ction Era Klan (Wade, 1987).
For a period of nearly three decades from the mid 1880s to 1915, little was heard about the Ku Klux Klan. Events transpired during this period, however, that were influential in the rebirth of the Klan. For the most part, the segregation and oppression of Negroes in the Northern states were as restrictive and as effective as that in the Southern states. The difference was that such actions were de jure in the Southern states and de facto in the Northern states. While the Southern states continued to be obsessed with controlling the activities of Negroes, however, new concerns were developing in the Northern states. In the late nineteenth century, huge ocean liners began delivering tens of thousands of new immigrants to the Northern states from Europe (Sims, 1985). Unlike earlier migrations from Europe, these latter day immigrants were primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe, which meant that tens of thousands of Roman Catholics and substantial numbers of Jews were entering the Northern states (Newton and Newton, 1991). Substantial segments of the populations of the Northern states became convinced that both the traditional ethnic structure of white American and traditional American values were being threatened by the new immigration (Desmond, 1912). As a consequence, the American Protective Association was formed in 1887. The goals of the organization were to (1) restrict immigration, (2) require fluency in English as a prerequisite for American citizenship, (3) ban Roman Catholic teachers from public schools, and (4) prohibit Roman Catholics from holding public office (Kinzer, 1964; Duffus, 1923). In the late 1890s, the American Protective Association had more than 500 thousand members. A split within the organization led to its downfall.
Many other organizations similar to the American Protective Association were born in the Northern states in the early 1900s (Newton and Newton, 1991...