People Who Inspire Us:
Adrianne Black

Adrianne Black (formerly Derek Black) understands what’s involved in a transformation of personal understanding or beliefs better than most people. As the daughter of Ku Klux Klan leader Ron Black, Adrianne was once the rising star of the extreme right in the United States. David Duke once called her “the leading light of our movement.”

Today, Adrianne is, in her own words, “an unexpected advocate for antiracism” and has been an important voice in improving our understanding of the white nationalist movement, how it functions, and how to combat it. In June 2022, she took part in Widen the Circle’s Berlin Fellowship, an immersive education program bringing together German and American activists. Speaking to a group of German grassroots remembrance practitioners in Berlin, she said she realized in college that his closest friends were among the very people who were being attacked by the movement she had espoused. At that point, she understood that she had a decision to make.

“It wasn’t so difficult to change my mind, to be faced with new facts and new beliefs, to expand the universe of people that I cared for, but it was incredibly difficult to break with the community of people who I had cared for for the first two decades of my life,” she said. “And that’s what condemning [white nationalism] had to mean. I think that was the moment that it became very clear that what it means to even believe something is to answer the question of who do you care for? Who is your community?”

Adrianne’s story has been chronicled in the book Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist.

More: Watch Adrianne’s keynote at Widen the Circle’s 2022 Summer Forum in Berlin, and her fascinating insights about the extreme right movement.