David Duke Lovingly Recalls Segregation (My Awakening, 1999)

Editors disclaimer: David Duke meeting a bullet during this period woulda been pretty cool, republishing
to illustrate how willing race obsessed psychopaths are to distort evil circumstances in favor of their agendas.

From the 1st chapter:

“As the stir in the chamber subsided, I pondered the long road that led me to become America’s most notorious
“racist” and its best known state legislator. I thought about my implausible story when my phone light blinked. It
was the capitol switchboard operator asking if I would take a call from Mrs. Cindy Reed, from Gentilly Woods (the
New Orleans neighborhood where I grew up). Suddenly, I realized that she was the family friend who often baby
-sat me. Cindy told me that she was proud of me, and we talked for a few moments reminiscing about the old
neighborhood, and then she said something that especially touched me. She commented, “Pinky always used
to say you’d be president someday.” Pinky, I thought, She’s been gone a long time. Pinky was my family’s Black
housekeeper who seemed like part of our family. She cared for me as if I were her own son, prepared many of
my meals, mended my wounds, and listened to my dreams. I was 11 years old when she died, and thinking about
her now warmed my heart. So how did it happen, that despite my childhood love for Pinky, I became a spokesman
today for what the postcard sender had called the “politically-incorrect European American?” As my life and thoughts
unfold in this book, you will find out why. I will lay bare the formative parts of my life – the experiences that stand
out in my memories, and the search for truth that led to my awakening…

Chapter 4:

“Never run from the truth,” Pinky told me. She encouraged me to admit to my folks that I had accidentally broken
an old porcelain figurine they treasured. “What would Jesus say about that?” she added. I ultimately admitted
my transgression to my folks and faced punishment, but I had to admit that it was better to take my medicine
than to live a lie. Our Black housekeeper, Pinky, always gave me advice such as “never run from the truth.” After
our return from Holland, she was the closest woman to me other than Mother and my sister, Dotti. My folks hired
her to take care of the house and to watch over Dotti and me, but none of us really looked upon her as an
employee. When she stayed late, we always insisted that she eat supper with us, and my father expected
her to join us at the table. Often Mother, with me tagging along, drove her home into one of the blackest parts
of New Orleans, the lower Claiborne Avenue area. This was in the late ’50s, when one could travel such streets
safely, before the advent of the “love and brotherhood” brought by the civil-rights movement. Pinky had the same
authority over me that Mother and Father had. If I didn’t obey her, my folks would punish me just as if I had
disobeyed them. Pinky did housework and prepared snacks for me. We had conversations about a thousand
and one subjects. She always attempted to derive every opinion from a solid Christian point of view. Scolding
me for improper behavior, she would always intone, “What would Jesus say about that?” The words were really
in the form of a declaration rather than a question, for the answer was always obvious: “Jesus would not approve.”
To Pinky there were no shades of gray to any ethical question, only clear right or wrong. Pinky influenced me to
be opinionated—to think an issue over and then take a definite position rather than just sit on the fence. This is
a trait that has stayed with me. Concerning racial issues, Pinky had a traditional southern Black attitude. She
insisted on using the toilet in the utility room rather than the main bathroom, and if we picked up some takeout
food at a restaurant, she always used the “colored” service area.

