RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR) -- The Southern Poverty Law Center’s map that showcases hundreds of groups in the United States they call “hate groups” is getting a lot of attention after a shooting outside a Jewish Community Center in Kansas over the weekend.
Police believe a white supremacist, Frazier Glenn Miller, killed three people outside the center.
At one time Miller founded a Ku Klux Klan group, the Carolina Knights, according to the SPLC, that's a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups.
It lists more than 900 hate groups across the U.S. on its website.
Twenty-six of those groups are in Virginia, and three of them are located in Richmond.
VCU History Professor Dr. Brian Daugherity specializes in civil rights issues, and is familiar with the history of hate groups.
“Not only are these hate groups continuing to exist and promote teachings that are opposed to the values of many of us today, but they also have the, they also cultivate an environment or an attitude that leads some people to act out in such a violent manner,” Daugherity said.
The three hate groups the SPLC said exist in Richmond are as follows:
- The European-American Unity and Rights Organization, which they call a white nationalist group.
- The Nation of Islam, which they call a black separatist group.
- The Confederate Hammerskins, which they call a skinhead group.
“As our society progresses and becomes more modern, individuals who have beliefs that are different from those modern values feel threatened, and, in some cases, they’re organizing around that opposition to the change, or in some cases, as in the news we heard this weekend, they’re actually acting out to try to prevent that change from occurring,” Daugherity said.
CBS 6 reached out to the local leader of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, but we have not heard back from him yet.
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