American Thought Leaders - Daryl Davis: Why I Befriend Neo-Nazis and the KKK

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

“At the age of 10, I formed a question in my mind, which was: how can you hate me when you don’t even know me? And now, for the next 56 years, I’ve been looking for the answer to that question.���The son of American Foreign Service members, Daryl Davis grew up in many different countries and was exposed to a variety of cultures, religions, and ideologies. He became an internationally renowned musician, touring and performing with the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and B.B. King. But a personal experience with bigotry at a young age made him curious about why people hate.“When I met this guy, he was a Grand Dragon. And he rose through the ranks to Imperial Wizard. And when he dropped out, because of this perception change and hanging out with me, he gave me his Klan robe and his hood,” says Mr. Davis.Today, Mr. Davis has made a second career out of befriending white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the Ku Klux Klan, helping over 200 of them to renounce their racist ideology.“People ask me: Daryl, why don’t you burn that stuff? No, I’m not going to burn it,” says Mr. Davis, referring to his Klan paraphernalia. “Yes, it is despicable. But it’s also a part of our history. And you don’t burn our history: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. You expose it, so it doesn’t happen again.”In this episode, we dive into Mr. Davis’s childhood, his passion for music, his encounters with the Klan, and the methodology he uses for helping them to renounce their racism.“The greatest weapon to combat racism, anti-Semitism, [and] all types of discrimination is the least expensive weapon known to man. It’s free, yet it is the most underused. It’s called conversation,” says Mr. Davis.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

And at the age of 10, I formed a question in my mind, which was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And now for the next 56 years, I've been looking for the answer to that question. The son of American Foreign Service members, Daryl Davis grew up in many different countries and was exposed to a variety of cultures, religions, and ideologies. He became an internationally renowned musician, touring and performing with the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and B.B. King. But a personal experience with bigotry at a young age made him curious about why people hate. When I met this guy, he was a grand dragon, and he rose through the ranks to imperial wizard. And when he dropped out because of this perception

change and hanging out with me, he gave me his Klan robe and his hood. Today, Daryl Davis has made a second career out of befriending white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the Ku Klux Klan, helping over 200 of them to renounce the racist ideology. People ask me, Daryl, why don't you burn that stuff? No, I'm not going to burn it. Yes, it is despicable, but it's also a part of our history.

And you don't burn our history, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. You expose it so it doesn't happen again. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janja Kellek. Daryl Davis, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking me. You've made a kind of a life project of speaking with people who are enmeshed in hateful ideologies and I guess inspiring them to step out of that. Tell me how you got into this. Well, it goes back to my childhood. I just turned 66 years of age.

But let's go back to when I was a kid. My parents were in the U.S. Foreign Service. So I grew up as an American embassy kid living in different countries every other two years and coming home in between. And my exposure to school was overseas, my first exposure to school. And my classmates were from all over the world. Anybody who had an embassy where we were assigned, all of their kids went to the same school. So this person might have been from Japan, that person from Nigeria, Russia, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, whoever had an embassy there. And because that was my first exposure to school,

that became what my baseline for school was. And when I would, this is in the 1960s, right? When I would come back home, I would either be in all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. And there was not the amount of diversity in our country at that time that we have today. So I was literally living probably 10 years ahead of my time when I was overseas because that multicultural environment in the schools had yet to come here and I couldn't figure it out. So one time when I came back in 1968, I was at the age of 10 in the fourth grade and I was in an integrated school. I mean, even though, you know, desegregation was passed

by the Supreme Court in 1954, four years before I was born, schools did not integrate overnight. You know, it took years, and even today in 2024, we're still dealing with some of that. So I was in an integrated school. I was one of two black children in the entire school. The school was first grade through sixth grade, and I was in the fourth grade. And there was a little black girl in second grade, so consequently all of my friends were fourth and fifth graders who were white. And several of my male friends invited me to join the Cub Scouts, which I did, and I was the only black scout anywhere in the area. We had a parade, and I was the only black scout participating in this parade.

