Tony Browder, Dr. Paul Smith & Rev. Edward Pinkney on The Carl Nelson Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And Grand Rising family, and thanks for making us part
of your morning ritual again. Later this morning, chematologist Tony
Browner will take over our classroom. Brother Tony will shed
light on the attempts to erase African and African American history.
Tony will also pull up his information from his forty
eight years have traveled to Egypt. But before Tony sixty,

(00:21):
civil rights activist doctor Paul Smith will compare the fight
for voting rights in that era to today's challenges. But
before we hear from doctor Smith, and to get it started,
we'll hook up with Benton Harbor, Michigan activists pastor reverend
Ed Pinkney. But before we do all of that, family,
we got to get these classroom doors opens, and Kevin
has the keys as usual, Grand Rising, Kevin.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Grand Rising, indeed, Carl Nelson. We're moving all of the
chairs and the desk closer to the chalkboard this morning
because we're gonna have a lot happening.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
And I got a new chair here in the studio too.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Man congratulator hergo.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Nami, I'm ready, I'm ready, ready to roll.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
How you feeling, Carl Nelson?

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm still learning, Kevin, and I'm going to learn a
lot from from all the folks were having to their
brother Tony, also doctor Paul Smith, and of course Reverend Pinckney.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
You've turned learning into an art form, I must say,
you know, right up there with Jean Michel Bascriacht.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
And Wow and Picasso. See what I did there?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Hey, Hey, look's going on in the news this morning.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Well, here's what's happening, Carl.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Remember the poem over the river and through the woods
the grandmother's house we go.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's gonna be a.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Little tougher now because the US orders ten percent of
the flights cut at major US airports due to the shutdown.
So if you're not shut down on the flight, you
can expect huge delays, and so you're gonna have to
call your airport before you know you're ready to carry

(01:54):
the sweet potato pie over the grandma's.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, because forty airports, that's a lot. This is about
every major airport you can think of, forty airports across
the country. Just about every major airport is going to
be impacted. So Kevin's right, Family, if you have a
flight out and it starts tomorrow. By the way, if
you've got a flight out this weekend. You know, please
check with the airline before driving to the airport, or
you know, have an alternative plan ready.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
At least find a way to manage your attitude and everything,
you know, because you're going to have to wait, and
you know, emotions can get kind of wild, and you know,
never mind, you're rushing trying to get there. The US
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said yesterday that he would order
ten percent cut in flights at forty major US airports,

(02:41):
citing air traffic control safety concerns. The drastic plans sent
airlines scrambling to make significant reductions in flights. Reductions in
flights Garland just thirty six hours, and passengers flooded airline
customer service hotlines with concerns about air traveling to come day.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
So hot nine might be a good thing to do.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, it's going to be interesting. The question is who
are they going to blame? And of course this is
the delays of the cancelation of the flights are caused
by the fact that the workers, essential workers, some of
them are not showing up. They're talking about air traffic
controllers at this point. But who is the American public?
Who are going to blame the Republicans are the Democrat See,
this is what happens. If they throw most of the

(03:27):
blame on the Republicans, then they'll they'll probably you know,
reach a deal and get the country back open sooner
if they blame it on the Democrats. That's that's what
I see. Maybe you see different. What do you say, well, Duffy.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
According to Routers website, Duffy said the cuts could be
reversed if Democrats agreed to reopen.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
The government to shut.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Down, of course, has forced thirteen thousand air traffic controllers,
fifty thousand Transportation Security and Men agents the TSA, and
they say the Democrats contend Republicans are for refusing to
negotiate over key health care subsidies.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
They're still pounding back and forth. So I just.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Blamed that whole branch man, the legislative, judicial, and executive branch.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
They're all love messing around, it seems to me.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
And it's the holidays, yeah, coming up on the holiday,
that's true, and the most travel days coming up in
a couple of weeks. But you know what, it may
be swinging on the side of the Democrats in their favor,
and I'll just say this because Donald Trump was doing
a Fox interviews in Friendly Territory and one of the
Maga folks it says, please do something about these rising costs.

(04:37):
You know, you promised on day one everything will be cheaper,
and it hasn't. So there's a little bit of rebellion
on that side of the aisle of the Republicans, the
Maga Republicans, the other conservative Republicans. Yeah, they going at
each other. So we'll see what happens.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
According to NPR News, Trump says election puts the shutdown
pressure on the Republicans and he wants to end the filibuster.
And that's rare for President Trump and the Democrats to
agree about anything, but both to say the longest ever
government shut down is contributed to a dismal showing for
Republicans in Tuesday's off year election. Like we were talking

(05:13):
about yesterday, that election is definitely a wake up call
for these guys. And so the Democrats won in races
up and down the ballot and across the country with
the message focused on affordability and opposing Trump administration policies.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
You see.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
So it's something else we got to watch, Kevin. They
shutdown because once the shutdowns over, the lady from Arizona
who won the election, she hasn't been sworn in yet.
It's boring a month, and the Arizona Attorney Gerald is
suing to get her sworn in because that part of
Phoenix has no representation. If this government shuts down, family
be forced to swear in, and then she's the vote

(05:52):
needed to open Epstein file. So this is maybe something
that they're playing the long game and we're looking at
the short game. But the Epstein five she gets in,
she's definitely voting to reopen the Epstein files.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, and there's certainly something going on that we're not
privy to, of course, And it seems that the Congress,
the government has a long to do list, and you
know they're not even looking at the list because they're
out of town. So you know what I mean, and
what is up with that? And finally before I want

(06:27):
to just share a point in history, but news one
says that the Trump administration tells grocery stores they can't
offer snap recipients discounts amid this shutdown. And so I
was saying, we were saying off mic that the discounts
I'm thinking of things like, you know, buy one, get
one pre that's that's a discount.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
I don't can they really do that? I mean, they
can do it, but can can can they enforce it?
If someone wants to help person out who has restricted
or reduced snap on the credit card, on the debit
card that they get and the grocery stores trying to
help them out by giving them, you know, buy one,
get one free, and then they're going to be punished.
I don't know if they can enforce that though, but hey,

(07:11):
but it shows if that is true, though, Kevi. And
it shows the American public the mentality of the people
running this country.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Well, and maybe they'll put one of the armed officers,
one of the deputized ice people be ice people, right, yeah,
put them behind the cats register.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
So wake up in the morning in the bronx and
it's your bodega. There's an ice sky there. We're making
sure that you don't get a second scoop of ice.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Scheenis hey, and remember way back when life was good
and also mellow. Back in twenty twelve, November six, Barack
Obama is reelected as a forty fourth President of the
United States, and things like this weren't happening. I mean,
I know it's hard to remember where you were November six,

(07:59):
twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
However it was.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
It was pre pandemic, so things just before pandemic seemed
like they were a little smooth, a little easier. It
was again the reelection of a very popular guy, Barack
Obama as a forty fourth the president. So I just
wanted to, you know, give everybody a positive vibe today.
But someone who's more positive than me on this November sixth,

(08:24):
I think is us the pastor man, and we want
to bring him in.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
I let you do the introduction.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
All right, family, I guess this morning start things out
for us from Benton Harbor, Michigan, acting his pastor, the
reverend Ed Pinckney.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
Hey, this is a good reverend right here.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Been going It's gone good. You see Kevin Haddy some music.
He says, you need some music because you got some.

Speaker 4 (08:53):
Shit, because only I can tell you it's going down.
I like that. I like that absolutely absolutely. But I
tell you cause things are cooking up here. Uh things, things,
things are roasting, those those E d. T cars and

(09:14):
and everything you can think of is happening right before you.
Very ask you know, it's unfortunate, but uh, hey, uh,
I respect the Democrats staying on that healthcare because that
would also affect me, you see. And uh, what they're
doing now is that, you know, if the Republicans, if

(09:37):
they open up the oh you know, open up government again,
they're not going to negotiate with the Democrats. They're gonna
do like they always do. You see, I have no
trust in the Republican Party at all, even a human beings.
I don't have any trust trusting them. I don't have
no trust in faith in them at all.

Speaker 5 (09:58):
So we're to pastor.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
The deal is that they had ten years to come
up with a health program, and they're they're keen in
on the Obamacare and or the Affordable Healthcare. I'm not
sure sure why they're opposed because it's got Obama in
its name, but they don't have a better plan. They
don't even have an alternative. They just want to scrap it.
And that's where the American people.

Speaker 4 (10:21):
To do it because it has Obama name on it.
It's not really Obamacare, you know, but they gave it
that name.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Right.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
We got some real issues and we got we gotta
we gotta face it. But We had a great week
this week. I tell you, the election came and we
took over four seats, and we were so incredible. These
guys had all the money in the world. They had
World fool money, they had day money, they had so

(10:56):
much money. They had science all over the city of
Benchit hoppered everywhere you look. They had their sience and
and but I kind of suspect that they was going
to be defeated because I could see the attitude of
black people. I understand black people, and when black people
don't think that you're doing something in their favor, they coming,

(11:19):
and boy did they come. I mean it was like
something that you would never believe that black people would do.
But black people since the Trump been in there, they
want to vote now, they want to vote, since they
trying to take away YO goals, like black people want
to vote. And I tell you, we gave them a

(11:39):
bum whooping this this week. That has gonna go down
in history because they, according to them, they don't have
the campaign because we're gonna win by lands fire, and
they got landsfied. It was. It was we won four
six and then they were channing get the mayor, get
the mayor, get the mayor. At at the polls, they

(12:02):
were channing this get the mayor, and I said, wow,
I like this. This is this is what black people
should be about. Get out here, unify and do what
needs to be done for the community. She is it's
not about a reverend that would paint me. It's not
me because I'm not an elected official. But it's about

(12:23):
the people and our children. That's what I base everything on.
There's nothing else that you should be basic thing on
other than your your children in the community, because that's
what they're after, after our children and there after our community.
So we were in a real dog fight, I tell you,
to achieve those folk. See was so incredible that even

(12:47):
the Newsy just said they never thought that they're see
the day this happens, I said, I've been living here
for thirty years and I never seen nothing like this.
M And I mean they were finally whooped. It wasn't
no closed at nothing closed man. But the thing is,
we as black people got to start coming together and

(13:08):
fight for the right calls. We got to fight and
fight and fight, because every single day's going to be
a fight. Whether you're like it now, when you wake
up in the morning, you got to be prepared to
go to war. Well, that's what it's all about. I
know that we have to take care of family. I
know that they coming, but I'm more concerned. I'm more

(13:30):
concerned about what we do rather than what they do.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
I tell you, I hold up the right there. Rab,
We've got to step aside for a few months. You
come back to explain that for us, and also tell
us if it was the economy. What they're saying around
the country is that the economy that people voted because
the economy is in the tank. That's where people voted
against the Republican talking points, if you will, and that's
what they say. So I want to see if that
was the same in Beding Harbor as well. Family. You
two can get in on this conversation, orre Ed Pincknate

(13:57):
reach out to us at eight hundred four or five
zero seventy eight seventy six and we'll take your phone
calls next and Grand Rising family, thanks for waking up
with us on this Thursday morning. I guess is Reverend
Ed Pinckney from Benson Harvard, Michigan. He's giving us a
report on the voter turnout. There's a were you surprised
when the voter turnout was so many young people voting

(14:17):
on Tuesday.

Speaker 4 (14:19):
I was extremely surprised, but it looked like to me
they was waiting for this opportunity. You see, and when
you re said young folks, young folks came out, the
senior citizens came out. People was coming from everywhere. We
probably had close to a fifty percent day that people

(14:39):
came to the polls that was Elgibo to vote. Probably
fifty fifty old, maybe a litmen of old fifty percent.
And my way of thinking is that they knew that
they had to do something. Saying I'm I'm always talking.
I'm talking to everybody. I'm talking to people who liked me,
I'm talking people who don't like me. I'm talking people

(15:00):
think I'm talking to everybody. I don't care. You know,
my thing is to get the message out there, and
what you do that information is on you. My job
is to tell you the truth, and I you know,
and I'm make sure that everything I say can be verified,
because they can't be verified. People look for things that

(15:20):
you do wrong rather than things that you do right.
So that's why I'm out there and I tell my people.
If you know, make sure whatever you tell them is
the truth and can be verified, because they don't at
all the cases one time, one time, one time that
they think that you said something that was not accurate,

(15:41):
they all know you become a liar and everything else.
So that's how my people are and I respect that well.
My job is to make sure I give you the information.
And the young folks are they clown They were working
at the polls and everything. They would, you know, they would.
They just want to do something, you know. And and

(16:03):
this is what I liked. I like to see young
people in training ready to take that step because soon
I'm going to have to give up the torch and
I want somebody who's gonna be able to step in
and take the ball and run with it. That's what
I want to see. I want to see folks out there.
You're talking about people. Man. People were so excited the

(16:25):
way they would come from everywhere. I was picking them
up off the street and they was, you know, they one,
I'm on my way to boat. They will walking the boat.
And I said, man, I was totally impressed. I'm telling
the truth. And the thing is, people understand now that
we have a problem. See they didn't understand before that

(16:45):
there was a problem when you when you take that
See ben Harvey is one of the poorish cities probably
in the country, you see, and they know that when
you cut off foodsteff housing and different things like that,
it's going to create a major, major problem. And you've
got to be prepared mentally, morally, and socially to deal

(17:10):
with this stuff because it's coming. This ain't gonna get worse.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
For a second, this guy, let me join for a
second here twenty two minutes after the top there family
just waking up. I guess it's reverend Ed Pinckney from
Benon Harbor, Michigan telling us about the huge turnout on
Tuesday for their votings. Let me ask youself, what what
what do you think prompting so many people to go
to the polls to see the economy? Or or was
it they just fed up? Or what?

Speaker 5 (17:35):
What?

Speaker 1 (17:35):
What do you think it was?

Speaker 4 (17:37):
I believe there's two things, one of the economy and
number two. They're concerned now may be afraid. I think
the economy has always been bad in Bening Harvard, So
if it get worse, to you imagine could you imagine
getting worse here? We are unemployment SISU five. Some of

(18:00):
the people's unemployed, they get they get snapped, and now
they're not getting snapped, so they're alarmed. Now. They thought
that it could never happen to them. That's why they
didn't vote. They said, you know, they live in their
own let me say they live in the projects. That's

(18:21):
their world. That's all they know. They don't know nothing
about downtown and all this other kind of stuff. They
don't even know the projects that that's their area right there,
and that's how they try to keep you right in
that area. They don't want you to go and they
and see the world. You see, anything outside of the
project is the world to them, so they don't want

(18:44):
you to see it. That's why. That's why I believe
one of the main reasons they came out. You start
taking them. If a person is not going to go home.
See that's something that you're talking about war that would
provided to work are A person is not going to
go homeward. I don't care what you say, what you do.

(19:06):
A person will not go homely, especially if there's some
food close around, even if they have to steal it,
they're gonna do it. And I think that's one of
the things that ignited these people. Snap is gone no
longer there, but it's coming back. It's just a matter
of time. But the point is can we survive until.

Speaker 6 (19:27):
They come back?

Speaker 4 (19:29):
And the overall attitude the people scared. They don't know
what this guy don't do to me, I'm pretty sure
not to Germany was pretty much like what's going on today.
I believe the way, but only they're going to start
killing people yet sending them to the gas chambers. But

(19:50):
I believe right now this is the first step because
the court. See, any time you control the House, the Senate,
and the the Supreme Court, and they're willing to do anything
that you say. This this is this is had of us.
This this is his era, and he does everything, gets about,

(20:12):
he asks what they do. A few nicknacked things. They
might rule in in our favor, but the big thing
they going with him, even though it's unconstitutional or whatever
it might be. We're not in a dog fight for
our life. Our children is the one who's gonna be
affected by this, and themn children. That's who's who're gonna

(20:36):
be affected by what's happening today. We don't even see
all the stuff he's done.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Because another question for you, pastor, Pastorick, who do they blame.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
Well, it all depends on whether you're a Republican or
a Democrat or a Republican gonna blame the Democrat and
Democrats gonna replain blame the Republicans. I'm blaming the Republican
because number one, what they was trying to do didn't
make no sense. That program that they were telling me
they want to cut and get provide a cut, uh,

(21:13):
the being there attacking no that don't it don't work
like that, and when and what they're trying to do
with with with the health insurance and all that kind
of stuff that affects me. Now that that makes me
want to get out here and fight. So coming strictly
blaming the Republican policies of what they what they was
trying to do attempted you, and what they have done

(21:36):
is designed to affect senior citizens. All these k that
voted that voted for Trump is affecting them. They affected Gouds.
There's more rent estate that are poor than in the
of Bruce State. And and the point is here, here's.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
What's the important say that again for the folks in
the back of.

Speaker 4 (21:57):
The room is more rare states that are poor than
blue states. There's more red states people who use snacks
than blue states. And the thing is they think that
most of these most of the inner city where black people,
black people use. Yeah, we're also white, do you? And

(22:21):
they can you imagine those people in the Approbation Mountains.
Have you never been up there? They got dirt floors.
I never seen nothing like that. I look for a
whole month. I had to keep bathing while I walked
into this house. They had dirt floors. That's how that was.
And this was just this less four five years ago.

