Race In America After the Fight for Civil Rights An Interview with Daryl Davis

By Alex Arzt Mr. Haight AP United States History 13 February 2005 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Statement of Purpose Biography Historical Contextualization Interview Trmiscription Interview Analysis Appendix Works Consulted Arzt 3

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this oral history project is to improve the collective knowledge available on the topic of racism in America after the Civil Rights Movement through an interview with Daryl Davis, a black man who crossed into the territory of the Ku Klux

Klan. By gaining a greater understanding of racist organizations like the Ku Klux Klmi, one can help to put an end to racism. Furthermore, the project aims to clarify any discrepancies in the history of the period. Biography ofDarylDavis

Daiyl Davis was bom in 1959 in Chicago, Ilhnois As a son of a foreign service officer, he spent much of his early childhood as an only child in Europe and Africa where he experienced a diverse population of people He has lived in a total of forty nine countries, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, and Austria After moving back to the United States to a Boston suburb when he was ten years old, he experienced the racism that plagued America, and in 1974 he became interested in the Ku KIUK Klan and began meeting with and interviewing Klan members In 1991, he began his book entitled

Klein Destine Relationships, which tells his story of his CKperiences with the Klan In his book, he connects with Klansmen and helps to change their lives by causing them to renounce the Klan on their own In 1980, he received a bachelor's degree in music from

Howard University in Washington, D C He now is a professional musician, playing in the Daryl Davis Band in which he performs as a singer and keyboardist in the Maryland,

Virginia, andD C area In 1992, he won a Grammy as the feature pianist for ^/^p. Flop, and Fly. In 1999, affer the pubhcation of his book, he won the American Ethical Union

Elliot Black Award Mr Davis now resides in his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, and continues to lecture and perform regularly The History of Racism in America and the Ku Klux Klan

Although the Civil Rights Movement occurred over forty yems ago, racism still reigns over America, despite what most people believe. Great strides have been made in race relations since the days of Martin Luther King, Jr., but there is still much progress to be made. 9,222 people were victims of hate crime in the disturbingly recent year of 2002, mid 211 of the crimes occurred in Marylmid (Dept. of Justice 3). Racism is rooted deep in this nation, which prides itself with the principle of Jefferson's Declaration of independence that "all men are created equal." This principle has proved difficult for mmiy Americans to accept throughout United

States history. Racist organizations thrive on Americmi soil. Today the burning crosses of the hooded members of the Ku Klux Klmi still blaze in nightly rituals. The Klan, whose beliefs are based around the ideals of "one hundred percent Americmiism", fundamentalism, and white pride, still commit mmiy racist crimes. At Klan rallies and meetings, racist speeches me made which include such offensive statements as "Praise God for AIDS! It helps us rid ourselves of niggers" (Davis 101). The years following the Civil Rights Movement began a modem racial

Reconstruction of the United States in which blacks were again liberated legislatively, not from slavery in the post war south, but from the discrimination that infected the entire nation. Because racism is still evident in the social order of America today, it is important to understand the origins of it and the perspectives of racist orgmiizations like the Ku Klux Klan in order to effectively stop it.

Racism began in America as soon as the white mmi stepped off his European ship onto the vast untouched North American continent. The first slaves were brought to Jamestown,

Virginia in 1619 mid with them cmiie a legacy that was unique to the United States. Black people were hardly seen as hummi and were treated like inferior miimals, especially on the

southern plantations where slaves constituted 47% of the population and constituted a majority

of the workforce (Fepperson 1). After the American Revolution and the Decimation of

Independence, two events founded on freedom, slavery was still a major pml of the country. As the United States was developing its democratic republic form of government, the four million

black slaves (Foner 1) were not taken into account, and their disenfranchisement continued. In

1787 the Constitution was signed and according to Chester Doles, leader of the Territorial Klans

of America, "When the United States Constitution was originally written. Blacks weren't

citizens. At that time, they were property. So how could they fall under the Constitution? It

wasn't written for them. It was written by the White mmi of the White man" (Davis 201). The

slave trade proved to be a black mark on the history of a nation that prides itself on freedom, and

by the seventeenth century, widespread northern abolitionism begmi to rise. The country was

split and sectionalism caused major internal conflicts in the areas of slavery and states rights. As the south threatened secession from the north because of these conflicts, the Civil War

commenced in 1860 in which the northern states, the Union, fought the southern states, the

Confederacy. After a bloody mid trying six years, the war ended mid the Union was victorious.

Thus the United States remained one country geographically, but not politically.

After the Civil War, the painful years of the Reconstruction of the south began. It was a

difficult adjustment for southerners to make physiologically and sociologically because their

order of life was disrupted. The freeing of the slaves was inevitable, but "the manner of its

coming made the adjustment of the races extremely difficult... Out of it cmiie many unfounded

fears, many stereotyped expressions of prejudice, many hysterical "myths" centered around the

Negro. The South still lives in the shadow of this 'tragic era'" (Woofter 193). And thus out of these stereotypes and fears the Ku Klux Klan and a new kind of racism were bom. After the Emancipation of the slaves by the Republicmis, poor whites competed with the free blacks

for jobs and status, and it was these whites that flocked to the Ku Klux Klan. Their hate for the

re-enfrmichised blacks was strengthened by the resentful feelings of Reconstruction.

The Klan was originally created by six former confederate officers; Richard Creed,

Calvin Jones, James Crowe, John Lester, Frank McCord, and John Kennedy in 1865 in Pulaski,

Tennessee. Their new secret fraternity was not originally intended to be a hate organization, but

simply for amusement that included mythical nmiies and strange costumes. Its main principles

were based on the values of the antebellum south. A meeting of all the Klan members of the time

was held at the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee in 1867. It was at this meeting

where the Lieutenmit General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest was elected the Grand Wizard, the

highest position in the Klan (Davis xvi). The Klan then adapted itself into a vigilante group in the

lawless times of Reconstruction. They were the protectors of the white southerners against the

northern carpetbaggers, who threatened to destroy southern ideals, and the free blacks, "in whose

blood," according to Klan lecturer R.H. Sawyer, "flows the mad desire for race miialgamation, is

more dangerous than a maddened wild beast and he must and will be controlled" (Jackson 22).

The white robed Klansmen began terrorizing the ignormit free slaves by telling them they were the ghosts of dead confederate soldiers coming to haunt them and often scared them into "staying

in their places" (Davis xv). The Klan's mission was to keep blacks as low as possible in the class

system and "to restore order meant returning the Negro to the field - just as long as he didn't do too well there - and the prewar leaders to their former seats of power. Those who felt differently

would have to go" (Chalmers 2). The image of the Klan became one of a savior to the aggrieved white people of the south, mid it is the mentality that "the south will rise again" that keeps the Klan spirit alive today in America.

As people begmi to realize that the Klmi's unnecessary violence and hatred were

hindering progress in America, it lost its momentum as a great power and influence. There

remained only a few "Klavems" that were located mostly in the Deep South. However the

postwm restlessness left by World War I in the 1920s caused a revival of the Klmi and "during the war patriotism had been worked up to a fever pitch, sometimes with outrageous propaganda.

Now the war was over, but the flag waving spirit continued, looking for some new focus"

(Tucker 12). As liberal sentiment began forming a strong base in the country after the war, the

Klan met it with full conservative force. "Colonel" Willimii Joseph Simmons, who was bom mid

raised in Alabama, brought the Klmi back to life and made it more powerful than it ever was in the antebellum years. Simmons declared himself the Imperial Wizard, and he wrote a fifty four

page pamphlet called the Kloran, published Jmiuary 16, 1917, in which all the ideals and policies

of the Klan are outlined (Jackson 6). In the beginning however, very few people new about the

Klan and Simmons struggled to support it. He called himself "its sole parent, author, and

founder; it was MY creation - MY child, if you please, my first bom" (Jackson 7).

Several factors contributed to the resurrection of the Klan in the 1920s. The extremely

popular silent film The Birth of a Nation by D. W. Griffith portrayed the Klan as heroes and

protectors of the south from the newly freed, wild blacks. It contributed to the 1920s view of

blacks as "a mental pygmy, unable and unwilling to perform miy but the most menial tasks, mid

ever mixious to prey upon the purity of white women" (Jackson 22). The movie shows the white

robed and hooded Klansmen keeping blacks away from their women, who were afraid to leave their homes, and using intimidation with guns to keep them away from voting at the polls. Even Woodrow Wilson, the liberal president of World War I, said of the film, "It's like writing

history with lightening and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true" (Chalmers 27). This

was possibly one of the first movies that was effective in swaying people's views of history.

Simmons' weaknesses and drunkenness caught up with him when the incompetent leader

was succeeded by Hirmii Wesley Evans in 1922 from Texas, who unlike Simmons possessed

"the determination of Martin Luther, the kindness of Lincoln, mid the strategy and generalship of

Napoleon" (Jackson 14). Evans reformed Simmons' Klan mid contributed to the organization

and the policies it holds today. He established the Klan as a benevolent and patriotic society that

sought to uphold education, temperance, the flag. Protestantism, morality, and charity. He also

proclaimed in the constitution of the Klan that any members who engaged in illegal activities

would be banished. The beginning of the Constitution reads, "Only native bom, white Americmi

citizens who believe in the tenets of the Christian religion, and who owe no allegiance of any

degree to any foreign government or institution religious or political, or to any sect, people, or

persons are eligible for membership" (Jackson 23). Evans was responsible for creating the anti

Semitic, miti Catholic, and anti foreign principles of the Klan. The hatred of the Germans after the first World War created a "peacetime suspicion of everything foreign" and aliens became the

"most dmigerous of all invaders" (Jackson 22). Between 1901 and 1920, fourteen million

immigrants arrived on Americmi soil. Five million of these were Italian Catholics and Russian

Jews fleeing the turmoil of war torn Europe (Woofter 31). Catholics owed allegiance to the Pope

before their country and the Jews did not believe in Jesus Christ, two concepts unacceptable to the Klan. There was less hate toward blacks mid more towards the unfamiliar immigrant in the twenties. The resurgence of the Klan was also a reaction to the roaring twenties. By 1926, it

had amassed two million members, mid journalist Stanley Frost called it "the most vigorous,

active, and effective force in Americmi life, outside business" (Jackson xii). They fought against the immorality that spread throughout the country like drinking, sexual promiscuity of women,

and city life which, according to Simmons, "corrodes the very soul of our Americmi life"

(Jackson xiii). It rallied together people who believed in traditional Americanism and

Christianity. A Klan newspaper editor wrote that the Klmi "is going to drive the bootleggers

forever out of this land...It is going to bring clean moving pictures to this country; it is going to

bring clemi literature to this country; it is going to breakup roadside parking, and see that the

young mmi who induces a girl to get drunk is held accountable" (Tucker 6). The Klan

continually resisted change in their history. They sought to hold onto traditional values mid did

so by trying to preserve the purity of the white race, which according to them was being

destroyed through miscegenation, or mixing of the races.

The Klan's influenced waned yet again with the Great Depression mid the 1933 repeal of the Prohibition Amendment. Frmiklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to try to lessen racial

oppression in the United States. He created a "Black Cabinet" to advise him on racial matters

(Wilson 165). However racism in the mmy persisted. Black mid white soldiers were segregated,

and blacks were given menial jobs and low rankings. Black soldiers were lynched by their fellow

white American soldiers for dating white English women (Tucker 185). At the close of World

War II, the Klan and racism in America experienced another revival, although not one of as great

force as in the twenties. Dr. Samuel Green, an Atlmita obstetricimi, was considered the last great

leader of the Klan because he united it. However, his Klan received far more opposition than in

previous yems from the American public. People no longer tolerated the violent acts that the Klan participated in, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Internal

Revenue watched the Klan closely. In 1944, the government demanded over $900,000 in unpaid taxes, which the Klan could not pay and thus folded. In 1949, after a short lived glory, Samuel

Green died, and this resulted in the splintering of the Klan, which altogether weakened its

influence (Chalmers 5).

