White supremacists meet Black Lives Matter supporters in Charlotttesville, Virginia.
(Newswire.net — July 14, 2017) — Charlottesville, VIRGINIA – Twenty-three people were arrested after a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) rally had met ‘Black Lives Matter’ protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.
‘White supremacists gathered to protest the decision to remove a historic bronze equestrian statue of Confederate Army General Robert Edward Lee from a city park and rename the area ‘Emancipation Park.’
The statue has been the city’s landmark since 1924, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. However, in April 2017, the City Council decided to remove the statue.
The move enraged white supremacists who organized a first torch-lit protest on May 14, 2017. Though many insisted on a differences between white supremacists and KKK groups, Mayor Michael Singer directly linked the protesters with the KKK movement.
On July 8, 2017, some 50 KKK members dressed in robes with pointy hoods marched the streets of Charlottesville protesting the removal of the General Lee statue.
The group encountered around 1,000 racial equality supporters, who cheered the City Council’s decision. The epilogue of the dual rally was 23 people detained and luckily no one injured. Video footages show KKK members saluting, while the other group was chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer has urged citizens to ignore the Loyal White Knights’ “putrid bait.”
“They only thing they seem to want is division and confrontation and a twisted kind of celebrity,” he said.
According to the Loyal White Knights’ website, they “do not hate any group of people,” but adds that they do hate homosexuality, drugs and abortion. Also, the group strongly opposes race-mixing “because these things go against God’s law and they are destroying all white nations.”
Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was an American general known for commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War from 1862 until his surrender in 1865.
After the war, Lee opposed the Radical Republican proposals to take the vote away from ex-Confederates and give it to the freed slaves.