In a Facebook post from last week (May 30), a community member asked for leads from anyone who might have information about the origins of a KKK letter that was left at a Black church.
“Join your local Klavern today to preserve white Christian unity before multiculturalism destroys America for good,” the flyer says. The letter also mentions that the domestic terrorist group is “alive and growing” before leaving an email address for new members interested in becoming a member.
“The Old Glory Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is alive and growing in 14 states,” the announcement reads. Among the states listed are Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
The letter was reportedly found at the Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church in DeSoto, Mississippi just before its 143rd anniversary.
“Y’all DM me if you know any of these folks organizing with the Klan, proud boys and other white supremacist groups. We need to know who to look out for,” the social media post by Hunter Demster says.
According to a recent article by theGrio, in April, an Atlanta neighborhood received a similar notice. That letter read, “Race traitors, mixed breeds, communists, homosexuals, and all other walks of Godless degeneracy, the Klan is back again and here to stay, so you’d better make amends or stay away!!”
Despite the flyers warning of the impending growth of America’s oldest hate organization and even the recent Buffalo, New York racially-motivated mass shooting, Lydia Bates, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center believes numbers of Klan members are dropping.
Bates spoke with The Commercial Appeal saying, “Across the board, in all states, Klan groups are declining.” She shared that the flyers are a low-cost way for Klan members to remain anonymous.
“Them saying that they are growing in 14 states is pretty unbelievable,” Bates added. “The Klan has been declining a lot in the last five to ten years. They are really losing a lot of members, not attracting new recruits. That is really just self-aggrandizing.”
Although the analyst doesn’t believe the numbers are growing, she still suggested that letters like these be taken seriously. “A hate group built on a 150-plus-year history of violence, you can’t dismiss it as just them trying to seem bigger than they are,” Bates said, “because there is violence in their words inherently.”