Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Andrew Young & John Hope Bryant Talk The Dirty Work Documentary, Friendship With MLK Jr. + More

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INTERVIEW: Andrew Young & John Hope Bryant Talk The Dirty Work Documentary, Friendship With MLK Jr. + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Every day a week.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Click yours up the Breakfast Club.
• 0:05
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's the world's most dangerous morning show.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: To Breakfast Club. Charlamagne the God DJ Envy just hilarious.
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: Envy's not here today, but Lauren Le Rossa is and
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: we have an amazing guest in the building today.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting when we talk about, you know,
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: black history, as if it's the thing of the past, like,
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: you know, as if we don't have living legends and
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: icons and people who you know, actually we're there for
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: the things that we talk about.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Mister Andrew Young is here. Good morning, sir.
• 0:32
  Speaker 4: Good morning. I'm really glad to be here with you. Yes, sir,
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: I'm long overdue, man, what are you telling I mean,
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: I need to know where you are, Yes, sir, and
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: I'm I'm out of the sink. A look at the
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: book and be honest or di lige and I probably
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: you know I need to read that quickly.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: John O'Brien is here as well, John Hope Ryan, Good
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: morning morning. Mister Andrew Young had a new documentary i'll
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: called The Dirty Work. It comes out on this Friday,
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: ten seventeen. Why was it important for you to tell
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: this part of your story.
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: Now, well, I'm telling my story, and we see the
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: glamor of the civil rights movement, and it was very glamorous.
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: But for every one or two you see on television,
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: there were five hundred to one thousand of us in
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: the background doing the dirty work. And it's the way
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: I got into it. I was actually up here in
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: New York in nineteen fifty seven fifty eight and doctor
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: King needed somebody to move with him to Atlanta. My
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: wife was from Marrying, Alabama, which was a little country
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: town near Selma, and we saw the ms Man. It
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: was a NBC documentary on John Lewis in the Nashville
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: citing story. We just bought a house out in Queen's
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: and I was working up at the National Council of Churches,
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: And when the documentary came home, my wife said it's
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: time for us to go home. I said, we are home.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: She said, no, this is New York. New York can have.
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: We'll be my home. And I said, well, we just
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: bought this house and we got a good job. She said, yeah,
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: and I hope you'll deal with that. I said, well,
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: what are you going to do? She said, I'm going
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: back to my mama in Alabama and I'm taking my
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: children and I said, well, what do you want me
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: to do? She said, I want you to sell this
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: house and find a job down south. And she was
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: the blessing in New York, though, was that she got
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: a chance to go Queen's College for eighteen dollars a
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: semester and get a master's degree. And that's what supported
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: us in those early days. But it's it was the
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: attraction of going back south that got me back in
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: the movement. And it was in that transition Martin Luther
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: King had just been stabbed and he took New York.
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: In New York, he took a month off to go
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: to India and was just coming back and planning to
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: move from Montgomery to Atlanta. So I ended up getting
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: pulled in to try to help him move. And that
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: was that was the dirty work. He needed to be
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: in a bigger city than Montgomery, and but he couldn't
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: afford to live in Atlanta except with his parents, and
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: so he was trying to raise funds. And that's another story.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: But no, no, that's this story. But that he never
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: he keeps avoiding his own He.
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: Never had he never had a million dollars a year
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: to work with the entire time we had the movement going,
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: and so I was trying to help him raise some
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: funds and went to my church up here, the United
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: Church of Christ, and asked them. They founded a number
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: of colleges, Howard and Fisk, Talladega to Galoo, all across
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: the south, and so I said, you know, if you
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: would let us use some of these properties or some
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: of them, we could have a movement southwide in a
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: little of no time. And so I was sort of
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: being a bridge between him making the transition to Montgomery
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: and comeing to Atlanta. I was then moved from Atlanta
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: back to I mean from New York back to Atlanta.
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: And the first job I got, he was not there.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: His secretary said, well once, she said, my wife's in Alabama.
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: She said, you can't be hanging around here loose. He said,
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: idle miners the devil's workshop, and we got a whole
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: lot of devils. And she said you need something to do.
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: I said, well, anything I can do to help, and
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: she gave me a great big egg crate packed with letters.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: She put about one hundred letters in a package, tied
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: them up and they would there were maybe a dozen packages,
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: and so she said, if you can help doctor King
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: with his mail, Well, that's kind of dirty work, but
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: that's really if you want to get to know a company,
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: if somebody's coming in he and wants to get to
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: know it, answer to mail, or at least read the mail,
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: or know what's what's happening around. And so it gave me.
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, I ended up with the bucket of mail,
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: and that was sort of a dirty work.
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: So you missed a couple pieces. First of all, you
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: and doctor King's wife, your wife and doctor.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: My wife and Martin's wife were by coincidence, and I said,
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: coincidence of God's way of remaining anonymous. They were from
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: the little same country town of three thousand, Marion, Alabama.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: But there was a good school there and actually, in
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: the nineteen forties that school turned out more black PhDs
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: than any school in the nation because it had a
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: I don't know, I've bad people who were studious. And
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: Julian Bond's daddy got his PhD writing it on Lincoln
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: in School in Marion, Alabama, which is where all these
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: young people came from, and it was where the movement
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: a lot of movement. People came from there.
• 7:09
  Speaker 5: So Charlemagne when he also when he went to go
• 7:11
  Speaker 5: get the job, when he went to do it out south,
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: the stabb didn't want them. Doctor King was out giving
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: speeches and on the road. The stabb didn't want them.
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: He was smart, he was articulated. He was like, all
• 7:25
  Speaker 5: the seats are taken, we all get every good. They
• 7:28
  Speaker 5: sent him packing, so he came back with a grant.
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: The grant was self funded and it was for non
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: violent education or something like that, but he funded it salary.
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: So doctor King said, you consider you paid for it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: You can sit right over here.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: Well, we've been paid for it. We not only paid
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: for it, I brought access to all of those schools. Yes,
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: from in North Carolina King's Mountain, Georgia. It was Atlanta University,
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: Alabam Most two galu Uh Talladega, Talladega and Alabama and
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: two Glue and Mississippi.
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: But the key point of that in bass Young was again,
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: you won't take credit for this. He became the one
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: person nobody could fire, so he could speak truth to power.
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: We didn't anybody.
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: Exactly because Doctor King didn't like conflict. If you let
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: me finish my point. Yes, Doctor En didn't like conflict,
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: so he was a conflict manager. So he was the
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: one inside the staff. You had crazy people on the
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: left and crazy folks sort of over here trying to
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: do revolutions. Doctor King didn't want conflict, so he would
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: expecting Bashi Young to knock his inside.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: And when he came in, he wanted it to be resolved.
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: And so he was the resolution manager inside the movement
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: and outside the movement. Again, he doesn't take credit for it,
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: but that that really became one of his magic pieces
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: was that he was an independent thinker, just like you are.
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: Just like all you guys are independent thinkers. They get there, right.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: I guess.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: The thing is that that the one thing you I
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: couldn't do. I couldn't move in there. I grew up
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: in New Orleans.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: I'd lived in the South all my life. But I
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: was up here in New York when the movement started,
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: So I couldn't come back down there and claim and
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: I hadn't done anything. Everybody had been beating up gone
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: to jail. Uh and I come down with a grant.
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: Well that's no, I mean, that gives me no scoring
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: points at all, but I and I didn't need them.
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: I just wanted to be there to help because well,
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I left Howard and I really well,
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: I really fucked up for three and a half years.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: See but I somehow got a degree, and he was
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: fucking up because I was playing around, wasn't studying. I
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: was trying to make the swimming team, trying to make
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: the track team, even tried the wrestling team, and trying
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: to play ball, basketball in the gym, and I was
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: I went to college at fifteen, and so I was
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: trying to hit on the girls and I wasn't making
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: any brogras at all. You know, a little nigga from
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: New Orleans, and I got along with people, but I
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: was trying to grow up. And when I came left
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: Howard and we stopped that you couldn't had no hotels
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: at let you stay. We stopped at King's Mountain, North Carolina,
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: where we had a church conference going on, and I
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: decided to run up the mountain and that was where
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: I was in good shape. But when you're in the hills,
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: you never run flat, either running downhill or uphill. And
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: I was running downhill too fast and still tried to
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: make it to the top of the mountain, and somewhere
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: along there I kind of blacked out and I looked
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: around and everything seemed perfect. You know, it was a
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: perfect sky, perfect corn field. The green trees were sparkling,
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: and I said, damn everything. He has got a purpose
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: but me and I said, I cannot be put here
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: on this earth with no purpose at all. And how
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: do I find a purpose? Well, what I came to
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: was if there's something that I think needs doing and
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: nobody wants to do it, that becomes my purpose. So
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: I was looking for stuff that needed to be done
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: that nobody wanted to do.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: Did that okay, Jr? Being working with him, did that
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: feel like part of your purpose?
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: Well, he was the only game in town and he
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: had just finished, you know, the Montgomery Improvement Association. He
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: got stabbed of here in Harlem, and he was recovering
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: from He and Corretta took a trip to India to
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: study more about nonviolence, and that was sort of when
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: I came in and he wasn't around, so I started
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: cleaning up. But I learned that when he got to
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: be head of the Montgomery Improvement Association, he wasn't even
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: a meeting. He was back in the in the mimiograph
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: room running a Memi ray machine, turning out handbills telling
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: people that we're gonna have a one day boycott. Well
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: that one day boycott turned into three hundred and eighty
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: one days. But they went to the back room because
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: two preachers, Methodists and Baptists usually they were arguing about
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: whose turn it was to be the spokesman. And the
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: ladies in the group said, look, these brothers always fussing
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: than fighting, why don't we let this young man in
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: the back be the spokesman. And so they voted him
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: the spokesman. And he didn't even know it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: That's that's how he became like yeah, And he.
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: Went and they went to the back and told him
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: that he was going to chair the meeting. And he
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: had less than an hour. It was about seven o'clock.
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: The mass meeting started at eight o'clock at another church
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: across town, and he had to stand up and to
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: find this whole movement. Well, he really was brilliant, But
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: with that kind of stuff, when you run a mimig
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: reference and all day your mind's wandering and somebody says,
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: hold up, you got twenty minutes you got to speak,
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: and nothing you can do but go to the bathroom
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: and lock the door.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: But somebody had to know he had those gifts, right
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: like somebody had.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: Well they had heard him preaching in his church. But
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: it wasn't a gift like running a mass movement. And
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: I mean this was the first time in a long time,
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: well the first time, and I can remember that any
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: city got together and did an agreed that everybody would
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: stop riding the bus. Started out for one day, but
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: it was so successful that it ended up being three
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: hundred and eighty one days.
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: That was an early uber, by the way, because there
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: was a black taxis everybody just decided to drive everybody
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: else around and not get on the bus. But the
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: thing he the message for your audience, Charlomagne, is when
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: he's running up that mountain, he was insecure, he was lost,
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: and he was looking for a purpose. A lot of
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: people are looking for a purpose, doctor, he was looking
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: for a purpose. He was back in the mimeogram machine,
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: tried to figure out what his life was going to
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: be like. And he'd spend eighteen hours preparing for a sermon.
• 15:07
  Speaker 5: He had eighteen minutes that when his moment came that
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: you're on and a half an hour dude.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: But you know, and the speeches that that speech, his
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: wife was pregnant so she couldn't be there. She asked
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: a choir director to record it, so we have it recorded,
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: and what you see is all of the you see
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: references to all of the speeches he made when he
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: got the Nobel Peace Prize when he was at the
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: marjar on Wardington in Selma. I mean, he had a
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: repertoire and he just pulled it all together, and he
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: had a nice voice and a nice cadence, and he
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: knew how to move across. So he put all of
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: the stuff together and priested his way to the top.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: It's such an interesting perspective when you talk about, you know,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: purpose to John, because in my mind, you know, I
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: always thought the purpose was the liberation of black people.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: But you're always just looking for something, a purpose within yourself.
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: Well, except you've got to start liberating black people by
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: liberating the one you are. And I'm not liberated. I'm
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: I'm I'm enslaved all of the crap that that goes
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: on on every college campus and and in every neighborhood
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: and uh.
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: So let's let's let's get some into some real talk.
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: He's got survivor's guilt. He doesn't sleep, he's always working
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: because he was on that balcony when Doctor King was assassinated,
• 16:47
  Speaker 5: and and uh, he was right.
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: There before that. Though we're all born into a mess.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: I mean I was born into a neighborhood, well my brother,
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: with only black kids. There were three four black families.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: But you had an Irish grocery store on one corner,
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: an Italian bar on the next. The Nazi party was
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: on the third corner. And I'm smack dad in the middle,
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: fifty yards from each one of them. And at four years.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Old, that's you. Yeah, that's you.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: I gotta be your ful.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Governor turn it off for you.
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: So so when he when Doctor King was assassinated, the
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: FBI told him the instructions for the shooter. If you missed,
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: the dreamer killed the strategist.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: M hmm.
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: So he's been this all this time. You an ambassador,
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: first black un ambassador of history the United States at
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: the Carter, first congressman since reconstruction in the South brought
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: the Atlantic, the Olympics to the Atlanta, made Atlanta International
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: City Presidential Medal of Freedma Wardie French FOREI Legion of
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: Wardie one hundred and fifty on ear doctor degrees, brought
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: a venture Capital of Africa, liberated Zimbabwe, helped get Mandela
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: out of prison.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: But underneath all this.
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: Is I'm here because my friend was a shot, so
• 18:20
  Speaker 5: he couldn't enjoy any of it.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: He give all his money away.
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: He's been a servant his whole life, and he is
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: He's the closest thing we have to Nelson Mandela.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: But he he had to stay in jail for three
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: to thirty thirty years. Yes, I have, and that was
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: one of the things I was guilty about. Everybody else
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: has been been to jail, and.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: They called him and uncle Tom, and the staff called
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: him uncle Tom.
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: Because I was managing the foundation money, I couldn't. I
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: wasn't supposed to go to jail, and so until I
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: got set up in Saint Augustine, well really even in Savannah,
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: and I ended up first time getting arrested because I
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: was walking to try to get jse Williams out of
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: jail and there were kids playing picketty in front of
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: the Holiday Inn. I mean, they were twelve years old,
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: and the police come up there to wrest them, and
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: I went on and I said, look, these kids are
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: not part of anybody's movement. We wouldn't put people out
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: here like this with no adults. I said, if you
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: arrest these kids, you ask them for trouble. And they
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: grabbed me and threw me in the paddy wagon. But
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: I was glad I went because they immediately shut the
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: thing down and you got a little slitland. It was
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: at least close to one hundred degrees in Savannah, and
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: they closed the air off and I got, you know,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: fifteen twenty kids in there, and they expected us to start,
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: you know, crying and screaming because we were We were
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: really closed in and hot. And that's where I go in.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: The Sunday School helped me, and I said, look y'all,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: y'all know how to sing. Wade in the water. We
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: going to the beach. Close eyes see, and I said,
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: and I said, we're going down to Tybee Beach. And
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: when you get to the beach, the water's cold, and
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: we're gonna get and the song goes the chills the body,
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: but not the soul. And so we started then walking
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: like they were in their mind walking into the water.
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: I said, we all not going to pash waist deep.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: Then everybody's gonna get down and we're gonna cool off.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: And so when we kind of figured out how to
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: stay in the oven and i'd burn, I said, let's
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: we're gonna sing, and they started singing, wade in the water,
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: God's going to trouble the water. See, and we turned
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: tragedy into a triumph. The police got mad and took
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: everybody to jail, and I had to go with him.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: But then when we got to jail, it was dinner
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: time and they gave everybody a paper plate and they
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: put up grits and Greece. That's what they served them.
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: And the kids said, we don't eat this ship, and
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: they started sailing the plates across the jail. And I mean,
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: it was it was a while time. But there again,
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: that's I accidentally got into that. When you when you
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: but that was the dirty work.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: When you look back, was there a moment when you
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: realize the moral weight of what you were doing could
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: also cost you personally.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: I think I never worried about that, and I never
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: worried about that because I never been. I mean the
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: school I went to in the elementary school, Belina C.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Jones was an all black public school, overcrowded, and I
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: could have gotten killed that in school, I mean it
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: was it was called a bucket of blood. But I
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: got along. And then between that in my schooling and
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: then I went to a church nursery and they taught
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: me to read and write. So when they put me
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: in public school, I was six years old, but they
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: put me in third grade and everybody else was nine ten,
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: and so I've always had a burden which I learned
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: to deal with and not you know, but I was
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: always playing ketchup?
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: Why did the staff call you that supposedly unpleasant phrase,
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: which actually, when you're doing a little research on Uncle Tom,
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: he was a bad brother. Actually he actually he actually
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: took slaves up north to Canada. He bought a home,
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: bought some property in Canada and actually housed them and
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: created self sustainability. Other folks turned the story in doing
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: something negative. But why do they call you some of
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: the staff uncle Tom?
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: Because my daddy taught me to live in that neighborhood
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: and to go to that school, I had to stay
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: calm and my dad is macho. He was a little
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: man five to four, and he said, look, you're never
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: gonna be big enough to beat up anybody, so stay
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: calm and let your mind lead you. Your mind is
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: fat is more powerful than your fists or your feet.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: You can run from trouble, but you won't feel good
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: about running. And you can fight, but you're probably gonna
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: get beat But if you let your mind work, you
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: can figure out how to get through any trouble. But
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: don't ever get mad. Get smart. See and I heard
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: that from four. In fact, he took me to the movie,
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: a segregated movie, to see Jesse Owens in the nineteen
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: thirty six Olympics, because when Jesse Owens won one hundred
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: meter dash, Hitler got mad and he was supposed to
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: give Jesse Owens the medal, but he walked out of
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: the stadium and took all of his troops with him.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: My daddy said, and I watched jessid what's he doing.
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: I said, He's going about his business. He said, that's
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: the point. He's not letting Hitler at him upset. He
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: got three more medals to win, and he ended up
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: coming out with four gold medals and a world a
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: couple of world records, and so it was it was
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: that preparation that that made me ready to do whatever
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: I had to do.
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: So they didn't understand his role. Doctor King never wanted
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: him arrested. Doctor King, he needed him on the outside.
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: He didn't want it was he was not useful getting
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: locked up like other people. He needed it was. It
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: was a different frequency. And he's not saying it, but
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: he was a strategist.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean, I think that's the interesting thing about
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: the doc right like it shows you that the civil
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: rights movement wasn't just about marching, and you said this,
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: it was about strategy.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: So what other dirty work had to be done quietly
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: for the in private, for the public victory to be probable.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: Well, you know they bombed. They bombed sixty two homes
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: in Birmingham in nineteen sixty one sixty two, and Fred
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: Shuttlesworth came over there to see us and said, look,
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: we cannot be passively don violent. We got to find
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: a way to be more aggressive and we need you
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: to come over and help us. So we agreed before
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: Christmas that we would in January we would come over
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: to Birmingham and start a movement, and Doctor King turned
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: to me and said, Andy, do you know any white
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: folks in Birmingham. I said, I don't know any black
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: folks in Birmingham. I ain't been to Birmingham. And he said, no, well,
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: you got six weeks to get to know some. I
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: said why. He said, Look, if we're going to go
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: there and tab the people's town, somebody has to go
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: in early and tell them we're going to do it.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: I said, then they're gonna kill me. I didn't say that.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: I said, well why me? He said, because you grew
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: up with white folks. You ain't worried about white folks.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: You get along with as good you get along with people.
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: And so I ended up by myself said going into Birmingham.
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: And I had met some people in Michigan at a
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: conference from Birmingham. So I called the Episcopal Church and
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: then one of the people I met answered the phone
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: and I said, I need you to help set me
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: set up a meeting with Doctor King and the Episcopal Bishop.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: And she said, well, I can't do that. She said,
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: I don't know Doctor King, and he's got to He said,
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: I tell you what she said, You come here and
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: I'll get you to see the bishop. So then I
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: had to go see the bishop and explain to him
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: that we're about to move fifty more black folks into
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: your already ninety thousand people, and we intend to tear
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: up your town. We intend to boycott. We're not going
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: to buy anything but food and medicine, you know. And
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: but we want to find a way to sit down
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: with you and draw up a map where we can
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: peacefully live together and you can respect us and we
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: can respect you, and everybody can get along.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: I mean he's looking at me like I'm crazy, because
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: he ain't used to black folk talking straight to him
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: like that. But I mean that was no problem for me.
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: And so we set up a series of meetings and
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: all the stuff that they're talking about at Harvard, now,
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: what is it, DEEI yeah, that came from Birmingham because
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: at the same time White Walker, who was pastor up
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: here for a while, he's gone to Glory. He was
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: meeting with the Fred Shuttlesworth and the black preachers and
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: they wrote a Birmingham manifesto all the things that were
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: wrong with Birmingham. And I was meeting with the white
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: folks and they were writing all the things they could
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: do to change that. You had to sit down and
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: put it to them bluntly, say, look, you got black
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: water and whitewater. Now you know that's not real. There's
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: no difference between the water. Why you got to put
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: a sign on it saying this one was for black
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: folk and that one was for white folks. It's all water.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: Take the signs down. See if you don't take the
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: signs down. And then you got these black women, and
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: you got them in aprons and smocks, and you let
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: the white women dress up with the clothes they're selling
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: and they get a commission, but the black folks have
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: to do all the work keeping the shop clean and
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: keeping the clothes. Said why not just let everybody wear
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: their dresses on the rack and let everybody get a commission.
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: And they said, well, we could, but then they'd have
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: a thousand reasons why they couldn't do it. But we
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: had ninety thousand black folks in Birmingham. And when ninety
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: thousand black folks decided that they were going to stop
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: spending money on anything but food and medicine, they bought
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: no shoes. No. I mean, that's where the blue jeans
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: came from everybody had raggedy blue jeans, and so nobody
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: bought any clothes. And that's when the college students who
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: had come down with us from all over the country,
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: they went back and started wearing blue jeans. Well, that
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: came out of Birmingham. The stuff that the preachers and
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: workers wrote down in the Birmingham Manifesto, the things they wanted,
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: and the things that the white folk wrote down about
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: what they could do to answer this, all of that
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: became public. But they blamed it on Martin Luther King.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: And he was in jail, so he wrote the letter
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: from the Birmingham jail. And he didn't have any paper,
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: so he wrote it around the march. Somebody had left him. Well,
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: lawyer up here from New York left him a section
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: of New York Times, and he wrote the letter from
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: the Birmingham jail around the margins of the newspaper. When
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: he ran out of newspaper space, he wrote on toilet paper.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: And he used to joke and said, is a good thing.
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: They had tough toilet paper in the Birmingham jail.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: But he smuggled it out through you.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: But he smuggled it out and we got it. We
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: got all of these published and and that was the
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: dirty work behind the movement.
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: And I need you to do me a favor. You're
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: talking to a whole generation. This is the voice for
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: this generation. Your your habit is to talk about this
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: person and that person and give this person credit. Look,
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: they need you to tell your story crisply and bluntly
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: so they can get the memo on how they need.
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: This generation has no business plan about what you did.
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: What you did was absolutely historic. This is no time
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: to be humble. There's no type of humble pie like
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: I'll do it. I'll set you up, but you got
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: to hit it out the park. There's some stories I know.
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: I know these stories.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: We want them to watch the dirty work too.
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:54
  Speaker 6: But like the work that you did with the boycott
• 32:59
  Speaker 6: and everybody plays a role in the movement is what
• 33:01
  Speaker 6: I've always heard and learned. I feel like today when
• 33:04
  Speaker 6: we talk about the boycotts, that that we're trying to
• 33:06
  Speaker 6: do actively. There's no real roles. We don't take one
• 33:10
  Speaker 6: thing serious. We might take the other one serious because
• 33:12
  Speaker 6: there's no there's no structure, there's no how did you
• 33:15
  Speaker 6: get people to fall along?
• 33:16
  Speaker 7: Even though not everybody a grew with.
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: Everybody used to go to church back then, and radio
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: black radio wouldn't let it, wouldn't wouldn't say anything about
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: Black radio was owned by white folks, and they would
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: play the music, but we'd have to slip in an
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: announcement there's going to be a certain meeting that you know,
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: such and such a Baptist church, or such and such
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: a Methodist church. And they finally even stopped them from
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: from doing announcements. So it went by word of mouth.
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: We knew that every night we'd have a mass meeting
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: at some church in some neighborhood and people would get
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: together about five o'clock and nothing to do, and they
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: sing these old songs that the young folk then came
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: in and modified the freedom songs. And then the preachers
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: would come in and preach a little bit and tell
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: what's going on. But it was all around the church,
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: and in the daytime when the churches were not operating,
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: the kids went to the schools, and the guys who
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: were hanging out at the pool hall, we'd stopped by. They.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: In fact, doctor King was very good pool played, grew
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: up in the YMCA, and he could get everybody's attention
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: because He would go into a pool hall and challenge
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: the guys that can I take the winner, And after
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: they saw he was he could run the table, they
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: listened to him. And it it was finding a way
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: to get to people where they are. And it didn't
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: matter what they looked like. It didn't matter what the
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: clothes were, it didn't matter anything except that I'm ready. Well,
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: they would really say, I'm ready to die for my people.
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: And it was the threat of death to almost every
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: black man in the South until just recently. And it's
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: coming back now. It's more organized now. But we had
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: to mobilize the entire community. But in mobilizing the entire
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: community of Birmingham, that's ninety thousand black folks. We brought
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: people from Atlanta. I came from New Orleans. Some others
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: came down from members. Some came from New York. The
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: hospital Workers eleven ninety nine was here in New York.
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: They would come down and they would work with the
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: hospital workers, and we found a way to mobilize the
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: whole city to one stop buying anything but food and medicine.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: And you do that for six weeks and then six months,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: and the economy drives up and closed. People have to
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: start closing stores. Then we finally ended up with eighty businessmen,
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: people who owned the hotels, people who owned the drug stores,
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: the shopping centers, sitting down with us, and they got
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: these two complaints together and agreed on the fact that
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: they could change. But they didn't say, we're automatically gonna
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: change everything today. We said, let's try it. Okay, we're
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: gonna take down the signs immediately, live on black and
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: white water. Everybody's gonna drink water, and okay, that's a
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: good sign. We're gonna let the ladies and in the
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: women's department, we're gonna let them take all those smocks,
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: uh and aprons, and we're gonna let them put on
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: the clothes that they sell it see, and they can
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: get a commission too, and we're gonna treat them fairly.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: And we took apart the town piece by piece, and
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: everything that was not fair. We said, from now on,
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: let's make it fair. And people began to realize that
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: when ninety thousand people haven't been shopping and all of
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: a sudden they start showing up, like you go to
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: Atlanta now and all of these stores now, the same
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: thing happened there. We didn't have to organize it like
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: they did in Birmingham. But the brothers who start making
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: off right now, the rappers run the department store because
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: they can come in with their girlfriends and they spend
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: money by one thousands of dollars.
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: But they answer your question, there were rules just like
• 38:36
  Speaker 5: you have here. He's been humbled again. It was strategy,
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: by the way, it wasn't. We got the business people
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: to take down to White's only science.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: He did.
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: Doctor King would set would shut the economy down. In
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: six weeks, they marched. They knew this. Six six percent
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: of the residents were black. The dollar was the same dollar.
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: So after six weeks, the merchants were the walls were
• 38:57
  Speaker 5: on fire. Then doctor King was s Andy Young and
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: that's young Andy. He called him Andy, going there, quietly,
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: take it, take it, take your overalls. I'll put your
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: business suit on, go behind closed doors, cut a deck,
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: cut a deal. Don't embarrass them, don't humiliate them. We
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: want them to win to.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: It was a little bigger than that.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Well okay, yeah, but we had to do it.
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: We had to get.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Acknowledging it, trying to get the blunt truth out.
