Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: There he is, Hello, how you doing?
Speaker 3: Hello there?
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 3: What's happening?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 5: I know you got limited times that I want to
Speaker 5: start the clock it immediately because we got a trillion question.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5: Welcome to another episode of Course Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: I Quest Love. We get here with Steve Supreme Shugar,
Speaker 1: Steve in the house.
Speaker 3: Hello, how are you?
Speaker 1: Congratulations on Sun Dange.
Speaker 5: Hello, Reverend now Hello there that's right, Reverend now also
Speaker 5: the star of Summer Soul.
Speaker 6: I forgot uh congratulations, but power to the people.
Speaker 7: The people got the power.
Speaker 3: Reverend is here.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, Uh, I'm Bayville.
Speaker 1: How are here?
Speaker 3: I'm fantastic. I'm a little off.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 5: Monticolo from North CAFLEC Yeah yes, indeed, yeah.
Speaker 2: Man, you just called it North Carolina. No one calls it.
Speaker 1: No one says no. No says New York City either.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: It's like people saying Philip Dell or ill Fresh or
Speaker 8: Phila whatever.
Speaker 2: It's just no one says North caclating, No Carolina.
Speaker 5: Sho No, okay know what uh people, we cannot call
Speaker 5: it North Carolina.
Speaker 1: North Caclac. All right, So our yesterday, how shall I say?
Speaker 5: Our guest today is is cut from a rare cloth,
Speaker 5: the cloth of justice. He's a gentleman who, at the
Speaker 5: ripe age of four knew what his calling was. I
Speaker 5: believe that at the age of four, my parents allowed
Speaker 5: me to watch Soul Train unchaperoned. So that's give me
Speaker 5: some comparisons. Anyway, he was practically baptized in the civil
Speaker 5: rights movement, appointed as leader of the youth movement from
Speaker 5: the one and only Jesse Jackson's Operation bread Basket.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is literally black Ghostbusters, the person, the
Speaker 1: person whom you call when it's time.
Speaker 5: To put wills, when the white folks aught tripping, bringing
Speaker 5: attention to justice name it. He's there, literally on the
Speaker 5: front lines. You're always exciting, ever loss of words or
Speaker 5: the right words. Always there on the front lines. Ladies
Speaker 5: and gentlemen, Welcome to questlev Supreme, the one and only
Speaker 5: Reverend Al Sharpton.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you, Yes are you today? How are you today?
Speaker 3: I'm doing good, I'm doing very well. And congratulations on
Speaker 3: some soul. You really a masterpiece on now.
Speaker 1: Wow, I appreciate that.
Speaker 5: But I got to ask you and I'm a self
Speaker 5: admitted former reluctant leader.
Speaker 1: How how hard is.
Speaker 5: It to still want to lead and be on the
Speaker 5: front lines and always have the answers because there's many
Speaker 5: a day where I mean, my version of leading is
Speaker 5: more like make it, yeah, make it a music or
Speaker 5: having a lunch with somebody, but you know, not not
Speaker 5: to your level, but still like, once you decide that
Speaker 5: that's the path that your life is on, you gotta
Speaker 5: see it through. And what what makes you get out
Speaker 5: of bed every morning to fulfill this role?
Speaker 3: I think that I put it this way. Michael Brown,
Speaker 3: who was killed by police, and Triggerson's mother spoke one
Speaker 3: night and she said something that clicked with me. She
Speaker 3: said that Mark Twain, and you gotta remember when the
Speaker 3: middle of this whole battle and Ferguson and for the
Speaker 3: mother of a victim to quote Mark Twain was like,
Speaker 3: what what is she getting ready to do? And she said,
Speaker 3: Mark Twain said something that she never forgot. She said,
Speaker 3: the two most important moments in your life is the
Speaker 3: moment you're born and the moment you find out why
Speaker 3: you were born. And that's what clicks with me. I
Speaker 3: believe I was born to do what I do. I've
Speaker 3: been doing it since I was four. Like you said,
Speaker 3: I started preaching as a kid an acost the church.
Speaker 3: I became Jesse and Bill Jones you directed at twelve,
Speaker 3: so I don't know nothing else. And even as I
Speaker 3: got older and got around James Brown and others in entertainment,
Speaker 3: I kept going back to activism. James Brown would saying
Speaker 3: he can't make a living doing that, He'll be back
Speaker 3: out here, and I wouldn't go back because that's where
Speaker 3: my comfort zone was. And as you have developed into
Speaker 3: a leader, you can drop the reluctant you do it
Speaker 3: questioning yourself. You do it because you can't do anything
Speaker 3: else because that has become you, and people look for
Speaker 3: you to do that. And what you are ambiguous about.
Speaker 3: That ambiguity is what attracts people because they know you
Speaker 3: don't have an agenda. You're doing it from your heart.
Speaker 4: Wow, okay, I gotta take that.
Speaker 5: So there's never a time where you feel like you
Speaker 5: know where you're in a situation and you don't know
Speaker 5: the right words to say, or Okay, there's a moment,
Speaker 5: let me back up. So there's a there's a moment
Speaker 5: that President Obama told me about in which he knew
Speaker 5: that he was going to do that the funeral service
Speaker 5: for in South Carolina. Yeah, in Charleston, he knew he
Speaker 5: was going to do that service. And with a good
Speaker 5: eight day lead, he knew that, you know.
Speaker 1: He had the He he crafted the perfect.
Speaker 5: Speech that he felt that was going to fit the tone,
Speaker 5: and he said, like three minutes into that speech, he
Speaker 5: knew that wasn't the tone, and he didn't know what
Speaker 5: to do, and he just like took a breath and
Speaker 5: something said just start singing amazing grace. And it was
Speaker 5: a risk for him, but he did it and it
Speaker 5: opened the people up. So I'm just saying, like in leading,
Speaker 5: some oftentimes you have to think on your feet in
Speaker 5: real time.
Speaker 1: How does that come to you?
Speaker 5: I think I come from a place where, like we
Speaker 5: now have to watch our words, and I don't want
Speaker 5: to get canceled.
Speaker 4: I don't want to say the wrong thing.
Speaker 5: So you know, often get caught in my head and
Speaker 5: leading because you don't want to say the wrong thing
Speaker 5: because of the repercussions.
Speaker 1: But how do you get over that?
Speaker 3: I think you go with the flow and the energy
Speaker 3: and no matter how much you plan, and all of
Speaker 3: us are worried about if I say this wrong, Am
Speaker 3: I gonna hurt the cause? Am I gonna hurt the
Speaker 3: family I'm representing them, I gonna hurt the organization. But
Speaker 3: then you get in an energy and you just flow.
Speaker 3: I'll give you an example, and or President Obama Trola
Speaker 3: the same serve by amazing grace. I was in the
Speaker 3: audience that they worked, and I didn't know that he
Speaker 3: didn't plan it. But when I walked on the pulpit
Speaker 3: to preach George Floyd's funeral, I had no plans of
Speaker 3: doing that whole thing of get your knee off our neck.
Speaker 3: It just came as I was speaking, and I just
Speaker 3: went with it, and it worked, and I just kept
Speaker 3: doing it. Then, and I think that you've got to
Speaker 3: be disciplined enough to put some borders on yourself in
Speaker 3: your own mind, but then free enough to say, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna pressed as far as I can inside these borders
Speaker 3: and let it flow. The advantage I had starting as
Speaker 3: a boy preacher. The disadvantage is before I could read
Speaker 3: and write well, I was preaching. The advantage is I
Speaker 3: never learn how to use a manuscript, so I can't
Speaker 3: speak from a manuscript. That's why when I started my
Speaker 3: MSNBC show, hardest thing in the world for me was
Speaker 3: to speak with a telepromt because I never read a sermon.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, I'm messing up that life. Good old Yeah,
Speaker 3: I never I never used a manuscript until I started
Speaker 3: on MSNBC. I was fifty seven years old learning how
Speaker 3: to speak it and read at the same time.
Speaker 7: So you're saying you're a freestyler. You saying you freestyle
Speaker 7: for I.
Speaker 3: Was freestyling before y'all call it freestyle.
Speaker 8: I was.
Speaker 3: I was freestyling when we were still saying North Kacilaki.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what you spoke about when you were four?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What was your parents' reaction to this?
Speaker 5: Like or whoever was in charge of you speaking, how
Speaker 5: do they know that this four year old had the
Speaker 5: the gumption of the right words to lead.
Speaker 3: We had in church what they call the Junior usher Boy.
