R Derek Black, son of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Don Black and former poster child of the white supremacist movement, has quietly come out as transgender.
DailyMail.com can now exclusively reveal that in the afterword to Black’s new book, The Klansman’s Son: My Journey from White Nationalism to Anti-Racismcomes out for the first time as a transgender person who uses they/them pronouns.
Black, 35, was already a well-known figure at the age of 10, when she appeared on the talk show The Jenny Jones alongside white power leaders from the notoriously racist and homophobic Westboro Baptist Church.
And as a child, Black contributed to a children’s section of Stormfront.org, the neo-Nazi hate site run by his father.
But now, Black writes that attending the famously liberal New College in Sarasota, Florida, since 2010 contributed to her “emerging understanding of my gender identity” and her disillusionment with the white supremacist movement.
‘[New College’s] The culture and people I met there helped me accept that I fit under the trans umbrella,” Black says.
Black reveals that their ideological evolution continued when they began dating a Jewish woman, even though the Black family were “some of the most famous anti-Semitic activists in the country.”
Through long and often challenging conversations with Allison Gornik, Black’s now wife, they began to take their first tentative steps away from the neo-Nazi movement. And in 2013, Black wrote a letter renouncing white nationalism.
Blacks, who renounced white nationalism in 2013, say they now “fit under the trans umbrella”
As a child, Black played a key role in promoting and defending Klan politics.
Black’s father is the former Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (pictured in suit)
Black is also expressing support for other trans people “whose rights are now under loud and violent attack in Florida.”
“I can’t imagine how horrible it would have been to grow up in today’s political environment as a girl who, until puberty, was very happy to be often perceived as a girl and then hid that part of myself,” they say. write.
As children, Black says, they grew their hair long enough to “put it behind my ears” and enjoyed being constantly mistaken for a girl by strangers.
“I liked the gender confusion, except in public bathrooms, where grown men always took it upon themselves to compliment my appearance before telling me I was in the wrong room.
“After puberty started, I kept my hair long, but I could use the bathrooms in peace and I was relieved to stop receiving inappropriate comments,” Black says.
Don Black (center, dressed in white) is flanked by armed guards at the climax of the cross burning of a 1982 Klan recruiting rally.
When she was 10, Black appeared on the Jenny Jones Show to defend the KKK’s policies.
Don Black talks to white hooded KKK members at a rally in 1979
R Derek with his father, KKK Grand Wizard Don Black, at Christmas, when they were about four or five years old.
Derek wears a Confederate uniform for Halloween: the costume was sewn by his mother.
When it came to choosing a college, Black jokes that New College regularly ranked among Princeton Review’s top ten schools as ‘Most Liberal Students,’ ‘Most LGBT Friendly,’ ‘Most Marijuana Friendly,’ and ‘Users.’ from Birkenstock, Tree -Hugging vegetarians and clove smokers.
After Black was admitted, they attempted to keep his white supremacist background a secret, but only one semester passed before they were “outed” on a college chat forum.
At the time, Black was attending a study abroad program in Germany and his godfather, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan founder David Duke, called.
“David Duke came from his home in Austria to visit me for the day,” Black writes. “I met him in a beer garden and he gave me an impromptu tour of the highlights of the early Nazi movement.
Duke assured his godson that he, too, had been “discovered” at the university.
David Duke, founder of the Knights of the KKK and Black’s godfather, took him on a ‘Hitler tour’ of Germany
Black reveals that attending the famed liberal New College in Sarasota since 2010 had helped “the emerging understanding of my gender identity.”
The culture and people black people met at New College helped them “accept that I fit under the trans umbrella.”
It had been for the best, Black remembers Duke saying, because afterward Duke was free to lean into his white nationalist activism.
‘Facing the outrage of your fellow students was the forge I needed to truly become the most effective activist. “I should really take the opportunity to learn how the enemy thinks and how intolerant they can be, he told me,” Black writes.
However, upon his return to Sarasota, rather than doubling down on extremist politics, Black began to further assimilate with Jewish and minority students and even regularly attend Shabbat dinners in a friend’s dorm room.
In 2013, in a letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Black finally apologized for their past activism, saying that they could no longer support white nationalism, “having gotten over my bubble, having spoken to the people it affected, having read more widely and realized the necessary impact my actions had on people I never meant to harm.’
Black admits that they rarely talk to their family now.
Black’s father, who served time in prison for plotting an invasion of the Caribbean island of Dominica in 1981, still runs Stormfront.
Black and Gornik married in 2020.
“We had qualms about what marriage symbolized,” Black writes. ‘It had been almost nine years since we met… We didn’t have a first date, because we had gone very ambiguously from acquaintances to friends who could talk for hours to friends who stayed the night almost every night in the same bed. . .
“Throughout the first few months of the year, our biggest concern had been how to keep the wedding small and relatively private without offending our families.”
So lockdown provided the excuse the couple needed.
‘At the end of April, while everything around us remained still, we knew we wouldn’t be able to invite family or friends to an in-person wedding anytime soon.
Blacks renounced white nationalism after many long conversations with his now wife Allison Gornik.
Black married his longtime friend Allison Gornik in an unconventional wedding ceremony in 2020.
“So we found a large cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, suddenly empty during what was normally the best spring break season, and we hosted our own private wedding ceremonies for several days, lying on couches and chairs writing letters to each other, texting each other. our own vows and catalog the ways we mean so much to each other.
Black and Gornik recorded themselves and sent an announcement to friends and family.
‘Allison came into my life at a time when I least felt like someone worthy of trust or love. Even then I knew that my loyalty to the community that raised me had led me to betray all the people who had chosen to be close to me.
‘It is impossible for me to imagine the story of my own life without his intervention. She showed me that she could love other people fully and fearlessly, and I showed her how wide the world is and that we can experience it all together.’
Klan member’s son: My Journey from White Nationalism to Anti-Racism by R. Derek Black is published by Abrams Press, May 14