(22:46):
And it shocked me so bad, and I said, what
black people they got? That they got to come up
and see these people, these people and all they do,
they don't have no job. All they do is get footstep.
That's what they do. That's what they real about. Because
they don't have to. They build their own shack and
it's a shack and uh oh man, it's this blew

(23:11):
my mind when they took me up there and I
saw that my life was never never the same because
I never seen nothing. I never seen a kitchen with
a dirt float. Never. And they yeah, but that's what
they is up there. But we they've got to understand. See,
white people think only black people get fools down. That's

(23:33):
they believe, you know, they you don't faithful, uh they
you know, they heat up trying to hit up on
black people telling, yeah, what y'all won't do? Now, Hey,
what y'all won't do? You know, y'all than us all
that stuff. So you need you you need to tip
the wahs.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
And rev you know what. The news meeting is part
of me too, because because of what's going on, they
always look for a black person that as the image
of the preson that's on snap or food stamps. So
the US go interview a black person. They got a
bunch of white folks out there in the line looking
for food. But they they're in their minds. Some of
these reporters believe, I believe that the stereotype that's just
us on our people on food stamps. So those can

(24:15):
try and find one of us, usually one who's in
articulate and to discuss his problems not yet getting food stamps,
but they don't go to their own people because they
want to reinforce that stereotype.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
Your thoughts, what they're doing, they will to make sure
that they look at black people suffering other than white people.
They they they okay, But the problem is with dad.
Even here invention Heiberd, I would say maybe for the

(24:49):
white people living and ben own food stamps. They poor,
they don't have a car, they don't need they're poor.
And and when I talk about that, people don't under see.
The news media is probably really one of the black
men enemy. They don't do nothing to help us. If

(25:13):
you see a white person give away a lollipop, they
have it on TV. He trying to help the community.
They doing this to help them, but in reality they're
the one who's just throwing the whole community. So we
have to make sure that we understand the problem. A
lot of times we just don't understand the problem because

(25:34):
we don't think this concerns out longer. You you know,
we had those snaps and so were cool, and just
like white folks longer they had them snaps, they cool.
You should hear some of the stuff these white folks
are saying. When they come to my church. They be talking,
they be talking stuff. They said no, they said no,
I'm sorry, o't voting for him? I said yeah, it's

(25:55):
little link now, but uh, you know, I just don't
cost of people who got it for him, because I
can't trust them.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
At twenty nine away from the topic, I guessed the
reverend ed Pickney from Benjon Harber in Michigan. Have you
said you you live next door to a Trump ste
Have you seen him since said all this.

Speaker 6 (26:16):
Down?

Speaker 4 (26:18):
Uh? The other day, me and my wife was in
the car and I drove, I drove Satan to my garage.
I didn't I don't want him to wave at me.
I didn't want him to do nothing. You see now
he feels so bad. Things were so bad that he
got two nixed children. We got two nixed children. People

(26:38):
been they've been ow them now, all because of those
Trump sides. That was in the yard the kids. That
really shocked me. When I heard that. That grew my man.
I said, well you can't. You can't attack the children,
and they said, well, now we.

Speaker 5 (26:56):
Just tease them.

Speaker 4 (26:57):
Tea of them that's attacking them, don't do it. Asked
him not to do it because the bus stopped in
front of my house for them, And I said, I
asked him not to do it. But I guess what
blew my man about him. He feels he really in
had now you know, he's really probably now see the
light how that his boat affected his here, his children.

(27:22):
His wife is white here, he'll billy excuse expression, but
she Heke's from the hills that way, and uh uh
uh she uh and she I'm pretty sure she's out
over there smiling after what happened to her children. You know.
So if he is, she got a minimal problem because

(27:43):
I don't see nobody attacking children for no reason. There's
not a reason in the world that that you should
be attacking him because what his parents did that to mean,
that's that's that He's the whole purpose right there. But
we we have to kill people. We have to stand
up and fight and and and show these people when
you see something that's not right, you got to address it.

(28:06):
I don't care if my if it was my cousin,
it is my brother, I'm gonna kill them. I said, no,
we don't do that like that, you know. And I
just try to explain to them, tell them what's going on.
And just like on TV, they always show black people
then shot somebody, and then it's more white people shooting

(28:28):
people than black people. People don't even know that indeed,
white fol there is more of them out here shooting,
killing and all this kind of stuff. And but they
if you see one period lege guy ge, they have
to put his picture all on t They don't go
white folk picture on TV see not up here and

(28:49):
you know, but uh, they don't do it. But we
just make sure that they understand that we're not gonna
sit back here and allow you, allow you to degrade
our people. They don't even talk to me no more,
the news leaders because they know that I'm not happy.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, twenty six away from the top. If he's just
waking up family, I guess is Reverend Ed Pinckney. He's
in Benson, Harvard, Michigan. He's an activist, Reverend Pinckney the mayor.
You guys have issues with the mayor. Has he said
anything about the election results?

Speaker 4 (29:22):
No, he didn't hide cause it's really it's really an
attack on him. Also because I feel with you. When
we was at the post, they were channing recall the mayor,
Recall the mayor, Recall the mayor, and it was a
lot of people and they were coming out, they were
channing people coming out from recall the mayor. And he
was right there. You know, he's looking because he's trying

(29:46):
to get people motivated to vote for his candidates and nobody.
I mean, it was terrible. It was terrible. It was
and right in front of the date. But we have
to make sure that we're doing all the things were
supposed to do, you know. And black folks, I will
never understand it. How would you sit back there, all
the hell that black people have been through, Why would

(30:08):
you sit back here and allow stuff to happen to
not just our community right now, but our children in
the future. That's what they're doing. That's why they're manufacturing
these sound boats. They're manufacturing them, makeing them, get giving
them a few dollars, and then that makes them think
that they're better than the next verse, which makes no

(30:31):
sense to me. Money don't make you better. It's your heart,
you see. You gotta have a heart for people. But
you know, uh, they that's what they do. What they're
doing is all over the country. It's not just here
and in benin Aarbory. It's not just in Houston, Texas.

(30:51):
It's not just in Oklahoma City. It's all over the country.
They give up a black person who's motivated by money.
Then they to be the humanitarian. This is what happened.
So we're in a fight. Well, like, oh, will fight,
and here's the good news. You can win. I think
what happened on Tuesdays demonstrate that we can win against

(31:14):
all their money. And we did it. We spank, we
splin him good.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
And now oh, I thought right there past the Pinckney.
We got to take a short break here. We gotta
check the traffic and weather and the news actually in
our different cities. When we come back and we'll talk
some more. Family, you two can get in on this
conversation with the reverend Ed Pinckney from Benton Harbor and Michigan.
You can reach us at eight hundred four or five
zero seventy eight seventy six and we'll take your phone
calls after the news. That's next and Grant Rising family,

(31:40):
thanks for waking up with us on this Thursday morning.
I guess is the reverend Ed Pinckney from Benton Harbor, Michigan.
The Reverend Pinkney is an activisty in that city. All
the folks know him because he's always out in front
looking out for our folks.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Before we go back to there. Let me just remind
you come up later this morning. We're go and speak with
Tony Bradley. Tony's, of course a chemotologis he's going to
talk about the tempted eratio of African and African American history.
Before we hear from brother Tony, we're going to speak
with doctor Paul Smithy. He's one of the our civil
rights icons who march with Doctor King. He's going to
share a story with us with concerning LBJ. So this

(32:13):
is going to be interesting. Those are your history buffs
will know what I'm talking about. Also, Tomorrow's Friday, We're
going to give you a chance to free your mind.
This's the way you get a chance to think for yourself.
That's all that means. And reach out to us in
our open for on Friday program again promptly at six
am Eastern time. Don't wait to the last minute. A
lot folks with to the last minute. We always have
a bunch of folks who don't get on. So it
starts at six am Eastern time right here in Baltimore

(32:33):
on ten ten WLB and also on fourteen fifty WL
in the DMV. Pastor pack Pinkney, how long do you
think folks in Benton Harber can go with this situation
going on right now, no food stamps or reduction in
food stamps, all the turmoil that's being caused personally on fevil.
That's why you said many of them turned out to
the polls on Tuesday. How long do you think there's

(32:54):
something else, you know, some sort of a personal explosion
or people start going off, anything that if it's shutdown, continues.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Well, and here's the thing. On yesterday, I was called
and they wanted me to come over to their home,
uh to look. He said they didn't have no food
at all in their refrigerator. It was a family of
five and and they told he said, I don't know

(33:23):
what I'm going to do. And he was a grown man,
he's a good guy, and he had tears in his eye.
He said, I can't feed my family now. And he's
kind of like handicapped. And he said that. So when
I did, he said, I don't know what I'm going
to do. I'm not gonna let my children start, you know.

(33:45):
And I said, well, it's not a whole lot, you know,
you really can't do all that. I was trying to
be as general, as powerful I said, but what we
got to do. We gotta figure out a plan and
extacute that plan so we can provide the fact we're
not gonna do be able to do everybody. I think
this being gonna get so bad. If it lasts over

(34:07):
a month, all hell gonna break loose. If it lasts
over a month, all hell is gonna break loose. And
here in the city of Benji hamp And, I can
tell you this. I don't know whether that's what they want.
I don't know, but I always told people, while you're

(34:29):
not going out there bout and they well, voting don't
mean nothing, you know, I said, on a local level,
it means a lot. On a national level. This is
what we got, whether you like it or not. You
got a Donald Trump and now who got with them
being aires pulling his strings? You see, that's what we

(34:49):
have right now. And I think that we are going
to have to say something, Black folks, this is our
opportunity to organize myself organized like we were in the sixties,
the seventies and part of the eighties. We was organized.
I mean, we did things. You see, then all of

(35:11):
a sudden we got two laps and then what they did.
They have pushed us into a corner now and it's
time for us to come out fighting. That's everybody, that's everybody,
all these and these sambos. You're gonna have more samd
bos now than ever before because they're going to be
motivated by feeding the family. They know what they're doing.

(35:31):
You're gonna have more black people on their side than
on the good side. And that's where we're hid them
right now. We're hidden to that level because this thing
is going to get worth before it did better and
I tell you that. And but all we can do
is just keep talking to them. My job is to

(35:51):
tell you what you do with that information is on you.
I can't tell you what they do. You're a grown person.
But I can tell you what you should do. But
whether you do it or not, it's really on you.
And that's how I fight. I fight every single day.
When I wake up early in the morning, I'm trying
to figure out what would be my next move. What

(36:12):
can I do to help the people, What can I
do to help the community, What can I do to
help the children. That's how my mind has said. Even
my wife said, well, you you so focus on on
on the community, and the and the children. You know,
you need to live a life for yourself. I said,
I am, this is the life that God had chosen
for me to have. And that's why I fight you,

(36:35):
you know, and I, like I said, I was even
a victim of their system. Oh, I didn't tell you
that they're doing a documentary of the work of Reverend
that we're picking. It's going to be viewed in Paaris,
France in August. I wouldn't get that put again real fast.

(36:58):
I do have the open I might s that that
opening to you. How they when I went to the
Barren County Commission after my conviction was overturned, And that's
going to be the opening of the documentary is going
to tell the story of how Benson harbyd got the

(37:22):
way it is. It's fantastic. Is being done by Cornell
University and I think New York University, New York College,
something like that anyway, is huge and it tells of
our stories and it's I'm telling the story, but it's
right there for people to see. It's I mean, I

(37:44):
was so excited about tears to my eyes just seeing
some of them before it was complete. But it is
complete now. The only thing they're doing now, we're getting
it all together and we're planning to be in Pair
of Science in August of twenty twenty six back in
the cities in Detroit, Chicago, New York, and also one

(38:06):
other place I can't take out of it, but anyway,
one other places that we're going to be here in
the United States. So next you're going to be in
twenty twenty seven. So we're doing good. We're doing everything
going great, and the fight is real, you know, and
I bled in the fight. I believe that.

Speaker 7 (38:19):
You know.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
I have sacrificed myself for these for the people, and
I don't ask for nothing in return. I don't ask
for no money, no nothing. Only thing I ask for
that you do the right thing for my community, you
do the right thing for our children, You do the
right thing for black people. That's all. I don't ask
anything of anybody. I don't tell nobody to do something
that I wouldn't do. And uh, and I'm willing to

(38:43):
take the blame. Is there some blame to be laid out,
do ain'tthing on me, Let me deal.

Speaker 5 (38:48):
With because I can handle.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
So that's.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, that is your story. And for the folks who
don't know your story. That's what I'm addressing right now.
In nine minutes away from the top of out family
and a picnic, he started to fight against the water
problem in Benchon Harbor, Michigan, to predominately blacktown no clean
water and he started to fight and still going on.
If they clean that mess up yet?

Speaker 4 (39:12):
No, but we're trying to What we're doing now, well,
we're giving the filters to everybody, and we call it
double filtering your water, and uh, we don't want they
know the water is still bad, but by the community
being blocked, they don't care enough about the black people
who want to do something. We care enough about black people.

(39:35):
My guys, they're out here checking people filters, checking everything
for free. They don't get paid, and they give me
three days a week, four days, three days a week,
four hours a day. That's how. That's how I ask
for them, and they do it, and they do it
with listenly. You know. Some of them go to work
at night and come home and go and go out
here to these people home checking their filters. They got

(39:58):
to we got like we call hotline. It's something, Uh
your water your filters are not working. We uh if
you're not double filter in your water. You don't understand
the process. You call us and we go out, you know,
and we do that. We do that six days a week,
you know. Uh, and we make sure it happened. Because
water is important. You get that land in that water,

(40:21):
get them contents in that water. It struck the growth
of our children. And that's what I'm fighting for. It's
all about the children and the senior city. I'm the
senior cists, so I know that the fighter is real.
And the water. See look, this is all over the country.
Or people don't really know that the water, uh is.
They let these these actually come in here and they

(40:44):
put these chemicals in the water. There's metal, copper, everything
you could think of, and then they are allowed. They
won't choose a drink it because they don't care enough
about the people. And the people don't care because you
have well I can't say they don't care, but they
they have to find out what's going on.

Speaker 6 (41:03):
In your community.

Speaker 4 (41:04):
Like before World Food Corporation will flooding the river, it
will flooding the Paw Paul River here with all these chemicals.
They go to clint it all out. I don't trust
nothing that these corporations say, if they say it, I
have to make sure I check it because I don't

(41:26):
believe nothing coming out of there now.

Speaker 6 (41:28):
And that's the truth.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
They sticks away from the top of Have you got
any aid from, say the city, the county or even
the state, because obviously it's a problem in Benching Harper
with the water and this has gone off for decades.
If some of them, if they come, you say, hey,
we're going to help you with these filters, or we're
going to change the pipes or try to get the
lead out of the water.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
But here's the thing. They are the federal government and
Joe Biden. They came in here the Bladen money, hundred
million dollars to change the pipes. But the problem was
they gave it to the shitty and they didn't know

(42:11):
what to do. They went out and hired is all
white coming at themar and what they did they went
out and hired nobody black to do the work. And
the agreement was we're gonna have five black contractors in
five white because we know we weren't gonna have all
black that the white folks they would have had a

(42:31):
fit boy, And you're talking some hanging and all that
kind of stuff, you would have got it right here.
So what they did, they didn't. They didn't hire any
black to hire a five white contractor to get one
hundred million dollars, and they butchered the pipes. I mean
some of them they didn't even do and they said
they did, uh, because nobody there was no checking balanced systems,

(42:54):
and the white folks know that black people. And we
tried to check them, and we almost got a rest.
We're trying to check them because we were saying, they said,
we're interfering with they with the jobs, but they wanted
to try to arrest us anyway. But the point was
they knew, they knew exactly what they was doing. And

(43:14):
right now the water is almost worse now than it
was before. And we spent one hundred million dolls to
these white folks. We just gave them they need to
live in the community. Just great to them, you know,
and they was able to do whatever they want, came
to work when they felt like and uh, and we
got an all black city council, you know, so that

(43:35):
that kills you where we're at. That's why we had
to remove fll of us and we had to make
sure that we're doing what we're supposed to do and
then we have to kill people. The water is it's
not their is not the only place the water is bad.
But nobody knew what to do, and it just so happened.

(43:55):
I knew what to do.

Speaker 6 (43:57):
You see, it's just.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Passed. We got to take a short trip and find
out what's going on the streets and our different cities.
When we come back, though, I'll let you explain what
you do, and also tell us about about the schools,
because at one time you were getting water to the schools.
Because our children going to these schools drinking that water
that's contaminated. I'll let you explain that when you get back. Anyway,
Famili's four away from the top of the out. We
got to check the trafficking weather in our different cities.
We'll be back in four minutes with reverend Ed Pinckney.

(44:22):
If you want to speak to him, just reach out
to us at eight hundred four or five zero seventy
eight seventy six and well take a phone calls. After
the track fit and weather together, it's next. I mean,
thanks for waking up with us on this Thursday morning.
I guess is the Reverend Ed Pinckney from Benton Harper, Michigan.
You've heard him before, he heard his story. He's given
us a report of Tuesdays elections in that predominant black
city before he left for the traffic and weather update.

(44:43):
My question to him was about the schools, because we're
talking about the water. This is where he started his
fight championing clean water for Benton Harper's. They still don't
have clean water, especially a problem in schools. I'm to
share this with you. Reverend Pinckney used to just carry
and give out bottle of water to the different groups
and to the schools. So feels give us an update

(45:03):
the schools. Still they still have contaminated water in our schools.

Speaker 4 (45:07):
Well here here's what we did. We supplied eight uh
they call them water filter stations and they cost a
lot of money. They was donated to us by fresh
Water Futures. And uh, they understood the problem. They understood
that we was going to go out and do the
right things. And see, that's that's important for groups to understand.

(45:28):
Integrity mean a lot, you know, and that's what we
have to teach our black brothers and sisters. You know,
you don't ever ever, uh reward bad behavior. And this
is one of the thing we did. We went out
and provided eight water filter stations for the high schools

(45:48):
so our children have clean, safe water. Matter of fact,
these things are so good that what they do, the
only do they get rid of compatient, they get rid
of the lead. See we had eight nine possis in
your lead. And remember this thing was the accent of it.
You know, fifteen the governor, the government got to come

(46:09):
in nine down to twelve. But what we're doing now,
we are making sure that everybody understands that lead is bad,
and Tanna's is bad. Copper is bad. If it's in
your water, is going to effect your children and senior citizens.
And we got to get that thing corrected. The school
right now has cleaner water. There's any home resident in

(46:33):
the city of bending Out thanks to those silters that
we provided for them.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
So is it easier to use the filters? And why
not just rebuild the pipes?

