Stephen Donald "Don" Black is an
American white nationalist and white
supremacist. He is the founder, and
current webmaster, of the Stormfront
internet forum. He was a Grand Wizard in
the Ku Klux Klan and a member of the
American Nazi Party in the 1970s. He was
convicted in 1981 for an attempted armed
overthrow of the government in the
island of Dominica in violation of the
U.S. Neutrality Act.
Early life
Stephen Donald Black was born in Athens,
Alabama, and became an activist at an
early age when he began passing out
racist newspapers White Power and the
Thunderbolt at his high school. This led
to a decision by the local school board
to ban the distribution of political
literature. Black countered by mailing
literature to student addresses obtained
from school handbooks. He said in an
interview that growing up in the South
during the turmoil of the civil rights
movement made him aware from a "White"
political perspective.
In the summer of 1970, after his junior
year at Athens High School, Black
traveled to Savannah, Georgia, to work
on the gubernatorial campaign of J.B.
Stoner, a segregationist and leader of
the National States' Rights Party. It
was in this election that Jimmy Carter
won the Georgia governorship. Don Black
was asked to obtain a copy of the NSRP
membership list by Robert Lloyd, a
leader of the National Socialist White
People's Party, formerly known as the
American Nazi Party. At the time, Black
was a member of the Party's youth
branch, the National Socialist Youth
Movement.
Also working on the Stoner campaign was
Jerry Ray, brother of Martin Luther
King's assassin James Earl Ray. On July
25, 1970, Jerry Ray shot Black in the
chest with a .38-caliber hollow-point
bullet to stop him from taking files
from Stoner's campaign office. Ray was
acquitted of all charges, saying he shot
in self-defense after Black reached for
what appeared to be a weapon.
Black finished his senior year at
Madison Academy, a private school in
Huntsville. Then after high school,
Black graduated from the University of
Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1975.
The Ku Klux Klan and Operation Red Dog
Black joined the Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan in 1975, one year after David Duke
took over the organization. He moved to
Birmingham to become the group's state
organizer. After the resignation of Duke
in 1978, Black became Grand Wizard, or
national director, of the Klan. In 1979,
he ran for mayor of Birmingham,
receiving just 2.5 percent of the vote.
Richard Arrington, Jr. won the mayoral
election, becoming Birmingham's first
African American mayor.
On April 27, 1981, Black and nine other
would-be mercenaries – many recruited
from Klan affiliated organizations –
were arrested in New Orleans as they
prepared to board a boat stocked with
weapons and ammunition to invade the
island nation Dominica in what they
would call Operation Red Dog. However,
the local media would label the botched
attempt the "Bayou of Pigs", a play on
words for the unsuccessful 1961 "Bay of
Pigs Invasion" of Cuba.
Black later explained the invasion as an
attempt to set up an anti-communist
regime, saying, "What we were doing was
in the best interests of the United
States and its security in the
hemisphere, and we feel betrayed by our
own government," The invasion was
intended to restore former prime
minister Patrick John to the mostly
black Caribbean island. Prosecutors said
the real purpose for the invasion would
have been to set up tourism, gambling,
offshore banking, and timber logging
operations on the impoverished island.
In 1981, Black was sentenced to three
years in prison for his role in the
attempted invasion and his violation of
the Neutrality Act. Black, Federal
Bureau of Prisons #16692-034, was
released on November 15, 1984. During
his time in federal prison Black took
computer programming classes which led
him to establish Stormfront on the
Internet years later. In 1986 Black
rethought his commitment to the KKK,
resigning from the group in 1987.
He tried running for office in Alabama
once again, this time as a Populist
Party US Senate candidate.
Stormfront
In 1995, Black founded Stormfront, which
was the internet's first major White
Nationalist web site. To date, it
remains one of the most popular online
resources for those drawn to racial
ideologies. Stormfront featured the
writings of 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 white
pride, neo-Nazi and white power skinhead
graphics for downloading, and a number
of links to other white nationalist
websites.
In a 1998 interview for the alternative
weekly newspaper Miami New Times, Black
is quoted as saying "We want to take
America back. We know a multicultural
Yugoslav nation can't hold up for too
long. Whites won't have any choice but
to take military action. It's our
children whose interests we have to
defend." In December 2007, Black gained
attention for donating money to Ron
Paul's 2008 presidential run.
In 1999, Don Black created the website
"martinlutherking.org", which is
administered by Storm Front. This
innocuous appearing website ostensibly
was created to malign the character of
King.
In 2008, Black said that the
establishment of white pride as a
special interest group within the
Republican Party is crucial. Asked by an
interviewer for Italian newspaper la
Repubblica if Stormfront was not just
the new Ku Klux Klan, Black responded
affirmatively, though he noted that he
would never say so to an American
journalist.
On May 5, 2009 it was announced that
Black was one of the 22 on a British
Home Office list of individuals banned
from entering the United Kingdom for
"promoting serious criminal activity and
fostering hatred that might lead to
inter-community violence".
Stormfront forum acts as one of the
largest online gathering of Holocaust
deniers in the world, with hundreds of
thousands of views on threads about
revising WW2 history. A number of
radioshows published by Black's web site
have featured holocaust denial themes.
Black asks website visitors for $7,500
each month for "basic expenses" and
described early 2012 as the "slowest
month" for donations. The website allows
people to be "Sustaining Members" for $5
a month, $30 a month for a CORE Support
membership, or $1,000 for a lifetime
supporter.
Family
In 2008, it was revealed Don Black's
wife, Chloe, works as an executive
assistant for sugar baron Pepe Fanjul
who runs the Florida Crystals company
and owns a real estate business in Latin
American countries. In particular, her
job duties included acting as the
spokesperson for a charter school "to
lift underprivileged black and Hispanic
children out of poverty."
The story was successively reported by
Gawker, the New York Post, the Palm
Beach Post, and Fox News, and resulted
in Black being criticized by some other
white nationalists. Chloe was previously
married to David Duke.
In August 2008 Black's 19-year-old son
Derek was elected to one of 111 seats on
the Palm Beach County, Florida,
Republican committee, with 167 of 287
votes. The committee has refused to seat
Black, citing a loyalty oath he failed
to sign before registering his
candidacy. The oath states candidates
must refrain from activities "likely to
injure the name of the Republican
Party." He hosted the Derek Black Show
weekdays on a local West Palm Beach,
Florida, AM radio station, WPBR, to
which Don Black paid $600 a week to
broadcast content on. The radio show
concluded in January 2013, with Derek
Black appearing on few episodes over the
last year.
Recently, Derek Black's racial
ideologies have come into question, He
has reportedly renounced white
nationalism and issued an apology to
those harmed by his previous actions and
beliefs. This renunciation reportedly
shocked his father, and like-minded
people.
References
Further reading
Swain, Carol M.; Russ Nieli.
Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism
in America. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-81673-4. 
External links
Stormfront - created by Don Black
Don Black: White Pride World Wide-
Statement by the Anti-Defamation League
