The longtime publisher and editor of The Democrat-Reporter in Marengo County – a man once celebrated by The New York Times as an exemplar of courageous journalism – is now drawing national criticism over a recent editorial advocating for the return of the Ku Klux Klan.

Goodloe Sutton has worked for the Linden newspaper since 1964, his family having owned it since 1917.

The Montgomery Advertiser contacted Sutton after Auburn Plainsman Editor-in-Chief Chip Brownlee and managing editor Mikayla Burns tweeted about an editorial published last week in The Democrat-Reporter entitled, “Klan needs to ride again.”

Sutton confirmed to The Montgomery Advertiser that he wrote the editorial in question.

The editorial outlined, “Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama.”

“Slaves, just freed after the civil war, were not stupid. At times, they borrowed their former masters’ robes and horses and rode through the night to frighten some evil doer,” Sutton wrote. “Sometimes they had to kill one or two of them, but so what.”

He concluded the editorial by calling on the Klan to return to intimidate “the ruling class.”

“Seems like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there. They call them compounds now,” Sutton said.

Read The Montgomery Advertiser’s full report here.