NDIGO STUDIO

Hi, I'm Herman Hartmann, and I want to welcome you to N'digo Studio.

And today, in our living room, we have got a Chicago legend, Congressman Danny Davis, representing Illinois, the congressional district in the seventh since 1996.

He's been a steadfast voice for social justice, health care, education and economic opportunity from his early days as an educator and then a community organizer to his decades of leadership in Congress.

He has dedicated his life to uplift, uplifting people and improving neighborhoods across Chicago and beyond.

We're going to have a candid conversation.

We're going to talk about his journey, his vision for the future, and his thoughts on leadership legacy.

Next generation.

This is what we do at Indigo Studio.

We have real conversations and go way beyond the headlong.

N'digo Studio, N'digo Studio Funding for this program has been provided by Illinois Student Assistance Commission, Community Trust.

CineCity Studios, Lamborghinis Chicago, Gold Coast and Downers Grove.

Commonwealth Edison Broadway Chicago and Illinois Health Plan get covered.

N'digo Studio Welcome, Congressman Davis.

Well, Herman, thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I am so delighted to be here with you.

Thank you.

Because as I remember and I think about activism and African-Americans who've been engaged in Chicago as long as I've been here, Herman Hartman.

I ain't been I've been here that long.

I'll be making me.

Old brown just as long as I've been in Chicago, because I didn't grow up in Chicago.

I grew up in Arkansas.

So tell me how you got to Chicago from Arkansas and how you got, most importantly, into public service?

Well, you know, we always say that Arkansas is the only state in the Bible.

People asked how and I said no.

I looked over his ark and saw Arkansas.

And so Arkansas.

But but but it's a good place to be.

From, Danny.

The only state in the Bible said, which.

Bill Clinton and I used to jokingly say to each other.

The motto was Land of opportunity and because we both loved the state enough, we could say the first opportunity we got, we left.

But we knew we didn't mean it, and we knew that it was wonderful to be healed from hope.

Lucky I came here.

Grew up in rural America.

My parents were sharecroppers, wonderful people.

Just super delightful individuals.

First school I went to was a one room school where Mr.

B.B.

King taught eight grades, plus what we call the little prima and the big prima back or so.

But I managed to go through, come to Congo out of college, went to college on my 16th birthday.

Enrolled I had 20 bucks, $20 and a $50 scholarship.

And somehow or another I manage to make my sisters lived on the west Side of Chicago.

So when I got to college, I came here and lived with them.

What did you major in?

I majored in history and government with a minor in education because I wanted to be a teacher.

So how did we get from education to community organizing to alderman to county commissioner to Congress?

That's been the political trail.

How did you do that?

Well, I got a job.

I worked at the post office for a year, but I knew I was going to teach, and then I just went ahead and started teaching and decided while teaching, before I got a master's degree in history, because that's what I really wanted to do.

I was teaching inner city young people in the North Lawndale community of Chicago.

That's where I met Alderman Ed Smith.

Ed and I both were teaching at the same school.

- I didn't know Ed was a teacher, Ed was a teacher also - Ed was a teacher also We taught at a special school for overage under achievers, meaning Vice Lords.

You Gyptian call Roman things, and many of those individuals managed to do extremely well.

But I decided that rather than doing this history piece that I better learn about the young people.

So I switched over and decided to become a psychologist.

Got involved in health care, health care, organized, and and we began to try and educate people.

And that really led to politics.

The 60s was such a wonderful time because.

That was a that was a transformational time.

Let me tell you, Doctor Martin Luther King was in town.

We got a chance to meet Doctor King, although we had had Doctor King speak at at my undergraduate school at a commencement.

But King really came to Chicago and organized.

Sidney came to Chicago and was right in the area where I lived and worked, and so caught up in the movement.

I mean, that was the.

Real and that was that was the political impetus.

Oh, met a lot of the activists.

Tim Black, Bob Lucas, Bob Lucas and I worked at the post office together.

Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson, Nancy.

Jefferson.

Nancy Nancy Jefferson daughter was in my office from Atlanta because she has written a play about Nancy.

Oh, well.

And she's actually a pathologist, but she's written a play and she's going to try to bring it to Chicago.

That's fabulous.

She's already done it in Atlanta, So many wonderful people.

- Where is America right now?

You are 25 years in Congress.

Seniority.

Ways and means committee.

You've brought back $1.4 trillion to your district.

You have been the congressman in your district.

But we really look up to you as a congressman of Chicago.

Where is America at this time?

The people in my district have been so wonderful.

