Georgia Denies KKK Request To “Adopt a Highway”

The Georgia Department of Transportation has officially denied the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) permission to take part in the State’s Adopt a Highway Program. The International Keystone Knights of the KKK in Union County applied last month to adopt part of Route 515 in the Appalachian Mountains.

The agency released a statement about the application and their denial saying,

“promoting an organization with a history of inciting civil disturbance and social unrest would present a grave concern” and could “have the potential to negatively impact the quality of life of people in the county and state.”

The Adopt a Highway program allows people or groups to clean up a part of the highway in return for a sign acknowledging the group who does it. The States says that the main priority of the department is to maintain road safety and that “encountering signage and members of the KKK along a roadway would create a definite distraction to motorists.”

Harley Hanson, the “exalted cyclops” of the Klan’s “Realm of Georgia,” told FoxNews.com before the request was denied that “all [they] want to do is adopt this piece of road and clean it.”

Representative Tyrone Brooks, head of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, told FoxNews.com, said that the application was being made by a “domestic terrorist organization”. He said that the application not being ripped up on arrival is offensive.

He said,

“It should be denied just as we would deny the request from any other hate group,”

In a similar case in Missouri in 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that the State cannot discriminate against a group for their political beliefs. Hanson said his group was hoping to use that precedent to get their application approved. As of this writing Hanson has no intention of suing the State to get the application approved.