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