Step into a powerful dialogue as Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., and Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X, share an intimate conversation at Essence Festival. They delve into the profound blessings and unique burdens of carrying the legacies of two of America's most influential civil rights leaders.
Discover their personal reflections on navigating public expectation, the enduring power of their fathers' visions, and the strength found in their shared experience. Hear how they forge their own paths while honoring their fathers' fight for justice and equality.
This inspiring discussion explores the deep empathy and clarity that their parents' examples provide, while also addressing the challenges of living under the constant shadow of such immense historical figures. Gain insights into their personal journeys and the enduring impact of their fathers' words and deeds.#LegacyAndPower #CivilRights #InConversation
Discover their personal reflections on navigating public expectation, the enduring power of their fathers' visions, and the strength found in their shared experience. Hear how they forge their own paths while honoring their fathers' fight for justice and equality.
This inspiring discussion explores the deep empathy and clarity that their parents' examples provide, while also addressing the challenges of living under the constant shadow of such immense historical figures. Gain insights into their personal journeys and the enduring impact of their fathers' words and deeds.#LegacyAndPower #CivilRights #InConversation
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00:05all righty guys so this next conversation is one that we definitely do not take lightly
00:11two daughters two legacies that changed the course of this country i need y'all to stand with me for
00:19this one please stand please stand please stand please stand clap it up start clapping right now
00:24please welcome dr bernice king daughter of martin luther king jr and dr shabazz daughter of malcolm x
00:32together moderated by entrepreneur and actively black founder laney smith they will reflect on
00:38the work of their fathers the responsibility of carrying a legacy forward and how they forge
00:44their own paths as leader leaders in their own right please welcome again with me icons legacy
00:52and power to the stage clap it up let's begin let's bring them out let's bring them on out let's
00:58do
00:58it essence festival who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your
01:05feet
01:05don't let anybody make you feel that you are nobody who taught you to hate the texture of your hair
01:12don't be ashamed of your hair who taught you to hate the color of your skin don't be ashamed of
01:18your color
01:19who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips i am black and
01:26beautiful
01:27and i am not a fan to play but i know a change gonna come
01:34and i'll bring you out there dr bernice king daughter of martin luther king
01:46and dr eliasa shabazz daughter of malcolm x together
01:52sweet queen betty
01:55sweet mother mary
01:58sweet father joseph
02:01sweet jesus
02:04we made it in america
02:07sweet baby jesus
02:20hello hello hello hello how y'all doing essence
02:31yes y'all please give it up for these queens come on now
02:37oh my goodness um it's a blessing to be here today at essence fest um with these queens um
02:44who really need no introduction but as you all know these are the daughters of malcolm x and
02:49martin luther king dr bernice king and dr eliasa shabazz um we're gonna jump straight into it because
02:57i know we have a lot to talk about today so the first thing i wanted to ask you is
03:02as the daughters
03:03of such legendary figures as martin luther king jr and malcolm x can you share the blessing
03:10and maybe even the burden of being born into that royalty and what it means for both of you to
03:15carry
03:15on that legacy okay all right i'm gonna go first uh both of my parents gave their lives to something
03:24larger than themselves and so the blessing is clarity i'm clear because of their example
03:31of believing in the dignity of black people so completely so fiercely so powerfully that the
03:40clarity of their purpose is a shining light for me and so many others here and around the world
03:47the burden is empathy and it's the empathy though that fuels and fortifies our stewardship
03:58so for me the blessing is being able to carry forth a legacy that not just changed the world but
04:08continues
04:09to inspire and educate and give people hope i can say more but i know our time is limited can
04:16i say one
04:17thing though please do essence we are here come on how about that come on on the main stage i
04:25had to say that
04:25of course of course that's a blessing okay the doors that are open the access that you know you have
04:33and the
04:34credibility because of what our parents did got you but the burden is when we show up
04:41there's always that constant comparison there's always that literal difficulty of just being you
04:53and the burden of not being able to just not be bernie's king you know exist as you all the
05:02time
05:03um there are days when i'm list i just wish i don't have to deal with this but i know
05:08when i leave my
05:09house when i get out of the confines of my car i have to show up whether i like it
05:16or not i don't get
05:17to have a bad day because if i have a bad day somebody's always got something to say she didn't
05:22smile
05:23she didn't speak i mean why are you paying that kind of attention to me and why do i have
05:28to be that
05:28perfect right so that part is a burden but the other for me i'll just say and i'm i'm not
05:34sure i think
05:34you've been married before correct the burden for me is it's been hard to connect with a brother
05:44those those are those are tough to feel yes that's a burden okay because my my father and mother had
05:51each other yeah and there are days that i wish that i had a covering a man that could help
