David Duke | 2. Robe and Ritual

Summary

Slow Burn – Season 4, Ep. 2: "Robe and Ritual"

Podcast: Slow Burn (Slate Podcasts)
Host: Josh Levin
Date: June 17, 2020
Theme: The Early Rise of David Duke and the Rebranding of White Supremacy

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Overview

This episode of Slow Burn delves into David Duke’s transformation from a campus provocateur at LSU to a slick, media-savvy leader of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Host Josh Levin explores how Duke, by appropriating and refashioning the symbols and rituals of the KKK, tried to rebrand white supremacism for a new era, moving it from the fringes of violence toward mainstream politics—while remaining rooted in the Klan’s tradition of hate. Through first-person interviews, archival audio, and pointed narrative, the episode traces Duke’s rise and its wider implications for American political life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. LSU in the Early 1970s: Collis Temple Jr. Breaks Barriers and Encounters Duke

• [01:04–04:40]
  • Collis Temple Jr., the first Black basketball player at LSU, describes his integration into a hostile environment and daily racism.
    • Quote — Collis Temple Jr.: “Some of my social outlet, candidly, in terms of who I communicated with the most, were actually people who cleaned up the dorm... and the people who cooked.” (03:14)
  • "Free Speech Alley" on campus becomes a hub for heated debates, including those about race and civil rights.
  • David Duke emerges at LSU as a campus agitator, delivering openly racist, antisemitic speeches to anyone who will listen—or shout back at him.
    • Quote — Collis Temple Jr.: “He’d be out there talking about why Jews and niggers should not be a part of our society… that’s basically what it came down to.” (04:18)
    • Temple frequently confronts Duke directly.

2. Free Speech Alley: The Showdown

• [05:14–07:30]
  • Kali Joseph, moderator during this period, recalls the atmosphere: supporters and detractors alike could take the soapbox—no voice was censored.
    • Quote — Kali Joseph: “He was given his opportunity because, you know, our motto was fair play. We have to give people a chance to speak.” (05:43)
  • A black student responds to Duke’s “master race” rhetoric by cutting his own finger, urging Duke to compare their blood—a gesture Duke refuses to engage with.
    • Quote — Joseph describing Duke’s reaction: “He obviously wanted to cut his finger… and I think he even said, ‘We’ll see that you bleed. You and I just bleed the same.’” (06:11)
    • Duke’s later dismissive response: “rats have red blood too.”
  • While Duke claims to have captivated audiences, Joseph insists he was “not popular… and he was spewing out hate.” (07:16)

3. Building a Network: Duke’s White Nationalist Road Trip

• [07:30–09:27]
  • As an LSU student, Duke seeks kinship among national Nazi and white supremacist groups.
  • Travels and bonds with Joseph Paul Franklin (later a violent spree killer) and Don Black (future founder of Stormfront).
    • Quote — Elise Hu: “They not only saw that their ideas were widely spread, they saw that it was possible to have their ideas and live a successful life… that’s something they all took back to Louisiana with them.” (09:15)
  • Each would take a different path—Franklin turning to murder, Black to online organizing, Duke seeking public platform and celebrity.

4. Rebranding the Klan: From Hoods to Suits

• [10:27–15:42]
  • Duke invents the "Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" (1973), leveraging the infamous brand for personal gain.
    • Quote — Josh Levin: “Duke figured that the KKK name would serve as a kind of tailwind for his career as a professional racist. He was right.” (15:12)
  • Leverages media appearances, most notably on NBC’s Tomorrow with Tom Snyder, presenting himself as articulate and respectable in a suit:
    • Quote — Tom Snyder: “At 23 years old, I’m told that you are the youngest grand Dragon in the United States of America.” (15:42)
    • Duke: “That’s right.”
    • Snyder: “Do you feel uncomfortable with your sheet off tonight or…?” (15:47–15:51)
    • Duke: “Oh, I feel okay. You feel uncomfortable in your suit?” (15:51)
  • Snyder’s easygoing style allows Duke to steer the conversation toward white grievance, minimizing the KKK’s history of violence.
    • Quote — Duke: “The white race has been one. It’s a forgotten majority, you might say.” (17:18)
    • Snyder: “Would you take part in a lynching?”
      Duke: “Well, I wouldn’t take part in one now…. I think, in some cases, it might be justified.” (17:38–17:57)

5. Chasing Controversy: South Boston and the Power of Public Anger

• [20:04–24:38]
  • Duke attempts to exploit racial tensions around school desegregation and busing in Boston.
    • Quote — David Duke: “In the 60s, we had freedom rides of the blacks… today we have a reverse of that. We’ve got white freedom rides north, and our people are aiding our white brothers and sisters in Boston to fight against this tyranny.” (21:59)
  • Despite minimal support, Duke finds audiences hungry for his provocations at rallies.
  • At a Southie rally, after riling up the crowd with racist hate speech, Duke collects membership payments—a sign of both the business and performative aspects of his Klan leadership.

6. A Larger Tent: The Political Ambitions of David Duke

• [24:58–29:31]
  • Duke organizes large Klan rallies, incorporates women and Catholics into the organization (departing from old Klan traditions).
  • Runs for the Louisiana State Senate (1975) as an open white supremacist, getting a third of the vote in a white affluent district.
    • Quote — David Duke campaign ad: “Let’s elect David Duke, Senator, District 16.” (27:54)
  • Inspired by civil rights organizing, he directly compares his movement to that of Martin Luther King, even claiming, “If I’d been born black, I would have been Malcolm X.”

