Does Daryl Davis Hold the Key to Racial Harmony?

Does Daryl Davis hold the key The Silver Spring musician says that by getting to to racial know members of the Ku Klux Klan and letting them get to know him, harmony? he’s fostering By Mike Gruss mutual respect and understanding. It’s a simple idea. Maybe too simple.

154 January/February 2014 | BethesdaMagazine.com Does Daryl Davis hold the key to racial harmony?

Musician and author Daryl Davis holds one of the hoods that he says was given to him by former Ku Klux Klan members. k ersley ben tan

BethesdaMagazine.com | January/February 2014 155 daryl davis

Davis is a gifted keyboard player and bandleader. He has the kind of enviable talent that has attracted audiences, though never the fame of a Little Richard or a Chuck Berry. But Davis believes his true gift is this: He wants to be seen as a cata- Davis has performed lyst in resolving race relations in America. with lots of celebrities. He is a black man with friends in the Klan. Clockwise from top: Davis with Billy Joel, And now we come to the background Jerry Lee Lewis and that Davis says helps explain his views. Chuck Berry. Davis’ parents worked for the Foreign Service. He describes the international schools he attended as “a little U.N.,” with Italians, Germans and Nigerians. In 1968, when he was 10 years old and living in Belmont, Mass., he was one of It would be easy to parse this expla- two black students in his school. During nation by race. Presley and Holly, both a parade that spring, as Boston seethed white, fall under one set of rules. Did- with tension over civil rights, he marched dley and Berry, both black, under in his Cub Scout uniform from Lexington another. But before the audience can to Concord. Onlookers pelted him with think too hard about it, before they can rocks and debris and bottles, he says. Daryl Davis is a tell if the speech is the setup for a joke or Davis didn’t understand why. “My part of a larger point about how artists first thought was they didn’t like the showman. are viewed based on the color of their Scouts.” His parents told him it was On this Saturday night at The Birch- skin, Davis moves on. because of his race. mere in Alexandria, four white men “In Chicago,” he says, “we call this the Six years later, while Davis was attend- in black shirts and black pants saunter boogie-woogie.” ing Rockville’s Thomas S. Wootton High onto the stage. Then Davis, a 55-year- And that may be one of the least School, Matt Koehl, then the head of the old African-American wearing a gold polarizing things Daryl Davis has to say American Nazi Party, came to speak to his shirt and black jeans with a cellphone about race. class. Koehl pointed at Davis, one of two attached to his belt, takes his place in black students in the room, and told him, the spotlight. When he appears on television, “We’re going to ship you back to Africa.” He opens with a showman’s query: whether it’s The Geraldo Rivera Show Another student asked: “What if they “What do you people want to hear?” or National Geographic or CNN, Daryl don’t go?” The audience shouts the names of Davis’ own history rarely comes up. The “They will be exterminated in the 1960s rock ’n’ roll favorites, and the hosts don’t really want to know who he upcoming race war,” Koehl said. band kicks off a series of twangy, boo- is or where he comes from; they want Afterward, Davis started reading gie-woogie songs. Davis plays in the sound bites. everything he could about hate groups, flamboyant style of Jerry Lee Lewis or Davis provides them. and today he claims to have read every Little Richard, sometimes chopping the The subject of a 75-minute documen- book written about the Ku Klux Klan. keys karate-style and grimacing as if the tary scheduled for release early this year, The confrontation stuck with him like a music pains him. he has become a media-friendly outlier song he couldn’t get out of his head. And Though Davis lives across the state line when it comes to the über-touchy topic rather than ignore it, he plays the refrain in Silver Spring, he addresses the crowd of race in America. He alternately is over and over again. as if he were performing in another regarded as a role model in a post-racial How can they hate me when they don’t country. “Every time I play Northern Vir- society—and as a publicity hound who even know me? ginia, y’all call it rockabilly,” he says late in has put his own interests above the Afri- the set. He describes the genre by naming can-American community by ignoring a In the early days of rock ’n’ roll, Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. He talks not-so-distant struggle. Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry played to about the same music being referred to The fact that he has played with some segregated crowds. Davis was too young as rock ’n’ roll, but played by Bo Diddley of the country’s most revered musicians, to witness the concerts firsthand, but the and Chuck Berry. well, that only adds to the allure. photos intrigued him. c ourtesy photos 156 January/February 2014 | BethesdaMagazine.com family room, a Who’s Who of ’60s and Music “brought people together. ’70s musicians. There’s Ted Nugent and I like that,” says rock and doo-wop groups such as The Davis, pictured Platters and The Coasters. There are his here at home in Silver Spring. idols, Presley and Berry. Over the past 30 years, Davis has played with Berry and with Little Richard and even with Bill Clinton on sax. But as Davis backed some of music’s biggest names, he continued to untan- gle the question of race. The story Davis likes to repeat most often is about a gig at the Silver Dollar Lounge, a truck stop in Frederick, where a white man told him he played like Jerry Lee Lewis. The man said he’d never seen a black man play like that. Baffled, Davis asked the stranger if he knew who taught Lewis how to play. The man did not. A black man, Davis said. (Lewis told him so, he says.) The two kept talking, a friendly conversation about the roots of rock ’n’ roll and blues and boogie-woogie, and eventually the man mentioned that he was a mem- ber of the Ku Klux Klan. And this is where the story should end. This is where others would have walked or run away, where they would have ended the conversation, gracefully sidestepping the ignorant. Instead, the two exchanged phone numbers. “If I had a gig, I’d call him and he’d come out,” Davis says. The man would bring his Klan friends. “Black kids and white kids would a couch and plays an ominous coupling Later, Davis hung out with them. He lis- bounce up out of their seats, knock down of notes on the piano that dominates his tened. He treated