The Joe Rogan Experience - #1419 - Daryl Davis

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Daryl Davis is an R&B and blues musician, activist, author, actor and bandleader. He also is the author of "Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man's Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan".

Two, one, good. Hello, Daryl. Hey, Joe. How are you doing? My pleasure. Thank you for being here. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you.

I read your story. I saw a thing about you on NPR, and it's crazy. You've converted how many people? 200 KKK members? You've got them to drop their robes? Right. Some directly, some indirectly, yes yes how did that all happen wow uh you know i keep running into these guys i'm a musician by trade right blues musician right rock and roll blues swing jazz my degree's in jazz but hey i'll i'll play whatever you want me to play. You're paying, I'm playing.

So everybody likes music, even the KKK. So use that to my advantage. I was playing in a bar one night in Frederick, Maryland, an all-white bar. And when I say all-white, I don't mean that blacks couldn't go in. What I mean is that blacks chose not to go in. They weren't welcome. And here I was in this bar with this country band, a friend of mine's band.

I was the only black guy in the band, the only black guy in the bar. And upon finishing the first set, I'm walking to the band table, and somebody came up and put their arm around my shoulder. I turned around to see who it was. It was a white gentleman, maybe 15, 18 years older than me. And he says, yeah, yeah, I really enjoy your all's music. I said, thank you. And he pointed at the stage and said, you know, I've seen this here band before, but I ain't never seen you before.

Where'd you come from? And I explained, yeah, you know, they told me they played here before, but this is my first time in this place. I just joined the band. And he said, well, man, I really like your piano playing. This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. And I wasn't offended, but I was rather surprised because, as I said, this guy's maybe 15 years older than me. And he did not know the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis' style of piano playing. I explained it to him. I got it from the same place Jerry Lee did from black blues and boogie-woogie piano players. Well, the guy was incredulous.

Oh, no, no, no. Jerry Lee invented that. I had never heard no black man play like that except for you. So I'm thinking, okay, well, this guy never heard of Little Richard or Fast Domino. And I said, look, man, I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He's a friend of mine. He's told me himself where he learned how to play. The guy did not buy that I knew Jerry Lee. He didn't buy that Jerry Lee learned anything from black people. But he was so fascinated that he wanted to buy me a drink. I was like a novelty to him. So I went back to his table. I had a cranberry juice.

And then he announces, this is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a black man. And now I'm the one who's incredulous. Like, how can that be? You know, I'd sat down with thousands of white people and everybody else had a meal, a beverage, a conversation. How is it this guy had never done that?

And innocently, I asked him. I said, why? He didn't answer me at first. He stared down at the tabletop. And I asked him again. And his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him in the side and said, tell him, tell him, tell him. I said, tell me. I'm trying to figure out what is this mystery.

He looks at me just as plain as day. And he says, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Well, I burst out laughing. You know, because it was getting weirder by the second half. And I knew a lot about the Klan. I'd been studying racism since I was a 10-year-old kid because of an incident that happened to me back then. And I bought books on black supremacy, white supremacy, the KKK, the Nazis, the neo-Nazis, to try to understand this mentality.

And I knew a Klansman would not come up and just throw his arm around some black guy's shoulder and praise his talent and want to hang out with him and buy him a drink. So this guy is jerking me around. So I'm laughing, and he goes inside his pocket and pulls out his wallet and produces his Klan membership card. They have cards? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he gave me his card.

I looked at it. And I recognized the Klan insignia, which is a red circle with a white cross and a red blood drop in the center of the cross. And I realized, oh, man, this thing's for real. So I stopped laughing. It wasn't funny anymore. And I gave it back to him. And we chatted about the Klan and different things. But the dude gave me his phone number and wanted me to call him whenever I was to return

to this bar so he could bring his friends, meaning Klansmen and Klanswomen, to see this black guy play like Jerry Lee. I'm not sure he called me a black guy to his friends, but I said, I'll call you. So I would call him every six weeks on a Wednesday or Thursday and say, hey, man, we're down at the Silver Dollar Friday and Saturday. Come on out. He'd come out both nights, and he'd bring Klansmen and Klanswomen, and they'd come and gather around the bandstand and watch me play the piano or get out there and dance to our music.

Now, they didn't come in robes and hoods, right? They came in street clothes. And on the break, I would go to his table and say hello. Some of them were very curious. They'd hang out there and want to meet me and talk to me. Others would see me coming and get up and take off and go stand some other part of the room where it's like, I just want to see you. I don't want to deal with you kind of thing. So that was fine. And I decided later on I would write a book because I'd been looking for an answer to a question that I had formed when I was age 10.

My question was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And this was a result of having marched in a Cub Scout parade at the age of 10, being the only black scout in this parade. And while most people on the streets and sidewalks were cheering us, we were marching from Lexington to Concord, Massachusetts to commemorate the ride of Paul Revere. And people were like waving flags and yelling and screaming, the British are coming, and all a good time, except for one small pocket of people who were throwing rocks and bottles at me. And at age 10, my first thought was, oh, those people over there don't like the scouts.

That's how naive I was. It wasn't until my den mother, my cub master, my troop leader all came rushing over and huddled over me with their bodies, these white people, and escorted me out of the danger that I realized I was only target because nobody else was getting this protection. And these were adults or these were other children? These were a couple. It was maybe about five people. I remember there being a couple of kids, maybe my age, a year older, and some adults.

Adults were throwing rocks and bottles at a 10-year-old boy. That's correct. Yeah. Wow. And, you know, I kept saying to my scout leaders, I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything because now I'm trying to find out what did I do? Right. You know, why are they doing this to me?

Right. And they kept, you know, shushing me, telling me to hurry up and move along. It'll be okay. So they never answered the question as to why this was happening. and telling me to hurry up and move along. It'll be okay. So they never answered the question as to why this was happening. When I got home that day after this parade,

my mother and father, who were not there, were putting the cure chrome and Band-Aids on me and asking me how did I fall down and get all scraped up. I told them I didn't fall down. I told them exactly what had happened. And for the first time in my life, my mom and dad sat me down and explained to me what racism happened. And for the first time in my life, my mom and dad sat me down and explained to me what racism was. At the age of 10, I had never heard the term racism. Now- What year was this?

1968. Okay. I'll tell you why. Because my dad was a U.S. Foreign Service. So we spent a lot of time overseas. Every two years, you go to a country, you're there for two years, come back home for a few months, and then you get reassigned to another country. So when I was overseas in elementary school, my classes were filled with kids from all over the world. Anybody who had an embassy in those countries, all those embassy kids went to the same school. My class was full of kids from Nigeria, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, you name it. If you were to open the door to my classroom and stick your head in, you would say, this looks like the United Nations of little kids, because that's exactly what it was. And we all got along.

This looks like the United Nations of little kids because that's exactly what it was. And we all got along. Then I would come home after that two-year assignment, and I would be in either all black schools or all white schools. I'm sorry, all black schools or all black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated schools. And there was not the amount of diversity in my classroom that I had overseas. Today you walk into a classroom, you know, you can't tell where people are from, from all over. So literally, between 1961 and like 1968, 1970,

I was living about 12 years into the future when I was living overseas. Because that multicultural scene had yet to come to this country. And when it did, of course, I was already prepared. Unfortunately many of my peers were not. So I didn't experience racism had I lived here my whole life. I might have had a different perspective and not taken this path.

So I was very curious about it and fascinated with it. Like, how can somebody hate you when they don't even know you? It was just beyond my comprehension. And I knew something was wrong because the people who did this to me did not look any different than my little French friends, my Swedish friends, or my fellow Americans from the embassy, or for that matter, my fellow Americans right there, you know, at the school where I went, where we did the march. So I knew it wasn't a color thing. In fact, when my parents told me this, I did not believe my parents. I thought for some reason my parents are lying to me,

I thought for some reason my parents are lying to me because my 10-year-old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me, had never spoken to me, knew nothing about me, would want to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin. So I did not believe them. Well, a month and a half later, that same year, 1968, on April the 4th, Martin Luther King was assassinated. And I remember it very well. We were in Massachusetts, same place, and nearby Boston, Washington, D.C., my hometown, Chicago, Illinois, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Richmond, LA, all burned to the ground with violence and destruction, all in the name of this new word that I had learned called racism. And so then I realized my parents had told me the truth. This phenomenon called racism does exist, but why? I didn't understand why.

Okay, so it's here, but why? And so that's when I formed that question. How can you hate me when you don't even know me? And so I've been looking for the answer to that question now for 51 years I'm 61 years old so after I

met this Klansman, oh maybe I don't know, three or four months later I quit that band and went back to playing rock and roll and blues and R&B and then it dawned on me Daryl, you know the answer that you've been seeking since age 10

fell right into your lap who better to ask that question of how can you hate me when you don't even know me than to ask it of somebody who would go so far as to join an organization whose whole premise has been hating people who do not look like them and who do not believe as they believe. And this organization has been around for over 100 years.

Somebody who would go that far to join the KKK should damn sure have an answer to your question. So get back in contact with that guy. And why don't you write a book? Because I had every book, I still do, every book written on the Klan. And they all were written by white authors, obviously because a white author would have less fear of ramifications talking to a

Klansman or interviewing them, who would have easier access or could join the Klan undercover, get the story, get out and write about it. So my book became the first book ever written by a black author on the Ku Klux Klan from the perspective of sitting down face to face. I decided I would go around the country, interview Klan leaders there in Maryland where I live, up north, down south, midwest, and west. And I said I would start right there in Maryland. So I got a hold of that guy, and I wanted him to introduce me to the Klan leader from Maryland.

What was his reaction? Do you mind grabbing the microphone and just pull it a little closer to you? There you go. Okay. Perfect. What was his reaction when you called him up and said, hey, I want to know

what makes you guys tick? Like, why are you doing this? Well, actually, it's a little funnier than that. The... I... I found the guy's number, you know, from the bar

from the Silver Dollar Lounge. And I called it. This was like months later. And it had been disconnected. So I had to track him down. It turned out he had moved. He didn't have a phone. But I was able to get an address.

And so I had no way of, you know, letting him know I'm going to come over and talk to you. So I showed up at his apartment one evening and knocked on the door. And I hadn't seen the guy in a while, right? He opens the door and sees me. He goes, Daryl, what are you doing here? And he steps out into the hallway and looks up and down the hallway to see if I brought anybody with me. And when he stepped out of his apartment, I stepped in. So he turned around.

He comes back in. He goes, what's going on? Are you still playing? What's going on? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm playing. But I need to. He comes back in. He goes, what's going on? Are you still playing? What's going on? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm playing. But I need to talk to you about the Klan. He says, the Klan? I said, yeah, you remember, right?

He goes, well, I was, but I quit. And he went into this long dissertation as to why he quit the Klan. So long story short, I said, I want to meet the Klan leader. Did he quit the Klan because of his interaction with you? No, not no. Actually, he lied to me. Yes, he was no longer in the Klan. But what happened was he said he quit because he didn't like their ideology.

I later found out in my research that, and I got this from the guy who banished him, the leader of that particular Klan group. Banished? Yeah, that's their term. They banish you. Okay. So every year, Klan groups, okay, first of all, let me explain the hierarchy of the Klan. Okay. First of all, let me explain the hierarchy of the Klan. Today, there is no such thing as the Ku Klux Klan. There used to be.

Today, there are many Ku Klux Klan groups, and they all are autonomous. They use the same name, Ku Klux Klan. You might have the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Rebel Knights, on and on and on. These are all separate Ku Klux Klan groups. They believe in the same ideology. They wear the same colors on their robes that designate their rank. They have the same secret handshake. What's the secret handshake, just in case? I'll show it to you.

Do we do it later? Yeah, we'll do it later. Oh, we can't tell people in case somebody shakes their hand and they don't even know? I can't reveal Klan secrets. Oh, okay. Serious stuff. Oh, yeah. Same passwords, everything.

They have passwords? Yeah. Hilarious. Understand, the Klan was formed in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. And it was formed by six Confederate soldiers who were of Irish and Scottish descent. And what they did was they borrowed the rituals or similar rituals and names and mystery from the Scottish Rite, the Masons. You know, Grand this and all that kind of stuff. Wizards and shit? Exactly. Precisely. Don't they have dragons? Yep. Yep. Okay. So here's, the Masons. You know, Grand this and all that kind of stuff. Wizards and shit.

Exactly, precisely. Don't they have dragons? Yep, yep, okay. So here's how the hierarchy works. All right, so like I said, over the years, Central split apart into different splinter groups of clan. So, and they all are rivals with each other. If you see a couple different clan groups out in public,

they will hold a unified front. But behind closed doors, they don't like each other. Yeah. We're a real Klan. They're a wannabe Klan. That kind of thing. Oh, that kind of thing. A lot of competition kind of thing.

Because they may have been in the same Klan at one time and something happened. Somebody embezzled some Klan dues or didn't get promoted, you know, whatever. So anyway, if you have a chapter of your particular Klan group in another state or in multiple states, you may then consider yourself or your group to be a national Klan group. Therefore, you must have a national leader who oversees all the states in which you have a chapter of your particular group. So we call our national leader the president. In clan terminology,

that person is known as the imperial wizard. Anybody who is prefixed with the word imperial means that person is a national officer, wizard being the top. All right, so imperial wizard would be like a president, and imperial claliff would be like a vice president. And you have secretaries, treasurers, whole nine yards. And then the next level down would be state, the head of the state, which we call the governor. That person is known as a grand dragon. Anybody grand is on the state level, state officer, dragon being the top governor. A grand claliff would be like a lieutenant

governor, and then secretary treasurer. And then within the state, you have counties. The county leader is known as the great titan. Anybody on the great level is on the county level. Within the county, you have districts, what they call claverns. And we would call a district leader a mayor, a councilman, alderman. That individual is known as an exalted cyclops. Exalted cyclops? So if you addressed him, you would say, sir, exalted cyclops? Yeah.

Wow. That's hilarious. So if you addressed them, you would say, Sir Exalted Cyclops? Yeah. Wow. That's hilarious. So anyway. Why Cyclops? That's the name they chose. I mean, when you think of a Cyclops, think of one of those guys with one eye in his forehead. Yeah.

But they have all these different names. And then below the Cyclops are just rank and file, plain white robe Klansmen and Klanswomen. So I wanted to meet the—I'll start in Maryland where I live. I want to start with the Klan leader from Maryland. Now, you could have several different Klan groups in the same state, and they are rivals with each other. And you can have chapters of those same Klan groups within your state. So this guy named Roger Kelly was the grand dragon for the state of Maryland for this guy's Klan group. And Roger Kelly at the time had the largest Klan group in Maryland.

