(CNN) –“All we wanna do is adopt a highway,” said April Chambers, secretary of the  North Georgia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. “We're not doing it for publicity. We're doing it to keep the mountains beautiful. People throwing trash out on the side of the road ... that ain't right."

The KKK has asked the ACLU for help.

For many Americans, the Ku Klux Klan has been a symbol for terrorism, racism and evil in America, synonymous with burning crosses, lynchings and hooded men.

Even today, the name evokes vociferous discussion about the rights of a local group to adopt a highway in North Georgia, which was recently denied.

But is the latest effort to adopt a highway an introduction of a new era of a kinder, gentler Klan or merely an effort to gain attention? After more than a century and a half, what is the Ku Klux Klan today?

"We're not racists," Chambers told CNN Monday. "We just want to be with white people. If that's a crime, then I don't know. It's all right to be black and Latino and proud, but you can't be white and proud. I don't understand it." Read more at CNN