The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey Quotes

“Wilson was born in the South but became president of Princeton University and then New Jersey governor. He declared that “adventurers swarmed out of the north as much the enemies of one race as the other to cozen, beguile and use the Negroes.…The white men were roused by a mere instinct of selfpreservation—until, at last, there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the south, to protect the southern land.” Wilson, at a private showing of The Birth of a Nation in the White House, allegedly declared it “true history.”
― Joseph G. Bilby, The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey

“A turnaround occurred when Simmons hired marketing professionals Edward Young Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler of the Southern Publicity Association (providers of public relations to the Anti-Saloon League, among other organizations), who promised they could turn his mediocre local fraternity into a national organization. The duo wrote speeches for Simmons, polishing his presentation and expanding his rhetoric beyond complaints of black people’s racial “heredity handicap.” Under their guidance, Simmons expanded his target list to immigrants, Jews, Catholics, labor agitators, “Bolsheviks” and political radicals of any stripe, along with the cultural aspects of the Jazz Age.”
― Joseph G. Bilby, The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey