And, This Is Where MAGA Got Their Playbook With Congressman Jim Clyburn
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per Minute
149.13637
Summary
On the same day that we learned of Jesse Jackson s passing, we talk about the history of the civil rights struggle, but also the story of Reconstruction, and whether or not we are entering into phase two of Jim Crow. Gavin Newsom sits down with Congressman Jim Clyburn.
Transcript
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I believe we got a job to preserve democracy. Well, I think we got the ticket a little step
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further. The majority of the people in this country are saying the country is on the wrong
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track. So we've got to show them that we will put this country back on track, making America's
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greatness accessible and affordable for all. So I just sat down with Congressman Jim Clyburn on
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the same day that we learned of Jesse Jackson's passing. We talk about Jesse Jackson, John Lewis,
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talk about the history of the civil rights struggle, but also the history of reconstruction
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and whether or not we are entering into phase two of Jim Crow. This is Gavin Newsom. And this is
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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
00:01:01.200
black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The
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Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit
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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,
00:01:22.860
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
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everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring
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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
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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
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their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the
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Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in
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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.
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Congressman, it's a pleasure to have you here, particularly here in Sacramento, in
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Ronald Reagan's old mansion, Earl Warren's old mansion. Yeah, well, Earl Warren is one of my favorites,
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as you can imagine. I have been the governor of California. And the interesting thing,
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when I first started studying politics, I remember studying a little bit about Earl Warren and
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happened to have had both the Democrat and Republican nominations. That made it kind of
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interesting. And growing up in a household, my parents were Republicans. Yeah. All members of
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the party of Lincoln. Yeah. And of course, I went over to college thinking maybe I was too.
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And I was having to be on that campus in the 1960 election between Richard Nixon and Robert F. Kennedy.
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It's the first time I really got to understand how politics can be so different, even within the
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household. I'll always believe my mother voted for Kennedy. Yeah. And I will always believe my father
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voted for Nixon. This is 1960. A lot of people don't realize it, but 28% of the African-American
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vote in 1960 went to Richard Nixon. It's interesting. And the big transition did not take place until
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1964, when the Civil Rights Act of 64 and then the Voting Rights Act of 65, those things drove
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Strom, Thurmond, and others out of the Democratic Party. And they took over the Republican Party
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that had been basically African-Americans. And so when people tell me about my colleagues on the
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other side of the aisle, you know, Abraham Lincoln this and Abraham Lincoln that, he did so much for
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African-Americans. I said, yeah, as the 16th president. But just remember, Rutherford B. Hayes
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was also a Republican. Yeah. And it was he who initiated the biggest double cross in African-American
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history when he brought an end to Reconstruction. Well, I want to talk about all of that and maybe
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reconstruct a little bit more about your history. And I love the little bit of history and the glimpse
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into your mom and dad. You know, all that history was made in South Carolina where you were born.
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And it's interesting today. A little bit of history has been marked by the loss of Jesse
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Jackson. Sure. Greenville, South Carolina. Jesse and I go back to high school. He was at Sterling
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High School in Greenville. Yeah. I graduated from Mather Academy in Camden. And we played against
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each other in football. I was nowhere near the football player that Jesse was. Jesse was an
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exceptional athlete. A lot of people don't realize that. Great quarterback.
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He was a three-letter. He was football, baseball, basketball as well, right? So he played all
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the sports. Well, he went away to college and a football scholarship. He went up to Illinois
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first. Yeah. And then from there, he went to North Carolina A&T. And I often say, and we
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used to talk about this a lot, that we were rivals in high school and we were rivals in
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college. Because North Carolina A&T and South Carolina State, where I went, we weren't particularly
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fond of each other when it came to sports. His mother was one of my biggest supporters.
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She really helped launch my political career. And so Jesse suffered a long time with the
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Parkinson's and other ancillary things. And there you look at this and talking with Jonathan,
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I know how that is, because I went through the same thing with my late wife.
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58 years we were married. And for 30 of those years, she battled diabetes.
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I love the story of the two. You guys met in jail.
