Amy Goodman
@DemocracyNow·3.2M subscribers·19.4K videos
Anti-Racists vs. KKK in Memphis
Posted
April 1, 2013
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April 1, 2013
40,767
119
163
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1:59Now PlayingWatch the full interview with Mark Potok on Democracy Now! at Several dozen members of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in Memphis on Saturday to protest the renaming of three city parks that had honored Confederate soldiers, including Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Klan's first grand wizard. The Klansmen were vastly outnumbered by antiracist protesters. We speak to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Mark Potok, you have this incident in Memphis this weekend. Klan members, what, around 60, 75 of them, KKK, held a rally, and they were protesting the renaming of three parks. The old names were Confederate Park; Jefferson Davis Park, who was of course the Confederacy's president; and Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, named for a Confederate lieutenant general and the Klan's first grand wizard. The city was changing the names of all three parks—the new names Memphis Park, Mississippi River Park and Health Sciences Park, but apparently the city council may change those, as well. The significance of this rally?
MARK POTOK: Well, the real significance was especially to Memphians, to people who live in Memphis, who were, I think, very uptight about this rally, in large part because there was a fairly major Klan rally in Memphis back in 1998 that ended in a lot of violence, basically between anti-racist counter-protesters and the police. So what happened this Saturday was an absolutely massive police presence in Memphis that really put the lid on everything. I think there were quite a few complaints from the counter-protesters that they were not even allowed close enough to the Klan to hear what was being said. In any case, you know, it was quite an event, I think. People came from all over. There were somewhere about in the order of 1,300 counter-protesters versus about 60 Klansmen. You know, so, I think in the end it turned out all right, but I do think there was a lot of frustration on the part of anti-racists who traveled from all over the country to be in Memphis to protest the Klan and then were kept so far away that many of them felt that, you know, this was not democracy in action.
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