- Elected to a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989. Served on the Judiciary and the Health and Welfare Committees.
- Elected to the Louisiana state legislature in 1989, and came in second in the Louisiana gubernatorial race in 1991.
- Received BA in history from Louisiana State University in 1974.
- Resigned from the Klan and formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People in 1978.
- Has previously ran for state senator, governor, U.S. representative, U.S. senator, both the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations, and for president as the nominee of the Populist Party.
- His autobiography "My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding" is dedicated to William Shockley, the Nobel-prize winning physicist and co-inventor of the transistor. It also includes a foreword by Glayde Whitney, a former president of the Behavior Genetics Association.
- His 1991 campaign for governor of Louisiana was endorsed by James Meredith, the first black student at the University of Mississippi. Meredith made the endorsement in a half-hour infomercial produced by the Duke campaign and aired on several television stations in Louisiana.
- Received an honorary doctorate in political science from the University of Kiev, Ukraine, in August 2002.
- Has lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Vanderbilt and many other universities.
- Was the elected chairman of St. Tammany Parish's Republican Executive Committee during the late 1990s.
- Became National Director of the Knights of the Klu Klux Klan in 1974. Left the Klan in 1978.
- Attended kindergarten at a Dutch-speaking school in the Netherlands, where his father was a petroleum engineer for Shell Oil Company.
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