This is Gavin Newsom - And, This Is Where MAGA Got Their Playbook With Congressman Jim Clyburn

00:00:00.000 I believe we got a job to preserve democracy. Well, I think we got the ticket a little step

00:00:06.080 further. The majority of the people in this country are saying the country is on the wrong

00:00:09.460 track. So we've got to show them that we will put this country back on track, making America's

00:00:15.460 greatness accessible and affordable for all. So I just sat down with Congressman Jim Clyburn on

00:00:21.700 the same day that we learned of Jesse Jackson's passing. We talk about Jesse Jackson, John Lewis,

00:00:26.540 talk about the history of the civil rights struggle, but also the history of reconstruction

00:00:30.940 and whether or not we are entering into phase two of Jim Crow. This is Gavin Newsom. And this is

00:00:41.280 Congressman Jim Clyburn. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Over the last couple of years,

00:00:51.740 didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama?

00:00:56.540 Montgomery Braw. This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B unpacks 0.94

00:01:01.200 black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The

00:01:06.320 Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit

00:01:11.020 discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective

00:01:16.460 Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:01:21.320 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:22.860 You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is

00:01:28.760 where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and

00:01:35.020 everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring

00:01:41.580 it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you.

00:01:45.900 Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:52.600 I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings Podcast,

00:01:58.720 in the lead-up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our

00:02:04.000 friends. Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter

00:02:12.160 Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears.

00:02:17.940 Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:02:27.740 1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse College, the students make

00:02:34.360 their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the

00:02:39.520 Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in

00:02:45.600 Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to

00:02:51.260 The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:02:57.580 Congressman, it's a pleasure to have you here, particularly here in Sacramento, in

00:03:00.720 Ronald Reagan's old mansion, Earl Warren's old mansion. Yeah, well, Earl Warren is one of my favorites,

00:03:06.940 as you can imagine. I have been the governor of California. And the interesting thing,

00:03:13.940 when I first started studying politics, I remember studying a little bit about Earl Warren and

00:03:18.860 happened to have had both the Democrat and Republican nominations. That made it kind of

00:03:23.960 interesting. And growing up in a household, my parents were Republicans. Yeah. All members of

00:03:30.000 the party of Lincoln. Yeah. And of course, I went over to college thinking maybe I was too.

00:03:35.820 And I was having to be on that campus in the 1960 election between Richard Nixon and Robert F. Kennedy.

00:03:45.560 It's the first time I really got to understand how politics can be so different, even within the

00:03:53.280 household. I'll always believe my mother voted for Kennedy. Yeah. And I will always believe my father

00:04:00.780 voted for Nixon. This is 1960. A lot of people don't realize it, but 28% of the African-American

00:04:08.220 vote in 1960 went to Richard Nixon. It's interesting. And the big transition did not take place until

00:04:17.020 1964, when the Civil Rights Act of 64 and then the Voting Rights Act of 65, those things drove

00:04:26.280 Strom, Thurmond, and others out of the Democratic Party. And they took over the Republican Party

00:04:35.660 that had been basically African-Americans. And so when people tell me about my colleagues on the

00:04:43.200 other side of the aisle, you know, Abraham Lincoln this and Abraham Lincoln that, he did so much for

00:04:50.060 African-Americans. I said, yeah, as the 16th president. But just remember, Rutherford B. Hayes

00:04:54.840 was also a Republican. Yeah. And it was he who initiated the biggest double cross in African-American 0.98

00:05:02.740 history when he brought an end to Reconstruction. Well, I want to talk about all of that and maybe

00:05:09.140 reconstruct a little bit more about your history. And I love the little bit of history and the glimpse

00:05:13.080 into your mom and dad. You know, all that history was made in South Carolina where you were born.

00:05:18.480 And it's interesting today. A little bit of history has been marked by the loss of Jesse

00:05:24.500 Jackson. Sure. Greenville, South Carolina. Jesse and I go back to high school. He was at Sterling

00:05:31.980 High School in Greenville. Yeah. I graduated from Mather Academy in Camden. And we played against

00:05:38.160 each other in football. I was nowhere near the football player that Jesse was. Jesse was an

00:05:45.420 exceptional athlete. A lot of people don't realize that. Great quarterback.

00:05:50.660 He was a three-letter. He was football, baseball, basketball as well, right? So he played all

00:05:54.200 the sports. Well, he went away to college and a football scholarship. He went up to Illinois

00:05:58.280 first. Yeah. And then from there, he went to North Carolina A&T. And I often say, and we

00:06:07.060 used to talk about this a lot, that we were rivals in high school and we were rivals in

00:06:14.180 college. Because North Carolina A&T and South Carolina State, where I went, we weren't particularly

00:06:21.400 fond of each other when it came to sports. His mother was one of my biggest supporters.

00:06:28.840 She really helped launch my political career. And so Jesse suffered a long time with the

00:06:37.020 Parkinson's and other ancillary things. And there you look at this and talking with Jonathan,

00:06:44.580 I know how that is, because I went through the same thing with my late wife.

00:06:48.740 You were married 58 years.

00:06:49.960 58 years we were married. And for 30 of those years, she battled diabetes.

00:06:56.180 I love the story of the two. You guys met in jail.

00:06:58.920 In jail, yeah.

00:06:59.940 True story, huh?

00:07:00.900 True story. True story.

00:07:02.480 What were you both doing in jail?

00:07:04.600 March 15, 1960.

00:07:11.040 Emily, we had this big march. You know, the sit-in started on February 1, 1960, up in Greensboro,

00:07:19.020 North Carolina. And on February 15, those of us at South Carolina State and Claflin University

00:07:24.940 attempted to sit-in, but they had removed all the stools out of the SH crest there. So we went

00:07:32.060 back to the campus and we started organizing. And we organized this big march that took place

00:07:37.560 on March 15, 1960. And of course, we got arrested. Well, we filled up all the jails. And the jails

00:07:48.120 could not, they had no room for people. They started herding all the students back to the

00:07:52.580 campuses. Well, they got into the cafeteria to bring us food. And I'm sitting there in jail

00:07:58.700 waiting to get bailed out. We had all been gathered in one spot to be bailed out. But they were kind

00:08:05.240 of lax with everything else. And so those students who had gotten into the cafeteria brought some

00:08:10.380 food to us at the jail. And Emily walked toward me with this hamburger in her hands. I really didn't

00:08:16.540 know her at the time. I reached for the hamburger. She broke it in half. He had me a half hamburger.

00:08:22.180 She hit the other half. I was so grateful for the half hamburger. I married her 18 months later.

00:08:26.840 18 months later. How old were you at the time? How old were both of you?

00:08:30.240 We got married. I was 20.

00:08:31.940 20?

00:08:32.200 Yeah. And she was 21.

00:08:34.400 Okay. Well, that's respectful.

00:08:36.140 Oh, yeah.

