KKK won't be allowed to 'adopt' highway

The Georgia Department of Transportation will not approve the application of a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan to "adopt" a one-mile stretch of highway in North Georgia, a state official said Tuesday.

 

The state official did not want to be named because the official was not authorized to speak on the record.

The Klan chapter wanted to clean a stretch of highway in Union County, Georgia, according to paperwork obtained by CNN on Monday.

The application, which sought state approval for cleaning up a one-mile portion of Georgia State Route 515 in the Appalachian Mountains, was filed by the International Keystone Knights of the KKK on May 21.

The chapter did not immediately respond to messages left Tuesday by CNN. Previously it said it would approach the American Civil Liberties Union if its application were denied.

"All we want to do is adopt a highway," April Chambers, the chapter's secretary, said Monday. "We're not doing it for publicity. We're doing it to keep the mountains beautiful. People throwing trash out on the side of the road ... that ain't right."

"We're not racists," Chambers said. "We just want to be with white people. If that's a crime, then I don't know. It's all right to be black and Latino and proud, but you can't be white and proud. I don't understand it."

A similar request in Missouri set off a legal battle that stretched for years and went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A Ku Klux Klan chapter there sought to adopt a portion of Interstate 55. A federal appeals court ruled the state could not bar the KKK from participating in the program, and the high court declined to review the case, letting that ruling stand.

However, the Missouri Department of Transportation eventually kicked the KKK, a white supremacy group, out of the program because members were not picking up trash as agreed, spokesman Bob Brendel said Monday. The state also named the stretch of I-55 after civil rights activist Rosa Parks, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Georgia has been participating in the Adopt-A-Highway program for more than 20 years. The program provides advertising for sponsors who agree to clean a stretch of road on a sign posted along the stretch.

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"Any civic-minded organization, business, individual, family, city, county, state, or federal agency is welcome to volunteer in the Georgia Adopt-A-Highway program," the DOT website says.

Chambers said the group is more than 100 strong. "We have a lot of support," she said.

"I don't see why we can't (adopt the stretch of highway)," she said. "Would it be any different if it was the Black Panthers or something? Someone always has some kind of race card."

On its website, the International Keystone Knights of the KKK says it is "fed up with the Federal tyranny and oppression of Reconstruction, and the time was ripe for Clandestine Armed Resistance."

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, lists the KKK as "the most infamous -- and oldest -- of American hate groups."

"Over the years since it was formed in December 1865, the Klan has typically seen itself as a Christian organization, although in modern times Klan groups are motivated by a variety of theological and political ideologies," the law center's website says.