Honest to goodness.

I hear elected officials talk about how people don't really respect them and don't do this.

And you don't have that factor.

Oh, let me tell you, I just I can walk to the grocery store and somebody say, here, let me carry your groceries.

I did not.

And Sara, I got it.

Oh, let me pump your gas to pump my gas, but not all right.

People have been so wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

And I just love them.

And I thank them.

I'm a historian.

I've always been.

Are the only reason that we do or did whatever I've been reading everything I could get my hands on since I was a small boy.

I mean, just and so I've studied history very seriously.

I think America is at a point we're really at a serious crossroads in terms of this whole concept of democracy and what democracy has meant and what democracy should mean, and what we need to do to try and retain the democratic concepts and principles upon which we have lived.

A lot of times I read the paper, I look at some documentaries a lot on RT w, and I see parallels between America today and some things that we have gone through historically.

Do you see that pattern?

Absolutely.

And especially as they relate to African Americans.

Black people in the country and the struggles that we've had since getting here in 16, 19.

And what has transpired, Charles?

Slavery, I mean, of all policies that anybody could have.

Nothing could be worse than that.

I mean, to have been enslaved and to have come through that oppressive system survived it, came out of it, got to the point of the Civil War, where just thousands and thousands and thousands of people were killed just to try and hold the country together.

But also it meant that slavery was abolished to a degree at that point.

And, and we had this brief period of reconstruction about 20 years or so, where blacks got the opportunity to vote, who got the opportunity to get elected to office.

When I tell people that there were 23 black people elected to Congress between 1870 and 1899, they don't believe it.

That's you know, that's.

The reconstruction.

Period.

Yeah, that was the reconstruction period.

We made progress.

And in an election changed that.

So where are we now?

Where today?

Where are we?

Are we I mean, it seems like we're in a I say we're in a civil war.

I say the the clock looks like it's turning backwards.

The snap program, the, closed down of government the longest that we've ever seen in the history of America.

The tariffs.

All of these things are taking us beyond progress.

It's a backward movement.

What?

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, psychologically and ideologically, we are.

I mean, there are, elements in our country who believe that African Americans, as well as other minority groups, have made too much progress.

Women included, women included.

I mean, we hold these truths to be self-evident.

But women only really got the right to vote no more than 100 years ago.

And there have been inequities right down the line where women could be doing the same work, did not get the same pay.

The inequities that continue to exist.

And anybody trying to change or eliminate them are characterized as being something else.

Or something wild eyed like racist.

Yeah.

You while I because you want to see women get the same pay for doing the same work.

Let me tell you something.

Sell advertising.

I called an advertiser who was advertise with me for many, many years, and this was the multicultural director.

And he said, I can't advertise with you anymore.

And I said, why?

He said, because you're a woman and because you're black.

I said, so I can't be a woman in black.

And that's what I am.

He said, yeah.

I said, do you know that's what they did in slavery before slavery?

You know, we couldn't be there.

I said, but let me suggest something.

If I write that, if I put that on social media, do you know some of those people that you say that you can't advertise with?

They come to your store weekly and buy your groceries?

You want me to tell them that?

He said, I'll call you back because I gotta figure it out.

I mean, but that's that would DEI eliminating or trying to eliminate.

With the Musuems, Erasure Trying to eliminate with the restrictions at schools.

At Harvard and Yale.

And the Ivy League schools How do we fight that?

How do we the people fight that?

I think that people must understand that.

No matter what they think, no matter what they believe, no matter what they feel, no matter what the atrocities have been, they must know that Douglass was right when he said that all games that have been made have come from honest struggle.

Frederick and Frederick Douglass.

And that if you're not struggling, I don't.

I don't care what happened before.

If you're not engaged in the struggle, then you're not going to change anything.

And so there for those who are voting won't do it.

No, voting will not do it alone.

But I can tell you, voting, knowing who to vote for, when to vote all the time, how to vote.

Voting is a principle that could be called the bedrock of democracy, because that's when you participate.

That's one way.

It's not the only way, but it's certainly is one way.

And understand and all of the things.

So yeah, these elements want to take us back.

Back beyond any place that we believe that we don't want to go.

You are retiring.

Congressman Garcia, he is retiring.

Bobby Rush, he is retiring.

Senator Durbin, he is retiring.

We just saw, Nancy Pelosi.

She is retiring.

What's that new way?

What's that?

Next generation.

What's your advice to them What do you tell them?

Well, you know, Illinois is is in a great position right now because they're, for five open seats.

Congressional.