7. Debate with Jesse Jackson: The Mainstreaming of Hate

• [29:31–34:16]
  • Duke debates Jesse Jackson on Chicago TV, presenting white nationalism as rational and “nonviolent.”
    • Duke: “I don’t want to suppress anybody, and the Klan is not trying to put anybody down. What we’re trying to do is allow each race to be masters of its own destiny…”
    • Jackson: “The genius of America is an experiment… that suggests people of many nations, many races, will… learn to live together…” (31:40)
  • Exchange grows heated and personal:
    • Jackson: “Blacks make cotton cane and we hold tobacco row and we raised your children when you were too trifling to raise your own.” (32:24)
    • Duke: “If that’s what makes America, then we’re going to have to give the horse the right to vote…” (32:42)
  • Jackson’s warning: “As more white people develop economic anxieties… their fears can be played upon by demagogues.” (33:11)
  • Jackson closes: “Blacks are not afraid of the Klan anymore. They can wear hoods or wear suits, they can burn crosses or baths. We’re not afraid.” (33:44)
  • Duke gives out his address on TV, presenting himself as approachable and open to “debate.” (33:58)

8. Stall and Reinvention: Duke Leaves the Klan

• [34:30–43:22]
  • By the late 1970s, Duke’s influence plateaus; his electoral performances stagnate, and the Klan remains unpopular (10% approval rating in national polls).
    • Journalist Bertha Gaffney Gorman’s 1978 encounter with Duke reveals a deeply insecure, angry man clinging to grievance.
      • Gaffney Gorman: “He would not look me in the eyes. One of the things… is that his feet, his legs kept moving.” (36:05–36:25)
      • “Black people destroyed the education system, they destroyed the economy, they destroyed the automobile industry. You name it, black people destroyed it.” (36:39)
    • Duke is accused by fellow Klansmen of womanizing, theft, and selling membership lists for cash.
    • Exposed in a sting by rival Bill Wilkinson (an FBI informant), Duke is forced out of his own organization.

9. Attempting a Mainstream Makeover: NAAWP and Beyond

• [43:22–44:37]
  • Duke launches the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), a calculated attempt to mimic and counter the NAACP while discarding the Klan’s violent imagery.
    • Historian Lance Hill: “By 1980, he realized that… the racist movement had to lose the robe and the ritual.” (43:22)
  • As Reagan’s presidency adopts many dog-whistle themes, Duke’s radical rhetoric loses traction.
    • Joe Klein: “Once Reagan came into power, ... it just sucked all of the fuel out of the radical right wing movement.” (44:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Collis Temple Jr. on Duke at LSU:
  “He’d be out there talking about why Jews and niggers should not be a part of our society. That’s basically what it came down to.” (04:18)

• Kali Joseph on Free Speech Alley:
  “He was given his opportunity because… our motto was fair play. We have to give people a chance to speak.” (05:43)

• David Duke, on TV with Tom Snyder:
  “Well, I wouldn’t take part in one now. I think that wouldn’t do the organization much good if I went to jail for 40 years. I think that in some cases it might be justified.” (17:38–17:57)

• David Duke, rally in Boston:
  “Our people are aiding our white brothers and sisters in Boston to fight against this tyranny.” (21:59)

• Rally in South Boston:
  “Duke was wearing a suit, not a robe and hood. But on this night, he wouldn’t play the part of the well scrubbed Klansman… And then he screamed the N word.” (24:58)

• David Duke’s Political Ambition:
  “Let’s elect David Duke, Senator, District 16.” (27:54)

• Jesse Jackson, debating Duke:
  “Blacks are not afraid of the Klan anymore. They can wear hoods or wear suits… That’s the point—we’re not afraid.” (33:44)

• Bertha Gaffney Gorman, on Duke’s manner:
  “I was not very impressed with him… He literally was halfway out the door before he came back and asked for the money to pay the parking. The parking was $1.25.” (37:10)

• Lance Hill (Historian):
  “By 1980, he realized that… the racist movement had to lose the robe and the ritual.” (43:22)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:04] – Collis Temple Jr. recruited to LSU
• [04:18] – Temple recalls Duke’s hate speech
• [05:14] – Kali Joseph and Free Speech Alley
• [06:11] – The bloodletting confrontation
• [10:27] – Formation of the Knights of the KKK
• [15:42] – Duke’s TV debut with Tom Snyder
• [20:04] – Context of Boston racial tensions
• [24:58] – Southie rally and Duke’s open bigotry
• [27:54] – Duke’s State Senate campaign
• [31:21–33:44] – Duke and Jesse Jackson debate
• [36:05] – Bertha Gaffney Gorman’s interview with Duke
• [43:22] – Transition to NAAWP
• [44:11] – The Reagan effect on Duke’s movement

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Closing Thoughts

This episode traces Duke’s transformation from a college bigot to a would-be national politician—and the way he tried to use imagery and media to legitimize white supremacy. It spotlights how hate can be mainstreamed, recast, and made media-friendly—without ever shedding its roots. Through poignant interviews, archival confrontations, and sharp analysis, “Robe and Ritual” exposes the machinery behind the public ascendance of American racism in the late 20th century.

