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Ron Stallworth’s ‘The Gangs of Zion’ is El Paso Matters Book Club pick [1]
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Date: 2024-09-11
El Paso’s Ron Stallworth became one of the nation’s best-known cops through Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” an Oscar-winning adaptation of Stallworth’s book called “Black Klansman.”
That movie and book focused on how Stallworth, then a young police officer in Colorado Springs, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and helped disrupt planned cross-burnings and other acts of terror by the Klan.
Stallworth, who grew up in El Paso and returned after retiring from law enforcement, says people often asked him what became of him after the Klan investigation was shut down. The answer is in his new book, “The Gangs of Zion: A Black Cop’s Crusade in Mormon Country.”
The book – published by Legacy Lit, an imprint of Hachette Book Group – focuses on Stallworth’s final stop in his law enforcement career, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Arriving in 1986, Stallworth worked as a gang investigator for the Utah Department of Public Safety.
“The Gangs of Zion” is the El Paso Matters Book Club selection for September-October. The book club introduces readers to authors from the region. The club features book selections every two months, book reviews and author Q&As, as well as in-person discussions with the authors.
You can join the bimonthly club by clicking here.
Ron Stallworth, a retired police detective and author of “Black Klansman,” poses at the entrance of his alma mater, Austin High School. Stallworth’s upcoming book will focus on rap and gangster culture among youth in Mormon Utah. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Conservative, predominantly Mormon Utah is not the first location that comes to mind for most when discussing criminal gangs. And much of “The Gangs of Zion” deals with the political and religious denial that Stallworth faced as he tried to raise awareness that the Crips and Bloods street gangs had infiltrated Utah.
“I had to convince major factions of Utah society to accept what I and other law enforcement officers around the nation already knew: Members of Los Angeles Crips and Bloods Gangs were infiltrating the state in increasing numbers and importing drugs and violence into the community,” Stallworth writes in the book’s introduction.
The emerging popularity of gangsta rap music in the 1980s and ’90s features prominently in “The Gangs of Zion.”
Ron Stallworth in the 1990s while working for the Utah Department of Public Safety. (Photo courtesy Ron Stallworth)
“I also discovered what few others had noticed: that the appeal of gangsta rap to young individuals – the frustration over inequity expressed in its lyrics – transcended race and culture. I embarked on a deep, ongoing inquiry into gangsta rap and came to understand these kids: where they came from, what motivated them, which gang they supported, and more,” Stallworth writes in the introduction.
Stallworth’s latest book is part memoir, and offers more personal insights than “Black Klansman,” which was largely a police procedural about an unusual investigation.
“Throughout my tenure in Utah and career overall, I often met people who could not come to terms with the fact that I was a Black man in law enforcement who could uphold the values of both my cultural identity and my professional role simultaneously,” he writes in his introduction. “The longstanding mistrust of law enforcement in minority communities exists for good reason, and understandably I faced accusations of being pro-cop at the expense of fellow Black people and other racial minorities. The truth is, I was not just one thing. No one is ever just one thing.”
How to get the book “The Gangs of Zion” will be released Tuesday, Sept. 17, at book retailers. It can be pre-ordered through a variety of book retailers. Check out a copy at your El Paso Public Library branch. Place a hold if unavailable.
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