Speaker 5 (46:43):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Because that's what they did.

Speaker 4 (46:45):
They supposed to have rebuilt the pipes, but unfortunately they
butchered the job. They didn't they didn't do it the
way it's supposed to do that they took one hundred
million dollars and ran with it. That's how white people
do you. You don't have no why dog watching them,
but they would take a gang's of view on every level,
and that's what they do to black people. So most

(47:08):
black people just happy for them to talk to them.
For some reasons. I don't get that neither. But the
point was when we went out and and and and
we found that petition with Joe Biden, them offered and
the Moneys y'all coming in. They gave into the city
and the city had no knowledge on what to do.
They turned it over to Adamar Adama are all white operations,

(47:32):
came in, took the money, went out and hired these
five fight contractors and they got all the money in
the in the city of bening High was left holding
the bag. The streets flood everything. Now since they've been there,
and nobody cares. Nobody cared. Black folks just two scared.
That's open their mouths, you know.

Speaker 8 (47:50):
But they got me.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
I will open my mouth, I will say something. If
you got something from me, bring it on because I'm
willing to make the sacrifice get things right here in
this small community.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Befany I let you go though, do you still need help?
Because you've had times every time we do this particular program.
After the show, he says, you've got to go out
and give out free water to different different people, especially
the elderly in your school. You're still doing that.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
Yes, I am, Yes, I am. We we doing nothing
that when I this morning, I'm going to be going
straight and distribute water to some of the senior citizens
and make sure that they have water because we know
that they need it. And if they want to help,
they can Miller check the bank O B A n
c O. Nineteen forty Union Avenue, Benton Harbor, Michigan, four

(48:42):
nine oh two to two. I repeat that BICO B
A n c O. Nineteen forty Union Avenue, Denton Harbor, Michigan,
four nine oh two two. And you know anything will
help you. You can said ten dollars five out whatever
your heart's eye, and I promise you we'll buy water

(49:03):
with all right.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Thank you, Thank you so much, reverend Ed Pickman. Thank
you what you do for our folks in Benton Harbor.
It's you know, just think that if you weren't there,
there'll still be drinking that contaminated water coming down all
kinds of problems, especially our children with the lead in
the water. But you spoke up, so probably God to
tap to you on the shoulder and told you to
get involved, and you did, he responded. So I just

(49:26):
want to thank you one more time. Just give out
the address of folks, because you all of this shouldn't
be on your shoulders. So one more time, what's your dress?

Speaker 4 (49:34):
BANKO, B, A and C O. Nineteen forty Union Avenue,
Linton Harber, Michigan, four nine oh two to two, or
you can call me at two sixth nine three, sixth
nine eight two five seven.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
One more time with the phone number.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
UH BANKO, B, A N C O nineteen forty Union Avenue,
Benin Hobblem, Michigan, four nine O two two phone number
two sixth nine three, sixth nine eight two five second
Reverend Edward Painting and thank you, Thank you so much.
Call for hired me on your shelf. I'm excited. I'm

(50:16):
excited because I know that we're at war and somebody
got to get out of in bite this war, and
now we're gonna have more people fighting this war than
ever before. The polls on Tuesday reflected that it told
the story it's told that we are no longer, no
longer sitting back and doing nothing. It reminded me of

(50:37):
the fifties or seventies in the eighties. We fought during
that time. We weren't afraid of these people. We weren't
trying to be materialistic. You know, now we're trying to
be We want to wear air Jordan's and all this
other kind of stuff. You know, my thing is this,
take care of the children. If you take care of
the children, they'll take care of you. That's a promise.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
That's right, Thank you, reverend. And by the way, belated
happy birthday all.

Speaker 4 (51:03):
Right, absolutely, you know I got so many I mean,
on faithful they hit me up nine hundred people wish
me a happy birthday. And also our anniversary was a
twenty field and you know, another four five hundred people
wish to day. I mean it was I was. I
was just thrilled. And today my my daughter's going going
to Chicago and have piaza with with my with my

(51:23):
oldest daughter, and uh, they like, they know I like
home running pieza and so they like to do that
and bring the gifts. I tell them I don't need none,
you know, just donate, donate to uh to to this
cause and.

Speaker 5 (51:35):
I'm happy with that, all right, thank you, rav, thank you.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
All right, family, that's Reverend Ed Pinckney from Benton Harbor, Michigan,
predominant black town and they're still fighting for decades and
to get clean water. And you heard the reverend said
that there's still no clean water. But he did say
after the election on Tuesday was like back in the
fifties and the sixties. So we're going to take you
to the sixties with Dr Paul Smith, Grand Rising, Doctor
Paul Smith, welcome back to the program.

Speaker 6 (52:01):
Thank you, thank you happen to be here.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
And you heard what the pastor said. He said that
the elections on Tuesday showed the people were ready to
fight back in the sixties. That's what that's what you
were in the sixties.

Speaker 6 (52:14):
That's my period. That's right right. We've been silent.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Yeah, but now we're going to give you a force.
So tell us about what's the difference in what you
see the struggles for voting rights in your air that
we see today or is there a difference.

Speaker 6 (52:31):
Well, my first comment is there's there's no social media,
so we didn't have any choice but to you know,
make our own voices heard. And we did that, you know,
obviously every day marching. We did that through basically at
that point we were doing basically through African American churches.
Then that that is certainly, you know, other than just

(52:52):
American churches. So without the media, we had to use
the pulpits of churches and synagogues and so forth to
get the message out. The other thing is we were
on the job every day. We didn't do although those marches,
by No King that was fantastic, but it was a
one day event. We had to be out there every day.

(53:13):
We just kept going to back and forth, back and
forth every day, to the court, to the streets, to
the platters, to the walk, to the shouts, to all
that kind of stuff. We did that every day, and
that I think is what is missing now. The second
thing is I can't imagine not being here today had
not been for the churches. The absence and the silence

(53:36):
of the churches is what's very glaring to me right now.
I think some of the mortal, larger churches, in particular
some of the evangelical churches, once they get involved, I
think that we'll see a shift. Although I do see
a shift since the election on two seats.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Speaking about that half of the top down family, just
checking in doctor Paul Smith's really sees one of the
civil rights activity Montchree, doctor King, Andrew Reilling, all of
those folks back in the sitatue. We're going to get
into some of those incidents as well. But why do
you think they think because some of the churches have
taken money, that's why they've been sort of silent on
these issues.

Speaker 6 (54:13):
Well, when we're not on air, I can give you
some specific specific Yeah. There, listen, if you if you're
depending on the banks and you got all these loans,
you know, for what's happening in your congregations, in your community,
you're you're, you're you have to really be kind the careful.
And I think some of that's happening, I know for

(54:34):
a fact for a couple of cases, but I can't
say it on the air. But the other thing is
is that, uh, people are just kind of out of
it right now. They only now as as many of
them did of course at the oppolls on Tuesday, but
there's sort of an apathy. But the fact that the

(54:56):
government shut down, I think that was a gods in
my opinion, it just woke people up saying, what the
heck are they? Why are we paying these people and
you know they're not at work, why are you know,
were missing our paychecks, you know, disrupting everything we do financially.
So I think in that sense it was a blessing
in disguise, although it's brought a lot of hurt, but

(55:17):
you know, a lot of good comes after the pains.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Twelve after the top of that with doctor Paul So
doctor Smith, you mentioned that you guys kept going day
after day. It wasn't like a one off, you know,
fighting for civil rights for us. What kept you going though?
What made you keep going back and day after day.

Speaker 6 (55:35):
The cause itself, As you know, I had I had
two kids that at that point Andy had two and
he had two kids as well, and so it was
for the future of our kids. We didn't want to
see our kids having to suffer when they didn't have to,
and and because we sat back and did nothing, So
that was the first thing that kept us going. The

(55:56):
other thing was our and then in particularly for me,
I think for a number of other people, it was
our faith that this is what we had if we
were called to do as Christians. This is what we
think Jesus would have done. We followed Jesus in terms
of what we believe, and therefore there were no days
off for him for the for the Master. So we

(56:17):
followed that that pattern and that that model more than anything.
But the other thing that kept me going was the
reality that if I wasn't going to do who was?
So I couldn't. I just couldn't sit back and watch
all this happen. Were not participating myself. Because I had
a little influence, I could also bring others with him,

(56:39):
not just within my family, but within my in my
scope of contact.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
All right, tell us how you got involved, though, doctor,
because you could have went somewhere else. You could have
been on the side of take like many of the
folks where back in the sixties. What how did you
get involved?

Speaker 6 (56:55):
I tell you, you know, I graduated from college in
nineteen fifty seven. My dad gave me one hundred dollars
and the car as a gifts. Now this is nineteen
ninety fifty seven, so that's a lot of money, one
hundred dollars. So my classmate and I who also I
graduate with me, we went to Detroit to kind of

(57:15):
sew our, Oh, she might say, so I had the car.
I had one hundred dollars, so we could kind of
do what we wanted to do in those days. So
on the second night that we were there, we were
coming from dinner, and we went past the Woodward Methodist
Church in Detroit, and on the marquis it said, doctor

(57:38):
Benjamin Elijah Mays is our guest preacher on Sunday, and
of course he was president of Morehouse College. And I said, oh,
my gosh, I've always wanted to hear doctor Made. So
I said to my class, said I think I'm going
to go to church. And here Dr Mayde. He looked
at me and said, you know, we were required to

(57:59):
go to church when we were in college. Why now
that we don't have to do it, why do you
want to go to church? I said, something tells me
I need to hear doctor Made. But also on the
mark he was doctor May's sermon, and I've never forgotten
his sermon title, and it said the title was everywhere
I turned, I find Jesus. I stopped in my tracks.

(58:22):
After I listened to him, I introduced myself to him,
went back to the to my sister's house. What we
were saying. Said to my classic, I'm going down to Savannah.
Andy Young has asked me to come and join the movement.
I told him no, but now I know why he
told me I needed to do that, So I'm going.

(58:43):
I got to do it. He was a mortifed that
I had done it. So I got my dad's car,
got in and drove back to South Bend. And when
I drove up in the driveway, my dad looked at
me and said, what's going on? I said, I have
to go down to Savannah. I got to get involved

(59:03):
in the movement. And he said are you sure.

Speaker 4 (59:07):
I said yes.

Speaker 6 (59:08):
He said, well, I can't believe it, and out of
the corner of my eye I could see tears coming
from his eyes because he realized that something really important
had happened to me. So I went to Savannah. I
met Andy Young again, decided that whatever I needed to
do or could do in the movement, that I was available.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
And I never said pull a story. Right there, doctor
samithe we got to take a short bring we come back.
I want to hear the question of the story how
you got and you hooked up with and he's talking
about the Andrew Young Ambassador. Andrew Young went on to
become Ambassador Andrew Young, Hey got into the movement with
doctor King. We're going to hear all those stories coming up. Family,
you want to join this conversation, reach out to us
at eight hundred and four or five zero, seventy eight,

(59:51):
seventy six or sixteen after the time I will take
you and grand Rising family. Thanks for staying with us
on this Thursday Money. And I guess doctor Paul Smith
he's one of the iconic civil rights fight us back
in the sixties, and before we left the break told
us he drove to Savannah to meet with Andrew Young
and pick up the story from there at doctor Smith.

Speaker 6 (01:00:11):
Yeah, so I had really not been so except you know,
when I went to college, and so just being in
Savannah and seeing all the activity, particular of our people,
you know, because they were in those churches, in the
streets and doing things every day in Savannah. And of
course Annie and I had gone to the same graduate

(01:00:33):
school at a different times. Of course, he's three years older.
So I just saw an excitement that I had not seen,
and also knew that there was a purpose for my
being there. I said to my grand one of my
grandsons a couple of years ago. You can always make money,
but I want you to make a difference. And that's

(01:00:54):
really my philosophy. I knew that I needed to be
there that, you know, to hang out, you know, doing
what classificate now we're doing in Detroit was it was
okay as part of my growing up, but my real
hall was to do what I think came up when uh,
when Andy Young invited me to come to uh come

(01:01:16):
to Savannah, and incidentally in my senior year at college, UH,
I think uh Talladega College is one of the first places,
uh in terms of the HBCUs where doctor King spoke
and it was also his influence seeking for my fraternity
at the college that just inspired me because you know,

(01:01:37):
Talleau is basically all flights of the mill town. And
I was so interested that how many white people from
the community that never really came up on the campus
came to hear doctor King on that Sunday that he
that he spoke.

Speaker 9 (01:01:53):
So that also got my attention too. So I think, well,
have you know my fall out of a faith stance,
But I think that was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
Your phone is going south on us chipping in and.

Speaker 6 (01:02:13):
Yeah, I get a good spot. Yeah, go ahead, Okay,
So yeah, that that was Yeah, I think that was
really and I never all right, we lost it, you know,
I learned you lost me again.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Yeah, well we can hear you now, So it seems
like going on if you're getting a good spot and
I know you're on a cell phone.

Speaker 6 (01:02:37):
Yeah, does that make any different?

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Yeah, well we'll see.

Speaker 10 (01:02:44):
Blocking the sound, So if you hit the parts, if
you're blocking, you probably can't here.

Speaker 5 (01:02:49):
Okay, can you hear me now, Carl, Yeah, I can
hear you.

Speaker 6 (01:02:52):
Can you hear me now?

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Sure?

Speaker 6 (01:02:54):
Okay, very good. So I said I didn't look back,
you know. Then my twin uh, you know, just starting
a marriage and a family. Uh, and so all of
that made it made a difference. And of course Andy
and the youngs was starting his family at the time.
And little did I know that I would learn the

(01:03:19):
meaning the true meaning of nonviolence, which you know, I
was taught basically by Andy. And I had heard about
non violence of course from my mentor, doctor Howard Thurman,
who had spent time in India with mc gandhi. And
so when I heard that, I knew something was really

(01:03:40):
happening in my own life, and that some years later
that the fact that I learned how to be non
violence is the reason I'm alive today, because you know,
I've said on this program some time ago that because
I was in the movement and had practic just and

(01:04:00):
learned non violent, when a person spat in my face,
my first instinct, you know, was to respond. But then
I had been in that training, and I realized if
I respond responded to that, not only what I have
been heard might have been killed, but those who were
marching with me also would have been injured. So that's

(01:04:21):
a semino in my life. I never will forget it.
And I'm clear that I'm alive today because of learning
how to be non violent. And I think that's what's
missing today. There's too much anger all the talk hosts
on all the major networks, so they're talking over each other,

(01:04:42):
at each other about each other. There's no compromise, there's
no listening. We were not perfect, but we certainly listened.
Our lives are on the line. You talk no better listen.
If your life is on the line, you need to
pay attention.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
And I have a doctor Smith twenty five minutes off
the topic. I want to go back to somebody spitting
in your face. Oh okay, and you don't retaliate. Uh,
what was the training?

Speaker 5 (01:05:10):
What? What?

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
What did how did they teach you? I mean, it's
just a natural reflex. You're going to swing, you're going
to retaliate. So what was that teaching that somebody spat
in your face and you didn't respond.

Speaker 6 (01:05:23):
We'll talk about it after when we're going on to break.
Are you going on break now?

Speaker 5 (01:05:27):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 6 (01:05:29):
So non violence, the first thing you do is you
have to really understand that this is a different experience.
It's not common. It is uncommon. It's as you you know,
somebody spit in your face. What's your first reaction to
fight back? Well, the first thing you learn in non
violence is not to respond to the first negative incident,

(01:05:51):
whether it's physical or mental. People saying nasty words about you,
which was a common experience. I mean every time we
went to march, we heard the end word and all
kinds of other stuff. So, but because I had practiced it,
because we did sessions, you know, Andy led sessions as
just some other people led sessions on how you know,

(01:06:12):
people pushed us around, called us names and so forth,
and taught us not to respond a little difficult at first.
Remember I'm in my twenties, you know, so it took
me a while to get used to it. But I again,
I'm convinced more and more that my call was by

(01:06:33):
the Creator, that I trusted God with my life, and
therefore I was not going to abandon that. Now he
had sent Andy Young to be a part of my life.
Andy had invited me. I finally answered the call, and
there I was, And so I'm here today. Yes, in
one nanosecond, I said, nobody's going to violate me like that.

(01:06:58):
And then I remembered the sessions had to take. It's
like turning the other teeth. And again I say, I
know that I'm physically okay now because I did not
respond to that event. I'm not a perfect person. I
had all the anger come up with me, up within me.
But within a nano second, a nano second, I knew

(01:07:22):
I'd probably not see my wife or you know, the
one child we had had if I had responded. All
those things come up, and they come up very quickly.
So you make a choice. You make a choice, and
my choice was to listen to what I had learned
when I was in that session the Savannah with Andy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Let me ask you this though, twenty eight minutes after
that tought me out. You know, back then in the sixties,
people blame Doctor King, Andy or all of you guys
that you were going for integration instead of separation. They
think that you guys missed the mark your thoughts.

Speaker 6 (01:07:59):
Yeah, we took a lot of criticism and we did
what we thought was best. Now I'm not a I
think I know a lot. I'm very clear that doctor
King knew a lot. He was charismatic, and as in
their lots, we didn't need to be perfect. We wanted
to be heard. So we certainly made the mistakes and

(01:08:20):
there we were subject to the criticism and it was deserved.
People can think what they want to think. But our
mission was to make sure that our families, our communities
would no longer be under threat from people who took
who went after us, because we are just happening to,
you know, be people of color. So I'm clear, very

(01:08:42):
clear that no matter what it said about us, had
it not been for our movement, we would not be
where we are today. Unfortunately, were going backwards. But again
I am very satisfied with what we did during that time.
It was what we were what we learned to do.