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: Well, Also if I take credit for it, I'd be then.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Well you're not yeah, but you're a love yeah, but
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: you're alive now.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: But by the way, clearly they do it because they
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: told him that you can't strategist.
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: But there was there was rules, there were there were
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: the roles. Everybody had a role. He had a roll,
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: Doctor King had a roll. The crazy people had a
• 39:43
  Speaker 5: role in the movement, but the women had a roll,
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: the kids had a roll.
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: But the dirty work is getting everybody to realize their world.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: And you get the kids and you let them know
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: that they can pass out handbills and if they happened
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: to see somebody shopping that they think that they shouldn't
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: be shopping, just go and politely hand them a handbill,
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: don't throw it at them, say or just put it
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: on the windshield of their car. But they know that
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: the community is watching. But it's it really was classic
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: to do it in Birmingham when ninety thousand folk. We
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: had trouble when we got to Chicago on New York
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: and you got millions of folk and so that's where
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: we stumbled. And that's when doctor King, I mean, when
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: we were going coming north and threatening to shut down.
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, Chicago has got more black folk then they
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: got folk at Alabama and and and half of Mississippi
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: and Chicago, and Alabama's gone to Chicago. So we didn't
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: have any problem doing the same things with them that
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: we did with the parents in back home.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Mhm.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: But it was on such a larger scale and and
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: these it is just getting around is different.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: How do I want to this question for both of y'all,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: how do we teach young people now that the real
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: revolution isn't in just outrage, especially the social media outrage,
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: but it's an actual organizer.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: Well, that's short. My dadd had started telling me when
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: I was four, don't get mad, get smart. See when
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: you lose your temper interfight, you lose the fight. And
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: every time he was he liked he was a boxing fan.
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: And when who at the Sonny liston was supposed to
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: be fighting Muhammad Ali and Sonny listening with a bear
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: of a man, and my daddy said, watch Muhammad a lad,
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: he'll probably knock him out in two rounds. I said, oh, Daddy,
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: you don't know what you're talking about. He said that, man,
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: I said that man, I said, he is a bear,
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: and I said, Muhammed is I mean, he's so thin,
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: he's light one or two punches and he's gonna go down.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: He said no. He said, watch, Mohammed is not going
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: to lose his temper, and Muhammad isn't gonna be cool,
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: and he'll take him a couple of rounds of playing
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: with him, and then Sonny Listening is out of there. Well,
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: I said, well, he said, don't forget. Same thing applies
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: to you. If you're gonna get in a fight, don't
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: get mad, get smart. He said, Sonny Listing has gotten
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: mad and you're gonna get his ass whipped.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Didn't your dad slap you?
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: And this is well, that's I mean, we used to.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: It wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't slapping. It was it
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: was he he always wanted a shadow box and he
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: tapped me on the face like that if I was
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: going the wrong way. Uh. But if I got lost
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: my temper and started swinging, then he knocked the hell out.
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: Let me say again, you lose your temper, you're gonna
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: lose your head.
• 43:33
  Speaker 7: That's because I always wondered, like, how did y'all so
• 43:37
  Speaker 7: for you?
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 43:38
  Speaker 7: You're the strategy brings. You can't lose your temper.
• 43:40
  Speaker 6: But like there were times I went to a museum
• 43:43
  Speaker 6: in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel when I was there last,
• 43:46
  Speaker 6: and they were talking to me about when Martin Luther
• 43:49
  Speaker 6: King was in I believe it was rallying and the
• 43:51
  Speaker 6: KKK was marching because he was in the city. And
• 43:54
  Speaker 6: times like that would happened all the time when people
• 43:56
  Speaker 6: there was death threats. There were so many things coming you,
• 43:58
  Speaker 6: guys way, I'm sure you had to have sometimes face
• 44:01
  Speaker 6: to face conversations that clear the way before he got
• 44:03
  Speaker 6: certain places, and you still stay strategy and brainstrong.
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: The truth is we didn't that everybody knew. In fact,
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: the only person who would talk about it openly was
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: Martin Luther King, and he said, now you know, if
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: we go messing with Birmingham, some of us ain't gonna
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: come back. Now he knew he was the one most
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: likely targeted, but he'd start, I mean, he'd make a
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: joke out of it, and he had a real good
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: sense of humor. He said, John, it might be your turn,
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: but it's gonna be one of the hardest things I
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: ever do. But I'll try my best to preach your
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: ass into heaven and then he'd start preaching all the
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: things that I pick on him about. See what are
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: you pointing me, because you know the illustration I'm saying
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: that that's the way he did all of us. He
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: would know and he would say things you didn't know.
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: He knew about you, and he'd ask God to forgive
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: you and please let him into heaven. You know, I mean, really,
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: he really turned your death into a comedy. And it
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: was it was.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: It was a sadistic but the fact that people knew
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: that they could potentially die and still were willing to
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: make that sacrifice is what I think is missing now also.
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: But they shouldn't have to. You shouldn't be willing to
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: make the sacrifice. You should be willing to take your
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: time and assume that you can make the world right
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: and you don't have to die. And we we we
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: maybe have made it too difficult. Most of the people
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: who died, we can remember the names, but they're literally millions.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: Like Martin Luther King got stabbed by black woman up
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: here in Harlem, and that with a letter opener, and
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: the letter opener was pressing on the order of his heart.
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: And they said if he had sneezed, he probably would
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: have died. And he talked about that all the time.
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: But what he talked about, he said, but he got
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: a letter, and this is why I'm writing the letters.
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: Answering the letters was important. He said, I remember getting
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: this letter and this girl said, I'm eleven years old
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: and it shouldn't matter, but I happened to be white,
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: and I just want to thank you and thank God
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: that you did not snee And he would talk. He
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: talked about that all the time because it represented a
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: fact that there's still many, many good people. And you
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: shouldn't believe that the whole world is going to hell
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: at a hand basket. See that right now, even right now,
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: in right now, the whole world is not going to
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: hell in a hand basket. I think there's Friday or
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: something that's supposed to be marches in twenty eight cities Saturday, Saturday.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: That's a protesting at the voter.
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: I think, no, no, it's they're calling it the no
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: King rally King Rally.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but we didn't have anything to do with that.
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: But it's it's you mean, we mean black people, black people,
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: but we'll join, but that's mostly white people. See and
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: like was it the start?
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: Why are you thinking about that? Let's let's answer her question. Though, yes,
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: there there was level headedness and he was it.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: He would go.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: There were a whole lot of smart black folks.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: That's young.
• 48:18
  Speaker 5: With all due respect you're being We can either have
• 48:21
  Speaker 5: an interview or a master class. Okay, now they want
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: it either way because they're not getting these stories.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: But the master class. But the master Jackie Robinson can
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: tell his own story yours.
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: But we're telling we're telling the story of people who
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: were heroes in a crisis and who were cool and
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: didn't get mad.
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: They got smart, but they got you here in person.
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: They can go read about Jesse, about j Robbins. Okay
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: for you too. So so let me give you one example.
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: And bastly young So Doc think he had actually a
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: ferocious sense of humor, but he couldn't. He didn't want
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: to be like that because he didn't think people were
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: going to take him seriously. So he he was like
• 49:18
  Speaker 5: boxed in. But he had this important role. He needed
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: him to play a role. And the one time he
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: didn't play his role, Doctor King got upset with him.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: The one time. It was only one time.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: The time all the time, he didn't play a role.
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: Well when when Meredith got shot on the road walking
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: to Mississippi, first place, he shouldn't have been walking down
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: a highway by himself and make it this point without
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: getting everybody, wanting people looking and getting somebody to help him.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: But anyway, we had a rule, if somebody gets killed
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: hurt doing something that's right for the benefit of all
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: of us, if they go down, we have to go
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: take their place. And we were already in Chicago. We
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: were registering voters in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, and we
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: didn't need to have another march to show we were brave.
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: But everybody was mad because Marylyith got shot, and so
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: they said, let's go, let's go. We got to keep
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: it going. Well, I saw that they were leaving all
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: of the stuff we've been working on for months behind
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: and it would all suffer. But I got tired of
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: playing Uncle Tom role. I said, okay, let's go, and
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: doctor King said, Andy, hold up, I got to go
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: to John meet me in my office and he came
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: in and he said, look, if you're not gonna talk
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: sense and help balance it on the right side, I
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: don't need you he said, I don't need another crazy negro.
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: We got plenty. Everybody can get emotional, somebody's got to
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: stay calm. And I said, but I get tired of
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: playing that Uncle Tom Row. He said, yeah, but you've
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: been doing it all your life and you ain't gonna quit. Now.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Why they call being calm and level headed and using
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: strategy of being an Uncle Tom.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: Because when everybody's mad and you calm, then they think
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: something's wrong with you.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: They thought the most they thought that a man thought
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: that the most courageous, manny thing he can do was
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: to go to jail. Going to prison, getting your rear
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: end whip was a badge of honor. By the way,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: strategically they put women and children on those marches. They
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: didn't want Charlemagne or me or they didn't want because
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: that was aggression against aggression. You wanted to get the
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: sympathy from the TV cameras and the meet so they
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: put women in children. That was strategic.
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: Well the men wouldn't come.
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: Okay, Well that's all okay, all right, whatever it was,
• 52:11
  Speaker 5: it worked out. The point is the point is that
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: that he was playing a very important role. Like if
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: you look at the pictures in the civil rights movement,
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: Doctor King Andrew Young. Andrew is never looking at the camera.
