INTERVIEW: Andrew Young & John Hope Bryant Talk The Dirty Work Documentary, Friendship With MLK Jr. + More

Summary

The Breakfast Club – Andrew Young & John Hope Bryant on “The Dirty Work” Documentary, MLK Jr., and the Power of Unseen Sacrifice

Podcast: The Breakfast Club
Guests: Andrew Young, John Hope Bryant
Hosts: Charlamagne Tha God, Lauren LaRosa (filling in for DJ Envy), Jess Hilarious
Date: October 23, 2025
Episode: “INTERVIEW: Andrew Young & John Hope Bryant Talk The Dirty Work Documentary, Friendship With MLK Jr. + More”

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Overview

This episode welcomes civil rights icon Andrew Young and entrepreneur/philanthropist John Hope Bryant to discuss Young’s new documentary, The Dirty Work, which spotlights the untold, behind-the-scenes labor essential to the civil rights movement. The conversation dives deep into Young’s personal journey, his pivotal relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the vital role of strategy and teamwork, lessons for new generations, and the importance of embracing “dirty work” as a noble, ongoing force for social change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why “The Dirty Work”? The Story Behind the Title

[03:21–08:30]

• Andrew Young explains the glamorization of the civil rights movement often ignores the thousands doing crucial groundwork. He shares how personal “dirty work” – from handling Dr. King’s mail (literally answering hundreds of letters) to fundraising and negotiating with churches – seeded his deeper involvement.
  • “Every one or two you see on television, there were 500 to a thousand of us in the background doing the dirty work.” [03:32]
• His wife’s insistence on moving South was a catalyst:
  • “She said, 'I'm going back to my mama in Alabama and I'm taking my children.' ... I want you to sell this house and find a job down South.” [03:55]

2. Teamwork, Roles, and Unseen Labor

[08:30–11:21; 14:14–17:32]

• Young and Bryant underscore the movement’s complexity beyond protests; strategy, conflict management, education, and quiet negotiation were essential.
• Young was uniquely “unfireable,” which allowed him to “speak truth to power” and resolve internal conflicts.
  • Bryant: “He became the one person nobody could fire, so he could speak truth to power.” [10:26]
• Young’s purpose found in tasks no one else wanted:
  • “If there's something that I think needs doing and nobody wants to do it, that becomes my purpose.” [13:21]

3. Purpose, Survivors’ Guilt & Leadership Lessons

[17:32–19:09; 21:00–24:22]

• Young speaks candidly about survivor’s guilt from being present when King was killed and how it fueled his work.
• The trauma and camaraderie of the movement:
  • Bryant: “[Andrew Young] is the closest thing we have to Nelson Mandela. But underneath all this is, ‘I'm here because my friend was shot.’ So he couldn't enjoy any of it. He gave all his money away. He's been a servant his whole life.” [19:48]
• Arrest stories, singing in a hot paddy wagon, and lessons in resilience showcase the ever-present threat but also the community’s spirit.

4. Strategy Over Outrage: Organizing, Not Just Protesting

[28:09–32:57; 39:23–45:52]

• The civil rights movement required structure, clear roles, and deliberate tactics.
• “Dirty work” included everything from negotiating desegregation with white business leaders to maintaining morale at mass meetings when radio mention was forbidden.
  • Young: “We took apart the town piece by piece and everything that was not fair. We said, from now on, let's make it fair.” [43:23]
• Today, he observes a lack of organizing and urges moving beyond outrage to durable, team-based action.

5. Heritage, Personal Temperament, and Learning Calm

[26:09–27:52; 47:32–51:36]

• Young attributes his strategic calm to lessons from his father:
  • “Don't get mad, get smart… Your mind is more powerful than your fists or your feet.” [26:09]
• Stories of boxing, sports analogies, and humor as survival tools.
• Even when threatened, Young insists that calculated, coolheaded strategy will always win over anger.
• Charlamagne: “It’s a certain temperament. Like, I don’t even know if you can learn that.”
  • Young: “I think you can learn it… every man learns it with his wife.” [59:30]

6. Women’s Critical, Under-acknowledged Roles

[84:39–87:53]

• Strong praise for Coretta Scott King and for women in the movement who organized, raised funds, and gave strength.
  • Bryant: “Behind every successful man is an exhausted woman, which is why he keeps telling the story of women who don’t get the credit, who don’t get acknowledged.” [85:56]

7. Modern Challenges: Social Media, ‘Me’ vs. ‘We’

[87:22–100:58]

• The hosts and guests reflect on the performative nature of today’s activism, claiming the “we” spirit has been lost:
  • Bryant: “The mission back then was we. The mission now is me.” [100:22]
  • Charlamagne: “My likes, my engagements, my views.” [100:47]
• They warn that without teamwork, humility, and a willingness to do unglamorous work, movements can’t succeed.

8. Hope, Faith, and America’s Ongoing Story

[74:15–79:52]

• Despite setbacks, Young expresses his faith in the country’s potential:
  • “I believe this country is a God-fearing, God-blessed country. … I haven’t seen any other country… [where] people keep coming back together like this.” [74:15]
• The importance of hope and self-esteem for young people:
  • Bryant: “The most dangerous person in the world is a person with no hope.” [102:48]

9. Unseen Strategy: Behind Historic Turning Points

[105:34–113:27]

• Young tells how Dr. King’s absence in Selma inadvertently led to “Bloody Sunday,” which spurred the Voting Rights Act; highlighting the unpredictability and interconnectedness of struggle, error, and progress.

10. Legacy & The Central Lesson of “Dirty Work”

[113:27–116:55]

• For future generations:
  • Young: “If there’s something that I think needs doing and nobody else wants to do it, that’s my job. … There is some dirty work in any struggle for freedom. But dirty work could be hard work, dirty work could be thoughtful work, you know, whatever nobody else wants to do.” [113:27]
  • Bryant: “Don’t be afraid of doing the dirty work. Embrace it—it’s noble work. It’s not dirty work.” [115:37]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (With Timestamps)

• On purpose and the unsung work:
  • “If there’s something that I think needs doing and nobody wants to do it, that becomes my purpose.” – Andrew Young, [13:21]
• Survivor’s guilt and humility:
  • “He’s the closest thing we have to Nelson Mandela. But underneath all this is, ‘I’m here because my friend was shot.’ So he couldn’t enjoy any of it… He’s been a servant his whole life.” – John Hope Bryant, [19:48]
• On learning not to react with anger:
  • “Don’t get mad, get smart.” – Andrew Young (advice from his father), [26:09]
  • “If you lose your temper in a fight, you lose the fight.” – Andrew Young, [47:43]
• Movement organization:
  • “We took apart the town piece by piece and everything that was not fair. We said, from now on, let’s make it fair.” – Andrew Young, [43:23]
• The shift from ‘we’ to ‘me’:
  • “The mission back then was we. The mission now is me.” – John Hope Bryant, [100:22]
• On hope and danger:
  • “The most dangerous person in the world is a person with no hope. … They had hope.” – John Hope Bryant, [102:48]
• The legacy lesson:
  • “There is some dirty work in any struggle for freedom. But dirty work could be hard work, dirty work could be thoughtful work, you know, whatever nobody else wants to do.” – Andrew Young, [113:27]

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Essential Timestamps

| Time | Segment/Topic | |---------|----------------------------------------------------| | 03:21 | Documentary purpose, Young’s entry into movement | | 08:30 | Staff roles, mail, “unfireable” advisor | | 14:14 | Discovering one’s purpose (“the thing nobody wants”)| | 19:09 | Survivors’ guilt, trauma, and responsibility | | 21:00 | First civil rights arrest, “turning tragedy to triumph” | | 26:09 | Father’s advice on calm and using intellect | | 28:09 | Negotiations, actual “dirty work” detailed | | 39:23 | Organizing via churches, word of mouth, radio | | 47:32 | Calm under pressure, “Don’t get mad, get smart” | | 51:36 | MLK’s humor coping with danger, sacrifice | | 74:15 | Faith in America’s potential | | 87:22 | Role of teamwork, modern activism’s challenges | | 100:22 | Shift from community focus to individual branding | | 113:27 | Central lesson of “dirty work” for new generations |

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Style & Tone

The conversation is deeply personal, sometimes humorous, always candid, and full of lived wisdom. Andrew Young and John Hope Bryant gently challenge, tease, and reflect, with Young’s humility and storytelling at the center. The hosts are respectful, curious, and insightful, drawing parallels between past and present, old-school organizing and modern performative activism, and the enduring need for selfless, behind-the-scenes labor.

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Summary Takeaway

The Dirty Work is more than a civil rights documentary—it’s a master class on humility, teamwork, and doing the unglamorous tasks that sustain movements and create lasting change. Andrew Young’s stories remind us that history is built not by stars alone but by thousands willing to do the hard, uncelebrated work. The key lesson for today’s generation: Don’t just seek the spotlight—embrace the noble labor no one else will do, because that’s how history turns.

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For the full story and the real jewels, check out “The Dirty Work” documentary on MSNBC.

Transcript

[Charlamagne Tha God]

This is an I Heart podcast.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

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[Johnny Knoxville]

Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, Campside Media and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect.

[Andrew Young]

Storm in a sewer. That was dumb. Do not not follow my example.

[Johnny Knoxville]

Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[John Hope Bryant]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

Hunting for Answers, I highlighted the story of 19 year old Lachey Dungey.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

But she never knocked on that door. She never made it inside.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

And that text message would be the.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Last time anyone would ever hear from her. Listen to Hunting for Answers from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrew Young]

Hold up. Every day I wake up. Wake your ass up. The Breakfast Club.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Yes, it's the world's most dangerous morning show. The Breakfast Club. Charlamagne, the God, DJ Envy. Just hilarious. Envy's not here today, but Lauren LaRosa is. And we have a amazing guest in the building today. Man, you know, it's interesting when we talk about, you know, black history as if it's a thing of the past. Like, you know, as if we don't have living legends and icons and people who, you know, well, we're there for the things that we talk about. Mr. Andrew Young is here. Good morning, sir.

[Andrew Young]

Good morning. How are you Brother, I'm really glad to be here with you.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Yes, sir.