(01:09:03):
Gandhi had done it in India, so why couldn't we
do it here? And I again believe in my heart
that many of us are here. Who are you know?
Andy's ninety three, I'm ninety We're here today because we
practiced it, we understood the value of it and that
we were needed to be in the movement. And if

(01:09:23):
we had done that, we could have been killed. And
you remember John Lewis almost lost his life because he
was he did not retaliate when the person almost beat
him to death. So that I hang on to that,
and there certainly are we probably could have done some
other things, learned some other ways to do it. But

(01:09:43):
if that's what we were taught, that's what we believed
we were called to do, and we did it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
A family just waking up on just doing this, I
guess is doctor Paul Smith's civil rights activists from the sixties.
You mentioned the Marsia and Andrew Young and doctor King,
Doctor Smith, the signing of the Voting Rights Act. Did
you declare that you guys declared that that was the victory?
Was that what you were searching or trying to achieve
the Voting Rights Act signature, the President signature. Can you

(01:10:11):
tell us about that?

Speaker 5 (01:10:13):
Yes.

Speaker 6 (01:10:13):
See, one of the things, and I think its a
valid criticism, was the lack we were We were not
as political. We just were were led basically by what
what our faiths taught us, you know, what our religious
uh and spiritual disciplines were. So we we did that.

(01:10:33):
So it made it made a huge difference in how
we responded to what was going on at the time.
So in that case, it was, as I said to you,
I was present when the Voting Rights Act was signed.

(01:10:56):
I was there with doctor King Andy and several other
civil rights leaders, many of whom are no longer with us.
When that happened. That was one of the seminal political
experiences of my life because I hadn't really connected all
of the doubts between what we were doing, as you know,
non violent people, civil rights activists, and the government. A

(01:11:18):
lot of that changed, of course, with Kennedy's administration and
his brother being the Attorney General. But to be there
to see in witness the signing of the Voting Rights Acts,
which as you know, is under attack right now, was
one of the most meaningful experiences in my lifetime, and

(01:11:38):
I think it made a huge difference because we saw
what happened on Tuesday. How many, how many many many
people vote. They know that the way to get through
to a lot of this excuse me as to it
with who you vote in so all.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Kids, let me jump in and ask you this though.
Let's go back to the signing because you're I guess
it was in the Whitehouse heldj signed the proclamation. From
your side, did you get the feeling that he signed
it out of political expediency or he signed it because
he really cared about us.

Speaker 6 (01:12:14):
That's a tough question, I have. It's probably a bit
of bully. I mean, he was kind of a religious
person in his own private way. You know, he's the
southern white guy, so we know what he grew up with.
But it didn't that wasn't a question for us what
his intentions or what he believes and so forth.

Speaker 5 (01:12:33):
He was the.

Speaker 6 (01:12:33):
President and the fact that he has a bully pulpit,
that he signed it, that's what was important more than
the other things that are certainly a reality, But that
did not play a part. We knew that if we
didn't have the right to vote, we could not make
the changes that were necessary, particularly in community. Well, we
couldn't vote, so no, we just felt that that was

(01:12:55):
the right thing to do at the right time. And
sure it was political, but that's where we are right now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Well, take us back to that day after they signed
the bill. What was the mood of the country like
after they signed the voting ranks mission.

Speaker 6 (01:13:08):
Well, they are ticked off, of course, you know, portray
to white people are not happy about that because that
kind of made us equal with them, which is another issue.
But what it did it was it let us know
that for better or for worse, the country that we
were born to and born in was supporting us as

(01:13:31):
a people who are Americans who loved this country, and
that this was our opportunity. So while we were able
to do it, and again it's the importance of the churches.
The churches were the signal place where we did voter registration,
gathered people to talk about the importance of the vote.

(01:13:53):
Imagine this, so they say you can't and that there
was something very very important voting that they didn't want
us to have. I remember doctor Howard's there and my
mentors saying that you know, weist didn't want us to
learn how to read. We said, well, what's the magic
about reading? And we said, reading to learn how to read,

(01:14:15):
to read materials, that's knowledge. And so when we felt
that we could not vote, it meant that we were
losing power and influence. And there is a difference between
power and influence. That's another discussion. So we felt that
it was important for us to get things. Then, since
it was the vote that counted that made things happen,

(01:14:36):
we had to have that right to vote, and we
did and it was again, it was one of those
signal experiences in my ninety years.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
I got to ask you this, doctor Bollsmith, fifteen away
from the top of that after LBJ signed the measure,
did you feel like we've accomplished what we started. We
can go back and you know, to our families, or
did you see there's still more work to be done.

Speaker 6 (01:14:59):
There was still more work to be done because you know,
we were not used to voting. Someone didn't even know
how to vote that you know, where the stations were,
what you had to do, how to do the lovers
and all of that. So there was there was a
learning curves that we had to catch up with and
that took time. And again the churches, the ladies and

(01:15:20):
w AC in particular began holding classes teaching us not
only the value of our vote, but how to vote
and then necessity to vote. So we were doing organizing
and communities all over the United States at that time,
and it made us feel good. And quite frankly, it's
interesting that you asked that question about Alvijay. It wasn't

(01:15:42):
so much what he did or did not do. It's
the fact that the country made a huge shift when
that Voting Rights Act took place. So that's what was
very helpful to us in terms of our own spirits
that we had done, had done some we had accomplished
something that was really major, and then we were sort

(01:16:05):
of on our way. That's exactly how I felt.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
All right, hold up, all right, then we've got to
check the latest news and trafficking weather in our different cities. Family,
it's twenty four minutes away from the top of there.
I guess it's doctor Paul Smith. Doctor Smith, as he
mentioned in Martred, doctor King, Andrew Young back in the sixties,
and they fought to get the voting rights measure. So
when we come back, though, Dr Smith, tell me how
you feel about the fact that they're trying to you know,
I just I guess tear up that piece of paper

(01:16:30):
that it was signed on the Voting Rights Measure and family,
you two can get in on this conversation. You can
reach us an eight hundred four to five zero seventy
eight seventy six and we'll take all a phone calls
after the news. That's next bank Grand Rising, family, and
thanks for staying with us this Thursday morning. I guess
this is doctor Paul Smith. He's a sixty civil rights
activist and he's telling us about what happened during the sixties,

(01:16:50):
the fight to save the Voting Rights Act. Before we
go back to him, though, let's mind you coming up
later this morning and speak with Tony Brown, Tony Chematologist.
He's going to talk about the attempts to raise African
and African American history from the books. We'll talk about
that with Tony and tomorrow's Friday. If you know a
chance to free you mind. All that means is to
think for yourself and join us for our open phone
Friday program begin promptly at sixty in Eastern time right

(01:17:13):
here in Baltimore on Tan tan WLB and also in
the DMV on fourteen fifteen. W L all right, doctor Smith,
your thoughts down. You see they're trying to trash or
restrict or reduce whatever they're trying to, you know, remove
the voting right sack your thoughts on that. After all,
what you went through is personally now you've see they're
trying to remove it, especially section two of the voting

(01:17:34):
right side. How do you feel about that?

Speaker 4 (01:17:37):
I'm a europe We took up a couple of things.
One is.

Speaker 11 (01:17:43):
It certainly makes you angry, and I try to do
my best to discipline myself and not be so angry
about this. And once I got beyond my anger that they're,
you know, just this mandement everything.

Speaker 6 (01:17:57):
That we had work so hard for, I was able
to be more focused and more committed. So yes, we
were really upset that that had happened. Could hardly believe
that it had happened. But now we see the tide turning.

(01:18:19):
At least that's what I see. I think was what
happened with the vote on Pussie was the beginning of
the turning of the tide. That God's promises will be fulfilled,
that we are a people ttrouggle don't last always and
that nobody's going to keep us from doing what we

(01:18:43):
believe God has intended. So I'm ecstatic that all this time,
all the hard work we did and we saw being
dismountled right before our eyes, that now we see the
tide is ship it again, and it's quite possible that

(01:19:04):
we will get back of where we were. I think
the country has has a different time of mood now,
as we would say, a new attitude. I hope I'm right,
I believe I'm right. And then a couple of days,
I'm going to be honored at the Washington National Cathedral
on my ninetieth birthday to celebrate all the work that

(01:19:27):
Andy Young and I, doctor King Brothers, I have done
all of our lives.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
Well, congratulations on that thirteen away from the top of now.
I got to ask you this question though, yeah, doctor Submiths,
because there were some folks during the last election, they
were telling us that we shouldn't vote. Our vote doesn't
count if we're still in the same position that we
are before, you know, and we'll still be as afterwards,
that black folks should not go to the polls. You know,
your thoughts went after all what you went through and

(01:19:55):
you hear that kind of conversation, how does that make
you feel?

Speaker 6 (01:20:00):
That's the dumbest thing that any any people can do,
but particularly African Americans. You know how long it took
us to get this, how many people die to make
it possible, and you're saying that your vote doesn't count.
That's quite stupid. In my opinions are to be so blunt,
but that that just goes against the grain of everything

(01:20:26):
that we all worked so hard for. We put our
lives on the line. And then to say because you're
ticked off because of something that happened and you're not
going to vote or you don't think it counts, you
really need to go back and think about that very
deeply and remember how many of us gave our lives

(01:20:49):
for that. That's how I feel.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
Yeah, well, it take us back into the sixties. Was
that what doctor King's objective just to get the voting
rights back passed?

Speaker 6 (01:21:00):
There was much more than that, but obviously that's when
we got really into the whole notion of politics. The
vote has to do with a country that votes the vote,
I mean, not just for our rights, but you know,
school boards, all kinds of things that really run your community,
your country. You have to be a part of that

(01:21:22):
and the way to get to that is through the
vote and that so again we knew it was precious
because they didn't want us to do it. So that's
why we kept working and working and working to make
sure that if something some group of people were not
doing what we wanted them to do, we could vote

(01:21:43):
them out. It's a vote that count. A vote is
your power tool, and that's what we just gave our
lives for. Work so hard because we knew that if
we could vote, we could determine who's going to be
on our side and worked with the things that we
believed in.

Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
All Right, ten away from the topic doctors, to take
us back to some of those marches that you and
Ambassador Andrew Young and doctor King were on these marches
and which which one of these rallies that really sticks
out in your mind that you always remember.

Speaker 6 (01:22:19):
I remember more than anything in Selma.

Speaker 4 (01:22:22):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:22:23):
You know, Andy Young and I have done an interview.
He did an interview with Rachel Mandal a couple of
weeks ago, and then he and I did one that
will you'll be able to see on YouTube and probably
in the next couple of days. But one of the
things he reminded. We reminded each other. But Annie's the
one who said the difference of No Kingsmark is that

(01:22:44):
in our day we always had a song. We always
had a song because the arts, the songs, the music
was our inspiration. I never would have done some of
the things that are walked in the middle of a
mob had it not been for the beauty of the
Negro spirituals, of the songs that we had learned, you know,

(01:23:05):
and created during the Civil rights movement. That's missing today.
In fact, the whole notion something deeper, greater than you are,
we are. I found that missing. And while I applaud
what happened on No King Day, and that has not

(01:23:27):
happened ever before in this country and probably one of
the most signal signal things of twenty twenty five, and
I applauded them for that, but it's the one time event.
You have to keep it up and you have to
keep working at it. I have no idea who runs
runs that group. Maybe they are doing some things that
I'm not aware, but we kept at it. That's the sequet.

(01:23:50):
We kept at it. We knew how important it was
and if we wanted to really make the changes that
we had to use our power in this sense of
vote is a roote to power. Power allows change to come.
And there was the power of change that I should

(01:24:11):
in the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act. And I'm
so happy that the Lord kept kept me there. That
day was one of the most important experiences of my
life and inspired me. I'm sure inspired and and we've
moved on for there. But to see it now being
dismantled simply because of what's happening with the politics, it's disheartening.

(01:24:34):
But nothing is going to break my back, nothing's going
to break my hope. Nothing's going to keep me from
doing what I believe I should be doing. And I'm
just going to keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
Keeping going, all right, And we love you for that
ate away from the tomp doctors. Ball Smith is guest.
He's one of these one of the sixties the civil
rights icons of marsh with doctor King and Andrew Young.
After the LBJ signed that these Voting Rights Act and
we get a chance to vote, did you have problems
getting black folks.

Speaker 3 (01:25:01):
To go to the polls and we're still scared?

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
Or what was this where the poll tax and questions
like how high is high? Or how many bubbles in
a bar soap? They used to ask our folks when
they went to vote. Was that pride to the Voting
Rights Act?

Speaker 6 (01:25:16):
Yes, said to get here. I'm sorry say yeah, I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
After the after LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, did
you have problems without people going to the polls?

Speaker 5 (01:25:25):
And there was still so many Yes we did.

Speaker 6 (01:25:27):
Yeah, yeah, some people wouldn't even let us in their
homes because you know, we had what we had to do,
and I think the HBCUs had a lot to do
with that. We had to have centers where you were
taught how to use how first of all, how do
the necessity of voting, and how you had to vote,
what you had to do, how you had to sign
up for all of those things had to be learned
because remember we hadn't we hadn't been able to do it,

(01:25:50):
so it had to be learned. And also we had
to inspire people and encourage people and make them understand
how how many people had given their lives is right
and so not to want to do it was was
just a bad way of looking at our history as
a people. So it took some time but again, those

(01:26:12):
school kids, those college kids, they were out, you know,
knocking on doors and neighborhoods and churches and community centers,
making us aware of that we had the right to
vote now and now we had to use that right
and if we didn't, God was going to get us.
That's how we put it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
My question is where there's still intimidation moves against you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:26:37):
Who into vote.

Speaker 6 (01:26:38):
Of course, yes, well see where card we were in
bold and sure people you know they threatened us, uh,
and and in all kinds of ways. You know, they
got all kinds of hospital letters of course, but basically, uh,
they knew that they could turn. First of all, we
were not.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Yeah, your phone's going south on us again, doc.

Speaker 6 (01:27:03):
And secondly, because of the law, the people were I mean,
we lived by the law in this country in spite
of all the things we're seen, So people were respectful
of the law. They were just not happy that we
were now being sort of made equal with them because
we now had the right to vote. So, yeah, there
was intimidation, there were threats against us and so forth,

(01:27:25):
but we had the upper hand because we had the
law behind us, and we knew that we could count
on it all right, five.

Speaker 1 (01:27:33):
Away from the top, that we'll come on a breakthrough soon.
But doctor Smith, take us back to those days. What's
your fondest memory of all those sixties and marches, rallies,
all all getting the voter rights out passed? Which do
you remember the most?

Speaker 6 (01:27:51):
That's I was pastoring in Saint Louis, and it's sort
of a pastoral experiment of two passes, one black, one white,
and the congregation that was becoming totally integrated, and so
that was that was in an area that was redeveloped.

(01:28:11):
Robert Weaver was they called the director of Housing at
that point, and so the communities were changing, and there
was an excitement, uh and a feeling that everything was
going to be all right, not only because of the
charisma of doctor King, but the fact that the government

(01:28:34):
seemed to be understanding us as a as a people
of color, and that had been under the weight of
segregation discrimination for most of our lifetime. So those those
were inspiring incidents for us. But in Saint Louis, we
had one of the best marchers, excuse me of that

(01:28:56):
of the time. I think the year was probably somewhere
in the late again, right after the ord right tack,
and we just kind of took over downtown Saint They
were singing songs, marching, holding hands. I have a picture
of it actually in my study of my colleagues, who's
now deceased, the reverend doctor Carl Dudley, and now who's

(01:29:19):
we had started as ministry at Saint Louis. But to
see us all marching and singing songs, and feeling that
we had gotten the United States government to understand that
we would be counted, that no one would ever again
discriminate against it, that we were going to take seriously
the new law that had had just been enacted, and

(01:29:42):
for us not to be a part of that would
be a betrayal of everything that we believed.

Speaker 1 (01:29:47):
All right, hold that though, Right then, we've got to
check the traffic, and we have one more time in
our different cities. Three minutes away from the top they
own family. I guess this's doctor Paul Smith. It's one
of the civil rights activis in Marching the sixties with
doctor King and Andrew Young. When we come back with
us some more questions for him and you two can
join this discussion just to reach out to us at
eight hundred and four or five zero, seventy eight, seventy six,
and we'll take your phone calls at the trafficing weather.

(01:30:08):
That's next.

Speaker 4 (01:30:15):
That's a nice things.

Speaker 12 (01:30:16):
I you know, I just don't want to jump out
and said something.

Speaker 6 (01:30:22):
If you have a question, if you want to make it,
I'll tell them. I'll tell a little bit where I
am and.

Speaker 10 (01:30:28):
That it's okay because for the time I'm going to
have a next couple, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
And grand rising family. I'm actually rolling with us on
this Thursday morning. We're speaking with doctor Paul Smith, he's
one of the sixty civil rights activists, and Mama Charid.
We're going to speak with chematologists Tony Browner. But I
got a question for doctor Smith. Doctor Smith said, do
you remember where you were if you assassination of doctor
Martin Luther King a seminal moment in our history. Do
you remember what your ear and what did you do
when you heard that doctor King had been assassinated?

Speaker 6 (01:30:57):
I know exactly before I was. I was talking my
three year old daughter in the park when I heard
the news, and because I was in the park and
because she's so small, I just remember just standing in
from It's all too many to say that this can't be.

(01:31:18):
It just can't be. And yes, so will. I will
never forget that moment. But Carl, I wanted to sum
this up in terms of where I am and what
I believe in a couple of words. The question is
what is it that your audience and people of all strives.

