). The primary objectives of these organizations involved limiting the activities and influence of Roman Catholics and Jews in the United States. While none of these organizations achieved significant success and public acceptance, they did set the stage for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. The revival of the Klan was heavily influenced by Northern fears of spreading Roman Catholic and Jewish influence, and by a continuing desire in both North and South to restrain the activities of Negroes. Two specific events in 1915, however, led directly to the recreation of the Ku Klux Klan.
A Thomas Dixon novel, The clansman, was published in 1905. The novel was a devastating attack on the application of Reconstructionist policies in the secessionist states of the South. Dixon presented an unflattering picture of freed Negroes, and depicted the Ku Klux Klan as an organization created to defend white southerners and traditional American valu
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