[Andrew Young]

I'm long overdue, man.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Who you telling?

[Andrew Young]

I mean, I need to know where you are.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Yes, sir.

[Andrew Young]

And I'm out of sync. I look at the book and be honest. A die lie. And I probably need to read that quickly.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Yes, sir. John Hope Bryant is here as well. John Hope Bryant. Good morning, sir.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Good morning.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Good morning.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Mr. Andrew Young has a new documentary out called the Dirty Work. It comes out on this Friday, 10:17. Why was it important for you to tell this part of your story now?

[Andrew Young]

Well, I'm telling my story and we see the glamour of the civil rights movement and it was very glamorous, but. But every one or two you see on television, there were 500 to a thousand of us in the background doing the dirty work. And it's the way I got into it. I was actually up here in New York in 1957, 58, and Dr. King needed somebody to move with him to Atlanta. My wife was from Marion, Alabama, which was a little country town near Selma. And we saw the msn. It was the NBC, NBC documentary on John Lewis in a Nashville sit in story. We just bought a house out in Queensland and I was working up at the National Council of Churches. And when the documentary came on, my wife said, it's time for us to go home. I said, we are home. She said, no, this is New York. New York can't ever be my home. And I said, well, we just bought this house and we got a good job. She said, yeah, and I hope you'll deal with that. I said, well, what are you going to do? She said, I'm going back to my mama in Alabama and I'm taking my children. And I said, well, what do you want me to do? She said, I want you to sell this house and find a job down South. And she was the blessing in New York, though, was that she got a chance to go to queens college for $18 a semester and get a master's degree. And. And that's what supported us in those early days. But it's. It was the attraction of going back south that got me back in the movement. And it was in that transition, Martin Luther King had just been stabbed and he took in New York. In New York, he took a month off to go to India and was just coming back and planning to move from Montgomery to Atlanta. So I ended up getting pulled in to try to help him move. And that was. That was the dirty work. He needed to be in a bigger city than Montgomery. But he couldn't afford to live in Atlanta except with his parents. And so he was trying to raise funds. And that's another story, but. No, no, that's this story, but that he never.

[John Hope Bryant]

He keeps avoiding his own.

[Andrew Young]

He never had. He never had a million dollars a year to work with the entire time we had the movement going. And so I was trying to help him raise some funds and went to my church up here, the United Church of Christ, and. And asked them. They founded a number of colleges. Howard and Fisk, Talladega, Tougaloo, all across the South. And so I said, you know, if you would let us use some of these properties or some of them, we could have a movement southwest in little or no time. And so I was sort of being a bridge between him making the transition to Montgomery and come into Atlanta. I was then moved from Atlanta back to. I mean, from New York back to Atlanta. And the first job I got, he was not there. His secretary said, well, once she said, my wife's in Alabama. She said, you can't be hanging around here loose. She said, idle miners, the devil's workshop, a bunch of kids in Alabama, whole lot of devils. And she said, you need something to do? I said, well, anything I can do to help. And she gave me a great big egg crate packed with letters. She put about 100 letters in a package, tied them up, and there were maybe a dozen packages. And so she said, if you can help Dr. King with his mail, well, that's kind of dirty work, but that's really. If you want to get to know a company, if somebody's coming in here and wants to get to know it, answer the mail or at least read the mail. I know what's happening around. And so it gave me. I mean, I ended up with the bucket of mail, and that was sort of the dirty work.

[John Hope Bryant]

So you missed a couple pieces. First of all, you and Dr. King's wife. Your wife and Dr. King's.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah, my wife and Martin's wife. Same old town were by coincidence. And I said, coincidence of God's way of remaining anonymous. They were from the little. Same country town, over 3,000. Marion, Alabama. But there was a good school there. And actually, in the 1940s, that school turned out more black PhDs than any school in the nation because it had a. I don't know, it had people who were studious. And Julian Bond's Daddy got his PhD writing it on Lincoln School in Marion, Alabama, which is where all of these young people came from. And it was where the movement A lot of movement people came from there.

[John Hope Bryant]

So Charlemagne, when he also, when he went to go get the job, when he went to go down south, the staff didn't want him. Dr. King was out giving speeches and on the road, the staff didn't want him. He was smart, he was articulate. He was like, oh, all the seats are taken. We all, we good. They sent him packing. So he came back with a grant. The grant was self funded and it was for non violent education or something like that, but it funded a salary. So Dr. King said, okay, well, you can sit, you pay for. You can sit right over here.

[Andrew Young]

Well, paid for it, huh? We not only paid for it, I brought access to all of those schools. Yes, they from in North Carolina, Kings Mountain, Georgia. It was Atlanta University.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Wow.

[Andrew Young]

Alabama was Tougaloo, Talladega, Tallity and Alabama and Tougaloo and Mississippi.

[John Hope Bryant]

But the key point of that in Bastie Young was again, you won't take credit for this. He became the one person nobody could fire, so he could speak truth to power.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah, but we didn't inspire anybody.

[John Hope Bryant]

Exactly. Because Dr. King didn't like conflict. If you let me finish my point.

[Andrew Young]

Yes, sir.

[John Hope Bryant]

Dr. King didn't like conflict, so he was the conflict manager. So he was the one inside the staff. You had crazy people on the left and crazy folks sort of over here trying to do revolutions. Dr. King didn't want conflict, so he would expect Ambassador Young to knock heads. That's part of the dirty work. That's it. And when he came in, he wanted it to be resolved.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And so he was a resolution manager inside the movement and outside the movement. Again, he doesn't take credit for it. But that, that really became one of his magic pieces was that he was in an independent thinker, just like you are. Just like all you guys are independent thinkers. Did I get that right?

[Andrew Young]

I guess. No. The thing is that, that the one thing you I couldn't do, I couldn't move in there. I grew up in New Orleans. I'd lived in the south all my life, but I was up here in New York when the movement started. So I couldn't come back down there and claim. And I hadn't done anything. Everybody had been beaten up, gone to jail, and I come down with a grant. Well, that's. No, I mean that gives me no scoring points at all, but. And I didn't need them. I just wanted to be there to help because. Well, I don't know, I left Howard and I really. Well, I really fucked up for three and a half years. Damn. See, but I somehow got a degree. And why you say you was fucking up? Because I was playing around, wasn't studying. I was trying to make the swimming team, trying to make the track team, even tried the wrestling team and trying to play ball, basketball in the gym. And I was. I went to college at 15 and so I was trying to get on the girls and I wasn't making any progress at all, you know, from New Orleans and I got along with people, but I was. I was trying to grow up. And when I got. Came left Howard and we stopped because you couldn't. Had no hotels that let you stay. We stopped at a Kings Mountain, North Carolina, where we had a church conference going on. And I decided to run up the mountain. And that was where I was in good shape. But when you're in the hills, you're never running flat, either. Running downhill or uphill.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Yeah, incline.

[Andrew Young]

And I was running downhill too fast and still tried to make it to the top of the mountain. And somewhere along there I kind of blacked out. And I looked around and everything seemed perfect. You know, it was a perfect sky, perfect corn field, little green trees were sparkling. And I said, damn, everything here has got a purpose. And. But me. And I said, I cannot be put here on this earth with no purpose at all. And how do I find a purpose? Well, what I came to was if there's something that I think needs doing and nobody wants to do it, that becomes my purpose. So I was looking for stuff that needed to be done that nobody wanted to do.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Did MLK Jr being working with him, did that feel like part of your purpose?

[Andrew Young]

Well, he was the only game in town, and he had just finished, you know, the Montgomery Improvement Association. He got stabbed up here in Harlem and he was recovering from. He and Coretta took a trip to India to study more about nonviolence. And that was sort of when I came in and he wasn't around, so I started cleaning up. But I learned that when he got to be head of the Montgomery Improvement association, he wasn't even in a meeting. He was back in the. In the mimeograph room, running a mimeograph machine, turning out hand bills, telling people that we're going to have a one day boycott. Well, that one day Boycott turned into 381 days and. But they went to the back room because two preachers, Methodists and Baptists, usually they were arguing about whose turn it was to be the spokesman. And the ladies in the group said, look, these brothers always fussing and fighting why don't we let this young man in the back be the spokesman? And so they voted him the spokesman, and he didn't even know it.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

That's how. Wow. That's how he became like the free.

[Andrew Young]

And he went and they went to the back and told him that he was going to chair the meeting. And he had less than an hour. It was about 7 o'. Clock. The mass meeting started at 8 o' clock at another church across town. And he had to stand up and define this whole movement. Well, he really was brilliant, but with that kind of stuff, when you running a mimeograph machine all day, your mind's wandering and somebody says, hold up. You got 20 minutes, you got to speak, and nothing you can do but go to the bathroom and lock the door.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

But somebody had to know he had those gifts, right? Like somebody had.

[Andrew Young]

Well, they had heard him preaching in his church, but it wasn't a gift like running a mass movement. And, I mean, this was the first time in a long time, it was the first time I can remember that any city got together and did and agreed that everybody would stop riding the bus. Started out for one day, but it was so successful that it ended up being 381 days.

[John Hope Bryant]

That was an early Uber, by the way, because it was black taxis. Everybody just decided to drive everybody else around and not get on the bus. But the thing, the message for your audience, Charlemagne, is when he was running up that mountain, he was insecure, he was lost, and he was looking for a purpose. A lot of people are looking for a purpose. Dr. King was looking for a purpose. He was back in the mimeograph machine trying to figure out what his life was going to be like. And he'd spend 18 hours preparing for a sermon. He had 18 minutes when his moment came. You're on in a half an hour, dude.

[Andrew Young]

But, you know, the speeches, that. That speech, his wife was pregnant, so she couldn't be there. She asked a choir director to record it. So we have it recorded. And what you see is all of the. You see references to all of the speeches he made when he got the Nobel Peace Prize, when he was at the March on Washington in Selma. I mean, he had a repertoire and he just pulled it all together. And he had a nice voice and a nice cadence and he knew how to move across. So he put all of the stuff together and preached his way to the top.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

It's such an interesting perspective when you talk about purpose, too, John, because in my mind, I always thought the purpose was the liberation of black People, but you always just looking for something, a purpose within yourselves, first and foremost.

