INTERVIEW: Andrew Young & John Hope Bryant Talk The Dirty Work Documentary, Friendship With MLK Jr. + More

Today on The Breakfast Club, Andrew Young & John Hope Bryant Talk  The Dirty Work   Documentary, Friendship With MLK Jr. Listen For More!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Every day a week.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Click yours up the Breakfast Club.

Speaker 3 (00:05):
Yes, it's the world's most dangerous morning show.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
To Breakfast Club. Charlamagne the God DJ Envy just hilarious.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Envy's not here today, but Lauren Le Rossa is and
we have an amazing guest in the building today.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Man.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
You know, it's interesting when we talk about, you know,
black history, as if it's the thing of the past, like,
you know, as if we don't have living legends and
icons and people who you know, actually we're there for
the things that we talk about.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Mister Andrew Young is here. Good morning, sir.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
Good morning. I'm really glad to be here with you. Yes, sir,
I'm long overdue, man, what are you telling I mean,
I need to know where you are, Yes, sir, and
I'm I'm out of the sink. A look at the
book and be honest or di lige and I probably
you know I need to read that quickly.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
John O'Brien is here as well, John Hope Ryan, Good
morning morning. Mister Andrew Young had a new documentary i'll
called The Dirty Work. It comes out on this Friday,
ten seventeen. Why was it important for you to tell
this part of your story.

Speaker 4 (01:12):
Now, well, I'm telling my story, and we see the
glamor of the civil rights movement, and it was very glamorous.
But for every one or two you see on television,
there were five hundred to one thousand of us in
the background doing the dirty work. And it's the way

(01:35):
I got into it. I was actually up here in
New York in nineteen fifty seven fifty eight and doctor
King needed somebody to move with him to Atlanta. My
wife was from Marrying, Alabama, which was a little country

(01:56):
town near Selma, and we saw the ms Man. It
was a NBC documentary on John Lewis in the Nashville
citing story. We just bought a house out in Queen's

(02:17):
and I was working up at the National Council of Churches,
And when the documentary came home, my wife said it's
time for us to go home. I said, we are home.
She said, no, this is New York. New York can have.
We'll be my home. And I said, well, we just
bought this house and we got a good job. She said, yeah,

(02:39):
and I hope you'll deal with that. I said, well,
what are you going to do? She said, I'm going
back to my mama in Alabama and I'm taking my
children and I said, well, what do you want me
to do? She said, I want you to sell this
house and find a job down south. And she was
the blessing in New York, though, was that she got
a chance to go Queen's College for eighteen dollars a

(03:02):
semester and get a master's degree. And that's what supported
us in those early days. But it's it was the
attraction of going back south that got me back in
the movement. And it was in that transition Martin Luther

(03:23):
King had just been stabbed and he took New York.
In New York, he took a month off to go
to India and was just coming back and planning to
move from Montgomery to Atlanta. So I ended up getting
pulled in to try to help him move. And that

(03:46):
was that was the dirty work. He needed to be
in a bigger city than Montgomery, and but he couldn't
afford to live in Atlanta except with his parents, and
so he was trying to raise funds. And that's another story.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
But no, no, that's this story. But that he never
he keeps avoiding his own He.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
Never had he never had a million dollars a year
to work with the entire time we had the movement going,
and so I was trying to help him raise some
funds and went to my church up here, the United
Church of Christ, and asked them. They founded a number
of colleges, Howard and Fisk, Talladega to Galoo, all across

(04:33):
the south, and so I said, you know, if you
would let us use some of these properties or some
of them, we could have a movement southwide in a
little of no time. And so I was sort of
being a bridge between him making the transition to Montgomery

(04:55):
and comeing to Atlanta. I was then moved from Atlanta
back to I mean from New York back to Atlanta.
And the first job I got, he was not there.
His secretary said, well once, she said, my wife's in Alabama.
She said, you can't be hanging around here loose. He said,

(05:18):
idle miners the devil's workshop, and we got a whole
lot of devils. And she said you need something to do.
I said, well, anything I can do to help, and
she gave me a great big egg crate packed with letters.
She put about one hundred letters in a package, tied

(05:40):
them up and they would there were maybe a dozen packages,
and so she said, if you can help doctor King
with his mail, Well, that's kind of dirty work, but
that's really if you want to get to know a company,
if somebody's coming in he and wants to get to
know it, answer to mail, or at least read the mail,
or know what's what's happening around. And so it gave me.

(06:04):
I mean, I ended up with the bucket of mail,
and that was sort of a dirty work.

Speaker 5 (06:11):
So you missed a couple pieces. First of all, you
and doctor King's wife, your wife and doctor.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
My wife and Martin's wife were by coincidence, and I said,
coincidence of God's way of remaining anonymous. They were from
the little same country town of three thousand, Marion, Alabama.
But there was a good school there and actually, in
the nineteen forties that school turned out more black PhDs

(06:39):
than any school in the nation because it had a
I don't know, I've bad people who were studious. And
Julian Bond's daddy got his PhD writing it on Lincoln

(07:00):
in School in Marion, Alabama, which is where all these
young people came from, and it was where the movement
a lot of movement. People came from there.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
So Charlemagne when he also when he went to go
get the job, when he went to do it out south,
the stabb didn't want them. Doctor King was out giving
speeches and on the road. The stabb didn't want them.
He was smart, he was articulated. He was like, all
the seats are taken, we all get every good. They
sent him packing, so he came back with a grant.

(07:32):
The grant was self funded and it was for non
violent education or something like that, but he funded it salary.
So doctor King said, you consider you paid for it.
You can sit right over here.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
Well, we've been paid for it. We not only paid
for it, I brought access to all of those schools. Yes,
from in North Carolina King's Mountain, Georgia. It was Atlanta University,
Alabam Most two galu Uh Talladega, Talladega and Alabama and

(08:05):
two Glue and Mississippi.

Speaker 5 (08:07):
But the key point of that in bass Young was again,
you won't take credit for this. He became the one
person nobody could fire, so he could speak truth to power.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
We didn't anybody.

Speaker 5 (08:17):
Exactly because Doctor King didn't like conflict. If you let
me finish my point. Yes, Doctor En didn't like conflict,
so he was a conflict manager. So he was the
one inside the staff. You had crazy people on the
left and crazy folks sort of over here trying to
do revolutions. Doctor King didn't want conflict, so he would
expecting Bashi Young to knock his inside.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
That's it.

Speaker 5 (08:41):
And when he came in, he wanted it to be resolved.
And so he was the resolution manager inside the movement
and outside the movement. Again, he doesn't take credit for it,
but that that really became one of his magic pieces
was that he was an independent thinker, just like you are.
Just like all you guys are independent thinkers. They get there, right.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
You know.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
The thing is that that the one thing you I
couldn't do. I couldn't move in there. I grew up
in New Orleans.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
I'd lived in the South all my life. But I
was up here in New York when the movement started,
So I couldn't come back down there and claim and
I hadn't done anything. Everybody had been beating up gone
to jail. Uh and I come down with a grant.
Well that's no, I mean, that gives me no scoring

(09:38):
points at all, but I and I didn't need them.
I just wanted to be there to help because well,
I don't know. I left Howard and I really well,
I really fucked up for three and a half years.
See but I somehow got a degree, and he was

(09:58):
fucking up because I was playing around, wasn't studying. I
was trying to make the swimming team, trying to make
the track team, even tried the wrestling team, and trying
to play ball, basketball in the gym, and I was
I went to college at fifteen, and so I was
trying to hit on the girls and I wasn't making

(10:19):
any brogras at all. You know, a little nigga from
New Orleans, and I got along with people, but I
was trying to grow up. And when I came left
Howard and we stopped that you couldn't had no hotels

(10:41):
at let you stay. We stopped at King's Mountain, North Carolina,
where we had a church conference going on, and I
decided to run up the mountain and that was where
I was in good shape. But when you're in the hills,
you never run flat, either running downhill or uphill. And

(11:03):
I was running downhill too fast and still tried to
make it to the top of the mountain, and somewhere
along there I kind of blacked out and I looked
around and everything seemed perfect. You know, it was a
perfect sky, perfect corn field. The green trees were sparkling,

(11:25):
and I said, damn everything. He has got a purpose
but me and I said, I cannot be put here
on this earth with no purpose at all. And how
do I find a purpose? Well, what I came to
was if there's something that I think needs doing and

(11:46):
nobody wants to do it, that becomes my purpose. So
I was looking for stuff that needed to be done
that nobody wanted to do.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Did that okay, Jr? Being working with him, did that
feel like part of your purpose?

Speaker 4 (12:01):
Well, he was the only game in town and he
had just finished, you know, the Montgomery Improvement Association. He
got stabbed of here in Harlem, and he was recovering
from He and Corretta took a trip to India to
study more about nonviolence, and that was sort of when

(12:24):
I came in and he wasn't around, so I started
cleaning up. But I learned that when he got to
be head of the Montgomery Improvement Association, he wasn't even
a meeting. He was back in the in the mimiograph

(12:44):
room running a Memi ray machine, turning out handbills telling
people that we're gonna have a one day boycott. Well
that one day boycott turned into three hundred and eighty
one days. But they went to the back room because
two preachers, Methodists and Baptists usually they were arguing about

(13:06):
whose turn it was to be the spokesman. And the
ladies in the group said, look, these brothers always fussing
than fighting, why don't we let this young man in
the back be the spokesman. And so they voted him
the spokesman. And he didn't even know it.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
That's that's how he became like yeah, And he.

