June 27, 2025 • 45 mins
In 2018, director Spike Lee brought the story of Ron Stallworth to the big screen to great effect. Today, Josh and Chuck discuss the true story behind the Oscar nominated film.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Summer Movie Playlist, the
place where we grouped some fun movie content because the
summer movie season. We thought you might like this, so
we gave it a shot, and today you're going to
be listening to the replay of our episode on Black Clansman,
the true story behind that movie. It's a great movie.
(00:21):
Love it, love Spike Lee, and this is a great one.
So I hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles Bryant, there's Jerry over there. You put the three
of us together. It's movie crush. I mean stuff you
should know.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
This does have some stank on it doesn't it. It's
a movie stank.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I know your game is cool.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I didn't even ask you have you seen Black clans
I I was.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Like, I can't. I can't do this episode without having
seen it. So I watched it last night.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Oh nice, Yeah good?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Huh Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. Like I like his
choice at the end, like just completely pull a somersault
on the viewer.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh sure with that last bet.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah. Like spoiler alert there's an end spoilery, Yeah, for sure,
we should probably say that out of the gate. If
you haven't seen this yet and you don't want it
to be spoiled, don't listen to this episode first. Yes,
but yeah, I guess now that we've said that, we
can speak freely. Right.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yes, So.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
The if, if the entire movie was basically to disarm
you up to the end, then I think it's one
of the greatest movies I've ever seen in my life.
And even if it wasn't, that wasn't the entire point
of the movie. It was still it was still great.
And how he pulled it out at the end, I think.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, well this was I don't know if you remember,
but this is the movie I saw in Perth, Australia. Ye,
that happens at the end, that big, you know, sort
of gut punch of realism at the end, And I
stood up and I was like, hmm, Like, wonder what
they're thinking here in Perth.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
They probably think of what just happened? What's wrong with America?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, and I'm going, I my good to see you.
I'm not American.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I'm Canadian. Can't you tell bloke?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Oh goodness? Yeah? It was. It was one of those
things where I was like, I'm kind of slightly embarrassed
right now.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, but I like that.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I enjoyed the movie though I thought to see Spike Lee,
who just he's one of my favorite filmmakers in his sixties,
still just bringing the juice like this. I loved it.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah. I also loved that it was controversial too, in
that like some people criticize Spike Lee for like not
going far enough or maybe kind of glossing over some
of the ugly aspects of the story.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, do you want to get to that at the end, maybe.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. But we'll give it a pre
mention shout out, which is what we just did.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Right, So we are talking about the true story of
the film Black Clansman, Spike Lee's movie that won the
Grand Prize at the con Film Festival. It's nominated for
Academy Awards.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, three Oscars, I believe for including Best.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Picture, Yeah, I think Picture Director, and.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Supporting Actor for who I would guess Adam Driver. I
didn't see really. Yeah, I was surprised because Denzel's son
did a wonderful job as well.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
He loves he loves that being known as that right.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
I can't remember his first name, but you know, Denzel's son.
He was like. There were several times when he was
talking and I was like, oh, you are definitely Denzel
Washington's son man, just the way he talked, the sound
of his voice. But also is acting too, he's a
good actor.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, so all right, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for
Adam Driver, Best Director, and Best Original Music Score.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Oh nice, but yeah he is.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I didn't know he was Denzel Sun till after the movie.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And he was a football player, do you know that.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I didn't who he played for.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
He played for Morehouse here in Atlanta. He was a
running back and then played an NFL on the practice
squad for the Rams, and then eventually played a few
years in NFL Europe and the UFL until he hung
up his cleats six years ago.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Oh that's cool. Yeah, playing football in Europe has got
to be a surreal experience.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, because it's a soccer ball.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Everyone's like, what are you doing? This is all wrong?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
All right? So should we way back into the nineteen seventies,
the groovy seventies of Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
First we should say his name is John David Washington.
Oh sure you were kidding, Denzel Son. Yes, so yeah,
let's get in the way back machine and see go
inspect their terrible low quality pot.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So Ron Stalworth is the true to life character's name
who There was a football player growing when we were
growing up named John Stalworth. So I'm always wanting to
say John Stalworth.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
This is not him. This is a cop named Ron Stalworth,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
And he had a few designations that are pretty important.
He was the first African American police officer to work
for the Colorado Springs Police Department, which he joined as
a cadet at the age of nineteen. Yeah, in seventy two,
and then a couple of years later on his twenty
first birthday. On his twenty first.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Birthday, that's what I saw he had June eighteenth.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I believe nice was sworn in as a full on
officer of the law.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Right, And I'm not sure if like they just swear
you in on your twenty first birthday or if it
just so happened. That's all right in ceremony was on
his twenty first birthday, but wardless, it was a big deal.
He's the first African American cop and then later on
detective for Colorado Spring. So that's a big deal, especially
starting out at age twenty one too. That takes a
lot of cajones as they call it in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
No, I think they call those rocky Mountain oysters.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
That's right, that is what they call him for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So he worked undercover for about thirty years long, great
careers and undercover detective. But it was this case which
only came out about four years ago when he wrote
a book about it about his career when he went
undercover as a well as a klansman. But it's a
(06:40):
little more complicated than that.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It was a very complicated operation, right.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, And this wasn't something that like, I mean, he
even says in this NPR interview that he didn't. It
was just a job at that particular point in time.
And when that particular job ended, that is the undercover,
which was about what eight or nine months, I moved
on to something else and it just happened by circumstance.
So he didn't come in there with a bone to
(07:09):
pick with the Klan, aside from probably every bone to
pick that he had with the Klan, right, just as
a black man in America.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Well, yeah, and it would probably help to give a
little background on the Klan at the time, because you know,
the Klan was very well known for being really big
and really violent at over three waves is basically how
the clan history is divided. Yeah, Like the first wave
was when they were they were founded in the wake
of the Civil War. Then they had the second wave
(07:38):
came around the nineteen teens, like nineteen fifty fifteen, I
mean that era, and then they had another big resurgence
during the Civil Rights era in the fifties and sixties.
But you know, in between these waves and after that
third wave, it's not like the Clan just went away.
(07:59):
They kept on. Their profile was lower and maybe there
the public violence or terrorism that they were engaging in
wasn't quite as pronounced, but they were still there. And
in Colorado in particular, they had a really long history
with the Klan, where basically the city of Denver was
(08:19):
in under the control of the Klan back in the twenties,
just you know, fifty years before Ron Stalwart started working there.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, and it was when he got hired there, he
got access to files like secret FBI files, right, and
he got to go in and dig in and look
at the history of the clan in Colorado, and boy,
like you ain't kidding. They were in the House of Representatives.
There were senators.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Both senators were clans members.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
The Mayor Benjamin Stapleton, who the airport was named after
until ninety five.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, his great grandson ran for governor on the GOP
ticket this past election and lost to who is Colorado's
first ever openly gay Jewish governor.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Oh wow, Colorado is a weird state.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
It is an odd state for a.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Lot of different ideologies all packed in together.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
It's very purple in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, So Mayor Benjamin Stapleton was a clan member. The
governor Clarence Morley was a clan member. The chief of police,
which is I mean, you don't want anyone in these
positions to be clan members, but I imagine the chief
of police is one of the more problematic areas to
have a person in that kind of control.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Particularly that one too. He was basically he was picked
by the clan, the Colorado Clan, and basically foisted on
Benjamin Stapleton, who who was even like, wow, this guy's
even too much for my tastes and eventually fired him.
But like the clan picked the chief of police of Denver,
(10:00):
Colorado back in the twenties.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh yeah, And they tried to recall Stapleton at one point.
It didn't work, and when that effort failed, the Klan
burned across on the top of Table Mountain as a celebration,
a show of public celebration.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Right, So the clan has deep roots and an old
story in Colorado, or at least they used to, and
they were still very much around when ron Stalworth started
as his investigation or started as the first black detective
in Colorado Springs, right, that's right. And so he started
(10:36):
out I guess, his kind of playing clothes and was
assigned undercover work pretty quickly just by his just by
being the only African American officer in the police force.
Because Stokely Carmichael came to town once.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
That's right. And this is in the film. We're going
to talk about a few differences between the movie and
the real story. But he did, in fact go to
a speech in a rally by famous black panther Stokely Carmichael,
and he was, you know, fully kitted out in his
bell bottoms, and his wearing a wire, he picked his
(11:16):
afro out, and he in fact did make a point
to meet him, just like he did in the film,
and Carmichael did apparently say arm yourself and get ready
because the revolution is coming. And I imagine Stalworth had
some mixed feelings about that assignment.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, I would guess. So it's kind of like, I
don't really have any idea of what he personally was
like because the movie mixed things up so much, in
like added layers that weren't necessarily there. So I have
no idea what that experience would have been like for him,
you know.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah. One thing we do know is not true is
the character in the film of Patrese whom he meets
at that rally, young woman that he falls in love with.