[Andrew Young]

Well, except you got to start liberating black people by liberating the one you.

[John Hope Bryant]

Are black person sitting there.

[Andrew Young]

And I'm not liberated. I'm enslaved. All of the crap that goes on on every college campus and in every neighborhood.

[John Hope Bryant]

And so let's get some into some real talk. He's got survivor's guilt. He doesn't sleep. He's always working. Because he was on that balcony when Dr. King was assassinated, and he was right there.

[Andrew Young]

It was his friend before that, though. See, we all born into a mess. I mean, I was born into a neighborhood where my brother and I were only black kids. There were three, four black families. But you had an Irish grocery store on one corner, an Italian bar on the next. The Nazi party was on the third corner. And I'm smack dab in the middle, 50 yards from each one of them and at four years old.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's you.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

I've been hearing it. Yeah, I hear it.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's you.

[Andrew Young]

It gotta be your phone. I don't. I don't know.

[John Hope Bryant]

The governor calling you. Let me turn it off for you.

[Andrew Young]

I don't know.

[John Hope Bryant]

So. So when he. When Dr. King was assassinated, the FBI told him the instructions for the shooter. If you miss the dreamer, kill the strategist. So he's been this all this time? U.N. ambassador, first black U.N. ambassador in history. United States under Carter. First congressman since Reconstruction in the South. Mayor of Atlanta. Brought the Atlantic, the Olympics to Atlanta, Made Atlanta international city mayor, Presidential Medal of Freedom Awardee, French Foreign Legion of 41. 50 honorary doctor degrees. Brought a venture capital to Africa, liberated Zimbabwe, Helped to get Mandela out of prison. But underneath all this is, I'm here because my friend was a shot. So. So he couldn't enjoy any of it. He give all his money away. He's been a servant his whole life. And he is. He's the closest thing we have to Nelson Mandela. But he.

[Andrew Young]

But he had to stay in jail for three to 30 years. Yes, I have. And that was one of the things I was guilty about. Everybody else had been been to jail.

[John Hope Bryant]

And they called him an Uncle Tom.

[Andrew Young]

And the staff called Uncle Tom. Because I was managing the foundation money. I couldn't. I wasn't supposed to go to jail. And so until I got set up in St. Augustine. Well, really, even in Savannah, I ended up first time getting arrested because I was walking to try to get Jose Williams out of jail. And there were kids playing pickety in front of the holiday Inn. I mean, they were 10, 12 years old. And the police come up there to arrest them. And I went on, I said, look, these kids are not part of anybody's movement. We wouldn't put people out here like this with no adults. I said, if you arrest these kids, you ask them for trouble. And they, they grabbed me and threw me in the truck in the paddy wagon and. But I was glad I went because they immediately shut the thing down and you got a little slit in there. And it was at least close to 100 degrees in Savannah. And they closed the air off. And I got, you know, 15, 20 kids in there, and they expected us to start, you know, crying and screaming because we were. We were really closed in and hot. And that's where going to Sunday school helped me. And I said, look, y'. All, y' all know how to sing Wade in the Water, we going to the beach. Close your eyes. And I said, and. And I said, we going down to Tybee beach. And when you get to the beach, the water's cold and we're going to get. And the song goes, it chills the body, but not the soul. And so we started then walking like they were in their mind, walking into the water. I said, we are not going to pass waist deep. Then everybody's going to get down, we're going to cool off. And so when we kind of figured out how to stay in an oven and not burn, see, I said, let's. We're gonna sing. And they started singing Wade in the Water. God's gonna trouble the water, see. And we turned tragedy into a triumph. The police got mad and took everybody to jail, and I had to go with them. But then when we got to jail, it was dinner time. And they gave everybody a paper plate and they put up grits and grease is what they served them. And the kids said, we don't eat this shit. And they started sailing the plates across the jail. And I mean, it was a while time, but there again, that's. I accidentally got into that when you, when you. But that was the dirty work.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

When you look back, was there a moment when you realized the moral weight of what you were doing could also cost you?

[Andrew Young]

Personally, I think I never worried about that. And I never worried about that because I never been. I mean, the school I went to in elementary school, Bellina C. Jones, was an all black public school, overcrowded. And I could have gotten killed in school. I mean, it was. It was called a bucket of blood, but I got along. And then between that in my Schooling and then I went to a church nursery and they taught me to read and write. So when they put me in public school, I was 6 years old, but they put me in third grade and everybody else was 9, 10. And so I've always had a, a burden which I learned to deal with and not, you know, but I was always playing catch up.

[John Hope Bryant]

Why did the staff call you that supposedly unpleasant phrase, which actually when you do a little research on Uncle Tom. He was a bad brother, actually. He actually took slaves up north to Canada. He bought a home, bought some property in Canada and actually housed them. Created self sustainability. Other folks turned the story into something negative. But why do they call you, some of the staff, Uncle Tom?

[Andrew Young]

Because my dad had taught me to live in that neighborhood and to go to that school, I had to stay calm. And my dad is motto, he was a little man, five, four. And he said, look, you're never going to be big enough to beat up anybody. So stay calm and let your mind lead you. Your mind is more powerful than your fists or your feet. You can run from trouble, but you won't feel good about running. And you can fight, but you're probably going to get beat. But if you let your mind work, you can figure out how to get through any trouble. But don't ever get mad. Get smart. And I heard that from four. In fact, he took me to the movie, a segregated movie to see Jesse owens in the 1936 Olympics. Because when Jesse Owens won 100 meter dash, Hitler got mad and he was supposed to give Jesse Owens the medal, but he walked out of the stadium and took all of his troops with him. And my dad said, now watch Jesse. What's he doing? I said, he's going about his business. He said, that's the point. He's not letting Hitler get him upset. He got three more medals to win and he ended up coming out with four gold medals and a couple of world records. And so it was, it was that preparation that, that made me ready to do whatever I had to do.

[John Hope Bryant]

So they, they didn't understand his role. Dr. King never wanted him arrested. Dr. King, he needed him on the outside. Yeah, he, he didn't want, he was, he was not useful. Getting locked up like the other people he needed. It was, it was a different frequency. And he's not saying it, but he was a strategist.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

And I think that's the interesting thing about the doc, right? Like it shows you that the civil rights movement wasn't just about marching. And you've said this, it was about strategy. So what other dirty work had to be done quietly for the. In the private, for the public victories to be?

[Andrew Young]

Well, you know, they bombed. They. They bombed 62 homes in Birmingham in 1961. 62. And Fred Shuttlesworth came over there to see us and said, look, we cannot be passively nonviolent. We gotta find a way to be more aggressive, and we need you to come over and help us. So we agreed before Christmas that we would. In January, we would come over to Birmingham and start a movement. And Dr. King turned to me and said, andy, you know any white folks in Birmingham? I said, I don't know any black folks in Birmingham. I ain't been to Birmingham. And he said, no. Well, you got six weeks to get to know some. I said, why? He said, look, if we're going to go there and tear up the people's town, somebody has to go in early and tell them we're going to do it. I said, then they go kill me. I didn't say that. I said, well, why me? He said, because you grew up with white folks. You ain't worried about white folks. You get along as good. You get along with people. And so I ended up by myself going into Birmingham, and I had met some people in Michigan at a conference from Birmingham. So I called the Episcopal Church, and then one of the people I met answered the phone and I said, I need you to help set me set up a meeting with Dr. King and the Episcopal bishop. And she said, well, I can't do that. She said, I don't know Dr. King. And. And he's got a. He said, I tell you what, she said, you come here and I'll get you to see the bishop. So then I had to go see the bishop and explain to him that we're about to move 50 more black folk into your already 90,000 people, and we intend to tear up your town. We intend to boycott. We're not going to buy anything but food and medicine, you know, but we want to find a way to sit down with you and draw up a map where we can peacefully live together and you can respect us and we can respect you, and everybody can get along well. I mean, he's looking at me like I'm crazy because he ain't used to black folk talking straight to him like that. And. But, I mean, that was no problem for me. And so we set up a series of meetings, and all this stuff that they talking about at Harvard now, what is it? Dei? Yeah. That came from Birmingham, because at the same time, Wyatt Walker, who was pastor up here for a while, he's gone to glory. He was meeting with the Fred Shuttlesworth and the black preachers, and they wrote a Birmingham manifesto. All the things that were wrong with Birmingham. And I was meeting with the white folks, and they were writing all the things they could do to change. You had to sit down and put it to them bluntly, say, look, you got black water and white water. Now, you know that's not real. There's no difference between the water. Why you got to put a sign on and saying, this one's for black folk and that one's for white folk. This is all water. Take the signs down. See if you don't take the signs down. And then you got these black women, and you got them in aprons and smocks. And you let the white women dress up with the clothes they're selling, and they get a commission. But the black folks have to do all the work keeping the shop clean and keeping the clothes. Said, why not just let everybody wear the dresses on the rack and let everybody get a commission? And they say, well, we could, but then they'd have a thousand reasons why they couldn't do it. But we had 90,000 black folk in Birmingham. And when 90,000 black folk decided that they were going to stop spending money on anything but food and medicine, they bought no shoes. No, I mean, that's where the blue jeans came from. Everybody had raggedy blue jeans, and so nobody bought any clothes. And that's when the college students who had come down with us from all over the country, they went back and started wearing blue jeans. Well, that came out of Birmingham. So the. The stuff that the preachers and workers wrote down in the Birmingham manifesto, the things they wanted and the things that the white folk wrote down about what they could do to answer this, all of that became public. But they blamed it on Martin Luther King. And he was in jail. So he wrote the letter from the Birmingham jail. And it didn't have any paper, so he wrote it around the mark somebody had left him. Well, lawyer up here from New York left him a section of the New York Times. And he wrote the letter from the Birmingham jail around the margins.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

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[Narrator/True Crime Host]

In the new podcast Hell in Heaven, two young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead, the other tried for murder not once. People went wild, not twice, stunned, but three times. John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular circular home high on the top, top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble and our couple retreat from reality.

[Andrew Young]

They lose it.

