“For all the Klan’s divisiveness, its extension across the country also worked perversely to reconcile North and South just as The Birth of a Nation imagined, as ‘Anglo-Saxons’ united against perceived threats from groups they sought to subordinate; the election of the Southern segregationist Wilson functioned in the same way, helping to reunite the nation in the wake of Reconstruction.”

“For all the Klan’s divisiveness, its extension across the country also worked perversely to reconcile North and South just as The Birth of a Nation imagined, as ‘Anglo-Saxons’ united against perceived threats from groups they sought to subordinate; the election of the Southern segregationist Wilson functioned in the same way, helping to reunite the nation in the wake of Reconstruction.”

— Sarah Churchwell