A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin County Community College District. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.599.3142. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: April 10 All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be e-mailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Sydney Portilla-Diggs, student correspondent; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Lydia Gober, special contributor; Nick Young, photographer.
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Speaker recounts experiences with Ku Klux Klan
Imagine this: You’re an African-American man, and you just walked into a known Ku Klux Klan bar with a Caucasian woman.
You do not want a drink or directions to the next town. A Confederate flag hangs on the wall, and you are looking for the Grand Dragon of the Maryland Klan, Roger Kelly.
Well, that was Daryl Davis in 1991. “I have a lot of books about the Klan, but none of them said how to go into a Klan bar with a white lady,” he said.
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| Author and musician Daryl Davis treated Collin students and faculty to some piano to showcase how early rock & roll blurred the lines of race among America's youth. | Davis spoke to a roomful of students at the Preston Ridge and Central Park campuses Feb. 23 in honor of African-American History Month. Davis did not find Kelly that night when he and his Caucasian assistant, Mary, drove to Thermott, Md., but his quest to interview Kelly did not stop there. He had Mary call Kelly to schedule an interview for his upcoming book about the Klan.
Kelly agreed, unbeknownst of Davis’ skin color.
Kelly showed up along with a Grand Nighthawk, a Klan bodyguard donning camouflage garb with Klan insignias, a beret with “Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” scribed up on it and a handgun strapped to his hip. The Grand Master stayed and fielded Davis’ questions, often debating points of each other’s long-held beliefs about the separation of the races, which Kelly felt was to the benefit of everyone.
Then a sudden noise interrupted the meeting causing a panic. It was a non-descript sound, but one that Davis said sounded threatening. Davis said after the noise, he slammed his hands on the table staring at Kelly wondering, “What did you do?” Davis and Kelly locked eyes in alarm.
After a moment, the two came to the conclusion that the noise was not threatening at all – ice in a bucket had begun to melt and the soda cans shifted. Everyone laughed off the tense situation, but Davis made a crucial point about the incident: Ignorance breeds hatred, hatred breeds destruction. Because neither Davis nor Kelly knew the source of the racket, they both felt a hate in that brief moment, which could have become destructive had they or the Grand Nighthawk lost their composure to the point of violence.
“Racism is a cancer,” Davis said. “You can not ignore it and expect it to go away. Whenever you find cancer, you must address it at its source to eradicate it.”
Experiencing Racism
Davis’ source in experiencing prejudice in the United States began when he was 10 years old. Davis was a son of U.S. diplomats and lived overseas much of his life totaling 49 countries on five continents.
“I have seen hundreds of different races, cultures and ethnicities. My classes were full of Germans, Swedes, Nigerians and other nationalities. My peers back home in this country did not get that experience because the schools were segregated.”
During a stay in Belmont, Mass., Davis had joined the Cub Scouts, who had planned a march from Lexington to Concord – the route of Paul Revere. While marching with the other children, Davis said spectators began throwing pebbles, trash and broken glass at him. At age 10 and with no experience with racism in the United States, Davis thought the rabble rousers were angry at the Cub Scouts, not the fact that he was black.
“I did not realize I was the only scout getting hit until the den mothers fell back and huddled around me,” he said. Following the incident, Davis’ parents taught him about racism in the United States. “I thought my folks were lying to me. It made no sense to me because why would anyone who has never seen me or never talked to me want to hurt me?” he said.
The experience forever changed Davis’ life.
As a 10th grader in 1974 living in Rockville, Md., Davis began collecting books and other information about racism – white and black supremacy, white and black supremacy groups, Nazis, skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan.
“I wanted to know where the racist ideology had come from, because you were not born with it. Where did it come from?” he said.
In 1980, Davis earned a bachelor’s degree in jazz piano from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and thus began his true calling in life – music. He performed in a number of rock and blues bands in and around the Maryland area and in 1983 he joined a country and western band, which were chic at that time due to the popularity of the film “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
During a break in performance at the Silver Dollar Lodge in Maryland, a mid-40s Caucasian man wrapped his arm around Davis’ shoulders complementing his piano chops and telling him that he was the first black piano player that he had heard that sounded like Jerry Lee Lewis. This came as a shock to Davis, who knew Lewis personally and knew for a fact that Lewis copped his boogey-woogey, rock piano playing from black artists such as Little Richard.
The man invited Davis over to his table for a drink, which Davis obliged to ordering a cranberry juice. The man said it was the first time he had had a drink with a black man. Thinking this was a night of firsts for the man, Davis felt perplexed by this claim and he began to laugh. The man then showed Davis his Ku Klux Klan membership card.
Davis quit laughing.
The two men eventually become friends, and Davis called the man giving notice of future performances, during which he would show up with fellow Klan members just to listen to the music.
In 1991, Davis decided he wanted to write a book about racism. Needing a focal point for his book, he chose to highlight the Ku Klux Klan. Davis sought out his first Klan acquaintance after the two had lost contact through time and eventually found him and paid him a visit. The man had quit the Klan following his friendship with Davis and had returned his robe (according to Davis, Klansmen or women can buy their robes or rent them from the organization). But he still had the mask and head piece. Davis told the man what he wanted: A meeting with Roger Kelly, the Grand Dragon.
The man said it was a bad idea if he went to his house because Kelly would most assuredly kill Davis. The man reluctantly told Davis to go to a certain bar frequented by Klan members, including Kelly, where he would be in public and would least likely be murdered.
“Klan-Destine Relationships”
Following Davis and Kelly’s interview, the two kept in touch. Davis invited Kelly to gigs. The two ate meals together. Eventually, Kelly would visit Davis’ house without the Grand Nighthawk in tow.
“We ate the same mozzarella sticks from the same basket. We used the same salt and pepper shakers. It was his first time to socialize outside of his own race,” Davis said.
Kelly was eventually promoted to Imperial Wizard, the national head of the Klan, and invited Davis to rallies in support of Davis’s book, which was getting rejection letter after rejection letter. One publisher, according to Davis, wrote that they were a non-fiction company and that Davis should submit non-fiction. He said publishers were afraid to touch the subject of a black man co-mingling with the Klan. Others just did not believe his story.
Seeking to get his story in the mainstream press, Davis called CNN and told them about him going to Klan rallies and socializing with the Imperial Wizard. CNN took the story, filmed Davis and Kelly at a Klan rally and even interviewed Kelly in Davis’ house.
Davis’ book, “Klan-Destine Relationships” was published in 1997.
Closet Full of Skeletons
Davis has a closet full of Klan robes, T-shirts and other paraphernalia. One of the robes used to belong to Kelly, who gave Davis his Imperial Wizard blue garb after he quit the white supremacist group. Through his relationships and talking with Klansmen, Klanswomen and Klanschildren from around the country, he has convinced them through kindness, understanding and reasoned discourse that the Klan’s ideas were bunk. Many times, the former Klan member surrenders their robe to Davis, each a reminder of a special friendship and a changed life.
“I am a musician. I did not major in psychology or sociology. If I can do this, anyone can do this,” Davis said. “If I can talk to someone on the base level, you can. You just work on things you have in common. “We live in a very racist society. We should not ignore it. If you see someone being discriminated against, you must address the issued because this is our society. We must all take responsibility for making this a better society.”
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
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