00:08:36.660 I mean, respectful.

00:08:37.800 Yeah. She always said that she was a cougar. 1.00

00:08:41.900 She was.

00:08:44.940 So it's interesting just going back. I mean, the march is another minor. I mean, so much of

00:08:50.320 Jesse Jackson life is sort of, you know, the marches, the advocacy, you know, despite the runs

00:09:00.260 for elected office, so much of his life and legacy is defined by what he did out of office.

00:09:06.320 You chose a very different path. You chose to develop strategies from within. Was that intentional?

00:09:14.520 Is that by design? Or was it just by happenstance?

00:09:17.760 Well, you know, even back when I was doing sit-ins and stuff, for some strange reason,

00:09:23.640 there was a little group that we called. There were seven of us. Four from South Carolina State,

00:09:28.760 three from next door at Clapham. We were the so-called Arnsberg Seven. We were the leaders.

00:09:35.680 Right.

00:09:36.080 And when we would meet, especially at Rallis, they always asked me to do the invocation.

00:09:45.240 And whenever it came time to negotiate with authorities, I was always asked to lead those negotiations.

00:09:54.360 Even the president of South Carolina State, when things got real bad and he refused to meet

00:10:02.940 with the students, he agreed to meet with me. And they blessed that meeting. And so I sat down

00:10:13.080 with the president. So it just got to be the point where people just said, you are our negotiator,

00:10:19.200 you do this. And so that's what happened. And so I just developed that mantra. And so when it came

00:10:25.180 to running for office, I didn't spend a whole lot of time yelling and raising the cane. I tried to find

00:10:33.520 a way to create an atmosphere that allowed me to do a deal when one was possible. And so I do the same

00:10:44.400 thing. Today, I give speeches. I try not to call names. I think it's insulting. I don't want to be insulted.

00:10:56.780 So I try not to insult others. I do try to make my point. But I try to do it in such a way that you will

00:11:06.340 accept the fact that you need to think about what you just said or just did.

00:11:10.680 You, we were talking right before we went on air a little bit about your dad. And we were talking

00:11:15.740 about your time running the NAACP as a 12-year-old. And I asked the youth council.

00:11:21.560 Youth council. But I mean, the idea that anybody's in a leadership position at 12 years old, I got it.

00:11:26.220 I have a 12-year-old. She's remarkable. But it's, you know, that's a remarkable thing.

00:11:30.200 And to me, what marked this question is how your father, who was a preacher,

00:11:37.360 had certain expectations of a 12-year-old. That was a time of life. And you had to develop a state

00:11:43.140 of mind of accountability, responsibility, leadership. Absolutely. Well, my dad used to

00:11:47.900 preach as often from the Old Testament as he did from the New. And I developed his favorite

00:11:53.840 scriptures because my dad had two rules in our house. Well, he had more than two. But two of the

00:12:00.920 rules had to do with our studies. First one was every morning at breakfast, we had to recite a Bible

00:12:10.540 verse. And you couldn't say the same one twice. And every evening before retiring to bed, we had to

00:12:18.740 share with him and my mother a current event. And we didn't have television. But the newspaper was

00:12:26.300 delivered to our house every afternoon. And we had to read that newspaper in order to really

00:12:32.660 share current events. So I grew up doing that. And my dad had this thing about the age of

00:12:40.900 responsibility. And that was 12. And that came from the story of Jesus assuming responsibility

00:12:51.480 at the age of 12. I mean, that's what it was grounded in. So you grew up with that. And so

00:12:57.300 here we are in the early 50s. And things were beginning to happen. Segregation being challenged.

00:13:07.740 And activities that led up to the 1954 Supreme Court decision. We were involved in those things.

00:13:13.920 And the people who started that in Clareland County, South Carolina, 23 miles away,

00:13:21.280 Reverend J. Ada Lane, was a good friend of my dad. And so we just grew up in this stuff.

00:13:31.140 And by the time I went away to college, I graduated high school at the age of 16. And I get to college,

00:13:37.860 college. And all of a sudden, things began to happen on college campuses. So here I was,

00:13:43.720 19 years old. John Lewis and I met as 19-year-old college students. We were both in the Student

00:13:50.840 Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, commonly called SNCC. I met him and Martin Luther King Jr. on the same

00:13:58.180 day, March of 1960. We met in October. We started SNCC in May of 1960 on Shaw University.

00:14:07.860 This campus in North Carolina. But the second meeting, the organizing meeting that took place

00:14:13.400 on the campus of Morehouse College, those events just changed my life. In fact, that meeting

00:14:22.180 with King was over a disagreement between the oldsters and the youngsters.

00:14:29.260 Uh-huh.

00:14:31.600 Define that. Oldsters versus the youngsters? 0.78

00:14:34.000 Yeah. Well, King was preaching nonviolence, and all of us were practicing nonviolence. But

00:14:40.920 King was also preaching disobeying unjust laws and paying the price for it. And we thought

00:14:47.060 that he wasn't demonstrating enough leadership in that particular category. In fact, if you go

00:14:52.400 back and check, a lot of people, I've laughed at the number of people who've checked this

00:14:56.960 out. The big event that turned the 1960 presidential election, and I bet you've not heard this a minute

00:15:07.200 about it because people, I don't think, really focus on this. In October of 1960, when we had

00:15:14.720 that meeting, it was after that meeting on Morehouse College campus that King went to jail the following

00:15:22.760 week in Georgia. And it was while he was in Georgia. Now, remember what was going on in 1960?

00:15:29.480 You got a big presidential election going on between John F. Kennedy.

00:15:32.180 Yes.

00:15:32.460 And Richard Nixon. And this was October the 15th, three weeks before the election. That jail visit

00:15:42.420 prompted a phone call.

00:15:44.120 The phone call.

00:15:45.160 That's right.

00:15:45.680 The phone call. The infamous phone call.

00:15:47.460 The infamous phone call from John F. Kennedy to Mrs. King.

00:15:54.000 Against all kinds of advice, do not do it, sir. Do not do it.

00:15:57.900 Absolutely.

00:15:58.600 That changed that election.

00:16:00.840 Do you really feel that?

00:16:02.280 Absolutely.

00:16:02.480 There's been a lot of speculation, but to hear from you, that's really interesting.

00:16:04.980 Absolutely. It changed that election.

00:16:06.580 I tell people all the time, going into that election, if you look at the polling, Richard

00:16:11.960 Nixon was getting a majority of the black vote.

00:16:13.820 Yeah.

00:16:14.400 Even afterwards, 28% of that vote still went to Richard Nixon.

00:16:19.780 But it sent a message.

00:16:21.200 It sent a message.

00:16:21.720 That Kennedy was willing to take a risk, do the right thing.

00:16:24.360 And I'll always believe that in spite of what was done back in 1948, Harry Truman, what

00:16:35.060 he did in 1948 when he integrated the armed services, when Franklin Roosevelt refused to

00:16:41.420 do so, it was Truman was the first president to address the National Convention of the NAACP.

