Ron Stallworth

Ron Stallworth is the protagonist and author of the memoir, Black Klansman. Stallworth is a respected law enforcement researcher and police officer. At the time of the memoir, Stallworth was a young police officer working as an undercover detective with the intelligence unit of the Colorado Springs Police Department. Stallworth first joined the department as a cadet, a program initiated by the CSPD to recruit non-white community members to become police officers. Stallworth, the first black cadet in the history of the department, successfully completes the cadet program and decides to become a police officer with the CSPD. Following a short career as a uniformed officer, Stallworth becomes an undercover investigator and plain-clothed detective.

Stallworth initiates the investigation into the Ku Klux Klan by responding to an advertisement for the KKK in a local newspaper. Stallworth uses his own name mistakenly, and thus becomes intertwined in...