William Joseph Simmons

William Joseph Simmons (1880–May 18, 1945) is the founder of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915.

William Joseph Simmons

Simmons served in the Spanish-American War, and later claimed to have studied medicine at Johns Hopkins University. He became a preacher for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, but was suspended by the church in 1912 for inefficiency.

William J. Simmons became a member of two churches, and twelve different fraternal organizations, walking the streets of Atlanta with his lapels weighed down with lodge pins. He was known as Joe, "Doc" (in reference to his fictitious medical training) or "Colonel" (referring to his rank in the Woodmen of the World).

Convalescing after being hit by an automobile in 1915, Simmons concerned himself with rebuilding the Klan, which he had seen depicted in the newly released film The Birth of a Nation. He obtained a copy of the Reconstruction Klan's "Precept," and used it to write his own prospectus for a reincarnation of the organization. He delayed his plans, however, until the media-inspired lynching of Leo Frank, the accused murderer of Mary Phagan. This horrific incident became a flash point for anti-Semitic feeling in Georgia. Frank was taken from prison and hung by a mob who lynched him on August 16, 1915. The lynch mob called themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, and on October 16, they climbed St one Mountain and burned a giant cross that was visible throughout the city. The imagery of the burning cross, which had not existed in the original Klan, had been introduced via The Birth of a Nation. The film, in turn, had obtained the image from the works of Thomas Dixon. He had taken his inspiration from Scottish clans, who had burned crosses as a method of signalling from one hilltop to the next. (The image also occurs in Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott.)

As the nucleus of his revived Klan, Simmons organized a group of 34 men. This included many of the Knights of Mary Phagan, in addition to two elderly men who had been members of the original Klan. Fifteen of them went to Stone Mountain with Simmons to burn a second cross and inaugurate the new Klan. Simmons' later account of the founding included a dramatic account of "a temperature far below freezing," although weather records showed that the temperature had never fallen below 45 degrees that night on Stone Mountain. The actual date of the founding is also in dispute, as some sources cite "Thanksgiving Day 1915." Simmons declared himself the Grand Wizard of the new Klan.

He died in Atlanta on May 18, 1945.

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