Questlove Supreme: Reverend Al Sharpton

This episode of Questlove Supreme is the perfect way to end Black History Month and continue the conversation. At 4 years old Reverend Al Sharpton knew what his mission would be in life and so his journey began as a great orator, warrior and leader in the plight of justice and equality for Black people. Listen as Reverend Al shares his story with Quest and Team Supreme and find out how music was pivotal in framing his story. Class is in session!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
There he is, Hello, how you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Hello there?

Speaker 1 (00:13):
What's going on?

Speaker 3 (00:15):
What's happening?

Speaker 4 (00:17):
All right?

Speaker 5 (00:18):
I know you got limited times that I want to
start the clock it immediately because we got a trillion question.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 5 (00:26):
Welcome to another episode of Course Love Supreme.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
I Quest Love. We get here with Steve Supreme Shugar,
Steve in the house.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hello, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Congratulations on Sun Dange.

Speaker 5 (00:39):
Hello, Reverend now Hello there that's right, Reverend now also
the star of Summer Soul.

Speaker 6 (00:45):
I forgot uh congratulations, but power to the people.

Speaker 7 (00:50):
The people got the power.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Reverend is here.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Yes, absolutely, Uh, I'm Bayville.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
How are here?

Speaker 3 (00:57):
I'm fantastic. I'm a little off.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Let's do it.

Speaker 5 (01:00):
Monticolo from North CAFLEC Yeah yes, indeed, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Man, you just called it North Carolina. No one calls it.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
No one says no. No says New York City either.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:17):
It's like people saying Philip Dell or ill Fresh or
Phila whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's just no one says North caclating, No Carolina.

Speaker 5 (01:24):
Sho No, okay know what uh people, we cannot call
it North Carolina.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
North Caclac. All right, So our yesterday, how shall I say?

Speaker 5 (01:37):
Our guest today is is cut from a rare cloth,
the cloth of justice. He's a gentleman who, at the
ripe age of four knew what his calling was. I
believe that at the age of four, my parents allowed
me to watch Soul Train unchaperoned. So that's give me

(02:01):
some comparisons. Anyway, he was practically baptized in the civil
rights movement, appointed as leader of the youth movement from
the one and only Jesse Jackson's Operation bread Basket.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Our guest today is literally black Ghostbusters, the person, the
person whom you call when it's time.

Speaker 5 (02:25):
To put wills, when the white folks aught tripping, bringing
attention to justice name it. He's there, literally on the
front lines. You're always exciting, ever loss of words or
the right words. Always there on the front lines. Ladies
and gentlemen, Welcome to questlev Supreme, the one and only
Reverend Al Sharpton.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yes, thank you, Yes are you today? How are you today?

Speaker 3 (02:53):
I'm doing good, I'm doing very well. And congratulations on
some soul. You really a masterpiece on now.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Wow, I appreciate that.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
But I got to ask you and I'm a self
admitted former reluctant leader.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
How how hard is.

Speaker 5 (03:12):
It to still want to lead and be on the
front lines and always have the answers because there's many
a day where I mean, my version of leading is
more like make it, yeah, make it a music or
having a lunch with somebody, but you know, not not
to your level, but still like, once you decide that

(03:36):
that's the path that your life is on, you gotta
see it through. And what what makes you get out
of bed every morning to fulfill this role?

Speaker 3 (03:45):
I think that I put it this way. Michael Brown,
who was killed by police, and Triggerson's mother spoke one
night and she said something that clicked with me. She
said that Mark Twain, and you gotta remember when the
middle of this whole battle and Ferguson and for the
mother of a victim to quote Mark Twain was like,

(04:06):
what what is she getting ready to do? And she said,
Mark Twain said something that she never forgot. She said,
the two most important moments in your life is the
moment you're born and the moment you find out why
you were born. And that's what clicks with me. I
believe I was born to do what I do. I've
been doing it since I was four. Like you said,

(04:26):
I started preaching as a kid an acost the church.
I became Jesse and Bill Jones you directed at twelve,
so I don't know nothing else. And even as I
got older and got around James Brown and others in entertainment,
I kept going back to activism. James Brown would saying
he can't make a living doing that, He'll be back
out here, and I wouldn't go back because that's where

(04:49):
my comfort zone was. And as you have developed into
a leader, you can drop the reluctant you do it
questioning yourself. You do it because you can't do anything
else because that has become you, and people look for
you to do that. And what you are ambiguous about.
That ambiguity is what attracts people because they know you

(05:11):
don't have an agenda. You're doing it from your heart.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
Wow, okay, I gotta take that.

Speaker 5 (05:16):
So there's never a time where you feel like you
know where you're in a situation and you don't know
the right words to say, or Okay, there's a moment,
let me back up. So there's a there's a moment
that President Obama told me about in which he knew

(05:37):
that he was going to do that the funeral service
for in South Carolina. Yeah, in Charleston, he knew he
was going to do that service. And with a good
eight day lead, he knew that, you know.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
He had the He he crafted the perfect.

Speaker 5 (06:02):
Speech that he felt that was going to fit the tone,
and he said, like three minutes into that speech, he
knew that wasn't the tone, and he didn't know what
to do, and he just like took a breath and
something said just start singing amazing grace. And it was
a risk for him, but he did it and it
opened the people up. So I'm just saying, like in leading,

(06:26):
some oftentimes you have to think on your feet in
real time.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
How does that come to you?

Speaker 5 (06:34):
I think I come from a place where, like we
now have to watch our words, and I don't want
to get canceled.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
I don't want to say the wrong thing.

Speaker 5 (06:41):
So you know, often get caught in my head and
leading because you don't want to say the wrong thing
because of the repercussions.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
But how do you get over that?

Speaker 3 (06:51):
I think you go with the flow and the energy
and no matter how much you plan, and all of
us are worried about if I say this wrong, Am
I gonna hurt the cause? Am I gonna hurt the
family I'm representing them, I gonna hurt the organization. But
then you get in an energy and you just flow.
I'll give you an example, and or President Obama Trola

(07:12):
the same serve by amazing grace. I was in the
audience that they worked, and I didn't know that he
didn't plan it. But when I walked on the pulpit
to preach George Floyd's funeral, I had no plans of
doing that whole thing of get your knee off our neck.
It just came as I was speaking, and I just

(07:32):
went with it, and it worked, and I just kept
doing it. Then, and I think that you've got to
be disciplined enough to put some borders on yourself in
your own mind, but then free enough to say, I'm
gonna pressed as far as I can inside these borders
and let it flow. The advantage I had starting as
a boy preacher. The disadvantage is before I could read

(07:56):
and write well, I was preaching. The advantage is I
never learn how to use a manuscript, so I can't
speak from a manuscript. That's why when I started my
MSNBC show, hardest thing in the world for me was
to speak with a telepromt because I never read a sermon.
So I'm like, I'm messing up that life. Good old Yeah,
I never I never used a manuscript until I started

(08:20):
on MSNBC. I was fifty seven years old learning how
to speak it and read at the same time.

