Judd Blevins, a city commissioner in Enid, Oklahoma, marched in the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally. Now he faces a recall vote.
The photo of Judd Blevins was unmistakable.
In it, Blevins, bearded and heavyset, held a tiki torch on the University of Virginia campus, on the eve of Unite the Right, a 2017 coming-together of the nation’s neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.
Connie Vickers had found the photo online along with others showing Blevins marching alongside an angry mob — a crowd of men recorded throughout the night spitting and shouting “Jews will not replace us!” Vickers had it enlarged at a local print and copy shop. On a January night in 2023, she and Nancy Presnall, best friends, retirees and rare Democrats in a deeply red Oklahoma county, brought it to a sparsely attended forum where Blevins, a candidate running to represent Ward 1 on Enid’s six-seat City Council, was making his case.
They had hoped to get a question in while Blevins was on stage, but settled for confronting him after.
Prior to the 80’s it was more of an open affair, but at some point they just put a door with no windows on it and you had to be asked to go into the “heritage room”. Even into the late 90s before it was remodeled.
I read this comment a few times, and googled it, but I still don’t know what a closed-door museum or a heritage room is in this context. What are they, and what happens in them? Lol
It was a room full of racist moron paraphilia where they believed they were preserving history although it was set up as a shrine to “The South will rise again” style bullshit. I doubt you will find anything on those search terms since they were just how I described it. I don’t know if such things even existed in other towns, but ours had a room no bigger than 15x15’ enshrined with Confederate, KKK, and even white supremacist paraphernalia. It’s not a part of the towns history it would admit to now.
Wow. Thanks for the info. Can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m definitely disappointed that those places exist…ed? I hope they don’t exist. But again, I’d be disappointed, but not surprised…
No problem! My understanding is it’s gone now, hit it’s been a few years since I have been back. I wouldn’t be surprised either.