The Ku Klux Klan: Birth of a Nation (Part 3)

The second Ku Klux Klan emerged in 1915 Georgia, not as a secretive paramilitary force like its Reconstruction-era predecessor, but as a public fraternal order blending costumes, rituals, and marketing. Inspired by Thomas Dixon's racist novels and D.W. Griffith's blockbuster film The Birth of a Nation, it grew into a mass movement of 2-5 million members by the mid-1920s, strongest in the industrial North and Midwest. This incarnation targeted white Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and bootleggers under the banner of "100% Americanism" and white supremacy—understood as WASP dominance—while wielding political power and vigilante violence.

Roots in Fiction and Founding

The spark came from Dixon, a towering North Carolinian and former Baptist minister turned novelist, whose books The Leopard's Spots (1902) and The Clansman (1905) portrayed the original Klan as heroic redeemers of the post-Civil War South against "black rapists" and radical Republicans. Griffith adapted The Clansman into The Birth of a Nation (1915), a cinematic milestone with Wagnerian scores and epic Klan rides that drew millions, including President Woodrow Wilson, whose histories were quoted approvingly. Audiences cheered the robed rescuers, embedding the Lost Cause myth deeper into culture.