[upbeat music] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein, welcome to "Side by Side."

Today, my guest is a child of poverty, who rose all the way to the White House, and changed the world and made it better, Dr. Robert Brown.

- [Announcer] Funding for "S ide by Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by... - [Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part, and to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Announcer] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized, janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

[gentle music] - [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally [rock music] thanks to our teammates.

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[upbeat music] [light music] - Rob Brown, I'm so delighted to have you on this program today.

You have led an amazing life in so many ways, but you wrote this book called "You Can't Go Wrong Doing Right."

It's an intriguing title.

Where did it come from?

- It came from my grandmother.

She used to tell me that from the time I was a little boy going off to school, she would tell me, "Bobby, you go to school today and ought to learn everything you can learn, but you do the right thing because you can't go wrong doing right."

- You grew up on a street in High Point, North Carolina, that was a dirt road.

You had no means, your grandma brought you up.

Take us there for a moment.

- Well, we were poor.

We lived in an old house, my grandmother's old house, but we had grapevines, we had the apple tree, cherry tree, peach tree and we had a garden, so my grandmother canned everything because we needed to eating.

But more than that, what I learned from her is that she was giving all the time.

She would can a lot of food, and then when people in the community who got sick, or old people that didn't have anything to eat, we would share our food with them.

And that's what we did as I was growing up, and that's what has been a guiding light for me in my own life, wherever I've gone in the world, I've tried to follow her guidance and what she did.

- Yes.

Now, Bobby, you went from that dirt road in that house with the peach tree to the White House!

How did that happen?

- Oh, they were a lot of things along the road.

- [Nido] Yes.

- First of all, I had a job as a policeman here in High Point.

- [Nido] Yes.

- Then I was recruited by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the Treasury Department to become an agent after I'd been here two years.

And then I went there and I was there for three years, and I became one of the top agents in the country.

I was part of arresting and breaking up the Vito Genovese mafia, mob.

I testified in a court and in many other courts in Canada and elsewhere.

I became one of the top agents in the country.

But after three years, I wanted to do something else with my life.

So I decided to resign and come back to High Point, North Carolina, where I was born and raised and opened up a public relations business.

- [Nido] I see.

- And there were no blacks in that business in America with their own company, and I wanted to do that.

And everybody thought I was crazy!

And they said so.

You know, they told me, "You lost your mind!

"You're in a job.

"You can maybe go forward and you can retire in 20 years."

And a few times I'd come back to High Point, that's totally segregated at that time.

- And you went solo, start a business all on your own.

- [Bob] All on my own.

- And that led to what?

Meeting other people.

- That led to meeting people, I traveled to Florida, to New York, to all over.

I would go travel in my car, I would drive.

And back during that time, you couldn't stop at a motel.

Most restaurants wouldn't take black people.

So I carried food and water, and even a way to go to the bathroom in my car.

- You know, General Colin Powell told me that he...

I interviewed him some time ago.

And he said the same issue.

When he came from Washington D.C. to somewhere in the south, he had the same...

Some of us can't understand that, relate to that.

You educate us, and that's what this book does.

You talk to us about, how in the White House you became engaged in social issues and how you used yourself as a steward to make good things happen?

So that was during the presidency of... - Richard Nixon.

- Yes.

Why would Richard Nixon pick Robert Brown to be a senior advisor to him?

- Well, I was a registered Democrat and... - So that's my question.

Why would Richard Nixon pick Bob Brown?

Yes.

- I've worked for Jack Kennedy.

I've worked closely with Bobby Kennedy until he was killed.

- Yes.

- And so after he was killed, I decided to get out of politics.

But some of the Nixon people that I knew who were friends of mine, they ran me down in New York one day.

- [Nido] I see.

- And convinced me that I ought to give him advice and counsel, that's the least I could do for them as friends.

And I agreed to do it.

- [Nido] Yeah.

- I said, I'm not gonna change my registration from- - Yes.

- Democrat to Republican.

- Yes.

- And that's what I did.

- [Nido] Yes.

- And one thing led to another and one situation lead to another, and I began to open doors and held different, very, very difficult and sensitive problems for them.

And all of a sudden, I look up and they want me on the plane with Mr. Nixon.

They said "From now on," because I resolved some very sensitive problem for them, "Mr. Nixon wants you on the plane with him, traveling everywhere he goes."

And I said, "Okay," you know, but... And that's what I did until he ended the campaign.

- Was your grandma alive then?

- My grandma was alive.

