Read more of Kim Lawton's interview with the Rev. Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus:

Q: You were born after Martin Luther King died. What is your first memory of hearing about MLK or what he had done?

A: It's a great question. I think you almost think you've always heard about him. You've just heard Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King forever ... I'm trying to think when did I first hear about Dr. King? Obviously, in school. I mean, you're in grade school and you hear about the "I Have a Dream" speech and I think that's probably your first, you know, introduction to Dr. King. I think as time went on, you begin to see him obviously through his birthday celebrations, and I think for me when I really began to understand Dr. King, more than being introduced to Dr. King, was in high school. I began to read his speeches, and I didn't know that Dr. King. It was actually very different. I'd only known of the Dr. King of "I have a dream." But then we began to read about the Birmingham letter, the letter to the clergy in Birmingham. And I began to read, you know, "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?" I began to hear his stance on the war in Vietnam and his stance on poverty. That wasn't the Dr. King that I was introduced to as a child so much, but I really began to appreciate his ministry and how important it was, and it was different, and then I really began to understand in how we got to where we are now is our generation and what he fought for. I mean, he connected demonstration to legislation. He connected demonstration to litigation. So it wasn't that he was just demonstrating, I mean, matter of fact, if he saw us today demonstrating without connecting to legislation and litigation, it would be a parade. It would just be us out there marching in the streets. So he was dealing with, obviously, equality but also dealing with the fact of ending segregation and where he went to do it. I mean now, going to Birmingham today and being in Birmingham and seeing what he did, I mean now it's amazing, I mean now looking back on it, it's, I mean, what he did 40 years ago was simply amazing. And now obviously our generation, at the 40th anniversary, being more years away than he actually lived, is something that is a calling for us as we are now the dream generation in the 21st century.

Q: When you were deciding to be a minister, how did Dr. King's connection of his faith with social justice resonate in your own heart?

A: Tremendously. I mean, obviously I am a minister so it's important to note that I did quite well in college. I was the student body president, I was playing basketball, I was a White House intern, and so independently on my own power I did pretty well. And then as you begin to deal with a lot of the issues you recognize you can't do it on your own power. And I think that's when I really began to look upon the church of Dr. King and that social justice church, and that's the church that I wanted to be a part of. I mean at the time it was feeding the homeless and feeding the poor, but I began to really ask the question that was, yes I can feed the poor, but why are the poor poor in the first place? And that really began to shape my ministry and so when I was in college is when I became a licensed minister, which is really unique, I mean here I am, I'm playing basketball, I'm a White House intern, you know, really I guess the big man on campus, and here I am now a minister, so, you know. That's why I got good grades, kind of lost my social life a little bit, so. But it was amazing, and I think I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the Rev. [Fred] Shuttleworths, the Dr. Kings, the Rev. [John] Lewises, in that spirit, and I think that's what propelled my ministry at the time, which also was propelled against, because as I was beginning to do a lot of social justice ministry, working with the homeless, working with the poor, dealing with gang violence, I kind of found out then that I began to get pushed back from the church of the '90s, and that was kind of hard for me, and that was the beginning of a cycle that led to my work with the hip-hop community. But Dr. King's ministry and how he was approaching, through poverty, dealing with policy with LBJ, dealing with how you work with the churches, obviously for me that was a huge way of looking at how ministry should be done.

Q: He always tied policies back to the teachings of Jesus.

A: Oh, definitely, I mean obviously he used that. I mean, he obviously used the Gospel as a mechanism to one, enforce what he was teaching for changing policy, but also as a calling card for how we treat each other as Christians, obviously dealing with segregation, the issue of his day, and dealing with voting rights and all those issues. He was tying in love and love your neighbor and obviously tying in a number of those pieces as well and using that in a very strategic fashion as well, so that the people who he was, when he wrote the letter in Birmingham, using that as a mechanism to say hey, you know, this Gospel, we should be coming together here. And I think that was one of the things that, in his message -- now it's important to also note that he was young. You know, he's 26 when he kind of really gets started, and he's 39 when he's assassinated, and so he was young, and a lot of people don't understand that when he -- for me it was inspiring because your voice can have a huge impact, and so I think a lot of us tend to want to wait until we're old, and nothing wrong with being old. I think it's important. Age definitely brings a lot of wisdom. But I think the passion and the energy you have, particularly using the Gospel for change, was amazing, and he used that in a very appropriate and a very strategic way.

Q: Has the hip-hop generation lost sight of the fact that Dr. King was so young when he started all of his activism?

