MOBILE, Ala. — Residents of Mobile’s Midtown neighborhood were stunned to find Ku Klux Klan flyers littering their yards over the weekend as the white supremacist group apparently sought to use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as a recruiting tool.
“We also have a dream,” the flyers’ headline declared, referencing MLK’s famous speech. “The blacks have NAACP, the Mexicans have La Raza, the Jews have JDL, and white people have the KKK.”
One local African-American resident Yellowhammer spoke with Monday morning said she is unsure if the flyers are even legitimate, or rather a distasteful hoax.
“Race relations aren’t perfect down here — they aren’t perfect anywhere. But it wouldn’t surprise me if this is just a dumb joke,” she said after asking that her identity be withheld. “No one down here is worried about some KKK. I’m more worried about the media using this like propaganda. It plays into their hand. ‘Oh, there goes Alabama again! Quick, get the George Wallace and Bull Conner tape.’ Mobile has been my family’s home for a long time. This ain’t us. It just isn’t. I did some research on the group and they’re from North Carolina anyway.”
The website of the “Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” says the group is from Pelham, North Carolina, roughly 700 miles from Mobile, and is fighting against “cultural genocide.”
Other Midtown residents were stunned by the flyers.
“I saw what was in it, some cards and a little flyer. I picked it up and read it and it pretty much shocked me,” another Midtown neighbor who asked to remain anonymous told Mobile’s local NBC affiliate. “I just took it as a learning experience, that we still have a long way to go in our race relations.”
In Birmingham, socialist senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will hold an MLK Day rally at Boutwell Auditorium Monday evening.
“We’ve got to be ready to receive thousands and thousands of people,” said Sanders’ Alabama campaign head Kelvin Datcher, “we’ve got 15 buses of college students come from all across the state.”
