January 19, 2026 • 62 mins
In this powerful episode, T.D. Jakes sits down with Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., for an intimate and wide-ranging conversation on leadership, justice, and the unfinished work of the civil rights movement.
She reflects on her father’s global legacy, the principles of nonviolence, economic justice, generational trauma, and why progress requires both moral courage and strategic action. She discusses preserving history in the age of social media, confronting misinformation, and the responsibility of leadership in divided times.
The conversation also touches on modern cultural flashpoints, including the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad, the role of media narratives, and why truth, dignity, and empathy remain essential to real change.
From MLK Day to today’s political and social landscape, this episode challenges viewers to engage deeply with the “fierce urgency of now.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this case, it was Kendall Jenner.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
She had a pepsicoler and it was one of the
demonstrations in this time, she emerges to give this pepsi
to a police officer, as if to suggest if they
reach across and just give them a pepsi, you know,
we can break this dividing line and create real community
and progress.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
And I'm like, wait a minute.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
People suffer blood and died and had to do more
than that, and so I made a crack. Well, if
he had only known he could give a pepsi, then
we wouldn't have had to go through all of it.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Right, Hello, I am Tdjason. I want to welcome you
all the family from Everywhere to next chapter. Everywhere. You
can tell all of your friends to download this podcast
and listen in real close, because we have a unique
opportunity to sit with history, to embrace thoughts and ideas
(00:52):
that we read about in books. But now we come
face to face with in the person of my special guests. No,
I'm not going to tell you who it is yet.
I'm gonna tell you all about her, and then I'm
gonna tell you who she is. She is an attorney,
she's a minister. She's the CEO of the Martin Luther
King Junior Center for Non Violence Social Change, civil rights advocate,
(01:15):
peace champion, and the youngest daughter of the civil and
human rights icon doctor Martin Luther King and Global thought leader.
Doctor Bernice King is who I'm talking about. We have
the privilege of hearing from a woman whose leadership reminds
us of the enduring power of hope and non violent change.
(01:38):
This is doctor Bernice A. King. I'm glad to have
you here. We go way back, been out there a
long time. When you were laying on your mother's lap
at the funeral of your father, I was sitting on
(02:00):
the couch with my dad. Oh wow, So I was
about the same age, about the same time, and I
remember it like it was yesterday. I don't even have
to watch it on film. From the wood cart that
they carried in in and the horses to Mahelia Jackson singing,
move on up a little higher. I live with that
(02:22):
through you, and I still know that I did not
live it the way you lived it. You lived it
up close. We lost an icon, you lost a father,
and I've always understood the difference between the two. I
admire you I respect you. Your mother and I were
great friends because your mother and my mother were great Yes,
(02:44):
so we have a lot of history, all the way
back to Mary and Alabama. They sang together in the choir.
But we have some things to say today that are
not just historical. We're going to touch on the historical,
but we're going to talk about the fierce urgency of
now and what we need to do right now to
survive the times that we're living in. Is Mlkday. We
(03:06):
are releasing this episode on January nineteenth, twenty twenty six,
MLK Day. Right on the spot, what does this day
mean to you? What should it mean to you? And
what do you want people to do on this day
to commemorate the life, the legacy, and the mentality of
(03:27):
doctor Martin Luther King. I've got a whole lot to
say about it, but there are many many important things
that I want to hear from you. Chapter one, Father's Legacy.
I want to know something right off the cuff, what
is your favorite quote from your dad?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
From your dad, Well, it's kind of hard to choose
a favorite favorite because he says so many things that
are just powerful and meaningful that transcends generations.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
But the one I quote the most because I think it's.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Critical that we get it, we get it in our system,
that we begin to understand that if we're going to
really create a just, humane, equitable, and peaceful world, and
that is he said, we're caught and an inexcapable network
of mutuality tide in a single garment of destiny. What
affects one directly affects all indirectly. And I cannot be
(04:19):
all that I ought be until you are all that
you ought be. And you cannot be all that you
ought be till I am all that I ought be.
You know, it talks about the interrelatedness, the interdependence, and
the interconnectedness of human life. You know, we live in
a time as you know, when you know, everybody's into dismissing, putting,
(04:39):
pushing to the side, putting down, wanting to get rid
of people. Now, in our philosophy of nonviolence, we're not
trying to get rid of people.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
We're trying to get rid of injustice.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
You're rid of evil or overcome evil. And so we
teach that nonviolence doesn't seek to defeat people, but in justice,
so that understanding of the interconnectedness and relatedness and inter dependence,
if it's properly understood and embraced, puts you in a
posture that the work that you do to resistant justice,
(05:13):
you don't become unjust towards the people that you know
are fighting against in terms of what they are calls it.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I think one of the greatest injustices that I have
seen in this country, and it's very appropriate to talk
about it at this time, is that doctor MLK Junior
has been regulated in the minds of the media and
everybody else as a black leader. I don't see him
as a black leader. I see him as a national,
(05:42):
global leader whose heart was not just for black people,
but for all people, and that we might have an
equality and a better lifestyle that didn't rob from one
to accommodate the other, but leveled the playing field in
such a way that we can all sit down at
the table, black children and white children and brown children
(06:03):
and red children and say free and last, free and last,
Thank God Almighty, we are free. At last. We will
not be free. That was a quote until we are
all free. And so it is that freedom we come
to aspire for, to pray for it, to work for,
(06:23):
to walk for, to write our Senators for to pick
it forward, to do whatever we have to do to
make that a reality, not just for us alone, but
for our children and our children's children. Your father has
long reaching arms, his voice, yet echoes in the anals
of our mind to understand more fully and completely the
(06:48):
shared humanity of the human race and how important it is.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And you know where that comes from, I believe for him.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I want to tell this little story. When my father
was years old, he had some playmates that were white
their parents. Their parents owned a store across the street
from the home that he was born in, and every
day he played with them. Well, the time came for
both of them to enter into the public school system,
(07:17):
and at that particular time, he went one day and
he was denied the opportunity to play with his friends.
I mean, for him, they were his friends, right, you know,
he didn't see like color. They were totally even the friends,
oblivious to that world that they lived in of segregation.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
He went home crying.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
My grandmother had to explain to him all of the
history finally from enslavement all the way up to Jim
Crowism and the separation.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And she said to him, which so many people still have.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
To say to that black children, unfortunately, you're as good
as anybody else. And I think that had such a
pression upon him that for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
This is the way I tell it for young people.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
To understand, is that he was looking to be reconnected
or reconciled with his white friend. Yes, and so that
led his that set the stage for his entire leadership.
And that's why although he had the obviously been a
black man in America, he had those experiences, but he
understood that whole connection, that we are part of a
(08:26):
human family, reds of you know, how we define ourselves,
we are part of interconnected.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Again absolutely, you know. The thing that really intrigues me
about that is to begin to recognize and to stand
on the impetus of the reality that we that prejudice
is a learned behavior. If he had little white friends
and they were all playing until they were school aged
(08:53):
and schools separated them, that means that bigotry and hatred
and prejudice is something that children learn from adults. Little
babies don't come here hating each other. It is a
learned behavior, and if we can learn it, we can
unlearn it. To my dismay, as I begin to study
(09:15):
further and further, there was a time that the world
existed without hatred toward black people. And if that ever
existed pre slavery, then it's possible, just the possibility that
one day again we can rise to a higher standard
and reach for something better. And I think that we're
(09:35):
going to be forced eventually to have to come together
because we have so many external enemies, and no doubt
globally maybe galactically, that will force us to defend the
species in order to better the race. When you start
(09:56):
talking about flint, when you start talking about Jackson, missus simp,
when you talk about COVID, when you talk about major
illnesses that are attacking all types of people without discrimination, exactly,
we are required to unite together in order to protect
the species. And your father was ahead of his time. Myself,
(10:18):
he was ahead of his time. We show could uli
him now, you know, we could use him right now
in explaining that to us and moving the myths and
the disparities that exists when the average African American family
makes one dollar to every ten dollars that the average
(10:39):
the average white family makes, When you recognize that home
ownership only embraces forty two percent of African American people,
but seventy five percent of Caucasian people. Even when the
credit ratings are the same the approval ratings of access
to capital, it will remain that kind of a golf
(11:02):
standing in between us. The digital divide is frightening, and
the digital divide is critical right.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Now, very much so, very much so.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Chapter two, don't become and complacent.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I want to point something out.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
As you're talking about all this, which includes the digital divide,
There's something I've been trying to disprove with my father.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I'm like on a mission.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Most of the words I embrace, I respect what he said.
This one thing is troubling to me. He said, one
of the tragedies still of human history is that the
children of darkness are often more zealous and determined than.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
The children of light. Right, And so as you were.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Talking, I was thinking one of the things that we
have to understand, you know, as we know out of
our faith, evil is always present at hand, right, And
so that means that we have to be vigilant. We
have to always shine the light. And I think too
often people get comfortable with progress, you know, and they
settle in, and we've seen that happen since my father's assassination.
(12:12):
There have been seasons that that happened, and so the
evil just begins to increase and increase. So people need
to understand, in the spirit of Martin Luther King, the
movement must continue. Mother said, struggles are never in the process.
Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win
it in every generation. Because I used to be disturbed
(12:34):
by all of these racial disparities and discrepancies and all
of the injustice in the world, until I listened closely
to both of them said and said, our role and
responsibility is to stay on the wall, be the nea mayas,
don't come down and get distracted by the different things
that distract. We have to continue to do good day
(12:55):
by day, and we have to do it in a
collective sense.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
I think one of the problems that we have in
getting good people to speak up is not always bigotry,
but the illusion that in giving us our share, it
diminishes their share. Instead of recognizing that we want to
make the path bigger, we want to be more inclusive,
(13:19):
so that we have more customers, more consumers, more building,
more economy. We have the strongest GDP in the world,
but it's not evenly distributed amongst all people. And we
need to understand that we can distribute it amongst all
people and not be communists and not becommunionistic, but to
be fair and just and give equal rights, not just
(13:42):
through black and white and brown, but male and female,
between millennial and baby boomers. If you do the work,
y'ah to get the pay and it's not going to
happen through natural means. It's only going to happen when
we speak up and we cry oud, and we write
senators and we do letters and we have meetings. There's
(14:05):
a lot You can't have income without influence. You got
to understand your influence is capital. There are some of
you that could pick up the phone and do more
than we did in a march all the way across Atlanta.
Just one phone call. One phone call, you could have
five people over for dinner and solve a whole neighborhood
(14:28):
worth a problem and be profitable and make money. We
got rid of DEI not realizing that the companies that
embraced DEI made twenty five to thirty percent more profit
margin than those that did not. So we are cutting
off our nose despite our face.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, I think people don't understand it's an inside game
and an outside game, and the two have to connect,
you know when you talk about the phone call, the
relational Yes, yes, I just had a situation with open AI. Yes,
this image was misused. I saw that, and Open AI
didn't necessarily do it. They didn't also think about the
(15:06):
guardrails that were needed in advance. So when me and
John Hope Brian were talking about this, I said, Hey,
this is Sam let's just reach out. You know most
times and people on social media wanted me to speak out.