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Emily, we had this big march. You know, the sit-in started on February 1, 1960, up in Greensboro,
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North Carolina. And on February 15, those of us at South Carolina State and Claflin University
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attempted to sit-in, but they had removed all the stools out of the SH crest there. So we went
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back to the campus and we started organizing. And we organized this big march that took place
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on March 15, 1960. And of course, we got arrested. Well, we filled up all the jails. And the jails
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could not, they had no room for people. They started herding all the students back to the
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campuses. Well, they got into the cafeteria to bring us food. And I'm sitting there in jail
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waiting to get bailed out. We had all been gathered in one spot to be bailed out. But they were kind
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of lax with everything else. And so those students who had gotten into the cafeteria brought some
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food to us at the jail. And Emily walked toward me with this hamburger in her hands. I really didn't
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know her at the time. I reached for the hamburger. She broke it in half. He had me a half hamburger.
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She hit the other half. I was so grateful for the half hamburger. I married her 18 months later.
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18 months later. How old were you at the time? How old were both of you?
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So it's interesting just going back. I mean, the march is another minor. I mean, so much of
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Jesse Jackson life is sort of, you know, the marches, the advocacy, you know, despite the runs
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for elected office, so much of his life and legacy is defined by what he did out of office.
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You chose a very different path. You chose to develop strategies from within. Was that intentional?
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Is that by design? Or was it just by happenstance?
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Well, you know, even back when I was doing sit-ins and stuff, for some strange reason,
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there was a little group that we called. There were seven of us. Four from South Carolina State,
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three from next door at Clapham. We were the so-called Arnsberg Seven. We were the leaders.
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And when we would meet, especially at Rallis, they always asked me to do the invocation.
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And whenever it came time to negotiate with authorities, I was always asked to lead those negotiations.
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Even the president of South Carolina State, when things got real bad and he refused to meet
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with the students, he agreed to meet with me. And they blessed that meeting. And so I sat down
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with the president. So it just got to be the point where people just said, you are our negotiator,
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you do this. And so that's what happened. And so I just developed that mantra. And so when it came
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to running for office, I didn't spend a whole lot of time yelling and raising the cane. I tried to find
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a way to create an atmosphere that allowed me to do a deal when one was possible. And so I do the same
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thing. Today, I give speeches. I try not to call names. I think it's insulting. I don't want to be insulted.
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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
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accept the fact that you need to think about what you just said or just did.
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You, we were talking right before we went on air a little bit about your dad. And we were talking
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about your time running the NAACP as a 12-year-old. And I asked the youth council.
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Youth council. But I mean, the idea that anybody's in a leadership position at 12 years old, I got it.
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I have a 12-year-old. She's remarkable. But it's, you know, that's a remarkable thing.
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And to me, what marked this question is how your father, who was a preacher,
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had certain expectations of a 12-year-old. That was a time of life. And you had to develop a state
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of mind of accountability, responsibility, leadership. Absolutely. Well, my dad used to
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preach as often from the Old Testament as he did from the New. And I developed his favorite
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scriptures because my dad had two rules in our house. Well, he had more than two. But two of the
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rules had to do with our studies. First one was every morning at breakfast, we had to recite a Bible
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verse. And you couldn't say the same one twice. And every evening before retiring to bed, we had to
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share with him and my mother a current event. And we didn't have television. But the newspaper was
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delivered to our house every afternoon. And we had to read that newspaper in order to really
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share current events. So I grew up doing that. And my dad had this thing about the age of
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responsibility. And that was 12. And that came from the story of Jesus assuming responsibility
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at the age of 12. I mean, that's what it was grounded in. So you grew up with that. And so
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here we are in the early 50s. And things were beginning to happen. Segregation being challenged.
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And activities that led up to the 1954 Supreme Court decision. We were involved in those things.
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And the people who started that in Clareland County, South Carolina, 23 miles away,
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Reverend J. Ada Lane, was a good friend of my dad. And so we just grew up in this stuff.
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And by the time I went away to college, I graduated high school at the age of 16. And I get to college,
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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
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day, March of 1960. We met in October. We started SNCC in May of 1960 on Shaw University.
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This campus in North Carolina. But the second meeting, the organizing meeting that took place
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on the campus of Morehouse College, those events just changed my life. In fact, that meeting
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with King was over a disagreement between the oldsters and the youngsters.
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Yeah. Well, King was preaching nonviolence, and all of us were practicing nonviolence. But
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King was also preaching disobeying unjust laws and paying the price for it. And we thought
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that he wasn't demonstrating enough leadership in that particular category. In fact, if you go
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back and check, a lot of people, I've laughed at the number of people who've checked this
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out. The big event that turned the 1960 presidential election, and I bet you've not heard this a minute
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about it because people, I don't think, really focus on this. In October of 1960, when we had
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that meeting, it was after that meeting on Morehouse College campus that King went to jail the following
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week in Georgia. And it was while he was in Georgia. Now, remember what was going on in 1960?
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You got a big presidential election going on between John F. Kennedy.
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And Richard Nixon. And this was October the 15th, three weeks before the election. That jail visit
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The infamous phone call from John F. Kennedy to Mrs. King.
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Against all kinds of advice, do not do it, sir. Do not do it.
00:16:02.480
There's been a lot of speculation, but to hear from you, that's really interesting.
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.
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Even afterwards, 28% of that vote still went to Richard Nixon.
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That Kennedy was willing to take a risk, do the right thing.
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And I'll always believe that in spite of what was done back in 1948, Harry Truman, what
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he did in 1948 when he integrated the armed services, when Franklin Roosevelt refused to
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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
00:17:05.440
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
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When the Democratic Party made the decision that you and many others have decided to amplify
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that we are going to be the party of democracy and dignity.
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And so these two D's are very important to people.
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And what was going on in the 60s as it relates to civil rights, what was going on with the Brown
00:17:59.840
v. Board of Education was a search for dignity.
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I want to come back to that, because I think it's powerful, and we don't talk about that
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Democracy, we should be talking as much more about, but dignity, not enough.
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But I want to go back just at the time, and forgive me, I want to also dignify your visit
00:18:22.520
I love meeting John Lewis, meeting Martin Luther King.
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I mean, so were they, for someone like me, sitting back, I mean, we think of these people
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in obviously and appropriately reverential terms as we do you, but as a living testament to that.
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But at the time, who were you, I mean, was it defined by, I mean, it was just situational?
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Did you have a sense of who you were with and becoming?
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Even when we were serving together in Congress, John said to me one day, he said, you know,
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I never dreamed that we would be here in this place.
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He was sitting near the back of the chamber one day, the House chamber,
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For some reason, John never had a really fine place to sit on the floor.
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John was always among people, most often on the outside of the aisle,
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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.
00:20:31.960
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?
00:21:45.880
And he understood that just intuitively on the basis of that experience?
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I mean, it's private, and I appreciate you dismiss it.
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?
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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.
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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.
00:23:08.280
Ended, I was thinking about praying for him, and that was 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.
00:23:43.240
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.
00:24:04.720
Because everybody knows what's going to happen, and you don't know exactly what to say.
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.
00:24:39.380
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.
00:24:58.440
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.
00:25:14.500
She was one of the biggest fundraisers for the NAACP.
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.
00:25:41.560
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.
00:25:51.960
And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
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Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.
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.
00:26:15.580
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated.
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.
00:26:44.860
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.
00:26:57.460
It echoes in today's world far more than it should.
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?
00:27:19.380
And if you can hear me, it's where culture meets the soul.
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Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life.
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We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope.
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Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore.
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If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you.
00:27:59.240
Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:28:12.500
During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead-up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games,
00:28:27.860
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?
00:28:59.180
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.
00:29:18.340
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.
00:29:53.540
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.
00:30:09.940
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.
00:30:27.940
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.
00:30:48.640
So the next morning, this is Wednesday after the election.
00:30:57.120
John Lewis had just gotten elected governor on that.
00:31:01.820
John West had just gotten elected governor that day.
00:31:06.380
And he was on his way to Kiowa, which back then was a hunting preserve.
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.
00:31:32.920
He told my wife, gave her his phone number and said, asked me to call him.
00:31:41.780
And he said, can you meet me in Columbia Monday morning?
00:31:48.540
And when I met with him, he said to me, we will not leave our wounded on the battlefield.
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.
00:32:14.780
He said, you know, if I were black with your talent, I'd be much more of the activist than you are.
00:32:29.940
And so I accepted the job and the rest is history.
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.
00:32:50.480
And that state agency, the State Human Affairs Commission, I became the commissioner of that.
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.
00:33:30.060
And we all met, in fact, Bennett Thompson, Bobby Scott from Virginia, Sanford Bishop from Georgia.
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.
00:34:08.220
Well, when the counting was over this time, I had 56% of the vote by my lonesome.
00:34:25.620
What was it when people said, why are you running for Congress?
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.
00:34:40.180
Making America's greatness accessible and affordable for all.
00:34:51.360
And my late wife insisted that every time I ran, she wanted to see billboards.
