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Updated: May 18, 2004
White Supremacists Get Low Turnout at Brown Protest
Approximately 30 white supremacists attended a May 15 rally in Topeka, Kansas, against racial integration in American schools. Members of White Revolution, the Arkansas-based group that organized the rally, Aryan Nations and European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) protested at a park near the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Site, created to commemorate the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision that ended racial segregation in American public schools. Some white supremacists who originally planned to be there chose not to attend because they were asked by organizers not to wear Nazi uniforms.
The demonstrators were met by approximately 150 counter-protestors, some of whom managed to make their way into the area that police set up for the racist groups. However, authorities kept the two factions apart and the demonstrations ended peacefully.
White Supremacists Protest 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Ed
Posted: May 14, 2004
A coalition of white supremacist groups, led by Billy Roper and his Arkansas-based White Revolution, plans to stage a protest surrounding the 50th anniversary commemoration of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark Supreme Court decision that brought an end to racial segregation in America's public schools.
Roper is encouraging members of various groups including Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement and the Ku Klux Klan to gather across the street from the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. The protest is scheduled to take place two days prior to the official commemoration of the decision and dedication of the site, run by the National Park Service, on May 17, 2004. Managers of the site had denied the groups a permit to hold a demonstration during the official ceremony.
While it is not known how many members of his or other groups are planning to join the protest, White Revolution has advertised the event on their Web site, which is well known to and frequented by like-minded bigots across the country.
A onetime teacher and former skinhead, Roper founded White Revolution in 2002 after he was expelled from the neo-Nazi National Alliance. He often seeks to capitalize on issues that divide communities along racial lines.
Roper claims that the protest is being organized by those who "oppose racial integration along with all its cumulative societal, cultural, and genetic effects…." He states that Brown has led to "higher dropout rates and lower standardized test scores for blacks and whites," and that "American schoolchildren are less educated today, than their grandparents were fifty years ago."
White Revolution blames Jewish activists for initiating the Brown case in the courts and laying out a plan for "forced integration" across America.
Roper suggests that the only way "to celebrate our differences" is to "not only accept the reality of racial differences and inherent inequality but create an educational system which is founded on that reality."
In response to the planned protest, the Topeka City Council recently passed a unanimous resolution supporting the Supreme Court's 1954 decision and stating that the council does not support White Revolution's beliefs or activities.
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