How a man singing about ‘Blues’ stopped racism

Daryl Davis is a blues musician, author, and lecturer with an unusual and inspiring mission. While traveling throughout the United States over the course of the last three-plus decades (30 years), he’s sought out members of the Ku Klux Klan as well as other white supremacist organizations, and gotten them to change their ways.

Even though he’s a black man, Daryl Davis has successfully befriended and converted some 200 Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis. And he starts each encounter with a simple question: “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?”

He says once the friendship blossoms, the Klansmen realize that their hate may be misguided. Since Davis started talking with these members, he says 200 Klansmen have given up their robes. When that happens, Davis collects the robes and keeps them in his home as a reminder of the dent he has made in racism by simply sitting down and having dinner with people.

“Allow them to air that point of view, regardless of how extreme it may be,” Davis says. “You challenge them. But you don’t challenge them rudely or violently. You do it politely and intelligently.”