The Ku Klux Klan is apparently coming up with crafty ways to find new members.
Between Saturday night and Sunday morning, KKK members waked around a South Carolina neighborhood and dropped bags of candy on residents' driveways, WHNS-TV reported. The candy came with a pamphlet calling for recruits, telling Seneca residents to "Save our land, join the Klan."
One neighbor, who did not give her name, told the station she was outraged when she found the sweet bribe.
"[I] talked to several neighbors. They were very angry, very upset, very ashamed at the same time- that this exists," the Seneca woman told WHNS-TV. "Ashamed to face our neighbors that do not have the same color skin that we do."
Dating back to the late 1800s, the white supremacist group has a notorious history for terrorizing black people and other minorities in the U.S.
"Always remember if it ain't white, it ain't right," says a recording on the "Klan Hotline," which the station called. "White power."
Robert Jones, leader of the group's division the Loyal White Knights, said they hold recruitment events three times a year. Called the national night ride, chapters around the U.S. visit houses during the night and leave literature.
This weekend was part of the night ride. But Jones said they don't single out houses because members have no way of knowing who lives there.
"I mean, we can't tell who lives in a house, whether they're black, white, Mexican, gay, we can't tell that," he told the station. "And if you were to look at somebody's house like that, that means you'd be pretty much a racist."
Jones stressed that now a days the KKK is not a hate group. Instead they are a civil rights group that focuses on protesting against illegal immigration, Jones said. An upcoming protest in South Carolina is scheduled for next month.
Though their ideal may be repulsive to many people, the KKK is granted freedom of speech protection under the First Amendment.
"You shouldn't have to wake up in fear that somebody might burn a cross in your yard or throw something like this out in your driveway with nothing but hurt in their intention," the Seneca woman said.
