Members of the Ku Klux Klan are looking to take part in the Adopt-a-Highway program for a mile-long stretch of road in Georgia, according to reports.
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Georgia Department of Transportation is currently reviewing the request made May 21 by the Klan.
The application was filed by International Keystone Knights of the KKK in Union County to clean up Route 515 in the Appalachian Mountains in Blairsville.
“Any civic-minded organization, business, individual, family, city, county, state, or federal agency is welcome to volunteer in the Georgia Adopt-A-Highway program,” at least according to the department’s website.
The state attorney general’s office is expected to decide shortly.
“We just want to clean up the doggone road,” Harley Hanson, who filed the application, told the paper. “We’re not going to be out there in robes.”
But Rep. Tyrone Brooks, head of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, called on Georgia state officials to reject the application.
“This is about membership building and re-branding in a public way,” he said.
“What’s next, neo-Nazis or the Taliban or al-Qaida adopting highways?”
It’s not the first time the KKK has participated in an “Adopt-a-Highway” program.
In 2000, the KKK successfully adopted part of I-55 south of St. Louis after a federal judge ruled that the Missouri DOT could not bar them from doing so.
The Georgia KKK group said it will file a lawsuit if the state rejects its application.