Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Fox News: Hate Infiltrates Hope

A Florida woman who has been married to both the former head of the Ku Klux Klan and the creator of a notorious white supremacist Web site is working as a spokeswoman for a school that aims to lift underprivileged black and Hispanic children out of poverty. An executive with an organization that tracks hate groups calls the employment of the woman, Chloe Black, an "untenable position" and "unbelievable."

Black, the ex-wife of former KKK leader David Duke, is now married to Don Black, the creator of the white-power hate site Stormfront. Chloe Black is currently employed as an executive assistant at Florida Crystals, a sugar conglomerate whose owners, the Fanjul brothers, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to help build a new campus for Glades Academy.

Glades is a charter school for the children of African-American and migrant workers in Pahokee, a rural town in Palm Beach County. Billionaire Jose "Pepe" Fanjul's wife, Emilia, is chairman of the board of Glades Academy, and she hired Black to help promote the school. Reports suggest that Black's salary from the school may be going to support her husband's activities on the hate site, as Don Black has had no clear source of income for some time.

Don Black, in an online appeal for contributions to his hate site, wrote that he does not receive a salary from the site. "Stormfront is an online community of White activists," he wrote. "It's not a business, no one receives a salary, and our work is supported by voluntary contributions."

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based non-profit organization that tracks hate groups, Don Black has not had a regular job for “years and years,” though the SPLC could not prove that Chloe Black’s salary from Florida Crystals was going to support Stormfront. When contacted by FOXNews.com, Chloe Black refused to discuss the allegations or her role in Glades Academy. She told the New York Post earlier this month that she hasn’t been involved with the white supremacy movement “in 30 years.”

But the SPLC, which has followed the Blacks as principal leaders of the white supremacist movement for decades, said that is not true. Mark Potok, the SPLC’s intelligence project director, said Black in June attended a key conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that says on its Web site that it opposes “all efforts to mix the races of mankind” and once described black people as “a retrograde species of humanity.”

“The SPLC’s role is not to make demands of the Fanjuls. But they have put as a front woman on this very worthy philanthropic project a woman who represents everything that is antithetical to this project. This is an untenable position. She is not merely a woman who married white supremacist leaders; she has actively participated in white supremacist functions,” Potok said.

Potok said he found Black’s involvement with Glades Academy “unbelievable.”

There is no indication that the Fanjuls or Florida Crystals were aware of Chloe Black’s right-wing sympathies when she was appointed to speak on behalf of Glades Academy. Gaston Cantens, Florida Crystals' vice president of corporate relations, did not respond to repeated requests by FOXNews.com for comment but has been quoted as saying that the company does not “comment on the private lives of our employees.”

But a cursory look at Black's resume would have revealed her connections to the Knights of the KKK and the National Party. In 1972 the then Chloe Hardin married David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the KKK who is described as a neo-Nazi by his critics. They divorced in 1984 but are reportedly still friendly and speak regularly. Black is the mother of Duke’s two daughters. Four years later she married Don Black, Duke’s best friend and an ex-Klansman himself. Black is the founder and webmaster of Stormfront, the premier online location for white supremacists in the U.S. and Europe. “Don Black and David Duke are not lightweight nationalists,” Potok said. “They are rabid white separatists. Duke is better described as a neo-Nazi more than anything else.”

The Black family residence in West Palm Beach has been registered in Chloe Black’s name since the year she separated from Duke. According to the SPLC, 32 percent of Pahokee residents live in poverty. The Glades Academy project aims not only to educate the children in the area, but encourage graduates to give back to the community.

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