- Did she understand how you've gone to the top in so many ways?

- Well, she didn't quite understand during that campaign.

- Yes.

- She was, you know, working on it, but she didn't really understand.

I don't think she really understood until I had been in Washington for four years.

I'd been there four years.

I know on one occasion, I was on Air Force One with the president.

He was flying to Charlotte to meet with Billy Graham.

And we were flying down this way, so I told one of the communications guy on Air Force One, I had my own seat there, and I picked up my phone, I told him, "I want you to get my grandmother on the phone."

This is her number."

And he called her and he said, "Your grandmother just answered the phone, Mr. Brown.

Pick up" So I picked up the phone and I said, "Mama."

She said, "Bobby, how you doin', boy?"

I said, "I'm doing fine, mama.

And I'm flying over High Point on Air Force One with the president.

We are on our way to Charlotte to meet with Dr. Billy Graham."

And she just starts screaming and hollering, you know?

- With pleasure and joy.

- With pleasure and joy.

- Yeah.

- And I know everybody, she had one of those big voices, she was a gospel singer.

- Yes.

- So she had a big voice and I know everybody in the neighborhood must have heard her.

[Nido laughs] It was unbelievable.

- That's wonderful.

You and Martin Luther King were quite close, and you helped him in his ministry and in his community work.

Tell us a story that you and Martin Luther King experienced together.

- Well, it was...

He was facing a lot of difficulty.

And on one occasion, I hadn't been in business that long, but I had a lot of contacts and I was in a restaurant in Atlanta one day and Wyatt Walker, who was his executive vice president and chief of staff, he walked over to me.

He said, "I know you from Virginia Union."

And I said, "Yeah, I know you.

I remember you were a senior there and I was just coming to school."

And he said, "Yeah."

He said, "What are you doing?"

I told him.

He said, "Well, you need to come over and meet Dr.

King."

He said, "You know, I'm running SDLC."

And I said, "Sure, I'd love to meet him."

I haven't met him.

And so I went to the office when I finished lunch and Dr. King was standing in, like he was waiting on me to come.

And when I walked in, he said, "Bob Brown, I'm so happy that you could come over here to see me."

He said, "We need your help."

He said, "We are troubled for money and for contacts and everything."

And I said, "Dr. King, I'd be happy to help any way I can, because everything that you're doing, all of us will benefit."

I said, "America as a whole would benefit."

And he said, "Well, I need money.

I need more contacts."

And so forth.

- [Nido] Was this before- - So I started raising money for him.

- Was this before you were in the White House or after you were in- - Oh, this was way before.

- Way before, I see.

- Yeah, this was when I was starting out.

- [Nido] Yes.

I see.

- And then I started to raise money for him.

And then, because I was working with some of the largest businesses in America, I had access to budgets and so forth.

So I would put money in the budgets that I would give to SDLC and Dr. King for them to move on.

- And you kept that friendship for a long time.

And upon his passing, you kept your relationship with his widow and his family.

- When he was killed, it was a terrible moment for all of us.

And a few weeks later, Coretta called me one day and she said, "Bob, I don't know what to do, but I wanna start my own office."

She said, "I have these little children, so I can't go anywhere, so I've set up my basement where I could have an office."

She said, "But I have no money to get furniture and this and that, what I need."

I said, "Don't worry about it.

I'll work it out."

I said, "All I want you to do is have somebody go down there and measure everything, every inch of it and just send me a little plan and I will take care of the rest."

So, which I did.

She had it painted and everything.

And then I got with a fellow by the name of Roy Kelly.

He was one of my close friends.

He was a top executive with the Bizz Co., which was one of my clients.

And I told him what I wanted to do.

And he said, "Well, don't worry about it."

He said, "I'll come down there and meet you in Atlanta and we'll go to the largest office furniture place in Atlanta and you get a list of everything Mrs. King needs, and we will bag, we'll have a truck in the house."

And that's what we did.

- And then later, you and she went to South Africa.

- Oh, yes.

- Why?

- Well, she called me one day and she said, "Bob, I wanna go to South Africa.

I wanna see Winnie Mandela.

I wanna see if we can get Nelson Mandela out of jail."

She said, "But I tried and they wouldn't give me a visa."

And she said, "I know that you know how to deal with a lot of these things."

So it just so happened that I had been on a prayer breakfast a couple of weeks before with Ambassador Koornhof who was an ambassador from South Africa to the United States.

And we sat at the same table.

This number guy at work.

