IDEAS // THE GOLDEN RULE AND... RACEAHOLICS ANONYMOUS
The Way It Is
Daryl Davis on race and rehabilitation
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee
EXCERPT //
It was a record-scratch moment when Daryl Davis, a black musician and racial reconciliation advocate, walked into the funeral service for the United Klans of America’s Grand Dragon of Pennsylvania.
“Everybody in there jumped,” Davis told me, recalling the 2009 event. “The funeral home was full of white supremacists.” At first, many thought he was with law enforcement, but very quickly Pastor Mark Thomas, himself a white supremacist, went over to shake Davis’ hand, and the room settled down.
The deceased, Roy Frankhouser, lived in Reading, Pennsylvania, and over the years had spoken to Davis for hours, as had Thomas, for Davis’ research for his book Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man's Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan. He says he attended out of respect for the time they devoted to helping him understand their views, and he served as a last-minute pallbearer, shouldering the weight of the coffin as well as a complicated relationship.
Davis believes that simply engaging with people is a powerful persuasive tactic, as is bonding over what unites us, such as music. He’s traveled the country for over 40 years playing boogie-woogie piano and blues with well-known acts such as Bruce Hornsby, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry—all the while collecting hoods from people who chose to leave the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups.
Davis is energetic and affable, and rollicking music spills easily from his fingertips. But when he talks about some of the men he’s been around—men he knows have been violent and predatory—he settles into a disquieting calm. He admits he’s put himself in real danger more than once, and believes that some kind of power is keeping him safe. “I have been—let me tell you—I have been in some situations that I should not have gotten out of, literally. Something got me out of it.”
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