OutSources: Angela King – Foregoing Fascism and Finding Queerness

Angela King joins Outsources host Angela Palermo. Growing up in South Florida, Angela King struggled with her identity. She became confused about the messages she received from her church and family on issues like sexual identity and racial stereotypes.

Disenfranchised, Angela began acting out and felt welcomed for the first time by a group of skinheads. Though the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing made Angela reconsider her beliefs, she knew that abandoning her skinhead affiliates would result in retaliation.

Angela was arrested in 1998 and sentenced to six years in prison for her part in an armed robbery of a Jewish-owned store. Angela was released from prison three years early, in 2001, for good behavior. She has since graduated from the University of Central Florida with an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies. Angela works as a keynote speaker, consultant, and character educator.

During our conversation, we discuss her growing up years in Florida, her recruitment into a Neo-Nazi skinhead group, the growing doubts she about her involvement with Neo-Nazism, her prison term, falling in love with a black woman behind, co-founding the anti-hate/anti-Nazi group Life After Hate and what she sees as the future of the anti-racist in the U.S. and worldwide.