(01:31:43):
What is it we hunger for? That's the first question,
What is it you really hunger for? And then the
second part of that question is what you hunger for?
How do you, Carl, Paul, doctor Paul, how do we
make what we hunger for real? That's the work of

(01:32:03):
my life, That's what I believe. That's what I try
to do every day to make sure that I am
in sync with the Creator, that I'm doing what the
Creator has called me to do, and that whatever I
believe in that I have to hold truth to that.
I believe that I walk the walk. I don't talk

(01:32:26):
to talk, I walk the walk. So I believe that
if you find what you hunger for, that the hunger
will lead you to do what is right. That's what
I believe.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
And you're talking about hunger on a personal level or
a collective level.

Speaker 6 (01:32:42):
Collective collective Again, it doesn't make any report your political
what you believe for your party is and so in
a sense, that really doesn't make a whole lot of
difference if you don't have some kind of something deeper,
in greater than that. And for me, that's my family,
that that's my wife for sixty five plus years. That's

(01:33:05):
having this conversation with you and your audience. Being a
part of a community that really believes in some of
the things that I say, makes it make the pulpits
available for me. They read my book which is on Amazon,
and again, to have this kind of celebration, to hear
people say you made a difference in my life because

(01:33:27):
of what you believe and because of what you experience.
That's the goal. To walk by faith, not by sight,
to walk with your hand in some one else's hands.
Surround yourself with people who believe what you believe, who
challenge you, who make sure you're you're paying attention to

(01:33:48):
the clues. Life is always giving us clues. We've always
got it right. Now we've got cell phones in their ears,
we got so many stretches the trees, doctors.

Speaker 1 (01:34:01):
Mate, don't you think what you guys achieved in the
sixties is sort of we've lost our appetite because we
think we've made it because of your accomplishments Black people,
and that I think, you know, an Obama of course,
is a turning point. He made it to the White House.
That's the struggle is different. There's no struggle because you guys,
you struggle for us, you know, for equal rights. And

(01:34:21):
so for most for many Black people that they feel
they've arrived.

Speaker 6 (01:34:27):
You now, and and many do. I'm always amazed that
at the moment of the value of you know, of
African Americans dollar, there are many people who feel the way.
And I think only in only because of what's what's
in the administration. Now it's awakened some people. Now, you
know how many people are hurting with this, you know,

(01:34:48):
with the government shut down. That that in a sense,
that's kind of a blessing because it's knocked us back
into our senses of what what really is happening. We
are under see again, uh. And until we understand that, uh,
I think we're beginning to understand and particuit with the
election of the new governors, the mayor in New York,

(01:35:11):
somebody in the you know, a pastor in New York,
and so many my young people are just behind what's
happening now. Kind of change is what hope keeps hope alive.
So I am hopeful, and I think that a number
of people are now beginning to see that. They're understanding

(01:35:32):
that what kind of car you drive and what kind
of house you have, that's not what is important. It's
what kind of rights you have, and what changes are
you are? Are you being a part of making? And
what are the things that make you come alive?

Speaker 4 (01:35:45):
And go do that?

Speaker 6 (01:35:47):
And I think that's what's happening now, and people are
beginning to understand that unless we participate, unless we raise
our voices, nothing's going to change. And we're beginning to
see that now the tightest shifting and I'm so glad
to be around a part of it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:04):
All Right, we're gonna let you go, doctor Smith. I
just want to thank you for all the abuse that
your generation took for us so we can vote guys
spitting in your face somehow that that side hasn't left
my brain yet, because I know with all the non
violence training, it's just be a reflex to go off
on the person who spat.

Speaker 5 (01:36:27):
You.

Speaker 1 (01:36:27):
See, you had some self control. Many of us don't
have that kind of self control. But you took a
lot of abuse and I just want to you know,
if nobody's told you, thank I just want to thank you.
And when you speak to ambassad Andrew, you I'm telling
me thank him too for the abuse that you guys
took for us to be here right today and do
what we're doing.

Speaker 6 (01:36:45):
And thank you for having me to be able to
share destroy.

Speaker 1 (01:36:51):
All right, because your phone's going sound, thank you, doctor Smith.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us this morning.
All right, I think his phone is now all right, family,
let's bringing Our next guest is chematologist Tony Browner Hotep,
Grand Rising, Tony, welcome back to the.

Speaker 5 (01:37:07):
Program, Hotep, Brother Carl, it's good to be back. It's
been a minute, and I always enjoy being a guest
on your show.

Speaker 1 (01:37:17):
Yeah, but it's take us back, Tony, because you're a chematologist.
But it didn't happen for you overnight. Tell us how
you got involved in being a chematologist.

Speaker 4 (01:37:28):
Well, listen, I love to but let me do this.

Speaker 5 (01:37:31):
I was listening to your guests, doctor Paul Smith for
the past forty five minutes or so. Interesting conversation, fascinating conversation,
doctor Smith is almost a generation older than me, and
while I appreciate what his generation did for my generation,

(01:37:52):
I see things slightly differently, and I would love to
have an opportunity to have a conversation with him about
my perspective on some of the things that did right,
some of the things that could have been done better,
and also to provide a historical perspective on some of
the things that he was talking about. So, if you

(01:38:13):
don't mind, I like to spend a few moments. I
took some notes as he was talking, and I like
to spend a few moments just just giving another perspective
of some of the things that he talked about. And
I say this because, as doctor Smith said that he
was closing, life is always challenging us. And challenges are

(01:38:37):
good because they help us see things differently. And life
is always giving us clues, and so we have to
be open to recognize those clues whom they appear before us,
so that we can learn from those clues. So a
couple of things I wanted to just respond to. While
I was coming of age during the Civil Rights Movement,

(01:39:01):
my life was impacted by it. I was four years
old when Im Matill was murdered. I grew up in Chicago,
Carl I was fourteen years old when Malcolm X was murdered.
I was seventeen years old when Doctor King was murdered.
And I remember vividly the impact of all three of
those murders a black man had on me growing up

(01:39:23):
in Chicago, which was when I was growing up and
it still is today, the most racially segregated city in
the United States. I understand how Mayor Daily, who is
the mayor for life in Chicago, during my childhood, I
used politics as a means of controlling everybody in the city.

(01:39:45):
I understand how he used a religion and pastors as
a means of controlling the black community. So all of
these things matter, All of these things impact us on
multiple levels, and which still dealing with today in twenty
twenty five, the same problems, the same issues we were

(01:40:06):
dealing with in nineteen sixty five, and in nineteen twenty five,
we're still dealing with the same problems. They've changed in
form slightly, but the issues are still the same. And
one of the things that I've come to understand. One
of the things that I've come to realize is that

(01:40:26):
black people African Americans, Negroes, colored people, whatever term we
used to describe ourselves every thirty years, are in worse
shape today in twenty twenty five than we were in
nineteen sixty seven. Our communities have been destroyed, our schools

(01:40:46):
have been destroyed, our social systems and economic systems have
been destroyed. So even though we've had a black president
who really didn't do much for us, in hindsight, we've
lost a lot, and I think we've lost a lot
in pursuit of this solusive thing called integration. You got

(01:41:08):
to remember what doctor King said when he was in
lbj's office and that civil rights legislation was being signed.
Doctor King said, we are integrating into a bernie house.
Doctor King realized that the real issue was not integration,
it was fair rights. And I believe you had had

(01:41:31):
a conversation with Harry Belafonte at some point before he
passed recently, where Belafante said that King had shared with
him shortly before his assassination that very concerned we are
integrating into a burning house. Doctor King came to realize
late in his life some of the strategies that they

(01:41:52):
had employed to gain civil rights or black folks were
not the best strategies, and if he could do it differently,
he probably would. I had an opportunity a number of
years ago to hear a discussion by Doctor King's driver.
He had written a book about, you know, his life,

(01:42:13):
his time with Doctor King, and he shocked a lot
of people in the audience when he said the last
year in King's life, King carried a gun, right, And
King carried a gun because the last year of his
life was the year after he made the speech in

(01:42:33):
New York City on April the fourth of why I
opposed the War to Vietnam. When King spoke out against
the Vietnam War, he began to align himself with the
thinking and the philosophy of Malcolm X. He began to
look at racism as something that wasn't just exclusive to
the United States, but it was international, and that it

(01:42:55):
was based on people of color being persecuted by white people.
So when Doctor King brought in his perspective and made
that speech about why he opposed the war in Vietnam,
all of his funding dried up. Doctor King spent the
last year of his life struggling to hold SELC together
because the people who had funded him were comfortable funding

(01:43:20):
him as long as he was talking about racial issues
in America, as long as he kept our perspective and
our understanding of the world confined to the United States
of America and didn't adapt a world view. Once he
brought in his understanding of the world and the situation
of people of color, specifically African people all over the world,

(01:43:43):
his philosophy changed and his money dried up.

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):
So it's his money drive, brother, Tony. We got to
step aside for a few moments. I'll let you continue.
This is a fascinating discussion here with Tony Browner. Family.
You want to join the discussion, reach out to us
at eight hundred and four or five zero seventy eight
seventy six would take your calls out to this short
break and grand rising family, and thanks for rolling with
us on this Thursday morning. Here twenty minutes after the
top of that, I guess this is Tony brow Tony

(01:44:07):
brown is mostly you know, as a chematologists, reflecting on
some of the issues that our previous guest, doctor Paul
Smith said this morning. So Tony, Ali, you get to
finish your analysis.

Speaker 5 (01:44:19):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:44:19):
Well.

Speaker 5 (01:44:20):
One of the things that I was saying, Carl before
we went to the break was that we have to
look at who financed King, who financed s CEOC, who
financed in THEBACP, who financed all of the black organizations,
and so that they would advance a specific agenda, agenda,
and now we have to ask who did that agenda

(01:44:40):
really benefit. So when King broke away from the script
and started speaking about racism and white supremacy on an
international scale, his funding dried up. So some people benefited
by having King adopt a non violent stance. I know
of no struggle in any society that was nonviolent. So

(01:45:05):
there's some questions that we need to ask. And I'm
not pulling doctor Smith and everyone who did put their
lives on the line, but we should understand and we
should never forget that while King was marching non violently,
there were groups of brothers and sisters with guns who
made sure that they were protected. So it's not just

(01:45:27):
you know, doing everything non violently in love your enemy.
You got to have some balance and you got to
be able to protect yourself. And the more you can
protect yourself, the better you can protect yourself, the more
your enemy will respect you. That's what the Black Panther
Party did. That's why they had to be eliminated, because
they were about introducing a new thought, a new consciousness

(01:45:47):
into the Black community that our oppressors did not want
to become a dominant thought. Now, a couple of other
points that want to make before we could jump into
our conversation for the day. I had the I have
to had the pleasure and the honor of working with
fire and Rows and Hank Sanders, Senator Hank Sanders and

(01:46:09):
from Alabama, who were responsible for sponsoring the annual Bloody
Sunday Jubilee in some Alabama. I've been going down there
every year for over fifteen years, and going down there,
I have had an opportunity to meet many of the
people who were beaten at the foot of the Edna

(01:46:31):
Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday in nineteen sixty five. They
had an opportunity to hear many of the ministers and
some of the politicians, and especially I've had an opportunity
to be behind the scenes and to watch how things
function behind the scenes. And I'm not going to call

(01:46:54):
any names now, but I can tell you what goes
on behind the scenes is to be different than what
happens in front of the camera, everything is not as
it appears. So that being said, there are a lot
of people pulling strings behind the scene, and there are
a lot of illusions that are being created, which the

(01:47:16):
masses just followed. So what we got to do with
the publicans got to do. We've got to read, we've
got to study, we've got to listen to everybody, and
we've got to be able to do a critical analysis
so that we understand what's really going on. I've also
had the pleasure for over twenty five years of working

(01:47:37):
with Children's Defense Fund and doing their Freedom School training.
So a lot of the civil rights activities were centered
around Freedom school and the freedom school events came out
of the civil rights movement of the sixties, and Children's
Defense Fund was created in order to reanimate that spirit

(01:48:00):
the civil rights movement and establish these freedom schools and
urban centers throughout the North, primarily to help young people
understand why our people struggled in the civil rights movement,
why they fought, why they die. And the Children's Defense
Fund had purchased the Alex Haley farm after he died,

(01:48:23):
and that's where all of our trainings took place, so
I would go down to Clinton, Tennessee every year, two
through times a year sometimes, and one of the trips
that we made in Clinton, Tennessee, and well, let me
give you some perspectives. We would always have people from
the civil rights movement come and talk to the young people,

(01:48:45):
come and talk to the trainers, and I would ask questions.
You know, that's my nature. I'm always asking probing questions.
I don't necessarily just drink the kool aid and go
along with everyone else. I want to understand why things
happen and who set things their motions that made things happen.
And so I would ask the questions about, well, who
trained doctor King, who trained doctor Smith, who trained doctor Young,

(01:49:08):
who trained Marion Berry? Who trained all of these people
to be non violent? And someone said, oh, you're talking
about the Highlanders Center. I had never heard of the
Highlanders Center, but at one of my visits two Children's
Defense Fund, we actually made a trip to the Highlander Center.
The Highlander Center is also in Tennessee, and it was

(01:49:30):
started initially by white folk, by liberal white folk, to
help four white people develop their rights and their awareness
so that they can defend themselves, protect themselves politically, social
med and economically so they can improve their quality of life.
And the people who ran the Highlanders Center saw what

(01:49:53):
was happening with civil rights and then expanded their agenda
to bring in colored people, doctor King and his whole crew,
where they began to train them on how to engage
in civil rights activities, how to maintain your composure when
someone is spitting at you, when someone is talking about

(01:50:14):
your mom and calling you the N word, when someone
is beating you. So there's a whole training that took
place over the course of years in order to create
the leadership which was then put in front of this
movement in order to leave the masses in a specific,
non violent direction. And so it's important that we understand

(01:50:37):
how the white folk who were creating all these problems
to begin with were responding to the Highlanders Center. There's
a very famous photograph that was placed on billboards in
the nineteen sixties, a picture of doctor King along with
any young and some other folk who were at the
Highlanders Center being trained for the civil rights demonstration. And

(01:51:02):
that photograph was put on billboards by Southern racist white
Christians and had to say that they were Southern racist
white Christians. The same people who believe in God and
Jesus that Doctor King believed in were antithetical to Doctor
King and everything that he stood for that point cannot

(01:51:25):
be eliminated, which means that we've got to begin to
look at who taught us to worship the same God
as our enemies. That's a whole nother topic conversation. But
those billboards who out the South said that doctor King
was a communist and the people who ran in the
Highlanders Center were being funded by communists. Now that was

(01:51:45):
a lie, but that lie was being used to taint
the waters so that those southern racist white Christians would
believe the lie and attack doctor King and opposed everything
that doctor King was doing. Still being lied to today
by Southern and northern white racist Christians who are telling

(01:52:08):
the same lies in order to confuse and confuse everybody
and divide the nations so that they can continue running.
Gain two more points I want to make, and then
we could jump in through our conversation. Doctor Smith made
reference to Howard Thurman. Howard Thurman was charted Howard's School

(01:52:33):
of Divinity. Howard Thurman is a person that most Christians
don't know about, but they need to understand this man,
Howard Thurman was the man, the minister who had the
greatest impact on doctor King. Howard Thurman was the man

(01:52:54):
who had traveled to India and met Gandhi and turned
Doctor King on to Gandhi. Howard Thurman was a Christian
who transcended Christianity and began to delve into the spirituality
of religion. Now I want to repeat that statement. Howard

(01:53:16):
Thurman was a Christian minister who transcended Christianity and delved
into spirituality. And so if you go to Morehouse College
today you will see King Chapel which is dedicated to
doctor Martin Luther King, who was an alumni of Morehouse College.

(01:53:40):
In front of King's Chapel, there is a checking. The
rightful call it an obelist. A checking is the oldest
symbol of resurrection known to mankind. A checking is the
symbol which represents the resurrection of Asar and the story
of the resurrection of of the Sar is the first

(01:54:01):
story of a resurrection, is the first story of a
so called emactical conception. It's the first story of a
virgin birth. The story of the Sar, his son Herow,
and his wife a sent is the First Trinity in
human consciousness. That story is the foundation for Christianity, but

(01:54:22):
most Christians know nothing about it. Here's the key, here's
the point that I'm making. That checking is dedicated to
Howard Therman. That teching contains the cremains of Howard Thurman.
So the point I'm making is we live a life
of contradictions, and until we develop the consciousness and the

(01:54:49):
courage to examine these contradictions, to put them down in
front of us, and to study them, to understand where
they came from and how they impact, because we will
never be free. We can pray to the White Man's
God all we want, we can pray to the Arab
Man's God all we want, we can pray to the

(01:55:11):
Jewish Man's God all we want. But until we understand
these contradictions and how these contradictions were shaped into a
consciousness that was poured into the brains of people who
did not study, people who did not read, people who

(01:55:33):
were comfortable being told what to do and believing in
things instead of knowing. There's a profound difference between the two.
It is about knowing. So you asked me, your initial
question is how did I get involved in studying kimmod.
I became involved in studying kimmd because once I realized

(01:55:54):
that we had been brain wash, we had been, as
Malcolm said, hood wing bambooze. And one of those greatest
weapons for hoodwinking any people is religion. A good friend
of mine, who was a pastor and it was also
an attorney, said, religion and nationalism are the last refuge

(01:56:19):
of scoundrels. Religion and nationalism are the last refuge of scoundrels.
So if you look at what's happening right now in
this government with the leadership of this government, this government
is being led by religious zealouts who are using nationalism
to steal all of the wealth of the world and

(01:56:41):
put everybody in the poorhouse. That's happening now in real time,
and unless until people wake up and realize that, as
dig Gregory often said, this whole thing is a game,
and these games are being played on the ignorant, on
the ill, and so on, and can only continue to

(01:57:02):
be played as long as you don't know that it's
a game. And said here you had often said that
by the time a fool learns the rules of the game,
all of the players have gone home. So We're getting
close to the end of the game. Things are changing

(01:57:22):
dramatically in this country and in the world, and people
are going to have to wake up. I've been saying
on your show for a long time, Carl, that it
takes a calamity. It takes a crisis before the general
population wakes up and starts doing what they've had the

(01:57:44):
capacity to do for years, for decades, maybe even centuries.
And we are approaching a catastrophe.

