author
W. J. (William Joseph) Simmons
1880–1945
A Methodist preacher and fraternal organizer from Alabama, he is best remembered for reviving the Ku Klux Klan in 1915 and leading its early expansion in the United States. He also wrote The Klan Unmasked, a book presenting the group’s ideas and self-justification.
1 Audiobook
The Klan Unmasked
by W. J. (William Joseph) Simmons
About the author
Born in Harpersville, Alabama, in 1880, William Joseph Simmons served in the Spanish-American War and later worked as a Methodist circuit preacher. In 1915 he founded and became the first leader of the second Ku Klux Klan, building it into a national organization before losing control of it in the early 1920s.
As a writer, he is chiefly associated with The Klan Unmasked (1923), a book that set out his defense of the Klan and its aims. Because of that role, he is remembered less as a literary figure than as a central organizer and public spokesman for one of the most notorious white supremacist movements in American history.
Simmons died in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1945. Today, his name appears mainly in historical, archival, and research contexts connected to the history of the Ku Klux Klan and racial violence in the United States.