When the welcome wagon bears burning crosses. (Image by Jason Garrett)

Even 50 years ago, the KKK seemed impossibly weakened and an artifact of our not-so-distant past as a country. Blatant racism was out of favor. While the system chugged along and Americans wrestled with the concept of “political correctness,” it still seemed like progress.

But now, after the U.S. elected a Black man president twice and a Black woman vice president once (so far), after Black Lives Matter and widespread awareness of racial issues — or perhaps because of these things — hate groups are ascendant.

A Facebook friend shares this image, a KKK care package left for many people in Blue Eye, Missouri, a small town near the Arkansas border. 

Welcome to the past.