Athens Has a History of White Supremacist Violence

Last month's mass shooting aimed at Spanish-speaking people in El Paso, TX underlined once again the fact that heavily armed white supremacists are locked and loaded right here in America. Such people have been emboldened by the ascendance of Donald Trump from the penthouse to the White House, but the demonic deeds and doctrines of right-wing racists long predate the Trump presidency.

America's original sins of enslavement of black people and genocide against indigenous red people were founding principles of this nation that claimed that "all men are created equal." After the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan became a terrorist group that saw its zenith in the 1920s, when millions of white Americans claimed membership in the racist "invisible empire."

The terrorist tentacles of the KKK reached into towns, cities and rural hamlets all across America, and Athens was no exception. The historic roots of white supremacy run deep even here. In her 1994 book, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, Nancy MacLean exposed the Athens chapter of the KKK during the 1920s, when the group directed its venom not just against African Americans and Jews, but also against immigrants, "immorality" and the perceived threats from the growing American labor and feminist movements. MacLean pointed out that the local KKK chapter was composed of solidly middle class and "respectable" white citizens like small businessmen, office workers, police officers and Protestant preachers.

When the University of Georgia was desegregated in 1961, police had to use tear gas to disperse a howling white mob of UGA students, Athens townspeople and racists from outlying areas who opposed the admission of two African-American students to the university. Just a few years after that ugly local incident, the eyes of the world were on Athens when local Klansmen murdered a black educator and decorated Army Reserves officer.

Read more: https://flagpole.com/news/street-scribe/2019/09/11/athens-has-a-history-of-white-supremacist-violence