Connecticut town’s KKK history recalled ahead of controversial upcoming GOP event

The town of Shelton, Connecticut was brutally whacked for its history of racism ahead of a Connecticut Republican Party event.

"Fun fact. In the 1980s, the Imperial Wizard (the national leader) of the Ku Klux Klan lived in Connecticut," columnist Colin McEnroe noted in The Middletown Press.

The host of WNPR's "The Colin McEnroe Show" explained how James Farrands ran the KKK out of his garage in Shelton.

"This may be an unfair memory to bring up, right when Shelton is having another bad run. In recent weeks, the school system there had to deal with a Snapchat pic of a student in blackface lifting both middle fingers and using a common distasteful racial epithet," McEnroe explained.

That wasn't the only incident.

"What could be worse? Funny you should ask. On Oct. 11, a student field trip from Shelton was kicked out of the Smithsonian, specifically its National Museum of African American History and Culture, after a student spat off the balcony, apparently hitting an African-American person in the crowd below," he noted.

"We just have to hope and pray Shelton gets six months or a year, trouble-free, to collect itself," he wrote. "What’s that you say? Oh dear. Next week, the Connecticut Republican Party is hosting an evening of 'enlightenment' featuring political activist James O’Keefe at a venue in ... Shelton."

McEnroe blasted the far-right activist.

"O’Keefe, leader of Project Veritas, is a trafficker in fraudulence posing as a crusader for truth. More succinctly, he is muck pretending to be a muckraker," he explained. "O’Keefe was arrested for trying to tamper with the phones of then U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu while posing as a telephone repairman. He tried to discredit a CNN journalist by luring her onto a boat full of sex toys and props. Creepy, weird and unsuccessful."

"This is who the Connecticut GOP has seen fit to bring to Shelton. It is trouble not of Shelton’s making, but it doesn’t help. I’m not sure how the party picked out its venue for this gig, but Shelton did go big for Donald Trump in 2016, by about 20 percentage points," McEnroe added.