Klansmen drowned out

Driving rain and drums drowned out the words of two dozen Ku Klux Klansmen at a rally held days after a wooden cross was burned on the lawn of the first black mayor of a Tennessee town.

About 400 protesters watched from behind police lines, chanting and playing drums to drown out the Klan’s remarks.

Yesterday’s rally in Newport, the first public Klan event in the region in decades, fell on Confederate General Robert E Lee’s birthday and two days before the observance of the Martin Luther King Jr holiday.