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In this episode of the Pluralist Points podcast, Ben Klutsey, the executive director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, speaks with author, activist and musician Daryl Davis, who is known for his work confronting racism through dialogue. They discuss Davis’ first encounter with a member of the Ku Klux Klan, his determination to discover the “why” behind racism, his meeting and eventual friendship with klan leader Roger Kelly and much more.
BEN KLUTSEY: This is a conversation that I’ve been looking forward to having for a very, very long time. As I’ve been going around and talking about the film “Undivide Us [ [link removed] ]” that we’ve been a part of, every time someone will ask me a question about, “How can you engage and even be in the same room or be at the table with someone who does not even recognize your humanity or thinks of you as less than?” Every single time, I mention the name Daryl Davis [ [link removed] ]: “Do you know Daryl Davis?”
Not everyone can be Daryl. But today I’ve been looking forward to this conversation so that he can give us all his nuggets, all his wisdom, all his insights, which hopefully will inform the work that we do going forward.
Just by way of introduction, Daryl Davis is an acclaimed musician who has performed with legends like Chuck Berry [ [link removed] ] and B.B. King [ [link removed] ]. He’s also an author and activist known for his work confronting racism through dialogue. Over the past 30 years, Daryl has engaged directly with members of the Ku Klux Klan, leading over 200 individuals to renounce their membership in hate groups. It’s quite the feat.
[applause]
KLUTSEY: His approach is rooted in conversations, patience and understanding. Has been featured in his book “Klan-destine Relationships [ [link removed] ]” and the documentary “Accidental Courtesy [ [link removed] ].”
Tonight he brings his unique perspective on civil discourse, pluralism and the power of dialogue. Daryl, thank you for joining us.
DARYL DAVIS: Thank you, Ben, for having me. Really appreciate it. Thank you all.
[applause]
At the Silver Dollar Lounge
KLUTSEY: Daryl, I wanted you to start with a story that you actually just shared with me a few moments ago. And I think it’s a story that really connects your career as a musician and your work also as an activist. It’s something you experienced in Frederick, Maryland, while you were playing your piano at a lounge. What happened in Frederick, Maryland, about somewhere in the early 1980s?
DAVIS: Well, I graduated from right here in Washington, D.C., from Howard University, with my degree in jazz. But I play rock and roll, country, blues, R&B—if they’re paying, I’m playing.
[laughter]
DAVIS: Country music had made a resurgence. It had gone away for a while. It had never gone completely away, but it fell off the top 40 charts. And a movie came out called “Urban Cowboy [ [link removed] ]” with John Travolta. Big hit movie. A lot of country music in there. A lot of line dancing, mechanical bull and all this kind of thing. A lot of the clubs across the country that were playing disco and top 40 back at that time switched their format to country.
If you want to work full-time in the music industry, you play what people want to hear. I joined a country band. Country and blues music is the exact same music, the exact same three chords—they’re kissing cousins. It is society that puts us in boxes: If you’re white and you’re singing a 12-bar blues [ [link removed] ], you’re country. If you’re Black, you’re singing blues, then you’re a bluesman. We’re socially divided even though the music is the same.
I joined a country band. It was very easy for me to play. I was the only Black guy in the band and generally the only Black person anywhere we played. We played in a town called Frederick, Maryland, which sits about an hour and maybe 25 minutes from where you’re sitting right now, just north of D.C. It was called the Silver Dollar Lounge. It had a reputation of being an all-white bar. Blacks were not welcome. There were no signs posted—“white patrons only” or “no Blacks allowed”—nothing like that. It had that reputation, and everybody knew it.
If you go somewhere where you’re not welcome and alcohol is being served, it’s not always a good combination. While I knew of the reputation, I’d never been in there before. But I joined this band, they were popular in Maryland, and they had played there before. Here I am in the Silver Dollar Lounge playing on their gig.
I got some looks when I came in, but nobody bothered me. On the break after the first set, I was walking to the band table, following the band, and I felt somebody reach across my shoulder from behind. Now, I don’t know anybody in this joint, and I can see the whole band in front of me, so I’m turning around to see who’s touching me. It was this old white gentleman, maybe 15 to 18 years older than me. Big smile on his face. He says, “Man, I love your-all’s music.” I said, “Thank you, sir,” and I shook his hand.
