Ku Klux Klan

====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}}