In that instance, I needed to use my influence inside,
which I did, and it made a tremendous difference and
(15:27):
helped set the stage for even the other historic and
how that's used. So I want people to understand that
there is power in your influence.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
We don't always have to look.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I'm for march and I'm for demonstrating, but I think
we missed a very important aspect.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Of the movement that people don't know about.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
That's why we do the work we do at the
King Center and teaching people about Kingian non violence, which
we call non violence three sixty five because there were
five steps.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Direct action was the fifth.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Negotiation was before that, right, right, you know, and sometimes
we can call people behind the scenes. Yes, we can
work behind the scenes, even if people have to be
in the streets.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
I don't know if there's connectivity between that, because as
the people in the streets from my father there were
also Okay, Andy will tell you, you've heard the studies.
He'd be in the you know, in the room, yeah,
talk well, while you know others were in the streets,
and Daddy understood that both have to work together synergistically
with a strategy.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I think that the people in the streets draw attention
to it, but the people are to make decisions. Yes,
you're not going to make a decision in a march,
holding up a place exactly you're going to draw attention.
You may get depresses attention. And today that doesn't even
work as well as it used to because so many
people have marched about so many things and massive numbers
(16:50):
and so many cities all across the country that the
media doesn't always cover it, the algorithms don't always bring
it to the top. It doesn't have the punch that
it used to when we had three TV stations. Now
we got three hundred and some stations. You know, we
got cable, we got streaming, we got.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
All we just have everybody in their social media.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Yeah, everybody thinks they're a reporter, you know. And so
I think we're going to be going to have to
be more progressive in the way that we approach problems
and seek the influence that that's necessary to be able
to hold court around a conference table rather than standing
around a statue having an argument or having a dispute.
(17:33):
Let me ask you this, I don't think that America
as a whole is as bigoted as it's some of
its leadership, some of its influencers, and some of its press.
I don't see us getting on elevators getting into a fight.
I don't see us in the grocery store slapping each other,
(17:53):
knocking each other down. A lot of us really do
want to get along, at least to a degree. But
when you watch the news, it looks like we're all
getting ready to pull guns and shoot each other. And
I think that if our better angels, to borrow Abraham
Lincoln's phrase, if our better angels would climb upon our
shoulder and begin to speak to us it would be
(18:16):
it would cause a transition of all of the hatred
and malice. It seems like the people who have the
most mouth have the leaf sense and the lease integrity,
and we need people who with calmer heads to prevail
in such a predominant way that we begin to redefine
what it means to be an American, because in the
(18:39):
last ten years there has been a steady erosion of
the capital of being an American. And I'm glad I
use that word because I wanted to talk about that.
The last frontier your father was really working on was
extending capital and fighting for capital and economic justice for
(18:59):
us us to have. And the striking and the marching
and the people who were working on trash dumps and
everything else were fighting trying to get a.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Fair ways and treated with dignity.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, treated with And.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
So the Southern Christian Nation Conference that he led, they
launched an arm of their organization called Operation bird Basket
in Atlanta around nineteen sixty two, and it spread across
different cities in the nation. And people need to know
that SELC was founded by one hundred ministers, and so
(19:40):
when they launched Operation bread Basket, it was with the
mission to get companies number one, to respect the personhood
of black people, because we were not being hired, you know,
in higher paying jobs. We were not always treated with
dignity on the job. And so they would use the
(20:04):
non violent philosophy and principles to call on corporations to
hire more blacks, to promote more blacks. And and also
they ended up start they started out and you know,
affordable housing as well. So they had this whole economic
structure that they was they were building out, uh, for
the for the black community.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
And in Memphis.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
When he went to Memphis, you know, someone invited him
there because of what happened to the sanitation workers, and
he joined that. But he was in the middle of
organizing a poor people's campaign to kind of elevate these
economic injustices that didn't just affect the black comp you know,
the white appellation, the the the Hispanic population, the poor whites,
(20:49):
uh and yeah, and women, women, digenous population. So it
was bringing all those people together to highlight the economic
inequities in our country.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I think a lot of people don't realize that the
encompass more white women than it did black people.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Benefit handicapped people exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
They made up the preponderance of the number, and so
they thought swiping out DEI was swiping out blacks. But
they looked around. They swiped out their grandmothers, They swiped
out the bans, they swiped out the.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
LTB and this cag fire community, it.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Is backfiring and the fruit is dying on the vine
and we can't get a lot of produce that we
need to get, and sometimes we fix something that isn't
broke to our own detriments. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, that's that's very true.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
But I mean that goes back to the vigilance that
I think we need to have in this nation when
people are doing that.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I mean, you talked about my father being ahead of
his time.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
We need more people ahead of what's happening, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
We need to see we need to read the tea leaves.
It's already been there, right, you know what is it called.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Five? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, yeah that you know that became as a surprise.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Suppose a great big, beautiful bills that weren't so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
It became as a surprise. But some of this has
been in the working.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
We've seen it, we've heard it, but we discounted it,
We dismissed it, even dismissed when Trump was running for
office the first time. We kind of just brushed it
off and didn't take it serious. So we got to
start really paying attention so that we can prepare better
to ensure that we can keep moving in the right direction.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I keep telling people about the time you read something
in the paper, is over. It is over. Whether it's
a land sale, whether it's a mall being built, whether
it is an injustice, a murder, a rape, or killing.
By the time you read about it in the paper,
it is done. By the time they started talking about
(22:57):
the great big, beautiful Billy project, yeah, project twenty twenty five,
it was already done. It was already done. All the
buttons had already been pushed, the books were being printed,
It was already in place. Things big things take time.
You can't throw them together at the last minute and
have the impact that we need to have. And I
(23:18):
think we need a strategic plan that has the deposit
of time and capital behind it. And we have to
talk about capital. Three, opening up of bank. You got
to have some serious capital now, Oh yeah, to be
heard to even get in the conversation America has become
(23:41):
so capitalistic that it has ceased to be It has
ceased to be about right and wrong. It has ceased
to be about mercy and compassion. It has become so
capitalistic that America has become eaten up. If you don't
have capital, you don't have a position. You're not on
(24:01):
the cabinet, you're not on the board, you're not in
the meeting. You can't get things done. And one of
the great things that you did is to get involved
in capital and to start a bank in the middle
of the cot in the middle of the country, and
to invest into a bank where in the middle of
the country the first time that a black investment has
(24:22):
been done in a place like that. What was it
that led you to move in that direction?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
So my business partner, actually Ashley Bell, came to me
and said, you know, he had an opportunity to purchase
a bank in Salt Lake City, Utah, really Holiday, Utah,
and he wanted me to join him with the effort.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
He told me about.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
He went to meet with the banking officials with the
Latter day Saints Church.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Because they're very influential.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yes, Salt Lake City in Utah itself that's where the
headquarters is, and when he met with them, they told him, hey,
you need to talk to Bernice to get you to
the Guard family. I happened to have a relationship with
one of the influential families in that church, and I
had a conversation with them, connected them with Ashley, and
the rest became history. They brought along some of the
(25:13):
other members of the Latter day Saints church to help
us with some of the fundraising, and they invested in it.
But we all along were getting more and more black
investors because in order to convert it to an MDI
Minority Depository Institute, we had to have black owners. And
so it was a majority of black owners with the
(25:34):
undergirdy of the Latter day Saints that invested in already
existing community bank with no delinquency.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, so we started good.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I don't know if they heard you. I don't. First
of all, I applaud the fact that you understand that
sometimes you have to make allign since with people that
you don't line up with about everything.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
But let me tell you this, bitch. You got to
hear the story because it's incredible.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
In nineteen seventy four ish, the leader of the Mormon
Church said there was nothing redeemable about black people.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Wow, hear that.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Fast forward to twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
We purchased, we close in June of twenty twenty five
on this bank. A good portion of our investors are
our largest investors are members of the Latter day Saints Church.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
And the bank is called Redemption Bank.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
And that is only true because there are some financial
advantages to black owned properties that made prejudice have to
go out the window. You had enough capital. That's when
you be surprised. It's not black, it's not white, it's
green in America, and understanding that that is a part
of the process and not just feeding off our own,
(26:50):
feeding off our own, eating off our only. Bugs. Don't
get on one leaf and just eat the one leaf up.
We have to be able to make connections and association.
We might not agree about everything. Our theology might not
line up, our doctrines might not line up. One might
be a bartender and the other one might be a
prayer meeting leader. But if it's going to move the
(27:13):
community forward, it took everybody. The barber, the teacher. I
grew up when we had black communities, you know, and
the barber and the school teacher lived around the street.
You couldn't do nothing because they tell you mama in
a minute. But we had real community. We had real community,
and we have to understand that today in order to
(27:34):
get things done on the scale we need to get
them done. We have to join hands, black hands, white
hands brown.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
That's why the movement was important.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Dose their fight to do away with dajuras segregation by law,
was it critical the fight to create integration because while yes,
it's people said in the days of the movement, we
had more black businesses, but we were confors fine to
our little neighborhood. You don't want to just be in
(28:04):
your own neighborhoods. You want to be able to collect
and have customers and clientele from other communities.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
And bring some of that back into So it opened
the door.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Oh you want a shout. They may want a shout
because so many times we are fed the line that
the money must stay in our community. But it won't
grow if it stays in our community.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
It definitely won't grow if if we're not placed in
other community. Yes, I mean we're here in Atlanta right now.
We have many black businesses that are in Buckhead right,
which is has been a predominantly white community in Atlanta.
We have some in Alpharetta, a place in forsythe County
where even in the eighties we had to leave before.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Dark and sundowntown.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Mother and them combined forces with what happened to Hoseal
Williams being attacked by white supremacists, and they marched on
forsythe County. From that march, Opracame did her show, and
then from that there was a racial Commission established, and
now black people live in Foresyth count they have businesses
in forty count Yeah, that's what the movement for Justice
(29:08):
and freedom represented and continues to represent if we align
with it.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
And it also represents the equity of influence. It's not
just about money, it's also about influence. Like Oprah did
her show there exactly. That made a big difference, bringing
to light see a lot of truth that's being smashed
down to the ground. One of the things your father
used to say, didn't write it, but I love it.
(29:34):
It's truth smashed down to the ground. Whereas again, undaunted
and right now, truth is being smashed down to the
ground through books, through other means, through all kinds of statements,
no more Black History Month, No no more libraries trying
to be shut down, books taking off the shelf. But
they're taking books off the shelf at the time that
(29:56):
we got ai. You're not going to be able to stop.
Truth is gonna run like a mighty stream. It's gonna
come up again. It's gonna rise up again. It's gonna
come up for women, it's gonna come up for all people.
And that's very, very important. And people are still gonna
have June teenth, whether you like it or not. They're
(30:16):
gonna have June teenth, just like they're gonna have cabbage
and black eyed peas on January one. They're still gonna
do it because of the culture. And you can't kill
culture with the tweet. Chapter number four, Big Picture, when
you look at the economic forecast of where we are
(30:39):
and you understand that currency is a global discussion, and
you understand that it's not just America, it's Africa, and
what's going on in Africa. Flat fastest growing GDP in
the world is coming out of Africa. We did not
start when the boats landed. We existed before the boats
(31:00):
and understanding and make connections so that we don't have
nothing against Asian people, but we don't need the Asian
people doing our hair products, doing our face products. We
could do that ourselves. We can connect, and we can
do it through our phone. You don't have to be
rich down to make connections with people overseas and join
(31:20):
forces together, just like Jewish people do with Israel. We
have to be able to make connections for the betterment
of all. Other racists do it exactly. All other racists
use their global influence to get things done and not
just people in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
And connection is important, but the connection needs to be
very strategic, right, and you have to figure out how
to truly create enterprise. I think it's important that we
have small businesses, not knocking that, but I think it's
time also to shift to creating enterprises. I think there
(31:58):
has to be an activity. You know, Delta understood that.