In the words of scholar William Pierce Randall, "A sober review of our history yields the

unwelcome conclusion that the Klan spirit is a constant in our national behavior. At times it is

quiescent, but it is not dead; only slumbering between eruptions" (Tucker 5). The Klmi was

reborn yet again during the turbulent yems of the Civil Rights Movement and was more violent than ever in their vicious fight against the ultimate threat to traditionalism, integration. As soon

as southern whites discovered that their precious way of life was threatened after the \954 Brown

V. Board of Education decision, which declared segregation unconstitutional in schools, mmiy

flocked to join the Klan. The New York Times reported on April 20, 1965 that "the Klmi and

allied organizations are now more active, and possibly stronger in numbers and influence, than at

any time since the Klan's heyday in the 1920s" (Keesing 7). With Robert Shelton as the leader of the newly formed United Klans of America, there were only forty to fifty thousand members in

1965, compared to the five million in the twenties, but this new Klan had far harsher motives and

more extremist ideals. Robert F. Kennedy said of far right conspirators in a 1961 speech.

They look suspiciously at their neighbor and their leaders. They call for a man on

horseback because the do not trust the people. They find treason in out finest churches, in

our highest court, mid even in the treatment of our water. They equate the Democratic

Pmly with socialism mid socialism with communism. They object quite rightly to politics intruding on the military - but they are anxious for the militmy to engage in politics.

(Ridgeway 76)

Communism became the new evil institution in the fifties and sixties. The Klan accused whoever threatened their idea of "100% Americanism" of being communist. This included Civil Rights

leaders like Mmtin Luther King, Jr. and also all Jews. Kennedy recognized the Klmi and other

right wing extremist racist orgmiizations as a threat to the advancement of civil rights for blacks

and also the political advancement of whites to abmidon racism mid white supremacy.

The southern system of race relations was staunchly defended by members of the Klan

who vehemently disagreed with integration. They felt that the government was not respecting

states' rights, which is strangely reminiscent of the Civil Wm and slavery. Racist southerners

opposed integration because the government was forcing their way of life on the south. Tony

LaRicci, Grand Giant of the Maryland Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, believed that.

Our nation - before the Civil Rights Movement - was the greatest nation on Earth mid the

most powerful and the smartest. I think history will prove this. Now, you look at our

nation today compared with it back then. Integration would have come along if they had

let the people accept it on their own and not be forced. (Davis 76)

Even if integration had eventually come along after the 1960s, it was long overdue when it

occurred. Racism has proved to be a virus among the Americmi people. Those who it infects are

isolated and thus divide the country and bar it from social progress. The mark left by the brmid of

slavery is burned so deeply in American history that the scar is still visible today. Some white

Americans cminot forget that once in the history of this country, the black man was subordinate to the white mmi, and they are empowered by that fact today. After the Brown v. Board decision, the nation exploded in anti integration

sentiment. In a 1958 CBS special, the Grand Wizard of the Georgia Klan, Eldon Lee Edwards^

said their main purpose was to maintain "segregated school at any mid all cost...If the Supreme

Court can't maintain our Southern way of life then we are going to do something about it"

(Adams 294). It was out of this sentiment that the violent new Klmi was bom. Between 1956 and

1966, there were more than one thousmid documented cases of racist crimes which included terrorism, assaults, and murders committed by Klansmen and other racist whites against both

black mid white victims (Tucker 187). After a 1960 lunch counter demonstration in Houston,

Texas, where black students sat in a white restaurant, four white men kidnapped one of the

students. After being beaten with a chain, the men cm^^ed "KKK" into his chest and stomach and

left him hmiging to a tree by his feet as a warning to other blacks who dared challenged the

southern system of segregation (Keesing 72). Mmiy of these murderers were not punished

because they generally had all white southern juries judge them at their trials. The most famous

case of this occurring was the 1963 bombing of the 16 Street Baptist Church in Birmingham,

Alabama in which four young black girls were killed by conspiring Klansmen including Robert

Chambliss. Connie Lynch, an extremely racist Klan leader was pleased by the bombing because the girls were "just little niggers...mid if there's four less niggers tonight then I say, 'good for

whoever planted the bomb"'(Tucker 187). This kind of disturbing statement echoed throughout the country when all the men indicted for the murders went free before mi all white southern jury

despite several witnesses who identified seeing the men at the church. And case after case, racist

killers were set free in trials with Klan sympathizing juries. The Civil Rights Movement

achieved great lengths in the advancement of the black race in America, and although mmiy new

laws secured their new position, there were still stubborn whites who did not want to accept it. After the Civil Rights Movement there was a long and difficult adjustment for the

country to go through before the movement could be called a success. The first sign of

real progress was the 1978 retrial of seventy nine year old Robert Chambliss in the

murders of the four black girls in the Birmingham church bombing. In the retrial,

Chambliss was sentenced to life in prison with the charge of first degree murder, a

landmark in American justice. His sentence showed the change of the social and legal

state of the country in the 1970s and how it had progressed since the 1960s (Tucker 188).

This sentence is credited to Morris Dees, who Klmi members call "the Sleaze" (Ridgeway

171). He is mi aggressive civil rights advocate in Alabama where he founded the

Southern Poverty Law Center, which helps to advance the legal rights of poor people through education and litigation. Out of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dees started the Klanwatch Project, which in 1981 started by protecting Vietnamese fishermen in

Texas from the harassment of Louis Beam's Lonestm Klan and has since helped in mmiy

cases to bring the Klan to justice despite the many death threats received by Dees.

Another case in which Dees helped bring the Klmi to justice was in the lynching of

Michael Donald, a nineteen year old black man who went out to get cigmettes and never

came back to his Mobile, Alabama home in 1981. Donald was beaten and then hung from

a tree. Dees represented Donald's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, in the case and demanded

seven million dollars from the United Klmis of America even though Dees said,

"Realistically, she will be lucky if she gets $300,000," (Toner 1) so paltry were the Klans

assets. Dees and Mrs. Donald won the case and thus drained the Klan of its monetary

support. Klan by Klan, Dees worked to slowly eradicate the organization. Ku Klux Klan membership dropped significantly after the Civil Right Movement.

It had forty two thousand members in 1965, and in 1974 the number dropped to roughly

fifteen thousmid. This drastic chmige cmi be credited to the lost battle against segregation

in the south and the fact that more people were ready to accept integration (Tucker 192).

Although the number of Klan members dropped in the seventies, segregation or racism

were still prominent forces in people's social lives mid in politics. In statistics t^en from the U.S. census, the segregation index in 1970 in Louisville, Kentucky was higher thmi

any other year at eighty three even after sixteen years since Brown v. Board. In 1980, the

segregation index was eighty and in 1990 it was seventy five, just short of the 1960 level

of seventy eight. (Cummings 620). These statistics tell a lot about the progress, or lack there of, in residential segregation. There is "nothing paradoxical about the persistence of

racial oppression after the so called Civil Rights Revolution...Concentrated black poverty

arose in urban areas in the post civil rights era for two primmy reasons: racial

discrimination in housing and employment persisters, and exploitative and oppressive

economic processes continued in this era" (Wilson 177). Perhaps it is because by nature

people of similar races cling together, or it is because Americans continue to not see past the color of skin. Although this is only one southern population in Louisville, it is the

idea that segregation still exists today that is tragic because many people have died

fighting against it. The Civil Rights Movement caused an awakening in America and

hopefully it will open its eyes wide enough in the future to see that much progress is still

left to be made.

In the post civil rights movement years, the main issue surrounding race relations

was affirmative action which was created to stop job discrimination. The government gives quotas, or percent requirement of how many employees are minorities and women, to these businesses, especially to employers known to practice job discrimination. It was

introduced by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 and remains a controversial issue in politics.

Ronald Reagan campaigned against affirmative action in the 1980s because he believed

in "race neutral politics" in which the country looks past race in its decision making

(Wilson 197). He said in a 1986 speech, "If there is any legacy I wmit to leave the nation,

it is that I continued to move our country towmd color blindness [mid] further away

from...racial quotas" (Adams 244). He believed that the purpose of affirmative action, to

compensate for years of wrong doing of women and minorities, had been accomplished,

and therefore affirmative action was no longer necessmy in the 1980s. George Bush, Sr.

held the same viewpoint. Before he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991, an amendment to Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964, he made sure to have affirmative action not made

any stronger. In the text it is written that the purpose of the act was to "provide for

dmiiage in cases of intentional employment discrimination" mid "to clarify provisions

regmding dispmate impact actions" ("Civil" 1). Affirmative action is still effective today, though the conservatives still are against it.

Although the Greensboro Massacre of 1979 concluded the seventies, much racial

progress was made in the eighties. In Greensboro, North Carolina, American Nazis and

Klansmen open fired on protesting member of the Communist Workers Pmly, killing five

and wounding nine (Ridgeway 150). Violence in the Klmi still persisted through the

eighties as well, but they were met with more opposition than ever before. Each time a

Klansmmi or racist committed a crime for their cause, they were not given sympathy in a

court of law because by the eighties, hate crimes were not taken lightly in the north or the south. Blacks and whites finally shared school rooms, bus seats, hotels, and restaurants

for the first time in American history. The federal government made laws requiring banks to have signs on their counters stating that it was illegal to discriminate because of race,

religion, or nationality, and the customer was allowed to appeal if they felt their rights

were violate. Blacks begmito be elected to leadership positions throughout the country

for the first time in the seventies and eighties. In the 1980s there were black mayors of

Atlmita, Baltimore, New York, and Washington, D.C. The grmidson of slaves, L. Louis

Wilder, became governor of Virginia, symbolic of over one hundred yems of progress

(Tucker 191). The membership of the Klan also dropped significantly from 1981 with a

membership of eleven thousand to five thousand in 1986, resulting mainly from the

growing public revulsion of the Klan (Tucker 192). The Klan will not likely gain the

same popularity it once had in the 1920s and "the ' 100 percent American' Klan that had

once rallied to defend the flag and Christimi virtue was long gone...What remained of the

Klan in the 1990s had become only the nucleus of a pmmioid fringe of American society,

self destructing through the crime and violence of its own rank-and-file" (Tucker 194).

Another Klan revival in the future is doubtful because of the growing amount of

liberalism in America today does not tolerate the slightest form of racism.

The busing controversy in Boston, Massachusetts epitomized the difficulty of

integration even in northern cities in the mid 1970s, sixteen years after the Brown v.

Board decision. After much violence broke out, the nation was shocked to discover that

Boston, a city known as the "cradle of liberty," was sharply divided by race and class.

According to Dan Richardson, a former Federal housing official, "This must be the most

segregated cities miywhere in housing mid in schools, north or south" (Homburger 236). In the U.S. District court case of Morgan v. Hennigan, Boston was charged with having

unconstitutionally segregated schools ("School" 1). Judge Arthur Garrity approved a

busing plan written by Charles Glenn after much debate. At first he was reluctant to do so

saying, "Just because a school in a black neighborhood doesn't automatically mean there

has to be a chartered bus to take white pupils in mid out of there" ("Judge" 1). However

with only three months until the opening of schools, Garrity was forced to approve the

Busing plan, which he called Phase I, to integrate half of the Boston public schools. It

was enforced on September 12, 1974, the first day of school for thousands of Boston's

youth. Violence erupted that very day as whites and blacks alike threw stones at buses or

committed random acts of violence. Ninety four people were arrested in the first four

days of the 1974 school year of which one was a youth who had fifteen firebombs in his

car. A school bus disappemed; the birthplace of John F. Kennedy was firebombed mid

vmidalized with the words "Bus Teddy;" and several people white mid black, were pulled

from their cars mid beaten on the basis of race alone (Homburger 244). Ellen Jackson

who ran a community center in Roxbury, a primarily black neighborhood, described her

experience that day when stones were thrown at an elementary school bus.