Speaker 3: That's the kids that would hand out their little programs
Speaker 3: and help see people. It was a cute little thing
Speaker 3: to keep kids involved. Once a year they'd have the
Speaker 3: Junior Usherboard anniversary. So the adult supervisor said, what do
Speaker 3: y'all want to do at the anniversary? And it was
Speaker 3: about ten of us. One of them was a guy
Speaker 3: who ended up being a pretty big singer, Ronnie Dyson.
Speaker 3: He was about yeah. Ronnie Dyson had a quarius in hair.
Speaker 3: He was a kid with me in Washington Temple Church
Speaker 3: in Brooklyn. He said that he wanted read a poem.
Speaker 3: My sister wanted to sing. I said, I want to preach,
Speaker 3: so everybody laughed. The doll Avis said let him preach.
Speaker 3: Maybe God's gonna use him because this is a Pentecostal church.
Speaker 3: And my mother said, I prayed that God would use
Speaker 3: my son. My father said, Yo, this is crazy. But
Speaker 3: they let me preach, and I preached the Anni versions about
Speaker 3: nine hundred people. That they put me on a box
Speaker 3: because the couldn't see me up on the roster, and
Speaker 3: I preached from Saint John's fourteenth chapter, Let not Your
Speaker 3: Heart Be Trouble. And I've been preaching ever since. By
Speaker 3: the time I was seven, I was doing the Youth
Speaker 3: Days and other churches. By the time I was nine,
Speaker 3: they did the World's Fan in New York and they
Speaker 3: put me up to preach before Maya Jackson. That's why
Speaker 3: I loved a Soul Somersa, because I ended up doing
Speaker 3: two or three cities with Maya and the rest was history.
Speaker 3: That's how Jesse them heard of me. I was called
Speaker 3: a wonder boy preaching.
Speaker 4: Wow, okay, So.
Speaker 7: How would you figure out what your sermons was going
Speaker 7: to be?
Speaker 3: I would listen to older ministers because I grew up
Speaker 3: in Pentecostal church. We was in church all the time,
Speaker 3: and I would in many ways just preach back what
Speaker 3: I heard out of memory, and I could put the
Speaker 3: sermons together in my head.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: Do you do you have any of like the recordings
Speaker 5: of your your sermons as a kid?
Speaker 1: Do you have you?
Speaker 3: I have one when I was nine. When I was nine,
Speaker 3: they did a forty five record me preaching, and this
Speaker 3: guy that was a radio guy at the time, Doc Wheeler,
Speaker 3: made a record. I have that, a little forty five
Speaker 3: record of me and I was doing more, you know,
Speaker 3: going back to what I heard other preachers did. And
Speaker 3: then you go through the holler in the shout, and
Speaker 3: because you was cute, you got away with it. When
Speaker 3: you got older you had to say something. You can
Speaker 3: get away with a lot when you're old.
Speaker 5: Accident, can you okay, can you explain to me? I
Speaker 5: know that you're a Pentecostal preacher. But what are the
Speaker 5: exact what are the difference between Baptist or you know,
Speaker 5: the various because I just thought like Southern preaching was
Speaker 5: one thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I was raised by Southern parents, though I
Speaker 3: was born raised in Brooklyn, Kojak, which I grew up
Speaker 3: until I was like fourteen. Then I wont Baptists. Kojak
Speaker 3: was more grassroots, h what James would call gut bucket.
Speaker 3: We would do the singing in the shout and then
Speaker 3: hallelujah dance. Baptists was a little more refined, and Methodists
Speaker 3: was even more refined. It's a matter of style. It
Speaker 3: is a matter of music. Like I remember when in
Speaker 3: some big Baptist churches when I was growing up, you
Speaker 3: wouldn't have drums in the church, but you wouldn't have
Speaker 3: choirs that would sing emotional songs. So when I would
Speaker 3: go to Baptist churches and Methodist church, they be singing anthems.
Speaker 3: We didn't do that. All of our stuff was Shirley
Speaker 3: Caesar kind of singing. And then you got more refined
Speaker 3: with the Baptists, so it's more cultural and class. Grassroots
Speaker 3: people were more to Pentecostals and as I grew up
Speaker 3: and then got in the civil rights movementhen I was twelve.
Speaker 3: They were all Baptists, and then I later became I
Speaker 3: would re baptized the Baptist and they were a little
Speaker 3: more learned. We were all spirit and that's probably why
Speaker 3: I gravitated to sol to James, because James was a
Speaker 3: secular version of the Holy Rolla. I mean, well Jans
Speaker 3: would do wasn't much different than we're doing the choir
Speaker 3: in the Holiness Church.
Speaker 2: Okay, where are your parents from? You said they were
Speaker 2: from the South.
Speaker 1: I was worried.
Speaker 3: My mother mother's from Dothan, Alabama. She passed. My father
Speaker 3: was from you follow Alabama. Neither one of them was
Speaker 3: on the map.
Speaker 1: Wow, Wait, what's it Isama?
Speaker 3: You follow? You follow flowed? I love that name.
Speaker 5: You follow, You follow follow Alabama?
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay.
Speaker 5: As a musician, I do want to know, like right now,
Speaker 5: as a record collector, I'm kind of on my my
Speaker 5: my seventies gospel kick right now, and I'm noticing that
Speaker 5: it's very hard to find rare to find like gospel
Speaker 5: records that have like a certain groove to it or
Speaker 5: a certain soul to it. And I realized that a
Speaker 5: lot of it is that, you know, they thought it
Speaker 5: was sinful or whatever, but you know, knowing that you're
Speaker 5: cut from the cloth of the James Brown shadow if
Speaker 5: you will, How I mean, how hard was it for
Speaker 5: kind of secular sounding music to finally break through to
Speaker 5: the Black church where it wasn't considered simple or that
Speaker 5: sort of thing. Because even when I was drumming in church,
Speaker 5: like if I started playing too good, I would get
Speaker 5: looks from like the elders, like you're playing that rap music.
Speaker 5: I know that you're playing run DMC right now, like
Speaker 5: that sort of thing, Like right, how.
Speaker 3: It was hot? I remember that in the early days
Speaker 3: of the sixties when I was still like eight or
Speaker 3: nine and Sam Cook left the church because Sam Cook
Speaker 3: started with a gospel group and he left and started
Speaker 3: singing secular. They said, oh, he's backslid, He's going to hell.
Speaker 3: And Lil Richard would go in and out, and after
Speaker 3: a while people would be in and out. Ronnie was
Speaker 3: in and out Ronnie Dyson, And after a while people
Speaker 3: started getting comfortable that it was all right. It became
Speaker 3: all right because those was that was kids got older
Speaker 3: and we didn't see the difference but it was a
Speaker 3: lot of tension. You're right. If I would go to
Speaker 3: a political rally when I was twelve, I had backslid.
Speaker 3: You in the world. You were supposed to deal with
Speaker 3: going to heaven, nothing on earth. So it was the
Speaker 3: same in the music, it was same in our social life.
Speaker 3: But this was the era where Doctor King got killed.
Speaker 3: It was a Black Power era. I was still thirteen
Speaker 3: years old and I wanted to be with my contemporaries,
Speaker 3: and we were activists, and many of them didn't stay
Speaker 3: in activism like I did. But that was the time
Speaker 3: where everybody was a member of something. You were either
Speaker 3: with us, with Doctor King, or you were with the Panthers,
Speaker 3: which were more militant, or you joined the Nation that's alon.
Speaker 3: But everybody in New York was something, and your whole
Speaker 3: life was around what you were a member of. What
Speaker 3: girls you dated was based on what silo you were
Speaker 3: in and uh and the church became had to make
Speaker 3: adjustments to that because people started changing. When I was
Speaker 3: first starting the Pentecostal Church, it was a sin for
Speaker 3: women to wear lipstick or pants. And I remember we
Speaker 3: went to Detroit. Yeah, I remember we went to Detroit
Speaker 3: to speak of a youth convention, and I saw my
Speaker 3: bishop's wife come out of the motel with some slacks on,
Speaker 3: and I called my mother collecting and said, Madam Washington's
Speaker 3: going to hell, she's wearing pants. My brother got mad
Speaker 3: at me for calling her collect.
Speaker 5: Wow man, Okay, So as of this recording, we're a
Speaker 5: few days ahead of the passing of of the infamous
Speaker 5: uh Danny Ray. James Brown's now see his his his his, uh,
Speaker 5: I guess you could say his, uh, his mouthpiece his
Speaker 5: Paul Revere, can you talk? When's the when's the first
Speaker 5: time you met James Brown?
Speaker 1: And what was that like?
Speaker 3: All right? When we when we were growing up? When
Speaker 3: I started, uh growing up. I was born in Brooklyn,
Speaker 3: Like I said, my father had a successful business and
Speaker 3: he bought a house in Hollis, Queen's. At that time,
Speaker 3: we thought Queen's Hollis was like the suburbs. And uh,
Speaker 3: James Brown had a big match in Saint Albans, and
Speaker 3: all the kids in the neighborhood gold and stand outside
Speaker 3: the gate on to see James Brown. So he was
Speaker 3: my hero. My father did his hair like James Brown,
Speaker 3: and but I never met him. So fast forward, I'm
Speaker 3: now known as a teenage preacher. And I had a
Speaker 3: youth movement that you mentioned, Questlove, and a kid came
Speaker 3: and joined the youth movement the same age as me,
Speaker 3: and he said he was from the South. He came
Speaker 3: to New York. He wanted to go to Columbia to
Speaker 3: go to law school, and he joined my youth group.
Speaker 3: His name was Teddy. He ended up being James Brown Slunt.
Speaker 3: And about seven months after he was in our youth
Speaker 3: group trying to get in law school, he got killed
Speaker 3: in a car accident in Albany. He was driving with
Speaker 3: some friends and Teddy got killed. James was having problems
Speaker 3: then because he had endulged. This is seventy three. I'm
Speaker 3: eighteen now, and he had endorsed a year before Richard
Speaker 3: Nixon for president, and a lot of the brothers was
Speaker 3: mad at him for going with Nixon. He was a
Speaker 3: seller and all, and they picking at him when he
Speaker 3: was at the Apollo in seventy two when Teddy got hill.
Speaker 3: The next year, he came to New York about Teddy,
Speaker 3: and the lead disc jockey in New York at that
Speaker 3: time was Hank Span on WWRL AM. This before FM
Speaker 3: got big, before Bright and Hank Span told him, he said,
Speaker 3: if you want to do something in memory of your son,
Speaker 3: your son joined this little youth group with this young preacher,
Speaker 3: you should do something for them, and nobody will picket
Speaker 3: you because everybody likes this little kid running around being
Speaker 3: a civil rights guy. And they set up for me
Speaker 3: to meet James Brown at his office on seventeen hundred Broadway,
Speaker 3: and I went in. I'm meeting God. That's why I
Speaker 3: told you the whole background of I stand at his
Speaker 3: gate and James Brown looked at me, and he looked
Speaker 3: me up and down, and he started talking and you
Speaker 3: had no idea what he was talking about. And he
Speaker 3: was looking at me, well, you know, if you do
Speaker 3: what I'm to do, I'm gonna do it whatever and
Speaker 3: all of that, and finally he shook my hand, which
Speaker 3: was dismissing me. So when we got outside, I told her,
Speaker 3: you know you with me, I think he said he's
Speaker 3: gonna do the show. So he told me what to do,
Speaker 3: how to pass out the flyers, how to promote. Hankspan
Speaker 3: pumped it up, and we did it at the Rko
Speaker 3: Alby Theater downtown Brooklyn, which is now the Alby Square mall.
Speaker 3: But it used to be a theater there and they
Speaker 3: had about two thousand seats and two shows was going
Speaker 3: to sell out four thousand seats. Now, I didn't know
Speaker 3: they had picked to James Brown, and I didn't know
Speaker 3: that they were worried about what was gonna happen. I
Speaker 3: went out there and did everything he said. And he
Speaker 3: pulls up that night in seventy three in the limousine
Speaker 3: and he jumps out the limousine and the driveway behind
Speaker 3: the backstage and he looks at his manager, mister Bobbitt.
Speaker 3: Mister Bobbitt, how they do Mister Bobba said, they sold
Speaker 3: every ticket out and there's about five hundred people outside.
Speaker 3: He said what he said? Yeah, and he told me
Speaker 3: you come with me, son, And I walked behind James
Speaker 3: Brown in the building and he went and combed his
Speaker 3: hair out, and he's talking and again I don't know
Speaker 3: what he's saying. And he gets ready to go on stage.
Speaker 3: Danny raised introducing him the band that hit. People are screaming,
Speaker 3: and he walks on the stage in the wings at
Speaker 3: my show. Now, mind you'm eighteen years old? Was Miles Davis.
Speaker 3: And Miles had come to see James perform and I'm
Speaker 3: standing there between James Brown and Miles Davis and I
Speaker 3: thought I had died and went them. In the middle
Speaker 3: of the show, James stopped the music. I think he
Speaker 3: had done trying me or something that was slow, and
Speaker 3: he stopped and told the band hut it and they
Speaker 3: stopped and he called me out. He said, I want
Speaker 3: to bring out this young man who made the night happen.
Speaker 3: His youth movement, y'all help. My son was a part
Speaker 3: and I want him to lead us in prayer memory
Speaker 3: of my son. So I'm like nervous. I'm used to
Speaker 3: every report, but I've never been on a show business stage.
Speaker 3: I walk out to the mic and I look at
Speaker 3: him and he said, pray, go on and pray. You
Speaker 3: know how to pray, don't you. I started freak and uh.
Speaker 3: And when I came off, Uh. James Brown sent for
Speaker 3: me in his dressing room after the show, and he
Speaker 3: was sitting on the hair drive because he would always
Speaker 3: have this happen till he died. After every show, he
Speaker 3: rolled his hair back up and uh, and I uh
Speaker 3: start talking to him and I'm trying to, you know,
Speaker 3: communicate with him, and he's like the hair drives making
Speaker 3: all his noise. He kept ha, what do you say?
Speaker 6: Ha?
Speaker 3: And he finally said to me, I'll be back in
Speaker 3: New York in two or three weeks. I'm gonna play
Speaker 3: in your career. And I met him in his office
Speaker 3: and he said, uh, I'm take you with me to California.
Speaker 3: I said to California. He said yeah, and we went
Speaker 3: to California. He took me with him to do Soul
Speaker 3: Train and he said to Don Connius, mister Caneis, He said,
Speaker 3: I want you to meet this young man. He's a teenager.
Speaker 3: I want him to give me an award on Soul Train.
Speaker 3: By then he had the big payback out and uh
Speaker 3: and uh he said. Don Coneia said, we don't do
Speaker 3: awards on this show. And he said this Canais, do
Speaker 3: you know how to sing payback? And uncle? He said, no,
Speaker 3: you do that here? Were you gonna singing unless you
Speaker 3: let this kid give me this award?
Speaker 1: And I went on.
Speaker 3: And I went on. Sol Tray gave j Brown this award.
Speaker 3: I was the biggest guy Brooklyn did. Because now all
Speaker 3: the girls that wouldn't give me a date because who
Speaker 3: wanted to day of preaching, right, wanted to date me
Speaker 3: because I was on sol trade with James Brown, and
Speaker 3: I became in many ways like Teddy because I was
Speaker 3: the same age, ambitious. I reminded him a son he
Speaker 3: lost and he became the father that I didn't have
Speaker 3: because my father left us when I was about twelve,
Speaker 3: and we're back, moved back to Brooklyn, We're in the projects,
Speaker 3: mother on welfare, and James started taking me around the
Speaker 3: world and he kept saying, I want you to stay
Speaker 3: in the ministry. I promise your mother you would leave
Speaker 3: the church. So he'd send me home for me to preach,
Speaker 3: do my youth work, send back for me, and he
Speaker 3: became like a father.
Speaker 1: Figured to me, Wow, wow, that's an incredible story. And
Speaker 1: I would know how you got on now. I get it.
Speaker 1: I get it now.
Speaker 6: So when did I'm just curious since I know you
Speaker 6: guys had the father relationship, but you politically you were
Speaker 6: growing and you were growing further and further apart. So
Speaker 6: did you just how did that work? Did y'all have conversation?
Speaker 6: Did you not feel right?
Speaker 3: We would argue James Brown was a very conservative guy
Speaker 3: and to the right of the right and from Gusta Georgia.
Speaker 3: He was a southern conservative guy and and he didn't
Speaker 3: believe or not. But he used to always say to me,
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're doing all that marching. Jane
Speaker 3: Brown always had one or two guns with him well,
Speaker 3: and he was a regular country guy like that. But
Speaker 3: we would debate and argue. But he had just like
Speaker 3: him for me. So he would always explain to his guys,
Speaker 3: Reverend is more militant, but that's my son. And he
Speaker 3: would take me in these rooms. And as I got known,
Speaker 3: he would tell people, y'all got to accept Rev. I'm
Speaker 3: talking about lot of the whites, because he take me
Speaker 3: the crossover shows. I'll never forget. Later in his life,
Speaker 3: they gave him the Kennedy Center Award, and he had
Speaker 3: made them have me write the line of notes in
Speaker 3: the program. And when I got there that night to
Speaker 3: the Kennedy Center, it was George Bush was president. He
Speaker 3: was in you know the President's whatever they call that
Speaker 3: where you sit up in the booth, and next to
Speaker 3: him the box they call it the presidential box. Next
Speaker 3: to him was Coldon Powell, and then there was the guests,
Speaker 3: and James Brown said, give Reverend the box. So these
Speaker 3: people all never said mister Brown. He being honored. Carolvin
Speaker 3: let him. They always do five, said mister Brown. Reverend
Speaker 3: Shoptons running for president under Democrats against mister Bush. We
Speaker 3: can't do that, he says, you gonna do it tonight.
Speaker 3: And I'm sitting up there in the box now against Bush,
Speaker 3: and Bush is two or three people down. So when
Speaker 3: the Nimate, we all go in this little VIP area.
Speaker 3: Only the president could go and honor Reeds and their guests.
Speaker 3: And I come in. And this is how James Brown was.
Speaker 3: James Brown stood there, looked at me. President staid over there,
Speaker 3: mister Bush, and George Bush comes over. He says, mister Brown,
Speaker 3: unted the happy with us tonight. He says, look here,
Speaker 3: I know you in the revend got you all differences,
Speaker 3: but his music tonight differences. I'm calling this James Brown.
Speaker 3: None of that bad ja James Brown. He gonna tell
Speaker 3: the president what you gonna do. And George Bush and
Speaker 3: I later in life would laugh about that. Every time
Speaker 3: I see George Bush, he says, did you ever tell
Speaker 3: anybody about James Brown and me and you at the
Speaker 3: at the Kennedy shen.
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 5: Wait, can I ask Okay, so James Brown won't be
Speaker 5: the first or the last. I mean, I guess the
Speaker 5: paraphrase term is the Rags to Richard's story that has
Speaker 5: pro probably more conservative leanings even though you know they
Speaker 5: say they're other people, but has more conservative leanings and.
Speaker 7: He just said it out loud.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the thing is is that what I noticed
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 5: Past election, we just had the amount of rappers that
Speaker 5: were kind of going down the same path this well,
Speaker 5: this thing of like pull yourself up by the bootstraps
Speaker 5: and you know, if I do it, you can do it.
Speaker 5: What do you think is the mindset that produces that?
Speaker 5: I guess from him it's like I worked hard to
Speaker 5: get here and everyone should follow my path.
Speaker 1: Or is that like where he was coming from.
Speaker 3: I think that it's some of that. A lot of
Speaker 3: it is that that I work hard, you can work hard.
Speaker 3: And some of that is that they just were afraid
Speaker 3: it would interfere where they were trying to go. But
Speaker 3: the problem that they had with Jane is as conservative,
Speaker 3: as conservative as he was politically, he had this real
Speaker 3: streak of black in him and he refused his music
Speaker 3: kept him black, and he wouldn't apologize for blackness, and
Speaker 3: I think that was the difference, because I would go
Speaker 3: in places and they would tell him. I was with
Speaker 3: him one night he wanted to do the Tonight show
Speaker 3: and they want to do the soundcheck, and he did
Speaker 3: the sound check like he was at the Apollo, and
Speaker 3: the guy told him said, mister Brown, you're gonna have
Speaker 3: to water it down our kind of audiences a little,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of tell him that you know they
Speaker 3: wouldn't it's too hard hitting. And I'll never get And
Speaker 3: this is why I love James Brown, despite his politics,
Speaker 3: and I loved him because he was like a father.
Speaker 3: He looked at the guy he said, if you want
Speaker 3: to Sammy Davis, you should have booked him. He said,
Speaker 3: you're gonna get James Brown knight.
Speaker 1: And that's what I love it.
Speaker 3: And that's really, in many ways what he would put
Speaker 3: in me. He said, I want you to be your
Speaker 3: own style. He said, whatever you do. We used to
Speaker 3: ride around he had about thirty two thirty three cars.
Speaker 3: That is a state. We'd always be riding around one
Speaker 3: of his I think one of the reason he liked me.
Speaker 3: He had a kids, but a lot of his kids
Speaker 3: didn't hang around him. His daughters were still very young,
Speaker 3: and I used to want to hear all the stories
Speaker 3: and all advice because he talked incessantly. And his other
Speaker 3: sons that were, you know, younger than Teddy, but my
Speaker 3: almost my age. Then they wanted to get away. They
Speaker 3: didn't want their elections. I wanted all of it. And
Speaker 3: we just ride around in the dark because there wasn't
Speaker 3: no street lights in the woods where James Browns the
Speaker 3: state is, and he would be talking to me. I
Speaker 3: remember he stopped one night and he said to me,
Speaker 3: I wasn't on more than twenty one twenty two days,
Speaker 3: he said, reverend, because everybody was surname. He believed in
Speaker 3: that respect. Thing he said, Reverend, I want you to
Speaker 3: promise me one thing. I said, what's that? He said,
Speaker 3: promise me you'll never be one of the boys. He said.
Speaker 3: I know you're a preacher, I know your civil rights,
Speaker 3: but don't be like none of them. Be different, he said,
Speaker 3: O always am different. When I do my first two
Speaker 3: chords of a song, they know that's James Brown. Don't
Speaker 3: nobody sound like me. And he pulled up in a
Speaker 3: parking lot next to Daddy Grace's church in Augusta, Georgian
Speaker 3: and we just sat there and I'm like, what are
Speaker 3: we doing here? And after about a minute or two,
Speaker 3: he said, you hear that? I said, here, what he
Speaker 3: said that? I said, I don't hear nothing, but they
Speaker 3: having church inside. He said, listen to that drum and
Speaker 3: I listened and I said, yeah, I hear. He says,
Speaker 3: that's where I learned the sound. They're on the one,
Speaker 3: he said. I'm on a one three beat. Everybody else
Speaker 3: is on the two fourth beat. Learn how to be
Speaker 3: on the one. Set your own beat, he said. And
Speaker 3: if you set your own beat, people always remember you.
Speaker 3: And you do your own style. And when I started
Speaker 3: a lot of activism in your face kind of activism,
Speaker 3: and people you say, oh, he was too bold. Why
Speaker 3: am I marching in Vincent Hurst? Why am I doing this?
Speaker 3: You can put out a press release and make a statement.
Speaker 3: I got it from Ain't Brown. I developed my own style.
Speaker 3: I took a lot of flat, but my father figure
Speaker 3: told me I had to be different in bold, and
Speaker 3: I did that. And he used to laugh, saying, Rev
Speaker 3: just doing the James Brown and civil rights rest of them.
Speaker 3: Buscher don't know, he said, he's doing the raw stuff.
Speaker 3: He's wraw he's wraw. I remember we were in his office.
Speaker 3: I tell you this story. He's in his office one
Speaker 3: day in nineteen eighty two and I had to come
Speaker 3: down to visit him, and he said, I hear y'all
Speaker 3: watching to try to get doctor King a birthday holiday.
Speaker 3: I said, well, I said, you tight with the Republicans.
Speaker 3: Why don't you see if you can help us out.
Speaker 3: He said, I can go to President whatever I want.
Speaker 3: And he hit us in the car and secondary picking
Speaker 3: it up. Get the White House on the Phones's about
Speaker 3: even o'clock of the ball And I said to myself,
Speaker 3: yeah right, So we going through the day, went out,
Speaker 3: got something to eat, come back about four o'clock. She's
Speaker 3: the interconse that the White House is on the phone.
Speaker 3: Mister Brown, I looked at him. I was a little
Speaker 3: shot man in press. He picks up the phone and uh,
Speaker 3: he talks to them. Then he hangs up the phone
Speaker 3: and he looks at me. He says, January fifteen is
Speaker 3: doctor King's birthday. He invited me up. Didn't get a holiday,
Speaker 3: didn't get a holiday, but they agreed to meet with
Speaker 3: him that day. So I told him they just using
Speaker 3: you as a show piece. He said, you're right, he said,
Speaker 3: and you're going with me. So I went back to
Speaker 3: New York January fourteenth. He flew me to Augusta to
Speaker 3: fly back to Washington. I kept saying, I can meet
Speaker 3: you in Washington.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna ride over Washington.
Speaker 3: No, you got to fly with me. So we in
Speaker 3: Delta Airlines because his private plane was in the shop,
Speaker 3: and were sitting in the.
Speaker 2: Wait he playing any new alternator.
Speaker 3: Playing in the shot. He played in the shot, So
Speaker 3: were sitting in first class. His bodyguards, coach were sitting there,
Speaker 3: and he looks at me. When the plane levels up,
Speaker 3: he said, reverend. I said, yes, sir. He said, I
Speaker 3: want you to do me a favor. I said, what's that?
Speaker 3: He said? When we land, were going by Bobby Bennett's place.
