Jesse Jackson Interview: From the Sit-Ins to Selma, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Lasting Impact

101 take one again again thank you for having us this is really exciting for me uh can we start with just telling us how did you first meet dr king and what were your first impressions you know the the first meeting was really indirect i grew up in greenville south carolina and most of my people have adjusted this situation ministers reinforce the adjustment be good people but don't fight for change don't fight for power because it meant with such safe resistance so to see dr king and reverend abernathy uh and reverend schultzworth emerged as redefining the rule of menaces was itself a source of relief so we met them that we begin to follow them in that in that vein i was arrested june july 19 1660 with several classmates trying to use the public library little i know he was aware of of that uh and then in 63 in greensboro north carolina uh at north carolina and t we were involved in a major sit-in movement there so when i first met him physically i was coming to atlanta to speak at morehouse uh as a member of the omega sci-fi fraternity and uh he was coming to the airport with his group only to get his nobel prize it was just a thrill to see him he saw me he called my name jesse he flipped me off high as sam you saw my doctor sam proctor who he knew at boston university and they were good friends he'd be in high things going in greensboro i think that the nti i think the bennett so the fact that he was because we had been on television quite a bit during that time during the greensboro struggle so i met him in that sense it to me it depicted how how sensitive he was how aware he was of our struggle i remember the green talking about when they graduated from little rock central he was at the graduation now there was a speaker he was just there at the graduation he was deeply immersed in the southern struggle with the end apartheid and in the south i remember the first time i was real close we were in selma reverend c.t vivian and i went by miss boynton's house where he was staying he was lying in bed he had by him a low power injustice by paul tillich uh the courage to be about paul tilley on nation destiny man by niebuhr and the bible uh i asked him about the books because i was in seminar at the time he said well i read one series one fiction one non-fiction book a week he was deeply scholarly as i often say the young people who catch on to i have their dream dimension of his life dr king finished high school at 15. he prince morehouse at 19. he finished seminary at 22 his phd at 26. deeply committed to scholarship he knew strong minds break strong chains i would hear young people say now when did he become radical to be in montgomery alabama a block from the confederate capital and from the confederate white house and to call a boycott to dislocate that city in the south was a very radical move when rosa parks was arrested the bus driver was legally right mrs parks was modeling their right there was a sign above the driver's head that read colored seat from the rear whites from the front those who violate by law will be will be punished and so to defy that law was radical and that was someone said was now that she is uh the bus to come to almost apologize he said no until the sign comes out until the wall comes down nothing has happened he saw beyond private pain to the issue of social justice and it was a significant as mrs parks one day to show you how connected things are i said mrs why don't you go to the back of the bus given the fact that you know everybody else together if you stayed up there you could be arrested you could be run over by the bus or something beat by house of forces she said she said i thought about going back but i thought my name would teal i couldn't go back august 20th 1955 a material was lynched all that stuff was happening at at the same time in the midst of lynching and very barbaric activity and hostile laws he emerged out of that cauldron calling for an unusual thing for the south and then to confederate rule a demand for social justice demand for one to the rules so even we must not underestimate just how militant the montgomery bus boycott was as an action a collective action that lasted for a year and then not only did the action survive but the law mrs parks and the reverend dr attorney fred gray testing the law of victor ford to see if it would valid uh the the 54 supreme court decision so she didn't just happen to sit down she meant to sit down she was willing to go to jail it was a plan to bail her out but those were very militant actions and so every action he made for change had a certain age of of not adjustment not resentment but resistance and change um as you got to know him personally what surprised you about him as a person well just his his energy level and his his reading habits and his willingness to open up to other people to staff members and to let ideas flow you agree with him or disagree or something he would just point blank what do you see his willingness to a kind of participatory democracy he had a point of view he had the conclusion but that that that feature of him and his uh and his preparation he uh used mr twos it was kind of his off day he spent two years of studying uh reflecting on what happened last week and projecting but he was quite sociable me laughed a lot you know with friends uh what we call preacher jokes so he was he was once a very personable guy many uh activists don't have much analysis mental analysts don't have much action here he had the combination of action and analysis and preparation he would say you must not have the paralysis of analysis you can't you can't just keep on talking you have to act but if you act without analysis you don't know where you're going and if you uh have you see it but you don't act you can't get there so he saw the accommodation led to power and that power led to change there is a new south today and there's minimalism in america because dr king led the movement to pull down those walls uh you couldn't have the carolina panthers in the land of falcons they couldn't exist behind the cotton curtain because it would have been illegal for them to play together stay together sitting in the fans together in sand together you could have had the olympics in atlanta behind the cotton curtain south carolina will not be the number one producer of tires in america today behind the cotton curtain you wouldn't have a honda and nissan and toyota in the south behind the cotton curtain today you couldn't have had clemson playing alabama black quarterbacks in the south behind the cotton curtain so in many ways the whole south must attribute its growth and its removal of certain barriers not in the southern governor or in the southern center all that was in dr king's watch uh it is important to note that we did not take for granted those changes but the south as we knew it was not always as it is today none other than free black people it fruits them in the white people uh jimmy carter couldn't have come from plains georgia and going to the white house behind the cotton curt uh george bush could have come from odessa texas to the white house behind the cotton curtain bill clinton from hope arkansas because as long as the curtain was there and and the south was in the shadows it was assuming the inner southerner was too racist quote unquote to lead the country so southern whites were in something's regionalized and limited as well he when the curtain came down the wall and the bridge went up it shed light on everybody it's like the right to vote you know blacks have been denied the protected right to vote from states rights since 1880. but white women couldn't travel on jurors since 1967. 18 years couldn't vote no serving in vietnam you couldn't vote on campuses you couldn't vote bilingually you couldn't get proportionality and delegate selection for conventions all that stuff happens in the wake of the flood about the king's sense of social justice and redemption absolutely uh you'd mention briefly about these preacher jokes can you have it do you remember any or can you give us a feel for what it was like and the competitive nature of preachers when they get together and ever since the competition the guys just how far as they as they express some some ministers could be comedians because they're public speakers and they develop punch lines to to tell their stories i don't know i don't remember frankly specifically about him but uh he was easier to to laugh and go along with friends and favor he refers to his his staff as a team of wild horses there are a lot of strong personalities there can you talk about that and how his management style how did how did he corral all you wild horses who's that was strong uh jose would go into the fire with gasoline clothes on he was that kind of defiant figure and sometimes boisterous and we didn't know what dr king knew i remember sometimes he would drink but he was just a good guy we all gravitated to him jose was 15. put his age up to go to the war his mother and father were blind they had never seen each other and they had never seen their children and while in the war he was in the foxhole i think seven eight people were killed he survived the