Strange Bedfellows Snuggle Under White Sheets
The Klan rally is a protest of an earlier decision by the city council to rename three Memphis parks that honored the Confederacy, including one named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan. The North Carolina-based Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is organizing the rally and says Klansmen from across the country are expected to attend.
Bradley Jenkins, the imperial wizard of the Alabama-based United Klans of America, told ABC 24 that he will be in Memphis to protest the protesters.
“The Ku Klux Klan stands for not self but others,” Jenkins told the station in a blatant display of self-serving revisionist history. “How can that be for others arguing over the name of a park inside a city that made the decision to rename it? That is the community’s prerogative.”
Dajuan Horton of the Grape Street Crips agreed.
“If you’re coming from out of town, excuse my French, I don’t give a fuck what your opinion is,” Horton said in a YouTube video denouncing the Klan rally. “We’re going to rename our parks, blacks and whites of Memphis, Tenn.”
It was Horton’s poorly lit video that led to the partnership of the Klansman and the Crips. Jenkins saw it and reached out.
“We will stand resolute with the citizens of Memphis and this young man and anyone in town, no matter what color they be, because hate and racism has no place,” Jenkins told the station.
It’s unclear whether the reporter reminded the imperial wizard that he belongs to an organization that has done nothing but preach racism and hate and spread terror for more than a century.