KKK Relaunched at Stone Mountain Georgia, Reaches Four Million Members by 1924

Inspired directly by 'The Birth of a Nation,' William Joseph Simmons and fifteen followers burned a cross on Stone Mountain, Georgia on Thanksgiving night 1915, relaunching the Ku Klux Klan. Aggressive marketing in the early 1920s grew it to an estimated 4 million members, with particular strength in Indiana, Ohio, and other Northern states. The second KKK targeted Black Americans, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants, carrying out hundreds of lynchings and thousands of acts of intimidation across the country.