Speaker 3: Bobby Bennett was one of the famous Flames which stopped singing,
Speaker 3: but they were still cool. And I said, oh, mister
Speaker 3: Bennet okay, because I met him a couple of times
Speaker 3: he come out to summer the show. He said, mister Bennett,
Speaker 3: I want him to he's gonna tighten up my hair.
Speaker 3: I want him to do your hair like mine. I said,
Speaker 3: you want him do what? He said? I want him
Speaker 3: to do your hair like mine. And I said, all right, again,
Speaker 3: this is my father. My father never I ain't emulate nothing.
Speaker 3: So I like the abandoned son that found a man
Speaker 3: that really felt I was worthy of being like him.
Speaker 3: It was a real self identity thing. Bobby Bennett did
Speaker 3: my hair and became you know. I started wearing the
Speaker 3: comp and we went met with Ronald Reagan. When we
Speaker 3: came back uh from the White House, got in the
Speaker 3: plane headed back to gusta plane that was off again.
Speaker 3: He's I got one more favor, Reverend. I said, what's that?
Speaker 3: He said, I want you to wear your hair like
Speaker 3: that as long as I'm alive. And that's where I
Speaker 3: got the hairstyle from. And I'll never forget. Years later,
Speaker 3: when he got in trouble when he was older and
Speaker 3: went to jail, he would call me from the jail
Speaker 3: about three times a week. And you have to call
Speaker 3: collect because he's prisoner. And he they said, collect call
Speaker 3: from the South Carolina Correction Facility, which you're accepting. I'm
Speaker 3: halfway not being able to play bills, but I'd have
Speaker 3: to take his call. I take the call. He would
Speaker 3: never ask me how my kids work. By then I
Speaker 3: had two daughters.
Speaker 1: Nothing.
Speaker 3: First question was Reverend, how's your hair? Because he was
Speaker 3: checking to see if I let with it? And she
Speaker 3: slept with it. And that's where they asked out from.
Speaker 3: And I took a lot of flat from a lot
Speaker 3: of Afro centric brothers.
Speaker 6: You sacrificed for us, but you sacrificed for us like
Speaker 6: it wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Be a father thing had a father in my life,
Speaker 3: like my father.
Speaker 7: So how you I just ask you, Rev. Since we're
Speaker 7: on the hair. You've had this hairstyle for such.
Speaker 6: A long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how you here?
Speaker 3: And now?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 7: Because it's still beautiful now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those that know, don't say. Those that say don't know.
Speaker 7: Not even the grease.
Speaker 9: You ain't even gonna talk the grease decks on it,
Speaker 9: red words.
Speaker 6: I mean, your edges are beautiful. So whatever it is,
Speaker 6: what it is, down with a two bresh real it.
Speaker 1: That's that's a credible, right, Rev.
Speaker 5: I need to know. I think it's easier now because
Speaker 5: of the social media and the Internet. Okay, but pre Internet,
Speaker 5: let's say, uh before nineteen ninety seven. I mean, even
Speaker 5: though the Internet was out there, but it wasn't as viral.
Speaker 5: If one needs to contact you for assistance or your presence.
Speaker 5: How does one do that?
Speaker 4: And what is the.
Speaker 5: Thought process and the sort of decision making that you
Speaker 5: go through before you decide yes, I'm going to take
Speaker 5: this on because I can imagine that. Actually, let me
Speaker 5: start with how many calls do you get every day
Speaker 5: on an average to take up a cause?
Speaker 3: Well, before ninety seven, I always, since ninety one, had
Speaker 3: an office, and I got that from James. James, you
Speaker 3: said you're not in business if you don't have office.
Speaker 3: I always had a stay up, started with two or three.
Speaker 3: Now we got offices in seven cities, regional offices, and
Speaker 3: the no government money. We raise our money and we
Speaker 3: have crisis departments that vet out cases. Usually a lawyer
Speaker 3: will call me because they want me to help publicize
Speaker 3: it like it started it with Vernon Mason would call
Speaker 3: me and say, sudden happened, kid got killed, Howard Beach.
Speaker 3: We vetted it. They give us information, and I would
Speaker 3: go and say, we're gonna do a march. We're going
Speaker 3: out in the neighborhood. Or now Ben Crump calls me
Speaker 3: like he called me when George Flutt family wanted to
Speaker 3: reach me. And you know that's one of the things.
Speaker 3: That was always crazy to me. They would always say
Speaker 3: our shop that just wants publicity. That's why people called
Speaker 3: me is they wanted me to blow it up. Nobody
Speaker 3: called me to keep a secret. So we would we
Speaker 3: would come in and we would decide that we thought
Speaker 3: it was legitimate, and we'd rally people around it, because
Speaker 3: if you don't create that kind of drama, you will
Speaker 3: never create the media. Because it wasn't social media. So
Speaker 3: other people said, it's a Shane nineteen eighty six, they
Speaker 3: killed this boy Michael Griffins and Howard Beach because he
Speaker 3: was black and nobody knew what to do. I said, well,
Speaker 3: let's go out there. And they were saying it might
Speaker 3: have been a mugget, it might have been a love triangle.
Speaker 3: I said, if we march, everybody know what it is.
Speaker 3: What do you mean March? I said, we got to
Speaker 3: go out there and dramatize, So I called him March.
Speaker 3: We went out there. As we start marching down the street,
Speaker 3: maybe about five hundred of us, there must have been
Speaker 3: seven eight hundred white stuff coming out calling us the
Speaker 3: N words, throwing bananas and everything at us. And I said,
Speaker 3: now everybody understand, it's a race thing because you bring
Speaker 3: it out. I knew if you go in certain sections
Speaker 3: Benson nurse Lady with you said Hawkins, they were gonna
Speaker 3: make the case because they gonna react, and that became
Speaker 3: on television. You had to remember I didn't come out
Speaker 3: of Georgia like doctor King or out of Chicago with Jesse.
Speaker 3: How come out of New York? You competing with Times Square,
Speaker 3: Statue of Liberty, Empire, statement Wall Street. New York is
Speaker 3: used to everything. So you got to be dramatic to
Speaker 3: get attention on your cause. So people say I was
Speaker 3: flamboyant and vodacious. You had to be in New York.
Speaker 3: You can't send out a press release in New York
Speaker 3: and get attention. You got to do something, and that's
Speaker 3: what we would do. We would do things to grab
Speaker 3: the media attention. The outrageousness of it made the case
Speaker 3: which changed the racial profiling laws. But you had to
Speaker 3: be able to dramatize. I remember when we was watching
Speaker 3: at Vincent Hurrys when they killed Yussef Hawkins, and they
Speaker 3: were throwing watermelons at us and calling us words, and
Speaker 3: one of them, Saturdays, got stabbed me and I remember
Speaker 3: I was marching locked arms with Yusef Hawkins brother and
Speaker 3: he said, Reverend, hell you right, they're acting crazy. This
Speaker 3: is gonna be wild on the TV news tonight they'll
Speaker 3: know now it was race to kill my brother. He said,
Speaker 3: this is gonna be great. I said, yeah, if we
Speaker 3: lived to the end of this watch because they were
Speaker 3: so crazy, even I got dirvious. But that's what you
Speaker 3: have to do. You've got to be able to strategically
Speaker 3: know how to raise the drama level and that edge.
Speaker 3: You got to be real careful and disciplined about and
Speaker 3: you got to be ready to be different. People would
Speaker 3: not do that. It was me learning that the actors
Speaker 3: from James Brown, combining to what I learned in the
Speaker 3: King Movement and trying to bring it up north.
Speaker 8: So the question that that's interesting you say that because
Speaker 8: one of the questions I have for you, because you know,
Speaker 8: you are a reverend, and you said, you know that's
Speaker 8: your calling, but you are you know, very.
Speaker 2: Much a celebrity as well.
Speaker 8: So how do you kind of walk that line between
Speaker 8: you know, your your ministry and your calling but also
Speaker 8: having to be a public figure and if not an
Speaker 8: outright entertainer so to speak. But you know, like you
Speaker 8: just said, you have to, you know, get people's attention.
Speaker 8: How how have you walked that line throughout your career Because.
Speaker 3: I always am honest with myself that I'm not an actor.
Speaker 3: I'm not a singer and dancer. My celebrity came from
Speaker 3: my activism, not my activism from my way around. A
Speaker 3: lot of celebrities try to act like activists. I do
Speaker 3: what I believe and and I won't do it if
Speaker 3: I don't believe in it. I'm the kind of person
Speaker 3: that's very disciplined like that. And I remind myself, kid,
Speaker 3: you've grown up broken home on welfare in Brooklyn, that
Speaker 3: only God could have put me where I am. And
Speaker 3: he put me there for a reason. And I don't
Speaker 3: want to get him to drop me for forgetting the
Speaker 3: reason I'm there. When James Brown and others tried to
Speaker 3: get me to just you can drop that you can
Speaker 3: do entertaining. No, I gotta do this. This is what
Speaker 3: I'm call I would have never known you, mister Brown.
