Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Art in your home can instantly transform your space and bring you joy. Saatchi Art makes it easy for you to discover and buy one-of-a-kind art that you'll love. Whether you're looking to complement your home decor, fill a blank space on your walls, or start an art collection, you can find the perfect piece for your specific style and budget at Saatchi Art. Go to SaatchiArt.com today to bring the beauty of art into your home. Plus, listeners get 15% off their first order of original art with code ROB.
That's 15% off at SaatchiArt.com. S-A-A-T-C-H-I-Art.com. Ever wish your favorite TV show had twice as many episodes? Everyone knows that feeling. And so does Discover. Everyone wants more of their favorites. That's why Discover doubles another favorite thing. Cash back.
That's right. Discover automatically doubles the cash back earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with Cash Back Match. Now that's a real crowd pleaser. Everyone knows how it ends. Double the cash back. See terms at discover.com slash credit card. The greatest weapon that we have to combat anti-Semitism, racism, any kind of discrimination is the least expensive, the most effective tool
and most underused. This conversation is free. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Literally. Today, we have an amazing conversation with a man named Daryl Davis. And Daryl Davis has lived, continues to live an amazing, amazing life. He grew up in many African nations. His father is... What way do you hear about his father? Daryl has devoted his life
to the conversation of race in a way that no one else has. He is the authority on the KKK, the authority on the KKK, and he's black. And his work and his experience and his story about going, not undercover so much, but just infiltrating in his own way the KKK and what that means
taught him about human understanding and race is spectacular. And this is a very special episode with my guy, Daryl Davis.
Daryl, thank you for coming. I've been aware of your work for a long time, but have never really done a deep dive on it. And this was the opportunity for me to do it. And I'm super psyched to talk to you. You're quite an amazing man. And what you do is, I think, super important today. Well, I appreciate the interest and the opportunity. First of all, I just want to go back to the beginning.
Go back to your life as a young man. So your dad worked at the Department of State Foreign Affairs. Is that right? Yeah, U.S. State Department. Correct. Okay. Now I'm just going to come right out and ask you, was he a spy? If I knew, I couldn't tell, right? Because whenever I hear that, I go, okay, look, there are always, you know, there are diplomats. There are. There absolutely are. And for good reason. And then a lot of them are also spies. And for good reason you asked that question because a lot of them are.
But I will say this, my father was one of the first Black Secret Service agents in this country.
Yeah, he wanted to be an FBI agent. But, you know, J. Edgar Hoover was a racist and a male chauvinist and among other things. And, you know, no blacks, no women. So my dad went to the Secret Service and there were no blacks there either. And Harry Anslinger was the head of the Secret Service at the time. And on the same day, he hired five black males. And my dad was one of those. That's.
Amazing. And what was his detail? Where did he end up working? He worked for the Bureau of, under the Secret Service, BNDD, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which then became the FBN, Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He worked on the French Connection, all kinds of stuff. Wow.
Why did you write a book on your dad? There are some books out there, you know, that have chapters on them. Yeah, I bet. I mean, geez, to me, that's like, why is that not an eight-episode Netflix show? The life of your dad. That is...
Super, super cool. And then you were in, how many African nations did you live in? I lived in Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, and Senegal. And I visited many more in between. I mean, total now, between my childhood travels and my adulthood travels, I've been in 63 countries. And I lived in a number of them, in Europe and Africa and visited many other continents. I mean, you have built your whole life dealing with
The conversation on race. And first of all, let me ask you this. Does every culture and country have their own version of racism? Well, they may have their own version of, let's say, discrimination. Okay. Yeah. Because sometimes it's not about race. It may be about religion. It may be about tribe. It may be about social class, etc.,
So, you know, different countries may have their own particular thing. Like, for example, in Europe, in the country of Ireland, it's the Catholics and the Protestants, right? But they look alike. You know, you couldn't tell a Catholic by looking at them or a Protestant. Over here, we don't have that issue. That's right. It's funny. I was just in Ireland. I'd never been there. And it's still a thing. Yeah. It's still a thing. But, you know, we are somewhat unique.
in the realm of racism. Because understand, this country
at one time, owned human beings. My ancestors were owned. I'm a descendant of slaves. And, you know, slaves were considered property, not human beings. In fact, we were classified eventually as three-fifths of a human being. So the way, you know, that's handed down or passed down, you know, we're still regarded as a little lesser than the majority.
