Credit: Dangerous Minds / Jonathan Davis

So, fun fact, the expression “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” may be attributed to Machiavelli or Sun Tzu, but is actually the wit and wisdom of one Michael Corleone.

It’s true. It was a line of dialogue written for the screenplay of The Godfather: Part II by director Francis Ford Coppola and author Mario Puzo. Not some pearl of ancient wisdom, passed down from generation to generation of scheming tactitians. In a way, this makes sense. After all, you could look for years in the annals of history, no matter how obscure or how famous, and basically never find a person who sums up this spirit better than Chicago blues pianist Daryl Davis.

Honestly? Davis would have had an enviable career long before you got to his most culturally important contributions. A boogie-woogie piano player who has performed with the likes of Chuck Berry, BB King and Jerry Lee Lewis, Daryl Davis has been setting stages alight with his energetic, joyous style of playing since the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, that’s not what he’s best known for. What he is best known for stems from a confrontation he had in a country and western bar in Frederick, Maryland. One that, in hindsight, could have gone so much worse.

After a well-received set, a (presumably) well-meaning punter came up to Davis and said to him that he’d never seen or heard a Black man play as well as Jerry Lee Lewis. Now, Davis could have easily just taken the compliment, thanked the punter for his custom and rolled his eyes when he left, but in an act of superhuman guts, Davis decided to put this punter on game. Buying said punter a drink and explaining to him that Jerry Lee learned to play piano from several Black blues and boogie-woogie players, and he knew this because ‘The Killer’ was a friend of his.

Now, in case you needed hammering home just how ballsy a move this was, the punter explained as the conversation went on that he was a member of the Frederick, Maryland, chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

Why did Daryl Davis seek out members of the KKK?

Now, one could have several responses to learning that you’re having a drink with a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Some of the more bone-headed, yet totally understandable ones might involve physically attacking them, especially in the middle of a country bar in the middle of nowhere, where he’s almost certainly not alone. The more reasonable ones might involve pulling an excuse out of your butt and ending the conversation there and then. Davis did something that vanishingly few people would do for the right reasons. He became friends with him.

Eventually, the patron gave Davis the names of the high-ranking members of the Maryland KKK chapter and, under the pretence of writing a book about the Klan, Davis set up an interview with the chapter’s ‘Imperial Wizard’, Roger Kelly. Yup, that’s what these freaks actually call themselves. Davis began the interview with the question, “Why do you hate me, when you know nothing about me?” And began the same process again with Kelly. The end result was the same, both eventually leaving the KKK as a direct influence of Davis’ friendship unravelling their indoctrinated beliefs about Black people. Kelly even made Davis his daughter’s godfather.

Kelly and that original bar patron weren’t the only Klansmen to do so, either. Davis’ intervention led, directly or indirectly, to over 200 members of the KKK resigning from the Klan, many of them sending Davis their old robes, which must have been a bleak badge of honour for the lad. It could be worse, according to Davis, he once received a medallion from a resigned Klansmen stamped with the words “KKK-member in good standing”. Jesus Christ.

How can we learn from him?

Kudos to Daryl Davis for being able to see the indoctrinated, misled people under the Klan hoods. Kudos to him for having the courage to confront them with kindness and patience. If there’s anything to learn from this, though, it’s not that more oppressed people should be going up to their oppressors with an outstretched hand just looking to educate them. Let’s be 100% real here, Daryl Davis was almost certainly not the first Black person to recognise that the KKK is a fascist cult that brainwashes children into being murderous psychopaths, but he was the luckiest.

Davis shows us that brainwashing can be undone, and in an age where people are becoming brainwashed more than ever, that’s an act that all of us could stand to learn from. We can’t keep expecting our queer, non-white, trans and disabled comrades to put themselves in the direct line of fire the way Daryl Davis did. For a better world to be built, it’s got to come from everyone being just as patient and kind as Davis was, while being about a third as brave.

Not because it’s easy, not because it’ll work, but because it’s the right thing to do.