Speaker 3: It wasn't forgotten. And I really believe that.
Speaker 8: When you talk about you know, doing you know, getting
Speaker 8: behind stuff that you believe in, do you think in
Speaker 8: any way like the Toronto the Tounta Brawley case. Did
Speaker 8: that change? I guess the way you were vet things?
Speaker 8: Uh you know in your career.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. How did that affect?
Speaker 3: When the lawyers called me about Broadley and I was
Speaker 3: out there three or four months after, you know, they
Speaker 3: started the case and we're moving. I went on the
Speaker 3: lawyer's word and I believed them, and I believe this girl.
Speaker 3: Why would not. You got people now that believe when
Speaker 3: people say things and win the meet to error. But
Speaker 3: I learned from that to vet it more carefully. Uh
Speaker 3: so that every every eye doted, every tea's crossed to
Speaker 3: the best of your ability. You never know all the
Speaker 3: way what somebody's gonna do. Because a year after I
Speaker 3: got in Brawley, I stood up for five kids accused
Speaker 3: of a rapeist Central Park that they confessed to. I
Speaker 3: ended up right on that one. They said I was
Speaker 3: wrong on Broadley. It all happened within the same year.
Speaker 3: So you taking a leap of faith, But I learned
Speaker 3: not to take crazy leaps. Try to vet it as
Speaker 3: much as you can and be careful, because you don't
Speaker 3: want to discredit the movement by getting in situations that
Speaker 3: blow up in your face, like right now we have
Speaker 3: three policemen indicted for killing George Floyd. We don't know
Speaker 3: what the jury's gonna do when they go to trial.
Speaker 3: We went and helped blow up Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman gott
Speaker 3: to quit it, and some people will say I was
Speaker 3: wrong on Zimmerman. They said he was not guilty. But
Speaker 3: Trayvon Martin is dead. So you've got to be willing
Speaker 3: to stick in there and take the bad days with
Speaker 3: the good. But make sure your intentions are good and
Speaker 3: right and that you're as careful as you could be,
Speaker 3: which is why I'm not getting any cases like that
Speaker 3: since because I vetted, even if my lawyer brings it
Speaker 3: to me, I vetted as much as I can, and
Speaker 3: like I'm a prosecutor, I want to know every angle.
Speaker 5: My question is there's just you know, we're going all
Speaker 5: over the place now. In two thousand and four, when
Speaker 5: you decided what means you decide to try to run
Speaker 5: for president in two thousand and four.
Speaker 3: I looked at the fact that in eighty four and
Speaker 3: eighty eight Jesse had run and had really moved the
Speaker 3: party more too towards the left, which we believed in,
Speaker 3: and nobody had picked that up. And I'm looking at
Speaker 3: the fact that we had just come out of the
Speaker 3: war in Iraq and there were people that had moved
Speaker 3: the party to the right, if you remember clintoning, them
Speaker 3: were triangular and they were like almost centrist. And I
Speaker 3: wanted to run to get into debates to bring up
Speaker 3: racial profiling, to bring up police misconduct and how the
Speaker 3: war Iraq was wrong. So I ran to try to
Speaker 3: be on the stage to get a national hearing on
Speaker 3: our issues. Uh. And that's what I did. And in
Speaker 3: the debates, I would bring up stuff that nobody would
Speaker 3: bring up with They had to deal with race, they
Speaker 3: had to deal with policing, they had to deal with Iraq.
Speaker 3: And I knew I wasn't gonna win, But I won
Speaker 3: because I made those InTru that those issues become central
Speaker 3: and uh, and I got a good vote and that
Speaker 3: that is when mainstream white America started saying that, well,
Speaker 3: he not just some guy out there angry. He really
Speaker 3: knows the issues. But the point was if we could
Speaker 3: get on the mainstream stage and our giall issues, we
Speaker 3: could affect policy. And that's why I rang.
Speaker 6: Can I ask you it's interesting because the issue recently
Speaker 6: came up. I was watching a new show about Van Jones,
Speaker 6: and I love the way you ride your relationships because
Speaker 6: you were just talking earlier about how, of course you
Speaker 6: ran against Bush. Your relationship is not the same with
Speaker 6: Bush as it was then. Relationship is not the same
Speaker 6: with a lot of people, right sick Clinton's how do
Speaker 6: you walk this line? I mean, in the Van Jones comparison,
Speaker 6: some people were saying, well, why are you in pictures
Speaker 6: with this person?
Speaker 7: You know, we don't.
Speaker 6: That doesn't happen with Al Sharpton, right, Like, everything seems
Speaker 6: to be very planned out in a way, but yet.
Speaker 7: You still work together. So can you kind of break
Speaker 7: that down because.
Speaker 3: You gotta let him know it's not personal. But just
Speaker 3: like you got your beliefs, I have mine. So Donald
Speaker 3: Trump I knew in New York. I marched on him
Speaker 3: about Central Park. Then he tried that he was Democrat
Speaker 3: when Dinkins was in but I when Trump won, about
Speaker 3: a month after he won, he called me. I'd been
Speaker 3: on Morning Joe that morning and Joe asked me about Trump.
Speaker 3: He said, you know him, you fought with him, and
Speaker 3: then he tried to be friendly and I said, well,
Speaker 3: you got to understand New York to understand Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And I explained. Trump was an out of borough guy
Speaker 3: in the Queens going the money, but he wasn't part
Speaker 3: of the established, He wasn't at the power spots. So
Speaker 3: he had this chip on his shoulder to day that
Speaker 3: the Park Avenue guys looked down on him and his father,
Speaker 3: and he was able to translate that to a lot
Speaker 3: of white, blue collar working class people who he never was.
Speaker 3: But he wasn't part of the accepted rothschilds of the world. Right.
Speaker 3: So when I got off the show, this is about
Speaker 3: December first, I think twenty thirteen, And when I got
Speaker 3: off the show, No. Twenty sixteen, when he ran and
Speaker 3: I was in a board meeting of National Action Network,
Speaker 3: my organization, and my cell phone rang and I looked down.
Speaker 3: I didn't know the number, and I had it on silence,
Speaker 3: and so I let it ring. It rang again, so
Speaker 3: I said, maybe something happened. So I picked up the
Speaker 3: phone and whisper, I'm in a board meeting. Called me later,
Speaker 3: whoever this is because I didn't know the number, and
Speaker 3: the boy said, can you hold on for the President elect?
Speaker 3: And I said, They said can you hold on for
Speaker 3: the president elect? So I put my finger like I'm
Speaker 3: in church, and I walk out the barnment. Now go
Speaker 3: in the hall of where we were and Trump comes on, al,
Speaker 3: I saw you this morning all morning, Joe, you got me.
Speaker 3: You're right, I wasn't outside and look at me. Now
Speaker 3: I'm the president elect of the United States. Can you
Speaker 3: believe it? I said, no, I am having a hard
Speaker 3: time belief he said. He said, well, he said, look
Speaker 3: at you. You got a TV show, but you're still marching.
Speaker 3: They never thought he one of us would be anything.
Speaker 3: He says, I want you to come to Marrow logo.
Speaker 3: We're gonna talk. I said, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 5: He said.
Speaker 3: I said, I'm not doing that. I said, to all respect,
Speaker 3: you will not do the photo out with me.
Speaker 6: We're not going to do a lot of people came
Speaker 6: to Trump Tower in those first months.
Speaker 3: Not me. I will not do it. And the whole
Speaker 3: time he was in he called me two or three times,
Speaker 3: and I wouldn't go to the White House at all
Speaker 3: because I understand from my background growing up in both
Speaker 3: the church and in show business, optics are important everything,
Speaker 3: and you give them the photo, they use it whatever
Speaker 3: way they want, and I would not give him that photo.
Speaker 1: How this bing was it to see that photo when
Speaker 1: he had the.
Speaker 5: Whatever the fifty black preachers or whatever, or just in general,
Speaker 5: how this ming was it to see how easy it
Speaker 5: was to be.
Speaker 4: I'm assuming no r yes, but it was.
Speaker 3: It was disheartening because you know that he's using you,
Speaker 3: and knowing Donald Trump, he probably didn't give people that much.
Speaker 3: People get all enthralled just to go to the White House.
Speaker 3: And the dvantage I had questlove is by growing up
Speaker 3: around people like Jesse and Night James Brown, I would
Speaker 3: impress it all I've been in the White House. I
Speaker 3: could take four years not going to the White House.