When the kids cmiie, everybody just broke out in tears and started crying. The

kids were crying. They had glass in their hair. They were scared. And they were

shivering and crying. Talking about they wanted to go home. We tried to gently

usher them into the auditorium. And wipe off the little bit of bruises that they had.

Small bruises and the dirt. Picked the glass out of their hair. ("School" 1)

The traumatic incidents that occurred the first day would continue for three years as the forced integration of Boston public schools was met with more opposition from both white and black parents. Phase II was implemented on May 26, 1975 in which the other half of schools were integrated through the busing of students of one race to another school.

The number of white students in the public school system dropped dramatically during the seventies. White school enrollment dropped from 58, 000 to 29,000 in the three years of busing in Boston (Evans 1). White middle class parents gave up on the faltering school system mid sent their children to private schools. Busing drained the municipal government of its funding for schools, and in 1976, the school year was ended a month earlier due to an enormous deficit. The percentage of black students in public schools increased due to the fleeing of whites from the system. The black population in

Boston was only twenty percent of the total population, but in public schools in the city, blacks made up sixty percent of the students (Evans 1). The Boston busing crisis shows how America was still steeped in divisive racism years after the Civil Right Movement and how progress came slowly.

No racial controversy is complete without the Ku Klux Klan. David Duke arrived in Boston to hold a Klan rally in support for the resistance to integration in the city.

Duke, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana, was a controversial extreme racist who believed that Jews should be exterminated and Blacks should be sent back to Africa. He was not afraid to use his first amendment rights in expressing his views on the white race when he spoke in Boston at the base of the

Dorchester Heights monument, "White people! We are going to win a great victory in

South Boston for the white race. The tide is beginning to turn against forced race mixing.

It is our duty as white people, proud of our heritage, to help return civilization to this continent...The issue isn't education. The real issue is Niggers" (Homburger 240). Most

white northerners however did not believe in the extremist views of Duke, and the

majority who wanted integration eventually won. Duke did manage to gain enough

support in 1989 when he won a seat on the Louisiana State Legislature as a Republican.

When he ran for senator the next yem, he lost the election, but won sixty percent of the

white vote (Tucker 192). Duke was living evidence that racism still has a voice in

America, and the fact the voice was strong enough to be a part of Americmi government

is disturbing and mi insult to all the victims of racial violence in the fight for civil rights.

The beating of Rodney King in Mmch 1991 showed the world that the racist

police brutality that was thought to be left behind in the sixties was still alive. It all began

as a high speed chase between a drunk Rodney King, a black ex convict, mid two

Califomia highway patrol officers in the early hours of the morning. It escalated into far

more when King stopped his car mid the officers ordered him to get out. When he did he

was met by three Los Angeles Police Cars and a helicopter. The officers involved were

Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno, Rolando Solmio, Stacy Koon, mid

Tim and Melanie Singer. Several of the officers proceeded to beat King severely after her

was tasered twice and still able to stmid. The beating was ruthless and caught on tape by

George Holliday, a man who lived across the street from where the incident occurred. As

King attempted to get up, he was repeatedly beat to the ground, mid then when he was

almost motionless he was still continually beaten. After King was handcuffed, Powell typed into his police report that "I haven't beaten anyone up this bad in a long time"

(Linder 4). The next day, Holliday took the footage he captured to the local news station

where it was played repeatedly throughout the day. The nation was horrified. A year later, when the verdict was reached for the trial of the officers by an all white jury on

April 29, 1992 in Simi Valley, all officers were acquitted. And as a result of the city's outrage with the decision, two hours later, the Los Angeles riots broke out. Mayor Tom

Bradley said of the outcome, "Today, the jury told the world that what we saw with our own eyes was not a crime" (Linder 5). The legacy that Rodney King left behind in race relations makes a statement on where the nation stood in the nineties. There were two viewpoints one could take on the incident. The first is that of Melanie Lomax, the president of the Police Commission, who called it "reminiscent of a police force in the deep south" (Moore 1). The opposing viewpoint was that t^en by the LAPD police chief at the time of the incident, Daryl Gates. He saw the video as "an aberration" and a "one incident situation with no symbolic power and no context beyond the moment" (Moore

1). As more mid more police brutality cases emerged in the yems after Rodney King's beating. Gates' interpretation was proved wrong. The King case reaw^ened a nation that had hoped to be rid of racial discrimination thirty years after the Civil Rights Movement, but racism will always be a factor in American life. No matter how much litigation is written against it, it will be forever be embedded in out national history and character.

The media's role in race relations has proved to be crucial as a guide of public opinion. During the Rodney King trial, the LA Times reacted to the beating and the trial verdict as atravesty in American justice and an embarrassment of the police force.

Journalist Solomon Moore wrote in a 2001 mlicle that "it has become, with time, for more than a decade, a brutal revelation of police misconduct. It looms instead as the crest of a two decade long racial cold war, the zenith of a culture of irreconcilability" (1). The liberal LA Times voiced the migry opinions of the many people who participated in the Los Angeles riots after the king verdict. During the Boston Busing crisis, the Boston

Globe maintained its liberal policy until busing protesters began to threaten the

newspaper. The first incident of this occurring was when a bullet was shot through one of their office windows. The second occurrence was when a Globe delivery truck was high jacked and dumped in the Boston harbor. The Newspaper then begmi to be reluctant to take a strong stand on integration and did not fully report violence in the city due to

busing. The right wing Klan newspapers continued to be at war with the left wing media

which was "run by Jews" whose main objective was "to do away with the Klan" (Davis

100).

Racism includes an innumerable number of dissenting and agreeing opinions and

historians' opinions on race in America fluctuate between those of liberal and

conservative sentiment. The Klmi's view of history differs exponentially to that of the

liberal media. One example is Martin Luther King, Jr. The popular view of King is that of

a peacemaker mid a leader of civil rights. The Klan, however, preaches that he was a

communist who was hired by European communists to disrupt the United States with the

Civil Rights Movement. There was an actual FBI investigation on King called

COINTELPRO, in which a full documented report of King was created investigating

whether or not King was a communist. J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI despised

King and called him "one of the lowest characters in the country" (Ridgeway 75).

Klansmmi Chester Doles said of King, "He was supposed to spread the work of peace,

but everywhere he went, violence and race riots broke out in every town" (Davis 203).

Here the left wing opinion is that without King, the Civil Rights Movement would not

have had the impact that it had on this country in helping to free blacks from their final chains of oppression. King has been a role model mid true peace maker between the black

man and the white mmi in America. Despite this, Klansmen like Tony LaRicci still

believe that "m^ing Mmtin Luther King Day a holiday is a disgrace" mid they celebrate the day of King's assassination as James Earl Ray Day (Davis 78). Although this point of

view is only t^en by a small faction of the American people, it has held strong in the

Klan since the sixties mid will continue to hold, despite public opinion.

Racism has transformed from an accepted to a hated way of thinking in America.

Since the stmt of the nation in the colonies, racism has played a significant role in

shaping American history. To understmid the history of America, one must first

understand racism and the principles of racist organizations in order to spread awareness

and thus put a stop to racism in this country. Although the Klan will most likely forever

be a force in this country, it is the duty of the American people to look forward toward the progress of the human race as a whole, not divided by color. Interview Trmiscription

Interviewee: Mr. Daryl Davis

Interviewer: Alex Arzt

Location: Arzt Residence, Adamstown, Maryland

Alex Arzt: What was your childhood like?

Daryl Davis: My childhood was quite different than that of most of my peers here in the states.

I'm forty six years old and from the age of three, for a great portion of my childhood, I lived overseas. My parents were in the foreign service so I was a US embassy brat, mid I've been to date, I've been in forty nine different countries and five continents. So back in my first experiences in grade school, a lot of them were overseas and at these international schools, everybody's embassy kids were there, so I was in class with Russians, Italians, French, Germans,

Nigerians, Japmiese kids, whatever. A lot of us didn't speak the same languages, but we all got along. We all played together, slept over at each other's houses, did our work together, that kind of thing. This is back in the early sixties. At the smiie time, my peers over here were going to segregated schools or else newly integrated ones, mid back then there were only black kids and white kids, but today, you know, at your school you probably see a diversity of Hispanics,

Asians, everybody else mid mixed in between, but back then, you know, we didn't have that. And so they were never exposed to that kind of thing. When I would come home at the end of an assignment with my pments every two yems, I would experience these different racist incidents, and I couldn't understand it because the white kids, you know that I went to school with, they didn't look any different than the white Americans I was in school with across the Atlantic Ocean

or the white Europeans, you know, that I was in school with. So I couldn't put it together, and it

never dawned on me that it had to do with race. I just had no idea. I thought because I was new they were picking on me or something like that.

AA: How did growing up in so many different countries influence your perception of the United

States, like when you were a kid?

DD: Oh, well, I thought we had a great country. We have a lot more going on in this country than all the other countries do. I mean, even to this day, I still do a lot of traveling. But in some

regmds, we have a long ways to go in terms of race relations and humanity in general. I was

actually, I mean if you can grasp this concept, I was living in the future back then because it

wasn't until twenty years later or something, or fifteen years later, that we had the influx of

different immigrants coming into this country from Cuba or South America or Vietnam or

whatever else. I was already living amongst those multi-cultural kind of people. I was multi­

cultural long before that term ever came into existence over here. So a lot of those kids were

bilingual. We're slowly just now getting to become a bilingual country but everybody I

encountered, they spoke at least two languages, if not more and were exposed to all kinds of

different cultures.

AA: When did you first understand the concept of race or that you were different? DD: I guess the first time that I was not accepted, I heard some funny things, I considered them

funny that they weren't meant to be racist, but I never considered myself any kind of color. I had

all kind of diverse friends. I remember one little boy asking me one time, I think I was like

maybe in second grade or something like that, he asked me if I ever had to take a bath. And I

said yeah, everyday or whatever. And I said, "Why," and he said because he didn't think I had to take a bath because the dirt would match my skin mid so it wouldn't show up. Now that was,

when you think about it, it wasn't racism, it was just...

AA: Ignorant?

DD: Well, no. Yeah, ignorant. He was serious. He was curious. And I remember I always thought that white people, as a kid, that white people, when they went to the bathroom, they

came out white. I did, okay. Because I thought it matched skin tone. And I didn't realize it until

somebody proved it [laughs]. But that's just kid's perception. But then, I mean I knew people

who didn't necessmily look like me in terms of my skin color or like Asians, at the time we

called them Orientals, with the eyes and things like that. But I didn't consider them to be any

different than me in terms of human worth. It wasn't until I was ten yems old, and the incident that you read about in the book about the cub scouts. People threw rocks at me and things. That

was the first time I was told that this is because you're different, mid at first I didn't believe it

because I was raised an only child. So I only had my parents to answer all my questions, solve all

my problems for me. There was nobody else I could go to, especially when we're in foreign

Davis, Daryl. Klan-Destine Relationships: A Black Man's Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan. Far Hills: New Horizon Press, 1998. countries or whatever. I didn't know anybody at the time. But when they told me why this happened, at first I didn't believe them. So I mean, you know, why would someone throw a rock at me because my skin is different. And again, the kids on the sidewalk and their parents and whoever was doing all this throwing they didn't look miy different than my white friends at school or my white friends back overseas. So what made them different? And I though that well maybe, if I was to believe this, maybe they're an exception. If s just some aberration or something. And it happened again in different things. I remember I went to a swimming pool in

Belma, Massachusetts. When I got in almost everybody else got out. It was a public pool. And little things like that. People driving down the street yelling things out the window. I was ten years old, but I remember it mid I begmi to believe my parents that they weren't lying to me.