fact that he his his sense of survival is a sense of justice so he had he had that that strong kind of something about him devil was just create creative i mean he would take any kind of risk but he bella could just like see things on unfolding point he was just like he could go to the point uh and it was always so smart uh administrative type a great balancing will reverend abernathy was the the rock to be all lean known and things got rough dorothy cotton was hit about political education the voter education department is called all these different reverend city vivint the kind of theologian in in the house bruno lafayette the non-violent artist really theoretician and activist and so we we would have the right to argue and take positions and he would say two things one we would team a wild horse and it is his job to take the energy and direct it and sometimes when the tougher gets hot on the inside of the stab and he would say well we reflect in here what's out there we can knock around ourselves we cannot corral the community and so he started it neces he saw that in some perspective the other thing he would say that we were he was the pilot of the plane but we were the ground crew without the ground crew the plane cannot go from port to port uh from from arrival to to departure it cannot have the mechanical dimensions so he had an appreciation of the field crew because after all the side of the sunday of the big march in sam alabama he was in his church preaching that morning but james orange along with devil and along with john lewis and and jose williams uh cotton rita the field crew was on the ground so he had a great appreciation the many roles that many people play uh and he himself as kind of guiding those forces and he was more like more interest in building a kind of um a tug boat as opposed to an ocean line he didn't want a big organization per se he's doing a membership organization she could get bogged down and raise their members it was not the big ocean liner he wanted to have a strike force they go into a given time they raised it raised the issues exposed the contradictions and had the courage to fight and um so i remember him telling one time that he did not want to uh build a big building and leave it as a monument uh or didn't want to have a lot of money left he felt if any money were left it would be a reflection on his leadership that it was not about money he believed that you should be materialistically minded enough to take care of basic essentials but not mindless materialistic and out for you for your stuff he had that sense of his life this one he gave and we won the nobel peace prize he gave run away to all other organizations kept just a proportion for his clc because he had those are kind of his kind his values i'd like to move to talk about coming up to chicago so after some of this moved to chicago and sort of in the housing to you know the move to end slums and him moving up to chicago can you talk about that and and how the how the movement how did the movement change when it moved up here to chicago and your role in that well when you came to chicago but first of all that was a big debate uh should we leave the south joseph thought we never should have left the south there was so much unfinished business in the south that was his point of view and the thought pathway should go to new york because there was a certain infrastructure relationship to new york the public could go urban and bevel came to chicago and river city vision came to chicago with the urban training center bruno lafayette came to chicago but chicago had an organization called the triple seal chicago coordinating council of community organizations he felt that the infrastructure would give us uh a right platform because there's always a challenge nonviolence working in the south canada work in the north violence is subtle in the north and it is very overt in the south all these dynamics are suppressed were to come north and came to chicago it came with the focus on schools over crowded schools uh and and the lack of resources for those schools to call them willis wagons overcrowded black schools and segregated schools i might add children going to classes in the trailers so while that was going on he said to the ministers well you guys to work on something called bread basket look at these companies that sell us milk and bread and product but don't have to drive trucks you go to the stores there with no black uh uh working in the meat departments produce managers i'll check out clerks not putting money in banks for the weekend to make money it was just stone economic occupation so ministers became fascinated with the bread basket part of things i had begun organized ministers and he lived at me national director of operation bread basket well while we were working on bread basket and he was one deal with the school thing on the on the west side billboard and bernard lafayette were getting children who would uh you know put urine in and and bottles and take them downtown and find layered lead in the urine and so you had the whole slums like absentee landlords had the product had to own the house but they moved on to florida they're just sucking money out of not reinvesting so you had these competing forces one the breadbasket movement the medicines you had the education movement you have the in the islam movement union 10 islam so you organize a whole block don't pay rent until something happens and then sometime i'm rather convinced with beverly who said here we are 25 percent locked on tempest in the land we got to move out of the islam because we got to demand all territories we started marching that's in the first street little that we realized which was dr king's real passion was a mass movement for mass change and when we began to move west of halston the whites basement their ignorance and their fear of our motives and what they had been taught the whole neighborhoods began to resist us and they're throwing the rocks and all of that so the mass marches took over but that's not what we came and dr king was right in his bailiwick a mass action mass reaction mass change global view so you had the school movement in the slums breadbasket open house kind of four things were happening at the same time and in the end while some skeptics say you lost chicago the fact of that is two things happened in chicago one thing happened was that the fire housing act of except not chicago open housing that as a as as concrete as as public accommodation the right to vote for housing the second was rainbow push which dr king's workshop we never stopped dr king said this would not be a three-month six-month movement like a kind of one-horse small southern town there's a big complex chicago out of fragrance come full black congressmen uh three u.s senators state black african-american senators i ran for president barack one for president all that stuff because we we have to lead the breakup of of the mentally incarcerated blacks in this city and unleash that power so so the the the dynamic no other theory has had to put the political leadership emerged since 66 in chicago you think about uh carol de bruyne and and barack obama and roland burris and senators uh my run in 84 and 88 out leading the leading the draft on seek the daily delegation in florida in 1972 uh barbara rush ex-patterns congressman and dana davis the congress and justice union the congress and uh and and so you see this whole political that the independent movement finally prevail and i think it's a kind of a dark spot in the mind of historians who see chicago as a failure that's a mistake the north city has had the change of inclusion of black people and then emile jones led the drive to get reapportionment that's where you have a latino gutierrez so the black brown coalition is alive in for chicago against the two most tremendous odds and he won but but you cannot connect harold's winning in in in in eight to three from what happened in six to six because many of the financing of his camp and the bread basket beneficiaries uh many of the guys who who were the beneficiaries of our economic movement became the officers of harry watson's campaign al johnson uh worked around for a dollar a year uh dr albute was his treasurer al johnson and george johnson and john johnson all all that chicago and i associate that very much with dr king's work the kind of radical urban reconstruction movement came from his movement going back to in chicago king talks about how surprised he was at the ferocity of those of the whites um can you can you sort of paint a picture of maybe a day or whatever chicago was a state of ethnic enclaves seven to some cities within the city and people fiercely guard the neighborhood turf and uh various ethnic groups european ethnic groups have certain territories latinos and blacks and and germans and all that so we started marching west of halsted this was invading the territory and they had seen blacks in the most stereotypical terms when we come pain comes community disintegration comes and there was a reaction to us it says the people stereotypes and so we began to march for the right to open the housing and we would have a black and white go-to uh run the house they would tell the black no rooms available white come right