Black Nouveau

- So, I wanna first apologize.

I grew up in the South.

We honor the way we present ourselves.

And my luggage did not arrive.

So I arrived without my luggage, without my makeup, without my shoes, without my suit.

So this is the way I'm dressed, so please forgive me.

I have on snow boots.

I'm so sorry.

I apologize.

- That's okay.

- Thank you.

(crowd applauding) Well, Uncle Martin would not say it's okay.

(crowd laughing) He just wouldn't.

And it's good to be back in Milwaukee.

I came here when I was a high school student.

I was a senior, and I came here to study the Menominee Indians.

I stayed with a United Methodist minister and his family for a week and went to my first powwow.

And the avenues were the largest that I had ever seen, which blew my mind.

And the cold was staggering.

And I had just left Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

But it's just phenomenal to be back here.

All I can think of is Uncle Martin said these words a few minutes ago, "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future, behind the dim unknown, standeth God in the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

There's a higher power that's watching where we are today.

Uncle Martin taught me that.

My Daddy taught me that.

My mother taught me that.

How close do I need to be to advance it?

I want to make it move forward.

I guess I got to move closer.

Just point where?

- Closer to here.

- Closer to here.

Okay.

So, the holiday that we celebrate was Daddy's idea and how he wanted to honor Uncle Martin.

So he took it to Congressman John Conyers and he took it to Senator Ed Brooke of Massachusetts, and then they lobbied for the creation.

And Congressman Clay wrote a book.

And in his book, he said, "And when they passed it into law, they paused, and they thanked my dad."

So what he did was he flooded the halls of the Russell Building and the Cannon Building in Washington, DC with letters.

Because back then, people wrote letters and they had the letter bags.

And they flooded the hallways with petitions and letters for people calling for the holiday.

And the holiday was a day when we all come together, we honor a man who stood up for justice, for freedom.

Because what you all need to understand is, and perhaps I'm older than most of you in the room, but I am the great granddaughter of slaves.

So, slavery wasn't that long ago.

I know you have a lot of young people in the room, but it really wasn't.

And unfortunately, it could happen again.

I need you to help me again.

Why is it not moving?

I'm pushing it.

Is it that you're... He has moist fingers.

(crowd laughing) and I have dry fingers.

- You try again.

- Wait a minute, those are my guys.

That's my Daddy, and that's Uncle Martin.

They were my men.

No, it doesn't work with me.

It really... Open the thing.

And let me just push the thing.

Let me just push like right here, right?

- See, it works for me.

- Oh, okay, let me just push.

There you go.

I got it.

- All right.

- I got it.

- [Audience Member] All right.

- Anyway, that's who they are, Daddy and Uncle Martin.

And so, yeah, my dad was a soldier and he graduated from high school when he was 16.

Uncle Martin graduated when he was 15.

And Daddy was drafted into the war and developed rheumatic fever when they were in the European Theater.

And David was his real name.

He just signed in as Ralph when he was enrolled.

And what happened was, because he developed rheumatic fever when they were leaving France and went to England, they put him in the hospital there in England and they shipped the rest of the Black soldiers off to the islands off of the coast of Japan where everybody was killed.

My dad said that they died defending American democracy, yet would've been denied the right to come back to the United States of America and enjoy that same democracy that they had fought and died for.

And because my dad survived and one of the soldiers survived, he had something called survivor's remorse.

The same thing he would have when he lost Uncle Martin.

And therefore, he decided to dedicate his life to a noble cause.

And so that's Uncle Martin.

And I told you I wasn't gonna tell the story, and I'm not gonna tell the story.

They met because they dated the same girl.

(crowd laughing) And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

But Uncle Martin was an undergraduate student, and my dad was getting his master's at Atlanta University.

And also my dad was invited to hear Uncle Martin preach his first sermon.

And at the end of the sermon, you know, the pastor stands at the back of the door and you shake everybody's hand.

And there must have been a carpet, I'm not quite sure, but there was electricity between them.

And then they were like, "Oh, wow, okay."

And, yeah.

And then came the girl.

And so that's Daddy being a pastor, Uncle Martin being a pastor.

And they believed that they were called by God to do something honorable in their lives, and they were.

And this is Uncle Martin in Crozer Theological Seminary.

And there he is in the middle.

And you see how he... He had this inner light inside of him.

Some of us are average people, but Uncle Martin was sort of special.

He had that something, something so that when he would come into a room, you just automatically turned and you looked at him because of the way he was.

And he wasn't trying to be, you know, famous or great or anything.

In his world, he would've been a philosopher and a teacher of philosophy.

But, you know, when God calls you, you have to answer.

But here he is at Crozer Theological Seminary.

And then all of a sudden, he and Daddy are reconnected in Montgomery, Alabama.

And I can't tell you that story, but Dr.

Vernon Johns, a pastor of Dexter Avenue, brought 'em all together.

And Dr.

Johns was telling Uncle Martin what he wasn't ready for, but because it was the days of segregation, Uncle Martin had driven Dr.

Johns.

And so he drove into my parents' house and Uncle Martin came up the walk.

And my dad said, he looked out and he saw in the light, he was like, "Oh my God, Martin, my friend, has come to my door."

And they came in and they sat down and they broke bread 'cause my mother made an incredible, you know, food because that's what my mother could do.

And they talked about the crisis of the negroes in Montgomery, Alabama.

And then the following morning, Uncle Martin was nervous.