05:56stand and
05:58fight some of the battles i've had to fight in my life well you know what we're gonna we're gonna
06:03pray you know that that that blessing still comes we we we're gonna listen because a lot come but
06:10they're not the right one got you got you now you know we often view both of your fathers you
06:18know as
06:19these legendary sometimes almost mythical um figures but for you both they were dad you know
06:27what i mean and and i think sometimes we forget the fact that you lost your fathers how have you
06:33managed that combination of grief of losing your father and then also that constant reminder of who
06:40your fathers were it's like you can't really escape that and then how has that formed this sisterhood
06:45between you two that shared experience yeah it's a it's a double question i have to remember the
06:53question let me say it like this there are very few people that are in our category you can probably
07:02count on one hand how many people have had their parents assassinated for the cause there's a very
07:11small group of people and so it's a world that nobody understands people forget you know sometimes we
07:20were just talking about some issues around trauma in the back people expect so much of us but they
07:26forget not only did we lose our parents to assassination at a young age i was five you were three
07:35two
07:36i mean that's traumatic you know and yet people expect us to continue to show up and and and and
07:44represent um so the grief is always with you because we also have to always be reminded of the
07:52assassination all the time i was going through a book the other day and suddenly my father's out in
07:56the casket and i'm like i don't want to see this you know um so we don't get that break
08:02but the beauty on
08:03the other side is that they're with us we get to carry not just our father but our mother's legacy
08:12with us on a daily basis right and that becomes comforting yeah for me um so i'm going to toss
08:20it
08:20to my sister well dr sabaz you know she touched on it with your about your mother's one thing that
08:26we
08:26all know to be true is when you see any black man walking in his purpose there's normally a black
08:32woman
08:32who is walking beside him and building with him you know so whether it's michelle obama who will see
08:43hello or whether it's bianca winslow my better half who's the co-founder of actively black
08:49or your queens dr uh betty sabaz and and and um coretta scott king what does that mean to you
08:57to
08:57make sure that your mothers are also remembered for what they did and how they walked with your
09:02fathers can you talk about that dr sabaz uh yeah you know when i think of our parents
09:10and we've both said this publicly we are grateful that they had one another the sisterhood you know and
09:17what they modeled for us was trust was love was nurturing um when i think of my mother and i
09:26share
09:26with my students you know my mother wasn't even 30 years old she had four babies she was pregnant with
09:33twins and she and her husband lay in bed as husband and wife as mother and father to all of
09:41these girls
09:42and their home was firebombed and so a week later he invites her to the audubon ballroom where he is
09:50going to deliver his uh the organization of afro-american unity because he was very much concerned about
09:59the welfare of black people and and aligning ourselves with black people around the globe
10:07right no foundational blacks no you know caribbean no this but as one black people and and so for my
10:16mother and her daughters to witness this assassination of her husband was very difficult you know probably
10:24the worst that she'd ever experienced in her life and the fact that she continued and raised all of her
10:33girls she loved her girls she loved her community she loved herself she loved her people for me it's very
10:41miraculous and so you know my mother's uh ex what she modeled for us was don't cry for me argentina
10:51i am not
10:52one to you know despair i am not a victim she never accepted no or i can't as an answer
11:01for herself
11:02and as a result she thrived and you know even my sisterhood with bernice has been extremely helpful
11:12you know and and so thank you my love
11:18and lonnie this is what i want to say without our mothers the malcolm x the martin luther king that
11:28people
11:28know today they wouldn't do they wouldn't know we wouldn't be sitting here today doing what we're doing
11:36our mothers made the legacy possible and that's what i want to say you can be as bad as you
11:40want in life
11:41but if the way if you don't make people feel connected and empowered through your life and change then when
11:51you're gone that's it and that's why i wear this jacket all the time the young lady who makes this
11:56is here with me today but it says impact over fame okay and so many people trying to get the
12:02bag they're
12:03trying to get the fame but it's the impact that not just our daddy's made but the impact our mother's
12:10made yes if you subtract most of the things that my mother did if i said remove the king holiday
12:16even the king memorial and i can put that in context for people even though the alphas did it there
12:21was a
12:21foundation laid before remove the king center that she founded as the institution and the work that
12:28it did to train 300 000 people when south africa was preparing for democracy so there would not be a
12:34bloodshed and moving from apartheid to democracy you know remove her encouragement for my father to speak
12:41out uh against the the war in vietnam remove her from the equation in atlanta where they called upon her
12:49to help the momentum around the fox theater to keep it from being demolished remove her from forsyth
12:56county when joselle williams got hit over the head and how she galvanized hundreds of thousands of
13:03people to converge on forsyth county that today was back then was a what do you call it a sundown
13:10town
13:10you had to get up out of there now black folks live and are doing business in forsyth county just
13:16just
13:17keep removing the freedom concert she did to raise the money just remove her from recording the first
13:22speech that he made remove her from saving the birth home in atlanta there would be no birth home if
13:31my
13:31mother didn't go to ivan allen as as mayor when my father was living when they were getting ready to
13:37demolish it and say uh-uh we need to preserve this for generations yet unborn and it reopened yesterday and
13:44me and my brother were there with his family and our cousins and so just take her out of the
13:48equation
13:49and see what martin king you get right right right and that's right that's right and you know and i
13:55want to add to that that there is always a divisive tactic yes right it's martin or malcolm it's brooker
14:05t
14:05washington or wab du bois it's tupac or biggie smalls right and so we just have to understand that
14:14they are divisive tactics because we are the majority in the world and we have great values we know what
14:22human dignity is and so imagine if we all came together you see dr king and me we're sisters we
14:32love
14:32each other there is nothing divisive about it and our fathers they respected one another and our
14:39mothers were very fortunate to have had one another as sisters you know and we are beneficiaries of that
14:46love and so we understand the necessity of brotherhood of sisterhood of all of us being in under one
14:54fatherhood of god and so the next time there's a multiple choice like that choose e
15:00all of the above thank you thank you thank you right the the crowd got to see um you know
15:09a clip
15:09from our new york fashion week show uh the actively black fashion week show that you both walked out on
15:14that runway um only you could get us to do that i was so humbled that you gotta understand it
15:20it felt
15:20crazy to even ask you you know i'm going to to these queens and asking them if they would walk
15:25on our
15:25fashion show and you did and the reason why i asked for y'all to walk together is because i
15:31wanted
15:32our people to see that unity because far too often even our own people will pit you against each other
15:38pitch your fathers against each other and i wanted them to see that unity so i i really want to
15:42thank you
15:42for doing that and listen lanny this is the reason why we support you you know you didn't just do
15:50a
15:50fashion show you brought history to the forefront and you acknowledged all of these individuals there
15:57were people who were blackballed there were people who were psychologically traumatized in this generation
16:05and the fact that you got everybody together that you invested your money that you invested money into
16:11this company is you know the reason that we will continue to support you and how you got us on
16:18the plane
16:19to get here and you showed the connection in that video that was so powerful because people as they
16:27already said they tear them apart all the time there's enough of that we're doing that too much
16:32right now right we need each other like never before in this season listen this ain't supposed to be
16:39about me and y'all got me up here about to cry um but thank you i truly truly appreciate
16:43that um
16:46one of the things i wanted to ask is um i know we don't have the time to dive into
16:52all of them but
16:53is there one misconception about your fathers that you would like to dispel right here at essence on this
17:00stage and let people know you know this is false or this is a misconception about my father that i
17:05want to
17:07correct i got so much to correct i mean we can get into that later i don't know if i
17:11can do it totally
17:12okay we've got a podcast coming out yeah just want to let y'all know we've got a podcast coming
17:17out where
17:17we're going to dive deep into these issues but but this is the one i'll talk about most people don't
17:24know that my father was building an economic infrastructure for the black community through
17:30operation breadbasket which was an economic arm for um sclc so what i'm going to say is everybody
17:38on here go to youtube and look up his 1967 speech to the sclc convention called where do we go
17:46from
17:46here because most people say you know he didn't do nothing on the economic front right and he did he
17:52wasn't just talking about it they were making substantial progress for one example uh in atlanta alone
18:00because of the work that operation breadbasket was doing demanding that the companies not only hire
18:06more black people because back then we take it for granted now there wasn't no black people uh significantly
18:12working in most of these places and so not only were they calling on them to hire more blacks but
18:17to
18:19um promote them and pay them on par and when they didn't do that then they would call for an
18:26economic
18:26boycott but in most instances the companies responded and as a result they were able to
18:32increase the income in the black community every year by 25 million dollars which is like three or
18:39four hundred million today come on so that's significant that's dr king and the sclc and those
18:44that work in and around him so i just wanted to clarify okay okay and dr sabaz um we got
18:50to make sure
18:51people know dr sabaz just released a new book called malcolm in the desert would you like to tell
18:57the folks about you know what this book is about and the transformative uh information that's shared
19:02in there that we we all need today yes sorry okay i'm a writer so there's a yoruba proverb that
19:09i quote in
19:10my book and it says in order to find your way you must first become lost and you must acknowledge
19:18that you
19:19are lost my father became beautifully productively lost in the desert and what emerged was the blossoming