He pointed at the stage and said, “I’ve seen this here band before, but I ain’t never seen you before. Where’d you come from?” I explained that I had just joined the band. It was my first time here. He said, “Man, I sure love your piano playing. This is the first time I ever heard a Black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis [ [link removed] ].”
I was not offended, but I was rather surprised, because this guy was maybe 15 to 18 years older than me. I was surprised that, being that much older, he did not know the origin of Jerry Lee Lewis’ piano style. I proceeded to explain to him that Jerry Lee got it from the same place I did: from Black blues and boogie-woogie piano players. That’s where that rock and roll, rockabilly style came from. “Oh, no, no, no, no. I ain’t never seen no Black man play like that except for you.” I’m thinking, “Well, this guy doesn’t get out much, because he’s never seen Fats Domino [ [link removed] ] or Little Richard [ [link removed] ].” It’s the same boogie style, right?
I said, “Look, man.” I said, “I know Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee Lewis is a very good friend of mine. He’s told me himself.” He didn’t believe I knew Jerry Lee. He didn’t believe Jerry Lee learned anything from Black people. But he was fascinated with me and wanted me to come back to his table and let him buy me a drink. I never drank alcohol, but I went back to his table, let him get me a cranberry juice. He pays the waitress, takes his glass, and he clinks my glass and cheers me.
The Klansman
DAVIS: Then he says, “You know, this is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a Black man.” Now I’m totally mystified, because at that point in my life, I had sat down with tens of thousands of white people or anybody else and had a meal, a beverage, a conversation. How is it that this guy had never done that? I know for a fact that there are Black people in Frederick, Maryland. I’ve seen them. How did he somehow not connect with them?
I wasn’t trying to be facetious; I was just naive. I asked him why. He stared down at the tabletop and didn’t answer me. I asked him again, “Why?” His buddy sitting next to him said, “Tell him; tell him; tell him!” I said, “Tell me.” He looked at me. He said, plain as day, “I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Well, I burst out laughing at him, because now I didn’t believe him. I know a whole lot about the Ku Klux Klan. I had an incident when I was 10 years old that made me want to study racism. I have just about every book written on the klan, on Black supremacy, white supremacy, the Nazis in Germany, the neo-Nazis over here. I have a vast library on that stuff, and I’ve read it all. I know Klansmen just don’t come up to Black people and hug them and want to buy them a drink and talk to them. It doesn’t work that way. This guy is pulling a joke on me. I’m laughing.
He went inside his pocket, pulled out his wallet and handed me his klan membership card. I instantly recognized the klan emblem, which is a red circle with a white cross and a blood drop in the center of the cross, and I stopped laughing. This thing was for real. It wasn’t funny anymore.
I gave it back to him. We talked—he was very friendly. We talked about the klan and different things. He gave me his phone number and wanted me to call him any time I was to return to this bar, because he wanted to bring his friends—you know, Klansmen and Klanswomen—to see, as he put it, the Black guy who plays like Jerry Lee. (I’m not sure he called me a Black guy to his friends, but that’s how he explained it to me.)
I said OK. So the band was on a rotation there every six weeks. I called the guy on a Wednesday or Thursday and said, “Hey, man, we’re down at the Silver Dollar. Come on out.” He’d come. He’d bring Klansmen and Klanswomen, not in robes and hoods but regular street clothes. They’d gather around the stage near the band and watch me play the piano. They’d get out on the dance floor and dance to our music.
On the breaks, I would make my way over to his table, thank him for coming. Some of the klan people would hang there. Most of them would hang there. They were curious about me and wanted to meet me and talk to me. We’d shake hands. There were two of them, every time I approached the table, they’d get up and move to the other side of the room. The implied message was, “We don’t want to touch you. We don’t want to talk to you. We just want to watch you play,” or something, which was fine by me.
I quit that band at the end of that year, and I went back to playing rock and roll and whatever else was going on. I lost track of the guy, because it wasn’t like I had a day off and I’d go to Frederick to hang out with the klan. (I do that now, but I wasn’t doing it back then.)
[laughter]
A Research Opportunity
DAVIS: It dawned on me a few years later, “Daryl, the answer to your question—” I had formed a question in my mind at the age of 10, after this incident, which was, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” I’d been looking for that answer, and when I would ask people, it was, “Oh, Daryl, some people are just like that. That’s just the way it is.” That’s not an answer to me. I want to know why.