Speaker 7 (08:25):
So you're saying you're a freestyler. You saying you freestyle
for I.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Was freestyling before y'all call it freestyle.

Speaker 8 (08:33):
I was.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
I was freestyling when we were still saying North Kacilaki.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Do you remember what you spoke about when you were four?

Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (08:46):
What was your parents' reaction to this?

Speaker 5 (08:48):
Like or whoever was in charge of you speaking, how
do they know that this four year old had the
the gumption of the right words to lead.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
We had in church what they call the Junior usher Boy.
That's the kids that would hand out their little programs
and help see people. It was a cute little thing
to keep kids involved. Once a year they'd have the
Junior Usherboard anniversary. So the adult supervisor said, what do
y'all want to do at the anniversary? And it was

(09:19):
about ten of us. One of them was a guy
who ended up being a pretty big singer, Ronnie Dyson.
He was about yeah. Ronnie Dyson had a quarius in hair.
He was a kid with me in Washington Temple Church
in Brooklyn. He said that he wanted read a poem.
My sister wanted to sing. I said, I want to preach,

(09:40):
so everybody laughed. The doll Avis said let him preach.
Maybe God's gonna use him because this is a Pentecostal church.
And my mother said, I prayed that God would use
my son. My father said, Yo, this is crazy. But
they let me preach, and I preached the Anni versions about
nine hundred people. That they put me on a box
because the couldn't see me up on the roster, and

(10:02):
I preached from Saint John's fourteenth chapter, Let not Your
Heart Be Trouble. And I've been preaching ever since. By
the time I was seven, I was doing the Youth
Days and other churches. By the time I was nine,
they did the World's Fan in New York and they
put me up to preach before Maya Jackson. That's why
I loved a Soul Somersa, because I ended up doing
two or three cities with Maya and the rest was history.

(10:23):
That's how Jesse them heard of me. I was called
a wonder boy preaching.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
Wow, okay, So.

Speaker 7 (10:29):
How would you figure out what your sermons was going
to be?

Speaker 3 (10:33):
I would listen to older ministers because I grew up
in Pentecostal church. We was in church all the time,
and I would in many ways just preach back what
I heard out of memory, and I could put the
sermons together in my head.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (10:48):
Do you do you have any of like the recordings
of your your sermons as a kid?

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Do you have you?

Speaker 3 (10:54):
I have one when I was nine. When I was nine,
they did a forty five record me preaching, and this
guy that was a radio guy at the time, Doc Wheeler,
made a record. I have that, a little forty five
record of me and I was doing more, you know,
going back to what I heard other preachers did. And
then you go through the holler in the shout, and
because you was cute, you got away with it. When

(11:16):
you got older you had to say something. You can
get away with a lot when you're old.

Speaker 5 (11:21):
Accident, can you okay, can you explain to me? I
know that you're a Pentecostal preacher. But what are the
exact what are the difference between Baptist or you know,
the various because I just thought like Southern preaching was
one thing.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah, well I was raised by Southern parents, though I
was born raised in Brooklyn, Kojak, which I grew up
until I was like fourteen. Then I wont Baptists. Kojak
was more grassroots, h what James would call gut bucket.
We would do the singing in the shout and then
hallelujah dance. Baptists was a little more refined, and Methodists

(12:06):
was even more refined. It's a matter of style. It
is a matter of music. Like I remember when in
some big Baptist churches when I was growing up, you
wouldn't have drums in the church, but you wouldn't have
choirs that would sing emotional songs. So when I would
go to Baptist churches and Methodist church, they be singing anthems.
We didn't do that. All of our stuff was Shirley

(12:29):
Caesar kind of singing. And then you got more refined
with the Baptists, so it's more cultural and class. Grassroots
people were more to Pentecostals and as I grew up
and then got in the civil rights movementhen I was twelve.
They were all Baptists, and then I later became I
would re baptized the Baptist and they were a little

(12:50):
more learned. We were all spirit and that's probably why
I gravitated to sol to James, because James was a
secular version of the Holy Rolla. I mean, well Jans
would do wasn't much different than we're doing the choir
in the Holiness Church.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Okay, where are your parents from? You said they were
from the South.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
I was worried.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
My mother mother's from Dothan, Alabama. She passed. My father
was from you follow Alabama. Neither one of them was
on the map.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Wow, Wait, what's it Isama?

Speaker 3 (13:24):
You follow? You follow flowed? I love that name.

Speaker 5 (13:27):
You follow, You follow follow Alabama?

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Okay, Okay.

Speaker 5 (13:33):
As a musician, I do want to know, like right now,
as a record collector, I'm kind of on my my
my seventies gospel kick right now, and I'm noticing that
it's very hard to find rare to find like gospel
records that have like a certain groove to it or
a certain soul to it. And I realized that a

(13:55):
lot of it is that, you know, they thought it
was sinful or whatever, but you know, knowing that you're
cut from the cloth of the James Brown shadow if
you will, How I mean, how hard was it for
kind of secular sounding music to finally break through to

(14:15):
the Black church where it wasn't considered simple or that
sort of thing. Because even when I was drumming in church,
like if I started playing too good, I would get
looks from like the elders, like you're playing that rap music.
I know that you're playing run DMC right now, like
that sort of thing, Like right, how.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
It was hot? I remember that in the early days
of the sixties when I was still like eight or
nine and Sam Cook left the church because Sam Cook
started with a gospel group and he left and started
singing secular. They said, oh, he's backslid, He's going to hell.

(14:57):
And Lil Richard would go in and out, and after
a while people would be in and out. Ronnie was
in and out Ronnie Dyson, And after a while people
started getting comfortable that it was all right. It became
all right because those was that was kids got older
and we didn't see the difference but it was a
lot of tension. You're right. If I would go to

(15:19):
a political rally when I was twelve, I had backslid.
You in the world. You were supposed to deal with
going to heaven, nothing on earth. So it was the
same in the music, it was same in our social life.
But this was the era where Doctor King got killed.
It was a Black Power era. I was still thirteen
years old and I wanted to be with my contemporaries,
and we were activists, and many of them didn't stay

(15:43):
in activism like I did. But that was the time
where everybody was a member of something. You were either
with us, with Doctor King, or you were with the Panthers,
which were more militant, or you joined the Nation that's alon.
But everybody in New York was something, and your whole
life was around what you were a member of. What
girls you dated was based on what silo you were

(16:04):
in and uh and the church became had to make
adjustments to that because people started changing. When I was
first starting the Pentecostal Church, it was a sin for
women to wear lipstick or pants. And I remember we
went to Detroit. Yeah, I remember we went to Detroit
to speak of a youth convention, and I saw my

(16:27):
bishop's wife come out of the motel with some slacks on,
and I called my mother collecting and said, Madam Washington's
going to hell, she's wearing pants. My brother got mad
at me for calling her collect.

