Group changes location of previously announced rally in Caswell County

ROXBORO — State troopers blocked intersections Saturday as the Ku Klux Klan made its way through the city’s downtown and major thoroughfare.

Windows rolled down, men and women shouted “White power!” and “Hail victory!” as the afternoon parade of roughly 30 cars drove by without an audience gathered.

After all, the Loyal White Knights had initially announced its “Trump victory parade” would occur Saturday morning in Pelham, a county over and nearly 40 miles away, but they didn’t show up in Caswell County.

The Times-News went to the residence of the founders of the Loyal White Knights to find out why no one had showed. The publication later learned that the parade was being held in Roxboro.

IT'S HAPPENING. KKK just came through Roxboro. Battle flags & shouting "WHITE POWER!" pic.twitter.com/rcjHbmUUiR

— Natalie A. Janicello (@natalie_allison) December 3, 2016 Amanda Barker, who is identified on the KKK’s website as an “imperial kommander” and is married to Chris Barker, who founded the group, said the car parade would be a celebration of President-Elect Donald Trump’s victory.

“We actually kind of have the same views,” Barker said. “Actually a lot of white Americans actually felt the same way, especially about the wall, immigration and the terrorism coming here. I think Donald Trump is going to do some really good things and turn this country around.”

On the sides and backs of the klan’s cars and trucks flew KKK flags, Confederate battle flags, Donald Trump flags and Christian flags.

Barker said that since Trump’s election, “more white people sit there going, ‘Woo Trump! I’m proud to be white.’”

“And now it seems like these people are kind of waking up, saying, ‘I’m not held down and now I can actually feel privileged and feel proud to be white once more.’”

The parade quickly moved through Roxboro as N.C. Highway Patrol — which apparently was already aware of the group’s route — stopped traffic for the KKK parade.

Hundreds of protestors and observers arrived in Pelham Saturday morning preparing to demonstrate against the KKK.

Several Alamance County residents were among those who gathered at the small town’s community center, among them Sugelema Lynch, a second-grade teacher at Haw River Elementary School who wanted the opportunity to see for herself what would take place.

“Curiosity,” it was, Lynch said.

“I just wanted to know what was going on,” she said, noting that coming from California, rumors of KKK rallies were uncommon.

Eric Fink, a professor at Elon University School of Law, was coordinating a group of legal observers who came to Pelham for the rumored parade. Some of his students at the law school were joining him in neon-colored hats to take notes, photos and video in case some type of conflict arose and protestors were arrested.

“We’re here to be eyes and ears,” said Fink, who has attended protests for that purpose for more than 20 years. “We don’t interfere in anything.”

AFTER THE PARADE, via phone, the Loyal White Knights’ “exalted cyclops,” a man who gave the name “John Roberts,” said the KKK would spend the remainder of the night “fellowshipping.”

Roberts, who came from Georgia for the event, was unable to participate in the parade because he didn't realize it was happening at the time.

Barker told the Times-News the group would hold an award ceremony and dinner for its members that evening, though plans for a cross lighting were still up in the air, depending on the wind.

When asked to respond to protestors’ allegations that the KKK was a racist organization, Roberts said that the protestors, in fact, were the racist ones.

“They’re the most extreme racists out there,” Roberts alleged, noting that Black Lives Matter and the Black Panther Party were particularly racist, though neither group was among the protestors in Pelham Saturday. “They spew nothing but race hatred.”

Concerning hostile rhetoric on the Loyal White Knights’ website and whether it is racist, Roberts said he “believes it could be seen as such” but that it is merely “a marketing ploy.”

“We’re a separatist group,” Roberts said. “We’re not a hate group.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Ku Klux Klan as the most infamous, and possibly oldest, hate group in the United States.

N.C. Highway Patrol did not return calls to the Times-News on Saturday about how long troopers had been aware that the KKK would be holding a procession in Roxboro, nor the extent of the patrol’s facilitation of the parade.