Finding Your Roots

Music

DONNA BRAZILE:

You got to give it back, right?

NARRATOR:

My third guest, Donna Brazile, is the ultimate political insider. She managed Al Gore's presidential bid... the first African American woman to manage a U.S. presidential campaign... serves as an analyst on CNN and ABC. And even had a recurring role on the political drama "The Good Wife"... playing herself.

BRAZILE:

I ask for your support.

NARRATOR:

For Donna, politics isn't just a job...it's a calling.

BRAZILE:

This has to be on our agenda.

NARRATOR:

One whose roots lead back to the racially divided world of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, where she grew up in the 1960s.

BRAZILE:

Jefferson Parish was segregated. It was very segregated. There was no such thing as a middle ground. It was chunks of chocolate and chunks of vanilla.

HENRY LEWIS GATES:

Right. >> There was no fudge ripple. Nothing.

NARRATOR:

: When Donna was just 8 years old, she experienced her political awakening. On April 4, 1968, a tragedy rattled the nation, and changed her life forever.

BRAZILE:

The night Dr. King was assassinated. That was that moment. There's something that pulled me that night in fact I disobeyed my mother. >> Mmm...Hmm. >> I heard somewhere on the radio, that if you put a black scarf or a black flag or something around your house, your house would not get burned down. >> Hmm. >> Yeah, you had to be in solidarity. >> Um sure. >> And my mother was like, "Don't listen. Stop that. Turn off that radio." And I listened to the radio all night long. And I snuck out the back yard, went around the front, and I put her black headscarf across the porch.

Laughs.

I got a nice whipping, but I did it. That was the beginning of my activism.

NARRATOR:

: Donna decided to dedicate her life to fighting social injustice. And she would do so by helping elect politicians who shared her values - a seeming long shot for an eight-year-old African American girl in small-town Louisiana, but her parents told her that she had every right to follow her dreams.

BRAZILE:

You know, I've always believed that my roots in this country go as far back as anybody else's. And I've always, I've always stood my ground, when it comes to being an American. My mother used to tell us, "It's not what they call you, it's what you answer to." >> That's beautiful. It's not what they call you, it's what you answer to. >>It's what you answer to. You're an American.