Transcript

[Elise Hu]

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[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

This podcast contains language that some listeners might find offensive. Collis Temple Jr. Was a great high school basketball player. A 6 foot 8 center, he dominated as a rebounder and an inside scorer. A bunch of big time colleges scouted Temple his senior year.

[Collis Temple Jr.]

I was being recruited by the University of Kansas, I was being recruited by Nebraska, Oklahoma and by Colorado and those were the teams that were recruiting black athletes from the south for the most part.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Even though he lived in Louisiana, in a tiny rural town called Kentwood, Temple wasn't expecting to hear from the state's flagship University. It was 1970 and the LSU basketball team had never had a black player. Temple did eventually get invited to join the roster. The man who recruited him wasn't from the admissions office or the athletic department.

[Collis Temple Jr.]

Phone was sitting in the kitchen. I happened to pick it up and I said hello. And then he said this is Governor John McKinnon. And I said oh really? Okay. I told my dad this person on the phone says he's the governor and he wants to talk to you.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

John McKithen told the temples that their son belonged at LSU. The governor said that times were changing and that Collis would be safe on campus in Baton Rouge. The Temple family saw this as a chance to make history and an invitation that was long overdue.

[Collis Temple Jr.]

My dad's attitude was, well, we all paid taxes so that Louisiana State University could be built and it's about time that we get a chance to participate in the Educational opportunities because it's the best school in the state.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Collis was 17 years old when he moved into the athletes dormitory. He lived with more than 100 young white men.

[Collis Temple Jr.]

There were tense times when I was around these guys because they weren't feeling comfortable with me. And I knew that the majority of the guys weren't necessarily interested in me being there. Some of my social outlet, candidly, in terms of who I communicated with the most, were actually people who cleaned up the dorm that I lived in. The janitors and the people who cooked.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Temple also spent time hanging out with other black undergrads at LSU's student union. To get there, he had to walk past a campus hotspot.

[Collis Temple Jr.]

Free Speech Alley was just an identifiable area where people just got up and expressed how they felt. And people talked about some of everything, all the social ills throughout this country.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Students at Free Speech Alley spouted off about the dress code at lsu, which forbade women from wearing pants. They got fired up about President Nixon in the Vietnam War, and they argued about civil rights. There was one student, David Duke, who was always shouting about the dangers of integration.

[Collis Temple Jr.]

He'd be out there talking about why Jews and niggers should not be a part of our society. That's basically what it came down to.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Would he stop and listen?

[Collis Temple Jr.]

I'd stop and listen and I'd yell and tell him he was full of shit.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

In the first episode of our series, I talked about David Duke the politician and how he triumphed in Louisiana in 1989. In this episode, I'm going to start two decades earlier, when Duke was figuring out who he wanted to become. Before he became America's most prominent white supremacist, Duke was a campus rabble rouser. Standing on a soapbox at Free Speech Alley, he claimed that whites were mentally superior to blacks. He said that Jews were traitors, and he gave the Nazi salute.

[Kali Joseph]

People used to call him a Nazi. Yeah, yeah, he was a Nazi. He was open about it.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

That's Kali Joseph. He was a moderator at Free Speech Alley in the late 60s and early 70s. It was his job to watch the clock. He never told anyone to tone down their language or pick a different subject. No topic was off limits. And banning an individual student, even a Nazi, was totally out of the question.

[Kali Joseph]

People would yell at the speaker. People would, you know, complain or hoot and holler if they didn't like things. But he was given his opportunity because, you know, our motto was fair play. We have to give people a chance to speak.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

One afternoon in 1969. Joseph watched David Duke declare that whites were the master race. When Duke's time was up, a black student got on the soapbox.

[Kali Joseph]

He began making a case that everybody's blood is the same or all the same, and we all believe in the same blood. So he pulls out a knife and cuts his finger. And then he begins to call out to David and telling David, come up to the box. And he obviously wanted to cut his finger. And I think he even said, we'll see that you bleed. You and I just bleed the same.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

David Duke declined to join in on the bloodletting. He later said it meant nothing to him that all humans bleed the same color. After all, Duke explained, rats have red blood too. Long after he graduated from lsu, Duke loved to reminisce about Free Speech Alley. Here he is in 1985.

[David Duke]

They had people hanging off the balconies, you know, around standing on the. They were totally awestruck. They didn't know what to do. They couldn't believe this guy was getting up here in the sun.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Kali Joseph recalls things differently.

[Kali Joseph]

I don't remember that. David had hardly any support from anybody. He was not popular at Free Speech Alley, and the whole thing was intense. And David, I mean, he was spewing out hate. There's no doubt about it.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

The presence of a black athlete like Collis Temple at LSU was a marker of racial progress. David Duke was there to remind him that the opportunity he'd earned was provisional. Temple and his black classmates saw Duke as a threat, someone they needed to stand up to or shout down to solidify their place on campus. Most white students saw Duke as a curiosity or a repetitive bore. Duke's performances at Free Speech Alley, the LSU student newspaper said, always get back to a commie Jew plot by the black lovers of America against the good old white folks. To spread his message, Duke needed a support system. He'd find one beyond Free Speech Alley. As a student at lsu, Duke wrote letters to the National Socialist White People's Party, the group formerly known as the American Nazi Party. These Nazis invited Duke to their annual conference in Virginia and suggested that he carpool with two other white supremacists. Here's the author, Eli Saslow.

