Anderson Independent Mail: News
Published on: 4/3/2003
CLEMSON - T.J. Leyden was a model neo-Nazi skinhead, but the 37-year-old Californian gave up his hate-filled white-supremacist life and now tries to chip away at hate by sharing his story with audiences across the country.
As the featured guest for Clemson University’s One World Week - a series of events designed to promote diversity and tolerance - he used graphic language and images of the propaganda he once spread to chronicle how he embraced and later refuted bigotry.
He also managed to show those in the audience how they, too, are apathetic toward and accepting of hate.
Throughout his presentation, he cracked jokes - not about his neo-Nazi past but less obvious examples of intolerance. He got some of the heartiest laughs expressing his frustration that his young son wanted to be a pastry chef.
People stopped laughing when he pointed out that for more than an hour they supported his mockery of others.
Organizer Tina LeMay said Mr. Leyden was right for the event because he is an example of how hate can be overcome. “Something we try to do with One World Week is offer hope,” she said.
Mr. Leyden delivers that hope by sharing his turnaround, even though his former friends threaten his life.
He entered the white-supremacist world in his teens after his parents went through a bitter divorce, and he watched his mom suffer abuse. His brothers poured their angst into cars or sports, but he reveled in punk rock.
He liked to pick fights at concerts. An older group of skinhead boys, appreciating his violence, invited him into their circle.
When he joined the Marines a few years later, his neo-Nazi activities increased. He married a white supremacist and exposed his two sons to his hateful behavior.
But slowly he turned his back on bigotry.
He learned that a Jewish doctor invented the vaccine that helped his mother beat polio, and that a black doctor made contributions to fighting heart disease.
Hearing his 3-year-old son’s racist comments started to bother him.
And when he asked his Aryan friends whom they would fight once they eliminated the groups they hated, they joked that it might be redheads like him.
In 1996, he begged his mother to forgive his life of racism. His wife would not make the change with him, so he remarried. He became a Mormon and went to work with the Museum of Tolerance and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish organization dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust. He now speaks across the country and consults with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other organizations.
He said only Florida, California and Texas rival South Carolina in its proliferation of hate groups.
Aside from not letting racist jokes slide by them, he encouraged his listeners to be mentors.
“If you teach that kid to be a better person,” he said, “that child will never grow up to be like me someday.”