She was opposed to socializing with White folks other than in her work. One day I asked Pinky why she had no
problem with segregation. She answered simply and eloquently, “‘Cause I want to be with my own kind.” Although
she was not of my “own kind,” when she died and I looked into her open coffin at her kind face, I saw only someone
for whom I cared and who cared for me. She was someone who had made me laugh, who punished me when I
went wrong, and who had encouraged me when she saw me doing something responsible or creative. When
Pinky passed away, I felt as though I had lost someone who was more family than friend. The pain of her loss
was the worst I had felt since the Grand Canyon plane crash that killed my aunt and uncle and so hurt my mother.
Mother and I were the only White people at Pinky’s funeral. The music and the preaching at the funeral were
elemental and powerful. Pure, unrestrained emotion poured out of the pastor’s mouth, almost as if the meaning
of the words were secondary to the way in which he projected them. He cried with pain and sadness, he laughed
deeply and warmly, he threatened us with the wrath of God, he cowered before Him, he raged in fury at the Devil,
he begged for forgiveness, and he passed his state of grace on to his audience as easily as a drunk would pass
a bottle of whiskey. I had never experienced anything like it in the Methodist church my family attended. At my
own church the emotions were restrained and subtle, while here in the Black church they were laid out raw. I was
more fascinated by it all than moved. What touched my heart that day was the thought that Pinky would no longer
be near when the service ended. The tone of the service seemed out of place with my memories of Pinky. It was
hard to associate her with the wild goings-on in that Black church. But the way the congregation talked back to the
preacher called to my mind the times Pinky would iron clothes while watching a soap opera on television, all the
while interjecting dialogue as if she were in it herself.

“Good goin’, girl,” Pinky would say, her eyes on the television, as she pressed one of Father’s shirts. “He two-timin’
her, yeah. … Un-huh, that’s right.” When I first saw Gone with the Wind, I knew about Mammy and Miss Scarlett—
I had experienced it. As I grew older, the civil-rights movement was maturing as well, and by the time I was 11,
the South was in turmoil. A social structure that had existed for hundreds of years was being completely overturned
at an astonishing speed. At first I did very little thinking on the race question. I was far more concerned with my
love of the outdoors, science, and my escapist world of reading (mostly scientific books and only a little political
material). Instinctively, because of my love for the Confederacy, I initially identified with the traditionally conservative
position of the South in opposition to racial integration. I saw the civil-rights movement simply as a destruction of
our Southern way of life, but I hadn’t thought very deeply about the issue. As civil rights pushed to the forefront of
the news in the early ’60s, I began to read a great deal about the issue in newspapers and magazines, and as I
did I grew more sympathetic toward the Negro cause. Practically everything written about the subject in books,
newspaper, and magazine articles, as well as everything on television, led me to believe that the civil-rights
movement was based on lofty principles of justice and human rights. The media proclaimed that these policies
would lead America to racial harmony and material progress. I read articles proclaiming that there is no significant
genetic difference between Whites and Blacks other than skin color. Racial differences in poverty, illegitimacy,
crime rates, drug addiction, and educational failure were said to be caused purely by environmental differences
among the races. The media blamed Black failure and dysfunction on segregation and White racism. Ultimately, the
poor circumstances of Black people were blamed squarely on White evil. Some leading academics even maintained
that there is no such thing as race; that race is an arbitrary and therefore meaningless way of classifying mankind.

Other scientists went so far as to argue that the Black race is in fact not inferior, but really the progenitor of mankind
—perhaps even superior to Whites. One account I read purported that the fact that Blacks have less body hair than
Caucasians is a sign of evolutionary advancement and superiority. Some stories were about the suppression of Blacks
in slavery and about discrimination and brutality against Blacks since emancipation. The heart-rending accounts
would provoke sympathy and outrage in any person sensitive to human suffering. At the same time, I came across
articles about the “great Black civilizations of Africa” and the “great Blacks in American history.” I found lessons in our
nationally distributed lesson books at my Sunday school that claimed God opposed the concept of racial differences
and discrimination. For the first time in the 2,000-year history of Christianity, it seemed, a new sin had been invented:
racism. Many church leaders of all denominations began to speak out forcefully in opposition to racism and segregation,
and they were rewarded with extravagant praise in the national media. Even my patriotic values were enlisted in the
cause of racial integration. I read articles in major magazines that maintained that racial equality is proclaimed in the
Constitution of the United States. Frequently quoted were the well-known words of the Declaration of Independence: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . .” In addition to Thomas Jefferson’s words in the
Declaration of Independence, the following line was used repeatedly in articles: “Nothing is more certainly written in the
book of fate than that these people (the Negroes) are to be free.” One summer I traveled with Father to Washington, D.C.,
and saw those very words inscribed in magnificent foot-tall letters on the inspiring Jefferson Memorial on the Potomac.

In the Gettysburg Address, which was quoted almost as often as the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln seemingly
paid homage to the concept of racial equality: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” For a fiercely patriotic
young man who idolized men like Davy Crockett, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, these
quotations were very persuasive. My belief that America’s greatest heroes had endorsed racial equality helped influence
my own attitudes. Integration of public schools was a major issue at this time, and the media portrayed it as a good thing
for America. Judging by what I saw on television, integration simply meant one or two little Black girls seeking to attend
a formerly all-White school. On the other hand, Whites were shown unchivalrously screaming racist invectives — and
attacking the quiet and well-dressed Negro children being escorted into school. Over the years I saw on TV and read
hundreds of dramatic portrayals of Blacks being hurt, oppressed, enslaved, discriminated against, falsely accused,
whipped, lynched, spat upon, raped, and ridiculed. Because I was idealistic and aspired to be fair and generous and
chivalrous — and because I was under the influence of the media — I came to believe that racial integration would
elevate the Black people to their true ability and thereby guarantee justice for them and progress for all. There is no
exaggerating the impact of television during the ’50s and ’60s on the issue of integration. The newness of live television
coming into the home sanctified the media newscaster and made him seem bigger than life. In awe of the technology,
many people uncritically accepted what they were fed through their televisions. I was no exception…My father often
took his car to Gary’s Super Service, a small Black-owned garage in a Black area just on the western periphery of the
New Orleans central business district. Like most pre-teen boys, I was fascinated with automobiles, and I was pleased
when Gary offered to teach me about cars if I would do some work around the place. For months, twice a week or so,
I would ride the streetcar down to his shop after school and work on cars. I met many Black people during my after
-school stays at Gary’s Super Service.

I often ate supper in a tiny Black restaurant three doors from the garage and talked for hours with everyday Black
residents of New Orleans. It was a rewarding experience. I not only learned about automobiles; I met interesting
people. And I discovered a great deal about the Black race. What I learned about them, I liked. But it also seemed
that the liberal line was not entirely correct, for it was obvious that racial differences went far beyond skin color. It
would be difficult to categorize all the distinctions I noticed. In fact, I made no effort to catalogue them at the time,
but their differences ranged all the way from physical characteristics to more subtle differences, such as extreme
aversion to work in cold weather. On cold days, when I felt invigorated, my Black co-workers seemed lethargic.
When I helped Father in his small construction firm, I had often worked side by side with White laborers and
sometimes Blacks as well. Many of the men were needed only for some day work, so Father literally hired them
off the street near the charity missions in the central city. Some of these men were good workers, some poor.
But the White ones were decidedly less excitable and animated than my co-workers at Gary’s Super Service.
At the garage, the Blacks I encountered were very elemental, almost child-like in their dramatic emotional swings.
They were quick to laugh, easy to anger, prone to cry at small disappointments or troubles, moody and temperamental
— although their moods were usually felicitous rather than threatening. At risk of sounding like a narrator of The
Tales of Uncle Remus, I vividly recall the singing, whistling, and humming that often filled the shop, and how they
occasionally semi-danced as they jauntily walked from one spot to another or swayed rhythmically to their own
inaudible tune right where they stood. It was no myth; they really could sing, and in Gary’s shop they all did. I
enjoyed their company, but I didn’t sing.

A few months after Gary’s shop closed, I saw the British anthropologist Ashley Montagu on a television talk show
and immediately read his book, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. The subject interested me
enough that I read Black Like Me, an autobiography about a White man who tinted his skin and frizzed his hair
and chronicled his unjust treatment across the South, and To Kill a Mockingbird. I sympathized with the plight
of the Negro. The event that most appalled me and reinforced my egalitarian attitudes was the 1963 bombing
of a Birmingham Black church where four little Black girls had been killed. For weeks the news and other media
were filled with horrific descriptions of the event and the sounds and scenes of the suffering of the victims’
relatives. I had become convinced that the cause of integration was a noble one and that its opponents, as
evidenced by the strained faces and crude words of the protesters outside the schools and by the church
bombing, represented everything ignoble, ignorant, intolerant, and uncivilized. I found it easy to be a racial
egalitarian. Judging by the books, newspapers, and magazines I read, all the most prominent and admired
actors, singers, scientists, and politicians believed in racial equality. I was proud to share the sentiments of
these people of fame and accomplishment who were working to get us into the bright new age ahead. I was
also aware enough to know that White racism may have been popular in the Deep South, but holding such
views could be quite damaging to a young man who wanted to be an astronaut. In my 13th year, I was shy
and bookish and idealistic on one hand, and physically hardened from my time in the outdoors on the other.
I had no doubt that the civil-rights movement and integration would prevail and that when racial discrimination
ended, everything in America would work out just as wonderfully as the egalitarians predicted.

The barriers were falling across the South; the Supreme Court continued to strike down Jim Crow, and Black political
registration and power were growing dramatically. One thing was for sure: politics had no great interest for me. In an
eighth-grade civics class at Ganus Junior High School, the teacher gave her students an interesting assignment. We
were to choose a topic dealing with current events and take a polemical position on it, then research that topic and
defend it rationally in class. I chose as my topic “The Case for Racial Integration of Education.” After each of us had
chosen and taken a position, she told us that we had probably taken a topic we agreed with. So our assignment
now became to research and take the opposite point of view from what we had originally chosen. The assignment
set my mind in turmoil. I went to the school library that afternoon to research “The Case Against Racial Integration
of Education.” In the card file I found listed many books on the subjects of racial equality and integration of education.
I had, evidently, chosen a topic that would be easily researched. But as I examined the books, I found that one after
another argued in favor of integration. Even in this small church-school library, there were at least a dozen books
promoting the civil-rights movement and its heroes, but no books on the other side. Why? It was obvious that there
was a lot of popular opposition to integration. I had seen the newsreels of its White opponents, and segregationists
were being elected all over the South. Whites rioted in New Orleans to prevent integration of the schools, and
almost every major politician of the time opposed it in principle. Yet, amazingly, I couldn’t find a book against it.
The next day I went to the Doubleday bookstore on Canal Street, hoping to search out some books opposed to
forced integration of public education. I found dozens of books promoting integration, and some even touting
Black supremacy. But again, I found nothing opposed to integration. Even the books that supposedly offered
a balanced analysis of the issue were decidedly one-sided in their presentation. Finally, to make some progress
on my assignment, I resorted to gleaning the anti-integration arguments from pro-integration books…

I didn’t have much money — it was 1963 and I was 13 years old — so I asked the lady at the desk which book she
would recommend. She picked up a paperback copy of Race and Reason: A Yankee View by Carleton Putnam and
put it in a bag for me with a handwritten receipt. The voice of Pinky crept into my mind as I walked to the Canal Street
streetcar, and I wondered if I betrayed her memory by even reading such material. Was I doing her some wrong even
to consider the idea that the races differ? But then Pinky’s admonishment never to run from the truth came back to
me as if she had been right there speaking those words again from her own mouth. If I should not run from the truth,
then I sure should not be afraid to confront a falsehood either. I imagined Race and Reason would be an easily
refutable, shallow exposition of race prejudice. All the same, I had an uneasy feeling about it. I had no inkling,
when I walked out of the drab little office on Carondelet Street, that I was about to read a book that would change
my life.

Chapter 5.

The book riveted me. I read it on the streetcar, and then on the connecting bus all the way home, almost missing
my stop. When I walked home from the bus stop, I would pause and read a couple of paragraphs and then close
the book and walk while I thought about the concept. That evening, after wolfing down my supper, I bounded
upstairs to my bedroom where I retrieved my book from its paper bag and read until I finished it. The book did not
convert me, but it made me think critically for the first time about the race issue, and it made me question the
egalitarian arguments that I had uncritically accepted. I was not ready to give up my egalitarian beliefs, but
Race and Reason made me realize another legitimate and scientific point of view existed. I asked myself, What
if the things he writes are true? What if the distinctions, quality and composition of races are the primary factors
in the vitality of civilizations? Putnam prophesied that massive racial integration of American public schools would
lead to increasing Black racism, resentment and frustration, reduced educational standards, increased violence
in the schools, and a resulting implosion of the great cities of America. I worried that such a fate could befall our
country. I wanted to find out the truth, no matter where it might lead. One allegation by Putnam especially interested
me. He said that most of America’s Founding Fathers were convinced believers in racial differences and that even
President Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, stated repeatedly that he believed that there were wide differences in the
races that make necessary their separation. If Putnam’s allegations were correct, then I would have to acknowledge
that the media had deceived me on an important matter. My generation had been taught that racial equality was
enshrined in the principles of our Founding Fathers and supposedly represented even by the Declaration of
Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…

Most Americans can instantly identify these words. But do these words mean that Jefferson and the other patriots who
put their names on that document believed that all men were truly created biologically equal; that the White and Black
races had equal endowments from the Creator? How could that be true, asked Putnam, when the same document refers
to Indians as “merciless savages” who massacred innocents without regard to age or gender? He has excited domestic
insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages,
whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. Anyone who used such
language today from the podium of the Republican or Democratic National Convention would be universally scorned. How
could they really believe in racial equality, when many of the signers themselves, including the author, Thomas Jefferson,
owned Black slaves that were considered chattel property? What of their slaves’ unalienable rights? Were our Founding
Fathers blatant hypocrites, or did the declaration simply say that our rights as British subjects in the thirteen Colonies
were the same as those of our British brothers back in England? After I read and re-read the rest of Jefferson’s utterances
on the Negro question, it seemed certain to me that he was not referring to racial equality when he penned the Declaration
of Independence. Other than the “created equal” line in the Declaration of Independence, the most common quote by
any American Founding Father used to bolster the civil-rights movement was Jefferson’s classic line that reads: Nothing
is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [the Negroes] are to be free. This declamation has been
used in thousands of books, articles, plays, documentaries and movies — more than any other famous enunciation on
the race issue. On the beautiful Jefferson Memorial in Washington, it is found chiseled as sacred writ on the huge interior
panels of granite. The next sentence on the wall begins with the word education.

In media articles the quotation ends with the words “are to be free.” Neither the articles nor the memorial’s architect give
the public the honesty of an ellipsis, for the quotation is clearly an intentional deception that completely alters his original
meaning. The quotation itself is only a fragment of one of Jefferson’s sentences written in his autobiography: Nothing is
more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [Negroes] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two
races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction
between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow
degree that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be … pari passu filled up by free White laborers. If on the
contrary it is left to force itself on, human Nature must shudder at the prospect held up. When I first read the complete
text of the Jefferson statement, it stunned me. Not only did Jefferson not believe in racial equality, he stated clearly that
Nature had made the Black and White races indelibly different, that they couldn’t live in the same government, and that
unless the Black race was returned to Africa, he “shuddered” for America’s future. The egalitarian sources that wrote
loftily of his belief in equality had brazenly deceived me. Perhaps Jefferson was wrong in his opinion, I thought, but
why have his words been twisted completely opposite to his original intent? I remembered my visit to the rotunda of
the Jefferson Memorial, when I had stared up in reverence at those words across from the magnificent statue of
Jefferson himself. Now, I knew those words etched in granite were a lie.