She was made up for the movie. Spike Lee wanted
a love interest basically and to represent sort of the
female black Power movement as a whole, So she was
(12:10):
completely made up. But she was terrific in the film.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Yeah, Laura harri Or she's in the New Spider Man
movies too.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
She's awesome, cool, the New Spider Verse movie.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
No No, No, that's animated.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Oh okay, Well, she could have been.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
A voice actor. I guess right, Yeah, No, she's in
the one the New Ones with the New the New Kid.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Okay, the New Spider Kid, the Current Spider Man.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Current Spider Man, which is great. Those are good movies.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I haven't seen any of them.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You're not super into that stuff, though, were you.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Well? I saw The Infinity War when he was in that.
I think, Yeah, he's a bit of a smart alec. Frankly,
he is.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So okay. He does his research on the deep roots
of the clan in Colorado, he goes under cover, and
then I don't think he was even assigned this thing.
I think he came up with it on his own,
by chance, almost in October nineteen seventy eight. He was
twenty five at this point, and he was looking through
(13:09):
the local paper.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Well that was part of his assignment, to gather intelligence
by reading the paper.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well, right, but I don't think I think this was
his idea to go undercover like this.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
That's the impression I have too.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
He seemed like a self starter in a lot of ways.
So he found this ad, a classified ad in the
paper for the Klan said get in touch if you
want further information. He sent a letter posing as a
white racist to a po box, just thinking that he
would just get back some pamphlets or something. So he
(13:42):
signed his real name, which is he didn't really think
that went through.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
No, he didn't, and he never really fully explained it
aside from the best explanation I saw is that he
didn't think anything was going to come of it. He
thought he'd get, like you said, a couple of pamphlets
and that would be that. And he just wasn't planning
to create like a large investigation out of making contact
(14:07):
through this ad. And again we should probably state this.
It was an ad in the paper for the clan
to get in touch with the clan, to get more
info about the clan and maybe you might want to join.
Who knows? Right? So he makes contact with him by
sending off a letter. And if you ask me, if
Spike Lee were directing this episode, he would put an
(14:30):
ad break right here.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
That was good.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Who are we to disagree?
Speaker 4 (14:36):
All right, we'll be right back, Okay.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
So, like we said, ron Stalworth is thumbing through the newspaper.
He mails off a letter to get more info about
the Klan, and he uses his real name, and like
you said, Chuck. He was expecting like a pamphlet or
something in return, like so you want to be a
clan member or something like that, right, Instead, about two
(15:23):
weeks later, he got a call from the number. So
he used everything as far as the undercover operation would go.
He used all of his undercover info except for his name.
So he got a call in his undercover phone line
from a guy named Ken O'Dell and he was pretty
surprised to get this call because again he was expecting
a pamphlet and instead he had a real, live, living,
(15:46):
breathing Ku Klux Klansman on the other end of the
line saying, Hey, I got your letter about hating black
people and other minorities. Let's talk.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, he was like, why are you interested? And Stalwarth
immediately just kind of goes into character, and I guess
that's what you You know, when you're undercover, you you
got to be part improv actor to be able to
pull that off.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Well. He also he said he drew from his own
personal experiences because he grew up in El Paso and
encountered a lot of racism there, and I'm sure on
the force in Colorado Springs too, So he drew from
his own experience as well.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah, so he basically right out of the gate says, well,
you know, my sister's dating a black man, and every
time he puts his hands on her, on her pure
white body, I cringe and I want to do something
about it. And Ken O'Dell says, you sound like a
great guy once you come on down and let's meet,
(16:47):
because you are just the kind of kind of dude
we're looking for.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
You sound like real clam material. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
I thought about maybe doing an episode on The Klan.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I thought about that too, and then I'm like, do
you want to give him a platform?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, But then I thought, or you know, you could
just talk about it and how stupid they are all
right like it when I was a kid. I mean,
of course, being in Georgia, that stuff was around. I
never like saw it firsthand, obviously, Yeah, but you heard
things even like growing up in the seventies in Georgia,
and I was always so scared of the whole thing
(17:20):
because of the outfits and everything and the fire. And
I was a good little Baptist boy, so there was
a lot of fear. But then I got a little
older and I was like, they're just dumb rednecks wearing sheets, right,
sort of demystified it.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
It's the moment you become an adult.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, but I mean, of course then I would later
learn that they did real horrific things and took lives
and you know, or a terrorist organization.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Right right, Yeah, but I think what you're saying is
they made themselves up to be boogeymen. Yeah, exactly, And
they definitely can be that way, especially in the young
mind or something like that.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
But sure.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah, So back to the story. Sorry, ron Stalworth is
on the phone with this guy named Ken O'Dell who
wants to meet him to see if he'd like to
join the Klan. And this is a big problem because
I think, as we mentioned a couple of times, ron
Stalworth was African American.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, He's like, oh boy, what do I do here?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Right? So he actually recruited a fellow detective who he
in his book calls Chuck. That's all he's ever publicly
referred to the guy as is Chuck Waite. Was it you, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
It was not me that gentleman is I guess either
still undercover or just never wanted his identity out there, right?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So he yeah, he may still live in Colorado Springs.
Who knows.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Maybe he's on a case right now for all I know.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
But so this Chuck guy, he's he was recruited by
Ron Stalwarts, who play Ron Stalworth to the Klan because
Chuck was white. He was already an undercover narcotics agent
and apparently he was friendly enough with Ron Stalwart to say, yes,
I will, I will join this investigation, buddy, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah. And here's the thing, though, he was this wasn't
his primary case. So Chuck is undercover on a lot
of different assignments, so he's not around as much as
Stalwarts needs him. So, like in the movie, most of
this stuff is done over the phone. Like, he spends
a lot of time in this investigation on the phone
(19:22):
speaking to these clansmen who think that he's a white man,
and when they needed to meet, he would send Chuck
in who And we'll get to the voice part in
a minute, because that's when I was watching the movie,
I was like, did none of these dummies not realize
that they don't sound anything alike?
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Right?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
You know, because they've been talking to him on the
phone at length, but they had they had their first meeting.
They they got together and I believe they met. They
met somewhere at first and then went to a bar
after like as the second part of that meeting.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, they met it it can be. So the movie
supposedly portrays this realistically. They this Chuck guy who is
portraying Ron Stalwarts to the Klan. They met at a
convenience store and he was said he was told to
get in the car and then they drove to a
second location. And that's scary stuff. And also he's also
wearing a wire at the time. Like that's something that
(20:17):
that the movie kind of gets across, but especially in
like articles about the story don't necessarily dive into this
Chuck cat was like putting himself out there.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Oh sure, as every undercover detective does.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Right. So, I mean Ron Stalworth is conducting this investigation,
he's the mastermind of He's leading this whole thing. But
this poor Chuck guy has to go hang out with
these you know, violent clans members or clan members on
you know, like fairly frequently from what I understand. So
hats off to him.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Oh yeah, absolutely, I mean it was it was definitely
like it required both of their best efforts. To get
away with us for that long, right, it was quite
the ruse. So Chuck meets with them, eventually earns their
trust a long way the phone work of Stalworth, and
then he actually gets successfully admitted about two months later
(21:09):
and got his little I guess you get a little
membership card.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
He still has it.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
He does. He did not throw it away like in
the movie. He has it framed in fact, and on
the back of the card were six codes of conduct,
one of which said, never discuss any clan affairs with
any plain clothes officer on a state, local, or national level.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So, there is a lot of comedy in the movie
if you haven't seen it, I mean, it's it's a
serious thing that they're doing. But there are a lot
of laughs as well.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
A lot of laughs and a lot of like movie
formula steps that Spike Lee purposely follows, you know, very
faithfully too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So there's a big point
there that we left out of the Chucks. So to
get that membership card, supposedly, again, as they say in Colorado,
the oysters on this guy his he had so so
(22:00):
he met so fake Ron saw with Chuck met with
the Klan, impressed them enough between Ron, the real Ron
Stalwarts phone calls, and Chuck's whatever Chuck was saying in person.
All this combined made the Colorado Springs Clan members say, Okay,
we like you, we want you to be a member.
Fill out this application and we'll send it off to
(22:21):
the national director of again the Klan. We should say,
I don't know if we've ever said this. The Klan
calls itself the organization rather than the clan, so they
and the guy who ran the thing. I don't know
if he still runs it or not, but he definitely
did at this time during this investigation is a guy
named David Duke, who if you grew up in the
(22:42):
eighties or I think even the nineties, you were probably
pretty familiar with David Duke. I believe he ran for
president once, didn't he?
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I don't know. I mean he was, wasn't he the
governor of Louisiana?
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I don't Maybe that's what it is. Maybe he ran
for that. But he was the grand Wizard of the
Ku Klux Klan, and he he was trying to make
it a more political organization, less of a terrorist organization
and more of a political organization. Under his guidance, but
it was still the Ku Klux Klan. Like, there was
still plenty of times when he was wearing robes and
stuff he just never did in public. So during this
(23:17):
time he was the national director, the Grand Wizard of
the Klan. And when ron Stalworth didn't get his application
pushed through fast enough, he picked up the phone and
called the national headquarters and ended up talking with David
Duke and saying like, Hey, my application is taking a while.
Is there anything you can do about it? And this
(23:38):
kicked off like what ron Stalwart would later characterize in
a weird way as a friendship between him, a black
undercover detective in Colorado, and David Duke, the Grand Wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, and by the way, I don't want to get
angry emails from David Duke supporters.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
He was a Republican Louisiana State rep. He was not governor,
but I think he ran for some high off. Oh
he did. He ran. He was a candidate for the
Democratic presidential primaries in the late eighties and then the
Republican primaries in ninety two.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
He ran as a Democrat and then a I could
see that solid South kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, and I think he ran for state Senate and
lost US Senate and lost US House and loss and
he did run for governor of Louisiana but he lost. Gotcha, Okay,
And you maybe if you're if you didn't grow up
in the eighties, you may have heard his name more
recently because he fully endorsed Donald Trump's campaign and after
(24:42):
Donald Trump won, this was his quote on Twitter. Make
no mistake, our people have played a huge role in
electing Trump. So he was he was in the news
again more recently.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Well, he was also in Charlottesville, if not leading the
rally to Unite the Right, definitely a big speaker at it,
a big part of it. And Spike Lee uses some
of his footage from that rally to kind of get
across that you know, this stuff is still going on.
(25:15):
This isn't from the seventies or earlier.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
How great was for Grace.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
He was wonderful.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
He was so good and he looks a lot like
David Duke in the seventies.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
He really does. Unfortunately for him the stash in the
three piece suits and all that. So yeah, he did
a good job, but so so yeah. In the movie
to for Grace from that seventies show. Always he will
always be from that seventies show. Yeah, he plays what
do you want me to say? Like he had a
bit part in Ocean's eleven or something. Brad Pitt's character
(25:46):
was teaching him to play poker.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I think I got about that.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
You know that guy.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
No, he's that seventy show of course.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
So so he he plays David Duke in the in
the movie and there this, this is, this is it's
really funny, like Spike Lee added stuff that just you
would think like, well, yeah, of course it's totally believable,
like Chuck being Jewish in real life, right, and he
actually wasn't. That's fabricated by the movie. So you would
just not even think twice about that. But it turns
(26:12):
out that's not true. The stuff that seems the least
true was actually the stuff that actually happened, and for
a very long time, at the very least. Over the
course of this nine month investigation, there were multiple phone
calls that were very cordial and friendly where ron Stalworth
would call David Duke, imposing as a White Clam member
and pumping from information. They would talk about, you know,
(26:35):
David Duke's family and like, just have normal conversations that
would inevitably turn back to racism and the weakening of
the white race at the hands of you know, the
Jewish media and all the minorities who are taking over,
and so it would inevitably turn disgusting. But he said later,
(26:55):
I think in the book in an interviews where if
you could separate that stuff out, he was actually a
pleasant person to talk to, and that's where that weird
friendship that he characterized it as kind of developed from
those conversations.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
But there is like he couldn't make this stuff up,
you know, exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
But there is at least one video of David Duke
basically admitting that, yes, this he had conversations with this guy.
He tries to downplay it, sure, but he does basically
verify that, yes, that's true, that really happened.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, and Duke's probably like I can't remember every phone
call I had with every random racist over the years, right,
there were a lot of them. Even the skuy Posing
is one. All right, well, let's take another break and
we're gonna go. We're going to talk a little bit
more about this weird David Duke relationship right after this.
(28:08):
All right, so he's budding up with David Duke on
the phone. He's fooling everybody, and he even like you
get the sense that he does have a little bit
of sense of humor Stalworth, because at one point he
even goaded him on the phone a little bit. And
this is in the movie and it was totally true.
He said, you know, mister Duke, have you ever worried
(28:29):
about like a black man posing as a white man
and infiltrating your organization? And Duke said no. And he said,
and this is from the NPR interview with Stalworth, he said,
I can tell you're white because you don't talk like
a black man. He said, you talk like a very smart,
intellectual white man. And I can tell by the way
(28:49):
you pronounce certain words. And he said, you know, give
me an example, and he said, black people tend to
pronounce the word are ara. And I can tell by
listening to you that you're not black, because you do
not pronounce that word in that manner.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
It's science case closed.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Oh boy, he was so easily duped. I love it. Uh.
And then they also did in fact meet in person.
That part is true as well. Duke came to town and
was having lunch. It was not a big ceremony like
in the movie, but he came to town to have
lunch and the department assigned Stalwarth to protect him, and
(29:29):
so he goes there to the restaurant, introduces himself to
protect him. Duke says, all right, I appreciate you them,
you know, sending someone my way. And Chuck is undercover
there as well, and he does, in fact, Stalworth pose
with David Duke and gets a polaroid with him.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
So this sounded to me like what what was the
what was going on here? Like, I mean, like, you've
got this investigation going this is this takes place during
this this undercover investigation that Stalwart's conducting. You have a
guy who's already like putting himself out there, Chuck, as
as the white Ron Stalworth. And then the chief says, oh, yes,
(30:09):
by the way, you the only African American police officer
in our entire squad. You go be David Duke's bodyguard
for the day while he's in town in Colorado Springs.
Like that was just bizarre. And not only do it
do that that that very like obvious over act slapping
the face to David Duke, which is great, but if
(30:32):
it but it could have jeopardized like this whole, this
whole thing, because you also you had the guy portraying
Ron Stalworth in the same room at the same lunch.
It just seemed really strange. And again that was one
of those things where when you watch the movie you
would think like, well, that's just made up. No, that
actually took place, at least according to Ron Stalworth's memoirs,
(30:53):
and that that that Chuck was in the room was
asked to take a picture by Ron Stalworth with David
Duke and the Grand Dragon I guess who must be
like the head of the state in Colorado. And then
the last second, when he was counting down, he put
his arms around the shoulders of the two clan guys
(31:13):
and then got his hands on the picture. Apparently all
of that was the case, but he's since lost the picture.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, and Duke really did try to get it back,
and Stalwarth like got to it quicker and said basically
like if you try to take this thing, I will
have you arrested for assaulting a police officer. Right, don't
do it. Don't think about.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
It, all right, so he said he lost it in
a move he wished he had taken better care of it.
But the idea that it was like that's just so nuts.
It tells you a lot about the investigation though to me,
like it makes you say, like, okay, how seriously were
they taking this investigation at the time. If Stalwarth later
said all right, this is this is just you know,
(31:53):
this is just another job to me. When I started it,
I did the job, and then when it was done,
I moved on to another job. The fact that he
didn't talk about it much until I think he spoke
about it to the press once in two thousand and
six a Desert News article, and then didn't talk about
it again until twenty fourteen when his memoirs came out.
(32:13):
It was just like a thing that they were doing
that other people were doing other stuff too. And then
to have like that part of it that the idea
that you would you would jeopardize it in that way
just makes it seem like they weren't taking it as
that big of an operations as like the movie would
like to believe. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Well, I think in real life it was it was
a information gathering investigation. Like, it was never we're going
to take down the clan in Colorado. It was let's
infiltrate and get as much information in fact finding as
we can. And in the end, after eight months, that's
(32:54):
kind of what happened. It was he considers Stalwart, considers
it a success, and that they fulfill their mission. They
did prevent three cross burning ceremonies during that eight month
span or at nine month span, and they did identify
clan members who worked at Noorad who apparently they said they,
I mean these days they would be fired probably, but
(33:16):
they said they reassigned them to like Greenland or something.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Right because they had access to the too nuclear weapons.
Apparently they had very high level clearance at noor Ad,
which is scary.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
And then they also found plans that they didn't act on,
like the whole bomb plot in the movie was made
up for dramatic purposes, but they did find links between
for a plan to bomb a gay nightclub and another
plan to steal automatic weapons from an army base, like
an inside job. So it was, you know, it was
(33:50):
valuable work they were doing, for sure. It just wasn't
like we're going to take the clan down like I
don't think it was the department's big, big job at
the time.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
No, certainly not. And in the memoirs and in the
movie too, the reason that's given for the undercover operation
to end is because it started to become successful. Ron
Stalwarth was nominated to lead the Colorado Springs chapter of
the Klan. Like Ken O'Dell basically said, you should take
(34:18):
my job. Everybody likes you. You're really good at this,
You're smart. You should lead the clan here and the
police chief of Colorado Springs. So that's it. Close it down,
burn all the evidence of this investigation. He apparently was
worried about what a pr nightmare it would be if
it got out that some of his detectives were in
(34:39):
the Colorado Springs Clan. But at the same time, what
strikes me is odd is that the FBI wasn't like, oh, well, geez,
this guy is like being nominated to lead the Colorado
Springs Clan. He's talking to David Duke like, really, this
could not be kind of blown up into a larger
investigation or a larger staying or something like that. And
(35:00):
then secondly, and ron Stalworth himself addresses this, there's a
very frequently a criticism of well, if this was such
a big operation and they found all this stuff, why
wasn't anyone arrested? Why weren't there any arrests? And Duke says, right,
not just David Duke. Stalwarth says also that in law
(35:20):
enforcement too, people question that, like why wasn't anyone arrested?