Speaker 5 (16:49):
Wow man, Okay, So as of this recording, we're a
few days ahead of the passing of of the infamous
uh Danny Ray. James Brown's now see his his his his, uh,

(17:12):
I guess you could say his, uh, his mouthpiece his
Paul Revere, can you talk? When's the when's the first
time you met James Brown?

Speaker 1 (17:22):
And what was that like?

Speaker 3 (17:24):
All right? When we when we were growing up? When
I started, uh growing up. I was born in Brooklyn,
Like I said, my father had a successful business and
he bought a house in Hollis, Queen's. At that time,
we thought Queen's Hollis was like the suburbs. And uh,
James Brown had a big match in Saint Albans, and

(17:46):
all the kids in the neighborhood gold and stand outside
the gate on to see James Brown. So he was
my hero. My father did his hair like James Brown,
and but I never met him. So fast forward, I'm
now known as a teenage preacher. And I had a
youth movement that you mentioned, Questlove, and a kid came

(18:10):
and joined the youth movement the same age as me,
and he said he was from the South. He came
to New York. He wanted to go to Columbia to
go to law school, and he joined my youth group.
His name was Teddy. He ended up being James Brown Slunt.
And about seven months after he was in our youth
group trying to get in law school, he got killed

(18:31):
in a car accident in Albany. He was driving with
some friends and Teddy got killed. James was having problems
then because he had endulged. This is seventy three. I'm
eighteen now, and he had endorsed a year before Richard
Nixon for president, and a lot of the brothers was
mad at him for going with Nixon. He was a

(18:53):
seller and all, and they picking at him when he
was at the Apollo in seventy two when Teddy got hill.
The next year, he came to New York about Teddy,
and the lead disc jockey in New York at that
time was Hank Span on WWRL AM. This before FM
got big, before Bright and Hank Span told him, he said,

(19:15):
if you want to do something in memory of your son,
your son joined this little youth group with this young preacher,
you should do something for them, and nobody will picket
you because everybody likes this little kid running around being
a civil rights guy. And they set up for me
to meet James Brown at his office on seventeen hundred Broadway,

(19:35):
and I went in. I'm meeting God. That's why I
told you the whole background of I stand at his
gate and James Brown looked at me, and he looked
me up and down, and he started talking and you
had no idea what he was talking about. And he
was looking at me, well, you know, if you do
what I'm to do, I'm gonna do it whatever and

(19:56):
all of that, and finally he shook my hand, which
was dismissing me. So when we got outside, I told her,
you know you with me, I think he said he's
gonna do the show. So he told me what to do,
how to pass out the flyers, how to promote. Hankspan
pumped it up, and we did it at the Rko
Alby Theater downtown Brooklyn, which is now the Alby Square mall.

(20:18):
But it used to be a theater there and they
had about two thousand seats and two shows was going
to sell out four thousand seats. Now, I didn't know
they had picked to James Brown, and I didn't know
that they were worried about what was gonna happen. I
went out there and did everything he said. And he
pulls up that night in seventy three in the limousine

(20:38):
and he jumps out the limousine and the driveway behind
the backstage and he looks at his manager, mister Bobbitt.
Mister Bobbitt, how they do Mister Bobba said, they sold
every ticket out and there's about five hundred people outside.
He said what he said? Yeah, and he told me
you come with me, son, And I walked behind James
Brown in the building and he went and combed his

(21:02):
hair out, and he's talking and again I don't know
what he's saying. And he gets ready to go on stage.
Danny raised introducing him the band that hit. People are screaming,
and he walks on the stage in the wings at
my show. Now, mind you'm eighteen years old? Was Miles Davis.
And Miles had come to see James perform and I'm

(21:22):
standing there between James Brown and Miles Davis and I
thought I had died and went them. In the middle
of the show, James stopped the music. I think he
had done trying me or something that was slow, and
he stopped and told the band hut it and they
stopped and he called me out. He said, I want
to bring out this young man who made the night happen.

(21:43):
His youth movement, y'all help. My son was a part
and I want him to lead us in prayer memory
of my son. So I'm like nervous. I'm used to
every report, but I've never been on a show business stage.
I walk out to the mic and I look at
him and he said, pray, go on and pray. You
know how to pray, don't you. I started freak and uh.
And when I came off, Uh. James Brown sent for

(22:06):
me in his dressing room after the show, and he
was sitting on the hair drive because he would always
have this happen till he died. After every show, he
rolled his hair back up and uh, and I uh
start talking to him and I'm trying to, you know,
communicate with him, and he's like the hair drives making
all his noise. He kept ha, what do you say?

Speaker 6 (22:25):
Ha?

Speaker 3 (22:26):
And he finally said to me, I'll be back in
New York in two or three weeks. I'm gonna play
in your career. And I met him in his office
and he said, uh, I'm take you with me to California.
I said to California. He said yeah, and we went
to California. He took me with him to do Soul
Train and he said to Don Connius, mister Caneis, He said,

(22:47):
I want you to meet this young man. He's a teenager.
I want him to give me an award on Soul Train.
By then he had the big payback out and uh
and uh he said. Don Coneia said, we don't do
awards on this show. And he said this Canais, do
you know how to sing payback? And uncle? He said, no,
you do that here? Were you gonna singing unless you

(23:07):
let this kid give me this award?

Speaker 1 (23:09):
And I went on.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
And I went on. Sol Tray gave j Brown this award.
I was the biggest guy Brooklyn did. Because now all
the girls that wouldn't give me a date because who
wanted to day of preaching, right, wanted to date me
because I was on sol trade with James Brown, and
I became in many ways like Teddy because I was
the same age, ambitious. I reminded him a son he
lost and he became the father that I didn't have

(23:34):
because my father left us when I was about twelve,
and we're back, moved back to Brooklyn, We're in the projects,
mother on welfare, and James started taking me around the
world and he kept saying, I want you to stay
in the ministry. I promise your mother you would leave
the church. So he'd send me home for me to preach,
do my youth work, send back for me, and he
became like a father.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Figured to me, Wow, wow, that's an incredible story. And
I would know how you got on now. I get it.
I get it now.

Speaker 6 (24:05):
So when did I'm just curious since I know you
guys had the father relationship, but you politically you were
growing and you were growing further and further apart. So
did you just how did that work? Did y'all have conversation?
Did you not feel right?

