The KKK’s main targets were immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, especially Catholic ones. Prohibition advocates had already linked them with drinking and criminality, and for these people, the era was a time of raids, violence and terror. From the beginning, Prohibition was tied up in anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic bias. Many of its advocates were white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants who thought only people like them could be “real Americans.” They believed the country was under siege by Catholic immigrants from countries like Italy, and that these people threatened the U.S. with their foreign drinking habits and saloons.
