I decided to go around the country and sit down with Klan leaders and Klan members to find out: How can you hate me when you don't even know me?
The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself.
Some black people who have not heard me interviewed or read my book jump to conclusions and prejudge me... I've been called Uncle Tom. I've been called an Oreo.
A lot of the media says, 'oh, black musician converts X-number of Klansmen.' I never converted one. But over 200 have left that, the white supremacy movements, because I have been the impetus for that.
I'd had a racist experience as a child at age 10, where people had thrown rocks at me and bottles. I didn't understand. And all it was, was because of the color of my skin, nothing I had done, nothing I had said.
I've dealt with a lot of black supremacists as well as white supremacists, and supremacy of any kind is wrong, and I address both black and I address both white.
Over the past 30 years, I have come to know hundreds of white supremacists, from KKK members, neo-Nazis and white nationalists to those who call themselves alt-right. Some were good people with wrong beliefs, and others were bad people hellbent on violence and the destruction of those who were non-Aryan.
There have been some incidents in which I was threatened and a couple of instances where I had to physically fight. Fortunately, I won in both instances.
I have just about every book written on the Klan and I've read them all.
There has always been a great deal of racism in the U.S. before and after Obama.
I try to bring out the humanity in people.
I don't consider myself to be a racist, but to me there's not much difference between a black racist or a white racist.
Am I going to vote for Trump? Absolutely not. I do not believe in his platform.
I deal with Klansmen and white supremacists all the time.
We've simply been putting Band-Aids on the wounds of racism. We haven't drilled down to the bone to get to its source.
Chuck Berry had a very profound impact on me. The man was a genius.
Back in the day, prior to rock and roll, music halls, concert venues were segregated if they allowed black people in at all. You know, there were ropes that went around the sitting sections with signs hanging that would say, 'Sitting for white patrons only,' or 'Colored sitting only.'
My parents were U.S. Foreign Service, so I spent a lot of time you know, overseas in various countries around the world, you know, I was an American Embassy brat and today, as a professional musician, I travel all over this country and around the world.
There are plenty of people, including good friends of mine, who are not racist, and who voted for Trump. A lot of people wanted a change from what they were accustom to for the last decades... they wanted a change of the status quo, a changing of the guard. And they were willing to overlook his misogyny, his racist or bigoted comments.
1983 - Country music had made a resurgence in this country so I joined a country band. I was the only black guy in the band and consequently, usually the only black guy in many of the places where we played.