How many members? They don't give out numbers, but Roger had probably just over 200, which is a very high number for that time period. Some clan groups only have 10 members. Some, you know, they have an internet presence, but it's only one guy sitting in his basement, you know, putting out something. But anyway, this guy, I want him to introduce me to Roger Kelly. I want Roger to be my first interview. And he was terrified. He said, no, I can't do it, Daryl. We both will get in trouble.

I said, but you're not in the Klan anymore. He said, it doesn't matter. I cannot take a black man to the Grand Dragon. So he was concerned, genuinely, for my safety as well as his own. And I said, well, look, why don't you give me Mr. Kelly's address and phone number? And I will go to his house and talk to him. And he would not do that. I begged and pleaded for 20 minutes. He finally gave me Mr. Kelly's address and phone number. Wow. On the condition that I not tell Mr. Kelly where I got it. And I said, okay. And then

he warned me. He said, Darrell. Well, that guy could crack under pressure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of them. Oh, I want to tell you why he got banished. Okay. But that's coming later. Okay.

He warned you? Yeah, he warned me. And he said, Darrell, do not go to Roger Kelly's house. He'll kill you. And then he said, there's a bar up in Thurmont, Maryland. Now, you know Thurmont, Maryland. You don't know it for the Klan, but that was one of their headquarters. You know Thurmont, Maryland because it's also the home of Camp David, the presidential retreat.

And the headquarters for the Klan is right down the road. That's hilarious. Yeah. And Thurmont at the time was an all-white town. Anytime a black person moved in or interracial couple or a gay couple, somehow, mysteriously, a cross would be burned in their yard. And boom, they'd move right out. Now, that does not mean that every person in Thurmont is in the Klan because they're not. In fact, most white people up there wanted the Klan gone.

But that's where it was headquartered. So he said there was a bar up there where they hang out every Saturday night. And if I go to that bar, I'm sure to find Roger Kelly. And, you know, unless they're out of town rallying somewhere. He says, but I don't guarantee you that Roger will even talk to you. But you're safer to approach him in a public place than go on his property. Did he give you a photograph of him? How did you find him?

No, no. I knew what Roger Kelly looked like because he was always in the newspaper, on the news, being interviewed, something like that. I never met him, but I knew his image. So he drew me a little map how to get to this place. And so it's on Saturday night. Let me turn that thing off. thing off. And he says, do not approach it on its own property. I said, all right. So I'm a musician. I'm working Saturday nights. I can't go chasing the Klan on Saturday nights. Just a hobby. Yeah. So at that point, it was a full-time

profession. I called my secretary who books my band. I said, you know, do I have any Sundays off? I figured Sunday's still part of the weekend. Maybe he hangs out there on Sunday, too. So she found me a couple Sundays. And I said, okay, I'm going to go find this Roger Kelly guy. She goes, well, I want to go with you. Now, here's the problem. She's white. Not that I have a problem with that. But a black man with a white

woman walking into a Klan bar. Right. Could be more of a problem. Yeah. You might find him sooner than you want. Yeah. So I said, you know, Mary, and she said, no, no, I want to go. I said, all right. You know, you go at your own risk. She said, all right. So we drove up there this particular Sunday evening. It's about an hour and a half from my house. And my guy gave me perfect directions. There's the place right there.

Boom. We locked the car, walk up these little steps. And I told her, I said, look, I'm going to walk in first. You walk right in behind me. If I turn around and face you, start running, and I'll be behind you. And she says, all right, let's go. So we walk in about 7.30 on a Sunday evening. The place was practically empty. I would say maybe no more than six or seven people in there. A couple guys in the back playing pool, a guy or two sitting at the bar. And the guy had told me this was a Klan bar.

And what he meant by Klan bar is the Klan doesn't own it, but that's where they hang out. And he described it to me that when you walk in the door, to your left would be a row of booths. And the first two booths closest to the door where you come in are reserved for the Klan. closest to the door where you come in, are reserved for the Klan. So I looked over there, and nobody was sitting there. So I'm looking around to see if I recognize Roger Kelly, and I didn't see anybody who looked like him, which did not mean that some of these people weren't Klan.

But I figured, you know what, and to my right was a long bar. Behind the bar was a mirror. And scotch tape to the mirror was a picture and an article from the Washington Post newspaper. It had a picture of Roger Kelly. They'd interviewed him about something. The NAACP was suing them over some kind of cross-burning ceremony or something. And I recognized the article. I said, wow. And there's a big Confederate flag on the back wall like you have the U.S. flag right there.

So I knew I was in the right place or the wrong place, depending on how you want to look at it, right? So I didn't see anybody who looked like Roger Kelly. I figured, you know, I drove an hour and a half to get up here. I don't want to go home empty-handed. But I didn't want to just walk up to somebody and say, Hey, excuse me, sir, are you in the Klan? So I said, Mary and I are standing in the middle of this bar,

basically looking stupid and not knowing what to do. So I said, Come on, Mary. Let's go over there and sit in one of those first two booths. Because if the Klan is in here, they will come to us. And then we'll know. And then we can ask them, hey, we want to see Roger Kelly. So we went over there and we sat down. Nobody bothered us.

Everything was cool. Eventually we migrated over to the bar. I chatted up the guy sitting next to me. Like I was lost., needed some directions. Very nice. Gave me directions. We failed. So we left.

The next morning, Mary walked out of my house. I gave her Roger Kelly's number Monday morning. I said, give him a call. I said, tell him that you're working for somebody who's writing a book on the Klan. Would he consent to sitting down with your boss and giving him an interview? However, do not tell Mr. Kelly that I'm black. If he asks, you know, don't lie to him, but don't allude to it. Don't give him reason to.

He'll be curious. She understood. And the reason why I did not want him to know that was, A, I figured, you know, if he knew that, he may not give me the interview. But if he agreed to do the interview, then obviously he would see that I'm black when he meets me. And he could decide right then and there if he wants to continue it or not. But I want him to see me first. if he wants to continue it or not. But I want him to see me first.

And secondly, if he agreed to do the interview knowing that I was black, he may have different answers prepared in the interim than he would have for a white interviewer as opposed to a black interviewer. So I wanted to be spontaneous, candid. So she understood, and she called him, and he agreed to do the interview. So we set it up for the motel above the Silver Dollar Lounge up there in Frederick, Maryland, at 515 on a Sunday afternoon. And Mary and I got there, oh, man, I don't know, several hours early. I gave her some money, sent her down the hall to get some soda pop out of the machine, put it in the ice bucket, fill it with ice, get it all cold. So, you know, I could offer Mr. Kelly a beverage, a cold beverage.

I had no idea what this man would do once he laid eyes on me and saw that I was black. Would he come in the room? Would he attack me? Would he walk away? You know, but in the event, I want to be hospitable. So she got the soda pop, put an ice bucket set on the dresser. Now, just by happenstance, the way the room is laid out, if you are standing in the hallway, in the doorway of the room, looking into the room, you cannot see who's in the room. You have to literally walk in the door and turn to your right.

And the room is You have to literally walk in the door and turn to your right, and the room is laid out back there. So there's no way you can know who's in the room standing in the hallway. And so I took advantage of that. I took the lamp table, took the lamp off, and put it in the most obscure corner of the room. I put a chair on one side for me and a chair on the other side for Mr. Kelly. And I had a little bag beside me, a little like duffel bag. And in my bag, I had a cassette recorder, blank cassette tapes, and a copy of the Bible because the Ku Klux Klan claims to be a Christian organization. And they claim that the Bible preaches racial separation.

Now, I've read through the Bible. I've never seen that in there. So I want to be able to pull out my Bible when he brings it up and say, here, Mr. Kelly, show me, please, in this King James Version, chapter and verse where it says blacks and whites must be separate. So I'm all prepared, right? Right on time at 515. Knock on the door. I'm seated there where you can't see me until you come in the room. Mary hops up.

And by the way, Mary's white, as I mentioned before. So she goes around the corner, opens the door, and walks what is known as the Grand Nighthawk. Nighthawk in Klan terminology means bodyguard, security. So a Grand Nighthawk. Nighthawk in clan terminology means bodyguard, security. So a Grand Nighthawk would be a bodyguard. Their names are so ridiculous. Cyclopses and dragons and wizards and nighthawks. Oh, it goes on and on. It goes on and on.

Of course it does. A Grand Clud, a Grand Clavey, Grand Magi, all kinds of stuff. Anyway, so the Grand Nighthawk, which means bodyguard to the Grand Dragon, like an Imperial Nighthawk would be the bodyguard to the Imperial Wizard, in so the Grand Nighthawk, which means bodyguard to the Grand Dragon, like an Imperial Nighthawk, which means bodyguard to the Imperial Wizard, in walks this Grand Nighthawk. He's wearing military camouflage. And on one side of his chest is that Klan emblem, that red circle, white cross, blood drop. On the other side are the initials KKK.

And embroidered on his barrette is said Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. And on his hip, he had a semi-automatic handgun and a holster. He comes in, and Mr. Kelly is walking directly behind him in a dark blue suit and tie. And when the Nighthawk turned the corner and saw me, he just froze. And Mr. Kelly did not realize that his Nighthawk had stopped short, and he slammed into his back and knocked him forward. And so they're stumbling around, regaining their balance, and looking all around the room. And I'm just watching them, and I could see the apprehension in their faces. You know, I could read it. You know, they were thinking, did the desk clerk give us the right room number?

You know, or is this an ambush, and what's going on here? I could read it. They were thinking, did the desk clerk give us the right room number? Or is this an ambush and what's going on here? So I stood up and I displayed the palms of my hands as to say, hey, I'm unarmed. And I walked forward. I stuck out my right hand. I said, hi, Mr. Kelly. I'm Darrell Davis. And he shook my hand.

He shook my hand. And the Nighthawk shook my hand. So, so far, so good. I'm doing well. I said, come on in. Come on in. Have a seat, please. Mr. Kelly sat down even better. And the Nighthawk stood at attention to Mr. Kelly's right. So any form of identification? I said, sure. I produced my wallet and I handed him my driver's license. He looked at me and he goes, oh, you live on Second Street in Silver Spring. Now, this had me a little concerned. Why is this man reading my street address? All he has to do is look at my name, look at my picture, match it up to me, and give me back my license. Here he is, I'm looking at my address. Is he going to come burn a cross on my lawn? What's up? So I did not want to let him know that he had unnerved me a little bit, but I wanted to let him know under no circumstances are you to come to my house

uninvited with any nefarious intentions? So I said to him, I said, yes, Mr. Kelly, that is where I live. And you live at, and I named his house number and his street that the former guy had given me. That way I was implying, hey, you know where I live? I know where you live. If you come visit me, I'm going to come visit you. So we're going to confine all this visiting to this motel room. So he smiled, he nodded his head like he understood. And I did not find out that day. It was several months down the road that I had been presumptuous. I had no reason to fear Mr. Kelly coming to my house to do anything stupid.

What had happened was one of his Klan members lived right down the road from me. I didn't know that. And Mr. Kelly would have to travel down my street to get into that neighborhood where this Klan member lived. He simply recognized the name of the street. That was it. Pure coincidence. So he wasn't trying to threaten you. No, not at all.

Not at all. So, you know, and today that same Klan member is in a federal prison. He'll be there for a long time. He would later commit a hate crime, which landed him in the federal penitentiary. So anyway, we got on with this interview. So, anyway, we got on with this interview. And within 10 minutes, Mr. Kelly let me know why he could hate people like me. Black people are inferior.

We are prone to crime. We're criminals. That is why there are more blacks in prison than whites. Now, that's a half-truth. There are indeed more blacks in prison than white people. It's not because we're prone to crime, like you said. It's because of inequity in our judicial system, where whites in the same predicament either don't get the same jail time or don't go to jail or whatever.

Anyway, so I'm a criminal. He also said that black people are lazy. We don't go to jail or whatever. Anyway, so I'm a criminal. He also said that black people are lazy. We don't want to work. While we prefer to scam the government welfare system, we're looking for handouts and freebies and all that, where white people, you know, they work, et cetera. And also, this book called The Bell Curve had just recently come out. Charles Murray. Yeah, you know the one. Curve had just recently come out. Charles Murray.

Yeah, you know the one. Yeah, very controversial book. Exactly. So he had jumped on that, and he said, well, it's a known fact. They say the world's biggest authority is they. You never see who they is, right? They say that black people have smaller brains than white people, And that's why their IQ is not as high. So I guess the bigger the brain, the more intelligent you are.

So now I'm sitting there listening to this guy tell me that I'm a criminal and I'm lazy and on welfare and my brain is smaller than his. What he was saying was indeed offensive. But here's the difference between me and most other people. I did not take offense to it. And I'll tell you why I did not take offense to it. Why should I be offended by somebody who knows nothing about me? He only met me 10 minutes ago.

He sees the color of my skin and has made this assessment. So why should I take offense to somebody who's telling a lie? I just let him roll on with it. Where did you develop this kind of clarity? It's very unusual to not be offended when someone's judging you instantly and saying disparaging things about everyone that looks anything like you just right off the cuff freely right in front of you how did you develop this clarity to just not be offended by that because it didn't make sense what he was saying of course so i figured

you know how can i be offended by somebody who's who's all twisted right you know, who obviously doesn't have the foresight to see that he's wrong. I want to learn more about this, where it's coming from. And so now, see, that's what usually stops a conversation. And then people get into combat. Yes. You know? And then it goes nowhere. So I was not offended by it.

So I didn't roll on with it. And then when he finished, you know, and he was proud of him, you know, explaining to me, you know, why the stance. I said, you know, well, Mr. Kelly, I mean, you know, I'm going to be straight up with you. I don't have a criminal record. I have never been on welfare. I've never measured my brain, but I'm sure it's the same size as anybody else's. He said, you said, whatever. And we'd go on. Well, every now and then the cassette would run out of tape, right?

And I'd reach down into my bag and pull out a fresh cassette. Or Mr. Kelly would pound the table. Mr. Davis, the Bible says. I'd reach down and pull out the Bible. Every time I'd reach down like this to get the Bible or the cassette out of the bag, the Nighthawk would reach up onto his hip. Right? Now, that was cool.