Speaker 3: But a lot of them have never been invited before.
Speaker 3: And the standing with the president it mean nothing to me.
Speaker 3: They're gonna be a new president in four years. Joe
Speaker 3: Biden and I talked, but Joe Biden will be gone
Speaker 3: in four years from the White House. I'll be out
Speaker 3: shopped as long as I live. I'm gonna stand for
Speaker 3: what I stand for. I'm not gonna give that up
Speaker 3: for some temporary photo up. And I think, and I
Speaker 3: tell a lot of those people that is, don't play
Speaker 3: yourself like that they may need you and will discard
Speaker 3: you when they don't need you. It ain't personal. The
Speaker 3: cause is bigger than all of us.
Speaker 5: Were there certain preachers or community leaders that you knew
Speaker 5: that were considering that that you personally have to talk
Speaker 5: out of doing that.
Speaker 3: I talked to one or two that I talked out of,
Speaker 3: and I talked to one that I couldn't talk out of.
Speaker 3: And I won't. I won't, you know, give up their
Speaker 3: names and I will tell them. I know Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is a user and he will drop you.
Speaker 3: And and as soon as the photos over which he did,
Speaker 3: and look what he did in his own buddies, He
Speaker 3: let a lot of them get indicted all he parted
Speaker 3: some of them. I mean, that's who he is. And
Speaker 3: you don't ever deal with a guy like that.
Speaker 6: Here's no ethics, al Can you please give us the backstory,
Speaker 6: your idea, the backstory behind some of these pardons.
Speaker 7: I'm confused, like.
Speaker 3: I think that he felt that if he pardoned some
Speaker 3: of them, My honest to God belief is that he
Speaker 3: was looking out for him, thinking that they would not
Speaker 3: sit up in jail and tell on him because now
Speaker 3: he can be prosecuted on a state level. I think
Speaker 3: he did that to cover the fact that he let
Speaker 3: Lil Wayne and Kodak go and then to let twenty
Speaker 3: of his boys go. So he was trying to act
Speaker 3: like he be in balanced.
Speaker 4: Actually I guess.
Speaker 7: Go ahead, give it up, give it.
Speaker 5: The Wayne situation was that, you know, he was on
Speaker 5: a private jet headed to Miami and he had things
Speaker 5: on him, and of course the pilot win in Karen
Speaker 5: mode and kind of called the police ahead of time
Speaker 5: when he landed, like with clients, and they have guns
Speaker 5: on the plane. So of course he gets nabbed. He
Speaker 5: was already on probation. And what happens is his lawyer
Speaker 5: called up the governor of Florida and was like, can
Speaker 5: you do whatever you whatever you can do, just help us.
Speaker 5: So the governor gets him off. And what happens is
Speaker 5: may be a month before the elections, Wayne pretty much
Speaker 5: uh you know Wayne's uh, Wayne's people got a call.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: Trump had said like, give me any celebrity, anyone, anyone
Speaker 5: forced me. I need someone that's big in the black
Speaker 5: community and the and the government.
Speaker 1: Remember what he.
Speaker 5: Did for Wayne, And it was sort of like a
Speaker 5: you owe me thing, And what I believed happened was
Speaker 5: that Wayne went in thinking that was a one off
Speaker 5: photo op thing, did the photo op thing, and then
Speaker 5: it was sort of like the bait and switch. Will
Speaker 5: you travel with me and and do the rest of
Speaker 5: the campaign. They were like no, we you said the
Speaker 5: one photo op thing. And then when that was broken,
Speaker 5: Trump got on the governor and then the governor was like, well,
Speaker 5: I will just resend your you know, your part, your
Speaker 5: probation whatever, and you got to go back to jail.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was it was a.
Speaker 2: It was a way bigger story always.
Speaker 8: I was gonna ask, I was curious to know your
Speaker 8: work with with younger activists and what are some of
Speaker 8: the differences that you see between your generation and the
Speaker 8: younger generation of actors, be it you know, Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 8: or you know, just any of the youth organizations now.
Speaker 8: And what are also some of the I guess some
Speaker 8: of the difficulties you have in uh, you know, in
Speaker 8: dealing with the youth activists. Are they more receptive to
Speaker 8: listen to, you know, to take advice from an elder
Speaker 8: or did they just seem to be like, oh well no,
Speaker 8: we want to do it our own way.
Speaker 2: How how is that relationship for you.
Speaker 3: Some of them doing the Trey Vond piece was tension.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't want to listen to the to
Speaker 3: the old God. We want to make our name. And
Speaker 3: I kept telling them. I said, let me tell you something.
Speaker 3: These cameras are gonna leave and we have to be organized.
Speaker 3: And gradually we started getting together, the three sisters that
Speaker 3: started Black Lives Matter, Lesia, Gods of Sister Colors, all
Speaker 3: three of them and I started talking a lot, and
Speaker 3: they started seeing this thing was difficult. I started seeing
Speaker 3: that sincerity. So we worked together. They do my TV show.
Speaker 3: We talked. When I did a book last year, they
Speaker 3: did the book, taught me virtually. Then you got some
Speaker 3: that's just out there, that's totally wild. Then you have
Speaker 3: others that are sincere. And I tell them there's no
Speaker 3: difference in y'all want to do it your way. I
Speaker 3: want to do it different than Jesse. Jesse did it
Speaker 3: different than doctor King. That's part of life. But we
Speaker 3: are all in the same cause. And I might I
Speaker 3: must say last year when we called the Big March
Speaker 3: in Washington and we are in the middle of a pandemic,
Speaker 3: we had aw hundred thousand people, all of them came
Speaker 3: and I told them I don't I don't have to
Speaker 3: put no shade on you. You ain't got to worry about
Speaker 3: being I'm gonna be our shop there anyway I can
Speaker 3: help y'all. Y'all can help me, but you just can't
Speaker 3: do no violent stuff around me. And most of them
Speaker 3: are not viny, and I won't do I won't make
Speaker 3: you go to church. If you want to throw a brick,
Speaker 3: let's make a compromise and we kind of get along
Speaker 3: like that. I have a big youth department in my
Speaker 3: organization because I intend to somebody's gonna take my organization
Speaker 3: and go for so a lot of the things I
Speaker 3: have my youth work with their youth. They're the same age.
Speaker 3: Some of them are younger that are in national action.
Speaker 3: There were and always been that you had to remember
Speaker 3: in history. Jesse was with doctor King's Stokely Carmichael then
Speaker 3: was Black Power was on the other side of the
Speaker 3: King thing. They were all the same age. John Lewis, Jesse, Jackson, Stokely,
Speaker 3: Comac or rap Brown always the same age. There's always
Speaker 3: been differences in every generation. So a lot of the
Speaker 3: young actors say we speak for the youth. Know, you
Speaker 3: speak for some youth. Some youth still go to church.
Speaker 3: Some youth are non vinent. I don't speak for all
Speaker 3: the elders. Everybody's got their piece work, your peace, and
Speaker 3: let's try to make something happen. And my thing is
Speaker 3: that it's a big highway out here, and as long
Speaker 3: as we don't switch lanes without a signal, we won't
Speaker 3: have an accent.
Speaker 6: Now, I was just gonna say, remmy that scene and
Speaker 6: Malcolm Xta THEREV was in when they little aspects of
Speaker 6: what was going on.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I tell you about that scene. I know we
Speaker 3: got to go, but I'll tell you about that scene.
Speaker 3: Spike Lee called me and asked me to do that scene,
Speaker 3: and I told him, you know that I was only
Speaker 3: eighty or nine years old, got killed. I'm just gonna
Speaker 3: put you up there because Spike Lee, Russell Simmons and
Speaker 3: I all grew up together in New York, getting on
Speaker 3: at around the same time. That's our generation. Spike's my generation.
Speaker 3: Spike about two years younger than me. You see, I'm
Speaker 3: always mentioning Spikes movies. Denzeler not the same age. That's
Speaker 3: our generation. And I can tell you, Denzel about you
Speaker 3: know John Davids getting more pots than you now because.
Speaker 7: That explains you on the dance floor. Now, now I
Speaker 7: get it.
Speaker 6: You was ah okay, all right, I see you on.
Speaker 7: A dance floor a few times.
Speaker 3: Get off.
Speaker 7: Oh yes, everybody.
Speaker 1: Bred. I want to know you know, we live in
Speaker 1: a time now where.
Speaker 5: You know, the the audacity of white supremacy is kind
Speaker 5: of proudly, you know, rearing its head once again in
Speaker 5: ways that they haven't done since the twenties. It's my
Speaker 5: question isn't did you ever think that it would ever
Speaker 5: come back to square one? I guess my question is
Speaker 5: how can we finally nip this properly in the blood
Speaker 5: that we have not done?