That's why they're one in the marketplace with airlines. They
started merging. You know, I'm challenging even the small business owners.
How do you create an enterprise? How do you connect
in a similar fashion You don't may have they may
not have to lose your identity, but how do you
(32:19):
create something larger?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Because we haven't.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Cornered anything as a people in the black community. I mean,
like you said, air cate products, we should be you know,
the leading UH manufacturers and UH distributors of all of that,
but we're not.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
So I'm going to go back to Neamiah again.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
When you hear the sound of the trumpet rally there
and our God will fight for us. There's something about
joining first forces, connecting UH and coordinating our efforts. So
if we want to we want we need to build,
we need to have chains.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
You know what I'm saying. All right with the nation
in different areas.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
And we have the skill sets and the engineers and
the technological and we have it. Is not that we
don't have it. We don't always use it properly to
its best intent and understand the vision. And a lot
of it comes down to something that cannot be counted
by an accountant, cannot be charged by the rs. It's
(33:20):
called trust. Trust is a commodity that has to sit
at the table of every boardroom or you can't get
it done. Now, to help trust the loan, we must
have some contracts. Yeah, in contracts we trust. Yeah, in
contracts we trust. And there's a way to do international
(33:41):
business in such a way that we can build these
things more rapidly. China has been pouring money into Africa
like crazy, and now there's highways, Now there's hotels, Now
there's plants, and now there's lithium, and now there's gold
and diamonds. And Africa has started saying, you're not just
gonna come in here exactly and take all our stuff
(34:03):
and leave us helpless. But they are looking to make
connections with us, and we need to be present at
the table when the divisions are made because we are
one people. We are one people landed on different spots,
but throughout the diaspora we are one people. I think
it's important when you start talking about reparations, other people
who have been through atrocities receive reparations. Do you think
(34:27):
that people of color deserve, need, or have a pathway
forward as it relates to reparation.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Absolutely, I mean, you know, my father often said it
didn't cost the nation one penny to integrate lunch counters,
to provide the right to vote, but going forward, it's
gonna cost something. You said, any society does something against
the people for hundreds of years must do something for people.
So absolutely, how it looks is where the challenge is
(34:58):
because there's different thoughts about whether it should be cash
payment or whether it should be you know, investment in
different things like education, healthcare, et cetera. I think it
needs to be a combination of right the above, because
there is a price that can be paid, especially for
those who descend from the enslaved.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
There's a way to trace that now, yes, thanks, you.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Know the ancestry, dot com twenty three and men so
many others, so we don't have to be trying to guess, well,
who does it go to?
Speaker 3 (35:25):
No, no, and there there's a way to do it.
As it relates to real estate, as it relates to DOWNPAI,
as it relates to access to capital, as it relates
to social grants, as it relates to CDFIs, there's so
many different ways that we can access capital in a
way that makes it possible for the dream to come through.
(35:46):
But once you have the capital, you also have to
have the human capital to go along with the capitalism
in order to get to the place that we really
need to go. I want to know this, if doctor
King was alive to day right now, seeing the state
of our country right now, in my view sliding backwards
(36:07):
in so many areas. What do you think he would say?
Speaker 2 (36:12):
You know, when people ask that question, I said, well,
he's not here today, so I don't know what he
would say. But what I usually say is, contextually, we
know what he was working on before he was assassinating, right.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
He was working on a livable wage.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
He was working on an opportunity for people to have
access to capital, to own homes, to start businesses.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I think number.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
One, he wouldn't necessarily be shocked because of his prophetic insight.
He would be disappointed that we didn't make the kind
of progress that.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
He wrote about. You know, we need to do this,
that and the other.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I don't think we picked up the blueprint, you know,
So I think he would read, he would restate some
of this blooprint, you know, and re talk about the
things that he.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Was already talking about, right, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
So that's that's the way I think he would he
would see things if he showed up after what is
this now fifty seven going on fifty eight years?
Speaker 3 (37:15):
You know, I think that's true. And I also think
the devil Ware is product now, you know, I think
the devil War is product. And by that I mean
liquor stores on every corner in our neighborhoods, fast food
that is killing us, giving us cancer, dying at earlier
(37:36):
and earlier ages. Yeah, and women having hysterectomies. Immediately, Black
women have twice as many hysterectomies as their white counterparts.
Some of these health disparities could be resolved because it's
it is a subtle, quiet, nice, well dressed genocide, and
(38:01):
we have to recognize that we don't take the first
opinion that's offered to us, that we have our own doctors,
that we have other people to research things, because some
of our best and brighters are not just blacks, but
across many, many minorities are being eradicated because clearly there
is an ongoing movement to sanitize the country and move
(38:26):
everything that has differences out of the country. But to me,
the thing that makes America America.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Is its diversity.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
If you lose its diversity, you have Democracy is just
an idea. It's not a building, it's not a place.
It's not something you buy or drink, or sell or eat.
It's just an idea, and an idea is fragile with
the changing of generations and the changing of leadership. Ideas change,
(38:55):
and we can easily lose the opportunity to go forward
when we look at the ideas of today, when we
look at the currency changing, for example, cryptocurrency, and we
start looking at cybercurrency, and we start looking at XRP,
and we start looking at all of these things that
are coming into the world. I think we have to
(39:16):
start teaching our children a little differently about capital.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yes, not just spending it.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Not I got an iPhone, I got stock in I phone. Yeah,
I got afford I got stock for it. We got
to get to the point that our money is making
money instead of us working for the money. We got
to make the money work for us. And that is
(39:44):
a cultural distinction in our intellectual way of dealing with
money that has not penetrated beneath the hard soil of
If I get it, I got to spend it. We
need to turn it around and take what we gain
and leverage it to produce more capital. If you can't
get the loan without black people being a part of it,
(40:08):
then black people need to take advantage of those opportunities.
A lot of times we don't know about it.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, Yeah, the minority partnerships with the majority exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
That was the true in South Africa too. Yeah, they
couldn't do business without doing business with black people. And
it helped a lot with Johannesburg and came down and
places like that, and it will help a lot.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And that's how that's how hr Russell's company grew here
in Atlanta, you know, because he was often the minority
partner in a lot of these real estate developments across
the city.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
And so we have to think about that.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
I mean, I believe in, as we said earlier, investing
in our.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
People, yes, each other, yes, but we also.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Have to diversify. It's like you diversify an investment, right.
We need to diversify in the way we do business, right,
and we need to bring others into the.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Fold, right, you know. I think about it bank.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
They knew when they came in as white investors that
it had to be a black owned bank, you know,
and they respected that. So now we have a black
on bank with white investors. We knew they were important
to the equation.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Talk about the bank. Is the bank focused more on
mortgages or land development or business small businesses?
Speaker 4 (41:23):
There?
Speaker 2 (41:23):
We actually are the only African American black owned bank
that originates SBA loans, the country originates them. That's because
Ashley was formerly the Southeast Regional director for the SBA.
And the intention is to grow the bank to become
national and eventually to trade it on Wall Street. That
(41:47):
happens with prayer and regulators a lot. Then then then
it would be the first time a black bank UH
would be national and goes public. So that's the work
that we are trying to do to expand it. It's
right now a community bank, you know, so the focuses
on the community right there in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
But the plan is to continue to expand.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
And there may be a possibility that some of the
bigger banks may give capital to the bank in a
way that a redemption bank that they might not give
to individuals and distribute it that way in order to
meet regulation.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yes, that's part of the division as well.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
I had figured out. I figured you had already thought that.
I didn't think I was enlightening you. But the reason
I took the time to say is that a lot
of people don't understand it's not always a name on
the door that's feeding the capital that's making the business run.
There are many, many, many, many authorities that are connected
(42:56):
to anything to make it run, government contracts. There are
different ways that you can do business. There are different
ways that you can form alliances lollps, LLCs and do
business in such a way that you get into a
game that you couldn't get in. I would rather own
ten percent of twenty million dollars than one hundred percent
of a twenty dollar bill, exactly. Yeah, and we have
(43:19):
held out for the one hundred percent of the twenty
dollars bill to the chagrin of losing the opportunity to
do more and to have more money. How does it feel,
not only as a black person, but as a black woman,
to be leading the charge in this way for Redemption Bank.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
It's very humbling, to be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah, but I know there's a great responsibility on my shoulder.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
You know. Again, banks are.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Regulated, Yes, yes, they are.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Heavily regulated, and so.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
You want to be very strategic smart, and you know,
every day, as I said, is important, Yeah, because there
are people that don't want this to succeed.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Yes, you know. And when she says regulated, she means
federally regulated. So you can't have a bank and be
autonomous from politics, because politics have regulations that banks have
to go by, and you have to understand that sometimes
a loan is not just turned down because you're black.
(44:27):
It turned down because you don't meet the regulations that
are necessary. So do your homework before you go after
the loan to find out one what kind of loan
you need, what kind of grants are available. You might
not need as much capital as you think, and who
the regulators are in Washington who control the purse strings
for the banks that can release the capital to get
(44:48):
you going. Sometimes it's not as hard as you think
it is, right, Yeah, but there's a way to get
it done, and it's not easily. It's not often discussed.
That's why I'm doing this podcast because there are some
things that we need to discuss that I can't do
from the poor pig right, but at this age and
(45:09):
at this stage, they need to be talked about. We
have to leave the smooth stones behind us that the
Lord was with us when we crossed the Jordan. The
stones have to be left behind and we have to
be able to have these kinds of conversations. And sometimes
in church the only conversation you can have is from
Genesis to revelations. But I think we need to have
(45:30):
some bigger conversations because we're at the point now that
people are coming up for prayer, believe in God for
a car. A car is not a miracle. No, all
kinds of people have a car. You don't need God
to come down and get you a car off to
call a lot. There are practical things that you can
do to get a down payment. They're down payment grants.
(45:50):
There are all kinds of things that are available to us.
You can leverage your money rather than spending your capital
and be able to get to end too places that
you can't get in before. Don't you think that financial literacy,
even though it's changing right now because of the currency,
it's something that we need greater emphasism.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Oh definitely.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
I mean I grew up as the daughter of Martin
and Curtis Scott King, and I was financially illiterate, that
interesting and educated, right and educated, And so our community
needs more education in this area.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
We need to be equipped in this area.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
We need to know where the opportunities and the information is.
And so I'm glad you're doing this and hope more
people I know with Operation Hope and John O'Brien and
what he's doing is so incredible, but we need more
and more people to do this and make sure the
information is being disseminated into those pockets where a lot
(46:50):
of times people are not getting.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
It right right, and we don't have to be in competition.
We support Operation Hope. We give capital to Operation Hope
because we have to get rid of the spirit of
competition and get into the business of collaboration. Chapter number five,
Preserving our history. Your mother says something that or she
(47:13):
was attributed to saying something I thought was quite profound.
They keep trying to assassinate your father over and over again.