It dawned on me a few years after I quit that band, “Daryl, the answer to your question that’s been plaguing you since the age of 10, it fell right into your lap. You didn’t even realize it.” Who better to ask that question of than someone who would go so far as to join an organization that has over a hundred-year history of practicing hating people who don’t look like them and who don’t believe as they believe?
“Get back in contact with that guy. Get him to fix you up with a state leader.” A state leader in the klan is known as a grand dragon. Anybody with the prefix “grand” means they’re on the state level. “Dragon” would be the top of the state, like we would call the governor. A grand klailiff would be like a lieutenant governor, and he’d have secretary and treasurer and all that. A national leader, what we would call the president, they call that the imperial wizard. “Imperial”—anybody who is “imperial” is on the national level. “Wizard” is the top, like president. An imperial klailiff would be like a vice president, and then again you have secretaries and treasurers, etc.
I wanted this guy to fix me up with the grand dragon of Maryland. I want to interview the guy, because every book written on the Ku Klux Klan had been written by a white author. There had been two books written by Black authors about the klan—they dealt with the klan, but each one was talking about how he escaped a lynching: one in the 1930s and one in the 1940s. But not from the perspective of sitting down face to face, interviewing their potential lyncher. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be the first Black author to write a book on the klan, sitting down face to face interviewing them.
So that’s how that started, and that’s what I did.
KLUTSEY: Wow, quite the story. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that.
You mentioned that—
[applause]
The State Department and the Foreign Service
KLUTSEY: Thank you. Thank you.
You mentioned that when you were 10 years old, something happened that generated this interest in you to explore this question. What happened when you were 10?
DAVIS: Let’s go back to before I was 10, and then we’ll get to when I was 10, because we have to do this chronologically.
KLUTSEY: Sure.
DAVIS: Otherwise I’ll forget.
So I’m 66 years of age. I was born in 1958. I was a child of parents in the U.S. Foreign Service. My father was one of the first Black Secret Service agents in this country. My dad wanted to be an FBI agent. J. Edgar Hoover [ [link removed] ] was a racist, a male chauvinist, among other things: no women, no Blacks. So my dad went to the Secret Service. The Service had no Blacks there. It hired five Black males on the same day, and my dad was one of those five.
My dad had a knack—his first assignment was in Chicago. My mom and dad are from Virginia, Roanoke and Salem, and so they moved to Chicago for my dad’s Secret Service assignment. While there, I was born.
My dad had a knack for languages. My dad spoke nine languages fluently. He could read and write in four of them. Where he got that from, I don’t know. (I didn’t get it.) But he had it. He rose as high as they would let him go in the Secret Service. There was a ceiling for Black people, and it got to the point where he was training agents who were being promoted above him.
At the time, Richard Nixon was vice president to Dwight Eisenhower, and he was going to have a debate. It was called the “kitchen debate [ [link removed] ]” with Nikita Khrushchev, the prime minister of Russia. So the State Department put out a solicitation for any Americans who could speak fluent Russian to come and apply for translator/interpreter, to go on this trip to Moscow. Well, guess what? My dad spoke Russian. So my dad went and applied for the job.
He got it. So he accompanied Vice President Nixon to Moscow and interpreted for him. When he got back, Nixon told Eisenhower about my dad. They did some background on him, found out what he was doing, all about him. They called him in to the White House. Eisenhower told my dad that he had gone as far as he could go for a Black man in the Secret Service. There was a ceiling there. However, he could go further if he were to take the Foreign Service exam and become a Foreign Service officer.
So my dad took the Foreign Service exam and passed it and became a Foreign Service officer with the State Department. That’s how I became an American embassy kid. There was still a ceiling for Black Foreign Service officers in the U.S. State Department. My dad rose as high as they would let him go. It was higher than what it was in the Secret Service, but not to the top.
Anyway, we did a lot of traveling. I began traveling around the world at the age of three in 1961. How it works is, you get assigned to a country for two years. Then you come back home here to the States. You’re here for a year, getting debriefed, whatever, and then you get reassigned to another country for two years. Back and forth, back and forth were my formative years.
