YouSaid · the spoken record

Bakari Sellers

lines on the record
79
first
2017-10-30
most recent
2017-10-30
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “Was what our parents told us. They gave us a few rules growing up. One, they were going to pay for you to go to college if you went to an historic black college university. You go to a majority institution after that. And so I went to Moorehouse. My brother went to Moorehouse. My sister went to Xavier. And two, you had to be a change agent. And so my brother actually went in the ministry. My sister's a doctor. And I was a lawyer who wanted to be in politics. I did not get the bug, the political bug, which you just cannot get rid of until I went to Capitol Hill and worked for United States Congressman James Clyburn in college. And between Jim Clyburn and Shirley Franklin, I've been”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “He ran for city council in Greensboro, North Carolina. My father didn't return to South Carolina after he was let go from prison. His mom and dad didn't want him to come back at all. So he resettled in Greensboro and went to UNCG to get his doctorate, et cetera. He ran for office. He was the national southern regional field director for Jesse Jackson in 1984. And was always around politics. I don't know if he won many races, though.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Discrimination, burying people we love because of racism and hate. You know, you look at some of the socioeconomic conditions that many people of color grow up in, punish because of the zip code that they're born into, not far from where we're sitting today. You can go to East Chicago and you have the environmental injustices that are comparable to that of Flint. And so... China grapple and destruct, deconstruct all of these systems is just a continuation of my father's journey.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I was an am angrier at my great state of South Carolina for February 8th, 1968 than I think my father even is. And I think a lot of that anger I'm writing right now is called anger is not sin, but I think a lot of that anger fueled me wanting to be a change agent. And I just had to figure out how to get there and I wanted to be a part of that as quickly as possible. And so my ascension was a little quicker. And I wouldn't change anything or trade anything in the world, but it was driven by an anger for the condition. I've told Joanne Reed one Sunday morning we were in Charleston after the Charleston massacre. I said, my father, at the time he was 70 and I was 30. We're 40 years apart and we have many of the same shared experiences. And that drives me crazy. And so.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, and he would take me around and we get hot dogs on the street. You know, we knew some of the more radical figures like H-Rap Brown, you know, Kathleen Cleaver would call the house. Julian Bond was myth everything. I mean, he was one of my father's very, very good friends. But he just meant so much to all of us. And so I didn't read history in books. You lived it. I lived it. Yeah. And many people who are, we call it, we refer to ourselves as children of the movement. And many of us who are children of the movement, even little Jesse can tell you the same thing. You have a certain ownership and pride of that torch and you make sure it doesn't burn out.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “A professor was an integral part of the African American Studies Department at the University of South Carolina and a college president. But”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And the first picture they have together, I can't remember the gentleman's name in the prison who took it, but she was able to bring in. They were sitting on the yard and she was able to bring in a camera. And they had their big afros and my dad has on his blue prison denims. And he's holding my sister for the first time. And so, you know, there was a lot of difficulty that she had to go through as a woman, as a mother, as a wife, because my father's activism took him out of her life for a while. And further, they grew up on my brother and sister had to deal with instances of welfare a little bit more because it's difficult to be black and have a felony in the south in which he had. And so although he was able to”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “My mom went to Gustavus Adolphus in Minnesota, and she was the daughter of a very prominent black pastor at the time who kept her pretty well removed from the civil rights movement until my father caught up with her and found her. My mom was in the... A number of years, 20, 30, 40 years. And so that's where we got this insatiable desire to always be on this journey for knowledge acquisition. But she was always a very strong supporter of my father. And I think that she... My sister's name My sister's name is Nosway Abadame Sellers. It's Swahili. Abadame means born while father's away because she was born while my father was incarcerated”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “February 1st, 1960, you had the three students from North Carolina and T that set in at the Woolworths Counter and sparked the quote unquote sit-in movement. But if you look at the violence that they endured at that one moment, I mean, they were white customers were pouring milkshakes on them. They were spitting on them. They were throwing hamburgers at them. I mean, but it wasn't until those images were seen around the world on the Edmund Pettis Bridge where people were like, holy hell. Yeah. You know, the trauma that black Southerners are going through, the 16th Street bombing. I mean, that literally bombed a church and killed four little corpse. Four little girls. Yeah. And so in L.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Discussion. My father will tell you that he was a radical. There's no question. My father would chant black power. But black power wasn't a militant phrase at the time. Co opted. Black power meant economic power, even more importantly, it meant political power. It wasn't some galvanizing phrase to have assembly of black rage by any stretch, but it meant being self-sufficient and retaking your communities and then empowering your communities. But they pushed sometimes we look back on people like Dr. King or Muhammad Ali. We don't understand them to be as militant as they were. And although there was a definite nonviolent message of Dr. King, Dr. King very much pushed the envelope when it came to various protest tactics or demonstrations. And so I think my father was a part of a younger group. SNCC was a younger organization than SELC and Dr. King and many other ministers. And there was tension between the groups.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It just appe They were friends of his. They had all been in Miami University of Ohio together where they were doing their training. And so that's why he was put on that mission to go and look for their bodies. And when you think about this, you're talking about...”