Speaker 4 (13:25):
Went and they went to the back and told him
that he was going to chair the meeting. And he
had less than an hour. It was about seven o'clock.
The mass meeting started at eight o'clock at another church
across town, and he had to stand up and to
find this whole movement. Well, he really was brilliant, But

(13:49):
with that kind of stuff, when you run a mimig
reference and all day your mind's wandering and somebody says,
hold up, you got twenty minutes you got to speak,
and nothing you can do but go to the bathroom
and lock the door.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
But somebody had to know he had those gifts, right
like somebody had.

Speaker 4 (14:07):
Well they had heard him preaching in his church. But
it wasn't a gift like running a mass movement. And
I mean this was the first time in a long time,
well the first time, and I can remember that any
city got together and did an agreed that everybody would

(14:29):
stop riding the bus. Started out for one day, but
it was so successful that it ended up being three
hundred and eighty one days.

Speaker 5 (14:38):
That was an early uber, by the way, because there
was a black taxis everybody just decided to drive everybody
else around and not get on the bus. But the
thing he the message for your audience, Charlomagne, is when
he's running up that mountain, he was insecure, he was lost,
and he was looking for a purpose. A lot of
people are looking for a purpose, doctor, he was looking

(15:00):
for a purpose. He was back in the mimeogram machine,
tried to figure out what his life was going to
be like. And he'd spend eighteen hours preparing for a sermon.
He had eighteen minutes that when his moment came that
you're on and a half an hour dude.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
But you know, and the speeches that that speech, his
wife was pregnant so she couldn't be there. She asked
a choir director to record it, so we have it recorded,
and what you see is all of the you see
references to all of the speeches he made when he

(15:35):
got the Nobel Peace Prize when he was at the
marjar on Wardington in Selma. I mean, he had a
repertoire and he just pulled it all together, and he
had a nice voice and a nice cadence, and he
knew how to move across. So he put all of

(15:55):
the stuff together and priested his way to the top.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
It's such an interesting perspective when you talk about, you know,
purpose to John, because in my mind, you know, I
always thought the purpose was the liberation of black people.
But you're always just looking for something, a purpose within yourself.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
Well, except you've got to start liberating black people by
liberating the one you are. And I'm not liberated. I'm
I'm I'm enslaved all of the crap that that goes
on on every college campus and and in every neighborhood

(16:35):
and uh.

Speaker 5 (16:36):
So let's let's let's get some into some real talk.
He's got survivor's guilt. He doesn't sleep, he's always working
because he was on that balcony when Doctor King was assassinated,
and and uh, he was right.

Speaker 4 (16:50):
There before that. Though we're all born into a mess.
I mean I was born into a neighborhood, well my brother,
with only black kids. There were three four black families.
But you had an Irish grocery store on one corner,
an Italian bar on the next. The Nazi party was
on the third corner. And I'm smack dad in the middle,

(17:13):
fifty yards from each one of them. And at four years.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Old, that's you. Yeah, that's you.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
I gotta be your ful.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
I don't know, Governor turn it off for you.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (17:29):
So so when he when Doctor King was assassinated, the
FBI told him the instructions for the shooter. If you missed,
the dreamer killed the strategist.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
M hmm.

Speaker 5 (17:42):
So he's been this all this time. You an ambassador,
first black un ambassador of history the United States at
the Carter, first congressman since reconstruction in the South brought
the Atlantic, the Olympics to the Atlanta, made Atlanta International
City Presidential Medal of Freedma Wardie French FOREI Legion of

(18:04):
Wardie one hundred and fifty on ear doctor degrees, brought
a venture Capital of Africa, liberated Zimbabwe, helped get Mandela
out of prison.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
But underneath all this.

Speaker 5 (18:15):
Is I'm here because my friend was a shot, so
he couldn't enjoy any of it.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
He give all his money away.

Speaker 5 (18:23):
He's been a servant his whole life, and he is
He's the closest thing we have to Nelson Mandela.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
But he he had to stay in jail for three
to thirty thirty years. Yes, I have, and that was
one of the things I was guilty about. Everybody else
has been been to jail, and.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
They called him and uncle Tom, and the staff called
him uncle Tom.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
Because I was managing the foundation money, I couldn't. I
wasn't supposed to go to jail, and so until I
got set up in Saint Augustine, well really even in Savannah,

(19:06):
and I ended up first time getting arrested because I
was walking to try to get jse Williams out of
jail and there were kids playing picketty in front of
the Holiday Inn. I mean, they were twelve years old,
and the police come up there to wrest them, and
I went on and I said, look, these kids are

(19:27):
not part of anybody's movement. We wouldn't put people out
here like this with no adults. I said, if you
arrest these kids, you ask them for trouble. And they
grabbed me and threw me in the paddy wagon. But

(19:48):
I was glad I went because they immediately shut the
thing down and you got a little slitland. It was
at least close to one hundred degrees in Savannah, and
they closed the air off and I got, you know,
fifteen twenty kids in there, and they expected us to start,

(20:12):
you know, crying and screaming because we were We were
really closed in and hot. And that's where I go in.
The Sunday School helped me, and I said, look y'all,
y'all know how to sing. Wade in the water. We
going to the beach. Close eyes see, and I said,

(20:32):
and I said, we're going down to Tybee Beach. And
when you get to the beach, the water's cold, and
we're gonna get and the song goes the chills the body,
but not the soul. And so we started then walking
like they were in their mind walking into the water.
I said, we all not going to pash waist deep.

(20:55):
Then everybody's gonna get down and we're gonna cool off.
And so when we kind of figured out how to
stay in the oven and i'd burn, I said, let's
we're gonna sing, and they started singing, wade in the water,
God's going to trouble the water. See, and we turned

(21:18):
tragedy into a triumph. The police got mad and took
everybody to jail, and I had to go with him.
But then when we got to jail, it was dinner
time and they gave everybody a paper plate and they
put up grits and Greece. That's what they served them.

(21:41):
And the kids said, we don't eat this ship, and
they started sailing the plates across the jail. And I mean,
it was it was a while time. But there again,
that's I accidentally got into that. When you when you

(22:02):
but that was the dirty work.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
When you look back, was there a moment when you
realize the moral weight of what you were doing could
also cost you personally.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
I think I never worried about that, and I never
worried about that because I never been. I mean the
school I went to in the elementary school, Belina C.
Jones was an all black public school, overcrowded, and I

(22:37):
could have gotten killed that in school, I mean it
was it was called a bucket of blood. But I
got along. And then between that in my schooling and
then I went to a church nursery and they taught
me to read and write. So when they put me
in public school, I was six years old, but they

(23:02):
put me in third grade and everybody else was nine ten,
and so I've always had a burden which I learned
to deal with and not you know, but I was
always playing ketchup?

Speaker 5 (23:25):
Why did the staff call you that supposedly unpleasant phrase,
which actually, when you're doing a little research on Uncle Tom,
he was a bad brother. Actually he actually he actually
took slaves up north to Canada. He bought a home,
bought some property in Canada and actually housed them and
created self sustainability. Other folks turned the story in doing
something negative. But why do they call you some of

(23:48):
the staff uncle Tom?

Speaker 4 (23:50):
Because my daddy taught me to live in that neighborhood
and to go to that school, I had to stay
calm and my dad is macho. He was a little
man five to four, and he said, look, you're never
gonna be big enough to beat up anybody, so stay
calm and let your mind lead you. Your mind is

(24:13):
fat is more powerful than your fists or your feet.
You can run from trouble, but you won't feel good
about running. And you can fight, but you're probably gonna
get beat But if you let your mind work, you
can figure out how to get through any trouble. But
don't ever get mad. Get smart. See and I heard

(24:35):
that from four. In fact, he took me to the movie,
a segregated movie, to see Jesse Owens in the nineteen
thirty six Olympics, because when Jesse Owens won one hundred
meter dash, Hitler got mad and he was supposed to
give Jesse Owens the medal, but he walked out of

(24:56):
the stadium and took all of his troops with him.
My daddy said, and I watched jessid what's he doing.
I said, He's going about his business. He said, that's
the point. He's not letting Hitler at him upset. He
got three more medals to win, and he ended up
coming out with four gold medals and a world a

(25:19):
couple of world records, and so it was it was
that preparation that that made me ready to do whatever
I had to do.

Speaker 5 (25:33):
So they didn't understand his role. Doctor King never wanted
him arrested. Doctor King, he needed him on the outside.
He didn't want it was he was not useful getting
locked up like other people. He needed it was. It
was a different frequency. And he's not saying it, but
he was a strategist.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
And yeah, I mean, I think that's the interesting thing about
the doc right like it shows you that the civil
rights movement wasn't just about marching, and you said this,
it was about strategy.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
So what other dirty work had to be done quietly
for the in private, for the public victory to be probable.

Speaker 4 (26:05):
Well, you know they bombed. They bombed sixty two homes
in Birmingham in nineteen sixty one sixty two, and Fred
Shuttlesworth came over there to see us and said, look,
we cannot be passively don violent. We got to find

(26:25):
a way to be more aggressive and we need you
to come over and help us. So we agreed before
Christmas that we would in January we would come over
to Birmingham and start a movement, and Doctor King turned
to me and said, Andy, do you know any white

(26:47):
folks in Birmingham. I said, I don't know any black
folks in Birmingham. I ain't been to Birmingham. And he said, no, well,
you got six weeks to get to know some. I
said why. He said, Look, if we're going to go
there and tab the people's town, somebody has to go
in early and tell them we're going to do it.