Early Education
DAVIS: My first introduction to school was overseas. I did kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade all in different schools in different countries. I did the in-between grades back home here.
Now, this is very important to your question: When I was overseas in kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade, my classmates (this is in the 1960s) were from all over the world. This girl here might be from Japan, that person there from Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, wherever. Anybody who had an embassy where we were stationed, all of their kids went to the same school.
That being my first exposure to school, that became what my baseline was for what school was supposed to be, right? But every time I’d come back home here to my own country, I would either be in all-Black schools or Black and white schools, meaning the still-segregated or the newly integrated. Despite the fact that desegregation was passed in 1954 by the Supreme Court, four years before I was born, schools did not integrate overnight. It took years. Even today, in 2024, in some parts of this country, we’re still dealing—we’re trying to get places integrated, all right?
Anyway, one time when I came back—we’ll skip ahead: I was age 10, 1968. We came back and we were living in Massachusetts, and first we went to Boston. My dad was getting his master’s in anthropology from BU, Boston University. I went to school in Boston in fourth grade for about three weeks. The schools there were so bad, terrible. Kids in the fourth grade were still learning their ABCs. I’m not joking.
I thought it was funny. And I told my parents, thinking they’d get a kick out of it, too. They didn’t. They’re like, “We’re out of here.” We packed up and moved eight miles outside of Boston to Belmont. Belmont is right next door to Cambridge, right next door to Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. I was one of two Black kids in the entire school there in Belmont, myself in fourth grade and a little Black girl in second grade. So I really didn’t see a whole lot of her, being she was in second grade. I see her at lunchtime or recess.
So my friends were white, fourth and fifth graders. Several of my male friends were Cub Scouts, and they invited me to join. So I joined the Cub Scouts.
The Parade
DAVIS: Every year, and I think this still goes on today, they have what’s called Patriots’ Day [ [link removed] ]. There is a parade from Lexington to Concord, right next door to Belmont. (That’s the route that Paul Revere rode.) The streets are blocked off; sidewalks were lined with nothing but white people waving and cheering. There were the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Brownies, 4-H club—a bunch of different organizations.
People were waving and cheering, smiling, yelling “The British are coming,” all that kind of thing, until we got to some point—I’m the only Black scout in this parade. We got to this certain point in this parade route when suddenly, pow! I’m getting hit with bottles and rocks and soda pop cans by just a small group of white spectators off to my right on the sidewalk.
I turned to see what was happening. I remember there being a couple of kids—I didn’t know them, maybe a couple of years older than me; they didn’t go to my school—and a couple of adults who were throwing things. I assumed it was kids and their parents. It wasn’t everybody, just this small four- or five-person group mixed in with the larger crowd.
My first inclination, because I didn’t have any precedent for this, was, “Oh, these people over here don’t like the scouts.” That’s how naive I was. I didn’t realize I was the only scout getting hit until my den mother, my cubmaster, my troop leader all came running and huddled over me with their own bodies (these were white people) and quickly escorted me out of the danger.
I kept saying, “What did I do? What did I do? I didn’t do anything to them. Why are they doing this?” All they would do is shush me and rush me along, tell me to keep moving, keep moving, it’ll be OK. I kept moving. Fortunately, they didn’t follow us.
By the end of the parade, I still didn’t know what happened, why it happened, and they never told me. When I got home, my mom and dad, who were not at the parade, were putting that—I don’t know if they make it anymore; it was that sticky red stuff called Mercurochrome. They were cleaning me up, putting this Mercurochrome on me, and Band-Aids, and asking me, “How did you trip and fall down and get all scraped up?” I told them, “I didn’t fall down.” I told them exactly what had happened.
For the first time in my life, at the age of 10, my mom and dad sat me down and explained to me what racism was. Believe it or not, at the age of 10, I had never heard the word “racism.” It did not exist in my sphere, in my world. I was around people from all over the world. People who looked like me, people who didn’t look like me, looked like somebody else I’d never seen before, whatever. We all got along. There was no racism.
My 10-year-old brain could not process what my parents were telling me. I could not believe that somebody would try to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin. It made no sense to me. My parents were wrong: People don’t do that. To prove that I was right, the people who were doing this to me over here on the sidewalk did not look any different to me than my little friends at school or, for that matter, my friends overseas, whether they were my fellow Americans from the embassy or my little Danish or Swedish or Australian friends. They didn’t behave like that. They didn’t look any different than those people. So color had nothing to do with it.
