He said, Darryl, do not fool with Roger Kelly, he will kill you. How can you hate me when you don't even know me? I began seeking out members and leaders of the Ku Klux Klan.
I'm not saying ship them back to Africa, although that wouldn't be a bad idea. Ku Klux Klan, an unashamedly extreme right-wing sect with one fanatical aim, white supremacy. The secretary set up an interview with Roger Kelly, but didn't tell him Davis was black. He comes in, a handgun in his holster.
This is an ambush. My mind is racing 100 miles an hour. My eyes locked with Roger Kelly's eyes. I feared for my life.
This guy, his name was Roger Kelly. And I'd managed to get his address and phone number from someone on the condition that I not tell Mr. Kelly where I'd gotten it. I said, Darryl, do not go to Roger Kelly's house. Roger Kelly will kill you. I gave my secretary a phone number for him.
I wanted her to call him as opposed to me. I figured, well, he might pick up in my voice that I'm black. I said, I'm not talking to you.
Click. So she called him, and he agreed to do the interview. Well, we set it up for this motel room.
Mary and I got there super early. I gave Mary some money to get some soda pop out of the machine, put it in the ice bucket, get it cold. I wanted to be hospitable.
I wanted to be... Able to offer Mr. Kelly, when he arrived, a cold beverage. I had no idea what this man was going to do when he saw me. Was he going to freak out? Was he going to attack me?
Right on time, 5.15, Mary hops up, runs around the corner, opens the door. I'm seated back here where you could not see me from the hallway. In walks what is known as the Grand Nighthawk.
It means bodyguard, security. He's wearing military camouflage fatigues. Got the Ku Klux Klan insignia right here. And right here he has a semi-automatic handgun in his holster. He comes in.
Mr. Kelly is walking directly behind him. And the Nighthawk turns the corner and sees me and just freezes. And they're like looking all around the room. I knew it was up.
You know, they're thinking they must have knocked on the wrong door or this is an ambush. And I stood up and I went like this to show I had nothing in my hands and I walked forward and I said hi Mr. Kelly I put my hand out said I'm Darryl Davis Mr. Kelly says to me Mr. Davis do you have any form of identification I said sure so we got into this into our into my interview with Mr. Kelly and you know he would answer questions or say you know I'd rather not talk about that or whatever a little over an hour Into this interview, there was kind of a strange noise. And we all jumped. And I knew, I knew that Mr. Kelly had made that noise. But I didn't know what the noise was.
I'd never heard a noise like that, so I couldn't explain it. Automatically, I assumed it to be a threatening noise, an ominous noise. Almost instantly, I popped up out of my chair.
I slammed my hands on the table. My mind is racing 100 miles an hour. I'm hearing the voice that told me, Daryl?
Do not fool with Roger Kelly, he will kill you. And I'm thinking, what did I just say? What did I just do to cause Mr. Kelly to go off and make some kind of weird noise?
I was not armed. My secretary was not armed. The only person that I knew for sure who was armed was an IHOP. I feared for my life. My eyes locked with Roger Kelly's eyes.
I didn't say a word. I didn't have to. Because my eyes were speaking loud and clear.
In fact, My eyes were shouting so loud at him he could hear my eyes. My eyes were saying to him, what did you just do? But guess what? His eyes were saying to me, what did you just do?
Well, Mary, she's sitting on top of the dresser. She realized what happened. The ice in the bucket next to her melted and the cans of soda fell down the ice.
That's what made the noise. And then it made it again, and we all began laughing. We all began laughing at how ignorant we all were.
I'll say this was a teaching moment. The lesson taught is ignorance breeds fear. We fear those things we don't understand.
If you do not keep that fear in check, that fear in turn will breed hatred. If you do not keep that hatred in check... That hatred in turn will breed destruction.
We want to destroy. those things that we hate. At the end, I thanked him very much for his time.