And he said, it was an intel investigation and that's
what they did, is they gathered stuff. But then he
very rightly points out, like you said, like the fact
that they prevented crossburnings alone makes it a worthwhile and
valuable operation. I think just some people on the outside
are saying, well, why wasn't why wasn't more done? Why
(35:42):
didn't Moore come out of this? You know? Well, and
I'm not quite sure what they're driving at, but there
are you know, Stalwart brings that up in an interview
I read with him like that people do ask that
and wonder about that.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, and Stalwarth is very proud of the fact that
with the cross burnings, he was like, no, I can't
remember the quote, but he said something about no children
in Colorado Springs got to you know, no young black
kids had to see crosses on fire during that eight
or nine month period, and I'm very proud of that,
as he should be.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yeah, for real.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
So I mentioned the voice earlier, in the fact that
he had a different voice obviously than Chuck, and he
said one time, only one time, and I think this
was in the movie, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
It was? Actually no, it was I remember.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, So one time in the whole investigation did someone
say like, wait a minute, you sound different. Chuck had
just been at a in person meeting, came back and
then Stalworth wants to follow up on the phone with
Ken O'Dell about something right afterward. So he had just
heard Chuck's voice for whatever this whole meeting and was
(36:48):
talking to him and he was like, wait a minute,
you sound different, what's going on? And he just pulled
it off. He coughed and said he had a sinus infection,
and Ken O'Dell was like, oh, well, here's how you
clear that up, and gave some good sinus medication advice.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Right. Yeah, they definitely appeared in the movie.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I mean, you could not make this thing up, you know,
it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
No, for real, And apparently for a long time, Stalworth
was saying like, yeah, it was just another job. It
was just another operation. I guess he told some fellow
like law enforcement friends or whatever about it, and they're like, dude,
you this is a movie. You need to write this down,
you need to get this out there. This is a
one in a million story. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
I wonder one reason it didn't go bigger operation wise
was because the sort of hackneyed way they got into it,
like he's the voice, but they're sending a white man
like it's I'm surprised he pulled it off for that long.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Yeah. I could totally see that.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
One final thing that did not happen in real life
but did happen in the movie. And this is what
when you usually will change real life is to get
a more satisfying ending. But Stalwart did not, unfortunately, reveal
his true identity to David Duke like he does to
hilarious effect in the film. Unfortunately. No, I'll see that.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
He was saying, like, yeah, he just he didn't really
talk about it until the two thousands, So David Duke
didn't know until I guess the memoirs came out.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, and you know, well, I guess we should talk
about Spike Lee getting criticized Boots Riley, director who I
had a movie crush.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
By the way, he I know what was his movie?
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Sorry to Bother You? Was his film that he made.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
No, I mean his pick for movie crush.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
His pick was a movie called Mishima, A Life in
four Chapters. Okay, yeah, it was a great film and
his like, his knowledge on movies was deep. He turned
me onto a lot of cool things.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
I thought it for a very terrible second you were
saying his pick was his own movie.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
No no, But he you know, Boots does not hold
back on what he thinks. And while you would think
that he would be like, oh no, I'm going to
be a champion of Spike Lee and telling the story,
he came out very publicly on Twitter and that very
intelligently criticized that he didn't just bag on it. He
(39:14):
wrote a big, long statement on exactly what he thought
was wrong with it.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah. He basically said, look, man, if you take away
all the embellishments that Spike Lee added to this movie,
what you have as a guy who's probably biggest assignment.
And I'm not sure where he got this, but he
focused on that stokely Carmichael thing and the fact that
ron Stalworth had worked undercover to infiltrate the Black Power
(39:41):
movement in Colorado Springs and that he had worked on
that for like three years, and that this clan thing
was just like a nine month thing. And he also
criticized Spike Lee for making it, making the movie seem
like law enforcement and the Black Power movement came together
to fight racism, right that like that was a larger point,
or that that was historically accurate or something like that.
(40:05):
It was a really interesting It was like a three
page essay that he posted on Twitter that made some
good points. He basically said, from what I can tell,
it looks like ron Stalworth was working for co intel Pro,
which was the FBI's it was their program to undermine groups,
including black power groups, which we mentioned it in the
(40:28):
Black Panther episode we did, and co intel Pro definitely
deserves its own episode, and it was ended officially in
nineteen seventy one. But I think Boots Riley's point was
it might have been officially ended, but the work was
still going on, and if this guy was infiltrating Black
Power like groups in Colorado Springs, he was almost certainly
(40:52):
trying to break them, up one way or another, probably
using co intel purposes or practices. And Ron stall Worth
he had a pretty great quote in response to it.
He said, I pray for my demented, dissolute brother in
response to Boots Riley and Spike Lee has no comment
about it whatsoever. So who knows. But you make a
(41:15):
good point that like he's he's he's not just giving
like blind allegiance to anything.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Sure. Well, Spike did comment eventually.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Oh I didn't see that.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, he was. He was in an interview, and the
first thing he said was like, Hey, I'm a I'm
a young man of sixty one or something like that,
and like, you know, young me might have kind of
gotten into a war of words, but he's just not
into that anymore. But he did say briefly something about, listen,
I'm not going to come out and say that all
(41:46):
cops are racist and all cops do bad things, because
they don't all do bad things. There's a lot of
great cops. There's also bad cops. And he kind of
just couched it in that and then was like, but
you know, I'm not going to be really talking about
this anymore.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Right, Yeah, I hadn't seen that he'd even had that comment. Yeah,
so it's interesting stuff and it's a good movie at
the very least.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
You know, I think I think ron Staal wars Like man,
they made a movie about my story. That's pretty awesome,
and at the very least it's a pretty great movie.
How about that? Totally, totally, So if you you got anything.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Else, I got nothing else.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
If you want to know more about Black Clansmen, you
should probably go see that movie. And I guess we
probably should have said at the outset this episode is
not an ad.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Oh, of course not.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
We just like the movie a lot, right.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, I mean you could say it's an ad, but like,
no one gave us money or asked us to do this. Sure, Okay,
I'm endorsing it.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Okay, there you go. I am endorsing it as well.
It has two thumbs up, as it were. Yeah, rest
in peace, Roger Ebert and Jeene Ciskel two thumbs Okay.
So if I already already said that, how about some
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yeah, I'm gonna call this ping pong response from a
former pro Nice, Hey, guys, want to commend you on
the job you did covering a sport that you didn't
have an extensive knowledge of. I'm a professional table tennis
coach and former player. I started playing in college. Thought
I was really good until I was coerced to go
to a tournament at Princeton University about twenty years ago
and I got destroyed. I didn't like that, so I
(43:21):
saw it out to coach and the rest is history.
You guys clearly did a lot of research and to
highlight the things that most novice players aren't aware of.
But there were a few things I couldn't help but
point out. Josh, you mentioned the components of the modern racket.
You said the pimpled sign those are called pips are
for spinning the ball, that the smooth side is for
(43:41):
defensive play. But the opposite is actually true. Oh no,
I didn't catch that, because I would have pointed that out.
I thought everyone knew that.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
You get good spin on that smooth side, all right,
for real? Oh yeah, yeah, it's grippy, all right? He said.
The smooth side is very tacky, as in sticky, and that,
combined with the sponge underneath, allows the ball to sink
in just enough so that the TACKI service grips the
ball and generates a lot of spin. Also, you can
really have any combination of rubber that you want as
(44:13):
long as it's ITTF approved. Players are not restricted to
having one smooth side and one with pips, but one
side does have to be read and the other black.
Most defensive players use pips on their backhand because pips
vary the spin that is coming back at you and
it's very hard to read. Also, Chuck, you mentioned that
defensive players are called chislers. They're actually called choppers as
(44:37):
they chop the ball back with varying backspin. I've never
heard the term chiselers. I'm wondering if it is extremely outdated.
Maybe I bet you that was the Gates I haead
Old research chizlas.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
That's what they call in the twenties.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
He said, if you guys are ever in the Dunnellen,
New Jersey area, stop by. We are there right now,
stop by the Lily Yip Table Tennis Club and I'll
gladly hook you guys up with the lesson.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
I will gladly humiliate you in person.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
And that is Thomas from Philly.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Thanks Thomas, much appreciated. We like it when we are
gently corrected because we like to be right, so thanks
for that. If you want to get in touch with us,
let us know I don't know something we got wrong
about black clansmen. Let us know. You can find all
of our social links on stuffishould Know dot com and
(45:29):
has always sent us an email to stuff podcast at
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Summer Movie Playlist, the
place where we grouped some fun movie content because the
summer movie season. We thought you might like this, so
we gave it a shot, and today you're going to
be listening to the replay of our episode on Black Clansman,
the true story behind that movie. It's a great movie.
