The Reason Daryl Davis Collects Robes of Former Klansmen | Joe Rogan

But check this out though. Our relationship would grow and grow. And eventually, Mr. Kelly... Me and Jesus. What do you got there? He began... He gave you a robe, so put your son and sneak right in. Yeah, he began believing. Whoa, that's him right there in that photo with you? That's him right there in his grand dragon robe. This is his imperial wizard robe. Whoa. Right here. And... He gave you his robe? He gave me his robe because he no longer believes in what it stands for. Wow. And... And how many years did it take... There it is. How many years did it take before you just by being around him and talking to him? For him, it was probably like around maybe six and a half, seven. Six and a half, seven years. Now, some... It's a matter of months, a matter of a year, two years. And so what did you do to just talk... Is that the hat? That's the hood, yeah. Oh, Jesus. And you see, this top part is the hood. And this lower portion here is what's called the mask. And members who want anonymity, they don't want you to know who they are. They wear this mask, which is attached by three snaps or a Velcro. Just remove it. They don't care and the face is exposed, as you saw in that picture. So what is it like? You said you guys got closer. You said you became more and more friends. You started visiting each other. Yeah. Did he ever say, I'm starting to think this is bullshit? Yeah, pretty much. How did he say it? He called me up one day and he told me, I got something I want to talk to you about. And I said, okay. He goes, you want to meet for dinner? I said, sure. So I drove up to Frederick and met him. And he said to me, then he said, you know, I'm quitting the Klan. I'm leading it. And he's the top dog. He's the top dog. He gave it all up. And here's the thing. He did a smart thing. He did a good thing. He didn't hand it down. He shut it down. Wow. Yeah. Did he convince the other people in the Klan that... Well, they had the choice to do whatever they wanted to do. Right. A lot of them left. A lot of them left as well. Then there were those who tried to keep it going, but failed. Did he use you as an example when he was speaking to them? They knew why he did it. He received some hate mail. He began receiving some hate mail from some of his own members anonymously. The same kind of hate mail that at one time he would send out to people anonymous would now come back to him. You know, you're in bed with Darrell Davis. You're a nigger lover. All that kind of stuff. Unsigned. You know, the same stuff that he would put out to other people. And so he began seeing himself in the mirror in the Klan. So that was very crucial. And I have repeated this process many times with different people. What is the process? Do you... Like when you're talking about like the Charles Murray stuff, the bell curve stuff, how do you refute that? What are you saying to him? I'm saying to him, look, Mr. Murray, anytime you want to prove something, you find something that fits your narrative. Yes. You can find some black person who has a very low IQ. Okay? If I'm going to... If I work for Ford and I want to prove that my car is better than Chevrolet, then I'm going to find a Chevrolet that doesn't run very well. You know, I'm going to do it that way. So I refuted Mr. Murray's and his partner, the two guys who wrote the book, their documentation. And see, they go by things that they can see and understand. I'm going to give you an example of something that's going to help you understand. The Cyclops was riding around in my car one day with me. He's sitting in my passenger seat, right? And we're driving. I'm driving along. And somehow we got on the topic of black crime, and he made a statement. He said, well, you know, we all know, they say that, again, that they, authority, say that black people have a gene in them that makes them violent. And I'd heard that before from other Klan people. That's one of their narratives. And, you know, the wild black savage kind of thing. And I said, what are you talking about? He says, well, who's doing all the drive-bys and carjackings in southeast? He was referring to southeast Washington, D.C., which is a predominantly black area. Some whites live there. It's predominantly black, very high crime ridden. I said, okay, it's black people. I said, but that's what lives there. I said, who's doing all the crime in Bangor, Maine? White people, because that's what lives there. I said, you know, you're not even considering the demographics. He's like, no, no, no, no. You all have this gene, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, he's going to shut me down. And I said, look, he's right here. I said, look, I'm as black as anybody, you know. I said, I have never done a drive-by. I have never done a carjacking. How do you explain that? This man did not wait one second. He answered me like that. He said, your gene is latent. It hasn't come out yet. How do you argue with somebody who's that far in the field, right? I mean, you can't even bite into that and chew on it, right? So, I'm dumbfounded, and I'm speechless. I'm just driving along. He's over here all smothered, you see, nothing to say. So, I thought about it. And I said, you know, they say, I use his authority. I said, they say that all white people have a gene that makes them a serial killer. He said, how do you figure that? I said, name me three black serial killers. He couldn't do it. I said, here, I'm going to give you one. I named one for him. I said, here, just name me two. He couldn't do it. I said, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, Son of Sam. Ed Gein, Henry Lee Lucas. Ed Gein, right. Ed Gein and his crazy machine. These are skin people, okay? I said, son, they're all white. You're a serial killer. It's blatant. Yeah, and he said, well, Darryl, I've never killed anybody. I said, your gene's agent hasn't come out yet. He goes, well, that's stupid. I said, well, duh. I said, you're right. It is stupid. I said, but it's no more stupid for me to say that about you than what you said about me. And he got very quiet. But I mean, you could almost see it, Joe. His wheels were spinning. The