The KKK thing was false propaganda. The Knights sued for libel and the KKK retracted it.
Are you currently active? My husband is the current Past Grand Knight and I am an active Lady Knight. There is no more secrecy in the Knights.
I’m not very active, but when I began at least the initiation ceremonies were under the cloak of secrecy. If that has been lifted, then it may be entirely gone.
I expect that what was “False propaganda” was the lies the KKK made up about the KofC being a terrorist organization. In my research, I read plenty of stuff from the KKK and KKK-aligned sources about how the KofC was trying to help Mexico take back the Southwest that was just simply insane! But some of what I DID find (and seemed to be uncontested) was pretty crazy. For instance, the KKK alleged that Mexico paid the poll tax for Americans of Mexican descent so that the Mexicans would vote for Republicans. The KKK even resorted to shooting Mexican-Americans when they tried to vote. So, the KofC set up snipers along the street. Never read about the snipers actually shooting anyone, but it sure kept the KKK from killing more Mexican-Americans.
(In this part of America, the targets of the KKK’s anti-Catholicism happened to be “Brown,” but such hatred against Irish, French, Italian, Poles, etc., was also common. That they happened to be “Brown” probably helped whip up hatred, but this was not primarily anti-”Brown” or even anti-immigrant; some KKK promoters were even Brown, Protestant immigrants fighting largely White, Catholic natives!)