It's so funny when you think, well, it's not funny, but it's hard to believe. Ironic, yes. That it's not that long ago. Right. Generationally, at all. And, you know, I don't want to jump totally ahead to where I want to lead you to the bulk of the conversation about your work in the Klan, infiltrating the Klan. But the notion that somebody alive today could be holding on to
Those views, those thoughts of the people that were around that thought it was a good idea to classify another human being as three-fifths of a human is mind-blowing. And I guess one of my questions to you is, what allows that to happen? Well, you know, in order for somebody to feel superior, you have to make somebody else inferior. Otherwise, there's no contrast, right? Right.
So we were 12% of the population, and basically we still are. So, you know, we were the ones who were deemed inferior. At first, it was the Native Americans, you know, who were here already.
And of course, history teaches us, you know, I'll be 66 in a couple of weeks. But, you know, when I was a kid in school, you know, we learned, you know, the pilgrims came and they were taught how to hunt buffalo and rotate crops and all this kind of thing. And that's why we celebrate Thanksgiving. We get together with the Native Americans, et cetera. Well, then we come to find out that a lot of that is a lie.
You know, yes, they did teach us how to hunt buffalo and how to rotate crops. But then once we learned that, when I say we, I'm talking about Americans back then. Once we learned all that stuff, what do we do? We killed off the Indians and the ones who were left. We put them on reservations. Yeah. You know, we had the Trail of Tears and all this kind of thing, which we don't learn in school until much later.
if we learned it at all. And this is in no way a defense of that. That's merely, at that point, was the latest telling in a tale as old as time. Correct. Which is, to the victors go the spoils, and history is built on people conquering. And I guess one of the things that I was curious about is
So the Klan is a direct result of the end of the Civil War, correct? And a direct result of the policies of Reconstruction? Well, basically, the Klan was formed in 1865, right? You're correct, at the end of the Civil War, and by some Confederate soldiers. Right.
And they wanted to carry on, you know, their traditions and their, you know, their culture. So in the original Klan of 1865, which ran through 1871, you had Catholics. You also had Jews as well as Protestants because it was simply a reflection of the Confederacy.
And in the Confederacy, there were Jews, there were Catholics, there were Protestants, right? And there were slave owners. And the Civil War was fought over slavery. What was your reaction when Nikki Haley couldn't spit that out? You must have been just jumping up and down going, what? I don't know if you read some of the articles I've written about Ms. Haley.
Okay, good. Okay. I was going to say, forgive me. I'm going to go back. That's okay. Because you must have a lot to say. She missed the point. I don't think she missed it. I think she missed it intentionally. And then, you know, she made the statement that this country has never been a racist country.
To me, Nikki Haley was prostituting herself to white supremacy and pandering to that. Nikki Haley knows all too full and well this country has been a racist country. Has racism improved in this country? Absolutely. Have we come a long ways? Absolutely. Do we still have a long ways to go? Absolutely. But this country has been a racist country.
Let me ask you this. What's the difference between saying this has been a racist country and this country has always had racism in it? Is that parsing of a statement too much? No. It's a nuance there. Yes, for sure. We will always have racism, but we may not always be a racist country.
Okay, to say this has been a racist country means that there are policies that govern the country and govern the people in it.
that make it racist. And yes, those policies were in place. You and I could not go to the movies together, and then at a point where we could, we couldn't sit together. We had to sit in segregated seating areas. I had to ride in the back of the bus. You could ride in the front of the bus. You could drink from a certain water fountain. I had to drink from another water fountain, okay? That is a racist country where you have laws that prohibit, all
All right, so now those laws do not exist anymore, okay? But there are still some people who would like to see that and may even practice that by not allowing me to join their country club or whatever. So yes, there is racism in the country. Is this today a racist country? No, I would not say racism does exist.
But I would say it's gotten better. We still have a lot of work to go. But in the past, this has been a racist country. And she knows that all too well. For one reason, you know, she is of East Indian background. And nothing wrong with that. And, you know, I've been there. They have the caste system there, which is still in place. And when she came here, she changed her name from her Indian name to an American name.
female name, Nikki. That's not her real name. That's not her birth name, I should say. Right. Okay? And I mean, Jewish people did a lot of the same thing. They took off Goldstein to make it gold and things like that for reasons, because they were being discriminated against through anti-Semitism and things like that. I get that. But to deny the history of this country is to deny me. Right.
