Kentucky fair board to weigh sales ban on Nazi, white supremacist items

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The Kentucky State Fair Board may take up a proposal next month to prevent Nazi and white-supremacist items from being sold at its state-owned exhibition buildings.

Dr. Mark Lynn, the fair board chairman, said he will introduce a proposal at the panel’s Nov. 15 meeting that would ban vendors from selling specific “offensive” items, such as Ku Klux Klan robes and memorabilia adorned with swastikas.

Lynn said it’s likely the board will consider changes to exhibitor rules that would “disallow those from being sold or handed out anywhere on the venues’ property.” The ban would be similar to a 2015 prohibition on merchandise with the Confederate flag.

The move comes days after photos posted on Twitter by Courier Journal columnist Joe Gerth showed a Klan robe and Nazi items for sale at a gun show at the Kentucky Exposition Center, which the fair board operates.

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Some social media users who shared the photos questioned the items being sold just days after a white man with a history of violence and racial remarks allegedly shot and killed two black shoppers at a Jeffersontown Kroger. The shootings are being investigated as a possible hate crime.

Authorities have said Gregory Bush Sr., who was charged in the slayings, had first tried to enter a predominantly African-American church nearby.

While Lynn said he couldn’t speculate on what the fair board may do at its mid-November meeting, “I would assume we’re going to take a very hard stance on it.”

However, he added, any ban wouldn’t extend to items or symbols on attendees’ t-shirts or vehicles, for example. And he said it’s too early to say if the board would attempt to regulate items that vendors display but don’t sell or give away.

“If they have them on a display and are not being sold or handed out, that’s more of a personal right or freedom of choice,” Lynn said. “I don’t know that we would want to go that far to say you can’t have it.”

Former University of Kentucky and NBA player Rex Chapman, a member of the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame, said in a Twitter post Tuesday that he would like his plaque removed from Freedom Hall if officials "can't guarantee Nazi clothing & paraphernalia won’t be sold/glamorized on the premises."

"I want no part of hate," Chapman tweeted.

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Another Hall of Fame member, UK men's basketball broadcaster and former Kentucky player Mike Pratt, echoed Chapman in a Tweet, saying, "I am with you Rex they can remove mine also...No room for hate in my world...."

The fair board voted in 2015 to forbid exhibitors at state facilities from selling merchandise with the Confederate flag. The Kentucky NAACP requested the ban after a white gunman killed nine people in a racially-motivated shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C.

The merchandise for sale over the weekend was at a National Gun Day show at the Kentucky Exposition Center. Show manager Ron Dickson did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The governor-appointed fair board oversees Kentucky Venues, which manages the expo center at the state fairgrounds and the downtown Kentucky International Convention Center.

On Sunday, Kentucky Venues spokesman Cody Patterson said the agency "finds any items representing racist ideology to be despicable." At the time, he directed a reporter to the show manager for its protocol on screening exhibitors.