote>Indiana's Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society: they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen were [[Protestantism|Protestants]], of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as [[fundamentalism|fundamentalists]]. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church.{{sfn|Moore|1991|p=9}}</blockquote>

The Klan attracted people but most of them did not remain in the organization for long. Membership in the Klan turned over rapidly as people found out that it was not the group which they had wanted. Millions joined and at its peak in the 1920s the organization claimed numbers that amounted to 15% of the nation's eligible population. The lessening of social tensions contributed to the Klan's decline.

====Costumes and the burning cross====
[[File:Ku Klux Klan members and a burning cross, Denver, Colorado, 1921.jpg|thumb|[[Cross burning]] was introduced by [[William Joseph Simmons|William J. Simmons]], the founder of the second Klan in 1915.]]
The distinctive white costume permitted large-scale public activities, especially parades and cross-burning ceremonies, while keeping the membership roles a secret. Sales of the costumes provided the main financing for the national organization, while initiation fees funded local and state organizers.

The second Klan embraced the burning [[Latin cross]] as a dramatic display of symbolism, with a tone of intimidation.<ref name="Greenhouse">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/29/us/supreme-court-roundup-free-speech-or-hate-speech-court-weighs-cross-burning.html?pagewanted=all|title=Supreme Court Roundup; Free Speech or Hate Speech? Court Weighs Cross Burning|last=Greenhouse|first=Linda|date=May 29, 2002|work=The New York Times|access-date=February 20, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090724115314/http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/29/us/supreme-court-roundup-free-speech-or-hate-speech-court-weighs-cross-burning.html?pagewanted=all|archive-date=July 24, 2009|url-status=live}}</ref> No crosses had been used as a symbol by the first Klan, but it became a symbol of the Klan's quasi-Christian message. Its lighting during meetings was often accompanied by prayer, the singing of [[hymn]]s, and other overtly religious symbolism.{{sfn|Wade|1998}} In his novel ''The Clansman'', Thomas Dixon Jr. borrows the idea that the first Klan had used [[Crann Tara|fiery crosses]] from 'the call to arms' of the Scottish Clans,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3xhhv4 |title=Were Scots responsible for the Ku Klux Klan? |last1=Oliver |first1=Neil |author-link=Neil Oliver |last2=Frantz Parsons |first2=Elaine |publisher=BBC |access-date=October 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023030843/http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3xhhv4 |archive-date=October 23, 2017 |url-status=live  }}</ref> and film director D.W. Griffith used this image in ''The Birth of a Nation''; Simmons adopted the symbol wholesale from the movie, and the symbol and action have been associated with the Klan ever since.<ref>{{cite web |first=Cecil |last=Adams |url=http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1038/why-does-the-ku-klux-klan-burn-crosses |title=Why does the Ku Klux Klan burn crosses? |website=The Straight Dope |date=June 18, 1993 |access-date=December 24, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100619134951/http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1038/why-does-the-ku-klux-klan-burn-crosses |archive-date=June 19, 2010 |url-status=live  }}</ref>

====Women====
{{main|Women of the Ku Klux Klan}}
By the 1920s, the KKK developed a women's auxiliary, with chapters in many areas. Its activities included participation in parades, cross lightings, lectures, rallies, and boycotts of local businesses owned by Catholics and Jews. The Women's Klan was active in promoting Prohibition, stressing liquor's negative impact on wives and children. Its efforts in public schools included distributing Bibles and petitioning for the dismissal of Catholic teachers. As a result of the Women's Klan's efforts, Texas would not hire Catholic teachers to work in its public schools. As sexual and financial scandals rocked the Klan leadership late in the 1920s, the organization's popularity among both men and women dropped off sharply.{{sfn|Blee|1991}}

====Political role====
[[File:klan-sheet-music.jpg|thumb|left|Sheet music to "We Are All Loyal Klansmen", 1923]]

The second Klan expanded with new chapters in cities in the Midwest and West, and reached both Republicans and Democrats, as well as men without a party affiliation. The goal of Prohibition in particular helped the Klan and some Republicans to make common cause in the North.<ref>Pegram, Thomas R. (2008). "Hoodwinked: The Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Prohibition Enforcement". ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' vol. 7 no. 1 pp. 89–119</ref>

