[1] The movement focused on the public's fear of immigrants and the need to Americanize; it had anti-Catholic overtones and found support from groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
[4] The movement experienced a post–World War II revival when some Americans began to fear the power of the Catholic Church and wanted to ensure public funds were not finding their way to parochial schools.
Campaigning for it, the Ku Klux Klan "circulated a tract that pictured a grinning, torch-wielding Catholic bishop triumphantly departing from a burning public school house whose teacher rang the school bell one last time as he lay dying in the vestibule, mourned by crying children".
[8] However, other progressives, including future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, criticized the decision as unwarranted judicial activism.
[9] After World War II some progressives, such as The Nation editor Paul Blanshard, became concerned with the power of the Catholic Church.