According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there are 917 active hate groups in America today, and there have been over 1,000 documented hate crime incidents since President Donald Trump’s election.
One group lately reentering headlines is the atavistic Ku Klux Klan.
Last week, the Klan showed up at a football game at Gray’s Creek High School in Hope Mills, North Carolina distributing recruiting literature.
It also made appearances in the Jacksonville and Orlando, Florida areas.
As if we have been flung right back into the Jim Crow South, KKK recruiting posters are threatening “black apes” who “make eyes” at white women.
Jacksonville’s First Coast News reports Klan fliers are not new to the city, but these, with their “specific threats,” are different.
For example:
“Notice to all (N-word): Any of you black apes caught ‘making eyes’ at a white girl will be beaten with bats and your mothers won’t get anymo’ [sic] bananas-That’s a promise.”
Anyone familiar with the KKK agenda is aware Blacks are not its only target. Jacksonville is reporting multiple anti-Semitic references as well, including the phrases “smash Jew communism,” “the only ‘good Jew’ is the one with a bullet hole through his head,” and “he who fights the Jew fights the devil.”
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office confirms it has opened an active criminal investigation.
Lt. Chris Brown, department Public Information Unit head, said:
“As a law enforcement agency, when we respond to reports of these incidents, our job is to determine if there is an allegation of criminal activity being made or if any laws are being broken. If there is, our officers are trained to conduct further investigation. If there isn’t, we try to take the opportunity to explain to the complainant that the distribution of literature—no matter how offensive that literature is to some—is not in and of itself a crime.”
Last week there was another white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the scene of the deadly rally that took the life of paralegal and civil rights activist Heather Heyer and two other counter-protesters.
Featured Image Via Anthony Crider Via Flickr/CC-By-2.0.
