Kansas Town Removed From Hate Group List

March 21 - After years of fighting to clear its name, a small Kansas town is finally taken off a list of hate group homes. Lakin was once named as a home of Ku Klux Klan members.

Lakin is a town of about 2,500 residents. Until now many of them had never heard their town was associated with a hate group, but it's something officials have been dealing with for years.

Lakin is finally being taken off the national hate group map. It's produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center's intelligence project monitors hate activity in the United States. Every year the center updates it's map and since 2000 Lakin has been on it. That's because a Lakin post office box was once listed as a regional center on the Imperial Klans of America website.

A spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center says Lakin will be taken off the map because the Ku Klux Klan took the address off its web site. Residents say there are many things that should put Lakin on the map, but hate isn't one of them.

Nobody knows who originally had the post office box but the town's postmaster says it's belonged to several people over the years. All of them were shocked to learn it was associated with a hate group.