LINDEN, Ala. — The editorial in The Democrat-Reporter, the newspaper that has served the small western Alabama town of Linden since 1879, appeared on Page 2 last Thursday, but it read as though it could have been written the year the paper was founded.

“Time for the Ku Klux Klan to ride again,” it began.

The unsigned opinion piece, railing against “Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats” and calling for the return of the most infamous white supremacist group in the nation’s history, went largely unnoticed until Monday, when two student journalists shared photographs of it online.

By Tuesday it was national news, the subject of numerous reports illustrated with stock photos of hooded Klansmen, and the target of widespread condemnation. Representative Terri A. Sewell, a Democrat whose congressional district includes Linden, called on the editor and publisher of the paper, Goodloe Sutton, to apologize and step down.

“For the millions of people of color who have been terrorized by white supremacy, this kind of ‘editorializing’ about lynching is not a joke — it is a threat,” she wrote on Twitter. “These comments are deeply offensive and inappropriate, especially in 2019.”