Speaker 1 (01:57:54):
Yeah, right there, brother Tony, I thought right there. Twenty
six nights away from the Top. I got a two
before we go off into that segments. Brother tuity for you,
and he says, Hotep, with all due respects, mister Browder,
black people, colored people are African American today are in
the best position as opposed to nineteen sixty five, nineteen
twenty five, et cetera. All racist views are directly in

(01:58:17):
front of us. It's chaos, and therein lies our opportunity
to create systems for ourselves.

Speaker 5 (01:58:24):
Well, let me respond by saying, we had systems before integration.
We had more systems in place. We had systems to
educate our youth so our youth were productive members of society.
We don't have that now. We had more businesses in
the twenties during segregation then we had now. When I

(01:58:44):
say businesses, I'm thinking in terms of We typically make
reference to Tulsa, Oklahoma and Black Wall Street, but there
were dozens of Tulsas, they were dozens of Black Wall Street.
Why Because during segregation, we understood what the issue work,
and we understood the importance of coming together and working together,
educating our children, caring for our children, loving each other.

(01:59:08):
We don't have much of that now and as a
result of integration essentially led to the disintegration of all
of those things that sustain us, and the bottom is
falling out. And what we're witnessing now, particularly with the
government shut down, which is the longest government shut down

(01:59:28):
in US history, African Americans have typically sought refuge in
the federal government. Jobs with the federal government, and here
in Prince Georgia County, where I live, Prince George's County
has had the distinction for over three decades of being
the only majority minority county in the United States. Prince

(01:59:49):
George's County has the highest concentration of wealthy black people
in the United States, educated black people in the United States.
But what has happened since? This show a large sentence
of what it's happened since the shutdown, and our quote
Edwin Nichols, because he pulled my quote on this that
Princevillge's counting now leads the state of Maryland in foreclosures.

(02:00:13):
That's black folks who being foreclosed on, right, and so
black folk now and what was the wealthiest concentration of
black folks a bleeding money?

Speaker 4 (02:00:24):
Why?

Speaker 5 (02:00:25):
Because we were over extended? Why were we overextended? Because
we were bought into being conspicuous consumers. We bought things
we didn't need. Right, we live paycheck to paycheck. And
now that the rug has been pulled out from under
tens of thousands of people, you know, they're now scrambling

(02:00:49):
to figure out how they're going to make it. So
I would respectfully disagree with the tweeter. I see that
many Black people are in worse shape now financial, actually, educationally, socially,
our health is in dire straits. We saw that during
COVID we are the largest percentage of deaths. We're African

(02:01:11):
Americans who had cold mobilities. We see dysfunction within our households.
We have more divorces now than ever before. So in
some respects it may appear as though we're doing better.
But when you step back and look at twenty twenty five,
ten years from now, you will see that many mistakes

(02:01:35):
were made and people didn't realize that they could have
done things that they should have done things differently.

Speaker 1 (02:01:45):
Step aside for a few moments. I'll let you pick
it up on there. What should have be done differently?
Tell us what we need to be doing right now,
twenty two minutes away from the top of our family.
I guess there's chematologist Tony Browner. You want to join
this conversation. Reach out to us. Telephone number is eight
hundred and four or five zero seventy eight seventy six.
Ye'll take your phone calls next.

Speaker 4 (02:02:05):
To exactly.

Speaker 13 (02:02:06):
Perspective is freedom?

Speaker 6 (02:02:09):
All right?

Speaker 3 (02:02:10):
You want to give viewer and feel lighter tomorrow.

Speaker 6 (02:02:13):
Here's your subtle art.

Speaker 1 (02:02:14):
Start at six am Eastern time right here in Baltimore
on ten ten w LB and also in the DMV
on fourteen fifty WOL. All right, let's go back to Tony. Brother. Tony,
I'll let you finish your thought then, Sondra and Baltimore
as a comment for you.

Speaker 5 (02:02:29):
Sure, What I like to do is refer your listeners
to go to the Carl Nelson Show and pull up
the podcast of the last interview you did with doctor
James Taylor. Carl that interview with fire. I love doctor Taylor.
He is clear, he is passionate, and he laid it

(02:02:50):
down and said, what the circumstances were is what we
need to be doing. Folks should listen to that interview
and take notes and doing the course of that interview, Carl,
you brought up markm Anaheim, who basically co signed everything
that doctor Taylor was talking about. And Mark said, Mark said,

(02:03:10):
you better have your to go back, and you need
to have me. Ray One Bush said, you need to
have your passport and some cash so that when things
get rough, if you're in a position to leave, you
should leave, and you should know where to go in
order to get away from the madness that's going to

(02:03:31):
be consuming this country. And we're at a point now,
you know, this past Tuesday was a wonderful day. I'm
glad so many people went out and voted. I'm glad
that people express their displeasures, but you can't just do
it on voting day. You have to do it for
the rest of your life to put evil in check.
We saw evil lose on Tuesday, But what I also

(02:03:54):
know is that evil doesn't just walk away. Evil was
what we saw on January the sixth. Evil fights back.
Evil is not non violent. So you better prepare yourself
because these jokers are going to fight back and they
don't play fair. And the point is that all the

(02:04:16):
praying is not going to help you against their evil
because they're praying to win, just as we are praying
to win as well. So we got to realize that
there are other powers that supersede prayer, the other levels
of work that supersede prayer, and we need to begin more.

(02:04:40):
People need to begin to understand that reality and make
a conscious choice to function on that level. So I'll
shut up and now and take a question or a call.

Speaker 1 (02:04:50):
All right, Sandra, We'll go to her fifteen away from
the top down. She's in baltimorerow She's online to Grant Rising. Sandra,
you're on with Tony.

Speaker 12 (02:04:57):
Browner, glamorizing call to union your guests. Doctor. Excuse me, Rowler.
I love you and respect you, sir. I can't wait
when you come on. But that person who tweeted just
before Carl went to break, he done lost his mind
and don't know where to find it. If he think

(02:05:18):
that we're doing better, he got to be crazy. We
gave up everything to any degree. We had more hospital,
more banks, more schools, more land than we could ever
have today. So undoubtly he don't read. And what you
said about the organization that secretly people don't know about.

(02:05:40):
Malcolm Book was bandited because he was beginning to talk
about that. They didn't want Matthew to talk about the
secret organization that was helping over the civil rights. And
he was named with the people and the preachers who
was involved in that. And they took money and they
ran them out of town. They they gave him a deadline. Well,

(02:06:02):
after you do it, you have to do for it.

Speaker 10 (02:06:04):
You take this money and you can get out of.

Speaker 12 (02:06:06):
Town before sun. Uh before sundown. Mackelm talks about that
it's deeper than people can imagine.

Speaker 10 (02:06:16):
And I don't believe all this hope of specs with
this uh it lets you eager. I believe some of
these mega people that circled their wagons and went out
there and voted it because they was angry with Donald Trump.
They had they're gonna come back. Nobody liked it the guy,
the Indian guy before, but all of a sudden, now
they all like him. They're gonna vote for him. I

(02:06:37):
think they played us on this end too. You gotta
watch these white people. They did it. They just do
some things to make your heads of them. Of course
you know about this. And as far as Gandhi, Gandhi
wasn't all that in love with black people because they
found out they didn't like black people. So all of
them was paid during the civil rights time.

Speaker 1 (02:07:00):
All right, Sandra, let me respond to anything she said.

Speaker 5 (02:07:10):
Well, no, I appreciate, I appreciate her insights. I appreciate
her insights and her wisdom and her passion. And you
know there there is truth in.

Speaker 4 (02:07:22):
What she said.

Speaker 5 (02:07:23):
The only thing that that I would say is that
I don't I don't necessarily agree with calling our people stupid.
We may act stupidly, and we remember Barack Obama got
in trouble for saying the white police officers acted stupidly,
but we do we do have to exercise more compassion

(02:07:46):
when we deal with our people because our people have
been brainwashed, our people have been miss educated. More so
now than probably at any other point in history, because
there's so many people out here with access to the
media who are sowing sea of confusion, seeds of ignorance,
and many people lacked the capacity of discernment, and they

(02:08:09):
believe in anything that they hear. As matter of fact,
it was one of Adolf Hitler's principal henchmen who said
that if you tell a lie often enough, and tell
a lie with conviction, then the unassuming public will accept
a lie and reject the truth when he's presented to them.
And one would do well to study Adolf Hitler and

(02:08:32):
his people. His team convinced the German people to follow
them straight to hell. Doctor Wilson often talked about this
and wrote about this, and it's one of the things
that she that she did after she graduated from from
college her father, who was a position after what she

(02:08:55):
wanted for a graduation graduation gift, She said she wanted
to go to Germany to study how the German people
could buy into Adolph Hitler's madness. And so we're seeing
the same strategies, the same tactics have been used by Maga.
So a lot of people have drunk the kool aidy,

(02:09:19):
and they will suffered the consequences of not learning how
to be or not learning the value of becoming critical thinkers.
So you asked me, carl It at the top of
this interview almost an hour ago. Now, what got me
started in studying Commitic history. What got me started was
when I realized that I had been lied to all

(02:09:39):
of my life. I realized that only after I met
doctor Ivan van Certema, and he told me in nineteen
seventy seven, February the twenty first, nineteen seventy seven, I
met Van Certemon who was giving a lecture at Georgetown
Law School here in Washington, DC, and he had just
published his book that came before Columbus, the African Presidence

(02:09:59):
in Amyria, America. And Van Certema, as your listeners, should
be aware of his work, where he documented the travel
of the Omes Africans who traveled from the Now Valley
across the Atlantic Ocean into Mexico and brought their cargo
of knowledge with them and jumped out of civilization in

(02:10:20):
the Americas. In Mexico, Van Certema showed images of the
Omic heads. Van Cerdema showed the temples that they built
and all of the technology that they brought with them,
and Van Certima blew my mind when he said that
these Omecs were from the now Valley, they were from Egypt,
and they were black. I had never heard anybody prior

(02:10:42):
to that time tell me that danger Egyptians were black.
I never read that in any book, and I thought
I was well educated. That's when I realized that I
have been miseducated, and so I began the process of
re educating myself. And in the process of re educating myself,
I discovered what I referred to as for bidden knowledge,
historical information document the truths that were not allowed to

(02:11:05):
be taught in classrooms, that were not allowed to be
preached in churches, that were not allowed to be disseminated
via the media. A whole new world opened up for me,
and as a result, I became aware of John J. Jackson,
Johnny Guard, Doctor Ben. I went to Egypt with Doctor Ben.

(02:11:25):
I spent first thirteen days on the nine was doctor
Ben in December of nineteen eighty and I came back
a transformed person. I had the opportunity to see with
my own eyes information that had intentionally been withheld from me,
and I made the decision to use all of my
time to re educate myself and then to do what

(02:11:49):
I was learning to do to educate those who were
willing to be educated. So that has been my life,
that has been my career, that has been my journey
for the past forty eight years, and I've done some
incredible things as a result of understanding profound historical truth.
Let me think about my grandson boy, our babycit later

(02:12:11):
bye by love my grandson man. Life is beautiful despite
all the craziness and madness out here in the world.
Life is beautiful. Family is beautiful. And if he really
love life, if we really love family, will take the time.
We'll learn to read, we'll learn to study, we'll learn
to become critical thinkers, and then we'll use that knowledge

(02:12:31):
to build the best life possible for ourselves and our families.
That's what we did during slavery, That's what we did
during jim pro That's what we did during segregation. We
were forced to come together and we allowed that African spirit,
that ancestral and intelligence to flow through us, and it
protected us, it guided us during times that are far

(02:12:54):
worst that we could ever imagine. When we gave that
up with integration, we've lost our foundation, we lost our way,
and as a consequence, we now find ourselves in the situations,
in the direstrats that we're in right now. So what
I'm saying is, as bad as things are, there's still
a way to turn things around. You have to be willing,

(02:13:17):
you have to be aware that there is a way,
and you have to learn what those ways are and
then commit yourself to enacting those ways in your life
for the rest of your life. And when you do that,
you deserve to have meaningful changes and you'll experience a

(02:13:37):
more meaningful life. So at this point in my life,
at this point in my career, I want to impart
more information about my journeys. I want to impart more
information about what I've learned and share this information with
folks who are ready to receive it. I've seen Carl
particularly within this past year, I've had numerous interactions with

(02:13:58):
highly edgines CAD black folk, I mean PhDs, making hundreds
of thousands of dollars a year, doing well by American standards.
But I was dismayed by the fact that with all
that money they had, with all that education, they knew
nothing about who they are. They knew nothing about their
real power. And once I sit down and have just

(02:14:23):
a slight one on one conversation with them, I see
them shift, all right. And we're at a point in
time whereas America is is disintegrating right before our very eyes.
And the people responsible for that disintegration are not black radicals.
They are the white people who built this system to

(02:14:46):
begin with. They're too greedy, they're too racists, and they're
too much of a liar in order to understand that
they could have done things much differently, and this country
would have been better off, This world would have and
better off. But they lack the capacity to do better.
We've got to understand that, and so we can't continue

(02:15:07):
to put our eggs in a basket that has a
hold in it. We've got to do things differently. And
doing things differently begins with us understanding who we are
as people of African ancestry, learning to love the African
inside of us, allow that love and that applification of
that love to guide us forward, to give us the

(02:15:28):
visions that we've always had, and to use the resources
available to us, to use the technology that's available to
us to make America right again, not write again. And
so these are times that will test everybody's soul and
folk won't have time to sit back, to sit on
the fence and just complain. These are times for action.

(02:15:52):
And if you're going to act, you need to be informed.
And if you don't know who to listen to, then
shame on you.

Speaker 1 (02:16:01):
All right, hold up thought right there, Tony. We gotta
take a short break, and we got some folks want
to talk to you as well. Family, you two can
get in on this conversation with Tony Browner. You can
reach us at eight hundred four or five zero seventy
eight seventy six, and we're taking calls next and Grand
Rising family, thanks for sticking with us on this Thursday
money with our guests that chematologist Tony Browner. Tony's I
mentioned you got a bunch of folks got questions for you,

(02:16:22):
So we'll let me attain some of these calls. Let's
go to Houston first, and Kevin has called us. He's online.
Three Grand Rising, Kevin, you're on with Tony Browner.

Speaker 14 (02:16:30):
Thank you so much for taking my call, and thank
you so much, Brother Browner. I just got through reading
doctor King's last book. Where do we go from here
chaos or community, And I found it very very interesting

(02:16:51):
and really kind of disappointing in some ways. He was
really really pad of it about this integration thing, and
I think he really had a conflicting He was really
at a crossroads in his life, and I think that

(02:17:14):
he was really trying to convince himself that integration was valid,
but deep in his heart he knew that it wasn't.
And I'll say that because Harry Belafonte in his book
My Song, and I saw Harry Belafonte when he basically
stated that King had this real bewildered look on his face,

(02:17:40):
and when he asked him what was wrong, he mentioned
that he had felt like he had integrated his people
into a burning house. So you know, I'll say that
as to my feeling about Doctor King. Now I will
also hit on Dames Taylor, and he talked about I

(02:18:04):
can't think of a guy's book but his.

Speaker 13 (02:18:06):
Plural but equal brother Browner, Where do you feel that
we should go from here? I think I know what
you're going to say, but I think that this integration
has bestelled us and the plural but equal situation I

(02:18:26):
think would be more to our making and what is
it that we need to do to move in that direction?

Speaker 5 (02:18:36):
Thank you, Honoledge Employe there sure. Thank you, Kevin. I
appreciate your comments and your question. I know that the
answers to many of the problems that we're confronting with
lies in the past. That's what Sankofah implies. The best

(02:18:56):
way to move forward is by studying the problems that
your ancestors were confronted with in the past. There is
nothing new in the world. There's nothing new in the
world except the history. You don't know. That's why you
study the past. So by going back, and one of
the most extensive past of any people on this planet

(02:19:17):
has been chronicle by Africans who lived in the Nile
Valley and left records of over three thousand years of
how to live, how to have relationships, how to live
in harmony with nature, how to live in harmony with
other people. We have the information, we just don't know
where to access it. And I think that if we

(02:19:41):
were to begin to learn to love ourselves as African
people and begin to look at the wisdom that our
ancestors have left for us, we will find solutions to
many of the problems that confront us. I always think
in terms think about my dear friend, doctor to Patricia Newton,
who was a psychiatrist who worked closely with doctor Francis

(02:20:04):
Chris Wilson, who worked also closely with doctor Van J. Nichols.
Doctor Newton said that we are trained, we have socialized
to avoid problems. The problems really are wonderful things because
every problem has a solution. So what one has to
do is to study the problem. How does this show

(02:20:25):
up in your life? When did it show up in
your life? Who brought the problems in your life? How
did the problems impact you? And once you analyze all
of that, don't run from it. Study it, unpack it,
analyze it, and once you see the problem from different perspectives,
then you now will know how to solve the problem.
The more importantly, you know how to avoid the problem

(02:20:49):
when it comes again, because the problem will come again.
As doctor Smith said, the tide always turns. The tide
as we just go out, the tide goes out and
comes back in, and goes out and comes back in.
The tide always shifts. And once you understand the shifting
of the tides and the circlical nature of the shifting,

(02:21:12):
of the tides, then you can prepare yourself to deal
with the tides when they come. If you understood, for example,
yesterday was a full moon. We have the highest tides
during the tire frame of the full moon. So once
you understand that everything on Earth is impacted by things
in the cosmos, the Sun, the moon, the stars, and
the other planets. Once you understand that and understand how

(02:21:35):
when the planetary objects are in a certain alignment, it
has a certain effect here on planet Earth.