I mean, I got that. That's his job. His job is to protect his boss. He has no idea what's in my bag. That's a little distracting, though, isn't it? Well, yeah. Distracting though, isn't it? Well, yeah.

But, you know, I realize that these people are afraid of me. Right. Okay. So, you know, I have to be cool. I'm not afraid of them. Right. So I have to be cool, but be transparent. All right.

So, you know, he's doing his job. And just like, you know, when you get pulled over, well, you know, maybe you don't get pulled over as much as i do right by the cops at night but you know i can tell you right now you know when when when you get pulled over in a and a cop tells you to get your license or whatever and you it's in the glove is in the glove box and you reach he gets a little more tighter on his hand you know he's protecting himself so the nighthawk was doing that. And I got that. So, um, this kept happening. And, um, after

a while, he realized there was no threat in the bag. And I went in and out of the bag. Nighthawk didn't move. He was relaxed. Just over an hour into this interview, there was a sudden, a very quick, I mean, less than a second noise in the room.

It went like that. That was it. And it happened so fast out of nowhere that my ear could not discern what it was. It just came out of the blue. And I'm sitting closer than you and I are right now because the table is smaller to Mr. Kelly and the Nighthawk was here and Mr. Kelly's right there and I flew up out of my chair and hit the table

because my ear could not discern what the noise was I perceived it to be an ominous threatening noise and I knew, I knew for a fact that Mr. Kelly had made this noise. Where did it come from? Why did he make it? And how did I know that he made it?

I knew that because I didn't make it. So, you know, if you don't want to accept responsibility or you know you're not responsible, what do you do? You assign blame. Right. And so I flew up out of my chair and hit the table. And my mind was racing.

What did I just do? What did I just say to cause Mr. Kelly to go off and make some threatening noise? You know, I instantly put everything in perspective. We're enemies. He's the head of the Klan. I'm a black guy. And now I heard that former Klansman's voice in my head.

Daryl, do not fool with Roger Kelly. He will kill you. So I didn't want to die. In that split second, I had gone into survival mode. And when you fear for your life, that's what you do. What was the noise?

I'm going to tell you in a second. Yeah, it was just, that was it. And because it was unexpected and it was so short, I couldn't discern it. You know, I went into self-protect mode. And I couldn't hit the table. Well, when you fear for your life, as I said, you know, you-protect mode. And I came and hit the table. Well, when you fear for your life, as I said, you go into survival mode. And in survival mode, you can only do like one of four things. Some people, they just pass out.

They faint. Because the fear is so great, their brain cannot process it. And it shuts down. And they pass out. Other people, their muscles contract, and they get tense, and they can't move. And you can be punching them, kicking them, and they won't even be deflecting the blows. They're all constricted. That's called paralysis by fear, that you're too afraid to move. The third thing people will do is to run away

from whatever the fear is. And that is your best option. When something scares you that bad, take off. Separate yourself as quickly as you can from that fear. Put as much distance between you and the fear as you can. And that would have been my choice had it been an option. But it was not an option for me because you cannot outrun a bullet in a motel room, right? you cannot outrun a bullet in a motel room, right? So I was not armed. My secretary was not armed. The only person who I knew for sure who was armed was a Nighthawk.

You can see his gun right there. And I didn't know if Mr. Kelly had a weapon up under his suit jacket or not. All I knew was I don't want to die today. So I chose the fourth option, which was to do a preemptive strike. You get them before they get you. So when I flew out of my chair, I was going to dive across the table. I was going to grab Mr. Kelly,

grab the Nighthawk, and slam them down to the ground and take away the Nighthawk's gun. Whoa. No, it was going to happen that quickly. Okay. I think pretty fast. Sometimes a little too fast. But I'm glad I hit the table because I'm looking right into his eyes, trying to figure out, like, what did you do?

I didn't say one word to this guy, but my eyes had locked with his eyes. It was like I could see right through him. And I let my eyes do the talking. I knew he could hear my eyes. My eyes were shouting at him saying, what did you just do? Well, his eyes had fixated on my eyes. He didn't say a word either, but I could read his eyes. His eyes were saying to me, what did you just do? And the Nighthawk had his hand on his gun, looking at both of us like,

what did either one of y'all just do? Mary was sitting to my left on top of the dresser because there were no more chairs. And she realized what had happened. And she began explaining it to us when it happened again. The ice in the ice bucket had begun to melt. Oh, Jesus. And the cans shifted down the ice. Oh, my God.

That was it. So the tension was so thick that the ice in the bucket wasn't just like a normal... If there was ice in the bucket right now, it'd be like, oh, it's just noise. You were just on edge. Absolutely. And the cans were just falling down the ice.

And you'd been talking for an hour? Yeah. They'd been sitting there before Mr. Kelly came in. And we'd forgotten about it. I offered him a drink when he sitting there before Mr. Kelly came in. Okay? And we'd forgotten about it. Right, right, right. I offered him a drink when he first got there, and he said no. But what I was going to get to was, like, so you're talking to him for an hour, and

in that hour is the tension. The tension's not being alleviated at all. He's explaining everything to you. He's telling you his theories. You're being very calm and just letting him speak. Yeah. But you are still so on edge just being across from this guy that that sound. Right.

Because it came out of nowhere. Right. You know, it came out of nowhere. And I mean, yeah, you know, the tension had de-escalated, all that kind of stuff, as we got more into the hour. But I think, you know, we each were aware, you know, this is not a normal situation. Yeah. You know, black kind of clan leader. So, you know, each one was still, you know, a little wary of the other kind of thing.

Right. But we were mutually respectful. Okay. So then it happened again. And, you again and we began laughing. We began laughing, all of us, at how ignorant we had all been. I won't say that this was a learning moment but it was a teaching moment

and the learning will come later. What was taught was this. All because some foreign, an underscore highlight circle, the word foreign, entity of which we were ignorant, that being the bucket of ice cans of soda, entered into our little comfort zone via the noise that it made, we became fearful and accusatory of each other. So the lesson taught is ignorance breeds fear. We fear those things we don't understand. All right? If you do not keep that fear in check, that fear in turn will escalate and breed hatred because we hate those things

that frighten us. If you don't check that hatred, it in turn will escalate and breed destruction. We want to destroy those things that we hate. Why? Because they frighten us. But guess what? They may have been harmless and we were just ignorant. And we saw the whole chain unravel to almost completion. The last component being

destruction. It stopped just short of that. Had I pounced across the table and hurt one of them, or had the Nighthawk drawn his gun and shot one of us, that would have been the destruction. Mark drawn his gun and shot one of us. You know, that would have been the destruction. Fortunately, that did not happen. We did see that, that whole chain unravel to completion. Three years ago, on August 12th, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is like two hours from my house,

on August 12th, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, there was a lot of ignorance in Charlottesville. There was a lot of fear in Charlottesville. There was a lot of hatred in Charlottesville. And what did it culminate in? It culminated in destruction when a white supremacist got inside his vehicle and drove full force into a crowd of counter-protesters trying to murder them. He succeeded in injuring 20 and murdering a young lady named Heather Heyer. So that whole chain is there. If you want to solve this problem of racism, we need to stop focusing on the symptoms. Don't worry about the fear.

Don't worry about the hatred. Those are just symptoms. That's like putting a Band-Aid on cancer. You've got to go down to the bone and treat it at its source. The source of all this is ignorance. Ignorance can be cured. The cure for ignorance is called education. So you fix the ignorance, there's nothing to fear because you fear what you don't know.

When you cure the ignorance, you know something. There's nothing to fear. If there's nothing to fear, then there's nothing to hate. If there's nothing to hate, there is nothing to destroy. So we need to focus on the ignorance, and we address it with exposure and education and conversation. We spend way too much time in this country talking about the other person, talking at the other person, talking past the other person. Why not just spend a little bit of time talking with the other person? So, like I said, we carried on with the conversation, had a good time. Nobody got hurt.

Everybody laughed. And I thanked them, shook their hands, and they told me to keep in touch. I'm thinking, keep in touch. You guys are homies now. Yeah, yeah. But I did. I called them and said, hey, man, I'm playing in your county. Come out and see me.

How long did you guys talk that day? Oh, maybe, I don't know, two and a half hours, something like that. At the end, after the ice, did everything sort of loosen up? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the laughter and then did the conversation loosen then? The conversation loosened then. I mean, it wasn't like we all hugged each other. Did you offer any counter to the things he was saying, like Charles Murray stuff?

Absolutely. Absolutely. How did he respond to that? He said, well, you know, I don't know about that. You know, I know, you know, that these guys are doctors and da-da-da-da. You know, so he looks to authority. Of course. But, of course, if you find authority in the other direction, well, something's wrong with them.

So you take a narrative that fits your narrative. Confirmation box. Yeah. So, for example, he did bring up that the Bible preaches racial separation. And I gave him the Bible. I said, show me where. So I forgot now the exact chapter and verse, but I think it's in Leviticus. I'm going to paraphrase.

He pointed to this verse, and I read it, and it said something to the effect of, a lamb should not lay with a wolf. I said, well, if it wants to live. Yeah. What the fuck does that have to do with people? So I said,

what does that mean, Mr. Kelly? He says, well, it means that two different species should not lay together. I said, hold on. I said, blacks and whites are not two different species. We are the same species, two different colors. Oh, no, no, no, no.

You know, we're different species. So, you know, he takes what he wants and twists it to fit the narrative. Okay. So he, like I said, I thanked him. I began calling him. He came up to my gigs. He'd bring the Nighthawk. I'd invite him down to my house.

He came down to my house with the Nighthawk. Nighthawk would sit on my couch next to him. Sometimes Nighthawk would get bored, right, and pull out his gun and twirl it on his finger. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, I'm serious. What the fuck? I felt very comfortable with them after time. And so then at that point, I would begin inviting over some of my black friends, some of my Jewish friends, some of my other white friends.

Did you let them know in advance? Sometimes. Sometimes not? Sometimes not, yeah. Wow. What did they say when they come over and they see a grand wizard and a nighthawk? Or a dragon? Is he a dragon or a wizard? He was still a dragon at that point.

Okay. And sometimes they'd freak out. And my band, oh my God, my band. You know, I have a band van, so they all show up at my house, get in the van, we all ride to the gig together, especially if it's far away. And sometimes I want to stop at some Klan rally on my way to a gig. And so my guys say, Darrell, I'll just meet you there.

You know, I'm not going to ride with you. Jesus Christ. So this became a full-time project for you. Yeah, it did. how quickly did it escalate so it went from this you you obviously had some you were compelled almost obsessed to meet this guy and get to the bottom of this thing that had been bothering you since you were 10 years old and and because my relationship with him was really growing, it was turning into a friendship. I mean, you know, I'm not going to lie. I genuinely liked this guy.

And I could see him beginning to like me a lot. I did not like his ideology. But I saw the humanity in him. And he was seeing the same thing in me. We both want the same things. All right? me. We both want the same things, all right? And I began interviewing a lot of other Klan people from different areas, up north, down south, Midwest, et cetera. Some would talk to me, some would not talk to me, some wanted to fight me. I ran the whole gamut. And I put it all in

my book. Now, I would see him for, you know, like two years. He'd come down to my house or we'd go out and have lunch or dinner together. Wow. Yeah. But during those two years, by the end of two years, he was coming to my house by himself. He trusted me that much. No Nighthawk. You drive on down, right?

And by the end of two years, he had not invited me to his house. After two years, he got promoted from a Grand Dragon state leader to Imperial Wizard, national leader. At that point, he began inviting me to his house. Wow. Because now he was the man in charge, right? So I go to his house. I would see his Klan den where he'd have his clan meetings. They have a den at the house?

Well, yeah, they call it a den. It's a room. It's all set up with a clan altar and chairs. What's a clan altar look like? It's a table that has a clan flag across it. It has that big red circle with the white cross and blood drop. Then they have candles, things like that,

and a cross. And the cross has either candles on it, so it, things like that, and a cross. And the cross has either candles on it, so it's like a flame, or light bulbs. So anyway, and a sword laying across the table. I take pictures, take some notes. And then he began inviting me to Klan rallies. Oh. Yeah, yeah. And so I go to these Klan rallies, and they'd have this big wooden cross.

The wooden cross is wrapped in burlap. The burlap has been soaked in what they call Klan cologne, which is actually diesel fuel or kerosene. And the Klansmen and Klanswomen are all in their robes and hoods, and they have these torches. And the torches are lit, and they walk in a big, wide circle around this cross, which is in the center. And then either the Imperial Wizard or the Grand Dragon will shout, you know, Klansmen halt! And they'll all stop in place. Klansmen face the cross, and they'll all turn in and face the inner circle. And then he'll say, for my God, and they all repeat, for my God, and bow. For my race, for my race. For my country, for my country. For my clan,

for my clan. White power, white power. Klansmen approach the cross, and they all close in, and now they're all right there at the base of the cross. Klansmen approached the cross, and they all close in, and now they're all right there at the base of the cross. Klansmen light the cross, and they drop their torches at the foot of the cross, and whoosh, this thing is aflame. And they stand there and admire this burning cross, and then they give some speeches from the podium, and then they have hot dogs and hamburgers, and the rally is over. You know? And I'm sitting there watching this i'm taking pictures taking notes and where did it feel to be there watching all this uh it definitely felt different

but you know i knew what to expect pretty much because i read all these books yeah so you know i mean i know that's what they do at clan rallies crosses. Now, let me explain something to you that I learned. There are two times, two occasions upon which they set the cross aflame, as they put it. They have a cross burning and a cross lighting. The difference being, a cross burning is when they take a five or ten foot cross wrapped in that burlap soaked in kerosene and put it in your lawn because you're an interracial couple, you're gay, you're Jewish in a white neighborhood, whatever the deal is. That is meant as intimidation.

It's a warning. We know who you are. Cease and desist. Move out. If you don't, next time we come, we mean business. And they're just going to bomb your house or something. Okay. When they do that, that's called a cross burning.

All right, a cross lighting is when they do a 30 or 20 or 30 foot cross at a ceremony. And they parade around it and give a lecture. That's called a cross lighting. And that's what you went to? I went to the cross lighting. How often they do those things? As often as they want. Several times a year.

What do they talk about? Like when they have meetings? The future of the white race and what they want and several times a year what do they talk about like when they have meetings um the future of the white race uh you know and what they want you know and and what the constitution guarantees them this is a white man's land this land was built by white people the constitution was signed by white by white men this is their country you know uh immigration whatever the issues are that uh the browninging of America is a big topic. Or white genocide, same thing. When they say white genocide, they mean their race is getting smaller through miscegenation.

