Meet the Black musician and activist who made friends with members of the KKK [Q&A]

As a musician and an activist, Daryl Davis has a strange relationship with crowds.

On stage, as a touring musician and bandleader who's played with legends like late greats Chuck Berry, B.B. King and Little Richard, Davis knows the love and energy a crowd can bring to a gig.

But, as a Black man and an activist, who has attended Ku Klux Klan rallies - both public and in private as a guest of high-ranking KKK members - Davis has felt the inverse emotions that a crowd is capable of.

"There'll be Klan people there who don't want you there," says Davis, 66, of Silver Spring, Maryland. "But they don't do anything because it is a very paramilitary chain of command. If the Grand Dragon or Imperial Wizard says, 'This is my guest,' well then, if (they) mess with you, they have to be accountable to their higher-ups."

Davis tells his story about meeting, and eventually befriending, Klan members with the goal of finding common ground and helping them leave the organization in his 1998 book "Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man's Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan" and a 2016 documentary "Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race and America."

READ: 'Beautiful: The Carole King Musical' kicks off Fulton Theatre's 'blockbuster' season

On Friday, Oct. 4, Davis will appear at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design to speak about his experiences as a musician and activist and perform his special brand of rock 'n' roll piano.

Davis has written and talked extensively about the impetus for engaging with the KKK: after a gig, he was approached by a white man who said he'd never heard a Black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. Davis quickly schooled the man about Lewis' influences, which he'd heard from Lewis himself, and joined the man for a drink and conversation. That man, Davis later learned, was a member of the KKK. And he became Davis' friend.

Davis' approach of meeting and befriending KKK members is a controversial approach that has its detractors. That's documented during a tense scene in "Accidental Courtesy," where Davis meets with members of a Baltimore-based Black Lives Matter group. But, it's an approach Davis believes in.

"(People) need to listen to the other side whether they agree with it or not," says Davis. "They need to hear the other side and understand where they're coming from before they make a decision to hate the other side."

During a recent phone interview, Davis talked about his life in music and activism.

Ultimately, Davis says, as a musician and a person, he is seeking harmony.

"On my band stand, I foster harmony between all the voices on my stage, whether they are the instrumental voices, the piano, bass, drums, guitar or saxophone, or the singers. I want harmony," says Davis. "When the gig is over and the curtain comes down and I step off the stage, and I'm walking around in society, I want harmony around me."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

READ: Here's how you can contribute a piece to 'Lancaster's Living Quilt,' an Art at Amtrak display

When was the last time you hung out with a member of the KKK?

I go out with Klan people all the time. I'll go hear music with them or invite them to my gig, things like that. Interact with them on a social basis. That is the most powerful thing. Being one-on-one with somebody. In a group setting, you know, they may question some things about their own ideology, but they're not going to voice them in front their brethren. But when you're with them, one-on-one, it's a lot more effective.

I've spoken at Klan rallies, I've spoken at Klan meetings, and they sit and listen to me and sometimes ask questions or whatever. But when I get home, I get emails, you know, with questions or things they didn't bring up when I spoke there. Because they didn't want to be embarrassed, or they didn't want to let somebody know that they're rethinking their own ideology.

How many Klan members have you convinced to leave the KKK?

Directly, by now, probably 80 or 90, and indirectly over 200.

And you have Klan members that have handed over their robes and paraphernalia to you upon leaving the group?

I have hundreds of pieces of paraphernalia. In terms of robes and hoods, I probably have 65. I deal with Neo Nazis too. I have swastika armbands and flags and all kinds of craziness. I keep it all locked up. I don't keep it all at home.

You've said in interviews you agree with some things you heard at Klan rallies. What were some of those things?

That we need better education for kids. That we need to get drugs off the street. I agree with that. It's like, hey what can we do together to reinforce these things?

Your parents worked in the U.S. Foreign Service and you grew up living in, and attending school, in Austria, Ethiopia, Ghana and other places. How did the experience shape you?

My first exposure to school was abroad. My classmates were from Nigeria, Japan, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden. Embassy kids. So, that became my baseline for what school was. When I came back, every two years, to the States. I was either in an all-Black school or a Black-and-white school, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. There was not the amount of diversity here in the classroom in the 1960s that I had overseas.

Some of the countries I lived in, as a preteen, their radio would play American music. This was back in the early 1960s, but the music that they would get from America was like five years older. I wasn't hearing the current stuff. I was hearing the stuff from the '50s. So, literally, I grew up on the '50s music. I was kind of an anomaly with my with my peers.

What was it like for you to eventually play, for 32 years, with Chuck Berry?

There is nothing like it whatsoever. It's the greatest experience. Chuck Berry was the inventor of Rock 'n' Roll. "Johnny B Goode" is my favorite song of all time and to sit on stage and play that song with that guy over 100 times was amazing. Chuck Berry was my mentor, my hero, my boss, my friend. I went to his home. He went to my house. We'd hang out together. We'd have dinner together.

Did he know about your work with activism and that you hung out with KKK members?

He grew up with that stuff. He was from the South. And there were some pretty horrific incidents during his era with that kind of stuff. So, he'd be like, 'Were you afraid?' I gave him a copy of my book and that kind of thing. He always supported what I did.

He and Little Richard and some others, once they became known, they would refuse to play to segregated audiences. If you go to see anybody today, Madonna or Bruno Mars or anybody, you 'll be there with people who don't look like you and may not have the same political beliefs that you do. But you're all are there cheering on the same people. A lot of young people don't realize that that was not the case 50 years ago or whatever. They don't realize what people had to go through to get to this point. And music still does have that ability to unite people.