[Elise Hu]

One of them was about his age, a guy named Joseph Paul Franklin. The other was about two or three years younger, a guy named Don Black. And they piled into this car and started driving, you know, 800 miles up the highway. And over the course of those hours, these three kids became really close.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke, Franklin and Black ate pretzels, listened to Southern rock and talked about the biological superiority of the white race. At that conference in Virginia, they met hundreds more people who shared their beliefs. They came away from this Nazi get together feeling less alone and more resolute.

[Elise Hu]

They not only saw that their ideas were widely spread, they saw that it was possible to have their ideas and live a successful life in this country. And I think that that's something that they all took back to Louisiana with them.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

David Duke and his two new friends had a shared white nationalist ideology, but different visions of how to spread it. Don Black would eventually create Stormfront, the largest online gathering place for racists. Joseph Paul Franklin would take it upon himself to instigate a race war going on, a three year killing spree before getting captured by police. The third man in that car dreamed of becoming the national frontman for white supremacy, the charismatic leader who'd bring racism to the masses. To become a star, David Duke would need to get on bigger stages than Free Speech Alley, and he'd have to lure in new and different followers. That meant he needed a new brand. Before he even graduated from lsu, he found one.

[Tom Snyder]

If you've never seen a member of the KKK with the hood on, you'll get your chance as we introduce Mr. David Duke of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan when the Tomorrow program continues after this announcement.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Thank you. How did David Duke use the Ku Klux Klan to sell his message and himself? How did he turn black progress into a rallying cry for disaffected white people? And why did he leave the clan behind? This is slow burn. I'm josh levine. Episode 2 robe and ritual. Hey there, Slow Burn listeners. I just wanted to take a moment to say that if you're a fan of the show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. That's Slate's membership program. This season, we're letting Slate plus members listen to the first half of our series on David Duke right away. We'll also have bonus episodes where we'll dive deeper into the history we're exploring this season. And as always, members get to skip out on all ads on all Slate podcasts. We could not make Slow Burn without the support of Slate plus. And in this economic climate, your membership is more crucial for us than ever. We're working hard to continue bringing you the news and analysis you depend on, but Slate and Slow Burn need your support right now, so please sign up if you're able to. It's only $35 for the first year, and you can find out [e-mail] slowburn that's slate.com slowburn thanks so much. I used to think the Ku Klux Klan was a single fixed organization. In reality, it's more like a virulent American meme, a shifting collection of symbols and ideas that's been passed on from one generation of bigots to the next. The first Ku Klux Klan arose after the Civil War when white vigilantes in masks and robes terrorized and murdered black freed men and women. That KKK was broken up by massive federal intervention. The second Klan was something closer to a political party. It drew in millions of white Protestants all over the country in the 1920s, and it was animated by hatred not only of blacks, but also Catholics, Jews and immigrants. It fizzled out around 1930, in part because Klan violence gave the group a bad reputation and polite white society. The third KKK came into existence during David Duke's childhood. It was a murderous backlash to the gains made by black Americans in the 1950s and 60s.

[David Duke]

They died in Birmingham at the 16th Street Baptist Church, rallying point of the Negro drive in the nation's most segregated big city. Dynamite exploded on a Sunday morning, killed.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Four little girls in Sunday school, injured 20 other Negroes.

[David Duke]

This is an earthen dam, the temporary.

[Tom Snyder]

Grave of three civil rights workers. Two white, one negro, beaten and shot to death.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Among those indicted for this triple slaying.

[Tom Snyder]

Were six men identified as members of the Ku Klux Klan.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Klan terrorism became a national outrage and helped spur the passage of the Civil Rights Act. At the same time, the FBI began to tear the KKK apart from the inside, infiltrating its leading branches. By the 1970s, about a century after it was founded, the Klan was basically in ruins. David Duke saw this as an opportunity. America's most powerful symbol of white supremacist terrorism was up for grabs.

[Tom Snyder]

Let me introduce to you now Mr. David Duke. And to further identify Mr. Duke, who comes to us from Louisiana. He is the Grand Dragon of that state in the southern United States. And he is National Information Director for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke thought of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as the true heirs to the original Klan, the one that sprung up after the Civil War. In fact, Duke himself invented the group in 1973. The Knights had no history or heritage and no connection to any of the various Klan factions in the United States. Nevertheless, Duke figured that the KKK name would serve as a kind of tailwind for his career as a professional racist. He was right.

[Tom Snyder]

At 23 years old, I'm told that you are the youngest grand Dragon in the United States of America.

[Collis Temple Jr.]

That's right.

[Tom Snyder]

Do you feel uncomfortable with your sheet off tonight or.

[David Duke]

Oh, I feel okay. You feel uncomfortable in your suit?

[Tom Snyder]

No, not at all.

[David Duke]

Usually when I see you.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke's network television debut came on NBC's Tomorrow in January 1974. The Tomorrow show aired at 1am on the east and West coasts and it wanted desperately to be edgy. Its host, Tom Snyder, chatted with a priest who claimed to exorcise demons, a blind man who found work censoring pornography and celebrities like Watergate icon Martha Mitchell. David Duke, the handsome young white supremacist, was the perfect Tomorrow booking. He was well spoken, controversial and beyond the fringes of social acceptability.

[Tom Snyder]

What's going to happen if we don't preserve white power?

