SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: The True Story of BlacKkKlansman

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Speaker 16 Hey everybody and welcome to the Summer Movie Playlist,

Speaker 16 the place where we grouped some fun movie content because of summer movie season. We thought you might like this, so we gave it a shot and today you're going to be listening to

Speaker 16 the replay of our episode on Black Klansmen, the true story behind that movie.

Speaker 15 It was a great movie. Love it.

Speaker 16 Love Spike Lee.

Speaker 16 And this is a great one. So I hope you enjoy the show.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Speaker 15 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles Bryant. There's Jerry over there.
You put the three of us together. It's Movie Crush.

Speaker 15 I mean, stuff you should know.

Speaker 16 This does have some stank on it, doesn't it?

Speaker 16 Some movie stank.

Speaker 15 Uh-huh. I know your game.
It's cool.

Speaker 16 I didn't even ask you, have you seen Black Klansman?

Speaker 15 I was like,

Speaker 15 I can't do this episode without having seen it. So I watched it last night.
Oh, nice. Yeah.
Good, huh? Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 15 I like his choice at the end to just completely pull a somersault on the viewer.

Speaker 16 Oh, sure, with that last bet.

Speaker 15 Yeah, like spoiler alert. Pretty powerful.
There's an end to all spoilery. Yeah, for sure.
We should probably say that out of the gate.

Speaker 15 If you haven't seen this yet and you don't want it to be spoiled, don't listen to this episode first. Yes.
But yeah,

Speaker 15 I guess now that we've said that, we can speak freely, right? Yes. So

Speaker 15 if the entire movie was basically

Speaker 15 to disarm you up to the end, then I think it's one of the greatest movies I've ever seen in my life. And even if it wasn't, that wasn't the entire point of the movie.

Speaker 15 It was still great in how he pulled it out at the end, I think.

Speaker 16 Yeah, well, this was, I don't know if you remember, but this is the movie I saw in Perth, Australia.

Speaker 15 So, yeah.

Speaker 16 That happens at the end, that big,

Speaker 16 you know,

Speaker 16 sort of gut punch of realism at the end. And I stood up and I was like, hmm, like, I wonder what they're thinking here in Perth.

Speaker 15 They were probably thinking, what just happened? What's wrong with America?

Speaker 16 Yeah. And I'm going, hi, Mate.

Speaker 15 Good to see you.

Speaker 15 I'm not American. I'm Canadian.
Country tail, bloke.

Speaker 16 Oh, goodness. Yeah, it was one of those things where I was like, I'm kind of slightly embarrassed right now.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 It was like that.

Speaker 16 I enjoyed the movie, though. I thought to see Spike Lee, who

Speaker 16 just, he's one of my favorite filmmakers in his 60s, still just bringing the juice like this. I loved it.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 I also loved that it was controversial, too,

Speaker 15 in that

Speaker 15 some people criticized Spike Lee for not going far enough for maybe kind of glossing over some of the ugly aspects aspects of the the story.

Speaker 16 Yeah, you want to get to that at the end, maybe?

Speaker 15 Yeah, yeah, for sure. But we'll give it a pre-mention shout-out, which is what we just did.

Speaker 16 Right. So we are talking about

Speaker 16 the true story of the film Black Klansmen, Spike Lee's movie that won the grand prize at the Khan Film Festival. It's nominated for Academy Awards.

Speaker 15 Yeah, three Oscars, I believe,

Speaker 15 including Best Picture.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I think Picture Director and...

Speaker 15 Supporting actor.

Speaker 15 For who? I would guess Adam Driver. I didn't see.
Really?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I was surprised because Denzel's son did a wonderful job as well.

Speaker 16 He loves that, being known as that.

Speaker 15 Right. I can't remember his first name, but you know, Denzel's son.

Speaker 15 He was...

Speaker 15 Like, there were several times when he was talking, and I was like, oh, you are definitely Denzel Washington's son, man. Just the way he talked,

Speaker 15 the sound of his voice, but also also his acting, too. He's a good actor.

Speaker 16 Yeah, so, all right, best picture, best supporting actor for Adam Driver,

Speaker 16 best director, and best original music score.

Speaker 15 Oh, nice.

Speaker 16 But yeah, he is, I didn't know he was Denzel's son until after the movie.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I could see that.

Speaker 16 And he was a football player. Did you know that?

Speaker 15 I didn't. Who did he play for?

Speaker 16 He played for Morehouse here in Atlanta. He was a running back.

Speaker 16 And then

Speaker 16 played NFL on the practice squad for the Rams.

Speaker 16 And then eventually played a few years in NFL Europe and the UFL until he hung up his cleats six years ago.

Speaker 14 Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Playing football in Europe has got to be a surreal experience.

Speaker 16 You know? Yeah, because it's a soccer ball.

Speaker 15 Everyone's like, what are you doing? This is all wrong.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 16 So should we way back it to the 1970s, the groovy 70s of Denver, Colorado?

Speaker 15 First, we should say his name is John David Washington. Oh, sure.
You were kidding, right? Benzel Sun, yes. So, yeah, let's get in the Wayback Machine and see,

Speaker 15 go inspect their terrible, low-quality pot.

Speaker 16 So,

Speaker 16 Ron Stallworth is the True to Life character's name who there was a football player when we were growing up named John Stallworth. So I'm always wanting to say John Stallworth.

