KKK Donates Video
to North Carolina Libraries
A librarians’ committee of the Greensboro (N.C.) Public Library concluded January 10 that a 60-minute videotape donated to the library by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan would add a viewpoint otherwise unrepresented in the collection. “It’s our mission to provide free and equal access to information,” GPL Director Sandy Neerman said in the January 11 Greensboro News and Record. However, the library is awaiting an attorney’s opinion on whether it could be sued for circulating a tape that apparently violates copyright law by not crediting the music used.
According to a press release appearing on the white-supremacist group’s Web site, the January 7 donation was also made to North Carolina’s High Point and Forsyth County public libraries, as well as the University of North Carolina/Greensboro’s Jackson Library. A note accompanying the video explained that it was being sent “as a protest against the Martin Luther King Holiday,” the News and Record reported.
The other libraries are also unsure whether they will keep the tape. State NAACP chapter President Skip Alston remarked to the newspaper that acceptance “would be a slap in the face to all African Americans in the city.”
Posted January 14, 2002.
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