American politician, diplomat, and activist, Andrew Young

John Hope Bryant spoke with Andrew Young about his legendary roles in American history, while telling some very candid stories and having some laughs along the way.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Building the Good Life with John Hope Bryant is brought
to you by Potential Financial. I was on how It's
track teams. I was in very good shape and swimming team,
so I was I mean, I didn't have to worry
about physical fitness, but I was running too fast and
that decided I needed to push myself to the top
of the mountain. Well, it was a beautiful day and

(00:21):
I was in good condition, but by the time I
got to the top of the mountain, I almost couldn't breathe.
I might have even blacked out for a little while.
But when I got together and my breath leveled off
and I looked out, the world just looked different. Everything
I saw had a purpose. And I said, you know,
these clouds have a purpose. Uh, the trees have a purpose,

(00:45):
The corn fields have a purpose. The cows know what
that purpose is. Everybody thinks everything I see that God
put on this earth has a purpose. And He couldn't
have made everything with a purpose except me. That's what
I'm talking about. Reverend, Doctor, Father, pastor, Friend, Ambassador Andrew Young,

(01:09):
Andrew J. Young. Some would know him as the Mayor
of Atlanta two terms. Others would know him as the
first Congressman since reconstruction in the American South in Atlanta
two terms. Others would know him as the first ever
you and ambassador who happens to be African American in
the history of the United States of America, President Jimmy

(01:30):
Carter making that appointment. Some others would know he had
a hundred and thirty honorary doctorate degrees. Others would know
him as a Chairman of the Southern African Development Fund,
investing post apartheid in the uplift of the economic prosperity
of Sub Saharan Africa. Still others would know he brought
the Olympic Games to Atlanta, Georgia. That's right, the Olympics.

(01:50):
Others would know he created the only international city in
the South, the building of modern Atlanta, the tenth largest
economy in the country, the thirty largest in the world.
If Atlanta was a country, you take Atlanta outside of Georgia,
and Georgia is poor than Mississippi. Conversely, take Mississippi, Alabama
and West Virginia put it inside of the city of Atlanta,

(02:11):
and you still have room. This is the city, the
vision that Andrew J. Young built. The only mayor mentored
by Dr Martin the King Jr. A man who's won
the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award, the French Foreign Legion Award.
A man for whom streets in Atlanta, when you come
from the airport lead you into the heart of Atlanta.

(02:33):
And Drew Young International Boulevard. A man who can only
can be compared today to Nelson Mandela, the right arm
to Dr Martin of the King Junior in the civil
rights movement, the strategists in the civil rights movement, the
one that Dr King never wanted arrested because he was
his thinker, his negotiator, his doer outside of the marches,
the man who helped to create and deliver three of

(02:55):
the four civil rights bills. That's right, this man ninety
years young and still giving every day. Ladies and gentlemen,
Andrew Jay. Yeah, we are honored to have you with
as my man. Let's get into this conversation. I've said
some pretty provocative things. You've lived history, you have been
living history, You're still making history. Can't get you off

(03:15):
a plane at ninety years young, on a plane with me,
or sorry, on a plane in spite of me. Last
week I think we took a trip together a few
weeks ago. This man is passing himself in the airports.
He doesn't give up, he doesn't give in. Why have
you not let up? Well, the struggle continues. And you
know before he passed, in fact, when we were all

(03:37):
in our thirties, Martin Luther King said said, um, you know,
we must all be clinically insane. We got no money,
we got no political power back then in the early sixties,
and we think we are the ones that can save

(03:57):
the sixth society. And said, the problem is that doesn't
seem to be anybody else right now. And he said
we might not make it, and he didn't, but he said,
it's a struggle. We've got to continue at least a
hundred because it's not gonna ever be easy. Change is

(04:20):
not easy, but change is inevitable. Things are going to change.
The question is which direction do they change. Do they
change in the direction of helping all or do they
change in the direction of helping only a few. It's
not an either or answer because I would say that

(04:41):
all of the high tech industry, well, let's go back
to the automobile industry. The automobile industry basically helped you know,
Henry Ford and a few very wealthy white people who
became wealthy, but they also created millions of jobs that
gave black people a step and stone to get into

(05:01):
the mainstream of the economy, to become automobile dealers, and
to branch off from there, to educate their children better
than they were able to be educated and their children.
I'm I'm, I'm always amazed to find young people thinking
of things that even in my ninety years, I've never

(05:25):
heard of. Uh. And it it uh, it's like, well
like the whole technology revolution. I mean, my kids use this.
So my grandchildren ten years old use their cell phones
better than I do. Uh, they know how to use them.
And I get frustrated because every time they upgraded or something,

(05:47):
they messed with something and I don't know how to
do it from that on and I'm barely to the
point where I can turn on my phone and doctors Greece. Well, yeah,
but I'm not of this era. But let's talk about
the things that are timeless. You're not of this era,
but you learned some lessons as a child and as
a young man that I think our timeless today for

(06:09):
this period where we can't as you said to me
one day, folks are so confused they're arguing on which
way the which way is up? You actually, as people
will argue with you on which way is up and
which way is down, which I unfortunately, I agree with
the story of you growing up with four corners of
friction in your life, the story of your dad uh
sort of teasing you aggressively uh and trying to get

(06:30):
you to antagonize you to see if you'd fight, and
and encouraging you to use uh your brain and not
your bron You know, living and growing up in America
is a great opportunity. And I grew up in New
Orleans with an Irish grocery store on one corner, an
Italian bar on another. Um, the Nazi party was on

(06:52):
the third corner, and there was a Chevrolet dealership around
the fourth corna and so um. There were black people
living in the neighborhood, but my brother and I were
probably the only black kids. And once I know you,
I didn't know that. Yeah, well, but it meant that

(07:13):
with difficult people and that we had to get along
and we couldn't fight all the time, And we couldn't
fight every time because at times when it's well. My
father's mantra was don't get mad, get smart. He said,
when you get angry in a fight, you lose your fight,

(07:37):
and he uses and this was before later, but his
best example was Sunny Listening and Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali
was just out of the um Uh Olympics and he
was young and tall and skinny. He didn't look like
he weighed two hundred pounds. He probably didn't. He was

(07:59):
probably just a hundred ninety so and Sunny Listen was
about two fifty and he looked like it. He was
nothing but muscle mass. And uh Mohammed Ali provoked him
and said, I'm gonna beat him out of this championship.

(08:22):
So he's too ugly to beet the champion. And he said,
I'm a pretty boy that the world champion ought to
be pretty like me. And Sunnay Listen was so mad
and Mohammed Ali, and my daddy said, I said, I
wish Mohammed would kind of cool it. Sunny Listen is
gonna kill him, and my dad had said no, he

(08:45):
probably knocked him out in one or two rounds. I said,
how do you figure that? He says, Sunday Listen got
mad and son and and when you're mad, you're not thinking,
and he's gonna walk in a couple of jabs uh
and the right cross and he's gonna be out of
there and it won't take it take less than five minutes.

(09:07):
When I saw a Sunday listening standing laying on the
ground and and he didn't even turn over, you know,
he was just flat on his back. Um and Muhammad
alities standing over him. I understood what my daddy was
talking about, that when you get angry, you're gonna get
your ass with because you're not thinking. And he was short.