(27:10):
I said, then they're gonna kill me. I didn't say that.
I said, well why me? He said, because you grew
up with white folks. You ain't worried about white folks.
You get along with as good you get along with people.
And so I ended up by myself said going into Birmingham.
And I had met some people in Michigan at a

(27:32):
conference from Birmingham. So I called the Episcopal Church and
then one of the people I met answered the phone
and I said, I need you to help set me
set up a meeting with Doctor King and the Episcopal Bishop.
And she said, well, I can't do that. She said,
I don't know Doctor King, and he's got to He said,

(27:55):
I tell you what she said, You come here and
I'll get you to see the bishop. So then I
had to go see the bishop and explain to him
that we're about to move fifty more black folks into
your already ninety thousand people, and we intend to tear
up your town. We intend to boycott. We're not going

(28:15):
to buy anything but food and medicine, you know. And
but we want to find a way to sit down
with you and draw up a map where we can
peacefully live together and you can respect us and we
can respect you, and everybody can get along.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Well.

Speaker 4 (28:35):
I mean he's looking at me like I'm crazy, because
he ain't used to black folk talking straight to him
like that. But I mean that was no problem for me.
And so we set up a series of meetings and
all the stuff that they're talking about at Harvard, now,

(28:57):
what is it, DEEI yeah, that came from Birmingham because
at the same time White Walker, who was pastor up
here for a while, he's gone to Glory. He was
meeting with the Fred Shuttlesworth and the black preachers and
they wrote a Birmingham manifesto all the things that were

(29:17):
wrong with Birmingham. And I was meeting with the white
folks and they were writing all the things they could
do to change that. You had to sit down and
put it to them bluntly, say, look, you got black
water and whitewater. Now you know that's not real. There's

(29:39):
no difference between the water. Why you got to put
a sign on it saying this one was for black
folk and that one was for white folks. It's all water.
Take the signs down. See if you don't take the
signs down. And then you got these black women, and
you got them in aprons and smocks, and you let
the white women dress up with the clothes they're selling

(30:02):
and they get a commission, but the black folks have
to do all the work keeping the shop clean and
keeping the clothes. Said why not just let everybody wear
their dresses on the rack and let everybody get a commission.
And they said, well, we could, but then they'd have

(30:23):
a thousand reasons why they couldn't do it. But we
had ninety thousand black folks in Birmingham. And when ninety
thousand black folks decided that they were going to stop
spending money on anything but food and medicine, they bought

(30:45):
no shoes. No. I mean, that's where the blue jeans
came from everybody had raggedy blue jeans, and so nobody
bought any clothes. And that's when the college students who
had come down with us from all over the country,
they went back and started wearing blue jeans. Well, that
came out of Birmingham. The stuff that the preachers and

(31:10):
workers wrote down in the Birmingham Manifesto, the things they wanted,
and the things that the white folk wrote down about
what they could do to answer this, all of that
became public. But they blamed it on Martin Luther King.
And he was in jail, so he wrote the letter

(31:33):
from the Birmingham jail. And he didn't have any paper,
so he wrote it around the march. Somebody had left him. Well,
lawyer up here from New York left him a section
of New York Times, and he wrote the letter from
the Birmingham jail around the margins of the newspaper. When
he ran out of newspaper space, he wrote on toilet paper.

(31:57):
And he used to joke and said, is a good thing.
They had tough toilet paper in the Birmingham jail.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
But he smuggled it out through you.

Speaker 4 (32:06):
But he smuggled it out and we got it. We
got all of these published and and that was the
dirty work behind the movement.

Speaker 5 (32:17):
And I need you to do me a favor. You're
talking to a whole generation. This is the voice for
this generation. Your your habit is to talk about this
person and that person and give this person credit. Look,
they need you to tell your story crisply and bluntly
so they can get the memo on how they need.
This generation has no business plan about what you did.

(32:40):
What you did was absolutely historic. This is no time
to be humble. There's no type of humble pie like
I'll do it. I'll set you up, but you got
to hit it out the park. There's some stories I know.
I know these stories.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
We want them to watch the dirty work too.

Speaker 5 (32:53):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (32:54):
But like the work that you did with the boycott
and everybody plays a role in the movement is what
I've always heard and learned. I feel like today when
we talk about the boycotts, that that we're trying to
do actively. There's no real roles. We don't take one
thing serious. We might take the other one serious because
there's no there's no structure, there's no how did you

(33:15):
get people to fall along?

Speaker 7 (33:16):
Even though not everybody a grew with.

Speaker 4 (33:18):
Everybody used to go to church back then, and radio
black radio wouldn't let it, wouldn't wouldn't say anything about
Black radio was owned by white folks, and they would
play the music, but we'd have to slip in an
announcement there's going to be a certain meeting that you know,

(33:41):
such and such a Baptist church, or such and such
a Methodist church. And they finally even stopped them from
from doing announcements. So it went by word of mouth.
We knew that every night we'd have a mass meeting
at some church in some neighborhood and people would get

(34:01):
together about five o'clock and nothing to do, and they
sing these old songs that the young folk then came
in and modified the freedom songs. And then the preachers
would come in and preach a little bit and tell
what's going on. But it was all around the church,

(34:23):
and in the daytime when the churches were not operating,
the kids went to the schools, and the guys who
were hanging out at the pool hall, we'd stopped by. They.
In fact, doctor King was very good pool played, grew
up in the YMCA, and he could get everybody's attention

(34:45):
because He would go into a pool hall and challenge
the guys that can I take the winner, And after
they saw he was he could run the table, they
listened to him. And it it was finding a way
to get to people where they are. And it didn't

(35:08):
matter what they looked like. It didn't matter what the
clothes were, it didn't matter anything except that I'm ready. Well,
they would really say, I'm ready to die for my people.
And it was the threat of death to almost every

(35:32):
black man in the South until just recently. And it's
coming back now. It's more organized now. But we had
to mobilize the entire community. But in mobilizing the entire

(35:56):
community of Birmingham, that's ninety thousand black folks. We brought
people from Atlanta. I came from New Orleans. Some others
came down from members. Some came from New York. The
hospital Workers eleven ninety nine was here in New York.

(36:18):
They would come down and they would work with the
hospital workers, and we found a way to mobilize the
whole city to one stop buying anything but food and medicine.
And you do that for six weeks and then six months,
and the economy drives up and closed. People have to

(36:42):
start closing stores. Then we finally ended up with eighty businessmen,
people who owned the hotels, people who owned the drug stores,
the shopping centers, sitting down with us, and they got
these two complaints together and agreed on the fact that

(37:07):
they could change. But they didn't say, we're automatically gonna
change everything today. We said, let's try it. Okay, we're
gonna take down the signs immediately, live on black and
white water. Everybody's gonna drink water, and okay, that's a
good sign. We're gonna let the ladies and in the

(37:30):
women's department, we're gonna let them take all those smocks,
uh and aprons, and we're gonna let them put on
the clothes that they sell it see, and they can
get a commission too, and we're gonna treat them fairly.
And we took apart the town piece by piece, and

(37:54):
everything that was not fair. We said, from now on,
let's make it fair. And people began to realize that
when ninety thousand people haven't been shopping and all of
a sudden they start showing up, like you go to
Atlanta now and all of these stores now, the same

(38:15):
thing happened there. We didn't have to organize it like
they did in Birmingham. But the brothers who start making
off right now, the rappers run the department store because
they can come in with their girlfriends and they spend
money by one thousands of dollars.

Speaker 5 (38:33):
But they answer your question, there were rules just like
you have here. He's been humbled again. It was strategy,
by the way, it wasn't. We got the business people
to take down to White's only science.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
He did.

Speaker 5 (38:44):
Doctor King would set would shut the economy down. In
six weeks, they marched. They knew this. Six six percent
of the residents were black. The dollar was the same dollar.
So after six weeks, the merchants were the walls were
on fire. Then doctor King was s Andy Young and
that's young Andy. He called him Andy, going there, quietly,
take it, take it, take your overalls. I'll put your

(39:06):
business suit on, go behind closed doors, cut a deck,
cut a deal. Don't embarrass them, don't humiliate them. We
want them to win to.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
It was a little bigger than that.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Well okay, yeah, but we had to do it.

Speaker 4 (39:18):
We had to get.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
Acknowledging it, trying to get the blunt truth out.

Speaker 4 (39:23):
Well, Also if I take credit for it, I'd be then.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Well you're not yeah, but you're a love yeah, but
you're alive now.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
But by the way, clearly they do it because they
told him that you can't strategist.

Speaker 5 (39:36):
But there was there was rules, there were there were
the roles. Everybody had a role. He had a roll,
Doctor King had a roll. The crazy people had a
role in the movement, but the women had a roll,
the kids had a roll.

