![]() ![]() “Robert White was a Grand Dragon who had gone to prison numerous times. I said I wanted to interview him for my book. At first, he was very violent and very hateful, but we talked for a long time. Over time, he began thinking about a lot of things he had done and said that were wrong. He quit the Klan. Toward the end he said he would follow me to hell and back, and he gave me his robe and hood.” Today there is no more Ku Klux Klan in the state.”ĭavis’s encounter with Robert White was intense. “When the three Klan leaders left the Klan and became friends of mine, that ended the Ku Klux Klan in the state of Maryland. “The three Klan leaders here in Maryland-Roger Kelly, Robert White, and Chester Doles-I became friends with each one of them,” recalled Davis. He even asked Davis to be godfather to his daughter. He began inviting me to his house.”Įventually, Kelly quit the KKK and gave up his robes. After a couple years, he became Imperial Wizard. After awhile he began coming down here by himself, with no bodyguard. “Sometimes I would invite over some of my Jewish friends, some of my black friends, and some of my white friends, just to engage Mr. “He’d sit right over there on the couch,” Davis said. After an initially tense meeting with Kelly, Davis invited him to a show and even to his own house. That same man kept showing up to Davis’s gigs and eventually gave him contact info for the Grand Wizard of the Maryland KKK, Roger Kelly. Thanks to that initial interaction with the KKK member in Frederick, Davis helped dismantle the Maryland KKK from within. It’s just latent.’ He said, ‘Well that’s stupid.’ I said, ‘It’s just as stupid as what you said to me.’ He was very quiet after that and I know it was sinking in.” Name me three black serial killers.’ He could not do it. “After a time I said, ‘You know, it’s a fact that all white people have within them a gene that makes them serial killers. One time, a Klansman told him, “All black people have a gene which makes them violent.” Davis responded calmly and rationally. He believes that many KKK members are brainwashed at an early age and simply have no real exposure to African-Americans. Many of them give him their robes to prove it.ĭavis wrote a book about his journey in 1998, entitled Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan. By his own estimates, he’s convinced 200 Klansmen to leave. “It’s a wonderful thing when you see a light bulb pop on in their heads or they call you and tell you they are quitting,” said Davis. Simply by talking and offering friendship. I just set out to get an answer to my question: ‘How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?’”īut convert Klan members he did. ![]() “I never set out to convert anyone in the Klan. Amazingly, he and Davis struck up a friendship. Soon the guy admitted that it was the first time he had ever talked to a black man before - because he was a member of the KKK. “Who do you think taught Lewis to play that way?” Davis quipped, mentioning how a lot of early rock ‘n’ roll pioneers were influenced by African-Americans who played the blues. The entire audience was white.Īfter the gig, a man walked up to Davis and complimented his piano skills, saying he was the best he had heard since Jerry Lee Lewis. The seeds were sown on a night in 1983, when he was performing country music with his band at a bar in Frederick, Maryland. Today, Davis works to change minds and hearts - by simply offering his friendship. Did the townspeople have something against the Boy Scouts? Bill Davis told his son that some people in the US simply didn’t like black Americans because they were different, and explained that there were even notorious militant groups like the KKK that believed in white supremacy. Hurt and confused, Davis had lots of questions for his father when he got home. Seeing what was happening, Davis’s fellow scouts came to his aid and surrounded him for protection. During a Fourth of July parade featuring the Scouts, a group of white townspeople threw rocks and glass bottles in Davis’s direction. When Davis’s family moved back to the US, they settled in Belmont, Massachusetts, where his father, Bill, enrolled for his Master’s degree at Boston University. He had never experienced racism or discrimination of any kind. As such, he lived around the world as a kid and grew up in cosmopolitan, multicultural environments in Ethiopia, Senegal and Austria. However, Davis is best known for reaching out to members of the Ku Klux Klan, befriending them and getting them to change their ways.ĭavis was born in Chicago in 1958 as the son of a State Department worker. He’s also an accomplished blues musician who’s played with some of the all-time greats, like B.B. He’s a character actor, with minor parts on HBO’s The Wire and in off-Broadway productions to his name. He’s a published author, public speaker and activist. ![]()
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