I shook his hand. He wished me luck. He even gave me his Klan card. He said, keep in touch. He and the Nighthawk left.
On my way back down the highway to my house, I said to Mary, I said, you know, I rather like Roger Kelly. She just jumped almost in the car, hit her head on the ceiling. She said, well, he doesn't like you.
I said, yeah, I know. Now understand something. I did not respect what Mr. Kelly had to say.
However, I am going to keep in contact with him. I would call him when I had to play a gig up in Frederick, Maryland or that county. Say, hey man, I'm playing, you know, wherever. Come on out. He'd come.
He'd bring the night off. And, you know, he'd come down to my house. And the Nighthawk would sit on my couch next to him.
Sometimes the Nighthawk would get bored and pull out his gun and just like twirl it on his finger while Mr. Kelly and I are talking. Now, here's a man who did not like me, who felt that he was superior to me, but yet he would sit at my dining room table and eat with me. Or we would go out and have lunch or dinner.
So this went on for a couple of years. By the end of a couple of years, he was coming down to my house by himself. No Nighthawk.
He trusted me that much. He began inviting me to his house. I'd go to his house, I would see his clan den where he would have his clan meetings, things like that. I picked some more notes from my book.
Then he began inviting me to clan rallies. The strange relationship of a KKK wizard and his black buddy. They talked and talked some more.
Davis learning about the clan, Kelly learning about Davis. We get to know one another and we do different things, you know. It hasn't changed my views about the Klan, you know, because my views on the Klan has been pretty much cemented in my mind for years. Mr. Kelly and I would continue our conversations, even after my book came out. Over time, that cement that he talked about, that held his ideas together in his mind, began to get cracks in it.
He began questioning some of his thinking based upon the conversations that he had with me. And then over more time, that cement crumbled. And fell apart. And then a few years back, guess what? Roger Kelly quit the Ku Klux Klan.
I got more respect for that black man than I do you white men. A lot of times we don't agree with everything, but at least he respects me to sit down and listen to me. And I respect him to sit down and listen to him.
Do you think that you had something to do with Roger Kelly leaving the Klan? Oh, I know I did. It was an exchange of information that made him rethink his ideology. And when Roger Kelly... with the Klan, he gave me his Robin Hood.
He and I became the best of friends. All of this came through conversation, through talking. When I first began interviewing Klan members, they felt I was inferior. I had nothing to offer in terms of my opinion. But then over time, as the relationship develops, slowly...
But surely they began asking me questions. That was the first clue that the tide was turning. Oh, all of a sudden, my opinion matters.
Let's see where this is going. As a result, active Klan members have renounced that ideology. And in doing so, they turn over their badge of honor, their uniforms, and their swastika flags. So thank you. Thank you.
All right, my friend. Somebody violated their oath. So what do you think about your parents belonging to these organizations? I think it's fine.
So now both daughters are in the Klan. And their father, he got sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison. So I thought, you know what?
I'm going to call Tina, the mother. She hit the roof. Wanted to know how did I get her phone number, what did I want, blah, I said, Tina, shut up and listen to me for a second. I drove them out to a... Their father was in prison, so they could visit him.
And nobody in the clan had ever done that for them before. And so they had a turnaround. Well, my little girl came a long way. You know, no thanks to her father and I. We really did our best to destroy our kids.
And I do believe God does work through people, other human beings, and he most certainly uses Daryl Davis as an instrument because that man has touched a lot of lives. How many members? of the KKK you stopped being members? Directly between 40 and 60 people. Indirectly over 200. People tend to feel comfortable around things with which they're familiar.
And sometimes they may become xenophobic or develop a fear of things that are different. That fear can be overcome. If they go beyond that fear and develop a hatred, That's harder to overcome. We're not so naive as to think that everybody is going to change.
No. There will be people who will go to their graves being hateful, violent, and racist. But if somebody is willing to sit down and talk with you, there's an opportunity to plant a seed.