Streets were blocked off, sidewalks filled with white people waving and cheering, until we got to a certain point in this route when suddenly, pow, I'm getting hit on my body with bottles and soda pop cans and just small debris from the street by just a small group of spectators off to my right on the sidewalk. I remember there being a couple of kids, maybe a year or two older than me, I didn't know them, and a couple of adults who I assume were their parents, I don't know, but they were throwing things. And having never had any precedent for this kind of behavior, my first thought was, oh, these people over here, they don't like the scouts. That's how naive I was. It wasn't until my scout leaders came running over, who were white,

and covered me with their own bodies and quickly escorted me out of the danger that I realized nobody else was getting the special protection. Why am I being targeted? I had no clue. And I kept asking them, why are they doing this? I didn't do anything. What did I do? I had no idea. And all they would do is kind of shush me and rush me along, tell me to keep moving, keep moving. Everything will be fine. So I kept moving. Everything was fine. They didn't follow us. And at the end of the day or the end of the march, they still had not answered my question as to why this was happening. And when I got home, my mother and father, who were not present at the parade, were cleaning me up and putting

band-aids on me and asking me, how did you trip and fall down and get all scraped up? And I said, I didn't fall down. I told them what happened. For the first time in my life, my mother and father sat me down. I'm an only child. Sat me down and explained to me at the age of 10 what racism was. I had never heard the word racism. I had no sense. My 10-year-old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me before, had never spoken to me, knew nothing of me, would want to hurt me for no other reason than this, the color of my skin. It made no sense. My parents had to be wrong because the people who were doing this to me in the parade did not look any different to me than my little white friends from school or my little white friends overseas, whether they were my fellow Americans or my little French or Danish

or Polish friends or what have you. Again, this was 1968, and a lot of things began happening with the culmination of the assassination of Dr. King. And I realized that my parents had not lied to me. This phenomenon called racism does exist. But what I did not know was why. And at the age of 10, I formed a question in my mind, which was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And now for the next 56 years, I've been looking for the answer to that question but through music somehow right because I kind of made a left turn I did not want me to be a musician yeah but but I mean you you

actually became a quite successful musician and this was actually important if I recall on your kind of journey to answer this question. Yes, indeed. You know, I saw Elvis Presley. I saw Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, you know, the pioneers of rock and roll. And I like that kind of music. I always liked music. I said, you know, that's what I'm going to do. Back in the 1940s, there were Jim Crow laws where you and I could not sit together at a concert, even if I was allowed into the building. I might not even have been allowed in in some buildings, right? But let's say you and I went to go see Glenn Miller Orchestra or Tommy Dorsey in the 1940s. We could not sit together.

There were seating sections with ropes and signs hanging over them that said, seating for white patrons only, colored seating only. We could not cross sit. If they crossed sat, they would be arrested. That was the law. That same law was in effect in the 1950s. But two things happened in the 1950s. One was the creation of rock and roll by black artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, and the popularization of it by white artists like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, and others. That same law was in effect, but the second thing that happened was when these people came out playing this new rhythm, this new beat. White kids and black kids could not sit still. They wanted to move. And they bounced up out of their seats and knocked over those signs. And they're boogieing

and dancing in the aisles together for the first time in American music history. All right. Police would come in and shut down the show because they were race mixing. That concert was over, done, in the middle of the song, boom, done, because they can't have that. So a lot of rock and roll concerts began getting banned from different towns, not just in the South, also in the North. And understand something. These kids, these white kids and black kids who were dancing together to this music, to this new beat, they didn't

even know each other. Because in the 1950s, black kids and white kids did not go to school together. So people, adults, city fathers, you know, managers, people like that, began blaming it on a communist plot. It was the devil's music. It was corrupting white youth. We've got to stop this rock and roll because it's integrating, you know, black kids and white kids. So, you know, we give a lot of respect and respect is due to a lot of the adult civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and many other black and white people who marched and demonstrated, did sit-ins and boycotts in order to bring white adults and black adults together. These rock and roll pioneers were achieving that with youth, white and black youth, with their music. So that's another reason why I liked the original form of rock and roll. Yeah, and so what did your parents say when you decided that this was going to be your focus? Oh my goodness, we went round and round. Because you know, my parents had taken me all over the world.

I met kings, I met emperors, I met presidents of foreign countries and all kinds of people like that. And they were hoping, you know, maybe I would get any job but a musician, right? And so, you know, I was more focused on the king of rock and roll rather than the king of Jordan or something like that. You ended up playing with Jerry Lee Lewis. That's what I remember. I did a lot of shows with Jerry Lee Lewis. The main one that I played with in his band was Chuck Berry. And oftentimes, you know, it'd be like a rock and roll revival. It might be Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, things like that. So I knew Jerry Lee very, very well.

