Structure

Stallworth’s memoir is divided into eleven chapters, and includes an additional afterword. Generally, the memoir is constructed in chronological order and covers the time frame of the Colorado Springs Police Department’s investigation into the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in 1978 and 1979. The two exceptions to this general structure are the first two chapters of the work and the afterword.

The first chapter of the work serves as a hook, a rhetorical device to get the reader invested in the plot of the memoir quickly. Stallworth opens the memoir with a description of how he first got in touch with the local chapter of the KKK by responding to a newspaper classified advertisement. At the end of the opening chapter Stallworth gets a call from the organizer of the local KKK chapter—Ken O’Dell.

Similarly, the second chapter of the work does not...