Speaker 3 (24:18):
We would argue James Brown was a very conservative guy
and to the right of the right and from Gusta Georgia.
He was a southern conservative guy and and he didn't
believe or not. But he used to always say to me,
I don't know what you're doing all that marching. Jane
Brown always had one or two guns with him well,

(24:41):
and he was a regular country guy like that. But
we would debate and argue. But he had just like
him for me. So he would always explain to his guys,
Reverend is more militant, but that's my son. And he
would take me in these rooms. And as I got known,
he would tell people, y'all got to accept Rev. I'm
talking about lot of the whites, because he take me

(25:02):
the crossover shows. I'll never forget. Later in his life,
they gave him the Kennedy Center Award, and he had
made them have me write the line of notes in
the program. And when I got there that night to
the Kennedy Center, it was George Bush was president. He
was in you know the President's whatever they call that
where you sit up in the booth, and next to

(25:26):
him the box they call it the presidential box. Next
to him was Coldon Powell, and then there was the guests,
and James Brown said, give Reverend the box. So these
people all never said mister Brown. He being honored. Carolvin
let him. They always do five, said mister Brown. Reverend
Shoptons running for president under Democrats against mister Bush. We

(25:47):
can't do that, he says, you gonna do it tonight.
And I'm sitting up there in the box now against Bush,
and Bush is two or three people down. So when
the Nimate, we all go in this little VIP area.
Only the president could go and honor Reeds and their guests.
And I come in. And this is how James Brown was.

(26:08):
James Brown stood there, looked at me. President staid over there,
mister Bush, and George Bush comes over. He says, mister Brown,
unted the happy with us tonight. He says, look here,
I know you in the revend got you all differences,
but his music tonight differences. I'm calling this James Brown.

(26:28):
None of that bad ja James Brown. He gonna tell
the president what you gonna do. And George Bush and
I later in life would laugh about that. Every time
I see George Bush, he says, did you ever tell
anybody about James Brown and me and you at the
at the Kennedy shen.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Wow?

Speaker 5 (26:45):
Wait, can I ask Okay, so James Brown won't be
the first or the last. I mean, I guess the
paraphrase term is the Rags to Richard's story that has
pro probably more conservative leanings even though you know they

(27:07):
say they're other people, but has more conservative leanings and.

Speaker 7 (27:10):
He just said it out loud.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah. Well, the thing is is that what I noticed
about this.

Speaker 5 (27:17):
Past election, we just had the amount of rappers that
were kind of going down the same path this well,
this thing of like pull yourself up by the bootstraps
and you know, if I do it, you can do it.
What do you think is the mindset that produces that?
I guess from him it's like I worked hard to

(27:39):
get here and everyone should follow my path.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Or is that like where he was coming from.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
I think that it's some of that. A lot of
it is that that I work hard, you can work hard.
And some of that is that they just were afraid
it would interfere where they were trying to go. But
the problem that they had with Jane is as conservative,
as conservative as he was politically, he had this real

(28:05):
streak of black in him and he refused his music
kept him black, and he wouldn't apologize for blackness, and
I think that was the difference, because I would go
in places and they would tell him. I was with
him one night he wanted to do the Tonight show
and they want to do the soundcheck, and he did

(28:26):
the sound check like he was at the Apollo, and
the guy told him said, mister Brown, you're gonna have
to water it down our kind of audiences a little,
you know, kind of tell him that you know they
wouldn't it's too hard hitting. And I'll never get And
this is why I love James Brown, despite his politics,
and I loved him because he was like a father.
He looked at the guy he said, if you want

(28:47):
to Sammy Davis, you should have booked him. He said,
you're gonna get James Brown knight.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
And that's what I love it.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
And that's really, in many ways what he would put
in me. He said, I want you to be your
own style. He said, whatever you do. We used to
ride around he had about thirty two thirty three cars.
That is a state. We'd always be riding around one
of his I think one of the reason he liked me.
He had a kids, but a lot of his kids

(29:13):
didn't hang around him. His daughters were still very young,
and I used to want to hear all the stories
and all advice because he talked incessantly. And his other
sons that were, you know, younger than Teddy, but my
almost my age. Then they wanted to get away. They
didn't want their elections. I wanted all of it. And
we just ride around in the dark because there wasn't
no street lights in the woods where James Browns the

(29:35):
state is, and he would be talking to me. I
remember he stopped one night and he said to me,
I wasn't on more than twenty one twenty two days,
he said, reverend, because everybody was surname. He believed in
that respect. Thing he said, Reverend, I want you to
promise me one thing. I said, what's that? He said,
promise me you'll never be one of the boys. He said.
I know you're a preacher, I know your civil rights,

(29:57):
but don't be like none of them. Be different, he said,
O always am different. When I do my first two
chords of a song, they know that's James Brown. Don't
nobody sound like me. And he pulled up in a
parking lot next to Daddy Grace's church in Augusta, Georgian
and we just sat there and I'm like, what are
we doing here? And after about a minute or two,

(30:18):
he said, you hear that? I said, here, what he
said that? I said, I don't hear nothing, but they
having church inside. He said, listen to that drum and
I listened and I said, yeah, I hear. He says,
that's where I learned the sound. They're on the one,
he said. I'm on a one three beat. Everybody else
is on the two fourth beat. Learn how to be

(30:39):
on the one. Set your own beat, he said. And
if you set your own beat, people always remember you.
And you do your own style. And when I started
a lot of activism in your face kind of activism,
and people you say, oh, he was too bold. Why
am I marching in Vincent Hurst? Why am I doing this?
You can put out a press release and make a statement.
I got it from Ain't Brown. I developed my own style.

(31:02):
I took a lot of flat, but my father figure
told me I had to be different in bold, and
I did that. And he used to laugh, saying, Rev
just doing the James Brown and civil rights rest of them.
Buscher don't know, he said, he's doing the raw stuff.
He's wraw he's wraw. I remember we were in his office.

(31:23):
I tell you this story. He's in his office one
day in nineteen eighty two and I had to come
down to visit him, and he said, I hear y'all
watching to try to get doctor King a birthday holiday.
I said, well, I said, you tight with the Republicans.
Why don't you see if you can help us out.
He said, I can go to President whatever I want.

(31:44):
And he hit us in the car and secondary picking
it up. Get the White House on the Phones's about
even o'clock of the ball And I said to myself,
yeah right, So we going through the day, went out,
got something to eat, come back about four o'clock. She's
the interconse that the White House is on the phone.
Mister Brown, I looked at him. I was a little
shot man in press. He picks up the phone and uh,

(32:06):
he talks to them. Then he hangs up the phone
and he looks at me. He says, January fifteen is
doctor King's birthday. He invited me up. Didn't get a holiday,
didn't get a holiday, but they agreed to meet with
him that day. So I told him they just using
you as a show piece. He said, you're right, he said,
and you're going with me. So I went back to

(32:27):
New York January fourteenth. He flew me to Augusta to
fly back to Washington. I kept saying, I can meet
you in Washington.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
I'm gonna ride over Washington.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
No, you got to fly with me. So we in
Delta Airlines because his private plane was in the shop,
and were sitting in the.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Wait he playing any new alternator.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Playing in the shot. He played in the shot, So
were sitting in first class. His bodyguards, coach were sitting there,
and he looks at me. When the plane levels up,
he said, reverend. I said, yes, sir. He said, I
want you to do me a favor. I said, what's that?
He said? When we land, were going by Bobby Bennett's place.
Bobby Bennett was one of the famous Flames which stopped singing,