(09:32):
I'm short. Was short, yeah, and all of us were
less than five eight and everybody rights movement, basically almost
everybody and still rights CT. Vivian was but six ft
and but most almost everybody was short. The big vision

(09:56):
and and and so you couldn't win on braun and
in in and big muscles. You had to have a
big brain. You had to have a big He had
to use your mind. And it's amazing, and you can't
really make the civil rights movement makes sense, uh, looking
at it politically and economically. There was a God factor

(10:19):
in that there was a spirituality that we depended on
but didn't talk about UH. For instance, when Martin Luther
King won the Nobel Priest Peace Prize and we came
back to talk to him President Lyndon Johnson. President Johnson
agreed with everything we asked him, but he said, I'm sorry,

(10:40):
I just don't have the power. He said, we just
as to create another civil rights He didn't want to
meet with you, right, he he he avoided, tried to
avoid Dr King UH in an official meeting. Well, I'm
not sure about all of that. He delayed us to
the media left, but no until the the people that
were in there with him when we got there, all

(11:03):
the people in Vietnam. They were the generals and the
senators who were provoking the war. UH. And it was
about seven o'clock at night and the press had gone home.
The meeting wasn't long, but it was very friendly and
very respectful because even though Dr King disagreed with him

(11:24):
totally on the war in Vietnam, in private he tended
to agree and say that he was this was something
that he didn't start. He he inherited it. Let me say,
Johnson privately agreed privately privately, he and Martin Luther King
never disagreed. It's a little known fact, and because Lyndon

(11:45):
Johnson was a poor boy from the Hill Country in Texas,
and he had been a school teacher, and he taught
uh poor Mexican kids who had not had anything to
eat before they came to school, and and he he
had identified with him. And when he finally signed the
Civil Rights Bill, he said that when he was a

(12:07):
teacher in the Hill Country in Texas, he often wanted
to be able to do something for those poor kids
that win his class, who couldn't learn because they hadn't
had anything to eat. He said, I'm now in a
position where I can do something about that, and I

(12:28):
intend to. But when we were in the office, he
agreed with everything, but said I just don't have the power.
So when we when we left, I said, Dr King, well,
what are we gonna do? He said, We're gonna get
the presidents and power, he said, And I said, you

(12:49):
more houseman. That's where he went to school. I said,
they say you can tell a more house man, but
you can't tell him much. But that's the most arrogant
thing I've ever heard. You say, you are five ft
seven in just all said, don't wait but about a
hundred and sixty pounds. Don't have any money, don't have
an army. We we barely got a pot to piss

(13:12):
in on the window to throw it out of And
and you're gonna get the presidents of power. That is
more nerves. And I mean, I know, I know you're great,
but just because you've got a Nobel prize doesn't mean
that you can manipulate the universe. Well, that wasn't true.

(13:33):
What I said wasn't true because he wasn't counting on
political power. That's what Johnson was talking about. He was
talking about spiritual power. And two days after we got
back into Atlanta, Mrs Amelia boy in Selma came over
to see us. Well, Martin Luther King's wife and my
wife were born and raised thirty miles from Selma, so

(13:56):
that was tempered. That was places we knew about. When
Mrs Boynton told r. King all of the mistreatment that
Jim Clark was afflicting on the people of Selma, he said, well,
don't worry, we'll be there to help you right after Christmas.
And that was about the twentie of December, and we

(14:19):
went to sell them on the second of January, and
everybody pay attention to you, about to get some history
lesson here, No one to Lyndon Johnson was standing up
making a speech saying we shall overcome and introducing a
voting rights bill before the first of April. And that's because, uh,

(14:40):
you told me before. Dr King got the date wrong
for a march, right, Well it was. It was a
combination of a lot of things that we didn't control, coincidences,
God remaining anonymous. One one was that it was a
leap year. So when we said we'd have them march
on this second Sunday in March, um, that was every

(15:05):
everybody agreed, but the poor folks in the country didn't
count Sundays like preachers do. So this is the march
on the Pettis Bridge, the famous march. And so when
I got over there, well I was I wasn't even
planning to go that day. And I finally got plane

(15:26):
and got to Selma. And when I drove through there,
I saw all the policeman gathering. But when I got
to Brown Chapel, a church, um there must have been
a couple of hundred people, and the number kept growing.
They and they were march. They were coming from all

(15:49):
over the Black Belt with their knapsacks and the Bibles,
and they were there to march from Selma and Montgomery,
which is about fifty miles. Dr at wasn't there. M hm.
And I said, you know, we really can't hold up
the movement in the march because we made a mistake.

(16:11):
I said that that. I said, they probably just gonna
turn everybody around. Uh they didn't, and everybody around. They
beat everybody up. That's what John Lewis, John Lewis, Jia
Williams and Missus Boynton and many others got beat up.
The only reason I wasn't in the front of the
line was he told me not to get arrested. Doctor

(16:33):
King never wanted your arrested. We really wanted me to
get arrested. Which the strategist. We'll talk about that in
a minute. Well, I don't know about He wanted me
to be outside if he was in jail, and he
figured if everybody went to jail, he'd have to come
over the next day and go to jail. So my
job was out of jail. But but the point of

(16:55):
this story is if Dr King actually got the date
right and had been there, they wouldn't have been as
are said, maybe maybe they this was Jim Clark. It
was a sheriff and he was kind of nuts mentally unstable. Yeah,
but he's not crazy. He wouldn't have beat up Dr King. Well,
he wouldn't. He wouldn't have because if Dr King had

(17:18):
been there, Lyndon Johnson would have sent the Justice Department
there you go, and the Justice Department would not have
let him beat up Dr King. And so because that
didn't happen, because Dr King wasn't there, the date was incorrect.
You showed up, the march went forward. They beat everybody
to enter their life as a result of that. The
team Will watched that on the TV where were enraged

(17:38):
by that, insulted by that, and all of a sudden,
you guys gave Dr King, and you gave President Johnson
more power, where he then up and said I want
another civil rights bill and every it's the way the
Lord works. Judgment at Nuremberg it was a story of
Hitler and Jews in the Second World War. And that

(17:59):
was on prime time news in New York and Chicago,
all over the North. And we had a terrible snowstorm,
so everybody had to be home looking at television, they
couldn't go anywhere. Uh, and so the Lord works in
mysterious ways. And because everybody was home looking at this,

(18:24):
and they saw the tragedy of Germany, and then they
saw the same sort of thing happening in Selma. That
awakened the nation and it began to give President Johnson
more voting rights power that we needed him to have.
You know, it's interesting that happened recently. The Lord working

(18:45):
in mysterious ways, the universe working mysterious ways, because there
was a time like Nuremberg, like that environment wherebody's watching TV.
In the last two years, it was a murder of
George Floyd because of the pandemic. Everybody was at home
doing what they normally wouldn't do, kids, students, blacks, wives, rich, poor, billionaires,
millionaires might trying to buy some are. Everybody's at home

(19:05):
watching a public lynching, which then enraged everybody's soul in sped.
We wouldn't have seen it if it hadn't been for
the young lady with her cell phone who photographed that
nine minutes and forty one seconds and sent it around
the world. I mean, they were they were marching the

(19:27):
next day in New Zealand all the way around the
bottom of the earth. It's probably take you twenty four
twenty six hours to fly from Minneapolis to New Zealand.
But on the airwaves, cell phones, instantaneous. It was almost instantaneous.

