KKK guy shows up at a rally wearing dreadlocks, and people are weirded out

People on social media did a hard double-take at a photo of a Ku Klux Klan member with dreadlocks at a rally in Virginia.

DeVanté Cunningham posted a photo to Facebook of the unidentified Klansman at a rally in Charlottesville where members of the Loyal White Knights protested the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a park.

According to local media, the 50 or so Klan members were outnumbered by more than 1,000 counterdemonstrators, including Cunningham, on Saturday.

“ONE OF THE KLANSMEN HAD DREADS!” Cunningham wrote on Facebook.

This tweet lit a fiery reaction on Twitter.

The guy apparently stood out in the crowd, because others took pictures of him, too.

“Me and my friend were in total disbelief. We really couldn’t believe we had just seen a klansman with dreads,” Cunningham told the BBC.

“We’re looking at the KKK here, and dreadlocks are basically a symbol of African culture. It was really weird to see.”

He said he tried to talk to the guy, but the Klansman just walked away.

The tweeted photo sparked tens of thousands of retweets, GIFs and responses that ranged from astonishment and anger to laughter over a white supremacist wearing a hairstyle associated with black culture.

Some people argued that black culture doesn’t “own” dreadlocks and that even Vikings wore them. But that argument was largely drowned out.

This story was originally published July 13, 2017 at 2:03 PM with the headline "KKK guy shows up at a rally wearing dreadlocks, and people are weirded out."