Daryl Davis is an R&B musician, a pro-human activist, and a guy who's immersed himself in the Klan as a Black man. He's the author of a book called "Klandestine: A Black Man's Odyssey in the KKK," and he's the host of the podcast Changing Minds, and star of the documentary Daryl Davis: Race in America, which is well worth your time.
00:05:02.120Well, you know, um, rock and roll evolved out of people like Chuck Berry taking elements of country, of blues and boogie woogie and combining it and putting a backbeat to it.
00:05:14.180Before Chuck Berry, there was no backbeat to the music.
00:05:19.420And so, uh, you know, Elvis, uh, came out and, and, uh, back then, you know, white radio stations would not play black records.
00:05:27.720Most of them, there were a few that would.
00:05:29.660And in order to, to, uh, to sell records, people have to hear the records and they hear them on the radio.
00:05:35.560And of course, back in the day, they had to leave their house, go to the record store and get it.
00:05:39.540It wasn't like, you know, just go on, go online and download the song back then.
00:05:43.680So, uh, it was very hard for, for, you know, black artists to, uh, to make a lot of money because the radio stations weren't playing their records.
00:05:52.140And the black radio stations did not have the wattage, uh, that the white stations did to, uh, to broadcast all across the state and on in, into other states before, you know, the FCC put, uh, you know, guidelines as to how much wattage, you know, they could use.
00:06:07.160So what, what, what are we talking here?
00:06:28.240And, you know, they want to hear whop, bop, a blue, bop, a lot, bam, boom, you know, and the stuff that was happening on the other side of the railroad tracks.
00:06:36.620Well, the powers that be, uh, decided to pull them back by putting in a white artists playing those songs, singing those songs like Pat Boone, for example, singing a fast dominant.
00:06:48.840Yeah. Singing Tutti Frutti and, and Blueberry Hill and all these, uh, great rock and roll hits in order to pull the, uh, the white kids back.
00:06:56.560But then along comes Elvis Presley and Elvis, you know, Pat, don't get me wrong.
00:07:01.920Pat Boone's a great balladeer, but he is not a rock and roll singer.
00:07:09.740And, uh, so, and that's why he was so controversial back then.
00:07:14.020Uh, even, uh, the white parents that would hear him on the radio thought he was black, uh, because of the way he sounded and he was doing this black music.
00:07:23.020So the DJ had to call him into the station and say, you know, so Elvis, you know, uh, how old are you?
00:07:33.320Well, that right there told the parents that this man was white because of course, back then, uh, you know, schools were segregated and Humes high school was the white school in Memphis, Tennessee.
00:07:42.700So that, that kind of calmed parents down a little bit until they saw him on TV, wiggling his knees, you know, and so hips going exactly.
00:07:53.220And all of that came from Chuck Berry, from little Richard, from Bo Diddley, uh, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Bill Haley in the comments, Buddy Holly, all these other great musicians were able to popularize it, but they did not invent it.
00:08:06.620And of course, you know, once, once, um, once they figured out how much money Elvis generated from playing this music, they, you know, once they hated him, now they're appointing him king of rock and roll and saying that he invented it.
00:08:22.460But, but did, would you say then that he helped open the door in a way to these other guys becoming more popular because they weren't, they weren't getting airplay prior to him?
00:10:00.540No, I mean, I, I got booked quite a bit.
00:10:02.880Um, but yes, race was, was definitely a factor.
00:10:05.640You know, I remember going to a club and, uh, I went to see a country band and, um, I came in there, you know, and they were playing and the people were dancing and I'd ask people, you know, if they would, you know, if I could dance with them.
00:10:18.900And they were like, no, you know, they didn't want to dance with me.
00:10:20.780Uh, well, one of the people in the band recognized me and asked me on the break, if I wanted to sit in and I said, sure.
00:10:27.500So I got up there and I played some country songs with them on the keyboard, you know, the keyboard player stepped aside for a moment.
00:10:33.340And, uh, when I came off, then everybody wanted to dance with me and the club owner came over to me and asked me, you know, if I had a band and I said, yeah.
00:10:42.320And he said, you know, I'd like to book you.
00:10:44.520And so he takes me to his office, puts out his calendar.
00:10:48.420And back then, you know, we used to carry like little notebooks, you know, we didn't have cell phones with calendars on them and write down these dates.
00:10:54.260And after he gives me several dates, you know, right on the spot, he says to me, um, do you have a mixed band?
00:11:02.140Now, when he said, I'm a little naive, right?
00:11:04.540So when he said that, I'm thinking, you know, is it male and female, like, you know, female vocalists?