back and get room available so we had to break down uh house by house and then they had the real estate guys what they call blockbusting uh once in black moving on the block to the other fight they're coming and they jack the price so it really was not just the crowd throwing the rocks which is obvious the real estate brokers were behind that deal and the bankers bankers were not bankers would only lend you money to buy a house off for business and certain areas the bankers had a role in this their hands were hit the real estate brokers leading the blockbuster and they had a role to play in this so the kids turned rocks they were they may have been the third or fourth layer of resistance so you had the basic catholic church leadership within most of them were catholic and and that's why in the day the archbishop had to come to the table to appreciate immorality of segregation and limiting people based on race and gender our religion and what about king when he moved in with his family to the projects were you around yeah on the west side he moved he moved into us just to prove when he moved into that uh apartment it was to put the focus on the fact that you had people had to pay rent didn't have heat had to pay rent maybe the time running water had to be rent lead paint on the walls i mean it's about moving in the middle of the community put put a global focus in other words he had this the strategic sense to put light in dark places a heating cold place he knew that by his calling it illuminated the situation you could say oh man the people owned it and one place we moved into it was kind of painful for us we were in the one house with a slum landlord who was draining money from there but put nothing back he died which was not associated with our effort nor our intent but that was just all the people would live in those neighbors as the blocks were busted they would rent the blacks but not reinvest that's what made the slum because the only deal between the condo on the project is that the condos people will wipe the windows and they take care of the elevators but and then so-called projects you don't have you don't have the accompanying facility developer protector of a property and personally was it hard on on king or on his family to to be living i don't think so because there was excitement that was the the people responding in such great numbers uh that was the joy of doing he would say the most difficult part of the movement when you when you look when you leave the excitement of a march in salem whether it's even violent reaction that's not the difficult part the difficult part is that when all that's over you got to get people to register and vote to slowly because the slow non-romantic dimension when the lights are not there the hard core organizers convincing people to change their minds to change their situation because at the end of the day change comes when people change their minds most people were on the occupation whose backs are against the wall they have three options and that's why it's so difficult to organize without understanding this most people are just they have found their place they found their space where they live where they can live when they grocery shop when they go to school they go to church where they get married they live in the circle and they've adjusted to they they they blanked the outside world away so if you were in in together now you paying pension funds uh and the pension funds are building the other side of town they're building the big tall buildings but you just forget that uh you're living in in conditions where you live that you don't control the economic resources but you've adjusted uh and some people beyond they resent they know better they don't feel empowered enough to change anything so they have a often become very bitter they they they they're not adjusted they resent and then the third dimension called resistance that's where the action comes in but you know only where you become male of justice dr king would say and you resent what you always begin to resist resisting means some kind of boycott some kind of action the weapons we use uh one uh the effective use of one's vote one's dollar coalition uh action and to be more on the right those are the weapons that you use because at the end of the day our biggest weapons is to be most tomorrow on the right mrs mrs parks and mostly right those who marched in birmingham were mostly right those smarts were right to vote but mostly morally right we couldn't impose wrong on anybody we had in fact to assert the rightness of our calling the righteousness of our cause and we're willing to suffer and sacrifice that end nonviolence is both a um a strategy in the way of life if we had been fighting with alms we couldn't have battled in arms but then dr can you say if if you shoot and you get shot then there are no winners but if you can if you can have change without you and getting shot then both can survive for another day and so now when i go to a a game in the south where the dallas cowboys play the houston texas atlanta and you see people choosing uniform color over skin color and directional complexion that's part of the transformation and after all we were enslaved longer than we have been free we've been slave for two and four to six years we've not been three twenty four six years uh and whites learned to live as slave masters for that long and after slavery was more violent than slavery after all 1880 to 1940 5 000 blacks were lynched 5000 without an indictment lynching took place after church on sunday they really believed blacks were inferior there was god ordained inferiority when god ordained superiority so the layers of of racial supremacy and racial degradation were much deeper than most people realize when people learn to believe in their dna that that the right to impose their will on others we had an obligation to resist so the resistance movement ultimately our resistance uh our distance their uh will to occupy and on on our worst days we see the backlash which always comes after the forward move but also in addition you also see these lights of progress i mean when i ran in 84 uh you know like and we got the right vote in six to five we were all we were happy we were it was a big deal we didn't realize that the right to vote the burden was on us we didn't know anything about gerrymandering how to drill lines annexation and large road privilege and ticket splitting we learned that in the next 25 years that's how deep that thing was uh i renovated four we've got three and a half million votes and less than 400 delegates delegates did not correspond to the votes so we figured out something called one to take all if if i get 49 and they must get 50.1 they'd take a hundred percent and so that meant the 49 who worked for me get zero no other people get 49 they didn't earn which itself undercut development so we got some kind of proportionality if i get 49 percent of the voting that many delegates on that theory and i ran in 88 we got 1200 delegates we were learning the science of politics on the 84 rules hillary won california ohio pennsylvania barely but she won them on later forward she would have been the winner in oh eight but on the ada rules president barack obama uh got his even though she won california or higher in pennsylvania and new jersey and texas uh he still got his share of delegates and he won because we democratized democracy we kept change the movement never continued to be finally even the playing field and i look at these uh how are we doing why we become so dominant in athletics and to me it's the very best analogy on on the field no one argues about spit homes and the social condition you came from what makes us so dominant in the football field basketball court because whenever the playing field is even the rules of public and the goals are clear the referees are fair and the score is transparent we can make it there's in a doubt there's a replay because that's a determination for a game to have a just process and a just outcome those rules that make athletics work don't apply beyond the athletic field and so fighting for a just society equal protection honors the law equal opportunity those are radical ideas one of those one of those radical ideas and the whole bible is is doing others that you have them do under you the one-to-one ratio does not sit well with aristocrats a one-to-one ratio does not say women are those who uh have supremacy notions of themselves and inferior notions of other people so his fight fight just and balance society i mean in football if the blacks had to run 12 yards of first down because they came from a broken home and white said they're running eight yards because it's inherited to some yards we couldn't get along there but the longest ten yards four first downs six months four touchdowns we've learned and so when i see i look at the games and i see the black and white referees and black and white players and and all that i just see the joy and people of odd political arrangements they want a fair game no one wants to win because somebody it becomes a violation because of a bad the bad call by referee but those same rules must apply to access to med school and law school and politics as well we talk about cicero and and cicero being you