Speaker 4 (02:21:42):
Once you know that.

Speaker 5 (02:21:43):
Information and have records of documented records or the impact
of those planetary bodies going back thousands of years, you're
now able to deal with the present and more importantly,
to plan for the future. That's the beauty of knowing yourself.
That's the beauty of studying Africa. That's the beauty of
studying Kimmot, because that's where the greatest records of human

(02:22:05):
accomplishments have been accumulated. That's why white folks want to
claim Egypt. That's why they took it out of Africa
and put it in the so called Middle East. That's
why Arabs want to claim Kimmt as part of their legacy.
When they had nothing at all to do with the
foundational knowledge that was developed thousands of years before arab

(02:22:29):
began or the birth of Muhammad. These are historical facts.
I'm not saying these things to disparage anybody. I'm talking facts.
And so it's important that we be willing to do
the work that we be willing to study. And more importantly,
it's important that we applied what we have learned applies,
which you know, it's applied knowledge that makes men better men,

(02:22:51):
that makes women better women, that determines the trajectory of
the nation. We haven't been applying knowledge we've been applying
in this country. We've been to parbat hatred and steer
and intimidation. And that's not working for anybody, black or white.
So I guess we can go into the next calleee call.

Speaker 1 (02:23:11):
Yeah, we got a bunch of folks want to talk
to you fro all across the country at Tony eight
after the top of the hour, let's go to New
York City. Brother Man two is online, two Grand Rising,
Brother Man two, you're on with Tony Browner.

Speaker 15 (02:23:23):
Yes, agreetings to all, Grand Rising, Hotel Abargani, free the
land and free the African mind. Thank you for the
opportunity to interact with Brother Tommy Brouder, Brother Broader, may
all be well with you and your family. Could you
explain what does it mean to be centered? And what

(02:23:46):
could you unpack or relate to your previous comments on
what it means to be African centered? And just to
quick comment and I'll let you respond. I hear your
response of we were in the fifties and the forties
trying to solve problems related to black people. But if

(02:24:07):
we were centered on who we were, would we look
to India and find Mahamagdni Gandhi as a solution to
our problems? Though we respect you know the sacrifice that
previous generations have made in hindsight to be better. What
is being centered? Where should we look to solve our

(02:24:28):
problems as African people?

Speaker 6 (02:24:30):
Thank you for some.

Speaker 5 (02:24:31):
Lessons great, Thank you brother. That's a phenomenal question. And
in answering that question, I would like to refer to
something that the previous guests, doctor Paul Smith said. Doctor
Smith talked about the music and how singing certain songs,
and in his particular instance, singing Negro spirituals infuse those

(02:24:56):
people who are about to march in the street, be
confronted with four legged dogs and two legged dogs. Sing
those songs instilled a spirit, a force, a consciousness in them,
which gave them the courage to go out and face
those beasts. Now, during all of the Civil Rights movement,

(02:25:20):
music was an integral part of every activity because music, sound,
vibration centers your consciousness. It connects you to source, It
connects you to God, it connects you with the Creator,
whatever term you want to use. It connects you to
the power and amplifies whatever your consciousness is at that moment.

(02:25:42):
So that's real. And when white folks understood that it
was the music that gave us the consciousness and the
courage to get out in the streets and allow people
to beat us and spit on us and call us names,
they said, oh no, we've got to change the music.

(02:26:03):
Because if you remember, and I've been saying I was
going to write something on this for years, and I
really have to do it. During the sixties, during the
Civil Rights movement, and I'm a child of the Civil
Rights movement, so all of this is a part of
my consciousness. Curtis Mayfield took a gospel song Amen and

(02:26:23):
made it a forty five hit, he sang Amen, and
then he took other gospel songs and made them into
contemporary music, which sold millions of records, and as a result,
other R and B artists started doing the same thing.
So when Curtis said keep on pushing, then the Shylights

(02:26:44):
came back and said, you got to give more power
to the people. Then Temptations came out with a message
to the black man. James Brown came out and said,
say it loud, I'm black and a cloud. How are
you gonna get respect if you ain't cut your process yet.
So the music of the late fifties shifted because the
consciousness of that b people shifted and as a result
of us seeing the music which gave us more backbone,

(02:27:06):
which connected us to spirit, white folks said we can't
fight that, and so they made a decision to shift
the music. And so in the seventies, the Eisly Brothers
came out with it's your thing, do what you want
to do. I can't tell you who to sock it too.
The music shifted from people uniting, people being together, people

(02:27:30):
having their black consciousness, to individuality. And as the music shifted,
the tone shifted and Carl, A number of your guests
can speak about this much more eloquently than I could.
But the vibrations shifted in the music. And then we
had rap music, which gave us like rap music, and
disco music, which gave us one hundred and twenty beats

(02:27:51):
per minute as opposed to the fifty to seventy beats
per minuted, which is a beat that moves in sync
with your heartbeat, avownede you. So as a result of
this other form of music, we became uncentered. And then
came the rap music. First it was conscious rap music,
then it became gangster rap music. And remember see the

(02:28:12):
Lords Tucker, and never forget that name. See the Lords.
Tucker was the only person who spoke out against rap music.
And there were numerous ministers, black ministers who shut her down.
I'm not gonna mention any names, but if you remember
her story, you remember how black men moved against their
sister shut it down. Why because there was money in

(02:28:35):
keeping black people thinking at a certain level. So it's
all about being centered. It's all about knowing what center is.
And once you develop an awareness of the value of centeredness,
what you will see is that the only center that
matters is an African center. Why do I say that,
because it's been documented that people of African ancestry have

(02:29:02):
lived on this planet for over three hundred thousand years.
That's a proven fact. People of Aascan ancestry have the
greatest record, the longest record, the most complete records of
what it means to be human. The people who have
been directing our lives and steering us down the path
to hell has only been on this planet anywhere from

(02:29:26):
eight to twelve thousand years. I'm talking specifically about Caucasian,
so called white people. The genetic evidence has been presented
which said where geneticists said that the Africans who lived
in Europe before white people mutated, lost their melanin, shifted
their consciousness and became Caucasians between twelve and eight thousand

(02:29:51):
years ago. And what that means simply is that people
of African ancestry have a two hundred in eighty eight
thousand year head start on the people who taught us
to pray to their gods, the people who taught us
what it means to be humans, the people who taught
us about science and philosophy and all the things that
make of people civilize. We need to center ourselves and

(02:30:15):
that's what we can knowledge first, and then we study
everybody else and how we interact with everyone else. But
it's centering ourselves that will ground you, that will empower you,
because that's where the soul is. And that's why everybody
wants to be black. But everybody don't want to be black,
if you get my meaning. They want our music, they

(02:30:37):
want they love our sports, they love the way we move,
they love the way we talk. They just don't love us.
So what we've got to do is learn to love
ourselves instead of striving to imitate the people who hate us.
You know, we've been socialized. I was at Howard's homecoming
a couple of weeks ago, and I was this made

(02:30:59):
to see the number of sisters, specifically with weeds down
to the middle of their back, with the fake nails
and the fake eyelashes. It was everywhere. It was everywhere,
and the energy on Howard's yard was not an energy
that I felt comfortable being around. And I reflected on

(02:31:23):
the energy on Howard's yard in the nineteen seventies. I
was at Howard from seventy one to seventy four during
the post civil rights era, during the post black consciousness movements,
and of the sisters on Howard's Yard in the early
seventies had afros. And I said in my first book,

(02:31:46):
from the BROWDI File, there's an essay called the Politics
of Hair, and I stated in that essay, you can
always tell the consciousness of Black people by how our
women wear their hair, because the more we wear our
hair like our pressure. And I don't mean to step
on anybody's toes. I'm just giving you my interpretation of

(02:32:07):
an analysis of history. When we wore our hair, naturally,
we were centered, we were plugged into the creator. We
had a consciousness that our enemies feared, and so they
had to undo that. So if we go back to
if you go back to the sixties, when we wore

(02:32:27):
afros and we had a different consciousness, that consciousness had
to shift. And what happened what shifted that consciousness. It
was when the movie came out called Superfly. Ryan O'Neill
was Superflying, And how did Ryan O'Neill head his hair?
It was straight. So I saw brothers on the West
Side of Chicago who were talking powers to the people.
Black panther, Black panther, consciousness had big old afros, but

(02:32:50):
Superfly came out. They got pems walking around looking like
dare I say at our shocked and yes, walking around
with perms and the consciousness shift, and then drugs began
to flood into the community, and everything that Fred Hampton
and Mark Tart, everything that Malcolm X, everything that Magar evers,

(02:33:11):
everything that goes to parks, everything the family new Hamer
fought for went out the window because we lost our minds,
we lost our center. So right everyone, oh.

Speaker 1 (02:33:25):
That thought right there, bron Ton, I got a step
aside for a few moments, and we still got a
bunch of folks want to talk to you. But let
me just add this. This report came out yesterday. There
are no hip hop songs in the US Top forty
for the first time since nineteen ninety. So maybe something
of the music industry is a change coming on the board.
So we'll talk about that as well later when we
speak with some of our other music folks.

Speaker 9 (02:33:46):
I sa MN.

Speaker 1 (02:33:47):
Sure we got to step aside for a few months,
but we got some more folks want to talk to.
Tony Browner, you could do the same reach out to
us at eight hundred four or five zero, seventy eight,
seventy six and the take all your phone calls next
and Grand Rising family, thanks for staying with us on
this Thursday morning here with our guess, the chemotologist, Tony Browner. Tony,
I'm gonna let you finish your thought. Then Ernest and
Baltimore has a question for you.

Speaker 5 (02:34:07):
Okay, I believe I finished a talk.

Speaker 3 (02:34:09):
Carl.

Speaker 5 (02:34:09):
We can go onto the next caller.

Speaker 1 (02:34:11):
Okayest Grand Rising, you're on with Tony Browner.

Speaker 16 (02:34:16):
Good morning, I mean Grand Rising.

Speaker 5 (02:34:19):
Hello, Yes, yes, sure we're here.

Speaker 16 (02:34:22):
Oh, okay, I can hear the bank. So I wanted
to know if you were saying that Christianity was bad
for black people. I mean you didn't just kind of
when you I got on about a thirty when you
were talking about different religions, you give mentioned Jewism and
I think Muslim and stuff like that, but it seemed
like you were staying that Christianity kind of like messed

(02:34:44):
up out thinking that you said you would learn a
new thing. And the other thing I wanted to say
was that Sondra was right because I always thought that
Martin Luther King talked about Gandhi and now you know,
turn off a teat type stuff, and I thought he
just got that from him, But she was right when
I googled it after she said that, because I always
thought Gonzi loved everybody. But if you google, it does

(02:35:07):
say that he talked about black people and he had
a name for him that wasn't good. And they they
try to say that later on, He's like, it wasn't
accepting the black people, but he in the beginning he
didn't like black people, and that was surprising to me,
and that was good information about the Howard Thurman and

(02:35:27):
the other thing. You know, your other guests called doctor
Fox with his book Addicted to White. I asked him,
was the point blank of christian Like? But I think
I don't think he said he was. But my point
was in his book he referenced the things from the
Bible throughout the book. So it's like all we know

(02:35:49):
was Christianity, all I knew from growing up in America.
And the other part is like, you want us to
be separate, not you, but be separate from white people
because sometimes people think we were better off when we
were segregated, But all I know is integration. I'm seventy, but.

Speaker 4 (02:36:11):
All my life, all I know is you know, North Avenue,
Baltimore fighting white people not liking us.

Speaker 16 (02:36:19):
But this is all I know. So I don't know
about being better separate from white people because in America,
that's all I know.

Speaker 5 (02:36:27):
All right, Okay, thank you, brother. I appreciate your call
and the comments, Earnest. So let me just unpacked a
couple of things that you said. I was speaking about
Christianity and saying the Christianity, like every religion, is a tool.
And just as you said, the system made some comments

(02:36:49):
that you were unaware of regarding Gandhi. You went and
googled it. As a result of you accessing that information,
you now know what you didn't know.

Speaker 4 (02:36:57):
Right.

Speaker 5 (02:36:57):
So the issue that I want you to become aware
of is what is it about Christianity that you don't
know and how will becoming aware of that information change
your understanding and your interpretation of Christianity?

Speaker 4 (02:37:11):
Right?

Speaker 5 (02:37:12):
Just think in terms of this, the people who taught
black people to be Christians were Christians themselves. They were
the people. They were the Christians who enslaved them. What
I want you to do, I want you brother to
since she's familiar with Google, I want you to google
Reverend C. C. Jones and his book The Religious Instructions

(02:37:35):
for the Negro. I want you to google him. I
want you to read C. C. Jones and then maybe
on a Friday you can call in the Calls Show
and share with call and the listeners what you learned
about Christianity and black folk. Can you do that for me?

Speaker 1 (02:37:51):
Yeah? He hung up.

Speaker 5 (02:37:53):
Okay, I trust he will.

Speaker 3 (02:37:55):
I trust he will do that.

Speaker 5 (02:37:56):
I don't want to tell him what to think, but
I do want to tell him today and there are
certain things that they can enhance your thinking.

Speaker 1 (02:38:07):
And thank you for sharing that information with us. Tony
and Ernest calls back. After you've read that book, I'll
just check it out online and let us know what
you think. Eight hundred and four or five zero seventy
eight seventy six, twenty five minutes after the top stands
in Chicago, he's online. Three grand rising stand you're on
with Tony Browner stand there online?

Speaker 17 (02:38:30):
Three reading greetings, Yeah, borrow geting Tony. Much respect for
everything that you've been working on, and thank you for
being a child of Chicago. I'm going to chogh Chicago
up as well. But one of the things that you
said was centering ourselves. And one of the questions that
I had for Kevin when I called in, is it
would it make sense for us organized by the nine

(02:38:51):
areas of people activity that you know, our our ancestor,
you know, needing full of every fool. Yeah, absolutely, maybe
add you more technology and health, you know, start boycotting
all these holidays, you know, getting back to the basics,
listening to some of that old school music, getting back

(02:39:11):
into that vibration, you know. But really, you know, starting
with poring into what we know, because if it's headed
where it's going, we're going to need those skills. Right,
So I was just trying to figure out how we
organize ourselves and then how do you expand that to
organize our people.

Speaker 5 (02:39:26):
Yeah, so you know you answered your own question. Yes
you should read Nearly Fuller. Yes you should read Doctor Press,
Chris Wilson, Yes you should read claud Anderson. Yes you
should read John Henry Clark. Yes you should read John Jackson.
Yes you should read Bead Curtainmoy. Yes you should read
a se Healer. And after you read this material, then

(02:39:48):
begin to formulate a plan of action based on new knowledge.
So you know, I'm sharing with you the same thing
I shared with Stan. We're in the situation that we're
in because we lack the knowledge to make informed decisions.
Why do we like the knowledge? Because it's in the
interest of our oppressor to keep certain information away from

(02:40:11):
us so that we can continue to be oppressed. So,
as my good friend and jagna Asa Hilliott said, mental
slavery is worse than physical slavery because the mental slave
believes that he or she is free and they never
realize that the chains are on their minds. So what
you were saying about us boycotting certain holidays and using
our money, a person who is mentally free knows to

(02:40:34):
do that. A mental slave has to be told to
do that, or you have to argue and debate with
that person. So the majority of our people are mentally
enslaved and they don't know it. So the most difficult
and think in terms of what sister Harriet Tubman says,
who lived on the eastern shore of Maryland. She said

(02:40:54):
that she freed thousands of slaves because we're free hundreds
of slaves. We could have pred hundreds more if only
they knew that they were slaves unpacked. Only let that
thought resonate in your mind for a minute, during the
time of man's worst oppression ever imaginable. You know, over conservatively, conservatively,

(02:41:19):
over fifty million African men, women, and children lost their
lives with the Arab slave trade, which lasted longer than
the European slave trade and set the foundation for Europeans
to come in and do what they did. Over fifty
million African men, women and children lost their lives at
the hands of Arab Muslims and European Christians.

Speaker 4 (02:41:41):
That's the fact.

Speaker 5 (02:41:42):
And then one of the things that they did once
they conquered us, once they enslaved us, is to give
us their God concept so that we would be aligned
mentally and spiritually and dependent on them for our salvation.
We don't realize because they have and taught us. We
don't realize that the essence of the Abrahamic tradition, Islam, Christianity,

(02:42:10):
and Judaism comes out of the now valley and anyone
who has steady now valley civilizations would know that. But
white folk had to take Egypt out of Africa and
put it in the Middle East to separate us from
the foundational truth that will center us on the things

(02:42:31):
that will give us the freedom that we already have.
So I would encourage you, my brother stands to keep reading.
And you're in Chicago, to be careful. You've got the
Nazi stormtroopers roaming around the city. And what this current
occupant in the house that Ascan people built wants to
do is to provoke either Blacks in Chicago or the

(02:42:56):
Mexicans in Chicago to react violently, lead to the violence
that's being projected onto you, so that they can drop
the hammer on everybody. So I encourage our brothers and
sisters in Chicago to be smart and be strategic. Thank
you for your.

Speaker 1 (02:43:16):
Brother, Tony. And I'm glad you mentioned arguing because that's
one of the counter racist technologies techniques. So Dr Welson
talks about that we should not do as black people,
since when we start doing that arguing with each other,
we play right into the white supremacy. This is what
the white supremacists want us to be going at each
other and they sit back and you know they probably
started the argument and sit back and laugh. So I

(02:43:39):
just think glad that you post that you mentioned that
for their family.