Speaker 15 This is not him. This is a cop named Ron Stallworth.

Speaker 16 That's right. And he had a few designations that are pretty important.

Speaker 16 He was the first African-American police officer to work for the Colorado Springs Police Department, which he joined as a cadet at the age of 19 in 72.

Speaker 16 And then a couple of years later, on his 21st birthday, on his 21st birthday?

Speaker 15 That's what I saw. Yeah, June 18th, I believe.

Speaker 16 Nice.

Speaker 15 Was sworn in as a full-on officer of the law. Right.
And I'm not sure if they just swear you in on your 21st birthday or if it just so happened that the swearing-in ceremony was on his 21st birthday.

Speaker 15 But regardless, it was a big deal. He's the first African-American cop and then later on detective for Colorado Springs.
So that's a big deal, especially starting out at age 21, too.

Speaker 15 That takes a lot of cajones, as they call it in Colorado.

Speaker 16 No, I think they call those Rocky Mountain oysters.

Speaker 15 That's right. That is what they call them, for sure.

Speaker 16 So he worked undercover for about 30 years, long, great career as an undercover detective.

Speaker 16 But it was this case, which only came out about four years ago when he wrote a book about it, about his career,

Speaker 15 when he went undercover as a,

Speaker 16 well, as a Klansman. But it's a little more complicated than that.

Speaker 15 It was a very complicated operation, right?

Speaker 16 Yeah, and this wasn't something that, like,

Speaker 16 I mean, he even says in this NPR interview that he didn't, it was just a job at that particular point in time.

Speaker 16 And when that particular job ended that is the undercover stint which was about what eight or nine months I moved on to something else and it just happened by circumstance so he didn't come in there with a bone to pick with the clan aside from probably every bone to pick that he had with the clan right just as a black man in America

Speaker 15 yeah and it would probably help to give a little background on the clan at the time because you know the clan was very well known for being really big and really violent at over three waves is basically how the Klan history is divided.

Speaker 15 Like the first wave was when

Speaker 15 they were founded in the wake of the the Civil War. Then they they had a the second wave came around the 19 teens, like 1915, I mean,

Speaker 15 that

Speaker 15 era. And then they they had another big resurgence during the civil rights era in the 50s and 60s.

Speaker 15 But, you know, in between these waves and after that third wave, it's not like the clan just went away.

Speaker 15 They kept on going. Their profile was lower, and maybe

Speaker 15 the public violence or terrorism that they were engaging in wasn't quite as pronounced, but they were still there.

Speaker 15 And in Colorado in particular, it had a really long history with the Klan, where basically the city of Denver was under the control of the Klan. back in the 20s, just 50 years before

Speaker 15 Ron Stallworth started working there.

Speaker 16 Yeah, he was, he got, when he got hired there, he got access to files, like secret FBI files.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 And he got to go in and dig in and look at the history of the Klan in Colorado. And boy, like you ain't kidding.
They were in the House of Representatives. There were senators.

Speaker 15 Both senators were Klan's members.

Speaker 16 The mayor, Benjamin Stapleton, who the airport was named after until 95.

Speaker 15 Yeah, his great-grandson ran for governor on the GOP ticket this past election and lost to

Speaker 15 who is Colorado's first ever openly gay Jewish governor. Oh, wow.

Speaker 15 Colorado is a weird state. It is an odd state for sure.
There's a lot of different ideologies all packed in together. It's very purple in all sorts of ways.

Speaker 16 Yeah, so Mayor Benjamin Stapleton was a Klan member. The governor, Clarence Morley, was a Klan member.

Speaker 16 The chief of police, which is, I mean, you don't want anyone in these positions to be Klan members, but I imagine a chief of police is one of the more problematic areas to have a person in that kind of control.

Speaker 15 Particularly that one, too.

Speaker 15 He was picked by the Klan, the Colorado Klan,

Speaker 15 and basically foisted on Benjamin Stapleton, who

Speaker 15 was even like, wow, this guy's even too much for my tastes, and eventually fired him. But like, the Klan picked picked the chief of police of Denver, Colorado, back in the 20s.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 16 And they tried to recall Stapleton at one point.

Speaker 16 It didn't work. And when that effort failed, the Klan burned a cross on the top of Table Mountain as a celebration, a show of public celebration.

Speaker 15 Right. So the Klan has deep roots in an old story in Colorado, or at least they used to.
And they were still very much around when

Speaker 15 Ron Stallworth started his investigation or started as

Speaker 15 the first black detective in Colorado Springs, right? That's right. And so he started out, I guess, as kind of plain clothes and was assigned

Speaker 15 undercover work pretty quickly just

Speaker 15 by being the only African-American

Speaker 15 officer in the police force because Stokely Carmichael came to town once.

Speaker 16 That's right. And this is in the film.
We're going to talk about a few differences between the movie and the real story. But he did, in fact, go to

Speaker 16 a speech and a rally by famous Black Panther Stokely Carmichael. And he was, you know, fully kitted out in his bell bottoms and

Speaker 16 wearing a wire. He picked his afro out.

Speaker 16 And he, in fact, did make a point to meet him, just like he did in the film. And Carmichael did apparently say, arm yourself and get ready because the revolution is coming.

