Robert Justice

There is a burning car on the cover of my second Wrongful Conviction Novel, A DREAM IN THE DARK. The fire on the cover foreshadows a moment in the story when a peaceful Martin Luther King Jr. celebration turns into a full blown race riot.

This was not fiction, I was there.

Skinheads along with the KKK got a permit to gather on the grounds of the Colorado state capitol building to stage a counterprotest to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. As those of us in the marade (march plus parade) approached on Colfax Avenue, I, along with the peaceful crowd of fifteen thousand, was met with Nazi salutes, Confederate flags, and vile and hate-filled words, including shouts of “White power.”

A police helicopter hovered overhead, while on the ground over two hundred officers stood in formation, clad in riot gear. Seeing what was brewing, I immediately made my way back to my car, almost two miles away, and returned home.

Lug nuts didn’t fly that day, but rocks, bottles, and snowballs did when, after the marade, some of the young people, frustrated with the presence of the KKK, confronted them. Older marchers attempted to stop the confrontation with talk of nonviolence, but tensions escalated when state troopers escorted the KKK and skinheads into the capitol for protection and eventually rushed the white supremacists across the street, where buses sat ready for their escape.

That’s when the powder keg of frustration exploded and resulted in overturned and burned police cars and the smell of tear gas in the air throughout the night.

It was another chapter in Denver’s long history with the KKK.