Just days after the unsettling story of a group of violent gun-wielding white supremacists storming a child's birthday party while screaming racial slurs in the suburbs of Atlanta, authorities are now investigating the area near the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church after Confederate flags were found on the premises early Thursday morning:
"Our grounds men were so upset," says Rev. Shannon Jones of Ebenezer Baptist Church, "[so] they took pictures and then they moved them." According to the Associated Press, a security guard reportedly saw a "suspicious vehicle" near the church late Wednesday evening — though that vehicle's relation to the planted flags is currently unknown. King once gave a rousing speech at the Ebenezer Church, just blocks away from the home of his grandparents — where King resided for the first 12 years of his life.
Sadly, various white supremacist groups have a long history of planting symbols of hate near or on otherwise unifying landmarks of peace. For example, the Ku Klux Klan's first reported cross burning took place in Georgia in 1915 the night before the Thanksgiving holiday.
