`Embarrassing day'

KKK adopts mile of Mo. highway

http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/UK4958.html
Monday, 6 December 1999

Knight Ridder Newspapers
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Missouri's Adopt a Highway program brightens state roads, attracts thousands of volunteers and saves taxpayers up to $2 million a year in maintenance fees.
But this seemingly ideal alliance of citizens and government is reeling because of its newest volunteer - the Ku Klux Klan.
A federal judge ordered the state last week to allow the Klan to participate, triggering questions on whether the highly successful program should be scrapped.
Gov. Mel Carnahan called the Klan's legal victory a ``sad and embarrassing day for Missouri.''
State Transportation Director Henry Hungerbeeler said the state would appeal the ruling to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the state is successful, he said, the Klan will be dropped.
``We feel strongly that an organization with the behavior of the KKK should not be allowed to participate in this program,'' Hungerbeeler said.
But for now, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Realm of Missouri, are responsible for cleaning up a mile-long stretch of Interstate 55 near St. Louis. A sign designating the group's participation disappeared last week shortly after it went up. State officials said it would take eight weeks to replace it.
A second Klan request to adopt a stretch of highway in south-central Missouri is pending. An attorney for the Klan could not be reached for comment.
Bob Herman, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's St. Louis office, said the Klan was entitled to take part, regardless of its political views.
``What it really comes down to is censorship just doesn't work, suppression of speech doesn't work,'' Herman said.
All the controversy seems odd for a project that has attracted 4,700 groups willing to pick up litter, mow grass and plant flowers along 7,000 miles of Missouri highways.
``This has been a huge, positive story for our agency,'' said Jeff Briggs, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Transportation.
Groups that want to participate in the program contact the department. Volunteers fill out a form, indicating areas where they want to work. They pick up litter, mow grass, plant and beautify.
State officials provide gear, safety vests and trash bags. Volunteers must tend their stretches of highway at least four times a year.
Missouri began the program in 1987, one of the first states to do so. Forty-eight others have similar programs.
Arkansas encountered its own Klan highway controversy when a federal judge ordered that state to let the group adopt a stretch of road in 1992, said Robert L. Wilson, chief counsel for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.



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