[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
rich soil has sent shoots up from
underneath birthing both the Great Oaks
and the small tree Heath would cut and
processed to make a gathering place
where chairs are pushed tight together
around the space the black and white sit
comfortably upon each cushioned seat
chomping fried chicken and sipping tea
in the Georgia heat white and black
children skip up laughing and clasping
hands for sweet cakes and pies prepared
by each of their clans such peace and
love of which the world bought us unable
when we sit in Brotherhood around this
dr. King’s table I am naturally a very
scared person no one took more advantage
of this growing up than my own father
who thought it was hilarious my family
would get together and they would watch
old Motown videos and we would sing on
Friday nights and would also watching
Michael Jackson videos and whenever the
Thriller video came I would run
immediately to the kitchen because it
was just too scary to see Michael
Jackson dancing my father would come and
fish him out of the kitchen he would say
son they’re only dancing but what I
thought they were literal monsters and
monsters are scary enough still let
alone dancing synchronized and so
whenever I see them
I’m freaking out
I’m literally hearing his words grizzly
ghouls from every tomb closing in to
seal your doom I’m thinking they’re
talking about me they’re gonna close in
to seal my doom and this is that I was
also quite over exaggerative and
dramatic and so that did not help I
would faint not even with a fainting
couch no fainting couch required I would
just fall there on the ground bit uh no
big and bold enough to hit the floor but
not big and bold enough to do much else
in my life
I remember whenever my brother’s
girlfriend at the time who he’s not
married to we would go over to her
family’s house because we were very
close with that family and they saved a
small kitten when they saved this small
kitten and brought it into the house
from the streets I remember standing
there on the other side of the room
thinking to myself there’s a wild beast
in the house you see mother would not
have allowed us to have animals in the
house you see because mother always knew
that animals cost money and they keep
everything dirty and my brother and I we
did that well all by ourselves
so we were not accustomed to having
animals in the house and so now we have
these animals in the house I’m looking
at this kitten it grows up and I
remember just laying there watching
television in their living room lying on
the floor and this kitten turned into a
cat which was literally a hunting
machine I would be pounced upon and so
then this makes it interesting because I
think much later years later if I really
would have married my wife if I had
known that she was such a cat lover I
wonder if I would have just rethought
the whole thing and said I don’t she
fought for years she said I would love
cats I would like to bring a cat into
our home and I said no it was hard
because her mother and her used to save
cats and her mother passed away and so
it was very meaningful to her but you
see not even the memory of her mother
could make me want to live under that
amount of stress
throughout every single day and so
finally I felt so bad I just felt that I
needed to man up and be the husband that
she thought she married and so I said
Hayley we’re going to consider getting a
cat we are going to think about it
because I think I want to come out of
this and so then I make the mistake of
going out of town and when I return I
find this Ferrari black substance and
the corner of my dining room and it
turns out to be a feline as I’m about to
convince my wife to take it back to the
Humane Society what she rescued it
it gets up and walks away revealing that
it only has three legs and you see I
know she did this on purpose because she
knows she knows that I have a heart for
the broken and she knows that I would
not send back a handicapped or what we
prefer
handi-capable cat and so then I lived in
fear for years and Here I am in my own
home now luckily the cat would sleep for
for the first several months underneath
the bookcase and you know she would
never come out but when she first came
out I told my wife I said babe what’s
all this
the cats moving about the house all
freely I thought that she was on a lift
her whole life underneath the bookcase
as it turned out I conquered my fears I
remember whenever she would first me out
me not being very familiar with cats and
very sketchy of them she just called
herself meowing when I heard was the
roar of an ancient prehistoric
saber-toothed tiger but as it turns out
time went on and we became close we
named her Bella and we actually love our
cat not just my wife but also me rich
soil has since shoots up from underneath
birthing both the Great Oaks and the
small tree Heath would cut and processed
to make a gathering place where chairs
are pushed together tight around the
space the black and white sit
comfortably upon each cushion seat
chomping fried chicken and sipping tea
in the Georgia heat white and black
children skip up laughing and clasping
hands for sweet cakes and pies prepared
by each of their clans such peace and
love of which the world bought us unable
when we sit in Brotherhood around this
dr. King’s table Mike Brown was shot and
killed August 9th
2014 in Ferguson Missouri a northern
suburb of st. Louis who’s thought that
was you should decide for yourself the
report said that the police officer that
shot him a white man was at fault for
using too quick decision and excessive
force and other report says that Mike
himself was at fault for resisting and
not obeying the orders given to him at
any rate whatever you decide my prayers
and my love goes out to each family
that’s involved there are two sides to
that argument either the police officer
is a racist or the young black man is a
hardened criminal and of course we can
say here without having the time to
discuss it very far that it is possible
for the police officer to be racist and
there are in fact racist police officers
to say that that’s not possible is
really nonsensical police officers can
be racist because they’re Americans and
each American has the prerogative to be
racist and to say that racism doesn’t
exist today it’s not only wrong but also
insensitive on the other hand on the
other side of that argument
whenever a young black men are young
minorities are faced with these types of
situations we can believe that many
times they are completely innocent but
to say that they are never guilty to say
that they never add to the problem is
also just as wrong and just as
insensitive but what we can see is a
deeper truth and it’s this deeper truth
that I would like Americans to try to
grapple with you see whenever I lived in
st. Louis I worked and I lived in
Ferguson and the surrounding areas and
so then when people bring me in to talk
on these things or to speak about
subjects like the one I’m speaking about
now they are wanting to hear great
stories they’re wanting me to say
something very outlandish so that they
can really picture what happened they
expect me to have driven down the
streets in Ferguson and to see a bodies