Yeah, that's why I brought it up. I couldn't imagine how you must have felt because that's kind of a layup question. But, you know, Rob, I'm not trying to bash her, but I'm bashing her attitude. She is a reactive person instead of a proactive person. For example, you may remember the Confederate battle flag that flew atop of the South Carolina state capitol.
That flag does not represent everybody in South Carolina. All right? That flag had no business being up there. She did not.
She had every opportunity to remove it, okay, just based on the fact that it does not represent all of her constituency, all right? But she did not remove it, even though different groups, the NAACP and other groups put together a boycott of tourism of South Carolina trying to get that flag removed. It didn't work.
What made it work was when a white supremacist walked into a black church and murdered nine black people conducting Bible study, right?
Then she removed the flag. You know, to me, that's reactionary instead of being proactive. It's sort of like you've seen intersections before where you think, oh, my goodness, you know, they need to put a stop sign here or a traffic light. Somebody's going to get killed. And you complain and complain and complain. And they say, oh, you know, we have to do a survey, you know, and
Yes, I've been through the very thing. It's a year long, six months to a year long survey before they decide whether or not to put a traffic light or stop sign. But the second somebody comes around the corner and runs over some lady crossing the street with a baby carriage, traffic light goes up the next day. So that's what I'm talking about. Do you want to be preventive, be proactive, or do you want to be reactive and wait for something to happen before you decide to act?
So let me ask you this. We're six years apart in age. You probably grew up and are aware of the television show I'm about to reference, The Dukes of Hazzard. Yes. The Dukes of Hazzard rode a car called the General Lee. Right, with the Confederate battle flag. Thank you. So how does our culture get to a place where you're selling, Mattel is selling the General Lee.
Like no one, I didn't think one thing of it. It never occurred to me at all. Okay, now, I didn't really watch that show, except for I tuned in when I saw the girl in the Daisy Dukes, right? Of course, who didn't? Yeah, exactly. So was her name Barbara Box or something like that, right? Good for you. Look at you with the knowledge. Hey, hey. Yeah. So let's talk about that for a second. A lot of people call that the Confederate flag.
But that is not the flag of the Confederacy. That, you know, we talk about the crossbars and stars. Yeah, yeah, of course. That is that the flag of the Confederacy was the red and white stripes with the blue square and the circle of silver stars.
Okay, that was the flag of the Confederacy. The crossbars and stars was the battle flag, the Confederate battle flag, which flew during the Civil War to preserve slavery. Now, in the North, if you go to high school in the North, you were taught the Civil War was fought over slavery, and that is correct. But if you go to high school in the South, you're taught, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Civil War was fought over states' rights.
Yes, that is correct, too. The state's right to own a slave. That's what it means, right? Leave that little part out. Let's talk about that flag, okay? Listen, we Americans, we went to war. Well, first of all, do you know what the largest group of white Americans are in this country, what their ancestry is? I'm going to guess Germans.
You are correct. That is number one. Number two is our British, Great Britain. Okay? So we went to war against Great Britain, and we beat Great Britain, which is why we celebrate the 4th of July.
Now, there are plenty of white Americans in this country who have British ancestry. They can go there today and find their third cousin removed, et cetera, et cetera. And we have no animosity against our British ancestry and all that. We like them. We get along fine. But these white Americans of British descent don't run out and build statues to King George III or fly the Union Jack.
Why? Because the loser does not get to build his statues or fly his flags on the winner's property. We went to war against Japan when they bombed Pearl Harbor. There are plenty of Japanese Americans in this country, as American as you or I.
who gave up their Japanese ancestry or heritage, right? Now, we treated them poorly by putting them in those internment camps, but they are as American as you and I. They love their Japanese heritage, but they don't run out and build statues to Emperor Hirohito and fly the Japanese flag, right? And we went to war against Germany, the largest white population in this country. Every American of German descent has some Nazi background.
Because Adolf Hitler was a dictator. You had no choice but to adhere to his principles or escape or be exterminated, right? So they love their German heritage, but they don't run out and build statues to Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Goebbels or Hitler and fly swastika flags unless they're neo-Nazis or something. So
The Confederacy, the South, needs to get over it. They lost the war. They don't get to build their statues and fly their flags. I believe that those statues and flags should come down. They should not be torn down and destroyed. They should be put in a Confederate memorial museum or a Confederate memorial park. And people who want to go and honor them and find, you know, go there and do that. Listen, my ancestors fought.
in the Confederacy, on the side of the Confederacy, because slaves had to fight for their slave masters. My parents were from Virginia, Roanoke and Salem. Virginia was the seat of the Confederacy. General Robert E. Lee was from Virginia. My older ancestors were from North Carolina.
