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White supremacists stage armed protest outside NAACP headquarters in Houston

A banner reading ‘White Lives Matter’ defined the rally.

Photo of Mary Emily O'Hara

Mary Emily O'Hara

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Photo via Cornell Brooks / Twitter Remix by Max Fleishman

It looked like a scene out of the 1950s on Sunday, as white supremacists held an armed protest outside the National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP) headquarters in Houston. Protestors waved Confederate flags, held a banner that read “White Lives Matter,” and carried signs referencing the neo-Nazi slogan “14 Words” (the 14 words being, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children”).

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NAACP President and CEO Cornell Brooks responded to the protest with a series of steadfast tweets, saying the civil rights organization was not intimidated.

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Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt also weighed in, declaring the rally “wrong” and disturbing.

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At the rally, which was surrounded by about a dozen police officers on horseback, white supremacist Scott Lacy told local news station KPRC: “We came here because the NAACP headquarters is here and that’s one of the most racist groups in America.”

A video shot by KPRC shows the armed protest taking place on the front lawn of the NAACP building located in the city’s historically black Third Ward. A racially diverse group of counter-protestors wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts arrived soon after the rally began.

One of the protestors on the white supremacist side, Billy Gaston, told KPRC he was there because “it seems like, in the country today, it’s always wrong to be white.”

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“It’s a physical manifestation of white supremacy, white privilege, and racism being protected by this country,” an unnamed woman told KPRC as she gazed at the scene of police protecting white supremacist protestors.

H/T KPRC Houston

 
The Daily Dot