AA: When did you first hear of the KKK?

DD: I first hemd of the KKK that I cmi recall back in the early seventies. I either saw something in a magazine or saw something on TV.

AA: How old were you?

DD: Maybe thirteen. And I asked my father about them and he told me about them. And I asked if he had ever seen any of them and he said, "Yeah." I thought it was kind of ridiculous, the notion that guys running around with sheets on, hiding their faces doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

And I wasn't sure if they still existed. But he assured me that they did. And we wouldn't always know where they were or who they were.

AA: What first motivated you to find out why someone would hate you just based on the color of

your skin?

DD: It wasn't anything in particular. I think it was a combination of things just building up. First,

with the Cub Scout thing, the rock throwing, mid then later when I was going to high school in

Rockville, these Nazis came to my school.

AA: I remember reading about that.

DD: Yeah. And when they said all that stuff, again these were adults talking, and I was like,

"Yeah, something's not right here." And that was 1974.1 was in tenth grade. And from that day

forward I wanted to find out all I could find out. I got every book I could get my hands on. Went to the librmy, got books on the Klan, the Nazis, all kinds of supremacy, whether its black

supremacy or white supremacy, it didn't matter because I knew that people were not bom with that ideology. They got it from somewhere. I wanted to find out where and how. And so I just

began reading it, and it became a hobby mid then my hobby became like an obsession with it.

And I was a musician. I still am. Thaf s what I do full time. I play different places and my first

encounter with a Klansman, I didn't know he was in the Klmi. It was right here in Frederick. I

don't know if you remember there used to be a truck stop up here at 70 and 270. The truck stop is

MattKoehl of the AmericanNazi Party visited Mr. Davis's high school and made racist remarks. still there. The motel and stuff is gone. At Market Street and 270.

AA: Is it a Travel Lodge?

DD: Exactly, exactly. I had played in there, mid at the end of the night, I was driving across the

pmking lot to the restaurant to get something to eat. And I pulled into this space, and this guy

was on top of this lady on the sidewalk mid he was banging her head into the ground and

smacking her. And when I got out of the car and closed my door, he stood up, looked at me, and

he said, "What the - are you looking at. Nigger?" Well to me, that was mi open invitation. And I

called him a name and I told him I was looking at him. And he jumped up and we got into it and

I beat him up. And the police were called because apparently he went back inside the restaurant

after all this. And the police were called mid made him come out and I wanted to press charges

against him. And I didn't get hurt, but he did. And they wouldn't charge him. And it appeared to

me that they knew him. They didn't let on but I could tell they knew each other. And they told

him to leave the property and if he stepped foot on the property again within twenty four hours, they would arrest him for trespassing. So he left. And I was still outside, right. I went inside the

restaurmit and I got hold of this lady who was beat up. And I got her name and address mid I told

her I was going to press charges against him. And she was willing to come as a witness for me,

and she lived down in Leesburg, Virginia. So the dates, I'm skipping ^ead a little bit, but a

couple days before the trial, I get this phone call from this lawyer and he says to me that he

understood that a coat of mine, the coat I was weming was torn. It wasn't torn, the button popped

off and I had it sewn back on. But anyway, I put the value of the coat as $500, which was the value of the coat. They didn't ask me how much it cost to put the button back on because it was

only the cost of the value of the coat at $500. And he said that this guy is sorry and he has the

$500 there in his office mid would like to give it to me and have me come in and sign a release of

charges, dropping the chmges. Just be done with it. And the trial was in Mmch or something.

And the incident happened back in January. And the trial was next week. I said to this guy, this

lawyer, I said, "How'd you get my phone number?" And he said, "If s on the complaint form."

And what happened was the same night after I talked to the lady, I left. I went to the...The police

would not mrest the guy. They said couldn't do that because they weren't there. They didn't see it.

So I went down to the police station, to the commissioner's office to fill out the wmrmit. But

when I left, apparently the guy had come back looking for me after the cops left. But he didn't

find me and he stmled a fight with somebody else. So the cops came back and this time they

locked him up because when I was in the commissioner's office I just finished filling out the

warrant. I said to the commissioner, I said, "How long before this guy is served?" And he said,

"Well, it goes to the sheriffs department and one of the deputies, the address." I got the guy's

address from the cops. So it was probably about three, four, or five days. Right then, in walks the

guy and he's in handcuffs with two different cops than the ones who came originally. I said,

"That's him right there." And he said, "Well sign it, and I'll serve him right now myself." So he

did and the guy was cuffed behind his back like this [gestures]. So the commissioner took the

paper and shoved it right between his arms mid says, "You've been served." So he was drunk, is

what happened. And he couldn't find me so he went to fight somebody else. Well a week before the trial his lawyer calls me and wants me to drop the charges and give me the money for the

coat. And I said, "How did you get my phone number?" And he said, "It was on your complaint that you filled out against my client." I said, "So in other words, your client had my phone

number. He said, "Ye^, he got a copy of the complaint and that's how he called me. And now I

have the complaint." I said, "Well, if your client is so sorry because he'd been drinking why

didn't he call me the next day when he woke up and got sober rather than wait almost three

months until the week before the trial and call me and tell me how sorry he is mid wants to settle.

No. I will not drop the charges. I will go to court against him. Well the guy couldn't understmid that. And so the day cmiie, at the courthouse on West Patrick Street up in Frederick, mid the

guy... Oh, well I went down to Leesburg and got that lady. On the way up, she told me that the

guy was in the Klan and he was a fireman, a Frederick city firefighter, and he had just gotten

promoted that night. And the fire department had a big pmly for him and he'd been drinking with

everybody else. His issue with her was she broke up with him because he was seeing somebody

else, and he wanted his cake and eat it too. And if I can't have you, nobody else will. Boom,

boom, boom [punches palm]. So she came to court to testify against him and basically I won. But

I didn't know he was in the Klan until the ride up. So that was my first incident. The second one,

was also right in the same parking lot, the same hotel, I was playing there again. I wrote about that in the book. I don't know what they called it, but they chmiged the name of it. But the real

nmiie was the Silver Dollar Lounge. I finished playing a set with the band. I was the only black

guy in the place. This guy gets up and puts his arm around my shoulder and told me that he

really enjoyed my piano playing. And never hemd a black guy play the piano like Jerry Lee

Louis. And we got to talking mid he told me that he was in the Klan. He and I becmiie friends,

and to this day his daughter comes out and sees me play from time to time. He's dead now, but that was my second encounter. And it was through him that I got a phone number to the head of the Klan here in Marylmid. I started with that guy to interview, and then I began to interview

people from other states.

AA: Was that Roger Kelly?

DD: Yeah.

AA: Given your experiences, what common reasons do people have for joining the Klan?

DD: Well there me mmiy different reasons why they join the Klmi. But really it can boil down to two reasons, and I'll explain each one of them. One is ignorance. The other one is stupidity. But the reasons that they give; "My daddy was in the Klan, my granddaddy was in the Klan, my

brother is in the Klan," whatever. So if s passed down. If s a fmiiily thing, okay. Other reasons are

for socioeconomic reasons. The Klmi is very fmiious for going into depressed towns where

people have been laid off of work; coal miners, factory workers, things like that. And a lot of times what happens is these jobs, these white people, hard working white people, who were

never racist in their lives. They had no reason to be. They had ajob, they had money, they do

what they want to do, supported their fmiiily. You know they weren't thinking about some black

guy, some Hispanic guy or whatever. They get laid off and then a lot of immigrants come in,

some of them legal, some of them illegal, and they get these jobs. And now if s white people

hiring these people not black people. White people hiring these illegal people, and because they're illegal they can pay them a dollar a day or something because they're afraid of being turned into the INS, so they'll work for next to nothing, and in their countries, their work ethic is

far different than ours. We complain about working an eight-hour day. We try to figure out how

we can get paid for eight hours when we work for five, you know something like that. These

people work for sixteen hours a day and think nothing of it. If necessary they'll work twenty.

They all live in the same apartment in one room or whatever. They know how to work, and so

naturally for a company if s more cost effective to hire these kind of people than you or I who

wants to work twenty dollars an hour mid do nothing. So the Klan comes into towns like this and

holds rallies and targets these people who are out of work. These white people mid they say,"

Look, the blacks have the NAACP standing up for them. If anything goes wrong, they complain to them and they complain and dah, dah, dah. They have to change. The Jews have the ADL and

B'nai B'rith, who stmid up for the white man? Nobody. Only the Klan. You join the Klan, we'll

get your jobs back." What happens is they're out of work, they cmi't put food on the table for their fmiiily, they cmi't put clothes on their kid's backs or send them to school. And they begin thinking, "I never thought about it like that. He's got a point there." And so they join just to see this guy promises them to get their job back. And they see their job being given out to some

person who wasn't even bom here, who just got here yesterday, and their making a living mid

he's not. He's been working at that compmiy for thirty years. So in their mind, if s rational. So

some join because of family tradition. Others join because socioeconomic status. But others just join because they've had some bad incident. Like one guy I knew who lives over in Rockville

and he and his wife were walking down the street in this kind of kind of ghetto like

neighborhood, part white, part black, but mostly black. And some black kids through a bottle at

him. That upset him and so in order to get back at them he's gonna join the Klan and come back and whoop some butt or something like that. But thaf s what happens. And, like I said, ifs either

an ignorant concept or a stupid concept. And the difference being, somebody who is ignormit, in

my definition, is someone who makes the wrong decision or makes a poor choice because he or

she has not been given the proper information, the proper facts so that they can make an educated

decision. So they're making a decision based upon ignorance. Alright, but ignorance cmi be

cured. And you cure it by education. You give the person the proper information and then they

can m^e a good decision. Alright. Stupidity is when somebody is given the proper information

and they still make the wrong decision. There is information right there, now how cmi you go

and screw it up. Thaf s stupidity. And there's no cure for stupidity. You know, you got what you

need and you still mess up. So some do it out of ignormice, some do it out of stupidity.

AA: Why do you think the Klan has been so lasting in this country? Do you think that it will

continue for a hundred more years?

DD: Well, let me answer the first part of the question first. The Klan has been so long lasting in this country because we have not done what we need to do to eradicate it. We ignore it. We don't

want to talk about it. Talking about race is like taboo. It's like talking about politics. You don't

want to go to a party and somebody asks you, "Did you vote for Kerry or Bush?" And then they judge you by who you voted for so you don't discuss it. Racism is the same way. There was a lot

of stuff this country has done that we don't talk about. And when I was in high school, I never

learned, I think you all learn it now, that we had internment cmiips in this country for the

Japanese Americans. Right? I didn't learn that until long after I got out of high school. I was in college when I heard about it. I went, "What?" Ask your parents. They didn't learn about it in

high school. But it went on just like slave masters went around and raped slave women. We

knew they had slaves, but we didn't know the president had kids by his black slave mistress. It

was kind of hush, hush. We don't talk about that kind of stuff. Even today, some of the Jefferson

family members still try mid deny it. Some acknowledge, some deny it. So race is a taboo and

people think that if you ignore something long enough, it will go away. There are certain things that does work with. Alright. For exmiiple, in school, in elementary school and places like that,

you encounter the school bully. And he always teases you because you wear glasses. Calls you

four eyes or calls you freckle face or something like that and hurts your feelings. And you run

home and you cry and he's all happy because he made you cry. Right. So you run home to your

mom and tell her and she says, "Well, Alex, just ignore him. All he wants is a reaction. If you

ignore him, and don't give him what he wants he'll leave you alone. He'll find somebody else mid

move on. Right. So next day you go to school, he starts calling you all these names and you just

blow him off and laugh in his face mid walk away. He doesn't get what he wants. Your mom was

right. He leaves you alone. So in an instance like that, ignoring a situation does work. Alright.

