The Black Civil Rights Activist Who Took Down a KKK Chapter Has Died

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The black civil rights activist who pledged to dismantle and destroy one of the largest neo-Nazi organizations in the U.S. has died at age 55, after a struggle with cancer.

James Hart Stern, who died at his home in Moreno Valley, California last month, earned comparisons to the title character in Spike Lee’s “BlackKkKlansman” earlier this year when corporate filings revealed that he’d been named the president of the National Socialist Movement (NSM). He had replaced the group’s longtime leader, Jeff Schoep, who until recently was an avowed neo-Nazi since the age of 10.

But that wasn’t even Stern’s first foray into breaking up hate groups. He’s also credited with dissolving a chapter of the KKK, after a Grand Wizard of the white supremacist group became his prison cellmate.

The dramatic — and surprising — change in leadership at the National Socialist Movement came as the organization was embroiled in numerous lawsuits stemming from its involvement in the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, which left Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old protester, dead and dozens others injured.

Now, the future of the organization remains unclear.

Schoep and NSM are among the more than 25 defendants in a federal lawsuit brought by nonprofit Integrity First for America on behalf of 11 residents of Charlottesville. They said they suffered physical or psychological injuries as a result of the white supremacist gathering.

Schoep claimed that Stern led him to believe that plaintiffs in Charlottesville would drop their case if he ceded control of the organization to Stern. But upon gaining control of NSM, Stern filed legal paperwork seeking a fast-track judgement, in an apparent effort to force the organization into financial ruin and ultimately, collapse.

Stern’s efforts triggered a renewed leadership struggle; Schoep tried to oust him from NSM and name one of his long-time members as its president instead.

“I thought we were friends,” Stern told VICE News at the time.

Stern sued in response, and the legal matter is still pending. In late March, the legal battle had gotten so ugly that Stern took out a restraining order against Schoep. He told VICE News earlier this year that Schoep had been making threats against his daughter.

“It won’t stop me,” Stern told VICE News.

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But in the months since, Schoep has publicly disavowed his neo-Nazi views and now touts himself as an expert on deradicalization. He declined to comment on Stern’s death or on the future of NSM.

The unlikely relationship between the two men started in 2014, according to the Washington Post, when Schoep agreed to debate Stern at a summit called the National Conversation on Race. After that, the two men continued to talk on the phone. About six months prior to Unite the Right, Stern wrote in a blogpost on his website that he’d persuaded Schoep to remove swastikas from his organization’s logo.

“He knew that he had the most vulnerable, the most loose-cannon members that they had ever had in the organization,” Stern told the Post earlier this year. “He realized somebody was going to commit a crime, and he was going to be held responsible for it.”

In 2004, Stern was sentenced to 25 years (with 10 years suspended) in federal prison in Mississippi for wire fraud. The following year, he got a new cell mate: KKK Grand Wizard Edgar Killen, who had been sentenced to 60 years for his involvement in the murders of three civil rights activists in the 1960’s. Killen was 80 by the time he was convicted.

The two men struck up an unexpected bond, according to Stern. When Stern was paroled in 2011, he held a news conference announcing that Killen had ceded him the power of attorney at his KKK chapter, as well as the deed to his 40 acres of land. And Stern had handwritten documents to prove it.

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Stern also produced rambling screeds that he claimed Killen had written, revealing the inner-workings of the KKK, according to the Washington Post. Killen later denied signing anything over to Stern, but the handwriting on the documents was later determined to match Killen’s. The Grand Wizard’s lawyer accused Stern of taking advantage of his client’s old age and traumatic brain injury.

Using his power of attorney that Killen — wittingly or not — had ceded to him, Stern dissolved his chapter of the KKK in 2016. Killen died two years later.

In addition to his work with hate groups, Stern was an ordained minister who founded “Racial Reconciliation Ministries,” a civil rights organization. He was also known for his work defusing gang violence in Los Angeles, where he was born and raised in the 1980s and 1990s.

“He fought with such courage in everything he did,” Stern’s friend Arne Edward List told AP. “James was very clear that this fight isn’t going to die with him.”

Cover image: FILE-In this Thursday, June 14, 2012 file photo, James Stern of Jackson, Miss., at a news conference in Jackson, Miss. One of the largest and oldest neo-Nazi groups in the U.S. appears to have an unlikely new leader: Stern, a black activist who has vowed to dismantle it. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)