would seem it was you're marching on cicero after the uh was it was your idea wasn't it that well cicero was considered the kind of the uh the birmingham of the chicago community it was it had been some killings there and the reputation was very violent and and so it was the supreme test we confront cicero and we met downtown with the mayor and the archbishop quote and all of that cardinal cody and we finally decided to not go into cicero we made our point about open housing versus closed housing but the temperature was so hot the people marching since rent house in defiance which is part of the whole uprising of open housing because what was happening when we were in chicago marching all around the country for a house and people were locked in these ghettos and locked into limitations every place uh after all when when we got the right to vote in open house we got the mayor 50 years ago this year with mayor richard hatcher and gary and carl stokes and cleveland all that comes out the same sugar that's not chicago that's gary that's that's uh that's cleveland that's detroit coming young that's la bradley so the impact of these movements the movement became like the the earthquake the aftershocks the reverberations affected everybody everywhere from seattle to miami i think i think another point i would like to think is um the ups and downs of the struggle are very distressing mentally and emotionally i remember we were uh his last birthday we didn't realize was his last birthday january 15 1968 uh we all met about fifth of us met in down in his basement of his church and that there was a lot of excitement in the air it was warm georgia atlanta george today the morning around eight o'clock he had breakfast with his family came to trench around 10 in the blue jeans on and uh sport jacket and sports shirt and and uh he had some quite some appellation with whom we had not worked before but we were aware of their situation some latinos from some chavez grew from southwest texas and colorado california some native americans some african-americans from deep south south carolina alabama mississippi georgia some jewish allies hello and seen out of new york some labor about 50 of us met planning a poor people's campaign his argument was we've got public accommodations we have the right to vote but we democratized in poverty this abounding property dr king said there must be a floor beneath which no person should fall we should always have a base of access to education and health care decent house ways education of the mind and and art for the spirits and culture he he kept that vision focused and so that day we had that kind of meeting and around 8 o'clock he left home and came to church around 10 we met around 12 o'clock so nolan clayton came in and bernard lafayette came in and she had the cake dante you forgot it was your birthday and we laughed and it was january 15th and we cut the cake we drank the punch it really it had about twelve to one maybe and then the afternoon uh lawrencium leather uh worshiping how they end the war in vietnam so he so as i argue people who celebrate his birthday let that week be a week of dota do voter registration let there be a season of fight for automatic voter registration that there be a season for activism is not not just banquets and parades but activism because he spent his own birthday home church work clothes in poverty in the war because he believed that the war in vietnam resources that was designed for the war on poverty which is thought to be a morally virtuous movement which was the war in vietnam and the resources needed to heal at home was going to kill abroad three million vietnamese were killed he thought that to be a moral disgrace and so he wanted to shift he said let's go to washington we're going to washington if necessary go to jail civil disobedience and convince this congress to shift from war in vietnam to war on poverty because bombs dropped in vietnam resources spent there were exploiting our cities and of course ultimately that did happen but he spent that it kind of happened he was in a kind of a good move that day that was january 15th we had a meeting of ministers january 20th in in florida the four ambassadors trying to organize a plan to get the school in 25 cities simultaneously um but in april the last week of march i remember on friday night we were we were brandon have a meeting the next day reverend happened at the call he said first of all dr king calls i need to see you guys tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock in my office so dog we're trying to get there but it's you know it's late he didn't spend much time arguing in the case reverend abernath said mark wants to see you guys uh bev and i were in chicago and i think ty may be in cincinnati and other people different places so reluctantly devil now we got the airport at 7 o'clock the doctor have nothing we missed a plane we can't make it he said i know you're going to miss it you're on the 7 35 eastern somebody got disabled if i played and i should never get that meeting because he came in and kind of summer moved he said i for four days i've had a migraine headache i thought i present with my wife coretta and and then gene and ralph and juanita and uh i i maybe i should quit now maybe i should stop maybe i've done as much as i could do we won the montgomery bus boycott broke down barriers in public edu transportation we have public accommodations we have the barbarism is behind us we have the right to vote men my friends are turning on me and my wife's friends my classmates preachers and said i can't come in and pull a pitch because we shouldn't be engaged in the war i can't bifurcate my sense of justice the war is more on the wrong i live in the world i'm a noble peace prize when i live in the world not just on one side of town he kind of talked and maybe i should quit i remember man they're saying dr king please don't talk that way he's saying to be quiet um don't say peace peace when there is no peace kind of like jeremiah and when he said that in a way we got real quiet he said but then i thought maybe if i was fast to the point of death my men might say stoke was my friend and rap for my kids we're all friends we disagree on tactics and strategy but we're friends so maybe if i were near death it would come around my bedside and we could regroup our struggle then as if something hitting me said but we're going to go on to washington uh as we did um in in south georgia and then we go on to it's like he freaks himself out with depression and he had been depressed and i was taking notes because it struck me that the same three moves of jesus let this cup pass from me and then some disciples slept and then as as he as he pondered some disciples slept and then not my will but then be done so jesus goes from let this cup pass me i think maybe i should quit as he prayed disciples slept to not my will but the king went from maybe i should quit to me bastard fast upon death tonight my will but then be done i watched those three moves and we left on that note we vigorously debated that morning what we should do tactically uh dr king was he said but i feel so alone that made us feel so bad i was arguing and devil was arguing if you get though if we get to washington and the government shuts down us what do we do we have no sympathetic ears anymore in washington so we finally said well when we got through august that if we go to the washington we look at the top 50 the ogm was the big company at that time maybe if we would target a big industry like that nobody calls to get big industry to the table to deal with our concerns they say well let's think it through us we can't be left on that note it's very anxiety-driven meeting painful for me frankly then we met in memphis that tuesday i suppose and he came he said that the plane had been held up because they thought that um he was on it and it might be a terror attack and um he sat in the room most we went we went with the menaces that morning about what the role they should play on the garbage workers strike and dr king he came and stayed in the room most of the day and said well i'm here to i don't feel like going and we had been laughing and playing he had the end of a pillow fighting it was very fun day he said you know my dad said uh my dad's slick old man he said uh a dad came out i think connie's georgia some real small georgia towns he came to town and dad hadn't been to college anything and my grandfather a.d williams were in front of the church sitting down and he found that he befriended the pastor he said but it was called the pastor the daughter was my mother we laughed about that and ultimately they became a husband and wife he said and um i look back to my family's history kind of walk through his walk through history so literally around five o'clock he said i'm not going to around the night table i don't feel like it but jess said will you go i didn't have a thought ralph said no jesse you're going so i think he must have asked and so father reverend happened out and i went together so we'll let's go let we'll go together so we went over there it was raining at night and we walked in the door the church was about three quarters full and people cheered the raft said jesse don't think they're trying for us