It's hard to tell what's true about Augusta anymore.
After weeks of national news reports about planned protests outside this year's Masters Tournament, information and misinformation about the city and the famed golf tournament have taken on lives of their own, business owners and city leaders say.
"You hear it every year," said Mayor Bob Young, pointing to last year's news reports about Washington Road and the tackiness of the town outside Augusta National Golf Club's gates.
"It's not unusual for people to say stuff about us. This year, the volume has just been turned up."
Among the most damaging and deceiving details to emerge in recent weeks are claims that the name "the Masters" comes not from "the masters of golf" but from slave masters who played the course. There are reports that the Ku Klux Klan will be marching the city's streets, too.
Neither is true, but each has been stated publicly in the past week.
"Our worst nightmare is being brought to the forefront," said Charles "Champ" Walker Jr., a former congressional candidate who is working to organize a town hall meeting among city leaders, Augusta National supporters and outside activists.
"The Masters is a great opportunity for people to see Augusta in its beauty and charm," Mr. Walker said. "However, what people have been reading in the media is that we're a good old boy, politically and racially polarized city. And the more people that start throwing darts, the more they start giving it credibility."
ON A NATIONALLY televised political talk show, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, claimed to have evidence that the Masters Tournament is named for "white male slavemasters" who were given exclusive use of the course in its early days.
"That is its original meaning. It was," the Rev. Jackson said, according to a transcript from CNN's Feb. 28 episode of Crossfire.
"It's on a plantation. It was about only the masters could play, the white male masters."
A local historian says slavery -- though an undeniable part of the South's history -- has no place in the history of the Masters Tournament.
"That's ludicrous to make that connection," said Erick Montgomery, the executive director of Historic Augusta Inc.
"It's absurd. When people are that ignorant, it almost doesn't merit a response."
The property the National sits on was, briefly during the 1850s, an indigo plantation, according to The Making of the Masters, a history of the tournament by golf writer David Owen. The concrete clubhouse was built in 1854 for Dennis Redmond, the plantation's owner.
". . . Slaves probably did walk across it and worked it . . . but that doesn't have a thing to do with the golf," Mr. Montgomery said.
In 1857, the land was sold to a Belgian baron, who operated the property as one of the leading commercial nurseries in the South until the early 1900s, Mr. Montgomery said.
In January 1931, the 365-acre property was purchased to build Augusta National Golf Club -- 70 years after it had been used as a plantation.
When the tournament began in 1934, it was called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament. It wasn't called the Masters until 1939, when it was named for the masters of golf who took part in the tournament.
"Anyone with even a passing interest in the Masters knows that the Rev. Jackson is flat wrong on the facts about the origin of the tournament's name," said Glenn Greenspan, the director of communications for Augusta National Golf Club. "Obviously, he is willing to say anything to attract media attention."
NEWS ORGANIZATIONS throughout the country also are reporting that the Ku Klux Klan is planning a protest in support of the Augusta National's membership policies. All the hullabaloo appears to be over a single man who doesn't have a "Klan" behind him.
Joseph J. "J.J." Harper, the self-proclaimed imperial wizard of the New American White Knights, said he is organizing a demonstration. Hate group watchdogs, however, said his splinter organization -- just months old and based in Cordele, Ga. -- appears to have little or no support in white-supremacist circles.
Behind the scenes, local officials are referring to him as the "one-man Klan."
Mr. Harper's track record for organizing demonstrations is 0-for-1, when his first and only Klan rally -- scheduled for Feb. 22 in his hometown -- fell through. The Southeast regional office of the Anti-Defamation League -- which monitors hate groups -- said the rally apparently never materialized because of an "internal disagreement" between Mr. Harper and another member.
"It didn't happen, which was an interesting sign for us that they may not have the numbers or that there's an internal division going on within," said Deborah Lauter, the director of the league's Southeast region office.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, Ala., has said Mr. Harper appears to be the only member of his group, which he formed after being ousted from the American White Knights of the KKK less than two months after he joined the group. He started his own branch of the organization, calling it the New American White Knights.
It's possible he might have no members, in part, because his views do not appear to be extreme enough, officials report. His Web site, although it supports the "white power movement" says Klan members should work to better themselves before blaming their troubles on minorities.
Even if the Ku Klux Klan were to descend on Augusta en masse next month, which officials say isn't likely, protesters probably won't be cloaked in white hoods. Georgia law prohibits demonstrators from wearing hoods.
IN THE END, some say, the blame falls on the shoulders of Martha Burk, the chairwoman of the National Council of Women's Organizations. Ms. Burk has blamed some of the negative attention on Augusta National, saying that because the club embraces discrimination, it attracts other discriminatory groups, such as the KKK.
Although the KKK, an anti-Burk protester and Ms. Burk all have filed their applications to protest, a number of other applications -- including those from a Grand Rapids, Mich., radio personality, the New Black Panthers Party and an anti-Jesse Jackson ministry group out of Los Angeles -- have yet to be returned to sheriff's officials.
Only one permit has been approved so far. It is for local businesswoman Allison Greene, who blames Ms. Burk for much of the city's Masters Week woes.
"Me being in the restaurant business, it affects all my employees." said Ms. Greene, the manager of the Boll Weevil Cafe who has organized her own anti-Burk protest the Sunday before Masters Week.
"If she realized the economic impact this was having, and how many women business owners, leaders and workers would be impacted in a negative way, I don't think she ever would have done it."
Reach Heidi Coryell Williams at (706) 823-3215 or heidi.williams@augustachronicle.com.
Have a thought? Go to the 