[Johnny Knoxville]

They actually lose it.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

They sort of went nuts until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrew Young]

Of the newspaper. When he ran out of newspaper space, he wrote on toilet paper. And he. And he used to joke and say it's a good thing they had tough toilet paper in the Birmingham jail.

[John Hope Bryant]

But he smuggled it out through, you see?

[Andrew Young]

But he smuggled it out and we got all of these published. And that was the dirty work behind the movement.

[John Hope Bryant]

And Bashar, I need you to do me a favor. You're talking to a whole generation. They're the voice for this generation. Your habit is to talk about this person and that person and give this person credit. Look, they need you to tell your story crisply and bluntly so they can get the memo on how they need. This generation has no business plan about what you did. What you did was absolutely historic. This is no time to be humble and is no type of humble pie like I, I'll do it. I'll. I'll set you up, but you got to hit it out the park. There's some stories. I know, I know these stories.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

We want them to watch the dirty work, too, though.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Young]

But you, you listen to, you talk.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

About this boy, like we. With the work that you did with the boycott, and everybody plays a role in the movement is what I've always heard and learned. I feel like today when we talk about the boycotts that, that we're trying to do actively, there's no real roles. We don't take one thing serious. We might take the other one serious because there's no structure. There's no. How did you get people to fall in line? Even though not everybody agreed with it.

[Andrew Young]

Everybody used to go to church back then. And radio, black radio, wouldn't say anything about. Black radio was owned by white folks. And they would play the music, but we'd have to slip in an announcement. There's going to be a certain meeting at, you know, such and such a Baptist church or such and such a Methodist church. And they finally even Stopped them from doing announcements. So it went by word of mouth. We knew that every night we'd have a mass meeting at some church in some neighborhood, and people would get together about five o' clock and nothing to do. And they sing these old songs that the young folk then came in and modified the freedom songs. And then the preachers would come in and preach a little bit and tell what's going on. But it was. It was all around the church. And in the daytime when the churches were not operating, the kids went to the schools. And the guys who were hanging out at the pool hall, we stopped by there. In fact, Dr. King was very good pool player, grew up in the ymca. And he could get everybody's attention because he would go into a pool hall and challenge the guy, can I take the winner? And after they saw he was. He could run the table, they listened to him. And it was. It was finding a way to get the people where they are. And it didn't matter what they look like, it didn't matter what the clothes were. It didn't matter anything except that I'm ready. Well, they would really say, I'm ready to die for my people. And it was a threat of death to almost every black man in the south until just recently. And it's coming back now, it's more organized now, but we had to mobilize the entire community. But in mobilizing the entire community of Birmingham, that's 90,000 black folk, we brought people from Atlanta. I came from New Orleans, some others came down from Memphis, some came from New York. The hospital workers, 1199 was here in New York. They would come down and they would work with the hospital workers. And we found a way to mobilize the whole city to one stop buying anything but food and medicine. And you do that for six weeks and then six months and the economy dries up and down. People have to start closing stores. Then we finally ended up with 80 businessmen, people who own the hotels, people own the drugstores, the shopping centers, sitting down with us. And they got these two complaints together and agreed on the fact that they could change. But they didn't say, we are automatically going to change everything today. We said, let's try it. Okay, we're going to take down the signs immediately about black and white water. Everybody's going to drink water. And okay, that's a good sign. We're going to let the ladies in the women's department, we're going to let them take out those smocks and aprons and we're going to let them put on the clothes that they're selling, see? And they can get a commission, too. And we're going to treat. To treat them fairly. And we took apart the town piece by piece and everything that was not fair. We said, from now on, let's make it fair. And people began to realize that when 90,000 people haven't been shopping and all of a sudden they start showing up like, you go to Atlanta now, and all of these stores now, same thing happened there. We didn't have to organize it like they did in Birmingham. But the brothers who start making. All right now, the rappers run the department stores because they can come in with their girlfriends and they spend money by the thousands of dollars.

[John Hope Bryant]

But to answer your question, there were rules just like you have here. He's being humble again. It was strategy, by the way. It wasn't. We got the business people to take down the whites only signs. He did.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Dr. King would set the stuff, would shut the economy down. In six weeks, they'd march. They knew this. 60% of the residents were black.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Right.

[John Hope Bryant]

The dollar was the same dollar. So after six weeks, the merchants were. The walls were on fire. Then Dr. King would send Andy Young in. Bastard. Young Andy. He called him Andy. Go in there quietly, take it. Take it. Take your overalls off, put your business suit on. Go behind closed doors, cut a. Cut a deal. Don't embarrass them. Don't humiliate them. We want them to win, too.

[Andrew Young]

Well, it was a little bigger than that.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, okay.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah, but because we had to do it. We had to get. We're acknowledging the whole town.

[John Hope Bryant]

I'm trying to get the blunt truth out.

[Andrew Young]

Well, because you also. If I take credit for it, I'd be dead.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, you're not. Yeah, but you're a lot. Yeah, but you're alive now.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah, but by the way, clearly they.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Knew it because they told him, if.

[Andrew Young]

You can't dream them strategists.

[John Hope Bryant]

But there was. There was rules, there were. There were roles. Everybody had a role. He had a role.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Dr. King had a role. The crazy people had a role in the movement, but the women had a role.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

The kids had a role.

[Andrew Young]

But the dirty work is getting everybody to realize the world.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's right.

[Andrew Young]

And you get the kids and you. You let them know that they can pass out hand bills. And if they happen to see somebody shopping, that they think this shouldn't be shopping, just go and politely hand them a handbill. Don't throw it at them. Say, I just Put it on the windshield of their car. But they know that the community is watching. But it really was classic to do it in Birmingham with 90,000 folk. We had trouble when we got to Chicago or New York, and you got millions of folk. And so that's where we stumbled. And that's when Dr. King, when we were going, coming north and threatening to shut down. I mean, Chicago's got more black folk than they got folk at Alabama. And half of Mississippi and Alabama has gone to Chicago. So we didn't have any problem doing the same things with them that we did with their parents in back home. But it was on such a larger scale and these cities just getting around is different.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

I want to this question for both of y'.

[Andrew Young]

All.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

How do we teach young people now that the real revolution isn't in just outrage, especially the social media outrage, but it's an actual organizing.

[Andrew Young]

Well, that's what my daddy started telling me when I was four. Don't get mad, get smart. See, when you lose your temper in a fight, you lose the fight. And every time. He was a boxing fan and when who was the. Sonny Liston was supposed to be fighting Muhammad Ali. And Sonny Liston was a bear of a man. And my daddy said, watch Muhammad Ali. He'll probably knock him out in two rounds. I said, oh, Daddy, you don't know what you're talking about. He said, that man. I said, that man. I said, he is a bear. And I said, muhammad is. I mean, he's so thin, he's light. One or two punches and he's gonna go down. He said, no. He said, watch. Muhammad is not going to lose his temple and Muhammad isn't going to be cool. And it'll take him a couple of rounds of playing with him, and then Sonny Liston is out of there. Well, I said, well, he said, don't forget. Same thing applies to you. If you're going to get in a fight, don't get mad, get smart. Sonny Liston has gotten mad, see, and he's going to get his ass whipped.

[John Hope Bryant]

Didn't your dad slap you in this example?

[Andrew Young]

Well, that's. I mean, we used. It wasn't slapping it wasn't slapping it, was it? Was he.

[John Hope Bryant]

I was trying to get it real.

[Andrew Young]

He always wanted a shadow box. And he tapped me on the face like that if I was going the wrong way. But if I got lost my temperature and started swinging at. Then he knocked the hell out. And he said, again, you lose your temper, you're gonna lose your head.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's right.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Because I always wondered, like, how did y'.

[Andrew Young]

All.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

So for you, right? You're the strategy brains. You can't lose your temper. But like, there were times I went to museum in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel when I was there last, and they were talking to me about when Martin Luther King was in. I believe it was Raleigh and the KKK was marching because he was in the city. And times like that would happen all the time where people. There was death threats. There were so many things coming you guys way. I'm sure you had to have sometimes face to face conversations to clear the way before he got certain places. And you still stayed. Strategy and brainstorming.

[Andrew Young]

The truth is, we didn't. That everybody knew. In fact, the only person who would talk about it openly was Martin Luther King. And he said, now, you know, if we go messing with Birmingham, some of us ain't gonna come back. See, now he knew he was the one most likely targeted. But he'd start. I mean, he'd make a joke out of it and he had a real good sense of humor. He'd say, now, John, it might be your turn, but it's gonna be one of the hardest things I ever do, but I'll try my best to preach your ass into heaven. And then he'd start preaching all the things that I pick on him about.

[John Hope Bryant]

See, why are you pointing toward me?

[Andrew Young]

Because the illustration, I'm saying that that's the way he did all of us. He would know and he would say things you didn't know he knew about you, and he'd ask God to forgive you and please let him into heaven. You know, I mean, he really. Yeah, he really turned your death into a comedy. And it was. It was. It wasn't sadistic, but the fact that.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

People knew that they could potentially die and still were willing to make that sacrifice is what I think is missing.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes. Now, yeah, he also.

[Andrew Young]

But they shouldn't have. You shouldn't be willing to make the sacrifice. You should be willing to take your time and assume that you can make the world right and you don't have to die. And we maybe have made it too difficult. Most of the people who died, we can remember their names, but there are literally millions. Like, Martin Luther King got stabbed by a black woman up here in Harlem with a letter opener. And the letter opener was pressing on the aorta of his heart. And they said if he had sneezed, he probably would have died. And he talked about that all the time. But what he talked about, he said, but he got a Letter. And this is why writing the letters, answering the letters was important. He said, I remember getting this letter. And this girl said, I am 11 years old and it shouldn't matter, but I happen to be white. And I just want to thank you and thank God that you did not sneeze. And he would. He talked about that all the time because it represented the fact that there's still many, many good people. And you shouldn't believe that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. See that right now. So even right now, in this moment, right now.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Okay.

[Andrew Young]

The whole world is not going to hell in land basket. I think there's Friday or something. There's supposed to be marches in 28 cities.

[John Hope Bryant]

Saturday.

