30 Pieces of Silver Could You Not Stay Awake With Me One Hour African Art
For 30 years, Daryl Davis has spent time befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan. He says 200 Klansmen take given upwards their robes after talking with him. Courtesy of Daryl Davis hibernate explanation
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Courtesy of Daryl Davis
For 30 years, Daryl Davis has spent time befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan. He says 200 Klansmen have given upwards their robes after talking with him.
Courtesy of Daryl Davis
Daryl Davis is a blues musician, merely he also has what some might telephone call an interesting hobby. For the past thirty years, Davis, a black man, has spent time befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan.
He says in one case the friendship blossoms, the Klansmen realize that their hate may be misguided. Since Davis started talking with these members, he says 200 Klansmen have given upward their robes. When that happens, Davis collects the robes and keeps them in his habitation equally a reminder of the dent he has fabricated in racism by simply sitting down and having dinner with people.
Interview Highlights
On the first fourth dimension he befriended a member of the Ku Klux Klan
I was playing music — it was my first fourth dimension playing in this detail bar called the Silver Dollar Lounge and this white gentleman approached me and he says, "I actually relish you lot all's music." I thanked him, shook his mitt and he says, "You know this is the offset fourth dimension I always heard a black man play pianoforte similar Jerry Lee Lewis." I was kind of surprised that he did non know the origin of that kind of music and I said, "Well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play that kind of manner?" He's like, "Well, I don't know." I said, "He learned information technology from the aforementioned identify I did. Black, blues, and boogie-woogie pianoforte players." That's what that rockabilly, rock 'n roll manner came from." He said, "Oh, no! Jerry Lee invented that. I ain't ever heard no blackness human except for you play like that." So I'1000 thinking this guy has never heard Fats Domino or Little Richard then he says, "You know, this is the start time I always sat down and had a beverage with a black man?"
Daryl Davis commencement befriended a member of the Ku Klux Klan in a bar where he was performing. He says they bonded over liking the same blazon of music. Courtesy of Jonathan Timmes hibernate caption
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Courtesy of Jonathan Timmes
Daryl Davis starting time befriended a member of the Ku Klux Klan in a bar where he was performing. He says they bonded over liking the same blazon of music.
Courtesy of Jonathan Timmes
Well, at present I'grand getting curious. I'm trying to figure out, now how is it that in my 25 years on the face of this earth that I have sat down, literally, with thousands of white people, had a beverage, a meal, a conversation or anybody else, and this guy is 15 to twenty years older than me and he's never saturday downwardly with a black guy before and had a drink. I said, "How is that? Why?" At first, he didn't answer me and he had a friend sitting side by side to him and he elbowed him and said, "Tell him, tell him, tell him," and he finally said, "I'one thousand a fellow member of the Ku Klux Klan."
On his reaction on hearing he was talking a member of the Klan
I just flare-up out laughing because I really did not believe him. I idea he was pulling my leg. As I was laughing, he pulled out his wallet, flipped through his credit cards and pictures and produced his Klan carte du jour and handed it to me. Immediately, I stopped laughing. I recognized the logo on there, the Klan symbol and I realized this was for existent, this guy wasn't joking. And at present I'm wondering, why am I sitting by a Klansman?
But he was very friendly, it was the music that brought united states together. He wanted me to call him and allow him know someday I was to return to this bar with this band. The fact that a Klansman and black person could sit downwards at the same tabular array and enjoy the same music, that was a seed planted. So what exercise you do when you lot found a seed? You lot nourish it. That was the impetus for me to write a book. I decided to go effectually the country and sit down with Klan leaders and Klan members to observe out: How can you hate me when y'all don't even know me?
On what he says to a Klansman
The all-time thing y'all do is y'all study upwards on the subject every bit much as y'all can. I went in armed, non with a weapon, but with knowledge. I knew every bit much about the Klan, if not more many of the Klan people that I interviewed. When they encounter that you know about their organization, their belief system, they respect you. Whether they like y'all or not, they respect the fact that you've done your homework. Just similar any expert salesman, y'all want a return visit and they recognized that I'd done my homework, which allowed me to come back again.
That began to chip away at their credo because when two enemies are talking, they're not fighting. It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. If you spend 5 minutes with your worst enemy — it doesn't take to exist most race, it could be about anything...you volition discover that yous both have something in common. As y'all build upon those commonalities, yous're forming a relationship and as you build about that relationship, you're forming a friendship. That's what would happen. I didn't convert everyone. They saw the light and converted themselves.
On what the Klansmen thought when he asked them why they hated him
Initially, they feel that if you're not white, you are inferior. [They believe] that blackness people have smaller brains, nosotros're incapable of higher achievement. I'll give you an example of one. This guy was an exalted cyclops sitting in my car in my passenger seat. He made the statement, which I'd heard before, "Well nosotros all know that all blackness people accept within them a gene that makes them vehement." I turned to him and I'm driving and I said, "Wait a minute. I'one thousand as blackness as anybody you've ever seen. I have never done a carjacking or a driveby, how do yous explain that?" He didn't even intermission to think well-nigh it. He said, "Your gene is latent. It hasn't come out yet."
And then how practise y'all argue with somebody who is that far out in left field? I was dumbfounded. I'g merely driving along. He's sitting over hither all smug and secure, similar "See you accept no response?" And I thought almost it for a minute. And so I used his point of reference. I said, "Well, we all know that all white people have a gene inside them that makes them a serial killer." He says, "What do y'all mean?" And I said,"Well, name me three black serial killers." He thought well-nigh it — he could not exercise it. I said, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy. All whites. I said, "Son, you are a serial killer." He says "Daryl, I've never killed everyone." I said, "Your factor is latent. It hasn't come out yet." He goes, "Well, that's stupid!" I said, "Well, duh. Yes, simply yous know what, you lot're right. What I said was stupid, but no more stupid than what you lot said you me." Then he got very, very quiet and changed the discipline. V months later, based on that chat he left the Klan. His robe was the starting time robe I ever got.
Matthew Schwartz produced the audio for this story. Wynne Davis adapted information technology for spider web.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes