The encounter turned into a friendship, and through it, Davis met Roger Kelly, a leader of the local KKK who was eventually promoted to Grand Wizard, the head of the national organization. “I was approached by a KKK member in the audience who couldn’t believe that a black man could play like Jerry Lee Lewis, the famous white rock star of the 1950s,” Davis explained. He recalls often asking family and community members, “How can they hate me when they don’t even know me?” Not until many years later did he find an explanation while playing a gig in Maryland. “People treated me with kindness when I least deserved it, and now I can make amends for my past behavior,” he said.ĭavis regularly experienced racism as a child living in Massachusetts, including being pelted by rocks and bottles while marching in a Cub Scout parade. Today, he represents the Serve 2 Unite program founded in 2012 after the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin, meets with the adult children of Holocaust survivors, and collaborates on art projects with elementary schoolchildren from diverse backgrounds. His book, My Life After Hate, details how the forgiveness offered to him by people he once detested helped turn his life around. Once filled with anger, Michaelis was a founding member of a white supremacist, neo-Nazi organization and the lead singer of Centurion, a favorite hate-metal band. They delivered their talk, “No Place for Hate,” to an engaged audience in Wanamaker Hall and spoke with students in smaller groups during classes and at a dinner at Hutchinson House. Yet, the two travel the country together giving workshops and talks on the need to turn away from violence and toward reconciliation and harmony. Michaelis, a former skinhead and hate-metal band member, and Davis, an African American, Grammy-nominated blues and jazz musician, seem an unlikely pair. We should follow in Davis’ example, to treat one another as human beings rather than as lesser, even when the other party thinks that way.In April, Principia College presented professional musicians and race-relations experts Arno Michaelis and Daryl Davis as this year’s Ernie and Lucha Vogel Moral Courage Lecturers. To oppress an individual on the basis of race is akin to doing so on the basis of ideology discrimination in one facet is the same as it is in the other. Furthermore by suppressing them you are sinking to their levels, which brings into question whether or not what you’re doing is a whole lot different than what they do. This train of thought makes absolute sense when analyzed further: when you silence or hate on a group whose whole premise is that they are hated, then you just gave them grounds to their own argument. In the divisive society we live in now, Davis believes that we need to strive towards discourse driven situations rather than silencing or demonizing individuals for their beliefs. It brings into question how we act and react towards hate groups and rhetoric. This story is not an outlier to Davis’ methods though, the man has accumulated over 200 robes from Klan members over the past 30 years. It was just half a year later than Roger Kelly gave his robes to Davis and denounced the Klan. Suddenly and miraculously, Davis had made a friend out of an imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Then the wizard would invite Davis on his own. The blues musician began to consistently call on Kelly to talk, and slowly Kelly began to come alone without his bodyguard. Tension was very high during that meeting, but, they began to talk. When the meeting took place, both Davis and the wizard were a bit surprised – Davis because Kelly had brought an armed bodyguard, and Kelly because Davis was black. Davis arranged a meeting through his white secretary without letting Kelly know about his skin color. Davis began to read up on the Klan and continued this fascination throughout his life.Īt a certain point he had gotten the contact information of an imperial wizard (a state leader of the Klan) named Roger Kelly. It started for Davis back when he was a child – he could not understand why a group of masked individuals hated him so much without so much as meeting him. Daryl Davis is a blues musician, author, and bandleader, but also has an interesting hobby of befriending members of the Klan and convincing them to give up their robes. It’s a strange sight to see an African American at a KKK rally, but even stranger for one to be invited to a rally. Cole Garber, Staff Writer & Page Designer
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