Ann Katz Festival of Books and Arts

The Klansman's Son with R. Derek Black

The Klansman's Son is an aston­ish­ing mem­oir of a child­hood built on fear, and of break­ing from a com­mu­ni­ty of hate. Derek Black was raised to take over the white nation­al­ist move­ment in the Unit­ed States. Their father, Don Black, was a for­mer Grand Wiz­ard in the Ku Klux Klan and start­ed Storm­front - Derek built the kids' page. David Duke, was also their close fam­i­ly friend and men­tor. Racist hatred was all Derek knew. Then, while in col­lege in 2013, Derek began engag­ing with stu­dents of var­i­ous reli­gions and races. A Jew­ish class­mate, Matthew Steven­son, bucked cam­pus pres­sure to ignore and iso­late Derek and invit­ed them to Shab­bat din­ner in his dorm. Derek began join­ing every week for the con­ver­sa­tions and cama­raderie. It set them on course to pub­licly renounce white nation­al­ism and apol­o­gize for their actions. In 2016, as they watched the rise of Don­ald Trump, they imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized what they were hear­ing - the spread and main­stream­ing of the hate they had helped cul­ti­vate - and they knew that they couldn' t stay silent. Derek traces a unique­ly insid­er account of the rise of white nation­al­ism, and how a child indoc­tri­nat­ed with hate can become an anti-racist adult, com­mit­ted to com­bat­ting antisemitism.

R. Derek Black (they/​she) is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. Since 2016, they have spo­ken to many audi­ences at uni­ver­si­ties, foun­da­tions, insti­tu­tions, muse­ums, syn­a­gogues, and church­es. They received the Elie Wiesel Award and a human­i­tar­i­an award from the Anti-Defama­tion League. The Klansman' s Son is their first book.

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