On February 7, thirteen neo-Nazi and white supremacist terrorists gathered on a highway bridge and exit ramp armed with assault rifles and engaged in a hateful rally against the predominantly African American residents of Lincoln Heights, Ohio. As the demonstrators proudly displayed swastikas, waved banners filled with hate speech, and shouted racial slurs, local residents confronted the aggressors, bearing firearms of their own before setting up an impromptu checkpoint to prevent more demonstrators from entering.
Lincoln Heights, a village of about 3,000 residents located thirteen miles north of Cincinnati, Ohio, is the oldest self-governing African American community in the United States north of the Mason-Dixon line. The suburb’s once-thriving business district and rich community resources have slowly eroded over the course of several decades due to disenfranchising policies promoted by the Cincinnati Police Department and Hamilton County officials that have targeted the village’s tax base, property valuation, and self-governance. Lincoln Heights, formerly one of the wealthiest African American communities in the United States, has faced a systemic denial of resources since its incorporation in 1946, when only ten percent of its originally proposed area was awarded by Hamilton County, excluding industrial plants that were instead given to the predominantly white village of Evendale. The village has also been affected by a Cincinnati Police Department gun range built on its border, which has caused such intense noise pollution that residents have compared it to living near a war zone.
Because the Lincoln Heights police force was disbanded in 2014, law enforcement from the neighboring village of Evendale, a predominantly white community, and the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office were the first to respond to the rally. Residents of Lincoln Heights quickly gathered to address the armed threat to their community and were kept back by police seeking to avoid any escalation between the two groups.
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department is the closest operating law enforcement agency to the site of the rally, with offices at the Lincoln Heights Municipal building less than half a mile from the spot on the highway where demonstrators dropped a banner that read “America is for the white man.” Eye-witness videos, traffic camera footage, and body-camera footage from officers all show that after local residents assembled to expel the neo-Nazi group, Hamilton County Sheriff’s deputies and police officers from the nearby village of Evendale escorted the demonstrators back to their rented U-Haul truck and helped them load their racist paraphernalia before allowing them to leave without pressing charges.
Daronce Daniels, a Lincoln Heights village councilmember and a leader of a local revitalization and advocacy nonprofit called The Heights Movement, says that law enforcement’s response to the aggressors’ display reflects the lasting impact of public policy on Lincoln Heights, which has relied on the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office since 2014. “It’s a disappointment as a human and taxpayer to see police protecting hate crimes and terrorists over their community members,” Daniels says.
Kerem Gençer
Portraits of all of the Lincoln Heights, Ohio, mayors are displayed in the lobby of the Lincoln Heights Municipal Building, February 2025. The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office is located inside the same building.
According to a statement released by the Evendale Police Department, the demonstrators did not apply for a permit and law enforcement had no prior knowledge of the rally. The Evendale police determined that the rally was not unlawful because their position on the overpass sidewalk did not block traffic. The demonstrators arrived on the scene in a U-Haul truck, potentially violating an Ohio law which prohibits drivers from allowing passengers to ride in an unlatched cargo area. Evendale Police Chief Tim Holloway said in a statement that the “public safety concerns of the situation outweighed any potential positives associated with issuing a single traffic violation.”
On February 12, the school district of Lockland, another nearby village, formally requested “a third-party investigation of the Village of Evendale and the Village of Lockland Police Departments, specifically in reference to the events that occurred the afternoon of Friday, February 7, 2025.” This request was made after a camera on the Lockland Educational Annex building, which serves preschool through fourth grade students, captured footage of an Evendale police cruiser leading the demonstrators’ U-Haul truck onto school property following their expulsion from the overpass.
Videos of the incident shared on social media show neo-Nazis with assault rifles shouting racial slurs at local residents. At one point, a man seen returning from a conversation with law enforcement is heard saying “Hey Carl, the cops just said they’ll give us an escort to Freddy’s car,” to another man, who responds “I’m ready to fight, fuck them n—-rs.”
The men also made reference to their involvement in the “Hate Club,” a hardcore segment of the white supremecist movement. The group was founded in October 2024 by Anthony Atlick, a white supremacist active in Missouri and Ohio who has been associated with neo-Nazi groups such as the Blood Tribe and the Goyim Defense League (GDL).
On February 11, Evendale police shared that the U-Haul vehicle used by the neo-Nazis was last known to be travelling toward Louisville, Kentucky, where the group was reportedly staying in a hotel.
“If you don’t feel safe in your community then what do you have? [Safety is] the foundation,” says Daniels. In recent weeks, he says, outsiders have been coming into the Lincoln Heights community, taking pictures of residents and their license plates in an effort to terrorize them. Daniels believes that racist organizers are feeling emboldened in the wake of the pardoning by President Donald Trump of the January 6 Capitol rioters, many of whom carried flags and symbols associated with neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and other forms of far-right extremism.
“Our entire Black community finds this [January 6 rioter pardons] unacceptable,” he says.
In the days following the white supremacist march, local residents set up a checkpoint at the site of the rally, and have since been patrolling their own streets in lieu of law enforcement. A Lincoln Heights resident who gave their name only as Von said that the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office promised to increase patrols in the neighborhood, but that they have yet to see this enacted. Von, Daniels, and other members of The Heights Movement, gathered the evening of February 12 to report on the day’s patrols to other group members and residents. According to Von, the day after the rally, another vehicle transporting individuals wearing swastika arm patches was seen driving through Lincoln Heights.
Christopher Williams, the interim village manager of Lincoln Heights, who is also the village’s public works director, has family roots dating back 100 years in the land where Lincoln Heights sits. He says many of the ancestors of today’s Lincoln Heights residents migrated from the South and founded this community to resist the negative impacts of Jim Crow era segregation. Seen as a beacon for African Americans seeking prosperity and autonomy for their businesses and families, the self-governed suburb grew through the 1970s with Black businesses, police chiefs, and mayors leading the way.
Williams doesn’t doubt that residents will continue to “stand tall” in the face of terrorists threatening their peace. “We live together, we go to school together, we stick together.”