The Ku Klux Klan assembles short distance from US Capitol with the American flag as their banner, received 50 candidates for membership in the mystic order. Photo shows the shrouded members in the background with the candidates kneeling in the foreground. In 1915 the film The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan and its endeavors. The second KKK was founded in 1915 by William Joseph Simmons at Stone Mountain, outside Atlanta, with fifteen charter members. Its growth was based on a new anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, prohibitionist and anti-Semitic agenda, which reflected contemporary social tensions, particularly recent immigration. The new organization and chapters adopted regalia featured in The Birth of a Nation; membership was kept secret by wearing masks in public. By the mid-1920s the second Klan had a nationwide reach, with its densest per capita membership in Indiana. The Klan became most prominent in cities with high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, as rural Protestants flocked to jobs in Detroit, and Dayton in the Midwest; and Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, and Houston in the South. Underwood & Underwood, 1920s.