00:16:50.420 Those movements on this part, it was Truman who introduced the first resolution to create civil

00:17:01.480 rights committees to look at this stuff.

00:17:05.440 That started in 1948, but it all culminated with Lyndon Johnson's election of 1964.

00:17:14.820 That's when Thurman took his second exit from the Democratic Party, and that's when all of

00:17:25.380 the shift began to take place.

00:17:28.280 When the Democratic Party made the decision that you and many others have decided to amplify

00:17:36.980 that we are going to be the party of democracy and dignity.

00:17:41.760 And so these two D's are very important to people.

00:17:47.700 There's one thing to talk about democracy.

00:17:51.220 There's something else to talk about dignity.

00:17:53.800 And what was going on in the 60s as it relates to civil rights, what was going on with the Brown 1.00

00:17:59.840 v. Board of Education was a search for dignity.

00:18:03.160 I want to come back to that, because I think it's powerful, and we don't talk about that

00:18:10.780 enough.

00:18:11.200 Democracy, we should be talking as much more about, but dignity, not enough.

00:18:16.340 But I want to go back just at the time, and forgive me, I want to also dignify your visit

00:18:20.440 a little bit by trying to understand.

00:18:22.520 I love meeting John Lewis, meeting Martin Luther King.

00:18:26.380 You're contemporary of all these folks.

00:18:28.980 Jesse Jackson, all these folks.

00:18:30.500 I mean, so were they, for someone like me, sitting back, I mean, we think of these people

00:18:35.520 in obviously and appropriately reverential terms as we do you, but as a living testament to that.

00:18:41.520 But at the time, who were you, I mean, was it defined by, I mean, it was just situational?

00:18:48.320 Did you have a sense of who you were with and becoming?

00:18:52.800 Was there an expectation?

00:18:54.440 I mean, was John Lewis John Lewis then?

00:18:57.580 Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King then?

00:18:59.460 No, no.

00:19:01.200 I mean, we knew King was special.

00:19:03.000 Yeah.

00:19:03.340 There's no question about that.

00:19:04.780 And we treated him that way.

00:19:08.560 A lot of us knew that John Lewis was special.

00:19:10.520 John Lewis internalized King's teachings.

00:19:15.380 A lot of us practiced it.

00:19:17.060 I was one of those who practiced nonviolence.

00:19:19.680 I never lived nonviolence as John did.

00:19:23.900 Even when we were serving together in Congress, John said to me one day, he said, you know,

00:19:30.380 I never dreamed that we would be here in this place.

00:19:35.500 He was sitting near the back of the chamber one day, the House chamber,

00:19:39.320 when he talked about that.

00:19:41.280 And it's kind of interesting.

00:19:42.420 For some reason, John never had a really fine place to sit on the floor.

00:19:48.320 I did and still do.

00:19:50.540 People know where to find me on the floor.

00:19:53.140 John was always among people, most often on the outside of the aisle,

00:19:58.000 but there was nothing unusual for him to sit down with somebody on the other side of the aisle.

00:20:03.100 And so John and I had this friendship that a lot of people in Congress did not really know about.

00:20:14.800 And it's kind of interesting, same age, where he was a few months older.

00:20:19.780 And we both married librarians.

00:20:22.120 Lillian was a librarian.

00:20:25.180 And Lillian and Emily became fast friends.

00:20:28.500 Nice.

00:20:28.660 And John and I talked often.

00:20:31.960 In fact, I spoke with him just a few hours before he passed away.

00:20:39.340 The night or the late afternoon that he was going to leave, go home, he knew he wasn't coming back.

00:20:48.260 He called me to the back of the chamber one day.

00:20:51.360 We said, to that day, he said to me, I said, never forget this.

00:20:56.720 He said, you know, I'm afraid that what is taking place here today is reminiscent of what happened to us with burn, baby, burn.

00:21:11.220 He said, defund the police is going to do to our party, what burn, baby, burn did to our movement.

00:21:20.800 And in so many words, he said to me, we should not let that happen.

00:21:25.960 And a lot of people asked when I made a public statement that defund the police was not in the best interest of our party.

00:21:39.040 And a lot of people asked me, why did I do that?

00:21:43.860 John asked me to.

00:21:45.880 And he understood that just intuitively on the basis of that experience?

00:21:49.600 Yes.

00:21:50.260 What was it?

00:21:50.920 May I ask?

00:21:51.640 I can't help.

00:21:53.500 I mean, it's private, and I appreciate you dismiss it.

00:21:57.820 You've talked to him right before he passed.

00:22:00.020 What was that conversation like?

00:22:02.120 Well, it was more me talking to him.

00:22:04.220 Yeah.

00:22:04.460 Because a rumor had gotten out that John had passed away, and I just couldn't believe it.

00:22:10.960 So I called my chief of staff, and I said to him, I said, yeah, baby, I've gotten several calls saying John had passed away.

00:22:16.880 I said, have you heard anything from Michael, his chief?

00:22:20.640 He says, no, that can't be true.

00:22:23.640 I said, call Michael and check on the former.

00:22:26.340 So he did, and he called me back.

00:22:29.280 He said, no, I'll just talk to Michael.

00:22:31.080 John has not passed away.

00:22:33.200 I said something about, okay.

00:22:35.360 He said, well, Michael wants you to call him.

00:22:38.940 So I called Michael, and I told him what I had heard.

00:22:43.780 I said, please tell John that I'm thinking about him, praying for him.

00:22:49.860 He said, well, he's awake.

00:22:53.880 Why don't you tell him?

00:22:56.680 And that's what it was.

00:22:58.120 So he put the phone next to his ear in the ceiling, and I could barely hear him, but I just told him how much I loved him.

00:23:07.360 Yeah.

00:23:08.280 Ended, I was thinking about praying for him, and that was it.

00:23:10.840 So it was me, really talking to him.

00:23:13.120 I love it.

00:23:14.460 When was the last time you talked to Jesse Jackson?

00:23:16.180 You know, Jesse called me, but Jesse, a couple weeks ago, and I talked to Jonathan a whole lot about it, and Jesse's body guy is the son of one of my classmates from college.

00:23:35.160 John was my classmate.

00:23:36.660 John's son is Jesse's body guy right now.

00:23:43.240 Now, he called me last week, and I tried to call him back, and I did not get him, but I talked with Jonathan, and Jonathan spent a lot of time in South Carolina, and so we kind of just chatted about his dad.

00:24:01.960 But, you know, you don't get too deep in those things.

00:24:04.220 No, right.

00:24:04.720 Because everybody knows what's going to happen, and you don't know exactly what to say.

00:24:11.240 Your dad was proud that you got into politics?

00:24:15.140 I think so.

00:24:15.880 I know my mother was.

00:24:16.720 My mother was extremely proud.

