CAMPTON, Ky. — They call themselves "Rednecks For Black Lives." A growing group started in Kentucky by a man who once drove around with a Confederate flag magnet on his car.

“She started to cry and I started to cry. That’s when I knew I had to do something,” said Greg Reese. 

He’s describing the moment he had an awakening and later made a series of changes.

 “When I saw George Floyd’s daughter on TV saying, 'my daddy changed the world' and I wanted to make that true. I wanted that to happen. My daughter was sitting there on the couch and she started crying, and I started crying, and I knew right then that I was going to find a way,” Reese said. 

Before Floyd’s death, Reese, 40, had a Confederate flag magnet on the trunk of his car. He threw that magnet in the trash sometime in June.

“The killing of George Floyd is what made me want to show people that I wasn’t racist because I finally realized at 40-years-old, 'Hey wait, if they see that Confederate flag, people are going to assume I’m racist,'” Reese said.

Reese grew up in Eastern Kentucky his whole life and now lives in Campton. He calls himself an educated Redneck. But growing up, he was surrounded by people who would often make racist comments, something Reese never encouraged, but he didn’t stop it either.

Now he's standing up for his beliefs. 

“I had to help. I had to get out there, couldn’t be their fight.  It had to be our fight,” Reese said.

His fight is in the form of a new bumper sticker, something Reese designed and calls it "Rednecks for Black Lives."

There’s also a growing Facebook group that he created in June with the help of Southern Crossroads, a group that considers themselves "Redneck" and hillbilly people who stand with the Black Lives movement.

“It’s probably inching up to 8,000 people in a week,” said Beth Howard, Organizing Director of Southern Crossroads in Lexington. 

She wrote an article on defining the term Rednecks.

“So the example I wrote about in ‘Rednecks For Black Lives’ is the Battle of Blair Mountain,” Howard said.

She explains the 1921 battle was a multi-racial uprising of miners against coal companies and police. Eventually, these miners unionized and wore red bandanas around their necks as a symbol. 

Howard said the term Redneck has been used to degrade people for decades, but now it’s time to take it back. 

“So it's been really important to me to reclaim that, and for a lot of us to reclaim that history and to be proud Rednecks to say, ‘Yes I am a Redneck because I stand in defense of Black Lives right now,’” Howard said. 

It's a movement that Reese said is never too late to join.

“All people of color, all white people, all Black people, we need to come together. Everybody that has love in your heart come together and let's make this change. Let’s please make this change,” Reese said.

The organization Southern Crossroads plans to moderate virtual educational classes as part of the new initiative to inform.