Speaker 4 (39:48):
But the dirty work is getting everybody to realize their world.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
And you get the kids and you let them know
that they can pass out handbills and if they happened
to see somebody shopping that they think that they shouldn't
be shopping, just go and politely hand them a handbill,
don't throw it at them, say or just put it

(40:16):
on the windshield of their car. But they know that
the community is watching. But it's it really was classic
to do it in Birmingham when ninety thousand folk. We
had trouble when we got to Chicago on New York
and you got millions of folk and so that's where

(40:39):
we stumbled. And that's when doctor King, I mean, when
we were going coming north and threatening to shut down.
I mean, Chicago has got more black folk then they
got folk at Alabama and and and half of Mississippi

(41:05):
and Chicago, and Alabama's gone to Chicago. So we didn't
have any problem doing the same things with them that
we did with the parents in back home.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Mhm.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
But it was on such a larger scale and and
these it is just getting around is different.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
How do I want to this question for both of y'all,
how do we teach young people now that the real
revolution isn't in just outrage, especially the social media outrage,
but it's an actual organizer.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
Well, that's short. My dadd had started telling me when
I was four, don't get mad, get smart. See when
you lose your temper interfight, you lose the fight. And
every time he was he liked he was a boxing fan.
And when who at the Sonny liston was supposed to

(41:58):
be fighting Muhammad Ali and Sonny listening with a bear
of a man, and my daddy said, watch Muhammad a lad,
he'll probably knock him out in two rounds. I said, oh, Daddy,
you don't know what you're talking about. He said that, man,
I said that man, I said, he is a bear,
and I said, Muhammed is I mean, he's so thin,

(42:22):
he's light one or two punches and he's gonna go down.
He said no. He said, watch, Mohammed is not going
to lose his temper, and Muhammad isn't gonna be cool,
and he'll take him a couple of rounds of playing
with him, and then Sonny Listening is out of there. Well,

(42:44):
I said, well, he said, don't forget. Same thing applies
to you. If you're gonna get in a fight, don't
get mad, get smart. He said, Sonny Listing has gotten
mad and you're gonna get his ass whipped.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Didn't your dad slap you?

Speaker 4 (43:01):
And this is well, that's I mean, we used to.
It wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't slapping. It was it
was he he always wanted a shadow box and he
tapped me on the face like that if I was

(43:22):
going the wrong way. Uh. But if I got lost
my temper and started swinging, then he knocked the hell out.
Let me say again, you lose your temper, you're gonna
lose your head.

Speaker 7 (43:33):
That's because I always wondered, like, how did y'all so
for you?

Speaker 4 (43:38):
Right?

Speaker 7 (43:38):
You're the strategy brings. You can't lose your temper.

Speaker 6 (43:40):
But like there were times I went to a museum
in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel when I was there last,
and they were talking to me about when Martin Luther
King was in I believe it was rallying and the
KKK was marching because he was in the city. And
times like that would happened all the time when people
there was death threats. There were so many things coming you,
guys way, I'm sure you had to have sometimes face

(44:01):
to face conversations that clear the way before he got
certain places, and you still stay strategy and brainstrong.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
The truth is we didn't that everybody knew. In fact,
the only person who would talk about it openly was
Martin Luther King, and he said, now you know, if
we go messing with Birmingham, some of us ain't gonna
come back. Now he knew he was the one most

(44:26):
likely targeted, but he'd start, I mean, he'd make a
joke out of it, and he had a real good
sense of humor. He said, John, it might be your turn,
but it's gonna be one of the hardest things I
ever do. But I'll try my best to preach your

(44:49):
ass into heaven and then he'd start preaching all the
things that I pick on him about. See what are
you pointing me, because you know the illustration I'm saying
that that's the way he did all of us. He
would know and he would say things you didn't know.

(45:12):
He knew about you, and he'd ask God to forgive
you and please let him into heaven. You know, I mean, really,
he really turned your death into a comedy. And it
was it was.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
It was a sadistic but the fact that people knew
that they could potentially die and still were willing to
make that sacrifice is what I think is missing now also.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
But they shouldn't have to. You shouldn't be willing to
make the sacrifice. You should be willing to take your
time and assume that you can make the world right
and you don't have to die. And we we we
maybe have made it too difficult. Most of the people

(46:01):
who died, we can remember the names, but they're literally millions.
Like Martin Luther King got stabbed by black woman up
here in Harlem, and that with a letter opener, and

(46:21):
the letter opener was pressing on the order of his heart.
And they said if he had sneezed, he probably would
have died. And he talked about that all the time.
But what he talked about, he said, but he got
a letter, and this is why I'm writing the letters.

(46:42):
Answering the letters was important. He said, I remember getting
this letter and this girl said, I'm eleven years old
and it shouldn't matter, but I happened to be white,
and I just want to thank you and thank God
that you did not snee And he would talk. He

(47:02):
talked about that all the time because it represented a
fact that there's still many, many good people. And you
shouldn't believe that the whole world is going to hell
at a hand basket. See that right now, even right now,

(47:22):
in right now, the whole world is not going to
hell in a hand basket. I think there's Friday or
something that's supposed to be marches in twenty eight cities Saturday, Saturday.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
That's a protesting at the voter.

Speaker 5 (47:38):
I think, no, no, it's they're calling it the no
King rally King Rally.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
Yeah, but we didn't have anything to do with that.
But it's it's you mean, we mean black people, black people,
but we'll join, but that's mostly white people. See and
like was it the start?

Speaker 5 (48:05):
Why are you thinking about that? Let's let's answer her question. Though, yes,
there there was level headedness and he was it.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
He would go.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
There were a whole lot of smart black folks.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
That's young.

Speaker 5 (48:18):
With all due respect you're being We can either have
an interview or a master class. Okay, now they want
it either way because they're not getting these stories.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
But the master class. But the master Jackie Robinson can
tell his own story yours.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
But we're telling we're telling the story of people who
were heroes in a crisis and who were cool and
didn't get mad.

Speaker 5 (48:44):
They got smart, but they got you here in person.
They can go read about Jesse, about j Robbins. Okay
for you too. So so let me give you one example.

(49:07):
And bastly young So Doc think he had actually a
ferocious sense of humor, but he couldn't. He didn't want
to be like that because he didn't think people were
going to take him seriously. So he he was like
boxed in. But he had this important role. He needed
him to play a role. And the one time he
didn't play his role, Doctor King got upset with him.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
The one time. It was only one time.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
The time all the time, he didn't play a role.

Speaker 4 (49:33):
Well when when Meredith got shot on the road walking
to Mississippi, first place, he shouldn't have been walking down
a highway by himself and make it this point without
getting everybody, wanting people looking and getting somebody to help him.

(49:54):
But anyway, we had a rule, if somebody gets killed
hurt doing something that's right for the benefit of all
of us, if they go down, we have to go
take their place. And we were already in Chicago. We

(50:15):
were registering voters in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, and we
didn't need to have another march to show we were brave.
But everybody was mad because Marylyith got shot, and so
they said, let's go, let's go. We got to keep
it going. Well, I saw that they were leaving all

(50:41):
of the stuff we've been working on for months behind
and it would all suffer. But I got tired of
playing Uncle Tom role. I said, okay, let's go, and
doctor King said, Andy, hold up, I got to go
to John meet me in my office and he came
in and he said, look, if you're not gonna talk

(51:01):
sense and help balance it on the right side, I
don't need you he said, I don't need another crazy negro.
We got plenty. Everybody can get emotional, somebody's got to
stay calm. And I said, but I get tired of
playing that Uncle Tom Row. He said, yeah, but you've

(51:25):
been doing it all your life and you ain't gonna quit. Now.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
Why they call being calm and level headed and using
strategy of being an Uncle Tom.

Speaker 4 (51:33):
Because when everybody's mad and you calm, then they think
something's wrong with you.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
They thought the most they thought that a man thought
that the most courageous, manny thing he can do was
to go to jail. Going to prison, getting your rear
end whip was a badge of honor. By the way,
strategically they put women and children on those marches. They
didn't want Charlemagne or me or they didn't want because
that was aggression against aggression. You wanted to get the
sympathy from the TV cameras and the meet so they

(52:03):
put women in children. That was strategic.

Speaker 4 (52:06):
Well the men wouldn't come.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
Okay, Well that's all okay, all right, whatever it was,
it worked out. The point is the point is that
that he was playing a very important role. Like if
you look at the pictures in the civil rights movement,
Doctor King Andrew Young. Andrew is never looking at the camera.
He's looking here. He's looking here, He's looking here, he's
looking for he's looking for threats to his friend. He's

(52:31):
not trying to become doctor King. You guys, when you're interviewing,
you're not trying to be the guests. You're not trying
to be the star. That's you're You're so good at it.
You're playing your role and you do it brilliantly. And
as a result of that, you became stars by focusing
on the star. And basst Young wanted Andrew doctor King
to be successful, and he deferred himself. He again, I'm

(52:51):
basically the only person that lets him that he lets
push him like this and just but he knows I'm
just trying to pull it out of him so that
people can benefit. He's very uncomfortable talking about himself. But
this is so important to understand the dirty work, the
stuff behind the scenes, the little things. It's everything. And
so this role he played of being calm and cool

(53:15):
and chill and stepping over mess and not in it.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
That's the way I was born.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
It's a certain temperament like I don't even know if
you can learn that, like, that's why. But you can learn.

Speaker 4 (53:28):
It, I think, well, can you unlearn it? I mean
I learned it. Every man learns it with his wife.
I mean, your wife can cuss you, and I mean
talk about you like a dog, and my wife does regularly.
Now nostic so she but she was a school teacher

(53:54):
for thirty years, and she dope and she said, I've
been dealing with you bad boys all my life and
I ain't gonna let you get away with nothing. Well, okay,
but I've been married twice and both of them were
school teachers, and both of them knew how to well
one I knew how not to get get riled up with.

