Protesters gather outside white nationalist rally in Tennessee

Protesters gathered outside a hotel in Tennessee on Saturday where a white nationalist conference is being held, HuffPost reported.

Police then formed a perimeter around the Tennessee state-owned Montgomery Bell State Park Inn, which is 30 miles west of Nashville, to protect patrons from the protesters outside.

Police perimeter around the white supremacist conference #AmRen is intense. We heckling them like hell. pic.twitter.com/mMYd8vave9

— Lacy MacAuley (@lacymacauley) April 28, 2018

The conference is being held by American Renaissance, a Virginia-based group classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

{mosads}

SPLC described American Renaissance as a “self-styled think tank that promotes pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites — although in hifalutin language that avoids open racial slurs and attempts to portray itself as serious scholarship.”

State park rangers required protesters to go through a metal detector test and prohibited them to bring bags inside the fenced-off protest zone across from the hotel, HuffPost reported.

According to HuffPost, more than 100 local and state law enforcement officers were at the park. Some officers were on the roof of the hotel and a helicopter was reportedly circling the area.

Protesters were prevented from wearing masks and police escorted at least one person out of the protest area for covering his face, HuffPost reported.

American Renaissance convention was billed as an opportunity for members to “plot a course for the year ahead” and will last through Sunday.