Speaker 5 (02:43:43):
And let me say to that point, Carl, we need
to have sometimes, we need to have heated discussions, but
those discussions should be behind closed doors and not in public.
And we should always be civil. It should always be
to be what did Jesseice Jackson say, we could be.
We can disagree without becoming disagreeable. So there's certain certain

(02:44:06):
protocols of civility that we need to be back and
bringing back into our consciousness that we need to center
ourselves around. We need to be civil with each other
and respect each other because you know, I am in
you and you are in me. And when you learn

(02:44:27):
to see the essence of the Creator in somebody else,
it allows you to love that person as you would
love yourself. These are principles and values that are African centered,
that are older than any religion of any foreigner, and
they were the means by which we governed ourselves for

(02:44:48):
over three thousand years. Those principles, those concepts, and ideas
still exist. You have to seek them out. They're there
and they will enhance your quality his life. I guarantee
it all right.

Speaker 1 (02:45:02):
Twenty eight away from the topic, Jr's online too, if
she's in Ohio, has a question for you. Grand Rising
Jay are with Tony Browner.

Speaker 18 (02:45:11):
Greetings, Greetings elders, I'm trying to be quick with this
because I know lots of people want to speak to
the elder. First, elder, I would like to thank you
for being very careful with your words, but to correct
someone earlier who sounds like they're an elder, and they
often do that, calling black folks names and using lowbrow

(02:45:33):
terminology such as stupid. So I love the way you
did that because that you know it is definitely true.
Age does not always make people eldership applicable. But thank
you for that correction. Number two. I would also say
to you.

Speaker 6 (02:45:47):
As I've said to.

Speaker 18 (02:45:50):
Baba Carl Nelson, what I've called like I'll say, man,
I'm telling you, Elder Tony Browler is one of my
favorites ever because.

Speaker 4 (02:45:57):
It's your humility.

Speaker 18 (02:45:58):
Your humility that comes despite having great wisdom as well
as your matter of factness, and for whatever you take
it for or not take it for, I'm just telling you,
I'm a person at fifty years old by the way
that it certainly appreciates that from you, and it makes
it easier oftentimes to hear the wisdom that you have.

(02:46:18):
Not all people that are on your level have that
same humility and matter of factness about the way they deliver. Now,
the real reason for my call is you mentioned and
I believe me, I get it. I'm not one of
these women that's been to get into the thing about
being offended that you said what you said about the
women and how disheartening it is and the fake hair

(02:46:41):
and these things. I'm there as well, and I don't
have to prove anything. I got my hair going out
of my rooms all the way down. My back is
a locked sister, So I'm cool. But I have been
in the journey. I have had that mess in my hair.
I have cooked and fried my brains for many years
in the past. Brand New that said, I would ask you,

(02:47:04):
if you would, elder, to maybe take the statement that
you mentioned a little step further and put some a
little tag on it in wisdom to your to the
quote unquote black male population. And the reason I say
that is this in closing is because even though that

(02:47:24):
is an argument to be made, and we have a
lot of problems out here as sisters in and of itself,
which is why, as we know, after consider rights, the
passage should be taught by other.

Speaker 5 (02:47:34):
Sisters to sisters.

Speaker 18 (02:47:36):
But too many males they use that point of what
you said, elder, but they don't have your wisdom, they
don't have your way of thinking. They don't have the
best interest of the black family in mind, so they
use that as a way to bash the sisterhood and
use that as to why people don't want sisters. So,

(02:47:56):
if you have anything in addition, when I hang up
to impart to say that, I didn't that you didn't
just say that just for the sake.

Speaker 4 (02:48:04):
Of saying it.

Speaker 18 (02:48:05):
What can black men be doing in their households right
now with the sisters that are under their sound of
their voices that they are rearing or even as grandchildren,
to encourage them and get them to change paths rather
than use this that as a tool to further bash

(02:48:25):
black women and thus not strengthen the black family. Thank
you so much for letting me get that out there,
and I'm happy to listen here.

Speaker 1 (02:48:35):
We got to take a short break here. I don't
want to break your rhythm, So let's take the break
a little bit early and then I'll let you respond
to Jay's question. Family, you two can get in on
this conversation with Tony Browner. Just reach out to us
at eight hundred four five zero seventy eight seventy six,
and we'll take a phone calls next a grand Rising family.
Thanks for sticking with us on this Thursday morning here
with our guests. To Tony Brown. Before we go back

(02:48:55):
to brother Tony, I just want to remind you Tomorrow's Friday.
We're going to give you a chance to free in
mind and all that means, he says, think for yourself.
You can hit us up ston at six am Eastern
time right here in Baltimore on ten ten WLB if
you're in the DMV or on fourteen fifty WOL. All right,
brother Tony, I'll let you finish responding to Jr's question
that you posed to you.

Speaker 5 (02:49:15):
Sure well, Jail Jr. For a fifty year old expresses
a lot of wisdom herself, and she asked me specifically
about hair. And yes, I was very selected with my
words when I broached this topic, because I know this
is a very sensitive issue for a lot of people.
And to that point, I've had private conversations with sisters

(02:49:39):
who I know and who I respect, and I've asked
them to begin to discuss this issue with the women
in their communities. Because here if doctor Wilson used to
say hair is a symbol of consciousness. Doctor Wilson would
sometimes get a little spiritual when she talked about hair

(02:49:59):
and said, hey, there is your antenna. Hair connects you
with the creator. So one has to ask a question,
what's the difference between a person who wears their hair
naturally and is connected to a natural source of creation
and someone who fries, dies and lays their hair to
the side. What is their connection with the creator? And
what is the connection of someone who wears somebody else's

(02:50:20):
hair or synthetic hair or animal hair. All these things
impact us, but we don't have conversations about this, and
we're living at a time when these pointed conversations need
to be had, and these conversations could be best head
and best heard by sisters who can speak two sisters

(02:50:41):
in a language that they can understand and better appreciate.
Brothers need to be more respectful when it comes to
talking to each other and when talking to sisters. As
I stated earlier, I don't believe we should be talking
about each other, calling each other bad, calling each other
out of their names. That is injurious to our spirit,
and anyone who loves black folk would never ever do that.

(02:51:05):
So I could go on and say more, but I
would refer folk to my first book from the Browder
File and the essay on the Politics of Hair, which
will give you my opinion on hair as a tool
of liberation. You can go into the next call it Carl.

Speaker 1 (02:51:21):
Yeah, before we do that, I got a tweet for you, Tony.
This says Grand Rising, Tony, our hair is spiritual, is
spiritual antenna. It's curly because it mimics the cyclical nature
of time, seasons, the annual planetary cycle, the soul cycle,
the galactic cycle, and the universal cycles. From that, we
are naturally able to download spiritual information and knowledge of

(02:51:45):
truth from the atmosphere, the environment, and the Creator. So,
first of go on to say, so please black people,
love your hair, care for your natural hair. Understand that
your natural hair is a gift from God to keep
you connected to the most High God and your spiritual essence. Brother, Tony,
you say what that's a.

Speaker 5 (02:52:03):
Question from Well, I would co sign with the person said.
And if you think if we use the same analogy,
if you see the hair as an antenna, let's think
back to the nineteen fifties when our televisions were black
and white. Maybe a little bit of color if you
had a little money, but you had the rabbit ear antennas,
those straight antennas, and that if this signal was bad,

(02:52:28):
you moved the antenna around, or some folk would take
a piece of a littlemit of full and put it
on the top of the antenna. Then in the late
sixties we had UHF ultra high frequency stations. We no
longer we went beyond VHF very high frequencies to ultra
high frequencies. And then the antenna changed on the television set.

(02:52:49):
The antenna was no longer straight, it was circular. Right,
So that circular antenna is in tune with the cyclical
and circlecal circleal nature of the universe and how energy moves,
and it picks up a ultra high frequency UHF. And
then if we go on and look at when we

(02:53:12):
got into the Internet and these other means of accessing
the World Wide Web, when we saw the satellite dishes,
the satellite dishes were circular. There's a reason why things
are circular, and circular things can gather more information as
opposed to straight things, which can only tap into a

(02:53:34):
short bandwidth of information, a short frequency of information. So
if your hair isn't antenna, then you would want your
hair to be circular as opposed to straight. Now that's
kind of a scientific interpretation, but the bottom line is
people can wear their hair the way that they want
to wear their hair. That's your right, but you should

(02:53:55):
also be conscientious about what you do so that you
stay in the right as opposed to stay in the role.
And lastly, I'll say this, there have been numerous medical
reports that have come out in recent years, specifically talking
about the harmful effects of the chemicals that women use

(02:54:15):
on their hair, and that specifically those chemicals permeate the
skin and are absorbed into the brain. So there have
been several articles written by neurosurgeons who said that they
have noticed when they perform surgery on the skulls on

(02:54:36):
the brains of black women, their brains women who have perms,
their brains are coated with this substance which is a
byproduct of the chemicals in the perms and the relaxes
that they use. So that being the case, why would
any person subject themselves to that? And what is the

(02:54:57):
effect of those chemicals on our brains? Do they cause
us to be less loving to our children? Do they
cause us to obe? Do they cause fiboys? Do they
cause issues that appear to affect black women disproportionally? So
you've got a number of freaquent guests when your shows

(02:55:18):
called who are physicians? Who are scientists? Who are female?
And I think they would be best suited to answer
this question. But there is something to it.

Speaker 1 (02:55:29):
All right, thirteen away from the top, I still got
a bunch of folks want to talk to you, brother Tony.
Let's go to Baltimore Money. Mike's waiting for us. He's
online three Grand Rising Money Mike, you on with Tony Browner.

Speaker 7 (02:55:40):
Grand Raising called, mister Browder. I just want to make
a brief comment. I want to thank you for emphasizing
education and reading. And you know, I don't know why,
but for some reason, we don't talk about education the
way we used to, the way our grandparents used to,
and I think that's a problem. So I want to
thank thank you for doing that, and Peece and blessings, sir.

Speaker 4 (02:56:04):
Thanks to you, Mike.

Speaker 5 (02:56:05):
I appreciate you calling in the calls show frequently and
challenging some of the guests and challenging some of the listeners.
That's a good thing. Let me say this about education.
The elders, my grandparents and great grandparents understood that education
was the way forward. Education allowed you to be able
to get a better job, to take care of your family,

(02:56:26):
allowed you to read so that you couldn't be exploited
by banks and insurance companies and other business people who
exploited our ignorance. But what happened in the sixties and
seventies and the sixties, more black people went to college
and took advantage of educational opportunities. And as a consequence
of more black folk going to college in the sixties,

(02:56:47):
we began to see that what we were being taught
in colleges was inadequate, and so there was a push
for black studies. There was a push for black consciousness
within the school system that trickled throughout the community and
all around the world. And white folks had to shut
that down. And so what happened. I just read an

(02:57:08):
article in the paper last night, New York Times last
night that at San Diego State of San Diego University
they just did away with a scholarship for black folk
because they were being they were sued by a white
organization and they used a falls and from a law

(02:57:29):
in the eighteen sixties that was written specifically for the
Kuklux Klan, so they twisted this thing around in order
to abolish this scholarship for black folk, so a white
person cannot get those scholarships. So what we've also witnessed
with regardless to education is that education has become too expensive.

(02:57:50):
When I was at Howard in the nineteen seventies, my
tuition was maybe two thousand dollars a year, and now
it's twelve thousand dollars or more a year. We are
now going into debt to getting an education that no
longer serves them. So the playing field has shifted, and
the educational system has now become a business, has now
become an enterprise. So just because you can't go to college,

(02:58:14):
or decide not to go to college because college is
not for everybody, it doesn't mean that you can't educate yourself.
It doesn't mean that you shouldn't read, It doesn't mean
that you shouldn't study with other people we're interested in
doing the same thing. So all education does not necessarily
have to take place within an educational formal educational environment.
It could take place in the beauty shops in the
barber shops, in the churches, in Sunday schools. That's what

(02:58:37):
we used to do before integration. We made our places
wherever we gathered, places where we educated everybody in the community.
And the word was the opportite phrase was each one
teach one. When I went to South Africa and visited
Robin Island, that was a philosophy that all of the
inmates in Robin Ireland used. If you had a sixth

(02:58:58):
grade education, then you called everybody with the fifth grade
education in below right, each one teach one, so we
all have knowledge that they can benefit someone else. We
need to be actively engaged in the process of educating others.
When I say educate, I mean educate in the literal
definition of the word reduce ray to bring out, bring

(02:59:19):
out the greatness and the goodness within each person.

Speaker 4 (02:59:21):
It's there.

Speaker 5 (02:59:23):
We just have to create the right environment where the
person can bring out the goodness, the God for us,
whatever term you want to use within that person, so
that they can manifest goodness and greatness and the best
of who they are wherever they are.

Speaker 1 (02:59:36):
Gotcha nine away from the top there with Tony Browner
Inoc's reaching out to us from the Los Angeles online too,
Grand Rising Inch you're with Tony.

Speaker 8 (02:59:44):
Browner, Grand Rising blacar On Greetings by Tony breathing our gift,
our gift. Then for your your your words soon and
your part of this rising because it's right on key.
You're talking about the hair, and I think they they've
cut off the hair because it's really heritage, you know,

(03:00:06):
So let's put it right in the center of what
we're dealing with, the heritage of mellenated people. It's a
conduit of energy that means that it generates energy, electricity, vibration,
intellect and all the good things it does for us

(03:00:28):
in its natural state. So this topic is very essential
at the time that we're living in as melenated people,
because we can't go ahead of ourselves and act like
we can't have these tough conversations. These tough conversations are needed.

(03:00:51):
We have to, we have to discuss them, we have
to bring them to the forefront. And I want you
to elaborate on the eleven I excavated churches out of Ethiopia.
A lot of Bellum eleven churches, okay, and well they're
yu to Christianity on the West that can give us

(03:01:11):
a little bit more anchoring to our divinity and our heritage,
because you're laborated on that at least. Okay, sure, let
me say thank you, brother, I appreciate it. Let me
say this before I say that. A lot has been
said about hair, but there's also another there's another component
to this conversation that has not been discussed. What about

(03:01:33):
folks who don't have hair. I lost my hair over
twenty years ago, and.

Speaker 5 (03:01:36):
It's only when I began losing my hair that I
began to realize how much attention people focus on hair. Right,
it's only when you lose something that you realize how
valuable it is, or you view it differently. So what
I know, what I've come to learn is that priests
and Kimmid and priests in other traditions, they will cut

(03:02:00):
their hair. Why because in some instances, hair interferes with
one's ability to access certain frequencies of consciousness. That's another
conversation for another time, but I want to put that
out there. And the priests of Kimmoth all had shaved hair,
but they wore wigs for certain occasions. So hair has

(03:02:20):
a purpose, and we need to understand the purpose and
the value of it. You referenced the churches in Lallabella
in Ethiopia. I've had the pleasure of traveling to Ethiopia
and seeing those churches. What we see in Ethiopia is
an original form of Christianity. Christianity is viewed and as

(03:02:41):
interpreted by African people. The roots of Christianity are African.
And one of the things that bothered me the last
time I was in Ethiopia back in what thirteen twenty fourteen.
I was there with doctor Julius Garvey and some other folks,
and we visited the monasteries there, and what people shared

(03:03:02):
with me was their concern and that many of the
Ethiopian Orthodox monasteries Christian monasteries now have taken.

Speaker 4 (03:03:15):
Down the.

Speaker 5 (03:03:18):
Images of a melinated Jesus and married and persons in
the Bible, and they've been replaced by non melinated images,
even in Ethiopia, the home of Christianity. So I would
say that our concepts of God have been under constant
attack for over three thousand years, and one would do

(03:03:43):
well to understand the source of the attack, where the
attack comes from, and how the attack has impacted us
on a personal level, so that we can begin to
become more judicious thinkers about our relationship with the unseen,
our relationship to the Creator. That is what's required now

(03:04:05):
at this critical point in history, because I guarantee you
within the next ten years, the world's perception of God
and the Creator will shift dramatically when information which has
been suppressed for at least two thousand years comes to light.
Shall just be prepared and I'll leave with this. I
don't want to be so nebulous and cryptic. God is

(03:04:27):
a consciousness. God is not a person.

Speaker 4 (03:04:30):
God is not a.

Speaker 5 (03:04:32):
Vengeful person who demands respect and adoration. These are concepts
and ideas that were reinterpreted by us in order to
control people consciousness. God is force, God is energy, and
as doctor Benoten says, you can't have God without a goddess.
That's part of the problem with most religious The female

(03:04:53):
aspect of the Creator has been suppressed and oppressed and eliminated.
That's why more people have died in the name of
God than will ever be saved by him. So I
don't mean to be blasphemous. What I do mean to
do is to challenge people to read, to reason, and

(03:05:13):
to study history. Study your oppressor and how your oppressor
has used these tools to contain you, to confuse you,
and to minimize your ability to manifest what some refer
to as the God's force which all of us are
born in. We're born here to be creators. We're not God,
but we have the capacity to create. And Earth is

(03:05:35):
the dominion where human beings can either create Heaven on
Earth or hell on earth. Your consciousness determines what you create.
Expand your consciousness. Know who you are, act on that knowledge,
and your world will change, and the world will ultimately
be a better place. That's where we are, and that's

(03:05:56):
our mention if we want to vive as a people.

Speaker 1 (03:05:59):
Thanks ro Tony. How can folks reach you if they
want to get your books or anything like that. It's
a website.

Speaker 5 (03:06:05):
Go to the website www dot ikg desh info dot com.
IKG desh info dot com. Carl, thank you very much
for this opportunity, and the Vember seventeenth is a lifeline.
November seventeenth, all right.

Speaker 1 (03:06:19):
All right, thanks, thanks brother Tony, and apologize the folks
to speak to him. A lot of folks didn't get
to speak you, Tony, but we got to move on.
Classes dismissed for the day. Stay strong, stay positive, please
please stay healthy. We'll see you tomorrow morning, six o'clock,
right here in Baltimore on ten ten w LB and
in the DMV on fourteen fifty WOL

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