But there are other situations that you cannot ignore and think that they will go away if you

ignore them. For example, if you go to the doctor mid the doctor says, "Alex, I hate to tell you this, but you have cancer of the liver." Well you just can't say, "Well, I'll ignore it mid it'll go

away." Right. If you do, it metastasizes and consumes your whole body. And then your whole

body goes away. So you have to treat it. Racism is a cancer. It cuts very, very deep. You just

can't treat it on the surface. You have to go to the core of it. And thaf s not what we do. We don't

do that in this country. We don't wmit to talk about it. We don't want to discuss it. We want to put the past in the past. You know, "Why are you people still complaining? You're free from

slavery. You know, you're now riding the bus anywhere you want to sit, dah, dah, d^, dah."

Well guess what? There me still elements that are still here, mid not just with black people. You

know, I mean miy kind of discrimination, whether ifs female discrimination, or gay

discrimination or whatever. Eventually, ifs going to come to the surface. And it has to be talked

about and discussed and resolved. And we're not good at that at all. In certain situations our

educational process is one of the best in the world, which is why a lot of people come here to go to school. And in other situations, Europemis are far more advmiced thmi we me academically.

You take the topic of sex education. When I was in, well I had junior high school, you all have

middle school, before middle school it was called junior high. In junior high, sex education was

introduced. And pments went into a rage. "I don't want my kids learning about that stuff outside

of the house or whatever." Well we had to get a note signed by our parents saying that we could take sex ed. Right. Today, ifs part of the general curriculum in health class or P.E. class, and as a

result, what was happening back then parents did not want their kids learning sex ed from teachers. But yet, they weren't teaching it themselves at home. But their kids are still gonna learn

it. Because if you don't learn it at home, and you don't lemn it from school, you're gonna learn it

from your friends out here on the street. And when you learn it out there on the street, you may

not get the proper, accurate teaching method. So but today because ifs being taught as a pml of the general curriculum, because back then it was a taboo, today kids are better informed about

venereal disease, family planning, contraception, etc., etc. They're better educated. What took us

so long? They had that in Europe thirty forty years ago, were teaching kids that stuff. Thaf s why

kids were a lot more mature thinking. The same thing has to happen with the topic of race. We don't spend enough time talking about race in school. And if you want to shape the minds of

people, don't try to shape them after they are fifty years old or something. We need to adjust these topics as they me growing, as we are cultivating these kids to become leaders of our

society. You implement these ideas and they me just like mathematics. Teaching somebody two

plus two equals four, you know, whaf s wrong with teaching them that this Asimi plus this

Hispanic plus this white plus this black or whatever equals the human race. But we don't do that.

So that's why that's so long lasting. Okay. Now the second pmt of the question was do I think they'll be around a hundred years from now. I don't know about a hundred yems. I see a lot of things changing. They're not changing rapidly enough though, but it will be around for a long time to come. I don't think you'll see the end of it in your lifetime. I certainly won't see it in my

lifetime. As to whether ifs called the Klan miymore or not I don't know. Because the Klan started

off in 1865, and for the longest time they were the premier racist orgmiization. And then now

you have a hundred different ones. You have Church of the Creator, the White Power Skinheads, the American Nazi Pmty, WAR, which stmids for White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Nations, this

one that one. Church of the Creator, whatever. So many different ones, but they all have the

same mentality just different names.

AA: Did your opinion of the Klan change after you've interviewed so many Klansmen?

DD: Did it change in what regard?

AA: Well, more like did you gain a better understanding of what they stand for mid why they exist?

DD: Well you can't really understand it because there's no reason why they should exist. But my

opinion chmiged, I guess, in the sense of I did not accept their beliefs, so my opinion did not

change in that regard. I could disagree with their ideology, but my opinion changed in the fact that I had more hope for them. I could see people changing, you know, when some of them quit the Klan and gave me their robes and hoods and things like that. I never set out to do that. All I

set out to do was write a book and get information, and once I interviewed them that was it. I had

no use of them. I wasn't going to become their friend, but when I was talking with them one on

one like you are doing with me right now, thaf s exactly what I was doing with Roger Kelly and

some of the other ones. And I saw a human side. I saw more than what I read about in my books

about dragging people and beating them and burning them and hanging them. I saw some human

qualities. I saw a lot of similmities in some of the things that they liked mid they enjoyed were

some of the same things that I enjoyed. So I thought, well that's pretty interesting. How can

people who have that much in common worry about just skin color? So I begmi calling him more

often, even when I wasn't interviewing, just to hang out and do some things together. So we did.

And as with a lot of the other ones, of course there are some who wouldn't do those things with

me. So my opinion chmiged in that where I was not out to make friends and went to saying,

"Hey, you know, this could be interesting. Let me try this out." So I did not reject friendship.

AA: How did music play a role in your experience studying race relations?

DD: Music has always played a role in race relations, and I'm just another generation of it. Music is something that everybody likes. Everybody, I don't cme who they are or what. I mean there me some people who don't like music at all, but very few. When you go to...What do your parents do for a living for example?

AA: My mom is mi interior designer and my dad is a computer salesman,

DD: Well, your dad mostly meets computer oriented people. So if his company were to have a pmty there'd be a bunch of computer type people at this party. They might be black and white and whatever else, but they would all be computer oriented people. When you go to...Who's one of your favorite bands?

AA: I like Coldplay.

DD: Who?

AA: Coldplay.

DD: Coldplay? Okay, have you ever seen them live in concert?

AA: No. DD: No? Well if you go to a Coldplay concert, there are going to be all kinds of different people there. There will be some people who are into computers, some who are into making furniture,

into the restaurant business, into interior design, a whole vmiety of people. But what brought them all in that same room together? Coldplay. The music, okay. So music has a way of drawing

all kinds of people, bringing them together. Alright. Back in the days of segregation, theaters and

concert halls were segregated. And they even had ropes going down the sections as to wear

blacks could sit and where whites could sit. It was just black and white. It didn't say Hispanic

seating or Asian seating. They didn't have that. Black and white, alright? And you did not sit

outside of your section or you get locked up. Simple as that. That was the law. As dumb a law as

it was, it was the law. Alright. And people abided by it. But then what happened in the 1950s,

when rock and roll came out, that caused kids to just jump right out of their seats and go crazy

and knock down those ropes. And you had black kids and white kids were dancing in the aisles together for the first time in the history of this country. They just went out of control when they

heard people like Elvis or Chuck Berry or whoever, alright. They just went crazy mid began

dmicing together. The police would come in and shut down the concert in the middle of it. And then the mayor of these towns would bmi rock and roll concerts from the town. Alright, it was

called race music. It was called nigger music. It was called jungle music. The smiie thing that we

call rock and roll. And it was banned because it was promoting race mixing which is against the

law. It was considered to be lude and overtly sexual, which by today's standards is Mickey

Mouse. But back then it was again a taboo. So music has always brought people together and

when I come along and I play my music I see the same thing. I don't see separation with ropes.

They're not mound. I see different people at my concerts coming together who otherwise may not be in the same room. I see the computer engineer dancing with the librarimi. You know, go

figure that one. Where else could a librarian dance with a computer software writer? I mean, I

literally saw it last night at a party that I went to. Okay. So my music does that and my music

caused this Klansman to get up out of his seat and walk over to me and out his mm around my

shoulder and tell me he enjoyed it. So music does play a pivotal role.

AA: Do you remember the day that Martin Luther King was assassinated?

DD: Very well

AA: Can you describe it?

DD: Mmlim. I was ten years old. It was 1968.1 just had my tenth birthday. Just had it. It was

April fourth. And every day I'd watch Bewitched on TV after school. And I was watching it mid

all the sudden the TV stmled beeping, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, like it was some kind of

emergency thing right. And it said, "Special Bulletin." This guy cmiie on and he said that Martin

Luther King, Jr. had just been assassinated. Well, I'd never heard of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Didn't know a thing about him. And I had no idea why my program that I watch every day had to be interrupted to talk about somebody who died. Because the evening news comes on at six

o'clock, two hours later. So why was it so important? And I didn't understand, but I figured it had to be important. So my father was in his den doing some work and I went in and I told him. And

I never saw him cry before, never. I saw my mom cry. I never saw him cry. And his head fell into his hands mid he began crying. And he told me who Martin Luther King was, and he had

marched with King before at the mmch on Washington. And I remember that night people were

beginning to riot. So we lived in Belmont, Massachusetts which was probably, say, as far away

as Gaithersburg to Frederick, Belmont was to Boston. Now I used to live in Boston. I lived in the

ghetto in Boston, a ghetto called Roxbury, a very rough place. And all kinds of rioting and

looting was going on, right. And I had.. .the schools they were so bad that my father took me out

of there and we moved to Belmont and put me in a better school. In fourth grade, fourth grade, the kids were still learning their abc's. And I thought it was funny. Well my dad didn't think it

was funny [laughs]. So we moved, but we went down to Roxbury and got some of my former

classmates from down there, called them, and I didn't understand why, but my dad did. I'm glad that he did it. We went down there and got them and brought them over to my house so they

wouldn't get hurt in these riots. And I just thought it was a big party. And Boston burned to the

ground. I mean, it burned up everything. Well the mayor of Boston at that time was a guy named

Kevin White. He was a good mayor. And James Brown, you know who Jmiies Brown is right?

Well he was in his hay day back then. Alright. He was like the black Elvis Presley. Black people

went to James Brown like others went to Elvis. Kevin White called in James Brown, and we had

a thing called the Boston Garden, which is like Madison Square Garden, Caps Center, or

something like that, and had James Brown put on a concert for free. Anybody could come. And this was the first televised concert. There used to be televised concerts all over. Farm Aid

whatever, live in concert. Well this was the first televised concert. And it was on TV live from

Boston Garden, Jmiies Brown. Now the objective here was to get black people to stay inside their

house and not go out and riot. Or go to Madison...I mean Boston Garden and watch the concert in Boston. So this was for the second night because there was going to be more rioting. So sure

enough it worked. It worked to a certain point, alright. James Brown did the concert. He came

into Boston Garden. Everybody went there. They're letting everyone in. And everything was

under control. Black people who couldn't go, they stayed home to watch it on TV. Right, well, there was a ring of police officers. I watched it on TV with my kid friends. There was a ring of

police officers around the front of the stage because kids were always trying to touch James.

Well this one kid in the front row halfway through the concert, James dmiced to the edge of the

stage, this kid just dove to try to touch his leg and he belly flopped on the stage. Well this white

cop without thinking grabbed the kids legs and so WOOMP. When he pulled him this way his

face hit the floor. Alright, now had it been a black cop who had done that, it would not have been

so bad. But because a white cop had done it just a day after some white guy had shot the black

leader and killed him, alright. It wasn't cool for a white cop to be doing this. Alright and so

people tore up Madison...I mean, I called it Madison Square Garden, the Boston Garden. Start throwing chairs, fighting the police, running out into the streets, and they burned Boston to the

ground again. The concert was over. That was it. I remember that very, very well.

AA: Did race relation or racism improve after King died or do you think they worsened?

DD: I ...I think they've worsened, fll say that. Okay. I think that certain things have been

accomplished, but I think that down the road we've gotten off of King's direction. I think if King

had lived I think they'd be a lot further along. I'm not saying there haven't been some chmiges.

