The Georgia Department of Transportation has a tough decision to make.
The Ku Klux Klan put in an application to Georgia’s Adopt-A-Highway program to clean up a highway in North Georgia, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The group wants to clean up one mile of Route 515 in the Appalachian Mountains, near the North Carolina border. The request was filed on May 21.
Klan members insist they have no ulterior motives. “We just want to clean up the doggone road,” member Harley Hanson, who filed the application, told the AJC. “We’re not going to be out there in robes.” He insists the Klan isn’t a hate group but a group that promotes racial pride. “I love my race. Does that make me wrong? I’m proud to be white,” he continued. “We are good, decent Christian Americans, and what we’re trying to do is to work with the local community.”
Hanson says if the application is denied, he will file a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union. Tyrone Brooks, state representative and head of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, is insisting that the application be denied, despite the threat of a lawsuit. “What’s next, are we going to let Neo-Nazis or the Taliban or al-Qaida adopt highways?” said Brooks. “They have to say no. If it brings a lawsuit, so be it. If it ends the program, so be it.”