A: I think one of the things that people always ask is the difference between the hip hop generation and the civil rights generation, and they say is it generational? And I say no, it's informational. The information that happened, of John Lewis and how young he was, and Jesse Jackson, and obviously a Dr. King and how young he was and how he was mobilizing, organizing, and energizing at that time in his 20s and in his 30s -- I don't think it's lost. I think most importantly that what people are getting now is a very much lukewarm edition of Dr. King -- this "I have a dream" only, and that's it. But they kind of miss the message of what happened in Montgomery. They missed the message of what happened in Birmingham, they missed the message of what happened in Chicago, in the slums of Chicago, dealing with poverty. And I think that's where our organization comes in. What we're trying to do is connect that. And it's funny, because we don't try to connect it so much to information, but we connect it just by living it out. And so a lot of times people connect us to being so much more like, they call us a modern day SNCC. They say we're like Dr. King and we're like those so much and we wonder why, it's because we're actually actively on the ground doing it, not just talking about it.

Q: You refer to yourself as being part of the dream generation. What do you mean by that?

A: Well, obviously on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated, and I think that the generation behind that, the dream did not die on the balcony. And while the dreamer was killed, the dream did not die. And the idea of us coming together as black and white and brown and yellow and male and female, as theists and atheists, as humans coming together, I think that dream of being judged by your content, not your color, that we are now that generation. My organization, what we do sometimes, and just in general my community is a multiracial community that comes in and works together to fight against poverty, to fight against classicism, to fight against sexism and poverty. And so we're coming together and so we're that generation that was born on the balcony. We are that generation now that was born in the '70s and the late '60s, and now in the '80s and '90s we're a generation of young people working side by side. So we're not just black or white working separately for sometimes the same issues, but we're black and white working side by side. We are that dream generation, and we have some of the problems that are carried over from the last generation that we must deal with as this dream generation together.

Q: What are some of those problems? To what extent are you fighting the same battles Dr. King fought, and do what extent are they different battles?

A: Well, no, we're fighting some of the same battles. Obviously, I believe that New Orleans is our Birmingham, and I do believe that Iraq is our Vietnam. And I do think that New Orleans and this war in Iraq is our lunch counter moment for the 21st century. We're still dealing with racism while we are pushing forth now a person of color for president, and a woman. We're still dealing with, sometimes, in the factory shops and on the street corners and sometime in the communities, still dealing with racism and sexism. We're still dealing with poverty -- people not looking for just jobs but good quality jobs, jobs that, you know, they can use and be proud of, and so we're still fighting for that as well, and we're still dealing with militarism, I mean we're still spending more money on our military than we are on programs for social uplift. And Dr. King said it best, that if we're still spending more money on our military than on our programs then our country is headed toward a spiritual death, and we are, and so we're still dealing with those problems. But it's different. How we organize is different. I mean, we use the Internet now, we use MySpace and YouTube. As I've said so often in using YouTube, the revolution may not be televised but it will be uploaded. And so we're using these mechanisms now. We're also dealing with a much more sophisticated oppressor. In the same way that we are multicultural and multiracial, so is our oppressor. The oppressor is not just white. But the oppressor is sometimes Latino or black. And so sometimes we are also dealing with that as well. And we're dealing with the situation now whereas we're dealing with poverty not from the standpoint of just jobs and denying that because of your color. But they are ... using different things to try and disenfranchise workers, trying to get rid of unions and those kind of things, for us to organize. We're also dealing with a much more sophisticated element, as I say, in Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a much more straw in the mouth and straw hat type of, you know, you can't cross that bridge, you can't live here. But we're not dealing with Jim Crow. We're now dealing with what I call the descendants of Jim Crow and, like, James Crow Jr. Esquire, or Jill Crow, Ph.D. We're dealing with a much more sophisticated -- who uses the Internet. Just the way we use it to mobilize, they do it to redline and cause people to lose their homes through mortgages and subprime lending. They use it through cutting away of health insurance so people can't have it, so we're dying in our homes without having health insurance. They're using it to cut away the funds for school systems so that our children are not being educated. So we are dealing with a much more sophisticated element of racism and sexism and classicism in the 21st century. And so we must, we can't just sometimes go to a church and rally the crowds and give a good speech. We also must be more sophisticated in how we organize as well.

Q: Talk a little bit more about some of the concerns you've raised about the black church of today. Does it have the same prophetic edge, moral authority, moral voice that it did during the time of Dr. King?

A: You know, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed a few days after Dr. King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, and it was bombed not so much to kill the little girls, which happened and which showed the disastrous domestic terrorism, and people responded to that, but mostly it was bombed because it was a place where people could organize. It was a place where people can come together not only for faith-based, but for survival-based mechanisms, and we've lost that, honestly. A lot of these institutions have become institutionalized, and their doors are closed to the movement. Their doors are not open. We have some wonderful churches -- Trinity in Chicago, Community of Hope in Prince Georges County, Maryland. We don't have as many churches as we used to have where people know to go to, and I think a lot of it has become because the oppressor also recognizes the power of the church. So they came in and began to give, you know, this -- a prosperity message, which began to shy away from being about the people, about the community, but about yourself. Just take care of yourself and get your money. And we've lost that message where the church was that community of hope, that place where we can come to and discuss politics and discuss our community and discuss our affairs. And so for my organization which works with the hip hop community, works with the streets, it's hard to then go into these places. And so even a lot of times they don't know that we even exist, and it is a problem. It's something amazing that what we are called now, Hip Hop Caucus, is called the modern-day SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, of the original lunch counter moment down at the Woolworth's counter in North Carolina. We're not there, and we're not invited. And that's a problem, we're not being introduced -- "Hi, I'm Reverend Yearwood and I'm from the hip hop community." "Hi, I'm the black church." And we're not being introduced to one another, and that's a problem when you're dealing with poverty and militarism and racism in the 21st century. And so we're not connecting, and I'm hoping that does change. I'm hoping that the church of old can become the church of new and fight these issues. And I think there's a problem when you have a president who can talk about being against homosexuality, and that can just skew your thoughts so much that you don't even deal with the fact that a million Iraqis are killed in Iraq. Four million are displaced, two million in the country, two million outside the country. Or in Katrina. Something is wrong with that. And I think that the church, the church that I'm proud to be a member of, but [it] needs to be much more involved with the people.

