Former Ku Klux Klan poster boy reveals new trans identity: Explosive memoir ... trends now
R Derek Black, the child of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Don Black and a onetime poster boy for the white supremacist movement, has quietly come out as transgender.
DailyMail.com can now exclusively reveal that in the epilogue of Black's new book, The Klansman's Son: My Journey from White Nationalism to Antiracism, they come out for the first-time as a transgender person who uses they/them pronouns.
Black, 35, was already a well-known figure by the age of 10, when they appeared on The Jenny Jones talk show alongside white power leaders from the notoriously racist and homophobic Westboro Baptist Church.
And as a boy, Black contributed to a kids' section of Stormfront.org - the neo-Nazi hate site run his by father.
But now, Black writes that attending the famously liberal New College in Sarasota, Florida from 2010 contributed to their 'emerging understanding of my gender identity' and disillusionment with the white supremacist movement.
'[New College's] culture and the people I met there helped me accept that I fit under the trans umbrella,' Black says.
Black reveals their ideological evolution continued when they started dating a Jewish woman, despite the fact that the Black family were 'some of the most famous antisemitic activists in the country.'
Through long, often challenging conversations with Allison Gornik - Black's now-wife - they started to take their first tentative steps away from the neo-Nazi movement. And in 2013, Black wrote a letter renouncing white nationalism.
Black - who renounced white nationalism in 2013 - says they now 'fit under the trans umbrella'
As a child, Black played a key role in promoting and defending the Klan's politics
Black's father is the former Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (pictured wearing a suit)
Black is also voicing support for other trans people 'whose rights are now under vicious, loud attack in Florida.
'I can't imagine how horrible it would have been to grow up in the current political environment as a child who, until puberty, was quite happy about being often perceived as a girl, and who then hid that part of myself,' they write.
As a child, Black says, they would grow their hair long enough to 'put behind my ears', and enjoyed the fact that strangers constantly mistook them for a girl.
'I liked the gender confusion, except in public bathrooms, where adult men always took it upon themselves to compliment my looks before telling me I was in the wrong room.
'After puberty started, I kept my hair long, but I was able to use the bathrooms in peace, and was relieved to stop getting the inappropriate comments,' Black says.
Don Black (center, in white) is flanked by armed guards at the cross burning climax of a Klan recruitment rally in 1982
As the age of 10, Black appeared on the Jenny Jones show to defend KKK politics
Don Black speaks to white-hooded members of the KKK at a rally in 1979
R Derek with their father, KKK Grand Wizard Don Black, at Christmas, aged around four or five
Derek wears a Confederate uniform for Halloween - the costume was sewn by their mother
When it came to choosing a university, Black jokes that New College regularly ranked among Princeton Review's top ten for schools with the 'Most Liberal Students,' 'Most LGBT-Friendly,' 'Most Weed Friendly,' and 'Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians'.