Really nervous.

And he called my dad, who was the first Black pastor on the radio.

First Black man on the radio.

And Uncle Martin said, "I'm scared."

And Daddy said, "Now, listen.

What I need you to do, I need you to get down on your knees and I'm gonna get down on my knees, and we're gonna pray."

And my dad could pray.

And that's what he did.

He prayed and he prayed and he lifted Uncle Martin up.

He said, "Now I need you to go forward and get accepted as the pastor of Dexter Avenue."

Now, simultaneously, Dr.

Johns, the former pastor, was preaching that morning at my dad's church at First Baptist.

And Dr.

Johns was my dad's mentor.

But Dr.

Johns was old man and Daddy wanted Uncle Martin, and he gave him what he needed to do.

And even though the majority of the members were over at First Baptist to hear Dr.

Johns, Uncle Martin was so on fire, they offered it to him, and he accepted.

And then they're together.

See, there?

They are down in front, you know, 'cause they were spiritual men.

They were great preachers.

Anyway, that women that came afterwards, that's Aunt Coretta and Mother, and that's Mother and Daddy.

And they came out west, where I live.

And that's the world that I grew up in, you know?

Right now they're... They're trying to harm Latino people in America, but I don't know.

Where I live is California, and the city that I live in was founded by Latino people and Black people.

And when I was a little girl, Caesar Chavez was my dad's friend.

He was Uncle Martin's friend.

My dad said to me, "Donzaleigh, I need you to give up your most favorite food, which are grapes."

And so I said, "Why?"

He said, "For Latino people, because they're being mistreated, and there are people, Donzaleigh."

And so I said, "Okay."

And I gave up my grapes when I was a little girl.

And I didn't eat grapes again until I was close to 40 years of age.

Because Latino people weren't being treated fairly and they weren't getting a fair amount of money working in the fields.

Because I don't know if you all understand, but in California, we feed America.

We give you all of your fresh produce.

Maybe you can get your potatoes from Idaho and you can get your oranges from Florida.

But the rest of everything else, you're gonna get from California.

You're gonna get your meat from California.

You might get some meat from another state in the middle of America, but we feed the majority of America.

And not only that, we feed Canada.

So, we care about our Latino people.

And not only do we care because they work, we care because they're hardworking people and they're lovely people and they love us, and they don't discriminate against us and they don't hate us.

They're just a part of us.

So when we see people say horrible things about them and that they're criminals, we know for a fact that they're not.

They're our neighbors.

I've already told my husband, "If ever something ever happens to you, my next husband's going to be a Mexican man."

And that's all there is to it.

(crowd laughing) So that's the world that I grew up in.

Anyway, this is the bus.

And it was colored seating from the back, and I gotta go fast.

And Rosa was arrested, and Rosa was the secretary of Montgomery NAACP.

And my dad was a number two man at the NAACP.

And E.D.

Nixon had to go out of town.

He was a Pullman porter.

You all know what the Pullman porters were.

The older people do.

Young people, you all don't know.

He's that person that you greet when you're getting on the train.

He takes your luggage and directs you to your seat.

That's the Pullman porter.

And E. D. Nixon was the head of that.

Asa Philip Randolph, who's responsible for the March on Washington, he was a Pullman porter as well.

Anyway, so he had to go out of town.

And so he said, "Ralph, we gotta do something."

And my dad said, "Okay."

And this would be my dad's third boycott.

And he said to... My dad said to E.D.

Nixon, "Do me a favor.

I need you to call my friend Martin, who's new in town."

And before he could call, Daddy called, and Uncle Martin said, "I can't do anything.

I'm doing my dissertation."

And Daddy's like, "No, no, no, no, no.

You're gonna come with me.

I'll pick you up.

You're gonna go to these meetings."

And so Uncle Martin said, and it wasn't until that third mass meeting that Uncle Martin officially joined them.

The following morning, just so you all understand, after Rosa was arrested on December 2nd, my dad issued the call for the of the Civil Rights Movement.

And that was before the Baptist Ministers.

And that's a great thing about being a Baptist versus a Methodist.

- When you're a Methodist... (Donzaleigh laughs) When you are a Baptist, you can run your church, you can do what you need to do.

When you're a Methodist, you got to go through the bishop, right?

And so they were Baptist ministers and they was like, "This is what we need to do."

But it was the women, Joanne Robinson, and the teachers, and my dad at that point had been the dean.

He was the outgoing dean of men at Alabama State University 'cause my dad thought that he was gonna spend his whole life in the educational system.

But God intervened.

And Uncle Martin said these words, "There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and are left standing in the piercing chill of an alpine November."

You all know what an alpine November is because you live in an alpine November.

(crowd laughing) "Work and fight until justice rose down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

And with those words, Black people took to the streets, 50,000 Black people took to the streets for the first time in the history of the United States of America.

And just so you understand, like Michelle Obama said, "I live in a house that was built by slaves, and I know that they may try and take down part of the East Wing, but the rest of the sucker was built by the hands of my ancestors, Black people, slaves."

So yes, we've come a long way.

(crowd laughing) Anyway, that's them.

Dad and Uncle Martin and Bayard Rustin who came down and introduced the idea.

And the horrible thing about that is they had to have him leave.

The Black Ministers said he had to leave because he was, you know, openly homosexual.

And I think it's wrong to discriminate with somebody because of their, the way that God made them is not something that you study and decide you're gonna be that way.