So they fought, you know, fought on the side of the Confederacy because they had to. Do I honor the Confederacy? No, absolutely not. I do not. But there are other black people, believe it or not, that do. And that's their prerogative if they want to do that. But there is one flag for this country and we know which one that is. Yes. Ironically, my fourth great grandfather, my great, great, great, great, great grandfather was fought with General Sherman. Mm-hmm.
on the side of the union. And just the notion that he might have been fighting against yours. Grandfather's like, what the hell is wrong with this picture?
All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel.
Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply. So the notion of what that flag meant over time was lost, changed to the point that it was on a network television show as a symbol of hijinks of the Duke boys.
running their car across the field as opposed to what it really represents. Correct. And a lot of, you know, I'm a musician by trade and I've played in all kinds of bands, played in Southern rock bands, all kinds of stuff. And, you know, played Allman Brothers and, you know, Marshall Tucker and all that kind of stuff, music, as well as, you know, other genres. And I've played in bands that use that flag, not because they're racist. They don't understand the background of the flag. To them, it represents Southern rock.
You know, I've played in rockabilly bands, you know, represents, you know, Southern rockabilly, you know, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, all that kind of great stuff because they don't know the history. And this is a problem in this country where we, you know, every country has history, good, bad, ugly, and shameful. And we need to turn all those cards face up, address them, and then move on. But, you know, we cannot...
omit history, rewrite it, and deny it. It would be as if, and just to put a bow around it to the extent that you can, it would be as if we didn't understand what the Nazi swastika was and we put that on the side of a car. Well, you know, I was in India about five or six years ago, and the swastika was originally an Indian symbol from India.
Yes. And then, you know, good luck, you know, peace, all that kind of stuff. And it's still used today over there. I've seen it on walls. And there's no reason why they shouldn't use it. It was theirs. Adolf Hitler culturally appropriated that symbol and made it become, you know, what it is in the Western world. So, you know, anytime any of us see that, we know what it represents. Now, back to the Confederate flag, battle flag for a second.
Germany, you know, up until about 20 years ago, 25 years ago, they never taught about the Holocaust in their high schools. Now they do. So kids know what happened way back when. Of course, we teach it over here because it didn't happen here. So we're not, you know, loathe to point out faults of somebody else, right, except for our own. Okay.
The swastika has been banned in Germany. You cannot display it publicly or even privately. You will go to jail, even if you have it in your own house privately. All right. So, you know, you can have your little neo-Nazi marches in Germany, which they do, but they can no longer fly the swastika. Guess what they use?
to promote white supremacy since they can't fly the swastika. What? Our Confederate battle flag. Yeah, it's surreal. No way. You see a neo-Nazi march in Berlin, Germany, carrying our Confederate battle flag because to them it represents white supremacy. Now, I'll tell you something. I get into disputes with people all the time about that. No, Darrell, it doesn't mean anything about hate. It stands for heritage.
The South has a lot to be proud of. Now, I'm not from the South. I was born in Chicago because my parents, my dad had his first Secret Service job in Chicago. All right, so that's where I was born. But
The South has a lot to be proud of. Slavery is not one of them, all right? So I tell people, yes, that flag is heritage, the heritage of slavery. No, no, no, I'm against slavery, dah, dah, dah. I say, okay, I'll tell you what. You come go with me to a Klan rally. I've actually done this many times. You come go with me to a Klan rally, and when you see those people
carrying and flying your flag that you claim is all about Harry. I don't want to go to a clan, those people are hateful, blah, blah, blah. I said, yes, they stand for hate, but go with me. And when you see one of them flying your flag, I want you to walk up to that clan person and tell them to give you back your flag, because that's not what it stands for. They probably won't give it to you, but if you do that,
I will come over to your house, I will take your Confederate battle flag, and I will hoist it up your pole for you. I have yet to have anybody take me up on my offer. Yeah, I can imagine that. Tell everybody that's listening, because I can't imagine it playing out in real time, where at the beginning of your journey of exploring the Klan, you reach out to them and they invite you to an interview.
They don't know you're a black man. And you walk into that room. What was that like? Well, it's kind of flipped around. I invited them to an interview, but they did not know I was black. Oh, okay. That's right. Yeah, you. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. We have to go back to the beginning. As you pointed out, I spent a lot of time overseas as a young kid. I began traveling the world in 1961 at the age of three.
