Former Grand Dragon reveals moment he realised he'd been 'lied' to and had to quit KKK
A former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon has opened up about the exact moment he realised that the extremist group had 'lied' to him.
Dr Richard Harris joined the KKK when he was 16 and was promoted to the Grand Dragon figurehead by the age of 20.
Speaking on LADbible's Minutes With, Harris recalled that he was picked up in a car and blindfolded, 'and they drove and drove and drove'.
"And I soon figured out they were driving around in circles and doing all kinds of things just so I wouldn't know where I was being taken. They finally arrived at a large home. I entered the house and they took the blindfold off," he said.
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"There were probably a hundred people there, robes and masks and hoods. Very dark, dimly lit room. But at the end of one end of the room, there was a makeshift altar set up, and there was a man standing behind it. And they marched me down to that altar."
Harris then swore 'allegiance to white supremacy' and 'swore allegiance to keep all the rules and the laws of the Ku Klux Klan secret'.
‘Light bulb’ moment he realised KKK had been ‘lying’ to him
After seeking a promotion within the racist organisation, Harris said: "I got word that one of my own security guards had put a hit out on me, and he was going to get me killed.
"I didn't know what to do. And in my 20-year-old mind at that time, all I could think of was, ‘I need better security’."
Harris said he began reading the Gospel of John before reaching the story of the Samaritan woman at the well — a passage he claimed had previously been distorted by KKK leaders.
“The whole point of the Samaritan woman at the well story was Jesus accepted Samaritans, race mixers,” he said. “And he loved them, and they believed in him. That's when the light bulb went on. ‘The Klan has been lying to me. They've been twisting the scriptures.’”
The former KKK leader said he immediately prayed for a way out of the organisation.
“And so at the end of that night, I prayed, I didn't know how to pray, but I prayed something like, ‘God, if there's any way you can get me out of this alive, I want out, and I want to know what a real Christian is, and I wanna be a real Christian.’
“And the next day, I called the Imperial Wizard and I quit.”
Leaving the KKK was not straightforward
“Well, it's not that easy to quit when you're the Grand Dragon,” Harris explained. “But after some negotiation, a couple days of negotiations, it finally ended with, they put a gun to my head and they said, ‘We're gonna let you out, we're gonna let you live if you keep your mouth shut’.”
Harris eventually broke his silence 15 years later and has since spent decades speaking publicly against racism and white supremacy.
Today, he serves as associate pastor at a historic African American church, where he says he has found forgiveness and belonging.
Anish Vij