Yeah, there have been some positive chmiges. Okay, but the overall picture, I think ifs bad. I think it cmi be fixed, but I think we've had... we've diverted the past. And I think a lot of work has to be done. Not just by whites, but by blacks also. It all has to be done together. I think there's

been just a little too much complacency.

AA: Were you living mound Boston during the busing crisis in the seventies?

DD: No.

AA: Do you remember it?

DD: I remember it, yeah.

AA: Can you explain it to me because I did a lot of research on it, but I was sort of confused as to...

DD: The forced busing thing? Well what happened in Boston was that we had mi area called the

combat zone, alright, which is where a lot of the rioting took place. The school systems in the

white areas were a lot better than the school systems in the ghetto, plain mid simple. Alright. So they were trying to bring people together mid try to get people through these school systems.

Well so they would have them put on a bus and drive them through the ghetto to get to the white

school over there or these kids to come to school over there. Well all the white people didn't

want that. They felt that the educational standard was going to be lowered by brining in people who were not up to par. And because it was implemented by force, they resisted by force. And thaf s why that happened. I think that ifs always better if somebody can come to a conclusion on their own rather than to force someone to do something. Then on the other side of the coin is

well how long do we have to wait until somebody comes to that conclusion that, hey, it might be

better to get along with somebody than to ignore them. You get tired of sitting around waiting for them to stop ignoring you.

AA: Getting back to the Klan. Roger Kelly said, "Anybody who hates has no business in the

Klan." Based on the Klansmen you have spoken with and gotten to know, do you think that a

majority of Klans would agree with this statement?

DD: Yeah. A lot of them would agree with the statement, but ifs not a true statement. Okay.

Roger Kelly was ignorant and he doesn't believe that anymore today. At the time he was

propagating the propaganda that he'd been taught. You see the Klmi over the years, they changed, they changed their message. They didn't change their point. They chmiged their message. Okay.

Back in the day they had no problem recruiting people saying, "Yeah, we hate niggers and kikes

and all sorts of stuff." And people would come in and join, but as time progressed they had to

modify their tone of voice, say the smiie thing but don't be so crass about. So the big thing when

David Duke came out. David Duke was probably the most popular Klansmmi in recent times. He

would say...he stopped wearing his robe. He'd just come out in a robe mid hood. Then he started

wearing a suit and tie to look more presentable and palatable to the general white public who

didn't want to be associated with a bunch of rednecks. So it worked for him. He formed the biggest Klan in recent history. Just by appealing to...He was a young, good looking guy. He was

a college graduate. So he didn't fit the Klan stereotype of third grade education, potbelly, pump

gas down at the gas station kind of thing. And he would say, "We don't hate black people. We just love our race." So it sounded a little better. But ifs the same old thing. And so now a lot of

Klans will say, "No. We don't hate other people. We just love our race." And what's wrong

with...If loving your own race is being racist, then yes, I'm a racist. So they'll say, "Don't you

love your race? So whaf s wrong with loving our race. We don't hate you. We just love our own.

Thaf s all." So it sounds better, but the same old b.s.

AA: Did you ever feel threatened or endmigered when you were with the Klan members?

DD: I have been threatened and endangered, but I never felt fear out of it, no.

AA: So they were shallow threats?

DD: Some were shallow, some were not shallow. There were times when I had to fight, [pause]

but when you're dealing with somebody like that, for example, if, maybe one of your girlfriends

[gestures towmds me].

AA: Becky.

DD: Lef s say you've never been to Becky's house before, and you all me good friends. And Becky says, "Hey, Alex, I'm going away to Florida for Christmas. Can you come by once a day

and feed my Rottweiler and my Doberman mid my pitbull?" Well what you know about

Dobermans, Rottweilers, mid pitbulls, they don't have very good reputations. So when you go

over there you are running a risk of being bitten or attacked. But you might go over there anyway

and maybe depending upon on how you negotiate with these dogs or how you carry yourself

with them they don't attack you. They don't bite you. Maybe you show superior strength. Maybe they're afraid of you or maybe you treat them equally where they have no reason to fear you. Or

maybe they decide "Hey, I don't know her. She's not setting foot on this yard. And they attack

you. You don't even know why." So when I go into a Klan situation, I'm well aware of their

reputation. So I know that there is an element of danger there. There is a threat given their

history. How they behave, especially toward people who look like me. But I go knowing that and

because I know it I can maneuver myself in those situations. And fortunately when ifs come to a

situation of violence I'm still here.

AA: Do you remember the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles and the reaction?

DD: Very well.

AA: How do you feel about it and how that still goes on today?

DD: What happened with Rodney King has been going on since day one. Thaf s why black mid

police have such a bad history. The only difference between any other situation and Rodney King was that Rodney King's was videotaped. You have a video camera. Right? Okay, I mean,

most everybody has video cameras these days. Twenty, thirty years ago the only people with

video cameras were TV stations. It's like computers. Everybody has a home PC. Before

computers were as big as a building, nobody had them at their house. So this guy, his name was

George Holliday, was the guy who happened to be shooting his video and saw what happened

and filmed it. For the first time, America, especially white America, got to see what we've been talking about for years. But even still, even after seeing it all day long on every news broadcast

for a week, every day up until the trial, they still didn't believe it. They acquitted those guys.

AA: The LA riots.

DD: Okay, now. Here's what happened. Nobody wanted to riot, alright. Everybody was calling

for calm, be cool, be calm, alright. I'll tell you who really screwed up was George Bush, Sr. He

was president at the time. Bush forty one, right. Okay, he should have gotten on TV and made

some commentary about that. He didn't. Okay well. Black people just sat back. We didn't riot

when that was shown on TV. Nobody rioted. Alright. We decided, "Okay. Lef s see how far things have chmiged. We'll let the legal system do its job. See if... Don't take the law into your

own hands. Thafs why we have a court system." Every body sat back, didn't do a thing. Then

goes the court. It was Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, and Theodore Briseno.

Those were the four officers. Alright. First of all the thing happened in Los Angeles. Now lef s talk about that for a second. Have you been to Los Angeles before? AA: No.

DD: Know anything about it? It is a very, very diverse town, about as diverse as Washington,

D.C. There is nothing thafs not there culture wise, race wise, religion wise, whatever. Right.

Okay. The Los Angeles police are made up of blacks, whites, Hispmiics, Asians. There were fourteen police officers at the scene when he was beat. Four of them were charged with the beating. The other ten just stood around watching. They should have been charged too. It's like if you stood around and watched somebody kill somebody, you don't do anything about it, well.

All fourteen of these cops were white. Now how is that? How does that happen that you are in pursuit of somebody? I'm not justifying Rodney King. He was a criminal. What he did was wrong. And that he further exacerbated it by evading the law by trying to outrun them. Alright, so I'm not justifying what they did to him, but I'm saying he was a criminal to begin with and that he confounded? it by running. Alright. When you're in pursuit of somebody and you're on your police radio, you're saying, "Well he's turning left on El Senego? Boulevard" or whatever and you're calling for back up, etc. etc. How is it that a police department that diverse with that many police officers on the street, were only white police officers working that night, that only white officers show up? Because of code words that are used. Okay, PG country got in trouble for that a few years before the Rodney King incident. Have you ever heard the term DWB?

AA: No.

DD: You ever the term DWI? AA: Yeah.

DD: Well what's that mean?

AA: Driving while intoxicated.

DD: Or DUI? DWI, driving while intoxicated. There's a police term, and thafs a common term,

DWB, driving while black. Alright, cops used to use that, okay. "So why'd you stop him?"

"Well, DWB. He was suspicious. He was a black guy driving a Cadillac or a Mercedes or some

expensive car." They would call it DWB. Well black officers didn't know what that meant. They

had no idea because it was a code. Or BDC, black driving Cadillac. They had all kinds of little

codes that meant certain things that white officers would pick up on and they'd come to the

scene. Thafs why you had fourteen white cops arrive on that scene. Not one black cop was there.

Then they do what they did to him, which was not justified at all, and if you're supposed to be tried by a jury of twelve of your peers, what do they do?

AA: All white jury?

DD: They move it to Silicon Valley, California, which is all white people. Okay. The thing

happened in Los Angeles, but it...I'm sorry Simi Valley, wasn't Silicon, Simi Valley. People in

Simi Valley have no idea about crime or anything outside of their own little bubble. And they. you know, "Hey if the police felt the need to do this, they had to be right. Police uphold the law.

Police don't break the law." And they acquit him. Alright now, when the acquittal happened, as

soon as it happened, that's when the riots started. Okay, they figured, "Well, we waited. We were told to let justice take its course. Well we see the justice." So they got mad. And they get out there and stmt burning stuff up and looting mid brewing windows mid wreaking havoc, and then

four black guys grabbed this white guy out of a truck. That was filmed from a helicopter, a news

helicopter. The guy's name was Reginald Denny, the truck driver. They pulled him out and beat the daylights out of him on the street the same way what happened to Rodney King. Now in my

opinion, is that right or wrong. Ifs wrong, but it served a purpose. Okay. It served a purpose in that sometimes you have to set by exmiiple. When it came time for those four guys for Reginald

Denny's beating, they also were acquitted. Now is what they did wrong? Absolutely. Nobody

deserves that. Reginald Denny wasn't even a criminal. He was just at the wrong place, wrong time in his truck. But it didn't matter. They grabbed somebody to demonstrate what was done to this guy. If those guys, four black guys, were convicted of doing what four white guys were

acquitted of doing, there would be no Los Angeles today. It would be a thing of the past. So they

had no choice but to acquit those people. So in that particulm case there's example where two

wrongs made a right. It shouldn't happen that way, but it had to happen that way.

AA: Have you ever been a victim of police racism?

DD: Absolutely. AA: Can you describe it?

DD: Plenty of times. Yeah. Well one incident was written in the book. My girlfriend at the time

was white, still is actually. We had gone to Baltimore to see a friend of mine perform and give

him a cassette tape. And he had about twenty minutes to go. It was a Sunday night in 1988, and

we pulled onto this gas station pmking lot to pmk. And as we were pulling in, two police cars

were sitting like this [gestures] facing each other talking through the window right there across

from where we parking. And there was a sign right where we were pmked that said, "Parking for

patrons only. Others will be towed at their own expense." And I saw it in front of me. And so

was I parking illegally? Yes, I was. Why did I do it? I didn't think it would matter on a Sunday

night at one o'clock in the morning, actually it was about twenty of one because the thing closed

at one. So I mean the place wasn't open mid the cops didn't say anything. So pulled in, and we

got out, went into the club, the guy was just finishing up, listened to his last song, gave him the tape, and then we were leaving and coming back. And I let my friend inside her door. This tow truck was coming around, mid he already pulled into the parking lot. I didn't think anything of it.

