MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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The KKK once attacked her family. Now she was writing to a former neo-Nazi.
By artappraiser on Wed, 08/09/2017 - 11:20pm |By Michael E. Miller @ WashingtonPost.com, Aug. 9
class at George Mason Univ. whose
members were told to write to a former
neo-Nazis in prison — a task she found
unsettling. Her grandparents had been
attacked by the Ku Klux Klan.
“It’s weird to find yourself identifying with someone who once had so much hostility toward people who look like you,” Stacy Nelson said after exchanging letters with Sean Gillespie, who is in prison for firebombing a synagogue in Oklahoma City [...]
The African American senior had been hesitant to take a course on hate crimes when the subject seemed all too real. At the time, the country was nearing the end of a divisive and racially charged presidential election campaign. The alt-right, with its call for a form of American apartheid, was on the rise. So were reports of hate crimes.
The teacher, Kevin Fornshill, a former U.S. Park Police detective, saw the assignment as an experiment.Could students studying hate crimes learn from someone who had actually committed one? [....]
URL:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-kkk-once-attacked-her-family-now-she-was-writing-to-a-former-neo-nazi/2017/08/09/be143f0a-7319-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html
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