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “And so when you think about that in my father's first mission was to go to Philadelphia, Mississippi, he was in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He always says that you know the Emmett Tills and you know some of the names of the black bodies that are floating in swamps and creeks in Mississippi, but there are hundreds of others that went unnamed. And so he was hiding in barns and sheds at the middle.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “My father, what motivated my father to be a part of the movement was Emmett Till. He says when he was young, he would always keep a picture of Emmett Till. He said, the bravest woman he knew was Emmett Till's mother because she elected to allow there to be an open casket. Right, Immettel. 13.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “The River of No Return. It's a great book. It's the story of a snick militant, as he calls it. If you look at many of the images, I remember a few, there was one when Stokely Carmichael first coined the term black power, anywhere in Mississippi, and my father is right behind him with a stoic look and a white t-shirt with his sleeves rolled up. And then if you see Dr. King marching down the street, you'll see like my father right behind him. So he's always been right there.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And they transported them all the way up from Orangewood to Columbia. They blocked off the interstate, which is 40 miles, and no one was allowed on, everybody on was pushed off. It was the first and only time in our state's history they completely shut down the interstate. And they housed up on death row. He was housed on death row for about two or three weeks while he was.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Got his master's from Harvard. So he was probably the only person in the South Carolina Department of Corrections with a master's from Harvard. But the interesting thing is when they arrested him that night on February 8th and transported him, they used to call the jail in Orangeburg the Pink Castle because it was a pink building and he came out and he had a sling on and he had these high water jeans and some Chuck Taylor's”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “He was hoping to restart school. At South Carolina State. My father ended up subsequently graduating from Shaw University because he dropped out of Howard. And then he was arrested and this kind of threw everything off track in between the time of his trial and his arrest. It was a few years he got”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Being targeted. Yeah, I mean, they actually at his home across the street, they had a tank. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division had their tank pointed directly at his home. And so that's why he was on campus because he wanted to get out of that house and he went and he stayed on campus that night.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Was shot in the hit. And so my father maintains the theory that he carries a lot of heartache about that night because he feels as if Henry Smith was probably dead because they wanted him dead. You have three young men.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Be my guest. I know. This one may have some foundation. If you look at Henry Smith and my father at the time they look nearly identical. And Henry Smith actually was.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “All the officers who fired into the group of students were charged, but they were all found not guilty. They actually arrested my father that night while he was shot. They charged him with five felony counts. They ended up backdated.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Stokely Carmichael, Plammy Toray, as he was his name when he passed away, but Stokely Carmichael is the godfather of my sister. He was my father's best friend. My father, we were talking about the Orange Rug massacre.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, that's the most amazing part about the movement at that time. And I guess very similar to today, that many of the individuals who push the envelope of change in this country were kids. I mean, my dad was 15, 16 years old. His parents were scared to death of him getting involved in the movement. He went to Howard University, or he befriended Stokely Carmichael. Stokely graduated and then convinced my dad to drop out of school. So my dad dropped out of Howard, went to Miami University of Ohio where Snick was doing training for Freedom Summer.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “My father was not a student there. My father was residing across the street from the campus. And the students, they would seek out his dad.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “killed that night. Delano Middleton was 17 years old. He was a high school student who was actually there to walk his mom home from work who was a custodian on the campus.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Many of the students were beaten John Strowman says that he witnessed a young lady being held by two state troopers while another one beat her with a baton. Then came the seventh nothing happened. Then came the eighth when the students went in protested again. This time when state troopers came, they got the right idea. They went back to their campus and they built a huge bonfire. And for eight seconds, South Carolina State troopers fired shots into the group of students, not rubber bullets or tear gas, but deadly double-eyed buckshots, the same bullets we used to hunt deer. They killed three Henry Smith, Samuel Hammond, and Delano Middleton, and they wounded upwards of twenty nine college students. Actually, one of the young men who was”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “In Orangeburg and the police at the time and state troopers came and surrounded the students and they beat many of the students with police batons that night Mr. Strowman, John Strowman claiming that”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Or massacre It was. History of I think that in 1968, you had the Orange Ring massacre first, and then subsequently you had the assassination of King and Kennedy. So it was definitely a rough year. But students at that campus, they were protesting what the history books call the last vestige of discrimination in Orangeburg. It was a whites only bowling alley. They went down on the 6th and they protested the police at the time.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Well, my mom and dad both put a high value on education in our household growing up, but even more importantly than that we had to understand and know where we were coming from. My father was shot on February 8th, 1968 in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He was national.”

    2017-10-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 186 - Bakari Sellers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source