Q: Do you think some of the people who are part of the hip hop generation lack a spiritual base because of this disconnect you're talking about?

A: Well, the great thing about spirituality [is] it comes in different forms and fashions, and I think that people who have a spiritual sense, if you see it, either it's through the institutional aspect of the church or not. They will show their spirituality in different ways and forms. And so when I go out people might burn candles. Or you go to a funeral particularly, you see how they grieve, they might put the shirt of their loved one on their shirt, and have a different approach. It is true that my generation is growing up outside of the church, but the spirituality is not. There's still a huge want to connect to the invisible in a very strong way, and so there is a sense of, and I think some stronger, and sometimes even a much more respectful way for the invisible, a much more respectful way of wanting to connect, and they take prayer very seriously. They are wanting to connect. I've heard many times people say, "I love Jesus, but I don't like the church." And so they love the revolutionary Jesus, the one who fought in the temple and was there for the poor and the woman who could touch the hem of the garment -- they love that. But they don't see the connection, because they see a lot of the hypocrisy sometimes in the church. But you see a huge sense of spirituality, and sometimes that has to be framed. Now the beautiful thing of the institution is that it can frame that spirituality, it can give it its rhetoric, it can give it its way to communicate, its way to express it. Obviously, through different teachings and using Scriptures, it can use it, and so a lot of people don't have that to pull upon, the stories using the Old Testament or the New Testament or the Koran. They can use that, but they don't, they're not getting that, and so there's a huge problem with that. I think that young people, I think there's a huge sense of spirituality, though, and a respect, though.I think that unfortunately doesn't come in the fashion that we are seeing, and that's very dangerous. Because we do know for people who were from Africa who came here to America as slaves, they obviously had a huge amount of spirituality. They didn't just find God through Christianity when they got here. They had that spirituality, and that was belittled and stripped, but they had that and that, then, is what actually formed the modern-day African-American church. You have that now. I think you have a lot of young people who are now forming their spirituality through the streets and not in the suites, and that spirituality is coming out in different ways and different forms and different fashions.

Q: For you personally, as you wage the various campaigns you're part of, what spiritual tools or practices or teachings keep you grounded?

A: Obviously, when you're dealing with the fact of dealing with the war and visiting the Middle East and seeing people who've been blown up, when you visit people in New Orleans who are homeless, when you deal with torture and know your country is participating in torture and you talk to a lot of your friends who are atheists, who use a lot of these things to say this is why I don't believe in God, because if there's a God, then how can they have all these Iraqis dead and how can they have all these Katrina survivors just not get what is right for them, how can they have A, B, C, and D? And it can become hard. But that's also the thing that you need to pull on the invisible. My faith actually propels me for justice. It is the thing that allows me to overcome and is that thing, that prayer life, that piece that allows me to continue on this work. And I think it is one thing that is actually missing sometimes in the progressive movement, that faith that they are able to pull on things outside of themselves and they're able to believe in a higher power they know is on the side of the oppressed, that higher power that they know is fighting for justice. And I think that is the thing that grounds me. I think that that's the thing, and then that kind of providence, that you just kind of get put in the right position and, you know, you get pushed. When I was on Capitol Hill and I was beaten up, as a minister I would be wondering why, as I was going to the floor, I was going headfirst. But I didn't hit headfirst. I twisted my ankle and then was beaten up. But then later on when I saw the outpouring of people in response to that heinous act, and I saw people who were people of faith and people who were not of faith who responded to that human act, and what that showed to me that God still lives and that God is still trying to work even in the worst situation, even in the most horrific process, in spite of that humanity can still rise, particularly with the support of the invisible, and in my case the support of God. That's the thing that keeps me going. That's the thing that allows me sometimes not to have money but to keep showing up, to keep organizing when I shouldn't organize, to keep mobilizing when I shouldn't, to be right there in solidarity with those that are impoverished. That's the thing that keeps me going on, the thing that drove me in the beginning in my ministry still drives me now -- that it's not about me but about something bigger that's called humanity. And God loves humanity.