(19:47):
And really think about it, the media actually helped you,
dr king ultimate leaders of the movement, the leading The
media protected you guys. You wouldn't march after two three
o'clock in the afternoon, when't march before ten because you
needed the media to come recorded and get that film
in order to New York in time to be processed
for the news. They don't have to do that now.
I think that's my point is that it's it's now.

(20:08):
We had sustantaneous because when the newsmen filmed it, they
had to get on a plane and fly the film
to New York and they had to leave by two o'clock.
Took him two hours to get there to try to
make the six o'clock news. So the media has always
been a powerful vehicle for justice and fair play, very

(20:32):
much like we are using the media right now, thank
you our heart, to get this message out because people
are depressed and bastelor young. Very much like in the sixties,
very much like out of the Civil War, very much
like during World War two. People are confused and distressed
and depressed. They diffused and depressed and stretched out for
many good reasons, which includes purpose. And I want you

(20:54):
to tell the story of you in that mountaintop, but
I want to I want to tell the story of
the songs. And it's not it's an old spiritual but
it was. It was from the fifties and sixties, Brother
James Cleveland, Lord, I don't feel no ways tired. We've
come too far from where we started from. And nobody

(21:16):
told me the way it was gonna be easy. But
I don't believe he brought us this far. There's always
been a song in the hearts of and oppressed people,
especially those of us of African descent. Well, even when
I was in college from sixteen years though, and hadn't studied,

(21:42):
I'd get in the shower and saying, nobody knows the
trouble I've seen. Nobody knows my sorrow, and I'm sorry.
My sorrow was that I was sorry and hadn't been studying.
But sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down, Oh yes, Lord,
But still my soul is heavenly bound. That means let

(22:03):
me get out of the shower and not just on
my knees, but behind my desk and try to learn
something by morning to pass those tests. So and actually
tell them that you were as a young pastor in development,
you had went with a friend yours to uh seminary school,
seminary camp or something, and you were really frustrated actually

(22:26):
about your purpose in life. They're gonna help a lot
of people right now who are struggling with their purpose. No,
the thing was that I had finished college. But MS,
it's a complicated story that I was well. I went
to a church nursery school. They just let us learn

(22:46):
and we were surrounded by loving people, so that when
I went to six when I became six years old,
it was old enough to go to public school. They
didn't put me in first grade. They put me in
third grade. And because I could read, and I could write,
and I could add and subtract, even because I've had

(23:07):
a good foundation, That's why I think the nursery schools
we put our children in. The priest pre k is
one of the most important parts of our preparation. And
if you learn that, it's fun to learn and so

(23:28):
children are never too young to start learning, and then
never too young to start learning uh math, and then
never too young to start learning history. That's why when
children ask a question, UH, it's important to take the
time to tell them the best answer you can give them.

(23:49):
Most of the time, and we don't know how to
answer because we don't know to answer, but we have
to keep their curiosity alive and make them want to learn.
And nowadays, even my little children, UM six and seven,
they got iPhones and they know how to talk to Syria, Google, Google,

(24:12):
Google or somebody, and they will They don't ever show
me what they're doing. But when when I started talking
about something they don't know about, I'll see him take
the phone and whispering it or something. And then the
next thing you know, they got an answer better than
the one I gave him. Well, God gave you an
answer that in the one that you had given yourself.

(24:33):
Um again, I don't know how old you were when
you took a walk up on the hill. Well, and
you were frustrated and concerned, a little distressed about life.
But I was guilty. I was guilty because I had
a college degree from Howard University, and I didn't know ship.
And I had majored in biology and chemistry and I

(24:55):
but I didn't I didn't want to go into medicine,
and I didn't want to be a dentists like my
father wanted me to be. Uh. And I had a
good science background, but I didn't know what life was
all about. We went in North Carolina and my parents
wanted to stop and go to a church meeting, and

(25:16):
I decided to go out and run up the mountain.
And the thing is, when you're running in hilly territory.
I was on hollows track teams. I was in very
good shape and swimming team, so I was I mean,
I didn't have to worry about physical fitness, but I
was running too fast and I decided I needed to

(25:36):
push myself to the top of the mountain. And it
it well. It was a beautiful day and I was
in good condition. But by the time I got to
the top of the mountain, I almost couldn't breathe. I was,
I was out of breath, and I might have even
blacked out for a little while. Uh and um. But

(25:58):
when I got together and my breath leveled off, and
I looked out, the world just look different and it
it um Everything I saw had a purpose, And I said,
you know, these clouds have a purpose. Uh, the trees

(26:18):
have a purpose, The corn fields have a purpose. The
cows know what that purpose is. Everybody thinks everything I
see that God put on this earth has a purpose.
And he couldn't have made everything with a purpose except me.
That's what I'm talking about. And I decided I didn't

(26:39):
know what it was, and I didn't care what it was,
but the Lord put me here for something, and the
way I defined it is, there's something I can do
that nobody else in this world can do. And I
don't know what it is, and I don't have the
slightest idea. I just do the best I can, one
day at a time. And it was the one day

(27:01):
at a time now. Fortunately, when I got home, we
had a new preacher and he just graduated from Yelle
to Entity School and he had been invited to come
out to Texas, UH to an interracial youth conference and

(27:25):
he had never been South before. So he said, look,
I don't know how to act down here, and I'm
really I'm frankly scared of driving driving alone in the South.
Would you drive with me? Would you go with me? Well,
I wasn't anxious to go, except that he said. I said, well,
where are you going? He said, it's near San Antonio. Well,

(27:47):
the coincidence is that that was Well, my roommate at
Howard was from. So I figured I'd take the preacher
to the meeting his meeting, dropped him off, and go
a party with my roommate for a week. Except that
Texas is so big, and we we when we drove,
we drove from Houston up towards the Panhandle of Texas,
and we were driving all day long and didn't see

(28:09):
anybody black. And when we got there at Lake Brownwood, Um,
there was nobody black there. He and I were the
only two black folks there. And he said, you're not
gonna leave me here alone, are you? He said? I
said no. I said there would be probably be some

(28:29):
more black folk coming the next day, but nobody else came.
And so I'm sitting around with white people who come
up to me telling me, you know, if my parents
knew I was here, they would probably disown me. I'm
not supposed to be in any meeting with colored people.

(28:49):
And I said, well, why are you here? And they
said because I think this is what Jesus would have
me do. And I said, damn, I ain't never met
no white folk at that. That translated Jesus love in
the love of people who are different on this earth.
They and and they, They were in the process of

(29:12):
trying to do that. So I was just the man
of color in residence. And I mean whatever they asked,
I answered the discussions we had. They had white foolish
folks point of view and I had a black folks
point of view, but never had the two engaged like that.

(29:36):
And so I ended up staying that whole week, and
at the end of the week they wanted they offered
me a job. It wasn't a paid job. It was
a volunteer position where they gave me expenses. And but
I didn't know what else to do, and I knew
I didn't. My daddy wanted me to go to dental school,
and well, I it was for me to say that

(30:00):
because I really love my daddy and all done. Everybody
wants to say say yes to their their parents, but
that was not for me. Mainly the only reason I said,
I said, Daddy, I said, you in an office all
day long. I don't know what I want to be,
but I don't want to be in anybody's office all
day long. Building the good life is brought to you

(30:23):
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(30:44):
and providing a platform for people to reach their financial goals.
It's it's obvious to me, a why uh that? Why
Dr King selected you? Now? I didn't put all the
pieces together. Sorry, Why God selected you to be with
him with Dr King is obvious to me now, and
I hadn't put the pieces together yet. You used to
talking to people for whom nobody else could talk to.