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: He's looking here. He's looking here, He's looking here, he's
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: looking for he's looking for threats to his friend. He's
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: not trying to become doctor King. You guys, when you're interviewing,
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: you're not trying to be the guests. You're not trying
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: to be the star. That's you're You're so good at it.
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: You're playing your role and you do it brilliantly. And
• 52:41
  Speaker 5: as a result of that, you became stars by focusing
• 52:44
  Speaker 5: on the star. And basst Young wanted Andrew doctor King
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: to be successful, and he deferred himself. He again, I'm
• 52:51
  Speaker 5: basically the only person that lets him that he lets
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: push him like this and just but he knows I'm
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: just trying to pull it out of him so that
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: people can benefit. He's very uncomfortable talking about himself. But
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: this is so important to understand the dirty work, the
• 53:06
  Speaker 5: stuff behind the scenes, the little things. It's everything. And
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: so this role he played of being calm and cool
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: and chill and stepping over mess and not in it.
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: That's the way I was born.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: It's a certain temperament like I don't even know if
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: you can learn that, like, that's why. But you can learn.
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: It, I think, well, can you unlearn it? I mean
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: I learned it. Every man learns it with his wife.
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: I mean, your wife can cuss you, and I mean
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: talk about you like a dog, and my wife does regularly.
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: Now nostic so she but she was a school teacher
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: for thirty years, and she dope and she said, I've
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: been dealing with you bad boys all my life and
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: I ain't gonna let you get away with nothing. Well, okay,
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: but I've been married twice and both of them were
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: school teachers, and both of them knew how to well
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: one I knew how not to get get riled up with.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: I don't believe I've ever lost my temper with my
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: wife either one one for forty years and another one
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: for thirty years.
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: He taught He taught me you can either be married
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: or you can be right.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: That those are two different things.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in the doc, you said, after Martin Luther King
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: Junior got shot, you knew there was no hope.
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: What did you know? I don't think I said that.
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: I knew that it was gonna be hard, but I really,
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: you know, my mama used to make me go to
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: Sunday school. And they one time they were talking about
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: Elisha going to heaven and a flaming chariot. And I
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: was about nine years old, and I said, I don't
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: believe that they put me out of Center school, but
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: I never forgot that. And that's what I thought when
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: I saw Martin laying there one I said, he probably
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: didn't even hear that shot. The bullet Follers travels faster
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: than the speed of sound, so it hit him right
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: in his and severed his spinal cord. So he probably
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: never heard it, and he probably never felt any pain,
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: and he was dead instantly. And the thing that occurred
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: to me then was, damn my brother done gone to
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: have them in a flaming chariot. And see, he used
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: to keep wanting to go back to Memphis. Well, Memphis
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: is right next to the river, Mississippi River, and Missisivvy
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: river runs through and all our spirituals, you know, my
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: home is over Jordan. Well, Jordan is the Mississippi for
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: us down south, and and it and all of the
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: all of the spirituals talk about you know, steal away,
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: steal away to Jesus uh. And I just felt that
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: he'd gone home to the Lord and and and left
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: me here. But I knew, and I still know that
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: there's hardly a day that I don't talk about him
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: and learn or remember something that he said, uh in
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: a similar situation. And I passed that on to my children,
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: but to all children. And it's one of the reasons
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: why I'm really grateful to those folk, and Johnny one
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: of them that put together money to tell this story,
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: because I don't believe it there's ever been. I don't
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: believe anybody black, white, rich or poor ha's ever had
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: ninety minutes of TV time telling their story. And these
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: folks came in brother from England. They backed three eighteen
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: wheelers up into my my my driveway and unloaded the
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: equipment and they set me down and I talked for
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: three days, eight hours a day. They came back a
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: month or so later with another three days, eight hours
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: a day, and I think we did that. We did
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: that three or four times.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: He's watch.
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: And they had read everything ever written by me, and
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: this this brother sat down there and he he asked
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: me questions. I said, where did you get that from?
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: And he tell me where it came from? And he
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: made me remember, and so I saw this as having
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: a chance to tell a story that And I don't
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: care how much we don't read like we used to,
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: if we ever did, But all the books that were
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: written by the movement are big thig books, and and
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: we don't read, we don't keep still that long. So
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: the mass media, radio and television is still our means
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: of communication. And it's why you play such an important
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: part in our community and why I had I mean,
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: I was in a meet and last night till ten o'clock,
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: went home, got me a few hours sleep, got up
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: at four o'clock in the morning, got on a plane,
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: and came up back here because I wasn't coming to
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: talk to you all. You talk to more people than
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: anybody I know. And when John said he's going to
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: let you talk to his people, I said, thank you Jesus.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: No, it's a privilege me.
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: Well, it's but it's a privilege for me because I well,
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: like I was mare for eight years and we took
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: Atlanta from half a million people to five million, and
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: we got the world's business airport, and it's I went
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: up to the airport was the world's business airport, and
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: they used to complain that they didn't have enough women
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: in the decision making. And I go into the board
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: meeting and there's twelve people in there, and nine of
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: them women black women, well, eight black women, one white woman.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: And that's that airport house one hundred and fourteen million
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: people a year. See, and black women are running it,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: and they we have worked that out and we're trying
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: to expand it and keep it growing. But we voted,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: and we get out and vote. I got elected because
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: and it poured down Raine. It was like Gladys Knight
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: thing rating night in Georgia, and it poured down from
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: Sunday and the only day was Tuesday, and I said, Lord,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: please stop this rain. And it kept on raining Monday
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: and rained all day Tuesday and half the night. And
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: I went out to see how I was doing. And
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: Black folk were still in lines. They went lines in Atlanta,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: like they went line with Mandela in South Africa. They
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: stayed in line for days in South Africa. Because they
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: got Mandela out of jail and elected in president. That
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: they elected me mayor, and then after that they elected
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: they elected me to Congress in seventy two and then
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: seventy three they elected Mayne to Jackson mayor, and we've
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: had nine black mayors in a row, and everyone has
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: grown the city more and and it's it's doing well.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: I have a favorite ask. I don't ask you from
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: any favors. I've never seen these folks so quiet. They're
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: gonna pay you respect because you are, you are the iconic.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: They've never seen him quiet, right, yeah, yeah, but they
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: got questions, right. And if you keep telling stories about Joe,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: Jack Schmoe and the other person, I need to know.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: This is a masterclass. This is an opportunity for give
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: it one. John, Okay, but I know there's some jewels.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: But I've been giving him one for the list years. Yeah.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: They can't be said in one interview.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: That's why the documentary is important as well. But I mean,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm I'm learning a lot I do. To John's point,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: do I do have a question? Do you think we've
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: honored doctor King's legacy or just branded.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: No. I don't think there's anybody anybody around that doesn't
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: respect what he did and what he gave his life for.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: I think that I think he is a sacred personality
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: in our history. But everyone is like that. I mean
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: Christmas Attics. I knew about him. He's the first black man,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: first man to die for this country in Massachusetts, and
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: he's black, and it well, this country would not be
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: what it is without us. And I think Martin Luther
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: King represents the best of us, but he ain't the
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: only one of us. That there were people around him,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: and only a half a dozen of us have been
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: to college. I mean, most of us learn learn from
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: the streets, and they learned from our experiences. But the
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: I mean Louis Armstrong grew up in my neighborhood in
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: New Orleans. He didn't I don't think anybody ever gave
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: him trumpet lessons. He just picked up the thing and
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: made it blow. And the thing that I'd like to
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: remind people is that here's a man who grew up
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: he sings It's a wonderful world, see. And there's Ray
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: Charles who's blind, and there's a big piano out in
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: all ben and Georgia where he grew up, and he
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: sings America the Beautiful. But he doesn't start with though,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: but the spacious skies. He starts with a little beautiful
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: their country loved, and mercy morderan life. And we take
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: the history of this country and the history of this planet,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: and we turn it into a a piece of music
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: or a symbol of grace. If we do something, we
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: do it with style, you know, and it's and and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: no matter what it is, we do it better. And
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: I used to think I could play basketball. I wouldn't
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: go near a basketball court with a bunch of women
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: on it because they all would beat. The day when
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: the Olympics wine in Korea, the women's Olympic team was
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: playing an army team, and I went to the brothers.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: I said, now, look, don't don't y'all like too rough
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: with these broads. I said, you've got you've got to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: show them some respect. He said, man, you don't know,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: these brothers be the ship out of us. And and
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: but I said, well, they said, no, we we got
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: to try to get even. And if you look at
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: at the way, well the Atlanta Airport, I can remember
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: the lady when they said eighty percent of the work
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: of the.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: Eight hundred thousand dollars was made by women in the airport,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: and this black woman got up and said, no, no, no,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: don't clap, don't clap. It should be a billion. Come
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: back when you've got a billion dollars, you've got a
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: women making a billion dollars in this airport, then we'll clap.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: And this it's been that. It's been that pushing and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: pulling and thinking and sweating that we have excelled at.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I say earlier, going back to what you said earlier,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 8: you said it's coming back, right. So my question to you,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 8: is this the state of this country where it is now?
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 8: Is it reminiscent of civil rights movement back in the day.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: No, it's not because when I came up in the
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: well maybe so, because I was born in nineteen thirty two.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: That was a recession here and there were people starving.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: That's where social security came from. That's where food stamps
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: came from, the government trying to meet people who were starving,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: and they were not they were not black, I mean.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: And right now, the way the government is moving, it's
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: not doing right for anybody. But there's some good happening.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: And I.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 8: What do you feel the good is?
