GOP Boots Former Klan Leader’s Son
Derek Black isn’t feeling the love from the Palm Beach County, Fla., Republican Party. On Wednesday night, the party’s chairman — or “Jewish supremacist chairman” in the words of Derek’s dad, white nationalist webmaster Don Black — refused to seat the younger Black on the executive committee he won election to in August because Black, 19, failed to sign a GOP loyalty oath by the required deadline. And besides that, said party chairman Sid Dinerstein, Black is unwelcome because he’s a white supremacist. Black said he may sue, but his friend, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and Louisiana state representative David Duke made that sound like an iffy proposition on his website.
“Whether Derek Black pursues legal action is contingent upon the family finances,” Duke’s website states. “If he truly wants to make an issue of this and lacks finances, I hope he considers setting up a legal fund and reaching out to the white nationalist community for help. This is a battle worth joining.”
Black is the 19-year-old son of Don Black, a former Alabama Klan boss who is the founder of Stormfront.com, the world’s largest white supremacist online forum. Derek Black works on his father’s website. His mother, Chloe Black, was married to Duke before she married Don Black.
Derek Black won election to one of 111 Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee seats, beating the incumbent with 58% of the vote. Committee members’ low-profile duties include electing the county party chairman and promoting voter turnout. After Dinerstein, the local party chief, learned more about Black, he said he wouldn’t seat him on the committee. He could do so, he said, because Black failed to sign the GOP loyalty oath by the June 20 deadline.
That prompted a visit from Duke to West Palm Beach for a few days last week in a show of support for Black. “Derek has done a great thing in winning this race,” Duke said in a Stormfront interview with Don Black last week. “I’m here to help Derek if he wants me to.” He and Don and Derek Black met with a Palm Beach Post reporter and Derek Black said he was insulted by Dinerstein’s characterization of him as a white supremacist. “I would describe myself as white person who is concerned about discrimination against white people,” said Black, who created a Stormfront children’s page when he was 12 that featured white supremacist sing-along lyrics and anti-Martin Luther King Jr. bedtime stories.
After the Post published its story, Don Black recorded what he said were two threatening post-midnight phone calls, apparently from the same person. In the first, the caller said, “We’re gonna have a scope trained on your son come Wednesday night.” In the second call, he mentioned Black’s home address and wife’s name and said he was outside his house. The phone number of the caller has since been disconnected.
Duke had left town by the time Derek Black attended Wednesday night’s GOP committee meeting. Once there, Dinerstein again refused to seat him. Nine other candidates suffered the same fate because they, too, missed the loyalty oath deadline. Black contends that a technicality shouldn’t trump the fact that he won the election. But even if Black had been seated, Dinerstein could have tried to remove him on a two-thirds vote for violating the section of the GOP oath that bans involvement in activities “likely to injure the name of the Republican Party or interfere with the activities of the Republican Party.”
Black insists he’s done nothing of that sort. “I can say without a doubt that I am not associated with white supremacy,” he said.
