A Missouri woman has received backlash and has gotten recently fired for her racist comments against peaceful protests in Branson, Missouri.
What We Know:
- On Sunday night, a peaceful protest took place outside a Branson Dixie Outfitters store which is known for selling confederate flags. The Missouri woman, identified as Kathy Jenkins, joined a counter-protests while displaying confederate flags.
https://twitter.com/4TheCulture____/status/1274903974114721793?s=20
- The 37-second video that has 12.9M views shows Kathy Jenkins exchanging words with the peaceful protesters and stating the following: “I will teach my grandkids to hate you all, suck on this” and she stands up with the confederate flag.
- The Missouri woman called radio station KOLR 10 Ozarks first to issue an apology and said the following: “I’m so, so sorry. I mean, if it would help for me to stand with Black Lives Matter, I absolutely would do that.”
- During the interview, she mentioned that she had “blacked out” due to protestors calling her a “racist” and she did not remember what was said.
- However, her apology was widely criticized by the organizer of the protest, Faith Pittser. She commented on KOLR 10 that Kathy was supporting the counter-protests and aside from her racial remarks caught on video she was also shouting other “obscenities and hateful worlds”.
- The Branson Dixie Outfitters where the protests centered around issued a statement on their Facebook with the following statement:
“They will not be happy, until they have taken all of the freedoms you enjoy! Until every small town, bows down to there socialist/communits ideology!”
- The following days, Branson Mayor Edd Akkers mentioned the importance of promoting unity and condemning hate speech during these times.
Since the protests and the following statements from Kathy Jenkins along with Dixie Outfitters, members of the public attended a meeting to demand the city of only 11,500 to force and remove Dixie Outfitters. There have been no further comments on the Dixie store as well as Kathy Jenkins.