them with respect. the ropes and start dancing and boogy- family room. Sometimes he knew the history and ing in the aisles together,” Davis said in a But harmony is different, he says. It meaning of the Klan traditions better 2011 interview with Amerika.org, a site does not come naturally. “You learn to than they did. He operated on the prin- for the self-described New Right. “This play harmony,” he says. ciple that people who have a coffee or a had never happened before.” About the same time as his encoun- beer together create a shared experience. Those images became an inspiration. ter with Koehl, Davis taught himself to “I have issues with their beliefs,” Davis “I wanted to do that. I wanted to make play piano. He attended Howard Univer- says, “but I realize I’m a good influence people happy,” he says. Music “brought sity on a music scholarship, graduating on people.” people together. I like that.” in 1980 and going on to meet as many Davis’ wife of six years, Brenda, calls It’s not much of a stretch, he adds, to musicians as he could, taking gigs as a her husband a “human magnet.” apply the same idea to race relations. session player or leading a band or back- “I admire him for what he does,” she Music depends on harmony and disso- ing national artists. “Music became my says. “Has it taken some getting used nance. Dissonance, Davis says, should profession,” he says, “but the whole time to? Yes.” only be used to create a certain mood. my obsession was racism.” Brenda, who is white and from Luray, c ourtesy photos k ersley ben tan As he explains this, he stands up from Dozens of photos line the wall in his Va., says she has seen a change in her BethesdaMagazine.com | January/February 2014 157 daryl davis Davis started reading everything he could about hate groups, and today he claims to have read every book written Davis at a KKK rally about the Ku Klux Klan. own friends, some of whom originally will view the Klan as ‘not all that bad’ women who appeared on the show and disapproved of her dating a black man and perhaps join where they otherwise offered to drive her to visit her husband but have rethought their positions. might not have.” in prison. The next clip, public television Out of human kindness or something Davis says NAACP leaders have criticized footage filmed five years after her appear- less easily defined, Daryl Davis says he him, as well, though neither the national ance on Geraldo, shows both the woman convinces racists not to hate him. Some chapter nor the Montgomery County chap- and her daughter renouncing the Klan at figure if Davis isn’t so bad, maybe other ter returned calls to confirm that. a public ceremony for Martin Luther King black people aren’t, either. Heck, maybe In 2007, administrators at Longwood Jr. Day in Silver Spring. They hug Davis they’ll even quit the Klan. And maybe University, a rural Virginia school where and tell the crowd they love him. one day, Davis says, the Klan will sim- the student population is 85 percent In another video, one that aired last ply disappear. white, made the book required read- summer on the National Geographic Some might view that as positive ing for incoming freshmen. Other col- Channel series Taboo, a former Klan thinking; others might call it unrealis- leges have invited him to speak. Among leader named Don sits at Davis’ dining tic. To Davis, it hardly matters. Today them: Cleveland State University, Penn room table. The two sip bottled water he claims to be friends with more than State University and Carleton College in and talk about a Klan event in Missouri a dozen current or former Klan mem- Minnesota. More than 15 years after the that the show paid Davis to attend. Don bers. And that’s why he has been on Ger- book’s release, Davis lectures as many as talks about how his friendship with aldo in the ’90s and on Jenny Jones and 50 times a year even as he plays about Davis has changed his views, and says on CNN, where one anchor deemed 200 gigs, from private shows to Ken- the Klan largely disbanded in Maryland him “strange indeed” for attempting tucky blues festivals to opening for blues after a few of the guys became friends to bridge the impossibly wide chasm guitarist and singer Buddy Guy. And with the musician. between himself and the Klan. early this year, Figura Media will release “My beliefs then are,” Don says, Lest anyone doubt his results, on a a documentary about him called The choosing his words carefully, “com- Sunday morning this past September, he Daryl Davis Project. pletely different than they are now.” goes to his closet and brings out a small, Amid all this attention, some ques- Davis, watching the clip with a visitor, black traveling bag, the kind you would tion Davis’ intentions. Others doubt the pops up from the couch. pack for a short weekend away, and pulls depths of the Klan members’ conversions. “Am I wrong for sitting down with peo- out the white robes, the ones he doesn’t Davis has heard the criticisms. This must ple when I get results like that?” he asks. keep locked up off-site, the ones he says be some kind of publicity stunt. He’s not an friends gave him after quitting the Klan. academic, so where does he get off claim- But is it really that simple? Harmony does not come naturally. ing he knows something about the Klan that Davis’ logic follows that if Klan mem- others don’t. He says African-Americans bers can just get to know him, they won’t In 1997, Davis wrote about these who criticize him for befriending the Klan be able to hate him, and vice versa. But interactions in Klan-Destine Relation- are essentially taking the same hate-based how can you ever really know what’s in ships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku position they despise: They’re labeling him another person’s heart? Klux Klan (New Horizon Press). Read- before they’ve even listened to him. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the South- ers online praised the book for its hon- Davis makes his case by playing a DVD. ern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, esty. Kirkus Reviews described it as a The first clip, from The Geraldo Rivera Ala., says the center gets calls about Davis “futile and pointless volume.” Show nearly 20 years ago, features Klan every few years. Potok has neither met “The dual dangers of this book are members and their children. It’s typical Davis nor heard of many of the Klan mem- that some readers will find tacit sup- talk-show tawdriness, and Davis was in bers the musician claims as friends. Regard- port for their beliefs that blacks are eas- the audience that day. Years later, accord- less, “the idea of being nice to the Klan is a