When you look at character assassinations and you look at
some of the things that people are doing with AI
right now, how vigilant is the fight not to have
our history distorted or aborted by the current technology that
(47:36):
we have out there now.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Well, I think it's very important. I think that's another concern.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
An area that we have got to equip by people in.
You know, the interesting thing is when I was talking
to John and his conversation with Van when it comes
to AI, a lot of people, as regardless of races,
right but the problem is oftentimes we don't spend the
(48:07):
time necessarily to educate.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
And expose and prepare our people.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
And we need to do that because we have the
capacity to take AI and use it as a tool
to continue to teach about who we are as a people.
And I'm hoping that will happen. I mean, we have
to have a vigilance that way. I tell people as
things are being quote unquote removed. Number one, I'm not
(48:33):
sure where they're being removed too, But our history tells
us that we are great storytellers. Information storage somewhere in
our culture, and so we're going to keep sharing it.
But now we need to figure out how to use
the tools of AI.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
We can do it exponentially.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
I think you're exactly right, and that's why I think
they're going to fail, because you can move all the
books out of the library, but you can't move AI
from being.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Able to and you can't memory too people that the
stories they got from Grandmama.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Yes, you know, yes.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
I mean, think about this when when you and I
were growing up in you know, middle school, high school,
we didn't get a lot of black.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
History, right, I learned most of mine later.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
In fact, I've learned more about our people in the
last ten years, right than my entire life. And I'm
sixty two. So that information is coming from somewhere now.
I mean it's emerging. I'm on social media and I'm
finding out new things every day right about our people.
So I'm like, I'm not concerned. Remove your book. We're
(49:36):
doing some other work. We're gonna get this information out.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
And even when they did teach black history when I
was at school, it started from the boats. Yes, yeah,
it started from the boats. It's if we just we
were made in the ocean, you know, and it started
from the boats, and that's where the story began. We
came here slaves and changing around our ankles, and that's
how we started. We were born as babies would hang. Yeah,
(50:00):
that's not true. We were a people before there was slavery.
We had an order. There were black people that were
on this continent before there was slavery, and you need
to look at it and study them. More were free, yes,
and they were free, and they owned property and they
helped to skill some of the people that you admire today.
And so before we got into this bigotry, we were
(50:23):
better together. We did more together. We helped one another
along and a lot of people who created a lot
of things that we take for granted now were not
created by just one group of people. It was a
collective influence of intelligence coming from different races of people,
blacks included, that brought America to where it is today.
(50:44):
And I'm afraid, just like the fruit rottening on the vines,
when you drive people away, you drive your advantage away
to be able to have a more perfect union in
a better way. So I think that's real important. One
of the things I want to go back to that
I think is important to at least discuss. I think
(51:05):
that you can produce television, short films, snackable content for
a fraction of money and send it all over the world.
Whereas when I came along, if you didn't have fifteen
million dollars to put into a movie, there was no
discussion to be had. And if they put up the
(51:26):
fifteen million dollars, they control the narrative of the story.
There's an expression in la, whoever has the goal makes
the rules. Now you can almost produce a movie with
her phone.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
You can, Yeah, you definitely can't.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
You can do it for a few hundred dollars exactly.
So if we lose our history, it's because we gave
it away, exactly, because we can capture our history and
we have enough of our elderly people alive. And the
other thing that I think is important is that when
you look at baby boomers, who were seeing the greatest
(52:03):
transfer of wealth in the history of America from one
generation to another, that generation that receives what the baby
Boomers are leaving behind have to be prepared because money
has to be aimed at something. It can't just be
put in cans like my grandmother did and buried in
new yard. Yeah, under the mattress or in the yard somewhere.
(52:27):
We have to have a plan and a strategy for capital.
Purpet profit without purpose is always going to lead to failure.
And so I think that's such an important thing, and
that's why I'm so inspired and wanted to have an
opportunity to talk to you, because you have purpose and
you have profit, and you have the potential to take this.
(52:47):
It starts out as a community bank. Everything starts out
as a seed, and then grow it and cause it
to build. Never laugh had a seed, Never laugh, Never
despise a small beginning, because oak trees start out as acorns,
and so when you have something small, nurture it and
don't let anybody laugh at your dream.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
That's right. We started out as seat.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
We started out a Yeah, we were a seat. That's right.
That's right. We started out us.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
Every human life is a seat. Absolutely, what we have
in this world absent what God placed it. When he
place does he it, we produce.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
That's right, So never despise it.
Speaker 3 (53:26):
So the whole earth survives under sea time in harvest.
Sea time and harvest is an unbreakable law, whether you're
talking about trees, whether you're talking about people, whether you're
talking about business. Growing that seed and fertilizing that seat,
and understanding what kind of ground that seed needs to
be planted in you might have the right business in
(53:46):
the wrong place, and figuring out where it ought to
be to be the most fruitful, and how to geo
target and market different areas in order to have the
greatest impact that you need. Our universities are finding it out,
they're teaching it. They're teaching entrepreneurship. We've got Good Soul.
One of the programs that we started this teaching entrepreneurship
(54:06):
so that we can get access to capital and have
opportunities to bring about change in life. And I think
that the more we know about what each other is doing,
the better it's going to be. Sometimes we don't get
the front page, we don't get the headlines, we don't
get the news. I was going to say six o'clock news.
(54:27):
You don't have no six o'clock news. Yeah, now twenty
four hour news. But it's harder to get in the
news because the sensationalism. And we are prone to this too.
Whenever you watch sensationalism more than you watch educational material,
whatever is the most profitable is what they're going to
(54:49):
show you the most, and it's what the algorithms are
going to bring to you. You ought to be digging
into AI and technology and learning a little bit more
about it. If you just learn little bit, if you
if you learn one thing a month, by the end
of the year, you know twelve things and you're a
little bit better off than you were before. You can't
(55:10):
help your kids with their homework if you don't study yourself.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
So this is this is a and study the trends.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
Yes, I mean, so many people are afraid of cryptocurrency, right.
You know, I have cryptocurrency, right, and when I tell
it the people they're like mmm.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
I said, okay, you're gonna be left behind, right.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yeah. When when when you start seeing banks like JP
Morgan Chase investing into a cryptocurrency and other types of currency,
a cybercurrency in general, that's that's a wake up call.
Those people aren't gonna put billions of dollars into something
that they're gonna let go down easily. And we ought
(55:53):
to be right behind them, like a man with a
basket of vegetables saying me too, me too. I might
only have twenty, but me too.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
And that's important for people to understand because most people
don't have the hundreds of thousands, right, they don't have
the thousand. Start with what you have and build from there,
and do it as young as you can.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yes, start very.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
Young, not saying my age, start, yes, Start is the point. Yeah, yeah,
but start when you're young, especially you got some young
and started now.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Yes. And there are tax exemptions incidentally that are available.
A certain amount of your income can be exempt from
taxes if it's put away for college fund, even if
they don't go to college, and they get to the
end of the road and decide to go into business,
you still have secured that amount of money that is
not tax And those kinds of things are the things
(56:47):
that we're just starting to wake up to and find
out about. So I have to ask you about the
pepsi ad, and you're speaking out about the pepsi ad.
Why did you do it and what impact did you
have as a result of it.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
I think sometimes the issue with social media is there
are only so many words you can use, and so
when people do things, it takes things out of context.
And so for me, when I see people use little
small clips to show something and people assume one thing,
I'm like, let me come and respond to this and
(57:21):
give context.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
In this case, it was Kendall Jenner.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
She had a pepsi cooler and it was one of
the demonstrations in this time with the young people Black
Lives Matter, and so she emerges to give this Pepsi
to a police officer as if to suggest, you know, pepsi,
if they reach across and just give them a pepsi,
you know, we can break this dividing line and create
real community and progress. And I'm like, wait a minute,
(57:46):
people suffer, bled and died and had to do more
than that, and so I made a crack. Well, if
he had only known he could give it a pepsi,
then we wouldn't have had to go through all of this.
So there are times when things happen on social media.
I don't do with everything is I don't want to
blow every everybody's platform, but there's strategically, there are times
when I feel the need that I have to speak,
(58:07):
either for contextualization, a clarity, or to point people in
the direction of where they need to read further, especially
with my dad, because people misappropriate and sanitize his words
all the time.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
Yes, and when I.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
Say people, I mean across the board, across party lines period.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
Wow, Well, thank you for the courage to do that
and to correct that. There is so much of what
we're seeing on social media is AI generated, and I
found out I did extensive research. Some of it's not
even generated in this country, right, it's generated outside this country.
But they found out the problems in this country, and
(58:49):
they're excervating. They're exacerbating the problem to make it worse.
To divide us, Yes, to divide us and distract us exactly,
And while we're running around fighting about something that really
doesn't matter. They're taking over the country and moving over
the world. We've got to have a change. Chapter number six,
MLK and Malcolm X. They tell me you have done
(59:13):
the Runway with Malcolm X's daughter and walk together, hand
in the hand. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
It was a powerful experience, and I have to say
it this way. I had a shirt on what my
father said. I'm black, I'm proud. I'm proud of it.
I'm black and I'm proud. I can't even remember the
words now when you think about what's been happening in
the black community with all of the taking away of
the DEI right and what seems like direct attacks on
(59:42):
our black women even in business.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
When I got in that room, Bishop, there was so
much energy in there. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (59:50):
It was a relief to see our people together in
that room and to see both the descendant of Malcolm
X and Martin Luther King your connecting on that runway
because they've always been presented as opposites, yes, or in opposition,
and the gentleman, but no, the gentleman.
Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Who who produced.
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
This show was able to find these clips that I
hadn't seen, and I was like, wow, and he put
he was saying, put something out that Malcolm said, then
put something out with my father said, and it was
like parallel and very powerful. Now my father had the
philosophy of non violence. People talk about NYE means that.
I said, we can go off on a tangent on that,
but the point is that both of them were committed
(01:00:36):
to uplifting the black community. And for us to be
on that runway together at this time what's happening with
our people was so refreshed and rejuvenating for so many people.
I haven't seen smiles like that in a long time.
Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
And it was Iliosa Shabaz, who's who's a friend of
mine and we connect and talk from time to time.
My mother and her, her mother and my mother had
a very close relationship, and so it was it was
just so rewarding to be there and I'm just excited
about it, and I'm sure we're going to be doing
some other things.
Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
I think she spoke at your mother's sad.
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
No, that was the other daughter.
Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
That's the other daughter, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Ottola or Ambassador Shabbaz spoke because she's the oldest and
she had a very close uh Ambassador Shabaz had a
very close relationship with my sister Yolanda as well.
Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Yes, they did performances.
Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
And there were people there from South Africa, Oh, Nelson
Mandelg's family and all.
Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Of the presidents living presidents with their wives.
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
And the only one that couldn't come, Gerald Ford wrote
us a letter and said he would have been there, yeah,
you know if he wasn't innfirmed.
Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
And of course the future President Obama was there.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
That was absolutely and and I was there, Yes, I
was there and proud to be there. Thank you for
being one of the teachers and leaders and four runners.
