CASPER, Wyo. —  The head of a Wyoming office of the NAACP is defending talks with a Ku Klux Klan activist, the first known meeting between the oldest civil rights group in the United States and a branch of the white supremacist network.

Jimmy Simmons, president of the NAACP in Casper, Wyoming, said on Wednesday, Sept. 4, he opened discussions with John Abarr of the United Klans of America because that group has renounced violence and because he felt the best way to gain insight into hate crimes was “to go to a hater.”

John Abarr, left, a kleagle of the United Klans of America out of Great Falls, Mont., and Jimmy Simmons, center, president of the NAACP Casper branch, arrive for a meeting Saturday night at the Parkway Plaza hotel in Casper, Wyoming.

The meeting took place under heavy security on Saturday, Aug. 31, at a hotel in Casper and was criticized by other civil rights organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“It’s utterly counterproductive,” said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the nonprofit center. “This, in effect, gives unmerited legitimacy to the racist right, and I don’t see how any good can come of it.”

Civil rights experts said they could not recall any previous meeting between the National Association for the Advancement Colored People (NAACP) and a branch of the Klan, which has long been associated with hooded, robed night-riders who menaced blacks in the Deep South with cross burnings, lynchings and other acts of violence.