After massive fire at famous civil rights center, officials found a 'white power' symbol nearby

[.99center]

Source: Washington Post

After a fire burned down the main building of a storied civil rights center in Tennessee last week, the organization has said that a symbol associated with the white power movement was found in the parking lot next to the ashy rubble of the former building.

The Highlander Center, which hosted civil rights figures like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Stokely Carmichael in the 1950s and 60s, made the disclosure on its Facebook page Tuesday.

No one was injured, but the fire destroyed the office, which housed what the center said was decades worth of historical documents, speeches, artifacts and other memorabilia from its history, including the era of the civil rights movement. The Wisconsin Historical Society, which is the center’s official archivist, said that a majority of its archives are safe.

“While we do not know the names of the culprits, we know that the white power movement has been increasing and consolidating power across the South, across this nation, and globally,” it wrote.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/03/highlander-center-civil-rights-fire-white-power-symbol/

[Geechie]

1. This has been going on for decades.

from the WaPo article:

"The Highlander Center was founded in 1932 as the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle in southeastern Tennessee, whose purpose was organizing unemployed and working-class people, according to its website. It also fought segregation in the labor movement in the 1940s, which expanded into a broader fight against segregation in the 1950s. But those activities made it a target — of both federal and state investigators during an era of anti-communist paranoia, as well as segregationists and racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan."

This current location was opened in 1972.

Just sickening. It feels like we're slipping backward faster and faster.

[Hekate]

2. Gods I feel sick. The maggots all came out from under their rocks, emboldened by Trump...

I don't know what's to become of us.

[McKim]

3. Highlander Center Has Been Through this Before

The Highlander Center has been through this before........someone please find a way to donate to rebuild! Rosa Parks trained there.

[riversedge]

4. glad no one was hurt, yet all the historical docs are gone.

[Blues Heron]

5. According to the article, horrendous as this attack was -

The Wisconsin Historical Society, which is the center’s official archivist, said that a majority of its archives are safe.

Thankfully not all was lost