00:24:18.400 My dad was more reticent about politics than my mother, but he was conflicted when we got in the sit-ins.

00:24:29.420 My dad was not too sure about those sit-ins.

00:24:33.860 Worried about your safety?

00:24:35.280 Worried that it was going too far?

00:24:37.000 Worried?

00:24:37.720 Well, he was more old school.

00:24:39.380 I think my dad would probably never say it, but I do believe that he had accepted the separation of the races the way my mother never did.

00:24:53.440 And so I was always there.

00:24:58.440 He never opposed anything I was doing, so he was supportive of what we were doing.

00:25:03.480 But in the conversations, my two brothers and I knew that he wasn't all that excited about what we were doing.

00:25:13.700 My mother was.

00:25:14.500 She was one of the biggest fundraisers for the NAACP. 0.99

00:25:18.040 It was the biggest in our hometown.

00:25:20.280 And she became the first NAACP woman of the year back when they started real serious fundraising.

00:25:30.240 She was the woman of the year, more because of how much money she was raising.

00:25:35.140 It had nothing to do with being anything else.

00:25:39.380 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

00:25:41.560 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.

00:25:45.720 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:25:48.860 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:25:50.680 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:25:51.960 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

00:25:55.640 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.

00:25:59.200 All at different stages of their journey.

00:26:01.400 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:26:04.620 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:26:09.980 Welcome to the A-Building.

00:26:11.500 I'm Hans Charles.

00:26:12.620 I'm Menelik Lumumba.

00:26:13.560 It's 1969.

00:26:15.580 Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated.

00:26:19.280 And Black America was at a breaking point.

00:26:21.640 Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale.

00:26:25.380 In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest.

00:26:31.360 It featured two prominent figures in Black history.

00:26:34.600 Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

00:26:38.920 To be in what we really thought was a revolution.

00:26:43.580 I mean, people were dying.

00:26:44.860 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

00:26:49.100 The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

00:26:55.440 This story is about protest.

00:26:57.460 It echoes in today's world far more than it should.

00:27:00.600 And it will blow your mind.

00:27:01.740 Listen to the A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:27:12.800 What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you?

00:27:18.220 I'm Ben Higgins.

00:27:19.380 And if you can hear me, it's where culture meets the soul.

00:27:22.580 A place for real conversation.

00:27:25.080 Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life.

00:27:28.960 Celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks.

00:27:30.940 And we go deeper than the polished story.

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00:27:38.740 We get honest about the big stuff.

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00:27:59.240 Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:28:06.620 I'm Bowen Yang.

00:28:11.640 And I'm Matt Rogers.

00:28:12.500 During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead-up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games,

00:28:20.120 we've been joined by some of our friends.

00:28:22.140 Hi, Bowen.

00:28:22.760 Hi, Matt.

00:28:23.520 Hey, Elmo.

00:28:25.120 Hey, Matt.

00:28:25.740 Hey, Bowen.

00:28:26.560 Hi, Cookie. 0.58

00:28:27.560 Hi.

00:28:27.860 Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears.

00:28:35.800 Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:28:41.280 You were, before you were in politics, you were someone else.

00:28:48.120 You were not only in the NWSAP yourself, in junior capacity at 12 years old, but then you went on, you were a teacher.

00:28:54.720 And I love, by the way, I'm going to get to your book.

00:28:56.680 I love that it begins with two of your students, right?

00:28:59.080 Yeah.

00:28:59.180 I mean, the foreword, which is wonderful on so many levels.

00:29:03.500 But then you were also, you know, an activist of sorts in terms of just youth organizations and economic empowerment and the like.

00:29:10.020 But you got into politics, by the way, of the governor working in the governor's office.

00:29:15.000 Yeah.

00:29:15.160 Tell us a little bit about that.

00:29:16.240 Well, I ran for office in 1970.

00:29:18.340 I ran for the state legislature and was declared a winner at around 10 o'clock in the evening at this big celebration.

00:29:27.060 And around 3.30 the next morning, I got this visit from a TV reporter who said, you better get down to the courthouse.

00:29:34.120 I just left the courthouse and something's going wrong with this count.

00:29:37.820 My wife and I were down there and sure enough, they told me, rather than being a 500-vote winner, I was a 500-vote loser.

00:29:45.640 Somebody adding up the votes forgot to carry a one.

00:29:50.460 Okay.

00:29:51.120 And so that was a verdict.

00:29:53.540 And so when I got in my office that day, I got this phone call from a reporter.

00:29:59.980 Never shall forget Barbara Williams, who won't become the editor of the Charleston Post and Courier.

00:30:06.120 So Barbara asked me what happened.

00:30:09.940 And for the life of me, I cannot put it on anything but a background, what I was taught.

00:30:18.400 And something Emily said to me earlier that year.

00:30:25.720 And she asked me what happened.

00:30:27.940 I says, it looks like I didn't get enough votes.

00:30:32.500 And she says, oh, Clyburn, you know what everybody is saying.

00:30:36.780 What do you think really happened?

00:30:39.920 I says, I should have gotten some more votes.

00:30:45.680 I didn't get enough.

00:30:48.640 So the next morning, this is Wednesday after the election.

00:30:52.140 Thursday morning, newspapers come out.

00:30:54.500 I didn't get enough votes, in quotes.

00:30:57.120 John Lewis had just gotten elected governor on that.

00:31:00.420 I mean, John West.

00:31:01.380 Yeah, West.

00:31:01.820 John West had just gotten elected governor that day.

00:31:04.740 So same ballot.

00:31:05.560 Interesting.

00:31:06.200 Yeah.

00:31:06.380 And he was on his way to Kiowa, which back then was a hunting preserve.

00:31:15.040 Nothing like votes but today.

00:31:17.600 And he was going out there to R&R with friends.

00:31:23.740 And he stopped in Charleston and picked up a newspaper when he saw that and called my house.

00:31:28.820 And I wasn't at home.

00:31:32.920 He told my wife, gave her his phone number and said, asked me to call him.

00:31:39.160 So I called him.

00:31:41.780 And he said, can you meet me in Columbia Monday morning?

00:31:45.200 This is Thursday.

00:31:47.420 And I said, I think I can.

00:31:48.540 And when I met with him, he said to me, we will not leave our wounded on the battlefield.

00:31:56.900 Ah, come on.

00:31:58.920 I want you to consider coming working for me.

00:32:00.660 That's too good.

00:32:01.740 And so I said to him, I said, well, governor, I don't think so.

00:32:06.020 I said, you know, I'm a little too much of the activist to be in your office.

00:32:12.480 And he looked at me and said these words.

00:32:14.780 He said, you know, if I were black with your talent, I'd be much more of the activist than you are. 0.75

00:32:26.900 And he kind of shamed me. 0.70

00:32:29.940 And so I accepted the job and the rest is history.

00:32:33.380 You were how old then?

