Black Klansman: A Memoir

After seeing Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, I decided that I had to read Ron Stallworth’s Black Klansman: A Memoir, which the movie is loosely based on, just so I could separate fact from fiction. Stallworth was the first African-American to join the Colorado Springs Police Department and become a detective. While reading the book, it felt as if Stallworth wrote the book just a skosh before the movie deal was closed. Even though it is a quick read because the story is innately interesting, and the book is short, Stallworth could have used a ghost writer instead of the publisher relying on his innate writing skills, which are probably limited to dry police reports and preparing to testify in court. Stallworth pumps the brakes on his dynamic tale by explaining his intention, stating what happened then explaining what it meant. It felt as if he was trying to meet some unspoken length, but he could have kept it moving by elaborating about parts omitted from the book.
He really tries to editorialize about his feelings about his career and the investigation, but he does so inconsistently, and it is obviously a struggle. Black Klansman: A Memoir is less a memoir than a limited snapshot solely devoted to his investigation of the KKK. He rushes through everything that precedes and follows that investigation. It is possible that the publisher directed him to do so, but it is a missed opportunity for an expansive memoir that should have chronicled his entire life.
Black Klansman: A Memoir does succeed at providing details that are not included in the movie. Please don’t read any further if you haven’t seen Lee’s movie because I plan to spoil BlacKkKlansman by comparing the memoir with the movie. Stallworth’s approach to policing was really interesting. I always thought that police just cracked down after crime occurs, but he preferred intelligence gathering, which is aimed at preventing crime before it happens and was the primary goal of his infiltration of the KKK. It seems as if he struggled against that bias, and it was the primary obstacle that he faced. So the denouement is complete fiction albeit one that I thoroughly enjoyed. It strikes me that Lee implicitly and unintentionally agrees with Stallworth’s superiors and not Stallworth because Lee thinks a flashy denouement is more interesting than crime prevention.
While only one officer pretended to be Stallworth, others from various local police departments were authorized to infiltrate, and Stallworth coordinated with federal agencies to advance the investigation. I do think that Lee missed an opportunity by skipping Stallworth’s history lesson about KKK’s long-standing ties with Colorado and the unveiling of unnamed KKK members at the highest levels of the military. Stallworth never says that the white officer who played him was Jewish so Lee was probably deliberately trying to echo the allegiance of black people and Jewish people from the civil rights movement on the streets to law enforcement institutions. Along casting lines, the cop who shot an unarmed black man was actually a member of another minority group and never actually got caught doing other shenanigans though the movie did accurately depict that his colleagues generally disliked him and deemed him a toady. So the jovial crackdown is complete fiction.
Stallworth also never had that big reveal on the phone with his colleagues barely keeping it together in the background, but Stallworth does adore mocking each individual KKK member that crossed his path so it was probably something that he wished he could do, and Lee obliged. On a sad note, it was accurate that a cross burning occurred as soon as the investigation ended. Stallworth used the intelligence that he gathered to step up patrols in areas where he discovered that the KKK planned to prominently burn a cross. Stallworth did suspect that the KKK inflated their terrorist actions on individual citizens during the investigation so Lee is unwittingly aiding them in inflating their ego by depicting them actually terrorizing people.
BlacKkKlansman’s relationship story line is complete fiction, and Stallworth probably disapproved of it because he was very cautious regarding socializing with groups that protested the KKK since he was just as suspicious of them as he was of the KKK as an officer of the law concerned that they would use force. He also goes out of his way to call them disorganized or ineffective. Stallworth is like most Americans-instinctually disdainful of the communist label or anything that whiffs of being too far left even if they’re for him. It explains why Boots Riley, the director of Sorry To Bother You, may have been more incisive than he realized by just watching and criticizing the movie, and Lee’s shock and dismay at Riley’s criticism was ultimately disingenuous so he could rely on mainstream proclivities as opposed to accuracy.
Black Klansman: A Memoir explicitly aims at being germane to our current political climate in terms of sentiment and by showing the link and collaboration between various white supremacist groups, militias and anti-government groups. He concludes from his investigation that they are basically the same thing. He may not directly reference Presidon’t, but it is clear that he is strongly making the link and hoping that readers will dry the same conclusion. Clearly Lee decided to make it explicit, overt and as unsubtle as possible, which may not be a bad idea because people can be willfully blind to the obvious so laying it on with a trowel is worth it. After all, we didn’t get here because people were discerning.
Lee, not Stallworth, has an ax to grind with the 52%. In Black Klansman: A Memoir, only one woman is described joining the KKK. Stallworth’s account of his investigation never depicts the role of women, specifically the significant others of the KKK members, though they exist. I’ll allow this digression because if you marry a KKK member, you can’t escape criticism. You signed on.
Unbelievably Stallworth actually did have to guard David Duke while he was in Colorado! A Birth of A Nation is as important to the KKK as Lee depicts. If I recall correctly, Black Klansman: A Memoir probably depicts the KKK showing it more than BlacKkKlansman so Lee actually underplayed it, which is astonishing because Lee can be described as many things, known for his restraint would not make the list.
I’m sure that the aforementioned comparison is not exhaustive. If you watched and enjoyed BlacKkKlansman, Black Klansman: A Memoir is short enough to read and judge for yourself which details from he movie and/or the book make Stallworth’s story resonate with you more and are more germane to today’s political climate. For me, the movie is entertainment, and the book is a primary historical account that may not be objective, but is an honest account of an eyewitness’ perspective of a particular time and place that is emblematic of the larger experiment of America that we take for granted everyday.