William Joseph Simmons
| William Joseph Simmons | |
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| 2nd Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan |
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In office 1915–1922 |
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| Preceded by |
Nathan Bedford Forrest as Grand Wizard |
| Succeeded by | Hiram Wesley Evans |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
May 6, 1880 Harpersville, Alabama |
| Died | May 18, 1945 (aged 65) Atlanta, Georgia |
William Joseph Simmons (May 6, 1880 – May 18, 1945) was the founder of the second Ku Klux Klan on Thanksgiving of 1915.
Simmons was born in Harpersville, Alabama, to Calvin Henry Simmons, a physician, and his wife Lavonia (David) Simmons. In his young years he attempted to study medicine at Johns Hopkins University, but could not afford it, so he served in the Spanish–American War, where he became honorably discharged. When he came home he became a teacher for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South but was suspended by the church in 1912 for inefficiency.
Simmons later joined two churches and twelve different fraternal organizations, which flourished in the early twentieth century. He was known as "Joe", "Doc" (in reference to his medical training) or "Colonel" (referring to his rank in the Woodmen of the World).
While convalescing in 1915 after being hit by a car, Simmons decided to rebuild the Klan which he had seen depicted in the newly released film The Birth of a Nation directed by D.W. Griffith. He obtained a copy of the Reconstruction Klan's "Prescript," and used it to write his own prospectus for a reincarnation of the organization. Simmons' planning took place during a period which coincided with the lynching of Leo Frank, on August 16, 1915. Frank, a Jewish northern industrialist, had been convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, one of his young factory workers. When Frank's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the outgoing governor, the public was outraged. Frank was taken from prison and lynched by a mob, calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan.
As the nucleus of his revived Klan, Simmons organized a group of friends, in addition to two elderly men who had been members of the original Klan. On Thanksgiving night 1915, they climbed Stone Mountain to burn a cross and inaugurate the new Klan, with fifteen charter members. The imagery of the burning cross, which had not been used by the original Klan, had been introduced by Griffith in The Birth of a Nation. The film, in turn, had derived the image from the works of Thomas Dixon, Jr., upon which the film was based. He had been inspired by the historical practices of Scottish clans, who had burned crosses as a method of signaling from one hilltop to the next. The image also occurs in Lady of the Lake, a long poem by Walter Scott. Simmons' later account of the founding included a dramatic story of "a temperature far below freezing," although weather records showed that the temperature had never fallen below 45 degrees that night on Stone Mountain. Simmons declared himself the Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
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