Friday night, Kent, Ohio: The smell of a barbecue mingles with the sounds of conversation and music. Just an ordinary party in an ordinary college town. But the men talking over Guinness are anything but ordinary. The toes of their combat boots gleam with reflections of their shaved heads. Most of them have shaved heads — even some of the women — and everyone is wearing flight jackets. The music is different, too. White-power bands blare from the speakers instead of Britney or Jay-Z. Meet the local skin crew.

For about a year, this group of independent skinheads has been gathering on West Main Street, and during that time the group has attracted about a dozen of the curious, the disillusioned and the angry. Independent skinheads are similar to other racially motivated groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers, because they believe in the power of their race, said Joe Roy, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project in Montgomery, Ala. “There are distinct areas of a skinhead group, but there is a lot of overlapping with the Klan as well,” he said. “Some skinheads identify themselves as being religious in a Christian manner. Some identify with being devil worshippers or even neo-pagans.”

Skinheads operate as local gangs and can be characterized as independent, Roy said.

“Generally, independents hold the same beliefs as other skinheads,” he said. “They just don’t affiliate with a specific-named organization.”

Mike Johnston, 26, is the leader of the group in Kent. He said skinheads want to contribute to the community by being diligent and peaceful, but they are also proud of their Aryan heritage.

“What I mean by white pride is that I am proud to be white and living by the standards that were placed by my ancestors,” Johnston said. “In terms of standards, I mean taking care of my family, being an honest, hard-working individual and doing anything for my own people. Another standard is not tolerating race mixing because it destroys our race as well as the race we are mixing with.”

Johnston is so proud he has used his body as an open expression of white pride with tattoos of the Confederate battle flag on one arm and a swastika on his chest. He also has pictures of Adolf Hitler hanging on the walls of his house. But Johnston does not consider his tattoos or his affiliation with skinheads to be representative of hate.

“The swastika is a symbol of pride to me because people were fighting under this symbol long before it was affiliated with Hitler,” Johnston said. According to several dictionaries, the swastika was used as a positive symbol to represent life, sun, power, strength and good luck before the Nazis appropriated the symbol. “If people are going to consider the swastika a hate symbol, they might as well call the Christian cross a hate symbol, too, because of the crusades. I do not consider myself to be involved in a hate group because to truly hate something or somebody you have to hate yourself first.”

Johnston defined skinheads as working-class white or Aryan people who are “sick of the Zionistic and/or communist influences” in Europe and America. He said the media creates pity for Jewish people through stories about their mistreatment and the Holocaust. “I’m sick of everyone in the United States being force fed to pity the Jews because of the Holocaust,” Johnston said. “I mean it happened over 60 years ago.... People need to move on. It’s not like we skinheads are the ones that imprisoned them in camps.”

Schools are also contributing to Zionistic influences, he said.

“History classes are a prime example of the Zionistic influences,” Johnston said. “Instead of children learning the full history of World War II, they get a summarized version of the war in one chapter, and then there will be three chapters devoted to the Holocaust.”

Johnston said the group’s members are from Kent, Ravenna and the suburbs of Cleveland. Johnston moved to Kent almost a year ago to be closer to his family. He said since he feels part of the community, the group will continue to meet here and contribute to the city.

“We’re working on establishing a stable organization here in Kent right now, in terms of growing numbers, but for the most part the biggest concentration of skinheads in Ohio right now is in Cincinnati,” Johnston said.

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Johnston's tattoos, in particular the swastika, represent his beliefs. He said his parents may not agree with his beliefs, but they support him. His father taught him that if he believes in something, he should believe in it 100 percent.