00:11:09.260No, you know, and, um, I, I described, I said, no, you know, I got five guys, but I can bring in a, uh, a female vocalist if you like.
00:30:35.140Okay, well, Hank was from Montgomery, Alabama, and Rufus T. Tot Payne was a black blues guitar player who would sit on the sidewalk with his guitar case open, and, you know, people would throw nickels and dimes in, and he'd play the guitar.
00:31:13.080We all borrow from one another, but society is what separates us.
00:31:17.060So anyway, I joined this already established country band in the area, and we played a place called the Silver Dollar Lounge up in Frederick, Maryland, which is about an hour and 20 minutes outside of D.C.
00:31:30.580The Silver Dollar Lounge was known as an all-white lounge, not meaning that blacks could not go in, but blacks did not go in, and that was by their own volition because, you know, they did not feel welcome there.
00:31:42.900And, you know, when you go somewhere where you're not, you know, where you're not welcome and alcohol is being served, it's not a good combination, right?
00:32:33.520And then he says, you know, this is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.
00:32:39.940Now, I was not offended, but I was rather surprised, given his age being older than me, he should know the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis's piano style.
00:32:50.720Yeah, and I told him, I said, look, you know, I got it from the same place Jerry Lee did, from black blues and boogie-woogie piano players.
00:32:57.560That's where rock and roll and rockabilly came from.
00:33:00.020Oh, no, no, no, no, Jerry Lee invented that.
00:33:01.960I had never seen no black man play like that, except for you.
00:33:04.440He was so fascinated, he went to invite me back to his table and buy me a drink.
00:33:08.340I don't drink, but I went back to his table and had a cranberry juice.
00:33:10.720He paid the waitress, then took his glass, and he clinked my glass and cheered me and says, you know, this is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a black man.
00:33:22.160Because, you know, in my years on this face of the earth, I had sat down literally with thousands of white people and had a meal, a beverage, a conversation.
00:33:49.720I burst out laughing because I didn't believe him.
00:33:52.960As I told you, I have all these books.
00:33:54.880And in none of my books, it was to talk about how a Klansman will come up and embrace you if you're black and praise your talent and want to hang out and buy you a drink.
00:34:31.300And then it dawned on me, Daryl, the answer to your question, how can you hate me when you don't even know me, that's been plaguing you since age 10, it fell right into your lap.
00:34:43.380You know, who better to ask that question of than someone who would go so far as to join an organization that has over 100-year history of practicing hating people who don't look like them and who don't believe as they believe.
00:34:58.140Get back in contact with that guy and get them to hook you up with Klan leaders around the country or start here in Maryland, go up north, go down south, Midwest and west, and write a book about it.
00:35:08.980Because no book had been written at that point in time by a Black author conducting in-person interviews with the Klan.
00:35:18.440And I'll tell you, you know, all I – I never set out to convert anybody.
00:35:22.560You know, when you see my name in the media, it will say, you know, Black musician converts X number of KKK members or white supremacists or whatever.
00:36:21.960And when it started happening, I realized I had stumbled onto something.
00:36:26.440And I was employing some principles that I had learned.
00:36:30.960I wasn't doing it consciously, but more subconsciously.
00:36:35.000You know, in all my travels around the world, no matter how far I've gone from this country, whether it's right next door to Canada or Mexico or halfway around the globe, no matter how different people may appear to me, they don't look like me, don't speak my language, don't worship as I do or whatever.
00:36:53.180However, I always conclude the same thing when I return home.
00:37:10.700And we want the same thing for our family as anybody else wants for their family.
00:37:15.420And if we employ those five core values in any society or any culture we may find ourselves in, in which we are unfamiliar, I will guarantee you that your navigation will be much more positive and much more smooth.
00:37:30.640And I, you know, I, and that's what, you know, write that down.
00:37:35.080And that's what I've been doing my whole life.
00:37:37.240And perhaps it came from being the child of diplomats.
00:37:40.620You know, we were American diplomats overseas because, you know, my dad's job was to foster better relations between foreign countries and our country.
00:37:49.520You know, that was his job in the, you know, with the State Department.
00:37:52.300And so I just naturally came by it honestly.
00:37:55.040Yeah, we talk about a couple of the specific instances because they're really extraordinary.
00:37:59.360Uh, this guy, at one time, he was the Grand Dragon from Maryland and he went to prison for four years for conspiring to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore.
00:38:12.360And then while in prison, he ran the Klan, you know, through his grand playlist, which means like, you know, Vice Dragon.
00:38:18.300Well, I wrote him while he was in prison.
