opinion

Bangert: Those KKK fliers in downtown Lafayette? This guy delivered them

LAFAYETTE, Ind. – So who would have left recruiting fliers for the Ku Klux Klan in downtown Lafayette under the cover of night a week and a half ago?

Take a look.

Maybe you know this guy.

Surveillance camera footage, obtained through public records requests and reviewed by the Journal & Courier, shows the man who walked through freezing rain during the wee hours of Jan. 12 to leave pamphlets headlined, “Why You Should Become a Klansman,” on downtown business doorsteps.

In the video footage, taken from city-owned cameras above the intersection of Sixth and Main streets, a man dressed in a black coat over what appears to be a hoodie, jeans and a black stocking cap approached Main Street from the north on Sixth Street. He was carrying a plastic bag, similar to one from a grocery store.

The surveillance camera shows him turn the corner and duck into the alcove at the entrance to McCord Candies, at the corner of Sixth and Main. He paused briefly to glance up Main Street before casually dropping something on the ground at the threshold.

When it happened: KKK recruiting fliers found on cars, businesses downtown Lafayette

In West Lafayette: West Lafayette church targeted with racial slurs, threats, day after anti-Trump event

More: After racist threats, West Lafayette church, mayor make stand

Bangert: Before Charlottesville, Purdue got a white nationalist wake-up call

From there, he strolled at a steady pace down the 500 block of Main Street. He didn’t break stride as he reached into the bag and dropped things at the doors of Operation Ink and the National Federation of Professional Trainers offices, before moving down the street.

The scene happened at 12:14 a.m. Across the street, in restaurants on two other corners of Sixth and Main streets, customers could be seen coming, going and eating at Pete’s Diner and Yatagarasu.

Denise Bootsma, owner of McCord Candies, said the footage matched with what she found on her restaurant’s doorstep when she opened that Friday morning. The pamphlet – tucked in a plastic freezer bag – touted Soldiers of Christ, American Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Moselle, Mississippi, and spewed several pages of white supremacist rhetoric.

“When I brought it in, I thought, ‘Good grief,’” Bootsma said. “I think he was pretty cowardly, just dropping these off. We get fliers and poster and pamphlets all the time from people. But they come in and hand them to us. … Just spineless to do it when no one is around, like that.”

Margaret Hass was waiting for a bus near Fifth and Main streets that morning when she found more fliers, in freezer bags, in other business doorways on a morning when roads were icy enough that most Greater Lafayette schools were closed.

“First I was just shocked, thinking, ‘What the hell?’” Hass said. “And then I started looking around, wondering if the person who had left it was still around or if there were other ones. … I think I was more surprised and angry than fearful at the time, but the recent threats at the UU church (in West Lafayette) makes me more worried. … And it's frustrating that it keeps recurring. You can't just forget about it when it shows up again and again.”

Hass was referring to a pair of banners found Sunday – nine days after the Klan propaganda was dropped off in downtown Lafayette – outside the Unitarian Universalist Church at 333 Meridian St. The church, about six blocks from Purdue University in West Lafayette, is known for its socially progressive views.

In that case, someone scrawled racial and homophobic slurs, along with threats tied to Jan. 23, on bedsheets and tied them to a fence around a playground at the church. Members of the congregation and neighbors in the New Chauncey Neighborhood found the banners around 8 a.m., before church services were scheduled. The threats, which included references to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, have made national news.

West Lafayette police continue to investigate the vandalism and the threats, including contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But as of Tuesday, police had no firm leads.

That case, too, involved someone sneaking around in the dark.

“This sort of activity is really encouraged in alt-right and neo-Nazi circles,” said David Atkinson, an associate professor of history at Purdue University. His studies specialize in white nationalist movements through history and into today.

“However brazen advocates of white supremacy might be feeling these days – and however prominent people like (alt-right leader) Richard Spencer might have become – there’s still a preference for anonymity among most of the rank and file.”

That has been the M.O. whenever Purdue has woken up in the past year-and-a-half to find white supremacist propaganda and recruiting posters around campus for various white nationalist groups.

“That needle might have been moving before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville (in August), but that event sent a lot of what we might call fellow travelers back underground,” Atkinson said. “Flier-ing remains a high-impact form of activism that individuals can do anonymously. They simply download something from the internet and post under the cover of darkness.”

Lt. Scott Galloway said Lafayette police received two reports about the Klan pamphlets from Jan. 12.

“It’s sad – terrible, really – to see this stuff around,” Galloway said. “But there were no direct threats in them, just recruiting. It’s just still a freedom of speech matter with that sort of propaganda.”

George Boes found one of the Ziploc-covered fliers under the windshield of his truck that morning.

“It’s still outrages me,” Boes said. “You saw what that thing said, right?”

The number listed on the flier leads to a voice mail message describing the group as a “white separatist” organization. The American Christian Knights website includes an application and a promises that “a recruiter will contact you.” The site says the order “stands against the genocide of the white race,” mixed-race marriages, the Black Lives Matter movement, Muslims, Jews, illegal immigrants, “the refugees we are being forced to receive in our nation” and people who don’t speak English.

“It’s poison,” Boes said. “You’d think in the 21st century we’d be beyond it. Awful that we’re not.”

He shook his head: “I hope someone knows who this guy is.”

Take a look.

Maybe you know who it is lurking in the dark, just one of the people spreading fear in Greater Lafayette these days.

IF YOU GO: “Stand for Love, Sing for Justice,” a response to recent racist and homophobic vandalism at the Unitarian Universalist Church will be at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24, at the church, 333 Meridian St. in West Lafayette. The event will feature Denise Wilson and the Blue Moon Rising Community Choir and a keynote address by Mayor John Dennis.

Reach J&C columnist Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter:@davebangert.