(54:16):
I don't believe I've ever lost my temper with my
wife either one one for forty years and another one
for thirty years.

Speaker 5 (54:25):
He taught He taught me you can either be married
or you can be right.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
That those are two different things.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
Yeah, in the doc, you said, after Martin Luther King
Junior got shot, you knew there was no hope.

Speaker 4 (54:38):
What did you know? I don't think I said that.
I knew that it was gonna be hard, but I really,
you know, my mama used to make me go to
Sunday school. And they one time they were talking about
Elisha going to heaven and a flaming chariot. And I

(54:59):
was about nine years old, and I said, I don't
believe that they put me out of Center school, but
I never forgot that. And that's what I thought when
I saw Martin laying there one I said, he probably
didn't even hear that shot. The bullet Follers travels faster

(55:21):
than the speed of sound, so it hit him right
in his and severed his spinal cord. So he probably
never heard it, and he probably never felt any pain,
and he was dead instantly. And the thing that occurred
to me then was, damn my brother done gone to

(55:43):
have them in a flaming chariot. And see, he used
to keep wanting to go back to Memphis. Well, Memphis
is right next to the river, Mississippi River, and Missisivvy
river runs through and all our spirituals, you know, my
home is over Jordan. Well, Jordan is the Mississippi for

(56:05):
us down south, and and it and all of the
all of the spirituals talk about you know, steal away,
steal away to Jesus uh. And I just felt that
he'd gone home to the Lord and and and left

(56:28):
me here. But I knew, and I still know that
there's hardly a day that I don't talk about him
and learn or remember something that he said, uh in
a similar situation. And I passed that on to my children,

(56:50):
but to all children. And it's one of the reasons
why I'm really grateful to those folk, and Johnny one
of them that put together money to tell this story,
because I don't believe it there's ever been. I don't
believe anybody black, white, rich or poor ha's ever had

(57:12):
ninety minutes of TV time telling their story. And these
folks came in brother from England. They backed three eighteen
wheelers up into my my my driveway and unloaded the

(57:34):
equipment and they set me down and I talked for
three days, eight hours a day. They came back a
month or so later with another three days, eight hours
a day, and I think we did that. We did
that three or four times.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
He's watch.

Speaker 4 (58:04):
And they had read everything ever written by me, and
this this brother sat down there and he he asked
me questions. I said, where did you get that from?
And he tell me where it came from? And he
made me remember, and so I saw this as having

(58:25):
a chance to tell a story that And I don't
care how much we don't read like we used to,
if we ever did, But all the books that were
written by the movement are big thig books, and and
we don't read, we don't keep still that long. So

(58:45):
the mass media, radio and television is still our means
of communication. And it's why you play such an important
part in our community and why I had I mean,
I was in a meet and last night till ten o'clock,
went home, got me a few hours sleep, got up

(59:06):
at four o'clock in the morning, got on a plane,
and came up back here because I wasn't coming to
talk to you all. You talk to more people than
anybody I know. And when John said he's going to
let you talk to his people, I said, thank you Jesus.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
No, it's a privilege me.

Speaker 4 (59:26):
Well, it's but it's a privilege for me because I well,
like I was mare for eight years and we took
Atlanta from half a million people to five million, and

(59:49):
we got the world's business airport, and it's I went
up to the airport was the world's business airport, and
they used to complain that they didn't have enough women
in the decision making. And I go into the board
meeting and there's twelve people in there, and nine of

(01:00:14):
them women black women, well, eight black women, one white woman.
And that's that airport house one hundred and fourteen million
people a year. See, and black women are running it,

(01:00:34):
and they we have worked that out and we're trying
to expand it and keep it growing. But we voted,
and we get out and vote. I got elected because

(01:00:55):
and it poured down Raine. It was like Gladys Knight
thing rating night in Georgia, and it poured down from
Sunday and the only day was Tuesday, and I said, Lord,
please stop this rain. And it kept on raining Monday
and rained all day Tuesday and half the night. And

(01:01:19):
I went out to see how I was doing. And
Black folk were still in lines. They went lines in Atlanta,
like they went line with Mandela in South Africa. They
stayed in line for days in South Africa. Because they
got Mandela out of jail and elected in president. That
they elected me mayor, and then after that they elected

(01:01:43):
they elected me to Congress in seventy two and then
seventy three they elected Mayne to Jackson mayor, and we've
had nine black mayors in a row, and everyone has
grown the city more and and it's it's doing well.

Speaker 5 (01:02:02):
I have a favorite ask. I don't ask you from
any favors. I've never seen these folks so quiet. They're
gonna pay you respect because you are, you are the iconic.
They've never seen him quiet, right, yeah, yeah, but they
got questions, right. And if you keep telling stories about Joe,
Jack Schmoe and the other person, I need to know.

(01:02:26):
This is a masterclass. This is an opportunity for give
it one. John, Okay, but I know there's some jewels.

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
But I've been giving him one for the list years. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
They can't be said in one interview.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
That's why the documentary is important as well. But I mean,
I'm I'm I'm learning a lot I do. To John's point,
do I do have a question? Do you think we've
honored doctor King's legacy or just branded.

Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
No. I don't think there's anybody anybody around that doesn't
respect what he did and what he gave his life for.
I think that I think he is a sacred personality
in our history. But everyone is like that. I mean

(01:03:12):
Christmas Attics. I knew about him. He's the first black man,
first man to die for this country in Massachusetts, and
he's black, and it well, this country would not be
what it is without us. And I think Martin Luther

(01:03:35):
King represents the best of us, but he ain't the
only one of us. That there were people around him,
and only a half a dozen of us have been
to college. I mean, most of us learn learn from
the streets, and they learned from our experiences. But the

(01:04:01):
I mean Louis Armstrong grew up in my neighborhood in
New Orleans. He didn't I don't think anybody ever gave
him trumpet lessons. He just picked up the thing and
made it blow. And the thing that I'd like to
remind people is that here's a man who grew up
in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans and

(01:04:23):
he sings It's a wonderful world, see. And there's Ray
Charles who's blind, and there's a big piano out in
all ben and Georgia where he grew up, and he
sings America the Beautiful. But he doesn't start with though,

(01:04:46):
but the spacious skies. He starts with a little beautiful
for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self
their country loved, and mercy morderan life. And we take
the history of this country and the history of this planet,

(01:05:07):
and we turn it into a a piece of music
or a symbol of grace. If we do something, we
do it with style, you know, and it's and and
no matter what it is, we do it better. And
I used to think I could play basketball. I wouldn't

(01:05:29):
go near a basketball court with a bunch of women
on it because they all would beat. The day when
the Olympics wine in Korea, the women's Olympic team was
playing an army team, and I went to the brothers.
I said, now, look, don't don't y'all like too rough

(01:05:53):
with these broads. I said, you've got you've got to
show them some respect. He said, man, you don't know,
these brothers be the ship out of us. And and
but I said, well, they said, no, we we got
to try to get even. And if you look at

(01:06:13):
at the way, well the Atlanta Airport, I can remember
the lady when they said eighty percent of the work
of the.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
No.

Speaker 4 (01:06:27):
Eight hundred thousand dollars was made by women in the airport,
and this black woman got up and said, no, no, no,
don't clap, don't clap. It should be a billion. Come
back when you've got a billion dollars, you've got a
women making a billion dollars in this airport, then we'll clap.

(01:06:50):
And this it's been that. It's been that pushing and
pulling and thinking and sweating that we have excelled at.

Speaker 8 (01:07:04):
Yeah, I say earlier, going back to what you said earlier,
you said it's coming back, right. So my question to you,
is this the state of this country where it is now?
Is it reminiscent of civil rights movement back in the day.

Speaker 4 (01:07:21):
No, it's not because when I came up in the
well maybe so, because I was born in nineteen thirty two.
That was a recession here and there were people starving.
That's where social security came from. That's where food stamps

(01:07:42):
came from, the government trying to meet people who were starving,
and they were not they were not black, I mean.
And right now, the way the government is moving, it's
not doing right for anybody. But there's some good happening.

(01:08:06):
And I.

Speaker 8 (01:08:08):
What do you feel the good is?

Speaker 4 (01:08:10):
That's well, one I believe in this country, and I
believe in God, and I believe this country is a
God feary, God blessed country. That's something I have. I
haven't seen any other country. Well, I've been to. I've

(01:08:30):
traveled one hundred and fifty one countries, and that only
about two hundred and ten countries in the world, and
I've been to one hundred and fifty of them. But
I come right back to the United States and I
come back to Atlanta. I enjoyed New York, and I'd
like to come to New York, but it's just takes

(01:08:52):
too long to get places. And the traffic, now, you know,
I worry about, but now the traffic humped Atlanta. So
we got to figure out what to do with that.

Speaker 5 (01:09:06):
When traffic comes to growing cities. Traffic comes to growing cities,
which you built in Atlanta, by the way, eight hundred
billion dollars sorry, five hundred and eighty billion dollars GDP
the same Atlanta's bigger GDP than Singapore.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
And he built it.

