{"id":13268,"date":"2018-08-15T01:21:02","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T01:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=13268"},"modified":"2018-08-16T01:23:20","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T01:23:20","slug":"as-a-young-reporter-i-went-undercover-to-expose-the-ku-klux-klan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/as-a-young-reporter-i-went-undercover-to-expose-the-ku-klux-klan\/","title":{"rendered":"As a young reporter, I went undercover to expose the Ku Klux Klan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dick Lehr<\/a>, Boston University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Spike Lee\u2019s powerful new film, \u201cBlacKkKlansman<\/a>,\u201d tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer who infiltrates a local branch the Ku Klux Klan in 1979. <\/p>\n

That same year, I also signed up to join the Klan. And at a secret meeting I even met the Grand Wizard himself, David Duke, the same Klan leader featured in Lee\u2019s film.<\/p>\n

I was a rookie Klansman at the time, and I\u2019d been recruited to join the cause. <\/p>\n

Sort of. <\/p>\n

Like Stallworth, I wasn\u2019t a true believer and had a very different agenda from the Klan\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The Klan descends on Connecticut<\/h2>\n

It was the fall of 1979, and I was a first-year reporter at The Hartford Courant when David Duke launched a recruiting effort in, of all places, Connecticut. His \u201cKlan calling cards<\/a>\u201d and his newspaper, The Crusader, started appearing in factory parking lots, restaurants, high schools and college campuses. <\/p>\n

To cover the story for the state\u2019s largest newspaper, I was teamed with a veteran reporter named Bill Cockerham. We called Duke\u2019s headquarters in Metairie, Louisiana.<\/p>\n

David Duke was 29 at the time \u2013 an educated, clean-cut Klansman campaigning for a seat in the Louisiana State Senate<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n David Duke holds up a copy of the Klan newspaper, The Crusader, in this 1977 photograph.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Duke was happy to talk. He made plain his aim to recruit young people and to remake the Klan into a gentler, kinder brand of bigotry. He wasn\u2019t anti-black or anti-Jewish, he said. \u201cWe are simply pro-white and pro-Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the white majority that are losing their rights, not the blacks or the Jews,\u201d he insisted. \u201cWe\u2019re the ones being attacked on the streets and they call us haters when we fight back for our rights and heritage.\u201d <\/p>\n

It was vintage Duke. He was trying, as one expert told us, to be \u201ceverybody\u2019s Klansman,\u201d using his considerable marketing skills to sugarcoat racism. <\/p>\n

He told us his recruiting efforts had struck a chord in the Nutmeg State, claiming more than 200 new members and several hundred more associate members. While no statewide organization was in place, there were, he claimed, a number of robust, local dens. He did mention a statewide organizer, but when we requested repeatedly to speak to him, Duke balked. <\/p>\n

The KKK was a secret organization, he explained. He couldn\u2019t do that. But because he was the face of the organization, we could call the Metairie office any time \u2013 he\u2019d be happy to talk Klan.<\/p>\n

Getting access<\/h2>\n

The front-page article in The Courant appeared a few days later \u2013 \u201cKlan Unit Attracting New Members: New Recruits Join Klan Through Mail\u201d \u2013 and local radio and television stations pounced on the story.<\/p>\n

Duke was suddenly a newsmaker, and the press and public struggled with the idea he could be successfully establishing a footprint in Connecticut, given that the Klan was mostly associated with the South.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n After The Hartford Courant published a story about Duke\u2019s recruitment drive, other media outlets started to explore the Klan\u2019s inroads into Connecticut.<\/span>
\n Hartford Courant<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, no one knew whether Duke\u2019s numbers were accurate; the story reported his claims of a groundswell of support.<\/p>\n

Which is why I clipped out an application from a copy of his Crusader in our newsroom, filled it out using a false identity and mailed it to Metairie along with the $25 entry fee. (The use of deception in reporting<\/a> is another story altogether, a matter regularly discussed<\/a> in journalism ethics courses.)<\/p>\n

My goal was to get inside Duke\u2019s local outfit, identify his local leader and either verify or debunk his headcount of followers. In the mail, I soon received my Klan membership card, a certificate of Klan citizenship and a Klan rule book with a picture of Duke in his fancy Grand Wizard robe telling me to buy a robe for $28. Just like that I had joined the Klan. <\/p>\n