The Klan had numerous members in every part of the United States but was particularly strong in the South and Midwest. At its peak, claimed Klan membership exceeded four million and comprised 20% of the adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, and 40% in some areas.<ref>Marty Gitlin (2009). ''The Ku Klux Klan: A Guide to an American Subculture''. p. 20.{{ISBN?}}</ref> The Klan also moved north into Canada, especially [[Saskatchewan]], where it opposed Catholics.{{sfn|Sher|1983}}

In Indiana, members were American-born, white Protestants and covered a wide range of incomes and social levels. The [[Indiana Klan]] was perhaps the most prominent Ku Klux Klan in the nation. It claimed more than 30% of white male Hoosiers as members.<ref name=nicfh>{{cite web| url=http://www.centerforhistory.org/indiana_history_main7.html|title=Indiana History Chapter Seven|publisher=Northern Indiana Center for History|access-date=October 7, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080411163028/http://www.centerforhistory.org/indiana_history_main7.html|archive-date=April 11, 2008}}</ref> In 1924 it supported Republican [[Edward L. Jackson|Edward Jackson]] in his successful campaign for governor.<ref name="Library" />

Catholic and liberal Democrats—who were strongest in northeastern cities—decided to make the Klan an issue at the [[1924 Democratic National Convention]] in New York City. Their delegates proposed a resolution indirectly attacking the Klan; it was defeated by one vote out of 1,100.<ref>Robert A. Slayton (2001). ''Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith''. pp. 211–213{{ISBN?}}</ref> The leading presidential candidates were [[William Gibbs McAdoo]], a Protestant with a base in the South and West where the Klan was strong, and New York governor [[Al Smith]], a Catholic with a base in the large cities. After weeks of stalemate and bitter argumentation, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise candidate.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Lee N. |last=Allen |title=The McAdoo Campaign for the Presidential Nomination in 1924 |journal=Journal of Southern History |year=1963 |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=211–228 |jstor=2205041 |doi=10.2307/2205041 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Douglas B. |last=Craig |title=After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, 1920–1934 |year=1992 |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |at=ch. 2–3 |isbn=978-0807820582 }}</ref>

[[File:Children with Dr. Samuel Green, Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, July 24, 1948.jpg|thumb|Two children wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods stand on either side of [[Samuel Green (Ku Klux Klan)|Samuel Green]], a Ku Klux Klan [[Grand Dragon]], at [[Stone Mountain, Georgia]], on July 24, 1948.|alt=]]
In some states, such as Alabama and California, KKK chapters had worked for political reform. In 1924, Klan members were elected to the city council in [[Anaheim, California]]. The city had been controlled by an entrenched commercial-civic elite that was mostly [[German Americans|German American]]. Given their tradition of moderate social drinking, the German Americans did not strongly support Prohibition laws – the mayor had been a saloon keeper. Led by the minister of the First Christian Church, the Klan represented a rising group of politically oriented non-ethnic Germans who denounced the elite as corrupt, undemocratic and self-serving. The historian Christopher Cocoltchos says the Klansmen tried to create a model, orderly community. The Klan had about 1,200 members in [[Orange County, California]]. The economic and occupational profile of the pro- and anti-Klan groups shows the two were similar and about equally prosperous. Klan members were Protestants, as were most of their opponents, but the latter also included many [[Catholic Germans]]. Individuals who joined the Klan had earlier demonstrated a much higher rate of voting and civic activism than did their opponents. Cocoltchos suggests that many of the individuals in Orange County joined the Klan out of that sense of civic activism. The Klan representatives easily won the local election in Anaheim in April 1924. They fired city employees who were known to be Catholic and replaced them with Klan appointees. The new city council tried to enforce Prohibition. After its victory, the Klan chapter held large rallies and initiation ceremonies over the summer.<ref name="Cocoltchos" /> The opposition organized, bribed a Klansman for the secret membership list, and exposed the Klansmen running in the state primaries; they defeated most of the candidates. Klan opponents in 1925 took back local government and succeeded in a special election in recalling the Klansmen who had been elected in April 1924. The Klan in Anaheim quickly collapsed, its newspaper closed after losing a libel suit, and the minister who led the local [[Klavern]] moved to Kansas.<ref name="Cocoltchos">Christopher N. Cocoltchos (2004). "The Invisible Empire and the Search for the Orderly Community: The Ku Klux Klan in Anaheim, California". Shawn Lay, ed. ''The invisible empire in the West'', pp. 97–120.{{ISBN?}}</ref>