That's out front. Don't don't make a lot of noise,
get a whole lot done. Walks here in quiet. That's
how she done. She walks in quiet. But you look around,
(01:02:08):
there's a big explosion coming from Reverend Bernice King. Thank
you for being on our podcast. It's a real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Hey, everybody, I want to take this time to thank
you for watching the Next Chapter podcast. If this conversation
inspired you, helped you reflect on an idea, or spark
something new inside of you, make sure to like, comment,
and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Remember, life
(01:02:40):
isn't about how you begin, it's about how you finished strong,
So start your next chapter with us right here every
week
In this case, it was Kendall Jenner.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
She had a pepsicoler and it was one of the
demonstrations in this time, she emerges to give this pepsi
to a police officer, as if to suggest if they
reach across and just give them a pepsi, you know,
we can break this dividing line and create real community
and progress.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
And I'm like, wait a minute.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
People suffer blood and died and had to do more
than that, and so I made a crack. Well, if
he had only known he could give a pepsi, then
we wouldn't have had to go through all of it.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Right, Hello, I am Tdjason. I want to welcome you
all the family from Everywhere to next chapter. Everywhere. You
can tell all of your friends to download this podcast
and listen in real close, because we have a unique
opportunity to sit with history, to embrace thoughts and ideas
(00:52):
that we read about in books. But now we come
face to face with in the person of my special guests. No,
I'm not going to tell you who it is yet.
I'm gonna tell you all about her, and then I'm
gonna tell you who she is. She is an attorney,
she's a minister. She's the CEO of the Martin Luther
King Junior Center for Non Violence Social Change, civil rights advocate,
(01:15):
peace champion, and the youngest daughter of the civil and
human rights icon doctor Martin Luther King and Global thought leader.
Doctor Bernice King is who I'm talking about. We have
the privilege of hearing from a woman whose leadership reminds
us of the enduring power of hope and non violent change.
(01:38):
This is doctor Bernice A. King. I'm glad to have
you here. We go way back, been out there a
long time. When you were laying on your mother's lap
at the funeral of your father, I was sitting on
(02:00):
the couch with my dad. Oh wow, So I was
about the same age, about the same time, and I
remember it like it was yesterday. I don't even have
to watch it on film. From the wood cart that
they carried in in and the horses to Mahelia Jackson singing,
move on up a little higher. I live with that
(02:22):
through you, and I still know that I did not
live it the way you lived it. You lived it
up close. We lost an icon, you lost a father,
and I've always understood the difference between the two. I
admire you I respect you. Your mother and I were
great friends because your mother and my mother were great Yes,
(02:44):
so we have a lot of history, all the way
back to Mary and Alabama. They sang together in the choir.
But we have some things to say today that are
not just historical. We're going to touch on the historical,
but we're going to talk about the fierce urgency of
now and what we need to do right now to
survive the times that we're living in. Is Mlkday. We
(03:06):
are releasing this episode on January nineteenth, twenty twenty six,
MLK Day. Right on the spot, what does this day
mean to you? What should it mean to you? And
what do you want people to do on this day
to commemorate the life, the legacy, and the mentality of
(03:27):
doctor Martin Luther King. I've got a whole lot to
say about it, but there are many many important things
that I want to hear from you. Chapter one, Father's Legacy.
I want to know something right off the cuff, what
is your favorite quote from your dad?
Speaker 4 (03:44):
From your dad, Well, it's kind of hard to choose
a favorite favorite because he says so many things that
are just powerful and meaningful that transcends generations.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
But the one I quote the most because I think it's.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Critical that we get it, we get it in our system,
that we begin to understand that if we're going to
really create a just, humane, equitable, and peaceful world, and
that is he said, we're caught and an inexcapable network
of mutuality tide in a single garment of destiny. What
affects one directly affects all indirectly. And I cannot be
(04:19):
all that I ought be until you are all that
you ought be. And you cannot be all that you
ought be till I am all that I ought be.
You know, it talks about the interrelatedness, the interdependence, and
the interconnectedness of human life. You know, we live in
a time as you know, when you know, everybody's into dismissing, putting,
(04:39):
pushing to the side, putting down, wanting to get rid
of people. Now, in our philosophy of nonviolence, we're not
trying to get rid of people.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
We're trying to get rid of injustice.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
You're rid of evil or overcome evil. And so we
teach that nonviolence doesn't seek to defeat people, but in justice,
so that understanding of the interconnectedness and relatedness and inter dependence,
if it's properly understood and embraced, puts you in a
posture that the work that you do to resistant justice,
(05:13):
you don't become unjust towards the people that you know
are fighting against in terms of what they are calls it.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I think one of the greatest injustices that I have
seen in this country, and it's very appropriate to talk
about it at this time, is that doctor MLK Junior
has been regulated in the minds of the media and
everybody else as a black leader. I don't see him
as a black leader. I see him as a national,
(05:42):
global leader whose heart was not just for black people,
but for all people, and that we might have an
equality and a better lifestyle that didn't rob from one
to accommodate the other, but leveled the playing field in
such a way that we can all sit down at
the table, black children and white children and brown children
(06:03):
and red children and say free and last, free and last,
Thank God Almighty, we are free. At last. We will
not be free. That was a quote until we are
all free. And so it is that freedom we come
to aspire for, to pray for it, to work for,
(06:23):
to walk for, to write our Senators for to pick
it forward, to do whatever we have to do to
make that a reality, not just for us alone, but
for our children and our children's children. Your father has
long reaching arms, his voice, yet echoes in the anals
of our mind to understand more fully and completely the
(06:48):
shared humanity of the human race and how important it is.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And you know where that comes from, I believe for him.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I want to tell this little story. When my father
was years old, he had some playmates that were white
their parents. Their parents owned a store across the street
from the home that he was born in, and every
day he played with them. Well, the time came for
both of them to enter into the public school system,
(07:17):
and at that particular time, he went one day and
he was denied the opportunity to play with his friends.
I mean, for him, they were his friends, right, you know,
he didn't see like color. They were totally even the friends,
oblivious to that world that they lived in of segregation.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
He went home crying.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
My grandmother had to explain to him all of the
history finally from enslavement all the way up to Jim
Crowism and the separation.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And she said to him, which so many people still have.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
To say to that black children, unfortunately, you're as good
as anybody else. And I think that had such a
pression upon him that for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
This is the way I tell it for young people.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
To understand, is that he was looking to be reconnected
or reconciled with his white friend. Yes, and so that
led his that set the stage for his entire leadership.
And that's why although he had the obviously been a
black man in America, he had those experiences, but he
understood that whole connection, that we are part of a
(08:26):
human family, reds of you know, how we define ourselves,
we are part of interconnected.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Again absolutely, you know. The thing that really intrigues me
about that is to begin to recognize and to stand
on the impetus of the reality that we that prejudice
is a learned behavior. If he had little white friends
and they were all playing until they were school aged
(08:53):
and schools separated them, that means that bigotry and hatred
and prejudice is something that children learn from adults. Little
babies don't come here hating each other. It is a
learned behavior, and if we can learn it, we can
unlearn it. To my dismay, as I begin to study
(09:15):
further and further, there was a time that the world
existed without hatred toward black people. And if that ever
existed pre slavery, then it's possible, just the possibility that
one day again we can rise to a higher standard
and reach for something better. And I think that we're
(09:35):
going to be forced eventually to have to come together
because we have so many external enemies, and no doubt
globally maybe galactically, that will force us to defend the
species in order to better the race. When you start
(09:56):
talking about flint, when you start talking about Jackson, missus simp,
when you talk about COVID, when you talk about major
illnesses that are attacking all types of people without discrimination, exactly,
we are required to unite together in order to protect
the species. And your father was ahead of his time. Myself,
(10:18):
he was ahead of his time. We show could uli
him now, you know, we could use him right now
in explaining that to us and moving the myths and
the disparities that exists when the average African American family
makes one dollar to every ten dollars that the average
(10:39):
the average white family makes, When you recognize that home
ownership only embraces forty two percent of African American people,
but seventy five percent of Caucasian people. Even when the
credit ratings are the same the approval ratings of access
to capital, it will remain that kind of a golf
(11:02):
standing in between us. The digital divide is frightening, and
the digital divide is critical right.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Now, very much so, very much so.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Chapter two, don't become and complacent.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I want to point something out.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
As you're talking about all this, which includes the digital divide,
There's something I've been trying to disprove with my father.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I'm like on a mission.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Most of the words I embrace, I respect what he said.
This one thing is troubling to me. He said, one
of the tragedies still of human history is that the
children of darkness are often more zealous and determined than.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
The children of light. Right, And so as you were.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Talking, I was thinking one of the things that we
have to understand, you know, as we know out of
our faith, evil is always present at hand, right, And
so that means that we have to be vigilant. We
have to always shine the light. And I think too
often people get comfortable with progress, you know, and they
settle in, and we've seen that happen since my father's assassination.
(12:12):
There have been seasons that that happened, and so the
evil just begins to increase and increase. So people need
to understand, in the spirit of Martin Luther King, the
movement must continue. Mother said, struggles are never in the process.
Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win
it in every generation. Because I used to be disturbed
(12:34):
by all of these racial disparities and discrepancies and all
of the injustice in the world, until I listened closely
to both of them said and said, our role and
responsibility is to stay on the wall, be the nea mayas,
don't come down and get distracted by the different things
that distract. We have to continue to do good day
(12:55):
by day, and we have to do it in a
collective sense.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
I think one of the problems that we have in
getting good people to speak up is not always bigotry,
but the illusion that in giving us our share, it
diminishes their share. Instead of recognizing that we want to
make the path bigger, we want to be more inclusive,
(13:19):
so that we have more customers, more consumers, more building,
more economy. We have the strongest GDP in the world,
but it's not evenly distributed amongst all people. And we
need to understand that we can distribute it amongst all
people and not be communists and not becommunionistic, but to
be fair and just and give equal rights, not just
(13:42):
through black and white and brown, but male and female,
between millennial and baby boomers. If you do the work,
y'ah to get the pay and it's not going to
happen through natural means. It's only going to happen when
we speak up and we cry oud, and we write
senators and we do letters and we have meetings. There's
(14:05):
a lot You can't have income without influence. You got
to understand your influence is capital. There are some of
you that could pick up the phone and do more
than we did in a march all the way across Atlanta.
Just one phone call. One phone call, you could have
five people over for dinner and solve a whole neighborhood
(14:28):
worth a problem and be profitable and make money. We
got rid of DEI not realizing that the companies that
embraced DEI made twenty five to thirty percent more profit
margin than those that did not. So we are cutting
off our nose despite our face.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, I think people don't understand it's an inside game
and an outside game, and the two have to connect,
you know when you talk about the phone call, the
relational Yes, yes, I just had a situation with open AI. Yes,
this image was misused. I saw that, and Open AI
didn't necessarily do it. They didn't also think about the
(15:06):
guardrails that were needed in advance. So when me and
John Hope Brian were talking about this, I said, Hey,
this is Sam let's just reach out. You know most
times and people on social media wanted me to speak out.
In that instance, I needed to use my influence inside,
which I did, and it made a tremendous difference and
(15:27):
helped set the stage for even the other historic and
how that's used. So I want people to understand that
there is power in your influence.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
We don't always have to look.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I'm for march and I'm for demonstrating, but I think
we missed a very important aspect.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Of the movement that people don't know about.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
That's why we do the work we do at the
King Center and teaching people about Kingian non violence, which
we call non violence three sixty five because there were
five steps.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Direct action was the fifth.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Negotiation was before that, right, right, you know, and sometimes
we can call people behind the scenes. Yes, we can
work behind the scenes, even if people have to be
in the streets.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
I don't know if there's connectivity between that, because as
the people in the streets from my father there were
also Okay, Andy will tell you, you've heard the studies.