And so I called him and I said, "Ambassador?"

I said, "I thought you were Christian."

And he says, "Bop, you know I'm a Christian.

I was with you, I prayed with you and everything."

I said, "Yeah, but one of my closest friends, Mrs. King, wants to go to South Africa and you all won't even give her a visa."

I said, "That's not the way Christians react!"

He says, "Oh, Bob, I don't know anything about it.

I don't know."

He said, "But I will find out.

I will find out and I will do whatever I can to make it work for you."

And then he called me back a few hours later.

He said, "Bob, I called my people in South Africa.

They did turn her down."

He said, "But we will let her go in with her delegation, if you will be a part of it."

And I had no intention of going to South Africa.

- By then, you've been there many times before.

- I've been there before.

- You were friends with Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela.

- I've been there just a few times.

- And you went to the prison to see Nelson Mandela when nobody could do that.

- Well, Mandela had been in jail for 20 some years.

And in those 20 some years, nobody, including his own family could not see him more than 15 minutes at a time, twice a year.

And they were traveling for 2,500 miles, and they couldn't see him.

And so one night I'm in South Africa, and I'm getting ready to come back to America.

And I get a call just out of the clear blue sky from a fellow by the name of Neil Van Heerden.

And he said, "Mr. Brown, my name is Neil Van Heerden.

And I work for President Botha."

And president Botha was like Hitler.

I said, oh my God, they're gonna kill me now.

They know I've been in here.

And so he said, "President Botha is giving you permission to go into Pollsmoor Prison to see Nelson Mandela, if you would like to do that."

I'm trying to figure out what on earth is this.

I said, maybe they wanna kill me.

I've been here several times.

They were killing people, black people that way.

So I said, oh, I talked to him a few minutes to make sure it was legitimate.

And I told him, I thought I would do it.

And he said, he told me what to do and so forth.

So I got off the phone and I called Winnie Mandela.

And I told her what had happened.

She just starts screaming to the top of her voice.

She said, "Bop, Bop, I told you that my God wouldn't let me down.

I told you, Bob, I told you."

Because nothing like this had ever happened before.

- And you went to see him.

- I went inside the prison.

- What happened when you sat with him?

What did you talk about?

- We talked about everything.

The other thing that was so important is they would not let his family see him twice a year at 15-minute intervals.

And they would usually give him two 15-minute intervals to see him twice a year for 27 years.

And so I'm sitting there and he's sitting in the chair, they had us sit in a room and they told me to go sit down and they brought him in.

And when they brought him in, you know, we hugged and he thanked me for what I was doing for his family and- - You were bringing his children to America to go to college and paying their expenses.

- That's right.

And they stayed over here with me for seven years until they graduated.

- And then later, Bob, later, you discovered there's a need in Africa for supplying children with books.

- [Bob] Absolutely.

- And what did you do about that?

- Well, I found out they had no books in most of the schools in South Africa, almost.

They had almost no books.

I mean, millions of children.

And it just hurt me to my heart.

And I said, you know, I've gotta do something about this, so I started collecting books.

And when I first started, I would just collect 'em and have 'em wrapped up in some boxes and so forth.

And then I would have them checked and pay what additional price and send them on.

I'd take them myself, and I'd have a couple of vans to meet me at the airport and get the books.

And then I just said, "Hey, I'm gonna do what I need to do."

So then I got just truckload of books and- - Where did you get the books from?

- I got 'em from Guildford County, from Charlotte, the Mecklenburg County.

I got 'em from different places, Chicago, New York.

Most of the school libraries usually have big warehouses full of books because they constantly had to be changing the books, updating, and so forth.

- I see.

- And so we'd trying to figure out what they're gonna do with 'em.

So there were plenty of books, millions of books.

So I started gathering those books.

But the problem was is they had a law, a regulation that you couldn't bring any books into South Africa for the black schools.

But I started bringing books in by the truckload.

- And you succeeded and- - Oh yeah.

- Planted seeds of greatness in the minds, hearts and souls of millions of students.

In the time we have remaining, I wanna throw some names at you and I want you to tell me your relationship with them.

Wayne Huizenga, the founder of Blockbuster.

- He was a very, very close friend.

- Beyond AutoZone, Blockbuster.

- Blockbuster.

- What else?

A number of other companies.

- All kind of companies.

- [Nido] Yes.

- He was one of the richest men in the world.

And he became one of my closest friends.

I've worked with his companies, I've served on the board of his company.

And we would sit and have long talks.