And so how the foreign service works is you're assigned to the American embassy in some foreign country for two years. Then you come back home here to the States. You might be here for a few months, a year, whatever. And then you're reassigned to another country abroad. So back and forth, back and forth. My first exposure to school was abroad. I did kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade. And in between, I was back home. My classes overseas were full of kids from all over the world. This population.
This person here might be from Czechoslovakia, from France, Nigeria, Japan. Because anybody who had an embassy in the same country to which we had our embassy, all of their kids went to the same school. So, exactly. Multicultural, all of it. You mentioned that word. That word did not even exist, multicultural, back then. To us, it was just a norm. That was our baseline for what school was. But every time I'd come home,
I would either be in all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. And there was not the amount of diversity that I had overseas, right? It was just black kids and white kids or black kids or white kids, right? So one of these times I came home, 1968, I was age 10.
And I was one of two black children in the entire school. I was in fourth grade. There was a little black girl in second grade. So consequently, all of my friends, you know, were white. They were fourth and fifth graders.
And some of my guy friends had joined the Cub Scouts and had invited me to join. I was, you know, the newcomer. And they invited me. I joined, had a lot of fun. And we had a parade. Well, we were in, well, first we moved to Boston. My dad was getting his master's in anthropology from Boston University. So we moved to Boston during that year that we were home.
And it was so bad, so bad that we moved eight miles out to the town of Belmont, Massachusetts. Belmont was a little better. It still had its issues, but a little bit better. Anyway, next door to Belmont are the towns of Lexington and Concord. And every year they have what's called Patriot's Day, where they have a parade with the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, Brownies, 4-H Club, you name it. And they march from Lexington to Concord to celebrate the ride of Paul Revere.
So the streets are blocked off, sidewalks are lined with nothing but white people waving and cheering. I'm the only, you know, and yelling the British are coming, all that kind of thing. I'm the only black participant in this parade. No problems until we got to a certain point in this parade route when suddenly I'm getting hit.
with bottles and soda pop cans and small debris from the street by a small group of spectators, maybe four or five people off to my right, mixed in with a larger crowd on the sidewalk. I remember there being a couple kids, maybe a year or two older than me. I didn't know them. I guess they were from that area, not Belmont. And their parents, perhaps, because there were a couple adults, a couple kids. And I didn't know what was going on. Because I was so naive,
I never had any behavior like that before. My first thought was, oh, you know, these people over here, they don't like the scouts. I'm thinking maybe they're jealous because your kid, you know, didn't make the cut or something. I didn't realize that I was the only scout getting hit.
Until my den mother and my cub master and troop leader all came running over. They all were white, right? And huddled over me with their bodies and escorted me out of the danger. Then I realized that no other scouts were getting the special protection. Now I'm wondering, what did I do? I didn't do anything. Why are they doing this to me? And my leaders would not answer. They would say, shh, move along, Dan, move along, hurry up, keep moving, you'll be okay.
It was okay, I mean, they didn't follow us, but they never answered my question. So it wasn't until I got home later that day, my parents who were not in attendance of the parade were asking me, putting band-aids on me and cleaning me up, asking me, how did you fall down and get all scraped up? I told them I didn't fall down, told them exactly what had happened. They sat me down and told me what racism was.
And Rob, believe it or not, at the age of 10, I had never heard the word racism. I had no clue what they were talking about. And my 10-year-old brain, which is why it's so important for me to give you that pre-background of me being around everybody, my 10-year-old brain could not process the idea that someone who never knew me, never spoke to me, never saw me before, wouldn't want to hurt me for no other reason than this, the color of my skin.
I've been around people from all over the world. And these are my fellow Americans. This is not true. I could not process that idea. And I did not believe my parents. Believe it or not, I thought they were deceiving me for some reason.
Well, of course, this being 1968, a lot of things happened, including the assassination of Dr. King, which was the biggest thing. And then I realized that my parents had not lied to me, that this racism phenomenon thing does exist. So I accepted its existence. But what I could not accept was why.