So these are the topics that they cover. It's pretty interesting. But check this out, though. Our relationship would grow and grow. And eventually, Mr. Kelly, you know. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. What do you got there? He began.

He began. Give you a robe? Yeah. Put this on and sneak right in. Yeah, he began. Don't take the hood off. Believing. Whoa, that's him right there in that photo with you?

That's him right there in his grand dragon robe. This is his imperial wizard robe. Whoa. Right here. He gave you his robe? Gave me his robe because he no longer believes in what it stands for. Wow. And how many years did it take?

There it is. How many years did it take before you, just by being around him and talking to him? For him, it was probably like around maybe six and a half, seven. Six and a half, seven years. Some, it's a matter of months, a matter of a year, two years. And so what do you do? Do you just talk? Is that the hat?

That's the hood, yeah. Oh, Jesus. And you see, this top part is the hood. and this lower portion here is what's called the mask. And members who want anonymity, they don't want you to know who they are. They wear this mask, which is attached by three snaps or Velcro. Just remove it. They don't care, and the face is exposed, as you saw in that picture. So what is it like?

You said you guys got closer. You said you became more and more friends. You started visiting each other. Did he ever say, I'm starting to think this is bullshit? Yeah, pretty much. How did he say it? He called me up one day, and he told me, I got something I want to talk to you about.

And I said, okay. He goes, you talk to you about. And I said, okay. He goes, you want to meet for dinner? I said, sure. So I drove up to Frederick and met him. And he sat me down. He said, you know, I'm quitting the Klan. I'm leaving it. And he's the top dog.

He's the top dog. He gave it all up. And here's the thing. He did a smart thing. He did a good thing. He didn't hand it down he shut it down wow

yeah did he convince the other people in the clan that they had the choice to do whatever they wanted to do a lot of them left then there were those who tried to keep it going but failed did he use you as an example when he was speaking to them?

They knew why he did it. He received some hate mail. He began receiving some hate mail from some of his own members anonymously. The same kind of hate mail that at one time he would send out to people anonymous would now come back to him. You know, you're in bed with Daryl Davis. You're a nigger lover. All that kind of stuff, unsigned. You know, you're in bed with Daryl Davis, you're a nigger lover, all that kind of stuff, unsigned. You know, the same stuff that he would put out to other people. And so he began seeing himself in the mirror, you know what I'm saying? So that was very crucial.

And I have repeated this process many times with different people. What is the process? When you're talking about the Charles Murray stuff, the bell curve stuff, how do you refute that? What are you saying to him? I'm saying to him, look, Mr. Murray, anytime you want to prove something, you find something that fits your narrative.

You can find some black person who has a very low IQ. Okay? If I work for Ford and I want to prove that my car is better than Chevrolet, then I'm going to find a Chevrolet that doesn't run very well. You know, I'm going to do it that way. So I refuted Mr. Murray's and his partner, the two guys who wrote the book, their documentation. And see, they go by things that they can see and understand. I'm going to give you an example of something that's going to help you understand. The Cyclops

was riding around in my car one day with me. He's sitting in my passenger seat, right? And we're driving. I'm driving along. And somehow we got on the topic of black crime. And he made a statement. We all know they say that, again, that they, authority, say that black people have a gene in them that makes them violent. And I'd heard that before from other Klan people.

That's one of their narratives. And the wild black savage kind of thing. And I said, what are you talking about? He says, well, who's doing all the drive-bys and carjackings in Southeast? He was referring to Southeast Washington, D.C., which is a predominantly black area. Some whites live there. It's predominantly black, very high crime ridden. I said, okay, it's black people. I said, but that's what lives there. I said, who's doing all the crime in Bangor, Maine? White people, because that's what lives there. I said, who's doing all the crime in Bangor, Maine? White people, because that's what lives there.

I said, you know, you're not even considering the demographics. He's like, no, no, no, no. You all have this gene, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, he's going to shut me down. And I said, look, he's right here. I said, look, I'm as black as anybody you know. I said, I have never done a drive-by. I have never done a carjacking.

How do you explain that? This man did not wait one second. He answered me like that. He said, your genius latent hasn't come out yet. How do you argue with somebody who's that far in the field, right? I mean, you can't even bite into that and chew on it, right? So I'm dumbfounded, and I'm speechless. I'm just driving along.

He's over here all smothered, you see, nothing to say. So I thought about it, and I said, you know, they say, I used his authority. I said, they say that all white people have a gene that makes them a serial killer. He said, how do you figure that? I said, name me three black serial killers. He couldn't do it. I said, here, I'm going to give you one. I named one for him. I said, here, just name me two. He couldn't do it. I said, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, son of Sam. Ed Gein. Henry Lee Lucas.

Ed Gein, right. Ed Gein and his crazy machines, the skin people. Okay. I said, son, they're all white. You're a serial killer. It's blatant. Yeah. And he said, well, Darry all white. You're a serial killer. It's Slayton. Yeah. And he said, well, Darryl, I've never killed anybody.

I said, you're genius agent. It hasn't come out yet. He goes, well, that's stupid. I said, well, duh. I said, you're right. It is stupid. I said, but it's no more stupid for me to say that about you than what you said about me. And he got very quiet.

But, I mean, you could almost see it, Joe. His wheels were like spinning. And he's thinking about it. And then he changed the subject. But within four or five months, he left the Klan. Wow. Based on that conversation. Wow.

And his robe was the very first robe I ever got. Wow. So he came to you and gave you the robe. He said that conversation with you? First he said, no, he didn't come to me and give me the robe. He called me and I was going to be up in that area. And he said, you want to get together? And I got together with him.

And he wanted to go over to the courthouse for something. He'd been in some kind of trouble. He wanted to go pick up something in the courthouse. So I gave him a ride over there. And he told me he was going to quit the Klan. You know, and he thought a lot about what I'd said. And I said, what are you going to do with your stuff?

He said, trash it. I said, no, no, no, don't trash it. I said, give it to me. And he says, you want my robe and all my Klan stuff? And I said, yeah. He goes, why? Why would you want that? I didn't know why.

But something told me, just take it, Daryl. Just take it. And I said, I don't know what I'm going to do with it. But I said, yeah, I do want it. So we went back to his apartment. Now, I'd never been in his apartment because I'd met him outside, outside in the driveway or whatever, the parking lot. And he said, come on in.

And so I'm walking up the stairs with him to the apartment. I'm thinking, you know, I hope I'm not getting set up here, you know. But I walked on in, and his fiancée was sitting on the couch, a Klanswoman I'd seen her before. And I sat down and talked with her, and he went down the hall to his room, and he came back. When he came back, he got a hefty trash bag, went back there again and came back with this trash bag all loaded up.

Had his robe, his hood, a Klan belt buckle. They have a Klan belt buckle? Oh, yeah, they got Klan tie clips, all kinds of stuff, man. And his certificate of membership, all kinds of stuff in this bag and gave it to me. And I said, okay, thank you. And I didn't know why I wanted it, but I just knew I should have it. Well, first of all, it's history. Okay?

And you don't destroy history. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful is still American history. And the KKK, I've said it before, is as American as baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet. It's a shameful part of our history, but it is our history nonetheless. Now I know what I'm doing with this stuff. I got my 501c3. I'm going to have a museum one day and put all this stuff in there. Wow.

What's a 501c3? It makes you tax exempt. Oh. Yeah. KKK Conversion Museum. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have pictures of you with the dudes right next to their robe in each one? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Most of them.

Most of them I do. And so I began collecting all this kind of stuff. This is... Well, here, let me show you this one. This is a Grand Dragon robe. Green is the sign for the Grand Dragon. And there you go.

It has little Confederate flags here, you know, clan patches. Whose is that? Who gave you that? This guy, Bob White, Robert White. Robert White used to be the Grand Dragon of Maryland for another clanlan group, which was a rival to Roger Kelly's group. All right. When I first heard of Bob White, I was in my late teens. And I heard about him on the news. arrested, and put in jail for conspiring to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore up on Liberty Road,

the Liberty Road Synagogue. And he was convicted. He went to prison for four years. This is before I started writing the book. I just remembered him. And then he got out after doing his time, continued running the Klan. And then some years later, he got busted again. Assault with intent to murder two black men with a shotgun. All right. Now, understand something. As a Klan leader, you don't make any money, or not a lot, unless you're embezzling money from the dues. And a lot of people do that.

That's what causes these splinter groups. you're embezzling money from the dues. And a lot of people do that. That's what causes these splinter groups. If you're a leader like a wizard or a dragon, you might get like a small stipend out of the dues, but not enough to pay your rent or put food on your table. So you have to have a regular job.

You know, cyclops, wizard, dragon, whatever, these are all just titles. Like Boy Scout leader, you have to have a regular job to pay your rent and mortgage. This man's regular job when he was doing all this nonsense, bombing places and stuff. Baltimore City police officer. Whoa. This is his police officer uniform, okay? Yeah.

He was not an undercover cop in the Klan gathering intelligence. He was a bonafide Klansman on the Baltimore City Police Force. And there are more. There are more. anti-Semitic and racist and very, very violent. But he went on to become one of my best friends. And he gave me his Klan robe, gave me his police uniform. I do a lot of lecturing all over the country and stuff. Did he quit the police force? He was forced to quit the police force or be fired. The police force, Baltimore City Police Force, I mean, even just last year, they had a consent decree from the Department of Justice against them.

They are very racist and very corrupt. What they would do is they would turn a blind eye to the Klansmen on the force. Because, you know, as a police officer, you're not allowed to belong to any subversive groups. All right. They would turn a blind eye as long as the guys would not bring unwarranted attention to the department. Just keep your stuff,

whatever. He would end up getting busted for planting a bomb near a synagogue and firing a shotgun and all that kind of stuff at black people. So they gave him, hey, you you got to retire or be put off the force.

You're causing us too much publicity. This is before he left the Klan. Yeah. So what did he do after he did that? He had to get another job while he was still in the Klan. He got another job. He began dealing in homing pigeons. He did the job.

He began dealing in homing pigeons. Dude, these people have to work, man. That's an archaic, ridiculous way to transmit information. It's perfect for someone who's in something like the Klan. But, you know, I mean, you have to work. Yeah. But I'll tell you something, though. Not all of them.

In fact, probably not most of them. But some of the hardest working people that I've ever seen in my life have been in the Klan. I'm serious. I mean, working hard to make a living and support their families. Is there a universal factor? Like when you talk about how they got involved in it, is it the neighborhood? Is it people that they knew? They are different. Well, let me give you an example of why people joined the Klan.

There are different reasons. In some cases, it's my grandfather was in the Klan. My daddy was in the Klan, so I'm in the Klan, and my kids are going to be in the Klan. It's a family tradition, right, passed down. kids are going to be in the clan. It's a family tradition, right? Passed down. And when you are dealing with somebody with that kind of tie, that generational thing, it may take a little longer for them to come out because it's hard to break family tradition, right? Another reason why people will join, you take a depressed town, like a coal mining town in West Virginia or Scranton, Pennsylvania, something like that, where people who are not racist, they're hard workers. They dig coal all their lives.

Grandfather dug coal. Father dug coal. Now you dug coal, dig coal after high school. That's all you know. If I were to hand one of those people a vacuum cleaner and say, vacuum this rug, they wouldn't know how to do it. All they know is digging coal. And they're happy. They're making their paycheck. They're feeding their family, paying their rent, whatever. They're not concerned about people's color. They're happy. But then the company gets greedy and decides, hey, you know what?

We can save money, make a lot more money if we lay off our employees and hire some of these immigrants, whether they're legal or illegal, because they'll work for less than half of what we're paying our people, right? And so they lay off these people and hire these people who just came over to the country looking for work and they pay them next to nothing. So now these white people who were never racist are out of a job. The bank is going to foreclose on their trailer or their house or whatever. They can't put food on their table. The Klan sees these things, and the Klan will come into a depressed town like that and hold a rally and say, the blacks have the NAACP. The Jews have the ADL. You know, nobody stands up for the white man but the Klan. Come join us. We'll get your job back. You know, that was your job. Your job's not gone, but you're gone. And now some nigger or some spick's got your

job. You know, why is that? Come join us. So these people, like I said, who were never racist, you know, they began thinking, well, you know, they're right. My job is still there. And I worked that job for 25 years, you know, and I got laid off for no reason. And somebody else is doing my job. So what do I have to lose?

Give me an application. And somebody else is doing my job. So what do I have to lose? Give me an application. And they sign up. So they're like, you know, coerced into this group. They may be a little easier to come out, you know, talking with them. Then a third reason why people would join, if somebody relocates to a town that is very clan oriented a lot of people who live there and stuff you know if you want to do business in that town you got to assimilate you know you join the local country club the local chamber of commerce and the local KKK

so you know those different reasons why people will join and depending again depending upon how strong the ties are or why they join can determine their longevity or their hold on it. What is the one that took you the longest to crack? Well, I'll be honest with you. I never set out to convert anybody. And even though in the media,

it will say a black musician converts 200 Klansmen or X amount of Klan members, I didn't convert anybody. I didn't even convert one of them. I will say that I am the impetus for over 200 leaving the Klan. Yeah, I know that for a fact. And people have told me, yeah, you know, I'm out of because of you and things like that. But I did not convert them. They converted themselves. I gave them reason to think about their direction in life. And they thought about it and thought, you know, I need a better path.

And this is the way to go. Because what would happen would be this. it's like, you know, when you believe in something, some people just believe in it just because it's that person saying it. Like, you know, we have a current president where no matter what he says, some people are going to believe and others are going to disbelieve. All right. And that can go for any president, really, if you're a big fan. No matter what you do, what you say, you have a base that's going to believe you. So I would tell

these people when I saw a fault with what they were saying in their ideology, I said, well, let me tell you why I think this is incorrect. And I'd lay out the facts for them. And then they, now they may not concede right then and there. But when they go home, they check it out. And it rolls around in their head. And they begin thinking, you know, Daryl does have a point. But he's black. But he's black.

