Ep. 436 — Rev. Dr. William Barber

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2021

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Growing up as the son of an ordained minister, Rev. Dr. William Barber didn’t want to be a preacher. But during his senior year of college he reconsidered, and after a long talk with his father, he preached his first sermon a few weeks later. Rev. Barber has since become a leading voice in the national fight for social justice. He joined David to talk about desegregating his school as a second grader, starting Moral Mondays to combat voter suppression, how he sees the fight for a $15 minimum wage as a fight for racial justice and why he believes we’re in the midst of a third Reconstruction.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:06.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.
0:19.0	The Reverend William Barber is a powerful, indefatigable advocate for the poor and dispossessed of North Carolina and the entire nation
0:28.0	and his views on social and economic justice are familiar to many.
0:32.0	But what I found most interesting when I sat down with him yesterday was the story of his remarkable personal journey, the faith, family, and truly excruciating battles with illness and pain and loss that helped forge his spirit and commitment.
0:46.0	Here's that conversation.
0:48.0	Music
0:55.0	Reverend Barber, it's so good to see you. There's so much going on right now that we need to talk about the voting rights battles, your poor people's campaign.
1:06.0	But before we get to how we got to this moment, I want to talk for a while about how you got to this moment and ask you a little bit about your own journey and your family's journey, which began for you, not in North Carolina,
1:24.0	but in Indianapolis.
1:26.0	Your dad made the journey from North Carolina to Indianapolis and met your mom. Tell me all about that. Tell me about your folks and how they happened to be there and how you happened to come back.
1:42.0	So Dave, first of all, let me thank you. Journey is an interesting word, how we get to where we are in life. My father was born in deep east, was born in eastern North Carolina, but raised and camd in New Jersey just outside of Phyllis.
1:57.0	And his dad had died at eight years old in the middle of the depression.
2:02.0	Grandma used to tell me how she was offered money for him on the black market, but as a single black woman said, no, came back to the south, raised him and his brother and then two other children.
2:14.0	And my father went in the Navy in the middle of World War II and went to warring to Georgia, then went to Indianapolis, India, I met my mother.
2:23.0	And my father was their studying ministry at Christian Theological Seminary and Butler University, both my parents served in the civil aperture.
2:32.0	I'll be going and remember the civil aperture.
2:36.0	And my mother worked in government. She trained at business school, their lane business, college of black schooling and was trained by one of the top pianists in the state.
2:49.0	And then I was born and my father was pastoring and I was born August 30th, 1963.
2:58.0	Yeah, I was a big day.
2:59.0	Yeah, because a huge two days after the March on Washington.
3:02.0	Now, the story that they tell is that I've always been a little bit rambunctious, difficult.
	...

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