Speaker 1: Now that we're back at square one, I.
Speaker 3: Think that what we're seeing is a backlash like we
Speaker 3: never saw. There's always a history, been a backlash after
Speaker 3: slavery reconstruction. In the backlash was the Klan. I think
Speaker 3: what makes this different is this the first time you
Speaker 3: had somebody in the White House that actually fan the
Speaker 3: flame to make them feel like nothing would happen to them.
Speaker 3: The law was on their side. And I think that
Speaker 3: the only way you're gonna lit this in the bud
Speaker 3: is you're going to have to have some strong laws
Speaker 3: and you're gonna have to make examples of them to
Speaker 3: go to jail. They're going to have to do time.
Speaker 3: And then the others that feel that way will know
Speaker 3: I may feel this way, but I won't be able
Speaker 3: to behave.
Speaker 2: You won't do that no more.
Speaker 3: That's how how do you stop crying before you start
Speaker 3: print walking some of them and they will start learning
Speaker 3: how to obey and act like they got good sense
Speaker 3: and that that's what you got to do. And that's
Speaker 3: what I've told bike, and you got to make examples.
Speaker 3: Can't be no you know. Uh, let's join hands and
Speaker 3: and sing, come by out and we go time. Look
Speaker 3: at what they did. They start with a George Floyd
Speaker 3: or they start with demonizing somebody like me. They run
Speaker 3: up in the capitals in the capital of the United
Speaker 3: States and was walking around looking calling for members of
Speaker 3: Congress to hurt them. If y'all don't put this in
Speaker 3: a real focus a penalty, they'll come after you because
Speaker 3: they don't care unless you make them here. Some of
Speaker 3: them will have to do some real time.
Speaker 2: Are there times like this? Uh?
Speaker 8: You know, even though you you know worked your career
Speaker 8: as you know, a nonviolent activist. All the times like
Speaker 8: this that really put that to the test for you,
Speaker 8: like you know, or if not this time, any other
Speaker 8: times in your career where the real non violent beliefs
Speaker 8: are really tested.
Speaker 3: Yeah, whatever, meaning you not violent, don't mean that you
Speaker 3: are punk and and and that you don't get angry.
Speaker 3: But you you catch yourself because I also feel like,
Speaker 3: particularly uh like when we start this conversation, if I'm
Speaker 3: out there representing families, I can't let my emotions embarrass them.
Speaker 3: So if I go off on somebody, I'm hurting their
Speaker 3: regardeners family. I'm not just hurting now shopping, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm hurt George Floyd's town. So I tried not to
Speaker 3: misrepresent that, but my jaws get tight. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of times I won't even listen to talk radio because
Speaker 3: if I listened to some of the right wing radio
Speaker 3: what they say, I'll get out the car and make
Speaker 3: my next speech cussing everybody out reacting to something. You're human,
Speaker 3: but you got to try to discipline and keep telling
Speaker 3: yourself you're here for a reason, not a season. You
Speaker 3: gotta last it uphold these people.
Speaker 7: Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 8: I was curious, what was your relationship because I guess
Speaker 8: I'm so. I was born in seventy eight, so my
Speaker 8: earliest memories of you, believe it or not, were from
Speaker 8: the Morton Down and Junior show. Straight up, I'm saying,
Speaker 8: like he you know, he come out, so I mean
Speaker 8: he was like, yeah, he would like you know, this
Speaker 8: is like Jerry Springer before whatever.
Speaker 2: But how much of that with him?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Was that real?
Speaker 2: And because like you said, you know in New York,
Speaker 2: I mean, you worked the circuit, you see these guys
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 8: How much of that of you and his relationship was
Speaker 8: like you guys really didn't like each other, and how
Speaker 8: much of it was kind of for the camera?
Speaker 2: What was y'all dynamic?
Speaker 3: Like, God, we didn't like each other at first. I
Speaker 3: think after a while we sort of understood that he
Speaker 3: wanted me on for controversy. I wanted him on because
Speaker 3: the mainstream shows wasn't booking us then, so it was
Speaker 3: me using him to get our thing out there. And
Speaker 3: I remember years later, Mike Wallace did a thing with
Speaker 3: me in the early nineties up and sixty minutes, and
Speaker 3: he asked me, why did you do one down there?
Speaker 3: I said, because you went interview me. As soon as
Speaker 3: I started getting made street, I left down there alone.
Speaker 3: But we started really not liking each other, but we
Speaker 3: kind of adjusted because I think it was equal use.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, all right.
Speaker 5: My final question, I have to say that your health
Speaker 5: regiment has been very inspirational to me and watching you.
Speaker 5: What was the decis to really get your health game
Speaker 5: together and to I guess, get your.
Speaker 2: Life right and how you keep it off? Then the rona,
Speaker 2: how have you kept it off this stuff?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, at first people used to do cartoons
Speaker 3: and all about me and the jarging suits and fat
Speaker 3: and all. That didn't bother me. But as my daughters
Speaker 3: started getting older. I remember one day I was at
Speaker 3: the house and my youngest daughter, she was about five,
Speaker 3: then Ashley. She walked over to me and patted me
Speaker 3: on the bell and said, Daddy, you fat, And that
Speaker 3: hurt me, and I thought it, wanting to lose weight
Speaker 3: for her, and I lost a lot of weight. Then
Speaker 3: in nine in two thousand and one, I went and
Speaker 3: let a protest in Puerto Rico, you might remember, protesting
Speaker 3: the bombing and bats, and the federal judge gave me
Speaker 3: ninety days in jail, and I fasted forty days and
Speaker 3: I lost a lot of weight and I felt better,
Speaker 3: and I started saying, you know what, I'm gonna change
Speaker 3: my diet and keep it off. So jail made me
Speaker 3: going a regiment. So I stopped eating meat. Then I
Speaker 3: pushed back on starches and sugars, and then I started
Speaker 3: feeling that I get more energy. I worked sixteen eighteen
Speaker 3: hour days and it just gave me more energy. And
Speaker 3: right now I only eat raw vegetables, raw fruits. I
Speaker 3: may eat fish one day a week, but no meat
Speaker 3: at all, no chicken. It was hard to give up
Speaker 3: chicken and preaching not eat chicken.
Speaker 2: But I mean, how many chicken places you have to
Speaker 2: pass up?
Speaker 1: Jesus? I was like, wait a minute, from.
Speaker 5: Church, I ain't even doing that.
Speaker 3: That was hard, But and then you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of people felt I lost weight to do TV. I
Speaker 3: had already lost the way. I had no idea i'd
Speaker 3: have a TV show. But it's became a way of
Speaker 3: life and it doesn't bother me. I had that kind
Speaker 3: of will. But I can sit down in front of
Speaker 3: people that can have everything I used to love to eat.
Speaker 3: It doesn't bother me at all.
Speaker 7: You are so amazing, man, that's what's up. God, damn
Speaker 7: it the shit.
Speaker 3: I just thank you.
Speaker 5: I thank you for doing this for me. I know
Speaker 5: your schedules busy.
Speaker 3: I thank you, man, and I thank you for being you.
Speaker 3: You've been a real cultural influence, even though you hurt
Speaker 3: my feelings once because I brought my daughter, got my
Speaker 3: daughter to thirty Rocks. She's in her thirties now. She
Speaker 3: got a friend with her and I was getting that
Speaker 3: Vader and my friend. Her friend looked at say that's
Speaker 3: Quest Loved and jumped up the elevator. And they never
Speaker 3: act like that around me, but they was trailing you,
Speaker 3: and I said this, nickro got some nerve that he's
Speaker 3: a bigger, a bigger than I am. At thirty Rocks
Speaker 3: Quest Love, I'm about I.
Speaker 5: Was all afraid. I mean, brother, now you just walked by.
Speaker 5: I was like, yeah, thank you for doing that show.
Speaker 5: I appreciate it. Thank you so much, love you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being our golf bussers for real. Yes,
Speaker 2: thank you all you're doing man.
Speaker 6: Oh, I was just gonna remind everybody to make sure
Speaker 6: that they watch Politics Nation every Saturday and Sunday.
Speaker 4: Yes on behalf of team Supreme. My yea Sugar Steve,
Speaker 4: unpaid bill.
Speaker 1: I'll take a little yes, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: ever now. I appreciate it this Quest Love Supreme. We
Speaker 1: will see you on the next go round. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Hey, this is Sugar Steve. Make sure you keep up
Speaker 3: with us on Instagram at QLs and let us know
Speaker 3: what you take and you should be next to suit
Speaker 3: down with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast.
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