Speaker 5 (01:09:20):
He and and the people he just talked about, they
built that into what my wife calls wakanda. And it's
nothing like it in the in the entire world. Again,
these are things that he doesn't talk about. It's it's
some of it's in the documentary, by the way, some
of it's not a lot of it's not a lot
of us ended up on on the editing floor the bother.
Thanks Rachel, Thank Rachel, Mattaw Phil Griffin MSNBC for putting

(01:09:42):
resources behind this to make it possible. But this guy's
a walking treasure trove of strategic thought, I mean, and
most of it is unarticulated, unrecorded. He just goes about
his business and he's he got to you just literally
pull it out of you, start talking, You ask them
a question.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
He goes in the fifty other directions. I love it, though,
I love it all about other people.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
You said, just now with all of the he said,
it's a God fearing country. But when you think about
all of the oppression black people are facing this country,
all the challenges to be facing this country, how can those.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
People be fearing of God treating people like that?

Speaker 4 (01:10:19):
Welcause God's son suffered and suffering is not Suffering is
not the end. It's not acceptable, and we should do
everything we can to wipe it out. But we shouldn't
be afraid of it like I just have never been
afraid to die. And and most of us that march

(01:10:47):
with Martin Luther King used to argue and and and say, Okay,
who's Bombingham? Is Bombingham? Somebody gonna get bombed And that
means I hope and and doctor King would start preaching
your sermon. He said, Now, if it's you, saw man,

(01:11:12):
I might have a hard time getting you into heaven.
But but but but he would start with finding some
of the things that you got. You have gathered my
people together on this radio, and I want to bless
you for that, and the Lord will bless you for that,
because you talk to more people about life than maybe

(01:11:35):
anybody else I know. And uh, we're grateful. We're not
gonna forget that. But we also know it took you
a little while to get here. And we know that
whatever got you here wasn't always you know, Sunday wasn't

(01:11:57):
lessons you learned in Sunday School and and and and
we we but you're forgiven the things in the struggle,
and you you got a place in glory.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
It sounds like you have a hard time getting me
in heaven.

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):
Well no, But does the revolution start when people get
tired of suffering.

Speaker 4 (01:12:28):
Now, yeah, no revolution, revolution I think is continuous. And
like I picked up one of your books off the
table and uh, what you get honest a die line
and in sometimes in history books like that would make

(01:12:58):
one group of people wake up. Now it's hard to
get us to read. That's why you're on the radio.
But that's why we're on television also. And doctor King
used to say that news media is worth a million
dollars a minute. We we we would try to get

(01:13:21):
our demonstrations on ABC, NBC and CBS and you know,
Cronkite and Brink, but each one of them, if you
could get on those three, that's that time is worth
a million dollars a minute. And so you put in

(01:13:43):
some good hours here, thank you, and you built a
good audience.

Speaker 7 (01:13:47):
Is it true that.

Speaker 6 (01:13:49):
You made the call to miss credits Scott King after
Doctor King was shot? Did you make the call to
correct miss Corredis Scott King when doctor King was shot?

Speaker 4 (01:13:57):
I did, but she had already heard it. But I
knew Corretta. Corretta and my wife grew up together in
a little country town and we talked all the time,
and they talked to each other and she wasn't crying.

(01:14:17):
She wasn't. She said, well, there's what I've been worried about.
But now we have to carry on. See, And that's
the way all of her children have tried to carry on.
And it's hard, and but all of us in some

(01:14:45):
way a doctor King's children. And we see the example
that he said, and we see her she was, she was.
She was up here in Boston, uh, trying to train
to be an opera singer. Mm hmm. And he said,

(01:15:10):
I need you back down south with me.

Speaker 5 (01:15:14):
She actually raised money. She would do concerts credit Scot
King would sing concerts, operated concerts and raise money for
the civil rights movement. For her husband behind every successful
man as an exhausted woman, which is why he keeps
telling the story of women who don't get the credit,
who don't get acknowledged.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
He keeps pulling.

Speaker 5 (01:15:31):
I do admire that he keeps pulling everybody into his
story so they get their name mentioned, so that they
get acknowledged. Uh. His his wife now is strong. His
first wife, Jeanie childs.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Young was strong.

Speaker 4 (01:15:45):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:15:46):
When he was you an ambassador, they were in a
they went to jean Child's hometown.

Speaker 4 (01:15:51):
Little country town in Alabama.

Speaker 5 (01:15:53):
And they were on the they were in the open
opening a car and Gene child Wrong said Andy. She
that's a guy I used to date in high school.
He's a bum. Now he's on he's on a street corner.

Speaker 4 (01:16:06):
I said, I said, go Lee, I guess you're glad
he he had a hard time in Vietnam and he's
not doing right. I guess you're glad you didn't marry him.
And she said she if he'd have been the ambassador
to the United Nations. And that's that's true. That that

(01:16:30):
and that's a there's a John Bryant quote behind every
great man as an exhausted woman, many exhausted women.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
I'm glad.

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):
I'm glad that you keep bringing up, you know, other people.
And I'm glad that what the doctors called the dirty work,
because I think playing your position is a lost start.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
I think everybody wants to be a star now.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
And it's like, you know, it makes me one that
has has social media made the struggle to performative because
people don't see that unseen grind. You don't see that
dirty work. You don't understand how important plan your position is.

Speaker 4 (01:17:10):
Well, you know, those who are in music noted you've
got to create a certain harmony, a certain rhythm that
you can't do it. I mean, jazz was everybody solo
and on their own. But but the music now has

(01:17:31):
has far more well in good times. It has melody
in hard times against funky. But you've got you've got
each one expressing the way they feel and h and

(01:17:53):
somehow when you hear it and it relates to you,
you go out and buy the records so you know
you you turn on whatever it is you have to
turn on. Nowadays, I don't have one of them.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
Radio anyway, go ahead, no.

Speaker 4 (01:18:09):
But it's it's this is a very complex life. I
mean when I lived in New York, I worked up
on a dear Harlem and near Riverside Church, and one
time the lights went off and I had to walk

(01:18:33):
from up there at one hundred and twentieth and Broadway
across the Queensbide Down Bridge to get a bus on
the other side to get me up to Hollis. And
it's a huge complicated city and there's nothing simple. But

(01:18:56):
you have to figure that for anything to work in
this city, and in most great cities, there's got to
be a series of teams that are making it work,
and most of the time you don't see the ones
that are in the background. And you don't, I mean

(01:19:20):
you don't. You might see the cook that's preparing the meal,
but you don't see the guy that had the slaughter
the cole.

Speaker 6 (01:19:29):
There's all this work, and you know, all the sacrifice
that you guys put in. When Martin Luther King was here,
he wasn't as liked and as revered by everybody as
he is today.

Speaker 7 (01:19:38):
How do you feel when you say.

Speaker 4 (01:19:39):
He almost was, you know, almost talking about I mean,
there were a few people who were jealous of him,
who wanted to be him, but they were preachers too, and.

Speaker 3 (01:19:55):
But he was one of that kind of I just
want you to they've never stopped that kind of no.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
But he he did not let that bother him, and
it well, yeah, yeah, you have to watch your enemies,
but you see them better if you bring them closer

(01:20:21):
and try to get them involved in what you're doing.
And you know, the teams that win play together, and
and and everything requires a team.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
Now we get into a real conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
Can you tell me about the team that you and
Clarence e Oh lord, I tell you that that is
one of the most He's one of the.

Speaker 4 (01:20:50):
Most beautiful brothers I've ever met.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
Love him.

Speaker 4 (01:20:53):
He called me and said, I'm trying to reach Andrew
Young and the young. I said, yeah, I'm in the Young.
He said, Nigga, are you crazy? And I said, I
don't know what? What?

Speaker 6 (01:21:09):
What?

Speaker 4 (01:21:09):
Why? What makes you think that they tell me you
running for congress in Georgia. Don't you know that they
just killed medical over there in Mississippi. How you ain't
got good sense and you want to run for Congress?
I said, well, before doctor King was killed, the last

(01:21:33):
thing we talked about was how were going to take
our people from the streets into politics. And when John
came along, it was from the streets to the to
the suites and the banks, and how to how we're
going to integrate the money, how we're going to integrate
the culture, say and he said, well, if you crazy

(01:21:57):
enough to run, I'm crazy enough to help you. And
I said, what would you He said, what would you do?
If I could get Bill Cosby? If I could bring
Bill Cosby and Isaac Hayes. Now this was nineteen seventy.
Bill Cosby was booming. He just got on, you know,
and Isaac Hayes was good music or out of Memphis.

(01:22:21):
And I said, well, you know, I said, I don't
even have money to make a phone call to invite him.
He said, nigga, I didn't ask you if you had
any money. I said, what would you do if they
came here? And I said, well, I'd get to Baseball
Stadium and we'd fill it. We'd fill it up. That'd

(01:22:42):
be a great start for a campaign. I said, but
I told you I don't have any money. He said,
I told you. I ain't said nothing to you about money.
Money is my business. And I shut up and he
hung up on me. But he found out who had

(01:23:03):
handled the radio, I mean the Braves Stadium. And it
was about in six weeks signs we well, four weeks
signs walp all over town that Bill Cosby and Isaac
Hayes would come into the baseball stadium and he blew
it out right and they filled it up in the
pour and down rain and gave you the money and

(01:23:25):
didn't even charge didn't charge anything.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
I low Clarence Man say, that's my idol.

Speaker 8 (01:23:30):
What was the issue the real issue between Martin Luther
King Jr.

Speaker 7 (01:23:38):
And Malcolm X.

