A flier showing the KKK was posted in Southwest Philly. A ward leader wants to calm fears.
A flier showing a picture of people wearing KKK robes was reported on Tuesday.
When a Southwest Philly resident reported a KKK flier had been taped to a pole outside their home this week, people got angry.
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission looked into the incident and put out a statement denouncing hate. Angry commenters on the 51st Ward’s Facebook page about the flier dared white supremacists to show their faces.
But 51st Ward Democratic leader Gregory Benjamin said while he understands the alarm and does not intend to dismiss people’s concerns, he believes this all may be some kind of misunderstanding.
“We want to calm that,” he said.
On Tuesday, a neighbor called Benjamin to let him know that they’d discovered a flier depicting members of the KKK on an electrical pole outside their home on the 5100 block of Chester Avenue.
The flier is black-and-white copy of the cover of a book written by University of Pittsburgh sociologist Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. The cover features a photograph of three generations of klans-people — an older woman, a younger adult woman, and a baby — all wearing white pointed robes, with a cross and American flag behind them.
It’s unclear what message whoever put up the flier intended to send. Blee’s 2008 book is a study of the role that women played in the Jim Crow-era KKK and the covert ways they carried out the Klan’s mission, not an endorsement of the group’s ideology. The first page of the book describes the Klan as “one of U.S. history’s most vicious campaigns of prejudice and hatred.”
The flier still raised concerns. Residents contacted the Human Relations Commission and its Philadelphia advisory council was notified, as well as police. It’s possible another identical flier was posted nearby around the same time, Benjamin said, but all fliers have since been removed.
No person or group has taken responsibly for the flier so far. While there is no indication the flier was put up by a white supremacist group, the manner in which it was posted can still be harmful, said Chad Dion Lassiter, executive director of Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.
“These things, they take an emotional toll on individuals,” he said.
Even if the flier was a piece of trolling or a message targeted at white people, Lassiter said it was crucial not to ignore it.
“We take all of these things [seriously]... we’re in a moment where people want to continue to deny the surge of white nationalism and white supremacy,” he said.
Representatives of Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission will attend the 51st Ward’s monthly community meeting on Saturday at noon at the Kingsessing Library, located at 1201 S. 51st St.
Benjamin said the meeting would be an opportunity for community members to share more information about the incident and ease any remaining tension.He said he hopes this experience will encourage neighbors to connect more and communicate better.
“Maybe we can bring something constructive out of this. Demonstrate that the community is more interested in [doing] something positive than anything else,” he said.