CORBIN, Ky. (LEX 18) — Over the past few weeks, there have been multiple incidents involving the Ku Klux Klan across central and eastern Kentucky.
There have been multiple reports from communities across central and eastern Kentucky of fliers that are recruiting for the Ku Klux Klan. One activist in Corbin says it's a bad sign for the state of the community.
LGBTQ+ advocate and protest organizer, Trent Osborne, says, "I think it's incredibly frightening. To me, it's a signal of an all-out war that they have declared. These people are not going to stop, they are going to harm people, they are going to hurt your communities, they are going to tear apart families."
In early June, Osborne was protesting recent legislation impacting the LGBTQ+ community when he and the group were approached by two armed men claiming to be members of the KKK. Osborne recalls a story from a friend’s grandfather who fought in World War II. He says he was disappointed that after that conflict hate groups survived.
He says, "The Nazis survived, the KKK have survived, they are these groups that are still rampaging through our communities, that are still tearing apart families, that are still threatening the very democracy that we have here in America. And it’s very strange to know that in the 1910s and the 1920s, the KKK was looked down upon and they're still active. Still to this day."
In 2021, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported nine hate and anti-government groups here in the Bluegrass. They've been tracking since 2000 and since then, here in Kentucky, they saw a spike in those numbers in 2016 with as many as 23 of those groups. Leaders from the SPLC say that while some of those groups may be quiet for a period, it's still important to know that they're out there and that they exist.
An analyst with the SCLP who wanted to remain anonymous because of the nature of his work, has tracked hate groups across the country. They say, "We monitor different websites, we monitor their own websites, their different all-tech platforms..." They tell me that this branch of the KKK hasn't been active since 2015.
The analyst urges the community to, "Educate yourselves about who they are and what they represent, educate yourself of how they talk and how their language...has seeped into mainstream rhetoric and media."
Osborne says it's time to remember to love one another. "I think that now, more than ever, it's very important to remember to love each other. That now, more than ever, your friends, your neighbors, your community needs you to love one another they're not going to back down. They want you gone and it's time to stand together and do more as a community."
There have been reports of these fliers from the KKK in Mt. Sterling, Lexington, Paris and most recently Corbin.
