Residents of the Pleasure Ridge Park neighborhood in Louisville, Ky. woke up to copies of the Ku Klux Klan newspaper on their doorstep.
According to the Courier-Journal, 24-year-old resident Austin Beam noticed an unsolicited copy of the Crusader, the KKK’s newspaper, in front of his home while taking out the trash. Beam told the Courier-Journal that it was the first time he’d ever seen the newspaper, which describes itself as the “premier voice of the white resistance.” He noticed that copies of the Crusader were on the doorsteps of most of his neighbors as well.
The Courier-Journal managed to contact a member of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who wrote their email in the newspaper. The member, who didn’t identify himself, told the Journal that the reason they sent the papers was “to educate our White Christian Brothers and Sisters and to let them know in these troubling times of Chaos created by BLM, Antifa, NFAC, Etc. That there is an organization here for them.”
So for those tired of Black people asking not to not be killed, don’t worry, the Klan’s got you.
The Knights of the KKK was founded in 1975 and is stationed in Arkansas. The group attempts to put a friendlier face on white supremacy, calling itself a “white civil rights” organization, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC has labeled the organization a hate group, saying that “beneath that veneer lurks the same bigoted rhetoric.”
“The motivation is not hate or intimidation,” the Klan member told the Courier-Journal in an email. “We feel every living thing has a right to safeguard their future and we are organizing in the Louisville area as well as many other areas across the country for this particular reason.”
Louisville has been the site of over 100 days of protests after Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot and killed in her home by police officers delivering a no-knock warrant. She was killed in March and there have been continued calls for the officers responsible to be arrested and charged with her death.
Beam, who threw away the newspaper after taking a picture of it, believes it’s trying to mislead and twist the narrative surrounding the protests and Black Lives Matter movement through “fear and racism.”
“I hope the beliefs in that paper don’t take hold in our neighborhood and stay out of Louisville,” he told the Courier-Journal.