The second Klan was re founded in 1915 in Atlanta, Georgia. It peaked in 1924 to 1925 with 4,000,000–6,000,000 members. The Klan was founded by William Joseph Simmons, preaching ‘One Hundred Percent Americanism’ and grew nationwide in nearly every southern state of America. It’s growth was based on a new Anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and prohibitionist. The Klan’s prejudiced, and predominantly fundamentalist base, attempted to again force the nation to adopt its xenophobic views. It appealed to new members based on the current social tensions, and stressed responses to fears raised by defiance of prohibition and new sexual freedoms. It emphasized anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and later 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 …show more content…
That leadership had been content to allow and often profited from, the undermining of traditional values. The new values, often promoted under the guise of boosterism or economic progress, became the focus for the anger of a middle and lower middle class that believed the people had lost control of their government and that government was no longer responsive to their needs or demands. 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 Republicans and Democrats, as well as 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."[111] Sociologist Rory McVeigh has explained the Klan's strategy in appealing to members of both