Keith Roysdon

kroysdon@muncie.gannett.com

LYNN, Ind. — A few days before three supporters of the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in the small Randolph County city of Winchester, a cross was burned, perhaps in practice, on a remote rural property, and pro-Klan leaflets were dropped on front porches and in yards throughout the nearby town of Lynn.

The Klan even targeted the marked police car of the Lynn town marshal with leaflets.

Although a couple of hundred people chanted "Leave our town!" to get the Klan threesome to depart Winchester on Aug. 24, and officials maintain there is no active Klan presence in Randolph County, it's the second time in two years that Klan activity, even on a small scale, has broken out in this county east of Muncie near the Indiana-Ohio state line.

A national expert on hate groups told The Star Press that the Klan is now mostly made up of small groups of disgruntled racists and white supremacists who feel emboldened by the politics playing out on the national stage this presidential election year.

But sometimes the truth is smaller — as small as a man who lives in a house with covered windows on a remote rural road and a camera crew for a would-be reality TV show.

'The cross was burned'

Taken together, the two properties, side-by-side on a remote Randolph County road closer to Ohio than Muncie, certainly create an impression of distance and hostility. "No Trespassing," "Beware of Dog" and "Private Property" signs and orange traffic cones mark the gated entrance to the driveway. County property records note that the structure on the land is "a dilapidated mobile home." A man's name is spray-painted on the front of the trailer.

Next door, a small white house is turned sideways to the road. Its windows are covered with paper.

Looming over it all is a flagpole at the gate along the edge of the narrow road. At the top of the flagpole is a modified Confederate flag with a center symbol of a marching skeleton. Surrounding the skeleton are the words, "The South Shall Rise Again."

One of these properties, law enforcement authorities in Randolph County say, is the home of the man who led the Winchester Klan demonstration. While authorities identified the man to The Star Press, they asked that he not be named and that his specific address not be cited in this article, fearing heightened tensions in their future dealings with the man.

And at one of these properties, they say, a cross was burned just a few days before the Klan showed up in Winchester.

"Somebody got hold of me and shared that there was a so-called KKK rally at a residence," Lynn Marshal Brad Fisher told The Star Press. "They were actually in the outfits and burned a cross. She had witnessed it."

"The cross was burned on the property of the people who burned it," the marshal said.

He added that although the cross burning generated a concerned posting on Facebook, the action didn't target another person or family.

"If that had been the case, we would have had a hate crime," said Fisher, the Lynn marshal for 19 years.

Randolph County authorities have gone to the address of the house with paper-covered windows several times for "domestics and arguments between father and son," Fisher said.

The cross burning was "a family-type rally," Fisher said. "We have nothing to investigate. As law enforcement, there were no complaints."

The Sunday morning after the cross burning, Lynn residents woke to pro-Klan leaflets, in plastic bags weighted down with rocks, "all around town," Fisher said.

That generated complaints, but even if it had not, the marshal noted he was aware of the leafleting firsthand.

"I got one of these on my porch," Fisher said. "And my police car."

The Klan's targeting of Lynn, a town of about 1,000 people, frustrated Fisher.

"I said, 'Are you kidding me?'" the marshal added. "Because it is definitely not welcome in our community. Lynn is a welcoming community for everyone."

In late 2014, similar leaflets, in plastic bags weighted with rocks, appeared on porches and driveways in Winchester and another Randolph County community, Farmland.

KKK leaflets second Randolph County town

The Washington Post and The Associated Press have reported similar bagged leaflets "from California to Kansas to New Jersey," according to a Sept. 20 article by the Post.

Reality show for the KKK?

The night of Aug. 24 brought good news and bad news to Winchester, a city of about 5,000 people that's the county seat of Randolph County. Three Klan members or supporters — including the man identified to The Star Press by authorities as the man from the rural area outside of Lynn — showed up on a street corner near the county courthouse.

Winchester to Klan: 'Leave our town'

The good news was that, after about two hours of arguments between the Klan sympathizers and townspeople on the courthouse square, closely watched by police and officials, the demonstrators were "chanted" out of Winchester by residents who kept repeating, "Leave our town! Leave our town!"

The bad news is that Winchester might still receive unwanted publicity and scrutiny thanks to a documentary film crew shooting the demonstration.

Several people with professional-grade cameras were in Winchester that evening, filming the demonstration and the reaction of residents.

The documentary makers told Winchester residents they were producing a show about the Klan for the television channel A&E Network.

Efforts by The Star Press to confirm the identity of the film crew and the nature of their work were unsuccessful. A Google search did turn up a posting on the website StaffMeUp.com, which connects film, TV and commercial producers with camera operators and other crew members.

"A&E KKK project Pilot — Reality/Doc (TV)" reads a listing on the site. No further information is provided.