But I played mostly, most extensively with Chuck Berry, and I had my own band as well. That's right. I was at an event. I think it was at a Minds event that you were speaking at. And you told a story which I thought was very powerful, which was one of your encounters with, well, one of your first, I mean, I guess, positive encounters with

the Klansmen. Why don't you tell me about that? Because I think it's a good place to continue here. Sure. So I majored in music, got my degree, and so I wanted to work full-time playing music. Well, around that time, a movie had come out called Urban Cowboy, and it had a lot of country music in it, and it was a big hit in the box office and theaters. So a lot of bars and clubs that were playing Top 40 and other genres of music, they switched their format to country. And so, you know, if you want to play music full time, you do what people want to hear. I joined a country band. I was the only black guy in the band, and usually the only black person anywhere where we played. Well, there was a lounge called the Silver Dollar Lounge in a town called Frederick, Maryland, which sits signs that said, you know, whites only, nothing like that.

But you know, you knew if you were black, you were not welcome. And when you go somewhere where you're not welcome and alcohol is being served, sometimes it's not a good combination. The band had played there before. You know, they were pretty well established in Maryland. I'd never been there.

I knew of it, but I'd never been there. And so now we're booked into the Silver Dollar Lounge. I go there with them. Of course, when I walked in, people looked at me, but they didn't bother me. And we played our first set of music. And on the break, I'm following the band over to sit down at the table. And I felt somebody from behind put their arm across my shoulder. And I don't know anybody in here, so I'm trying to see who's touching me. It was a white gentleman, 15, 18, maybe years older than me. Big smile on his face. And he says how much he enjoys the music and the band. He says he's never seen me before, but he's seen the band before. I said, well, yes, they played here, but I just joined. He goes,

this is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. And I was not offended by his statement, but I was surprised that given the fact that he is a decade and a half older than me, why did he not know the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis's piano style? And I proceeded to explain to him that Jerry Lee got it from the same place I did, from black blues and boogie boogie-woogie piano players. That's where that early rock and roll, rockabilly style came from. Oh, no, no, no, no. Jerry Lee created that. I ain't never seen no black man play piano like that, except for you. So I said, well, I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He's a good friend of mine. He's told me himself where his influences came from. He didn't believe that. But he was so fascinated with me, he wanted me to go back to his table, let's told me himself where his influences came from. He didn't believe that.

But he was so fascinated with me, he wanted me to go back to his table, let him buy me a drink. I don't drink alcohol, but I let him buy me a cranberry juice. He pays the waitress, takes his own glass, and clinks my glass, and cheers me. And then he says, you know, this is the first time I ever sat down with a black man and had a drink. And now I'm even more mystified because how can that be? At that point in my life, I sat down with literally tens of thousands of white people or anybody and had a meal, a beverage, a conversation. How is it that this man had never done that? And innocently, I asked him why. He didn't answer me. He looked down at the table, very quiet. And I asked him again. And his friend said, tell him, tell him, tell him.

I said, tell me. And he says, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I started laughing at him because I did not believe him. I know a lot about the Klan. And they don't just come up and embrace a black man and want to hang out and buy him a drink and converse. It doesn't work that way. And so I figured, okay, this guy's joking. I'm going along with the joke.

He went in his pocket, put out his wallet, and handed me his Klan membership card. I recognized the Klan emblem immediately, and whoa, this is for real. So I stopped laughing. It wasn't funny anymore. I gave it back to him, but we talked about the Klan and some other things,

and he gave me his number and wanted me to call him anytime I was to return to this bar with this band, because he wanted to bring his friends, right, Klansmen and Klanswomen, to see, as he put it, the black guy who plays like Jerry Lee. I don't know if he called me the black guy to his friends, but that's how he explained it to me. And so I would call him every six weeks and he would come. He'd bring Klansmen and Klanswomen. You know, they came in street clothes, not robes and hoods. And they watched me play. They'd come near the stage and watch me play the piano. They'd get out on the dance floor and dance. And on the breaks, you know, I'd make my way to his table, thank him for coming, meet some of them, thank them for coming. Two of them didn't want to meet me. They would get up and walk to the other side of the room when they saw

me coming, which was fine with me. So this went on until the end of that year. And I quit the band and I went back to playing rock and roll and R&B and whatever else. And then a few years later, it dawned on me, Darryl, the answer to your question that's been plaguing you since the age of 10, how can you hate me when you don't even know me, it fell right into your lap and you didn't realize it. Who better to ask that question of than somebody 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, who don't believe as they believe. Get back in contact with that Klansman and get him to hook you up with the Klan leader from Maryland.