(31:06):
You used to diffusing conflict with your head and your heart,
not your braun and your fists. You used to be exactly.
You used to step an over mess and not in it.
You're you're You're comfortable talking to white people when everybody
else was and Dr King was the only black lad
you're talking to white America. Most black leaders were just
talking to black America. But but you work for a
church that sent you down to work with Dr King

(31:28):
to do some training for non violent training. Abanathy and
others thought you were competition and sent you packing because
Dr King wasn't in the office. He's always giving speeches.
You came back talking about the power of economics, and
this pivots to you how you build Atlanta and I
think the message for the day about social justice with
the economic lens they sent. The church sent you back
with the six contract to do three years of of

(31:50):
non violent training. That meant you were on the payroll
for Dr King with no cost to them. Dr King
then just said, is I get the story right? Go
sit right over there, free employee. The beautiful heart, though,
was that no one could now fire you. There was
before you were subject. Doctor King wasn't in town, aberatic
whoever else. I actually came there with the money and

(32:11):
with and UH, with Mrs sept Mclark and Mrs Dorothy
Cotton and Ms and nol Ponda. I we we were
supposed to teach people, train leaders, not unlike your operation Hope.

(32:31):
But we couldn't get into institutions. And so we paid
people thirty dollars a month to conduct voter registration classes
in their barbershops, in their beauty polace, and or in
their living rooms. And it wasn't pay except that in

(32:55):
Mississippi there I was a month was just about as
much because you could make chopping cotton. So it wasn't
to be dismissed. And but people like Mrs Fanny Lheima
uh and uh, James Bevel, and I mean most of

(33:21):
the people from Mississippi that that that we know about
came through our program that history knows about now yet.
And like Jim Clyburn, the majority leader, his mother and
father were in our program when he was a little boy,
and his father was one of the pastors who led

(33:44):
the program in South Carolina. And so that that we
were laying the foundation. But what's going on now? And
I was so proud of last night of Bennie Thompson
from a town so small in Mississippi that you have

(34:05):
to know it's there to slow down and find it
right between Jackson and Bicksburg and and he uh and
right on the Mississippi Ruba. But he was in charge
of the Conscience of the Nation last night. Now I
don't know directly, um, but I wouldn't be surprised at

(34:29):
the January six Committee by everybody by the way. So yeah,
so we're trying to cover a lot of ground here
and and you're beautifully pivoting to the trying to relate
it all to each other. Now, what I did was
always when I when I left the top of that mountain,
I said, there's something I can do that nobody else
can do. So when I got to Dr King's office,

(34:54):
my wife had just had a baby, so she went
to Alabama to stay with our parents. Dr In Secretary said, no,
you don't need to be alone here in Atlanta. You
idle mine as a devil's workshop. Your wife's not here.
You be getting in trouble. I said, no, man, I
won't get an entry, but we really need your help.

(35:16):
And I said, well, anything I new to help. I
was staying at the y m c A. And she
gave me a great big egg crate full. Let us
probably had a thousand letters tied in packages that Martin
Luther King had received from a variety of people over

(35:36):
the last couple of years, and it bothered him that
he wasn't able answer them, so that became my my
my time answering the letters. Uh, and he she would
type him up, and when she typed him up, he'd

(35:57):
read them and sign him. And he didn't know me,
but he wondered how I knew so much about him
and just met Dr King at this point, really we
had met. We had really just met. We only met
once before. But now his wife and my wife grew
up in the same little town. But he grew up
in New Orleans, I mean in Atlanta, and I grew

(36:17):
up in New Orleans. And we both kind of had
rather privileged families. And when I say privileged families, I
mean it was understood when he was born that he
had to get a PhD. In something. He couldn't just
get a college degree. He had to be he had
to be a black intellectual. His mother had a master's degree,

(36:41):
his sister had a master's degree. So he was his destiny, uh,
was that he had to know as much as he
possibly could. He too, was pushed into college at fifteen,
and Dr King was, Yeah, in fact, I don't know

(37:01):
how that I know how I I ended up at Howard.
I'm in a Dillage in New Orleans at fifteen, and
then went to Howard my sophomore year. Both of you
guys went to college at fifteen years old. Yeah, managed
Jackson went in fourteen and I was still in crayons
and yeah, but you're about purpose, and even even back

(37:23):
then you had you had a sense that you want
to be about something. Well, I didn't. I mean I
was frankly, I was not a good student. I ken
got a C minus in public speaking from crozer Seminary. No,
he he got a a C a C in public
speaking at Morehouse really and at Crozier, Okay, and consistent.

(37:49):
And we were we were young, too young, uh And
we were always trying to well with me. It was sports.
I was trying and to make you know, the basketball team,
I wasn't big enough. And I was a good swimmer,
mainly because there weren't that many people who could swim,

(38:11):
and that we didn't have a lot of competition. But
and I was on the track team. Uh No, in
track Howard and Morgan. Morgan had two world record holders. Okay,
I was in real good competition. La that that was
just trying to establish my confidence in my manhood. So

(38:37):
how do you translate this? So these are great life lessons.
Anybody listening to this is just just it's just washing
over them, like the wisdom of Ages. They also say, well,
I'm not Andrew Young, I'm not Dr King. And I
think what we're trying to say is that Andrew Young
wasn't Andrew Young, Doctor King, wasn't Dr King. That they
had to believe in something larger and more important than

(38:59):
themselves else but also I mean his trying to get
people to find their purpose. And when he went to
Montgomery because he didn't want to stay in Atlanta, because
he said, in Atlanta, they're gonna put me in politics,
and everybody's gonna want me to be the leader because
my daddy was a leader and my granddaddy was a leader.
And they didn't take him seriously in Montgomery. That's why
they gave the job. Nobody else wanted it. Well, you know,

(39:21):
they were fighting over it and the women and he
was in the back, wasn't even trying in the meeting,
and he was in the back running the mimiograph machine
printing the the pamphlets for the boycott. And when the
Baptist and the Methodist preacher got into an argument over it.
The women said, look, these guys have been fighting over

(39:43):
who's the most important. That that's a bright young man
back in the back. Let's elect him a spokesman. And
he got elected spokesman for the Montgomery Improvement Association at
seven o'clock at night, and he had to stand up
at eight o'clock and give a speech defining what the

(40:03):
movement was all about, the change the world. Really had
no time and he only did eighteen hours of preparation
for us for for Sunday lectures. This is he here
thirty minutes to get us get his act together. But
he had a good background, he had a good heart,
and he was chosen by God to be them. I
mean normally he would have been pastoring in in Atlanta

(40:24):
or gone to another big city. But Montgomery was was
the most conservative, was the headquarters of the Confederacy, and
he went there thinking that that would keep him out
of trouble, trouble. Chelsea Clinton says, uh, John, we got
to figure out how to how to get into and

(40:45):
get caught doing We need to try to get caught
doing good. And John Lewis would say, getting a good,
good trouble. So you you got into a lot of
good trouble. You tried Dr King try to keep you
out of trouble. You almost had your life snuffed out
of you. And in Florida where you a beat between
the inch of your life. People don't know about that
in the movement. Other than that though. Dr King really
was trying to get you, keep you the slack as

(41:05):
you were the negotiator, you were the strategist, you brought
all that as the only mayor. It really Dr King Atlanta.
I ended up leading that march because the men didn't
want to go you mean Florida. In Florida, In saying Augustine,
the men walls and I'm I can't be none violent.
I didn't do this that another and they wouldn't march.

