Two former basketball hall-of-famers at the University of Kentucky demanded that their plaques be removed from Louisville’s Freedom Hall where KKK and Nazi memorabilia were being sold at a gun show over the weekend, according to the Courier Journal.
The Kentucky Expo Center held the event, where Nazi Christmas ornaments, Ku Klux Klan robes, Gestapo uniforms, and swastika shirts were being sold, Newsweek reported. The decision to sell the items—especially on the same day as the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history—was criticized by former Kentucky Wildcat players Rex Chapman and Mike Pratt on Twitter.
“If you guys can’t guarantee Nazi clothing & paraphernalia won’t be sold/glamorized on the premises then I would ask that my plaque be removed from the facility,” Chapman wrote directly to the Kentucky Venues’ Twitter account. He added, “I want no part of hate. Thanks.”
Hi @KyVenues –
My KY HOF plaque hangs in Freedom Hall commemorating induction in 2011.
If you guys can’t guarantee Nazi clothing & paraphernalia won’t be sold/glamorized on the premises then I would ask that my plaque be removed from the facility. I want no part of hate. Thanks.— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 30, 2018
Pratt replied to the tweet, and said he also wanted his plaque removed. “I am with you Rex they can remove mine also…No room for hate in my world,” he wrote.
The Kentucky Expo Center replied to Chapman’s tweet on Tuesday afternoon, denouncing the sale of white supremacist and fascist items, and calling it “despicable and unacceptable.” The expo center added that the chairman of the Kentucky State Fair Board would hold a meeting on November 15 to discuss the sale of these items.
The sale of Nazi and KKK items is especially questionable at a time when white supremacist groups and violence are on the rise in the U.S. The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked 953 hate groups across the country as of this year, with active cells in every state.