(33:15):
but they were still cool. And I said, oh, mister
Bennet okay, because I met him a couple of times
he come out to summer the show. He said, mister Bennett,
I want him to he's gonna tighten up my hair.
I want him to do your hair like mine. I said,
you want him do what? He said? I want him
to do your hair like mine. And I said, all right, again,

(33:38):
this is my father. My father never I ain't emulate nothing.
So I like the abandoned son that found a man
that really felt I was worthy of being like him.
It was a real self identity thing. Bobby Bennett did
my hair and became you know. I started wearing the
comp and we went met with Ronald Reagan. When we

(33:58):
came back uh from the White House, got in the
plane headed back to gusta plane that was off again.
He's I got one more favor, Reverend. I said, what's that?
He said, I want you to wear your hair like
that as long as I'm alive. And that's where I
got the hairstyle from. And I'll never forget. Years later,
when he got in trouble when he was older and

(34:19):
went to jail, he would call me from the jail
about three times a week. And you have to call
collect because he's prisoner. And he they said, collect call
from the South Carolina Correction Facility, which you're accepting. I'm
halfway not being able to play bills, but I'd have
to take his call. I take the call. He would
never ask me how my kids work. By then I
had two daughters.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Nothing.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
First question was Reverend, how's your hair? Because he was
checking to see if I let with it? And she
slept with it. And that's where they asked out from.
And I took a lot of flat from a lot
of Afro centric brothers.

Speaker 6 (34:53):
You sacrificed for us, but you sacrificed for us like
it wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Be a father thing had a father in my life,
like my father.

Speaker 7 (35:04):
So how you I just ask you, Rev. Since we're
on the hair. You've had this hairstyle for such.

Speaker 6 (35:09):
A long time.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, how you here?

Speaker 3 (35:11):
And now?

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (35:12):
Because it's still beautiful now.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah, those that know, don't say. Those that say don't know.

Speaker 7 (35:21):
Not even the grease.

Speaker 9 (35:22):
You ain't even gonna talk the grease decks on it,
red words.

Speaker 6 (35:34):
I mean, your edges are beautiful. So whatever it is,
what it is, down with a two bresh real it.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
That's that's a credible, right, Rev.

Speaker 5 (35:46):
I need to know. I think it's easier now because
of the social media and the Internet. Okay, but pre Internet,
let's say, uh before nineteen ninety seven. I mean, even
though the Internet was out there, but it wasn't as viral.
If one needs to contact you for assistance or your presence.

(36:15):
How does one do that?

Speaker 4 (36:17):
And what is the.

Speaker 5 (36:19):
Thought process and the sort of decision making that you
go through before you decide yes, I'm going to take
this on because I can imagine that. Actually, let me
start with how many calls do you get every day

(36:39):
on an average to take up a cause?

Speaker 3 (36:42):
Well, before ninety seven, I always, since ninety one, had
an office, and I got that from James. James, you
said you're not in business if you don't have office.
I always had a stay up, started with two or three.
Now we got offices in seven cities, regional offices, and
the no government money. We raise our money and we
have crisis departments that vet out cases. Usually a lawyer

(37:10):
will call me because they want me to help publicize
it like it started it with Vernon Mason would call
me and say, sudden happened, kid got killed, Howard Beach.
We vetted it. They give us information, and I would
go and say, we're gonna do a march. We're going
out in the neighborhood. Or now Ben Crump calls me
like he called me when George Flutt family wanted to

(37:30):
reach me. And you know that's one of the things.
That was always crazy to me. They would always say
our shop that just wants publicity. That's why people called
me is they wanted me to blow it up. Nobody
called me to keep a secret. So we would we
would come in and we would decide that we thought
it was legitimate, and we'd rally people around it, because

(37:51):
if you don't create that kind of drama, you will
never create the media. Because it wasn't social media. So
other people said, it's a Shane nineteen eighty six, they
killed this boy Michael Griffins and Howard Beach because he
was black and nobody knew what to do. I said, well,
let's go out there. And they were saying it might
have been a mugget, it might have been a love triangle.

(38:14):
I said, if we march, everybody know what it is.
What do you mean March? I said, we got to
go out there and dramatize, So I called him March.
We went out there. As we start marching down the street,
maybe about five hundred of us, there must have been
seven eight hundred white stuff coming out calling us the
N words, throwing bananas and everything at us. And I said,

(38:35):
now everybody understand, it's a race thing because you bring
it out. I knew if you go in certain sections
Benson nurse Lady with you said Hawkins, they were gonna
make the case because they gonna react, and that became
on television. You had to remember I didn't come out
of Georgia like doctor King or out of Chicago with Jesse.
How come out of New York? You competing with Times Square,

(38:58):
Statue of Liberty, Empire, statement Wall Street. New York is
used to everything. So you got to be dramatic to
get attention on your cause. So people say I was
flamboyant and vodacious. You had to be in New York.
You can't send out a press release in New York
and get attention. You got to do something, and that's
what we would do. We would do things to grab

(39:18):
the media attention. The outrageousness of it made the case
which changed the racial profiling laws. But you had to
be able to dramatize. I remember when we was watching
at Vincent Hurrys when they killed Yussef Hawkins, and they
were throwing watermelons at us and calling us words, and
one of them, Saturdays, got stabbed me and I remember
I was marching locked arms with Yusef Hawkins brother and

(39:40):
he said, Reverend, hell you right, they're acting crazy. This
is gonna be wild on the TV news tonight they'll
know now it was race to kill my brother. He said,
this is gonna be great. I said, yeah, if we
lived to the end of this watch because they were
so crazy, even I got dirvious. But that's what you
have to do. You've got to be able to strategically

(40:01):
know how to raise the drama level and that edge.
You got to be real careful and disciplined about and
you got to be ready to be different. People would
not do that. It was me learning that the actors
from James Brown, combining to what I learned in the
King Movement and trying to bring it up north.

Speaker 8 (40:22):
So the question that that's interesting you say that because
one of the questions I have for you, because you know,
you are a reverend, and you said, you know that's
your calling, but you are you know, very.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Much a celebrity as well.

Speaker 8 (40:33):
So how do you kind of walk that line between
you know, your your ministry and your calling but also
having to be a public figure and if not an
outright entertainer so to speak. But you know, like you
just said, you have to, you know, get people's attention.
How how have you walked that line throughout your career Because.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
I always am honest with myself that I'm not an actor.
I'm not a singer and dancer. My celebrity came from
my activism, not my activism from my way around. A
lot of celebrities try to act like activists. I do
what I believe and and I won't do it if
I don't believe in it. I'm the kind of person
that's very disciplined like that. And I remind myself, kid,

(41:16):
you've grown up broken home on welfare in Brooklyn, that
only God could have put me where I am. And
he put me there for a reason. And I don't
want to get him to drop me for forgetting the
reason I'm there. When James Brown and others tried to
get me to just you can drop that you can
do entertaining. No, I gotta do this. This is what
I'm call I would have never known you, mister Brown.