In the South, Klan members were still Democratic, as it was essentially a one-party region for whites. Klan chapters were closely allied with Democratic police, sheriffs, and other functionaries of local government. Due to [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disenfranchisement]] of most African Americans and many poor whites around the start of the 20th century, the only political activity for whites took place within the Democratic Party.

In Alabama, Klan members advocated better public schools, effective [[Prohibition]] enforcement, expanded road construction, and other political measures to benefit lower-class [[white people]]. By 1925, the Klan was a political force in the state, as leaders such as [[J. Thomas Heflin]], [[David Bibb Graves]], and [[Hugo Black]] tried to build political power against the Black Belt wealthy [[Planter (American South)|planters]], who had long dominated the state.{{sfn|Feldman|1999}} In 1926, with Klan support, [[Bibb Graves]] won the Alabama governor's office. He was a former Klan chapter head. He pushed for increased education funding, better public health, new highway construction, and pro-labor legislation. Because the Alabama state legislature refused to redistrict until 1972, and then under court order, the Klan was unable to break the planters' and rural areas' hold on legislative power.

Scholars and biographers have recently examined Hugo Black's Klan role. Ball finds regarding the KKK that Black "sympathized with the group's economic, nativist, and anti-Catholic beliefs".{{sfn|Ball|1996|p=16}} Newman says Black "disliked the Catholic Church as an institution" and gave over 100 anti-Catholic speeches to KKK meetings across Alabama in his 1926 election campaign.<ref>Roger K. Newman (1997). ''Hugo Black: A Biography''. pp. 87, 104 {{ISBN?}}</ref> Black was elected US senator in 1926 as a Democrat. In 1937 President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] appointed Black to the Supreme Court without knowing how active in the Klan he had been in the 1920s. He was confirmed by his fellow Senators before the full KKK connection was known; Justice Black said he left the Klan when he became a senator.{{sfn|Ball|1996|p=96}}

====Resistance and decline====
[[File:D. C. Stephenson Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan in Indiana, c 1922.jpg|thumb|upright|[[D. C. Stephenson]], Grand Dragon of the [[Indiana Klan]]. His conviction in 1925 for the murder of [[Madge Oberholtzer]], a white schoolteacher, led to the decline of the Indiana Klan.]]

Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as [[Reinhold Niebuhr]] in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan, gaining national attention. The Jewish [[Anti-Defamation League]] was formed in the early 20th century in response to attacks on [[American Jews|Jewish Americans]], including the lynching of [[Leo Frank]] in Atlanta, and to the Klan's campaign to [[Compulsory public education in the United States|prohibit private schools]] (which was chiefly aimed at Catholic parochial schools). Opposing groups worked to penetrate the Klan's secrecy. After one civic group in Indiana began to publish Klan membership lists, there was a rapid decline in the number of Klan members. The [[NAACP|National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) launched public education campaigns in order to inform people about Klan activities and lobbied in Congress against Klan abuses. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership in most areas began to decline rapidly.{{sfn|Jackson|1967}} Specific events contributed to the Klan's decline as well. In Indiana, the scandal surrounding the 1925 murder trial of Grand Dragon [[D. C. Stephenson]] destroyed the image of the KKK as upholders of law and order. By 1926 the Klan was "crippled and discredited".<ref name="Library">{{cite web|url=http://www.in.gov/library/2848.htm|title=Ku Klux Klan in Indiana|publisher=Indiana State Library|date=November 2000|access-date=September 27, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090918163319/http://www.in.gov/library/2848.htm|archive-date=September 18, 2009|url-status=live}}</ref> D. C. Stephenson was the grand dragon of Indiana and 22 northern states. In 1923 he had led the states under his control in order to break away from the national KKK organization. At his 1925 trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder for his part in the rape, and subsequent death, of [[Madge Oberholtzer]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.indianahistory.org/library/manuscripts/collection_guides/m0264.html |title=D. C. Stephenson manuscript collection |publisher=Indiana Historical Society |access-date=February 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100208221521/http://www.indianahistory.org/library/manuscripts/collection_guides/m0264.html |archive-date=February 8, 2010 }}</ref> After Stephenson's conviction, the Klan declined dramatically in Indiana.

