History logs insist that the American Civil War ended May 9, 1865.
In explicit defiance, former Confederate military officers formed the
white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, December 24, 1865.
Ever since, all classes of white men, women and children have donned the Klan
hood and robe to perpetrate unspeakable crimes against immigrants, Catholics
and Jews, and especially African Americans. Contrary to the romanticized myth
that Klan ranks are ensconced strictly in the South, Klaverns (chapters) have long
been coast-to-coast, as well as in Canada.
In 1925, Denver, and a state-wide number of other Colorado cites, were firmly
in the social, political and economic grip of the "invisible empire." The majority
of Denver's elected officials, including its mayor, were members.
Simultaneously, millions of African Americans were beginning new lives
beyond the former slave states. Many were light skinned enough to "pass for white."
And did so.
In Charlene Porter's Denver Post #1 bestselling novel, Boldfaced Lies, Margaret
Browne, the wife of a ruthlessly ambitious Denver Klavern leader, learns that she
is one-quarter Negro. Denver Public School Libraries rates Boldfaced Lies "an
important book about a shameful era of Colorado History."
The Honorable Wellington Webb, Denver's first African American mayor (1991
to 2003) states: Charlene Porter is a gifted writer. In Boldfaced Lies she weaves a
thoughtful and suspenseful story about family subjects and experiences that were
long taboo.
If your book club list includes: The Help, Hidden Figures, Beloved, Small Great
Things, Passing, The Warmth of Other Suns, Twelve Years a Slave, Sycamore Road,
or The Underground Railroad...be sure to add
Boldfaced Lies
.