(41:36):
It wasn't forgotten. And I really believe that.

Speaker 8 (41:38):
When you talk about you know, doing you know, getting
behind stuff that you believe in, do you think in
any way like the Toronto the Tounta Brawley case. Did
that change? I guess the way you were vet things?
Uh you know in your career.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
You know what I'm saying. How did that affect?

Speaker 3 (41:55):
When the lawyers called me about Broadley and I was
out there three or four months after, you know, they
started the case and we're moving. I went on the
lawyer's word and I believed them, and I believe this girl.
Why would not. You got people now that believe when
people say things and win the meet to error. But
I learned from that to vet it more carefully. Uh

(42:18):
so that every every eye doted, every tea's crossed to
the best of your ability. You never know all the
way what somebody's gonna do. Because a year after I
got in Brawley, I stood up for five kids accused
of a rapeist Central Park that they confessed to. I
ended up right on that one. They said I was
wrong on Broadley. It all happened within the same year.

(42:40):
So you taking a leap of faith, But I learned
not to take crazy leaps. Try to vet it as
much as you can and be careful, because you don't
want to discredit the movement by getting in situations that
blow up in your face, like right now we have
three policemen indicted for killing George Floyd. We don't know

(43:01):
what the jury's gonna do when they go to trial.
We went and helped blow up Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman gott
to quit it, and some people will say I was
wrong on Zimmerman. They said he was not guilty. But
Trayvon Martin is dead. So you've got to be willing
to stick in there and take the bad days with
the good. But make sure your intentions are good and

(43:22):
right and that you're as careful as you could be,
which is why I'm not getting any cases like that
since because I vetted, even if my lawyer brings it
to me, I vetted as much as I can, and
like I'm a prosecutor, I want to know every angle.

Speaker 5 (43:42):
My question is there's just you know, we're going all
over the place now. In two thousand and four, when
you decided what means you decide to try to run
for president in two thousand and four.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
I looked at the fact that in eighty four and
eighty eight Jesse had run and had really moved the
party more too towards the left, which we believed in,
and nobody had picked that up. And I'm looking at
the fact that we had just come out of the
war in Iraq and there were people that had moved

(44:14):
the party to the right, if you remember clintoning, them
were triangular and they were like almost centrist. And I
wanted to run to get into debates to bring up
racial profiling, to bring up police misconduct and how the
war Iraq was wrong. So I ran to try to
be on the stage to get a national hearing on

(44:37):
our issues. Uh. And that's what I did. And in
the debates, I would bring up stuff that nobody would
bring up with They had to deal with race, they
had to deal with policing, they had to deal with Iraq.
And I knew I wasn't gonna win, But I won
because I made those InTru that those issues become central
and uh, and I got a good vote and that
that is when mainstream white America started saying that, well,

(45:02):
he not just some guy out there angry. He really
knows the issues. But the point was if we could
get on the mainstream stage and our giall issues, we
could affect policy. And that's why I rang.

Speaker 6 (45:16):
Can I ask you it's interesting because the issue recently
came up. I was watching a new show about Van Jones,
and I love the way you ride your relationships because
you were just talking earlier about how, of course you
ran against Bush. Your relationship is not the same with
Bush as it was then. Relationship is not the same
with a lot of people, right sick Clinton's how do
you walk this line? I mean, in the Van Jones comparison,

(45:37):
some people were saying, well, why are you in pictures
with this person?

Speaker 7 (45:40):
You know, we don't.

Speaker 6 (45:41):
That doesn't happen with Al Sharpton, right, Like, everything seems
to be very planned out in a way, but yet.

Speaker 7 (45:47):
You still work together. So can you kind of break
that down because.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
You gotta let him know it's not personal. But just
like you got your beliefs, I have mine. So Donald
Trump I knew in New York. I marched on him
about Central Park. Then he tried that he was Democrat
when Dinkins was in but I when Trump won, about

(46:11):
a month after he won, he called me. I'd been
on Morning Joe that morning and Joe asked me about Trump.
He said, you know him, you fought with him, and
then he tried to be friendly and I said, well,
you got to understand New York to understand Donald Trump.
And I explained. Trump was an out of borough guy
in the Queens going the money, but he wasn't part
of the established, He wasn't at the power spots. So

(46:35):
he had this chip on his shoulder to day that
the Park Avenue guys looked down on him and his father,
and he was able to translate that to a lot
of white, blue collar working class people who he never was.
But he wasn't part of the accepted rothschilds of the world. Right.
So when I got off the show, this is about

(46:55):
December first, I think twenty thirteen, And when I got
off the show, No. Twenty sixteen, when he ran and
I was in a board meeting of National Action Network,
my organization, and my cell phone rang and I looked down.
I didn't know the number, and I had it on silence,
and so I let it ring. It rang again, so
I said, maybe something happened. So I picked up the

(47:17):
phone and whisper, I'm in a board meeting. Called me later,
whoever this is because I didn't know the number, and
the boy said, can you hold on for the President elect?
And I said, They said can you hold on for
the president elect? So I put my finger like I'm
in church, and I walk out the barnment. Now go
in the hall of where we were and Trump comes on, al,

(47:39):
I saw you this morning all morning, Joe, you got me.
You're right, I wasn't outside and look at me. Now
I'm the president elect of the United States. Can you
believe it? I said, no, I am having a hard
time belief he said. He said, well, he said, look
at you. You got a TV show, but you're still marching.
They never thought he one of us would be anything.

(48:01):
He says, I want you to come to Marrow logo.
We're gonna talk. I said, I'm not doing that.

Speaker 5 (48:06):
He said.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
I said, I'm not doing that. I said, to all respect,
you will not do the photo out with me.

Speaker 6 (48:12):
We're not going to do a lot of people came
to Trump Tower in those first months.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Not me. I will not do it. And the whole
time he was in he called me two or three times,
and I wouldn't go to the White House at all
because I understand from my background growing up in both
the church and in show business, optics are important everything,
and you give them the photo, they use it whatever

(48:36):
way they want, and I would not give him that photo.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
How this bing was it to see that photo when
he had the.

Speaker 5 (48:46):
Whatever the fifty black preachers or whatever, or just in general,
how this ming was it to see how easy it
was to be.