But he does have a point. But he's black. So even though they know it's true, they don't want to believe it because I'm black. So it's like that cognitive dissonance thing going on. So they have an internal struggle, and they have to make up their own mind. Do I continue living a lie, or do I turn my life around and live the truth? That's their choice. Well, it's also, you're a very articulate guy, and I'm sure a lot of these people are not very educated,

so the continued exposure to you is probably confusing to them as well. Because you're so good at forming sentences and speaking and calm, and the words flow so smoothly out of your mouth, and you have this wonderful grasp of the English language, they're probably like, fuck, I think this guy might be smarter than me.

That had to help. But let me say something, though. Don't be fooled. We think of Klan people, and I say we, people in general, because most of our exposure to it is at the Jerry Springer show or Heralda, where they throw chairs. Stereotypes. Yeah. Third grade dropout kind of thing.

Caricatures. Yeah. And those are the types that they would bring on the show for whatever reason. And I know plenty of those types, trust me. Those stereotypes do exist. But they can go anywhere from third grade dropout all the way to president of the United States. President Warren G. Harding was sworn into the Ku Klux Klan

in the green room of the White House. Whoa. What year was that? Whatever year he was president. So it was post-65. Oh, well, yeah. 1865.

He's a 1920s, right? Was he with the T-Dome, whatever it was? President Harry Truman. Before Harry Truman became president, he was a member of the Klan for a short time. That's right. Harry Truman, who integrated the army. All right? Wow.

He joined for a short time. He didn't like it. He got out. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Hugo Black was in the Klan at the time he was appointed to the Supreme Court. He had to leave the Ku Klux Klan to sit on the Supreme Court as a justice. More recently, Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia who just died a few years ago. He was a Klansman in the 1940s.

He was a Grand Clegal. Clegal means recruiter. Grand means state. So he was a recruiter for the state of West Virginia, Grand Clegal. In the 1940s. And then he later renounced it and stuff. Yeah. So, you know, all kinds of educational backgrounds.

Particularly a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was considered an honorable white man society. At the time, you know, they didn't allow women in the Klan, and they had women's auxiliaries. Now they allow women, but women, there's still a male chauvinistic organization. So women are making progress, even in the Klan. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they cannot hold the highest offices. They can't be a grand dragon or dragoness. When did you start all this? What year was it? I started meeting them and all that or researching them. When did you start meeting them? When did you have this meeting? Actually, the first friendly meeting that I had with the Klan was in the bar.

That was 1983. But my first encounter with the Klansman was the year before, and I didn't know he was a Klansman. I beat him up. Oh. But the bar thing was in 83. I was wondering if it was pre or post

the Dave Chappelle bit pre pre yeah that's why and what's funny is everybody asks me did you see that

Clayton Bigsby or whatever it's called yeah you know they think it's hilarious but I'm going to tell you something it's not hilarious okay

Dave Chappelle he's a comic genius. He's great. And perhaps if I had never done what I've done, I'd find a lot of humor in it. But I tell you what, he's never been to a Klan rally. I have. I've been to plenty of them. Those things are not funny. They are not funny.

They are a pressure cooker waiting to go off and if that valve is not really you know released it's going to explode and we saw that in charlottesville well you know that he his joke was oh yeah and how ridiculous it was yeah absolutely no no i'm not faulting him blind yeah i'm not faulting him he's black right exactly i understand what you're saying from your your perspective, it's not funny. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I mean, there's humor in everything, but we shouldn't take racism, we need to take

it more seriously than we do. And I'm going to tell you something. Our country, I'm going to tell you where it's headed so you understand. Our country can only become one of two things. It can become, number one, that which we stand up. I'm sorry, that which we sit back and let it become. Or number two, that which we stand up and make it become. So we are charged with this question.

Do I want to sit back and see what my country becomes? Or do I want to stand up and make my country become what I want to see? And I've chosen the latter because I don't like the direction it's going in. Well, you've chosen a very noble, not just the latter, but a very noble path. I mean, what you've done is pretty incredible in the amount of time and energy that's required for you to get close to these guys and the fact that you could be doing a lot of other things. You're a successful musician.

I'm sure you have friends. I'm sure you're busy. But you chose to spend an extraordinary amount of time pursuing this. I would much rather be on stage playing music and making people happy and causing them to jump up and dance and carry on and sing along than attending Klan rallies.

But I find it more and more necessary because we have dropped the ball. You know, the topic that you and I are discussing right now, you know, 20, 30 years ago would have been taboo talking about it on radio or whatever. People did not want to discuss it. And I know we can't talk about that, just keep it in the closet, you know, because out of sight, out of mind, denial. And denying it does not make it go away, just because

you can't see it. It's always there. So now we're forced to address it. But let me tell you where it's going, which is what a lot of people do not talk about and don't understand. Well, first of all, let's define what it is. Back in the day, there was only one group, the's define what it is.

Back in the day, there was only one group, the Ku Klux Klan. They were the first and the largest gang, if you will, of races. At one point in time, they had four million members. All right. It's a pretty big gang. When was that? Back in the 1920s and into the early 30s. How many people were even in America in the 1920s?

More than that. Yeah, but I mean, how many? It wasn't even 100 million. I don't even know. Indiana. I bet it's probably about 80, 90 million. Oh, we can look it up for sure. Yeah, because if there's 4 million, that's an extraordinary number of people. And the majority of them were in Indiana.

Indiana. Indiana, yeah. About 110-ish. 110 million. Wow. And how many? 4 million? That's fucking crazy. Indiana. Indiana, yeah. About 110-ish. 110 million. Wow. And how many? Four. Four million?

That's fucking crazy. Yeah, yeah. So it's basically somewhere in the neighborhood of 4% of the entire population of the country who's in the fucking Klan. Yeah. Now, at that time, it was called white supremacy because that's what they believe in. This is our country. We're in charge.

We're supreme. They didn't call it the Klan? Yeah, yeah. It was a Klan, but the ideology was called white supremacy. And a lot of – it started in 1865. 1965, a lot of violence, a lot of, you know, lynchings, bombings, you know, dragging people behind vehicles, all that kind of stuff began happening. And it became a lot of baggage with the term white supremacy, where a lot of white people did not like black people or did not like Jewish people. They did not want to participate in this night riding, you know, lynchings and murder and all that kind of stuff, either for moral reasons or legal reasons,

whatever. The membership began dwindling. People began dropping out. All right. It was too violent for them. This white supremacy word became unpalatable and became negative. So when the membership decreased, they had to rebrand. So they changed it from white supremacy to white separatism. I'm a white separatist. I don't hate black people or Jewish people. I just love my own. Blacks and Jews should be able to have their own schools,

their own neighborhoods, their own churches, their own workplaces. We should be able to have ours. And that way we don't have to mix. Oh, yeah, yeah. I like that idea. Sign me up. I'm a white separatist. Membership began increasing. And of course, the more people you have, somebody's going to start acting up. So here comes the violence. So now the term white supremacy also became unpalatable and people began dropping out. supremacy also became unpalatable, and people began dropping out. So membership went down again, and then they had to rebrand. Next, they called themselves white nationals or white nationalists. All right? Now, what is a nationalist? A nationalist is someone who loves their country,

like a patriot. So you're a nationalist. I'm a nationalist. Why do we have to say white nationalist? Why can't we just say I'm a nationalist, right? But no, white nationalist. So, yeah, I love my country and I'm white. Sign me up. Here comes the violence. So once again, they rebranded it, and now they call it the alt-right. And I hate to use a cliche, but as they say,

a rose by any other name is what? Still a rose. So you can call it whatever you want to call it. It's still white supremacy. Do you think that Charlotte was a wake-up call? Charlottesville, excuse me. Yes. It was for me because I knew that it still existed, but I didn't think they would show themselves publicly like that in the age of the internet and walk down the street with tiki torches let me tell

you something let me i'm gonna show you something okay okay the the rally there was called unite the right rally i know the guy who put it on i know all the speakers there. I know them personally. What was your understanding as to why they were having this big Unite the Right rally? I only knew of it peripherally. I didn't know why they were doing it. I just had probably heard it on the news or something like that that was going on. And then when I saw the

KKK showing up, were those guys, the Charlottesville guys with the torches, were those KKK or was it another white supremacy movement? All of the above. They had different, it was Unite the Right. All the different right-wing groups came. League of the South, the Ku Klux Klan, National Socialist Movement, different entities. Socialist Movement.

Yeah. The National Socialist Movement. Like the Nazis. Exactly. NSN. Really? Yeah. Okay.

They were there too. They were there too. Now, in the media, they gave a reason as to why were they there. What were they protesting? What was their reason for being there in Charlottesville? I have no idea. Okay, what the media put out was they had come together to protest the removal of the Confederate statues. Okay.

You recall that? Yeah, I remember they were tearing down those statues. Right. And I had a conversation with somebody about it, that those statues, most of them were very cheaply made and they were actually put up during the Civil Rights Movement. Right, exactly. As a slap in the face. Yes, yes.

Okay. So, that was not the reason why they had the rally. Okay. That's what the media said. Okay. That's what the media said. Okay. Anytime. Okay. The reason why they had this rally there. Yes, there were some people who went there to legitimately oppose the removal of those statues, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, whoever else. But the majority of people who came there were there to start the initial steps of the race war. That's right, the race war.

The white supremacists have been predicting and have been preparing for a race war. Just like Dylann Roof was trying to start the race war, that's what he said when he went to that black church and gunned up the place. The guy who shot all those people in El Paso, he said the race war. All right? Anytime you want to occupy a piece of public property because you want to have a rally, a demonstration, or even if you want to set up a lemonade and hot dog stand, if it's going to be on public property, you must have a permit, right? You go down to the city, get an application, fill out your name, and state your purpose. You cannot very well say on the application, I want to start a race war. You will not get the permit, all right? So you provide some quasi-legitimate excuse. My great, great,

great ancestors fought in the Confederacy. That's my heritage. I don't want you messing with it. Okay. That's legitimate. Sign off. Here's your permit, sir. And now you can occupy that corner of 12th and Main from 12 noon to 4 p.m. or whatever. Okay? So they went through all the procedure. They legally got a permit to have their Unite the Right rally under false pretense. All right? Now, two things. Anybody who knows American history knows that there were also blacks and also Jews who fought in the Confederacy.

Black slaves had to fight for their slave owners. In the South, there were a number of Jewish slave owners. They didn't want to give up that free labor. So blacks, Jews, and whites fought together in the Confederacy against blacks, whites, and Jews in the Union. My great, great, great ancestors were slaves who also fought in the Confederacy. I have ancestors who fought in the Confederacy. My parents are from Virginia, Roanoke, and Salem. I was born in Chicago because that's where my dad was working at the time.

But Virginia was the seat of the Confederacy. All right? So there are black people today and some Jewish people who honor the Confederacy. They don't condone slavery, but they honor the Confederacy because of their great, great ancestors. They honor it how so? Like they have Confederate flags? Yeah, they have Confederate flags. Where is this taking place?

Mostly in the South. So there's black people in the South that have Confederate flags? Absolutely. Look them up. You'll find them. Wow. You'll find them. Yeah.

And no, they don't condone slavery. They're just honoring the Confederacy because their ancestors were in it and died in it or whatever. I honor my ancestors. However, I don't honor the Confederacy, me personally. If some of the blacks and Jews want to do that, that's their business. I don't do it. So, and ironically, ironically, this is a historical fact, the Confederate Army was integrated. The Union Army was segregated, which doesn't make any sense. So here we're fighting to free slaves, and the Confederate Army has blacks and Jews and whites fighting together, and the Union had them all segregated. It doesn't make sense, but it does because it's all so ridiculous.

Yeah. Because that's what humans are. Exactly, exactly. You got it. Yeah. You know, irrationality. Yeah. So, okay, now, if blacks and Jews and whites could fight together 150 years ago,

why can't they march together in 2017? could fight together 150 years ago, why can't they march together in 2017? Wouldn't it make more sense and give more credibility to your cause? If your cause was truly to preserve those statues, why not invite descendants like yourselves of blacks and Jews to march with you in Charlottesville and say, hey, that's my heritage too. Leave it alone. Would that not add more credibility? That certainly would.

But what are the numbers? I mean, how many can you get? Even if you only got five or ten. Right. Okay. That still would lend some credibility. Okay. But instead, so they're claiming this is their heritage.

Instead of inviting or including blacks and Jews, they excluded them in 2017. So if blacks and Jews wanted to march, they would not let them? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't know that there were any who did. Or they just implicitly stated that this is for white people. This is unite the right. Okay? White supremacist organizations.

So, instead of including blacks and Jews, you know, heritage should include everybody in that heritage. You talk about you want to preserve the Confederacy? Well, guess what? There were blacks in the Confederacy. You know that. That's a historical fact. There were Jews in the Confederacy. The Confederacy was simply a reflection of the South, okay? So instead of including them, they excluded them,

and they marched through the University of Virginia campus with their tiki torches and the streets of Charlottesville, yelling and screaming anti-Semitic and racial epithets. What does that tell you? It tells you their protest was not about heritage. It was about hate. That's number one. Number two, nobody in Charlottesville or anywhere else ever met their great, great, great ancestors who fought in the Confederacy, right?

Those people were long dead and gone by 1865. And these people weren't even born then, right? Now, you tell me, but it's okay. You know, you can honor people that you don't know. All right, that's fine. But how do you honor your great, great, great ancestors in the Confederacy, and at the same time, you dishonor the very ancestors who you do know, the very ones who raised you, your fathers, your grandfathers. And if you're lucky enough, you may have met your great-grandfather.

These people, many fathers of these people in Charlottesville, many fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers lost their lives fighting, not in the Confederacy, but fighting in World War II. And who were they fighting in World War II? The Nazis. So how do you tell me you're going to honor your great, great, great ancestors and you're going to walk down the streets of Charlottesville side by side with people wearing swastikas? We went to war against the Nazis. Why are you marching with Nazis and flying swastikas? Now, wait, wait.

So what did the Nazis have to do with our heritage? Right. The Nazis had no heritage in Charlottesville, Virginia. In fact, the Nazis weren't even in existence during our Civil War. Adolf Hitler was not even born during our Civil War. So what were the Nazis doing in Charlottesville? It wasn't about heritage. It was about hate.

And that's what the media failed to tell us because what the media did was they went to City Hall, because it's a public record, just pulled the permit and read, oh, they're there to protest the statues. They took it verbatim and reported like that. They didn't do the background check. Now, was it a small percentage of them that were the ones that were marching with the torches and the swastikas? No. And did they join into the entire group or was the entire group all about hate? So everybody was there.