And I formed a question in my mind at that age of 10, which was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And that has been my mission for now, almost the next 56 years, because I was 10 then, I'll be 66 in a couple of weeks, to find out how somebody can hate somebody else when you don't even know them. And so who better to ask that question of than someone who would go so far
As to join an organization that has over a hundred year history of practicing hating people who don't look like them or who don't believe as they believe. What an incredible story. And how did you make that happen? And walk me through that. Because you've had since many, many years.
moments and within the Klan of infiltrating them, talking to them, getting to them, interviewing. But the very first time. Okay, the very first time that I had a positive encounter with a Klansman. All right. Or a negative one. Or a negative one. What's your first exposure to the Klan? My first exposure, I was finishing up a gig and I was pulling into an all-night diner.
And as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a man straddled across a woman lying on her back on the sidewalk. And he was banging her head into the sidewalk and smacking her across the face. And about four other men were standing there watching this. Nobody was calling the cops. And I parked my car. I got out. And I was going to go over there and yank the guy off. And when I closed my car door...
He like looking at it, it caught his attention, the slamming of the door. He looked up at me and he said, you want a piece of me, nigger? Well, of course, that was an invitation for me. I said, yeah, he got up and we got into it. And I beat the daylights out of him. Well, long story short, he was a firefighter in the county in which I was playing.
And he had been promoted from sergeant to lieutenant on the fire force, fire department. And he was also a Klansman.
And I didn't know that at the time, but it didn't matter to me. You know, what mattered to me was why is this man beating the crap out of this woman? Right. So anyway, I found that out later. And why were the guys watching? Well, they might have been Klansmen too. I don't know. But I know that he, I found out that he was because I went with the lady. I took the lady inside, put some ice on her head and all that kind of stuff. And then I went to court with her to testify on her behalf.
And she told me all about, she was his ex-fiancee and he didn't want to let go of her. And so he had a new fiance, but he wanted his cake and eat it too kind of thing.
So anyway, I went to court with her. When I showed up in court with his ex-fiancee and his new fiancee was there, that's a whole different story. But anyway, that was the first encounter. And so the second encounter, there was a bar that had music every weekend up in a town called Frederick, Maryland, which sits about an hour and 20 minutes north of Washington, D.C.
Frederick, the club was called the Silver Dollar Lounge. And the Silver Dollar Lounge had a reputation of being an all white lounge. There were no signs, you know, blacks not welcome or whites only, nothing like that. You know, you could go in there, but, you know, if you were the wrong color, you know, you knew you were not welcome.
So anyway, I joined this country band and it was an all white band. I was only black guy in the band and they were pretty well established here in the Maryland area.
And because country music had made a resurgence, you know, the movie Urban Cowboy had come out with Travolta. Oh, I remember. Everybody had boots. Including me. Everybody. So, you know, if you want to work full time in the industry, you know, you got to play what's popular. So I joined the country band and they played there before.
They were pretty popular. So here I am in the Silver Dollar Lounge. And we play the first set. People are looking at me and stuff. But play the first set, come off on a break. And I'm walking to go sit down. I felt somebody from behind come up and put their arm across my shoulder. Now, I don't know anybody in here but the band, right? So I look around to try to see who's touching me. And it's a white guy, you know, 15, 18, maybe 20 years older than me. Big smile.
And he says, man, I sure like your all's music. I said, thank you, shook his hand. And he pointed at the stage and says, I've seen this here band before, but I ain't never seen you before. Where'd you come from? And I explained, well, I just joined the band. But, you know, they have played here before. So this is my first time. He goes, man, I sure love your piano playing. This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. Well, I was not offended. I was not offended.
Jerry Lee is a very good friend of mine. Well, you know, he's passed on now, but he was a very good friend of mine. We did many shows together and I knew him very well. I explained to the guy, well, Jerry Lee got it from the same place I did from black blues and boogie woogie piano players. That's where that rockabilly rock and roll style came from. Oh, no, no, no, no. Jerry Lee invented that. I ain't never heard no black man play piano like that except for you. So I'm thinking, okay, well, dude never saw Little Richard or Fats Domino, you know?
Yeah, exactly. There was no convincing. I said, look, man, I know Jerry Lee. Wait, he really thought Jerry Lee Lewis invented that style of playing? Listen, I know people who think Elvis Presley, who I love, invented rock and roll. No. But, you know, history gives credit to certain people. Like, let's put that on hold for a second. Let me digress for a second. We invented jazz, right? Yeah.
The title of King of Jazz was given to Benny Goodman. People like Edward Kennedy Ellington only got the title of Duke. People like William Basie only got the title of Count.
That's amazing. Wait, wait. I've never thought of that until this second. That's amazing. So you could be a Duke. You could be Count Basie, but you're not going to be King Basie. And the king of swing was Sammy K. Swing and sway was Sammy K. The blues, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton were the kings of the blues. Not B.B. King, who was born with the last name.
