Saturday, October 24, 2020

GOP Arkansas state senate candidate wore KKK costume as teen

 


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A Republican candidate running for Arkansas State Senate said he made “mistakes" as a teenager after repeatedly denying his dismissal from a Mississippi high school for wearing a racist Ku Klux Klan costume for Halloween.

Charles Edward Beckham III initially denied reports from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Arkansas Times that he was suspended and dismissed from Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science for wearing a racist Ku Klux Klan costume at a school-sponsored Halloween event. The Arkansas Times first reported Beckham's dismissal on Tuesday.

Beckham also told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a email Tuesday that people fabricated the allegations and blamed it on a ploy by the Democrats.

“First of all, I unequivocally denounce the KKK and any like minded hate group,” Beckham said in the email. “It is sad that the Democrats will do anything and say anything to try to win. The accusations that have been made about me are not only baseless and false, but disgusting.”

But the Democrat-Gazette obtained court records from a lawsuit Beckham's family filed in Hinds County Circuit Court in Jackson, Mississippi, that challenged his dismissal from the school.

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