to think mods behind us and so you could sense they were expecting him so we went down the side of the church at mason temple church to the to the uh bank where bishop mason bishop mason of church got in christ founder where's by delay and um he doctor i haven't had to call them on the on the pay telephone pay telephone if you will so man come just for a few minutes you have to stay long say that it is for ready for you and so dr king came and riot venture gave a rather long introduction because he was trying to let them get himself adjusted when they got they gave the speech in fact back in liberty at the time in history he'd walk through history that day on on a very personal level and and i've been in the mountain i've seen the promised land that that was in the context of and then we had no idea what he may have felt about the forces closing in on him i'm not fearing any man it's a big statement reflect 50 years that i'm not fury it's like i know they're trying to kill me another alpha man because i took on the vietnam war i was taking on our government in wartime i was taking on angry people and misguided people in wartime we were walking to airport one day in uh o'hara and chicago i remember four sailors two white and two black came hey dr king how you doing and one guy said dr king why are you are you against us ain't stopped almost as if we tear them somewhere tilt burn out we kiss the next plane i'm not against you i think you should be in college not in vietnam killing somebody so i'm for you i want you to live not kill and be killed he stopped and talked with him he sets that kind of moving in on him and so i do not know what he felt that we didn't know except i'm not appearing in him and i've seen the glory in the coming of the lord and he and up in the mountaintop and then he in turn we embraced because i was sitting right behind him the doctor having that that was that night you know and the next day um we we met some more figuring out who we're going to do because we had a good night tonight before finally and i remember revving by the cows and and jose and i were in the room with him and some local gang groups who would interfere with the march the week before they came by the room wanted to raise them some money in new york because i can't get your grant unless you have a plan i can i'm not i don't have any money and they got bostrous and jose and i said you guys time for you guys to go you know we had that kind of understanding with them when they had to go so we set up without kyle and his wife gwen to have dinner at their home that night i remember her brother ben now chicago being branch and wayne bennett in the group david mccullough we opened the carousel singing we were saying tonight at the rally the week before dr king had been to chicago at the brevard community and he'd heard ben branch play pressure logged on the saxophone they'd never heard that before it was beautiful rendition so i was coming across the courtyard and dr king can he's about an hour late as it was typically um he said jesse you read the guy he said you know you have on a tie so i said dr king of pre-records for eating another tie is an appetite he said you're crazy we laughed and he said to ben ben how are you doing and ben's uh dr king he's played my favorite song and i pressured lord because he'd heard him play it two weeks before and then he raised up the bullet hit him right here it's seven this time i i heard someone i think devil was saying get a little because we were shooting this free ballistic could have shot several of us and i hit running toward the steps and there's a picture of andy young and uh porn the pointing is that he was knocked against the wall and the police were coming from that way with the guards they said the shooter came that way not this that's what that picture was all about and i remember getting down and by the time reverend abernathy came out the room he said martin but he was non-responsive so i got up and went and called mrs king because i was they've been next door to them and i called by his bed side i had that phone said hello jess how are you doing i said ms king i said um it's a long 10 steps to take from where he was to that phone uh dr came in shout out i think he's been shot in the show a little bit i think you should come i really couldn't say what i saw it was like too much to say like just couldn't say that i couldn't say that and she said i'll come and maybe i just well maybe a few minutes later ap calls he was dead and that's when a new dimension of our struggle took off determined at that time really led by reverend avenatti and joe lara's leadership took on another dimension we would not let one bullet kill a movement with the turn the pain and the power and a lot of stuff happened post his assassination uh that was burning in the streets but also the burning desire people to do some people who had never come next to hear him speak we've never been to a king rally the burning in the hearts was hotter than the burning in the streets frankly and now that came the gary convention that came elections all over the country out of that came a whole new dimension of politics in our country many ways from the balcony in memphis back in the white house 40 years in the wilderness was it as a non-stop moving lots of stuff happened in the i call it 40 years in the wilderness because it's so analogous to what happened with moses and 40 years in the world for 40 years leader kill red basket and marching and changing rules for the democratic invention 72 uh running for offices we've never run from before in the winning uh of the high degree of consciousness from collision negro to black power to african-american we were our minds were getting freed up and and the success of the 8048 campaigns with the broad base of coalition building and and the young have become maya and walt function become a congressman in the south and in washington wanted to see us kind of swelling up and so by oh wait i remember standing in grant park across from johnson publishing with mr john jones used to raise money for dr king and give dr king support where in in 68 there had been the the riots and tear gas and this in that same park uh barack obama is announced president boy tears came from everywhere commit my eyes because it was the moment and the and the memories the moment was that we won the big one we had one the big one we had one the big one and the new broadway representative as well because he's so smart and so able and you want to see evidence of that but what also made me i wish dr king a mega evers mrs parks really uh certainly a fan of hammer could have been there for a moment to just to see the fruit of their neighbors certainly world famous many of us because it was their night really and then the people who couldn't get that someone would injure a dead guy named cotton reader and james orange and others who have been injured along the way who may be unable to come to chicago couldn't get the big standing spots couldn't get this the common people made that that write the book possibly from the right to what was the crown jewel of our struggle and and that's why it's almost unattacked because the right to vote is the current rule of democracy and there's the the attempts to minimize undercut undercutting even today the protected right to vote in six days has been undermined tremendous about this administration uh and one of the one of the most anti-forces was led by sessions who said the right to vote wasn't impositioned on the south it was intrusion and he could not await he and the roberts court to in fact removed the protections from the south but all that stuff came in and post king here we are today with a different place because the roots of all this is mounted again junior we've already talked about the assassination um you went home to chicago uh right afterwards and you talk about the writing and what you're feeling that was we had the substantial movement of operation breadbasket in chicago after math 66 movement here for the first time blacks built chain store construction guys companies we begin to build churches for the first time build a stronger black middle glass we begin to leverage corporations to invest in the black community we had stores on the weekends to put their money's in the blind banks over the weekend mine is a cruise and so with a strong movement here and he had been here two weeks before and my family was here so when the shot took place when he came back from the funeral home the atlanta group went home they lived in atlanta i lived in chicago i came home to view my family our organization and so i woke up the next morning chuck preston was trying to give me senator perez to come by the house i was still landing my clothes when i went down to city hall i was so angry because the same force that was so hostile toward him some of the ministers and political leaders that they the forces that say he should go to him he had no place in chicago they were having having the drapes of the purple and gre purple and black drapes and i was mad as hell so you guys said here's hypocrites i could not i was trying to control my anguish with discipline it was hard to do and i left that afternoon back to atlanta but i came home first but there were explosions