At Everett's Place, a restaurant in downtown Winchester, the documentary crew apparently did some filming.

"They called in advance and said they were doing a documentary on 'family differences,'" said Trudy Ludwick, co-owner of the restaurant.

Ludwick stopped a telephone interview with The Star Press and asked a reporter to call back in five minutes.

"I checked with my partner, and we don't want to be affiliated with anything that happened that day," she said in the follow-up call.

When Ludwick was asked if she had names or contact information for the filmmakers, she said no but added that they had been "dismissed" from the restaurant. She then ended the interview by hanging up.

Klan is 'still alive and dreams of restoring itself'

"This is C.J.," the voicemail to a Star Press reporter began. "I'm the imperial wizard of the Old Glory Knights. I want to talk about the article you did about Winchester."

The self-described Klan leader promised to call again at a particular day and time but did not. Twenty minutes before the time the call was to come, a Star Press reporter was added to two lists by a Twitter account called @ProWhites. The lists were of "anti-white whites" and "anti-white media."

The Star Press has tried to call the Ohio-based number for the supposed Klan leader but has never received an answer.

A call to the rural Randolph County man who police say led the Winchester demonstration was answered, but the man disconnected when asked about the Klan rally. Because he didn’t stay on the phone long enough to hear a question about his possible involvement, and because of law enforcement concerns, The Star Press isn’t naming the man.

In June, AP reported that the Klan is "still alive and dreams of restoring itself to what it once was: an invisible white supremacist empire spreading its tentacles throughout society. As it marks 150 years of existence, the Klan is trying to reshape itself for a new era.

"Klan members still gather by the dozens under starry Southern skies to set fire to crosses in the dead of night, and KKK leaflets have shown up in suburban neighborhoods from the Deep South to the Northeast in recent months. Perhaps most unwelcome to opponents, some independent Klan organizations say they are merging with larger groups to build strength."

The Klan is a sickly shadow of itself from earlier eras, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center told The Star Press.

"The Klan today is weak, poorly led and without political power at all," Potok said. "The peak of the second era of the Klan, in 1925, was at 4 million members. Today, there are between 5,000 and 6,000 Klansmen in a country of 319 million."

Ku Klux Klan had short-lived political power in Indiana

Pro-white groups have seen a boost in recent years after criticism of public display of the Confederate flag and issues of nationalism and immigration in this year's presidential campaign.

"They've probably gotten a boost from the rhetoric of Donald Trump," Potok said, citing the Republican Party nominee for president. "What Trump has done is open up a space for discussion of subjects that were previously really taboo, subjects the Klan wants to discuss, like the idea that America is a white man's country.

"These groups can say, look, here's the presidential nominee of a major party discussing these important issues. It has helped push these groups."

The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate groups and white nationalist activity. Potok said that while he hadn't heard of an A&E series about the Klan, "I believe it. There are so many documentaries being made about the radical right."

'This is not what we're about'

For his part, Randolph County Sheriff Ken Hendrickson said there was "no doubt" the Lynn leafleting and Winchester demonstration were connected "because of the timing."

"But we don't know of an active Klan presence in this county," the sheriff said, adding that he looked at the rural property where a cross was burned. "But I didn't see anything that night."

For now, law enforcement in Randolph County is keeping a watch on racist activities. The Lynn marshal added that he didn't plan to confront the rural man who led the Winchester rally, though.

"I can't answer if it's gonna escalate or not," Fisher said. "I have no reason to approach them unless there's an unlawful assembly in my jurisdiction or I felt any black families or mixed-race families were targeted."

Potok's group tweeted links to The Star Press' coverage of the Winchester Klan demonstration.

"It is important for regular people in a community to come out and say this is not what we're about," Potok said. "If that doesn't happen when the Klan parades around the courthouse square, they will take that as a sign they have support in the community and will return."

Contact Keith Roysdon at 765-213-5828 and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Hate here and elsewhere

• How many KKK chapters and other hate groups are there around the country?

892 hate groups exist in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPCL).

16 hate groups operate in Indiana, including the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Muncie; the Blood and Honour Social Club, a racist skinhead group that operates throughout the state; the White Aryan Resistance and other race-based groups as defined by the SPLC.

• Is the Ku Klux Klan in Muncie?

Three men who are members of the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated and distributed pro-Klan leaflets in the Randolph County city of Winchester on Aug. 24.

But is the Klan in Muncie?

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors the activities of hate groups of all kinds, includes Muncie on its "Hate Map." According to the SPLC, the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are represented in Muncie.

Mark Potok of the SPLC told The Star Press that his organization tracks such groups through internet postings and websites as well as information from law enforcement and "hard copy underground information never put on the internet."

According to a Ku Klos Knights website, the national office is located in Church Hill, Tennessee.