The historian Leonard Moore says that a failure in leadership caused the Klan's collapse:

<blockquote>Stephenson and the other salesmen and office seekers who maneuvered for control of Indiana's Invisible Empire lacked both the ability and the desire to use the political system to carry out the Klan's stated goals. They were uninterested in, or perhaps even unaware of, grass roots concerns within the movement. For them, the Klan had been nothing more than a means for gaining wealth and power. These marginal men had risen to the top of the hooded order because, until it became a political force, the Klan had never required strong, dedicated leadership. More established and experienced politicians who endorsed the Klan, or who pursued some of the interests of their Klan constituents, also accomplished little. Factionalism created one barrier, but many politicians had supported the Klan simply out of expedience. When charges of crime and corruption began to taint the movement, those concerned about their political futures had even less reason to work on the Klan's behalf.{{sfn|Moore|1991|p=186}}</blockquote>

[[File:Kkk1928.jpg|thumb|left|Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1928.|alt=]]
In Alabama, KKK [[vigilantes]] launched a wave of physical terror in 1927. They targeted both Black and white people for violations of racial norms and for perceived moral lapses.{{sfn|Rogers|Ward|Atkins|Flynt|1994|pp=432–433}} This led to a strong backlash, beginning in the media. [[Grover C. Hall]] Sr., editor of the ''[[Montgomery Advertiser]]'' from 1926, wrote a series of editorials and articles that attacked the Klan. (Today the paper says it "waged war on the resurgent [KKK]".)<ref name=history>[http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/99999999/CUSTOMERSERVICE01/91026023/History-Montgomery-Advertiser "History of the Montgomery Advertiser"]. ''Montgomery Advertiser'': a Gannett Company. Retrieved November 8, 2013. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120825232802/http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/99999999/CUSTOMERSERVICE01/91026023/History-Montgomery-Advertiser |date=August 25, 2012 }}</ref> Hall won a [[Pulitzer Prize]] for the crusade, the 1928 [[Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing|Editorial Writing Pulitzer]], citing "his editorials against gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance".{{sfn|Rogers|Ward|Atkins|Flynt|1994|p=433}}<ref>[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Editorial-Writing "Editorial Writing"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131031075115/http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Editorial-Writing |date=October 31, 2013 }}. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 8, 2013.</ref> Other newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan, referring to the organization as violent and "un-American". Sheriffs cracked down on activities. In the [[1928 United States presidential election|1928 presidential election]], the state voters overcame their initial opposition to the Catholic candidate [[Al Smith]] and voted the Democratic Party line as usual.

Although in decline, a measure of the Klan's influence was still evident when it staged its march along [[Pennsylvania Avenue]] in [[Washington, D.C.]], in 1928. By 1930, Klan membership in Alabama dropped to less than 6,000. Small independent units continued to be active in the industrial city of [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]].

KKK units were active through the 1930s in parts of Georgia, with a group of "night riders" in [[Atlanta]] enforcing their moral views by flogging people who violated them, whites as well as Black people. In March 1940, they were implicated in the beating murders of a young white couple taken from their car on a lovers lane, and flogged a white barber to death for drinking, both in East Point, a suburb of Atlanta. More than 20 others were "brutally flogged". As the police began to investigate, they found the records of the KKK had disappeared from their East Point office. The cases were reported by the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]''<ref name="records">[http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1940/03/24/page/19/article/klans-records-vanish-in-face-of-terror-quiz "Klan's Records Vanish in Terror Quiz/Floggers Linked to Killings in Lovers Lane"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204085445/http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1940/03/24/page/19/article/klans-records-vanish-in-face-of-terror-quiz/ |date=February 4, 2017}}, ''Chicago Tribune'', March 24, 1940; accessed February 3, 2017</ref> and the NAACP in its ''[[The Crisis|Crisis]]'' magazine,<ref name="crisis">{{cite magazine |date=October 1940 |title=Sixth Lynching |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7FoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA324 |magazine=[[The Crisis]] |publisher=[[NAACP|National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] |volume=47 |issue=10 |pages=323–324 |access-date=February 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215093611/https://books.google.com/books?id=7FoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA324 |archive-date=February 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> as well as local papers.