[Andrew Young]

Saturday.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Was that for the protest against the Voting Rights Act?

[John Hope Bryant]

No, no, it's. They're calling it the no King rally.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Or the no King rally, but we.

[Andrew Young]

Didn'T have anything to do with that. But it's. It's.

[John Hope Bryant]

You mean. We mean black people.

[Andrew Young]

Black people. But we'll join. But that's mostly white people. And like, was it that started.

[John Hope Bryant]

Why are you thinking about that? Let's answer her question, though. Yes, there. There was level head in this. And he was it. No, he would go.

[Andrew Young]

There were a whole lot of smart black folk.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's young. With all due respect. You're being. We can either have an interview or a master class. Okay. Now they want it either way because they're not getting these stories.

[Andrew Young]

What about Jack.

[John Hope Bryant]

But the master class. But the master, Jackie Robinson can tell his own story. We know yours.

[Andrew Young]

But we telling. We telling the story of people who were heroes in a crisis.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes.

[Andrew Young]

And who were cool and didn't get mad. They got smart.

[John Hope Bryant]

But they got you here in person. They can go read about Jesse. About Jesse. Okay.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

And I wore my raggedy jeans for you, too.

[Andrew Young]

These jeans right here.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Thank you.

[John Hope Bryant]

So let me give you one example. Ambassador Young. So, doctor, he had actually a ferocious sense of humor.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

But.

[John Hope Bryant]

But he couldn't. He didn't want to be like that because he didn't think people were going to take him seriously. So he. He was like boxed in. But he had this important role. He needed him to play a role.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And the one time he didn't play his role, Dr. King got upset with him. The one time. It was only one time.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

All the time. All the time. You didn't play your role.

[Andrew Young]

What did you do? Well, when. When Meredith got shot on the road walking in Mississippi. First place. He shouldn't have been walking down the highway by himself and making this point without getting everybody wanting people and getting somebody to help him. But anyway, we had a rule. If somebody gets killed or hurt doing something that's right for the benefit of all of us, if they go down, we have to go take their place. And we were already in Chicago. We were registering voters in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. And we didn't need to have another march to show we were brave. But everybody was mad because Meredith got shot. And so they said, let's go, let's go. We got to keep it going. Well, I saw that they were leaving all of the stuff we'd been working on for months behind and it would all suffer. But I got tired of playing Uncle Tom role. I said, okay, let's go. And Dr. King said, Andy, hold up. I got to go to John. Meet me in my office. And he came in and he said, look, if you're not going to talk sense and help balance it on right side, I don't need you. He said, I don't need another crazy negro. We got plenty. Everybody can get emotional. Somebody's got to stay calm. And I said, but I get tired of playing that Uncle Tom role. He said, yeah, but you've been doing it all your life and you ain't going to quit now.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Why do they call being calm and level headed and using strategy being an Uncle Tom? That doesn't make.

[Andrew Young]

Because when everybody's mad and you calm, then they think something's wrong with you.

[John Hope Bryant]

They thought the most. They thought, a man thought that the most courageous, manly thing he can do is to go to jail, going to prison, getting your rear end whipped was, was a badge of honor. By the way. Strategically, they put women and children in those marches. They didn't want Charlemagne or me or they didn't want. Because that, that was aggression against aggression. You wanted to get the sympathy from the TV cameras and the me. So they put women and children. That was strategic.

[Andrew Young]

No, we didn't put it. Well, the men wouldn't come.

[John Hope Bryant]

Okay, well, that's okay. All right. Whatever it was, it worked out. But the point is, the point is that, that he was playing a very important role. Like if you look at the pictures in the civil rights movement, Dr. King and Andrew Young. Andrew is never looking at the camera. He's looking here, he's looking here. He's looking here. He's looking for. He's looking for threats to his friend. He's not trying to become Dr. King. Yeah, you guys, when you're interviewing, you're not trying to be the guest no, you're not trying to be the star. That's really. You're so good at it. You're playing your role, and you do it brilliantly. And as a result of that, you became stars. And by focusing on the star, Ambassador Young wanted Andrew Dr. King to be successful, and he deferred himself. He. Again, I'm basically the only person that lets him. That he lets push him like this. It just. But he knows I'm just trying to pull it out of him so that people can benefit. He's very uncomfortable talking about himself. But this is so important to understand the dirty work.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

The stuff behind the scenes, the little things is everything. And so this role he played of being calm and cool and chill and stepping over mess and not in it.

[Andrew Young]

That'S the way I was born. Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

It's a certain temperament. Like, I don't even know if you can learn that. Like, that's why.

[Andrew Young]

But he saw that you can learn it, I think.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Well, can you unlearn it?

[Andrew Young]

I mean, I learned it. Every man learns it with his wife.

[John Hope Bryant]

Okay, that was good.

[Andrew Young]

I mean, your wife can cuss you and I mean, talk about you like a dog. And my wife does. Regularly.

[John Hope Bryant]

No, Carol is fantastic.

[Andrew Young]

No, she. But she was a school teacher for 30 years, and she don't. And she said, I. I've been dealing with you bad boys all my life, and I ain't gonna let you get away with nothing. Well, okay, but I've been married twice, and both of them were school teachers, and both of them knew how to. Well, one, I knew how not to get. Get riled up with. I don't believe I've ever lost my temper with my wife, either. One. One for 40 years and another one for 30 years.

[John Hope Bryant]

He taught. He taught me, you can either be married or you can be. Right.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

That's right.

[John Hope Bryant]

Those are two different things.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

In the doc, you said after Martin Luther King Jr. Got shot, you knew there was no hope. What did you mean?

[Andrew Young]

No, I don't think I said that. I knew that it was going to be hard, but I really. You know, my mama used to make me go to Sunday school. And one time they were talking about Elijah going to heaven in a flaming chariot. And I was about 9 years old, and I said, I don't believe that they put me out of Sunday school, See? But I never forgot that. And that's what I thought when I saw Martin laying there. One, I said, he probably didn't even hear that shot. The bullet phallus travels faster than the speed of sound. So it hit him right in his and severed his spinal cord. So he probably never heard it and he probably never felt any pain. And he was dead instantly. And the thing that occurred to me then was, damn, my brother done gone to heaven in a flaming chariot. And he used to keep wanting to go back to Memphis. Well, Memphis is right next to the river, Mississippi River, Mississippi river runs through. And all our spirituals, you know, my home is over Jordan. Well, Jordan is the Mississippi bus down south. And all of the spirituals talk about, you know, steal away, steal away to Jesus. And I just felt that he'd gone home to the Lord. And it left you here and left me here. But I knew, and I still know that there's hardly a day that I don't talk about him and learn or remember something that he said in a similar situation. And I pass that on to my children, but to all children. And it's one of the reasons why I'm really grateful to those folk and John is one of them that put together money to tell this story. Because I don't believe there's ever been, I don't believe anybody black, white, rich or poor that's ever had 90 minutes of, of TV time telling their story. And these folk came in, brother from England. They backed three 18 wheelers up into my, my, my, my, my driveway and unloaded the equipment and they, they set me down and I talked for three days, eight hours a day. They came back a month or so later with another three days, eight hours a day. And I think we did that, we did that three or four times.

[John Hope Bryant]

He's 93.

[Andrew Young]

I'm sitting here like, just watching, listening.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Some talk now like.

[Andrew Young]

But it was. And they had read everything ever written by me. And this brother sat down there and he asked me questions. I said, where did you get that from? And he tell me where it came from. And he made me remember. And so I saw this as having a chance to tell a story. And I don't care how much we don't read like we used to, if we ever did. But all the books that were written by the movement are big, thick books. And we don't read, we don't keep still that long. So the mass media, radio and television is still our means of communication. And it's why you play such an important part in our community and why I had to. I mean, I was in a meeting last night till 10 o', clock, went home, got me a few hours sleep, got up at 4:00 in the morning, got on A plane and came up back here because I wasn't coming to talk to you all. You talk to more people than anybody I know. And when John said he's going to let you talk to his people, I said, thank you, Jesus.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

No, it's a privilege, man.

[Andrew Young]

Well, but it's a privilege for me because I. Well, like, I was mayor for eight years, and we took Atlanta from, well, half a million people to 5 million. And we got the world's busiest airport. And I went up to the airport, the world's busiest airport, and they used to complain that they didn't have enough women in the decision making. And I go into the board meeting, and there's 12 people in there, and nine of them are women. Black women. Well, eight black women, one white woman. And that airport handles 114 million people a year, and black women are running it. And we have worked that out, and we're trying to expand it and keep it growing, but we voted, and we get out and vote. I got elected because. And it poured down rain. It was like Gladys night thing, rainy night in Georgia. And it poured down from Sunday, and only day was Tuesday. And I said, lord, please stop this rain. And it kept on raining Monday and rained all day Tuesday and half the night. And I went out to see how I was doing, and black folk were still in lines. They were in lines in Atlanta like they were in line with Mandela in South Africa. They stayed in line for days in South Africa because they got Mandel out of jail and elected him president. That. They elected me mayor. And then after that, they elected me to Congress in 72, and then 73. They elected Maynard Jackson mayor. And we've had nine black mayors in a row. And everyone has grown the city more. And. And it's. It's doing well.

[John Hope Bryant]

I have a favorite action. I don't ask you for many favors. I've never seen these folks so quiet. Okay. They're gonna pay you respect because you are. You are the iconic. I've never seen them as quiet. Right. Yeah, yeah, but they. But they got questions, right? And if. And if you keep telling stories about Joe Jack Schmo and the other person I need for them, this is a master class. This is an opportunity for giving one.

[Andrew Young]

John.

[John Hope Bryant]

Okay, but I know there's some jewels.

[Andrew Young]

But I've been giving him one for the last 20 years.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

But also, everything can be said in one interview. That's why the documentary is important as well. But I mean, I'm learning a lot. I do. To John's point, I do Have a question? Do you think we've honored Dr. King's legacy or just branded it?