Start with him and interview him and then go up north, go down south, go to the Midwest, go to the West and interview other Klan leaders and other members and write a book. Because no book had been written by a black author on the KKK from in-person interviews. So this sounds like a crazy idea. Tell me a little bit more about how this came to you. I mean, do you remember? Yeah. You know, curiosity. Because, you know, I knew a lot about the Klan. And I never heard of them buying a black guy a drink. So something's going on here. I need to find out more about this. But I also want to find out more about how can you hate somebody when you don't know them? Between my childhood travels with my parents and now my adulthood travels as a professional musician and lecturer.

When you combine those two sets of travels, I have played in all 50 states. I have been to 63 countries on six continents. And so that has exposed me to a wide variety of skin colors, ethnicities, cultures, ideologies, etc., religions. And all of that has helped shape who I've become. So it was just very foreign to me to talk to somebody who was judging me when he didn't even know me. Just all he saw was this, and he already has a different reality. You know, his perception became his reality. Where did that perception come from?

How can I perhaps alter it? So what, you reached out to him? Well, actually, I reached out to the guy that I originally met and got him to connect me. He did not want to do it. He feared for my safety. I said, give me his number and his address, and I will see him myself. And he only gave it to me on the condition that I not tell this guy

where I got his personal information. But then he warned me. The man's name was Roger Kelly, the leader. And he said, Daryl, do not fool with Roger Kelly. He will kill you. And I said, well, that's the whole reason I need to see him. Why would he kill me? I don't understand that. So, you know, for me, it was more, don't get furious, get curious. You know, try to understand, you know, where all this is coming from. What did you find? I found a lot. A Klansman or a Klanswoman is not stamped, or a white supremacist is not stamped from a standard cookie cutter. They come from all walks of life, all educational levels, socioeconomic levels. And I interviewed Mr. Kelly, and I learned, you know, he had a lot of false perceptions.

It stems from ignorance. And when I say ignorance, I don't use that term in the derogatory sense. I use it in the sense of unaware of, ignorant of, right? Ignorance breeds fear. We fear the things that we don't understand, those things of which we are ignorant. If we don't address that fear, keep that in check, that fear in turn will escalate into hatred. We fear the things that we hate. They frighten us. If that hatred is not stopped, that in turn will escalate into destruction. We get angry because we hate something, and next thing you know we want to destroy it.

So ignorance breeds fear, fear breeds hatred, hatred breeds destruction. We spend way too much time in this country talking about the other person, talking at the other person, and talking past the other person. Why don't we spend a little bit of time talking with the other person? Because the greatest weapon to combat racism, anti-Semitism, all types of discrimination is the least expensive weapon known to man. It's free, yet it is the most underused. It's called conversation. I say forget about the destruction. Sorry it happened,

but what's been destroyed is not coming back. The destruction is a symptom of the nucleus, of the root cause. Forget about the hate. Don't focus on that. That's a symptom also. Forget about the fear, another symptom. Focus on the root cause. The root cause is ignorance. And if you can cure 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 angry about and destroy. The cure for ignorance is exposure and education.

And my spending time with that man who had never, yeah, of course he's aware of black people and anybody else, but he's never spent time, been exposed to them on a social basis. And it was no skin off my back, a little bit of my time, right? And through that exposure, he got educated. And then his mind began changing that perception that he had of what a black person is a jewish person a gay person a muslim or whatever all the people he hated began to change and as a result he got out and and he when i met him he was what's called a grand dragon.

Grand dragon in Klan terminology is what you and I would call a governor, the head of the state. So each state that has a Klan chapter has a grand dragon. The national leader who oversees all the states, which you and I would call the president, they call that person the imperial wizard. When I met this guy, he was a grand dragon, and he rose through the ranks to imperial wizard. And when he dropped out because of this perception change and hanging out with me, he gave me his clan robe and his hood. Why don't I get you to just sort of show me the hoods that you collected, or the robes, I guess, that you collected.