Well, of course, as we all know, 1968 was a very turbulent year. I remember it very well. At the age of 10, I saw Boston burn to the ground. I saw the rioting [ [link removed] ], the looting, the burning, and the destruction and the violence. I’ll never forget that. Then I realized that what my parents had told me, this racism thing, this phenomenon, does exist.
So I accepted its existence, but I didn’t understand why. How can somebody hate somebody because of the color of their skin? That’s when I formed that question, “How can you hate me if you don’t even know me?”
See, I didn’t have big brothers and sisters to go through stuff and then pass down their experiences to me. I was an only child. (My folks got it right the first time.)
[laughter]
KLUTSEY: That’s a good one.
Interview Preparation
KLUTSEY: You’ve said before that ignorance breeds fear, which breeds hatred. We’re afraid of things we don’t know. How do we have the courage to face the risks of knowing the other side of the conversation? Because you really don’t know what’s on the other side.
DAVIS: So I got that Klansman from the Silver Dollar Lounge to connect me with the grand dragon of Maryland. He was reluctant. First I asked him if he would take me and introduce me to him. He said no way. He was afraid I’d be in trouble; he’d be in trouble. I convinced him to give me the man’s name and number. Well, I knew the man’s name—give me his number and his address. He reluctantly did it, only on the condition that I not tell this man where I got his personal information. I said OK.
But he warned me: He said, “Daryl, do not go to his house; he will kill you.” And I said, “Well, that’s the whole reason I need to see him. Why would he kill me? This is what I’m trying to understand. Just because I’m Black?” You know? This is what I want to hear.
I had my secretary give this man a call. His name was Roger Kelly. I had her give him a call: My secretary at the time was white. I’m only mentioning that because—I could care less what color somebody is. But I had the number; I could have called him myself. I didn’t want to call him because I figured, well, knowing his background from his member, if I were to call him, he’d know I was Black, maybe, from my voice. He’d say, “I’m not talking to you”—click. And hang up the phone. And my whole project would have ended before it ever got started.
So I had Mary, my white secretary, give this man a call because I knew that he would know the voice on the other end of this phone line, well, (a) is a female, but is also a white female—because she sounded white. (I know I’m not being politically correct, but I’m not known for that.)
[laughter]
DAVIS: Anyway, he would know that she’s white, and he would not automatically assume that this white woman is working for a Black man, especially a Black man who’s writing a book on the Ku Klux Klan—because they didn’t exist. Mine would be the first. That might up the odds that he would agree to the interview. Then, obviously, when he came to be interviewed, he could see I’m Black, right?
She said OK; she understood. I told her specifically, “Do not tell Mr. Kelly that I’m Black unless he asks, but don’t allude to it. If he asks, don’t lie to him. Tell him, but don’t give him reason to ask.” She understood. She called him. He agreed to do the interview.
Mary and I got a room at the Silver Dollar Lounge. The lounge is in the bottom of this truck stop motel. The way the room is situated, if you’re standing in the hallway looking through the door into the room, you cannot see who’s in the room. You have to come into the room, turn to your right and go around the corner, and then you see who’s in the room. I took a lamp table, not much bigger than this table right here, took the lamp off and put the table in between two chairs.
I had a cassette recorder put on the table, had a little black bag containing blank cassettes, and a copy of the Bible—because the Ku Klux Klan claims to be a Christian organization. And they claim that the Bible preaches racial separation. Now, I’ve read the Bible; I’ve never seen that in there. Provided this man came in and allowed me to record the interview, we’re going to talk about that. I’d be able to pull out my Bible and say, “Here, Mr. Kelly, please show me chapter and verse where it says Blacks and whites must be separate.” So I’m all prepared, right?
Right on time, there’s a [knocks] on the door. Mary hops up and runs around the corner, opens the door. I’m seated back here at my table where you can’t see me until you come halfway into the room. She opens the door: In walks what’s known as the grand nighthawk. “Nighthawk” in klan terminology means bodyguard. “Grand” means state-level. Grand nighthawk is the bodyguard to the grand dragon, like an imperial nighthawk would be the bodyguard to the imperial wizard.
