Douglasville, GA: Community Protests as North Mississippi White Knights No Show

On Sunday March 5th, 2107, over a hundred locals gathered at the Douglas County Courthouse in Douglasville, GA to counter a protest announced by the North Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The North Mississippi Klan was a no-show, but a handful of unaffiliated racists did show their faces, including Randall Wiley Smith, a leader of the Villa Rica, GA-based Aryan Nations Worldwide, as well as Douglasville white nationalist Kenneth Whitman.

 

The protest was announced Friday March 3rd by Steven Howard, Imperial Wizard of the North Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in response to the sentencing of Jose Torres and Kayla Norton for terrorizing an 8-year old boy’s birthday party with Confederate flags and brandished guns.

From the outset, Howard’s call for a protest in Georgia was curious, since Howard currently resides on the West Coast. (This did not stop Howard from attending the Nationalist Front white power gathering in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on November 5, 2016.)

The white supremacist protest was planned for noon. By that time, locals had assembled on a lawn facing the courthouse in Douglasville, many holding signs with anti-Klan slogans. An hour passed, with locals greeting each other and talking among themselves. The handful of racists in attendance kept to themselves, trying their best to not draw attention. Eventually the racists receded to the parking lot, secluded by rows of cars and a strand of trees.

Then, at around 1:00PM, the racists who had gathered in the parking lot unfurled their Confederate flags, immediately drawing the attention of anti-racist locals and the media. Those displaying their flags were soon surrounded, with local white nationalist Kenneth Whitman, pictured in his Confederate flag hoodie, standing at the center of attention.

For thirty minutes, locals and media surrounded Whitman and his friends, with locals effectively no-platforming Whitman by strategically yelling profanities when reporters tried to record him. In one of the soundbites Whitman did get through, he described himself as “just a Confederate.” This self-description is not fully accurate. Whitman is an ideological racist who promotes far-Right narratives of “white genocide.” Whitman for example was one of the few attendees of the “Rock Stone Mountain” white power rally at Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta on April 23, 2016 that attracted large-scale anti-racist resistance. Whitman is also pictured in a July 2016 group photo from a joint Aryan Nations Worldwide / Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan event in Georgia.

While events unfolded in the parking lot, Randall Wiley Smith of Aryan Nations Worldwide arrived with a handful of others, the older men all recognizable from Aryan Nations / Loyal White Knights joint events last year. Almost immediately upon arriving, Randall Smith got into a confrontation with another crowd member. Once sheriffs intervened, Smith and his crew moved to the periphery of the crowd. Smith tried to keep a low profile for the remainder of his time there, but had another verbal dispute with sheriffs before leaving.

After the racists had been sufficiently disempowered by the efforts of the locals, they dispersed to their respective vehicles, taking precautions to protect their own anonymity, and leaving those who had gathered to fight off the Klan with a feeling of victory.

If you have information on other racists in these photos, please contact us.