A new report shows Kentucky is a top target for on-campus white supremacist propaganda and recruiting. This is the third year in a row colleges nationwide are seeing an increase in the amount of extremist material being distributed on campuses.
The Anti-Defamation League report showed a major spike in documented cases of white supremacist fliers, stickers, posters and other material in the 2017-18 school year.
And it’s getting worse.
The just-completed spring semester saw more extremist propaganda on campus than any preceding semester. Kentucky alone had the second highest instances of on-campus white supremacist propaganda with 22 such occurrences. The report shows Tennessee had four incidents of extremist propaganda and Indiana had eight.
ADL found the messages ranged from veiled white supremacist language to explicitly racist images and words that attack minority groups. Other fliers promote “American Identity” without any explicitly racist message, but link to a website where such content is available.
According to the data, white supremacist propaganda in non-college settings also increased, with 672 incidents during the first five months of this year, compared to 868 in all of 2018.
![Bombing victim Sarah Collins Rudolph, pictured in 2013, argues that Ku Klux Klan members who attacked the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 were "inspired and motivated by then-Gov. [George] Wallace's racist rhetoric."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f9db9e5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3120x1738+0+302/resize/560x312!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fassets%2Fimg%2F2020%2F09%2F30%2Fap_863643898715-f12e722268692d57726e954ddce810f9e892c95d.jpg)