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: That's well, one I believe in this country, and I
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: believe in God, and I believe this country is a
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: God feary, God blessed country. That's something I have. I
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: haven't seen any other country. Well, I've been to. I've
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: traveled one hundred and fifty one countries, and that only
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: about two hundred and ten countries in the world, and
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: I've been to one hundred and fifty of them. But
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: I come right back to the United States and I
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: come back to Atlanta. I enjoyed New York, and I'd
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: like to come to New York, but it's just takes
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: too long to get places. And the traffic, now, you know,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: I worry about, but now the traffic humped Atlanta. So
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: we got to figure out what to do with that.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 5: When traffic comes to growing cities. Traffic comes to growing cities,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 5: which you built in Atlanta, by the way, eight hundred
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: billion dollars sorry, five hundred and eighty billion dollars GDP
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 5: the same Atlanta's bigger GDP than Singapore.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: And he built it.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: He and and the people he just talked about, they
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: built that into what my wife calls wakanda. And it's
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 5: nothing like it in the in the entire world. Again,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 5: these are things that he doesn't talk about. It's it's
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 5: some of it's in the documentary, by the way, some
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 5: of it's not a lot of it's not a lot
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 5: of us ended up on on the editing floor the bother.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: Thanks Rachel, Thank Rachel, Mattaw Phil Griffin MSNBC for putting
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: resources behind this to make it possible. But this guy's
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: a walking treasure trove of strategic thought, I mean, and
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 5: most of it is unarticulated, unrecorded. He just goes about
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 5: his business and he's he got to you just literally
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: pull it out of you, start talking, You ask them
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: a question.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: He goes in the fifty other directions. I love it, though,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: I love it all about other people.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: You said, just now with all of the he said,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: it's a God fearing country. But when you think about
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: all of the oppression black people are facing this country,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: all the challenges to be facing this country, how can those.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: People be fearing of God treating people like that?
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: Welcause God's son suffered and suffering is not Suffering is
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: not the end. It's not acceptable, and we should do
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: everything we can to wipe it out. But we shouldn't
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: be afraid of it like I just have never been
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: afraid to die. And and most of us that march
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: with Martin Luther King used to argue and and and say, Okay,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: who's Bombingham? Is Bombingham? Somebody gonna get bombed And that
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: means I hope and and doctor King would start preaching
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: your sermon. He said, Now, if it's you, saw man,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: I might have a hard time getting you into heaven.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: But but but but he would start with finding some
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: of the things that you got. You have gathered my
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: people together on this radio, and I want to bless
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: you for that, and the Lord will bless you for that,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: because you talk to more people about life than maybe
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: anybody else I know. And uh, we're grateful. We're not
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: gonna forget that. But we also know it took you
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: a little while to get here. And we know that
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: whatever got you here wasn't always you know, Sunday wasn't
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: lessons you learned in Sunday School and and and and
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 4: we we but you're forgiven the things in the struggle,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: and you you got a place in glory.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: It sounds like you have a hard time getting me
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: in heaven.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: Well no, But does the revolution start when people get
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: tired of suffering.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: Now, yeah, no revolution, revolution I think is continuous. And
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: like I picked up one of your books off the
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: table and uh, what you get honest a die line
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: and in sometimes in history books like that would make
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: one group of people wake up. Now it's hard to
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: get us to read. That's why you're on the radio.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 4: But that's why we're on television also. And doctor King
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: used to say that news media is worth a million
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: dollars a minute. We we we would try to get
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 4: our demonstrations on ABC, NBC and CBS and you know,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: Cronkite and Brink, but each one of them, if you
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: could get on those three, that's that time is worth
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: a million dollars a minute. And so you put in
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: some good hours here, thank you, and you built a
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: good audience.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 7: Is it true that.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 6: You made the call to miss credits Scott King after
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 6: Doctor King was shot? Did you make the call to
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 6: correct miss Corredis Scott King when doctor King was shot?
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: I did, but she had already heard it. But I
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: knew Corretta. Corretta and my wife grew up together in
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: a little country town and we talked all the time,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: and they talked to each other and she wasn't crying.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: She wasn't. She said, well, there's what I've been worried about.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: But now we have to carry on. See, And that's
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: the way all of her children have tried to carry on.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: And it's hard, and but all of us in some
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: way a doctor King's children. And we see the example
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: that he said, and we see her she was, she was.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: She was up here in Boston, uh, trying to train
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: to be an opera singer. Mm hmm. And he said,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: I need you back down south with me.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 5: She actually raised money. She would do concerts credit Scot
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 5: King would sing concerts, operated concerts and raise money for
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 5: the civil rights movement. For her husband behind every successful
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 5: man as an exhausted woman, which is why he keeps
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 5: telling the story of women who don't get the credit,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 5: who don't get acknowledged.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: He keeps pulling.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 5: I do admire that he keeps pulling everybody into his
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 5: story so they get their name mentioned, so that they
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 5: get acknowledged. Uh. His his wife now is strong. His
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 5: first wife, Jeanie childs.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: Young was strong.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 5: When he was you an ambassador, they were in a
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 5: they went to jean Child's hometown.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: Little country town in Alabama.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 5: And they were on the they were in the open
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 5: opening a car and Gene child Wrong said Andy. She
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 5: that's a guy I used to date in high school.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 5: He's a bum. Now he's on he's on a street corner.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: I said, I said, go Lee, I guess you're glad
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: he he had a hard time in Vietnam and he's
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: not doing right. I guess you're glad you didn't marry him.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: And she said she if he'd have been the ambassador
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 4: to the United Nations. And that's that's true. That that
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: and that's a there's a John Bryant quote behind every
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: great man as an exhausted woman, many exhausted women.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: I'm glad.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: I'm glad that you keep bringing up, you know, other people.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: And I'm glad that what the doctors called the dirty work,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: because I think playing your position is a lost start.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: I think everybody wants to be a star now.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: And it's like, you know, it makes me one that
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: has has social media made the struggle to performative because
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: people don't see that unseen grind. You don't see that
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: dirty work. You don't understand how important plan your position is.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, those who are in music noted you've
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: got to create a certain harmony, a certain rhythm that
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 4: you can't do it. I mean, jazz was everybody solo
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: and on their own. But but the music now has
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: has far more well in good times. It has melody
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: in hard times against funky. But you've got you've got
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: each one expressing the way they feel and h and
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: somehow when you hear it and it relates to you,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: you go out and buy the records so you know
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 4: you you turn on whatever it is you have to
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: turn on. Nowadays, I don't have one of them.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: Radio anyway, go ahead, no.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: But it's it's this is a very complex life. I
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: mean when I lived in New York, I worked up
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 4: on a dear Harlem and near Riverside Church, and one
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: time the lights went off and I had to walk
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: from up there at one hundred and twentieth and Broadway
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 4: across the Queensbide Down Bridge to get a bus on
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: the other side to get me up to Hollis. And
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: it's a huge complicated city and there's nothing simple. But
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: you have to figure that for anything to work in
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: this city, and in most great cities, there's got to
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: be a series of teams that are making it work,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: and most of the time you don't see the ones
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: that are in the background. And you don't, I mean
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: you don't. You might see the cook that's preparing the meal,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: but you don't see the guy that had the slaughter
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: the cole.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 6: There's all this work, and you know, all the sacrifice
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 6: that you guys put in. When Martin Luther King was here,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 6: he wasn't as liked and as revered by everybody as
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 6: he is today.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 7: How do you feel when you say.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 4: He almost was, you know, almost talking about I mean,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: there were a few people who were jealous of him,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: who wanted to be him, but they were preachers too, and.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: But he was one of that kind of I just
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: want you to they've never stopped that kind of no.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: But he he did not let that bother him, and
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: it well, yeah, yeah, you have to watch your enemies,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: but you see them better if you bring them closer
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: and try to get them involved in what you're doing.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: And you know, the teams that win play together, and
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: and and everything requires a team.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: Now we get into a real conversation.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: Can you tell me about the team that you and
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: Clarence e Oh lord, I tell you that that is
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: one of the most He's one of the.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: Most beautiful brothers I've ever met.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: Love him.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: He called me and said, I'm trying to reach Andrew
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: Young and the young. I said, yeah, I'm in the Young.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: He said, Nigga, are you crazy? And I said, I
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: don't know what? What?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 6: What?
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: Why? What makes you think that they tell me you
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: running for congress in Georgia. Don't you know that they
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: just killed medical over there in Mississippi. How you ain't
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: got good sense and you want to run for Congress?
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 4: I said, well, before doctor King was killed, the last
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: thing we talked about was how were going to take
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: our people from the streets into politics. And when John
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: came along, it was from the streets to the to
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: the suites and the banks, and how to how we're
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: going to integrate the money, how we're going to integrate
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: the culture, say and he said, well, if you crazy
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: enough to run, I'm crazy enough to help you. And
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: I said, what would you He said, what would you do?