[David Duke]

Well, I think we're seeing what's happening right now. In every major city of this country there are white people, great numbers of them, who are hurt, murdered, raped, abused by Negroes.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Snyder never prepared questions. He preferred to let the conversation flow naturally. That worked fine for Duke. He was no longer the ranting, raving young man from Free Speech Alley, this David Duke. The suit wearing Grand Dragon was on a mission to win over his audience. His strategy was persuade white Americans that they were victims.

[David Duke]

Well, we believe that the white people in this country must organize for their own interest. We need people pushing for our people in the schools, for our people in the government. The white race has been one. It's a forgotten majority, you might say.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Snyder didn't ignore the Klan's legacy of violence. Violence?

[Tom Snyder]

Would you take part in a lynching?

[David Duke]

Well, I wouldn't take part in one now. I think that wouldn't do the organization much good if I went to jail for 40 years. I think that in some cases it might be justified.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

But it was the guest, not the host, who ended up steering the interview. Rather than focus on the KKK's history of atrocities against black Americans, Snyder and Duke debated whether blacks were predisposed to criminality. Snyder also didn't ask Duke about his Nazi sympathies or his Klan newsletter, which depicted black people as guerrillas and described tear gas as Negro control equipment. Towards the end of their time together, Snyder called Duke intelligent, articulate and charming. Their banter was collegial, at times even jocular.

[David Duke]

I got about five of the biggest Klansmen that I know of, including a couple football team.

[Tom Snyder]

Do you mean we saw your brothers playing football here over the holiday in the bowl game?

[David Duke]

Well, we may have. Wasn't one of the black ones on the team? I can tell you that.

[Tom Snyder]

No, you don't have to tell me anything. Go ahead.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

The Tomorrow show averaged 3 million viewers every night, and it made David Duke a public figure. National TV and radio bookers saw him as a great get. Someone who'd stir up controversy, who people would tune in for. Duke also became a regular on the college lecture circuit, collecting speaking fees for delivering his views to impressionable minds. David Duke had leveled up. He had a national profile, and he learned how to portray himself as a new kind of Klansman, one with a department store wardrobe and intellectual pretensions. But Duke couldn't lead a movement if he didn't have an army behind him, one fueled by white anger. David Duke didn't observe America's racial conflicts from a distance. He searched them out and stoked them. In South Boston, he found a war that was already raging in a place that seemed aligned with his white power agenda. Here's journalist Joe Klein.

[Joe Klein]

Well, Southie in the 1970s was a working class community, and things weren't going so good for working class white people. There used to be factories in Boston, but they were closing down. And on top of all that, suddenly these suburban liberals want to break the ethnic identity of the neighborhood by bringing in black kids.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

On the first day of School in September 1974, white adults and children in South Boston attacked school buses carrying black students.

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And they were throwing eggs at the window and tried to hit people with them. And they was calling us black niggas.

[Collis Temple Jr.]

If you're not going to disperse, you're going to be arrested.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

In Boston and elsewhere, white opposition to school desegregation was violent and persistent. Busing was the most visible battleground in a bigger fight over the state of the civil rights movement. In the 1970s, black college enrollment was on the rise, and more black politicians were winning elected office. A lot of white people thought these gains were more than sufficient. They believed the push for black equality was going too far, that programs like affirmative action were unfair and even racist, and that integration was an attack on their way of life. Duke sensed this growing white insecurity, and he wanted to capitalize on it. As the nation's eyes turned toward Boston, he tried to make himself the center of attention. Duke told any news outlet that would listen that he'd gotten a request from the white people to come up north and help them get organized.

[David Duke]

In the 60s, we had freedom rides of the blacks and certain white liberals down to the south. Today we have a reverse of that. We've got white freedom rides north, and our people are Aiding our white brothers and sisters in Boston to fight against this tyranny.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

David Duke's go to move in the 1970s was to show up where racial tensions were high, find a camera and boast about the size of his following. Duke declared that 150 Klan members would be joining him in Boston a few years later. He'd claimed to be heading up a massive Klan border watch, a group of thousands of volunteers keeping an eye out for Mexicans trying to cross into the United States. This was all bluster. The border watch would turn out to be Duke and seven other guys, and there's no evidence they did anything. In Boston, Duke had just two men at his side, and public officials acted like he didn't exist. A handful of reporters did greet Duke when he arrived at Logan Airport, but most of them peeled off after that initial photo op. One journalist who didn't was Joe Klein. He wrote about Duke for the underground newspaper, the real paper.

[Joe Klein]

We went to several neighborhoods in Southie, and along the way, I think Duke was shocked because his, you know, the image he was trying to project was clean cut, the new face of the Klan. And there was nothing clean cut about the people in Southie. They were far more profane than he was.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

By the end of their day together, Klein got the sense that Duke's trip to South Boston was more than just a failed publicity stunt. Outside the public eye, away from the TV cameras, Duke was starting to find his people. After the sun went down, the Klan leaders staged a gathering at a monument commemorating the Revolutionary War.

[Joe Klein]

I would guess that there were 500 to 1,000 people there, mostly teenagers, mostly kids, some older folks. And it was in the field behind Southie High School.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke said that the white people of Southie were American heroes. He blamed the federal government for allegedly forcing little white children out of their homes and sending them into black jungles. He also attacked welfare programs, saying they take money out of your pockets to finance the production of thousands of little black bastards.

[Joe Klein]

And the crowd started chanting things like boneheads, boneheads, boneheads. And, you know, he didn't have to do very much to rev up these people. Their anger was there. They agreed with him. They, you know, they wanted him to do more. They would say, where are our sheets?