00:32:34.980 I was 30 years old.

00:32:36.420 30 years old.

00:32:37.100 And you were there for how many years in the governor's office?

00:32:39.520 Oh, I was there for three years and about 10 months.

00:32:42.900 Three years, 10 months.

00:32:43.700 What happened three years and 11 months?

00:32:46.140 He named me to run the state agency.

00:32:50.480 And that state agency, the State Human Affairs Commission, I became the commissioner of that.

00:32:56.800 And I was there for almost 18 years.

00:33:00.140 I retired from state government from that job to run for Congress.

00:33:05.420 And, of course, it was that year that we had this big shift in the South.

00:33:14.460 It was the year that John Lewis got elected.

00:33:17.380 We didn't have anybody elected from Florida.

00:33:20.280 There was one from Georgia.

00:33:22.060 No blacks elected from North Carolina.

00:33:25.380 And this is in 1992, the election.

00:33:27.340 It was in that election.

00:33:30.060 And we all met, in fact, Bennett Thompson, Bobby Scott from Virginia, Sanford Bishop from Georgia.

00:33:39.080 We were all in that class.

00:33:40.320 Yeah.

00:33:40.760 Wow.

00:33:40.960 And there were five of us running in South Carolina.

00:33:45.140 And I was told that I had no chance to win, that there were two state senators running.

00:33:54.680 And all four of the candidates, other candidates, were elected officials.

00:34:04.900 And one of them would certainly win.

00:34:08.220 Well, when the counting was over this time, I had 56% of the vote by my lonesome.

00:34:16.820 And the other four, she had 44%.

00:34:20.920 Do you remember the campaign?

00:34:22.520 Do you remember the why?

00:34:23.540 What was the motivation?

00:34:24.880 What was the issue?

00:34:25.620 What was it when people said, why are you running for Congress?

00:34:29.360 Do you remember?

00:34:29.800 Well, I have always said in more ways than one, but I've got it all boiled down to one bumper sticker.

00:34:37.840 It was really a billboard.

00:34:40.180 Making America's greatness accessible and affordable for all.

00:34:47.460 That's been the theme.

00:34:50.040 From the beginning.

00:34:50.720 From the beginning.

00:34:51.360 And my late wife insisted that every time I ran, she wanted to see billboards.

00:34:59.240 She said, I don't care how many TV ads you do.

00:35:02.020 I don't care how many radio ads you do.

00:35:03.960 I want to see billboards.

00:35:06.420 That's exactly right.

00:35:07.420 Because she wanted to what?

00:35:08.420 You to distill the essence of the why?

00:35:10.860 Well, you know, I've asked her.

00:35:13.260 She didn't, for some reason, I don't think she felt that a political campaign should be, she's a librarian, remember?

00:35:22.840 So all this newfangled stuff, she wanted people driving down the highway.

00:35:27.120 That misses.

00:35:28.780 Making America's greatness accessible and affordable for all.

00:35:32.740 And that was on the billboard.

00:35:34.620 Yes.

00:35:35.440 It's still on my billboards.

00:35:36.460 But it's, I mean, even if it was a different reason, I mean, I love that.

00:35:40.760 I mean, she wanted to see it, but it also forced you.

00:35:43.500 Forced me.

00:35:44.320 To distill.

00:35:45.260 That's exactly right.

00:35:46.380 Yeah.

00:35:46.960 And that's almost everything.

00:35:49.960 Everything.

00:35:50.780 It's focused on that.

00:35:51.740 Everybody says, you know, I'm on the Appropriations Committee.

00:35:55.120 And it says, and I am the ranking member on transportation and HUD.

00:35:59.940 And my whole thing is, what can I do in this account to make transportation more accessible and affordable?

00:36:11.760 To make housing more accessible and affordable?

00:36:14.240 I love it.

00:36:16.100 In fact, if you look back and look at the so-called broadband bill that became this big thing.

00:36:23.180 It was $65 billion or so, I recall.

00:36:25.200 $65 billion.

00:36:26.320 Yeah.

00:36:27.340 Now, when I passed the House, it was $95 billion.

00:36:30.220 Okay.

00:36:30.740 The Senate cut it to $65 billion.

00:36:33.200 But the name of that bill is making broadband accessible and affordable for all.

00:36:41.400 I love it.

00:36:42.340 I put it on everything I can.

00:36:43.700 You know, I've got this other thing that a lot of people are enamored with that I call 10-20-30.

00:36:51.440 Yep.

00:36:52.380 And that is, let's say, that we classify counters in this country based on what we call persistent poverty counters.

00:37:02.800 And about 500, maybe we're between 460 and 500 counters every time the census come out.

00:37:09.660 They classify these counters as persistent poverty counters.

00:37:13.700 Yep.

00:37:13.960 And so, I've always maintained, and I've gathered in 17 appropriations accounts, something I call 10-20-30.

00:37:22.200 And then they say, a county is considered to be in persistent poverty when 20% or more of the population are stuck between the poverty level for 30 years.

00:37:35.740 And so, I say, we ought to target at least 10% of all the money in this account into those counters.

00:37:44.860 So, 10% of the money should go over 20% or more of the population that have been stuck for 30 years.

00:37:51.400 So, in the poverty level for 30 years.

00:37:53.160 So, that's what I do with all this stuff, trying to do things in such a way.

00:37:58.100 And I'll tell you something else.

00:38:00.300 If people say, oh, is that you're only focused on black people?

00:38:05.660 Well, 20% of them are the population.

00:38:08.820 I'm going to say the black population.

00:38:09.980 And if you look at that, two-thirds of the communists that fall into this category are represented by Republicans. 0.71

00:38:20.580 And they ain't black. 0.91

00:38:23.360 In Kentucky, for instance, they're going to be white throughout Appalachia. 0.85

00:38:28.600 If you're in Alaska, there could be Native Americans.

00:38:34.780 If you're in New Mexico, there could be Hispanic.

00:38:40.280 You're in California.

00:38:41.640 I mean, yeah, white and Hispanic.

00:38:44.060 Absolutely.

00:38:44.620 Yep.

00:38:45.180 Absolutely.

00:38:46.100 So, this is about targeting resources into communities of need.

00:38:53.700 And I emphasize all of that.

00:38:55.400 And the fact that you're picking up only a third of them happen to be African-American, so what?

00:39:03.800 That one-third would not get attention if we didn't do it.

00:39:07.940 There you go.

00:39:08.300 So, why do I care about two-thirds getting so long as we pick up communities of need?

00:39:14.900 So, there's nothing about that.

00:39:16.800 There's racial.

00:39:17.400 It's all about using the resources we have in this country so that everybody.

00:39:21.940 Think about this.

00:39:22.660 Because when the FCC used to classify broadband coverage, they did it by census tracts.

00:39:33.620 And if one residence in a community had broadband, the entire census tract would be considered as covered.

00:39:43.340 Now, the reason I was so insulted by that, my daughter was on the FCC, so she's the one that first schooled me to this, because I didn't know about this.

00:39:53.180 She thought it was a real insult.

00:39:55.440 And her thing was, Daddy, we down there living where all these plantations were, I mean, the big house gets connected.

00:40:03.520 All the little houses around it ain't got no connection, but according to the FCC, that entire census tract is connected.

00:40:11.920 So, that's the kind of stuff.

00:40:14.000 We've had these kinds of things going on in government for a long time.

00:40:18.240 And so, that's why we need to focus people's attention on what this means.

00:40:24.660 So, why would you ignore the census tract?

00:40:27.060 It's covered.

00:40:27.900 Well, I compare it to why it's covered.

00:40:29.480 Well, that leaves me focusing a little bit more on this book, which, by the way, I loved and is what a history lesson and what a reminder.

00:40:43.060 But history of the lens, not only your personal biography, a little bit memoir in history, and you bring it to light, particularly in the epilogue about where we are today, and it connects a little bit of that dot.

00:40:52.620 But also through South Carolina and just Reconstruction, a little bit earlier than some had maybe believed.

00:41:00.420 But I want to just make a deeper point, and that is many people believe, and you write about this in your book, that you were the first black representative when you were elected in 92 and sworn in 1993.

00:41:10.780 That was not the case.

00:41:12.900 And in so many ways, it inspired you writing this book.

00:41:16.320 That's what made me start the writing of the book.

00:41:19.860 But when I got halfway through it, I thought I was halfway, 2020 election came about, the reaction to that election, and the phone call down to Georgia, fine me 11,780 votes.

00:41:34.820 Yep, yep.

00:41:35.240 But I saw what was going on.

00:41:38.540 I saw that the attempt was being made to treat the 2020 election the way the 1876 election was treated.

00:41:48.260 And it was that 1876 election and the aftermath that led to the end of the careers of these eight African Americans, as well as all other African Americans throughout the South.

00:42:01.700 And led to the fact that there are 95 years between number eight and yours truly number nine.

00:42:10.080 And so, and then what I emphasize in this book, and what I wish people would get from this book, is the importance of respecting history.

00:42:23.860 Because you must know that anything that's happened before can happen again.

00:42:32.080 How many times have we heard people refer to the student movement of the 1960s as being the second reconstruction?

00:42:41.360 The only way you're going to have a second reconstruction is for the first one to come to an end.

00:42:45.840 And so the first reconstruction can come to an end.

00:42:48.760 Why not the second reconstruction come to an end?

00:42:51.040 And that's what I think is underway.

00:42:55.200 And so the book is about saying to people, be careful of this.

00:42:58.240 And then remember, there was no big wave over the country that led to the ending of reconstruction.

00:43:06.780 Reconstruction came to an end by a vote of eight to seven.

00:43:11.540 One vote brought an end to reconstruction.

00:43:14.540 Jim Crow became the law of the land by an electoral college vote of 185 to 184. 0.56

00:43:27.040 The difference was one vote.

00:43:31.060 Samuel Tilden had 184.

00:43:35.180 Brother B. Hayes had 185.

00:43:36.980 Why did that happen?

00:43:40.120 Because when the voting was over and Tilden had 184, he needed 185.

00:43:46.140 Brother B. Hayes had 165.

00:43:50.000 And there were 20 disputed votes sitting in three states.

00:43:55.080 Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

00:43:58.200 And when the House of Representatives couldn't figure out what to do, they appointed a 15-member commission to study the issue, meet with the candidates, and make a recommendation.

00:44:10.020 That 15-member commission voted eight to seven to give those 20 votes to Hayes.

00:44:15.180 Why?

00:44:15.900 Because Hayes told them, give me these votes.

00:44:20.860 I'll bring an end to the reconstruction.

00:44:22.880 That's what you want in Florida.

00:44:24.320 That's what you want in Louisiana.

00:44:25.940 That's what you want in South Carolina.

00:44:27.380 They gave him the 20 votes.

00:44:28.880 He brought an end to reconstruction.

00:44:30.620 One month after he was sworn in, he removed all the troops from the South and allowed Jim Crow to become the law of the land. 0.87

00:44:39.980 And that lasted for nearly 100 years.

00:44:43.820 You write about, it's interesting, you write briefly about what you just said, that you were in the process, I think, in the introduction, where you talk about him two years into this book.

00:44:53.460 And all of a sudden, you're reflecting on January 6th as well, your own personal experience in relation to that, not just what happened down with the Secretary of State in Georgia.

00:45:02.020 You reflect as you were getting sworn in, or not just sworn in, but as you spent your time in the Capitol, that there was no reference to reigning the first African-American.

00:45:11.240 There's nothing you can find.

00:45:12.260 And so you started, you know, to apply even before you were at the book years and years ago, you said a lot of respect.

00:45:18.480 Absolutely.

00:45:18.980 To these respects.

00:45:19.600 You started to put their, especially when you became a majority leader, you had a little bit more power in that respect.

00:45:24.180 You said, let's start to celebrate these folks.

00:45:26.640 Yeah, yeah, I introduced a resolution to put a portrait of Rainey in the Capitol building, and we were successful in doing that.

00:45:36.980 And then on this 150th anniversary of him having been sworn in, he was sworn into the House of Representatives on December 12th, 1870.

00:45:48.580 And so on the 150th year, we put up another resolution to have a room in the Capitol named in his honor.

00:45:57.260 Nice.

00:45:57.680 And so on the first floor of the Capitol, room 150 is the name for Joseph Rainey.

00:46:04.240 So, you know, I spent a lot of time with trying to make history, I think, rhymes on its own.

00:46:11.540 But sometimes I try to strike up a tune that helped the rhythm a little bit.

00:46:19.080 And that's one of the things I've done.

00:46:20.840 But you said something, and I hope everybody picked up on it.

00:46:24.760 I'm going to amplify it a little bit more.

00:46:26.040 You know, when Reconstruction ended, and you can argue the sort of traditional prism, 1865 went to 1877, and then the establishment of these Jim Crow laws and poll taxes.

00:46:39.360 I mean, the voter registration issues, not just ID issues.

00:46:44.640 And we can get to that a little bit with the SAVE Act.

00:46:46.840 And it goes to this point you made, and the question I want to offer.

00:46:51.460 You talked about the second Reconstruction potentially coming to an end. 0.92

00:46:56.400 And I mean, do you feel like we're in that moment today in vivid terms?

00:47:01.580 I mean, you talk about the red shirts becoming the red hats.

00:47:06.340 You talk about, you know, Redeemer Democrats. 0.60

00:47:08.800 You talk a lot about the contours of today, rewriting history, censoring historical facts.

00:47:14.760 You reference CRT, DEI.

00:47:17.460 I'll add ESG and, you know, all the anti-woke, which seems to me pretty much anti-black.

00:47:23.080 So one thing it has in common, so much of that rhetoric.

00:47:25.500 I mean, how concerned are you?

00:47:28.920 Very much so.

00:47:29.760 The moment we're in.

00:47:30.760 Absolutely.

00:47:31.120 Do you think it's hyperbolic?

00:47:32.580 Do you think we're overstating?

00:47:34.800 Or do you feel like this is?

00:47:36.640 No way.

00:47:37.440 God bless.

00:47:38.380 It's not hyperbolic to say it.

00:47:41.600 We are in the throes of turning the clock back.

00:47:46.900 And you mentioned voter registration and voter ID.

00:47:52.740 And we've seen the House has passed a law on voter ID.

00:47:56.760 I want somebody to explain to me, why is it when these states, they put the stuff in,

00:48:04.440 why is it when they started talking about what forms of ID would be accepted?

00:48:10.820 Yep.

00:48:11.140 And a hunting license.

00:48:12.860 Thank you.

00:48:13.260 Your picture on a hunting license will be accepted as ID.

00:48:19.260 But your picture on a student activity card will not be accepted.

00:48:24.320 Somebody explain that to me.

00:48:26.560 And so when you tell me about voter ID, and I say to people all the time,

00:48:30.620 they try to twist this around.

00:48:32.320 I have never voted when I did not ID myself.

00:48:35.740 Because the moment I present my registration card, as I always do when I vote, that is my ID.

00:48:43.840 So now you're saying, that's not good enough.

00:48:47.120 It's been good enough for all these years, but not good enough now.

00:48:49.720 And so when you come out with all of these forms of ID, it's where the problem is.

00:48:54.260 And so I'm telling people all the time, don't tell me because I object to this law that they're trying to pass,

00:49:01.620 that I'm against ID.

00:49:03.460 I am not against IDing yourself to vote.

00:49:07.880 I am against your telling me that the ID that I'm more apt to have in my possession will be no good,

00:49:17.780 but the ID that someone else had, like a hunting license.

00:49:24.600 And you compare the number of black people with a hunting license 1.00

00:49:28.120 as opposed to white people with a hunting license, how many black people.

00:49:33.680 But these things that white people possess, who travel, who use various IDs for travel, okay. 0.80

00:49:46.160 These things, we just have to just call them out.

00:49:50.160 So no, that's not what this is.

00:49:52.820 Let's talk about what ID you would have that you don't have to pay for.

00:50:01.000 Don't put a poll tax on this.

00:50:03.420 Don't say to this senior citizen who's having a job making ends meet 1.00

00:50:11.020 that we're going to charge you another $150 to get an ID to vote.

00:50:17.900 That's a poll tax, it seems to me.

00:50:19.880 So that's the kind of thing that we're talking about.

00:50:22.520 And that happens over and over again.

00:50:24.860 And there are other forms of ID that we've seen discussed and nobody wants to talk about it.

00:50:29.300 And, of course, we're not talking about the other aspects of the SAVE Act that go well beyond ID,

00:50:34.100 and it goes to the, I mean, which is also part of Jim Crow, the history,

00:50:38.320 and that is when it comes to registration, you've got to find your birth certificate.

00:50:41.480 If you know where yours is, I have no clue where mine is.

00:50:44.180 Or you have to passport, and two-thirds African-Americans don't even have passports. 0.97

00:50:49.080 Passport, I was blocking on just then.

00:50:51.200 But not only that, how many people go out, get married, and then square their married name

00:51:01.740 with their birth certificate?

00:51:03.680 And that would be thrown out under that law.

00:51:05.660 Under that law.

00:51:06.560 Yeah.

00:51:07.100 So that's what just past the House of Representatives now needs to get the 60 in the Senate.

00:51:11.900 So I like what Schumer said, dead on arrival.

00:51:14.820 Absolutely.

00:51:15.280 But what's not dead is we have arrived in a moment in time

00:51:19.080 where there's so much other vandalism that's going on that's so reminiscent

00:51:21.940 of what happened after Reconstruction as it relates to Voting Rights Act,

00:51:26.080 Civil Rights Act, issues related to trying to turn back the clock

00:51:29.120 in mid-decade redistricting, rigging the gerrymandering,

00:51:33.680 which is, again, ubiquitous in your book as well.

00:51:39.320 And I'll ask people to remember, at the time, most of what this book is about,

00:51:43.660 in South Carolina, over 60% of the population was African-American.

00:51:50.020 Yeah, it's remarkable, isn't it?

00:51:51.340 Absolutely.

00:51:52.020 6-0.

00:51:52.540 And I don't mean just that.

00:51:53.920 And the same thing when it came to registered voters.

00:51:58.260 How is it then that you have seven congresspeople and only one?

00:52:06.760 That's what it is now.

00:52:08.040 But at the end of this period of time, there were seven African-American,

00:52:15.840 seven congresspeople in South Carolina on the one district.

00:52:22.900 They called it the Shoestring District because it was drawn in such a way

00:52:27.620 that all the black people were in that one district and the other six were white.

00:52:34.340 And that's what it is today.

00:52:35.520 I was telling my staff after reading this book, a lot of the history I vaguely remember,

00:52:44.220 but you were able to connect dots and tell your own personal history to this

00:52:48.400 and really distill the essence of how South Carolina played such an outside role in all this.

00:52:52.560 And I said, I preferred not to read it.

00:52:54.620 And they said, why?

00:52:55.240 I said, my blood is boiling and even hotter than it was six hours ago.

00:53:02.380 Ignorance allows me to get through the day sleeping.

00:53:05.520 I mean, but I mean that, you know, I feel like, you know, my own complicity this moment

00:53:11.060 that we're not doing enough, that we're not calling this out.

00:53:13.400 How in the hell is this happening at the kind of scale?

00:53:16.580 I mean, when we talk about rewriting history and sensing historical facts,

00:53:20.260 it's quite literally happening.

00:53:22.380 Institutions across this country, institutions of higher learning,

00:53:25.520 what's happening with DEI and the assault, just rank racism.

00:53:29.600 Yeah.

00:53:30.200 That's coming from the feed, the social media feed of the President of the United States,

00:53:34.240 just recently what he did to the Obamas.

00:53:37.340 Absolutely.

00:53:38.160 It's a disgrace.

00:53:39.040 You know, I have-

00:53:40.020 But tell me why I shouldn't be more outraged.

00:53:42.280 No, I think you've demonstrated time and time again that you are outraged.

00:53:47.040 Not enough.

00:53:47.900 That you can't let it go.

00:53:50.840 I know a lot of people say, and remember, it's one thing to augur for democracy.

00:53:57.060 It's something else again to augur for dignity.

00:54:01.720 And I think you have to look at what is happening today and saying,

00:54:09.100 where is the dignity in the Obama's depiction?

00:54:18.420 Where is the dignity in that?