Speaker 4 (01:23:39):
You know there was no issue. The difference was that
Martin Luther King learned in college. Malcolm X learned in jail.
But Malcolm X read the Dictionary and the Bible. Say,
and when Mark and came back with the Nobel Prize,

(01:24:02):
we worked in Harlem and the Armory. And when we
came in the back door, who was standing act in
the back door with Malcolm X? Two people, Malcolm X
and Nelson Rockefeller. And Malcolm X said, I just wanted
to thank you for all that you've done, and I

(01:24:23):
want you to know that I am with you in
anything you want me to do. But I think that
it's probably better strategy if you and I don't seem
to be so close, and said, that's why I'm not
going to come in there with you in public.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
He wasn't trying to profile Malcolm was trying to.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
Did you disparage Malcolm? You see disparage Martin publicly? Sometimes
though we'll call him Uncle Tom, was his brand.

Speaker 4 (01:24:52):
It wasn't. It wasn't Malcolm so much as it was
that whole whole crowd around Elijah Muhammad.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
Now, but Martin was close to Elijah too.

Speaker 4 (01:25:03):
It seems like I know well because we're wunerable because
when we came to if we went into town, like
when we went to to Chicago, we got all the
big preachers together and got them to agree that we
would be there with them and that they could tell

(01:25:26):
us what they wanted us to do. Now, some didn't
like it, and some just didn't want anybody to have
a profile but them, and we just went on around them.
But Malcolm, well, I met Malcolm when I was here,

(01:25:46):
and Mike Wallace did a story on Malcolm on sixty Minutes,
and the black guy who was working with Mike Wallace
was married to one of my secretaries at the National
Consular Churches, and they invited me and my wife over

(01:26:10):
to dinner. This was this was before Malcolm X was
even known around and but we'd had dinner a couple
of times together. Anytime he came to Atlanta, he came
by our office, but Martin was never there, but he
went to He went to Selma to see Martin, and

(01:26:35):
Martin got arrested that day and was in jail. So
he spent the day with Corretta and me and spoke
at the Mass Mass meeting that night and then went
on his way. Malcolm and they haven't.

Speaker 8 (01:26:48):
They haven't met.

Speaker 4 (01:26:50):
They met once, Yeah, they met, No, they met several
times because he was always in private.

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):
Publicly yeah, publicly.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Yeah, that's when they had got that picture together.

Speaker 5 (01:26:59):
By the way, when he became mayor, just the point
about paying people playing their roles. When he became mayor
of Atlanta, the civil rights leaders his friends. The second
day he was mayor, they picketed him, so he went outside.

Speaker 1 (01:27:10):
He said, what are you guys doing?

Speaker 5 (01:27:11):
They said, well, you're the mayor now, so you know
you got your job, we got ours and he accepted that.
So Malcolm was playing his lane, is playing his role publicly,
but privately he respected doctor King and just didn't feel
that he was useful to him. By the way, a
lot of these, a lot of the Black Power movement

(01:27:32):
came out of standing right next to Doctor King walking
in the South, the Black Power movement, that's where it started.
They'd used Malcolm Martin's visibility to get visibility for what
they were doing, which was easier because he were angry.
Black Power getting angry, so and Martin a lot allowed
all of that. He allowed everything to flourish around him.
He wasn't insecure, but it just wasn't his It wasn't

(01:27:54):
his way.

Speaker 4 (01:27:55):
What he did was on just that he invited Carmichael
to come to church. So next time you're in Atlanta,
if you're in Atlanta on a Sunday, please come to
church and then come home and have dinner with us afterwards.

(01:28:16):
We need some time to talk. And he came to Atlanta,
went to church, and then they went home together. Uh
and uh, Coretta fixed dinner with the well. Preacher's wives
always have a way of fixing food no matter who
shows up. They got enough.

Speaker 5 (01:28:36):
But isn't it true that all of those leaders at
some point criticized doctor King. Yeah, see snick snick.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
Uh uh, yes, sick.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
I mean it's nick.

Speaker 3 (01:28:47):
That's why I love the documentary King of King King
in the Wilderness, you know, because it shows that. But
it seemed like it was respectful, you know, like they
were walking together and they were disagreeing during interviews, but.

Speaker 2 (01:28:59):
It was respectful.

Speaker 4 (01:29:00):
Yeah, But people like John Lewis never disagree, you know,
and it was it was people. I mean, you have
rivalries on the same football team, but they all running

(01:29:21):
the same play and and and that's sort of that's
sort of the way we were we said, Look, we
may disagree on how to get there, but we all
are trying to do the same thing, and we can
do it best if we do it together.

Speaker 5 (01:29:40):
So Charlemagne, what I'm hearing from what I've learned from
him is the mission back then was we? The mission
now is me? This is the basically when to summarize
what the problem is and what you brought up earlier.
People today wake up Ago, I'm tired of talking about me.
Now you talk about me, and it's all about me me,

(01:30:00):
and I'm and if it doesn't benefit me, then I'm
not interested.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
My likes, my engage is my views.

Speaker 5 (01:30:06):
That's right, my opinion, And if I got to hurt you,
I've got to step on you to elevate myself, then,
so be it. Back then it was almost the exact opposite.

Speaker 4 (01:30:16):
Now, I mean, I just you're being gracious, you are
being I'm being respectful.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
Exactly the point.

Speaker 4 (01:30:27):
But I'm trying to find if you're going to get
along with people, you can easily point out differences, but
if you really want to work together, you got to
find those huge things that you agree on and say,

(01:30:50):
let's get this straight first. And that's true in the neighborhood.
You know, it's true in everything we do.

Speaker 8 (01:31:00):
I totally respect what you said a little bit back
when you said I've never been afraid to die, right,
But I think it's greater that you've never been afraid
to die without making a difference or without making a change,
because you've got a lot of young people that aren't
afraid to die either, but for the wrong reason.

Speaker 4 (01:31:21):
No, they afraid. They scared to death, and it's because
they're scared that they do stupid things. See. I mean
most street fights would be avoided if somebody could say
blow a whistle and say just take ten seconds to
cool off, they wouldn't shoot. But they're doing something and

(01:31:53):
I don't really understand it because I've never had to.

Speaker 1 (01:31:58):
Be that way.

Speaker 5 (01:32:00):
Let me bridget. The most dangerous person in the world
is a person with no hope. So they had hope.
Loaded The most dangerous person in the world is a
person with no hope. They had hope. They had self esteem,
not just confidence. You can be great in music or
great and whatever, have enormous confidence, but have low self esteem.

(01:32:22):
They had spirituality. They believe it's something larger and more
important themselves. Doctor kingon say I'm here to say black people.
He said, I'm here to redeem the soul of America
from the triple evils of war, racism, and poverty. He
wrapped everybody in his vision and he brought everybody in
and then lifted everybody up and with it. Yes, black
people got lifted too, but it wasn't black people only

(01:32:44):
or black people at the cost of everybody else. And
so he made it hard for people to disagree with him.
But he had his own self esteem. When you have
no hope, you're willing to your life has no value.
They were willing to die because they had hope, because
it wasn't about them. It's a different new ones. They
value themselves enough that they valued everybody else enough that

(01:33:07):
they're willing to sacrifice themselves. So that's a different thing than.

Speaker 1 (01:33:12):
I don't value me.

Speaker 5 (01:33:14):
I don't value it was going I'm not gonna live
to twenty five anyway, What does it matter? None of
this matters, So I'm not the most dangerous person in
the world. Is a personal no hope, That's why he
said he can't relate to it. So it is that, Charlie,
what you said earlier about has it changed or you asked, Yes,
I think it has changed. It's me and me. I
because I don't value myself. I need to keep pouring

(01:33:36):
water in this cup because because the cup has no bottom.
If the cup has no bottom, I'm pouring all the
time trying to fill up myself esteem.

Speaker 8 (01:33:46):
And people need validation.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
They seek validation, Yes, through everything. And so what he's
talking about is purpose in life.

Speaker 2 (01:33:52):
My god, what he's got his intention? It's your real purpose.
What's your intention? What are you here for?

Speaker 1 (01:33:56):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (01:33:58):
And you guys are the most powerful what you do
in the country, And I believe in the world because
you're all about something. You don't just show up here,
me and me. It's not good. You facilitate a conversation
and you wouldn't let the other person be. You want
the other person to be the center of the conversation,
to pull it out of him. And you even sacrifice

(01:34:18):
yourself sometimes when the people talking mess to you. You
got to know who you are. He knows who he is.

Speaker 1 (01:34:25):
Doctor. Can you tell him?

Speaker 5 (01:34:26):
The quick story is not in the documentary Quick quick
story about I'm just trying to do this quick because
I want to try to get a lot in a little
bit of time when when you came back with doctor
King from the Nobel Peace Prize and President the United States.
This was when he saw Malcolm and Rockefeller, and the
President United States refused to meet with you guys because
he didn't want to ask. He knew was coming and

(01:34:48):
you were in New York. Rockefeller offered you his jet.

Speaker 4 (01:34:52):
Well, Rockefeller assumed that we were going to see the
President Johnson, and he said, you all can let me
know what time you want leave. I'll have my jet
ready to pick you up and take you down to Origenon.
And that was in the paper. So we got an
appointment we thought for three o'clock and we got there

(01:35:12):
on time with the President. With the President, we got
there on time, but they said he was tied up
with the generals talking about Vietnam.

