♪ ♪ ♪ >> Benjamin Jealous -- president of the People For the American Way and former president of the NAACP next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by... Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

American Petroleum Institute -- through the core elements of API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry in the U.S. and around the world.

You can learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

Over the next 10 years, Comcast is committing $1 billion to reach 50 million low-income Americans with the tools and resources they need to be ready for anything.

♪ ♪ >> We welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles" the honorable Benjamin Jealous.

Ben, welcome.

>> Thank you, brother.

It's good to be here with you.

>> Man, you have such a distinguished career.

You were born in California.. >> Yeah.

>> But your parents really spent their time in Maryland.

>> Yeah.

>> And you're in Maryland now.

Tell us about when you first got involved in civil rights.

>> I was born into a civil-rights family.

We were in California 'cause my parents' marriage was against the law.

>> Well, let's -- hold there.

They had to leave Maryland to go to California just to get married?

>> Well, they had to leave Maryland to go to D.C. to get married.

But once they were married in 1966, the anti-miscegenation laws -- they didn't just prohibit you from getting married.

They prohibited you from living in Maryland across racial lines as man and wife.

>> As man and wife, Black and white, they could not live in Maryland, 'cause it was illegal.

>> Correct.

I mean, they could live there in defiance of the law, but what they would be risking is what had happened in Virginia to the Loving family.

>> The Supreme Court case that went on.

>> That's right.

And what had happened to the Lovings, who were an incredible couple -- you know, in many ways, sort of the ongoing act of civil disobedience in Jim Crow in Maryland and Virginia were greasers.

It was car culture.

It was young white folks and Black folks, like, hot rods, street racing, and they were the first sort of, like, interracial, large social groups.

And that's how the Lovings had fell in love.

And then one day, they're married, you know, they're raising their kids, and the sheriff breaks down their door at midnight to find them in bed so he can prove that they're violating the anti-miscegenation laws.

And so my parents didn't want any part of that, and they figured California would be the most welcoming place to a couple like them.

It turned out to be true and not true.

Racism's kind of coast to coast.

But yeah, so, I was born in California and baptized in West Baltimore.

Our family church is right there in Sandtown-Winchester.

>> Man, that's quite a history.

>> I'm a third-generation member of the NAACP -- excuse me.

No, I'm a fifth-generation member of the NAACP.

My grandmother was third-generation.

The first was her grandfather.

He had been a leader of an interracial, populist movement in Virginia in the 1880s that had both expanded Virginia Tech, secured free public education for every child in Virginia, and founded Virginia State.

In the Ayers case, in which literally the Governor of Mississippi was seeking to make a public Historically Black College a prison -- make Mississippi Valley State -- that's Jerry Rice's alma mater -- a prison, shut down Alcorn State -- Steve McNair's alma mater, if you know your football players -- and then take Jackson State -- Walter Payton's alma mater -- and make it majority white within two years.

That case was a threat to every public HBCU in the country.

And so, because my family's legacy with Virginia State, it felt like a mortal threat.

>> Virginia State is in Petersburg.

>> Yeah, in Petersburg, Virginia.

>> That's where Reginald Lewis went.

>> Yes, absolutely.

>> First Black billionaire.

>> Yes, absolutely.

And that's also where my grandma went, and it's been the bedrock of my family's success.

>> So, fast-forward, Ben.

Today, you're head of People For the American Way.

>> Yes.

>> What is the mission today of People For the American Way?

>> It's really same as it ever was.

It was founded in a moment when you had this rising tide of far-right-wing, very partisan political television evangelists, who were telling people that they weren't good Christians if they didn't vote the way their pastor wanted them to vote.

And the number-one priority is to preserve our democracy, and the number-one thing we must do to preserve our democracy right now is to pass urgently needed voting-rights legislation.

>> 'Cause as you know, in many state legislatures, they've passed all kind of voter-suppression laws at the state level.

>> That's right.

>> And even the count of the United States Census for 2020, they've redrawn all the districts to further suppress people of color's votes.

>> And what sent us to the White House -- what started these protects, were started in August, and they've built.

We've had them every -- on average, every three weeks since then.

First time, no one was arrested.

Second time, five people were arrested.

Next time, 26.

Next time, 62.

Today, more than 200.

Joe Biden exhibited a certain... disconnection with reality about the power of these voter-suppression laws.

CNN Town Hall meeting, President Biden, pushed, I believe, by Don Lemon, but by one of the announcers there -- was pushed on this issue of voter suppression, says, "Well, you just can't stop people from voting."

And it is the most ahistorical comment I'd seen a president make in a very long time.

My grandmother turned 105 last week.

Her grandfather was born enslaved in Southern Virginia.

He died having served as one of the last Blacks to serve in the Virginia legislature during Reconstruction.