00:38:19.980And when he, when he got out, you know, we got together.
00:38:22.500He was vehemently violent, anti-Semitic and racist.
00:38:26.920Everything, the whole problem with the whole world were the Blacks and the Jews, you know, and I listened to this hour after hour after hour of interviewing him.
00:38:36.500But anyway, um, yeah, like I said, when you're in the Klan, uh, you don't make money from being in the Klan.
00:38:43.320If you're a leader, you might get a small stipend out of, out of some of the dues, but not enough to pay your mortgage or your rent.
00:38:49.580But this particular guy that I'm telling you about, he, his day job was Baltimore City police officer.
00:38:57.200And he went on to become one of my best friends.
00:39:00.600And today I, yeah, today I, I, I even invited him to my wedding and he came.
00:39:17.540But I'll tell you what though, I, I, uh, you'll, you'll love this next story, but, uh, but check this out.
00:39:23.080So, um, uh, today I own his robe and hood and his police uniform because he got out of that, uh, you know, through, through my influence, he and I became the best of friends.
00:39:33.620But now if you remember, uh, four years ago in two months, August, four years ago, Charlottesville, what happened down there, there was a scene there, uh, where this Imperial wizard in the Klan, uh, pointed a gun at a black person's head who was wielding a improvised flamethrower and, and spraying this flame towards these Klansmen who were coming down the steps of this Confederate statue park.
00:40:01.360And, um, he pointed the gun at the guy's head and, and yelled a racial epithet and then lowered the gun and fired it.
00:40:08.460And the bullet went down into the gravel, just a less than two feet from the guy's feet.
00:40:14.020And, um, you know, he went on, you know, he turned and went on, walked right past the cops who watched the whole thing go down and did nothing.
00:40:20.420Uh, anyway, um, he, I called him up and I said, listen, man, you and I need to talk.
00:40:28.520Not a Klansman to black man, but man to man, American to American.
00:40:38.460I drove an hour and a half to his house, unarmed, just myself.
00:40:41.980I sat in his living room, all kinds of KKK stuff all over the walls, Confederate flags.
00:40:47.420In fact, his couch where I was sitting was covered with a Confederate flag blanket.
00:40:51.040So I sat there, yeah, uh, I'll send you pictures.
00:40:55.500Um, I sat there listening to him and his Klans lady fiance, give me a two hour lecture on American history from a Confederate perspective, of course.
00:41:35.140I will get tickets to this newly opened, um, uh, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture just opened downtown in DC back then.
00:41:47.540He said, okay, we toured the museum and, um, you know, we, he learned a lot.
00:41:54.620Uh, but you know, you can't take it all in and, and, you know, two or three hours, but, uh, he learned a lot.
00:42:00.740And now this is about a year later, uh, at when we toured the museum, um, the, the incident happened in Charlottesville on August 12th, 2017.
00:42:11.640And we toured this museum in late June of 2018.
00:42:14.840So now I've been working with this guy for a year, right?
00:42:17.620Getting together, talking with them, you know, getting to know him, letting him get to know me, et cetera.
00:42:21.800So he's going to marry, uh, that clans lady in a few weeks after the museum tour.
00:42:36.520The, the girl is from, uh, is from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
00:42:40.340And her father was too ill to, to come up this way to, uh, do the fatherly duty by walking his daughter down the aisle and giving her away.
00:42:48.280Rather than ask, um, some of, some of their trusted, uh, clansmen in that group.
00:59:04.520That that scene, that eight or nine minute scene that you saw in the movie, it went on for about an hour and it almost culminated in physical violence.
00:59:11.260You know, that's how passionate, you know, some people were about.
00:59:13.720Well, yeah, because the next guy came in, he refused to shake your hand.
01:00:15.840I believe individuals are behind the system because the system does not run by itself.
01:00:20.120It's put together by by individuals who run the you know, who program the system and make it systemic.
01:00:26.320So when you put somebody, you know, you know, if you have a racist boss, then everything that trickles down is going to reflect that.
01:00:33.680So when you when you get somebody else in the top position, you vote them in or elect them in or whatever, then that changes what happens down below.
01:00:46.860But the important thing is that we need to work together.
01:00:51.360What about somebody who says what you're doing is teaspoons in the ocean, you know, taking out one person at a time?
01:01:00.400Well, yeah, you know, any time you change one person, it changes a generation.
01:01:05.380You know, if you could change one police officer, that would help because he might help change the culture of another one.
01:01:10.700You know, so you're not going to change the whole department.
01:01:12.660You know, you know, what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd reflected on the whole department.
