![]() ![]() "And Roger bumped into his back, Keystone Cops style." "The Grand Nighthawk turned the corner, saw me and froze," says Davis. His business manager called to arrange a meeting at a Frederick County motel, never letting on that Davis was black. He wondered how they could hate him without even knowing him.Ī friend helped him get in touch with Maryland Grand Dragon Roger Kelly. All he had to do was look around his home state, and where better to start than with the rank and file of the Ku Klux Klan. A judge found them not guilty, but the incident broke up an already strained relationship.įor Davis, the arrest and the rough treatment he received showed him he didn't have to go to the Deep South to study racism. Then in 1988, a run-in with Baltimore police over his car being towed ended with Davis and his white girlfriend under arrest for disorderly conduct. Years later, a gig in a Frederick bar ended in a fight with a Klansman. In high school, a pair of neo-Nazis spoke to his class and said their plan included sending all blacks back to Africa. the same year so-called friends left him in the aftermath of the riots following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Not until he was 10 and living back in America did someone call Davis "nigger." That was the same year onlookers threw rocks at him as he marched with his Cub Scout troop in Belmont, Mass. "I'd probably share the same attitudes some of my friends have. "If I had not had that experience of dealing with people from different backgrounds, and I had been here all my life and experienced a lot of racism as a kid, I probably wouldn't go anywhere near the Klan," he says. He spent his formative years in Africa, where his father served in the U.S. To understand Davis' peculiar drive, look no further than his youth. And he had to admit that it was a black man who helped put food on the table to feed his child." "And, of course, Chester turned out to be very appreciative of that. "Why should that baby suffer because of what her father had done?" asks Davis. When Grand Klaliff Chester Doles was imprisoned for beating a black man, Davis sent money to help feed his newborn child. He insists his friendships with the Klansmen he has come to know are true. "They just don't have nigger friends."Įpithets aside, Davis seems to be redefining the meaning of friendship with men like White. "Many Klansmen have black friends," says White. To some degree, at least, his approach seems to have worked.īob White, a retired Maryland Grand Dragon and current Grand Giant, says he's "proud to be a friend of Daryl Davis." He would attempt to challenge their stereotypes, maybe become a man in their eyes, albeit still a black man. If you ignore cancer, it simply metastasizes and consumes the whole body."įollowing that philosophy, Davis figured the best way to approach the Klan was with an open mind. Why don't you just ignore them and they'll go away?' This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community."People say, 'Why do you give the Klan publicity? They seek that kind of stuff. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. He appeared in two episodes of the critically acclaimed HBO series, "The Wire." Davis is the author of the nonfiction book "Klan-destine Relationships," and he is the subject of the documentary "Accidental Courtesy." Davis was a key player in "Elvis Mania," which was extended by two months due to popular demand in New York City at an off-Broadway theater. When two enemies are talking, they're not fighting." Daryl received rave reviews for his stage roles in William Saroyan’s "The Time Of Your Life" with a famed cast of Marcia Gay Harden, Brigid Cleary, Richard Bauer, Dion Anderson, and Henry Strozier. Davis summed up his advice as: "Establish dialogue. His efforts to improve race relations, in which as an African-American, he engaged with members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), have been reported on by media such as CNN, Newsweek Magazine and the Washington Post. Davis has played with such musicians as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. Daryl endeavors to improve race relations and does not shy away from "reaching across the aisle" to members of the KKK.ĭaryl Davis is an American R&B and blues musician, author, actor and bandleader, known for his energetic style of boogie woogie piano. He uses his boogie woogie piano to open doors to conversations that few would venture to start. And what if that person, or those people, have made an open show of that dislike, without apology? What would you do? Davis is no stranger to this experience and has chosen a unique, and often viewed as controversial, approach to such ponderings. What do you do when someone just doesn't like you? I mean really, really not like you. ![]()
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