We brought him into the whole region, Algeria and all of that.

And he was a wonderful man.

- Yes, he was.

Maya Angelou.

- Maya Angelou was just a great, great human being.

She was a very, very close friend.

We became closer when she moved to North Carolina to be a professor at Wake Forest.

And we knew Sammy Davis Jr., he had told her to get in touch with me.

Sammy Davis Jr. was one of my closer friends, and she knew Sammy.

So when she got here, she called me.

She said, "I wanna have lunch with you.

Sammy told me to call you."

So we had lunch and we talked.

We had lunch, went home for about three hours.

And after then, it was- - Lifetime.

- Lifetime.

- Oprah Winfrey.

- Oprah.

I got to know Oprah through Maya Angelou, because Maya called me called me and my late wife Sally and said, "You know, I have this young lady over here.

We're getting ready to have dinner.

She and her boyfriend, Stedman Graham and Oprah Winfrey."

I'd heard a little bit about her, but she was in Chicago.

I didn't know much about her.

So we went over to have dinner.

I had dinner and we just talked for hours.

And so it got so late that night, Maya said, "Hey, look, you're all not gonna spend the night, so come back tomorrow, I'll cook up a whole lot of food and we'll just talk."

So we went back the next day.

And from there on, we became very, very close.

Steadman started to work with me.

He traveled with me all over the world for several years.

And then Oprah's fame started growing all over the world and we are still close friends even today.

- You know, Bob, I could name a hundred more names that people, our viewers would know and you'd know every one of them.

And more importantly, they each know you and love you and respect you.

Your life has been a testimony to what one man, who as your book states, "A Child of Poverty" growing to the highest levels of esteem in this country on merit, by design, and with faithful courage.

What is one moment in your life that was sort of the height of spiritual experience for you, emotional experience for you?

What is that one moment that made you realize that you are gifted in so many ways?

Was it the moment in the White House?

Or that big dinner in Washington, when President Nixon put his arm around you and in front of all these people and showed his appreciation?

Was it the time that you came back and talked to your grandma?

What was that moment?

- Well, I know one moment that really standed out was when I was in South Africa, there was a young white doctor who had graduated from medical school who decided to practice medicine in one of the worst black townships.

I mean, it was muddy roads and broken down homes and everything.

And the government didn't want him to do that, so they were trying to get him into the Army or do something else, but he had this old building.

I'd been trying to meet him.

So one day, I decided it was kind of rainy, misty, that I would go to his building where he was practicing to see if I can be helpful to him.

And I went there and there were people standing in the misty rain all on the outside this old raggedy building and then I went inside and the people were just standing all around.

And I told a young lady who came to me.

She said, "What can we do for you?"

I told her, "I wanna see the doctor."

And she said, "Well, he's so busy."

I said, "I wanna be helpful, I'm here to be helpful."

So she went and got him.

He came out.

I told him I admire what he was doing this young white Africana man.

And he told me, he said, "I don't know what to do, Mr.

Brown."

He said, "You see all these people, "I have no medicine, I have nothing.

And I'm trying to be helpful."

And the whites were trying to get him to get out of there.

So I told him to have somebody write down everything he needed.

And so they did, the next hour or so.

And I took a van, a couple of vans, and I went out to different stores and I bought just loads of medicines, and just basic things like alcohol.

He needed all of that.

- And gave it back to him.

- And gave it back to him.

- And that just filled your heart with - - Oh, it did me more good than it could have ever done any of those people who he was helping all for him.

You know, when I came back to him, he came out, he had tears in his eyes.

He was crying.

And so I've identified so many things like this in different places in the world where I've worked, because my grandmother used to tell me over and over again, she said, "Bobby, just let the Lord use you.

"Let him have his way with your life."

She said, "He will carry you to the mountaintop."

- And you can't go wrong.

- You can't go wrong doing right.

- Bob Brown, you have received more awards, more honorary doctorates, more recognitions in this country than anybody could list in three hours.

And yet, your humility and your heart filled with gratitude and appreciation for the very breath of life that you possess and your ability to be the kind of steward that you've been, it's a testimony to what can one man do to change the world, and it's an inspiration to me and to others.

Thank you so much for being with us here today.

[inspirational music] And I thank you for joining us right here on "Side by Side."

I'll see you next week.

- [Announcer] Funding for "S ide by Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by.

- [Narrator] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part, and to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Narrator] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

[gentle music] - [Narrator] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 30 0 brands and flavors locally.

[rock music] Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

Your local bottler.