He'd be in the you know, in the room, yeah,
talk well, while you know others were in the streets,
and Daddy understood that both have to work together synergistically
with a strategy.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I think that the people in the streets draw attention
to it, but the people are to make decisions. Yes,
you're not going to make a decision in a march,
holding up a place exactly you're going to draw attention.
You may get depresses attention. And today that doesn't even
work as well as it used to because so many
people have marched about so many things and massive numbers
(16:50):
and so many cities all across the country that the
media doesn't always cover it, the algorithms don't always bring
it to the top. It doesn't have the punch that
it used to when we had three TV stations. Now
we got three hundred and some stations. You know, we
got cable, we got streaming, we got.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
All we just have everybody in their social media.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Yeah, everybody thinks they're a reporter, you know. And so
I think we're going to be going to have to
be more progressive in the way that we approach problems
and seek the influence that that's necessary to be able
to hold court around a conference table rather than standing
around a statue having an argument or having a dispute.
(17:33):
Let me ask you this, I don't think that America
as a whole is as bigoted as it's some of
its leadership, some of its influencers, and some of its press.
I don't see us getting on elevators getting into a fight.
I don't see us in the grocery store slapping each other,
(17:53):
knocking each other down. A lot of us really do
want to get along, at least to a degree. But
when you watch the news, it looks like we're all
getting ready to pull guns and shoot each other. And
I think that if our better angels, to borrow Abraham
Lincoln's phrase, if our better angels would climb upon our
shoulder and begin to speak to us it would be
(18:16):
it would cause a transition of all of the hatred
and malice. It seems like the people who have the
most mouth have the leaf sense and the lease integrity,
and we need people who with calmer heads to prevail
in such a predominant way that we begin to redefine
what it means to be an American, because in the
(18:39):
last ten years there has been a steady erosion of
the capital of being an American. And I'm glad I
use that word because I wanted to talk about that.
The last frontier your father was really working on was
extending capital and fighting for capital and economic justice for
(18:59):
us us to have. And the striking and the marching
and the people who were working on trash dumps and
everything else were fighting trying to get a.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Fair ways and treated with dignity.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, treated with And.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
So the Southern Christian Nation Conference that he led, they
launched an arm of their organization called Operation bird Basket
in Atlanta around nineteen sixty two, and it spread across
different cities in the nation. And people need to know
that SELC was founded by one hundred ministers, and so
(19:40):
when they launched Operation bread Basket, it was with the
mission to get companies number one, to respect the personhood
of black people, because we were not being hired, you know,
in higher paying jobs. We were not always treated with
dignity on the job. And so they would use the
(20:04):
non violent philosophy and principles to call on corporations to
hire more blacks, to promote more blacks. And and also
they ended up start they started out and you know,
affordable housing as well. So they had this whole economic
structure that they was they were building out, uh, for
the for the black community.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
And in Memphis.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
When he went to Memphis, you know, someone invited him
there because of what happened to the sanitation workers, and
he joined that. But he was in the middle of
organizing a poor people's campaign to kind of elevate these
economic injustices that didn't just affect the black comp you know,
the white appellation, the the the Hispanic population, the poor whites,
(20:49):
uh and yeah, and women, women, digenous population. So it
was bringing all those people together to highlight the economic
inequities in our country.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I think a lot of people don't realize that the
encompass more white women than it did black people.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Benefit handicapped people exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
They made up the preponderance of the number, and so
they thought swiping out DEI was swiping out blacks. But
they looked around. They swiped out their grandmothers, They swiped
out the bans, they swiped out the.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
LTB and this cag fire community, it.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Is backfiring and the fruit is dying on the vine
and we can't get a lot of produce that we
need to get, and sometimes we fix something that isn't
broke to our own detriments. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, that's that's very true.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
But I mean that goes back to the vigilance that
I think we need to have in this nation when
people are doing that.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
I mean, you talked about my father being ahead of
his time.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
We need more people ahead of what's happening, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
We need to see we need to read the tea leaves.
It's already been there, right, you know what is it called.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Five? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, yeah that you know that became as a surprise.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Suppose a great big, beautiful bills that weren't so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
It became as a surprise. But some of this has
been in the working.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
We've seen it, we've heard it, but we discounted it,
We dismissed it, even dismissed when Trump was running for
office the first time. We kind of just brushed it
off and didn't take it serious. So we got to
start really paying attention so that we can prepare better
to ensure that we can keep moving in the right direction.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
I keep telling people about the time you read something
in the paper, is over. It is over. Whether it's
a land sale, whether it's a mall being built, whether
it is an injustice, a murder, a rape, or killing.
By the time you read about it in the paper,
it is done. By the time they started talking about
(22:57):
the great big, beautiful Billy project, yeah, project twenty twenty five,
it was already done. It was already done. All the
buttons had already been pushed, the books were being printed,
It was already in place. Things big things take time.
You can't throw them together at the last minute and
have the impact that we need to have. And I
(23:18):
think we need a strategic plan that has the deposit
of time and capital behind it. And we have to
talk about capital. Three, opening up of bank. You got
to have some serious capital now, Oh yeah, to be
heard to even get in the conversation America has become
(23:41):
so capitalistic that it has ceased to be It has
ceased to be about right and wrong. It has ceased
to be about mercy and compassion. It has become so
capitalistic that America has become eaten up. If you don't
have capital, you don't have a position. You're not on
(24:01):
the cabinet, you're not on the board, you're not in
the meeting. You can't get things done. And one of
the great things that you did is to get involved
in capital and to start a bank in the middle
of the cot in the middle of the country, and
to invest into a bank where in the middle of
the country the first time that a black investment has
(24:22):
been done in a place like that. What was it
that led you to move in that direction?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
So my business partner, actually Ashley Bell, came to me
and said, you know, he had an opportunity to purchase
a bank in Salt Lake City, Utah, really Holiday, Utah,
and he wanted me to join him with the effort.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
He told me about.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
He went to meet with the banking officials with the
Latter day Saints Church.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Because they're very influential.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yes, Salt Lake City in Utah itself that's where the
headquarters is, and when he met with them, they told him, hey,
you need to talk to Bernice to get you to
the Guard family. I happened to have a relationship with
one of the influential families in that church, and I
had a conversation with them, connected them with Ashley, and
the rest became history. They brought along some of the
(25:13):
other members of the Latter day Saints church to help
us with some of the fundraising, and they invested in it.
But we all along were getting more and more black
investors because in order to convert it to an MDI
Minority Depository Institute, we had to have black owners. And
so it was a majority of black owners with the
(25:34):
undergirdy of the Latter day Saints that invested in already
existing community bank with no delinquency.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Yeah, so we started good.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I don't know if they heard you. I don't. First
of all, I applaud the fact that you understand that
sometimes you have to make allign since with people that
you don't line up with about everything.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
But let me tell you this, bitch. You got to
hear the story because it's incredible.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
In nineteen seventy four ish, the leader of the Mormon
Church said there was nothing redeemable about black people.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Wow, hear that.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Fast forward to twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
We purchased, we close in June of twenty twenty five
on this bank. A good portion of our investors are
our largest investors are members of the Latter day Saints Church.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
And the bank is called Redemption Bank.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
And that is only true because there are some financial
advantages to black owned properties that made prejudice have to
go out the window. You had enough capital. That's when
you be surprised. It's not black, it's not white, it's
green in America, and understanding that that is a part
of the process and not just feeding off our own,
(26:50):
feeding off our own, eating off our only. Bugs. Don't
get on one leaf and just eat the one leaf up.
We have to be able to make connections and association.
We might not agree about everything. Our theology might not
line up, our doctrines might not line up. One might
be a bartender and the other one might be a
prayer meeting leader. But if it's going to move the
(27:13):
community forward, it took everybody. The barber, the teacher. I
grew up when we had black communities, you know, and
the barber and the school teacher lived around the street.
You couldn't do nothing because they tell you mama in
a minute. But we had real community. We had real community,
and we have to understand that today in order to
(27:34):
get things done on the scale we need to get
them done. We have to join hands, black hands, white
hands brown.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
That's why the movement was important.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Dose their fight to do away with dajuras segregation by law,
was it critical the fight to create integration because while yes,
it's people said in the days of the movement, we
had more black businesses, but we were confors fine to
our little neighborhood. You don't want to just be in
(28:04):
your own neighborhoods. You want to be able to collect
and have customers and clientele from other communities.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
And bring some of that back into So it opened
the door.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Oh you want a shout. They may want a shout
because so many times we are fed the line that
the money must stay in our community. But it won't
grow if it stays in our community.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
It definitely won't grow if if we're not placed in
other community. Yes, I mean we're here in Atlanta right now.
We have many black businesses that are in Buckhead right,
which is has been a predominantly white community in Atlanta.
We have some in Alpharetta, a place in forsythe County
where even in the eighties we had to leave before.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Dark and sundowntown.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Mother and them combined forces with what happened to Hoseal
Williams being attacked by white supremacists, and they marched on
forsythe County. From that march, Opracame did her show, and
then from that there was a racial Commission established, and
now black people live in Foresyth count they have businesses
in forty count Yeah, that's what the movement for Justice
(29:08):
and freedom represented and continues to represent if we align
with it.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
And it also represents the equity of influence. It's not
just about money, it's also about influence. Like Oprah did
her show there exactly. That made a big difference, bringing
to light see a lot of truth that's being smashed
down to the ground. One of the things your father
used to say, didn't write it, but I love it.
(29:34):
It's truth smashed down to the ground. Whereas again, undaunted
and right now, truth is being smashed down to the
ground through books, through other means, through all kinds of statements,
no more Black History Month, No no more libraries trying
to be shut down, books taking off the shelf. But
they're taking books off the shelf at the time that
(29:56):
we got ai. You're not going to be able to stop.
Truth is gonna run like a mighty stream. It's gonna
come up again. It's gonna rise up again. It's gonna
come up for women, it's gonna come up for all people.
And that's very, very important. And people are still gonna
have June teenth, whether you like it or not. They're
(30:16):
gonna have June teenth, just like they're gonna have cabbage
and black eyed peas on January one. They're still gonna
do it because of the culture. And you can't kill
culture with the tweet. Chapter number four, Big Picture, when
you look at the economic forecast of where we are
(30:39):
and you understand that currency is a global discussion, and
you understand that it's not just America, it's Africa, and
what's going on in Africa. Flat fastest growing GDP in
the world is coming out of Africa. We did not
start when the boats landed. We existed before the boats
(31:00):
and understanding and make connections so that we don't have
nothing against Asian people, but we don't need the Asian
people doing our hair products, doing our face products. We
could do that ourselves. We can connect, and we can
do it through our phone. You don't have to be
rich down to make connections with people overseas and join
(31:20):
forces together, just like Jewish people do with Israel. We
have to be able to make connections for the betterment
of all. Other racists do it exactly. All other racists
use their global influence to get things done and not
just people in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
And connection is important, but the connection needs to be
very strategic, right, and you have to figure out how
to truly create enterprise. I think it's important that we
have small businesses, not knocking that, but I think it's
time also to shift to creating enterprises. I think there
(31:58):
has to be an activity. You know, Delta understood that.