(41:29):
And so there was a group of mostly women and teenagers,
and there was a couple of hundred clansmen out there
and in the park, and they wanted to march around
the park. And I was trying to prevent a bloodbath, right,
So I left them on one side of the street
and I crossed over by myself, thinking I could reason

(41:51):
with the clan right. The guy would negotiate with anybody,
talk to anybody, and and and I was doing all
right because I mean, I know poor white people. But
what I didn't know was the sheriff had deputized them
the clan. Yeah, the sheriff had deputized the clan. Deputized
the clan, and they were supposed to beat us up.

(42:13):
It's hard to plass America like it's just sat Augustine
and and Florida somebody. I mean, I was doing all
right with the people I was talking to, but somebody
came up behind me and hit me with a black
jack or something. I don't know how long I was down.

(42:33):
You're out, but I was out. But when they pulled
me up, I immediately came to my senses and said, no,
you cannot stop now. And we had to go down
to so I took but you weren't angry. You weren't
You didn't swing back. This was that is they can
be non violent. It's full of ship because when you

(42:56):
got two hundred clans, when wet bricks and bottle and blackjacks,
and you're gonna go by yourself and be violent, No,
you you ain't got that. I mean, nobody is that stupid.
So I could do it, not because I was trying
to beat him, but I was trying to believe that
even in the worst of God's children, there's a colonel

(43:19):
of good. Now the thing is on the next corner.
I found it because the next corner some of the
same people were down there. They had filled the park.
And this time though, when they swung at me, it
was from her side, and I can see it's uh.
I got out of the way and they kicked at man.

(43:41):
I turned and I mean, I was doing one of
your soul train moves up there. I was. I was,
I was quick stepping, you know. And they were swinging
and they were kicking. And there was this great, big
policeman who was about six six, and he was different

(44:02):
from the sheriff that the sheriff was the one had
deputized the workers, i mean, the clan to beat us up.
But he stepped in and he said, all right, that's enough.
You're gonna kill somebody and then you're gonna really be
in trouble. Let these people through. And so a colonel

(44:23):
of good, colonel common sense, one out of five d right.
But fortunately he was had a uniform on and he
had a stick in the gun. But they weren't gonna
mess with him, so they wouldn't have messed with any
of the big guys that were in the city. There's
a couple of things though, I know you won't lose
your track of your thoughts, and couple things that hits

(44:43):
me though about what you're saying when you guys were
non violent, not only because he was godly and and
moral and right, he was also just good comments sense
of strategies. You still remember you telling one of the
j Williams or somebody in the movement wanted to go
beat everybody up and wanted he said, look, they got
the armies, got banks, and they got a military budget.
The police have got guns, and they got they got

(45:04):
police cars, and they got armies, and we just got
it's just sixty of us, at sixty sixty or seventy
of you in the entire movement with a budget and
more like forty fifty. Yeah, well a couple of volunteers.
And you said, look, it is ridiculous for us to
think that we're gonna beat them, uh, militarily, always violence.
We've got to do this with common sense, with love,
with with with and believe it or not, I didn't

(45:27):
hold anything against them. I knew I'd grown up with
white folks like that. Yes, and over mass not in it. Yeah,
and and and and talk without being offensive, listen without
being defensive, always lead even your adversary with their dignity.
And so I was not trying. I was trying to
educate them and put out the best in them at
the opportunity moment. First place, looking back, now, this is

(45:51):
nineteen sixty four, those just two thousand and two. H
that's a long time, you know, the children of those
clans when a still poor and raggedy down there, and
saying many of them were on the on the mall
on January six, seventy six percent of all those who
attacked the capitol had a financial crisis in their life.

(46:12):
They would be an ideal operation, hope, client for coaching
if they would just settle down and let us to
push through the depression and help them get some in
There's one of the pictures, and probably the children of
the folks that you're talking about, the grandchildren the folks
are talking about one of the pictures that they found.
It's interested in enough. They didn't find these pictures until
ten years after it happened, and Flagla College started a

(46:36):
Southern history program, and it turned out that one of
the young women in the class there was the daughter
of the police chief, and she came up looking through
there and she found the pictures of Dr King being
arrested and all of the records that they There was
no press there the night say I got beat up,

(46:57):
but it was a police camera that showed it, so
there was almost no record. If you've gotten about no
one better known about it. The thing was that that
made a difference. You could always make a difference. And
again Dr King sent me down then not to march,

(47:19):
and I tried to convince the people not to march.
Jose Williams was trying to convince me. He said, Andy,
you can't stop this movement. I said, Jose, the Congress
is in session then the middle of of of the filibuster.
They want to vote this out within the next two
week if we have a riot here. And that was

(47:41):
what he was afraid of, that if we have a
riot and black folk and white folk get the fighting,
that'll kill a civil rights bill nationwide. So I was
I mean, I waged weighed the cost of an ass weapon,
and it was it was, it was very inexpensive for me,

(48:04):
in fact, for good. The thing, the thing that about
that I remember was I didn't even have a headache
after they hit you over the here with the black
and and I'd been I'd been kicked and beaten. Now
a couple of days later, you know, the bruises started
coming out. Run. A couple of years later, I had
to have a couple of tumors removed that I assumed

(48:26):
might have come from that. But at the time my
concern was only saving these people and keeping them marching. Now,
they like black people do. The clan couldn't get us
to fight back and couldn't get us to act crazy,
and so they decided they were gonna come down in

(48:48):
the black community on a Saturday in uniform, and they
gonna marched down the middle of Lincolnville. And I said,
oh ship, because I don't know, you know, I don't
know what people are gonna do. And they got her right,
you know, I mean, after the weapons that people have

(49:11):
been taken, you know, when you come on our territory,
I don't know what's love will happen. But I talked
to the lady, one of the ladies that was leading
that movement, Um, yesterday was her birthday, Um, Mr Cora Tyson.

(49:31):
And she's ninety eight now, and she's still her mind
is still so sharp. Uh. And I thanked the for
you know, all she did to keep back. Dr King
stayed at their house because we couldn't. There were no
hotels that would let us stay. And but we started talking,

(49:53):
and I reminded her that when the clan came down there,
instead of booing him and hitsing them and calling them names,
folks started singing, I love everybody. I love everybody in
my heart. You can't make me doubt him because I
know too much about it. I don't. I got the
love of Jesus, and my heart said, oh, mercy kindness.

