Oh get lost. The fact is that Reagan made an appearance in Philadelphia to deliver a message that he was not going to prosecute past kluxer crimes, and once in office, he did not do so.
I don't think this is true, and I don't see how it could be.
The FBI and other justice department parts continued to whittle away at the KKK during the Reagan administration.
And the Reagan appearance you speak of was just his stump speech wasn't it? It was given at one of the biggest gatherings that is held in Mississippi annually, does a politicians appearance in a community actually endorse all of the crimes that have ever occured in the same area?
Would an Obama appearance in Chicago be construed as a promise to never prosicute organised crime?
I don't think any such message was concieved nor understood untill later when some anti Reagan sort came up with the idea that just being there was a message.
By the way , Reagan starred in an anti -KKK propaganda movie, as a G man on their case.
Can you decode the hidden endorsement of the KKK in that?
In Storm Warning, Ginger Rogers stars as a model visiting relatives in an unnamed small town. She happens to witness the beating death of a man at the hands of the KKK. Rogers soon discovers that the whole town is controlled by this vigilante group, and that her loutish brother-in-law Steve Cochran is one of the group's members. D.A. Ronald W. Reagan is the man who breaks the stranglehold of the hooded terrorists--through the simple expedient of walking into one of their meetings and calmly identifying each of them by name. ~ http://www.fandango.com/stormwarning_v111826/plotsummary