This guy is dressed in military camouflage. Got that red circle, white cross, blood drop patch right here; the letters KKK right here; and embroidered on his cap, it said “Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Right here he had a semiautomatic handgun and a holster. He comes around the corner and sees me and just freezes.
Well, Mr. Kelly is on the other side of the corner and doesn’t realize that his nighthawk had stopped short. He came around the corner and slammed into the guy’s back and knocked the guy forward. They both are stumbling around trying to regain their balance. They’re looking all around the room. I’m just sitting there looking at them, and I can read their faces. They’re thinking, “Did the desk clerk give us the wrong room number, or is this an ambush?” I could see the apprehension.
Meeting the Grand Dragon
DAVIS: I stood up and I went like this: show I had nothing in my hands. And I walked forward. I said, “Hi, Mr. Kelly. I’m Daryl Davis.” He shook my hand; so did the nighthawk. So far, so good. I said, “Please, please, come on in! Have a seat.” Mr. Kelly sat down. The nighthawk stood at attention to Mr. Kelly’s right. Before I could sit down, Mr. Kelly says, “Mr. Davis, do you have any form of identification?” I said sure; I gave him my driver’s license. He said, “Oh, you live on such-and-such street in Silver Spring.”
Now, that had me a little concerned. Why is he looking at my—
[laughter]
DAVIS: Why is he looking at my address? Is he going to stop by and burn a cross in my yard or what? Right? I did not want to let him know that I was concerned, but I wanted to let him know that he was not to come to my house uninvited. I said, “Yes, Mr. Kelly, that is where I live. You live at—” and I named his house number and his street. That way I was leveling the playing field.
[laughter]
DAVIS: “I know where you live; you know where I live. If you come visit me, I’m going to come visit you. So let’s just confine all this visiting to this motel room.”
[laughter]
DAVIS: He understood. He nodded his head.
I did not realize it that day—it was a few months later—I was being presumptuous. I had no reason to fear Mr. Kelly coming to my house for any nefarious purpose. The reason he mentioned my street—he recognized my street. I didn’t even know this.
One of his members lived right down the road from me. All right? Two neighborhoods over. (My street runs through about three neighborhoods.) One of his members lived down there. That same member today is in a federal prison in the state of Maine for committing a hate crime. All right? Mr. Kelly recognized the street because any time he’d go visit that guy, he had to get on my street. That’s all. There was no way I could have known that that day.
We got on with this interview. Every time Mr. Kelly would say, “Mr. Davis, the Bible says—” I’d reach down to pull up my Bible, or if my cassette ran out of tape, I’d reach down and get a fresh tape. Every time I’d reach down like this, the nighthawk would reach up, like this. He never pulled his gun. He just rested his hand on the butt of the gun. I understood that. That’s his job. I’m the enemy; he doesn’t know what’s in my bag. His job is to protect his boss. So I was fine with that.
After about 45 minutes or so, he relaxed. I went in and out of the bag. The bodyguard, the nighthawk, did not move. He relaxed. A little over an hour into this interview, Mr. Kelly and I were just talking casually across the table. Out of nowhere, there was a very fast, very short noise, like a “pshh.” We all jumped. I flew out of my seat, and I hit the table.
I knew that Mr. Kelly had made this noise. I didn’t know what the noise was. It was too fast and too short for my ear to discern what it was. Because I didn’t know what it was, I perceived it to be an ominous, threatening noise. When you don’t know something, you perceive the worst of it. I had gone into survival mode. When you fear for your life, you go into survival mode.
In survival mode, you will do anything and everything that you can to preserve your well-being. There are only several things you can do. Some people, they faint, they pass out. Because the fear is so great, their brain can’t process it, and the brain just shuts down. They faint. I don’t do that. Another thing people will do: their muscles will constrict, and they’ll tighten up, and they’ll ball up into a little ball and start shaking, and they cannot break away. You can be punching them, kicking them, whatever. They’re not even deflecting. They’re like this. That’s paralysis by fear. I don’t do that either.
Third thing people would do is to run away. That is your best option. As quickly as you can, separate yourself from the source of the fear. Get away from it. That is the option that I would have chosen had it been available. But how am I going to outrun a bullet in a motel room? I’m not armed. Mary is not armed. The only person who I know for sure who is armed is the nighthawk. I can see his weapon on his hip. I did not know if Mr. Kelly had a gun up under his suit and tie or not. I knew I didn’t have one. I didn’t want to get shot that day.
