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

by Ron Stallworth

Ken’s plan was to begin sending copies of The Crusader newspaper, along with membership applications to join the Klan, to white inmates. He made it clear that there would be an active attempt at organizing a Klan “den” (chapter) inside the Colorado State Penitentiary at Canon City, Colorado.

“Now, we need a hundred members for Mr. Duke’s visit in January. In order to do this I’m putting forth a new policy. Each of you needs to recruit three new members. And in turn those three members will recruit three members and so on and so on. That way we will grow exponentially.” I could imagine over the wire the smug grin on Ken’s face as he mispronounced “exponentially.”

It's The Shittiest Pyramid Scheme Ever!

Chuck, to his immense credit in the moment, was again conscious of entrapment and the ramifications of being in such a high position of responsibility and how that could affect the direction and possible outcome of this investigation if it reached an ultimate conclusion of multiple criminal charges and arrests. He thanked Ken and the others for the “high honor” but stated he was not certain he could devote the necessary time required to fulfill the duties of the local organizer. Ken brushed that off and expressed confidence in my (Chuck’s) ability to arrange my schedule to accommodate the necessary duties of the local organizer.

Ken wanted to organize a group to go to El Paso for a “border watch.” This would mean staking out the border in their cars and trucks with rifles with scopes and shooting anyone they saw trying to cross the Rio Grande.

Of fucking course

Some Posse members were practicing survivalists and were active in the formation of the armed citizen militias of the 1990s. Like the Ku Klux Klan, they embraced anti-Semitic and white supremacist beliefs that the federal government is under the control of ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government), part of a Jewish conspiracy.

One of the tactics pioneered by the Posse in the 1970s and used quite frequently in Colorado Springs to terrorize law enforcement and other government officials was the use of false liens filed against property and other forms of paper terrorism. These liens would tie the victims up in court for extended periods of time and force them to spend money and other resources on attorney fees to defend what was legally theirs. I personally knew of some officers who attempted to sell their houses only to find out at a certain point in the process that they could not do so because of a Posse lien placed against it.

The PC was larger than the Klan in Colorado, and its members were, to put it bluntly, nuts. They would openly carry guns on the streets, into stores, everywhere.

Griffith was an unapologetic white southerner of the nineteenth century whose movie reflected the attitudes of his peers who were unable to see black Americans as fellow beings worthy of rights.

Yup

Ken told Chuck that an associate of the Posse Comitatus possessed an original KKK saber and belt buckle belonging to the first Grand Wizard, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and he wanted to buy them. He added that another good reason for combining forces with the Posse was that they offered a course for sixty-five dollars on how to avoid paying income taxes.

Ahahahahaha

At this point in the conversation Ken began to press Chuck on the fact that he was, thus far, the only Klan member who had not recommended a person for new membership. Ken was lying, no one else was bringing in three members either, but his insistence on Chuck, or I should say “Ron,” bringing in new members and becoming an organizer was beginning to present a real problem. There are only so many times you can say “I’m trying” before people like Ken become angry, or worse, suspicious. After Chuck indicated he would attempt to talk a friend into coming for an interview, Ken said if Chuck wished to remain a “silent” member then he would conduct the interview as if Chuck were a new recruit himself.

When I asked what the sergeant had done to discipline Miller for this obvious breach of conduct, the military authorities stated nothing. The sergeant apparently just laughed it off as “Miller being Miller.” His alcoholism continued, his KKK involvement continued, and his implied threats to the sergeant’s life continued. Miller continued being himself, which, in the eyes of his first sergeant—a black man—was apparently “normal.”

It was hard to keep a straight face while speaking with David, if I’m being honest. It was also very hard to keep my real opinions to myself. When I was confronted with this blatant racism it honestly came off as silly. Just nonsense.

We had made such a positive impression on Ken because both Chuck and I had just spewed the most disgusting hate from that first phone call on, and then reinforced those feelings. As undercover investigators we would never have challenged Ken, who was—I can’t stress this enough—a total idiot.

Ken continued his personal testimony by acknowledging he was illegally carrying a handgun in his pocket and always carried one for protection. He said he did this because the Klan expected a race war to occur prior to the 1984 general elections, and he was preparing for it.

I bet he loved Reagan.

When dealing with Howarth, we had to be on our guard because he had a fascination with guns. He once questioned me during a contact I had with him about my personal .357 Magnum revolver, which I carried at the time, and how it compared to his preferred choice of a .45. Every time I tried to change the subject to the reason for my contacting him, he kept on his soliloquy until I finally, in as polite, respectful, and professional a tone as I could muster, told him to be quiet about guns and moved on to the purpose of my visit.

Ken continued, explaining that the Posse wanted the military Klan members to steal automatic weapons and explosives from Fort Carson, and they would pay good money for them. Ken indicated he did not want his G.I. members engaged in this type of activity but expressed no outrage at the very thought of a direct sneak attack (i.e., theft) on a weapons/explosives cache from a U.S. military installation that flew the flag he had taken an oath to defend.

The Posse’s declaration of wanting to bomb “queer” bars—there were two gay bars/bathhouses in Colorado Springs at the time, the Hide N Seek Room Tavern (512 W. Colorado Avenue) and the Exit 21 Cocktail Lounge—did not strike Ken as alarming or in any way unusual, in spite of his personal affirmation as the local Klan leader that they were a nonviolent organization and did not condone such acts today as their forefathers had in the past.

In summation, he felt the only good thing the Posse had to offer the Klan was their course on how to evade income taxes.

The People for the Betterment of People was, to be kind, not the best-organized group, but they were well intentioned.

I personally monitored the march by walking alongside Ken and Joe close enough to hear any personal conversation they might exchange between them. Several times, I laughed to myself that the “Ron Stallworth” Ken often talked to on the phone was standing within three feet of him and he never realized the truth of the hoax being played out against him and his cohorts.

We were witnesses to a new day and attitudes toward the Ku Klux Klan. While stopped at an intersection red light, a black man holding his five-year-old son’s hand stopped beside me and was standing next to O’dell. The son looked at Ken curiously, pointed to him, and asked his father, “Daddy, why is that man dressed so funny?” I started chuckling along with the others standing nearby when the father, looking directly at Ken, replied, “He’s just a damn clown, son.”

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.”

By 1923 it was estimated that the Klan in Colorado had approximately thirty thousand to forty-five thousand members, half of whom lived in Denver. There were also chapters in Canon City, home of the state penitentiary; Boulder, home of the University of Colorado; Colorado Springs; and Pueblo, about thirty-five miles south of Colorado Springs. 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. By 1925, the Colorado State Senate and House of Representatives were filled with a majority of Klan members elected through the Republican Party.

In the November 1924 general election other Klan-supported candidates swept to victory. The governor, Clarence J. Morley, was a Klansman; the two U.S. senators, Rice Means and Lawrence Phipps, had strong Klan connections; and the Klan held the offices of lieutenant governor, state auditor, and attorney general. Another Klansman, William J. Candlish, was selected by the Grand Dragon to be the chief of police for the Denver Police Department and was officially appointed by Mayor Stapleton. In addition, Klansmen were seated on the Board of Regents for the University of Colorado and the State Supreme Court. The City of Denver and State of Colorado, in essence, were under Klan control.

Jesus Christ

A day or two after my return from Denver, I received a package at my office from a congressional investigator with the U.S. House of Representatives. Inside the package were four volumes of “Hearings on Activities of Ku Klux Klan Organizations in the United States of the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities of the 89th Congress (1965–66).” It contained an entire “official” history of the Klan based on a federal government inquiry during the height of the civil rights movement, including witness testimony and official Klan documentation. It provided good background information on the Klan to help me further understand the organization and the type of people attracted to its ideological brand. I do not know how these volumes were sent to my attention.

On the matter of “new trends,” Coppersmith would ask me from time to time if I could ask my Klan “sources” about this or that issue, things that the ADL in Denver had developed information on or been asked by other ADL offices around the country to check into. I would then place a telephone call to either Ken O’dell or Fred Wilkens or both and steer the conversation to that particular issue. I would relay their response and on a couple of occasions phoned David Duke and spoke with him, and he unwittingly cooperated with his archenemy—an organization he more than once told me he despised—by giving me an answer to their question.

For example, in separate conversations Duke told me of planned Klan marches in Los Angeles, Kansas City, and other areas of the country. In the conversations he would provide details as to their rally point, specific objectives of their rally, planned counterresponse measures, which were always violence-based in spite of their claim to being a nonviolent group, and efforts against police response. As soon as possible after such conversations I would call the appropriate law enforcement agency in that city’s jurisdictional area and alert them to Duke’s information.

agency representatives investigating subversive groups from an intelligence perspective learning of the undercover investigation into Duke’s organization would break out in side-splitting laughter after finding out specifics of the investigation—a black cop pulling off an undercover “sting” of the Ku Klux Klan.

As a matter of fact, when you took away the topic of white supremacy and KKK nonsense from discourse with Duke, he was a very pleasant conversationalist. He seemed like a “regular” guy. Once that topic entered the margins of Klan ideology, however, Dr. Jekyll became Mr. Hyde and the monster in him was unleashed.

I once asked “Mr. Duke,” everyone referred to him respectfully as “Mister,” if he was ever concerned about some smart-aleck “nigger” calling him while pretending to be white. He replied, “No, I can always tell when I’m talking to a nigger.” When I asked him how he could tell, he said the following: “Take you, for example. I can tell that you’re a pure Aryan white man by the way you talk, the way you pronounce certain words and letters.”

HAAAAAAAAAAA

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.

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.

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.

His views were more suited for an America that existed during the years of the Eisenhower presidency (1953 to 1961), a period when white dominance in America was the norm and the Klan literally ruled communities across the South. That era, which included Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy and his crusade against communism, was one of an attitude of “cultural elitism” on the part of the white mainstream. That attitude was very notable in the attack back then against rock ’n’ roll, the new form of music that was emerging from the roots of black culture and being widely accepted by white youth. The Klan played key roles in denouncing this emerging trend and tried to suppress its continued influence among white youth.

When I see the news today, news that reminds me a great deal of my time investigating the Klan, I like to think of that father and son, walking next to Ken in his Klan outfit. It’s just some clown.

The phone call ended, and we all started laughing. First they got their ideas about how to light a cross from a James Bond movie, and now they were bragging about secret handshakes. It was as if Dennis the Menace were running a hate group.

Donald Black is an interesting figure in the history of the racist/hate movement. When Duke left the Klan around 1980 to form the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), Black took over as Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He was unsuccessful in sustaining the “respectable” image initiated by Duke. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Klanwatch Project, about a year after Black assumed control of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan he was arrested along with other Klansmen and neo-Nazis for attempting to overthrow the government of Dominica.

This meeting was the first time we learned of a link between the Klan and the American Nazi Party in Colorado Springs.

It should be evident that the participation of the Denver and Lakewood police departments and the Colorado attorney general’s office demonstrated the seriousness with which law enforcement took the potential risk factors of Duke’s presence, the combined Denver and Colorado Klan chapters, and the presence of American Nazi Party, Posse Comitatus, and outlaw motorcycle gang members who also subscribed to white racial supremacist rhetoric and who were expected to attend in celebration of Duke.

The group People for the Betterment of People in all likelihood meant well but like other locally formed protests groups lacked true leaders with organizational and rhetorical skills with the capability to rally supporters to a cause. This happened on more than one occasion during this investigation.

With this application, a total of twelve people were going to be nationalized as Klansmen (eight from Colorado Springs and four from Denver, which included one Denver undercover officer). So out of the twelve new members, three were undercover police officers.

At a certain point in the ceremony, the inductees were asked to kneel and pray as Duke sprinkled “holy water” of purification on them and recited the words “In body, In mind, In spirit,” resembling the blessing used in the Catholic Church—“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” (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.)

Jim and Chuck posed for a couple of photographs with David Duke. Duke autographed one of them “To Rick Kelley, White Power Forever.”

Because we had two officers undercover with the Klansmen the chief felt that I alone would be sufficient; if anything of serious consequence broke out the two officers could, out of necessity, break their cover and come to my aid. Meanwhile, the chief had alerted our day shift commander of Duke’s appearances, and the uniformed patrol officers working the particular areas would be extra attentive to those locations and the actions of any anti-Klan demonstrators who might be in the area.

I was to guard Duke not in my uniform but as a plainclothes officer. It would appear to any outside observer that a black man was hanging out with the Klan. Again, I raised objectives to the chief at the ridiculousness of this order, but I loaded my gun with five bullets to kill five assholes if need be and set out for the day.

I extended my hand to Duke—addressing him as “Mr. Duke”—which he took and shook in the Klan manner, the index and middle finger extended along the inside wrist while pressing the tips of the fingers into the flesh as the hand is pumped. I later learned this was the Klan’s “secret” handshake.

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 then asked “Mr. Duke” for a favor. He cordially agreed to my request without first asking what it was. I was carrying a Polaroid camera. “Mr. Duke, no one will ever believe me if I tell them I was your bodyguard. Would you mind taking a picture with me?” He, Wilkens, and Ken smiled at my request and agreed to pose for a photograph. I then asked Wilkens if he would appear in the photograph with me and Duke, and he also agreed. In the latest display of mockery, I gave the camera to Chuck, the “white” Ron Stallworth, and asked him to take the picture.

omg omg omg this is the funniest thing ever.

I’ve since lost the photo.

Damn!

Duke reached for the camera in Chuck’s hand, but I was a split second faster. He then reached toward me to take it out of my hand and I looked him in the eye with the coldest, most intimidating gaze I could collect and told him, “If you touch me I’ll arrest you for assault on a police officer. That’s worth about five years in prison. DON’T DO IT!” Duke stopped dead in his tracks.