Community Corner

Another Ku Klux Klan Club Coming to New Lenox?

This Ku Klux Klan group says the last one distributing literature in New Lenox was merely a "copycat" organization.

More Ku Klux Klan literature has turned up in New Lenox and the leader of the group responsible for it says the last organization recruiting in town was merely a bunch of pretenders.

"I would call that a copycat group," said Frank Ancona, the imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights.

"They're trying to grow a membership but they don't follow the original Klan rituals," Ancona said of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a group that distributed fliers around New Lenox in October.

Letters from Ancona's group turned up in Liberty Square subdivision Sunday, according to the New Lenox Neighborhood Watch Facebook page.

"White people simply will not buy the equality propaganda anymore and have begun to doubt some of the Klan hysteria that they have been fed in school and from TV and movies," the letter said.

The letter lists nine reasons why the KKK is "growing so fast" and is "the answer for the White Race." Point 7 is that the "Klan is youth oriented. The young people of today will determine the kind of nation we will have tomorrow. Any movement that wants to make history must win the young, and we are."

New Lenox Deputy Police Chief Robert Pawlisz said the department has not received any recent complaints about Klan literature.

Speaking by phone from his Park Hills, MO, headquarters, Ancona said the Traditionalist American Knights have been recruiting "all over the Chicago area." He declined to say whether there is actually a local chapter, or "klavern," in New Lenox. He explained that the locations of klaverns are only disclosed to new recruits after they are thoroughly vetted.

"First off, we do a background check," Ancona said, and if a recruit turns out to have a criminal record, "Boom, you're gone."

Ancona said a background check revealed one recent applicant was a registered sex offender, something he and the KKK frown on.

"We have different ideas about what should be done with sex offenders. We think the laws are a little too light with them," he said. "If somebody molests my daughter or my son, I think they should be put to death."

Ancona said his organization's recruiting effort has been "doing pretty well up" around Chicago, and even though he is the national leader, he was aware of the push into New Lenox.

"I had a pretty good idea," he said. "I know the majority of things that are going on."

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