"It is deeply troubling that items so clearly associated with hateful ideologies are so prominently displayed for sale in the French Quarter," Aaron Ahlquist, director of the Anti-Defamation League's South Central Region, wrote in a statement to The Times-Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate. "We cannot allow for hate to become normalized, and that certainly includes profiting from the symbols of hate."

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Rare Finds owner Sue Saucier first told the newspaper, "The items in my store are historical items. We don't mean to offend anyone when we sell these things. They represent history. They do not represent my sentiments."

However, she called back minutes later on Thursday and said she would remove the items Friday.

"I've consulted with my attorney, and at this time, we have done some reflection on the issue, and we are going to remove the items from the store," she said. "They will not be for sale."

A call Friday by The Associated Press to a number found online for the store reached only a prompt for an access number.

Ahlquist said he learned about the store after an out-of-town visitor went there and then told a friend, who got in touch with the Anti-Defamation League.

Items with racist imagery were prominently featured but were a relatively small portion of the store's inventory, the newspaper reported.

The flag behind the main counter was priced at $1,695. A 10-inch statuette of a hooded Klansman, priced at $1,295, was in a display case near the front of the store. A sign said it once was placed in front of buildings where the Ku Klux Klan was meeting. Just inside the door was a statue of a chimpanzee dressed as a jockey. A sign described it as a "1950's 27-inch tall black Americana cement lawn jockey. $495. Hard to find."

Historian Lawrence Powell, who retired from Tulane University in 2012 after 34 years teaching there, said the claim that the items were there for history is weakened because the signs didn't provide context such as a description of the atrocities carried out by Nazis, Klansmen or slave owners.

"She has the right to display it and sell it – that's the freedom of commerce," Powell said. "But I think it represents terrible judgment, and racial and ethnic insensitivity, and maybe worse."

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Martha Gerdes is on a "leave of absence" from the program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte pending her disenrollment from the ROTC, according to US Army Cadet Command spokesman Maj. Robert Carter. The Army Times was the first to report the discipline against Gerdes.

UNC-Charlotte spokeswoman Buffie Stephens said federal law prevents the university from commenting.

Gerdes was a student at Davidson College in North Carolina when the Army began investigating her last November. Carter said ROTC officials learned of Gerdes' online activities when an anti-racism group called Carolina Workers Collective posted screenshots of tweets it attributed to her.

Carter said Gerdes admitted to investigators that she anonymously posted the statements on her Twitter account, "@femanon," which has been suspended. Gerdes' online activities "are inconsistent with the high moral expectations of a future Army officer," he added.

"Army ROTC remains committed to leadership excellence through diversity," Carter said in a statement.

Gerdes was enrolled at Davidson from August 2015 to November 2018, majoring in physics and working as a teaching assistant in the German studies department, said college spokesman Jay Pfeifer.

The Army Times reported that Gerdes posted messages that appeared to advocate for a race war and defend the Nazi Party. Above old photos of Ku Klux Klan members burning a cross, she tweeted that she was "born in the wrong era." And, a day after a gunman killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, she wrote that she didn't care about "Jews getting shot up except insofar as it's going to make it a lot harder for a lot of white people to just exist."

In March, HuffPost leaked online chat logs that were linked to several members of the U.S. armed forces, including two Army ROTC cadets from Montana and New York, to a white nationalist group called Identity Evropa. Carter said both are "out of the programs now."

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