I would say probably about 95% of people there were about hate. And so there was a few misguided people that were there because they really thought they were protecting their southern heritage and they were lumped in with all these other people that used it as a ruse to sort of set up this hate meeting. To have a permit. How many people went there for that thing? I mean, there were more protesters. Of course. Yeah, as usual,

which there should be. I don't have the exact numbers myself. I'm sure I can get them. They get skewed from either side. The police will tell you one number and the people there will tell you another number. The guy who was the killer that ran those people over. James Fields.

That guy seemed to be the epitome of a lost soul that got sucked into a horrible ideology. It was not very smart. And that must be a large percentage of what they prey on. Absolutely. Lost people. Isn't that how a cult works? Sure. And they give you a meaning and a reason and a heritage to defend.

And a status. And a status, right? And a bunch of crazy names like Cyclops and Nighthawk. And I know Susan Brough. Susan Brough is the mother of Heather Heyer, the girl who was murdered and run down by James Fields. That 20-year-old boy threw his life away. And it was premeditated. He had said stuff on the internet before even going there and praised Hitler and so forth and so on. These are things that we have to be very much aware of, which is why today I'm helping an

organization as an advisor. In fact, we're putting on a festival of ideas this year in June. June. We've already got Cornel West and Tim Pool, Bill Ottman, and several other people who have already committed to doing this Festival of Ideas to de-radicalize

the internet. There's a new internet platform that's been around just for over almost two years and it's already gotten two million members almost two years. It's already gotten two million members. Called Minds. Minds,

like your mind. Yeah, I've had the guy who created it. Yeah, Bill Altman. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Fantastic guy. Fantastic guy. He and another co-founder put together this thing and they brought me on as an advisor and we're going to put on

this festival. Bringing in some formers. Now, the head of the NSM is a very good friend of mine. And what is the NSM? A National Socialist Movement, the Nazi Party. You're going to slowly convert those guys as well? Well, yeah. He's out now.

Oh, he left? Yeah, yeah. Because of you? No, no. I was a contributor. Oh. Okay? But he saw the light, and he's a good guy, and. I was a contributor. Oh. Okay? But he saw the light.

And he's a good guy. And he's helping to get others out. You have an amazing ability to forgive people that other folks would write off for life. Other people would think that those people were horrific monsters that aren't worthy of salvation. Don't get me wrong. There are some of those people. of salvation. Don't get me wrong. There are some of those people. There are some horrific monsters on all sides, some of whom will go to their grave being hateful, violent, and racist or anti-Semitic. There is no changing them whatsoever. But I can tell you this. If somebody of that attitude or that belief, they're there and you're here on the spectrum at opposite ends.

If they're willing to sit down and have a conversation, no matter how extreme they may be, there is the opportunity to plant a seed. But the important thing is anybody can plant a seed. But the follow-up is what's important. You have to nurture that seed. You must water it. All right? So it grows. And as you, you know, when you're here, you think you have nothing in common.

But if you spend five minutes with your worst enemy, you will find something in common. You will find something in common. And then you begin nurturing those commonalities. Yeah. Okay? And you're closing that gap. So now you're about right here. So now you're about right here. So now you have formed a relationship.

You've gone from here to a relationship. And now you begin nurturing that relationship. And you're closing it in. And when you get about to here, you found a lot of commonalities. And now you've made a friendship. All right? And when you get there, the trivial things that you have in contrast, such as the color of your skin or whether you go to a church, a temple, a mosque, or a synagogue, begin to matter less and less. People begin to see that.

And I'll be honest, the most important thing that you have in any endeavor is your credibility, your credibility. You only have one opportunity to make, especially in this kind of thing, to make a good first impression. impression. You may have a second or third opportunity to impress somebody, but you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression. And most people would judge you by their first impression of you. So when I would meet these people, I'm as transparent as I can be. I'm honest. I don't lie to them. I let them know where I stand, but I'm willing to listen to them. I want to hear why. I'm saying, enlighten me. Teach me why I should believe the way you believe and see things. I'm here to learn from you. Now, how did you start the conversation with this National Socialist

Movement guy? The same way. Same way. Exact same way. And what was the conversation like with him? Well, he believed at the time in the ideology of adolf hitler you know the master race how old was this guy when you met him uh i met him in 2016 he uh he he just left um last year and he'd been the commander for uh 27 years that's you have an amazing gift like the ability to just slowly talk to these people and talk some sense into them. And the fact that you're willing to spend the time to do that, that is. We have to do that. We have to do that. I mean, what choice do we have?

You know, otherwise we're going to self-destruct. Yeah. Now, I will say, you know, Joe, I have been between traveling with my parents as a child in the Foreign Service and today as a professional musician playing all over this country and around the world, when you combine those travels together, I have been in a total of 57 different countries on six continents. So I've been from, you know, three years old all the way to I'll be 62 in March. I've been exposed all my life to a wide variety of religions, cultures, traditions, ethnicities from all over. And no matter how far I've gone from the United States, no matter how many different people I've met, I can conclude at the end of the day, we all are human beings. We may practice different things, have different cultures, different beliefs, but we all are human beings. And one of my very favorite quotes of all time is by Mark Twain, and it's called the travel quote.

And Mark Twain said, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. And many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. And that is so true. Perhaps if I had not done that traveling and been exposed to different things, would I be doing this today? Maybe not. But I think the future of this are things like what Bill Altman has put together, this

Minds.com. People should check it out, Minds.com or also go to change.minds.com. They can follow me there at Daryl Davis where it's a platform for free speech, free speech, and where you can come and express your ideas, not be kicked off or all that kind of stuff. There's going to be protocol where you're not going to be able to threaten people and cause them harm and things like that. But you allow people with some of these toxic ideologies to come on and speak their mind,

and then you engage them? And we engage them and talk. It could be about politics. It could be about technology, whatever. Have you had luck talking to people just directly online? Because my perspective is that one of the things that makes this work is that you're very personable and that you're just you being around that you know you're you're just you being around you you're a very nice guy to be around i think that probably helped them get

closer to you and get to appreciate you that's that's the credibility i'm talking about because you know if like for example i don't meet somebody one time and next thing you know they're stripping themselves of their robe and hood okay it may take repeat visits and things like that but it's in person is what i'm saying yeah like talking to people online well it's very difficult to get through to people uh yeah it is but you know what um people have watched um or seen things online about me and then have emailed me i got tons of emails people in the clan, people in Nazi movements or whatever will say, hey, I appreciate what you said. You gave this person a fair shake. I wasn't really expecting that from a black person or someone like that. And it wasn't that I was kissing up to somebody. No. I'm going to be fair and be transparent. And because of my credibility,

that affords me a second visit with them and a third. Because if they didn't like me, if their first impression of me was, this guy's an ass, and I say, can we meet next week? Nah, I'm done with you. The only person that I've ever known or heard of that's been radically converted just online was Megan Phelps. Do you know who she is? Sure. Sure.

I know. From the Westboro Baptist Church. Yeah, I never met Megan. I had conversations with Rachel, who was crazy. Is Rachel the mom or one of the sisters? Megan's sister. Yeah. Megan's a very, very nice person.

Yeah. It's hard to believe that she was ever locked into the Westboro Baptist Church. And her husband, her now husband, actually converted her by talking to her on Twitter, of all things. Might be the greatest thing that's ever been accomplished on Twitter. That's right. So do you participate in other social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram or any of that? Or do you just use Minds? I'm going to focus on Minds.

I think Minds has the best platform. Again, like I said, it's transparent. Anybody is welcome. And you said there's 2 million members now. Again, like I said, it's transparent. Anybody is welcome. And you said there's 2 million members now. Yeah, and growing. And Facebook will kick you off for certain things. Minds does not do that. I mean, they won't allow you to threaten somebody.

But does Minds have the same sort of algorithm that directs things towards you that you're interested in that could facilitate people getting upset you know facebook does that yeah and it turns out that most of what people are interested in is what upsets them yeah yeah no no they don't they don't operate like that um i think it's worth anybody to check out you know because and people get frustrated you know i'm getting off facebook because i hate all this arguing and so on. And you can come here and talk to some – listen, people have a hard time getting together for Thanksgiving because of our current political climate where somebody voted for our current president and some of the family members did not vote for that person. People should be able – families should be able to talk about that and respect the fact that your brother or sister voted for our president and you didn't. You know, that should be fine. You know, let's discuss it. You know, what impressed you about him?

What didn't impress you? Why didn't you vote for him? And do it with civil discourse. We have lost the art of civil discourse. And Mines is going to restore that. That's what we're working on the that's i'm glad you said that that's one thing that i've learned how to do by doing this podcasts learn how to talk to people better learn how to really listen to people and i mean when i

first started this podcast 10 years ago i probably wasn't very good at it you know i didn't really have any experience doing it mostly what I was doing was me talking. I was doing stand-up comedy or I was talking to my friends. Social civil discourse, like being able to sit down with people and calm each other down and have genuine compassion for each other and just listen to each other is one of the lost arts in human interaction. Because, you know what, it's because we see only what the person did. We don't, you know, in terms of who they voted for or what they believe in, what they did, you know, what group they joined. We don't see what led them to that because we don't talk to them. Right. You know, we're only interested in the result.

Like, let's go back to Roger Kelly. Black people are criminals. Why? Why are they criminals? Well, how can you say that? Well, because, Daryl, you know, there are more blacks in prison than there are whites. He sees the result. Yeah.

He's not seeing what led up to that. Right. So that's, you know So that's where we lose. Well, it's also, it's very difficult for people to actually have conversations. Like most people are committing to text messages and emails and occasionally phone calls. That's how they interact with each other. And then if you go out to a dinner at a restaurant, you'll see people just sitting across from each other staring at their phones. Yeah.

I mean, it's one of the worst times for interaction face-to-face. I mean, I've never seen a pie chart on the difference between the way human beings talk, but there is no question that the amount of people per capita that communicate through electronics versus the way just talking person-to-person over the last 10 years has radically increased. And so has our hostility towards each other in a lot of ways, particularly through those electronic mediums. Hostility through social media is a relatively new thing. Social media hate. I mean, in these mob groups that just go after people, that's 10 years, maybe, max, right?

2010-ish. This is a new thing in human history and this what you're doing what you're talking about just sitting down it's so old school talking to people becoming friends with people to speak and you've got these projects i mean you've you set this sort of friendship in motion with these people and you've changed the course of their lives and that's a and then they in turn yes what is that the wizard dragon fellow what's that guy doing these days uh he has to work like two or three jobs um because unfortunately you know when you um have that kind of stigma uh and you work for a company where the public sees you and they go, oh, that's that guy.

What did he used to do? Brick layer, brick maker. So he works security now. But there are a lot more of them. Some of them, if they don't have a young family, some of them will come out with me and speak out against their former organization. There's another guy who's very prominent, Christian Picciolini. Yeah, I know him.

Do you know him? I do. Along the same lines. He's doing that, too. He's converting people and helping to de-radicalize people. He was co-founder of a group called Life After Hate. He was co-founder of a group called Life After Hate. And there are a lot of those formers who do that, especially if they don't have a young family because oftentimes they can get ramifications for speaking out against their organization.

You take an oath to join those organizations. And they'll come after you or come after your family, things like that. So some fly low under the radar. So your book, what is it titled? The book is called Clandestine, spelled with a K, Clandestine Relationships. And right now, that book is out of print. I'm working on the second edition, second copy, which will have all new stories and plus a lot of the old stuff and updates. Have you ever done an audio book?

No, but I think I'm going to do it on this one. You got a great voice, man. It would be perfect for an audio book. I have laryngitis right now, but I have a normal voice too. Well, it comes and goes. I can hear it. I hear it crackle up, but you obviously have a booming voice. That would be a great audio book.

It'll be gone in a couple of days, that laryngitis. Yeah. I mean, that way it's always easy to put back in print as well. Yeah. There's so many people that are digesting audio books versus books, me included. I mean, I still listen to a lot of podcasts, but I mean, I think half the time I'm in my car, I'm listening to audio books. Where'd you get the idea to do a podcast?

What was the impetus? Probably no one would ever give me a radio show that was i mean i think i had gotten some offers to do radio shows but it was for like no money and uh you know satellite radio kind of a deal for no money and um i had a friend uh anthony kumya who's on this uh show opie and Anthony. And he did an internet thing in his basement just for fun. He was already on a radio show, but he put up a green screen in his basement. And he's kind of a nut. And he would get drunk and do karaoke holding a machine gun, like crazy shit, but hilarious.

And I was like, this guy just set up a studio in his basement. How wild is this? And so I said, well, let me just do a little web thing. And so me and my friend Brian, we started doing it with a webcam, just in a laptop, just talking to people online, answering questions. And then it started carrying on. And then that was 10 years ago, and it just kept growing. And then it became what it is now just by just keep doing it that's

all it was i just kept doing it and then it went from thousands to millions to just this weird number of people that are listening to it and watching it now to its you know because they have a hunger for what you're putting out there well conversation yeah real conversation like i don't have a agenda i just want to talk to people. Like, with you, as soon as I got the pitch, I was like, I need to talk to you. Like, what you're doing is insane and amazing and very, very unusual for someone to have that kind of patience and commitment to something like that and to convert these people and without judgment and to be able to rationalize with them and talk to them reasonably. These are my fellow Americans. Yes. You we all are we all in this game together and sometimes people get trapped in a really fucking stupid ideology yeah and they don't they they there's a part of their brain that knows it's dumb

there's a part of their brain that knows it's toxic and they they deny that they ignore that they squash it and they try to avoid thinking about it and then someone like you comes into their life and you kind of like open this door and joe you know that that toxic thing happens on both sides you know i catch hell from people who look like me not everybody you know but there are people who look like me who totally disapprove because you're giving these people a platform because you them a platform. Because you're communicating with them. Yes. Listen, you cannot change somebody's mind by disallowing them to express what's on their mind. Right. You know?

Well, that's the argument about deplatforming people online. Right. Right? But then the argument, the other way, is that you're radicalizing young people. The argument is there's a lot of young people that would go on these social media sites, and they're impressionable, and they don't know any better. Particularly YouTube, they worry about that because these YouTube videos, they have music, and it's a multimedia experience. It can be compelling and with a really good narrator. You can get people to, like, look at this fucking Flat Earth movement.

Where's that coming from? You can get people to, like, look at this fucking flat earth movement, right? Where's that coming from? It comes from a few articulate narrators who put together these videos on YouTube where they're the only ones who get to talk. Scientists don't get to interject and go, stop, that's wrong. That's not how. I'll show you. Nope, it's like this.

