"On the eve of Thanksgiving 1915, Simmons invited a group of his influential friends to a meeting at the Piedmont Hotel in Atlanta. Afterward, 16 believers climbed into a tour bus and set out an eight-mile drive to Stone Mountain a slab of pure granite that climbs 800 feet above the surrounding area. Brandishing flashlights, the expedition party made its way to a ledge near the summit. There, as a cold night wind whipped, the robed and hooded men built a makeshift altar from flagstones, draped it with an American flag, and decorated it with a Bible, a canteen of baptismal water, and a sword. Simmons and his followers erected a rag-covered wooden cross, doused it with kerosene, and set it ablaze. In the light of the ceremonial fire the Ku Klux Klan was called back from the dead. THE CEREMONY on Stone Mountain reawakened the sleeping giant. Now it was time to fire up the masses. Simmons had that figured out too. He planned the public announcement to coincide with the Atlanta premier of “The Birth of a Nation”, a two-hour silent-film spectacular set in the South during the tumultuous aftermath of the Civil War. Filmmaker D. W. Griffith had used state-of-the-art cinematic techniques to drive home his controversial message that white vigilantes has saved decent white families. Simmons reserved space for ads introducing “The Greatest Fraternal Organization on Earth” adjacent to the movie promotion in the “Atlanta Constitution”. Then he waited."