Residents of Lincoln Heights, Ohio, a Black-majority town in the suburbs of Cincinnati, have formed armed watches after neo-Nazis recently marched close by and after fliers from the Ku Klux Klan began appearing in town.
The Washington Post reports that residents decided that they had to take matters into their own hands because they became suspicious of the police response to a neo-Nazi march that took place earlier this month on an overpass leading into the town.
The residents thus decided to take advantage of Ohio's open-carry laws and arm themselves to set up checkpoints for people coming in and out of their town.
"An American individual protecting his homeland with a firearm — I thought that was the most American thing that we [could] do," Daronce Daniels, a spokesman for the newly formed Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch Program, told the Post.
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45-year-old teacher DeRonda Calhoun tells the Post that she was particularly disturbed that her students were on the receiving end of hate from the neo-Nazis.
"The way I found out that the Nazis were in my neighborhood was through children," she said. "They were afraid."
The Post notes that Lincoln Heights has a long independent streak, as it got its start in the 1920s "as a Black enclave for laborers blocked from Cincinnati and surrounding towns because of their race."