He would occasionally explain to Kelly how his racist viewpoints were flawed. Over the next few months, Davis and Kelly met for several more interviews.ĭavis was extraordinarily patient and meek, but also persistent and authentic. He was no longer just head of the Maryland chapter, but of the whole country. They found that they agreed on the causes of many problems plaguing American society.Ī short time after the interview, Kelly was elected Imperial Wizard of the Invincible Empire Knights of the kkk. They talked not just about racial issues, but also about the deterioration of family values in America, the difficulties of raising children in the modern climate, and the dangers of recreational drug use. “Every time I reached into my bag to pull out a blank cassette or other item I needed,” the Knighthawk “brought his hand to rest on his gun,” Davis writes.īut Daryl Davis and Roger Kelly kept talking. The Grand Knighthawk remained on high alert, vigilant for anything that could endanger his leader. Throughout most of the two-hour interview, the atmosphere remained palpably tense. Finally, the Grand Dragon extended his hand toward Davis and shook his hand. But he understood the vastness of the distance he was attempting to reach his arm across. “I’m Daryl Davis, come on in,” he said.ĭavis stood there with his open palm outstretched. Davis sought to quickly reassure them, so he rose from his seat with his right hand extended toward Kelly. They feared that they had walked into an ambush. “I noticed the apprehension in their faces as their eyes quickly scanned the room and darted back to me.” “Upon seeing me, he stopped short, causing the Grand Dragon, following behind him, to almost bump into his back,” Davis writes. When he saw that Davis was a black man, the Knighthawk froze in his steps. The Grand Knighthawk also carried a loaded 9-millimeter pistol on his belt. This was the Grand Knighthawk, body guard to the Grand Dragon.” ![]() In his book, Davis describes the attire of the Grand Dragon’s bodyguard: “A young man dressed in military camouflage fatigues with the Ku Klux Klan insignia, a white cross in a red circle with a red blood drop in the center, on one side of his chest, and the initials ‘ kkk’ on the other side, entered the room. While arranging the meeting, Davis decided not to tell Kelly that he was black he thought divulging that little detail could dissuade the Grand Dragon from meeting with him.ĭavis arrived in the designated hotel room before Kelly. The Grand Dragon in Maryland was a man named Roger Kelly. Not one to aim low, Davis set up a meeting with the Grand Dragon, the highest-ranking Klansman in the state. He was living in Maryland, and decided to try to speak with a member of one of the state’s kkk chapters, the Invincible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Davis knew these would be dangerous meetings for a black man to take part in, but he was determined to forge ahead. ![]() He read every book he could get his hands on about the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group with a long history of using physical assault, terrorism and murder against black people and other minorities.ĭaryl also read all he could about the racism of Nazis during World War ii, about American neo-Nazi groups, and about black-supremacist groups.Īs the years went by, he learned an immense amount, but he realized that to fully answer the question, he would need to have firsthand discussions with white supremacists. Each one intensified his desire to comprehend what fueled the blind hatred. That experience planted a question in Davis’s mind that he was determined to answer: How can a person hate another person who they don’t even know?ĭuring his teenage years, Daryl suffered a few other racially motivated affronts. “It was very hard, at the age of 10, to understand why some people who didn’t even know me would inflict pain upon me for no other reasons than the color of my skin,” he wrote. His parents explained to him later that the people attacking him were racists, whose only problem with him was that he was black. But when his Cub master ran over to shield him from the stones, Daryl suddenly realized that he was the only Scout being targeted. ![]() Young Daryl was oblivious to the fact that he was the only black Cub Scout in the parade, and he initially thought those spectators must have had a problem with the Scouts. ( Listen to The Sun Also Rises episode about this inspiring story) “I turned, and to my surprise, saw they came from some of the spectators, even children, along the parade route.” Davis writes in his book, Klan-destine Relationships. As they approached a certain cluster of spectators, 10-year-old Davis suddenly felt the sting of a rock striking his arm. ![]() When Daryl Davis was a Cub Scout in 1968, his troop was marching from Lexington, Massachusetts, to Concord to commemorate the Ride of Paul Revere.
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