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke was wearing a suit, not a robe and hood. But on this night, he wouldn't play the part of the well scrubbed Klansman. The real issue isn't a school here or a school there, Duke said. The real issue is. And then he screamed the N word in his article for the real paper. Klein wrote that the place exploded when Duke yelled that slur. That this is what the residents of Southie had come to hear. When it was all over, the 24 year old Duke stood on a car and declared white victory. He then asked the kids who'd been shadowing him to hand over $3 each the price of a Klan members. Duke's Ku Klux Klan was gathering strength. In April 1975, he drew a thousand people to a gathering in rural Louisiana. It was one of the biggest Klan meetups in decades. Duke told the crowd that black people were the puppets of Jews and he spat out the N word, much to the audience's delight. Duke started out wearing a suit and tie, but at the end of the night he changed into a Klan robe. He then set fire to a 40 foot cross. In a press release, Duke's Klan explained that they disliked the term cross burning. They preferred to call that ritual, which would symbolize death and terror to generations of black Americans, a cross lighting. This was David Duke's dance. He sold himself as a new kind of Klansman while relying on old fashioned Klan slurs and symbols. The KKK's history of savagery gave him a frisson of danger that he alternately played up and played down. He'd talk about wanting to shoot a black person, then turn around and say that he never condoned any kind of violence. Depending on the occasion, he styled himself as a polite activist for the civil rights of white people. A crowd inciting Grand Dragon or both. The movement Duke envisioned was more expansive than previous Klans. He welcomed women and Catholics into his big white tent, a tactic that won him yet more media attention. In 1975, a writer from the New York Times interviewed five Klanswomen at Duke's house in Baton Rouge. One of them, a 35 year old mother, said that what white people have to do is fight. I don't mean with violence, unless of course it is to protect ourselves and our children. I mean fight politically by electing congressmen and senators who feel just like we do. David Duke had the same idea.

[David Duke]

We need a voice for our heritage, ideals and interests. It's only fair if things are to be evened up a bit, we do.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Need a real voice for the majority.

[David Duke]

Let's elect David duke, Senator, District 16.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

In this 1975 election for a state Senate seat in Baton Rouge, Duke didn't pretend to be anything other than a racist. He said that his purpose as an elected official would be to work on behalf of white people. Duke's base wasn't yet large enough to sweep him into office. But he had reason to be optimistic. In 1975, 1,000 people went to Duke's big Klan rally in rural Louisiana. That same year, more than 10 times that many Louisiana residents, 33% of voters in an affluent district were willing to cast ballots for a Klan leader. The electorate, Duke said, was just about ready for us. We'll be back in a minute. David Duke didn't just look to previous white power movements for inspiration. He also took notice of the fight for black equality, a crusade he considered offensive but highly effective. Here he is in an interview from 1975.

[David Duke]

What's happened in this country is that the minorities, by the fact that they stick together, have been able to wield tremendous power in terms of our government. And we believe that it's time that the white majority, the people that built this country and created our constitution and our ideals, that they again become masters of their own destiny.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

One of Duke's supporters said that Duke was trying to do for white people what Martin Luther King did for black people. Duke liked to think of himself as a more militant voice. He said, if I'd been born black, I would have been Malcolm X. Duke wanted to sell the idea that his own movement was an equal and opposite force to the push for black civil rights. In September 1977, a Chicago television host named Steve Edwards gave him the opportunity to make that case in an hour long televised debate. Duke's opponent was Jesse Jackson.

[David Duke]

So we will meet the Klansmen and the civil rights leader when we come back in a moment on Friday night.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

A few years earlier, Duke had been shouting racist tirades at his college classmates from on top of a box. Now he was sharing a stage with a man widely seen as America's most influential black leader. Jackson, who had worked under Martin Luther King, saw himself as a pragmatist. He believed in school integration, but not because he thought black students learned better alongside white ones. Rather, he understood that white schools got more government funding because Jackson said, whites don't intend to leave each other ignorant. On his home turf of Chicago, Jackson organized boycotts of white owned businesses that didn't extend job offers to black workers. But he also took the leftist position that racism was inextricable from class struggle, that poor and working class blacks and whites should recognize their common interests. Duke began the debate by trying to make white nationalism sound peaceful and reasonable.

[David Duke]

I don't want to suppress anybody, and the Klan is not trying to put anybody down. What we're trying to do is allow each race to be masters of its own destiny. We think the blacks should have control over their communities and their nations in the world. And we think that the white people, we should have control over ours.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Jackson said that Duke misunderstood the United States.

[Jesse Jackson]

The genius of America is an experiment that suggests that people of many nations, many races of the world will somehow accept the challenge to learn to live together in some relative proximity and harmony.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

This was high minded stuff. It didn't take long for the tone to get earthier. At one point Duke started talking about the founding fathers and what they might say about inner cities.

[David Duke]

I think Thomas Jefferson would walk on the south side of Chicago if he could walk and survive and he'd vomit. That's what I think Thomas Jefferson would do. I think he'd be sick.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Jackson and Duke went back and forth in increasingly hostile fashion.

[Jesse Jackson]

Well, you don't have any monopoly on work. I mean the fact is blacks have worked hard but didn't get paid for our work. Even white historians understand that blacks make cotton cane and we hold tobacco row and we raised your children when you were too trifling to raise your own.

