KKK Banner Rises Over ‘Sweet’ Georgia Town
Protesters against a KKK sign in Dahlonega, Georgia in February 2016 Image by Facebook
Protesters against a KKK sign in Dahlonega, Georgia in February 2016 Image by Facebook
Dahlonega, a charming former gold mining spot an hour north of Atlanta, rallied against the sign, the Post reports: “The mayor got dressed and headed for the square. The reverend called the sheriff.”
Locals showed up to protest the sign; they were menaced by pickup trucks circling the square and revving their engines. Eventually, municipal workers climbed into a cherry picker to loosen the 21 screws anchoring the sign to the building.
The next day, the Post reports, a Unitarian church announced a “unity march” and drew in a local fiddler, a member of the Indigo Girls band and concerned residents. Then more pickup trucks flying Confederate flags and Make America Great Again banners arrived. A regional radio station picked up the story, and listeners mused that the banner might be “fake news,” a plot driven by liberals.
In the meantime, the perpetrator was found: an 84-year-old local woman who owned the building and who had been trying to get approval to build a hotel in the town square.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