Speaker 16 And I imagine Stallworth had some mixed feelings about that assignment.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I would guess so.

Speaker 15 It's kind of like, I don't really have any idea of what he personally was like because the movie mixed things up so much and like added layers that weren't necessarily there.

Speaker 15 So I have no idea what that experience would have been like for him, you know.

Speaker 16 Yeah, one thing we do know is not true is the character in the film of Patrice, whom he meets at that rally, a young woman that he falls in love love with. She was made up for the movie.

Speaker 16 Spikely wanted

Speaker 16 a love interest, basically, and to represent sort of the female black power movement as a whole.

Speaker 16 So she was completely made up, but she was terrific in the film.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Yeah, Laura Harrier, she's in the new Spider-Man movies, too. She's awesome.

Speaker 15 Cool. The new Spider-Verse movie?

Speaker 16 No, no, no. That's animated.

Speaker 15 Oh, okay.

Speaker 16 Well, she could have been a voice actor, I guess.

Speaker 15 Right, yeah.

Speaker 16 No, she's in the one, the new ones with

Speaker 16 the new kid.

Speaker 15 Okay, the new spidey kid. The current Spider-Man.

Speaker 16 Current Spider-Man, which is great. Those are good movies.

Speaker 15 I haven't seen any of them.

Speaker 16 You're not super into that stuff, though, are you?

Speaker 15 Well, I saw the Infinity War one. He was in that, I think.
Yeah. He's a bit of a smart Alec, frankly.
He is.

Speaker 16 So, okay, he does his research on the deep roots of the Klan in Colorado. He goes undercover.
And then

Speaker 16 I don't think he was even assigned this thing I think he kind of came up with it on his own by chance almost

Speaker 15 in October 1978 he was 25 at this point and he was looking through the local paper well that was part of his assignment to gather intelligence by reading the paper well right but I don't think I think this was his idea to go undercover like this that's the impression I have too he seemed like a self-starter

Speaker 16 in a lot of ways so he found this ad

Speaker 16 a classified ad in the paper for the Klan. It said, get in touch if you want further information.
He sent a letter posing as a white racist to a P.O.

Speaker 16 box just thinking that he would just get back some pamphlets or something.

Speaker 16 So he signed his real name, which is,

Speaker 16 he didn't really think that one through.

Speaker 15 No, he didn't.

Speaker 15 And he never really fully explains it aside from

Speaker 15 the best explanation I saw is that he didn't think anything was going to come of it. He thought he'd get, like you said, a couple of pamphlets and that would be that.

Speaker 15 And he just wasn't planning to create like a large investigation out of making contact through this ad. And again, we should probably state this.

Speaker 15 It was an ad in the paper for the Klan to get in touch with the Klan to get more info about the Klan. And maybe you might want to join.
Who knows? Right.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 he makes contact with them by sending off a letter. And if you ask me,

Speaker 15 if Spike Lee were directing this episode, he would put an ad break right here.

Speaker 16 That was good.

Speaker 15 Who are we to disagree? All right, we'll be right back.

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Speaker 15 Okay, so like we said, Ron Stallworth is thumbing through the newspaper. He mails off a letter to get more info about the Klan, and he uses his real name.
And

Speaker 15 like you said, Chuck, he was expecting a pamphlet or something in return, like, so you want to be a Klan member or something like that. Right.

Speaker 15 Instead, about two weeks later, he got a call from the number. So he used everything as far as the undercover operation would go.

Speaker 15 He used all of his undercover info except for his name. So he got a call on his undercover phone line from a guy named Ken O'Dell.

Speaker 15 And he was pretty surprised to get this call because, again, he was expecting a pamphlet, and instead he had a real live, living, breathing Ku Klux Klansman on the other end of the line saying, hey, I got your letter about hating black people and other minorities.

Speaker 15 Let's talk.

Speaker 16 Yeah, he was like, why are you interested?

Speaker 16 And Stallworth immediately just kind of goes into character.

Speaker 16 And I guess that's what you, you know, when you're undercover, you got to be part improv actor

Speaker 16 to be able to pull that off.

Speaker 15 Well, he also said he drew from his own personal experiences because he grew up in El Paso and encountered a lot of racism there. And I'm sure on the force in Colorado Springs, too.

Speaker 15 So he drew from his own experience as well.

Speaker 16 Yeah, so he he basically, right out of the gate, says, well, you know, my sister's dating a black man, and every time he puts his hands on her, on her pure white body, I cringe, and I want to do something about it.

Speaker 16 And Ken O'Dell says, you sound like a great guy.

Speaker 16 Why don't you come on down and let's meet? Because you are just the kind of

Speaker 16 dude we're looking for.

Speaker 15 You sound like real clan material.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I thought about maybe doing an episode on the clan.

Speaker 15 I thought about that too, and then I'm like, do you want to give them a platform?

Speaker 16 Yeah, but then I thought, or, you know, you could just talk about it and how stupid they are. All right.
Like when I was a kid, I mean, of course, being in Georgia, that stuff was around.

Speaker 16 I never saw it firsthand, obviously. Yeah.

Speaker 16 But you heard things even, like growing up in the 70s in Georgia, and I was always so scared of the whole thing because of the outfits and everything and the fire.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 And I was a good little Baptist boy, so there was a lot of fear. But then I got a little older and I was like, they're just dumb rednecks wearing sheets.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 That sort of demystified it.

