A new documentary is lifting the lid
on the notorious Ku Klux Klan as tensions surrounding the notorious hate
group continue to simmer in Tennessee.
In
March, about 75 members of the Ku Klux Klan wearing hoods and carrying
banners with crosses descended on downtown Memphis to protest the
renaming of Nathan Bedford Forrest Park.
A
month earlier, the Memphis City Council voted to change the name of the
park honoring the controversial Confederate general and one-time slave
trader who went on to became the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. The
move had sparked an outrage among members and supporters of the
extremist hate group, who decided to stage a protest against the
council's renaming decision.
Journalists from VICE magazine traveled to Memphis in March and spent time interviewing clansmen as they were preparing for the rally. VICE
ended up producing a three-part documentary called Triple Hate about
racism in America, along with a long feature that appears in this
month's issue of the magazine.
The documentary revolves around the rally that was staged on March 30 in downtown Memphis.
Klan
members dressed in robes were bused to and from the protest and were
relegated to a fenced-in section in front of the Shelby County
courthouse. Some wore pointed white hoods and waved flags with the
letters KKK on them.
Police
said an anti-Klan rally located in another fenced-in area about 100
yards away attracted 1,275 people throughout the day. Some chanted ‘KKK,
go away.’
The rally was
peaceful, with no injuries or property damage and only one arrest for
disorderly conduct, Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said.
Following
the rally in Memphis at the end of March, the VICE filmmakers traveled
with a white supremacist group called the Loyal White Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan to attend a cross burning ceremony held in the woods of
Mississippi.
'Anybody who
doesn’t; think the KKK is alive and well today in America , I encourage
you to go to the woods of Mississippi and see for yourself,' said VICE
reporter Rocco Castoro while standing in a circle of hooded men gathered
around a flaming cross.
'White power!' the clansmen could be heard yelling while giving the Nazi salute.
Ahead
of the pro-Forrest demonstration in Memphis, the VICE crew filmed a
small rally held by a clan offshoot in the town of Tishomingo,
Mississippi. The main
speaker, a KKK leader dressed in a red robe, a matching hood propped on
his head and mirrored aviator glasses, vowed to 'stand tall' for Nathan
Bedford Forrest before going on a tangent against the NAACP and
'bohemian' music.
'If it
weren't for the white man fighting for you, you'd still be picking
cotton in the field,' the speaker hollered into the loudspeaker, with a
small crowd of spectators, among them African Americans, watching across
the street.
The reporters
also got a chance to attend a backyard barbecue hosted by the
Mississippi clansmen and their families, some of whom were eager to
share their views on race relations and the park renaming decision.
'I'm tired of all of the blacks and all of the Mexicans [who] think that they own America,' said clansman Michael Clayton.
When
asked about the vote to rechristen the Memphis park named after the
infamous general and KKK leader, Clayton said: ‘I think that it's just a
bunch of… blacks that want to take all the white people's history away
from them.’
In a
particularly chilling moment in the film, uniformed members of the
Mississippi hate group are shown preparing for a cross illumination
ceremony in the woods when one of the men says: ‘Tonight, boys, we're
gonna kill us some Negroes,' drawing laughter from the others.
Source: Daily Mail
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