Residents across Clintonville and Worthington woke up to an unwelcome sight overnight: flyers linked to the Ku Klux Klan scattered along sidewalks and driveways in both Columbus-area neighborhoods. The leafleting appears tied to a small Kentucky-based Klan faction that has targeted communities across the region for months.
According to myfox28columbus.com, the flyers turned up overnight in both suburbs, with residents discovering the materials on their properties when they stepped outside. The group behind the leaflets, the Trinity White Knights, is a Klan faction headquartered in Maysville, Kentucky, that has distributed anti-immigrant and white supremacist flyers across Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania to attract prospective members and generate publicity. One flyer asked would-be attendees to mail one dollar to receive an information packet and application, according to WEKU.
How the Flyers Were Dispersed
The flyers were found overnight. Community members also worked to remove the materials from sidewalks and driveways.
This is not the first time either area has confronted this kind of propaganda. Worthington experienced a similar hate flyering incident in August 2022, when white supremacist leaflets were found outside households near Flint Street, sparking community anger and prompting police reports, according to NBC4 WCMH. Local officials and residents publicly condemned that earlier incident at the time.
A Pattern Across Central Ohio
Trinity White Knights propaganda has surfaced in other Central and Southern Ohio communities before, including a March 2024 incident in Chillicothe where police responded to Klan recruitment leaflets scattered across local streets, per 10TV.
Civil rights groups have tracked a broader pattern of Klan activity in Ohio's major cities as well. In July 2023, KKK recruitment flyers were distributed in Columbus's Franklinton neighborhood and Cincinnati's Clifton area. Statewide data underscores the scale of the problem: Ohio ranked second in the nation for white supremacist propaganda incidents in 2023, recording 509 documented cases, up from 211 incidents in 2022, according to the Anti-Defamation League's annual tracking report cited by Axios.
Why Hate Crime Charges Are Rare
Despite the fear these campaigns generate, prosecuting the people responsible as hate crimes can be legally difficult.
Because modern flyering campaigns often lack explicit direct threats, prosecutors in Ohio and nearby jurisdictions frequently charge individuals tossing hate literature with misdemeanor littering violations instead of hate crimes, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Earlier this year, an Ohio man faced more than 160 littering citations totaling $50,000 for dropping antisemitic flyers from a car in Pittsburgh — an example of how littering codes, rather than hate crime statutes, often become the primary enforcement tool.
Push for a Broader Hate Crime Law
That legal gap has fueled ongoing debate at the Statehouse. Civil rights advocates at CAIR-Ohio pushed for House Bill 306 in 2025 to create a broader Hate Crime Act, arguing the state's existing ethnic intimidation law is too narrow because it only enhances penalties for select misdemeanor offenses.
Central Ohio's history with the Klan stretches back a century. The region served as a major center of Ku Klux Klan activity during the 1920s, when the organization maintained a strong presence in Columbus and neighboring suburbs including Westerville, according to the Westerville Public Library.
For now, Clintonville and Worthington residents are left doing what neighbors elsewhere in Ohio have done before them: clearing the materials from their streets.