The fourth, the last option you have, is to do what’s called a preemptive strike. Get them before they get you. When I flew up out of that chair, I was on my way to dive across that table, grab the nighthawk, grab Mr. Kelly, and slam them down to the ground and take away the nighthawk’s gun to neutralize the situation.
But when I hit that table, I’m looking right into Mr. Kelly’s eyes. I didn’t say one word. My eyes were speaking for me. My eyes were shouting so loud he could hear my eyes. My eyes were saying to him, “What did you just do?”
His eyes were fixated on mine. He didn’t say a word either. I could read his eyes. His eyes were saying to me, “What did you just do?” And the nighthawk’s like this, looking at both of us: “What did either one of y’all just do?”
Mary was sitting on top of the dresser to my left because there were no more chairs in the room. She realized what had happened, and she began explaining it to us when it happened again.
There was a bucket of ice and cans of soda sitting next to her that we had gotten earlier, before Mr. Kelly arrived, to offer them. The ice had begun melting, and the cans of soda were shifting down the ice. That was it. When she explained it and we heard it, we all began laughing at how ignorant we all had been.
The Root Is Ignorance
DAVIS: Now, it’s hard enough to picture a Black man and a Klansman sitting together in a room, let alone them both laughing at the same thing. But that happened, all right? I won’t say this was a learning moment. I’ll say it was a teaching moment. The learning would come later.
The lesson taught is this, what you just mentioned: All because some foreign—underscore, circle, highlight the word “foreign”—entity, of which we were ignorant, that being the bucket of ice, cans of soda (I mean, we knew it was over there, but we’d long forgotten about it, so we were ignorant to it). All because some foreign entity of which we were ignorant entered into our little comfort zone, we became fearful of each other, and accusatory.
If you do not address that ignorance, it will lead to fear, because we fear the things of which we are ignorant. If you don’t keep that fear in check, that fear will escalate into hatred. Because we hate the things that frighten us. If you don’t keep that hatred in check, that hatred will escalate to destruction. We want to destroy the things that we hate. But guess what? At the end of the day, it may have been harmless, and we were simply ignorant.
We saw that whole chain almost unravel to completion. It stopped just short of the destruction had that nighthawk pulled out his gun and shot me or my secretary, or I pounced across the table and hurt one of them. It stopped just short of that last component. Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds hatred. Hatred breeds destruction.
Now, me personally: I think we waste a lot of time, way too much time, addressing the destruction. Once something is destroyed, that’s it. It’s gone. It’s not coming back. It’s unfortunate, but it’s gone.
The destruction is a symptom of the nucleus; a symptom of the root cause. Forget about it. Forget about the hatred—that, too, is a symptom of the root cause. Forget about the fear: another byproduct of the root cause. The root cause is ignorance. If you cure the ignorance, then there’s nothing to fear. With nothing to fear, there’s nothing to hate. With nothing to hate, there’s nothing to get mad about and destroy. So we should focus our efforts, our energy, our finances, our teaching, our exposure, on curing the hate. And we can do that. That’s where I focus mine.
Now, we saw that whole scenario unfold to completion on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, when they had this large white supremacist rally there. I know every one of those people who put on that rally. Some of them have been in my home, and I’ve been in some of their homes. A nasty bunch of people.
But on that day, August 12, 2017, there was a lot of ignorance in Charlottesville, Virginia [ [link removed] ]. There was a lot of fear in Charlottesville. A lot of hatred in Charlottesville. What did it culminate in? It culminated in destruction when a white supremacist got into his vehicle and drove at full speed, as fast as he could, into the crowd of counterprotesters, hoping to murder as many as he could. He succeeded in injuring just over two dozen and murdering one young lady named Heather Heyer.
Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds hatred. Hatred breeds destruction. The greatest tool that we have to combat antisemitism, racism and most forms of discrimination is the least expensive. It’s free. Yet it remains the most underused. It’s called conversation. I’m a firm believer that a missed opportunity for dialogue is a missed opportunity for conflict resolution.
