The new Spike Lee film ( regretful , " joint " ) " BlacKkKlansman " asterisk John David Washington , acquire the Grand Prix at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival for its gripping and entertaining retelling of a little - known chapter of black history , when a black Colorado Springs police police officer , Ron Stallworth , infiltrate theKu Klux Klanso deeply that he was ask to lead a local chapter .
While the movie take some spectacular license withStallworth ’s memoir , many of the most horrid scenery in " BlacKkKlansman " — including Stallworth ’s chummy phone conversations with KKK Grand Wizard David Duke — are absolutely true .
The story begin in 1978 , when Stallworth was the " Jackie Robinson " of the Colorado Springs Police Department , the first black detective on the violence . Flipping through the local newspaper , he found a brusque classified ad for the KKK with a P.O. box speech listed for more information . Since it was part of Stallworth ’s job as an intelligence officer to keep tab on likely domesticated terrorists , he shot off a line . He signed his real name think he ’d just get a brochure .
A few weeks afterward , he got a call at his desk from a local KKK organiser . Asked why he was interested in join the Klan , Stallworth confront himself as a white valet who hated blacks , Jews , Mexicans , Asians — the standard KKK lure . For added realism , he claimed that his baby was dating a fatal gentleman .
" Every time he put his filthy dim manus on her pure white-hot consistency it made me crawl , " Stallworthrecalled saying , to the Washington Post . " And I require to do something to stop those things from find . "
proud of as punch to find another whitened supremacist in Colorado Springs , the Klan organizer paint a picture the two meet in person . That was n’t going to sour , obviously , so Stallworth raise a lily-white colleague to be his supremacist stand - in . And so began a seven - month hush-hush investigation in which the two " Stallworths " became card - carrying Klansmen and trusted associate of none other than David Duke .
At one gunpoint during Stallworth ’s investigation into Klan activities in Colorado , he came across a phone act for " The Voice of the Klan " and chip in it a ring .
" anathemize if David [ Duke ] did n’t pick up the line of merchandise , " Stallworth say the Washington Post . " He laughed and said , ' I ’m ' The Voice of the Klan . ' He name himself as the grand wizard , the theater director . "
Stallworth and Duke became fast sound friends , have several long conversation about the many threats against the Aryan wash in America . Stallworth buttered up Duke with flattery , but could n’t resist play with the grand wizard ’s inflated ego . In an NPR interviewStallworth said he once asked Duke if he was n’t afraid of some black person call up his system pretending to be bloodless .
" He said , no , he was n’t fearful of that at all , because he could always tell when he was talking to a disastrous person . And I might add , he never used the condition ' smuggled . ' He always used the so - called N tidings , " Stallworth say .
Duke replied that it could never go on , because he was able to detect a pure Aryan by the elbow room he pronounced certain words and idiom .
" He said , ' Black person run to sound out the intelligence ARE , he said they pronounce it AR - RA . And he say , ' I could tell by listening to you that you ’re not calamitous because you do not label that word in that manner,'“remembered Stallworth .
When Duke attended a Klan rallying in Colorado Springs , Stallworth was sacrifice the task of ward him . Duke never see that Stallworth was the person he ’d been talk on the phone with for months . Indeed , Duke did n’t detect out that Stallworth was a black hugger-mugger police officer until 2006 , when a newsperson wrote about it and columnistLeonard Pitts contacted Duketo fact - hitch Stallworth ’s unbelievable story .
Not a lover of Lee ’s film , Duke lately pinch that it was " a self-aggrandizing lie . Cops infiltrate a Klan chapter . But , if the moving-picture show is true by depicting them as violent , why no catch ? no test ? no grand jury ? "
While it ’s honest that the investigation did n’t lead to any check or conviction , the whole full stop of it was to assemble data . Stallworth says that it tipped off law to planned cross burnings , let out the identityof two Klansmen hold high - level posts within the North American Aerospace Defense Command ( NORAD ) , and disrupted a plot to flush it two gay bars in Denver .
The probe was shut down in 1979 when , improbably , the local KKK personal digital assistant nominated Stallworth as the new loss leader of the Colorado Springs chapter . Stallworth ’s superiors felt the dangerous ruse had gone on long enough .
After his stretch as a black Klansman , Stallworth served more than 30 yr as a narcotic investigator in Colorado , Wyoming and Utah , becoming an expert in gang culture along the path . He retire in 2006 andself - published his memoirin 2014 . He still has his KKK membership bill of fare and his " certificate of citizenship " signed by David Duke .
