Thousands have signed an online petition to remove a billboard about white pride in Arkansas near the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. The billboard shows a photo of two white adults and children holding an American flag alongside a sketch of a cross with a dove and a flame. It advertises the websites WhitePrideRadio. The billboard has reportedly been in the area since , but gained renewed attention when a white filmmaker recently stood in the spot with a Black Lives Matter sign and filmed the interactions he had with people in cars driving by.
The petition specifically calls on the company that owns the billboard, Pro-Signs, Inc. William J. Simmons revived this klan at Stone Mountain in Georgia. The second iteration is considered to be the largest klan, with somewhere between 4 million and 5 million members. Joe Huffington started the Indiana klan in , but it was soon taken over by a charismatic man named D. Stephenson , Mowatt said.
Other places, including Indianapolis, were known for a higher than average membership percentage. This horrific event essentially ended the second-wave klan in Indiana and eventually the rest of the country.
A third wave of the KKK emerged out of Birmingham, Alabama, in the s as a response to the growing civil rights movement. This is the version of the klan that exists today. Matthew Heimbach and Matt Parrott, the founders of a white nationalist group called the Traditionalist Worker Party, have also gained attention for their attempt to build a separatist society for their group in Paoli. Martinsville has come to represent racism in Indiana so strongly because of high-profile incidents in the city dating back decades.
Jenkins, a year-old Black woman, was visiting Martinsville for her job when she was stabbed in the chest with a screwdriver and left to die. A story from the Indianapolis Star reported that Richmond lived in Hendricks County and had ties to the klan. Martinsville High School was banned from having home games for a year by the Indiana High School Athletic Association after students in the crowd apparently shouted racist slurs at Black players during a basketball game against Bloomington High School North.
There have also been claims that Martinsville is a sundown town, or a community that kept out Black people through the law or other forms of intimidation. Stuttgen said she has never found any evidence to corroborate these claims. These stories have created expectations for what Martinsville is like and how people from Martinsville will behave, Stuttgen said. Stuttgen said students talk about Martinsville like an urban legend.
But I feel like sometimes you have to make people face their own resolve. You have to make them face their own demons. You have to make them question themselves. And you can't do that if you don't talk to them. Jessica Angelica, another activist working with Clarke, said she would also be up for a conversation with Robb.
Come meet me. Come shake my hand. Come see for yourself that I am not anti-American," Angelica told "Nightline. I'm not a terrorist. I love my community and I want the best for all of us. Aaron and I do this because we want a better life for our children. Clarke said that one thing he learned while trying to reach out to some of these local residents is that they "don't really know anything about people of color.
Clarke's cookout is one of the latest efforts in the region to make it more welcoming to people of color. Kevin Cheri , a retired superintendent for the National Park Service's Buffalo National River, was one of the first Black residents in Harrison when he moved there in the s.
He said it wasn't always easy living there and that he's since joined a local government task force dedicated to repairing the city's image. Cheri underlined that there are many communities across the country that have more in common with Harrison, and Boone County, than they might think.
He said there are cities big and small where residents haven't done enough to truly know their neighbors who are of other races and ethnicities. You hid. You were ready. Because it could be trouble. He went on to speak about some of the racist experiences that he and his family went through, such as his sisters being pelted with eggs by white people driving by.
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