When Arkansas raised signs announcing that the Ku Klux Klan had volunteered to keep the shoulders of Route 65 free from trash in 1992, motorists went out of their way to throw extra garbage along the rural route.

When Pasco County, Fla., raised Adopt-A-Road signs bearing the Klan's name along Lake Drive in 1993, vandals ripped them down so often the state refused to keep paying to replace them and the Klan gave up.

When the Klan in 1997 applied for the roadside cleanup program in Tarrant County, Texas, the state filed a federal lawsuit claiming the Klan intended to intimidate minorities by raising signs and the Klan backed down.

As officials in Anne Arundel County debate the Klan's recent request to "adopt" Gambrills Road, highway administrators across the U.S. described the Klan's efforts to clean up roads as generally short-lived and troubled by vandalism.

The American Civil Liberties Union last week demanded that Anne Arundel either grant the request of a Klansman from Mayo to join the county's Adopt-A-Road program or shut down the program for everybody.

Discouraged by an enrollment that has plummeted from 4 million nationally in 1924 to fewer than 3,000 members today, the notoriously racist and violent organization has been trying to lure new members by remaking its image into that of a community service organization, said Marilyn Mayo, an assistant director of the national Anti-Defamation League.

"It's all about image. They know that guys in hoods have a bad image," said Mayo. "Their efforts are not working, however, because people in this country are smart enough to understand that underneath that 'new image' the Klan is still the same -- racist and anti-Semitic."

A spokeswoman for a national Klan organization said that the group has been trying to get its name onto Adopt-A-Road signs nationally as a way to counterbalance what she described as an unfairly negative image.

But Rachel Pendergrast, a spokeswoman for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan's national office in Arkansas, denied that the Klan's efforts have been insincere or a failure.

"Any type of civic organization like our own wants to let people know that we are trying to help the community and we are out there, working," said Pendergrast.

Pendergrast's fellow Klansmen in Arkansas have stopped working to clean up roads, however.

A federal court in 1992 ruled that the state's highway department must allow the Klan to adopt Route 65 in rural Boone County. The state's earlier efforts to keep the Klan logo off the Adopt-A-Road signs violated the organization's right to freedom of speech, the court ruled.

After that decision, the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department paid about $320 to raise a pair of signs on that road recognizing that the group had volunteered to clean up the road, said Randy Ort, public affairs officer for the department.

For two or three years, a handful of Klansmen would assemble beside the road -- which is near the Klan's national headquarters -- four times a year to pick up litter, Ort said.

But the cleanup effort was troubled by several problems. Drivers would dump trash beside the road, knowing the Klan was responsible for picking it up, Ort said. Vandals ripped down the signs 12 times, requiring the state to pay $160 per sign to replace them.

Police had to intervene to keep the Klan in line, Ort said, because the organization raised tables on the side of the road to distribute racist literature. This encouraged drivers to stop and park illegally, Ort said.

Finally, the Klan appeared to lose interest, Ort said. They stopped collecting trash and the state removed the signs.

"I feel they were doing it just for the publicity. But then again, most groups are doing it for the same reason," Ort said.

In Texas, the Klan in the spring of 1997 applied for a pair of Adopt-A-Highway signs in Tarrant County.

State Attorney General Dan Morales sued the organization, saying it was only trying to raise the signs to intimidate minority drivers, said Heather Browne, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office.

Faced with the vigorous opposition, the Klan gave up on the program, Browne said.

In Florida, Pasco County officials in 1993 raised a pair of signs on Lake Drive in the Moon Lake area, according to Jackie Tambasco, a worker in the county utilities department.

The county moved the signs, however, because they were near a bus stop where black children waited, said Christine Cook, coordinator of the county's Adopt-A-Road program. Vandals ripped down the signs several times, Cook said, and the county finally told the Klan that it would no longer pay for the replacements.

Finally, in November 1995, the Klan gave up and stopped participating in the program, said Tambasco.

"In the beginning they were real gung-ho, but they were apparently frustrated by the vandalism and maybe they found it difficult to get their people to participate," said Tambasco.

Pub Date: 3/10/99