A group of Ku Klux Klan members says it is planning military style combat training for the first time in KKK history - exactly 60 years after the birth of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
The Loyal White Knights (LWK) faction plan to take up arms for a civil war they say will break out “soon”.
One family – comprising mother Amanda, father Sam and sons Dustin, 11, and Mike, 14 - invited the media along to a KKK rally in April, held in a secret forest location near Parkersburg, West Virginia.
Participants at the rally dance around a burning cross
Behind closed gates, the participants frequently spat the “n-word” and openly supported the killing of homosexuals they branded “fags”.
Screams of “white power” angrily erupted from a wooden hut inside a forest clearing early on a Saturday morning - where the rally was hosted.
Armed men and women wearing trademark robes and pointed hoods gather jeering around a kitchen knife rack – shaped to look like a black man with knives through his belly and a noose around his neck.
The group is deadly serious and proof that the KKK is fully active, today.
The rally was the result of weeks of recruiting and discreetly publicising their event and saw 40 people come together - including newcomers.
Sam was one of six main speakers at the rally where he announced they are arming for a race war they believe will soon grip America.
He refused to give his family name over fears his family would be victimised, but warned of his group’s controversial plans in his speech.
He said training would begin when existing and new KKK members leaving the military returned from overseas campaigns in “the next couple of weeks”.
“This is something that no Klan has ever done before,” he said.
A family including their two sons aged 11 and 14 at the rally
“We’ve organised training in survival, firearms and unarmed combat to prepare for the war that is coming.
“All our boys are finally coming back home from the military and we’re getting a lot more military members joining.”
To the delight of the rally-goers, he added: “We’re going to arm and train in hand-to-hand combat for the upcoming battle.
“The women might not like it but we’re going to use live animals and show people how to skin deers, rabbits, and squirrels.
“In the end we’re gonna need this to survive.”
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Klan members at the rally believe America is a ‘house of cards’ on the brink of collapse.
“We already know what’s coming, Sam added. “China and Germany don’t want mess with us no more.
“Hell our dollar ain’t worth but 65 cents right now. And that’s according to the last news report.
“So we’re gonna have to start training the men, the women, and the kids and get ready.”
Once America’s government crumbles, the KKK predict “all out war” between people of different races trying to gain control.
In preparation the LWK have been increasing their recruitment drives like many other Klan factions around the United States.
The faction believes a race war is on the cards for America - and are training in preparation
And unlike KKK members of the 20th century, members in 2014 use social media to attract new members and spread their views.
University student and LWK Grand Dragon for Virginia State James Moore, 23, was another of the six rally speakers.
He plays hate rock on his acoustic guitar - while wearing his KKK hood - and runs a Youtube channel where he preaches anger-filled Klan material.
One of his online posts reads: “White unity from Amerikkka!!! unite against the sharpies and scum! skins and klans unite!!! WHITE PRIDE!!!!”
Like James, the LWK leaders maintain a website http://www.kkkknights.com/ where they run special sections for Klanswomen and even a ‘Kids Kadet Klub’.
Ku Klux Klan rally
Junior members, aged between 13 and 17, are told to pledge that they will keep their membership ‘a secret’.
The chat room section of the website wants users: ‘Caution - the ’N’ word spoken here”
The ‘Ladies’ section of the site warns against the dangers of ‘race mixing’.
Some kids, like Mike and Dustin, are simply enlisted by their long-serving Klan parents. Both boys attended the Parkersburg rally bur couldn’t be photographed without their hoods on.
Like her husband Sam, mum Amanda refused to give the family surname over fears her boys would be targeted at school.
She said: “Being around the Klan all their lives has given the boys good judgement.
“It’s helping them face the situation here in America.
“We teach them to keep their Klan activities a secret and in the home.
“They aren’t allowed to talk about it outside school unless they are with us at a rally like this.
“The Klan is a Christian organisation, so they get to read the bible and they enjoy going to rallies and they get to play with kids their own kind.
“I was going to rallies when I was pregnant with both the boys, and they’ve been gong to rallies since before they could crawl.
“We didn’t teach our kids that they couldn’t have African-American friends, but raising them in the Klan meant they chose the right way themselves.
“They don’t choose to have black or Mexican friends on their own.”
To attract newcomers the lower-ranking members of the Klan go on ‘night rides’ where they litter small towns with the leaflets under cover of darkness.
The night riders drive slowly through neighbourhoods and throw leaflets in sandwich bags weighed down by grains of rice to stop them blowing away.
Some pamphlets they drop vary from neighbourhood-watch-style flyers to mock World War I style ‘Your Klan Needs You’ posters.
At the rally that follows, awards are presented to the foot soldiers who dropped the most leaflets or who had worked especially hard on recruitment.
One member, a single dad named David in his 30s, who hides his identity with a black baseball cap and sunglasses, said: “The night rides are good but I prefer to just speak to people.
“I am permanently recruiting because that’s what we need - more members.
“And we’re willing to try anything. Even if I am in there supermarket, I start speaking to people and feel them out. Good chance you’ll see them at our next rally.”
The LWK themselves span at least three US states including Virgina, West Virginia and North Carolina.
They are one of several Klan factions totalling up to 6,500 members across the US.
Professor of criminal justice Brian Levin, who has been working in and around the KKK since the 1970s, said: “Groups like the Ku Klux Klan sometimes choose to arm themselves because it’s a way of saying ‘we mean business’.
“The danger the Klan poses won’t come in the form of a national army because their numbers are just too small.
“The real danger is more likely to come from small splinter cells, sometimes with new leaders aiming to make a name for themselves.
“The KKK is a shadow of it’s former self, which had far greater numbers.
“But now, it’s like a cornered rat and they can be even more dangerous.”
On April 13, a former KKK faction leader, Glenn Miller, a.k.a Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., was arrested and later charged after a rampage-style shooting at the Overland Park Jewish Community Centre in Kansas.
Three people died in the shootings, including 14-year-old Reat Griffin Underwood and his grandfather Dr William Lewis Corporon, 69, and Terri LaManno, 53.
Professor Levin added: “They are becoming less culturally significant but this can lead to desperate acts in some extremist groups like the KKK.
“Today the KKK is targeting younger people for two reasons.
“They are traditionally made up of members from an older demographic, but young people help keep your organisation alive.
“They also give you a cultural boost in terms of modern approaches to recruitment and technology like the internet.”