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WILKES-BARRE — A Ku Klux Klan recruiting flier distributed to some city homes was the first blow.
For the local NAACP head and others in the community, front-page treatment of the incident in a local newspaper added insult to injury.
As much as Larry Singleton was disturbed by the six-line fliers and what they represent, he questioned whether a Citizens’ Voice photo and headline inadvertently played into the group’s hands.
“You’re advertising for the KKK. Their job is done now,” Singleton said of the paper’s Wednesday edition, which displayed a photo of a hooded Klan member behind a headline reading, “The KKK wants you.”
According to the accompanying story inside the paper, that message appears on a Klan-affiliated website associated with the telephone number on the fliers.
Beneath the main headline, the paper added in smaller type: “Racist group recruits in Wilkes-Barre.”
A message seeking comment from the Citizens’ Voice was not immediately returned Wednesday evening.
Flier details
Charlotte Raup, president of the Wilkes-Barre Crime Watch Coalition who provided a copy of the flier to the Times Leader, said she has seen three in the past week — one each from residents attending the North End, East End and Parsons meetings.
The flier suggests that black and Asian people may express racial pride, but whites who do so are labeled as racists.
“Stop the double standards,” says the flier, calling on supporters to fight “white racism, illegal immigration and terrorism.”
It includes a Harrisburg-area hotline, which was answered by a recorded message for the East Coast Knights of the True Invisible Empire, in which callers who are “interested in saving our country” are invited to leave a message.
A message left by the Times Leader was not immediately returned on Wednesday.
The number on the flier also appeared in two recent Craigslist ads recruiting for a “pro-white” group in the area, including links to a website which maintains that the group’s intentions are “not malicious.”
“We do seek to ensure a safe and secure future for Caucasian Americans, for that we will not apologize,” it continues.
Residents react
Raup said the three older white residents who brought copies of the fliers did not initially know what they were.
“Then we looked it up, and when they found out what it was, it made them uneasy,” Raup said. Part of their concern, Raup said, was why they were singled out to receive the fliers, which seemed to have been distributed only to selected neighborhoods around the city.
At the same time, Raup said, those residents were dismissive of the message.
“They just thought it was nonsense,” she said.
Len Cornish, a resident of the Rolling Mill Hill section of the city, did not receive one of the fliers, but was not shocked to learn about them, either.
“To me, as an African-American, this is not news to me,” said Cornish, who added that it also isn’t the sort of thing that will cause him to be afraid or want to leave his community.
‘Taken aback’
Singleton said the fliers did come as a surprise, as he believed “there was some progress made” on race relations in the city.
“We were sort of taken aback,” he said. “We haven’t had anything like this in the community for some time.”
Cornish, a U.S. Navy veteran did have strong words for those who use such tactics, and try to blame people of color for bringing crime and violence to Wilkes-Barre.
“I didn’t go in the military to fight for black people, I went to fight for all American people,” Cornish said, adding that he is not happy about crime in the city himself.
But he also wasn’t happy to see “The KKK wants you” and a hooded Klan member on the front page of a newspaper.
“I didn’t have a problem with the story itself,” Cornish said. “I do have a problem with the photo.”
The photo and print headline also drew vocal criticism online at the Citizens’ Voice Facebook page.
One of the people who criticized the story online was Cornish’s partner, Tracy Hughes, who is white.
She didn’t agree with the flier, but felt it was “pretty generic” and that its distributors are entitled to their own freedom of speech. Like Cornish, she feels the front-page display only amplified a message that might otherwise have been soon forgotten.
“I just think it was handled so poorly,” Hughes said.
Singleton said he, along with representatives of the area’s Latino and Jewish communities, had discussed the issue with the newspaper. One of the topics which arose, he said, was the idea that the paper had been hoping to create a community dialogue about the issue.
He doesn’t share that view.
“I’m not talking about censorship,” Singleton said. “I’m talking about being responsible, doing the right thing.”
Geri Gibbons, staff writer, contributed to this report.