Then I waited. I figured it wouldn\u2019t take long for my compatriots to reach out and bring me into the fold, where I\u2019d get the inside story. That was the game plan, and when I occasionally called down to Duke\u2019s office in Metairie, using my new identity, I was assured I\u2019d be hooked up with like-minded Connecticut racists in short order.<\/p>\n

But nothing happened. Weeks went by. Meanwhile, David Duke continued to reap regular coverage in Connecticut media, with the imperial wizard claiming huge success in his statewide recruitment.<\/p>\n

My break came in early December 1979. Duke announced he\u2019d decided to travel to Connecticut and to two other New England states. The trip would be a kind of climax to his fall membership drive. He would visit several Connecticut cities and speak with the press at each stop, before holding a private rally at night with his Connecticut Klansmen.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when I got the call \u2013 all hands were summoned for the secret mass meeting on Friday, Dec. 7. I was told that for security reasons the location would not be disclosed until the actual day but to be on call.<\/p>\n

The moment of truth<\/h2>\n

Teamed again with the veteran reporter, I spent most of that Friday afternoon on the move. I was instructed to call Metairie and was directed to head west from Hartford. While Duke staged a press conference at a Waterbury motel, I waited in a local bar, where Duke\u2019s local point person finally contacted me. He directed me to Grange hall<\/a> in Danbury, which they\u2019d rented posing as a historical group.<\/p>\n

I left my colleague behind and was met in a rear parking lot by three \u201cenforcers.\u201d They asked for my Klan ID card, and then waved me through. I walked into the dimly lit room on the second floor and looked around. The hall was nearly empty, except for around two dozen men quietly mingling.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when it dawned on me why I\u2019d never heard a peep from any other Connecticut Klansmen: There was no real organization, or presence, to speak of.<\/p>\n

While most were dressed in leather and jeans, the sandy-haired Duke wore a three-piece suit with a Klan pin on his lapel. He introduced himself to each attendee, showing off a three-ring binder with Connecticut newspaper clippings about him and the Klan.<\/p>\n

Duke\u2019s idea for a meeting was a simple one \u2013 a screening of D. W. Griffith\u2019s \u201cThe Birth of a Nation<\/a>,\u201d the 1915 blockbuster about the Civil War and Reconstruction. (In Spike Lee\u2019s movie, a Klan meeting also involves a showing of the film.) <\/p>\n

To Griffith, a Southerner, the robed Klansmen were heroes<\/a>, riding to the rescue and saving the South from the lawlessness and chaos of Reconstruction. <\/p>\n

That night in Danbury, Duke used the film as a teaching tool, turning the darkened Grange hall into a classroom for a course on white power. Standing next to an American flag, he read aloud the film\u2019s subtitles and then added his own bigoted commentary. When a group of Klansmen on horses dump the corpse of a black man on a front porch, Duke began to clap his hands \u2013 a firm clap that grew louder as others in the room joined in to applaud the death of a black man on screen.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Once the true size of the Klan\u2019s imprint in the state had been exposed, coverage dried up.<\/span>
\n Hartford Courant<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I left that meeting with the story we\u2019d been after for months \u2013 the identity of the Connecticut leader and, more importantly, the actual numbers in Duke\u2019s much-ballyhooed statewide Klan. It wasn\u2019t several hundred but closer to two dozen. Duke\u2019s run of media coverage in Connecticut dried up immediately. <\/p>\n

We exposed Duke as the con man who\u2019d bluffed his way into a run of free publicity to spew is pro-white nonsense \u2013 a transparently perverse message that somehow has regained currency today. The imperial wizard\u2019s rhetoric of 1979 is parroted almost verbatim<\/a> by a new generation of haters who are attracting plenty of media coverage. <\/p>\n

I never spoke to Duke again, but I did receive a Christmas card from him that holiday season \u2013 addressed to my Klan alias, apparently mailed before the article was published. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe red card featured two Klansmen in robes holding a fiery cross. The caption read: \u201cMay you have a meaningful and merry Christmas and may they forever be White.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dick Lehr<\/a>, Professor of Journalism, Boston University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dick Lehr, Boston University Spike Lee\u2019s powerful new film, \u201cBlacKkKlansman,\u201d tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer who infiltrates a local branch the Ku Klux Klan in 1979. That same year, I also signed up to join the Klan. And at a secret meeting I even met the Grand Wizard himself, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":13263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[4982,191,785,4983,2158,1538,4984],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13269,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13268\/revisions\/13269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}