gears. Yeah. And he's thinking about it. And then he changed the subject. But within four or five months, he left the Klan. Wow. Based on that conversation. Wow. And his robe was the very first robe I ever got. Wow. So he came to you and gave you the robe. He said, that conversation with you? Well, first he said, no, he didn't come to me and give me the robe. He called me. And I was going to be up in that area. And he said, you want to get together? And I got together with him. And he wanted to go over to the courthouse for something. He'd been in some kind of trouble. He wouldn't go pick up something in the courthouse. So I gave him a ride over there. And he told me he was going to quit the Klan, you know? And he thought a lot about what I'd said. And I said, what are you going to do with your stuff? He said, trash it. I said, no, no, don't trash it. I said, give it to me. And he says, you want my robe and all my Klan stuff? And I said, yeah. He goes, why? Why would you want that? I didn't know why. But something told me, just take it, Darrell. Just take it. And I said, I don't know what I'm going to do with it. But I said, yeah, I do want it. So we went back to his apartment. Now, I'd never been in his apartment because I'd met him outside, outside in the driveway or whatever. A parking lot. And I said, come on in. And so I'm walking up the stairs with him to the apartment. I'm thinking, you know, I hope I'm not getting set up here, you know? But I walked on in. And his fiance was sitting on the couch, Klan's woman. I'd seen her before. And I sat down and talked with her. And he went down the hall to his room. And he came back. When he came back, he got a hefty trash bag, went back there again, and came back with this trash bag all loaded up. Had his robe, his hood, the Klan belt buckle. They have a Klan belt buckle. Oh, yeah, they got Klan tie clips, all kinds of stuff, man. And his certificate of membership, all kinds of stuff. And this bag gave it to me. And I said, OK, thank you, you know? And I didn't know why I wanted it, but I just knew I should have it. Well, first of all, it's history, OK? And you don't destroy history. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. The shameful is still American history. And the KKK, I've said it before, is as American as baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet. It's a shameful part of our history. But it is our history nonetheless. Now I know what I'm doing with stuff. I got my 501c3. I'm going to have a museum one day and put all this stuff in there. Wow. What's a 501c3? It makes me tax exempt. Oh. Yeah. KKK, Conversion Museum. Yeah, yeah. And you're going to have pictures of you with the dudes right next to the robe in each one? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Most of them, most of them I do. And so I began collecting all this kind of stuff. This is, well, here, I'll show you this one. This is a Grand Dragon robe. Green is the sign for the Grand Dragon. And there you go. Got a little Confederate flags here, you know? The Grand Patches. Whose is that? Who gave you that? This guy, Bob White, Robert White. Robert White used to be the Grand Dragon of Maryland for another Klan group, which was a rival to Roger Kelly's group. All right. When I first heard of Bob White, I was in my late teens. And I heard about him on the news. He had been busted, arrested, and put in jail for conspiring to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore up on Liberty Road, the Liberty Road's synagogue. And he was convicted. He went to prison for four years. This is before I started writing the book. I remember him. And then he got out after doing his time, continued running the Klan. And then some years later, he got busted again. Assault with intent to murder two black men with a shotgun. All right. Now, understand something. As a Klan leader, you don't make any money, or not a lot, unless you're embezzling money from the dues. And a lot of people do that. That's what causes these splinter groups. If you're a leader, like a wizard or a dragon, you might get like a small stipend out of the dues, but not enough to pay your rent or put food on your table. So you have to have a regular job. You know, Cyclops, Wizard, Dragon, whatever, these are all just titles. Like Boy Scout Leader, you have to have a regular job to pay your rent and mortgage. This man's regular job, when he was doing all this nonsense bombing places and stuff, Baltimore City police officer, this is his police officer uniform, okay? Yeah. He was not an undercover cop in the Klan gathering intelligence. He was a bonafide Klansman on the Baltimore City police force, okay? And there are more, there are more, okay? But he went on, this guy was vehemently, vehemently anti-Semitic and racist and very, very violent. But he wanted to become one of my best friends. He gave me his Klan robe, gave me his police uniform. I do a lot of lecturing all over the country and stuff. Did he quit the police force? He was forced to quit the police force or be fired. The police force, Baltimore City police force, I mean, even just last year, they had a consent decree from the Department of Justice against them. They are very racist and very corrupt. What they would do is they would turn a blind eye to the Klansman on the force. Because as a police officer, you're not allowed to belong to any subversive groups, all right? They would turn a blind eye as long as the guys would not bring unwanted attention to the department. You know, just keep your stuff, you know, whatever. Well, he would end up getting busted for planting a bomb near a synagogue and firing a shotgun and all that kind of stuff at black people. So they, you know, they get, hey, you got to retire or we put off the force. You're causing us too much publicity. This is before he left the Klan. Yeah. So what did he do after he did that? He had to get another job while he was doing that. He got another job. He began dealing in the homing pigeons. Hey, that's the name. Dude, these people have a work name. That's an archaic, ridiculous way to transmit information. It's perfect for someone who's in something like the Klan. But, you know, I mean, you have to work.