01:01:20.820OK, but had somebody tried to address Derek Chauvin, who already had 18 complaints against him, maybe if one of those complaints had been addressed instead of ignored, George Floyd might still be alive.
01:01:33.400So, you know, one person can make a difference.
01:01:36.580Suppose suppose Dylan Roof was one of the people that I sat down and talked with before the Charleston, South Carolina incident.
01:01:48.680So there are those who appreciate what I do.
01:01:51.240And then there are those who want to rip me a new one.
01:01:53.180Can I just can I just round back and say, I see the news media taking a tape and putting it on loop and leading people to believe like that one guy said to you in that clip every minute black men are being killed by police in this country.
01:02:09.560And I know that you you're an honest broker on this because I saw, you know, you've interviewed cops trying to get to the bottom of how what does the problem actually look like?
01:02:16.860And I respect what you've been doing, but I I think we have to be honest about what the problem really is.
01:02:23.280And the problem is not that black men are getting killed every minute and certainly not even when it comes to unarmed shootings of police by black men.
01:02:34.260In 2020, it was 18 out of 10 million arrests, 300 million contacts between police and people out there.
01:02:42.900So it's, you know, you're your chances of being killed by a police officer as an unarmed black man are infinitesimal.
01:02:51.740If you if you sort of look at, you know, the number of contacts that police have with with individuals out there.
01:02:59.240No, I hear exactly what you're saying.
01:03:02.260Now, there is there is a lot of racism on many police forces, even right here in affluent Montgomery County, where I live, Montgomery County, Maryland.
01:03:11.120And, you know, we we see incidents of it.
01:03:16.460I'm not out there dealing drugs or shooting people or, you know, committing whatever transgressions against the law.
01:03:22.260But I've been victimized by by racist cops, you know, and and I, you know, I have filed 11 complaints with internal affairs against against the police.
01:03:36.580Like what kind of things have happened to you?
01:03:38.040Um, I I've been I've been pulled out of my vehicle, have my vehicle search for no reason because I had dark windows on my van.
01:03:47.640I'm a band and all my band guys are in the band.
01:03:51.340You know, they're I mean, they're in the van and and they make us wait while they call the canine unit.
01:03:56.200And we all have to get out and let the dog run through the van, sniff up and down the seats and sniff through our amplifiers and drum kit and my keyboard looking for and then they and then they don't find any.
01:04:05.660And then they say, oh, you know, we're just conducting, you know, a training for the dog.
01:04:09.980No, you don't conduct training for the dog on civilians on the highway.
01:05:11.180Oh, but you know, I see this is now like you're getting to it, right?
01:05:15.040Because I, I know, I know just from speaking in particular to black male friends that they do get pulled over.
01:05:23.520But their experience of being pulled over, of being harassed, of being mistreated by police, you can't compare it to what somebody like me experienced.
01:05:39.320But it just doesn't compare to the average story of a black man in America.
01:05:42.560And I recognize that I think where we diverge, you know, I and Black Lives Matter and the facts and Black Lives Matter messaging is on shootings, on killings, which has become the narrative.
01:05:53.660They overstate their case to their detriment because the numbers are what the numbers are.
01:06:17.320And so the narrative gets corrupted when I think we should be talking about what about the things that happened prior to the shootings?
01:06:23.880Right. Like what about the I don't know how to describe it, lower end harassment, you know, less than death, harassment or prejudice or encounters between blacks and cops.
01:06:35.960And let's be open about the crime rate.
01:06:38.520And how do we get that down so that interactions are less and so that profiling happens less so that when a police officer sees a black man in the city, he doesn't have an instant reaction of that's the that's the group that commits crime.
01:06:50.820Yeah. But it's also, you know, Dylann Roof got to go to Burger King.
01:06:56.900Yes. But they said they were trying to calm him down.
01:07:14.500But you have to admit that nine times out of 10 where the serious problems happen, where the shootings or the killings happen, it's where a defendant of whatever color is resisting arrest, which I mean, I will say.
01:07:40.280I can tell you I can tell you a situation that I pulled up on one time where a cop had a gun pointed pointed at someone.
01:07:47.740And had I not been there with this lady looking at them, looking at him, that guy would have been shot and killed in the middle of the night on my way home from a gig.
01:07:57.540The fact that I was there and I was witnessing was what caused that cop to put that gun down.
01:08:06.140And I don't doubt that there are bad cops.
01:08:07.640And I hate having to be in the position of defending police officers because they really can get drunk on their own power and be absolute pricks.
01:08:13.460I mean, I think most Americans have experienced that, but especially black America.
01:08:18.660I am a, you know, a supporter of law enforcement.