ily led,” the reviewer wrote, “and others ing to Davis, he called one of the Klan pretty silly one,” Potok says. c ourtesy photo 158 January/February 2014 | BethesdaMagazine.com daryl davis

Elyshia Aseltine, an assistant profes- they hate all black people. But many oth- sion of “Johnny B. Goode,” Davis moves sor of sociology, anthropology and crim- ers like the musician, he says. away from the keyboard. The bass player inal justice at Towson University, studies Gary counts himself among the latter. lays down the groove. The drummer stays how race factors into people’s self-per- He’s a separatist and would prefer that on time. Davis makes a show of watch- ception. She says Davis likely has “a nar- the world “be all white.” But he attended ing his lead guitar player so intently that row understanding of how racism plays Davis’ wedding, even though it was to a he appears to be studying how to play the out.” Racism is more nuanced than it white woman. instrument for the first time. Finally, he was 50 years ago, she says, and manifests “I don’t think it’s right,” he says of the nods as if to say: Let me try. itself in people’s decisions about where interracial marriage. “But I’d never say Then, still facing the crowd, Davis to live or shop or send their kids to anything about it.” stands in front of the lead guitar player school, rather than in Klan membership. If the purpose of befriending Klans- and, as if he has just learned the song She worries that Davis has become men is to somehow chip away at race- from those few seconds of careful obser- an exception to his Klan friends, not based hate, how do you measure victory? vation, takes over the solo, playing the the rule, and that their views remain In robes? In someone holding his disap- instrument behind his back. unchanged. proval in check? In a change of heart? It’s the signature move of the eve- Consider Gary, a former Klansman ning: white fingers guiding the instru- from Washington County in western At The Birchmere, Davis throws a ment, black fingers playing the strings, Maryland who asked that his last name blue hand towel over the keys and bangs and a crowd behaving exactly the way he not be used because “crazies” could look out an extended, flourish-filled solo. He always dreamed. Listening. n him up. Gary has been to more than two likes to introduce stunts into his sets, occa- dozen of Davis’ concerts, and Davis once sionally playing the piano through flames Mike Gruss has written for newspapers in secured tickets for him to see Chuck created with the help of lighter fluid. Ohio, Indiana and Virginia and now lives Berry. Gary says the hard-core Klan “I feel it,” he shouts. “It’s in my soul.” in Alexandria. To comment on this story, members “can’t stand” Davis because At one point during a vivacious ver- email [email protected].