"THE PRIME MOVER of the next rising of the KKK was William J. Simmons, the son of Civil War veteran from the Deep South. His father had ridden with the original night riders during Reconstruction. As a boy growing up on his family’s farm in the hamlet of Harpersville, Alabama, Simmons first heard the romanticize accounts of valiant, hooded night riders and saw the fear of the eyes of blacks servants and field hands who had felt their wrath. As a young man Simmons let the farm, served an undistinguished tour of duty in the Spanish-American War, and returned home to make his mark. He trained to be a minister and took to the preaching circuit, only to be drummed out of the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church for “ineffectiveness and moral failings.” Still searching for a life path Simmons moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and found work as a salesman and college lecturer before taking a job promoting fraternal organizations much like today’s Elks, Masons and Shriners. Rising to the rank of colonel in the Woodmen of the World, Simmons proudly told friends and associated that he was now a professional “fraternalist”-and he dreamed of resurrecting the fraternity of the KKK."