And she carries his pain.

And my grandmother's grandfather's pain was that of having watched his colleagues in the state legislature vote to pass laws to make it so difficult for his constituents to vote that men like him would never be able to serve again in that century, and not until past the middle of the next century.

>> Well, look, Democrats control the House.

They control the Senate.

>> Yes.

>> And they control the White House.

So what is the remedy for voter suppression?

>> The remedy -- the first remedy is courage from Joe Biden.

He needs to tell his party, just clear a path for an up-or-down vote, 'cause we got the votes.

>> On which voter-legislation bill?

On the Lewis bill?

>> On the John Lewis bill and on the Freedom to Vote Act.

The John Lewis bill restores the power of the Justice Department to stop future attempts to shred our voting rights, and the Freedom to Vote Act, which was authored in part by Joe Manchin, and he's fully behind, takes care of the laws that have been passed now.

The purpose of these protests, though, has been to really give the President courage.

Martin Luther King III got arrested, not today, but two weeks ago.

>> With his wife and with his daughter.

>> With his wife and his daughter -- Dr. King and Coretta Scott King's only grandchild -- 13 years old, powerful.

And he reminded the crowd.

He said, "You know, President Biden is our friend.

Sometimes we have to push our friends to have the courage to do the right things, and that's what my father had to do."

This was Martin Luther King III talking.

But his dad, Martin Luther King Jr., having a conversation with President Johnson in '64 after the Civil Rights Act.

And President Johnson, maybe somewhat understandably, is like, "Look.

All my powder's gone.

I have nothing left.

I know you want the voting-rights bill, but I hope you'll be satisfied with the Civil Rights Act, because there's nothing more I can do.

And Martin Luther King Jr. walked out of that meeting, looked at his lieutenants, said, "We're just gonna have to make him do it."

And so we're in the "make the President do it" moment here.

Vice President Kamala Harris, I want to be clear, has done her job.

She's President of the Senate.

Her principal job for a President is to get consensus.

She has gotten consensus.

She's gotten consensus with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on this.

There's something, though, that only a president can do, and that's when there needs to be a carve-out in the filibuster.

When you've got a path in the Senate, despite a minority party putting up roadblock after roadblock, the only way it gets done, historically, is that the President calls on his party to do it.

>> As long as some among us are oppressed and we are a part of that oppression, it must blunt our faith and sap the strength of our high purpose.

Thus this is a victory for the freedom of the American Negro, but it is also a victory for the freedom of the American nation.

[ Applause ] >> And so this is 100% up to Joe Biden, and he has to have the courage that Johnson showed around the Voting Rights Act, and we're just playing the role that the movement has always played in helping to strengthen the President's backbone on voting rights.

>> How do you see things going forward?

This is a critical time period in American history.

>> The growth in the South, population growth, has been, like, statistically almost exclusively people of color, and not just Black folks -- Black folks, Latino folks, Asian-Americans in multiple origins, Native Americans.

Those voters have found their voice suppressed in a very powerful way.

10 years ago, we were focused on redistricting, and we were amazed that that administration, President Obama, Vice President Biden, preapproved every Republican redistricting plan in the South.

What was the impact of that?

Stacey Abrams, at the time was Minority Leader of the Georgia legislature -- she had submitted a plan to give equal voice to all residents of Georgia, including newer residents of Georgia, citizens, diverse backgrounds, who had been crammed into these supersized districts.

You know, in redistricting, if you will, you want every district to have the same number of people.

But instead of, say, being like 500,000, 500,000, and 500,000, somewhere like 300,000 and almost exclusively white, and other ones were like 900,000, crammed into one district, and disproportionately Black, brown, Asian.

That plan would have increased the number of seats that leaned Democratic -- and she was the Minority Leader of the Democrats -- in Georgia, I believe by about 25.

The plan -- it was approved by the Department of Justice then, 'cause we had Section 5 back then.

It had the opposite effect.

It cut 25.

It was Nathan Deal's.

And so we know -- and I have a lot of respect for President Obama and for Joe Biden.

We did a lot of great things together.

When I led the NAACP, we helped elect, to re-elect, push through all this landmark domestic-policy legislation.

We leaned in.

But when your friend blinks on voting rights, it can have devastating effect.

And preapproving plan after plan after plan across the South has devastated not just, like, Democratic office holding.

No, it's devastated fair representation of Black people, brown people.

And the way that shows up, yes, is a net loss to Democrats, but there's a much deeper principle, which is that every American deserves an equal voice in our system.

We can't blink this time.

And that means that these laws have to get passed this calendar year.

If they are not, they will have no impact on the redistricting that happens next year, and what will happen in Georgia, for example, will be worse than what happened 10 years ago.