Look, here's a satellite photo. Look, here's a hundred satellite photos. Look, here's all the satellites that take pictures of the earth. They don't get to do that. 100 satellite photos. Look, here's all the satellites that take pictures of the Earth. They don't get to do that. So these guys, they'll have this long, uninterrupted, narrated video that makes so much sense. You listen to this guy.

God, he's genius. Oh, my God, the world's flat. I can't believe they're fucking lying to me. So there's hundreds of thousands of people that believe in the flat Earth now because they've been radicalized, because they've been converted by these multimedia things like YouTube. This is what people worried about in terms of radicalizing them towards hateful ideologies as well. And I'm glad you're using that word radicalize. Yeah. Because that's exactly spot on.

Because, you know, we – it wasn't until recently that we began using that word domestically you know for a while they were only using it uh for for middle eastern type people you know when when somebody like dylan roof uh did what he did we didn't say he was radicalized said oh you know he must have some mental issues well it's both isn't it well sure i mean anybody who walks into a place and starts shooting up people you know issues, but what allowed them to become radicalized? Maybe those mental issues. But we don't say radicalized when it comes to our own, because we're ashamed of it. So many different code words. For example, what do you call these groups of white people who go out in the woods and practice maneuvers and survivalist stuff? They're like anti-government, kind of a paramilitary.

Yeah, like, what do they call them? Militias. Exactly. Right. Okay, militias. Right. What do you call the same type of things with black people i didn't know they had them yeah they have what they call them

what do they call them they call them militants oh like the black panthers oh okay okay right right so what you know it's the exact same thing. Right. But one term has more of a negative connotation. Militia's got a pretty negative connotation. Not as negative as militant. Yeah. Yeah. I guess. Not with me.

It seems the same shit to me. And let's take back when Obama got into office. We had a new political party that came out of nowhere. The Tea Party. The Tea Party. Last time you heard of a Tea Party was in 1776. What happened to them, those Tea Party folks? They're still floating around.

Really? They still call themselves the Tea Party? No, because Obama's gone now. I think they were out by the time he was, I mean, it was before he was even gone. Didn't they fall apart? Well, because he got a second term, you know, it didn't quite work. But their slogan was, take our country back. We're going to take our country back.

Okay, take America back. That is a Klan slogan. Okay. And it was a code term for the Tea Party that was a clarion call. And people, it resonated with a certain ilk of people. That slogan started in 1954 with the Klan. 1954 when Brown versus the Board of Education desegregated schools. of education, desegregated schools. You can go on YouTube, find all these Klan rallies with these wizards in Drangzing, with the burning cross in Drangzing. We're going to take our country back.

I'm not going to let my little white boys and girls go to school with little nigger children and blah, blah, blah. We're going to take our country back, back to segregation. They didn't want to integrate it, right? So I would ask these Tea Party people, why are you using a Klan slogan and they say oh no no no Darryl that's not what we mean

I say well you don't say take our country back from who you don't say take our country back to what you say take our country back kind of open ended I say what are you trying to say oh what we mean is we're going to take our country back from the Democrats take it back to Republican rule. Okay, that's fine. Why not say that?

Right. Exactly. They're using an already used slogan. Right. That was a KKK slogan. Exactly. So it hearkens to those people, right? And here's the thing.

Last time I checked, Bill Clinton was a Democrat. Jimmy Carter was a Democrat. Where was the Tea Party? Where was Take Our Country Back? And then all of a sudden, a black guy gets in the White House and they start screaming, Take Our Country Back.

Right, right. You can put two and two together, right? Yeah, where were you guys eight years ago? Exactly. Or four years ago. Yeah, exactly. Right. And now, check out Martin Luther King.

All right? We had to fight, fight for decades to have Martin Luther King Day. There was a lot of resistance to that. And a lot of the resistance was the fact that Martin Luther King is the only American man in this country to have a holiday all to himself. And guess what? He's black. What do you mean by a holiday all to himself? Columbus Day.

Columbus is not American. Oh, that's right. Okay. Well, he kind of was when he became one no he thought he well he did first of all columbus didn't even land here and he was like basically a serial killer he was a serial killer he was a rapist yeah and a pillager and he didn't he didn't discover a damn thing what did they call an indigenous people's day now yeah yeah now how do you discover something when you get there people are already there come on be real well not only that like why did it take until basically the later latter half of the 20th century before people came to grips with the fact that he was an atrocious human being like when we were kids when i was in i'm a little bit younger than you i'm 52 when i was in high school it was Columbus.

Sailed the ocean blue. Yeah. The Santa Maria. Right. Nino Pinto and Santa Maria. This was a guy who was an explorer. He was going there for Spain. Right.

And then when you get older and you read these missionaries' accounts of the horrific crimes. And we still celebrate them. Yeah. Well, I mean, do we sort us out? We kind of are done celebrating them, right? No, we still have Columbus Day. It should be abolished. I thought it's Indigenous Peoples Day now. They call it that.

Yeah. But on the calendar, it still says Columbus Day. Does it? Yeah. Not on the Apple calendar. Really? That's cool. I don't think so.

Maybe Apple's ahead of its time. I think it says Indigenous Peoples Day now. Okay, that's cool. Maybe I'm wrong. But it fucking should. It should. It should. Yeah. it says indigenous people's day now okay that's cool maybe i'm wrong but it fucking should it should yeah now um so we used to have um two white guys who each had a holiday all to himself americans who are those guys we used to have uh maybe before your time uh during my time

george washington day and abraham lincoln day really one of those days you remember that i It was during my time. George Washington Day and Abraham Lincoln Day. Really? Yeah. One of those days. You don't remember that? I don't remember that. Yeah. And so we had too many holidays.

So they combined those two days into one day called President's Day. Oh, okay. We had too many holidays. We didn't have enough productivity. Exactly. So they took those away and combined them. So now the only American man who has a holiday to himself is a black man, and they can't handle it. Martin Luther King.

And now we had to fight for decades to give this man a holiday when he gave his life to bring this country together. Yet we give a holiday to Christopher Columbus, who, as you pointed out, was a murderer, a serial killer, a pillager, a rapist. Okay, who didn't discover a damn thing, right? Martin Luther King never murdered, pillaged, and raped, but yet we don't want to give him a holiday. You know, so that's the inequity in this country. And I'll tell you something else.

Now, there are a lot of people who would disagree with me. And that's okay, because we're Americans, we can disagree. And we're all individuals. But there are people who will agree with me also. And I've been saying this now for 22 years. One of the things that will help us to advance into the 21st century, to advance into the 21st century, because we are behind the times. We need, at this point, to get rid of Black History Month. Now, I know a lot of people listening are going to freak out. What's this guy talking about?

Let me explain. For the longest time, we needed Black History Month. Black history was not being taught in our schools. Now, you remember when you pointed out a moment ago that when you were in school, you know, Columbus was a hero, looked up to him, et cetera, and then you go to college and you learn otherwise. When I was in high school, it was not in our textbooks that we had internment camps with Japanese Americans I did not learn that until I got to college I'm like what are you kidding me I didn't believe it

now it's in the textbooks that's what I'm saying we're behind the times so anyway we didn't have black history what we had was called American history it might as well have been called white history because that's all it was. And even in some cases, whites were being given credit for things they did not invent and for places they did not discover.

But we knew. We were told at home things like that, but not in schools. So we had to fight, fight, fight. And finally, we got one week. It was called Negro History Week. Carter G. Woodson created that. And schools had Negro History Week one week a year. We continued fighting harder and harder. Finally, we got one month. You know, nobody's going to give us everything at one time, right? They'll dole it out little by little. So we got that one month,

shortest month of the year, right? February, 28 days. No coincidence. But we accepted it for two reasons. It was the birth month of two of our heroes, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. All right? So we accepted that. And then we stopped fighting, and that was a mistake on our part. We became complacent. All right? And now it's my belief that Black History Month

has become detrimental to us, to all of us, white and black. I'll tell you why. Yes, we needed it for a certain period of time because we had nothing. But here's the problem. We only studied black history in February. And each February, we studied the same half a dozen people, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and one or two other ones. By the time we get through half a dozen, our month is over.

We did our black thing. Let's move on. Yet we study Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key all year long. We're constantly reinforcing what they did all year long. We never forget who flew the kite and the lightning hit the key and we have electricity. We all know it's Ben Franklin. All right. But yet, if you ask some kid in June, say, who was Harriet Tubman?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember her. Yeah. She was that lady who refused to give a receipt on the bus. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember her. Yeah. She was that lady who refused to give up her seat on the bus. They got her confused with Rosa Parks because there's been no reinforcement since February.

And then next year, next February, it's the same half a dozen people. All right. So you're constantly, I'm not taking anything away from those people. They were some of the greatest. All right. But you're constantly reinforcing that there were only six or seven black people in this whole country who ever did anything. What about the guy who invented the traffic light? What about the person who invented the ironing board and so many other black

discoveries and inventions? Oh, well, we didn't have time for that. We only have one month. Yeah, but you got time to talk about Ben Franklin all year long, you know? Women's History Month is March. We need to get rid of that too. Take these things out of those months and put them where they belong, under the umbrella of American history, and teach them all year long. That way kids get accustomed to this and they learn and they have more respect for each other. Look, I remember when I was a kid, Miss America beauty contest. There were only two categories.

And it was all white women. Black women were not allowed to join Miss America, to compete in Miss America. All the judges were white males. Two categories. The evening gown, evening wear, and the swimsuit. That was it. Women were objectified. They were sex objects.

You know, they didn't have talent. They didn't need to write an essay or show what else they can do. They just looked at and judged on that. So black women were deemed not beautiful enough to compete in Miss America. Plus, they didn't want any white man judging a black woman in a bathing suit or whatever. So black women began having low self-esteem because they were told they were not as beautiful as these other women. So what did we as black people do to elevate the self-esteem of black girls? We created the Miss Black America beauty pageant

to give them something to aspire to. And that worked for a while. Finally, finally, Miss America, the big one, came to its senses and opened its doors. What year was that? I don't know the exact year. But I guess it was back in the 70s sometime. Opened its doors to all American women, regardless of their ethnicity, color, or whatever. As long as they were American, they could compete.

And since that time, we've had more than one Miss America who's been black, starting with Vanessa Williams and then Debbie Turner. I think maybe one or two other ones since that time. So now, because Miss America has come into the time, we can get rid of Miss Black America. We don't need it anymore, right? We got the main one. When are we going to come to American history? We need to get rid of Black History Month.

We just finished the first black American president. What are we going to do with Obama? Are we going to put him in the February box? Because he's black. Only talk about him in February. Don't talk about him in March or September. Because he's black history. Put him in February. Well, you know, I'm at a loss for words, man.

Right. It's crazy how we do this. Listen, we claim to be The greatest nation On the face of this earth I have a problem with that And don't get me wrong I'm a patriot, I love my country But I do have a problem with that statement

And I'll say that perhaps we are The greatest nation on the face of this earth Technologically After all We put a man on the moon of this earth technologically. After all, we put a man on the moon. We invented the technology to carry that man to the moon safely and allow him to walk around, get back in his lunar module, and come back to Earth safely.

We invented that technology. Not only that, when Neil Armstrong was up there walking around and made that famous one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind quote, we were able to talk with him live all the way from Earth, NASA headquarters, all the way to the moon, live via satellite radio phone. We invented that technology, Americans. Everybody you know has a cell phone. Everybody you know has email. Hit a few words, hit a few numbers, hit send.

You're talking to people next door in Nevada or over in Africa, China, Australia, wherever you want to talk, anywhere on the face of this earth. We invented that technology. So how is it that we as Americans can talk to people as far away as the moon or anywhere on the face of this earth, yet so many of us have difficulty talking to the American who lives right next door

because he or she is a different color, a different religion, a different ethnicity, a different persuasion, a different whatever. It seems to me that before we can call ourselves the greatest, our ideology needs to catch up to our technology. And when we get ourselves up there, both of them up there, then we can truly brag about how great we are. Because we are living in the 21st century. We are living in space age times.

Yet there's still so many of us thinking we're still in age minds. What is this doing in the 21st century? What was it doing in any century? But yet in the 21st century, you've got to be kidding me. Well, it brings me back to what you were saying earlier, the problem is education the problem is ignorance right and the the solution to education is ignorance and this is sort of the same thing when it comes to radicalizing young people online right the one of the reasons why that works at all is because these young people are susceptible to other ideas because their intelligence immune system is very low they don't have a lot of data they don't have

a lot of education they don't have a lot of information and they don't have a lot of perspective so they can be they can be tricked they can be roped in yes and this is this is the same with everything this is the same with what you were talking about with not trusting your neighbors because they're a different nationality or a different color and not communicating with people that are any different than you and then being toxically tribal. It's all kind of the same thing. It's like there's a lack of understanding of what the consequences that are globally and in personally to your own life. globally, and then personally to your own life? Well, again, you know, back to MINDS. MINDS is going to help those young kids get those perspectives. We'll have people on there who are the experts in sucking those kids into these things. I know a former jihadi recruiter for ISIS who used to recruit kids to put them in ISIS here in the States. Okay?

Get him. Jeff Scoop, the guy from the NSM, he knew what to do in order to lure people into his movement. What's the NSM? The National Socialist Movement. Oh, okay. The Nazis. Same thing. Yeah.

So these people are willing to help on minds and help um point out these different things the little telltale signs as to what to look for you know you know so parents can spot what oh and this doesn't sound right you blah blah blah right you get my kid off of here and give kids a better perspective does minds have a video component to it or it will it will it will absolutely absolutely i i working on that now yeah see that that is uh for better i mean whether it's correct or not that's uh apparently the people that are really worried about people being radicalized online they're more concerned with that than anything else with video there's something about the compelling videos that you

find the music and the video and yes yes oh. Oh, yeah. Because kids grab, you know, because they play video games all day. It lures them in. But, you know, back to what I was saying before, and I finish it. What's happening that we don't see in the media a lot is this. When I was a kid, the black population in this country was 12%, 11.9%, 12%. Native Americans, just under 1%. Hispanic people, Latino people, 2% and 3%. Asians, 4%. White people, 84%, 86%. So white people of the supremacist type mindset,

their biggest nemesis, of course, were black people at 12%. Whoa, that's way too much. They didn't care anything about Native Americans. Their attitude was that's just 1%. Stick them on a reservation and forget about them. And that's where these negative terms come from that a lot of people don't realize are insulting terms. You know, when you say somebody's gone off the reservation. Oh.

