Escaping the KKK: A Documentary Series Exposing Hate in America (2017)

Cameras follow four prominent Klan families who each have a family member trying to escape the Ku Klux Klan. This series pulls back the curtain on the organization that the Anti-Defamation League calls "a racist, anti-Semitic movement with a commitment to extreme violence to achieve its goals of racial segregation and white supremacy," to show its effects on American families as member's grapple with the consequences of leaving. The series follows four families: an "Imperial Wizard" who hopes to groom his teenage daughter to take his place; an Iraq war veteran and proud member of the KKK determined to raise his four-year-old son to embrace his views; a young man who sees his close friend and Klan leader as the father he never had, asked to pledge his loyalty to the KKK; and a fifth-generation Klan family struggling to keep up the legacy. The series will also follow a network of anti-hate and peace activists working to break the cycle by helping to convince members to leave the hate group. The team consists of Daryle Lamont Jenkins, the co-founder of One People's Project, an organization that monitors and investigates hate groups; speaker, author and peace educator Arno Michaelis, a former skinhead who joined the white power movement at the age of 16; and Bryon Widner, a reformed Neo-Nazi and subject of the documentary Erasing Hate, who spent sixteen years as a skinhead until he realized the environment wasn't best for his son. These activists develop deep relationships with Klan families attempting to convince them to hang up their robes and finally leave the group for good.