Great moment in black history happened in ’79

Stallworth filled out his application, paid his dues, became a Klansman. Some problem delayed his membership card, though, so Stallworth went to the top to get it straightened out. “I called David Duke,” he said.

Within a few days, Stallworth had his membership card, which he still carries. He says he handled Klan business by phone, sending in the white cop when face-to-face meetings were required. For a year, he said, he and Duke spoke once or twice a week. Once Stallworth asked Duke if he wasn’t afraid of being infiltrated by undercover cops, or maybe some smartaleck black man posing as white.

“He said, ‘No, I’m not concerned about that because I can always tell when I’m talking to a n - - - - - .’ I said, ‘How?’ He said, ‘The way they pronounce certain words or letters. N - - - - - - tend to say the word ‘are,’ they say ‘are-uh.’ That’s a dead giveaway. I can tell you’re an educated white man because you don’t talk that way.”

I asked Duke about all this by email. The Klan’s former bigot in chief professed no memory of Stallworth. “I don’t believe we talked much, if at all,” he wrote. The Klan he led, he said, was “legal and law-abiding.” He points to the fact that Stallworth’s investigation produced no arrests as proof.

Stallworth says that as an intelligence officer his aim was not to make arrests but to gather information. He says his investigation did head off a number of cross burnings. And that two soldiers moonlighting as Klansmen found themselves transferred to cold and distant posts.

Here’s the kicker: After a year, Stallworth’s Klan contact called with the news that he, too, was being reassigned. He asked Stallworth to lead the chapter “because I had been a loyal and dedicated member.”

Stallworth promised to get back to him. His bosses shut off the phone, closed the investigation. His career in the Klan was over.

This great moment in black history has been sponsored by the same old ignoramuses who still think melanin is destiny. Which only goes to show you what atavistic imbeciles they — ahem — are-uh.