Meet the man who is helping to disrobe and deradicalise the Klan

For years Daryl Davis has collected symbols of hate and intolerance. The 63-year-old Black musician has hundreds of items of memorabilia that used to belong to members of the Ku Klux Klan — and he intends to display them in a museum.

Davis believes that the Klan — which emerged in 1865 as a white supremacist organisation after the American Civil War — is a part of US history that needs to be remembered in the same way as the Holocaust, so that lessons can be learnt by future generations.

Former Klansmen handed over their robes and other paraphernalia to Davis when they decided to ditch the ideology — that in some cases had dominated their lives — after the musician, who also works as a race reconciliator, had spoken about the effect of racism on his life and others.

More than 200 former Klan members turned their back on the Klan after having met and come to know Davis, but he tells Crikey he was merely the inspiration for them to think about change.

“I did not convert anybody — not even one,” he said. “I am the impetus for over 200 to convert themselves and I do that by giving them a better alternative, giving them an education, and exposing them to something that they are otherwise not getting.

“What you do is you give them a better perspective, offer them another … perspective. If they resonate with your perception or perspective, then they will change their own reality.”

His work in race reconciliation has meant his collection has grown and has had to be stored offsite.

“People ask me: ‘Why do you have this stuff? Why don’t you burn it?’ ” he said.

“Well, no, I am not going to burn it. It is a part of American history and you don’t burn your history. You keep it. You put it in a museum — the good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. The Klan is certainly ugly and shameful. White supremacy is certainly ugly and shameful. But you don’t destroy the history of it. You learn from it.”

Davis credits his parents with helping him learn from a young age to be confident in speaking to people of different races and backgrounds and says his upbringing — along with his musical career — helped him connect with extremists.

His father was a diplomat, and Davis mixed with children from other cultures and traditions in schools in all the countries his family lived. He first encountered racism at home in America when at 10 he marched with a cub scout group in a parade. He recalls a point in the march when he started having objects thrown at him. He had no real idea why.

When his parents became aware of why he came home with injuries needing attention they explained the meaning of racism.

Davis is cited by former American neo-Nazi leader Jeff Schoep as one of the influences that helped him decide to leave the National Socialist Movement after leading it for 25 years.

A part of a conversation in which Davis challenged Schoep’s white supremacist worldview appears in a 2016 documentary called Accidental Courtesy that covers Davis’ tour across the country talking to extremists from various organisations about their beliefs.

“[Schoep] is now working towards pulling people out of that movement, deradicalising them, and helping to prevent others from being radicalised into such movements. He has done a total 180[-degree turn],” Davis says.

However, there are Black activists who resent and criticise Davis for meeting with Klan members. Accidental Courtesy also featured members of a Black Lives Matter faction who could not understand why he had engaged with the Klan.

“It became very contentious because they could not understand why I would sit down and have a conversation with white supremacists,” Davis said. “They just could not get with that so they began insulting me and calling me names.”

Davis says politicians should focus on eliminating the appeal of extremism by dealing with the ignorance first. The cure, he says, is exposure to different ways of looking at the world.

“Ignorance is the parent of fear,” he said. “Ignorance gives birth to fear. We fear those things of which we are ignorant. If we do not address the fear then the fear will escalate and turn into hatred because we hate the things that frighten us.

“If we do not address the hatred, then the hatred in turn escalates into anger and then becomes destruction. We will want to destroy the things that we hate because they frighten us. But guess what? They might have been harmless, but we were simply ignorant.”