Hoods and robes, yeah. So this is, and what happened? They're just like, I'm giving you this as a sign that I'm leaving this. Some, yes, some were going to burn them and throw them away. I said, no, no, no, no, give them to me. And I didn't know why at first I wanted it, but I just knew I wanted it, and now I know why. I'm going to start my own museum. Yes. And I didn't know why at first I wanted it, but I just knew I wanted it. And now I know why.

I'm going to start my own museum. Yes. This is the robe of an imperial wizard. You tell by the color blue, sometimes it's purple. And this is the Klan emblem that every Klan member uses on their robes, on their T-shirts or whatever, or the business card that the guy gave me in the silver dollar lounge and he oversaw all the states for his chapter this is what's known as the hood this is the hood this is the mask and members who want anonymity they don't want you to know

who they are they wear this mask which is attached with three snaps and or Velcro. If they don't care that you know who they are, they simply detach the mask, and the face is exposed under the hood. And this guy here, this was a Grand Dragon. Now, you have a choice. You can have a cotton robe, white cotton robe, with blue or purple adornments to signify your rank, or you can have a satin robe, in which case it would be all blue or all purple, and I have some of those too. Green is the color of the

Grand Dragon, state leader. All right, so you can have a white cotton robe with green stripes and green cape, etc., or you have a green satin robe. This guy chose a satin. You see, he wore two of these things, and he wore the American flag and the Confederate battle flag on both sleeves. Now, let me tell you about this fellow. This guy was the Grand Dragon of Maryland at one time, okay? And I remember him. I never met him, but I remember hearing about him on the news. He went to prison for four years for trying to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore. He continued running the Klan while in prison through his right-hand guy on the outside. Then he got out, took over the Klan again, and a couple years later he went back to prison

for three years for assault with intent to murder two black men with a shotgun. I wanted to meet him. What is going through his mind? So when he came out, I got to meet him when he came out. I wrote him letters in prison. He didn't know I was black until later. He sent somebody to check me out. I didn't know.

And they reported back to him, and he was all upset and wrote me some letter because, you know, he was cussing out Jews and black people. The whole, everything wrong with the world were the blacks and the Jews. Of course, you know, he thought he was talking to a white guy. And then he found out I was black and he wrote me and he was all upset. I was trying to trick him. I said, no, I said, I just don't walk around saying I'm black. You know, I'm a human being. So anyway, we got together and we spent a lot of time together. He was very vehemently violent and anti-Semitic and racist. Right.

But over time, he began changing because of those conversations. I don't agree with them. And they know that. But I allow them to be heard. I show them that respect. Understand, when I say respect, I don't respect what they're saying. I respect their right to say it. And in return, they treat me the same way, and it's a fair exchange. There's a fairness. Now, being a Klan leader, you don't make a lot of money. You might get a small stipend from the quarterly dues,

but not enough to pay your mortgage or your car note or whatever. You have to have a regular job. Grand Dragon, Imperial Wizard, these are just titles, like Boy Scout leader. His regular job, when he was in the Ku Klux Klan, and he was trying to bomb the synagogue in Baltimore, he was a Baltimore City police officer. He was not an undercover cop in the KKK gathering intelligence. He was a bona fide KKK member on the Baltimore City Police Force.

This is his uniform. When he and I became friends, he gave me the robe and the hood and the uniform and some other things because he knows I go around and lecture and I can show people. I got a couple other items here that I'll show you here this is a clan rally banner a flag that they use at their rallies or when they have their marches and it bears that that emblem that I showed you there and who gave you that others came from another clan group another leader all right And I also deal with a lot of neo-Nazis. And this came from one of them. And I've got a bunch of these. Like I said, I get them over

the years. So, of course, that needs no explanation. And these will all be going into my museum. People ask me, Darryl, why don't you burn that stuff? No, I'm not going to burn it. Yes, it is despicable, but it's also a part of our history. And you don't burn our history, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. You expose it so it doesn't happen again. I think everybody knows what this is. Now, people call this the Confederate flag.

It's not officially the Confederate flag. It is officially the Confederate battle flag. This is the flag that flew during the Civil War to preserve slavery. The flag of the Confederacy, the official flag of the Confederacy, is the red and white stripes with the blue square and the circle of silver stars representing each colony. Now, we see a lot of this flag flying in people's yards, on the back of their pickup trucks, and on their t-shirts and flag and caps and things like that.

