A former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon and neo-Nazi who marched a year ago with white nationalists in Charlottesville says he's turned his back on that life after a chance meeting with filmmaker Deeyah Khan and a pastor.
“I pretty much had heat exhaustion after the rally because we like to wear our black uniforms, and I drank a big Red Bull before the event," Ken Parker, a former white supremacist told NBC News. "I was hurting and [Khan] was trying to make sure I was OK."
She was at the rally filming her documentary "White Right: Meeting the Enemy." In it, Parker is shown as a racist, but he says as he talked with her, he started having doubts.
"That kind of got me thinking," he said. "She’s a really nice lady. Just because she’s got darker skin and believes in a different God than the God I believe in, why am I hating these people?”
A few months later, Parker said he saw an African-American neighbor, All Saints Holiness Church Pastor William McKinnon III, having a cookout, and he and his then-girlfriend approached him to talk.
Soon after, McKinnon invited Parker to attend Easter church services, and on July 21, Parker was baptised.
Now he tells people in the hate movement to follow the path he did.
"It was my life, for six years. I never thought I would get out,” Parker said. “Get out. You’re throwing your life away.”
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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