all over the country we were trying to turn you turn garbage into energy energy if you can discipline it so our point was don't just burn up where you live there's some of the areas we're burning out are still burned out these many years later turn your anger into votes turn your anger into boycotts turn your anger into opening school doors of the clothes because if you spend more than you have you get in debt you vote less than you have that's a formula for suicide if you if you spend less than you have and vote all you can that's the form of power so let's how do we discipline our power and make something happen that's big here and we began to finance our own campaigns i mean the basic money for harold washington's campaign came to black business committee in chicago the first one is that barack obama came from that same that same the king group was of 66 and 60 60 72 the al johnson booty john rogers parents that that that the king group put the first one even for president barack obama so there's a continuity between open housing marches and and chicago 66 and the white house and hawaii that's that's an unbroken line of and i think much of much of that has been left in the dark because many uh writers only put a footnote to his wreck in chicago my dad put it for the record there's a book written by dr deppy i read you should read the book modern deputy i'll give you a copy of it today because for some reason they want to say well montgomery was a success and bring me on success and if sam was in chicago he got had back daily it's not true in chicago we laid the groundwork to redefine the urban structure chicago is so big you can have a statement for the people at soldier field fire socks and cubs pog be fooled you don't miss anybody you know this is chica this is not a selma of birmingham uh uh or atlanta this is chicago and so we had to figure our way out how to navigate through this urban situation and build coalition that's why i say that the weapons are you have to be you have to have the right to vote you have to write use of your dollars your coalitions act and be mostly more in the right to all that stuff has to come together to make something happen so dr king's the barack victor is against the king victory dr king's side of history and we who were in that struggle would rightly become the joshua generation because joshua came under moses army he was the most of our time inside of that comes and andyong who becomes congress and goes to u.n uh that uh walter fallsville comes out who helps organize washington out of the west and then out of out of the aftermath the rainbow coalition comes to barack obama so the king is the most of our situation as king as joshua in this here we are today facing a stiff resistance a reaction to our progress uh unfortunately one built upon fear not built upon hope but he not he warned us of this he said you'll have these four movements forward and then fear will sit in and their reaction was set in you plant two seeds in the ground of equal strength and you water them both would you put a wall between them one will grow tall with multiples of fruit one will be short and stunted does not mean the smaller is less than under the others more than something called photosynthesis when they had the light could flourish and whites often have delight and they flourish not because they're better because they have photosynthesis or to put another way you you have a wall between you and on the other side of all this ignorance uh fear hatred and violence so you pull the walls and we can see each other we become teammates uh in on the football field we become teammates in the army we want to become teammates involving healthcare and jobs and justice that's a lot of that's why we choose bridges over walls so coming up to chicago how was mayor daley a different kind of opponent for king compared to the bill connors and how was that tactic a bull caller had a solid white confederate base it was white black society meodel had many more african-americans on his plantation ministers who were intimidated if they spoke out against him on sunday morning because some policy there was some precinct captain in the audience who would report them to the to the building commission that challenged the churches on monday morning churches wanted intimidation uh he controlled a political structure which had black leadership in this commitment and you know all of them but all on the if you want to become a judge you have to go through mayor daley uh police officer promotion had to go through mayor daley so he could hear the very controlled situation so the first time we ran into stiff black resistance where a group of blacks ministers had the press conference said we don't need drain to be here another guy i had the press on the west side said dog king should go to hell made all all the night in the news here you had a group of uh political leaders who were one of the churches big press conference why dr king was not needed in chicago we never met that in you know montgomery in birmingham or selma before that was different it's about the distinction between who was trapped in that machinery somewhere to free those in the machine to get them free too i should never forget one saturday afternoon since we began to buy the news and machine who's freed who's like gus sandwiches over here and and some of us over there and um hell washington sent for me he was saying he was still on the at the time south pogba which is not king drive at least but most of us had to have to explain why he was in the machine now but his father was a was a protester hare washington's father uh he learned how to work how he presented the machinery and his own only when he was fighting hera became someone who understood it in it didn't like it harold was a different kind of creature he knew enough of it kind of like moses moses understood the system negative because he grew up in it he didn't like it harold was kind of that guy with that duality of consciousness and so at some point in time either the emerges air washington who knows what makes the machine click and how to stop it from clicking uh one sunday morning on friday should i say uh dorothy um what's your name doris yeah throughout the tim and marin stamps and lou palmer were at the open open housing meeting uh and they were arrested beaten and arrested we went down to get them freed and then we still kind of become exhausted like what to do next this is such a big complex situation in chicago new york early and um i was on the radio program that sunday morning on bmx someone called said why don't you guys just boycott chicago fest that's just jane burns coronation you've done a lot to get her elected and she's she defied us turning back on us i wanted to say to him it's easy for you to say call the boycott it's hard to do yeah we're gonna have free hot dogs and beer and cokes uh stephen wonder's coming for free because the citizens are on the written cost of the concert so my mind said no but my my movement consciousness said but if you have the faith it can happen this is really faith versus mine so i couldn't put the person out there saying you don't understand i'll get back to you next week so that suddenly i asked reverend evans and he said go for it and joe garden and reverse group and leon finney and so about wins we had a meeting of this building and said enough is enough we just kind of west side side side and then north side and we started the boycott and so everybody had a different sign my assignment was to get the artist whom i worked with and expo not to cross eye picket line because the receiver wouldn't cross the picket line so they sued him stephen took the head of the suit when he wasn't across the picture every different artist wouldn't cross the picket line so after 10 days this thing had momentum harold came by one day harold said um this is successful i'm on my way back to washington i'm not gonna run for mia because i have a good job and i like my job at washington i'm not going to run because you have to you know you you you're the one with the right set of credentials sarah said and we wouldn't have the meeting i said well two or three things one if i were to run you have to put on 50 000 new voters i raised at least a quarter of a million hospital not promised to put on the table i have to build a coalition this is not just a black city i have to build a coalition because we take up on that in the wake of 10 days of a successful boycott of chicago affairs very successful a lot of press coverage every day media coverage all day the day the broadcast was successful the day of the blog got successful got successful so we had a meeting and they put on 400 000 new voters and raised a half million dollars led by mr mr ed gardner and and people of that era and so harold kind of was trapped in his own rhetoric so to speak but it was really part of his consciousness frankly for a long time right and out of that heroine but that that too comes out the same chicago consciousness because have we not had expo have we not known stephen the artist that couldn't have happened he would not have the presence of mind it couldn't have happened to all that stuff in the wilderness years that stuff like that happened i want to go back to the media response to