Some people do understand what it is. Others don't. They say, oh, no, no, this is my heritage. It's not about hate. It's about heritage. That particular flag flew to preserve slavery. And if you go to a Klan rally, I tell you people, come go to a Klan rally with me and when you see one of those people with your flag, your heritage flag, you go up to them you tell them, hey that's not what that's about, it's not about this, give me back my flag. They probably won't give it to you, but if you do that I will come to your house, I will take your Confederate battle flag and I

will hoist it up your your flagpole for you. I have yet to your house, I will take your Confederate battle flag, and I will hoist it up your flagpole for you. I have yet to have anybody come and take me up on that offer. So let's talk about that flag for a second. We Americans went to war against Great Britain, and we beat Great Britain, which is why we celebrate the Fourth of July in this country. There are plenty of white Americans who are of British descent from Scotland, Wales, England, Ireland. And we love Great Britain. They're our friends. And they can go back there and find their third cousin removed and whatever else, right? But they don't run out and build statues to King George III or fly the Union Jack.

The loser does not get to fly his flag or build his statues on the winner's property. We went to war in 1941 against Japan when they bombed Pearl Harbor. There are plenty of Japanese Americans in this country. We treated them very poorly by putting them in internment camps when that happened. But they were no less American than we are. And they love their ancestry, but they don't run out and build statues to Emperor Hirohito and fly the Japanese flag. We went to war against Germany. The majority of white Americans in the United States are of German descent. That's the largest group. The second largest is of British descent. These Americans of German descent don't build statues to Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler and fly swastikas unless they're neo-Nazis or something. Guess what? The Confederacy lost the war. They need

to get over it. It strikes me that everything you're talking about requires dialogue. It would be very easy. Let's say I'm a very understanding person relatively on the spectrum that's out there. I know I've seen that in my life. I'm ready to give the benefit of the doubt, even sometimes when maybe people have told me I shouldn't. Right. But when I think about these Klansmen, I think, wow, this is something that I don't, someone that I might not really want to talk to ever. You did.

Right. someone that I might not really want to talk to ever. You did, right? And through that process, you facilitated something amazing, frankly. And you made a project. I mean, as I said at the beginning, you made a project of this. And this project has led to the formation of a foundation, a new foundation called the Pro-Human Foundation. And myself and a fellow named Byron Bartning are the co-founders of this new foundation. You know, we always talk about, you know, what we're against. I'm anti this, anti that. Okay, fine. But what are you pro? You know, so we have the Pro-Human Foundation. I am not an anti-racist. I'm not anti-racist. To me, the racist is the person, you know, the noun, right? I am anti-racism, the ideology. The ideology needs to be erased, not the person.

The person acquired that ideology. So let's not be anti-the. Let's be anti the message. Let's be pro-human. And these are people that initially I never believed they would change. Why would they? You know, they hate me because of the color of my skin. They went so far to take a blood oath to join a group. And when you do that, that becomes your family above and beyond all others. You go through a whole ritual to be in the Ku Klux Klan. I've seen these things. And now you're leaving and you're renouncing that group? You have betrayed your family.

And you've given your enemy your robe and hood and your flag? That would be like one of our U.S. generals taking off his uniform and giving it to somebody in ISIS or Al-Qaeda. So transformation can happen. And what caused that transformation? Not me saying, you're wrong, give me that robe and hood. No. Conversation. Exposure to people that they didn't know. And that brings the education out. They're being self-educated through that exposure. What did it cost me? A little bit of time, but no skin off my back. And look what I got.

And I got some friends out of that. Some of them even come out with me on my lectures and renounce their former organization. Some are working very hard now trying to get others out of that movement and trying to prevent young people from joining those movements. How many people have you helped pull out of these types of organizations? Over the last 42 years, I would say just over 200. Have you ever feared for your life in the process? Just strikes me as something that could happen.

I've been threatened before, sure. It's not on a daily basis or anything like that, but I've had my share. I still get them. I've had physical violent confrontations. To me, violence is not the first resort. But I've had to be violent. I've had to hurt people, put them in the hospital, put them in jail for putting their hands on me or trying to hurt me.

I'm not going to just sit by and let somebody beat on me now. Fortunately, those have been few and far between. But you realize that going in, these people do not like you. You are inferior. They are superior. That's the term supremacist. And they have to let you know that they are superior. And how do you do that?

