I prefer to sit down and talk with each other. I see too much here in our country of people talking about each other or talking at each other or talking past each other. Allow them to share their views … This is how we communicate. You’re going to have one perspective, somebody else is gonna have another perspective … Give your adversary a platform. Apply it to your strategies about the environment or whatever. “If you don’t take anything else home with you tonight, take that home with you. A lot of times we don’t agree with everything, but at least he respects me to sit down and listen to me and I’ll respect him and sit down and listen to him.”ĭavis emphasized Kelly’s last quote and its importance. It hasn’t changed my view about the Klan, it’s pretty much cemented in my mind for years.” Later on in the video, there is a clip of Kelly giving a speech at a Klan rally in which he talks about Davis: “I believe in what he says and what he thinks that I stand for. Referring to Davis, Kelly said in the interview “We get to know one another, we do different things, you know. When Kelly was promoted to Imperial Wizard (the national leader of the KKK), he began to invite Davis over to his house and to Klan rallies.ĭavis proceeded to show a CNN clip of a reporter interviewing Roger Kelly inside of Daryl Davis’s home. Davis invited Kelly to his gigs, to his house, introduced him to his friends and they would have dinner together. “Once I know what the problem is, then I can figure out a solution to address it.”ĭavis is the first black man to ever solicit interviews from KKK members for a book.Įventually Davis befriended Roger Kelly, the Grand Dragon. “I don’t want to convert anybody, I just want to know,” Davis said. Davis decided then that he would conduct a series of interviews with Klan members across the country and write a book about it. The man revealed to Davis that he was a member of the KKK, and Davis eventually took that as an opportunity: he convinced the man to connect him with the top KKK member in the state of Maryland, Grand Dragon Roger Kelly. The first KKK member that Davis engaged with was at a bar in Maryland in 1983 the man had just watched Davis perform on the piano and he approached him to talk about music. If we see something that’s wrong in our society, if we see something that’s wrong in our environment, we must address it.” If you see someone in a robe and hood walking down the street, you cross over to the other side. Fear is the greatest weapon known to man … why do these people still exist? Because they evoke fear. We don’t engage with them … if they’re willing to sit down and talk, that is a step in the right direction. “Why do they still think the way they think? It’s because we have ignored them for so long. “Why is that Klan robe still here in the 21st century?” Davis asked the audience. He encouraged students to apply his strategy for communicating with KKK members to interactions with people who are resistant to fighting climate change. Using music to bridge the seemingly uncrossable gulf between the Klan's hatred and the Black man's rage, Davis travels an uncharted road filled with gripping highs and lows.Acclaimed blues musician, Daryl Davis explained how he managed to convince 200 Ku Klux Klan members to give up their robes during the 21st annual Environmental Studies Symposium on Oct. Through Kelly and others, Davis begins to infiltrate the Klan, gaining real insight into its workings and members' minds. After a cathartic first encounter at the end of which Kelly poses for pictures, as long as "we don't have to stand with our arms around each other, " the two slowly form as close a friendship as a Black man and a Klansman can. Finding that the Klan is entrenched not only in the Deep South but in his own neighborhood, Davis sets out to meet Roger Kelly, Imperial Wizard of the Invincible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. His mesmerizing story, told in gritty words and startling photographs, is both harrowing and awe-inspiring. He had a "question in my head from the age of 10: 'Why do you hate me when you know nothing about me?' That question had never been answered from my youth."ĭriven by the need to understand those who, without ever having met him, hate him because of the color of his skin, Daryl decides to seek out the roots of racism. "After 129 years of nothing but violence and hatred, it's time we get to know one another on a social basis, not under a cover of darkness, " explains Grammy Award winning pianist Daryl Davis of his extraordinary journey into the heart of one of America's most fanatical institutions - the Ku Klux Klan.
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