Speaker 15 It's the moment you become an adult.

Speaker 16 Yeah, but I mean, of course, then I would later learn that they did real horrific things and took lives and, you know, are a terrorist organization.

Speaker 15 Right. Right.
But I think what you're saying is

Speaker 15 they made themselves up to be boogeymen. Yeah, exactly.
And they definitely can be that way, especially in a young mind or something like that. But

Speaker 15 yeah.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 back to the story. Ron Stallworth is on the phone with this guy named Ken Odell who wants to meet him to see if he'd like to join the Klan.

Speaker 15 And this is a big problem because I think, as we mentioned a couple of times, Ron Stallworth was African-American. Yeah, he's like, oh, boy, what do I do here? Right.

Speaker 15 So he actually recruited a fellow detective who he in his book calls Chuck. That's all he's ever publicly referred to the guy as is Chuck.
Wait, was it you, Chuck?

Speaker 16 It was not me. Okay.

Speaker 16 That gentleman is, I guess, either still undercover or just never wanted his identity out there.

Speaker 15 Right. So he, yeah, he may still live in Colorado Springs.
Who knows?

Speaker 16 Maybe he's on a case right now, for all I know.

Speaker 15 But so this Chuck guy,

Speaker 15 he was recruited by Ron Stallworth to play Ron Stallworth to the Klan because Chuck was white. He was already an undercover narcotics agent.

Speaker 15 And apparently he was friendly enough with Ron Stallworth to say, yes,

Speaker 15 I will join this investigation, buddy. Let's do it.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and here's the thing, though.

Speaker 16 This wasn't his like primary case. So Chuck is undercover on a lot of different assignments.
So he's not around as much as Stallworth needs him.

Speaker 16 So like in the movie, most of this stuff is done over the phone. Like he spends a lot of time in this investigation on the phone

Speaker 16 speaking to these Klansmen who think that he's a white man.

Speaker 16 And when they needed to meet, he would send Chuck in who and we'll get to the voice part in a minute because that's when I was watching the movie.

Speaker 16 I was like Did none of these dummies not realize that they don't sound anything alike?

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 You know, because they've been talking to him on the phone at length. Yeah.

Speaker 16 But they had their they had their first meeting.

Speaker 16 They they got together and I believe they met

Speaker 16 They met somewhere at first and then went to a bar

Speaker 16 after like as the second part of that meeting.

Speaker 15 Yeah, they met at a convenient. So, the movie supposedly portrays this realistically.

Speaker 15 This Chuck guy who is portraying Ron Stallworth to the Klan

Speaker 15 met, they met at a convenience store, and

Speaker 15 he was told to get in the car, and then they drove to a second location.

Speaker 15 Man, that's scary stuff. And also, he's also wearing a wire at the time.
Like, that's something that

Speaker 15 the movie kind of gets across, but especially in articles about the story, don't necessarily dive into. This Chuck Cat was like putting himself out there.
Oh sure.

Speaker 16 As every undercover detective does.

Speaker 15 Right. So I mean Ron Stallworth is conducting this investigation.
He's the mastermind of he's leading this whole thing. But this poor Chuck guy has to go hang out with these

Speaker 15 violent Klans members or Klan members on you know

Speaker 15 like fairly frequently from what I understand. So hats off to him.

Speaker 16 Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean it was it was definitely like it required both of their best efforts to get away with this for that long.
Right. It was quite the ruse.

Speaker 16 So Chuck meets with them, eventually earns their trust

Speaker 16 along with the phone work of Stalworth. And then he actually gets successfully admitted about two months later and got his little, I guess you get a little membership card.

Speaker 15 He still has it. He does.

Speaker 16 He did not throw it away like in the movie. He has it framed, in fact.

Speaker 16 And on the back of the card were six codes of conduct, one of which said, never discuss any clan affairs with any plainclothes officer on a state, local, or national level.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 So there is a lot of comedy in the movie if you haven't seen it.

Speaker 16 I mean, it's a serious thing that they're doing, but there are a lot of laughs as well.

Speaker 15 A lot of laughs and a lot of like movie formula steps that Spikely purposefully follows, you know, very faithfully, too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 15 So there's a big point there that we left out, though, Chuck. So to get that membership card, supposedly,

Speaker 15 again, as they say in Colorado, the oysters on this guy.

Speaker 15 So the

Speaker 15 fake Ron Stallworth, Chuck, met with the Klan, impressed them enough between the real Ron Stallworth's phone calls and Chuck's, whatever Chuck was saying in person.

Speaker 15 All this combined made the Colorado Springs Klan members say, okay, we like you. We want you to be a member.
Fill out this application and we'll send it off to

Speaker 15 the national director.

Speaker 15 Again, the Klan, we should say, I don't don't know if we've ever said this, the Klan calls itself the organization

Speaker 15 rather than the Klan. Yeah.

Speaker 15 So they, and the guy who ran the thing, I don't know if he still runs it or not, but he definitely did at this time during this investigation, is a guy named David Duke, who, if you grew up in the 80s or I think even the 90s, you were probably pretty familiar with David Duke.

Speaker 15 I believe he ran for president once, didn't he? I don't know.

Speaker 16 I mean, he was, wasn't he the governor of Louisiana?