That's why they're one in the marketplace with airlines. They
started merging. You know, I'm challenging even the small business owners.
How do you create an enterprise? How do you connect
in a similar fashion You don't may have they may
not have to lose your identity, but how do you
(32:19):
create something larger?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Because we haven't.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Cornered anything as a people in the black community. I mean,
like you said, air cate products, we should be you know,
the leading UH manufacturers and UH distributors of all of that,
but we're not.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
So I'm going to go back to Neamiah again.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
When you hear the sound of the trumpet rally there
and our God will fight for us. There's something about
joining first forces, connecting UH and coordinating our efforts. So
if we want to we want we need to build,
we need to have chains.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
You know what I'm saying. All right with the nation
in different areas.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
And we have the skill sets and the engineers and
the technological and we have it. Is not that we
don't have it. We don't always use it properly to
its best intent and understand the vision. And a lot
of it comes down to something that cannot be counted
by an accountant, cannot be charged by the rs. It's
(33:20):
called trust. Trust is a commodity that has to sit
at the table of every boardroom or you can't get
it done. Now, to help trust the loan, we must
have some contracts. Yeah, in contracts we trust. Yeah, in
contracts we trust. And there's a way to do international
(33:41):
business in such a way that we can build these
things more rapidly. China has been pouring money into Africa
like crazy, and now there's highways, Now there's hotels, Now
there's plants, and now there's lithium, and now there's gold
and diamonds. And Africa has started saying, you're not just
gonna come in here exactly and take all our stuff
(34:03):
and leave us helpless. But they are looking to make
connections with us, and we need to be present at
the table when the divisions are made because we are
one people. We are one people landed on different spots,
but throughout the diaspora we are one people. I think
it's important when you start talking about reparations, other people
who have been through atrocities receive reparations. Do you think
(34:27):
that people of color deserve, need, or have a pathway
forward as it relates to reparation.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Absolutely, I mean, you know, my father often said it
didn't cost the nation one penny to integrate lunch counters,
to provide the right to vote, but going forward, it's
gonna cost something. You said, any society does something against
the people for hundreds of years must do something for people.
So absolutely, how it looks is where the challenge is
(34:58):
because there's different thoughts about whether it should be cash
payment or whether it should be you know, investment in
different things like education, healthcare, et cetera. I think it
needs to be a combination of right the above, because
there is a price that can be paid, especially for
those who descend from the enslaved.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
There's a way to trace that now, yes, thanks, you.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Know the ancestry, dot com twenty three and men so
many others, so we don't have to be trying to guess, well,
who does it go to?
Speaker 3 (35:25):
No, no, and there there's a way to do it.
As it relates to real estate, as it relates to DOWNPAI,
as it relates to access to capital, as it relates
to social grants, as it relates to CDFIs, there's so
many different ways that we can access capital in a
way that makes it possible for the dream to come through.
(35:46):
But once you have the capital, you also have to
have the human capital to go along with the capitalism
in order to get to the place that we really
need to go. I want to know this, if doctor
King was alive to day right now, seeing the state
of our country right now, in my view sliding backwards
(36:07):
in so many areas. What do you think he would say?
Speaker 2 (36:12):
You know, when people ask that question, I said, well,
he's not here today, so I don't know what he
would say. But what I usually say is, contextually, we
know what he was working on before he was assassinating, right.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
He was working on a livable wage.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
He was working on an opportunity for people to have
access to capital, to own homes, to start businesses.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I think number.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
One, he wouldn't necessarily be shocked because of his prophetic insight.
He would be disappointed that we didn't make the kind
of progress that.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
He wrote about. You know, we need to do this,
that and the other.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I don't think we picked up the blueprint, you know,
So I think he would read, he would restate some
of this blooprint, you know, and re talk about the
things that he.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Was already talking about, right, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
So that's that's the way I think he would he
would see things if he showed up after what is
this now fifty seven going on fifty eight years?
Speaker 3 (37:15):
You know, I think that's true. And I also think
the devil Ware is product now, you know, I think
the devil War is product. And by that I mean
liquor stores on every corner in our neighborhoods, fast food
that is killing us, giving us cancer, dying at earlier
(37:36):
and earlier ages. Yeah, and women having hysterectomies. Immediately, Black
women have twice as many hysterectomies as their white counterparts.
Some of these health disparities could be resolved because it's
it is a subtle, quiet, nice, well dressed genocide, and
(38:01):
we have to recognize that we don't take the first
opinion that's offered to us, that we have our own doctors,
that we have other people to research things, because some
of our best and brighters are not just blacks, but
across many, many minorities are being eradicated because clearly there
is an ongoing movement to sanitize the country and move
(38:26):
everything that has differences out of the country. But to me,
the thing that makes America America.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Is its diversity.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
If you lose its diversity, you have Democracy is just
an idea. It's not a building, it's not a place.
It's not something you buy or drink, or sell or eat.
It's just an idea, and an idea is fragile with
the changing of generations and the changing of leadership. Ideas change,
(38:55):
and we can easily lose the opportunity to go forward
when we look at the ideas of today, when we
look at the currency changing, for example, cryptocurrency, and we
start looking at cybercurrency, and we start looking at XRP,
and we start looking at all of these things that
are coming into the world. I think we have to
(39:16):
start teaching our children a little differently about capital.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yes, not just spending it.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Not I got an iPhone, I got stock in I phone. Yeah,
I got afford I got stock for it. We got
to get to the point that our money is making
money instead of us working for the money. We got
to make the money work for us. And that is
(39:44):
a cultural distinction in our intellectual way of dealing with
money that has not penetrated beneath the hard soil of
If I get it, I got to spend it. We
need to turn it around and take what we gain
and leverage it to produce more capital. If you can't
get the loan without black people being a part of it,
(40:08):
then black people need to take advantage of those opportunities.
A lot of times we don't know about it.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, Yeah, the minority partnerships with the majority exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
That was the true in South Africa too. Yeah, they
couldn't do business without doing business with black people. And
it helped a lot with Johannesburg and came down and
places like that, and it will help a lot.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And that's how that's how hr Russell's company grew here
in Atlanta, you know, because he was often the minority
partner in a lot of these real estate developments across
the city.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
And so we have to think about that.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
I mean, I believe in, as we said earlier, investing
in our.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
People, yes, each other, yes, but we also.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Have to diversify. It's like you diversify an investment, right.
We need to diversify in the way we do business, right,
and we need to bring others into the.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Fold, right, you know. I think about it bank.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
They knew when they came in as white investors that
it had to be a black owned bank, you know,
and they respected that. So now we have a black
on bank with white investors. We knew they were important
to the equation.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Talk about the bank. Is the bank focused more on
mortgages or land development or business small businesses?
Speaker 4 (41:23):
There?
Speaker 2 (41:23):
We actually are the only African American black owned bank
that originates SBA loans, the country originates them. That's because
Ashley was formerly the Southeast Regional director for the SBA.
And the intention is to grow the bank to become
national and eventually to trade it on Wall Street. That
(41:47):
happens with prayer and regulators a lot. Then then then
it would be the first time a black bank UH
would be national and goes public. So that's the work
that we are trying to do to expand it. It's
right now a community bank, you know, so the focuses
on the community right there in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
But the plan is to continue to expand.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
And there may be a possibility that some of the
bigger banks may give capital to the bank in a
way that a redemption bank that they might not give
to individuals and distribute it that way in order to
meet regulation.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yes, that's part of the division as well.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
I had figured out. I figured you had already thought that.
I didn't think I was enlightening you. But the reason
I took the time to say is that a lot
of people don't understand it's not always a name on
the door that's feeding the capital that's making the business run.
There are many, many, many, many authorities that are connected
(42:56):
to anything to make it run, government contracts. There are
different ways that you can do business. There are different
ways that you can form alliances lollps, LLCs and do
business in such a way that you get into a
game that you couldn't get in. I would rather own
ten percent of twenty million dollars than one hundred percent
of a twenty dollar bill, exactly. Yeah, and we have
(43:19):
held out for the one hundred percent of the twenty
dollars bill to the chagrin of losing the opportunity to
do more and to have more money. How does it feel,
not only as a black person, but as a black woman,
to be leading the charge in this way for Redemption Bank.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
It's very humbling, to be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah, but I know there's a great responsibility on my shoulder.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
You know. Again, banks are.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
Regulated, Yes, yes, they are.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Heavily regulated, and so.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
You want to be very strategic smart, and you know,
every day, as I said, is important, Yeah, because there
are people that don't want this to succeed.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Yes, you know. And when she says regulated, she means
federally regulated. So you can't have a bank and be
autonomous from politics, because politics have regulations that banks have
to go by, and you have to understand that sometimes
a loan is not just turned down because you're black.
(44:27):
It turned down because you don't meet the regulations that
are necessary. So do your homework before you go after
the loan to find out one what kind of loan
you need, what kind of grants are available. You might
not need as much capital as you think, and who
the regulators are in Washington who control the purse strings
for the banks that can release the capital to get
(44:48):
you going. Sometimes it's not as hard as you think
it is, right, Yeah, but there's a way to get
it done, and it's not easily. It's not often discussed.
That's why I'm doing this podcast because there are some
things that we need to discuss that I can't do
from the poor pig right, but at this age and
(45:09):
at this stage, they need to be talked about. We
have to leave the smooth stones behind us that the
Lord was with us when we crossed the Jordan. The
stones have to be left behind and we have to
be able to have these kinds of conversations. And sometimes
in church the only conversation you can have is from
Genesis to revelations. But I think we need to have
(45:30):
some bigger conversations because we're at the point now that
people are coming up for prayer, believe in God for
a car. A car is not a miracle. No, all
kinds of people have a car. You don't need God
to come down and get you a car off to
call a lot. There are practical things that you can
do to get a down payment. They're down payment grants.
(45:50):
There are all kinds of things that are available to us.
You can leverage your money rather than spending your capital
and be able to get to end too places that
you can't get in before. Don't you think that financial literacy,
even though it's changing right now because of the currency,
it's something that we need greater emphasism.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Oh definitely.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
I mean I grew up as the daughter of Martin
and Curtis Scott King, and I was financially illiterate, that
interesting and educated, right and educated, And so our community
needs more education in this area.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
We need to be equipped in this area.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
We need to know where the opportunities and the information is.
And so I'm glad you're doing this and hope more
people I know with Operation Hope and John O'Brien and
what he's doing is so incredible, but we need more
and more people to do this and make sure the
information is being disseminated into those pockets where a lot
(46:50):
of times people are not getting.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
It right right, and we don't have to be in competition.
We support Operation Hope. We give capital to Operation Hope
because we have to get rid of the spirit of
competition and get into the business of collaboration. Chapter number five,
Preserving our history. Your mother says something that or she
(47:13):
was attributed to saying something I thought was quite profound.
They keep trying to assassinate your father over and over again.
When you look at character assassinations and you look at
some of the things that people are doing with AI
right now, how vigilant is the fight not to have
our history distorted or aborted by the current technology that
(47:36):
we have out there now.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Well, I think it's very important. I think that's another concern.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
An area that we have got to equip by people in.