You come into the world that way, and that's just the way you are.

And I don't want somebody to love somebody because I think they have to love a certain way.

I think they need to be who they are.

That's what Daddy and Uncle Martin taught me.

Anyway, that's daddy and... That's him overseeing a crowd.

And that's standing room only there, and you'll see those are women.

When you look at that photograph, those are women.

Women, women.

Women were the facilitators of change in America, not the men.

The Black men were scared, but the women were fearless.

(crowd applauding) And women are still fearless.

Yes.

And so we were hungry.

We had endured 244 years of slavery, nearly 100 years of Jim Crow segregation.

That was 344 years of a white man telling you you're less than simply because of the color of your skin.

And don't you know God made us that way?

And this is the beautiful thing that I love about growing up with Uncle Martin and Daddy.

And the thing that they taught us was that, you know, while my sister's husband was, his ancestors were living in caves, wearing the hide of a bear on their backs because that's what they were up there in Denmark, my people had built the pyramids.

We had hieroglyphics, we had running water.

We knew the power and we knew gold.

We had created.

We even took our knowledge, the Moors to Spain and built where your ancestors were and made Spain beautiful.

Black people did that.

We didn't learn a skill out of slavery.

We already had skills long before.

So, we were great.

We didn't need it.

Anyway, that's them.

I'm just gonna show you the pictures really fast.

And so this is Uncle Martin, and I love him.

And Uncle Martin said to me in my dad's funeral, he said, "Donzaleigh, I need you to talk about your Uncle Martin.

Talk about him."

And I really didn't understand how important it was, and I didn't actually talk about him until, you know, after I lost my dad.

And I was lost and I didn't know what to do, and I was just walking.

Walking repeatedly.

And it was like a voice came to me and it said, "Well, if you start talking about him, everything will be okay."

And so my life is like a love letter to him because I loved him.

See, most women have pretty hands and mine look horrible because Uncle Martin bit his fingernails.

And because I loved him so much and I wanted to be so much like him, I bite my cuticles still to this day.

And I'm so sorry they look so bad.

And my husband's always saying, "Let's go get your nails done, Donzaleigh."

But it doesn't matter because two to three days afterwards, I'm doing this again.

And it's a nervous habit that I learned from Uncle Martin because he was a nervous man.

And you can see here he is being arrested and he didn't even wanna go to the courthouse, to the jail by himself.

So he said to my dad, "Please come with me."

And you'll see him.

You see how his lips are pursed.

He's humble.

And that's (indistinct) first mugshot.

And here you see the people walking and we shall overcome.

And then Daddy, you know, he got Uncle Martin involved, and then he got Uncle Howard up there, above him.

That's my dad's roommate from Alabama State.

He brought all his friends together.

And that's him at Highlander School learning nonviolent.

And they didn't know that they were gonna do nonviolently.

But like I said, Bayard Rustin came down and taught them.

And nonviolence is incredible.

And Uncle Martin used to say, "And when you rise to love on that level."

'Cause that's what nonviolence is about, love.

You love those you don't like.

You love those whose ways don't move you.

You love every man because God loves them.

And that's what they were doing.

And this is the man, Glenn Smile, who actually taught them nonviolence.

And that's my mother, that's Glenn, that's his wife Helen, that's my dad, and that's my sister Juandalynn who lives in Germany.

And I found Glen in the midst of the Los Angeles riots when Los Angeles was burning.

And here, you can see Uncle Martin is so shy and he's so young.

See, he's only 26 years of age.

And that's Daddy behind him.

And that's them on the bus when they could finally ride the bus.

And that was a brand new Negro in the South with a nuisance of dignity and destiny.

And so in consequently, they bombed our homes.

That's my parents' home.

My mother was pregnant with me and Daddy and Uncle Martin and Aunt Coretta had gone to Atlanta to create a whole new organization called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

And my mother stayed behind because she was in the first trimester of pregnancy, and she was pregnant with me.

And so she said she'd fallen asleep watching the Jack Paar show, which was like the predecessor to Johnny Carson.

And she said an angel awakened her, I'm not quite sure.

But they had a floodlight and maybe someone walked in front of the floodlight and they placed the bomb right there.

And... Mother awakened.

She went into the bedroom, and 15 minutes later, the whole front of the house exploded.

And then right after that, Arthur Mae Norris walks up to the street, get to my mother, make sure she's all right, the police are there, they're roping everything off.

They're trying to tell everybody, "You can't come up to the house."

Arthur May is in the house.

She clears away.

She makes my mother sit down, mother sits down, she grabs the phone, and she's calling my dad on the phone.

And the GrandDaddy King's house.

And GrandDaddy King was not a nonviolent man.

He's angry, he's yelling at Uncle Martin.

"Look what you all have done.

You all have stirred up these people."

And that's sometimes, you know, young people, your parents may not agree with what you wanna do in your life.

I know this because my mother wanted me to be a French teacher, and I wanted to be an actor.

And thank God I followed my will.

Anyway, GrandDaddy King is yelling.

Mother's on the phone with Daddy, and that's when they hear the second explosion, which was First Baptist Church, which was my dad's church.

And then my dad just breaks down.

Uncle Martin takes the phone.

And you read his book, "Stride Towards Freedom," he talks about all of this in the book.

And then he says, "With Ralph's home and church bombed, all we could do is get down on our knees and ask the Lord to give us the strength to carry on."