king in chicago when he came when he when he when the movement moved up north it seemed like the first time that king was getting from northern uh news outlets and and 60 minutes since he was getting criticism um can you talk about that and his how did he feel about it well the media is strong the cultural and the media didn't believe that we had the capacity to take on the daily machinery they they had fallen uh pray to that and after all the day the machinery quote unquote delivered canada in 1960 the fact is on the congressman dawson and that district in chicago blacks that's what turned the key for canada but they they had the overall option he was the guy and it couldn't happen and when they didn't see any instant struggle these big cities a lot of instant gratification but a montgomery is a single issue bus boycott that cripples the city's transmission birmingham it cripples the downtown area and you have the tumultuous upbringing and we win because the human the the barbarism and the degradation of dogs biting people in the whole world sort and sell another one town so to speak but chicago was a big complex situation and says we finally got off the ground with red basket and unity in slums and the schools struggling open housing and then we met with daley and met with cardinal cody said well you didn't win anything in chicago we knew it was a long-distance run in chicago and the fact is the reason why we are just looking at the other post african-american presidents because of 1966 you could not have had 0-8 it's not had 68 in memphis and and 71 in it doesn't have all that stuff it was a kind of non-stop struggle from the one balcony to another back in the background memphis back in the white house um i was just thinking i'd read that the chicago tribune said that the king you and king threatening to march on cicero was uh they called a black male by martyrdom um you know how did you did you feel um that the media that that's not just chicago but the northern media was being unfair well you see the the sense that they knew if we marched as we marched and whites were erupting in ignorant volatile violence that we were winning though we were getting hit that nonviolence had the power to pull the the worst uh fever out of them and show our moral strength we were winning the losing they had they had to stick with the bible the they had the politics we have the morality of our cause if it by going into cicero it would just be whites would just go berserk but we wouldn't win they'll bloody well they were they they saw that and and no we did not we didn't mind dying for life we don't mind going to jail for life we put forth our courage and bodies on the line our bodies were like living sacrifices and so they said it was like we weren't modeling we wanted open housing and we finally got open housing and fire housing because of that um i want to talk a little bit about uh after the movement after the chicago um marches coming back the sclc andy young talks about how the sclc started to disintegrate a little bit and sort of internal strains on it how was what were those pressures like on sclc every time one of us would leave the core organization and go to another position we call it expanding our movement not disintegrating uh so when and at one time head of the king foundation human relations council in atlanta and the existence de facto executive director and ran for congress and one so sclc was going to congress and walter fontor and the young into congress so we were there long in that case uh i stayed in chicago and every time we went a victory over some corporate lockout that was the seoc was there uh then brendan lafayette would go on his journey as into nonviolent teaching in ct vivian so the core group expanded you know uh we didn't leave we expanded and uh and and there were children of the immediate household in other words in maxine waters de facto on staff but she was in california you know uh reverend h.h brooke's in california reverend tom kilgo in california uh all these the the the seed sown uh great harvest around the country indeed around the world so not only the harvest fruits in america but we led the drive to get mandala out of south africa same spirit we lit the drive to get i received back to haiti so the movement when i when i went to syria to get lieutenant robert goodman and the americans out of the rock and rock and cuba i was that was dr king we were still believing that we had the moral authority our struggle captured the imagination of people around the world right i was thinking about also how when um king came after came out against the war they talked about how a lot of the sclc funding outside funding sort of dried up and was that did that cause any pressures on you tremendous pressure so that's why our movement never accepted the regular salary competition for monies we we're making like 37.50 a week you know a lot of insurance somebody asked me one time to just how did you at age twenties five or twenty six get so close to dr king so quickly and that was w and that was bevel just a handful of you guys so well if you want to wreck for fifty dollars a week or less for no insurance on call to go to jail you might get shot there was no long line waiting to get in that in that line that was a short line of people willing to pay the price and and dr king felt kind of like the uh the coefficient of expansion once we came out we we swallowed up we would not go back we would not go back and so it really was the blood of the martyrs the that that redeemed us it was honor and suffering that was redemptive it really was the name this face these people i remind people on the sunday that the master placed in south alabama it was john lewis and jose who were known from the civil rights work mrs boynton who really invited dr king to come to selma uh the people the nameless faceless masses began to swell up believe that that that the no no stick could stop them there's no dog biting could stop them no grave would hold their body down we begin to believe that and by the power of that faith we change the course of the country i want to talk about the meeting in early house taylor branch talks about it being a retreat to figure out what the next moves might be and uh people talked about how you would you would just in terms of arguing about the fight for either operation breadbasket or vietnam hunger what the next moves were well the thing about those earlier house type strategy sessions we go to the penn center once a year in far more south carolina and think through what's next we had we had developed the audacity to believe we could change citizen change laws we believed we had the power uh the folks who got the right to vote didn't have the right to vote vocal open house they couldn't live in open housing we had values beyond our situation the people who made open housing don't live in country club hills you know those who got the right to vote for the most part didn't go to congress in the senate they made it possible to i do we were knocking down doors and and and creating space and building bridges we were construction workers we rebuilt the south and about uh memphis you talked about that meeting when you had the when you you all when he called you back into memphis after the um the like you go back a little bit to like how how king and as the staff reacted to the to the violence of the first march we felt the first march that the uh the the the gang group on the back of the march was a up it was a very successful march in terms of putting focus on the garbage workers with two or three people in there disgusting anger through rocks and some winters and all the press covered the rocks and not the garbage workers dr king is another case while violence does not work because violence sticks to oxygen not to take the focus on how accurate or inaccurate the rocks were but not focused on garbage brokers and collective bargaining and so but we knew that was a plan to get attention by them and it could have been even paid provocateurs we were not sure but we we took that so dr king king can't control his troops that's not true the the ministers and the garbage workers were watching lockstep without the king the rock throwers were coming from another angle so this whole thing about putting he can't control his troops in fact as he our troops were growing and our sense of focus was growing and and we went back into memphis again determined to have another march and that's what that the the rally and mason temple was the night before was all about that you talk about how frustrated he was at that point in his life and and you talk there's that incident where you were he was in his frustration he kind of cussed you out a little bit here's a little little um uh short review wednesday cuz we were arguing in that meeting bevel kept saying i kept saying dr king we go to washington and uh why not close those where is the stick so if we go to washington and and what i say is no and the congress says no where do we go do we go back home there was no answer that really i supposed to go to washington and and organize the massive walkers that came out of that conversation and while bev and i were arguing back and forth on the same page it was frustrating to him he said well jesse that's all right