The second era Ku Klux Klan was a very large nationwide organization in the 1920s, consisting of between four to six million members (15% of the nation's eligible population) that especially opposed Catholics. The revival of the Klan was spurred by the release of the 1915 film "The Birth of a Nation". The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to America's "Anglo-Saxon" blood. Anti-Catholic sentiment, which appeared in North America with the first Pilgrim and Puritan settlers in New England in the early 17th century, remained evident in the United States up to the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, who went on to become the first Catholic U.S. president in 1961.