Page 4 - Michael Burden News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Downtown entertainment district board returns to Abilene council agenda The Abilene City Council is scheduled again to take on approval and appointment of a downtown entertainment district advisory board. The public portion of Thursday's regular meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at Abilene City Hall, 555 Walnut St. Tabled at the council'smeeting April 8, the item would create a board to study a downtown entertainment area thatwould allow people to buy an alcoholic drink and then travel from location to location in a specified area, carrying the beverage. City Manager Robert Hanna said after the p...

Former White Supremacist Store and Klan Meeting Space is Being Turned Into a Community Center to Promote Healing Jan 27, 2021 One of the surest ways to keep history from repeating itself is to shine a light in its darkest corners, and that’s exactly what this 67-year-old reverend has set out to do in the town of Laurens, South Carolina. Reverend David Kennedy outside the Echo Theater In 2019, Rev. David Kennedy and local historian Regan Freeman established the Echo Foundation. Its mission: transforming a symbol of racial inequality into an opportunity for reconciliation and education. Their...

Black Preacher To Turn 'World's Only Klan Museum' Into A Racial Healing Community Center The recently founded Echo Project has raised more $375,000 to renovate and the former KKK meeting place and white supremacist museum. January 18, 2021 at 4:39 pm Two South Carolina men have formed an organization to renovate a once well-established place of segregation and white supremacy into a place for racial healing and remembrance.  Officially forming the Echo Project in 2019, Laurens, South Carolina, residents Regan Freeman and the Rev. David Kennedy have so far raised more than $375,000 to transfo...

A former White supremacist store and Ku Klux Klan meeting space is being turned into a community center to promote healing A South Carolina preacher and local resident are turning what once was a Ku Klux Klan meeting place into a community center dedicated to educating and fighting against racial injustice. Deep in Laurens stands the historic Echo Theater, perched in between diners and cafes bustling with customers and ’50s music that can be heard from the street. But that building carries a history much darker than the cheerful life that surrounds it. In 1996, the once segregated movie the...

Work begins to turn SC racist store into racial harmony site December 31, 2020 at 8:47 am LAURENS. S.C. (AP) — Regan Freeman had spent more than a year organizing a project to tell the story of a Black South Carolina pastor who reached out to Ku Klux Klan members who wanted him dead because of his race. Freeman thought he knew the story well. Then came a tweet that led to two gray storage tubs of some of the most racist newspapers, flyers, posters, photographs and other material he had ever seen. That brought Rev. David Kennedy’s struggles as well as his patience, love...