(00:21):
Love it, love Spike Lee, and this is a great one.
So I hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles Bryant, there's Jerry over there. You put the three
of us together. It's movie crush. I mean stuff you
should know.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
This does have some stank on it doesn't it. It's
a movie stank.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I know your game is cool.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I didn't even ask you have you seen Black clans
I I was.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Like, I can't. I can't do this episode without having
seen it. So I watched it last night.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Oh nice, Yeah good?
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Huh Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. Like I like his
choice at the end, like just completely pull a somersault
on the viewer.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh sure with that last bet.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah. Like spoiler alert there's an end spoilery, Yeah, for sure,
we should probably say that out of the gate. If
you haven't seen this yet and you don't want it
to be spoiled, don't listen to this episode first. Yes,
but yeah, I guess now that we've said that, we
can speak freely. Right.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yes, So.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
The if, if the entire movie was basically to disarm
you up to the end, then I think it's one
of the greatest movies I've ever seen in my life.
And even if it wasn't, that wasn't the entire point
of the movie. It was still it was still great.
And how he pulled it out at the end, I think.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, well this was I don't know if you remember,
but this is the movie I saw in Perth, Australia. Ye,
that happens at the end, that big, you know, sort
of gut punch of realism at the end, And I
stood up and I was like, hmm, Like, wonder what
they're thinking here in Perth.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
They probably think of what just happened? What's wrong with America?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, and I'm going, I my good to see you.
I'm not American.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I'm Canadian. Can't you tell bloke?
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Oh goodness? Yeah? It was. It was one of those
things where I was like, I'm kind of slightly embarrassed
right now.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, but I like that.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I enjoyed the movie though I thought to see Spike Lee,
who just he's one of my favorite filmmakers in his sixties,
still just bringing the juice like this. I loved it.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah. I also loved that it was controversial too, in
that like some people criticize Spike Lee for like not
going far enough or maybe kind of glossing over some
of the ugly aspects of the story.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, do you want to get to that at the end, maybe.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. But we'll give it a pre
mention shout out, which is what we just did.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Right, So we are talking about the true story of
the film Black Clansman, Spike Lee's movie that won the
Grand Prize at the con Film Festival. It's nominated for
Academy Awards.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, three Oscars, I believe for including Best.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Picture, Yeah, I think Picture Director, and.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Supporting Actor for who I would guess Adam Driver. I
didn't see really. Yeah, I was surprised because Denzel's son
did a wonderful job as well.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
He loves he loves that being known as that right.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
I can't remember his first name, but you know, Denzel's son.
He was like. There were several times when he was
talking and I was like, oh, you are definitely Denzel
Washington's son man, just the way he talked, the sound
of his voice. But also is acting too, he's a
good actor.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, so all right, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for
Adam Driver, Best Director, and Best Original Music Score.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Oh nice, but yeah he is.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I didn't know he was Denzel Sun till after the movie.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And he was a football player, do you know that.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I didn't who he played for.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
He played for Morehouse here in Atlanta. He was a
running back and then played an NFL on the practice
squad for the Rams, and then eventually played a few
years in NFL Europe and the UFL until he hung
up his cleats six years ago.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Oh that's cool. Yeah, playing football in Europe has got
to be a surreal experience.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, because it's a soccer ball.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Everyone's like, what are you doing? This is all wrong?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
All right? So should we way back into the nineteen seventies,
the groovy seventies of Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
First we should say his name is John David Washington.
Oh sure you were kidding, Denzel Son. Yes, so yeah,
let's get in the way back machine and see go
inspect their terrible low quality pot.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So Ron Stalworth is the true to life character's name
who There was a football player growing when we were
growing up named John Stalworth. So I'm always wanting to
say John Stalworth.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
This is not him. This is a cop named Ron Stalworth,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
And he had a few designations that are pretty important.
He was the first African American police officer to work
for the Colorado Springs Police Department, which he joined as
a cadet at the age of nineteen. Yeah, in seventy two,
and then a couple of years later on his twenty
first birthday. On his twenty first.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Birthday, that's what I saw he had June eighteenth.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I believe nice was sworn in as a full on
officer of the law.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Right, And I'm not sure if like they just swear
you in on your twenty first birthday or if it
just so happened. That's all right in ceremony was on
his twenty first birthday, but wardless, it was a big deal.
He's the first African American cop and then later on
detective for Colorado Spring. So that's a big deal, especially
starting out at age twenty one too. That takes a
lot of cajones as they call it in Colorado.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
No, I think they call those rocky Mountain oysters.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
That's right, that is what they call him for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So he worked undercover for about thirty years long, great
careers and undercover detective. But it was this case which
only came out about four years ago when he wrote
a book about it about his career when he went
undercover as a well as a klansman. But it's a
(06:40):
little more complicated than that.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It was a very complicated operation, right.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, And this wasn't something that like, I mean, he
even says in this NPR interview that he didn't. It
was just a job at that particular point in time.
And when that particular job ended, that is the undercover,
which was about what eight or nine months, I moved
on to something else and it just happened by circumstance.
So he didn't come in there with a bone to
(07:09):
pick with the Klan, aside from probably every bone to
pick that he had with the Klan, right, just as
a black man in America.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Well, yeah, and it would probably help to give a
little background on the Klan at the time, because you know,
the Klan was very well known for being really big
and really violent at over three waves is basically how
the clan history is divided. Yeah, Like the first wave
was when they were they were founded in the wake
of the Civil War. Then they had the second wave
(07:38):
came around the nineteen teens, like nineteen fifty fifteen, I
mean that era, and then they had another big resurgence
during the Civil Rights era in the fifties and sixties.
But you know, in between these waves and after that
third wave, it's not like the Clan just went away.
(07:59):
They kept on. Their profile was lower and maybe there
the public violence or terrorism that they were engaging in
wasn't quite as pronounced, but they were still there. And
in Colorado in particular, they had a really long history
with the Klan, where basically the city of Denver was
(08:19):
in under the control of the Klan back in the twenties,
just you know, fifty years before Ron Stalwart started working there.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, and it was when he got hired there, he
got access to files like secret FBI files, right, and
he got to go in and dig in and look
at the history of the clan in Colorado, and boy,
like you ain't kidding. They were in the House of Representatives.
There were senators.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Both senators were clans members.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
The Mayor Benjamin Stapleton, who the airport was named after
until ninety five.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, his great grandson ran for governor on the GOP
ticket this past election and lost to who is Colorado's
first ever openly gay Jewish governor.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Oh wow, Colorado is a weird state.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
It is an odd state for a.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Lot of different ideologies all packed in together.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
It's very purple in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, So Mayor Benjamin Stapleton was a clan member. The
governor Clarence Morley was a clan member. The chief of police,
which is I mean, you don't want anyone in these
positions to be clan members, but I imagine the chief
of police is one of the more problematic areas to
have a person in that kind of control.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Particularly that one too. He was basically he was picked
by the clan, the Colorado Clan, and basically foisted on
Benjamin Stapleton, who who was even like, wow, this guy's
even too much for my tastes and eventually fired him.
But like the clan picked the chief of police of Denver,
(10:00):
Colorado back in the twenties.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh yeah, And they tried to recall Stapleton at one point.
It didn't work, and when that effort failed, the Klan
burned across on the top of Table Mountain as a celebration,
a show of public celebration.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Right, So the clan has deep roots and an old
story in Colorado, or at least they used to, and
they were still very much around when ron Stalworth started
as his investigation or started as the first black detective
in Colorado Springs, right, that's right. And so he started
(10:36):
out I guess, his kind of playing clothes and was
assigned undercover work pretty quickly just by his just by
being the only African American officer in the police force.
Because Stokely Carmichael came to town once.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
That's right. And this is in the film. We're going
to talk about a few differences between the movie and
the real story. But he did, in fact go to
a speech in a rally by famous black panther Stokely Carmichael,
and he was, you know, fully kitted out in his
bell bottoms, and his wearing a wire, he picked his
(11:16):
afro out, and he in fact did make a point
to meet him, just like he did in the film,
and Carmichael did apparently say arm yourself and get ready
because the revolution is coming. And I imagine Stalworth had
some mixed feelings about that assignment.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, I would guess. So it's kind of like, I
don't really have any idea of what he personally was
like because the movie mixed things up so much, in
like added layers that weren't necessarily there. So I have
no idea what that experience would have been like for him,
you know.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah. One thing we do know is not true is
the character in the film of Patrese whom he meets
at that rally, young woman that he falls in love with.
She was made up for the movie. Spike Lee wanted
a love interest basically and to represent sort of the
female black Power movement as a whole, So she was
(12:10):
completely made up. But she was terrific in the film.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Yeah, Laura harri Or she's in the New Spider Man
movies too.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
She's awesome, cool, the New Spider Verse movie.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
No No, No, that's animated.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Oh okay, Well, she could have been.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
A voice actor. I guess right, Yeah, No, she's in
the one the New Ones with the New the New Kid.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Okay, the New Spider Kid, the Current Spider Man.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Current Spider Man, which is great. Those are good movies.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I haven't seen any of them.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
You're not super into that stuff, though, were you.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Well? I saw The Infinity War when he was in that.
I think, Yeah, he's a bit of a smart alec. Frankly,
he is.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So okay. He does his research on the deep roots
of the clan in Colorado, he goes under cover, and
then I don't think he was even assigned this thing.
I think he came up with it on his own,
by chance, almost in October nineteen seventy eight. He was
twenty five at this point, and he was looking through
(13:09):
the local paper.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Well that was part of his assignment, to gather intelligence
by reading the paper.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well, right, but I don't think I think this was
his idea to go undercover like this.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
That's the impression I have too.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
He seemed like a self starter in a lot of ways.
So he found this ad, a classified ad in the
paper for the Klan said get in touch if you
want further information. He sent a letter posing as a
white racist to a po box, just thinking that he
would just get back some pamphlets or something. So he
(13:42):
signed his real name, which is he didn't really think
that went through.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
No, he didn't, and he never really fully explained it
aside from the best explanation I saw is that he
didn't think anything was going to come of it. He
thought he'd get, like you said, a couple of pamphlets
and that would be that. And he just wasn't planning
to create like a large investigation out of making contact
(14:07):
through this ad. And again we should probably state this.
It was an ad in the paper for the clan
to get in touch with the clan, to get more
info about the clan and maybe you might want to join.
Who knows? Right? So he makes contact with him by
sending off a letter. And if you ask me, if
Spike Lee were directing this episode, he would put an
(14:30):
ad break right here.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
That was good.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Who are we to disagree?
Speaker 4 (14:36):
All right, we'll be right back, Okay.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
So, like we said, ron Stalworth is thumbing through the newspaper.
He mails off a letter to get more info about
the Klan, and he uses his real name, and like
you said, Chuck. He was expecting like a pamphlet or
something in return, like so you want to be a
clan member or something like that, right, Instead, about two
(15:23):
weeks later, he got a call from the number. So
he used everything as far as the undercover operation would go.
He used all of his undercover info except for his name.
So he got a call in his undercover phone line
from a guy named Ken O'Dell and he was pretty
surprised to get this call because again he was expecting
a pamphlet and instead he had a real, live, living,
(15:46):
breathing Ku Klux Klansman on the other end of the
line saying, Hey, I got your letter about hating black
people and other minorities. Let's talk.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, he was like, why are you interested? And Stalwarth
immediately just kind of goes into character, and I guess
that's what you You know, when you're undercover, you you
got to be part improv actor to be able to
pull that off.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Well. He also he said he drew from his own
personal experiences because he grew up in El Paso and
encountered a lot of racism there, and I'm sure on
the force in Colorado Springs too, So he drew from
his own experience as well.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Yeah, so he basically right out of the gate says, well,
you know, my sister's dating a black man, and every
time he puts his hands on her, on her pure
white body, I cringe and I want to do something
about it. And Ken O'Dell says, you sound like a
great guy once you come on down and let's meet,
(16:47):
because you are just the kind of kind of dude
we're looking for.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
You sound like real clam material. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
I thought about maybe doing an episode on The Klan.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I thought about that too, and then I'm like, do
you want to give him a platform?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, But then I thought, or you know, you could
just talk about it and how stupid they are all
right like it when I was a kid. I mean,
of course, being in Georgia, that stuff was around. I
never like saw it firsthand, obviously, Yeah, but you heard
things even like growing up in the seventies in Georgia,
and I was always so scared of the whole thing
(17:20):
because of the outfits and everything and the fire. And
I was a good little Baptist boy, so there was
a lot of fear. But then I got a little
older and I was like, they're just dumb rednecks wearing sheets, right,
sort of demystified it.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
It's the moment you become an adult.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, but I mean, of course then I would later
learn that they did real horrific things and took lives
and you know, or a terrorist organization.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Right right, Yeah, but I think what you're saying is
they made themselves up to be boogeymen. Yeah, exactly, And
they definitely can be that way, especially in the young
mind or something like that.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
But sure.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah, So back to the story. Sorry, ron Stalworth is
on the phone with this guy named Ken O'Dell who
wants to meet him to see if he'd like to
join the Klan. And this is a big problem because
I think, as we mentioned a couple of times, ron
Stalworth was African American.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, He's like, oh boy, what do I do here?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Right? So he actually recruited a fellow detective who he
in his book calls Chuck. That's all he's ever publicly
referred to the guy as is Chuck Waite. Was it you, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
It was not me that gentleman is I guess either
still undercover or just never wanted his identity out there, right?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So he yeah, he may still live in Colorado Springs.
Who knows.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Maybe he's on a case right now for all I know.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
But so this Chuck guy, he's he was recruited by
Ron Stalwarts, who play Ron Stalworth to the Klan because
Chuck was white. He was already an undercover narcotics agent
and apparently he was friendly enough with Ron Stalwart to say, yes,
I will, I will join this investigation, buddy, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah. And here's the thing, though, he was this wasn't
his primary case. So Chuck is undercover on a lot
of different assignments, so he's not around as much as
Stalwarts needs him. So, like in the movie, most of
this stuff is done over the phone. Like, he spends
a lot of time in this investigation on the phone
(19:22):
speaking to these clansmen who think that he's a white man,
and when they needed to meet, he would send Chuck
in who And we'll get to the voice part in
a minute, because that's when I was watching the movie,
I was like, did none of these dummies not realize
that they don't sound anything alike?
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Right?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
You know, because they've been talking to him on the
phone at length, but they had they had their first meeting.
They they got together and I believe they met. They
met somewhere at first and then went to a bar
after like as the second part of that meeting.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, they met it it can be. So the movie
supposedly portrays this realistically. They this Chuck guy who is
portraying Ron Stalwarts to the Klan. They met at a
convenience store and he was said he was told to
get in the car and then they drove to a
second location. And that's scary stuff. And also he's also
wearing a wire at the time. Like that's something that
(20:17):
that the movie kind of gets across, but especially in
like articles about the story don't necessarily dive into this
Chuck cat was like putting himself out there.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Oh sure, as every undercover detective does.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Right. So, I mean Ron Stalworth is conducting this investigation,
he's the mastermind of He's leading this whole thing. But
this poor Chuck guy has to go hang out with
these you know, violent clans members or clan members on
you know, like fairly frequently from what I understand. So
hats off to him.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Oh yeah, absolutely, I mean it was it was definitely
like it required both of their best efforts. To get
away with us for that long, right, it was quite
the ruse. So Chuck meets with them, eventually earns their
trust a long way the phone work of Stalworth, and
then he actually gets successfully admitted about two months later
(21:09):
and got his little I guess you get a little
membership card.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
He still has it.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
He does. He did not throw it away like in
the movie. He has it framed in fact, and on
the back of the card were six codes of conduct,
one of which said, never discuss any clan affairs with
any plain clothes officer on a state, local, or national level.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So, there is a lot of comedy in the movie
if you haven't seen it, I mean, it's it's a
serious thing that they're doing. But there are a lot
of laughs as well.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
A lot of laughs and a lot of like movie
formula steps that Spike Lee purposely follows, you know, very
faithfully too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So there's a big point
there that we left out of the Chucks. So to
get that membership card, supposedly, again, as they say in Colorado,
the oysters on this guy his he had so so
(22:00):
he met so fake Ron saw with Chuck met with
the Klan, impressed them enough between Ron, the real Ron
Stalwarts phone calls, and Chuck's whatever Chuck was saying in person.
All this combined made the Colorado Springs Clan members say, Okay,
we like you, we want you to be a member.
Fill out this application and we'll send it off to
(22:21):
the national director of again the Klan. We should say,
I don't know if we've ever said this. The Klan
calls itself the organization rather than the clan, so they
and the guy who ran the thing. I don't know
if he still runs it or not, but he definitely
did at this time during this investigation is a guy
named David Duke, who if you grew up in the
(22:42):
eighties or I think even the nineties, you were probably
pretty familiar with David Duke. I believe he ran for
president once, didn't he?
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I don't know. I mean he was, wasn't he the
governor of Louisiana?
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I don't Maybe that's what it is. Maybe he ran
for that. But he was the grand Wizard of the
Ku Klux Klan, and he he was trying to make
it a more political organization, less of a terrorist organization
and more of a political organization. Under his guidance, but
it was still the Ku Klux Klan. Like, there was
still plenty of times when he was wearing robes and
stuff he just never did in public. So during this
(23:17):
time he was the national director, the Grand Wizard of
the Klan. And when ron Stalworth didn't get his application
pushed through fast enough, he picked up the phone and
called the national headquarters and ended up talking with David
Duke and saying like, Hey, my application is taking a while.
Is there anything you can do about it? And this
(23:38):
kicked off like what ron Stalwart would later characterize in
a weird way as a friendship between him, a black
undercover detective in Colorado, and David Duke, the Grand Wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, and by the way, I don't want to get
angry emails from David Duke supporters.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
He was a Republican Louisiana State rep. He was not governor,
but I think he ran for some high off. Oh
he did. He ran. He was a candidate for the
Democratic presidential primaries in the late eighties and then the
Republican primaries in ninety two.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
He ran as a Democrat and then a I could
see that solid South kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, and I think he ran for state Senate and
lost US Senate and lost US House and loss and
he did run for governor of Louisiana but he lost. Gotcha, Okay,
And you maybe if you're if you didn't grow up
in the eighties, you may have heard his name more
recently because he fully endorsed Donald Trump's campaign and after
(24:42):
Donald Trump won, this was his quote on Twitter. Make
no mistake, our people have played a huge role in
electing Trump. So he was he was in the news
again more recently.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Well, he was also in Charlottesville, if not leading the
rally to Unite the Right, definitely a big speaker at it,
a big part of it. And Spike Lee uses some
of his footage from that rally to kind of get
across that you know, this stuff is still going on.
(25:15):
This isn't from the seventies or earlier.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
How great was for Grace.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
He was wonderful.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
He was so good and he looks a lot like
David Duke in the seventies.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
He really does. Unfortunately for him the stash in the
three piece suits and all that. So yeah, he did
a good job, but so so yeah. In the movie
to for Grace from that seventies show. Always he will
always be from that seventies show. Yeah, he plays what
do you want me to say? Like he had a
bit part in Ocean's eleven or something. Brad Pitt's character
(25:46):
was teaching him to play poker.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I think I got about that.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
You know that guy.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
No, he's that seventy show of course.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
So so he he plays David Duke in the in
the movie and there this, this is, this is it's
really funny, like Spike Lee added stuff that just you
would think like, well, yeah, of course it's totally believable,
like Chuck being Jewish in real life, right, and he
actually wasn't. That's fabricated by the movie. So you would
just not even think twice about that. But it turns
(26:12):
out that's not true. The stuff that seems the least
true was actually the stuff that actually happened, and for
a very long time, at the very least. Over the
course of this nine month investigation, there were multiple phone
calls that were very cordial and friendly where ron Stalworth
would call David Duke, imposing as a White Clam member
and pumping from information. They would talk about, you know,
(26:35):
David Duke's family and like, just have normal conversations that
would inevitably turn back to racism and the weakening of
the white race at the hands of you know, the
Jewish media and all the minorities who are taking over,
and so it would inevitably turn disgusting. But he said later,
(26:55):
I think in the book in an interviews where if
you could separate that stuff out, he was actually a
pleasant person to talk to, and that's where that weird
friendship that he characterized it as kind of developed from
those conversations.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
But there is like he couldn't make this stuff up,
you know, exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
But there is at least one video of David Duke
basically admitting that, yes, this he had conversations with this guy.
He tries to downplay it, sure, but he does basically
verify that, yes, that's true, that really happened.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, and Duke's probably like I can't remember every phone
call I had with every random racist over the years, right,
there were a lot of them. Even the skuy Posing
is one. All right, well, let's take another break and
we're gonna go. We're going to talk a little bit
more about this weird David Duke relationship right after this.
(28:08):
All right, so he's budding up with David Duke on
the phone. He's fooling everybody, and he even like you
get the sense that he does have a little bit
of sense of humor Stalworth, because at one point he
even goaded him on the phone a little bit. And
this is in the movie and it was totally true.
He said, you know, mister Duke, have you ever worried
(28:29):
about like a black man posing as a white man
and infiltrating your organization? And Duke said no. And he said,
and this is from the NPR interview with Stalworth, he said,
I can tell you're white because you don't talk like
a black man. He said, you talk like a very smart,
intellectual white man. And I can tell by the way
(28:49):
you pronounce certain words. And he said, you know, give
me an example, and he said, black people tend to
pronounce the word are ara. And I can tell by
listening to you that you're not black, because you do
not pronounce that word in that manner.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
It's science case closed.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Oh boy, he was so easily duped. I love it. Uh.
And then they also did in fact meet in person.
That part is true as well. Duke came to town and
was having lunch. It was not a big ceremony like
in the movie, but he came to town to have
lunch and the department assigned Stalwarth to protect him, and
(29:29):
so he goes there to the restaurant, introduces himself to
protect him. Duke says, all right, I appreciate you them,
you know, sending someone my way. And Chuck is undercover
there as well, and he does, in fact, Stalworth pose
with David Duke and gets a polaroid with him.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
So this sounded to me like what what was the
what was going on here? Like, I mean, like, you've
got this investigation going this is this takes place during
this this undercover investigation that Stalwart's conducting. You have a
guy who's already like putting himself out there, Chuck, as
as the white Ron Stalworth. And then the chief says, oh, yes,
(30:09):
by the way, you the only African American police officer
in our entire squad. You go be David Duke's bodyguard
for the day while he's in town in Colorado Springs.
Like that was just bizarre. And not only do it
do that that that very like obvious over act slapping
the face to David Duke, which is great, but if
(30:32):
it but it could have jeopardized like this whole, this
whole thing, because you also you had the guy portraying
Ron Stalworth in the same room at the same lunch.
It just seemed really strange. And again that was one
of those things where when you watch the movie you
would think like, well, that's just made up. No, that
actually took place, at least according to Ron Stalworth's memoirs,
(30:53):
and that that that Chuck was in the room was
asked to take a picture by Ron Stalworth with David
Duke and the Grand Dragon I guess who must be
like the head of the state in Colorado. And then
the last second, when he was counting down, he put
his arms around the shoulders of the two clan guys
(31:13):
and then got his hands on the picture. Apparently all
of that was the case, but he's since lost the picture.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, and Duke really did try to get it back,
and Stalwarth like got to it quicker and said basically
like if you try to take this thing, I will
have you arrested for assaulting a police officer. Right, don't
do it. Don't think about.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
It, all right, so he said he lost it in
a move he wished he had taken better care of it.
But the idea that it was like that's just so nuts.
It tells you a lot about the investigation though to me,
like it makes you say, like, okay, how seriously were
they taking this investigation at the time. If Stalwarth later
said all right, this is this is just you know,
(31:53):
this is just another job to me. When I started it,
I did the job, and then when it was done,
I moved on to another job. The fact that he
didn't talk about it much until I think he spoke
about it to the press once in two thousand and
six a Desert News article, and then didn't talk about
it again until twenty fourteen when his memoirs came out.
(32:13):
It was just like a thing that they were doing
that other people were doing other stuff too. And then
to have like that part of it that the idea
that you would you would jeopardize it in that way
just makes it seem like they weren't taking it as
that big of an operations as like the movie would
like to believe. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Well, I think in real life it was it was
a information gathering investigation. Like, it was never we're going
to take down the clan in Colorado. It was let's
infiltrate and get as much information in fact finding as
we can. And in the end, after eight months, that's
(32:54):
kind of what happened. It was he considers Stalwart, considers
it a success, and that they fulfill their mission. They
did prevent three cross burning ceremonies during that eight month
span or at nine month span, and they did identify
clan members who worked at Noorad who apparently they said they,
I mean these days they would be fired probably, but
(33:16):
they said they reassigned them to like Greenland or something.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Right because they had access to the too nuclear weapons.
Apparently they had very high level clearance at noor Ad,
which is scary.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
And then they also found plans that they didn't act on,
like the whole bomb plot in the movie was made
up for dramatic purposes, but they did find links between
for a plan to bomb a gay nightclub and another
plan to steal automatic weapons from an army base, like
an inside job. So it was, you know, it was
(33:50):
valuable work they were doing, for sure. It just wasn't
like we're going to take the clan down like I
don't think it was the department's big, big job at
the time.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
No, certainly not. And in the memoirs and in the
movie too, the reason that's given for the undercover operation
to end is because it started to become successful. Ron
Stalwarth was nominated to lead the Colorado Springs chapter of
the Klan. Like Ken O'Dell basically said, you should take
(34:18):
my job. Everybody likes you. You're really good at this,
You're smart. You should lead the clan here and the
police chief of Colorado Springs. So that's it. Close it down,
burn all the evidence of this investigation. He apparently was
worried about what a pr nightmare it would be if
it got out that some of his detectives were in
(34:39):
the Colorado Springs Clan. But at the same time, what
strikes me is odd is that the FBI wasn't like, oh, well, geez,
this guy is like being nominated to lead the Colorado
Springs Clan. He's talking to David Duke like, really, this
could not be kind of blown up into a larger
investigation or a larger staying or something like that. And
(35:00):
then secondly, and ron Stalworth himself addresses this, there's a
very frequently a criticism of well, if this was such
a big operation and they found all this stuff, why
wasn't anyone arrested? Why weren't there any arrests? And Duke says, right,
not just David Duke. Stalwarth says also that in law
(35:20):
enforcement too, people question that, like why wasn't anyone arrested?
