Two white nationalist rallies took place in Tennessee on Saturday, October 28: one in Shelbyville and another in Murfreesboro, USA Today reports. They were protesting the presence of immigrants from Somalia, Sudan, and other parts of the world. Some cited a shooting that took place in a Nashville church on September 24, whose suspect is a Sudanese immigrant who now legally lives in the U.S.
In Shelbyville, around 200 white nationalists showed up. They held confederate flags, called for closing borders and deporting immigrants, and chanted “white lives matter” and the Nazi slogan “blood and soil.” The white nationalist organization League of the South held a sign reading “southern cultural genocide.” Someone on the white nationalist side of the protest was arrested for “threatening behavior.” However, around 400 counter-protesters overshadowed the white nationalists, yelling “Black lives matter” and playing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Police kept the protesters and counter-protesters separate, The Tennessean reports.