Alabama Newspaper Declares "Time for KKK to Night Ride Again"

The editor of the tiny Democrat-Reporter newspaper in Linden, Alabama, recently called for a return to mass lynchings and suggested that the Ku Klux Klan should “clean out” Washington.

“Time for the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again,” began a Feb. 14 editorial in the paper, which went on to claim that Democrats, along with some Republicans, were planning to raise taxes in Alabama, The Washington Post reported. “Seems like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there,” it concluded.

The Democrat-Reporter back at it again with things you’d never thought you’d see published anymore. pic.twitter.com/i5b7gKD1SC

— Mikayla Burns (@mikaylasburns) February 18, 2019

The paper’s editor, Goodloe Sutton, who is also the paper’s publisher, told the Montgomery Advertiser on Monday that he had written the editorial, which ran without a byline, and stood by it.

“If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off,” he told the paper, explaining, “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them.”

During the same conversation, Sutton argued that the KKK “didn’t kill but a few people” and “wasn’t violent until they needed to be.”

Within the same interview, the reporter and editor suggested the Klan, a white supremacist hate group, was comparable to the NAACP. Sutton said people who disagreed with his views are welcome to call him, write him a letter or boycott the paper.

When the Advertiser asked him if the publisher of another paper calling for lynchings of Americans was appropriate, Sutton replied, “It’s not calling for the lynchings of Americans. These are socialist-communists we’re talking about. Do you know what socialism and communism is?”

Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who prosecuted two members of the Klan for their role in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four young girls, called the editorial “disgusting” and demanded Sutton’s immediate resignation on Monday night, according to the Post.

“I have seen what happens when we stand by while people-especially those with influence- publish racist, hateful views,” he wrote on Twitter.