[Andrew Young]

No, I don't think there's anybody. Anybody around that doesn't respect what he did and what he gave his life for. I think that. I think he is a sacred personality in our history. But everyone is like that. I mean, Crispus Attucks, I knew about him. He's the first black man. First man to die for this country in Massachusetts. And he's black. And it. Well, this country would not be what it is without us. And I think Martin Luther King represents the best of us, but he ain't the only one of us that. There were people around him, and only a half a dozen of us had been to college. I mean, most of us learn from the streets, and they learn from our experiences, but the. I mean, Louis Armstrong grew up in my neighborhood in New Orleans. He didn't. I don't think anybody ever gave him trumpet lessons. He just picked up the thing and made it blow. And the thing that I'd like to remind people is that here's a man who grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans, and he sings It's a Wonderful World. And there's Ray Charles, who's blind, and there's a big piano out in Albany, Georgia, where he grew up. And he sings America the Beautiful. But he doesn't start with. But the spacious skies. He starts with, oh, beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life. And we take the history of this country and the history of this planet, and we turn it into a. A piece of music or a symbol of grace. If we do something, we do it with style, you know, and it's. And no matter what it is, we do it better. And I used to think I could play basketball. I wouldn't go near a basketball court with a bunch of women on it.

[Commercial Announcer]

Why?

[Andrew Young]

Because they all would beat the day. When the Olympics were in Korea, the women's Olympic team was playing an army team. And I went to the brothers. I said, now, look, don't. Don't y' all act too rough with these broads. I said, you got. You got to show them some respect. He said, man, you don't know. These brothers beat the shit out of us. But I said, well, they said, no, we got to try to get even. And if you look at the way. Well, the Atlanta airport. I can remember the lady when they said 80% of the $800,000 was made by Women in the airport. And this black woman got up and said, no, no, no, don't clap, don't clap. It should be a billion. Come back when you got a billion dollars, you got women making a billion dollars in this airport, then we'll clap. And it's been that, it's been that pushing and pulling and thinking and sweating that we have excelled at.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah, I heard you say earlier, going back to what you said earlier, you said it's coming back. Right. So my question to you is, does the state of this country, where it is now, is it reminiscent of civil rights movement back in the day?

[Andrew Young]

No, it's not. Because when I came up in the. Well, maybe so because I was born in 1932, that was a recession year and there were people starving. That's where Social Security came from. That's where food stamps came from. The government trying to meet people who were starving and they were not, they were not black. I mean, and right now, the way the government is moving, it's not doing right for anybody. Yeah, but there's some good happening and I.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

What do you feel the good is that's happening?

[Andrew Young]

Well, one, I believe in this country and I believe in God and I believe this, this country is a God fearing, God blessed country. There's some. I have, I haven't seen any other country. Well, I've been to, I've traveled 151 countries and that only about 210 countries in the world and I've been to 150 of them. But I come right back to the United States and I come back to Atlanta. I enjoyed New York and I like to come to New York, but it's just takes too long to get places and the traffic now, you know, I worry about. But now the traffic's come to Atlanta so we got to figure out what to do with that.

[John Hope Bryant]

Well, traffic comes to growing cities. Traffic comes to growing cities. Which you built in Atlanta, by the way. $800 billion. Sorry, 580 billion dollar GDP the same. So Atlanta's bigger GDP than Singapore. And he built it, he and, and the people he just talked about, they built that into what my wife calls Wakanda. And there's nothing like it in the, in the entire world. Again, these are things that he doesn't talk about. Some of it's in the documentary, by the way. Some of it's not a lot of it's not a lot of it's ended up on the editing floor when it can, by the. Thanks Rachel. Thank Rachel Maddow, Phil Griffin MSNBC for putting resources behind this to make it possible. But this guy's a walking treasure trove of strategic thought. I mean, and most of it is unarticulated, unrecorded. He just goes about his business.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And he's, you gotta, you gotta just literally pull it out of him. You start talking, you ask him a question, he goes into 15 other direct.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

I, I love it, though.

[John Hope Bryant]

I love it. All you bragging about other people.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

You said just now with, with all of the, you said it's a God fearing country, but when you think about all of the oppression black people are facing this country, all the challenges we face in this country.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

How can those people be fearing of God treating people like that?

[Andrew Young]

Well, because God's son suffered. And suffering is not. Suffering is not the end. It's not acceptable. And we should do everything we can to wipe it out, but we shouldn't be afraid of it. Like, I just have never been afraid to die. And most of us that march with Martin Luther King used to argue and say, okay, who's Bombingham is bombing him, Somebody gonna get bombed. And that means, I hope. And, and Dr. King would start preaching your sermon. He said, now if it's you, Charmaine, I'm gonna have a hard time getting you into heaven. But he ain't lying. But, but, but he would start with finding some of the things that you have gathered my people together on this radio and I want to bless you for that. And the Lord will bless you for that because you talk to more people about life than maybe anybody else I know. And we're grateful. We're not going to forget that. But we also know it took you a little while to get here. And we know that whatever got you here wasn't always is, you know, Sunday wasn't lessons you learned in Sunday school and, and, and, and we, we. But you're forgiven the things in the struggle. And you, you got a place in glory.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Sound like you're having a hard time getting me into heaven.

[Andrew Young]

Everybody got their own. I'm not in him yet.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

But doesn't revolution start when people get tired of suffering, though?

[Andrew Young]

Yeah, no. Revolution. Revolution I think is continuous. And like I picked up one of your books off the table and what is it, get honest or die lie. And sometimes in history books like that would make one group of people wake up. Now it's hard to get us to read. That's why you're on the radio, but that's why we're on television also. And Dr. King used to say that news media is worth a million dollars a minute. We we would try to get our demonstrations on abc, NBC and cbs. And, you know, Cronkite and Brink. But each one of them, if you could get on those three, that time is worth a million dollars a minute. And so you put in some good hours here. Thank you, brother. And you built a good audience.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

Is it true that you made the call?

[Radio Host/Announcer]

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[Commercial Announcer]

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[Narrator/True Crime Host]

In the new podcast Hell in Heaven, two young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to see start over. But one will end up dead, the other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild, not twice, stunned, but three times. John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular circular home high on the top of A hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble and our couple retreat from reality.

[Andrew Young]

They lose it.

[Johnny Knoxville]

They actually lose it.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

They sort of went nuts.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrew Young]

All I know is what I've been.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Told and that to have truth is a whole lie.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Andrew Young]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Johnny Knoxville]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Andrew Young]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[John Hope Bryant]

That y' all said.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.

[Andrew Young]

They made me say that I poured.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Gas on her.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

From Lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[John Hope Bryant]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple podcast.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

To Ms. Coretta Scott King after Dr. King was shot. Did you make the call to Ms. Coretta Scott King when Dr. King was shot?

[Andrew Young]

I did, but she had already heard it. But I knew Coretta. See, Coretta and my wife grew up together in a little country town and we talked all the time and they talked to each other and she wasn't crying. She wasn't. She said, well, this is what I've been worried about. But now we have to carry on. See, and that's the way all of her children have tried to carry on. And it's hard and. But all of us in some way are Dr. King's children. And we see the example that he set. And we see her, she was up here in Boston trying to train to be an opera singer. And he said, I need you back down south with me.

[John Hope Bryant]

She actually raised money. She Would do concerts. Coretta Scott King would sing concerts, operated concerts, and raise money for the civil rights movement for her husband. Behind every successful man is an exhausted woman, which is why he keeps telling the story of women who don't get the credit, who don't get acknowledged. He keeps pulling. I do admire that he keeps pulling everybody into his story so they get their name mentioned so that they get acknowledged. His, his wife now is strong. His first wife, Jeannie Child Young was strong. When he was UN Ambassador. They were in a. They went to Gene Child's hometown, little.

[Andrew Young]

Country town in Alabama, and they were on the.

[John Hope Bryant]

They were in the open, open air car. And Gene Chow Rung said, hey, Andy. She called him Andy. There's this guy I used to date in high school. He's a bum now he's on a. He's on a street corner. So. Bastard Young.

[Andrew Young]

I said, I said, golly, I guess you're glad he, he had a hard time in Vietnam and he's not doing right. I guess you glad you didn't marry him. And she said, she, if I married him, he'd have been the ambassador to the United Nations. And that's, that's true, that, that. And that's a John Bryant quote. Behind every great man is an exhausted woman, many exhausted women.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

I'm glad, I'm glad that you keep bringing up, you know, other people, and I'm glad that we're. The DOC is called the Dirty Work because I think playing your position is a lost art. I think everybody wants to be a star now. And it's like, you know, it makes me wonder, has, has social media made the struggle too performative? Because people don't see that unseen grind. They don't see that dirty work. They don't understand how important playing your position is.

[Andrew Young]

Well, you know, those who, in music know that you got to create a certain harmony, a certain rhythm that you can't do it. I mean, jazz was everybody soloing on their own. But the music now has far more. Well, in good times it has melody. In hard times it gets funky. But you got each one expressing the way they feel. And somehow when you hear it and it relates to you, you go out and buy the record. So you turn on whatever it is you have to turn on nowadays. I don't have one of them.

[John Hope Bryant]

Anyway. Go ahead.

[Andrew Young]

No, but it's. This is a very complex life. I mean, when I lived in New York, I worked up on the near Harlem and near Riverside Church, and one time the lights went off and I had to walk from up there at 120th and Broadway, across the Queens Midtown Bridge, to get a bus on the other side to get. To get me up to Hollis. And it's a huge, complicated city, and there's nothing simple, but you have to figure that for anything to work in this city and in most great cities, there's got to be a series of teams that are making it work. And most of the time, you don't see the ones that are in the background. Yeah, and you don't. I mean, you don't. You. You might see the cook just preparing the meal, but you don't see the guy that had to slaughter the cow.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

This.

[John Hope Bryant]

All.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

This work and, you know, all the sacrifice that you guys put in. When Martin Luther King was here, he wasn't as liked and as revered by everybody as he is today. How do you feel when you see.

[Andrew Young]

Oh, he almost was, you know, almost talk about that. I mean, there were a few people who were jealous of him, who wanted to be him, but they were preachers, too. And. But he. He.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

He was one of that kind of hate. I just want you. They've never stopped that kind of.

[Andrew Young]

No, but he.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

He.

