black…MYstory

Those familiar with the “Chapelle Show” would remember the character of Clayton Bigsby. He was a blind black man who didn’t know he was black. Instead, he thought he was a white racist. The joke continued because he was head of a white power organization and only those in his inner circle knew he was black.

Well, the story of William Hoff, Jr. has some similarities. Hoff was an avowed racist and prominent member of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), the largest neo-Nazi group in the U.S. However, when he died in a car accident in December 2006, he carried a secret with him to the grave. Hoff was of black ancestry.

Sometime between the age of 17 and 19, the raging racist came out of Hoff. In his adult years, he joined the KKK and the Aryan Nation. In 1969, he did a six-year stretch in Attica Prison for a plot to bomb civil rights activists. Upon leaving jail, he joined the NSM.

During all of this, Hoff’s brother Sheldon took a different path, eventually falling in love with a non-white woman and becoming the father to two biracial children, whom he says his brother adored. During the 80’s Sheldon began to research his family’s geneology. In 1995, Sheldon came across something very interesting:

…in the 1910 census, their father’s family was listed as black. Sheldon eventually traced their black ancestry back to the 1600s.

That’s right. Hoff came from a long line of black men. Sheldon Hoff said his brother rebuffed the claim “but after that he never gave us any of his ‘white is superior’ stuff.”

So, in a bit of irony, a man who spent his life hating black people found out he was indeed one of those people.

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