Growing up, he made speeches, hosted a radio show and started the website KidsStormfront — which acted as a companion to Stormfront, the white nationalist website his father, Don Black, created.
"The fundamental belief that drove my dad, drove my parents and my family, over decades, was that race was the defining feature of humanity ... and that people were only happy if they could live in a society that was only this one biologically defined racial group," Black says.
It was only after he began attending New College of Florida that Black began to question his own point of view. Previously, he had been home-schooled, but suddenly he was was exposed to people who didn't share his views, including a few Jewish students who became friends.
Black's new friends invited him over for Shabbat dinner week after week. Gradually, he began to rethink his views. After much soul-searching, a 22-year-old Black wrote an article, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2013, renouncing white nationalism.
Derek Black's "awakening" is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Saslow's new book, Rising Out Of Hatred. Saslow also interviewed Black's father and other leaders in the white nationalist movement.
Interview:
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/24/651052970/how-a-rising-star-of-white-nationalism-broke-free-from-the-movement
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