12/29/2023 0 Comments Roger kelly klan wizardThat’s an endorsement GOP candidates made clear they don’t want.īut as despicable as these Klan appearances are, there’s one good thing about them: they tend to bring folks together, at least for a little while. This time they want to sign up new members and increase support for the Republican Party in Maryland. Kelly, the Maryland imperial wizard who lives in Frederick, said the rally this weekend is expected to bring 60 to 80 Klansmen, which would be the largest Klan gathering in Annapolis since the 1960s. Klansmen staged a rally in the West River area last October and have reappeared during the past few months handing out leaflets in Laurel, Woodland Beach and other communities. The Klan is becoming a tiresome visitor to Anne Arundel County. The Ku Klux Klan, those perpetual tricksters, will be dressing in their white sheets and camouflage fatigues for a rally tomorrow at Lawyer’s Mall in the shadow of the State House. Halloween is coming early to Annapolis this year. Violence happens only when talking has stopped.Baltimore Sun eNewspaper Home Page Close Menu “They may be yelling and beating their fists on the table, but at least they are talking. “I’ve seen firsthand that when two enemies are talking, they are not fighting,” he wrote. “Whether or not anyone there immediately changed their minds, we talked as people-and we all benefited from that,” he wrote.ĭialogue, Davis has come to appreciate, is indispensable. Incredibly, in the wake of the violent clash in Charlottesville, North Carolina, this summer, he was invited by the leaders of the Tennessee and Kentucky chapters of a branch of the Klan to speak at their national “Konvocation.” Davis went and spoke and took audience questions from the gathering. He has a collection of robes and other paraphernalia owned by members who have quit the Klan. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which keeps a database of “hate groups” in the United States, estimates that there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members, split among dozens of different organizations that use the Klan name.ĭavis would go on to meet with and get to know many more Klansmen and other supremacists. “I had not turned out to be what he had always thought of black people.” When Kelly resigned as head of the 13-state Invincible Empire, he told Davis he could no longer hate people, Davis wrote. “We would share many meals together, even though he thought I was inferior.” “He would visit me in my home, and I would eventually be a guest in his,” Davis wrote. He persuaded the man to put him in touch with Kelly, then the leader of the Klan in Maryland, and the first meeting, though tense, at least broke the ice. “Sitting in that lounge with my new friend, I decided to figure it out in the only way that made sense: By getting to know those who felt hostility toward black people without ever having known any,” Davis recollected. While we sipped, he clinked my glass and said, “This is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a black man.” My new fan didn’t buy it, but he did want to buy me a drink. I told him that Lewis was a friend of mine and that he had learned his style from watching and listening to black blues and boogie-woogie pianists. “This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” the man said, as recounted by Davis in an op-ed in the Washington Post. He’s a blues musician, and as the only black member of a band playing at a truck stop lounge in 1983, he was surprised during a break to be treated to a drink and some friendly conversation by a man who said he was a member of the KKK. He tells the story in the book Klan-Destine Relationships, and is the subject of a documentary called Accidental Courtesy.ĭavis did not set out to be a missionary to the Klan. In each case, Davis asked the same question: “How can you hate me if you don’t know me?” It’s become Davis’ mission to get to know-and be known by-Klansmen and other white supremacists. Kelly, who had previously been the grand dragon in Maryland, resigned from the Klan in 1999, one of about 200 Klansmen who have “converted,” according to Davis. But when a fellow by the name of Daryl Davis came into his life, he began to have second thoughts. One would assume that such a man would be completely dedicated to the ideals of the organization that strives for white supremacy in the United States. That position was once held by a man by the name of Roger Kelly. The imperial wizard is the top national leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Daryl Davis collects robes of former Klansmen whom he convinced to quit the group.
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