You step on somebody and push them down. But I've even had some of those that I've been into a physical confrontation with, not all of them, but some of them come back to me and apologize and then have gone out. But there will be people on all sides, black, white, other, who will go to their grave being hateful, violent, and racist. You know, they'll probably never change. But I don't give up on those people. I just simply move them down my list of priorities and deal with the ones who are willing to sit down and talk. Even though they disagree with me and don't like

me, at least we can converse. And then I work my way down to the ones who are a little harder. But here's something else that's very interesting. Hate is exhausting. It's very exhausting. And when these people get out, they feel like a burden has been lifted and they can breathe, you know. And their lives become a lot better. And then those hardcore ones, you know, that call them a race trader and they sold out and so on and so on. They see that person, you know, blooming and blossoming and having a great life. Their ears become open and they begin wondering, have I gone down the wrong? Can I

get that? And some of them change that way through that vicarious situation, you know? That's fascinating. I never dreamed I would be doing this all these's fascinating. I never dreamed I would be doing this all these years later. I first started writing the book in 1990. And now I finished my second book. Well, finished writing it. It's going through the editing process right now.

But the first book came out in 1997. I started writing it in 1990, interviewing KKK people. And I had no intentions of becoming friends with these people or hanging out or anything like that. All I wanted from them was just tell me. How can you hate me when you don't even know me? And we part ways.

But over time, I would see them changing through these conversations. And so when you, you know, you're the interviewer, you're asking them questions. They will answer the question, but they won't reciprocate. They won't ask you. Like, you know, you might say, so, you know, what do you think of Donald Trump's policy on blah, blah, blah? And they say, well, I think, you know, and they'll give you the answer, but they don't say, well, what do you think about it? They're not interested in what you have to say because you are inferior. Nothing you can say is going to be of any consequence for them, right? So they have all the answers. But then over time,

you know, it always catches you by surprise because there's no, you know, time frame. It just happens randomly. Over time, you'll ask a question, so what do you think about such and such? And they'll say, well, I think, what do you think about it, Jan? And then it's like, whoa, this person actually asked me a question? I have some modicum of value that this person wants to know my opinion? That's when you realize you've broken through. The crack in the armor is beginning to happen.

I've had a number of people on the show who are what you would call detransitioners, people who have gone down the path of what's euphemistically called gender-affirming care. They've maybe taken some drugs, cross-sex hormones. They've been living in this ideological space of gender ideology for some time, and then they've left for whatever reason. They've chosen.

They transitioned and then they came back? Exactly. They went some degree down that road. Some people have had body parts removed or things like that. Some less. Some maybe it was just drugs and things like that. But they found that it wasn't good, and then they decided to what's generally called detransition. They went in thinking that this would help them. And then they found a community of people that were ostensibly very supportive. But the thing is, the moment that they leave,

and this is sort of universally the case, and everyone I've spoken with and also kind of read about, they get this kind of vitriolic hate that you were just describing. That's what occurred to me as you were... Right, because they went into a community that welcomed them as family. And now you are betraying us. When I help facilitate some of these... Well, I was going to use the word transition, but that's a different term these days, right? When I help somebody transition out of hate into normalcy, it's very, very important that you give this person When I help somebody transition out of hate into normalcy, right,

it's very, very important that you give this person support because they're swinging in the wind. They've left their clan family. They betrayed them. They can't go back, right? And if their biological family disowned them because they weren't involved in that kind of stuff, they don't want them. Or if their involved in that kind of stuff, they don't want them. Or if their biological family is in the Klan, they don't want them. So they're out here

swinging in the wind by themselves with nothing. And they want to belong to something. So chances are they're going to go find some other kind of group. If it's not the Klan, it might be the neo-Nazis. It might be some religious culture, whatever, satanic worshipers, whatever. All right. They want to belong to something. So it's important for you to be an anchor there to help them reenter society on a normal basis. Otherwise, they will fall. It's like an alcoholic.

When they decide they want to stop, they need some kind of support, whether it's AA or some other thing, you know, that's where the pro-human foundation comes in. This is what we do. I'm not saying, you know, let them slide, okay, by any means, you know, you've done something wrong, you know, you got to be accountable and responsible for it, but it's how you approach them. If they think you're there to change them, not going to happen. You cannot change somebody's reality. And if you try to change their reality, even if it's not real, you know it's not real, but to them it's real. So they only know what they know. And if it's real to them, it's a lost cause for you to try to change their

reality. Don't ever attempt to do that. They will push back. And if you push harder, it's a lost cause for you to try to change their reality. Don't ever attempt to do that. They will push back. And if you push harder, it's going to escalate, maybe even beyond yelling and screaming, maybe even to the point of physical violence. What you want to do is understand that one's perception is one's reality. Whatever somebody perceives becomes manifest as their reality. So if you want somebody's reality to change, you have to offer them a better perception or better perceptions, plural. And if they resonate with one of those perceptions, they then will change their own reality. Well, because really what you're saying, give them the opportunity to broaden their perspective on actual reality. Precisely.