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.
00:35:28.780
Making America's greatness accessible and affordable for all.
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.
00:35:51.740
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?
00:36:16.100
In fact, if you look back and look at the so-called broadband bill that became this big thing.
00:36:27.340
Now, when I passed the House, it was $95 billion.
00:36:33.200
But the name of that bill is making broadband accessible and affordable for all.
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.
00:36:52.380
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.
00:37:13.960
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.
00:37:53.160
So, that's what I do with all this stuff, trying to do things in such a way.
00:38:00.300
If people say, oh, is that you're only focused on black people?
00:38:09.980
And if you look at that, two-thirds of the communists that fall into this category are represented by Republicans.
00:38:23.360
In Kentucky, for instance, they're going to be white throughout Appalachia.
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.
00:38:46.100
So, this is about targeting resources into communities of need.
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.
00:39:08.300
So, why do I care about two-thirds getting so long as we pick up communities of need?
00:39:17.400
It's all about using the resources we have in this country so that everybody.
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.
00:39:55.440
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.
00:40:14.000
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.
00:40:29.480
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.
00:41:12.900
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.
00:41:38.540
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?
00:42:55.200
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.
00:43:14.540
Jim Crow became the law of the land by an electoral college vote of 185 to 184.
00:43:40.120
Because when the voting was over and Tilden had 184, he needed 185.
00:43:50.000
And there were 20 disputed votes sitting in three states.
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.
00:44:30.620
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.
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.
00:45:12.260
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.
00:45:19.600
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.
00:45:57.680
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.
00:46:20.840
But you said something, and I hope everybody picked up on it.
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.
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.
00:47:08.800
You talk a lot about the contours of today, rewriting history, censoring historical facts.
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.
00:47:41.600
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?
00:48:13.260
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.
00:48:26.560
And so when you tell me about voter ID, and I say to people all the time,
00:48:35.740
Because the moment I present my registration card, as I always do when I vote, that is my ID.
00:48:47.120
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,
00:49:07.880
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
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.
00:49:46.160
These things, we just have to just call them out.
00:49:52.820
Let's talk about what ID you would have that you don't have to pay for.
00:50:03.420
Don't say to this senior citizen who's having a job making ends meet
00:50:11.020
that we're going to charge you another $150 to get an ID to vote.
00:50:19.880
So that's the kind of thing that we're talking about.
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.
00:50:51.200
But not only that, how many people go out, get married, and then square their married name
00:51:07.100
So that's what just past the House of Representatives now needs to get the 60 in the Senate.
00:51:15.280
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.
00:51:53.920
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?
00:52:08.040
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.
00:52:35.520
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.
00:52:55.240
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,
00:53:22.380
Institutions across this country, institutions of higher learning,
00:53:25.520
what's happening with DEI and the assault, just rank racism.
00:53:30.200
That's coming from the feed, the social media feed of the President of the United States,
00:53:42.280
No, I think you've demonstrated time and time again that you are outraged.
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,
00:54:20.980
That kind of thing can operate within democracy because you've got freedom of expression and all of that.
00:54:31.720
And if you remember, the President, even at the time he did it, he talked about that freedom.
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.
00:55:42.160
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.
00:56:48.580
And I can tell you, why is it an insult for a student, black or white, to learn that?
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.
00:57:05.020
I was talking to somebody and I forgot what came up.
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.
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.
00:57:50.300
Because it was, quote, unquote, too insensitive.
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?
00:58:07.960
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.
00:58:41.760
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.
00:59:09.460
And she says there's only two states that got that.
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.
00:59:42.820
Remember, there was one question that Trump asked in his first campaign, and he was talking to black folks when he did.
00:59:54.520
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.
01:00:12.380
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.
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.
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.
01:01:24.020
I mean, we're going to be successful this November.
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.
01:02:26.140
Dignity, affordability, accessibility, and the spirit of Isaiah, be repairers of the breach.
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?
01:02:50.700
This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B unpacks black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo.
01:02:59.440
The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race.
01:03:07.420
To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:03:16.120
You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty.
01:03:20.060
I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul.
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Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between.
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Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring it out.
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And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you.
01:03:39.620
Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:03:45.960
Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
01:04:25.660
And at Morehouse College, the students make their move.
01:04:28.440
These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson,
01:04:31.540
locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr.
01:04:36.700
It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget.
01:04:43.900
Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.