David Duke

Duke met Chloê Hardin while working in the White Youth Alliance. They remained companions throughout college, and married in 1974. He has two daughters with Hardin - Erika and Kristin.

Duke had a weakness for women, and pursued them keenly. Fed up with Duke’s womanizing, Chloê Hardin divorced him in 1984. Duke also developed a lifelong weakness for gambling.

David Duke was born on July 1, 1950 to David H. Duke, an engineer for Shell Oil, and Alice Maxine Crick. The family lived for some time in the Netherlands, and finally settled in Louisiana.

He met the white supremacist National Alliance leader, William Pierce, who would remain a lifelong influence. He joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1967.

Duke enrolled at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1968. Two years on, he formed a white student group called the White Youth Alliance affiliated with the National Socialist White People’s Party.

In 1970, he appeared at Tulane University wearing Nazi uniform to protest William Kunstler’s appearance. He became notorious at LSU for picketing and holding parties on Adolf Hitler’s birth anniversary.

He ran for the Louisiana State Senate as a Democrat from a Baton Rouge district in 1975. Four years later, he contested for the 10th District Senate seat, and finished second.

He allegedly refused to turn over proceeds from the 1979 Klan rallies. Accused of using Klan funds to purchase and refurbish his home in Metairie, he justified saying that the Klan used his house.

In 1988, after contesting in the Democratic presidential primaries, he sought the Presidential nomination of the Populist Party. In December, he changed his political affiliation from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

He founded the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and became its Grand Wizard. He introduced reforms including business suits, nonviolence, legality, equal membership for women and Catholics’ membership.

In 1979, after his unsuccessful run for president and violent Klan incidents, he left the Klan, and formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People to end discrimination against white people.