And then right after that, they bombed Bell Street Church, Mount Olive Church, and the home of Reverend Robert Graetz, a white pastor.

And that's the church that was bombed.

That's Reverend Robert Graetz because he was a bad white man because he was associated with Black people.

And that's the March on Washington.

Anyway, that's the real thing.

And that's what they said in America.

And then Uncle Martin got stabbed because there was a crazy Black woman who walked up to him in a department store when he was writing his books, "Stride Towards Freedom."

She says, "Are you Dr.

King?"

And he's like, "Yes, I am."

And then she took the letter open and just stabbed him in the chest.

And you'll see right there.

And what he used to do is, he was so gentle, Uncle Martin.

He was so incredible.

He would... He was like, "Yeah," and he'd show us the scar.

And we would climb up on top of him and kiss it and say, "Oh, we're so glad you didn't sneeze.

We're so glad."

And he loved all of that attention.

I was just thinking about it this morning, how, I was looking at pictures and there's that bed.

And he taught us how to jump up and down on the bed.

He was playful.

He loved to laugh.

He had a sense of joy inside of him.

But he didn't want people to understand or see all that part of him.

He had the gift of mimicry.

You know how there are some people that can imitate someone's voice?

Well, he could do that.

And he would... I loved it when he would talk to the Geechee and the Gullah people.

I don't know if you all know about the Geechees and the Gullah and the way that they speak.

Yes, from South Carolina.

And yeah, he was amazing that way.

Anyway, my dad was a strategist, and then Uncle Martin was the voice.

And there they are together.

And non-violence was the only way we could do it.

And that's the world I grew up in segregation.

I was born in segregated hospital.

That's the Freedom Riders.

And then they were trapped overnight in my dad's church, and they turned the car over, set it on fire, and the people had to sleep in the church.

And then thank God that was Robert Kennedy Sr.

Who... Yeah.

(crowd laughing) So... Yeah.

And he sent in the National Guard.

And the National Guard protected everybody.

In the wee hours of the morning, after one o'clock in the morning, we were finally free to go home.

And then the following morning, I remember this morning awakening, and Black and white students are there in the house.

And Uncle Martin is there in the house.

And then John Lewis would, congressman.

And it was just amazing.

And the only reason I remember is because I had a teeny-weeny little (indistinct), and it was just starting to grow in my hair.

My sister took the scissors and cut it because my mother was missing an action.

And that sent a shock to me.

And I remember that day.

And right there, that's our little rocking horse you can see 'cause that's my parents' home.

And this is the world.

And so this was all real.

And then right after that, they arrested my dad that day.

And these were the Freedom Riders.

And that's me, this little girl right here sitting in Uncle Martin's lap.

That's me in my dad lap, and that's me and my sister Juandalynn.

And so like I said, they called our homes and threatened to kill us every morning and every evening.

And consequently, my sister moved to Europe.

That's Uncle Martin in my parents' house in Montgomery.

And... You know, he was... He was so much fun, you know?

His game was "Monopoly."

And that's how they taught us to count money.

He played "Candy Land" with us.

Whatever we were doing, he was gonna do it with us.

Somebody just made a movie the other day called "Hoops," and they say that he liked to play basketball.

I've never seen that.

I never heard that.

I question that.

He did roller skate.

He love to ride a bicycle, but his thing was swimming.

And so on Wednesday nights when Daddy and Uncle Martin were in town, every Wednesday we'd go over to the Y, to the Black Y because those are segregation.

They had the little Black Y for us, and we'd go swim.

And the other thing is, I didn't do what Uncle Martin wanted me to do because once, you know, we were all on the diving board and it was my turn, and I wanted to show off to Uncle Martin and my dad, you know, what a great diver I was.

And so, you know how when you dive, you do the thing and you like dive out?

And so I made a belly flop and I hurt my stomach so bad.

And I get out of the pool and I'm going like over there.

I'm like, "Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy."

Uncle Martin's like, "No, make a dive again.

Make a dive again."

I'm like, "No, Daddy, please, please," and I'm working my dad.

And then I get up under my Daddy.

I'm like, "Please don't make me die again, please."

And Uncle Martin says, "If we don't make her dive again, she'll never dive again."

And don't you know, when I got my senior lifesavers, when I'm 16 years of age in Vermont, I learned how to jump in the lake, and then swim down and save somebody's life because I didn't listen to Uncle Martin, and that's what I regret.

And he was always so good at telling you what was right and what you needed to do.

And I didn't listen.

I didn't listen.

The other day, I talked to Jesse, Jesse Jackson, because, you know, he is in the hospital.

And his daughter called 'cause he wanted to talk to me.

And we talked about Daddy and we talked about Uncle Martin, and I wanted him to know how much, you know, Daddy loved him and don't ever worry.

Don't ever worry.

And he felt like he had failed them, but he hadn't because Jesse became Jesse, and it was great.

And sometimes Uncle Martin was hard on him, but they've all risen up.

That's the great thing because it's all about the people.

And that's what it's about.

That's Daddy and Martin together, and this is the beginning of Birmingham-Shuttlesworth.

I can't tell you Birmingham 'cause I gotta go to, I gotta go all the way to Selma because I gotta come to the end, because this is what's important.

And I only have a few more seconds.

How many more minutes do I have?

That's Big Mama.

That's Uncle Martin's mother.

We called her Big Mama.

And Granddaddy, Uncle Martin's father, was the only grandfather that I ever knew.

And that's them with their wives.

I didn't wanna be like mother and Aunt Coretta.

I felt like all they ever did was major in being pretty.

And I didn't understand it.

(crowd laughing) And I didn't understand when you have a man who is charismatic, women will throw themselves at your man.

And as a little girl, I would see this, and I just didn't understand.

I was like, "Okay, whatever.

I'm gonna be like them," you know?

And I would always wanna carry the briefcase.

I'll never forget one time, we had arrived, they'd arrived, and we were there at the airport to meet them.

And we go down to the gate to get 'em 'cause you could go down to the gate back then.

And there's the press, you know?

And the press is walking backwards, and everybody's trying to be up front next to Uncle Martin and Daddy.

And I'm walking backwards with the press, right?

'Cause that's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to see what they're seeing, you know?

I was fascinated by the camera.

As soon as we got to the main part of the airport, mother and Aunt Coretta and Yoki and my sister Juandalynn, they go to the bathroom to make themselves beautiful.

And the boys have their shirt tails out and they're just running every which kinda way.

And I'm like, "Well, let me be with Daddy and Uncle Martin 'cause that's what I preferred to do anyway."

And that's when I found out they were gonna go in this teeny-weeny little plane.

And I was like, "Oh, Daddy, can I go, can I go?"

He said, "No, Donzaleigh, you can't go because you're a girl."

And Uncle Martin said, "You know, Ralph, that's an idea.

Let's take the boys."

And I was like, "What?"

(crowd laughing) And I'll never forget, 'cause it had this little glass kiosk in the Atlanta airport.

And so I ran over to the glass kiosk.

And, you know, how you used to blow your breath on the glass and it'd fog up?

And I thought, "Those boys, those boys.

One day those boys will come to me.

I will be strong."

And sure enough, they did.

They do.

When there are problems, (indistinct) used to call Ralph III.

Anyway, this is Uncle Sammy.

That was what was so incredible about that time growing up with those guys because they had all of these extended people.

And Marlon Brando, here, they are at a party in Los Angeles.

And Marlon Brando gave $50,000 to pay for all of those young Black people that were arrested in Birmingham, Alabama.

$50,000.

That's him with Uncle Martin.

And Mahalia, she was Aunt Mahalia, and she used to come and stay at our house.

Our house, she stayed in our house in Montgomery and she stayed at our house in Atlanta.

And that's the March on Washington.

I was there that day.

I don't even remember.

I was running around like crazy.

And Benjamin Mays, who was the president of Morehouse College, said to me as I'm running around, Uncle Martin's already speaking.

I don't remember my dad speaking that day.

He said, "Do you know what's happening here?"

I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

I'm like five years old.

Of course I know what's happening.

And he made me go sit down.

And then Uncle Martin was saying, "I have a dream."

And it was just incredible.

These are the words my dad wrote.

"Friends of freedom."

This was his 1958.

Put your shoulders to the wheel and push until freedom rings from every mountainside.

Yes, even Southern mountainsides."

And this is what's so great about friends.

Uncle Martin took those words and he said, "And he named the mountainsides, the prodigious hilltops, and the Alleghenys.

I let freedom ring."

And then that's how he closed it.

Anyway, it was just incredible that day.

And later that day, they sat down on the steps and the placards and everything, the litter was just blowing, Daddy said.

And they thought about W.E.B.

Du Bois because he had just died in Africa and he just passed the torch to them.

And it was at that point that they officially knew that it was on.

They officially knew that they had to finish this and go the course.

Because prior to that, the civil rights bill, nothing had passed and they would have to go forward.

And these were the people.

And then they bombed and killed those girls at 16th Street Baptist Church.

Of which I remember that Sunday.

Daddy coming to the... Coming to the pulpit and breaking down, crying.

And then they killed our president on November 22nd.

And then they went, they gave Uncle Martin the Nobel Prize and they went to see the Pope.

And then they killed the freedom... These young men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner down in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

And I love this picture because they got on their sunglasses.

They did everything alike.

You know, the exact same sunglasses they shopped at Mr.

Muses and Mr.

Zimmerman, Jewish stores.

And they bought the same shoes.

They did everything, was exactly alike.

When I was a little girl, I used to think that Daddy and Uncle Martin loved each other more than they loved us because I never had my dad without Uncle Martin.

And then on Sunday night, when church was over, you know, we'd have Sunday dinner together, and then they'd go visit the sick and shut in, and I'd go with Daddy to visit the sick and shut in.

And then late Sunday night, Uncle Martin would come back to the house, sometimes with Aunt Coretta, but definitely every Sunday night.

And then they re preached the sermon that they preached that day to each other, you know, going to (indistinct).

You know, like, "I did this well, and da, da, da, da."

"Well."

And I'd be like, "Oh my God."

And I was a little girl that just sat down on the floor with them because I was so taken by what they were doing.

Anyway, that's them leaving jail.

And then that's Civil Rights Bill was passed.

And then John Lewis and Hosea Williams.

And so what happened here is, Daddy couldn't be there to march that day.

And so Uncle Martin said, "Well, if you're not gonna be there, I'm not gonna march.

We're not gonna march."

And so... And they told the staff not to march, but the people in Selma didn't get the message.

They didn't get the memo.

And so they showed up at Brown Chapel that day.

So Hosea calls during service.