You've heard that term before, right? Yeah. Yeah. I never even thought of that until just now. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, wow. You see what I'm saying?

You don't realize it's a negative term. Yeah. Or when somebody says, that's none of your cotton picking business. Oh. Ah. Okay. Who picked cotton? right okay uh i thought it was a nice way of saying motherfucking you know like you want to like people say freaking yeah it's none of your cotton picking business but yeah yeah or or when somebody comes from the wrong side of the tracks

oh yeah that one's obvious. Yeah, the railroad track divided blacks on one side, whites on the other. The wrong side, of course, was the black side. Anyway, so their biggest nemesis, if they were of that supremacist mindset, were black people. 12% is too much. Now, today,

black people, we remain at 12%. We've not grown. 12.6% if you look at at 12%. We've not grown. 12.6 if you look at 2017 census. We have not grown 12%. Native Americans are still at 1%. Asians are at 6%. Hispanics have surpassed us. They're like at 13% or something, just above 13%.

So let's just take 12% black, 13% Hispanic, let alone 6% Asian or whatever. That's 25% non-white. This is happening. Okay? And it's well predicted by 2042, which is 22 years from now, this country, for the first time in history, will be 50% white and 50% non-white. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun is a very hard pill to swallow for people of that mindset. They're becoming unhinged and disconcerted. That was the they will not replace us thing, right?

Precisely. Exactly. Now you're getting it. Exactly. And that's what they call the browning of America and the white genocide. And see, what they're doing is these groups are stepping up their recruitment efforts now. Because one of the main problems in this country, one of the main concerns is illegal immigration. So these groups are saying, hey, you know, we're against illegal immigration too.

Come join us. You know, they're getting on a legitimate bandwagon. But when they say illegal immigration, it's a code word. It's a code word for people from South America, Mexico, West Africa, okay? Because there are plenty of people here in this country right now who are here from Canada. Nobody gives a fuck about Canadians coming in here. Exactly. Exactly.

Canadians or people from the UK or Eastern Europe. And the Canadians speak perfect English, too. Sure. They slide right in. And it doesn't even matter if Canadians speak perfect English, too. Sure. They slide right in. And it doesn't even matter if they speak perfect English or not. You know, if you're, you know, these Nazis and Klan people tell me, Daryl, I don't want my grandkids to be brown. Well, you know, if their kid were to marry somebody from Canada, their grandkids are going to be white. Or the UK or Eastern Europe, they're going to be white.

But if they let their grandkids marry somebody from El Salvador or Guatemala or Nigeria, oh, heaven forbid, right? Heaven forbid. Oh, it's a trouble. So what happens is this. They say, come join us. We're going to take our country back. We're going to build that wall, blah, blah, blah.

So people see the landscape changing. And so they go and join these groups. And the group doesn't do anything. So then what happens? They say, you know what? If the Klan can't do it, if the NSM can't do it, I'll do it myself. And that's when they walk into a synagogue. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Or into a black church. Boom, boom, boom. Or El Paso. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay? These are called lone wolves. Now, we have intelligence agencies or whatever that can infiltrate some of these groups and get in there and get all the stuff and foil those plots, gather intelligence. But you cannot infiltrate a lone wolf.

It's only one person. And as we get closer and closer to 2042, unfortunately, we're going to see more and more of these lone wolves. And that's what we have to watch out for. So you notice every time one of these white supremacist types gets busted and they go and raid his home, what do they find? A whole cache of automatic weapons and all that kind of stuff. That's for the race war. That's for the race war. When they track racism over the last 100 years, it's at a decline.

It's at a measurable decline, but not enough. What could be done to accelerate that decline? What do you think can be done to sort of start teaching civics, spike up the civics in elementary school. Don't wait until high school. By civics, what do you mean exactly? You know, our country is so diverse now. We need to learn about the history of everybody in our country and everybody's contributions to making this a great country. White, black, Hispanic, women, whatever.

Our country is truly a melting pot, and we need to treat it as such and give everybody credibility. So, you know, this person looks different than me, but he contributed something that I need. I look different than him, but I contributed something that he needs. You know, that kind of thing. So we have more mutual respect for one another. You know, the older generations are going to die out, but we have to stop them from

proliferating their BS to these younger generations, you know? And we do this in schools. You know, look, when I was in junior high school, which they don't have anymore, right? They have middle school now. Sex education was being introduced. Parents were freaking out. Oh, my God, I don't want my kid learning that. Well, guess what?

They didn't want their kid going to school and learning about sex. But yet these parents were not teaching their kid about sex at home either. They didn't want their kid learning it. How are you going to stop a kid from learning about sex? If you don't let your teachers in school educate them properly and you're not willing to do it at home, your kid's still going to learn it. And where is he or she going to learn it?

Out in the street. And then what are you going to do when your kid comes home pregnant? You're going to be all freaked out. So if you wanted to take sex ed when I was in junior high school, you had to bring a note from your parents saying it was okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then you had like a little small class of five or six people taking sex ed. Today, it's part of the regular curriculum. And as a result, kids today are better informed about venereal disease, STDs, family planning, contraception, and all these kinds of things because they're no longer ignorant.

They have more information. All right? The same thing has – the taboo on sex education has been lifted. Right. Okay? We need to lift the taboo on racism in schools and talk about it at an early age. How much time are they allocating towards teaching people how to accept diverse groups and how to accept, how to fight against racism?

I mean, is that something that's taught? It seems like that should be a core curriculum. In private schools, where I see it is mostly in private schools. I don't see it in public schools, which is very unfortunate. You know, parents seem to seem to run the schools. You know, if your kid, for example, you send your kid to school and you find that your kid is not learning what you think he or she should learn, what do you do? You take him out of that school and put him in another school.

If they don't learn it there, you put him in a private school. If they don't learn it there, you take him home and you homeschool him. And so a lot of schools are very loathe to step on eggshells with parents. They don't want to upset the parents, whatever. But they need to. The parents are not the teachers. The teachers are the teachers. Well, it seems that if you could explain to kids how people get radicalized,

if you could explain to kids what happens online, how they draw you in, what's the appeal of being a part of a tribe, which is a big part of it, right? A big part of it is being like a gang. Right. Same thing that attracts kids to gangs like everybody's in it we're all together it's like it's in a a tight group right yeah i mean that that gets people in and when they draw you in like that if the kids said oh this is that shit they talked about in seventh grade i know what they're doing i mean just that they that alone. Darrell Bock And they're better prepared. Darrell Bock Yes. Darrell Bock That information. Exactly. Darrell Bock Yes. Darrell Bock And so schools are one thing, academic at an early age. The next thing I

fault are churches. Well, when I say churches, I mean religious institutions, which would include synagogues, et cetera. And I hate to get down on the clergy, but I'm telling you, they have accountability that they're not accepting. And don't get me wrong. I'm a Christian, all that kind of stuff. And I was a deacon in my church at one time. But here's the thing. Whether you're Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, whatever, you have some form of Sunday school. And so you go down in the basement in your facility, in your church or temple or whatever.

And your Sunday school lesson, when you're four or five years old, they teach you that we're all God's children. God made a rainbow, right? And we accept that at four or five years old. And then as we grow older, we reach puberty, adolescence, whatever, we move upstairs to the big congregation. Now we're sitting up there with the adults. The clergy, the rabbi, the priest, the minister, the pastor, the reverend, whatever, no longer teaches that Sunday school lesson. They stop saying upstairs, we're all God's children. What do you think would happen if the reverend or the priest would say to the congregation

one Sunday morning, hey, folks, guess what? It's okay for blacks and whites to marry. It's okay for Jews to marry Catholics. Half the congregation would get up and leave. And they wouldn't be putting their money in the collection plate because they're not hearing what they want to hear, right? And because it has not been continued. That Sunday school lesson needs to be continued upstairs so adults feel, hey, you know, we're

all a rainbow. We're all of God's children. But the priest does not say that or the reverend does not say that anymore because he's afraid of walking on eggshells and stopping the flow of money coming into tithes and offerings in that collection plate. People would be changing churches or firing him, right? And then your kid is, let's say I'm Catholic, and now I'm in 12th grade, and I'm going to the senior prom.

So my mom says, so, Daryl, who are you taking to the senior prom? I say, I'm going to take Susan Goldberg. Oh, yeah, you know, Susan's a nice girl. But don't you think you should take a nice Catholic girl? Well, yeah, Mom, but I mean, but, you know, I thought we were all God's children. Yeah, we are but but exactly

but is not a God word right but is a man word yes God was perfect if we are to believe in the concept of God then we are to believe

that God did not make any exceptions and buts and mistakes et cetera little loopholes he was perfect from the word go.

But is a man word. It's an exception. God was perfection. Man is exception. All right? So that's what happened. So that's why the clergy does not continue that Sunday school lesson. They're afraid of losing money.

In other words, they put money above morality. And they should be held accountable. Well, it seems like there's a lot of problems. It's not one thing. It's not just the clergy, and it's not just the schools. It's certainly the parents, and it's not just the schools. It's certainly the parents, and it's certainly what the parents were taught. So it's the parents' parents. It's the continuing of the ignorance that they inherited.

One of the most influential, unless you're an atheist, of course, the most influential authority in your life is your church. Everybody goes to church as a kid unless you're atheist or whatever. So that weighs very heavily. Well, how do you reach the atheists then? How do you reach the atheists then? Or the agnostics? A lot of atheists and agnostics

have excellent morals. A lot of them do. They have churches called ethical societies. And I've spoken to many of them do. They have churches called ethical societies. And I've spoken to many of them before. They don't believe in God, which is not something that I advocate, but I'm saying that they know right from wrong. And you find less controversy and racism and more acceptance in these places because it's about ethics and morality more so than division. Why do you have a white Baptist church and a black Baptist church?

What's that all about? Baptists should be Baptists. It's the same King James Bible. Why aren't they preaching the same lesson in Sunday school that they preach upstairs? They're not concerned about telling little four and five-year-olds that we're all God's children, God made a rainbow. You know why? Because little four and five-year-olds don't have any money. So they're not getting any money in the collection plate there.

It doesn't matter. It matters where the money is. You say what you got to say to get the amount of money that you need. That's, you know, I don't go to church, so that's an alien concept to me, but it's sad if that's the lesson, if that's the way they're structuring their lessons

in a church or a synagogue or a temple, that that's how they're doing it. They're structuring their lessons to achieve more donations? Look at these megachurches. Yeah. Well, look at them. Look at them. And how many times do some of these priests and preachers get in trouble?

Those megachurches always seem to me to be run by cult leaders that are keeping it together. They're just keeping it together, staying within the structure of traditional Christianity. Because people want to believe in something. Yes. So why not believe in the Klan? Why not believe in whatever? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's tribal. We have this intense desire to stay tribal, but we've got to consider ourselves a tribe of the human race. Exactly. The human race. That can be taught to people it can yeah i think what you're done what you're proving and what you're doing by your amazing accomplishments is showing that that even in the most radicalized of people the kkk and the national Socialist Movement. You're converting people.

Well, I'm going to hook you up with some friends of mine like Jeff Scoop, who was the recent leader of the NSM, Arno Michaelis, who co-founded A Life After Hate, and he spends his whole life dedicated to de-radicalizing people. Please do. I'd love to hear their stories. I'd love to talk to them. Absolutely. And you can get their perspective, what got them in, but more importantly, what got them

out? What were the triggers that got them out after years of hating people and doing this? What made them see something differently? And how can that be parlayed into other entities? Well, I'm hoping that just hearing it from someone who's maybe struggling with that, And how can that be parlayed into other entities? Well, I'm hoping that just hearing it from someone who's maybe struggling with that. Maybe they live in a very tribal community or they're in some sort of a toxic environment. Their family dragged them in and they're really trying to figure out how long they can do this and how they can get out and what's the steps to get out? Well, it's not only getting out, but there has to be – and here's another thing that

I provide for these people when they come out. I provide support because oftentimes these people, if they come from a family that belong to these groups and they decide to leave the group or whatever, they've still got their family or whatever. But if they come from a family that was not racist, for example, there may have been some dysfunction or they just read the wrong book or made friends with the wrong person and went down that rabbit hole or whatever, and they give an oath and they join these groups, the family disowns them. You don't want your kid around your house if you have black friends or Jewish friends and he's over there insulting them.

You stay away from this house. You no longer my kid. So their family becomes that group. Took a blood oath. We got your back. You got our back. We are your family. Just like gangs.

Just like gangs. Okay? Yeah. And then finally you come to your senses and you see how crazy it was and you quit. You get out. Well, now you're left out there swinging in the wind. Right. Because your biological family still doesn't want you.

You have disgraced them. Your old friends from high school found out you had gone down that road. They don't want to associate with you because you have that stigma attached to you. You may be an ex-Klan member, but that ex-Klan member will always precede your title. For example, David Duke, he belongs to all kinds of different white supremacist groups but whenever you see him listed in the media so it's ex-clan leader David Duke blah blah blah it's never just David Duke that title ex-clan leader

it follows you and people look down on you for that you can't go back to your old group you've betrayed them so they want nothing to do with you except to beat you up or something look down on you for that. You can't go back to your old group. You've betrayed them. So they want nothing to do with you except to beat you up or something. And so now you're out here, can't go to your family,

your friends have disowned you. You turn to alcohol or drugs or some other gang to have that nurture, that belonging. So they need something there to support them. And that's also where I come in. I give them a chance to give them something to believe in, help their self-esteem, et cetera. And that's very important. Darrell, for anybody who's listening right now, what is the best way for them to find out more? What's the best way for them to take a step? What website would you point them to? Would you point them to your Minds account? Yes, I would point them to Minds.com and Change.Minds.com and Daryldavis.com. D-A-R-Y-L,

only one R. Daryldavis.com. Listen, what you've done is amazing. Your message, the way you handle yourself, the way you've managed to infiltrate those groups and just talk sense to them and convert them. It's very inspiring and very humbling. Thank you. I really appreciate you being here, man. I really appreciate you spreading your message. Let's consider this part one. Yes, sir.

Let's do it again. I would love to. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Daryl. My pleasure. Bye, sir. Let's do it again. I would love to. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Daryl. My pleasure. Bye, everybody.