[David Duke]

Again, you're talking about.

[Jesse Jackson]

That is not a.

[David Duke]

You're talking about physical things. If that's what makes America, then we're going to have to give the horse the right to vote and give the horse equal power because they even contributed more than the black man did physically.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

No matter who said what. The fact of the broadcast was a triumph for Duke. He was being presented as a spokesman for white America, one whose ideas were worth batting around. Jesse Jackson didn't need this platform. So why did he agree to go on TV with a blow dried bigot?

[Jesse Jackson]

I chose to participate on this program, Steve, only because I think that as more white people develop economic anxieties and economic insecurities, their fears can be played upon by demagogues. For the threat to this country right now is the fact that we will end up so racially polarized and so weak in our separation until we will not be able to make the nation achieve the level of greatness it is capable of achieving.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Jackson ended the show with a pointed message.

[Jesse Jackson]

It's important for me to say this. You know, first of all, blacks are not afraid of the Klan anymore. They can wear hoods or wear suits, they can burn crosses of bath. And that's the point where we're not afraid.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke's final word was an invitation.

[David Duke]

People watching the televisions, they might think this is not true or he's not telling the truth. Well, if they agree with me or if they disagree with me, they could write to me and I'll supply the documents. They just write, david Duke, ku Klux Klan, Jefferson, Louisiana. And I'll provide these documents to them. Just David Duke. We have to apply. Jefferson, Louisiana.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

David Duke.

[David Duke]

Thank you very much. I'm sorry. Good night, everybody. I'll see you Monday morning on AM Chicago.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

In the 1970s, David Duke became synonymous with a certain kind of white supremacy. He built his Knights of the Ku Klux Klan up from nothing and made it into one of the nation's leading racist organizations. Duke was attuned to white anger, and there were plenty of Americans who found his bigotry invigorating. But by the end of the decade, Duke was hitting a ceiling. When he ran for the State Senate in 1979, he got fewer votes than he had in 1975. A national poll also found that the Klan had an approval rating of just 10%, up four points since 1965, but still abysmally low. Bertha Gaffney Gorman met David Duke in the summer of 1978. She was a staff writer for the Sacramento Bee, and she was working on a series about civil rights 10 years after the King assassination.

[Bertha Gaffney Gorman]

To me, it was almost a natural that there had to be some writing about David Duke and who he was. He really was, you know, beating his own drum and other people beating the drum, and they were lifting him up as some kind of mystical man, and he himself was going to save the white race.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke insisted on doing the interview late at night in Gaffney Gorman's hotel room. Gaffney Gorman is black, and she'd brought a white male friend with her on the road trip for safety purposes. In the room, Duke shook hands with the white man. He didn't extend his hand to Gaffney Gorman.

[Bertha Gaffney Gorman]

I mean, he would not look me in the eyes. He would not look me in the face, and he always looked off to the side. One of the things that caught my attention immediately is that his feet, his legs kept moving. He had this really nervous. His legs go like. I mean, he. And then he would seem to try and control it, and then another one would start. And he did that.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

All through the interview, Duke gave Gaffney Gorman his usual Patterson. He said that white people were being discriminated against and that the civil rights movement and integration had caused every problem imaginable.

[Bertha Gaffney Gorman]

Black people destroyed the education system, they destroyed the economy, they destroyed the automobile industry. You name it, black people destroyed it.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke said the KKK was on its way to political power and that Reports of Klan violence were concocted by the media. He told Gaffney Gorman that he got no salary from the Klan and that he supported the group by writing books under a pseudonym. And with that, he walked out.

[Bertha Gaffney Gorman]

When he left, it was not of a person who felt very powerful. It was just a person who felt very angry and felt that someone had taken something from him. And I was not very. I was not very impressed with him. He literally was halfway out the door before he came back and asked for the money to pay the parking. The parking was $1.25.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Before she left town, there was one more thing Gaffney Gorman wanted to do.

[Bertha Gaffney Gorman]

After a lot of thought, I said, I want to see where he lives. I don't know if that's a good idea, but I thought what we really need to see what this man is about. And sure enough, we drove out to this little house where he lived, talking about a weather beaten, unpainted house. That's where he lived.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke was writing books under pen names to make money. One of them, called Finders Keepers, was a guide for women looking to attract and hold on to men. Its authors, James Conrad and Dorothy Vanderbilt, AKA David Duke. And David Duke suggested speaking slowly and softly, getting cosmetic surgery and agreeing to anal sex. Duke wrote another book, African Addo, using the name Muhammad X. That one was billed as a street fighting manual for black militants with techniques supposedly learned from a tribe in Nigeria. Duke would claim that Africanado was part of a counter intelligence operation. All I can say with certainty is that Africanado is a very weird book and that it didn't make Duke rich. The Klan had made David Duke famous, but it could only carry him so far. By the late 70s, he was looking for an escape plan and Duke's fellow Klansmen were happy to see him go. One Klan member said that Duke's womanizing was conduct on becoming a racist. Others accused Duke of pilfering money from his own followers. Duke denied all of these allegations, claiming that disgruntled Klan types had conspired with a Jewish group to try to bring him down. Duke's most persistent Klan antagonist was Bill Wilkinson, the leader of a rival group called the Invisible Empire. Wilkinson thought Duke was a glory hog and too much of an egghead to get things done. You don't fight wars with words and books, Wilkinson said of Duke. You fight them with bullets and bombs. After feuding for five years, Duke and Wilkinson agreed to a secret deal. Duke would resign from his clan and sell Wilkinson his membership list. The names and addresses of 3,000 Klansmen, which were supposed to be kept secret. Wilkinson would pay Duke $35,000. It was a setup. Wilkinson had invited some reporters to listen in on their negotiations. When the journalists popped out and started asking questions, Duke ran away. Wilkinson considered this operation a huge success.

