![]() Throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, other United Daughters of the Confederacy officers, members, and chapters memorialized the Ku Klux Klan. Plane was not the only UDC member in Georgia or the nation, however, to praise the Ku Klux Klan. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance.” “Since seeing this wonderful and beautiful picture of Reconstruction in the South,” Plane wrote, “I feel that it is due to the Ku Klux Klan which saved us from Negro domination and carpet-bag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. She wrote Gutzon Borglum, the original designer of the memorial, urging him to include the KKK in his carving. After viewing the film and learning of Simmons’s cross burning on Stone Mountain, Plane’s vision of the monument expanded to include the Ku Klux Klan. Lee on the side of Stone Mountain as a new monument to the Confederacy when The Birth of a Nation came to town. Plane had been strongly advocating for the carving of Robert E. Plane Leading Movement for Monument to Confederacy,” September 26, 1915. The KKK’s connection to Stone Mountain continued over the following decades as the site for Klan rallies, membership initiations, and the organization’s “Imperial Palace.” By 1924, the Klan had expanded far beyond its Southern base with “Klaverns” (branches of the KKK) in almost every Northern state and a reported national membership of six million. Later, during the opening night of the film’s premiere in Atlanta, Simmons and his fellow Klansmen wore white sheets and Confederate uniforms as they rode hooded horses down Peachtree Street and fired rifle salutes in front of the theater. Days before the film premiered in Atlanta, Simmons led a group of 15 men in robes and hoods up the side of Stone Mountain, set fire to a cross, and symbolically resurrected the KKK. Simmons closely followed The Birth of a Nation’s national success and appeal, which he saw as a vehicle to revive and promote membership in the KKK. First established in December 1865, the KKK was largely suppressed by the federal government by 1871. William Joseph Simmons was a former Methodist preacher and founder of the Modern Ku Klux Klan. In Atlanta, the film served as an inspiration and a guide for the leaders of two early 20th-century Atlanta organizations with close connections to Stone Mountain-the modern Ku Klux Klan and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Birth of a Nation’s success and wide distribution increased national interest in the post-Civil War Klan. Milwaukee: Riverside Printing Company, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Poster for the film “The Birth of a Nation,” 1915.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |