BlacKkKlansman

In 1972, Ron Stallworth is hired as the first black officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Assigned to work in the records room, he tires of being harassed and applies to be an undercover officer. He is assigned to infiltrate a local rally where national civil rights leader Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael) is speaking. At the rally, Stallworth meets Patrice Dumas, president of the Black Student Union at Colorado College. While taking Ture to his hotel, Patrice is stopped by patrolman Andy Landers, a racist officer in Stallworth's precinct, who threatens Ture and gropes Patrice.

Following the rally, Stallworth is reassigned to the intelligence division. After reading about a local division of the Ku Klux Klan in the newspaper, he calls posing as white. He speaks with Walter Breachway, the president of the Colorado Springs chapter, but soon realizes that not only did he use his real name, but he must also meet the Klan members. Stallworth recruits his Jewish coworker, Flip Zimmerman, to impersonate him and meet the Klan members while he continues posing as white on the phone. Under Stallworth's identity, Zimmerman meets Walter, the slightly more reckless Felix Kendrickson (and later his wife Connie), and Ivanhoe, who cryptically refers to an upcoming attack.

Calling Klan headquarters in Louisiana to expedite his membership, Stallworth begins regular phone conversations with Grand Wizard David Duke. Kendrickson suspects Zimmerman of being Jewish and tries to force him to take a polygraph test at gunpoint, but Stallworth, overhearing everything on the wire Zimmerman is wearing, breaks the Kendricksons' kitchen window as a distraction. Stallworth begins dating Patrice without telling her that he is a police officer. After passing information to the Army CID about active-duty members, he learns from an FBI agent that two members are personnel stationed at NORAD.

Duke visits Colorado Springs for Stallworth's induction into the Klan. Over the real Stallworth's protests, he is assigned to a protection detail for Duke. Once Zimmerman, masquerading as Stallworth, is initiated, Connie leaves the ceremony to place a bomb at a local civil rights rally. The real Stallworth realizes her intentions and alerts local police officers. When Connie notices a heavy police presence at the rally, she puts Felix's backup plan into action and plants the bomb at Patrice's house, leaving it under her car when it will not fit into the mailbox. Stallworth tackles her as she tries to flee, but uniformed officers detain and beat him despite his protests that he is working undercover.

The bombmaker, Walker, recognizes Zimmerman from a prior arrest and informs Felix. He, Felix, and Ivanhoe drive to the house and park next to Patrice's car without realizing that the bomb is hidden underneath. When they detonate it, the explosion kills all three. Zimmerman arrives, frees Stallworth, and arrests Connie. While Stallworth is celebrating the closed case that night with Patrice, Landers arrives and harasses the two, remorselessly admitting to his assault on Patrice; Stallworth then reveals he is wearing a wire, and Police Chief Bridges arrives and arrests Landers for police brutality.

Bridges congratulates the team for their success but orders them to end their investigation and destroy the records. Stallworth receives a call from Duke, and he insultingly tells Duke he is black before hanging up. While Patrice and Stallworth discuss their future, they are interrupted by a knock on the door. Through the window in the hallway, they see a flaming cross on a hillside surrounded by Klan members. The film then cuts to actual footage of the 2017 Unite the Right rally, the hit and run that followed, and where a still-respected Duke is a speaker, and ends with a dedication to Heather Heyer (the only person killed in the attack), and an upside-down American flag that fades to black and white.

In July 2015, screenwriters/co-producers Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz discovered the book Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth. They interviewed Stallworth and wrote a spec screenplay, then pitched the script to producers Shaun Redick and Ray Mansfield.[3] They brought the property to QC Entertainment, which had co-produced the successful 2017 film Get Out. QC again teamed up with Jason Blum's company Blumhouse Productions, and Jordan Peele's company Monkeypaw Productions, to produce the project.[4][5]

In September of that year, Spike Lee signed on as director and John David Washington was in negotiations to star.[6] The following month, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, and Corey Hawkins had joined the cast.[5][7][8][9] In November, Paul Walter Hauser, Jasper Pääkkönen, and Ryan Eggold joined the cast,[10][11][12] with Ashlie Atkinson joining a month later.[13]

Filming began in October 2017.[14] Ossining, New York, was one location used in October.[15] Filming locations also included the Rockland County hamlet of Garnerville, New York, where exterior shots of one of the Colorado Springs police stations were filmed.[16]

Harry Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington; according to Lee, he commanded his crew on the day of filming Belafonte's scene to dress for the occasion in suits and dresses to honor Belafonte.[16]

Lee ends the film with a tribute to anti-fascist counter-protester Heather Heyer, who was killed on August 12, 2017, in the Charlottesville car attack during the Unite the Right rally.[17]

Lee and the cast at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival

On April 12, 2018, the film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered on May 14.[18][19] It opened in the United States on August 10, 2018, which was chosen to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville rally.[20]

Stallworth at a book signing in February 2019

Although based on a true story, the film dramatizes several events:[48][49]

• The investigation occurred between 1978 and 1979, although the film is set in 1972. (David Duke did not become Grand Wizard until 1974, and Stokely Carmichael did not change his name to Kwame Ture until 1978.)
• The true identity of Stallworth's partner remains secret, and was only referred to as "Chuck" in the memoir; he also was not Jewish as depicted in the film. There was also a second white officer ("Jim") who also went undercover alongside Chuck.
• Stallworth and other officers never worked to secretly expose and arrest a racist cop (as depicted in the film), although he does mention in the memoir an officer who shot and killed a young boy but was protected by fellow law enforcement officers.
• Stallworth did work security, meet, and take a photo with Duke when he visited Colorado, although it was a much more intimate gathering than the large ceremony depicted in the film, and his partner's cover was never blown.
• The bomb plot against the Black Student Union is fictional, although Stallworth noted the local chapter did at one point have plans to attack a local gay bar.
• The character of Patrice is fictional, although Stallworth does mention dating a young woman while doing the investigation.
• Stallworth never called Duke to admit he was actually a black man; Duke did not find out until he was asked to fact-check the story by a reporter in 2006.

• List of black films of the 2010s
• Race (human categorization)

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