(50:18):
I mean they but the contrast, see, this was on
a Saturday, so they see people us getting beat up
on a Friday, and they put it together with the
response to the black community on a Saturday, and they
showing in a Sunday and Monday news and that Tuesday

(50:38):
they passed the sixty four Civil Rights Act. And so
I figured that was the best asked weapon. I have
a god. There you go. And this and this was
a pivotal part of the civil rights movement that most
people don't know of. They know of Bloody Sunday, they
know if he's certainly, they don't know of this, of
this huge we don't get that point in St. Augustine,
Florida well, and and they don't know, and and there's

(51:00):
no reason why they should know the thousands of people
that suffered. I was with a young lady yesterday and
I hadn't I didn't realize she was now principal, right
down the street from me, and but her mother was
one of those that was beaten up in Mississippi with

(51:20):
Fanny Luheima. And I had to go get a mother
out of jail. Uh and they had beaten They were
but women, and the sheriff got the deputies too to
beat him. And they because they wouldn't say sir wow,

(51:47):
and they were polite, they will And when they came
out of jail, I I was there to try to
bond them out, but they didn't even require any bond
because chaf of knew he was guilty. And they were
so sweet and so polite mm hmm to everybody. And

(52:11):
I said, who wasn't it beat you all up? He
said them. I said, damn, you know and they were
so strong and loving, and it was things like things
like that that make for great people. Fanny Lhama's famous quotation,

(52:32):
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, but
I ain't gonna bow down norm And people don't know
that half of the of the of the supporters of
the civil rights but half the volunteers were white, and
half of those were Jewish. This was we were We
realized we were the better together. And that's a that's
a lesson that I think that you've got for this generation.
We got to figure out whether we're better together and

(52:54):
we're gonna live as friends and brothers and sisters, that
we're gonna die as fools. That that that too, plus
two here cools six, So as we pivot here and
bastel young. This is called building the good life, and
we do need to give people some tools and some
direction to build in this current situation. I'm gonna say
something you said to me and repeat something you said
to me a decade ago that I thought was absolutely nuts.

(53:17):
And but because you're such a genius and my mentor,
my friend, I just kept my mouth shut and figured
it would maybe something would hit me in time, or
you'd get some counseling. I now realize you're a genius again.
You won't know what I'm about to say. I'm gonna
drop this, Mike. You're gonna either shut me down or
open me up. Open this conversation up. I think this.
I think you said something that's about why we have
such pain and problems in this country right now. And

(53:39):
it's a guy who built modern Atlanta to the tenth
artist economy in the country, focusing on we not just me,
focusing on not black or white, but the color green economics.
As a guy who found a way to negotiate with
business leaders in the South to take down the whites
only signs which nobody knows about. Dr He would sut
down the economy by marching, would send you in to
me with the hunted business leaders the business deal or

(54:00):
rational business deal to take the whites only signs down
from those businesses. It was businesses that integrated the South.
Is the guy who's been at every really intersection of history,
um in the last seventy years. I'm about to drop this, Mike.
You tell me what I'm wrong. You said something, maybe kidding.
I think it's genius now you said, the reason we
have this obsession with guns today is that because of

(54:23):
slavery and because it was done the black folks with
two hundred almost three d semost three hundred years that
when black folks finally got free after the after the
Civil War was over, white folks in the South, in
these small towns with no lights, no no no protection,
I guess, no security or whatever, they figured that if
they had done, if if they had done, if if
they had done, if blacks had done to whites, what

(54:44):
what whites had done the blacks that blacks are coming
back for come for payback, and they needed some guns
in their house, their church, they pick up truck, they
store front wherever, because they were gonna be paid back.
Of course, we never did that. We never went for
payback as they have session of guns. I know that
you're right. And I found the same thing in South
Africa when I when never healed. By the way, the

(55:05):
second part of this is during the Civil War because
Dr Lincoln was was exhausted. He never called for me
any kind of of commission or something. He was killed.
He was right, he was killed. My bad. But I mean, well,
you know that story better than I do that he
had created just created with Frederick Douglas, the Freedman's Bank,
the Freeman's Bureau, which created the hospitals and institutions to

(55:27):
develop an economy for the former slaves. When I when
when I went to South Africa, but Jimmy Carter sent
me and wanted me to talk to all of the
UN ambassador. I was you an ambassador and he wanted
me to talk to as many African leaders. Well, when
I got to South Africa, they wanted me to talk
to the black leaders and I said, you know, all

(55:48):
of them were friends of mine. They come to the
lianta back and forth all the time. I said, I've
been knowing these guys since I was in college. I
need to find out what white folks were thinking and
wanted the So I said, well, I said look, and
they said who do you want to talk to? I said, look,
who is the meanest son of a bit you got

(56:09):
to deal with? And they said, p W Boltha. I said,
well why not, let's talk to him. Oh, we don't
talk to him myself. Somebody needs to talk to him.
And so I said, you might getting him on the phone,
And they got him on the phone and I went
by to see him and he yes, I mean, he said,

(56:31):
are you coming by yourself? I said yeah. He said, oh,
come on. I said, I'd like to bring them back.
And he said no, no, no, you come along. So
I go to see him and he's supposed to me
to mean his man in South Africa. The question that
he asked me that was most revealing was how long
do you think we'll have before the blood bath? And

(56:53):
I said what blood bath? And he said, surely these
black people are gonna rise up someday and kill us
all uh. And I said no, I don't think so.
And you got really agitated. How can you say that?
How can you say that? I said, I can say
that because Gandhi formed the Indian National Congress the same
year that Nelson Mandela and Um Bishop too too, and

(57:19):
um all of the Tambo formed the African next to Cagos.
I said, Gandhi went back to India and he negotiated
independence for for India. And I said, I don't think
a single not one oh white British Englishman was killed.

(57:41):
And I said, and they had, they had, They were
leading the British a billion to one, had a billion
Indians and they didn't kill a single Indian, I mean
in Englishman, and I said, I have never heard anybody
talk about anything, but how can we have a multiracial

(58:02):
democracy where everybody has a vote, where everybody gets the
right to an education, where everybody can own their own business.
And black folks and brown folks and underserved folks didn't
want payback. They wanted a level playing field. They want
an opportunity to succeed in the prosper like everybody else.
They didn't want to. There was one one story I'll

(58:25):
mentioned that ought to be known that when the boycott
came um Cola Cola was one South Africa boycott of
South Africa. Everybody was pulling out of South Africa. Well,
Coca Cola sent Carl Ware who was from an HBCU.
It's in negotiating with South Africans blacks. He didn't pull

(58:50):
out Coca Cola. He sold Coca Cola to South African Breweries.
South African Breweries was founded by five black brothers that
had gone to Adams College. Now that Adams College is
John Adams, the second president of the United States uh

(59:14):
and it was formed at the same time. In fact,
it was formed a little ahead of Howard and Morehouse
and spellwan Uh and the HBCUs. There was an HBCU
network in Africa. Carl Ware coming out of Clark Atlanta University,
hooked Coca Cola in with the black business community and

(59:38):
they agreed to pay the money into Bishop tutus Um
Children's Fund to care for the often children that was
suffering because of the war. And so Coca Cola is
probably the largest employer on the African continent. And they
did well because they not only because they in a

(01:00:00):
great product that people enjoyed, but because they stood for
something larger and more important than themselves. And Justrofit that
was a black executive who wasn't afraid the other black
executives in South Africa, and instead of trying to control
and run things, he organized an honest and fair business deal.