I walk mound to my door and I see the guy getting ready to pull up behind my cm. And he migles

his truck and I see him backing towards my cm. I went up and tapped on his window mid said,

"Hey, hey, hey, thafs my car. I'm leaving, I'm leaving." And he stmted backing up. He backs

right up to my bumper. Then he gets out and pulls his chains off the back and says, "I'm taking

your car." I said, "For what?" He said, "Yours is the fourth car, will be the fourth car I've taken this evening. You see that sign right there. You pmked right in front of it." I said, "Yeah." I said the same thing I said to you. I didn't think it mattered on Sunday night. He goes, "Well, sign's right there. If s twenty four hours, seven days aweek." And I say, "Ifs the fourth cm." I said, "All these cms don't belong here. Take somebody else's car who's not here. Let me go." Well he

wouldn't do it. So the two cops come over, a lady cop mid a man cop. And they try to act...they're

white. They try to act like they had no idea whaf s going on. "Oh, is there a problem here?" You

know. And I tried to explain to them and the driver says, the one cop, the male cop, he says, "Is there anything you're gonna do about this?" And he says, "Well, I'll tell you what. Eighty dollars

and I'll let you go." And I said, "Eighty dollars?" He said, "Thafs right." mid so I pulled out my

checkbook. He goes, "No. Cash only." This girl who I was with had her credit card. He said,

"Cash only." The male cop said, "You heard him. Cash only." I knew right then and there what the deal was. He gets forty, the cops get forty. It's a whole scmii the cops do. They're the ones

who call the tow truck driver on the radio, dispatched the tow truck driver. He comes, gets the

cash, and they split it. Alright mid I said, "Wait a minute. Are you here to help me or me you

here to scam with this guy?" Well the guy didn't like that mid he said, "I want you to leave right

now. Your cm is outta here. Start walkin'." I said, "I can't I have my equipment in my car." I just

finished a gig. I had ten thousand dollms worth of keybomds, amplifiers, etc. I said, "I'm not

leaving my car." He says, "Start walkin' right now. I don't care about your equipment. You go

down to quarters, mid you tell them you cmi get it back in the morning when you come back with

eighty bucks." I said, "I live in Potomac, Maryland. I'm not walking to Potomac. He said, "You

got two seconds to stmt walking." And I stood there. He grabbed me and threw me up against the

car, and the lady cop came and kneed me in my ribs. And I bent over, and he bent my arms and

hmidcuffed me. And the girl said, "Hey, hey, hey! Why you doing this?" And the lady cop called

her all kinds of names including whore. She didn't know this girl. Why would you call her that if you don't know her? The reason being is because she is a white woman with a black guy. So who

else but a whore would do that? And they threw her leg up mid threw her down onto the ground

and rolled her on her stomach and bent her mms behind her back. Her chin was scraping on the

pmking lot, and handcuffed her. And they called the paddy wagon, and he comes, and he wants to get in on the action. And he begins taunting us. And I as I was stepping up to get into the

paddy wagon, they had to have me by my collar and cuffs to help me into the thing, right. As

soon as I raised my leg up he pushed me like this [gestures] mid my shin hit the metal bumper.

Ifs like a metal step that you step on to get inside. And I turn around. I said, "What's your

nmiie?" and he said, "Smith." I looked at his badge and it said "Jenkins." And I said, "Your name

isn't Smith. Your name is Jenkins." He said, "Your nmiie is stupid." He took his hmid and

smashed my head up against the door j mil mid threw me in. I got up, I crawled, and got on this

bench thing. Then she got in, sat beside me. And I said, "You have no right to do this." And I

looked at the paddy wagon driver, and he wants to get in. He says, "You think you cmi do a

better job than us? Here, put this on." He rips off his badge and he throws it at me, his police

badge, hits me in the chest [claps], and falls on the ground. I'm like this, right? [puts hands

behind back] He says, "Pick it up. Put it on. Go ahead." He goes, "I didn't think you could. And

puts it back on. And then he t^es us down. He drops her off at Central Police Station in

Baltimore, which is a women's facility. He takes me over to the Southern District for men. And

he takes me out of there mid grabs me inside. Well my, the male officer who was on the scene

originally, he's already there. The female officer had gone to Central to process her. And he's

standing there laughing at me. He says, "Ah, you know, you could've been home by now" or

something like that. Just trying to taunt me. And he was trying to provoke me to give him reason to attack me again. And another cop comes in, it was a black cop actually. He came in and he has

a white guy in cuffs and there's blood all over this white guy's shirt and all over the cop's shirt

where there'd been some kind of altercation. I said, "Who's that?" And they were like, "Reggie,"

something like that. So my cop says, "Reggie, did you do the hurtin' or did you get hurt?" And the black guy says, "I did the hurting." And Jenkins looked at me and said, "That's what I like to

hear." And then the other guy says to me, the paddy wagon driver, "You feel good now, boy?"

Then he began singing the James Brown song "I Feel Good" just trying to get me going. I just

kind of ignored them. So I got taken, I got fingerprinted mid photographed, and all that kind of thing. And I got put inside a cell. And the guard, I kept calling the guard, telling him I wmited to

see the commissioner. He said if I called him one more time he was going to lose my papers for three days, which means I'd be there for three days. "Oh, I couldn't find his papers. We didn't

know he was still in there." One of those kind of deals. And what happened was my head was

bruised, my shins were bruised, and I wanted the commissioner to see that before those bruises

subsided. Okay. 'Cuz see they would say they came from resisting arrest. I wasn't resisting. So

anyway they wouldn't let me see him until the next morning. So when I saw him the next

morning, he let me go since I had no criminal record or anything like that. And we decided I was

going to file a complaint, and, well, first we go to court and file the complaint. Well I get a

lawyer and all this other kind of stuff, and we took a polygraph test that was administered by the

state police of Maryland, not the Baltimore city ones who arrested me, state police of Maryland.

And the results were given to the Baltimore city police. Alright, when it came time for the trial, the prosecutor, district attorney, was willing...See, you're not allowed to use polygraph tests in

court. They're what you call inadmissible. But they will look at them and decide whether they should even go to court or not based upon the evidence. Alright, but you can't present them in

court. So the prosecutor had seen these things and knew the cops were lying. We were

questioned extensively. "Did you say this? Did you do that?" Now we were told, each of us were

polygraphed separately, that we passed with flying colors. Well, the district attorney said he'd

probably be willing to Mali pros? This case, which memis dismiss it, wipe it out, it never existed.

If Mr. Davis and Ms. Price will sign a waiver saying that they will not sue the police. I said, "No.

I will not sign that waiver." So I told Cathy, my girlfriend, to go ^ead and sign it. So she had

one of these jobs that had top secret clearance. She worked for NS A. She could not afford to lose

her clearmice from this mrest. So I said, "You go ahead and sign it that way you can get your thing expunged immediately." I said, "I will not sign it. I'm going ahead and sue them." If you

don't sign, you have to wait three years before you cmi apply for expungement. So, she signed it

and we went ahead to trial. And the cops got up there and lied. Completely lied. And so the judge

found us not guilty and threw it out. Alright, so I got my record...Because I was not guilty, I

could get it expunged immediately. If I was found guilty, I would have had to wait three yems. It

was a misdememior. It was called "a failure to obey," which is a disorderly conduct charge

because I failed to obey them when they ordered me to leave the parking lot. Alright so we're

found not guilty. I went downstairs, got my record expunged, got her expunged. But she already

signed the thing saying she would not pursue action against them. So I want to pursue action

against them and she can be my witness. Well, we go to the police. They had everything but the

polygraph tests. Some how they had vanished out of the file. They couldn't find them anymore.

They were gone. And they tried to protect the officers mid never took any action against them. I

mean that's just one incident. I can throw out day to day incidents, but it still goes on today. It still goes on today.

AA: Whaf s the most important lesson you've learned with your experiences with the Klan?

DD: That people can change. I think the lesson that can be implemented in any situation not just with race or whatever. That while you me actively learning about somebody else, you me constantly teaching them about yourself. While I was trying to lemn something and do something with the Klan, they were subconsciously learning about me, about my behavior, about my questions, about whatever they were learning about my chmacter. And as a result, friendship was formed. It started with friendship and then I saw some of them begin to question their own upbringing mid their own belief system. And then finally get rid of it. So I think that kind of thing cmi be used with anybody. If you believe a certain way about nuclear weapons, or abortion, or whatever the issue may be, mid you know somebody who doesn't believe what the way you believe, y'all can still sit around and talk, and hear each other's point of view, and you may even be able to forge a friendship. You may not end up agreeing or you may go her way or she may go your way. But when you communicate about each other, you know people say a tiger doesn't change his stripes, well I proved that's wrong.

AA: Do you feel you've made a difference writing your book, just in the progress of this area or in the country?

DD: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because as a result of Mr. Kelly quitting the Klan here in Mmyland, there officially is no more Klan. I mean, that does not mean there are no more racist people. Sure, they're still around. They're all on the police force. That's where I'm concerned. But there's no more organized hate group. There me a few little pockets here and there. People try to start something up every now and then, but the backbone of the organization is broken.

AA: Based on your experience, how do you feel this country has progressed in race relations?

DD: Poorly, very poorly. As I've said, we all have a lot of work to do, and we cmi't, I mean, blame should lie on those who discriminate, and blmiie should lie on those who do nothing about it, or this black-white or whatever. If you know that you're sister is a racist and you're not, you have, I think, a moral obligation at least not a legal one, to talk to her. Try to show her something different. Because she may have never have seen before. And tell her, "If you can prove to me that your point of view is right, and it would be better for me to change, show me." Give her room to talk to you. Let her explain why she feels that way towards whatever group she has a problem with. And she makes sense. If she makes sense, you might want to change your opinion.

But give her that platform. Do your homework, mid you present your platform after she presents hers. And maybe she'll see things your way. But we all have an obligation to do that. And we've ignored it for too long. We've ignored it for way too long. When I, you asked me if it was still gonna be mound a hundred yems from now. Some of it will be around, maybe a little better, but some of it will be mound. When I was in... you're in eleventh grade now?

AA: Mmlim. DD: When I was riding the bus to school, I guess tenth or eleventh grade, back down in

Rockville and Potomac, when I would look out the windows, I see people working out on the

street, paving a road or digging a ditch or whatever. There was always black guys with these

hmd hats on, their shirts all sweating, [makes jackhammer noise] the jackhammer. There was

always some white guy stmiding up above the hole, nice pressed, starched white collmed shirt

with his hard hat on. He was directing them, telling them what to do. He's wiping his forehead

like this [wipes his forehead with hand] as though he's done some work himself. He hadn't done

a thing. He was the boss. And I always looked out the windows, I saw that, and it hurt me. But then today when I see the same situation, ifs mostly Hispanics doing all that grunt work. And it's

a white guy or a black guy doing this and doing this [points]. In that sense they've elevated a

certain degree, but they've done it by putting somebody else down. Thafs wrong to me.

Downtown, you know the hotels, back when I was here as a kid or whatever, all the maids and

door people mid baggage carriers were all black. Now they're all Hispanic. And they're making the minimum wage that we used to make. So how do you get ahead without stepping on top of

somebody? Thafs what we need to figure out.

AA: Okay, well, I think that's all the questions I had.

DD: Okay, do you have a VCR? AA: Yeah, Right in there

[Mr. Davis showed a video regarding Roger Kelly mid other Klan members he has worked with]

DD: When I met him he [Roger Kelly] was a Grand Dragon, which means the state leader, then he was promoted during that time to imperial wizard, which means a national leader. But we maintained our friendship, and I was still lemning about him, he was learning about me. And over a period of time, he began to question his own beliefs mid what he was promoting. And when it finally dawned on him that it didn't m^e any sense, he quit mid gave it up. As well as giving up those beliefs as well. So as a result of him doing that, I got his robe, which I brought to show you as well, [pulls out KKK robe and hood from his bag].

AA: Oh, cool.

DD: This is the one you saw him wearing in the clip. I haven't washed these things. They've been used. That's the mask. You snap it on and off.

AA: Who m^es these?