00:54:20.980 That kind of thing can operate within democracy because you've got freedom of expression and all of that.

00:54:30.100 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:30.540 And you can stress this.

00:54:31.720 And if you remember, the President, even at the time he did it, he talked about that freedom.

00:54:38.300 Yeah.

00:54:39.220 That being the First Amendment freedom.

00:54:41.240 And it may be.

00:54:43.000 But where is the dignity?

00:54:44.940 And so I think that it's one thing to have democracy is something else to have dignity.

00:54:53.260 And I think that the dignity and respect that we need to have within this democracy is something we need to talk about more.

00:55:02.600 And so I say to my Democratic friends, I believe we've got a job to preserve democracy.

00:55:10.940 But I think we've got to take it a little step further.

00:55:15.460 And that is to talk about the dignity and respect that must exist within this democracy that we hold near India.

00:55:24.920 And I see what is happening time and time again today is the lowering of the dignity standards that used to be important to this country and needs to come back.

00:55:38.940 You know, I've been saying this all over.

00:55:42.160 I don't know if I said it to the students earlier today, but I was down in Atlanta on Sunday and met with a lot of college students.

00:55:51.500 And I said to them, you know, when I was a student, I learned in my history classes that Thomas Edison was the greatest American inventor of all time in large measure because he invented the light bulb.

00:56:11.840 However, what I did not get in my history books was the fact that Thomas Edison couldn't get that light bulb to work until he got Lewis Latimer's filament put in that light bulb.

00:56:25.560 Lewis Latimer came up with the filament, the son of former slaves who discovered the filament.

00:56:33.980 And it was when Thomas Edison had enough maturity to step outside of his comfort zone and sit down with this black guy, Lewis Latimer.

00:56:45.800 That's what made his light bulb work.

00:56:48.580 And I can tell you, why is it an insult for a student, black or white, to learn that?

00:56:54.880 So why is that not in our textbooks?

00:56:57.240 So I think that what we have to do is call people out on this because I'm amazed at the number of people.

00:57:03.160 And I walked through other things.

00:57:05.020 I was talking to somebody and I forgot what came up.

00:57:08.240 And I says, yeah, we were able to do that.

00:57:10.720 They were talking about soldiers in the battlefield because Charles Drew discovered the way to refrigerate blood and serum.

00:57:18.180 Well, this person had never heard of Charles Drew, but they knew about blood transfusions.

00:57:23.820 And so we don't have any problems putting things in the textbooks that make white students proud. 0.88

00:57:33.160 But there's a problem.

00:57:35.580 We're putting stuff in textbooks that would make black students proud.

00:57:39.400 I mean, Congressman, you remember it was just a few years ago that there was a social studies book in Florida that they rewrote under the Anti-Woke Act.

00:57:47.060 And they removed Rosa Parks' race. 0.69

00:57:49.580 Absolutely.

00:57:50.300 Because it was, quote, unquote, too insensitive.

00:57:52.100 That's exactly right.

00:57:53.760 That happened.

00:57:54.700 Yeah.

00:57:55.180 That's happened.

00:57:55.800 And only because of the blowback and the outrage of that major national publisher that was threatened by other states, did they back off?

00:58:06.080 It's kind of interesting you bring up Florida.

00:58:07.960 Frederica Wilson, a congresswoman from Florida.

00:58:11.100 I was on a Zoom, a virtual meeting with her the other day, and she brought up the same thing you just brought up.

00:58:21.360 And she mentioned there's only two states in the union that made study of black history mandatory in our schools.

00:58:33.380 And South Carolina was one of them.

00:58:35.120 And I had never really thought about it.

00:58:36.840 And I remember how that happened.

00:58:39.200 It was to settle a lawsuit.

00:58:41.760 And I happened to be on the committee that was appointed by Dick Riley to come up with some ways that he could go to the courts and get the lawsuit settled.

00:58:58.240 And I was on that committee and happened to be one of the people that that was one of the things we put in that settlement.

00:59:05.440 They put black history in our schools.

00:59:09.460 And she says there's only two states that got that.

00:59:12.240 I got to check on that.

00:59:13.720 I don't know if that's true or not.

00:59:15.220 But that's what she said.

00:59:16.400 This was just a week or so ago.

00:59:18.640 I love it.

00:59:19.240 Well, we don't have much more time.

00:59:21.620 And I'd regret if we didn't just quickly jump into, yeah, you mentioned the 28% black support that Nixon received.

00:59:31.740 Donald Trump wasn't that far behind.

00:59:34.360 Right.

00:59:35.180 No, he wasn't that far behind.

00:59:37.140 What the hell happened?

00:59:38.880 Is that on us?

00:59:40.340 Yes.

00:59:40.840 That's on us, Democrats.

00:59:41.760 Yes.

00:59:42.640 Yeah.

00:59:42.820 Remember, there was one question that Trump asked in his first campaign, and he was talking to black folks when he did.

00:59:51.000 What do you have to lose?

00:59:54.520 Now, a lot of people had trouble answering that question.

01:00:00.520 I have never had trouble answering that question.

01:00:04.760 And I think that we've seen enough today to know exactly what you've had to lose.

01:00:11.920 Well said.

01:00:12.380 And so what we've got to do is, and that's why I keep hopping on dignity and respect, because he got a big portion of the African-American vote, mostly African-American men, simply because of that little word of dignity. 0.77

01:00:32.400 Maybe those two words, and respect.

01:00:34.740 And when you run a campaign, and no matter what, people of color say, you tell me you know more about this, because of your algorithms or whatever you're using, rather than the lived experiences. 0.71

01:00:53.740 And I think that's what has happened in all too many instances, and I think that's what has happened in all too many instances.

01:01:05.400 I think that's what has happened in all too many instances, especially at the last election, and I think we won't be making that mistake again.

01:01:20.460 What advice going forward?

01:01:24.020 I mean, we're going to be successful this November.

01:01:26.440 What does a Hakeem Jeffries mean to you?

01:01:28.640 I mean, it would be a historic moment.

01:01:30.420 It would be historic, because I think what it would mean is that sensitivity and sensibilities will be brought back into the process.

01:01:41.600 Not so much because it is Hakeem Jeffries, but because it is a party that he represents, that offers to this country affordability and accessibility, and offers to this country dignity and respect, and will define for the country exactly what you've got to lose

01:02:07.640 if you've got to lose if you do not change the direction you're going in.

01:02:12.620 But the majority of the people in this country are saying the country is on the wrong track.

01:02:16.240 So we've got to show them that we will put this country back on track, the right track.

01:02:24.000 Well, that's a great way to end.

01:02:26.140 Dignity, affordability, accessibility, and the spirit of Isaiah, be repairers of the breach.

01:02:34.640 Repairs of the breach.

01:02:35.900 Congressman, it's great to have you here.

01:02:37.120 Thank you so much for having me.

01:02:43.100 Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama?

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