You know, the interesting thing is when I was talking
to John and his conversation with Van when it comes
to AI, a lot of people, as regardless of races,
right but the problem is oftentimes we don't spend the
(48:07):
time necessarily to educate.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
And expose and prepare our people.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
And we need to do that because we have the
capacity to take AI and use it as a tool
to continue to teach about who we are as a people.
And I'm hoping that will happen. I mean, we have
to have a vigilance that way. I tell people as
things are being quote unquote removed. Number one, I'm not
(48:33):
sure where they're being removed too, But our history tells
us that we are great storytellers. Information storage somewhere in
our culture, and so we're going to keep sharing it.
But now we need to figure out how to use
the tools of AI.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
We can do it exponentially.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
I think you're exactly right, and that's why I think
they're going to fail, because you can move all the
books out of the library, but you can't move AI
from being.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Able to and you can't memory too people that the
stories they got from Grandmama.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Yes, you know, yes.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
I mean, think about this when when you and I
were growing up in you know, middle school, high school,
we didn't get a lot of black.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
History, right, I learned most of mine later.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
In fact, I've learned more about our people in the
last ten years, right than my entire life. And I'm
sixty two. So that information is coming from somewhere now.
I mean it's emerging. I'm on social media and I'm
finding out new things every day right about our people.
So I'm like, I'm not concerned. Remove your book. We're
(49:36):
doing some other work. We're gonna get this information out.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
And even when they did teach black history when I
was at school, it started from the boats. Yes, yeah,
it started from the boats. It's if we just we
were made in the ocean, you know, and it started
from the boats, and that's where the story began. We
came here slaves and changing around our ankles, and that's
how we started. We were born as babies would hang. Yeah,
(50:00):
that's not true. We were a people before there was slavery.
We had an order. There were black people that were
on this continent before there was slavery, and you need
to look at it and study them. More were free, yes,
and they were free, and they owned property and they
helped to skill some of the people that you admire today.
And so before we got into this bigotry, we were
(50:23):
better together. We did more together. We helped one another
along and a lot of people who created a lot
of things that we take for granted now were not
created by just one group of people. It was a
collective influence of intelligence coming from different races of people,
blacks included, that brought America to where it is today.
(50:44):
And I'm afraid, just like the fruit rottening on the vines,
when you drive people away, you drive your advantage away
to be able to have a more perfect union in
a better way. So I think that's real important. One
of the things I want to go back to that
I think is important to at least discuss. I think
(51:05):
that you can produce television, short films, snackable content for
a fraction of money and send it all over the world.
Whereas when I came along, if you didn't have fifteen
million dollars to put into a movie, there was no
discussion to be had. And if they put up the
(51:26):
fifteen million dollars, they control the narrative of the story.
There's an expression in la, whoever has the goal makes
the rules. Now you can almost produce a movie with
her phone.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
You can, Yeah, you definitely can't.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
You can do it for a few hundred dollars exactly.
So if we lose our history, it's because we gave
it away, exactly, because we can capture our history and
we have enough of our elderly people alive. And the
other thing that I think is important is that when
you look at baby boomers, who were seeing the greatest
(52:03):
transfer of wealth in the history of America from one
generation to another, that generation that receives what the baby
Boomers are leaving behind have to be prepared because money
has to be aimed at something. It can't just be
put in cans like my grandmother did and buried in
new yard. Yeah, under the mattress or in the yard somewhere.
(52:27):
We have to have a plan and a strategy for capital.
Purpet profit without purpose is always going to lead to failure.
And so I think that's such an important thing, and
that's why I'm so inspired and wanted to have an
opportunity to talk to you, because you have purpose and
you have profit, and you have the potential to take this.
(52:47):
It starts out as a community bank. Everything starts out
as a seed, and then grow it and cause it
to build. Never laugh had a seed, Never laugh, Never
despise a small beginning, because oak trees start out as acorns,
and so when you have something small, nurture it and
don't let anybody laugh at your dream.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
That's right. We started out as seat.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
We started out a Yeah, we were a seat. That's right.
That's right. We started out us.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
Every human life is a seat. Absolutely, what we have
in this world absent what God placed it. When he
place does he it, we produce.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
That's right, So never despise it.
Speaker 3 (53:26):
So the whole earth survives under sea time in harvest.
Sea time and harvest is an unbreakable law, whether you're
talking about trees, whether you're talking about people, whether you're
talking about business. Growing that seed and fertilizing that seat,
and understanding what kind of ground that seed needs to
be planted in you might have the right business in
(53:46):
the wrong place, and figuring out where it ought to
be to be the most fruitful, and how to geo
target and market different areas in order to have the
greatest impact that you need. Our universities are finding it out,
they're teaching it. They're teaching entrepreneurship. We've got Good Soul.
One of the programs that we started this teaching entrepreneurship
(54:06):
so that we can get access to capital and have
opportunities to bring about change in life. And I think
that the more we know about what each other is doing,
the better it's going to be. Sometimes we don't get
the front page, we don't get the headlines, we don't
get the news. I was going to say six o'clock news.
(54:27):
You don't have no six o'clock news. Yeah, now twenty
four hour news. But it's harder to get in the
news because the sensationalism. And we are prone to this too.
Whenever you watch sensationalism more than you watch educational material,
whatever is the most profitable is what they're going to
(54:49):
show you the most, and it's what the algorithms are
going to bring to you. You ought to be digging
into AI and technology and learning a little bit more
about it. If you just learn little bit, if you
if you learn one thing a month, by the end
of the year, you know twelve things and you're a
little bit better off than you were before. You can't
(55:10):
help your kids with their homework if you don't study yourself.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
So this is this is a and study the trends.
Speaker 2 (55:18):
Yes, I mean, so many people are afraid of cryptocurrency, right.
You know, I have cryptocurrency, right, and when I tell
it the people they're like mmm.
Speaker 1 (55:27):
I said, okay, you're gonna be left behind, right.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yeah. When when when you start seeing banks like JP
Morgan Chase investing into a cryptocurrency and other types of currency,
a cybercurrency in general, that's that's a wake up call.
Those people aren't gonna put billions of dollars into something
that they're gonna let go down easily. And we ought
(55:53):
to be right behind them, like a man with a
basket of vegetables saying me too, me too. I might
only have twenty, but me too.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
And that's important for people to understand because most people
don't have the hundreds of thousands, right, they don't have
the thousand. Start with what you have and build from there,
and do it as young as you can.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yes, start very.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
Young, not saying my age, start, yes, Start is the point. Yeah, yeah,
but start when you're young, especially you got some young
and started now.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Yes. And there are tax exemptions incidentally that are available.
A certain amount of your income can be exempt from
taxes if it's put away for college fund, even if
they don't go to college, and they get to the
end of the road and decide to go into business,
you still have secured that amount of money that is
not tax And those kinds of things are the things
(56:47):
that we're just starting to wake up to and find
out about. So I have to ask you about the
pepsi ad, and you're speaking out about the pepsi ad.
Why did you do it and what impact did you
have as a result of it.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
I think sometimes the issue with social media is there
are only so many words you can use, and so
when people do things, it takes things out of context.
And so for me, when I see people use little
small clips to show something and people assume one thing,
I'm like, let me come and respond to this and
(57:21):
give context.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
In this case, it was Kendall Jenner.
Speaker 2 (57:24):
She had a pepsi cooler and it was one of
the demonstrations in this time with the young people Black
Lives Matter, and so she emerges to give this Pepsi
to a police officer as if to suggest, you know, pepsi,
if they reach across and just give them a pepsi,
you know, we can break this dividing line and create
real community and progress. And I'm like, wait a minute,
(57:46):
people suffer, bled and died and had to do more
than that, and so I made a crack. Well, if
he had only known he could give it a pepsi,
then we wouldn't have had to go through all of this.
So there are times when things happen on social media.
I don't do with everything is I don't want to
blow every everybody's platform, but there's strategically, there are times
when I feel the need that I have to speak,
(58:07):
either for contextualization, a clarity, or to point people in
the direction of where they need to read further, especially
with my dad, because people misappropriate and sanitize his words
all the time.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
Yes, and when I.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
Say people, I mean across the board, across party lines period.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
Wow, Well, thank you for the courage to do that
and to correct that. There is so much of what
we're seeing on social media is AI generated, and I
found out I did extensive research. Some of it's not
even generated in this country, right, it's generated outside this country.
But they found out the problems in this country, and
(58:49):
they're excervating. They're exacerbating the problem to make it worse.
To divide us, Yes, to divide us and distract us exactly,
And while we're running around fighting about something that really
doesn't matter. They're taking over the country and moving over
the world. We've got to have a change. Chapter number six,
MLK and Malcolm X. They tell me you have done
(59:13):
the Runway with Malcolm X's daughter and walk together, hand
in the hand. Tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
It was a powerful experience, and I have to say
it this way. I had a shirt on what my
father said. I'm black, I'm proud. I'm proud of it.
I'm black and I'm proud. I can't even remember the
words now when you think about what's been happening in
the black community with all of the taking away of
the DEI right and what seems like direct attacks on
(59:42):
our black women even in business.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
When I got in that room, Bishop, there was so
much energy in there. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (59:50):
It was a relief to see our people together in
that room and to see both the descendant of Malcolm
X and Martin Luther King your connecting on that runway
because they've always been presented as opposites, yes, or in opposition,
and the gentleman, but no, the gentleman.
Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Who who produced.
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
This show was able to find these clips that I
hadn't seen, and I was like, wow, and he put
he was saying, put something out that Malcolm said, then
put something out with my father said, and it was
like parallel and very powerful. Now my father had the
philosophy of non violence. People talk about NYE means that.
I said, we can go off on a tangent on that,
but the point is that both of them were committed
(01:00:36):
to uplifting the black community. And for us to be
on that runway together at this time what's happening with
our people was so refreshed and rejuvenating for so many people.
I haven't seen smiles like that in a long time.
Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
And it was Iliosa Shabaz, who's who's a friend of
mine and we connect and talk from time to time.
My mother and her, her mother and my mother had
a very close relationship, and so it was it was
just so rewarding to be there and I'm just excited
about it, and I'm sure we're going to be doing
some other things.
Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
I think she spoke at your mother's sad.
Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
No, that was the other daughter.
Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
That's the other daughter, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
Ottola or Ambassador Shabbaz spoke because she's the oldest and
she had a very close uh Ambassador Shabaz had a
very close relationship with my sister Yolanda as well.
Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Yes, they did performances.
Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
And there were people there from South Africa, Oh, Nelson
Mandelg's family and all.
Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Of the presidents living presidents with their wives.
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
And the only one that couldn't come, Gerald Ford wrote
us a letter and said he would have been there, yeah,
you know if he wasn't innfirmed.
Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
And of course the future President Obama was there.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
That was absolutely and and I was there, Yes, I
was there and proud to be there. Thank you for
being one of the teachers and leaders and four runners.
That's out front. Don't don't make a lot of noise,
get a whole lot done. Walks here in quiet. That's
how she done. She walks in quiet. But you look around,
(01:02:08):
there's a big explosion coming from Reverend Bernice King. Thank
you for being on our podcast. It's a real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Hey, everybody, I want to take this time to thank
you for watching the Next Chapter podcast. If this conversation
inspired you, helped you reflect on an idea, or spark
something new inside of you, make sure to like, comment,
and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Remember, life
(01:02:40):
isn't about how you begin, it's about how you finished strong,
So start your next chapter with us right here every
week
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