[Andrew Young]

He did not let that bother him. And it. Well, you have to watch your enemies, but you see them better if you bring them closer and try to get them involved in what you're doing. And, you know, the teams that win play together. And, And. And everything requires a team.

[John Hope Bryant]

Now we get into a real conversation.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Can you tell me about the team that you and Clarence Avon.

[Andrew Young]

Oh, Lord, I tell you that that is one of the. He's one of the most beautiful brothers I've ever met.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Love him.

[Andrew Young]

He called me and said, I'm trying to reach Andrew Young. Andy Young. I said, yeah, I'm Andy Young. He said, nigger, are you crazy? And I said, I don't know. What makes you think that? They tell me, you running for Congress in Georgia. Don't you know that they just killed Medgar over there? And in Mississippi, how you ain't got good sense and you want to run for Congress? I said, well, before Dr. King was killed, the last thing we talked about was how are we going to take our people from the streets into politics? And when John came along, it was from the streets to the suites and the banks and how to. How are we going to integrate the money? How are we going to integrate the culture? See? And he said, well, if you crazy enough to run, I'm crazy enough to help you. And I said, what would. He said, what would you do? If I could get Bill Cosby, if I could bring Bill Cosby and Isaac Hayes. Now this was 1970. Bill Cosby was booming. He just got on, you know, and, and, and Isaac Hayes was good music out of Memphis. And I said, well, you know, I said, I, I don't even have money to make a phone call to invite him. He said, nigga, I didn't ask you if you had any money. I said, what would you do if they came here? And I said, well, I, I'd get to baseball stadium and we'd fill it, we'd fill it up. That'd be a great start for a campaign. I said, but I told you I don't have any money. I told you I ain't said nothing to you about money. Money is my business. And I shut up and he hung up on me. But he found out who handled the radio. I mean, the Braves stadium. And it was about. In six weeks, signs were up, well, four weeks, signs were up all over town that Bill Cosby and Isaac Hayes were coming to the baseball stadium.

[John Hope Bryant]

And he blew it out, right?

[Andrew Young]

And they filled it up in a pouring down rain and gave you the money and didn't even charge, didn't charge anything.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

I love Clarence, man.

[Andrew Young]

See, that's my idol.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

What was the issue, the real issue between Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X?

[Andrew Young]

You know, there was no issue. The difference was that Martin Luther King learned in college, Malcolm X learned in jail, but Malcolm X read the dictionary and the Bible say. And when Martin came back with the Nobel Prize, we were up there in Harlem in the armory. And when we came in the back door, who was standing in the back door with Malcolm X? Two people, Malcolm X and Nelson Rockefeller. And Malcolm X said, I just wanted to thank you for all that you've done. And I want you to know that I am with you in anything you want me to do. But I think that it's probably better strategy if you and I don't seem to be so close and said, that's why I'm not going to come in there with you in public.

[John Hope Bryant]

He wasn't trying to profile, see, Malcolm X was not trying to take his life.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Malcolm did used to disparage Malcolm, used to disparage Martin publicly. Sometime though, we'll call him Uncle Tom.

[John Hope Bryant]

That was his brand.

[Andrew Young]

It wasn't. It wasn't Malcolm so much as it was that whole, whole crowd around Elijah Muhammad now.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

But Martin was close to Elijah too, it seemed.

[Andrew Young]

I know well, because honorable Elijah, because when we came to, if we went into Town, like, when we went to Chicago, we got all the big preachers together and. And got them to agree that we would be there with them and that they could tell us what they wanted us to do. Now, some didn't like it, and some just didn't want anybody to have a profile but them. And we. We just went on around them. But Malcolm. Well, I met Malcolm when I was here, and Mike Wallace did a story on Malcolm on 60 Minutes. And the black guy who was working with Mike Wallace was married to one of my secretaries at the National Council of Churches. And they invited me and my wife over to dinner. This was. This was before Malcolm X was even known around, but we'd had dinner a couple of times together. Anytime he came to Atlanta, he came by our office, but Martin was never there. But he went to Selma to see Martin, and Martin got arrested that day and was in jail. So he spent the day with Coretta and me and spoke at the mass. Mass meeting that night and then went on his way. Malcolm has.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

They haven't. They haven't met. Oh, yeah, they met once.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah, they met. No, they met several times.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Because it's always.

[Andrew Young]

But it was always in private.

[John Hope Bryant]

Publicly.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah, publicly.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

That's when they had got that picture together.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah. By the way, when he became mayor, just a point about people playing their roles. When he became mayor of Atlanta, the civil rights leaders, his friends, the second day he was mayor, they picketed him. So he went outside, he said, what are you guys doing? They said, well, you the mayor now. So you got your job, we got ours. And he accepted that. So Malcolm was playing his lane. He was playing his role publicly, but privately, he respected Dr. King and just didn't feel that he was useful to him. By the way, a lot of these. The Black Power movement came out of standing right next to Dr. King, walking in the south, the Black Power movement. That's where it started. They used Martin's visibility to get visibility for what they were doing, which was easier because people were angry. Black power getting angry. So. And Martin allowed all of that. He allowed everything to flourish around him. He wasn't insecure, but it just wasn't his. It wasn't his way.

[Andrew Young]

What he did was on just that he invited Stokely. Stokely Carmichael to come to church. So next time you're in Atlanta, if you're in Atlanta on a Sunday, please come to church and then come home and have dinner with us afterwards. We need some time to talk. And he came to Atlanta, went to church, and then they went home Together. And Coretta, fix dinner with the. Well, preachers wives always have a way of fixing food. No matter who shows up, they got enough.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah, but isn't it true that all of those leaders at some point criticized Dr. King?

[Andrew Young]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Sc. Snick. Snick, go ahead.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Yeah, Snick. I mean, it's Nick. That's why I love the documentary King, King, King in the Wilderness, you know, because it shows that. But it seemed like it was respectful criticism.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

You know, like they were walking together and they were disagreeing during interviews. But it was respectful.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes.

[Andrew Young]

But people like John Lewis never disagree, you know, and it was. It was people. I mean, you have rivalries on the same football team, but they all run in the same play. And that's sort of the way we were. We said, look, we may disagree on how to get there, but we all are trying to do the same thing, and we can do it best if we do it together.

[John Hope Bryant]

So, Charlamagne, what I'm hearing from, what I've learned from him is the mission back then was we. The mission now is me.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

This is the. Basically, if you want to summarize what the problem is and what you brought up earlier, people would wait today, wake up, and go, I'm tired of talking about me. Now you talk about me, and it's all about me, me. I, I. And I'm. And if it doesn't benefit me, then I'm not interested.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

My likes, my engagements, my views.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's right. My opinion. And if I gotta hurt you, if I gotta step on you to elevate myself, then so be it.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Back then it was almost the exact opposite.

[Andrew Young]

Well, even now, I mean, I just.

[John Hope Bryant]

You're being gracious.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yes.

[Andrew Young]

I'm not being great. You are being.

[John Hope Bryant]

You are being.

[Andrew Young]

I'm being respectful.

[John Hope Bryant]

Exactly the point.

[Andrew Young]

But I've learned, I'm trying to find. If you're going to get along with people, you can easily point out differences, but if you really want to work together, you got to find those few things that you agree on and say, let's get this straight first.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's right.

[Andrew Young]

And that's true in the neighborhood. It's true in everything we do.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

I totally respect what you said a little bit back when you said, I've never been afraid to die. Right. But I think it's greater that you've never been afraid to die without making a difference or without making a change. Because you got a lot of young people that aren't afraid to die either, but for the wrong reasons.

[Andrew Young]

No, they afraid.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Okay.

[Andrew Young]

They scared to death, okay? And it's because they're scared that they do stupid things. See, I mean, most street fights would be avoided if somebody could say, blow a whistle and say, just take 10 seconds to cool off. They wouldn't shoot, but they doing something. And I don't really understand it because I've never had to be that way.

[John Hope Bryant]

So. So let me bridge it. The most dangerous person in the world is a person with no hope. So they had hope.

[Andrew Young]

Slow that down and say that again.

[John Hope Bryant]

The most dangerous person in the world is a person with no hope. They had hope. They had self esteem, not just confidence. You can be great in music or great whatever, have enormous confidence, but have low self esteem. Yeah, they had spirituality. They believed in something larger and more important themselves. Dr. King didn't say, I'm here to save black people. He said, I'm here to redeem the soul of America from the triple evils of war, racism and poverty. He wrapped everybody in his vision and he brought everybody in and then lifted everybody up. And with it, yes, black people got lifted too. But it wasn't black people only or black people at the cost of everybody else. And so he made it hard for people to disagree with him. But he had his own self esteem. When you have no hope, you're willing to. Your. Your life has no value. Yeah, they are willing to die because they had hope, because it wasn't about them. It's a different nuance. They value themselves enough that they valued everybody else enough that they're willing to sacrifice themselves. So that's a different thing than I don't value me. I don't value what's going on. I'm not going to live to 25 anyway. What does it matter? None of this matters. So I'm not the most dangerous person in the world is a person with no hope. That's why he said he can't relate to it. So it is that Charlemagne, what you said earlier about has it changed or you asked? Yes, I think it has changed it. Me. Me. I. Because I don't value myself, I need to keep pouring water in this cup because. Because cup has no bottom. The cup has no bottom. I'm pouring all the time trying to. Trying to fill up my self esteem.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

And people need validation. They seek validation.

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes, through everything. And so what he's talking about is purpose in life. My God, what he's got is intention.

[Andrew Young]

Real purpose.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

What's your intention? What are you here for?

[John Hope Bryant]

Yes. And you guys are, I think, the most powerful. What you do in the, in, in the country and I believe in the world. Because you're all about something. You don't just show up here. Me, me, I. It's not. Again, you, you facilitate a conversation and you wouldn't let the other person be. You want the other person to be the center of that conversation, to pull it out of them. And, and you even sacrifice yourself sometimes with the people talking mess to you. You got to know who you are. He knows who he is. Can you tell him a quick story? It's not in the documentary. Quick, quick story about. I'm just trying to do this quick because I want to try to get a lot in a little bit of time. When, when you came back with Dr. King from the Nobel Peace Prize and President of the United States, this was when he saw Malcolm and Rockefeller and the President, United States refused to meet with you guys because he didn't want the ask he knew was coming and you were in New York. Rockefeller offered you his jet.