Speaker 4 (48:57):
I'm assuming no r yes, but it was.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
It was disheartening because you know that he's using you,
and knowing Donald Trump, he probably didn't give people that much.
People get all enthralled just to go to the White House.
And the dvantage I had questlove is by growing up
around people like Jesse and Night James Brown, I would
impress it all I've been in the White House. I

(49:27):
could take four years not going to the White House.
But a lot of them have never been invited before.
And the standing with the president it mean nothing to me.
They're gonna be a new president in four years. Joe
Biden and I talked, but Joe Biden will be gone
in four years from the White House. I'll be out
shopped as long as I live. I'm gonna stand for
what I stand for. I'm not gonna give that up
for some temporary photo up. And I think, and I

(49:48):
tell a lot of those people that is, don't play
yourself like that they may need you and will discard
you when they don't need you. It ain't personal. The
cause is bigger than all of us.

Speaker 5 (50:00):
Were there certain preachers or community leaders that you knew
that were considering that that you personally have to talk
out of doing that.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
I talked to one or two that I talked out of,
and I talked to one that I couldn't talk out of.
And I won't. I won't, you know, give up their
names and I will tell them. I know Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is a user and he will drop you.
And and as soon as the photos over which he did,
and look what he did in his own buddies, He

(50:31):
let a lot of them get indicted all he parted
some of them. I mean, that's who he is. And
you don't ever deal with a guy like that.

Speaker 6 (50:39):
Here's no ethics, al Can you please give us the backstory,
your idea, the backstory behind some of these pardons.

Speaker 7 (50:44):
I'm confused, like.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
I think that he felt that if he pardoned some
of them, My honest to God belief is that he
was looking out for him, thinking that they would not
sit up in jail and tell on him because now
he can be prosecuted on a state level. I think
he did that to cover the fact that he let

(51:09):
Lil Wayne and Kodak go and then to let twenty
of his boys go. So he was trying to act
like he be in balanced.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
Actually I guess.

Speaker 7 (51:19):
Go ahead, give it up, give it.

Speaker 5 (51:23):
The Wayne situation was that, you know, he was on
a private jet headed to Miami and he had things
on him, and of course the pilot win in Karen
mode and kind of called the police ahead of time
when he landed, like with clients, and they have guns
on the plane. So of course he gets nabbed. He

(51:43):
was already on probation. And what happens is his lawyer
called up the governor of Florida and was like, can
you do whatever you whatever you can do, just help us.
So the governor gets him off. And what happens is
may be a month before the elections, Wayne pretty much

(52:05):
uh you know Wayne's uh, Wayne's people got a call.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (52:11):
Trump had said like, give me any celebrity, anyone, anyone
forced me. I need someone that's big in the black
community and the and the government.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Remember what he.

Speaker 5 (52:22):
Did for Wayne, And it was sort of like a
you owe me thing, And what I believed happened was
that Wayne went in thinking that was a one off
photo op thing, did the photo op thing, and then
it was sort of like the bait and switch. Will
you travel with me and and do the rest of
the campaign. They were like no, we you said the

(52:44):
one photo op thing. And then when that was broken,
Trump got on the governor and then the governor was like, well,
I will just resend your you know, your part, your
probation whatever, and you got to go back to jail.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
And yeah, it was it was a.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
It was a way bigger story always.

Speaker 8 (53:06):
I was gonna ask, I was curious to know your
work with with younger activists and what are some of
the differences that you see between your generation and the
younger generation of actors, be it you know, Black Lives Matter,
or you know, just any of the youth organizations now.
And what are also some of the I guess some

(53:27):
of the difficulties you have in uh, you know, in
dealing with the youth activists. Are they more receptive to
listen to, you know, to take advice from an elder
or did they just seem to be like, oh well no,
we want to do it our own way.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
How how is that relationship for you.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Some of them doing the Trey Vond piece was tension.
You know, we don't want to listen to the to
the old God. We want to make our name. And
I kept telling them. I said, let me tell you something.
These cameras are gonna leave and we have to be organized.
And gradually we started getting together, the three sisters that
started Black Lives Matter, Lesia, Gods of Sister Colors, all

(54:09):
three of them and I started talking a lot, and
they started seeing this thing was difficult. I started seeing
that sincerity. So we worked together. They do my TV show.
We talked. When I did a book last year, they
did the book, taught me virtually. Then you got some
that's just out there, that's totally wild. Then you have
others that are sincere. And I tell them there's no

(54:31):
difference in y'all want to do it your way. I
want to do it different than Jesse. Jesse did it
different than doctor King. That's part of life. But we
are all in the same cause. And I might I
must say last year when we called the Big March
in Washington and we are in the middle of a pandemic,
we had aw hundred thousand people, all of them came
and I told them I don't I don't have to

(54:53):
put no shade on you. You ain't got to worry about
being I'm gonna be our shop there anyway I can
help y'all. Y'all can help me, but you just can't
do no violent stuff around me. And most of them
are not viny, and I won't do I won't make
you go to church. If you want to throw a brick,
let's make a compromise and we kind of get along
like that. I have a big youth department in my
organization because I intend to somebody's gonna take my organization

(55:18):
and go for so a lot of the things I
have my youth work with their youth. They're the same age.
Some of them are younger that are in national action.
There were and always been that you had to remember
in history. Jesse was with doctor King's Stokely Carmichael then
was Black Power was on the other side of the
King thing. They were all the same age. John Lewis, Jesse, Jackson, Stokely,
Comac or rap Brown always the same age. There's always

(55:41):
been differences in every generation. So a lot of the
young actors say we speak for the youth. Know, you
speak for some youth. Some youth still go to church.
Some youth are non vinent. I don't speak for all
the elders. Everybody's got their piece work, your peace, and
let's try to make something happen. And my thing is
that it's a big highway out here, and as long

(56:02):
as we don't switch lanes without a signal, we won't
have an accent.

Speaker 6 (56:08):
Now, I was just gonna say, remmy that scene and
Malcolm Xta THEREV was in when they little aspects of
what was going on.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
Sorry, I tell you about that scene. I know we
got to go, but I'll tell you about that scene.
Spike Lee called me and asked me to do that scene,
and I told him, you know that I was only
eighty or nine years old, got killed. I'm just gonna
put you up there because Spike Lee, Russell Simmons and
I all grew up together in New York, getting on

(56:33):
at around the same time. That's our generation. Spike's my generation.
Spike about two years younger than me. You see, I'm
always mentioning Spikes movies. Denzeler not the same age. That's
our generation. And I can tell you, Denzel about you
know John Davids getting more pots than you now because.

Speaker 7 (56:51):
That explains you on the dance floor. Now, now I
get it.

Speaker 6 (56:54):
You was ah okay, all right, I see you on.

Speaker 7 (56:58):
A dance floor a few times.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Get off.

Speaker 7 (57:00):
Oh yes, everybody.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Bred. I want to know you know, we live in
a time now where.

Speaker 5 (57:10):
You know, the the audacity of white supremacy is kind
of proudly, you know, rearing its head once again in
ways that they haven't done since the twenties. It's my
question isn't did you ever think that it would ever
come back to square one? I guess my question is

(57:30):
how can we finally nip this properly in the blood
that we have not done?