19:28of his beautiful stewardship he served god to his higher power he said he didn't fear man because he feared
19:38god
19:39and so we discovered his compassionate heart and so in this book it's a daughter's offering to a father
19:47she never fully got to know after he left the nation of islam in 1964 my father made hajj his
19:56pilgrimage
19:56to mecca he walked alongside pilgrims from every nation and every complexion and for the first time
20:03in his adult life he was not defined by his marginal status as a black man in america he was
20:11becoming el
20:12haj malik el shabazz in 1965 when we weren't even flying on airplanes and one expression of being is what
20:22he
20:22called the infinite parade of beings before god the anger that had fueled him the pain that had shaped
20:33his politics rightfully so began to open into something larger compassion he was just 39 years old
20:43and so what i learned personally is that my father was just a young man i'm old enough to be
20:48his mother
20:49father today he was 39 when he was killed he was still becoming he was publicly changing his stated
20:59positions to admit where he had been wrong and to keep moving toward truth even when it cost him
21:06everything and so my father was most of all a truth teller not a fixed ideology but a continued commitment
21:15commitment to growth evolution transformation and what i hope our people take away from my father
21:23is this transformation is not a betrayal of who you are it is a fulfillment of it and in these
21:34hard times
21:35we do not need to be rigid we do not need to alienate ourselves from one another but to be
21:44rooted
21:45it and open and my father was both and i'm so grateful that i have this book and i have
21:52the
21:52opportunity to write it at this stage in life and it is my gift to you and i hope that
21:59you will go out
22:00and you will get it it's a self-guide book to walk alongside malcolm to walk alongside me during a
22:07very
22:08challenging time in our lives and see what we did to grow and and it's something that dr king and
22:15i
22:16talk about kind of often you know i look at her and i always think that she has all the
22:21answers
22:22and she looks at me and she thinks i have the answers and i'm like really you know so we
22:28really
22:29lean on one another and i think we help fuel one another and it's so important for us in our
22:34communities
22:34to do that so speaking speaking of answers they're telling me we got to go soon so i i have
22:39one more
22:40question for you dr king that i think is an answer we all are looking forward to when you look
22:45at the
22:46landscape of what's happening right now in our country when you're looking at the temperature of
22:50the politics um of society they're trying to erase black history the attack on black women black men
22:58black children um things like the civil rights act and the voting rights act that they're openly
23:04attacking when you think about what your father fought and died for which what's something what's
23:10a call to action for us right now as a people as we deal with what's going on right now
23:15in this country
23:16um we'd love to hear your thoughts on that so going back to what i said about why we need
23:20each other in
23:21the season i'm a preacher there's a chapter uh in nehemiah the book of nehemiah the fourth chapter the 19th
23:30and 20 verse 20 verse it says
23:36the problems what we're dealing with is extensive and we are widely separated on the wall
23:44we know we're dealing with some extensive challenging things we're widely separated in
23:49spaces and places doing what we can do in this hour but it says when you hear the sound of
23:54the trump
23:56pit i'm sorry i didn't mean to say trump but that's what i meant to say rally together that means
24:02come
24:02together and our god will fight for us this is a season that we have to do what daddy said
24:08he said
24:09in his book where do we go from here chaos community we must organize and it's a nettlesome task he
24:14said
24:15to discover how to organize our strengths into compelling power so that the government or power
24:22structures cannot elude our demands not request demands so that means that we've got to move beyond
24:32organizing around passion but we got to look at how do we bring together every strength that's needed
24:40and we coordinate those efforts in a powerful front right now people are doing things in different
24:47ways but if we don't find our way to a strategy and a plan that is past politics because we
24:54are not
24:54fighting politics right now we are actually in a battle between evil and good and that's a different
25:01kind of fight right right so you have to fortify in a different kind of way and so that's what
25:07i would
25:07say to our people and and finally non-violence teaches us and gives us the framework framework for
25:14doing that effectively so that we don't have many casualties first of all but also so that we can
25:21build the world that all of us genuinely want where everybody can flourish so i'm encouraging people to
25:27visit the kingcenter.org take our master class our workplace addition and let's get that let's let's deal
25:34with what we're up against because it's deeply disturbing it's deeply disappointing but as mama
25:39said struggle is a never-ending process freedom's never really won you earn it and win it in every
25:46generation so we're going to do that in this generation they might try to set us back but the
25:51setback is a setup and we're going to come back strong if we organize our streets right we're going to
25:57be
25:57actively black and with that you know the the the tagline for actively black is there's greatness in
26:03our dna and these two queens are the living embodiment of that there's literally greatness in their dna
26:09thank you queens for joining me today on this stage forever grateful thank you please give it up for them
26:15please
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