Public records document Ku Klux Klan flyering and a 2015 Statehouse rally, Patriot Front propaganda and a March 1, 2025 Statehouse march, and SPLC listings of Patriot Front, the Proud Boys and other white nationalist groups in South Carolina. Federal prosecutions in the District of South Carolina include the Emanuel AME Church case against Dylann Roof and later cases in which defendants expressed white supremacist views or sought help from white supremacist organizations. [1][2][3][4][5][6]
Origins
On October 17, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties: Spartanburg, York, Marion, Chester, Laurens, Newberry, Fairfield, Lancaster and Chesterfield. The proclamation declared the unlawful combinations and conspiracies in those counties to be rebellion against the United States. On May 7, 2017, the first South Carolina historical marker to mention the Ku Klux Klan was unveiled at Allison Creek Presbyterian Church in York County. The AP reported that the plaque describes how the Klan terrorized Elias Hill and more than 150 other freed slaves during Reconstruction. [7][8]
Patriot Front is a rebrand of the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America, which attended the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to NPR reporting republished by South Carolina Public Radio on February 9, 2022. Federal court documents quoted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia on October 6, 2022 state that the Proud Boys describe themselves as a "pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world, aka Western Chauvinists." [9][10]
Footprint in South Carolina
Klan recruitment fliers appear in South Carolina news reports from 2012 to 2016: Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan fliers in West Ashley (2012) and North Charleston (July 2015); bags with candy and Klan recruitment papers in Oconee County (July 14, 2014); a Knights 311 Klub of the Confederate White Knights donation flyer in Walterboro (October 24, 2015); and Loyal White Knights of the KKK fliers in Goose Creek, which police said violated a city ordinance (May 1, 2016). [11][12][13][14][15]
On May 8, 2014, WYFF reported that the New Empire Knights of the KKK kept its headquarters in Abbeville and that the SPLC then listed three KKK organizations in South Carolina: the Abbeville group and two in Spartanburg. On January 3, 2012, the AP reported that the Redneck Shop had operated in a former movie theater in Laurens since 1996, running a Klan museum and selling Klan robes, and that a judge ruled a Black church its rightful owner. [16][17]
On July 18, 2015, the North Carolina-based Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied at the South Carolina Statehouse to protest removal of the Confederate flag. The AP reported that about 40 Klan members marched up the Capitol steps and that two men involved in a scuffle were led away by police. [1]
Patriot Front propaganda appears in Myrtle Beach, where flyers were posted outside a newspaper and a TV station (January 14, 2019), and at the College of Charleston, where campus Public Safety reported Patriot Front stickers (October 2, 2019). On March 1, 2025, approximately 40 people carrying Patriot Front banners marched up Main Street in Columbia to the Statehouse at about 11:30 AM. The Post and Courier reported no arrests, masks and sunglasses on the marchers, earlier Patriot Front stickers in Columbia, and a 2021 leaked video of members lowering a banner over a Columbia highway. [18][19][2]
Structure and organization
The SPLC listing reported by the Post and Courier on February 21, 2018 named Patriotic Flags and Red Ice as white nationalist groups in Charleston. The SPLC listing reported by WACH on June 13, 2023 named Patriot Front (statewide), Fight White Genocide (Columbia area), Patriotic Flags (Summerville area), Renaissance Horizon (Summerville area) and Southern Sons Active Club (statewide) as white nationalist, and the Proud Boys (statewide, with emphasis on Greenville and Charleston) as general hate. These are advocacy-group listings; neither article states criminal activity by the listed groups. [20][3]
Federal court documents state that Jeremy Bertino joined the Proud Boys in approximately 2018 and was for a time vice president of his local Proud Boys chapter in South Carolina. He pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy on October 6, 2022. [10]
Identifiers and symbols
The Fourth Circuit's August 25, 2021 opinion states that Dylann Roof paid for a foreign internet server to host his website, LastRhodesian.com, and posted a manifesto there on the day of the attack. The court quotes the manifesto: "We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet." The Post and Courier reported that the March 1, 2025 Columbia marchers carried banners bearing the Patriot Front insignia and that stickers bearing the same insignia had appeared at Columbia gathering places. [4][2]
Notable South Carolina cases
On July 22, 2015, a federal grand jury in South Carolina returned a 33-count indictment against Dylann Storm Roof for hate crime and firearms charges for the June 17, 2015 killings at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. A federal jury convicted him on December 15, 2016 and sentenced him to death on January 10, 2017. The Fourth Circuit affirmed on August 25, 2021; the opinion states that Roof called himself a "white nationalist" when interviewed by agents. [21][22][4]
Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell of Conway pleaded guilty on February 28, 2018 to being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition and was sentenced on July 11, 2018 to 33 months. The USAO stated that he expressed admiration for Dylann Roof on social media and that an FBI undercover agent posed as a member of a white supremacist organization. Brandon Cory Lecroy of Greenwood was sentenced on April 12, 2019 to ten years for murder for hire with a hate crime enhancement. The USAO stated that he contacted a white supremacist organization seeking help to kill his African American neighbor and requested a "flaming cross" in the neighbor's yard. [5][23][6]
On August 23, 2011, the USAO announced the guilty plea of a defendant formerly of Lexington County in a VA pension case, describing him as a national leader in the Aryan Nations white supremacist movement. On June 29, 2021, James Giannakos of Gilbert was sentenced to 28 months for interstate threats against a former federal prosecutor; WIS reported that the threats followed her public comments about Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and did not state that Giannakos was a member. [24][25]
Inside SCDC
The USAO stated on July 11, 2018 that McDowell "established White Supremacy Extremist connections while serving in prison." The release does not name the institution. No other public source opened for this profile documents Klan, Patriot Front, Proud Boys or white nationalist group activity inside SCDC facilities. [23]
Current status
The most recent South Carolina event in sources opened for this profile is the March 1, 2025 Patriot Front march on the Statehouse, which the Post and Courier described as the group's most visible demonstration in Columbia in recent memory. The newest SPLC listing opened, from 2023, names no Klan group in South Carolina. [2][3]
