Excellent piece, much praise. I think I could help address this one question you ask perhaps just a little bit. If you have an openly racist president extol your virtues and openly praise your organization, wouldn't you feel uplifted? With that kind of backing in the 1910s, you will feel warranted in your beliefs, empowered, like a Patriot, and not like a terrorist. And when that President has won a world war, then you stand not with hatred but finally with recognized dignified justice from a noble Ivy league historian who saw America through a prism of white supremacy. After that backing, you can hang your triple K sign anywhere you want, in any hall of power you want.

Here's what supremacist historian and President Woodrow Wilson wrote that was quoted in the white supremacist film "Birth of a Nation" they proudly screened for him at the White House:

"The white men [Southern white militia “patriots” who killed the federal black national guardsmen, one black sheriff, and one black elected state senator in just two of the many massacres] were roused by mere instinct of self-preservation…until at last there had spring into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect southern country.”

To me their terrorists, sure. I put the bracketed part in. But re-read what the president wrote and soak in that this is not some accidental quote in his book on AMerican history but reflective of his guiding belief structure. To themselves, with such praise from the world war-winning president, how could these KKK members and leaders see themselves as anything but justified?