Ron Stallworth Quotes
It was extremely dangerous to be a black man in the KKK. If I'd been exposed, it could have all gone horribly wrong. The Klansmen were armed, and there was always a peril.
Stallworth, Ron. Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime. Flatiron Books, 2018.
Wilson, a history and government professor and college president before politics, was has been accused of being one of the most racist Presidents since Reconstruction. Prior to his Presidency, the Federal Government had been making steady progress in hiring African Americans. Under Wilson there was a wholesale firing of a large proportion of them. Some apologists argue that his League of Nations and other major aspirations required the votes and cooperation of Southern Senators who insisted that many of the blacks be terminated. At the same time, the KKK was near the zenith of its membership and political power and was an intimidating force. Wilson’s home state of New Jersey not only had a large KKK membership but there were lynching of Blacks in his own state and when Governor and President he never asked for any anti-lynching legislation.
The song was sung by and inspired many South African patriots including Nelson Mandella. “Barefoot” was the name given to the apartheid Prime Minister Verwoerd. The composer was hung by the apartheid government for refusing to name his revolutionary compatriots.
Most of the actions of the KKK over the years have violated the spirit and the laws of America. They are opposed to many of the Bill of Rights. There was a time, before the 1970s, where members literally got away with murder in the South. When Americas laws were enforced and KKK members who broke the law were jailed and sued for monetary damages, the Klan has a very tiny membership and is constantly under survelience.
This quotation illustrates how the racist South defeated the objectives of the Civil War and Reconstruction by the institution of Jim Crowe laws and so called “states’ rights”. It would take more than another half century for the Yankees and the vast majority of the non-Southern Americans decided that the Southerners could no longer “do as they pleased” with fellow human beings. It is hard to believe for us today that an entire section of our country could actually believe in the morality of the South but that is the tragic history of race relations in America.
Justice Marshall, in he early career played an extremely important role in the development of the law vis a vis race and discrimination in America. He went from town to town in the Jim Crow, segregated South filing and often winning civil rights lawsuits. This was an era where lynching was still prevalent, and he was often threatened with bodily harm or death. Justice Ginsberg who also had been a leader in filing and winning civil rights suits but she worked in the area of women’s rights. The host had stated that she and Marshall were the great legal pioneers in civil rights litigation. Ginsberg explained that she hers was a much easier role and Marshall should receive much more credit. This was her reason.
Ron Stallworth is an American retired police officer who infiltrated the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the late 1970s. He was the first African-American detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department.
