Harley drops Tenn. dealership over BLM posts
MILWAUKEE — Harley-Davidson said it is pulling its Facebook ads for the month of July and severing ties with a Tennessee dealership whose owner was accused of posting racist comments on social media disparaging Black Lives Matter protesters.
The post was allegedly made on the Facebook page of Abernathy’s Cycles, a Union City, Tennessee, motorcycle and ATV dealership, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday.
“I’m sick of this black lives matter,” read the post, which also called for Black people to go “back to Africa and stay.”
The dealership’s owner, Russell Abernathy
II, told Jackson, Tennessee, TV station WBBJ that he did not make the posts and that his account was hacked.
“The derogatory nature of the comment in no way aligns with my personal beliefs or that of Harley-Davidson Motor Co. It personally saddens me that this post has caused such wide-reaching pain to those that have already been subject to so many social injustices,” he wrote in a statement posted on the company’s website.
The Associated Press reached out to Abernathy on Thursday. He did not answer any phone calls.