>> So there's a lot on the line.

>> Yeah.

>> And people have been arrested.

>> Yes.

>> The ante has been raised.

>> Yes.

>> And the consequences are even greater than ever before.

What are the groups that are working with People For American Way to get us to rise to the occasion that you are describing?

>> Well, you know, what I love about People For is that from the very beginning, you got to remember, like, Barbara Jordan, Norman Lear in many ways are this complementary set, you know, of opposites, you know?

He's white, she's Black.

She's Christian, he's Jewish.

She was in an open, loving relationship with another woman in a time when the LGBT rights movement was severely repressed in this country, you know?

You know, he, you know, is straight.

Like, he's Northern, she's Southern.

Like, all of that.

And they created this organization, not just to fight the far right, but to demonstrate that we should all be allies to each other, that this is really about the motto of the Three Musketeers -- "All for one, one for all."

That's why I came out of retirement.

I was the nation's youngest retired civil-rights leader.

>> Too young to retire.

>> Yeah.

[ Laughs ] But, you know, when you lead, step down from the NAACP, they congratulate you on your retirement.

And I was like, "I'm 41, y'all."

But I came back, one, to help fight the threat that was Donald Trump's movement, that is Donald Trump's movement.

>> And then you ran for Governor of Maryland.

>> Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yes.

No, I had just run when I came here.

And to also, quite frankly, build a big coalition.

And what we're seeing in these voting-rights protests is that coalition.

For the first time since Woodrow Wilson is president, the women of the League of Women Voters -- of course they had a predecessor organization with Woodrow Wilson, 'cause they weren't voters yet.

This is the first time that they've gotten arrested outside the White House in 100 years.

>> Wait.

Say that again.

This is the League of Women Voters.

Everybody knows that they put on forums.

They have debates.

They sponsored sometimes the presidential debates.

>> Yes.

>> But you're saying in 100 years, they never went to jail?

>> Well, the last time was 100 years ago, when Woodrow Wilson was president -- a little over 100 years ago -- and they were fighting for women's suffrage.

It has been more than a century since the women of the League of Women Voters were getting arrested.

And as somebody who grew up, again, you know, white dad, Black mom, and my white grandmother was a member of the DAR, and she was a member of The League of Women Voters, Chuck Grassley's grandma was in the League of -- you know what I'm saying?

Like, historically in the white community, these are like your activist grandmothers, but they were mostly kind of women who lunched.

>> Then there's a Latino over the League -- >> There is.

Incredible -- Virginia Solomón.

Great leader.

But the buses, our League -- You know what I mean?

Like, when I was putting them back on the bus to Baltimore today, a couple of Black women, whole bunch of white women -- they looked like my white grandmother's League, right?

When they were getting arrested outside your White House, you really, Mr. President, got to look deep in your soul and say, "I don't want anything in common with Woodrow Wilson."

Like, this is not, if you will, you know, just activists like you and me who, like, we get arrested all the time.

These women never get arrested!

But they're so worried.

You know, it's not -- Black folks, we're like the canaries in the coal mine in assaults on our democracy.

When you dig into the voter suppression that we talk about historically as, like, racist voter suppression of Black voters, when you actually read the legislative debates, legislators at the time conceded that they were suppressing the votes of a lot of poor white people, but then would conclude that they were suppressing more -- this was a more plainspoken era.

You're talking like 120 years ago, the rise of Jim Crow -- more Black people's vote, so it was okay.

We also got to, you know, remember that poor white men, white men who did not own land were not allowed to vote until the 1840s.

But the spirit of people for and of these movements -- the League of Women Voters, Black Voters Matter, Black Women's Roundtable -- Bee Nguyen, Vietnamese-American state legislator in Georgia, running -- >> Melanie Campbell's group.

>> Yeah, yeah.

For Secretary of State, yeah.

>> National Coalition on Black Voter Participation.

>> Exactly.

And also the Black Women's Roundtable, yes.

You know, Melanie's an incredible leader.

All of these groups.

Spirit of it is very much the spirit of the Three Musketeers -- all for one and one for all.

And that's the spirit of our country, you know?

I really don't care who you vote for as much as I care that you can vote.

And yet again, these voter-suppression laws, at the end of the day, impact a whole bunch of poor white people.

Reverend Barber today reminded us that that really -- that Dr. King called that out as the plan of voter suppression.

The plan of voter suppression was not just to minimize the political power of Black folks.

It was to minimize the political power of working people of all colors and, in the history of the Deep South, of both colors.

If you go back far enough, and you look at sort of the repression of social movements in the South, it starts with the repression of social movements in Southern Virginia, places like Gloucester, 1663, or Bacon's Rebellion, 1676, which were rebellions of Irish indentured servants and African slaves together.

