LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Unsolicited copies of the Ku Klux Klan’s quarterly newspaper were left on doorsteps in Pleasure Ridge Park this week, a resident of the neighborhood said.
Austin Beam, 24, said when he took out his trash Tuesday morning he found a copy of the KKK’s Crusader, the self-described “premier voice of the white resistance.”
Beam said Tuesday’s delivery was the first time he has received a copy of the Crusader, and he noticed it had been left on most of his neighbors’ doorsteps as well.
A member of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who wrote their email at the bottom of the newspaper responded to a Courier Journal inquiry and said the motivation behind the papers is “to educate our White Christian Brothers and Sisters and to let them know in these troubling times of Chaos created by BLM, Antifa, NFAC, Etc. That there is an organization here for them.”
“The motivation is not hate or intimidation,” the person, who declined to provide a name, said in an email. “We feel every living thing has a right to safeguard their future and we are organizing in the Louisville area as well as many other areas across the country for this particular reason.”
The Knights of the KKK is based in Arkansas and designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Founded in 1975, the group has attempted to put a “kinder, gentler” face on the Klan, attempting to portray itself as a modern “white civil rights” organization, according to the center. “But beneath that veneer lurks the same bigoted rhetoric.”
The newspapers come as Louisville has seen more than 100 days of protests over the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by police as officers executed a drug raid on her apartment. No drugs were found.
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Beam, who threw out the newspaper after taking a few photos, said he feels like whoever delivered the papers is “trying to warp peoples’ narratives following BLM protests using fear and racism.”
“I hope the beliefs in that paper don’t take hold in our neighborhood and stay out of Louisville,” he said.
*story by Courier Journal