Precisely. You know, I lived 10 years in Africa. I lived in Europe, visited many other countries in between. And as a kid in elementary school, whenever I'd come back home here to the States, you know, you go around the classroom, you know, where you're from, where'd you come from, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm an American. But, you know, I you're from, where'd you come from, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm an American, but, you know, I just got back from Africa. My fellow classmates would ask me, and they were serious, did I ever see Tarzan? Because that's their perception of Africa.

You know, they don't picture tall buildings and houses and cars. They picture, you know, wild animals running through your backyard and mud huts and straw. Do those exist? Yeah, they exist. Okay. Do trailer parks exist in this country? Yeah, they exist. We don't show them in our tour guide, but they exist. Okay. But one's perception is one's reality. So you've been to Africa? Yeah. Did you see Tarzan? You get lions in your backyard, you know, all that kind of crazy stuff. And these are kids and they're being honest. You know, that's their perception. You know, when I was a little kid, there was a mythical place which represented some place very far out. It was called Timbuktu. Timbuktu, you know, I'm going to knock you into Timbuktu. Right. Meaning, you know, you into Timbuktu, right?

Meaning you're going so far, you're never coming back. Timbuktu does exist. I've been there. It's in the country of Mali on the west coast of Africa. I went there. I lived in Dakar, Senegal, Conakry, Guinea, and Accra, Ghana on the west coast. So we visited other countries, went to Mali. And back then, you could not drive into Timbuktu.

You know, you drive your car a certain distance, but then you had to walk into the village. But, yeah, it does exist. And I tell people I've been to Timbuktu, and they don't believe me. Even when what someone seems to represent is beyond the pale, you have to try. And always don't say you or I. Say we. So in other words, if I want to say something to somebody about one of my experiences,

I wouldn't say, well, I look at it like this, or you look at it like that. I would say, why don't we look at it like this for a second? I would say we and us. Even though you may be on the worse of terms, include them. And guess what? It begins to wear on them, and they begin to shed their animosity. And next thing you know, they'll be using that. Well, if we look at it like this, oh, he caught on.

Now he's calling me we. What would you say was the most dramatic change that you've seen happen in your process of trying to connect with people? I walked a Klan bride down the aisle and gave her away to her clan leader husband. Seeing them come out of these organizations, the one I mentioned, Roger Kelly, he oversaw 13 states as an imperial wizard. When he left the clan, he didn't just quit and hand it over to his second in command. He shut it down. He shut down all his chapters in those 13 states. Now somebody else might come along and try to reboot it,

but they can't use that particular name. And just seeing somebody give a person that they hated their uniform, their badge of honor. It's just incredible. I think the work you've done is pretty inspirational. I'm just a rock and roll piano player. I'm not a sociologist or a psychologist. If I can do it, anybody can do it. But you have to know how to do it without allowing yourself

to get triggered by somebody who doesn't know you. And see, that's where we fall short. I don't get triggered because somebody tells me I'm stupid and I'm inferior, who just met me and all they saw was this. Why would I be offended by that? They don't know me. They're just spewing stuff from their perception. So I'm not going to be offended by a lie.

So what would be your advice to folks that are having, you know, they're seeing intolerance around them? Never give up on having conversation. Don't force it on people. I know people, and you do as well I'm sure, who say, you know, I'm not going to Thanksgiving dinner with my family because my brother voted for so-and-so and I voted for this one and we just can't talk doesn't matter who becomes president whoever becomes president is only going to be there for a minimum of four years a maximum of eight years how long have you been with your family decades you're going to throw away decades of a relationship over somebody who's only going to be around from four to eight years?

If I can go to a KKK rally and talk to people, you can't sit down at your Thanksgiving dinner table and talk to one of your siblings or your parents. You know, juxtapose that. That helps them have another perspective. Well, Darrell Davis, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. It's my pleasure. I hope we can do it again sometime. Thank you all for joining Darrell Davis and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm