The recent Spike Lee movie? BlacKkKlansman’ brought to light a little known and splendidly gripping account of Black history when a black police officer from Colorado Springs was asked to lead a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
The incredible true story of the real black Klansman started in 1978 when police officer Ron Stallworth, the first black detective to be a part of the force, saw a classified ad listing for the KKK. As it was his duty to keep an eye out for local terrorist activities, he contacted the given address assuming he’d just end up getting a brochure. After a few weeks, he was contacted by a local KKK organizer. When asked why he wanted to join the KKK, Stallworth replied saying that he could not stand blacks, Jews, and other minorities and wanted something concrete to be done about it.
Convinced that he had come across one of his own, the local organizer suggested that the two of them meet in person. This would not be possible, because of obvious reasons. To overcome the hurdle, Stallworth recruited a white co-worker to stand in for him as the supremacist he claimed he was. The short meeting led to an extensive undercover investigation that lasted seven months.
At one point, Stallworth came across a number supposedly belonging to ?The Voice of the Klan’. He gave it a ring and was connected to none other than David Duke. Stallworth and Duke talked on the phone often and had several detailed conversations about the threat minorities posed to the supreme race in America. In an interview, Ron Stallworth described Duke as ?a very pleasant conversationalist’ and ?a very nice guy in person’. Ron also said that Duke couldn’t, however, refrain from explicitly expressing his views on the topics of race and creed for long. Once that side of him came to the forefront, he was easily recognizable as the director of a white-supremacist clan that persistently planned violent attacks on the minorities.
When the local organizer of the KKK nominated Stallworth to be the leader of the KKK Colorado Springs chapter, the investigation was shut down. The superiors involved in the affair felt that the dangerous stunt had gone on for long enough.