Shocking map shows the appeal of the KKK through America in the 20th century

The digital dots on the map document pockmarks of racism that spread to every state between the two world wars.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s “Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940” pinpoints where more than 2,000 local “klaverns,” as they were known, were organized across the nation as if they were just another fraternal society.

The map is “a powerful smack in the forehead,” said John Kneebone, a professor of history who researched the second wave of the Klan after it was reborn in Atlanta in 1915 with the premiere of “The Birth of a Nation.”

“The comforting notion that the Klan was made up of ignorant hillbillies or backward Southerners, that won’t wash,” Kneebone said. “It had an appeal everywhere.”

The map is a joint project with VCU Libraries’ digital team, which created an online resource of Klan data intended to invite further research.