Speaker 15 I don't, maybe that's what it is. Maybe he ran for that, But he was the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and he was trying to make it a more political organization,

Speaker 15 less of a terrorist organization and more of a political organization under his guidance. But it was still the Ku Klux Klan.
Like there were still plenty of times when he was wearing robes and stuff.

Speaker 15 He just never did in public. So during this time,

Speaker 15 he was the national director, the grand wizard of the Klan.

Speaker 15 And when Ron Stallworth didn't get his application pushed through fast enough, he picked up the phone and called the national headquarters and ended up talking with David Duke and saying, like, hey, my application is taking a while.

Speaker 15 Is there anything you can do about it? And this kicked off like

Speaker 15 what Ron Stallworth would later characterize in a weird way as a friendship between him, a black undercover detective in Colorado, and David Duke, the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and by the way, I don't want to get angry emails from David Duke supporters.

Speaker 16 He was a Republican Louisiana state rep. He was not governor.

Speaker 15 But I think he ran for some high office. Oh, he did.

Speaker 16 He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential primaries in the late 80s and then the Republican primaries in 92.

Speaker 15 He ran as a Democrat and then a I could see that solid South kind of thing.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and I think he ran for state Senate and lost, U.S. Senate and lost,

Speaker 16 U.S. House and lost.
And he did run for governor of Louisiana, but he lost. Gotcha.
Okay. And you may be,

Speaker 16 if you didn't grow up in the 80s, you may have heard his name more recently because he fully endorsed

Speaker 16 Donald Trump's campaign. And after Donald Trump won,

Speaker 16 this was his quote on Twitter. Make no mistake, our people have played a huge role in electing Trump.
So he was in the news again more recently.

Speaker 15 Well, he was also in Charlottesville,

Speaker 15 if not leading the rally to Unite the Right, definitely a big speaker at it,

Speaker 15 a big part of it.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 Spike Lee uses some of his footage from that rally

Speaker 15 to kind of get across that, you know, this stuff is still going on. This isn't from the 70s or

Speaker 15 earlier.

Speaker 16 How great was Topher Grace?

Speaker 15 He was wonderful. He was so good.

Speaker 16 And he looks a lot like David Duke of the 70s. He really does.

Speaker 15 Unfortunately for for him. The stash and the three-piece suits and all that.

Speaker 15 Yeah, he did a good job. But so, so, yeah, in the movie, Toefer Grace from that 70s show,

Speaker 15 always, he will always be from that 70s show. Yeah.
He plays, what do you want me to say? Like, he had a bit part in Ocean's 11 or something? What was he?

Speaker 15 Brad Pitt's character was teaching him to play poker, I think. I forgot about that.
You know, that guy.

Speaker 16 No, he's that 70s show, of course.

Speaker 15 So, so he plays David Duke in the movie. And

Speaker 15 it's really funny. Like, Spikely added stuff that just you would think, like, well, yeah, of course, it's totally believable, like Chuck being Jewish in real life.
Right. And he actually wasn't.

Speaker 15 That's fabricated by the movie. So you would just not even think twice about that, but it turns out that's not true.
The stuff that seems the least true is actually the stuff that actually happened.

Speaker 15 And for a very long time, well, at the very least, over the course of this nine-month investigation, there were multiple phone calls that were very cordial and friendly where Ron Stallworth would call David Duke, imposing as a white Klan member, and pump information.

Speaker 15 They would talk about, you know, David Duke's family and like just have normal conversations that would inevitably turn back to racism and the

Speaker 15 weakening of the white race at the hands of the Jewish media and all the minorities who are taking over. And so it would it would inevitably turn disgusting.

Speaker 15 But he he said later, I think in the book and in interviews, where if you could separate that stuff out, he was actually a pleasant person to talk to.

Speaker 15 And that's where that weird friendship that he characterized it as kind of developed from those conversations.

Speaker 16 But there is like he couldn't make this stuff up, you know.

Speaker 15 Exactly. But there is at least one video of David Duke basically admitting that, yes, this he had conversations with this guy.
He tries to downplay it. Sure.

Speaker 15 But he does basically verify that, yes, that's true. That really happened.

Speaker 16 Well, and Duke's probably like, I can't remember every phone call I had with every random racist over the years.

Speaker 15 Right. There were a lot of them.

Speaker 16 Even the sky posing is one.

Speaker 16 All right, well, let's take another break, and we're going to go, we're going to talk a little bit more about this weird David-Duke relationship right after this.

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Speaker 16 All right, so he's buddying up with David Duke on the phone. He's fooling everybody.

Speaker 16 And he even, like, you get the sense that he does have a little bit of sense of humor, Stalworth, because at one point he even goaded him on the phone a little bit.

Speaker 16 And this is in the movie, and it was totally true.

Speaker 16 He said, you know, Mr. Duke, have you ever worried about like a black man posing as a white man and infiltrating your organization? And Duke said, no.
And he said,

Speaker 16 and this is from the NPR interview with Stalworth. He said, I can tell you're white because you don't talk like a black man.
He said, you talk like a very smart, intellectual white man.

Speaker 16 And I can tell by the way you pronounce certain words. And he said, you know, give me an example.
And he said, black people tend to pronounce the word are, aura.

Speaker 16 And I can tell by listening to you that you're not black because you do not pronounce that word in that manner. It's science.