You know, or any of his predecessors, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Buddy Waters. Okay. But Elvis Presley despised the title King of Rock and Roll. He didn't like that. You know, he even told people, he told Sammy Davis Jr. and told Tom Jones that Chuck Berry was the king. He told Little Richard that he was the king. He told the press during an interview that Fats Domino was the king.
So anyway, you know, when you hear this stuff and it's printed in books, you know, it becomes sort of like, you know, you watch movies, you know, someone you say, who said, play it again, Sam? They'll say, oh, yeah, it was Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. He never said that. But when something is repeated over and over again, somehow it becomes real to people. That's right. Oh.
All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I'll never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel. ♪
I have a quick digression just because you mentioned Chuck Berry, and I'm a huge Chuck Berry fan. And there are so many amazing stories about him. And they're all sort of the same story. He rolls into a town, has local bands back him, right?
and and he's always there are so many he gets paid in a a cash in a bag um what do you have any what was your chuck berry uh okay interaction like i played for chuck berry for 32 years yeah not every gig what 32 years a lot of them i did mostly east coast and some midwest um
I love Chuck Berry. All my stories are good stories. I know some of those crazy stories. You know, I've seen some, I've heard some, but all of mine are positive. Chuck Berry was a genius. There are a lot of people who can say, I play the guitar, I wrote this song, I sing my song. Some other people might sing my song. But how many people can say, I invented, I created a genre of music? Not that he would ever say that. He was too humble.
But he could say that. Beethoven could say it. Jimi Hendrix could say it. All right. So geniuses are wired a lot differently than regular people. And if you don't understand that, then you might have a misperception of Chuck Berry and how he thinks. So a lot of people, you know, would get thrown off because they didn't understand what they were dealing with.
And they'd come up with these crazy stories. He was a normal person. OK, he was a genius. And once you got to know him or you got to know you, it's just like you and I talking right now. But he was a very private person until he got to know you. But yes, he would roll into he would get off the plane, go to one of the car dealerships and rent a car. This man knew every street in every city USA.
And he would drive himself to the gig, to the hotel, and back to the airport. He would not let anybody drive him except for me or his bass player, Jimmy Marsala, or one of his family if one of his family members came along. He wanted to have that car at all times. Now, before he would even bring his guitar out of the car, back in the early time, he would roll up to the place,
Leave the guitar in the trunk of the car or whatever. Go inside the venue. Go right to the promoter's office. Get his money in cash. All right? And then once he got paid, he counted. You know? And then once he got paid, he'd go back outside to the backstage parking lot. Then get his guitar and come back in. All right? But during the last probably the last maybe...
I don't know, 12, 15 years of my working with him. He would have all of his money, his feet wired to his bank account in St. Louis 30 days in advance of the show. What? That's right. So he's already been paid 30 days before he even leaves St. Louis to fly to your town.
I love that. I got to call my agent. That's a good one. There you go. That's amazing. I went to the Chuck Berry School of Music and the Chuck Berry School of Business. I love the Chuck Berry School of Business. Yeah. Because people get ripped off, you know? For sure. He was a firm believer in not letting the same dog bite you twice. Yeah. He...
And one of my favorite things is that there was a movie, Hail Hail Rock and Roll. Right. Which is, if you're a fan of Chuck Berry, if you're a fan of rock and roll music, you have to see it. It's great. But there's that great sequence where he and Keith Richards are arguing. Do you know the little thing? Yeah, absolutely. They're playing Carol by Chuck Berry. Yes. Right? And they're arguing over that famous Chuck Berry riff. Yeah. It's...
I mean, he invented, I mean, if I, you play a Chuck Berry riff, everybody in the world knows it's Chuck Berry. Right. It's amazing. I mean, you know, in that scene, you know, he and Keith were friends, you know, Keith should have left that alone.
You know, it's like he said to him, well, you know, why don't I, you know, you play the rhythm or I play the lead or you play the lead and I'll play the rhythm because you can't do both. And Chuck said, what do you think I've been doing all these years?
You know, which is true. I mean, he invented the genre, you know, he accompanied himself. So, you know, Keith, I think, overstepped his bounds. Keith was trying to do a good thing by putting out this movie. But don't tell Chuck Berry how to be. Don't tell him how to play his own songs.