(01:00:22):
And any good business deal, everybody makes money. And that
is and that is where I want to pivot because
versus all this struggle and pain and and friction, and
black people and white people at each other's throats, and
Republicans and Democrats each other's throats, and as I keep
saying that in the world like that, the only people
who win are the folks who who are waiting for
us to destroy ourselves. Everybody wants to be an American,

(01:00:44):
but Americans. You built Atlanta not by arguing over who
went to a water fountain, but by arguing who would
get the contract. That was the only argument of the
city too big, busy to hate, and and and every
city in this country that is successful is diverse and inclusive.
Let me say something about Atlanta that's different. We wanted

(01:01:05):
to build an airport the same time New York Laguardy
was trying to build a new airport, and I guess
New York was trying to build it with government funds.
We didn't go to Washington asking for money for an airport.
We went to Wall Streets. There's endless volumes of money

(01:01:28):
at Wall Street, on Wall Streets for good investments. And
and we we when we decided on the airport we wanted,
we signed up everybody that wanted to be in it.
Delta Eastern United American. Marryott had the concessioncy and the
parking lot, and everybody was on the building of the

(01:01:53):
was called a tombstone. Everybody's on the tumbstone. But the
city of Atlanta is at the bottom. As a guaranteur,
you know, which means we don't become the guarantea unless
all these other people go broke. When Eastern went broke,
it didn't hurt us a bit. Well, it meant we
had to make an adjustment. So we closed down one

(01:02:15):
of the concourses and it took Delta about a year
and a half to two years to grow in to
fill them up. But but, but Atlanta's airport is now
the busiest in the world. It's the busiest in the world.
And and and and create jobs and opportunity for everybody.
And you actually got Delta Airlines who thought you were
crazy to suggest they should go in to Africa. You
got them to go into Africa when you're on the
board and it's not one of their their most profitable

(01:02:37):
routes of the entire airline, you can't do. The most
profitable route is Atlanta. The Legos Wow, Legos Nigeria. Yeah,
the second most profitable route is Atlanta. That Johannesburg can't
get a seat. You can't get a seat. So look
and and and it's working. The airport has en up

(01:03:01):
all of the islands. So we we we, I mean,
you used to have trouble. They had to Bamba Airways
had two planes going to uh two Bahamas, one from
Baltimore and one from Miami. And I said, give me

(01:03:25):
two flights a day in Atlanta and I will fly
more people that are Bahamas. Then Baltimore and Miami put together,
and I said, just try it for ninety days. In
ninety days, they not only got more that was Bahamas there,

(01:03:48):
but Delta realized it was a good market and they
came in and they fly in the Bahamas three or
four times a day, so so that that we're flying
wealth all over the world when when people are going
to Turks and Cagos, I had never heard of that place.
But it's got something the cleanest, most beautiful water in

(01:04:10):
the world. This is Dominican Republic. Everything is working well.
And the one thing we can't get right, and I
don't understand it, and it hurts me, and that is Haiti.
Healing works better than hurt and and I'm thinking about healing.
The theme of this healing and opportunity we talked a
little bit about and we had spent an hour on

(01:04:32):
this one topic. A little bit about this fact that
these guns is obsession in America with guns, which I'm
convinced is tied to the fear going back a hundred
and fifty two years that black folks were gonna try
to get some payback and it was just as an
unfounded fear. But nothing else makes any sense why everybody
wants a gun everywhere. And then you tie it back
to a lack of healing and the Civil War, to

(01:04:52):
the lack of healing after the Civil War, and you
got this, this country that has that just needs a
huge calonic needs a huge emotional uh cleansing process. And
you've cleansed that in your own soul. That's why you're
so peaceful. So what do you have to say that's
controversial and what do you have to say to America
that might be convertible? Part is that guns have to

(01:05:15):
do with manhood, that when you're anxious and insecure about
your manhood, you need a gun. I don't need no
gun or at n I ain't got a gun. And
I'm I'm not afraid to live, but neither I am
afraid to die. And how long you live? And you

(01:05:40):
you you know that my grandmama prayed to die. She
was angry with God for leaving her here. But for
eighty six years until the last five or six years
she lost the sight. She didn't want to be blind
and helpless. She wanted and she fussed with God about
getting reward in heaven. Martin Luther King used to laugh

(01:06:02):
and joke about it dying. He said, yeah, I know,
there is a bullet with my name on it somewhere,
he said, But what I'm counting on is you all
are so anxious to get your picture in the paper.
Why don't you all jump in front of me and
take it. He said, Then I'll really have a problem.
And he said, what what's the problem? Somebody saves your life? Said,

(01:06:24):
then is my responsibility to preach your sorry behind into heaven.
And he would start preaching our sermons, our funerals, but
he would do the preaching more like Richard Pryor or
Eddie Murphy or what's the other fellow's name. I mean,
I mean, he didn't use the profanity that they use,

(01:06:47):
but he could signify with the best of him. Well
he was really free, uh that last day. But what
but what he was doing, See what he was doing
was he was helping us to cope with the fact
that you're gonna die and he said, Look, death is
the ultimate democracy. Everybody's got to die. And he said,

(01:07:11):
you don't have anything to say about when you die,
where you die, or how you die. The only choice
you have is what is it you're willing to give
your life for. And and he said, if you haven't
found something you're willing to give your life for, you're
not fit to live anyway. See uh. And but he

(01:07:36):
said that death is the ultimate democracy. And I don't know, um,
I know Daddy King um, and I never heard him
say this, but good friends of his said that he
used to say that I'll not let any man no

(01:07:58):
matter what they do to me. I'll not that any
man hate me, but me hate any man. And he
said there was a white man forced him before that
it was a white man that killed my son, he said,
but a black man stood up in my church and
shot my wife while she was at the organ play

(01:08:19):
in the Lord's prayer. And he said, shot her dead
and killed three other people in the tree. Yeah, and uh,
he said, because God is merciful, he said, I would
I hope to meet them in heaven one day. And

(01:08:41):
that's a kind of forgiveness. But he was saying because
he he had been surrounded by death of his family
growing up in Stockbridge, Georgia. The same thing happened to Coretta.
They burned Corretta's house down when she was swift, and

(01:09:01):
her daddy had them pray to forgive the people who
burned the house down. Well, first he prayed that thank
God that nobody was home and nobody burned up in
the house. And then he had them pray for the
people who burned the house down, and he said, we
can always build houses. And he came back from having

(01:09:21):
them having burned down his house, and in the next
ten years he not only had rebuilt the house, but
he had a grocery store, and he had a sawmill, uh.
And he had a pope logging chain calling logs. And
he was just a talented brother, though he didn't have

(01:09:43):
a lot of education. He was a member of the A. M. E. Church. No,
I'm talking about Correcta's father and in Maryon, Alabama. Doesn't No,
you don't even know him. But his prayer was very
much like the prayer of the pastor the Ami pastor
in Charleston when they killed eight people in the Mother Emmanuel, Uh,

(01:10:09):
somebody trying to reach the bash young and saw some
for other problem in the world as phone is bringing
as we as we wrap up, I mean, we have
you kept you for too long? Thank you so much
for this, and we don't we want you to come
back because there's so many lanes of discussion we need
to go down. But as we as we as we
leave this in bashelor Young, what is the message for
America I talked about I started out and you changed
my view. I started talking about the America at war