And so ultimately, like, you remember King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

>> One of the most powerful writings.

>> Yeah.

Our movement I don't believe will truly succeed until we succeed at also bringing in working-class white people alongside working-class people of every other color in the South.

I believe that day's coming.

Donald Trump's movement is trying to stop that, and we have to have the courage to reach out to all of -- you know, the full rainbow.

And to me, you know, that's part of what your leadership inspired in me when I was a very young man.

>> While there's been a lot of focus on systemic racism, and we should continue to focus on that, but, also, want to elevate the discussion, then, about the future of American democracy.

Is it gonna be inclusive, or is it gonna be exclusive?

Is it gonna be representative of the American population as it evolves, or is it gonna be increasingly restrictive?

And what happened on January 6, 2021, may have been a dress rehearsal.

Can you speak to, from your perspective of People For the American Way, what have been the consequences of what happened on January 6, 2021?

>> Well, I want to go, actually, to the first part of what you were talking about.

I am ultimately very optimistic about the future of American democracy.

>> Great.

I want to hear that.

>> I believe, you know, we're going through some tough times now, and they are likely to last for a while.

My grandmother, the one who turned 105, Mamie Todd -- she's a farm girl from Southern Virginia, and she would tell you as a farm girl that a fox is usually, like, a meek and mischievous character, but you back that fox in a corner, and suddenly the fangs come out.

For a farmer -- what a farmer knows, the moment that the fox is backed into a corner is the moment that the whole world's about to change on that fox, and its viciousness actually is the signal that you've won the fight, right?

You pull the trigger and the fox is done.

Well, we're living through a moment where our country, it's a quarter-century from whites becoming a minority, too.

From whites becoming a minority, too.

A lot of white folks, like my dad, like my uncles, like, "Great.

Finally, our folks got to get along with somebody else, too, you know?

Like, we can be like every other group in this society, you know?

We have to get along demographically with at least one other group to succeed democratically -- an evolution, if you will."

There's a bunch of other white folks who are -- and, frankly, typically very rich special interests -- who are deeply entrenched in the status quo, and they fear that change.

They fear that change because they know, for example, there is no Green vote, there is no environmentalist vote without the Black and brown vote, right?

That rising tide, if you will, of people of color in this country means that things will shift in ways that will have impact on, for example, an industry that depends on its ability to destroy the planet to prosper.

So you'll see big investments, you know, from folks who are invested in, you know, old, extractive industries in efforts to suppress Black and brown voters.

But this is the thing -- they cannot stop the future.

They can only delay it.

And so ultimately, yes, I believe we are headed towards a more inclusive, more representative democracy.

It does mean that we are in for some tough times.

It does mean that we have to make a choice.

Are we gonna allow them to succeed in delaying that better day for all of our children, or are we gonna do what Dr. King inspired us to do, what you inspired us to do when I was young, which is just to lean in to the moment and push hard and organize to make a better future come faster for all of our kids.

And that future, I believe, is better for white kids, as well as kids of color.

You know, you and I both know a guy named Bob Zellner.

>> Know him very well.

>> And Bob -- when he was born, he was born into the family of his father, who was a Methodist preacher and a Klansmen.

And that was not an odd thing at the time.

The Klan had been revived by a Methodist preacher in Stone Mountain, Georgia, in 1920 or '21.

His father, though, had lost his mind, because his father participated in a lynching, and it, as a man who preached the love of Jesus, participating in that lynching drove his father to have a nervous breakdown.

His father regained his sanity, regained his self-respect, regained the admiration of his family by leaving -- Bob's father led his family into the civil-rights movement in, like, the early 1950s, like, before Brown.

And his father would preach a sermon in which he'd say, "Any white person who has his hand on the neck of a Black man, holding him down, better recognize he's down in the ditch with him."

He said, "A rich man walks down the middle of the road and laughs at both men in the ditch, the Black man and the white man."

And that ultimately has to be the goal of our movement.

That was the goal of Norman Lear and Barbara Jordan all those years ago, is to build an alliance that cuts beyond all the lines that divide us, and it recognizes what we all have in common, which is that we tend to, you know, share as Americans the having of a deep faith.

We are people of faith -- many faiths, but faith in this country.

We are as Americans patriots.

We are as Americans deeply committed to the American dream, and we are as Americans, I would say, inclined to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And so fundamentally, that day is coming, but we've got to first be a movement that is hell-bent on suppressing the right to vote for working people of all colors in this country in a profound way.

>> Benjamin Jealous, thank you for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> And thank you.

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by... Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

American Petroleum Institute -- through the core elements of API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry in the U.S. and around the world.

You can learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

Over the next 10 years, Comcast is committing $1 billion to reach 50 million low-income Americans with the tools and resources they need to be ready for anything.

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