An advertisement appeared in the Atlanta Journal for “The World’s Greatest, Secret, Social, Patriotic, Fraternal Beneficiary Order” on December 9, 1915. Next to this advert for the newly reformed Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was a poster for the film The Birth of a Nation, which celebrated and memorialized the original Klan and was just beginning its record-breaking run in the city. Three days earlier at the premiere, members of the Klan had reportedly paraded outside the theatre.



Birth Of A Nation poster Wikimedia Commons

A century on and the dark days when the Klan recruited millions of members across America to its divisive and racist creed may seem like history, but the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment around the world and recent proclamations from the likes of Donald Trump—who has said he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.—are a sobering reminder of how the media can be used to spread division in society.

The Klan knew how powerful an institution the fast-growing movie industry was going to be and, while historians have recognized the link between D.W. Griffith’s hugely controversial film and the reformed Klan, what is less well known is the broader way in which the Klan used film over the next decade to recruit members, generate publicity, shape public behavior and define its role within American society.

At its height in the 1920s, the Klan had an estimated 5m members and oversaw a massive publicity operation. It was publishing dozens of weekly newspapers. It was producing films and radio shows, owned theaters and staged large-scale community plays. It had its own bands and baseball teams, a university, a successful women’s group and a strong presence in local protestant churches.

Klan groups set up film companies and produced their own feature films during the 1920s, such as The Toll of Justice (1923) and The Traitor Within (1924). As part of the Klan’s efforts to position itself at the heart of local communities, these films would play in churches, schools, Klaverns (Klan buildings) and at outdoor events. Posters advertised Klan values as much as the film itself, with slogans such as “Do away with the underworld” and “Protect clean womanhood”, while often identifying the Klansman as “100 percent American”. Indeed advertisements for The Toll of Justice presented “The picture that every red-blooded American should see”.