The most notorious hate group in America will rally in support of the Confederate Flag in July, amid a national debate about flag’s place in modern society and racially-motivated violence.
A North Carolina-based chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, the Loyal White Knights, reserved space on the State House grounds in Columbia, South Carolina, the state confirmed to msnbc, for Jully 18th, 31 days after a man sympathetic to white supremacist groups killed nine people at a historically black Charleston church in what appears to have been a racially-motivated massacre.
“The flag ain’t all racist, the Klan ain’t all racist,” Ku Klux Klan member James Spears told msnbc, saying that the Civil War was “not over slavery but over taxes, anybody who pick up a history book can tell that [sic].”
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The event will gather Klansmen and supporters for speeches on the State House grounds from 3-5 p.m. Later in the evening after moving to private property, they’ll set a cross on fire; the “cross lighting,” as Spears call it, is said by Klansmen to be a symbol of the KKK’s Christian faith, but it has historically been used to intimidate African-Americans.
Spears said the Charleston massacre was being used “to try and erase white people out of the history books.”
“We will be at the state house in Columbia, South Carolina standing up for our confederate history,” an answering machine tied to the KKK’s Loyal White Knights chapter said Tuesday morning. The group claims to be the largest Klan group in the country, though the chapter’s Great Titan James Spears could not estimate how many members that includes.