Speaker 1 (01:35:22):
You don't want to see him, and.

Speaker 4 (01:35:26):
It I mean, we really didn't get to see himuntill dark.
It was about six o'clock, two or three hours later.
But we were with the Vice president and the district
and the Attorney General talking about voting rights. When we
got in with the President Johnson, he was really depressed

(01:35:48):
and he said, I agree with you, doctor King, everything.
Martin says, he said, I agree with you, I just
don't have the power. And that was his only answer
everything we said. He said, I agree with you, I
just don't have the power.

Speaker 2 (01:36:07):
He the president who had the power.

Speaker 4 (01:36:08):
If you were, then well, he didn't have the votes,
and he had just gotten beat up by people who
were trying to get him to drop atomic bombs on Vietnam,
and so he was depressed. And when we left, I said,

(01:36:31):
doctor King, I said, you know, the president is right.
He doesn't have the power and we don't either. And
I said, this is a perfect time for you to
take a sabbatical. You need to take three or four
months off, go wherever you want to go, think this through,
take your family or not, and then after the next

(01:36:57):
election we'll have a better position. And he said no.
I said, well, what you going to do? He said,
we got to get the president some power. And I
said something else and he said no, we got to
get the president some power. And finally I said, nigga,

(01:37:18):
you more housemen. You broke You see, because the Nobel
Peace Prize was sixty thousand dollars, Rockefeller doubled it, so
we had one hundred and twenty thousand dollars but then
Martin divided up against all well all six He gave
everybody a sixth of it, every civil rights organization.

Speaker 1 (01:37:40):
He split up the money himself.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):
And I.

Speaker 4 (01:37:47):
Said, here, we ain't got a pot to pissing or
window the throat out of. And you talking about getting
the president some power? I said, you niggas got some nerves.
And I was talking. I went to Howard, he went
to Morehouse. So we always were picking on each other,

(01:38:10):
and that's the only thing he'd kid you about. But
when we got back home.

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
He said, you can tell you what's about more house men.
You can tell morehouse men.

Speaker 4 (01:38:23):
Well, yeah, I mean that was my line. I said,
you more houseman got more nerve than a brass ass monkey.
You ain't got a pot to pisson or when did
to throw it out of? And yet you're gonna get
the presidents of Paul.

Speaker 8 (01:38:37):
What did he say?

Speaker 4 (01:38:39):
He just said, we're gonna get the president of Paul
who have it. When we got back two days later,
Amelia Boyton called and said she was on the way
to see us from Selma. Now Melia Boytan had been
in Selma since nineteen thirty two, that's the year I
was born, and She went there at eighteen with George

(01:39:03):
Washington Carver to teach sharecrop of women how to feed
their children in the midst of the recession. And so
they were doing things like smashing beans.

Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
Everybody else's story, but what happened in Selma.

Speaker 4 (01:39:22):
But in Selma when we got to the office, she
called and said she was there to see doctor King,
and she and three preachers came in and told what
was happening in Selma and said we have to you

(01:39:47):
have to help us. And this was just before Christmas.
So he said, well, right after Christmas, we'll come over.
And you know, everybody has an Emancipation Day celebration on
the first of January, and so we didn't have it
on the first of January because that was that was

(01:40:12):
the first Sunday, and that's the reason was that threw
everything off. But we had it on the second Sunday,
and it was we didn't have it on Sunday, we
had it on Tuesday. And so but that's when we
started to sell them a movement. Ninety days later, Lynnon

(01:40:37):
Johnson was on television saying we shall overcome.

Speaker 1 (01:40:40):
So back up.

Speaker 5 (01:40:41):
So it's an important part of this is doctor King
made a commitment to go to Selma. If he had
shown up in Selma, the police wouldn't have attacked John Lewis.
They would't have attacked you. The wouldn't have attacked Doctor
King strategically on a bad move. They would have let
doctor King march. But doctor King got the wrong date.
That's what he That's what just again, history for him

(01:41:02):
is just like talking about like that's a monitor. He
just glossed over it. They they told him that lady
in Selma a date, but they, oh, I can't come
on that date. That's the first Sunday I got to
be in my church. So he stayed back and sent
and he sent Andy Young beast Young, I called him
Bass Young to go there for him, like, make sure
that the like is in trouble. Don't let anybody march.
He got there and said, well, these people will march anyway,

(01:41:24):
but well they're gona probably turn us around, so don't
worry about it.

Speaker 4 (01:41:26):
Well, three hundred people in the country town. That's a
lot of folk.

Speaker 5 (01:41:30):
So they didn't turn him around. They let him march.
But then the then the troopers ran. That's that famous
film where they ran over everybody and they and they
knocked John Lewis out. All that was an accident. I mean,
it wasn't supposed to happen because Doctor King was supposed
to be there. It was have been a proper speech.
So all of because Doctor King had to be in
his church on first Sunday and they got the date wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:41:49):
So that called John Louis accidental trouble then.

Speaker 4 (01:41:53):
And then he used to talk about good trouble and.

Speaker 1 (01:41:57):
So that then triggered three months later.

Speaker 4 (01:42:00):
It wasn't It wasn't that that. That was the first
of March. Yeah, it was fourth of July. And what
happened He signed the Civil Rights Bill. Wow, and that
gave us the right to vote.

Speaker 5 (01:42:16):
Wow, got him some power to the black boys from
from the South flipping the President of the United States.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24):
You've been very generous with your time.

Speaker 4 (01:42:25):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:42:26):
His interview has been longer than the documentary by the way, Okay,
but we appreciate it. And I want to leave on
this the Dirty Work.

Speaker 3 (01:42:36):
If if the Dirty Work documentary could teach one lesson
to this generation and the next generation or organizes, what
what would.

Speaker 2 (01:42:43):
You want it to be?

Speaker 4 (01:42:44):
Well, you know, I called it the Dirty Work, But
when I kind of realized I had no purpose in life.
And the way I decided, I said, if there's something
that I think needs doing and nobody else wants to
do it, that's my job. And that's the way I

(01:43:06):
defined my calling. When I went to work with doctor King,
nobody wanted to work with him. He didn't have anybody there,
and so I've started, well, whytt Walker was coming down,
but he hadn't gotten there yet. And it's and once
I got there, most of the stuff that nobody wanted

(01:43:28):
to know. Nobody wanted to go sit down and argue
with white folks. And I didn't argue because I would
I would be cool. But if Jose had gone, he
would want to. It would have been an argument because
he had to argue about everything. But that was my role,
which was which I did, though I didn't necessarily like

(01:43:50):
it to be in that role all the time, but it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
So, what's the lesson for this generation less than just.

Speaker 4 (01:43:59):
This generation, is there is some dirty work in any
struggle for freedom. But dirty work could be hard work,
dirty work could be thoughtful work, you know, whatever nobody
else wants to do. Like we didn't want to mess

(01:44:20):
with money. And John decided that he was going to
teach folks how to that you can't be free without voting,
but neither can you be free if you broke. And
so teaching people how to manage money, how to save money,
how to invest money, how to know the meaning of money,

(01:44:43):
to your salvation and survival, that's another issue altogether. But
communications is an issue.

Speaker 5 (01:44:54):
And so don't be afraid of doing the dirty work.
Embrace it. It is noble work. It's not dirty work.

Speaker 1 (01:45:02):
Yeah, is that right?

Speaker 4 (01:45:04):
That's not only is a noble work, is is the
kind of work that has to be done.

Speaker 5 (01:45:12):
So when when when Charlemagne was doing that internship way
back when, and that in that first radio program, and
when people noticed you, that was the dirty work. Absolutely,
I'm sure you've done dirty work in your career. You've
always not been both of you and I always been
sitting here prime time. You had to hustle, You've had
to do things and jobs nobody else wanted.

Speaker 2 (01:45:32):
I still do the dirty work now, m maybe.

Speaker 4 (01:45:37):
Ybe.

Speaker 5 (01:45:37):
And the work you're doing with with mental health, the foundation,
you're doing the stuff that nobody sees. The conversation that
we have that at two in the morning about about
life in general, all that's the dirty work and raising
your children is the most honorable version, raising your pain,
paying school fees. Like, we've got to be about the basic.

(01:46:00):
We got to get back to the basics and be
about we and not just about me. That's really who
he is. And I spent most of his interview trying
to draw him out.

Speaker 2 (01:46:10):
This was good.

Speaker 1 (01:46:11):
You can see him.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
This is good.

Speaker 3 (01:46:13):
John O'Brien, thank you for bringing this, this, this walking memorial,
this iconic, this icon living. Mister Andrew Young, thank you
for coming.

Speaker 4 (01:46:22):
Brother, Thank you for having men.

Speaker 3 (01:46:24):
That's right, and check out the dirty work of this
Friday on What's It's.

Speaker 1 (01:46:28):
A Peak ib globally.

Speaker 3 (01:46:31):
On MSNBC globally, nine pm, nine pm this Friday. Thank you, brother,
thank you, and thank all of your audience. Yes, sir,
this is a good.

Speaker 4 (01:46:44):
This is college on the radio.

Speaker 2 (01:46:48):
I like that.

Speaker 4 (01:46:48):
That's a word if you didn't have money to go
to college listening.

Speaker 2 (01:46:53):
That's right. Yeah, thank you. It's the Breakfast Club.

Speaker 1 (01:46:57):
Every day a week ago up Breakfast Club. We are
finished for yar dumb