And when Daddy walked out of the pulpit, oh, that meant it was time for Ralph II, my brother, and I to leave too 'cause we could go upstairs and get the ginger ale out of Daddy's office and drink and get some candy.

And we run upstairs too.

And Daddy's on the phone with Hosea.

And Hosea is like, "Can I march?"

So then Daddy hangs up with him, he calls Uncle Martin.

Uncle Martin leaves his pulpit.

Uncle Martin says, "I don't think we should let him march."

And Daddy's like, "If we don't let Hosea lead this march, he'll be mad at us for the rest of our lives.

We gotta let him lead this march."

And Daddy says, "Okay, okay."

Uncle Martin says, "okay," and Daddy say, "okay."

He calls Hosea.

He's like, "Hosea, you do this."

And the SNCC people were so angry with John Lewis because they were gonna be a part of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement because, you know, SNCC had already been in there before and nothing had happened.

And so, sure enough, John Lewis said, "I quit SNCC."

He put on his little backpack on.

He used to tell his story, John, and then put on his coat and walked on in history because this is what they met them.

And it's brutal.

It was brutal, Selma.

So they went to see the president.

And that's my mother with my dad, and they're going to see Johnson.

And Luci Baines gave me this picture.

Luci Baines Johnson, president Johnson's daughter.

She's like, "Donzaleigh, nobody shows your father there with Uncle Martin, with Dr.

King."

And they were always there together.

And so she sent me this and she was like, "Show so people know."

But that's one of those pictures where they were.

And and President Johnson said, "We're gonna get that Voting Rights Act and you gotta do it."

And Luci said that her dad grabbed Senator Dick Dirksen 'cause her dad was a big man.

And he grabbed him by the suit and he lifted him up and he said, "You are gonna vote for this voting rights act."

Sometimes a president has to be strong like that.

But, yeah, when you're standing for justice, Abraham Lincoln was that man.

And he lifted him up, and yes, Lincoln did his thing, Johnson did his thing.

President Johnson passed more civil rights legislation than any president in the history of this country.

You know, we fault him.

This photograph here, he sent to my parents.

It's in our dining room now.

It used to be in our foyer.

It's amazing photograph.

That's him leaving the Oval Office.

And then they went back to the South, Daddy and Uncle Martin and John Lewis, 'cause that's gonna continue.

And this is my favorite photograph of them from my book 'cause Daddy's praying, 'cause that's what he always did.

And then the white students came.

This was in Nancy Pelosi's office on the wall when they stormed the capitol and a voice.

And I was watching, said, "Turn to the left, turn to the left, turn to the left."

And I looked to the left, and I saw there was a placard that John Lewis had given her.

And I started crying because all of a sudden what was happening in Washington was personal to me 'cause I grew up with John.

I love John.

And anyway, so we crossed that bridge.

This is the second attempt.

And that's Daddy and Rabbi Israel Dresner praying because they were met by the police.

It isn't like Ava DuVernay made in that movie, "Selma."

They had to turn around.

It was called Turnaround Tuesday.

And then that night, three white off, three white clergymen, Reverend James Reeb from Massachusetts and two other ministers ate in a soul food restaurant.

'Cause that's what you do down there, right?

You wanna get some good food, don't you?

So you go eat with Black people 'cause we do know how to cook.

And sure enough, the Klan saw these three white men and they beat them unmercifully, and they killed Reverend James Reeb.

And that's the (indistinct) for Reverend James Reeb.

That's Daddy and Uncle Martin's favorite picture.

That was their picture.

That's in Brown Chapel.

And that's him trying to figure out what they're gonna do.

He meets with the president again, and then he sent in the National Guard.

And this is the official start of Selma.

And I'm just gonna show you really fast.

And so it's 55 miles from Selma to Montgomery.

And you see, I used to have to go see my relatives 'cause my dad and mother met in Selma.

And Aunt Coretta's from Marion right next to Uniontown where my mother's from.

And my dad's from Linden, 35 miles from Selma.

So my dad wanted us to go into Selma and begin the thing.

And that's at March.

That's them laying on the ground.

And John is with him.

John was so cool.

He was so cool.

He was ushering my first wedding to my first husband.

I love John.

And Daddy said, "If you have him in the wedding, that means it's gonna be your endorsement against Julian Bond."

I said, "Well, I have to decide who I'm gonna choose."

And Julian was a beautiful man, but John, John had a speech impediment.

And I remember going to the student nonviolent coordinating meeting, and hearing them make fun of John Lewis because he spoke with a speech impediment.

And as a little girl, I had a problem with that.

I had a problem with people making fun of somebody because of a speech impediment.

And so I said to my dad, "John is good.

I want John.

I know John is good."

Julian may have been pretty.

And Julian and I went to the same boarding school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

And he used to write to me when I was in boarding school, but it didn't matter.

And I will always love Julian.

However, John was good to the core of his soul, and he became the moral conscience of Congress.

Anyway, that's them.

And we were, this is Jim Letherer that we walked with.

And so that's me right there, that little girl with that striped sweater.

That's my brother and my sister.

We walked two days for the right to vote.

And I was so slow.

My mother has a hand in my back.

And so that priest comes and yanks me on down the road.

Anyway, that night, the movie stars came.

And that's us standing on the stage waiting for Uncle Sammy to give us a kiss.

I remember standing backstage with Peter, Paul and Mary.

