White supremacist banners appear in Louisiana’s capital city

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — In Louisiana’s predominately Black capital city of Baton Rouge, banners promoting a white nationalist hate group seemingly appeared overnight.

Community members from Baton Rouge’s NAACP chapter removed four banners, hanging above busy roads and highways in Baton Rouge, on Sunday. The signs bore the logo and website for Patriot Front, which is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a white nationalist hate group” that formed after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Louisiana has an expansive history of racism and one of the nation’s largest Black population percentages — with the Black community accounting for one-third of the state. In Baton Rouge 53% of the population is Black, 4% is Hispanic and nearly 4% is Asian, according to data from the United States Census Bureau.

“It’s something that is very concerning to us,” Mark Armstrong, a city spokesperson, said about the banners on Thursday. “It’s rather disturbing, to say the least. I mean, this is clear racism being posted up on a banner in our community.”

Eugene Collins, president of Baton Rouge’s NAACP chapter, said he believes the banners — based on their placement and website added to it — are being used as a tactic to recruit new members.

Collins and Johnnie Domino, a member of the NAACP chapter, removed the banners after receiving concerned calls from community members. Police have been notified and they request any additional signage to be reported. In addition the FBI tracks the activities of Patriot Front and similar groups.

“I just know that if somebody doesn’t stand up to it, and people don’t speak out for all races ... that these types of hate groups will always be able to manipulate and make people think that there are no good people out there in the world,” Domino told The Associated Press.

Like the rest of the country, Louisiana has seen a drastic increase in hate crimes. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice reported Louisiana had 26 hate crimes. In 2021, the most recent data available, there were 150.

Just last year, graffiti bearing Patriot Front’s logo appeared, spray-painted with stencils, on the doors and windows of a local art gallery, The Advocate reported. One month earlier, a poster for the organization was discovered on a utility box near Airline Highway and Barringer Foreman Road.

Over the past few years Patriot Front has received national attention.

Most recently five members of the group were convicted and sentenced to several days in jail for conspiring to riot at a Pride event in Idaho. A total of 31 Patriot Front members, including one identified as its founder, were arrested June 11, 2022, after someone reported seeing people loading into a U-Haul van like “a little army” at a hotel parking lot in Coeur d’Alene, police have said.

Police found riot gear, a smoke grenade, shin guards and shields inside the van after pulling it over near the North Idaho Pride Alliance’s Pride in the Park event.

Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia and Arkansas.