This article is about Don Black, the white nationalist. For the musician, see Don Black (musician) .

Don Black (born 1953) is the white nationalist webmaster of Stormfront and the former Grand Wizard (national leader) of the Ku Klux Klan.

Early life

Black was born and grew up in Athens, Alabama, first coming into contact with the white nationalist movement at age 15, when he joined the White Youth Alliance , an organisation founded by David Duke. He caused controversy by handing out racist literature at his school, which caused the school to ban the distribution of political pamphlets.

In 1970, his senior year of high school, Black went to Savannah, Georgia, to work on the campaign of J.B. Stoner, a white nationalist running for governor of Georgia. During this time, Jerry Ray , brother of James Earl Ray, shot Black in the chest after he admitted to having broken into Stoner's offices at the request of the American Nazi Party (this was at a time when Stoner and the ANP were in conflict with each other). He recovered and returned to finish his education at a private school in Huntsville.

The Ku Klux Klan

Black joined the KKK in 1975, one year after David Duke took over the organisation. He moved to Birmingham to become the group's organiser for the state of Alabama. After the resignation of Duke in 1978, Don Black became Grand Wizard, or national leader, of the KKK.

He unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Birmingham in 1979.

Operation Red Dog

On April 27 1981, Black, along with Larry Lloyd Jacklin and Wolfgang Droege, was arrested in New Orleans as they prepared to board a boat stocked with weapons and ammunition to invade Dominica in what Black, Droege and Jacklin dubbed Operation Red Dog.

The invasion would have restored former prime minister Patrick John and set up lucrative cocaine and gambling industries on the island. Black was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the attempted invasion and his violation of the Neutrality Act. He was released in 1984, having served his sentence in a federal prison in Texas.

After his release from prison, Black rethought his commitment to the KKK. Resigning from the group in 1987, he said:

"I concluded the Klan could never be a viable political movement again. It had a reputation for random and senseless violence which it could never overcome. There were several events around that time that reinforced that opinion."

Stormfront

In 1995, Black founded Stormfront, a white nationalist website, featuring the writings of prominent white nationalists such as William Luther Pierce and David Duke, as well as works by the Institute for Historical Review. Initially, along with these articles, Stormfront housed a library of neo-Nazi graphics for downloading, and a number of links to other white nationalist websites.

By 1997, Stormfront had expanded and began hosting other white nationalist and racist websites, and since that time, more than 44,000 people have registered on Stormfront's message board system. Black described Stormfront as a great victory for the white nationalist movement, saying that the website has helped him recruit people he might not have otherwise been able to reach.

Black also hosts a number of other racist websites, including Jew Watch (which features, amongst others, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and Henry Ford's The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem ), Blitzcast (an internet radio station) and Bamboo Delight .

In 2004, Black joined in signing the New Orleans Protocol on behalf of Stormfront. The New Orleans Protocol seeks to "mainstream our cause" by reducing violence and internecine warfare, and was written by David Duke.

External links

• Stormfront - created by Don Black Warning: White Supremacist Site
• "White supremacist spreads views on net", The Birmingham News, October 19, 1997 (hosted on Stormfont)
• The Anti-Defamation League's profile of Stormfront and Don Black
• White Supremacist view of Martin Luther King - created by Don Black Warning: White Supremacist Site
• Jew Watch - created by Don Black Warning: White Supremacist Site