And then Aunt Coretta is so nervous.

That's my sister.

That's me and my sister standing there as Uncle Martin's thanking everybody.

And Aunt Coretta's nervous because she's gonna have to sing in front of all the movie stars.

And I just thought, "Oh my God, it was wonderful."

And I loved Mary from "Peter, Paul and Mary."

She had that blonde hair.

And when I grew up, you know, Black people and white people, we worked together, you know?

We were always together.

You know, they stayed in our home.

We had white ministers who lived in with us.

And so we didn't know about hate.

I wasn't raised by hate.

Uncle Martin didn't believe in hate.

We believed in love.

And so I know they were trying to say we shouldn't be integrated, but we were always together, and our families were always, you know, mixed with people of different races.

That's Aunt Coretta getting ready to sing.

That's the following day as the march starts.

And I'm sucking my finger and I don't wanna hold my brother's hand.

I want my sister to be in the middle, so there will be the sign of a cross.

And my dad was like, "No, it's gonna be about my son.

He's gonna be in the middle."

And so I didn't wanna hold my brother's hand.

And my mother starts giving me the dirty eye.

You can see right there.

And Uncle Martin is late 'cause he always ran late.

And the reason he was running late was 'cause he was trying to get that speech together.

"How long?

Not long."

And while you all were listening to it early, and I know I gotta come to an end, he's saying, "How long?

Not long."

I'm swinging my arm.

He's like, "How long?

Not long 'cause the moral arc of the universe is long, yet it bends toward justice.

How long?

Not long because you reap what you sow."

And I'm standing there backstage with my sister and I'm telling her, "This is it, this is gonna be great.

He's going down in history."

And I knew.

Anyway, that's that day, and that's what we were facing.

And then they killed her by La Loza.

And then they passed the bill.

And then we integrated the elementary schools.

And it's all about the vote.

And I just wanna get to Memphis, and then I'm gonna say goodbye.

And they weren't having the right to march.

And this march turned violent because Reverend Jim Lawson didn't workshop people in nonviolence for the first time.

And then kids were violent.

So they had... The kids came and told Uncle Martin and Daddy in the hotel 'cause they couldn't even go back to their hotel, Lorraine Motel, that they were paid by white people to throw rocks and to create violence.

And so Uncle Martin took full responsibility for it and never told the press.

He said, "I'm responsible.

I didn't do my part."

And that's humble, you know, to say that it's your fault when you know it's not your fault.

But that's just the way he was.

And so when they got to Memphis this second time, Uncle Martin wouldn't even pack when Daddy arrived at the house to pick him up.

And so Daddy and Aunt Coretta packed Uncle Martin's things.

And Uncle Martin just got his books 'cause that's what he was about.

He was always about reading.

He was an avid reader.

And so he was getting his books together and everything like that.

And then they finally got on the plane.

And when they got on the plane, they couldn't take off.

And the pilot says, "Well, I guess, you know, we have a celebrity on board and we have a death threat, a bomb threat."

And Daddy said Uncle Martin turned to him and he said, "Why do they have to do me like this?"

"Why?"

And then they finally got to Memphis.

And their room was down on the first floor, and Jesse had moved it up to the second floor.

And Jesse's so proud of himself and he thought he was doing something good.

But he didn't know that, you know, there was malice that was coming.

That's him going in the Room 306 that they shared.

That's them meeting with the staff.

And anyway, so that night, Uncle Martin did not wanna go speak at the Mason Temple.

And he said to Ralph, "You go," my dad, "You go ahead, you do that."

And he was like, Daddy went on ahead, okay?

And Jesse's like, "I wanna speak, I wanna speak."

And Uncle Martin said, "No, Ralph is gonna speak."

And when he got there, the crowd went crazy.

And so Daddy got to a telephone because they didn't have the little ones, you know, handheld things.

He got to the telephone, he said, "I promise me you need to be here.

Come, you'll come."

And Uncle Martin said, "Okay, okay, okay."

And he arrived.

And normally, what they would do is Uncle Martin would speak first, and then my dad would follow behind and make it plain what Uncle Martin had said, because Uncle Martin would use big words.

And often, poor Black people didn't understand those words.

Anyway, what happened was Daddy spoke first and Uncle Martin got up and he said, you know, "It's always nice to have your best friend say wonderful things about you.

Ralph D. Abernathy is the best friend I have in the world."

Then he went on to say that he had been to the Promised Land.

He said, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people shall make it to the Promised Land.

I'm not fearing any man.

My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

And then they were gonna go to dinner that day.

This was April 4th, 1968.

And Daddy always got ready first.

And he was ready.

But when Uncle Martin walked past him to the door, he smelled the Aramis cologne that Daddy had forgot to put on because they wore Aramis.

They wore the same thing.

And Uncle Martin walked on out onto the balcony.

You know, he's walking out to the balcony and Jesse's down there.

So he apologizes to Jesse for not letting him speak the night before.

He said, "But I want you to come to dinner and I want you to bring Ben Branch," who was the operation basket band saxophone player.

And Ben was amazing.

And somebody said, "Dr.

King is cool."

You know, "You should have bring a coat."

And Daddy says that he got ready to put, to, you know, pat his cheek to put the Aramis on.

He heard something that sounded like a firecracker.

And from where he was standing, all he could see was Uncle Martin's feet.

And he ran out the door and everybody else had scurried, they had run away.

And Daddy got to Uncle Martin and he saw the bullet that entered this cheek.

And so he started patting him on the other side.

And Uncle Martin's eyes were wobbly.

He said, "Martin, this is Ralph."

"Martin, this is Ralph."

And then Uncle Martin tried to, his eyes focused on Daddy.

He tried to move his lips, but no words would come out.

But he was still alive.

And the police finally came.

And you can see where they've covered the face here, but he's still alive.

They get to the hospital.

And when they get to the hospital, they're not polite.

They cut your clothes open.

And when they cut the clothes open, there was a big hole in his chest.

The doctor said that the bullet had entered this cheek and it had severed the spinal cord.

And that if he lived, he'd be a vegetable.

And the doctor said, "Listen, it'll be active mercy if God takes him."

And Daddy said, "Oh, no, no, no, you have to help him.

You have to help him."

And he went back over to him, the doctors, and they worked on him again.

And then they said, "Listen, Reverend Abernathy, there is nothing we can do.

If you want these final moments with him, you can."

And so Daddy went over to him and he took him up in his arms and he cradled him because he loved him.

And then he stopped breathing.

And then he was gone.

And... And when Uncle Martin was gone, my dad was gone.

That's Daddy closing the casket, and those are the staff.

That's Bernard, his traveling companion, and T.Y.

at the end there.

T.Y.

Rogers and staff.

And that's the other cheek.

That's a good cheek my dad's hands are on.

Ooh.

That's Daddy lost.

We finally got the right to march in Memphis.

That's at Memphis March.

I'm in the little stripe dress there with my head bowed because I didn't understand.

I found out when I was on the tarmac with mother and Aunt Coretta.

And when I saw mother and Aunt Coretta together, that's when I knew Uncle Martin was gone.

And prior to that, my sister and Yolanda were crying on the phone to each other.

And I was like, "No, no.

See, the Roadrunner.

The Roadrunner gets shocked and the Roadrunner gets back up.

And Uncle Martin's gonna get back up.

And good people don't die.

Why are you all upset?

He was stabbed before, he's gonna be fine."

And I was just, you know, the believer that everything was gonna be all right because God doesn't let good people die.

And sure enough.

And then it was like the light went out of our lives.

So that's me down there, my sister, Dexter and Martin watching whatever it is I'm watching.

And... And then Rabbi Abraham Heschel came and Andy's there.

And then that's the first time we got a chance to see him.

After the march, we had to go see the body.

That's my brother, Ralph III, who's gone to heaven.

Dexter, his best friend, who's gone to heaven.

Martin, who was my buddy.

Bernice and Yoki, who's gone to heaven.

Uncle Bob who's gone to heaven.

Uncle Bob who's gone to heaven.

Dora, who's gone to heaven.

And everybody's gone to heaven in that picture except for Martin and Bernice.

And when I'm with Bernice, she always says, "Tell me about my Daddy."

That's Aunt Coretta.

This is the bed that I used to jump up and down on.

That's what Uncle Martin taught us how to do, is to jump up and down on the bed.

And I'll never forget, we were jumping up and down on that bed one day, and Aunt Coretta didn't know why we were doing it, but she came down that hall and she was ready to take a switch to us.

And Uncle Martin said, "Leave those children alone."

And then this is the night before.

And this is the day of the funeral.

And Mrs.

Kennedy came.

And I remember she came to the room to meet the children.

And I stood there beside her because I knew who she was, I knew who her husband was, and I remember the day he was killed.

And that's us leaving.

And my sister's standing there as we leave the... I didn't know who the people were, and I wanted to know why they were all there.

But there was Uncle Sammy and Eartha Kitt and Nancy Wilson and Marlon Brando and Berry Gordy and Bobby and Ethel Kennedy and Daddy overseeing the body.

And Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

And then right here, I just want you to see Yoki.

That was Uncle Martin's most favorite child.

She's holding her head down.

Yoki was everything.

She skipped a grade, and Uncle Martin was so proud of her.

He was always... He loved her so much.

She was everything.

And Daddy had him carried in a wagon to represent the poor people that he served.

We didn't want anything fancy.

He wanted something that was of the earth, that was of the people.

And then this is the first march that they were ever really allowed to participate in.

It was a funeral march.

And you can see all the tens of thousands of people that showed up.

I'm this little girl in the white dress down there.

That's me right there with my head bowed because I was angry.

I told my mother, "I hate God."

I had never said I hated God before, but I did that day because I didn't understand.

And I've been asking forgiveness ever since.

And that's the funeral march.

And that's me and my sister and Harry and his wife and Aunt Coretta's sister and my mother behind it.

Aunt Coretta's face, and that's Aunt Coretta's father.

And that's my dad given the last rights as he said, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust."

And what he said was, he was like, "Okay, children, you all need to come up here and touch the casket one last time."

But there was so many people in the way, and everybody got there, and I couldn't get there.

And I just wanted to get there just to say goodbye.

And so, because I couldn't, I guess I'm the only one that can go out and talk about him now because that's what I do.

I talk about him.

And where he is buried today.

My dad bought the land and he gave it to GrandDaddy King for the King Center.

'Cause they didn't have the money, and Ebenezer didn't have the money, but my dad took the money and bought it.

And that's what they were as Daddy carrying on.

And that's my story.

That's my man.

(crowd applauding) Thank you so much.

God bless you.

(crowd applauding) Thank you so much.

God Bless you!