Speaker 15 Case closed.

Speaker 16 Oh, boy. He was so easily duped.
I love it.

Speaker 16 And then they also

Speaker 16 did, in fact, meet in person. That part is true as well.
Duke came to town and was having lunch.

Speaker 16 It was not a big ceremony like in the movie, but he came to town to have lunch and the department assigned Stallworth to protect him.

Speaker 16 And so he goes there to the restaurant, introduces himself to protect him. Duke says, all right, I appreciate you, them, you know, sending someone my way.
And Chuck is undercover there as well.

Speaker 16 And he does, in fact, Stallworth pose with David Duke and gets a Polaroid with him.

Speaker 15 So this sounded to me like,

Speaker 15 what was going on here? Like, I mean, like, you've got this investigation going. is, this takes place during this undercover investigation that Stallworth's conducting.

Speaker 15 You have a guy who's already putting himself out there, Chuck, as the white Ron Stallworth.

Speaker 15 And then the chief says, oh, yes, by the way, you, the only African-American police officer in our entire squad, you go be David Duke's bodyguard for the day while he's in town in Colorado Springs.

Speaker 15 Like, that was just bizarre. And not only do it,

Speaker 15 do that, that very like obvious overt act of slap in the face to David Duke, which was great, but if it, but it could have jeopardized like this whole, this whole thing because you also, you had the guy portraying Ron Stallworth

Speaker 15 in the same room at the same lunch. It just seemed really strange.
And again, that was one of those things where when you watch the movie, you would think like, well, that's just made up.

Speaker 15 No, that actually took place, at least according to Ron Stallworth's memoirs. And that

Speaker 15 Chuck was in the room, was asked to take a picture by Ron Stallworth with David Duke and the grand dragon, I guess, who must be like the head of the state in Colorado. And then at the last second,

Speaker 15 when he was counting down, he put his arms around the shoulders of the two clan guys and then got his hands on the picture. Apparently, all of that was the case, but he's since lost the picture.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and Duke really did try to get it back. And Stallworth got to it quicker and said, basically,

Speaker 16 if you try to take this thing, I will have you arrested for assaulting a police officer.

Speaker 16 Don't do it. Don't think about it.
Right.

Speaker 15 So he said he lost it in a move. He wished he had taken better care of it.
But

Speaker 15 the idea that it was

Speaker 15 like, that's just so nuts. It tells you a lot about the investigation, though, to me.
Like, it makes you say, okay, how seriously were they taking this investigation at the time?

Speaker 15 If Stallworth later said, all right,

Speaker 15 this is just another job to me. When I started it, I did the job, and then when it was done, I moved on to another job.

Speaker 15 The fact that he didn't talk about it much until, I think he spoke about it to the press once in 2006 in a Deseret News article,

Speaker 15 and then didn't talk about it again until 2014 when his memoirs came out.

Speaker 15 It was just like a thing that they were doing, that other people were doing other stuff too.

Speaker 15 And then to have like that part of it, the idea that you would jeopardize it in that way, just makes it seem like they weren't taking it as that big of an operation as the movie would like to believe.

Speaker 15 I'm not sure.

Speaker 16 Well, I think

Speaker 16 in real life,

Speaker 16 it was an information gathering investigation.

Speaker 16 It was never we're going to take down the Klan in Colorado.

Speaker 16 It was let's infiltrate and get as much information and fact-finding as we can.

Speaker 16 And in the end, after eight months, that's kind of what happened. It was, he considers, Stallworth considers it a success in that they fulfilled their mission.

Speaker 16 They did prevent three crossburning ceremonies during that eight-month span or a nine-month span. Right.
And they did identify clan members who worked at NORAD

Speaker 16 who apparently they said they, I mean, these days they would be fired probably, but they said they reassigned them to like Greenland or something.

Speaker 15 Right, because they had access to nuclear weapons. Apparently, they had very high-level clearance at NORAD.
Which is scary.

Speaker 16 And then they also found plans that they didn't act on. Like the whole bomb plot in the movie was made up for dramatic purposes.
But they did find links between for a plan to

Speaker 16 bomb a gay nightclub and another plan to steal automatic weapons from an army base, like an inside job.

Speaker 16 So it was, you know, it was valuable work they were doing for sure. It just wasn't like we're going to take the clan down.
Like, I don't think it was department's big, uh, big job at the time.

Speaker 15 No, certainly not. And in the memoirs and in the movie, too, the reason that's given for

Speaker 15 the undercover operation to end is because it started to become successful.

Speaker 15 Ron Stallworth was nominated to lead the Colorado Springs chapter of the Klan. Like, Ken O'Dell basically said, You should take my job.
Everybody likes you. You're really good at this.
You're smart.

Speaker 15 You should lead the Klan here.

Speaker 15 And the police chief of Colorado Springs said, that's it. Close it down.
Burn all the evidence of this investigation.

Speaker 15 He apparently was worried about what a PR nightmare it would be if it got out that some of his detectives were in the Colorado Springs Klan.

Speaker 15 But at the same time, what strikes me as odd is that the FBI wasn't like, oh, well, geez, this guy is...

Speaker 15 like being nominated to lead the Colorado Springs Klan.

