Daryl Davis Responds to Dave Chappelle’s Clayton Bigsby Sketch

You're a very articulate guy and I'm sure a lot of these people are not very educated so the continued exposure to you is probably confusing to them as well. Because you're so good at forming sentences and speaking in calm and you know the words flow so smoothly out of your mouth and you have this wonderful grasp of the English language they're probably like fuck I think this guy might be smarter than me. That had to help. But let me say something though. Don't be fooled. You know we think of Klan people and I say we are people in general because most of our exposure to it is at the Jerry Springer show or Geraldo where they throw chairs. Stereotypes. Yeah. Third grade dropout kind of thing. Caricatures. Yeah. And those are the types that they would bring on the show for whatever reason. And I know plenty of those types trust me. Those stereotypes do exist. But they can go anywhere from third grade dropout all the way to President of the United States. President Warren G. Harding was sworn into the Ku Klux Klan in the green room of the White House. Whoa. What year was that? Whatever year he was president. So it was post 65. Oh well yeah. 1865. It was the 1920s right? Wow. The T-dome, what it was. President Harry Truman. Before Harry Truman became president he was a member of the Klan for a short time. That's right. Harry Truman who integrated the army. All right. Wow. He joined for a short time. He didn't like it. He got out. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Hugo Black was in the Klan at the time he was appointed to the Supreme Court. He had to leave the Ku Klux Klan to sit on the Supreme Court as a justice. More recently Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia who just died a few years ago. He was a Klansman in the 1940s. He was a grand kliegel. Kliegel means recruiter. Grand means state. So he was a recruiter for the state of West Virginia, grand kliegel. In the 1940s. And then he later renounced it and stuff. Yeah. So all kinds of educational backgrounds. Particularly a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was considered an honorable white man society. At the time they didn't allow women in the Klan and they had women's auxiliaries. Now they allow women but women, they're still a male chauvinistic organization. So women are making progress even in the Klan. Yeah. But they cannot hold the highest offices. They can't be a grand dragon or dragoness. When did you start all this? What year was it? I started meeting them and all that or researching them. Just when did you start meeting them? When did you have this meeting? Actually the first friendly meeting that I had with the Klan was in the bar. That was 1983. My first encounter with the Klansmen was the year before and I didn't know he was a Klansman. I beat him up. Oh. So this, but the bar thing was in 1983. I was wondering if it was pre or post the Dave Chappelle bit. Pre, pre. Yeah. That's why. And what's funny is everybody asked me, did you see that? Did Clayton Bixby or whatever it was called? They think it's hilarious. But I'm going to tell you something. It's not hilarious. Okay. Dave Chappelle, he's a comic genius. He's great. Okay. And perhaps if I had never done what I've done, I'd find a lot of humor in it. But I tell you what, he's never been to a Klan rally. I have. I've been to plenty of them. Those things are not funny. They are not funny. Okay. They are a pressure cooker waiting to go off. And if that valve is not really released, it's going to explode. We saw that in Charlottesville. Well, you know that his joke was in how ridiculous it was. Yeah, absolutely. No, no, no. I'm faulting him. I'm not faulting him. I didn't know he was black. Right. Exactly. I understand what you're saying. From your perspective, it's not funny. Yeah. Brian. Yeah. I mean, there's humor in everything. But we shouldn't take racism. We need to take it more seriously than we do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.