you'll be leaving one of you you'll understand one day he left we would've been insensitive to hit the state of his mind and pain at the time he said well come on and so we that was on saturday until we were all in memphis it was there was no falling out it was just an argument in the staff meeting about what did we do and so in the in the in the speech it makes until he referred to me in the speech he says and we also have put money in tri-state bank and and we'll also have development and we'll also what's that comedy jessica coca-cola carnation uh won the bread because that was in fact one of the tactics that was being used that came out of the sand des moines meeting so put that put in perspective was not he was frustrated he was full of pain and uh i understand that pain there as he said i live to see it sometimes you can be your mind you understand me and your mind is in many other places and staff here arguing about stuff this mundane compared to our arguments were comparatively mundane we were doing the best we could do with what we had we just didn't know any did you notice a big difference between the king you met when you began in selma and that king at the at the end well he had more attacks on his on his person classmates i i know martin martin shouldn't be doing this when he took the position against the vietnam war the longer the war machinery that came with him the pentagon but civil rights leadership he'll know he's doing they began to talk to the press on and off the press many of the churches closed doors don't come in my church talking about more stuff i mean going against the wall was counter culture that they ran around and we speak freely wars because of today's technology there are no more foreigners you you look at your gadget in real time you're looking at south africa in australia and new york in real time that was nothing never saw a cell phone today if i if you and i catch a plane one going to synagogue one going to l.a we get there by the same time this is our world was so different at that time so much i mean my parents talk about these foreigners who work with them these foreigners and they they can carry they can carry buckets on their heads and don't drop them they're from jamaica away but there are no more foreigners and so and in that sense dr king was expanding our world and so we were going to think we had the right to fight the free mandela that was our world i went down to uh peoria illinois a few weeks ago trying to get a guy who'd been in jail four to seven years apparently innocent and the press of why you're down here you're imperialist michael we could fight for mandela and pretoria we can fight for sea for cleve heidelberg and peoria we we're world citizens so find the rural citizens among people who've adjusted to their own little spot is is quite audacious can you um is there a memory of dr king when you think about that makes you smile and instead of personal some personal sort of interactions non-political just sort of human things about him that i remember staying in this house one night and you stayed in the community amongst the people and the next morning we had to get up and mrs king fixed a quick breakfast it was early in the morning and we had to get the airport in about 15 minutes before he had these security guards and he was a nascar driver i thought he would not make it to the airport he could drive you know he was driving you know we laughed and he get to pull the car in front of the airport and it's in the and and the skycap is going to get the gun we run the airplane gets a plane i mean he was that you know um one sunday morning he asked me to preach in his congregation before his congregation that's before i i had my i was even licensed to preach and i always teased was and the church was just packed to come hear him speak and he said now this morning one of my sons in the ministry will speak to us this morning and said only clayton said she had come all the way from california to hear him speak and i was getting up to speak that morning in albany's she kept giving us opportunities to grow and so so much of my relationship with him frankly uh he came in his shoulders to grow on and and in my men my mind i make certain moves now he's a frame of reference if i go to south africa if i go to try to get some captives free if i confront corporate america in a certain way if i'm arguing tv organ sometime i will i will sublimate my anger my anguish with discipline because i think he was he would have thought that way so he's uh in many ways in my heart he's also very much in my head and i learned to read what he read he read um love power and justice by paul telling he was that he was he was his phd was in systematic theology he read around neighbor nation destiny man and so i stayed fairly close to the books he read now of course i wish this generation would read whether we go from here uh i wish they would read the courage to be i wish they would read and understand that then around the random neighbors a nature destiny man i was to become aware with his book of sermons i mean he speaks to this generation clearly as if he's in yesterday's morning paper he speaks to us clearly his strategies his philosophy his worldview remain real today and what would you say finally to the people that missed that you know two who obvious most people are too young to have marched in selma to have marched in in chicago the work we have to do today what do you what's the work that we need to do those who lived today of the those who watch the sun in the football game they miss the process from monday to sunday to practice the preparation i hear some saying we are the joshua generation that's not accurate joshua came out of moses army moses died those who worked with him joshua won the battle of jericho and he was the minority reporting the spires who says who smiled at the land and joshua gained his strength on the moses and he took it this generation is the post joshua not post cain generation but there was they see the fruits of the labor the right to vote the right to play athletics on on the big stage every saturday and sunday afternoon uh the right to be flight attendants there had to be pilots even to check out clerks at the airport all that all that is post six to six this post-public accommodation is post the right to vote i remember when hatcher and stokes became mayors of cities they were national stars it was such a new deal i mean brandon became mayor of l.a because now you've got you're a senator from california you've been the mayor the longest-running state rep in california with willie brown so things we now take for granted in my lifetime it happened and so much it was a tribute to dr king's vision you know the mystery community but if you have ten thousand folks in march and unity on that person is in charge of their blind and the blind say that one other person is in charge he had vision sometimes the unity thing failed because of competing forces but the vision of of the power of non-violence the power of love power redemption power reconciliation power preparation king with the prince high school at 15. defense college of 19 seminar degree 22 phase 3 26 the power of preparation and and to be mostly moral on their right if you have no weapons and no money just be mar on the right is like a light in darkness and he in in his movements were changed he always carved out the moral high ground and that's what frustrated enemies what they talked about about we want to be modest in cicero didn't know that that in the rightness of our cause even death became a platform for the resurrection he survived the crucifixion now we live in the king resurrection the crucifixion took place in memphis and one thing we perhaps we do too much we focus you took him back to atlanta atlanta was bethlehem that's where he was born with calvary is a redemption jesus that jesus did not choose to be born in bedlam he chose to go to calvary the king did not choose people one another he children with the memphis and what is memphis except the delta of arkansas mississippi the poorest americans in appalachia his his his his calvary was it was in the pit of appalachian rights in arkansas and mississippi delta blacks and so just as we celebrate his birthplace in atlanta memphis must take on new meaning we will as a christian we're not saved by business we're saved by calvary and and the resurrection comes beyond calvary and sometimes it is memphis how we handle the poor of memphis and delta of arkansas and appalachian whites how we handle that valley right that determines the power of the resurrection that's the new american possibility

Channel: Life Stories

Views: 19,546

Keywords: Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson Interview, Martin Luther King Jr.'s, civil rights, jesse jackson chicago, jesse jackson mlk, jesse jackson dr. martin luther king, dr. martin luther king, reverend jesse jackson, rev. jesse jackson, jesse jackson biography, jesse jackson martin luther king, jesse jackson wealth, jesse jackson mother, jesse jackson father, jesse jackson family, jesse jackson protest, jesse jackson parkinson’s, jesse jackson assassination, Jesse jackson fbi

Id: COaIEBVc5-8

Length: 90min 3sec (5403 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 01 2018