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: If I could get Bill Cosby? If I could bring
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 4: Bill Cosby and Isaac Hayes. Now this was nineteen seventy.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: Bill Cosby was booming. He just got on, you know,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: and Isaac Hayes was good music or out of Memphis.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: And I said, well, you know, I said, I don't
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: even have money to make a phone call to invite him.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: He said, nigga, I didn't ask you if you had
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: any money. I said, what would you do if they
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: came here? And I said, well, I'd get to Baseball
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: Stadium and we'd fill it. We'd fill it up. That'd
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 4: be a great start for a campaign. I said, but
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: I told you I don't have any money. He said,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 4: I told you. I ain't said nothing to you about money.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: Money is my business. And I shut up and he
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: hung up on me. But he found out who had
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: handled the radio, I mean the Braves Stadium. And it
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: was about in six weeks signs we well, four weeks
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: signs walp all over town that Bill Cosby and Isaac
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: Hayes would come into the baseball stadium and he blew
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 4: it out right and they filled it up in the
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: pour and down rain and gave you the money and
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: didn't even charge didn't charge anything.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: I low Clarence Man say, that's my idol.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 8: What was the issue the real issue between Martin Luther
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 8: King Jr.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 7: And Malcolm X.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: You know there was no issue. The difference was that
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 4: Martin Luther King learned in college. Malcolm X learned in jail.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: But Malcolm X read the Dictionary and the Bible. Say,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: and when Mark and came back with the Nobel Prize,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: we worked in Harlem and the Armory. And when we
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: came in the back door, who was standing act in
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 4: the back door with Malcolm X? Two people, Malcolm X
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: and Nelson Rockefeller. And Malcolm X said, I just wanted
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: to thank you for all that you've done, and I
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: want you to know that I am with you in
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: anything you want me to do. But I think that
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 4: it's probably better strategy if you and I don't seem
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: to be so close, and said, that's why I'm not
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: going to come in there with you in public.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: He wasn't trying to profile Malcolm was trying to.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: Did you disparage Malcolm? You see disparage Martin publicly? Sometimes
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: though we'll call him Uncle Tom, was his brand.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: It wasn't. It wasn't Malcolm so much as it was
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: that whole whole crowd around Elijah Muhammad.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: Now, but Martin was close to Elijah too.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: It seems like I know well because we're wunerable because
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 4: when we came to if we went into town, like
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 4: when we went to to Chicago, we got all the
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: big preachers together and got them to agree that we
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 4: would be there with them and that they could tell
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 4: us what they wanted us to do. Now, some didn't
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 4: like it, and some just didn't want anybody to have
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: a profile but them, and we just went on around them.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: But Malcolm, well, I met Malcolm when I was here,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 4: and Mike Wallace did a story on Malcolm on sixty Minutes,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 4: and the black guy who was working with Mike Wallace
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: was married to one of my secretaries at the National
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 4: Consular Churches, and they invited me and my wife over
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 4: to dinner. This was this was before Malcolm X was
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: even known around and but we'd had dinner a couple
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: of times together. Anytime he came to Atlanta, he came
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: by our office, but Martin was never there, but he
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: went to He went to Selma to see Martin, and
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: Martin got arrested that day and was in jail. So
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: he spent the day with Corretta and me and spoke
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: at the Mass Mass meeting that night and then went
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: on his way. Malcolm and they haven't.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 8: They haven't met.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: They met once, Yeah, they met, No, they met several
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 4: times because he was always in private.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Publicly yeah, publicly.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when they had got that picture together.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 5: By the way, when he became mayor, just the point
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 5: about paying people playing their roles. When he became mayor
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 5: of Atlanta, the civil rights leaders his friends. The second
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 5: day he was mayor, they picketed him, so he went outside.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: He said, what are you guys doing?
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 5: They said, well, you're the mayor now, so you know
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 5: you got your job, we got ours and he accepted that.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 5: So Malcolm was playing his lane, is playing his role publicly,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 5: but privately he respected doctor King and just didn't feel
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 5: that he was useful to him. By the way, a
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 5: lot of these, a lot of the Black Power movement
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 5: came out of standing right next to Doctor King walking
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 5: in the South, the Black Power movement, that's where it started.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 5: They'd used Malcolm Martin's visibility to get visibility for what
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 5: they were doing, which was easier because he were angry.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 5: Black Power getting angry, so and Martin a lot allowed
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 5: all of that. He allowed everything to flourish around him.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 5: He wasn't insecure, but it just wasn't his It wasn't
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 5: his way.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 4: What he did was on just that he invited Carmichael
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 4: to come to church. So next time you're in Atlanta,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 4: if you're in Atlanta on a Sunday, please come to
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: church and then come home and have dinner with us afterwards.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 4: We need some time to talk. And he came to Atlanta,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 4: went to church, and then they went home together. Uh
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: and uh, Coretta fixed dinner with the well. Preacher's wives
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 4: always have a way of fixing food no matter who
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 4: shows up. They got enough.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 5: But isn't it true that all of those leaders at
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 5: some point criticized doctor King. Yeah, see snick snick.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: Uh uh, yes, sick.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: I mean it's nick.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: That's why I love the documentary King of King King
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: in the Wilderness, you know, because it shows that. But
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: it seemed like it was respectful, you know, like they
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: were walking together and they were disagreeing during interviews, but.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: It was respectful.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, But people like John Lewis never disagree, you know,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: and it was it was people. I mean, you have
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: rivalries on the same football team, but they all running
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: the same play and and and that's sort of that's
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 4: sort of the way we were we said, Look, we
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 4: may disagree on how to get there, but we all
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 4: are trying to do the same thing, and we can
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 4: do it best if we do it together.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 5: So Charlemagne, what I'm hearing from what I've learned from
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 5: him is the mission back then was we? The mission
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 5: now is me? This is the basically when to summarize
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 5: what the problem is and what you brought up earlier.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 5: People today wake up Ago, I'm tired of talking about me.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 5: Now you talk about me, and it's all about me me,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 5: and I'm and if it doesn't benefit me, then I'm
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 5: not interested.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: My likes, my engage is my views.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 5: That's right, my opinion, And if I got to hurt you,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 5: I've got to step on you to elevate myself, then,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 5: so be it. Back then it was almost the exact opposite.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 4: Now, I mean, I just you're being gracious, you are
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 4: being I'm being respectful.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Exactly the point.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 4: But I'm trying to find if you're going to get
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 4: along with people, you can easily point out differences, but
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: if you really want to work together, you got to
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 4: find those huge things that you agree on and say,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: let's get this straight first. And that's true in the neighborhood.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 4: You know, it's true in everything we do.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 8: I totally respect what you said a little bit back
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 8: when you said I've never been afraid to die, right,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 8: But I think it's greater that you've never been afraid
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 8: to die without making a difference or without making a change,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 8: because you've got a lot of young people that aren't
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 8: afraid to die either, but for the wrong reason.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 4: No, they afraid. They scared to death, and it's because
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 4: they're scared that they do stupid things. See. I mean
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 4: most street fights would be avoided if somebody could say
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 4: blow a whistle and say just take ten seconds to
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 4: cool off, they wouldn't shoot. But they're doing something and
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 4: I don't really understand it because I've never had to.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: Be that way.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 5: Let me bridget. The most dangerous person in the world
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 5: is a person with no hope. So they had hope.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 5: Loaded The most dangerous person in the world is a
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 5: person with no hope. They had hope. They had self esteem,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 5: not just confidence. You can be great in music or
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 5: great and whatever, have enormous confidence, but have low self esteem.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 5: They had spirituality. They believe it's something larger and more
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 5: important themselves. Doctor kingon say I'm here to say black people.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 5: He said, I'm here to redeem the soul of America
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 5: from the triple evils of war, racism, and poverty. He
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 5: wrapped everybody in his vision and he brought everybody in
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 5: and then lifted everybody up and with it. Yes, black
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 5: people got lifted too, but it wasn't black people only
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 5: or black people at the cost of everybody else. And
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 5: so he made it hard for people to disagree with him.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 5: But he had his own self esteem. When you have
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 5: no hope, you're willing to your life has no value.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 5: They were willing to die because they had hope, because
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 5: it wasn't about them. It's a different new ones. They
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 5: value themselves enough that they valued everybody else enough that
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 5: they're willing to sacrifice themselves. So that's a different thing than.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: I don't value me.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 5: I don't value it was going I'm not gonna live
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 5: to twenty five anyway, What does it matter? None of
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 5: this matters, So I'm not the most dangerous person in
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 5: the world. Is a personal no hope, That's why he
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 5: said he can't relate to it. So it is that, Charlie,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 5: what you said earlier about has it changed or you asked, Yes,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 5: I think it has changed. It's me and me. I
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 5: because I don't value myself. I need to keep pouring
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 5: water in this cup because because the cup has no bottom.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 5: If the cup has no bottom, I'm pouring all the
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 5: time trying to fill up myself esteem.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 8: And people need validation.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: They seek validation, Yes, through everything. And so what he's
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: talking about is purpose in life.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: My god, what he's got his intention? It's your real purpose.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: What's your intention? What are you here for?
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 5: And you guys are the most powerful what you do
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 5: in the country, And I believe in the world because
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 5: you're all about something. You don't just show up here,
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 5: me and me. It's not good. You facilitate a conversation
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 5: and you wouldn't let the other person be. You want
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 5: the other person to be the center of the conversation,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 5: to pull it out of him. And you even sacrifice
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 5: yourself sometimes when the people talking mess to you. You
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 5: got to know who you are. He knows who he is.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: Doctor. Can you tell him?