And he said, it was an intel investigation and that's
what they did, is they gathered stuff. But then he
very rightly points out, like you said, like the fact
that they prevented crossburnings alone makes it a worthwhile and
valuable operation. I think just some people on the outside
are saying, well, why wasn't why wasn't more done? Why
(35:42):
didn't Moore come out of this? You know? Well, and
I'm not quite sure what they're driving at, but there
are you know, Stalwart brings that up in an interview
I read with him like that people do ask that
and wonder about that.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, and Stalwarth is very proud of the fact that
with the cross burnings, he was like, no, I can't
remember the quote, but he said something about no children
in Colorado Springs got to you know, no young black
kids had to see crosses on fire during that eight
or nine month period, and I'm very proud of that,
as he should be.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yeah, for real.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
So I mentioned the voice earlier, in the fact that
he had a different voice obviously than Chuck, and he
said one time, only one time, and I think this
was in the movie, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
It was? Actually no, it was I remember.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah, So one time in the whole investigation did someone
say like, wait a minute, you sound different. Chuck had
just been at a in person meeting, came back and
then Stalworth wants to follow up on the phone with
Ken O'Dell about something right afterward. So he had just
heard Chuck's voice for whatever this whole meeting and was
(36:48):
talking to him and he was like, wait a minute,
you sound different, what's going on? And he just pulled
it off. He coughed and said he had a sinus infection,
and Ken O'Dell was like, oh, well, here's how you
clear that up, and gave some good sinus medication advice.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Right. Yeah, they definitely appeared in the movie.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
I mean, you could not make this thing up, you know,
it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
No, for real, And apparently for a long time, Stalworth
was saying like, yeah, it was just another job. It
was just another operation. I guess he told some fellow
like law enforcement friends or whatever about it, and they're like, dude,
you this is a movie. You need to write this down,
you need to get this out there. This is a
one in a million story. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
I wonder one reason it didn't go bigger operation wise
was because the sort of hackneyed way they got into it,
like he's the voice, but they're sending a white man
like it's I'm surprised he pulled it off for that long.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Yeah. I could totally see that.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
One final thing that did not happen in real life
but did happen in the movie. And this is what
when you usually will change real life is to get
a more satisfying ending. But Stalwart did not, unfortunately, reveal
his true identity to David Duke like he does to
hilarious effect in the film. Unfortunately. No, I'll see that.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
He was saying, like, yeah, he just he didn't really
talk about it until the two thousands, So David Duke
didn't know until I guess the memoirs came out.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, and you know, well, I guess we should talk
about Spike Lee getting criticized Boots Riley, director who I
had a movie crush.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
By the way, he I know what was his movie?
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Sorry to Bother You? Was his film that he made.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
No, I mean his pick for movie crush.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
His pick was a movie called Mishima, A Life in
four Chapters. Okay, yeah, it was a great film and
his like, his knowledge on movies was deep. He turned
me onto a lot of cool things.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
I thought it for a very terrible second you were
saying his pick was his own movie.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
No no, But he you know, Boots does not hold
back on what he thinks. And while you would think
that he would be like, oh no, I'm going to
be a champion of Spike Lee and telling the story,
he came out very publicly on Twitter and that very
intelligently criticized that he didn't just bag on it. He
(39:14):
wrote a big, long statement on exactly what he thought
was wrong with it.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah. He basically said, look, man, if you take away
all the embellishments that Spike Lee added to this movie,
what you have as a guy who's probably biggest assignment.
And I'm not sure where he got this, but he
focused on that stokely Carmichael thing and the fact that
ron Stalworth had worked undercover to infiltrate the Black Power
(39:41):
movement in Colorado Springs and that he had worked on
that for like three years, and that this clan thing
was just like a nine month thing. And he also
criticized Spike Lee for making it, making the movie seem
like law enforcement and the Black Power movement came together
to fight racism, right that like that was a larger point,
or that that was historically accurate or something like that.
(40:05):
It was a really interesting It was like a three
page essay that he posted on Twitter that made some
good points. He basically said, from what I can tell,
it looks like ron Stalworth was working for co intel Pro,
which was the FBI's it was their program to undermine groups,
including black power groups, which we mentioned it in the
(40:28):
Black Panther episode we did, and co intel Pro definitely
deserves its own episode, and it was ended officially in
nineteen seventy one. But I think Boots Riley's point was
it might have been officially ended, but the work was
still going on, and if this guy was infiltrating Black
Power like groups in Colorado Springs, he was almost certainly
(40:52):
trying to break them, up one way or another, probably
using co intel purposes or practices. And Ron stall Worth
he had a pretty great quote in response to it.
He said, I pray for my demented, dissolute brother in
response to Boots Riley and Spike Lee has no comment
about it whatsoever. So who knows. But you make a
(41:15):
good point that like he's he's he's not just giving
like blind allegiance to anything.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Sure. Well, Spike did comment eventually.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Oh I didn't see that.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, he was. He was in an interview, and the
first thing he said was like, Hey, I'm a I'm
a young man of sixty one or something like that,
and like, you know, young me might have kind of
gotten into a war of words, but he's just not
into that anymore. But he did say briefly something about, listen,
I'm not going to come out and say that all
(41:46):
cops are racist and all cops do bad things, because
they don't all do bad things. There's a lot of
great cops. There's also bad cops. And he kind of
just couched it in that and then was like, but
you know, I'm not going to be really talking about
this anymore.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Right, Yeah, I hadn't seen that he'd even had that comment. Yeah,
so it's interesting stuff and it's a good movie at
the very least.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
You know, I think I think ron Staal wars Like man,
they made a movie about my story. That's pretty awesome,
and at the very least it's a pretty great movie.
How about that? Totally, totally, So if you you got anything.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Else, I got nothing else.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
If you want to know more about Black Clansmen, you
should probably go see that movie. And I guess we
probably should have said at the outset this episode is
not an ad.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Oh, of course not.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
We just like the movie a lot, right.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, I mean you could say it's an ad, but like,
no one gave us money or asked us to do this. Sure, Okay,
I'm endorsing it.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Okay, there you go. I am endorsing it as well.
It has two thumbs up, as it were. Yeah, rest
in peace, Roger Ebert and Jeene Ciskel two thumbs Okay.
So if I already already said that, how about some
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yeah, I'm gonna call this ping pong response from a
former pro Nice, Hey, guys, want to commend you on
the job you did covering a sport that you didn't
have an extensive knowledge of. I'm a professional table tennis
coach and former player. I started playing in college. Thought
I was really good until I was coerced to go
to a tournament at Princeton University about twenty years ago
and I got destroyed. I didn't like that, so I
(43:21):
saw it out to coach and the rest is history.
You guys clearly did a lot of research and to
highlight the things that most novice players aren't aware of.
But there were a few things I couldn't help but
point out. Josh, you mentioned the components of the modern racket.
You said the pimpled sign those are called pips are
for spinning the ball, that the smooth side is for
(43:41):
defensive play. But the opposite is actually true. Oh no,
I didn't catch that, because I would have pointed that out.
I thought everyone knew that.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
You get good spin on that smooth side, all right,
for real? Oh yeah, yeah, it's grippy, all right? He said.
The smooth side is very tacky, as in sticky, and that,
combined with the sponge underneath, allows the ball to sink
in just enough so that the TACKI service grips the
ball and generates a lot of spin. Also, you can
really have any combination of rubber that you want as
(44:13):
long as it's ITTF approved. Players are not restricted to
having one smooth side and one with pips, but one
side does have to be read and the other black.
Most defensive players use pips on their backhand because pips
vary the spin that is coming back at you and
it's very hard to read. Also, Chuck, you mentioned that
defensive players are called chislers. They're actually called choppers as
(44:37):
they chop the ball back with varying backspin. I've never
heard the term chiselers. I'm wondering if it is extremely outdated.
Maybe I bet you that was the Gates I haead
Old research chizlas.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
That's what they call in the twenties.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
He said, if you guys are ever in the Dunnellen,
New Jersey area, stop by. We are there right now,
stop by the Lily Yip Table Tennis Club and I'll
gladly hook you guys up with the lesson.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
I will gladly humiliate you in person.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
And that is Thomas from Philly.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Thanks Thomas, much appreciated. We like it when we are
gently corrected because we like to be right, so thanks
for that. If you want to get in touch with us,
let us know I don't know something we got wrong
about black clansmen. Let us know. You can find all
of our social links on stuffishould Know dot com and
(45:29):
has always sent us an email to stuff podcast at
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com
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