Speaker 15 He's talking to David Duke. Like, really,

Speaker 15 this could could not be kind of blown up into a larger investigation or a larger sting or something like that. And then, secondly, and

Speaker 15 Ron Stallworth himself addresses this,

Speaker 15 there's a very frequently a criticism of, well, if this was such a big operation and they found all this stuff, why wasn't anyone arrested? Why weren't there any arrests?

Speaker 15 And so, well, that's what David Duke says.

Speaker 15 Right, not just David Duke. Stallworth says also that some that in law enforcement, too, people question that, like, why wasn't anyone arrested?

Speaker 15 And he said it was an intel investigation and and that's what they did is they gathered stuff but then he very rightly points out like you said like the fact that they prevented crossburies alone makes it a worthwhile and valuable operation.

Speaker 15 I think just some people on the outside are saying, well,

Speaker 15 why wasn't more done? Why didn't more come out of this?

Speaker 15 And I'm not quite sure what they're driving at, but there are, you know, Stallworth brings that up in an interview I read with him, like that people do ask that and wonder about that.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and Stallworth

Speaker 16 is very proud of the fact that with the cross burnings, he was like, no, I can't remember the quote, but he said something about like no children in Colorado Springs got to, you know, no young black kids had to see crosses on fire during that eight or nine month period.

Speaker 16 And he's very proud of that, as he should be. Yeah, for real.
So I mentioned the voice earlier and the fact that he had a different voice, obviously, than Chuck.

Speaker 16 And he said one time, only one time, and I think this was in the movie, wasn't it?

Speaker 16 Or was it it's been yeah it was actually no it was I remember yeah so one time in the whole investigation did someone say like wait a minute you sound different Chuck had just been at an in-person meeting came back

Speaker 16 and then

Speaker 16 Stallworth wants to follow up on the phone with Ken O'Dell about something right afterward so he had just heard Chuck's voice for whatever this whole meeting and was talking to him and he was like wait a minute you sound different what's going on and he just pulled it off he coughed and said he had a sinus infection and ken o'dell was like oh well here's how you clear that up and gave him some good sinus medication advice right yeah that definitely appeared in the movie

Speaker 15 i mean you could not make this thing up you know it's crazy no for real and apparently for a long time stallworth was saying like yeah it was just another job it was just another operation and i guess he told some some fellow like law enforcement friends or whatever about it and they're like dude you this is a movie you need to write this down you need to get this out there you this is a one in a million story yeah i wonder one reason it didn't go bigger operation wise was because

Speaker 16 the sort of hackneyed way they got into it like he's the voice but they're sending a a white mechanic

Speaker 16 like it's it's i'm surprised they pulled it off for that long yeah i could totally see that uh one final thing that did not happen in real life but did happen in the movie and this is what when you usually will change real life is to to get a more satisfying ending.

Speaker 16 But Stalworth did not, unfortunately, reveal his true identity to David Duke like he does

Speaker 16 to Hilarious Effect in the film, unfortunately.

Speaker 15 No, sad to learn that. He was saying, like, yeah, he just didn't really talk about it until the 2000s.
So David Duke didn't know until, I guess, the memoirs came out.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and you know, well, I guess we should talk about Spike Lee getting criticized.

Speaker 16 Boots Riley, director,

Speaker 16 who I had on Movie Crush, by the way.

Speaker 15 I know.

Speaker 15 What was his movie?

Speaker 16 Sorry to bother you, was his film that he made.

Speaker 15 No, I mean his pick for Movie Crush.

Speaker 16 His pick was a movie called Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 15 Yeah. It was a great film.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 his knowledge on movies was deep. He turned me on to a lot of cool things.

Speaker 15 I thought for a very, a very terrible second you were saying his pick was his own movie. No, no.

Speaker 16 But he,

Speaker 16 you know, Boots does not hold back on what he thinks.

Speaker 16 And while you would think that he would be like, oh, no, I'm going to be a champion of Spike Lee and telling the story, he came out very publicly on Twitter and very

Speaker 16 intelligently criticized it. He didn't just bag on it.
He wrote a big

Speaker 16 long statement on exactly what he thought was wrong with it.

Speaker 15 Yeah, he basically said, look, man, if you take away all the embellishments that Spike Lee added to this movie, what you have have is a guy who's probably biggest assignment, and I'm not sure where he got this, but he focused on that

Speaker 15 Stokely Carmichael thing and the fact that Ron Stallworth had worked undercover

Speaker 15 to infiltrate the black power movement in Colorado Springs and that he had worked on that for like three years and that this Klan thing was just like a nine-month thing.

Speaker 15 And he also criticized Spike Lee for making it making the movie seem like law enforcement and the black power movement came together to fight racism. Right.
And that

Speaker 15 was a larger point or that that was historically accurate or something like that.

Speaker 15 It was a really interesting, it was like a three-page essay that he posted on Twitter that made some good points. He basically said,

Speaker 15 from what I can tell, it looks like Ron Stallworth was working for COINTELPRO, which is the FBI's,

Speaker 15 it was their program to undermine groups, including black power groups, which we mentioned it in the Black Panther episode we did. And the COINTELPRO definitely deserves its own episode.

Speaker 15 And it was ended officially in 1971, but I think Bruce Riley's point was

Speaker 15 it may have been officially ended, but the work was still going on. And if this guy was infiltrating black power

Speaker 15 groups in Colorado Springs, he was almost certainly trying to break them up one way or another, probably using using COINTOL purposes or practices.