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 5: The quick story is not in the documentary Quick quick
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 5: story about I'm just trying to do this quick because
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 5: I want to try to get a lot in a little
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 5: bit of time when when you came back with doctor
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 5: King from the Nobel Peace Prize and President the United States.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 5: This was when he saw Malcolm and Rockefeller, and the
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 5: President United States refused to meet with you guys because
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 5: he didn't want to ask. He knew was coming and
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 5: you were in New York. Rockefeller offered you his jet.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 4: Well, Rockefeller assumed that we were going to see the
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 4: President Johnson, and he said, you all can let me
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 4: know what time you want leave. I'll have my jet
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 4: ready to pick you up and take you down to Origenon.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 4: And that was in the paper. So we got an
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 4: appointment we thought for three o'clock and we got there
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 4: on time with the President. With the President, we got
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 4: there on time, but they said he was tied up
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 4: with the generals talking about Vietnam.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: You don't want to see him, and.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 4: It I mean, we really didn't get to see himuntill dark.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 4: It was about six o'clock, two or three hours later.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 4: But we were with the Vice president and the district
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 4: and the Attorney General talking about voting rights. When we
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 4: got in with the President Johnson, he was really depressed
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 4: and he said, I agree with you, doctor King, everything.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 4: Martin says, he said, I agree with you, I just
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 4: don't have the power. And that was his only answer
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 4: everything we said. He said, I agree with you, I
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 4: just don't have the power.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: He the president who had the power.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 4: If you were, then well, he didn't have the votes,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 4: and he had just gotten beat up by people who
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 4: were trying to get him to drop atomic bombs on Vietnam,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 4: and so he was depressed. And when we left, I said,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 4: doctor King, I said, you know, the president is right.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 4: He doesn't have the power and we don't either. And
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 4: I said, this is a perfect time for you to
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: take a sabbatical. You need to take three or four
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 4: months off, go wherever you want to go, think this through,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 4: take your family or not, and then after the next
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 4: election we'll have a better position. And he said no.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: I said, well, what you going to do? He said,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 4: we got to get the president some power. And I
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 4: said something else and he said no, we got to
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 4: get the president some power. And finally I said, nigga,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 4: you more housemen. You broke You see, because the Nobel
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 4: Peace Prize was sixty thousand dollars, Rockefeller doubled it, so
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 4: we had one hundred and twenty thousand dollars but then
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 4: Martin divided up against all well all six He gave
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 4: everybody a sixth of it, every civil rights organization.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: He split up the money himself.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: And I.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 4: Said, here, we ain't got a pot to pissing or
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 4: window the throat out of. And you talking about getting
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 4: the president some power? I said, you niggas got some nerves.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 4: And I was talking. I went to Howard, he went
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 4: to Morehouse. So we always were picking on each other,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 4: and that's the only thing he'd kid you about. But
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 4: when we got back home.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: He said, you can tell you what's about more house men.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: You can tell morehouse men.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean that was my line. I said,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 4: you more houseman got more nerve than a brass ass monkey.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 4: You ain't got a pot to pisson or when did
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 4: to throw it out of? And yet you're gonna get
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 4: the presidents of Paul.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 8: What did he say?
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 4: He just said, we're gonna get the president of Paul
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 4: who have it. When we got back two days later,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 4: Amelia Boyton called and said she was on the way
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 4: to see us from Selma. Now Melia Boytan had been
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 4: in Selma since nineteen thirty two, that's the year I
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 4: was born, and She went there at eighteen with George
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 4: Washington Carver to teach sharecrop of women how to feed
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 4: their children in the midst of the recession. And so
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: they were doing things like smashing beans.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: Everybody else's story, but what happened in Selma.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 4: But in Selma when we got to the office, she
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 4: called and said she was there to see doctor King,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: and she and three preachers came in and told what
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 4: was happening in Selma and said we have to you
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 4: have to help us. And this was just before Christmas.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 4: So he said, well, right after Christmas, we'll come over.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 4: And you know, everybody has an Emancipation Day celebration on
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 4: the first of January, and so we didn't have it
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 4: on the first of January because that was that was
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 4: the first Sunday, and that's the reason was that threw
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 4: everything off. But we had it on the second Sunday,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 4: and it was we didn't have it on Sunday, we
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 4: had it on Tuesday. And so but that's when we
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: started to sell them a movement. Ninety days later, Lynnon
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 4: Johnson was on television saying we shall overcome.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: So back up.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 5: So it's an important part of this is doctor King
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 5: made a commitment to go to Selma. If he had
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 5: shown up in Selma, the police wouldn't have attacked John Lewis.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 5: They would't have attacked you. The wouldn't have attacked Doctor
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 5: King strategically on a bad move. They would have let
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 5: doctor King march. But doctor King got the wrong date.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 5: That's what he That's what just again, history for him
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 5: is just like talking about like that's a monitor. He
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 5: just glossed over it. They they told him that lady
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 5: in Selma a date, but they, oh, I can't come
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 5: on that date. That's the first Sunday I got to
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 5: be in my church. So he stayed back and sent
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 5: and he sent Andy Young beast Young, I called him
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 5: Bass Young to go there for him, like, make sure
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 5: that the like is in trouble. Don't let anybody march.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 5: He got there and said, well, these people will march anyway,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 5: but well they're gona probably turn us around, so don't
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 5: worry about it.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 4: Well, three hundred people in the country town. That's a
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 4: lot of folk.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 5: So they didn't turn him around. They let him march.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 5: But then the then the troopers ran. That's that famous
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 5: film where they ran over everybody and they and they
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 5: knocked John Lewis out. All that was an accident. I mean,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 5: it wasn't supposed to happen because Doctor King was supposed
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 5: to be there. It was have been a proper speech.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 5: So all of because Doctor King had to be in
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 5: his church on first Sunday and they got the date wrong.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: So that called John Louis accidental trouble then.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 4: And then he used to talk about good trouble and.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: So that then triggered three months later.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 4: It wasn't It wasn't that that. That was the first
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 4: of March. Yeah, it was fourth of July. And what
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 4: happened He signed the Civil Rights Bill. Wow, and that
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 4: gave us the right to vote.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 5: Wow, got him some power to the black boys from
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 5: from the South flipping the President of the United States.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: You've been very generous with your time.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 4: Man.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: His interview has been longer than the documentary by the way, Okay,
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: but we appreciate it. And I want to leave on
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: this the Dirty Work.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: If if the Dirty Work documentary could teach one lesson
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 3: to this generation and the next generation or organizes, what
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 3: what would.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: You want it to be?
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I called it the Dirty Work, But
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 4: when I kind of realized I had no purpose in life.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 4: And the way I decided, I said, if there's something
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 4: that I think needs doing and nobody else wants to
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 4: do it, that's my job. And that's the way I
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 4: defined my calling. When I went to work with doctor King,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 4: nobody wanted to work with him. He didn't have anybody there,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 4: and so I've started, well, whytt Walker was coming down,
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 4: but he hadn't gotten there yet. And it's and once
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 4: I got there, most of the stuff that nobody wanted
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 4: to know. Nobody wanted to go sit down and argue
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 4: with white folks. And I didn't argue because I would
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 4: I would be cool. But if Jose had gone, he
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 4: would want to. It would have been an argument because
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 4: he had to argue about everything. But that was my role,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 4: which was which I did, though I didn't necessarily like
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 4: it to be in that role all the time, but it.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: So, what's the lesson for this generation less than just.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 4: This generation, is there is some dirty work in any
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 4: struggle for freedom. But dirty work could be hard work,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 4: dirty work could be thoughtful work, you know, whatever nobody
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 4: else wants to do. Like we didn't want to mess
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 4: with money. And John decided that he was going to
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 4: teach folks how to that you can't be free without voting,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 4: but neither can you be free if you broke. And
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 4: so teaching people how to manage money, how to save money,
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 4: how to invest money, how to know the meaning of money,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 4: to your salvation and survival, that's another issue altogether. But
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 4: communications is an issue.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 5: And so don't be afraid of doing the dirty work.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 5: Embrace it. It is noble work. It's not dirty work.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is that right?
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 4: That's not only is a noble work, is is the
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 4: kind of work that has to be done.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 5: So when when when Charlemagne was doing that internship way
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 5: back when, and that in that first radio program, and
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 5: when people noticed you, that was the dirty work. Absolutely,
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 5: I'm sure you've done dirty work in your career. You've
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 5: always not been both of you and I always been
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 5: sitting here prime time. You had to hustle, You've had
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 5: to do things and jobs nobody else wanted.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: I still do the dirty work now, m maybe.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 4: Ybe.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 5: And the work you're doing with with mental health, the foundation,
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 5: you're doing the stuff that nobody sees. The conversation that
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 5: we have that at two in the morning about about
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 5: life in general, all that's the dirty work and raising
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 5: your children is the most honorable version, raising your pain,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 5: paying school fees. Like, we've got to be about the basic.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 5: We got to get back to the basics and be
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 5: about we and not just about me. That's really who
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 5: he is. And I spent most of his interview trying
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 5: to draw him out.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: This was good.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: You can see him.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: This is good.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 3: John O'Brien, thank you for bringing this, this, this walking memorial,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 3: this iconic, this icon living. Mister Andrew Young, thank you
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 3: for coming.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 4: Brother, Thank you for having men.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: That's right, and check out the dirty work of this
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 3: Friday on What's It's.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: A Peak ib globally.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 3: On MSNBC globally, nine pm, nine pm this Friday. Thank you, brother,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 3: thank you, and thank all of your audience. Yes, sir,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 3: this is a good.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 4: This is college on the radio.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 4: That's a word if you didn't have money to go
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 4: to college listening.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, thank you. It's the Breakfast Club.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: Every day a week ago up Breakfast Club. We are
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: finished for yar dumb