Many who live in a predominantly black neighborhood in North Charleston are angry after finding KKK fliers on the windshields of their cars.
Some were shocked, some were angry, and one woman says she was targeted. Cherri Delesline says she was a target of racial hate.
Delesline lives in the Dorchester Waylyn neighborhood of North Charleston and says when she walked to her car Wednesday morning last week, someone had left a “KKK Neighborhood Watch” flier on the windshield of her car.
Delesline said, “They’re targeting us right now. What did we do to them? What did we do to them to make them come around here?”
Delesline told News2 on Tuesday afternoon, exactly one week ago, she saw several suspicious white men driving through her predominantly black neighborhood waving the Confederate flag. Delesline believes those men may be the ones who left the racist flyers.
“We actually saw a white pickup truck and then we actually saw a blue pickup truck. They had the flags out the window in their hands, not on the truck, but in their hands, just waving around the flag,” explained Delesline. “We were like, ‘Wow!’ That’s the first thing that happened, and then after that, the next morning is when we actually found the letters.”
Delesline says she filed a police report with her other neighbors who received similar letters on their cars.
The president of the Dorchester Waylyn Neighborhood Association, Jesse Williams, said he was shocked to hear about the fliers.
Williams told News 2, “We want the residents to be informed of what happened, but of course we don’t want to be fearful, and so we want to move forward and support each other.”
And moving forward is exactly they’re doing. Delesline made new fliers and is giving them out to her neighbors. The new fliers read, “We say NO to the KKK. This community stands against racism.”
Delesline explained, “I want people to put those up inside their windows so, you know, when they come through the neighborhood and they think that they can intimidate us, they can know that this neighborhood is one that stands together as one.”
Neighborhood residents say they don’t know if the fliers were meant to intimidate, scare, or anger them; but whatever the distributor of these fliers had in mind, community members say, ‘Take it elsewhere.’
On Wednesday night, Delesline is organizing a special meeting at 6:00pm at 2604 Wye Lane in North Charleston to discuss the racist fliers – and how community members plan on standing up to the KKK, if they do come back.
Officials say they still aren’t sure if this is the same group of KKK members that are supposed to rally at the SC Statehouse Saturday, but we do know that a KKK chapter from North Carolina still plans to be there from 3:00pm to 5:00pm.