DD: Well, actually semiistresses in their organization or they hire somebody to make them for them. So fortunately, ifs a good thing that I have this and he doesn't. So I wanted to shme that with you. So you're talking about "are they gonna be here a hundred years from now?" the answer is yes, if we don't do miything about it, if we just ignore it because that's what happens. If

you ignore AIDS and cancer, multiple sclerosis, and whatever else, you don't look for a cure, of

course ifs always going to be around. But if you're out trying to find a cure, you might be able to

slow it down in the process until you get one. And I mentioned that we need to address these topics in school at a young age while kids me learning rather than wait for them to already form their opinions, form their personalities and then try to force them to something. When I did this

clip I'm going to show you here, the Heraldo TV show. Topic was children in the Klan. Fathers teaching their kids how to hate. And I knew some of the people on the show, some of the Klmi

people. Others I didn't know. Well ifs 1994. You'll see this twelve year old girl. Her name is

Erin, and her sister. Erica, was fourteen on this clip. I didn't know them. Their father was mi

Imperial Wizard in the Klan and their mother was in the Klmi. And they at the time were too

young to joint the Klan. They would join later, but I was so disgusted by what I saw with them that I wanted to meet them. So after the show I went down to the Klan dressing room, mid I met them and they were cool that day. But I had some problems with the father another day. And he

went to prison, not because of me, but for other things that he did. Anyway I met them that day

and three years later, the kids were in the Klan. They were old enough to join. The father was in

prison in Illinois. I'll get to that part in a second. Let me show you this clip from 1994. [plays tape of Heraldo Show] Now the last clip I'm gonna show you here is 1997. Three yems later. The

kids had joined. Erin, who's twelve, was now fifteen, and Erica was now seventeen. They had joined, but I'd said that their pop had gone to prison. They're in Delaware and their pop was put

in prison in Pennsylvania. So they could drive, which is right nemby. But he got transferred out to Marion, Illinois. They hadn't seen him in a couple years. So I got call to come out and do the Jenny Jones TV show which was filmed in Chicago. And I called Tina, the mother, and asked her if she would want to go and be on the show and present the Klan's viewpoint mid I'd present my viewpoint, and debate each other. And, well, she didn't understand why I was calling her. I had a run in with her husband, and she was very skeptical of me. And I said, "Well think about it.

Here's my number. Give me a call back." Well she called me back mi hour later. She's still not sure whether to trust me or not. And she wanted to know about her kids. He couldn't leave them if she were to go. I said, "Okay, I'll call you back." I called the Jenny Jones Show and said, "Hey, you know, I got a Klanswoman who'd like to come out, but she has children. She can't leave.

Would you consider bringing them out as well." They said, "Yeah." So I called Tina back, and she called back again and agreed to go. I told her if she went that I would take her out to see Bob, her husband, mid their kids to their father, which is several hours away from Chicago, rent a car and drive them out there. And she could see him. Again, she couldn't figure out why this black guy would call her in the first place. And what did he have up his sleeve? Why would he drive her to see her husband halfway across the United States? But I told her I wasn't putting her on. I wasn't lying to her. I'd do what I said I would do. She took the chance and she agreed to do it. I called Jenny Jones back. She arranged all the airline tickets. We flew out there and as soon as we got to the hotel, I rented a cm and drove them out to the prison. And I sat out in the car mid they went inside and visited with Bob. And then that night, Erin, who's now fifteen, she mid I went out on the town, and I showed her around Chicago. That's where I'm originally from. And had dinner and went to a show, mid the next morning we did the Jenny Jones show. And then we flew home together back to BWI, mid they quit the Klan. And later Bob quit the Klan in prison.

And then in 2002,1 did a presentation for Mmtin Luther King Day for the city of Rockville. And Tina, the mother, came down and spoke with me as an ex-klmiswoman to my audience, and Erin

wanted to come, but she couldn't m^e it. She had just gotten married. I went to her wedding.

And so she was going to be on her honeymoon at the time of the presentation, but we made this

little videotape, little two minute thing that I played for the audience. So this is her, eight years

later. Now Erin's age twenty. [Plays clip of Erin renouncing the teaching of racism seated next to

her black husband and Mr. Davis] And that's it. So that's what can be done. Thafs the power of

being able to educate young people. If Erin was already, lef s say twenty five or thirty years old

believing that stuff, she may not change. She could, but it might take a little longer. So has it

changed me getting to know these people? Ifs changed me in a sense that it gives you more hope that people can chmige, but we have a lot more work to do. Not enough has changed.

AA: That's a big chmige that she made. Historical Analysis and Interpretation of Interview

Oral history provides a human and emotional perspective to the written word

found in history texts. By exploring the experiences of others who have lived through

certain historical periods, a greater understanding of American history is reached that is

beyond memorizing facts and events. The spoken word shows the humanity of a period through tone, emotion, volume, emphasis, and dialect, which all add to the

comprehension of the written word. To be a true historian, one must analyze the validity

of any primmy or secondary document presented to them. When the spoken word and the

written word me compmed, a historian may find inaccuracies that transpire when coming to a conclusion. By putting the written and oral forms of history together, we are able to

acquire and understand the significmice of the historical period. Senate historian Don

Ritchie said in an interview that, "Oral history is like a motion picture" (B. Arzt 42). The

words being told by the "living repository" of the past form a vivid image in our head that convey the emotion experienced by the human spirit during a historical event. The

interview with Daryl Davis shows how crucial oral history is to understmiding the past

and the present. Mr. Davis elucidated a crucial element of American society, race, through the telling of his unique experience as an African American mid also through his

inspiring journey within the Ku Klux Klan.

Mr. Davis was charismatic, informative, and miswered all questions thoroughly-

After reading his book, Klan-Destine Relationships, it is delighting to personally hear

about some of the stories mid people he wrote about straight from the author. His

eloquent voice addressed each topic with articulation, thought, and elaboration. The

interview covered a wide range of topics on racism in the post Civil Rights Movement era that continues today. From Martin Luther King to police racism to the Klan, Mr.

Davis told about his experiences growing up in foreign countries and returning to the

states to find his fellow white class mated treating him differently from his European

classmates. "I was actually, I mean if you cmi grasp this concept, I was living in the

future back then" (Arzt 25). Mr. Davis grew up quite differently from other Americmi

children in the 1960s and experienced diversity early, which greatly influenced his adult

life. As a child, however, he still struggled with the concept of being different and being

seen as inferior by Americmi white people. Like nearly all blacks in America, Mr. Davis

experienced racist attacks from an emly age. For example, when he was a young boy

living in Belma, Massachusetts he experienced racism from other children. When he got

into the public pool, everyone else got out. His experiences with racism even in northern

states like Massachusetts mid Marylmid proves that the south was not the only pmt of the

country where racism remained prevalent in the twentieth century. Mr. Davis continued,

answering each question with full thought and explanation, to discuss his experience with

police racism, brutality, and corruption; his experience with the Klan; his memories from the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed; mid his philosophies regmding race relations.

One of Mr. Davis's many passions is to understmid race relations in America and

discovering how to improve them, which he has succeeded in doing. Before Daryl Davis

started his work with Klansmen, the Klan in Marylmid was strong and widespread. As a

result of Mr. Davis befriending Roger Kelly, mi Imperial Wizard of a Maryland Klmi,

Kelly realized the senselessness of racism mid quit. Thus, the Klan in Maryland

disintegrated. Although Mr. Davis has contributed to stopping hate groups in Marylmid, there is still a lingering feeling of racism in some white people. "As a result of Mr. Kelly quitting the Klan here in Marylmid, there officially is no more Klan. I memi, that does not

mean there are no more racist people. Sure, they're still around" (Arzt 58). This proves an

ugly truth about America as a nation. Hate still exists after years of racial confusion

rooted in and invoked by the tragedy of slavery, which was eradicated over one hundred

years ago. As historian William Pierce Randal explained, "A sober review of our history

yields the unwelcome conclusion that the Klmi spirit is a constant in out national

behavior. At times it is quiescent, but it is not dead; only slumbering between eruptions"

(Tucker 5). Racism in this country continues to be prevalent, but when people like Mr.

Davis help one individual at a time realize the ridiculousness of their views, a great

difference is made.

It will be mound for a long time to come. I don't think you'll see the end of it in

your lifetime. I certainly won't see it in my lifetime. As to whether ifs called the

Klan anymore or not I don't know. Because the Klmi started off in 1865, and for

the longest time they were the premier racist organization. And then now you

have a hundred different ones. You have Church of the Creator, the White Power

Skinheads, the American Nazi Party, WAR, which stands for White Arymi

Resistance, Aryan Nations. (Arzt 37)

Mr. Davis' prediction of the Klmi's future contradicts Randal's. The character of the Klan

has changed drastically since its founding in 1865. Instead of having one strong racist

organization that loses and gains popularity depending on events occurring at the time, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of racist orgmiizations in America. Their numbers

may not be as strong as they were in the 1920s, but their influence is still felt today. The

Klan will likely never have another surge in membership as it did in the twenties and sixties because of the liberal sentiment gradually adopted by today's American citizens.

The world has drastically chmiged socially mid economically and the Klan is not able to

keep up with the changes any more.

Mr. Davis experienced police racism and brutality himself and therefore he had a

strong opinion on the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles. Less than thirty years after the conflicting times of the Civil Rights Movement, racism existed in the police who are

supposed to protect the Americmi people, not attack them unjustifiably or discriminate

against innocent citizens. The Rodney King beating of March 1991 "has become, with time, far more than a brutal revelation of police misconduct. It looms instead as the crest

of a two decade long racial cold war, the zenith of a culture of irreconcilability" (Moore,

1). Mr. Davis reinforces Moore's statement when he said, "What happened with Rodney

King has been going on since day one. Thafs why black and police have such a bad

history. The only difference between any other situation and Rodney King was that

Rodney King's was videotaped" (Arzt 48). The video tape of the vicious beating of

convict Rodney King on a Califomia highway shocked white America and "for the first time, America, especially white America, got to see what we've been talking about for

years" (Arzt 48). It revealed that even in the 1990s racism still ran deep into the

American national fiber. The underlying tensions between blacks mid whites left behind

by the days of the Civil Rights Movement were brashly exposed to the nation in George

Holliday's home video of the beating. The Rodney King incident was crucial to the

history and progress of America racially. It provided the realization that race was still an

issue and that the more it was avoided as a taboo, the worse racism became and the higher tensions rose. The Rodney King incident was a slap in the face that woke America

up from its blissful dremii of racial harmony.

During my endeavor to find a "living repository" of the past, I found one of the

future, Daryl Davis. His inspirational story of human potential and chmige has shown me the possibilities of this country to move forward in race relations. With the great strides

we have made in the past ten years, there is still much to be done, and as a pmt of a future

generation that will make up the population of this country, I feel it is my responsibility

as an American to carry on the words and work of Mr. Davis. In doing this project, I

found myself having to face the apprehension and fear of an unknown confrontation and

ultimately enjoying it and taking away from the experience. The hours of work at my

computer have taught me the learned skill of being a historian. By fusing the written and

oral history, I have created mi invaluable historical resource that will aid future

generations in understanding race relations in America. Mr. Davis's story of transforming members of the most notorious hate group in America not only shows us the

progress this country is capable of, but also gives us insight to humanity itself. "You

know how people say a tiger doesn't chmige his stripes, well I proved that's wrong" (Arzt

57). Appendix

Q^ation^

D.W. Griffin's "The Birth of a Nation" WTVw.r onholloway. c om/ http ://iinage s. amazon. c om/image s/P/63 05130949.01 .L2ZZZZSZ.jpg D aiyD avisCD c over, gif

Datyl performing with Chuck Beny Datyl with Grand Dragon Robert White WTVw.daiyldavis.com ^Nw^. daiyldavis. c om

Daryl's Book Klan-Destine Daryl with Imperial Wizard Roger Kelly Relationships www.daryldavis.com www.umd.umich.edu/student/ sab/lecture.htm Holliday's video of the Rodney King Maitin Luther King, Jr. BeatingitiLos Angeles http://wwTy.gre atestcities.coiTi/1391pic/839/CPllJ http://www.vanceholmes.com/couft/lp_ SP.jpg'llfi.bmp Idng.jpg

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Cartoon of justice beating Rodney King to death wwTy.ieuben.org/.../ qqxsgEodneyKing.gif Works Consulted

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