From Ignorance to Destruction
DAVIS: Today, I own—well, when I met Roger Kelly, he was a grand dragon. He went through the ranks and he became imperial wizard. Today I own his robe and hood, because he no longer believes in what it stood for at the time. He and I became friends. I’ve been doing this now for about—well, next year it will be 45 years. I have a ton of robes and hoods and swastika flags and all kinds of racist and antisemitic paraphernalia that I hope to put inside a museum which I will open one day.
The whole process—the ignorance, fear, hatred, destruction—it doesn’t matter if you’re an adult or a child. I speak to little kids sometimes. Of course, I tone down the lecture. I’ll give you an example: I speak to elementary school kids. They have these little desks; they go five rows back. I’ll just be talking with them, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I’ll say, “Hey, there’s a snake under your chair.” Just at the thought of there being a snake there, people from five rows back scream and throw their legs up in the air, screaming. Then they realize there’s no snake there, right?
I say, “What are you all screaming about?” “Well, I’m afraid of snakes.” “I hate snakes.” There’s your fear: “afraid.” “I hate”: there’s your hate. I say, “Why are you afraid of snakes? Why do you hate them?” “Well, they’re slimy. They’re poisonous.” There’s your ignorance. If you’ve ever touched a snake, it is not slimy. It is dry. And not all snakes are poisonous. So there’s your ignorance. Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds hatred.
Then I say to them, “OK, well, obviously there’s no snake under your chair. I was just joking. But let’s just say there really was a snake under your chair. What would you want me to do about it?” You know what they say? “Kill it.” There’s your destruction. These are kids, not adults. Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds hatred. Hatred breeds destruction. Let’s address the ignorance early on in school, so we don’t have to go through the fear and the hatred and the destruction as adults.
[applause]
KLUTSEY: Thank you for that.
DAVIS: Thank you.
Having the Conversations
KLUTSEY: Daryl, you’ve done this hundreds of times. You’ve led over 200 individuals to renounce their membership in the KKK. What’s your secret sauce for conversation? What’s your formula?
DAVIS: All right, two things. Well, three things, OK? As I said, I did a lot of traveling as a kid. I still travel now as an adult musician. I perform concerts all around the world. I also give lectures around the world. I’ve played in all 50 of our states. When you combine my childhood travels with my adulthood travels, I’ve now been in 63 countries on six continents.
What does that mean besides I have a lot of frequent flyer miles and hotel points? It means that I have been exposed to a wide variety of colors, ethnicities, religions, cultures, ideologies, belief systems, etc. And all of that has helped shape who I have become. My favorite quote of all time is by Mark Twain. (Samuel Clemens was his real name.) Mark Twain: It’s called the travel quote. Mark Twain said [ [link removed] ], “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” And that is so true.
Most Americans, unfortunately, do not travel. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, less than 50% of Americans even own passports. We need to get out and travel. Now, all that travel that I have done does not make me a better human being than someone who has less travel. I’m not saying that at all. But what it does give me—it gives me a better and broader perspective on humanity than people who have not been exposed to other cultures.
I can tell you this. No matter how far I go from our own country, the United States—whether I go right next door to Canada, or right next door to Mexico, or halfway around the globe; no matter who I encounter—maybe they don’t look like me, they don’t speak my language, they don’t worship as I do; maybe they don’t worship at all—I always conclude one thing: Everybody I’ve met is a human being. And, as such, every human being wants these five core values in their lives: Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to be respected. We all want to be heard, we all want to be treated fairly and truthfully, and we all want the same things for our family as anybody else would want for their family.
If we can learn to apply those five core values when we find ourselves in an adversarial situation, or in a culture or society in which we are unfamiliar or uncomfortable, I will guarantee that your navigation of that situation, that culture, that society will be much more smooth and much more positive.
That’s what gets me over in klan and neo-Nazi rallies. I’ve been going to those things for a long time. Yes, I’ve had my share of fights and violence and things like that, but those were few and far between. It was worth it: I have a ton of robes and hoods given to me by people who were active, who now don’t believe in that ideology. Some of them even travel with me and stand on my stage renouncing their former organization and work hard trying to de-radicalize people still in and prevent young people from going down that rabbit hole.
Keep those five core values in mind whenever you’re in an adversarial situation.
KLUTSEY: Thanks, Daryl.

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