01:08:22.040My father was one of the first black Secret Service agents in this country.
01:10:05.000If you snitch on your fellow officers, it will leak down to you.
01:10:08.760And what happens is, you know, let's say you're an honest cop and now, you know, you got a call, you had to go investigate something and you get there and people are shooting at you.
01:10:18.920You know, you get on your radio for backup.
01:10:21.380Well, of course, your name is, you know, goes across the air, your number or whatever.
01:10:25.000And the other police officers in the area, they know you're a snitch and they hear your name coming up.
01:10:31.020Then I'll come back you up or if they come, they're going to come very slowly.
01:10:35.320In other words, they're going to endanger your life.
01:11:22.820In fact, he was hurt many times and never became sullen, racist, bitter, just kept getting back out there and doing it and trying to improve the community.
01:11:33.040And I hate when they get demonized writ large because I think of Paul and I think about his colleagues and I think of how the risks they take every day and how dangerous policing is.
01:11:44.320And I just I think it's really unfair, the narrative that goes around about them.
01:11:48.980I don't believe that there are more bad cops than good cops.
01:11:52.800I don't know if I'd use the phrase bad apples, but I think we're we're being really tough on these guys who do a really dangerous job and and at great risk to themselves.
01:12:02.500Keep many black people, black women, black children safe in cities where black men drive up the crime rate and nobody else will protect them.
01:12:26.020Right. And there are honest cops out there.
01:12:28.000I'm not I'm not paying a broad brush across the department, but here's the problem.
01:12:31.760So a good cop who turns a blind eye trying to uphold the blue wall, turns a blind eye on one of his colleagues who's beating the crap out of somebody or shooting somebody or planting a gun beside somebody and then shooting him.
01:12:45.240You know, say I pulled a gun on me or whatever or stealing drugs or stealing money or whatever he does.
01:12:50.900When when that when that good cop turns that blind eye, that makes him complicit.
01:12:58.920One, we need some kind of mechanism where good cops, because, you know, most people don't go join the police in order to go out and do bad things.
01:13:53.320And you and you report on officer so and so down on the street.
01:13:56.760Believe it or not, the brass is going to leak that.
01:14:00.440And word word will come out that you told.
01:14:04.120And the reason the brass does that is because, you know, back when they were on patrol, they were doing the same crap.
01:14:11.420And it doesn't reflect well on them to have a department of bullies.
01:14:15.500Exactly. So, you know, these good cops need a mechanism in which they are protected from their own.
01:14:22.380And the other thing that they need is they need a national registry for bad cops, for cops who've been convicted or terminated for, you know, whatever.
01:15:05.500I mean, I've been saying in the schools right now, the parents who object to these insane teachings, some of which I mentioned earlier, they need to be given an anonymous way of reporting it, too.
01:15:14.380Because when it comes to, you know, saying, I don't want that, you know, people are so paranoid in this environment to speak out against something that they are labeling anti-racism that they keep silent at their children's peril.
01:15:27.700And, you know, not everybody's like a loud mouth, like some one half of this conversation and they don't want to do it.
01:15:36.660So let me let me switch gears and just end it with this, because I have to ask you about FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.
01:15:53.480So why did you why did you agree to do that?
01:15:57.340And what do you think why do you think this is a good organization that people should consider?
01:16:01.940What do you what do you like about their mission?
01:16:03.920Well, FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, I think it's an excellent organization because, I mean, you know, they're trying to promote, you know, equality and fairness that treats people as individuals rather than just, you know, some token of a racial group or something.
01:16:21.740I'm all about treating people, you know, people equally.
01:16:24.620And there needs to be more groups like this or patterned after this to do that.
01:16:31.200And when Byron Bartoning, you know, contacted me about it, and I had a long conversation with him on the phone as to what his mission was, what he hoped to do, it all lined up with, you know, what I'm trying to do out here.
01:16:44.960And so I said, hey, you know, let's, you know, let's do this together.
01:17:04.800Don't miss the show on Wednesday because we are going to tackle the latest in all the COVID nonsense and the interminable masks, despite being vaccinated, despite the risk of catching it being exposed is very, very low in schools.
01:17:23.840What's happening with our children who were hanging out to dry?
01:17:28.900Basically, every child under the age of 12 is going to have to be in a mask forever if we let these lunatics get their way and don't start pushing back.
01:18:23.600But what if you or a partner needs to step away?
01:18:26.480When the unexpected happens, count on Canada Life's flexible life and health insurance to help your business keep working, even when you can't.
01:18:34.660Don't let life's challenges stand in the way of your success.