(01:10:30):
and we're at war. And really what I'm hearing you
say is that we need that we need souls at peace.
That it just needs about forgiveness and love and stepping
over our mess and not in it. And you want
to have a little grace, you need to show a
little mercy. Uh. What's your message? What's your building message
to those listenings? My building messages is that truth is
forever on the scaffold. Wrong is forever on the phone,

(01:10:52):
but that scaffold sways the future for behind the dim
unknown stand of God within the shadows, keeping watch above
his now. What God is watching for us now is
what do we do in this next election? See? Um,
are the people who are insecure and hateful of America

(01:11:16):
and of each other, going to win the election of
the people who feel that America can still lead the world.
That I disagree with you on China because I think
China is much more insecure than the United States, and
that there they have a hundred and forty two different
minorities and they spend most of their military old people

(01:11:42):
keeping them down. And so China's got real trouble. But
there's nobody with a vision for the whole planet like
Joe Biden. And Joe Biden went to Congress with me
in Vree and so I've known him. He went to
the Senate and I went to the House of Representatives,

(01:12:03):
and he's always been cool, calm, dedicated, and very visionary
and unselfish. Now he's not the charismatic speaker that Martin
Luther King was, but if you stop and listen, he is.

(01:12:24):
He's a good Catholic boy who grew up and remember
the Catechism, and he's trying to grow the faith of
this nation, not in the image of Rome, but in
the image of the founding Fathers, which said that we
should have a country where everybody is free in their beliefs,

(01:12:48):
in their right to serve, but that we either learned,
as Martin said, to live together as brothers and sisters,
or will perish together as fools. So if we vote
for those people who are trying to get us together,
yes we'll keep the country going. I think you have

(01:13:09):
to watch closely because there has been some real treachery
going on. Yeah, that that was an attempt to create
a coup and take over this country. I'm convinced. Yes.
And to your point, if if if the former president
had been re elected, uh, the this democracy would be
on his deathbed because he was he wanted to make

(01:13:30):
this country in his own image as an individual marriage
like Hitler did. Well, you salute a person, not institutions.
He was trying to destroy all the institutions of justice
and probably he was. He was, he gave he gave
narcissist a bad name, and and so we He wasn't
a Democrat or a Republican. He was donaldkrat It was
about himself. And that's your point, that that really for

(01:13:53):
all the criticism of President Biden. And I'm and I've
served Republicans and Democrats, You've served Republicans and democrats. I
think it's not about political parties right now. This is
about trying to find a healing presence that when they
had the last impeachment of Nixon, everybody in the Black
caucus was against geryld Ford. But I had well, I

(01:14:13):
I'd had a pool muscle and he messed up his
ankle skiing and we went in to infirmary together and
we got to talking about football. And he'd played football
in Michigan, and some of the people that he played
with I knew, uh, you know that were now successful

(01:14:34):
judges and everything. And even though he was very conservative
at that time, we needed somebody that could heal the
wounds of the nation and wouldn't exacerbate the problems. And
he was it. And I'm I'm glad I not only
voted for him um to be vice president, uh, but

(01:14:59):
I it up and spoke in his behalf. Look, the
world is changing so dramatically. Again, we need to wrap
this up. But I mean a lot of black folks
when President George W. Bush were in office called him
all kind of things, everything but the son of God,
and I mean bad, bad, bad names. They would do
anything to get George W. Bush back. Today as president,
he was in hindsight, rational, reasonable, love facts, was respectful

(01:15:22):
to people don't and his father was even better. I
think we've got to we've got to come back to
some except for one thing, than he did a lot
for Africa. But the two Bushes still have the burden
of leaving us well the terrible Supreme Court. Well, fair enough,
fair enough, And so it's important too. It's important to

(01:15:47):
make sure we keep control of the House and that
we we don't let people in the Senate veto the
future of America because of the fellow buster well and
and to be and to listeners listening to this, we're
not having a political conversation, to be clear. Uh, I've

(01:16:10):
gotten incredible progress from Republican presidents. Am baschlor Young has
gotten uh in predigal, predigal progress with Dr King from
Democrats and Republicans. What we have now are people who
are selfish. Is like a party that does you can't
even have a name on it, and we need to
knock that off. We all voted Republican when I moved
to Georgia nineteen fifty six fifty four. The first voter

(01:16:34):
registration drive I ran was for Eisenhower. Yeah, I'm just
trying to make sure nobody gets their back up and
don't listen. They because people who are talking about politics
is worse than religion these days, and they stopped listening
to reason. What we have got to find is a
bridge back to each other. And what what I'm hearing
Bastlara Young saying is don't don't vote your party if
the person is a nutcase U. You need to vote

(01:16:56):
for the thing that's that that made this country great,
which is the spirit of this country and the spirit
of good people wherever you find them, republic in our
democrat who are rooting for the best of all people.
And with that, I just want to say thank you
to you for being that spirit of the good of
all people who found the goodness even in a klansman

(01:17:19):
in St. Augustine, Florida. And you found a little bit
of goodness in this little nut nut knucklehead boy in
front of you named John Hopebrian. Because because of you,
potential well we're still working on it. But I but
I couldn't be me had you not put your arms
around me and gave me cover here in Atlanta and
around the world. I have credibility to go and do

(01:17:39):
and be because people are like you believed in me,
and as a result of that, I'm putting my arm
around others because I want to help build the next generation,
to to help to unlease the untapped potential of all
of us, including my poor wife, brothers and sisters in
rural America. As you also believe, we need all of
us to add two to three percent of untapped GDP
in this country. No, there's no reason for anybody to

(01:18:01):
be poor. As wealthy as this country is that we
we we could have a comfortable and we're moving towards it.
In Georgia. Georgia is probably one of the easiest states
now to get a college education, and we're turning out
more college graduates here than maybe in most places. And
that wasn't true, Um, even when when I was mayor,

(01:18:25):
there were only four hundred or five hundred students of
Georgia State, not at fifty three thousand. And they go
into school on the Hope scholarship, so they don't come
out deep and dead. Truth on the scaffold and basstranger young. Um,
First of all, what you promised to come back, the
truth on the scaffold, leave this audience with something to

(01:18:45):
hold on to. People are distressed, they're depressed, they're got
too much month at the end of their money, they
give them something to hold onto, that rainbow after the storm.
Well I said that truth is forever on the scaffold,
and wrong seems to be forever the throne. But the
scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown standeth
God within the shadows, keeping watch above his own. I

(01:19:10):
believe that I heard that from my grandmama all of
her life. I heard that from Martin Luther King. I
heard that from just about everybody that I have come
to respect, that they have a faith that transcends the
politics and economics of their daily lives. Because as well

(01:19:32):
you introduced me in part to depat Choprah, he says,
we are really not just human beings with a few
spiritual experiences. We're spiritual beings and this is a temporary
human experience. Again, as you said, and wrapping up this
is with a statement, it's not about how long you live,

(01:19:53):
it's about how well you live. If you don't know
what's he wanting to die for, where you aren't fit
to live, Thank you and Bassi Young for living, but
you all might have life, and forgiving your life that
when you might all might all have liberty. I love
you man. This has been Building the Good Life with
John Hobrant and Ambassador Andrew J. Young. Building the Good

(01:20:17):
Life with John Hope Bryant is brought to you by
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