The Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders the members never revealed their membership and wore masks in public. Investigators in the 1920s used KKK publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled Klansman, newspaper reports, and speculation to write stories about what the Klan was doing. Almost all the major newspapers and magazines were hostile. Published accounts exaggerated the official viewpoint of the Klan leadership, and repeated the interpretations of hostile newspapers and the Klan’s enemies. There was almost no evidence regarding the actual behavior or beliefs of individual Klansmen. The resulting popular and scholarly interpretation of the Klan from the 1920s into recent decades, based on those sources, says Pegram, emphasized the Southern roots, and violent vigilante-style actions of the Klan in its efforts to turn back the clock of modernity.