Speaker 15 And Ron Stallworth, he had a pretty great quote in response to it. He said,

Speaker 15 I pray for my demented, dissolute brother in response to Bruce Riley, and Spike Lee has no comment about it whatsoever. So who knows? But you make a good point that, like, he's he's

Speaker 15 he's not just giving like blind allegiance to anything. Sure.

Speaker 16 Well, Spike did comment eventually.

Speaker 15 Oh, I didn't see that.

Speaker 16 Yeah, he was in an interview, and the first thing he said was like,

Speaker 16 hey,

Speaker 16 I'm a young man of 61 or something like that. And like, you know, young me might have kind of gotten into a war of words, but he's just not into that anymore.

Speaker 16 But he did say

Speaker 16 briefly something about,

Speaker 16 listen, I'm not going to come out and say that all cops are racist and all cops do bad things because they don't all do bad things. There's a lot of great cops.
There's also bad cops.

Speaker 16 And he kind of just couched it in that and then was like, but you know, I'm not going to be really talking about this anymore.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I hadn't seen that he'd even had that comment. Yeah.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 it's interesting stuff and it's a good movie at the very least.

Speaker 16 Oh, for sure.

Speaker 15 You know,

Speaker 15 I think Ron Stalwart is like, man, they made a movie about my story. That's pretty awesome.
And at the very least, it's a pretty great movie. How about that?

Speaker 16 Totally.

Speaker 15 Totally. So

Speaker 15 if you, you got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about Black Klansmen, you should probably go see that movie.

Speaker 15 And I guess we probably should have said at the outset, this episode is not an ad. No, of course not.
We just

Speaker 15 like the movie a lot, right?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, you could say it's an ad, but like no one gave us money or asked us to do this.

Speaker 15 Sure.

Speaker 16 But I am endorsing it.

Speaker 15 Okay, there you go. I am endorsing it as well.
It has two thumbs up, as it were. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Rest in peace, Roger Ebert. And Gene Siskel.

Speaker 16 Two thumbs.

Speaker 15 Okay, so if. Oh, oh, I already said that.
How about some listener mail?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I'm going to call this ping pong response from a former pro. Oh, nice.
Hey, guys, want to commend you on the job you did, covering a sport that you didn't have an extensive knowledge of.

Speaker 16 I'm a professional table tennis coach and former player. I started playing in college, thought I was really good.

Speaker 16 until I was coerced to go to a tournament at Princeton University about 20 years ago, and I got destroyed. I didn't like that, so I sought out to coach, and the rest is history.

Speaker 16 You guys clearly did a lot of research

Speaker 16 to highlight the things that most novice players aren't aware of, but there were a few things I couldn't help but point out.

Speaker 16 Josh, you mentioned the components of the modern racket.

Speaker 16 You said the pimpled sign, those are called pips, are for spinning the ball, that the smooth side is for defensive play, but the opposite is actually true. Oh, no.

Speaker 16 I didn't catch that because I would have pointed that out. I thought everyone knew that.

Speaker 15 Thank you for that.

Speaker 16 You get good spin on that smooth side.

Speaker 15 For real? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 15 It's grippy. All right.

Speaker 16 He said the smooth side is very tacky,

Speaker 16 as in sticky. Oh, I see.
And that combined with the sponge underneath allows the ball to sink in just enough so that the tacky service grips the ball and generates a lot of spin.

Speaker 16 Also, you can have really have any combination of rubber that you want as long as it's ITTF approved. Players are not restricted to having one smooth side and one with pips.

Speaker 16 But one side does have to be red and the other black.

Speaker 16 Most defensive players use pips on their backhand because pips vary the spin that is coming back at you and is very hard to read.

Speaker 16 Also, Chuck, you mentioned that defensive players are called chiselers. They're actually called choppers as they chop the ball back with varying backspin.
I've never heard the term chiselers.

Speaker 16 I'm wondering if it is extremely outdated. Maybe.
I bet you that was the case.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 16 I had old research.

Speaker 15 Chislers.

Speaker 15 All right, that's what they call it in the 20s.

Speaker 16 He said, if you guys are ever in the Dunnellen, New Jersey area, stop by.

Speaker 15 We're there right now.

Speaker 16 Stop by the Lily Yip Table Tennis Club, and I'll gladly hook you guys up with a lesson.

Speaker 15 I will gladly humiliate you in person.

Speaker 16 And that is Thomas from Philly.

Speaker 15 Thanks, Thomas.

Speaker 15 Much appreciated. We like it when we are gently corrected because we like to be right.
So thanks for that.

Speaker 15 If you want to get in touch with us, let us know,

Speaker 15 I don't know, something we got wrong about Black Klansmen. Let us know.

Speaker 15 You can find all of our social links on stuffyshouldknow.com, and as always, send us an email to stuffpodcast at houstuffworks.com.

Speaker 1 For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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Speaker 5 Living with a rare autoimmune condition comes with challenges, but also incredible strength, especially for those living with conditions like myasthenia gravis or MG and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, otherwise known as CIDP.

Speaker 3 Finding empowerment in the community is critical.

Speaker 8 Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production, in partnership with Argenix, explores people discovering strength in the most unexpected places.

Speaker 12 Listen to Untold Stories on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.