Daryl Davis is an American musician, actor, and — you guessed it — a lecturer who deals with racism. Davis has been working to improve race relations, engage in dialogue, and befriend members of the KKK for over 30 years.
It all started in 1983 when he was playing Western music in a white bar, and a patron came up to him and said it was the first time he “heard a black man play as well as Jerry Lee Lewis.”
Davis explained to the man that “Jerry Lee Lewis learned to play from black blues and boogie woogie piano players and he’s a friend of mine.” The man then slowly got closer to Davis and over a drink he admitted that he was a member of the KKK. The two men eventually became friends and the man gave him contact information on KKK leaders.
A few years later, Davis decided to interview Klan members and write a book on the subject. One of the motivation for Davis to write such a book is to find a question that lingered in his head since his childhood: “Why do you hate me if you know nothing about me?” This was a question that was left unanswered during his youth.
He once had a meeting with the Grand Dragon of the KKK in Maryland, Roger Kelly, where he told the secretary to conceal his race when he was arranging the meeting. The meeting took place at a motel, to where Kelly arrived with an armed bodyguard. Davis later became friends with the man.
From that moment on, Davis befriended and convinced 200 KKK members to give up their robes, chronicling many of these episodes in his numerous books.