[Andrew Young]

Well, Rockefeller assumed that we were going to see the President Johnson and he said, you all can let me know what time you want to leave. I'll have my jet ready to pick you up and take you down to Washington. And that was in the paper. So we got an appointment, we thought for three o' clock and we got there on time with the President. With the President, we got there on time, but they said he was tied up with the generals talking about Vietnam.

[John Hope Bryant]

He didn't want to see him.

[Andrew Young]

And it, I mean, we really didn't get to see him till dark. It was about six o', clock, two or three hours late. But we were with the Vice President and the Attorney General talking about voting rights. When we got in with President Johnson, he was really depressed and he said, I agree with you, Dr. King. Everything Martin says, he said, I agree with you, I just don't have the power. And that was his only answer. Everything we said he said, I agree with you, I just don't have the power.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

He's the President who had the power. If it wasn't him.

[Andrew Young]

Well, he didn't have the votes and he just gotten beat up by the people who were trying to get him to drop atomic bombs on Vietnam. And so he was depressed and when we left, I said to Dr. King, I said, you know, the President is right, he doesn't have the power and we don't either. And I said, this is a perfect time for you to take a sabbatical. You need to take three or four months off, go wherever you want to go. Think this through take your family or not, and then after the next election, we'll have a better position. And he said, no. I said, well, what you gonna do? He said, we got to get the President some power. And I said something else. And he said, no, we got to get the President some power. And finally I said, nigger, you Morehouse men, you broke. You see, because the Nobel Peace Prize was $60,000. Rockefeller doubled it, so we had $120,000. But then Martin divided up against all, with all six, he gave everybody a sixth of it. Every civil rights organization, he split up.

[John Hope Bryant]

The money and keep anything for himself.

[Andrew Young]

And I said, here we ain't got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. And you talking about getting the President some power. I say, you have got some nerve. And I was talking, I went to Howard, he went to Morehouse. So we always were picking on each other. And that's the only thing he, he kid you about. But when we got back home.

[John Hope Bryant]

So you can tell, you was about Morehouse men. You can tell Morehouse men.

[Andrew Young]

Well, yeah, I mean, that was my line. I said, you Morehouse man got more nerve than a brass ass monkey. You, you ain't got a pot to piss in or window to throw it out of, and yet you gonna get the President's Apollo.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

What did he say?

[Andrew Young]

Huh? He just said, we're going to get the presidential power.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

So what happened?

[Andrew Young]

When we got back two days later, Amelia Boynton called and said she was on the way to see us from Selma. Now, Amelia Boynton had been in Selma since 1932. That's the year I was born. And she went there at 18 with George Washington Carver to teach sharecropper women how to feed their children in the midst of the recession. And so they were doing things like smashing beans.

[John Hope Bryant]

There you go again. Tell everybody else's story. What happened in Selma.

[Andrew Young]

But in Selma, when we got to the office, she called and said she was there to see Dr. King. And she and three preachers came in and told what was happening in Selma and said, we have to. You have to help us. And this was just before Christmas. So he said, well, right after Christmas we'll come over and, you know, everybody has a Emancipation day celebration on the 1st of January. And so we didn't have it on the 1st of January because that was, that was the first Sunday. And that's the reason that was. That threw everything off. But we had it on the second Sunday and no, it was, we didn't have it on Sunday. We had it on Tuesday. And so. But that's when we started the Selma movement. Ninety days later, Lyndon Johnson was on television saying, we shall overcome.

[John Hope Bryant]

So back up. So the important part of this is Dr. King made a commitment to go to Selma. If he had shown up in Selma, the police wouldn't have attacked John Lewis. They wouldn't have attacked. They wouldn't have attacked Dr. King strategically on a bad move, they would have let Dr. King march. But Dr. King got the wrong date. That's what he just. That's what just. He just. Again, history for him is just like, talking about, like, that's a monitor. He just glossed over it. They. They told him, the lady in. In. In Selma, a date, but they, oh, I can't come on that date. That's the first Sunday I got to be in my church. Yeah. So he stayed back and sent. And he sent Andy Young. Bastard Young. I called him Bastard Young to go there for him, like, make sure that white gets in trouble. Don't let anybody march. He got there and said, well, these people will march anyway, but they're gonna probably turn us around, so don't worry about it.

[Andrew Young]

Well, 300 people in the country town, that's a lot of folk.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

So they didn't turn them around. They let him march. But then the troopers ran. That's that famous film where they ran over everybody and they. And they knocked John Lewis out. All that was an accident. I mean, it wasn't supposed to happen because Dr. King was supposed to be there. It was in a proper speech. So all because Dr. King had to be in his church on first Sunday, and they got the date wrong.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

So they called John Lewis Doc Accidental Trouble.

[John Hope Bryant]

Then that's it. And then.

[Andrew Young]

And then he used to talk about good trouble. Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

And so that then triggered three months later.

[Andrew Young]

It wasn't. It wasn't that. That. That was the first of March. Yeah. It was Fourth of July.

[John Hope Bryant]

And what happened?

[Andrew Young]

He signed the civil rights bill.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Wow.

[Andrew Young]

And that gave us the right to vote.

[John Hope Bryant]

Wow. Got him some power. Two little black boys from the south flipping the President of the United States.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

You've been very generous with your time, man. This interview's been longer than the documentary, by the way. Okay. But we appreciate it. And I want to leave on this the Dirty Work. If the Dirty Work documentary could teach one lesson to this generation and the next generation of organizers, what would you want it to be?

[Andrew Young]

Well, you know, I call it the Dirty Work. But when I kind of realized I had no purpose in life and the way I Decided I said, if there's something that I think needs doing and nobody else wants to do it, that's my job. And that's the way I define my calling. When I went to work with Dr. King, nobody wanted to work with him. He didn't have anybody there. And so I start, well, White Walker was coming down, but he hadn't gotten there yet. And it's. And once I got there, most of the stuff that nobody wanted. No, nobody wanted to go sit down and argue with white folk. And I didn't argue because I would. I would be cool. But if Jose had gone, he would want to. He. It would have been an argument because he, he had to argue about everything. But that was my role, which was. Which I did, though I didn't necessarily like it, to be in that role all the time. But it.

[John Hope Bryant]

So what's the lesson for this generation?

[Andrew Young]

The lesson of this generation is there is some dirty work in any struggle for freedom. But dirty work could be hard work. Dirty work could be thoughtful work. You know, whatever nobody else wants to do. Like, we didn't want to mess with money. And John decided that he was going to teach folk how to. That you can't be free without voting, but neither can you be free if you're broken. And so teaching people how to manage money, how to save money, how to invest money, how to know the meaning of money to your salvation and survival, that's another issue altogether. But communications is an issue.

[John Hope Bryant]

And so don't be afraid of doing the dirty work. Embrace is noble work. It's not dirty work.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah.

[John Hope Bryant]

Is that right?

[Andrew Young]

That's. Not only is it noble work is. Is the kind of work that. That has to be done.

[John Hope Bryant]

So when, when Charlemagne was doing that internship way back when in that. In that first radio program and when people noticed you, that was the dirty work.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Absolutely.

[John Hope Bryant]

I'm sure you've done dirty work in your career. This you've always not been. Both of you. And I've always been sitting here prime time. You've had to hustle, you've had to do things and jobs nobody else wanted.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

I still do the dirty work now.

[John Hope Bryant]

And the work you're doing with, with mental health, the foundation, you're doing the stuff that nobody sees. The conversation that we have that at 2 in the morning about. About life in general, all that's the dirty work. And raising your children is the most honorable version. Raising your paying, paying school fees. Like, we've gotta be about the basics. We gotta get back to the basics and be about we and not just about me. That's really who he is. And I spent most of his interview trying to draw him out.

[Andrew Young]

This was good.

[John Hope Bryant]

You could see him.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Yeah, this was good.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

I loved it.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

John o', Brien, thank you for bringing this walking memorial, this iconic, this icon living. Mr. Andrew Young, thank you for coming, brother.

[Andrew Young]

Thank you for having me. That's right.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

And check out the dirty work this Friday on what's on. It's on peacock, right?

[John Hope Bryant]

No, MSNBC.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

MSNBC globally on MSNBC globally, 9:00pm, 9:00pm this Friday. Thank you, brother.

[Andrew Young]

Thank you and thank all of your audience.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Yes, sir.

[Andrew Young]

This is a good. This is college on the radio.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Oh, I like that.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's a word.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Andrew Young]

If you didn't have money to go to college, listen in.

[John Hope Bryant]

That's right.

[Andrew Young]

Yeah.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Thank you. It's the Breakfast Club.

[Andrew Young]

Hold up.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

Every day I wake up.

[Andrew Young]

Wake your ass up.

[John Hope Bryant]

The Breakfast Club.

[Johnny Knoxville]

Hello, America's sweetheart. Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless Hillbilly Heist from Smartless Media, Campside media and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist.

[Andrew Young]

Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.

[Johnny Knoxville]

It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

So we're sitting like, oh God, what do we do?

[John Hope Bryant]

What do we do?

[Andrew Young]

That was dumb. People, do not follow my example.

[Johnny Knoxville]

Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[John Hope Bryant]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

Hunting for Answers, I highlighted the story of 19 year old Lachey Dungey.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

But she never knocked on that door. She never made it inside.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

And that text message would be the.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

Last time anyone would ever hear from her. Listen to Hunting for Answers from the Black Effect podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrew Young]

In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin.

[Commercial Announcer]

Into New York from Asia.

[John Hope Bryant]

Had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it.

[Andrew Young]

Five, six white people pushed me in the car.

[Radio Host/Announcer]

I'm going, what the hell.

[Andrew Young]

Basically your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. All you gotta do is receive the package. Don't have to open it, just accept it. She was very upset, crying. Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw.

[Charlamagne Tha God (Host)]

The flash of light.

[Narrator/True Crime Host]

Listen to the Chinatown's on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Charlamagne Tha God]

This is an iHeart podcast.