Seats, congressional seats for young people, younger people with hopefully fresh ideas.

But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

They're there.

They're some things that have worked for these old timers and that put these old timers in place.

Integrity representing the interest of the people.

And the only way you can do that is know what the people are thinking.

Know what the people want.

Know what the people need.

And then function in the interest of the people.

Not your.

You know, our granddad's met.

Not to get slapped on the back.

Don't just focus on the small group.

And don't just focus on your inner circle.

But what about the difference between representation and leadership?

I think we just saw something happen in New York that went beyond being the mayor, but into a new type of leadership.

You would start on that.

Well, I love to say that you can't lead where you don't go and you can't teach what you don't know.

Therefore, the voters need to take a good look at who's asking them to put them in place.

It's like a courtship, in a way.

I mean, I've been married to the same lady now 56 years.

So courtship where, you know, what you get in, you know who you get.

It when you elect people don't elect somebody just because of the facade or whatever.

But really look at who they are and what they believe and what they've done in the past.

If they've done anything and and make the best choices.

If you do that, don't have to fight with them once don't have to fight with them once they're in office.

If you already got what you needed, Now you can collaborate.

With whoever, like when people come and advocate, I sit there and patiently listen and I, mm-hmm, and I'm saying, I'm with you.

You don't have to beat me up to get me to be with you.

One of your hallmarks as congressmen has been criminal justice reform, reentry programs, um, checking the box.

Talk about reentry and what that means in America.

In America, we are.

That is the United States of America.

We are the most incarcerated nation in the world.

There's no country anywhere in the world that have more rich people incarcerated and detained than the United States of America right now.

There are 2.2 million people in jail, prison, and of course, disproportionately African-American males are the biggest part of that population.

Is it the modern day slave system?

It's modern slavery in many ways, and some progress is, in fact being made where individuals who have been wholesale into convictions for things like marijuana possession, things that don't necessarily have to be and have not been violent crimes, although they're far too many of those as well.

At one of our town halls.

Way back, I asked the question there what's a big problem in this particular community?

And somebody said, the number of people who are in jail, in prison.

And we started our work on reentry in a very serious way to try and make that happen.

It's hard to find a family, for example, in inner city America that has not been affected and is not affected in some way by somebody in their family that have run afoul of the law, or to find somebody who has not become drug addicted, or to find somebody that's not involved extensively in opiate use.

And so all of these things are individuals who make up a large part of the population.

And if we don't address those problems, help those individuals, the idea of become equal and experience and equality a kind of far fetched.

So we've been fortunate to pass something called a second chance to act.

And there have been people at the state level like the John Ford Band, the box where individuals didn't have to put on applications, the fact that they've got a criminal conviction or they've been convicted of something.

Because when you have these kind of experiences, there are a lot of things you can't do.

I mean, you can't get a license to do this employment.

Some people just won't even look at it yet.

They're restricted.

They're other people who've started.

I know individuals who are college professors.

I know individuals who are outstanding business people.

I know individuals who drive CTA busses now because the city of Chicago has a second chance program.

And I am so delighted that the notion of reentry has taken on a different level, where now we have harsh filters.

We have all kind of businesses, we have chambers of commerce who bought into the idea and, helping these individuals get gainful employment and become productive citizens.

What's the Danny Davis legacy?

What are you most proud of?

Of what you've done in Congress?

I think what I consider myself to be most proud of is the level of education that we have tried to provide to our citizenry, where being engaged, where being involved, where believe in in yourself, where believing in the community, where you live and work, being a part of the rebirth, the redevelopment, the institutionalization, the education.

It has been promoting education.

Chicago, because of you in health care is most resound in the world.

It's not the city.

It's not the country.

It is the world.

People from all over the world come here.

They share.

Medical care.

And that's because of you, Danny.

We've got the best rehabilitation hospital in America.

In the world, right.

Here in North Western.

University of Illinois.

University of Chicago.

I mean, health centers all over.

And they are serving more than 30 million low and moderate income people all over the United States of America.

I have work in 25, 30 states with helping to organize them.

And I used to be president of the National Association of Health Centers.

And great experience.

Wonderful people, wonderful experience.

Danny Davis, thank you for sharing with us Your legacy and your wisdom, your experience, and taking a look at future of what politics might look like.

Thank you.

It's been a pleasure, and we'll do like the Mississippi River.

Just keep rolling alone.

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Funding for this program has been provided by Illinois Student Assistance Commission.

Community trust.

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Lamborghini Chicago Gold Coast and Downers Grove.

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