‘Some Of Those Who Run Forces Are The Same Who Burn Crosses’: Klan Robe And Materials Found In Mississippi Law Enforcement Office Closet
So, officials with a law enforcement agency in Mississippi were cleaning out their headquarters’ closet and found a KKK handbook, and, well — no, no, this is completely surprising news.
According to Mississippi Today, Mississippi Department of Public Safety officials were cleaning out a closet to move to the department’s new location when they came across a small suitcase, and in that suitcase, they found a handbook for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. So, not just any old group of wayward white supremacists, but the Klan outfit that is considered to be the most violent white supremacist group of the 1960s.
The officials didn’t just find Klan literature, by the way; they found paperwork for Klan charters, a Klan robe, KKK recruitment materials, and other pro-white propaganda, meeting notes, ledgers, and a list of members who paid or didn’t pay their dues. They basically found everything in that Klan closet except the remains of lynching victims — as far as we know.
“Mississippi Highway Patrol Troopers and Agents with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety have worked for decades with our federal law enforcement partners to shed light on the darkness in which groups like the Ku Klux Klan chose to operate,” Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said in a statement. “By preserving these artifacts and shedding light on such organizations, we help ensure that future generations are never led astray by such hate.”
It’s not exactly a statement that explains why a law enforcement department had a treasure trove of white supremacist lore in its closet, but the department did confirm that it has given the Klan materials to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
It would be interesting to find out if those archives include the long history of Klan members moonlighting as police officers (or vice versa, or whatever). At the very least, there should be a note of where its latest entry of white supremacist materials were last discovered.
In fact, this is as good a time as any to remind people that, in 2024, six Braxton, Mississippi, police officers were convicted for entering the home of two Black men without a warrant to beat, torture and sexually assault them, reportedly, after a white neighbor called one of them and complained that the two men were staying with a white woman.
One can only wonder what those KKKops had in their closets.
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