In 1978, Ron Stallworth was the first black detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department. With the help of a white colleague, he began a remarkable undercover investigation that led to him not just leading a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan from a distance but also briefly serving as the bodyguard of the KKK's grand wizard, David Duke. In BlacKkKlansman, out August 10, Spike Lee addresses the connections between Stallworth's experience four decades ago and contemporary racist violence. (The release date is timed to the anniversary of the tragic events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists clashed with counterprotesters over the city's plans to remove a Confederate statue.) Stallworth's memoir sticks with the past and is rich with details about detective work and racism at its most fervent. When Duke gives Stallworth a hard-eyed stare, he thinks, "I had arrested pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers and put them in jail and prison...who had not spewed the visual vile I received from David Duke."
— Mark Athitakis
