KKK rally planned in Eastern KY national forest, flyers in Midwestern cities claim
WINCHESTER, Ky. — Flyers promoting an alleged Ku Klux Klan rally in Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest next month have surfaced in several Midwestern communities, prompting questions about whether a white supremacist group is attempting to organize in the commonwealth or simply spread fear through provocative propaganda.
The flyers, which began circulating in July, claim the Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan plan to hold an Aug. 8 event in the forest celebrating America’s 250th anniversary. "Native, white protestants” are invited to what is advertised as a family-friendly event featuring food, fellowship and a nighttime cross-lighting ceremony.
Whether the rally will actually take place remains unclear.
The appearance of the flyers nonetheless highlights efforts by evolving white supremacist organizations to recruit supporters and generate publicity in the region, often through anonymous flyer campaigns that have become a recurring tactic across the Midwest. It also raises questions about whether organizers intend to use Kentucky’s sprawling public lands as a venue for extremist activity.
The flyers have been reported in multiple communities south of Fort Wayne, Indiana, along the U.S. 27 corridor between Decatur and Portland, and in suburbs near Dayton, Ohio, and north of Columbus, according to a Herald-Leader review of social media posts and conversations with witnesses. Residents in those areas have posted photographs of the leaflets after finding them tucked into mail boxes or scattered on residential side streets.
“I felt targeted,” said Kristina Muhlenkamp, a 47-year-old Asian-American woman in Portland, Indiana, who said she left her home early one morning late last week to find dozens of KKK flyers advertising the Kentucky event lying in her street. “I live in a small, rural community, and, to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were around here, but they weren’t known to me until now.
“It’s scary,” Muhlenkamp told the Herald-Leader.
The Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is one of about a dozen remaining KKK factions that emerged from the fractured modern Klan movement after decades of internal divisions, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Based in Northern Kentucky with state-level divisions called “realms” in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, the KKK group has periodically attempted to recruit members across the Midwest and Appalachia through mailed literature, roadside flyers and public demonstrations.
Like other Klan organizations that spread racist, antisemitic, white supremacist and other hateful beliefs, the Trinity White Knights group chooses to spread propaganda through flyers because it’s easy, inexpensive and relatively low-risk, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research, reporting and analysis at SPLC.
“The primary focus, or the intent, really, as we read from their own internal messaging and what they put online, is really to intimidate, and the flyering is a method of showing power and force, and trying to look bigger than they are,” she said.
Giving off the impression that the organizations behind flyers are larger and more coordinated than they really are can help drive recruitment, Carroll Rivas said, but it also serves to intimidate and provoke targeted groups while testing ideas and messaging in new regions.
A Kentucky man named William Bader identified himself as the imperial leader of the Trinity White Knights in 2015 during a protest over the removal of a Confederate battle flag from the Columbia, South Carolina, state capital grounds. He is still believed to be the group’s primary leader, Carroll Rivas told the Herald-Leader.
Bader, of Maysville, was stopped by police alone and cited for littering last year in Hamilton County, Ohio, after police there say they found similar flyers in a historically Black suburb north of Cincinnati. A search of his car uncovered copies of the suspicious flyers, a white sheet commonly worn by KKK members and a homemade banner that had recently been observed after a neo-Nazi rally, according to the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office.
Trinity White Knights members were also reportedly tied to a neo-Nazi rally last year in Evendale, Ohio. The group is among the most active remaining KKK organizations in the country, Carroll Rivas said.
Kentucky has periodically been the target of white supremacist recruitment efforts, including flyer distributions by Klan factions and other extremist organizations. Last year, police in Frankfort and Lexington investigated littering complaints involving a KKK faction.
Then, in 2023, residents in a Mt. Sterling neighborhood awoke to flyers in their front yards that featured an illustrated Klansman above the words “Neighborhood Watch: You can sleep sound tonight. The Klan is awake!” The flyers invited residents to email Trinity White Knights with “problems” in their neighborhood, including “crime and drug dealers.”
In 2020, religious and civil rights leaders in Lexington openly condemned hateful white supremacist flyers that were distributed in several Lexington neighborhoods. Those pamphlets, which didn’t feature any specific organization name, took aim at Jewish and Black people and advocated for white people to “fight back,” according to photos shared with the Herald-Leader.
The Herald-Leader has not yet been able to independently verify whether any flyers advertising the Aug. 8 event were distributed in Kentucky. SPLC is actively monitoring internal messaging about it, Carroll Rivas said.
KKK groups are talking about a Kentucky event
Daniel Boone National Forest spans more than 700,000 acres across 21 counties in Eastern and Southern Kentucky, and is among the state’s most visited outdoor recreation destinations.
Large, remote public lands can offer extremist groups an unusual combination of space, privacy and access, making them potentially attractive settings for private gatherings or demonstrations. Daniel Boone forest officials were made aware of the event flyers at the beginning of July, said Public Affairs Officer Mary O’Malley.
Rangers are investigating those reports “to ensure that all required rules and regulations are followed,” she said.
Noncommercial activities involving 75 or more people on U.S. Forest Service land generally require a special-use permit, allowing rangers to prepare for large gatherings and help protect public health and safety, maintain order and safeguard natural and cultural resources.
But no one has sought permission to hold the event advertised on the flyers, said Forest Service spokesperson O’Malley.
The flyers do not identify a specific location, saying only that the Aug. 8 gathering will take place “within Daniel Boone National Forest.” They direct prospective attendees to contact the group’s national office through a post office box in Aberdeen, Ohio, a small community across the Ohio River from Maysville.
That wording leaves open the possibility that the advertised event, if it exists, could be planned on private property within the forest’s broader proclamation boundary rather than on land actually managed by the federal government, she said.
It’s difficult to say with any certainty that the Aug. 8 event the Trinity White Knights say they are planning in the national forest will actually occur. The group distributed flyers last year for an event they said they were planning for May 17 to mark the 160th anniversary of the KKK. Likewise, O’Malley said no one approached forestry officials for a permit or permission, “and we were unable to confirm whether that previously advertised event took place.”
The forest popular with hikers and climbers from across Central and Eastern Kentucky has repeatedly come up in online chatter the SPLC monitors, Carroll Rivas said. SPLC has reviewed dialogue between purported KKK members who “at least claim” to have attended events there.
“Sometimes the photos and things they share are pretty benign,” she said. “Like, they’re just an image of the forest, so it’s hard to know whether they were really there. There is definitely evidence, but they just look like some white dude camping.”
Next month’s event has been discussed not only by the Trinity White Knights but a closely aligned and similarly active KKK off-shoot called the Silent Knights of the Ku Klux Klan out of Auburn, Indiana, she added. That does add some credibility to their claims, but it’s important to remember that the number of flyers or the scope of hate groups’ messaging doesn’t usually reflect their size.
Most KKK groups have been whittled down to “just a few people,” Carroll Rivas said, but it might be wise to avoid them.
“I don’t think that a person of color, a more obvious religious minority in the United States or an immigrant person would have a good interaction with them, and so I think that, in that case, they should be careful and cautious,” she said.