GATE CITY — About 25 Ku Klux Klan members and supporters Saturday afternoon stood on the steps of the Scott County Courthouse, protesting the recent discipline of three students at Twin Springs High School.

The peaceful event drew about twice that many onlookers, not counting those who drove by in cars and trucks — including one black man in a pickup truck who as he drove by said he had “prayed” the Klan would come to his church and another black man in a truck who said he wanted his child to see Klan members.

The event — marked by periodic chants of “white power” — started about 2:30 p.m. and lasted a little more than 30 minutes. Gate City police and county sheriff’s deputies briefly blocked a side street so the group could move from a parking lot where they gathered and put on robes and hats about 2 p.m. They later moved back across the street, all with no physical confrontations, only some occasional hecklers.

Gary Delp, a Dungannon resident and imperial wizard of Virgil’s White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said the purpose of the event was to question the 10-day suspensions of three white male students at Twin Springs after a Jan. 21 investigation into the smell of marijuana and “strong cologne” in a boy’s bathroom.

He and other protesters said a fourth student, who they identified as Hispanic, received no suspension after his probation officer had him take a drug test and the test did not detect marijuana in his urine.

Superintendent Greg Baker could not be reached for comment Saturday, but copies of a discipline report sent to the parents of two suspended students outlined the general investigation and results for two of the three suspended students.

Klan members and officers from Tennessee, elsewhere in Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina also attended and spoke.

Parents of the other three students, including two mothers who attended the event, took their sons for a drug test the following Monday. They gave out copies of tests indicating no marijuana was detected in the two students’ urine, as well as discipline letters from the system.

Carol Compton said she wasn’t notified by the school of the 8:30 a.m. incident until 2:45 p.m. and would have given permission for her son to be drug tested. A second mother, who attended the event but did not speak during it, also said she also was notified late in the day.

Compton said she’s gathering signatures on a petition and plans to bring up the matter before the Scott County Board of Education.

“My son is innocent,” Compton said during the rally, after which she spoke with a reporter. “The school board thinks they’ve heard the end of this — not by a long shot.”