It's amazing. It's just one of the, it's amazing to watch. One time I was, I, you know, he called me into his dressing room and I'm sitting in there and this is early on. And I said, is there any particular thing, you know, you want me to do while, you know, while you're playing? And he was telling me, you know, when to stop and when to start and all that kind of stuff. He says, for example, hand me my guitar. His guitar was sitting behind me. So I reached back and give it to him.
And then he goes, now, when we're playing Sweet Little 16, for example, he goes, up in the morning and out to school.
I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, that's not Sweet Little 16. That's school days. But if he wants to call it Sweet Little 16, hey, he wrote it. That's fine. Call it whatever you want to call it. That's amazing. I'm not going to argue. You know when to stand down. Right. What's the old Upton Sinclair quote? Sometimes it's difficult for a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it. Oh, that's really a good one. Yeah.
Ooh, I'm going to whip that one out from time to time. That's super good. Okay, I want to ask you this to wrap it up. If you could wave a magic wand over white America, if you could wave a magic wand over black America, what could we all do better to moving forward to understand each other better, to put some of the things that separate us
uh to dissolve that okay well uh as as you may know you know i i've been working on this for now 42 years uh i meet with clan clan members leaders grand dragons imperial wizards neo-nazis i have a ton of stuff that they've given me because they have renounced that ideology since coming to know me i got robes and hoods you know you name it conversation i'm a firm believer
that a missed opportunity for dialogue is a missed opportunity for conflict resolution. Nothing gets resolved without talking about it first. And the greatest weapon that we have to combat anti-Semitism, racism, any kind of discrimination is the least expensive, the most effective,
and most underused. It's conversation. It's free. But we spend way too much time in this country talking about the other person, talking at the other person, and talking past the other person. Why don't we spend a few minutes talking with the other person? Because you know what? This country is going to continue to get more and more diverse. When you and I were kids, we used to brag or people...
Our adults, our elders would brag about how this is the melting pot. It was not a melting pot back then. It only had a few different people here and there. Today, it truly is a melting pot and people are upset about it. Let me tell you something. I learned this back in 1982 from the then head of the American Nazi Party. He was very concerned about this and it's coming to fruition. I've been following it ever since. The year 2042.
is going to be a demographic shift in this country because white people have always been the majority in this country. But in 2042, because we're getting more and more diverse, it's going to be 50-50 for the first time in the history of this country.
And then between 2045 and 2050, it's going to flip and whites will become the minority. And while there is a vast number of white people in this country who don't care, they say, hey, I can live with that. That's not a problem. It's evolution, no big deal. There is a certain percentage that does care. And those are the ones that I deal with.
And when they tell me, Daryl, I don't want my grandkids to be brown, they call it the browning of America or white genocide through miscegenation. And that's why we're seeing more and more of these lone wolves who go into these churches and synagogues and Walmarts and Buffalo grocery stores and things like that. They're trying to stop this demographic shift. The best thing we can do
is learn about one another because we're going to be here for a long time. And everybody has contributed to the fabric of this country. Everybody. That's a great way to end it. I could talk to you for a long time, man. Well, let's consider this part one. We'll do a part two sometime. I love that. Okay, booked. Done. Consider it done. Thank you for everything you do. I want to come hear your music. Do you still go out on the road? I do. I do.
Well, if you ever get to Santa Barbara, you ever played Santa Barbara? I've played Los Angeles. I've played San Diego. I think I played San Francisco, Modesto, a few other places. I don't think I've played Santa Barbara. Give me a gig. I'm there. Okay. And if I get out to see the Orioles play. Okay. Who look good. Who look good, man. This could be a good year for the Orioles. I'll look you up and we'll get together. It'd be great. But thank you so much for coming. This was spectacular. Thank you, Rob. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Wow. Wow.
I want to thank Daryl again. It's so good that we've got people like that thinking the way he thinks out there, educating the way he educates. And I'm glad you guys got a chance to be exposed to him. If you haven't already with his, his book, his album, American roots and changing minds with Daryl Davis is his podcast. If you want to know more about him, but thank you again to Daryl and Daryl,
That was a fantastic day here in Literary World. I hope that you come back for another day in Literary World because we are gonna be back next week with more. Thanks so much.
You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Sean Doherty, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar and research by Alyssa Grau. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross for Team Coco, and Colin Anderson for Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd. Music by Devin Bryant. Sports and culture by Devin Bryant.
Special thanks to Hidden City Studios. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally.
All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel.
Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton Honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply.