News

SMALL TOWN

SMALL TOWN JUSTICE

Rural Missourians protested in support of Black lives — and were met by armed neighbors

MBY DANIEL HILL ain Street Memories, a small shop in Fredericktown, is best known as a vintage and antique gift store. But, in a pinch, it can also serve as a perfectly fine sniperȇs nest. 7hatȇs the impression For Frederick Dorsey Jr., the 21-yearcourthouse.ȋ one might get from the old Zho had organi]ed the protest the Meanwhile, a Jeep circled the scene scene that played out on the evening weaponry was a little much. But it was for upwards of three hours, blasting of June 24, when a group of protestnothing compared to the blatant raca David Allan Coe song titled “N*gger ers aiming to shed light on racism in ism hurled at him by many of those )ucNerȋ Zhose lyrical content is Must as the small southeast Missouri city were same armed townsfolk. reprehensible as its name implies. met by a larger group of counterproȊ$ lot of &onfederate ȵagsȋ 'orsey Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the testers — many armed to the teeth. whose mother is white and whose facounterprotesters wore Trump apPhotos and video from the event show ther is Black, says of the scene. “And I parel and Zaved ȵags in support of the that gun-wielding townspeople were also saw people threaten to hang me president. joined by members of the Three Perfrom a noose. A few people were mak“The counterprotest was supposed to centers — a group described by the ing monkey gestures and telling me I be a ȆBacN the Blueȇ protest. But it turned Southern Poverty Law Center as an needed to go back to my own commuinto a 7rump rally somehoZȋ 'orsey anti-government militia — dressed nity Zhen ,ȇve lived in )redericNtoZn says. Ȋ, still donȇt understand hoZ that in military fatigues and tactical vests. for sixteen years. I got called many happened. >0y@ protest Zasnȇt even 7hey carried riȵes pistols and ]ip ties racial slurs. And then my own mother about the police department; it was just similar to the ones used by law enZas protesting against me.ȋ to shoZ hoZ racist )redericNtoZn is.ȋ forcement in lieu of handcuffs. A man In videos, counterprotesters can be It would seem that Dorsey made his spotted on the roof of the antique shop seen imitating monkeys and making point. Still, witnessing his own family even had a suppressor on his gun. gestures with their hands that imply shout threats and insults at him was And on the other side, ostensibly in hanging by a noose. When Cheyenne more than a little surreal. defense of the protesters, HawaiianDevereaux, a Black drag queen based “Me and my mom have never had a shirt-sporting Boogaloo Bois, a loosely in St. Louis, made her way over to the close relationship. Before this protest organi]ed group that believes a second counterprotestersȇ side of the street a , havenȇt seen her in several yearsȋ American civil war is impending, carvoice could be heard saying, “Whatever Dorsey, who lives with his dad, says. ried their oZn riȵes and tactical gear. that thing is arrest it.ȋ “And she was on the other side, I guess Not everyone had guns, though. Ȋ,ȇm a drag Tueenȋ 'evereau[ reyou could call it the Back the Blue, proSome townsfolk brought bladed weapplied calmly. Trump side, saying that I was just doons. At least two arrived on the scene Ȋ<ouȇre a drag alrightȋ the man reing all this to shoZ my ass and ,ȇm putwith broadswords. Others wielded sponded, before another man said, ting my life at risk and everything. And two-by-fours. “String it up. String it up from the then my stepdad and his kids said they Zere gonna Nill me because ,ȇm doing all this. He kept calling me stupid and

Activists at Fredericktown’s June 24 protest were met with racist taunts and threats from armed counterprotesters. | ADAM HAMLIN Continued on pg 10

Photographer Adam Hamlin, le, with Frederick Dorsey, Jr., one of the protest organizers. | JESS MARIE PHOTOGRAPHY

Missouri Social Activism, or MOSA, has brought crowds of demonstrators to small towns throughout southeast Missouri since getting its start this summer. | ADAM HAMLIN

PROTESTS Continued from pg 9

saying I needed to grow up. And I was like, if anything, this is the most grown-up thing I’ve done.

“I didn’t say anything back, because it wasn’t worth my time, because I feel like what I’m doing is right,” Dorsey adds. “And it’s much needed.”

Fredericktown is a small city located about an hour and a half south of St. Louis, in the northeastern foothills of the St. Francois Mountains. The town’s early history saw it as a mining hub Zith mines Must east of the city that were, at one point, the largest source of lead in the United States.

It is the county seat of Madison &ounty Zith Must under  people and a population that is 96 percent white, according the U.S. Census Bureau. The town contains two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school.

In some ways, Fredericktown is familiar to Adam Hamlin, 34, an independent Mournalist Zho Zas shooting photos at the surreal scene on June 24. Hamlin grew up in Imperial, a similarly small and predominantly Zhite toZn Must an hour north in Jefferson County. He still lives in JeffCo today, but no longer in Imperial. He reasons that his experience gives him a unique view into the racism that can sometimes be pervasive in small-town America.

“I come from a little-bitty town myself. I come from Imperial, Missouri, which is really little. I grew up there most of my entire life, but especially throughout the entire ’90s,” Hamlin says. “I know how a lot of these little towns often behave. And I didn’t go to these places looNing for that but they definitely haven’t hidden it either.” In the past, Hamlin photographed nature — a far more peaceful affair. But ever since the events of Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 that ended in the killing of Heather Heyer by a white supremacist who deliberately drove his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters, Hamlin has felt compelled to document protests. He’s also trained as a street medic Must in case. Ȋ, figured if , could do anything , could bring some medic supplies,” Hamlin says. “But I could also capture what was happening, so that way there could never really be a question about what’s going on.”

In keeping, Hamlin has spent years attending and documenting protests across the region — lately, many of them in the small towns in southeast Missouri. He notes that oftentimes those opposed to Black Lives Matter protests in more rural communities claim they don’t want to see their towns looted and pillaged — a familiar refrain for anyone who has seen the comment section on a news story in the past couple months. But Hamlin doesn’t buy it.

“That’s the line that they give — that they are Must protecting their community — but it’s hard to believe thatȋ he says. Ȋ7he maMority of these protesters that show up in these little rural towns also live there. So they’re not looking to destroy anything at all, and I know that the counterprotesters also know that. But the counterprotesters are also the kind of people who generally are gonna have signs on their house that say,

Leticia Hindrichs, right, is one of MOSA’s ten organizers. | ADAM HAMLIN

‘We don’t call cops’ or things like that. So they can say that they’re wanting to protect their community all they want, but I think that they’re kind of looking for a show or something that they can get in on in that manner.”

Hamlin has seen counterprotesters behave in all sorts of ways that don’t imply fear or defense, but rather a kind of political theater. At a recent protest in Perryville, he says, a couple drove around for hours with a Trump ȵag ȃ so long that they had to switch seats at one point — and threZ pacifiers at the protesters to imply they were babies. At another recent protest in Park Hills, Hamlin watched a group of protesters get into a car and begin to drive away. Counterprotesters chased the car on foot.

Still, Hamlin says what he saw in Fredericktown on June 24 was the most shocking display he’s seen since he got started.

“It was pretty gross, all things considered,” he says. “Like, Perryville had an actual Nazi who came out and Sieg Heiled and shouted ‘white power’ a bunch, and Fredericktown was still worse than that.”

At one point in Fredericktown, Hamlin says, a man was shouting threats and taunts so forcefully that his teeth actually ȵeZ out of his mouth.

“He went to shout something, but instead of the word coming out, his top fake teeth came out. Like actually hit the ground,” Hamlin says. Ȋ+e Must picNed ȇem up and put ȇem back in his pocket.”

As widespread protests have continued across the nation in response to George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis, the already stark political divisions in the U.S. have become even more pronounced. On the right, this has led to a demonization of the predominantly leftwing protesters, enthusiastically

Activists at Fredericktown’s June 24 protest were met with racist taunts from counterprotesters, like this gesture graphically depicting the act of lynching. | ADAM HAMLIN

Armed militia groups, including the ree Percenters, have had a heavy presence at some protests. Here a sniper on the roof trains his rifle on a protester. | ADAM HAMLIN

Fredericktown resident John Johnson, organizer of June 24’s “Back the Blue” counter-protest. | ADAM HAMLIN

stoked by President Trump, who has referred to them as “thugs,” “vandals,” “anarchists” and even “terrorists.”

Fear of BLM and antifa, the latter of which Trump has outright labeled a “terrorist organization,” has led to some wild fever dreams in rural and suburban communities that there will soon be riots and looting on the streets of their towns. But that fear has also been deliberately sown by neo-Nazi groups who have even gone so far as to impersonate their anti-fascist rivals online in order to further push the idea that dangerous mobs are planning to descend upon smalltown America and wreak havoc. In early June, Twitter suspended a newly created account with the username @ANTIFA_US after it posted a rather alarming tweet:

“Tonight’s the night, Comrades,” the tweet read, accompanied with a broZn fist emoMi. Ȋ7onight Ze say ‘Fuck The City’ and we move into the residential areas... the white hoods.... and we take what’s ours ...”

Twitter swiftly moved to suspend the account for violating its rules against the incitement of violence. After an investigation, the company linked the account to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Identity Evropa was also involved in organizing the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.

By the time Twitter suspended the account, though, the genie was already out of the bottle. The message was retweeted hundreds of times and popped up in several online news stories from rightleaning publications. Screenshots of the tweet made their way onto Instagram and Facebook, where they spread unabated. 6ocial media Zas ȵooded around this time with similar stories of antifa “bussing in” rioters to small towns — claims that were wholly unsubstantiated. On June 1, as reported by the Associated 3ress the sheriffȇs oɚce in 3ayette County, Idaho, a rural county with a population of about 24,000, took to Facebook to address the substantial number of phone calls it had received tipping the department off to an alleged antifa invasion set to hit their community.

“The Payette County Sheriff’s 2ɚce has been monitoring social media posts that have stated FALSE information,” reads a statement on Facebook. “The original post (with false information) states: ‘Family and friends in Idaho. We were told by our Congressman that Antifa has sent a plane load of their people into Boise and three bus loads from Seattle into the rural areas. The sheriff in Payette has already spotted some of them. We were warned to lock our doors and our guns. We think they will stay in the larger communities but it is best to be prepared..’

“The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has not had contact Zith and has not verified that $ntifa is in Payette County. The Payette County 6heriffȇs 2ɚce has not given any specific Zarnings to our citizens about Antifa or other organizations. The information in this social media post is not accurate.” Obviously, planes and buses full of antifa “terrorists” did not show up in Payette County. But the disinformation was part of a pattern, with the AP noting similar false ȵags in 7oms 5iver a 1eZ -ersey suburb; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Milan, Michigan. The Sioux Falls warning even used identical language as the one debunked by Payette County.

Given the storm of misinformation, it might make some sense that the scene in Fredericktown on June 24 featured a whole lot of guns.

That day’s “Back the Blue” counterprotest was organized by a Fredericktown resident named John Johnson as a direct response to Dorsey’s efforts to highlight the existence of racism in his city. Dorsey’s assessment of Johnson is succinct.

“He’s a shit disturber,” Dorsey says.

Johnson’s public Facebook page seems to bear that out. On June 27, Must a feZ days after the protest Johnson changed his listed profession on the site to indicate that he is the social media manager for the Southern Poverty Law Center (he is not). About a week and a half after that, on July 8, he posted a message to his followers that might explain the imaginary career change: “If you have your work place listed on Facebook remove it,” he wrote, adding in a comment, “People are getting fired from their Mobs. B/0 is stalking Facebook pages and doxxing individuals. They will contact your employer and try to get you fired.ȋ

Looking through Johnson’s social media posts, a few things become clear. Johnson seems to align politically with the right — there are multiple posts in support of Donald Trump, as well as many that show disdain for Democrats.

“Not all Republicans are Christian but I can be sure to know that no Democrats are,” he wrote on July 17.

Johnson’s page also promotes

Continued on pg 12