A former Ku Klux Klan meeting space is being turned into a community center to fight against racial injustice

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A South Carolina preacher and local residents are transforming a former KKK meeting space into a community center dedicated to educating and fighting against racial injustice.

In Laurens, S.C. stands the Echo Theater.

In 1996, the segregated Echo Theater became home to the Redneck Shop, a White supremacist store that sold White nationalist and neo-Nazi paraphernalia, Klans robes and Confederate memorabilia upon its forced closure in 2012.

Owned by KKK members John Howard and Michael Burden, the building also became the “World’s Only Klan Museum” and the meeting spot for several white nationalist groups, including the National Socialist Movement (NSM), the largest neo-Nazi organization in the country, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Former KKK Meeting Space Being Renovated By The Echo Project

Now the theater is being renovated by the Echo Project, an organization founded in 2019 by Laurens-area resident Regan Freeman and local preacher, Rev. David Kennedy.

The organization intends to turn the theater into a community center and museum to fight against racial injustice.

“We don’t want to just have a museum to tell this story, the struggle for justice, and the fight against the Klan, but we also want to detail what happened here to make sure it never happens again,” Freeman told CNN.

“The Echo Theater went from being a segregated movie theater to a literal Klan’s store to being in the possession of a Black minister, and it is about to become a place for reconciliation, justice and healing.”

Curiosity about former KKK meeting space led to project

Freeman grew up just 15 miles away from the notorious Redneck Shop, which he passed frequently without questioning what went on behind its closed doors.

In 2018, while he was completing his last year at the University of South Carolina, Freeman began to wonder what the shop really was.

For months, Freeman went through records, photographs and archives from the past two decades, eager to unravel the truth behind the store and KKK meeting space.

“What’s really horrifying is that what happened in that building isn’t even ancient news,” Freeman said. “The Redneck Shop was the meeting hall and recruitment center of the American Nazi party from 2007 to 2012, when the shop closed. The White supremacists that resided in this shop were promoting hatred and evil, things that bring to tears to my eyes just thinking about it, and it was all in the past decade or two.”

Freeman, the executive director of The Echo Project, told CNN more than $375,000 has been raised to transform the museum.

The museum will display artifacts from the Redneck Shop and the belongings that Freeman uncovered.

The center will also have a classroom to engage with the community.