[David Duke]

What was your real motive? To show people, you know, that he was a con man and a crook and a thief. He would literally sell his people out, which he did. I've worked.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke would publicly quit the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in July 1980. I'm resigning, he said, because I don't think the Klan can succeed at this point because of its violent image and because of people like Bill Wilkinson. Wilkinson, it turned out, was an FBI informant, and he'd later leave the Klan himself. Duke would hand over the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to his old friend Don Black, who he'd met 10 years earlier on that road trip to a Nazi conference in 1981. Black was convicted of taking part in a plot to overthrow the island of Dominica, which he was hoping to transform into a white utopia. Black would learn to code in prison, and he'd use those skills to launch the racist website Stormfront. The other guy on that Nazi road trip, Joseph Paul Franklin, firebombed a synagogue in 1977, then murdered multiple interracial couples. He also shot and paralyzed Larry Flynt because he was outraged by the depiction of interracial sex in Flint's Hustler magazine. Franklin was arrested in 1980 and was ultimately convicted of murdering eight people, though he told one reporter he'd killed approximately 22. He was executed by lethal injection in 2013. To revive his dreams of building a mass movement, David Duke needed to start something new.

[David Duke]

The former grand wizard is seeking a more positive image. Because I'm just tired of having to deal with the Hollywood stereotype of the Klan. I want to discuss the issues before the American public.

[Blue Apron Advertiser]

Hi, you've reached the naawp, the national.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Association for the Advancement of White People. We are a nonprofit civil rights organization.

[Blue Apron Advertiser]

Dedicated to equal rights for all people.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

And to the preservation of the heritage.

[David Duke]

And culture of the white race.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

For a copy of our newsletter, the NAAWP News.

[Blue Apron Advertiser]

Please leave your name and address after.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

The tone, and we will send you a copy by return mail. Please speak slowly when leaving your message. For Duke, the NAAWP was a clean slate, a group untainted by violence. It was also perhaps an admission that he'd taken the wrong approach to white power movement building. Here's historian Lance Hill.

[Joe Klein]

I think. By 1980, he realized that, at least superficially, the racist movement had to lose the robe and the ritual.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Duke's bizarro version of the NAACP didn't win any political victories for white people. In the first half of the 1980s, Duke worked mostly as a newsletter publisher, writing up and reprinting racist articles. By 1984, Jesse Jackson was a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. That year, David Duke's name appeared in the New York Times just once, in the ninth paragraph of an article about Bill Wilkinson. Lance Hill has been following duke since the 70s. He thinks there's a simple explanation for why Duke lost steam.

[Joe Klein]

Ronald Reagan. Once Reagan came into power, here's somebody who expressed many of the policies that the openly white supremacist groups had been advocating as organizing issues. And it just sucked all of the fuel out of the radical right wing movement.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

If Duke couldn't beat Ronald Reagan, he had to be like Ronald Reagan. The clean cut Klansmen bit had run its course. Duke's best path forward was mainstream politics.

[David Duke]

And what's going to happen now? And this is the best news I think I have to give you. No matter what happens now, ladies and gentlemen, we have. Corruption created a political shift in this country.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Next time on slow burn. In 19. In 1989, David Duke got a foothold in American politics. To build on that victory, he'd have to fend off two Louisiana women. One was a Republican official. The other was a Holocaust survivor. Slow Burn is a production of Slate plus Slate's membership program. This season, we're giving Slate members early access to the first half of the series. Sign up now and you won't have to wait until next week to hear episode three. Here's a preview.

[David Duke]

I was pretty, you know, anti Duke.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

But when I went up there and saw how he was, I felt like.

[David Duke]

I was in on a dirty little secret. Ha ha ha.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

Look what I did in Louisiana. Pulled the wool over their eyes. And it was like he went back to his supporters and he was using.

[David Duke]

The Republican Party and that just made me mad.

[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

You can listen now by signing [e-mail] slowburn Slate + members also get weekly bonus episodes where we'll dive deeper into the history we're exploring this season. Today you'll hear an interview with Eli Saslow, who wrote a book about David Duke's godson Derek Black and the origins of the modern white supremacist movement. Head over to slate.com slowburn to listen now. Slow Burn is produced by me and Christopher Johnson, with editorial direction by Lo and Liu and Gabriel Roth. Madeline Ducharme is our production assistant. Sophie Summergrad is Slow Burn's assistant producer. Our mix engineer is Paul Mounsey. David Gross composed our theme song. The artwork for Slow Burn is by Lisa Larson Walker. Special thanks to Plato Robinson for some of the audio we used in this episode. Thanks also to Jordan Hirsch, Jessica Seidman and Slate's Chow 2G, Katie Rayford, Laura Bennett, Allison Benedikt and Jared Holt. Thanks for listening. The new year brings new health goals and wealth goals.

[Jesse Jackson]

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[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

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[Jesse Jackson]

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[Narrator (Josh Levin)]

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[Jesse Jackson]

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[Jesse Jackson]

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