In 1940, three lynchings of Black men by whites (no KKK affiliation is known) took place in the South: [[Elbert Williams]] was the first NAACP member known to be killed for civil rights activities: he was murdered in [[Brownsville, Tennessee]], for working to register Black people to vote, and several other activists were run out of town; [[Jesse Thornton]] was lynched in [[Luverne, Alabama]], for a minor social infraction; and 16-year-old [[Lynching of Austin Callaway|Austin Callaway]], a suspect in the assault of a white woman, was taken from jail in the middle of the night and killed by six white men in [[LaGrange, Georgia]].<ref name="crisis" /> In January 2017, the police chief and mayor of LaGrange apologized for their offices' failures to protect Callaway, at a reconciliation service marking his death.<ref name="cnn">{{cite news |url=http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/ |title='Justice failed Austin Callaway': Town attempts to atone for 1940 lynching |first=Emanuella |last=Grinberg |publisher=[[CNN]] |date=January 27, 2017 |access-date=February 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202065324/http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/ |archive-date=February 2, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/nightly-news-full-broadcast-january-27th-864596547728|title=Nightly News Full Broadcast (January 27th)|publisher=[[NBC News]]|access-date=February 3, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202064213/http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/nightly-news-full-broadcast-january-27th-864596547728|archive-date=February 2, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref>

====Labor and anti-unionism====
In major Southern cities such as [[Birmingham, Alabama]], Klan members kept control of access to the better-paying industrial jobs and opposed unions. During the 1930s and 1940s, Klan leaders urged members to disrupt the [[Congress of Industrial Organizations]] (CIO), which advocated industrial unions and accepted African American members, unlike earlier unions. With access to dynamite and using the skills from their jobs in mining and steel, in the late 1940s some Klan members in Birmingham used bombings to destroy houses in order to intimidate upwardly mobile Black people who moved into middle-class neighborhoods. It has been said that "By mid-1949, there were so many charred house carcasses that the area [College Hills] was informally named Dynamite Hill."<ref name=Carry />

Activism by these independent KKK groups in Birmingham increased as a reaction to the [[civil rights movement]] of the 1950s and 1960s. Independent Klan groups violently opposed the civil rights movement.<ref name=Carry>Diane McWhorter, ''Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution'', New York: Touchstone Book, 2002, p. 75.{{ISBN?}}</ref> KKK members were implicated in the [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing]] on a Sunday in September 1963, which killed four African American girls and injured 22 other people. Members of the [[Communist Workers' Party (United States)|Communist Workers' Party]] came to North Carolina to organize textile workers and pushed back against racial discrimination there, taunting the KKK, resulting in the 1979 [[Greensboro massacre#Background|Greensboro massacre]].<ref name=wayback /><ref name="death">{{cite web| title= 'Death to the Klan' March| url= http://ncpedia.org/death-klan-march| website= NCpedia| publisher= [[North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources]]| access-date= March 26, 2016| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170731230118/http://www.ncpedia.org/death-klan-march| archive-date= July 31, 2017| url-status=live| df= mdy-all}}</ref>

====Development of Christian Identity Theology====
{{see also|Serpent seed|Christian Identity}}
According to Professor Jon Schamber, Rev. Philip E. J. Monson branched off from the teachings of [[British Israelism]] and began to develop [[Christian Identity|Christian Identity Theology]] in the 1910s.{{sfn|Schamber|Stroud|2000|p=11}} During the 1920s, Monson published ''Satan's Seat: The Enemy of Our Race'' in which he adopted [[Russel Kelso Carter]]'s theory that Jews and non-whites were descended from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Monson connected the work of the corrupt race to the activities of the Catholic Church and the Pope. Monson's ideas were popular among some KKK members in the 1950s.{{sfn|Schamber|Stroud|2000|p=11}}