Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime

by Ron Stallworth

If one black man, aided by a bevy of good, decent, dedicated, open-, and liberal-minded whites and Jews can succeed in prevailing over a group of white racists by making them look like the ignorant fools they truly are, then imagine what a nation of like-minded individuals can accomplish.

By saying “nigger” he’d let me know he thought he was inherently better than me. That word was a way of claiming some false power. That is the language of hate, and now, having to pretend to be a white supremacist, I knew to use that language in reverse.

In essence, he mainstreamed the Klan, making it seem an acceptable and viable alternative for those looking for a means to express their displeasure with the status quo of their lives and government representatives.

It can be argued that all of Duke’s campaigns were successful in the sense that they gave him a vast public platform from which to spout his philosophy and racist ideological agenda. This, in turn, forced his campaign opponents to respond, thus making for an often chaotic outpouring of Populist rants in support of Duke and liberal responses against what they perceived to be a neo-Nazi version of Adolf Hitler in a white robe. It made for a lively discussion. Had Duke not been on the ticket in these races much, if not all, of his topical agenda would probably never have been an issue for debate.

The fact that he won an election as a Republican after failing twice as a Democratic candidate says a lot about the mind-set of the electorate. The conservative right-wing Republican political agenda was then and still is much more in sync with white, hate-fueled racist extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

The goal was to get Klansmen elected to political offices at all levels of government throughout Colorado. If they could not find qualified Klansmen to run for elective office, Wilkens said, “We will also support non-Klansmen who share our philosophy. If a candidate wants our public endorsement we’ll give it to him or we may support him with financial aid. The important thing is to get the right kind of thinking into government.”

“When racist vermin like the Klan and Nazis wriggle out from under a rock, we believe in smashing the rock right back down on them.”

When I was confronted with this blatant racism it honestly came off as silly. Just nonsense.

The response of the father convinced me we were in the dawn of a new era. For a black man in years past to openly refer to a robed Klansman as a “clown” would have been a futile and foolhardy statement of defiance, ignorance, or stupidity. Here in 1978 Colorado Springs, the father showed bold courage by openly challenging the white-robed, Confederate flag symbolism and, while looking Ken straight in the eye, declared to his son and all those around, he was nothing more than a “clown.” A few decades earlier and the result would probably have been a death sentence for the father.

Once established, the Klan made a grasp for political power. They took control of the state’s Republican Party and selected virtually all of its candidates in the 1924 elections.

Much of the Klan’s approach from half a century earlier was being, or trying to be, revived by today’s generation of Klansmen. Their takeover of an entire capital city, Denver, and the state government was the precedent that motivated Ken O’dell’s talk of the Klan becoming a political party and of registering Klan members to vote.

I asked him to be more specific and he said, “A white man pronounces the English language the way it was meant to be pronounced. For example take the word ‘are’ or the letter ‘r.’ A pure Aryan like you or I say it the proper way, ‘are,’ whereas a nigger would pronounce it ‘are-uh.’ Niggers do not have the same intelligence as the white man to properly speak English the way it was meant to be spoken. Whenever you talk to someone on the phone and are unfamiliar with them, always listen to their speech pattern for a short while to determine how they pronounce certain words.” He never told me what those other words were.

From that point on, whenever I spoke to Duke on the phone I always found a point in the conversation to inject a question that incorporated the word “are” in it except I would pronounce it like a “nigger,” “are-uh.” This was my symbolic way of sticking a finger in Duke’s eye and an extended middle finger in his face to show him that this high school–educated black man with only twenty college credits was smarter than he, a college graduate with a master’s degree. My use of the “are-uh” was my way of playing with his head and having a little fun at his expense. He never picked up on the fact that one of his pure Aryan white Klansmen was speaking English like a “nigger” and was, in fact, a proud black man of African descent.

Duke’s assessment of blacks’ use of language was interesting in that he was only partially right. Some blacks from the South do, in fact, pronounce the word “are” in the manner in which he described. An example was my late mother-in-law. She was born and bred in Alabama, a graduate of Alabama State University with a master’s degree in business, and was a retired head of the Business Department at a Colorado Springs high school. She was active in her A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) church and black community affairs, yet throughout my thirty-year experience with her she pronounced the word “are” exactly as described by David Duke. The racial fallacy in his argument is that this pronunciation is not unique to blacks. Many people from the South, whites included, employ this speech pattern. In other words, it has nothing to do with pure Aryan white racial intelligence superiority as stated by the Grand Wizard, but rather is more of a regional reflection of a cultural linguistic upbringing. In other words, his logic was extremely flawed and unsubstantiated by facts. Another significant factor about this particular conversation was Duke’s freewheeling use of the pejorative “nigger.” He was publicizing himself at the time and being reported by the media as being the “new face of the modern Klan.” He was not the stereotypical, uneducated, potbellied, tobacco-chewing/spitting, beer-guzzling Klansman of movie lore. David Duke was respectable-looking, always appearing in public ...

He explained that only by changing the political landscape through the ballot box could the Klan hope to change conditions in America to be more beneficial to the white race. He would run for a Louisiana state office first but eventually would take a shot at the presidency.

The part of the card that grabbed my attention was the back side, with its “six pledges” concerning the “Personal Code” of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. PERSONAL CODE 1. To untiringly work for the preservation, protection, and advancement of the white race 2. To forever be loyal to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—as the only true Klan 3. To obey all orders from the officers of the Empire 4. To keep secret all fellow members and Klan rituals 5. To never discuss any Klan affairs with any plain clothes officers on a state, local or national level 6. Fulfill social, fraternal, and financial obligations to this order as long as I live The pledge that captured my attention and drove me, Jim, and Chuck into a fit of laughter was number 5: “I Pledge: to never discuss any Klan affairs with any plain clothes officers on a state, local or national level.” That was almost too good—they actually put that right there on their membership card.

This happened on more than one occasion during this investigation. A small group of citizens expressed their outrage over the Klan’s antics yet the overall community response remained tepid.

The media all too often unwittingly creates the very news it reports because of its zeal to get a story. This only benefits the person or subject being covered and gives them or it a power neither deserves.

1. Are you a white, non-Jewish American citizen? 2. Is the motive prompting your ambition to be a Klansman sincere and unselfish? 3. Have you ever been rejected, upon application, for membership in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan? 4. Do you believe in the Constitution of the United States? 5. Are you in favor of a whiteman’s government in this country? 6. Do you believe in the right of free men to rebel against government tyranny? 7. Do you believe in Racial Separation? 8. Do you believe in the right for our people to practice the Christian Faith anywhere they assemble, including prayers in schools and public facilities? 9. Will you faithfully obey our Klan Constitution and regulations? 10. Are you willing to dedicate your life to the protection, preservation, and advancement of the white race?

(It is ironic that the KKK would co-opt a section from the Catholic service, a faith that they have historically held in disdain, for one of their most sacred ceremonies. It is one of their many blatant hypocrisies.)

Again, the media was fascinated by Duke and the Klan, and willing to give him and their cause the attention and sound bites they so craved.

I was a little apprehensive at first about Ken, Fred, and Duke hearing my voice for an extended period, thinking it might trigger something in their memory from our many telephone conversations, but they never recognized it. My apprehension quickly gave way to a renewed sense of confidence that these three individuals and their followers had been completely hoodwinked, bamboozled to the point of incompetence.

I believe if he could have demonstrated the depth of his humiliation in the form of violence and gotten away with it he would have.

This is yet another incongruity in the Ku Klux Klan and among most other white supremacist groups. They profess to subscribe to the highest ideals of Americanism—celebrating the U.S. Constitution and hailing the American flag in the process—yet they rank among their pantheon of heroes the likes of Adolf Hitler while singing the praises of the National Socialist movement (Nazi Party) he founded, which led the world to the brink of destruction over sixty years ago. Listed in that pantheon is George Lincoln Rockwell, a decorated American World War II and Korean War Navy commander who founded the American Nazi Party. The KKK salutation is even a reflection of the Nazi influence (a raised right arm, palm down, similar to that of the Nazi salute seen so often in newsreel footage of Nazi soldiers).

As a debater, Duke was educated on his side of the issue and extremely articulate in presenting justification for that side. He was always “cool” and polished in his demeanor and seemed to become more so in the face of ad hominem attacks by those not as versed as he. Even when his false claim of facts in support of his racist beliefs were aggressively challenged by his opponents, Duke remained calm and would present a well-reasoned response based on his positional thinking that often left them looking befuddled and him on the low side of brilliant.

A representative of the Black Student Union of Colorado College, during his address to the crowd, said, “If the police do not stop the Klan then the only recourse is to rely on the masses to prevent the spread of the Klan’s message of hate.”

My investigation had reached the top echelons of the U.S. government, and taken down white supremacists who had some of the highest clearances in the U.S. military.

My answer is always in this fashion: “As a result of our combined effort, no parent of a black or other minority child, or any child for that matter, had to explain why an eighteen-foot cross was seen burning at this or that location—especially those individuals from the South who, perhaps as children, had experienced the terrorist act of a Klan cross burning. No child in the city limits of Colorado Springs ever had to experience firsthand the fear brought on by this act of terror. We prevented them from having such an incident burned into their consciousness, as many of their parents might have been imprinted as children. I knew firsthand from direct dealings via my undercover phone conversations with Ken when and where those acts of terror were being planned, and we in the police department were able to put a stop to them. Success in a police investigation does not always rest on how many arrests are made or how much illegal contraband is seized.”

Success often lies not in what happens but in what you prevent from happening.

The white nationalist, nativist politics that we see today were first imagined and applied by David Duke during the heyday of his Grand Wizardship, and the time of my undercover Klan investigation. This hatred has never gone away, but has been reinvigorated in the dark corners of the internet, Twitter trolls, alt-right publications, and a nativist president in Trump.

Our history is always in our present.