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Now that we're back at square one, I.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Think that what we're seeing is a backlash like we
never saw. There's always a history, been a backlash after
slavery reconstruction. In the backlash was the Klan. I think
what makes this different is this the first time you
had somebody in the White House that actually fan the
flame to make them feel like nothing would happen to them.

(58:04):
The law was on their side. And I think that
the only way you're gonna lit this in the bud
is you're going to have to have some strong laws
and you're gonna have to make examples of them to
go to jail. They're going to have to do time.
And then the others that feel that way will know
I may feel this way, but I won't be able
to behave.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
You won't do that no more.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
That's how how do you stop crying before you start
print walking some of them and they will start learning
how to obey and act like they got good sense
and that that's what you got to do. And that's
what I've told bike, and you got to make examples.
Can't be no you know. Uh, let's join hands and
and sing, come by out and we go time. Look

(58:49):
at what they did. They start with a George Floyd
or they start with demonizing somebody like me. They run
up in the capitals in the capital of the United
States and was walking around looking calling for members of
Congress to hurt them. If y'all don't put this in
a real focus a penalty, they'll come after you because

(59:11):
they don't care unless you make them here. Some of
them will have to do some real time.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Are there times like this? Uh?

Speaker 8 (59:18):
You know, even though you you know worked your career
as you know, a nonviolent activist. All the times like
this that really put that to the test for you,
like you know, or if not this time, any other
times in your career where the real non violent beliefs
are really tested.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Yeah, whatever, meaning you not violent, don't mean that you
are punk and and and that you don't get angry.
But you you catch yourself because I also feel like,
particularly uh like when we start this conversation, if I'm
out there representing families, I can't let my emotions embarrass them.
So if I go off on somebody, I'm hurting their

(59:57):
regardeners family. I'm not just hurting now shopping, you know,
I'm hurt George Floyd's town. So I tried not to
misrepresent that, but my jaws get tight. There's a lot
of times I won't even listen to talk radio because
if I listened to some of the right wing radio
what they say, I'll get out the car and make
my next speech cussing everybody out reacting to something. You're human,

(01:00:20):
but you got to try to discipline and keep telling
yourself you're here for a reason, not a season. You
gotta last it uphold these people.

Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
Oh, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 8 (01:00:29):
I was curious, what was your relationship because I guess
I'm so. I was born in seventy eight, so my
earliest memories of you, believe it or not, were from
the Morton Down and Junior show. Straight up, I'm saying,
like he you know, he come out, so I mean
he was like, yeah, he would like you know, this

(01:00:51):
is like Jerry Springer before whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
But how much of that with him?

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Was that real?

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
And because like you said, you know in New York,
I mean, you worked the circuit, you see these guys
all the time.

Speaker 8 (01:01:05):
How much of that of you and his relationship was
like you guys really didn't like each other, and how
much of it was kind of for the camera?

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
What was y'all dynamic?

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
Like, God, we didn't like each other at first. I
think after a while we sort of understood that he
wanted me on for controversy. I wanted him on because
the mainstream shows wasn't booking us then, so it was
me using him to get our thing out there. And
I remember years later, Mike Wallace did a thing with
me in the early nineties up and sixty minutes, and

(01:01:34):
he asked me, why did you do one down there?
I said, because you went interview me. As soon as
I started getting made street, I left down there alone.
But we started really not liking each other, but we
kind of adjusted because I think it was equal use.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yeah, yes, all right.

Speaker 5 (01:01:49):
My final question, I have to say that your health
regiment has been very inspirational to me and watching you.
What was the decis to really get your health game
together and to I guess, get your.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Life right and how you keep it off? Then the rona,
how have you kept it off this stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Well, you know, at first people used to do cartoons
and all about me and the jarging suits and fat
and all. That didn't bother me. But as my daughters
started getting older. I remember one day I was at
the house and my youngest daughter, she was about five,
then Ashley. She walked over to me and patted me
on the bell and said, Daddy, you fat, And that

(01:02:31):
hurt me, and I thought it, wanting to lose weight
for her, and I lost a lot of weight. Then
in nine in two thousand and one, I went and
let a protest in Puerto Rico, you might remember, protesting
the bombing and bats, and the federal judge gave me
ninety days in jail, and I fasted forty days and
I lost a lot of weight and I felt better,

(01:02:54):
and I started saying, you know what, I'm gonna change
my diet and keep it off. So jail made me
going a regiment. So I stopped eating meat. Then I
pushed back on starches and sugars, and then I started
feeling that I get more energy. I worked sixteen eighteen
hour days and it just gave me more energy. And
right now I only eat raw vegetables, raw fruits. I

(01:03:16):
may eat fish one day a week, but no meat
at all, no chicken. It was hard to give up
chicken and preaching not eat chicken.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
But I mean, how many chicken places you have to
pass up?

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Jesus? I was like, wait a minute, from.

Speaker 5 (01:03:29):
Church, I ain't even doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
That was hard, But and then you know, a lot
of people felt I lost weight to do TV. I
had already lost the way. I had no idea i'd
have a TV show. But it's became a way of
life and it doesn't bother me. I had that kind
of will. But I can sit down in front of
people that can have everything I used to love to eat.
It doesn't bother me at all.

Speaker 7 (01:03:49):
You are so amazing, man, that's what's up. God, damn
it the shit.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
I just thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:03:58):
I thank you for doing this for me. I know
your schedules busy.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
I thank you, man, and I thank you for being you.
You've been a real cultural influence, even though you hurt
my feelings once because I brought my daughter, got my
daughter to thirty Rocks. She's in her thirties now. She
got a friend with her and I was getting that
Vader and my friend. Her friend looked at say that's

(01:04:23):
Quest Loved and jumped up the elevator. And they never
act like that around me, but they was trailing you,
and I said this, nickro got some nerve that he's
a bigger, a bigger than I am. At thirty Rocks
Quest Love, I'm about I.

Speaker 5 (01:04:39):
Was all afraid. I mean, brother, now you just walked by.
I was like, yeah, thank you for doing that show.
I appreciate it. Thank you so much, love you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Thank you for being our golf bussers for real. Yes,
thank you all you're doing man.

Speaker 6 (01:04:54):
Oh, I was just gonna remind everybody to make sure
that they watch Politics Nation every Saturday and Sunday.

Speaker 4 (01:05:00):
Yes on behalf of team Supreme. My yea Sugar Steve,
unpaid bill.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
I'll take a little yes, thank you very much for
ever now. I appreciate it this Quest Love Supreme. We
will see you on the next go round. We appreciate it.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
Hey, this is Sugar Steve. Make sure you keep up
with us on Instagram at QLs and let us know
what you take and you should be next to suit
down with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of Ihearty Radio.

Speaker 5 (01:05:40):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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