lynched
to see crosses burning to see riots in
the streets for justice but that was not
the case in fact the only thing I really
saw was separatism
I saw a strict separation
I remember whenever I would drive from
one side of town to the other
after leaving one of my jobs I would
drive across town by the time I got to
Ferguson it was interesting because
around 3:00 p.m. the schools are being
dismissed and on one Street there were
young black kids walking with their
backpacks in hand laughing and joking
and just one Street over just one block
over there were white children walking
with their backpacks laughing and
talking it was as if there were two
worlds living side by side but never
coming together never even interacting
with each other I was not at all
surprised whenever I moved to Memphis to
see and I saw that the same thing that
Ferguson and st. Lewis trouble with
Memphis struggled with as well and so
then when we think about this tragic
shooting we can never know exactly what
happened but I can know one of the
deeper problems that led to something so
tragic
this problem is separatism and it’s a
little formula the problem of separatism
is from your leg it has an outworking
you see where there is separatism
separatism leads to ignorant and then
where there’s ignorance ignorance leads
to fear and then whether it’s fear fear
leads to poor decisions and then finally
if you have enough poor decisions if you
add them up enough that leads to the
destruction of a society there’s no
better proof then bail abba be like a
cat who my friend calls tripod of course
I was separated from cats and animals in
general and so then that separation with
the exception of a couple of bad
experiences made me ignorant of how they
move ignorant of how they operate and so
then that ignorant led to me being
afraid even when the cat was not a
threat and of course when I’m afraid I
could make poor decisions would would
lead me to treat the cat more harshly
than I should as the cats caretaker and
so then we see that this is a trivial
type of example of trivial illustration
but maybe there is some insight and some
deeper implications that we can give
rich soil has since shoots up from
underneath bursting both the Great Oaks
and the small tree Heath would cut in
process to make a gathering place where
chairs are pushed together tight around
the space the black and white sit
comfortably upon each cushion seat
chomping fried chicken and sipping tea
in the Georgia Heat
white and black children skip up
laughing and clapping hands for sweet
cakes and pies prepared by each of their
clans or such peace and love of which
the world thought us unable when we sit
in Brotherhood around this dr. King’s
table perhaps this story of my cat
perhaps a bell of the three legged
animal and my interaction with her could
also have some type of deeper
implication implication that can help us
to maybe sort through or at least
consider some missing components when
looking and observing the types of
situations between young black
minorities and white police officers you
see some white police officers do not
congregate often with black men and this
makes them separate
therefore they are ignorant of how black
men operate their separatism leads to
ignorance and so then if they’re
ignorant of how a black man operates
then they may think that this young
black man is doing something that’s
threatening when in fact it’s not you
see if a white police officer were to
see a young white man doing the same
thing that white police officer may
interact differently because he’s
familiar and so that he’s not as
ignorant and so if it’s not ignorant he
was he is rather not afraid the reality
is the police officer may well have been
a racist the police officer in any of
these situations may well have been
racist or the police officer may well
had been separate and just unfamiliar in
the same way when we have this
separatism it then eventually leads to
ignorance and then this ignorance leads
to fear and so then some black young men
or minorities young men are not as
familiar with the way that white
officers do things or white culture in
general and so then they in their
separateness will be ignorant of how
things go here in this space that they
have found themselves in and so then
they become afraid they interpret the
police’s actions as
ducing and so some people deal with fear
by running in flight or by staying in
fight and so the reality is sometimes
these young minorities they may well be
hardened criminals or they literally may
just be scared and so then when we
become afraid many of us begin to act
rashly we don’t think as clear as we
know that we need to think and so that’s
why in some of these situations a gun is
pulled too quickly that’s why in some of
these situations we are resisting arrest
it’s because whenever we’re afraid then
we start to act out and very unfortunate
ways and so then both parties really one
could be completely racist or the other
could be literally a hardened criminal
or both may be genuinely afraid and this
all starts with separation this is the
art working separation leads to
ignorance then ignorant to fear then
fear to poor decisions and if you add up
enough of those poor decisions that
leads to destruction whenever you turn
on your television and you see someone
else shot someone else’s family up in
arms because their family member who’s
the police officer has been drugged into
this battle the family of the slain when
it just becomes normal to see these
things we are really looking at a
society that is slowly being destroyed
and it was this slow destruction that
dr. Martin Luther King spoke against in
his delivery of his I have a dream
speech given on August 28th 1963
acknowledging separation and how it can
lead to all of these terrible things dr.
King says this in that speech I have a
dream that one day on the Red Hills of
Georgia the sons of former slaves and
the sons of former slave owners will be
able to sit down together at a table of
brotherhood you see there is a lot to be
gained when we sit down at the table of
brotherhood and we listen to each other
in so doing we never become less of
ourselves we never have to stop being
black or stop being white or stop being
a man or stop being a woman because to
be either of those things this beautiful
whiteness is too beautiful blackness is
too beautiful Hispanic Ness is too
beautiful the female and the males are
too beautiful the young and the old it’s
too beautiful we don’t want to cease
being those things we only want to sit
down and come to know each other sit
down across the table and share meal of
love peace and respect we don’t want to
learn about it on television or in the
news but we want to learn face to face
we need to close this gap of separation
because less separation means less
ignorant unless ignorance means less
fear less fear means fewer poor
decisions and fewer poor decisions mean
that we could save the destruction of
our society dr. King was gunned down in
Memphis Tennessee on the balcony of the
Lorraine Motel and as we come upon the
50th anniversary of that event we can
honor his legacy by remembering his
dream because I know that whenever he
fell down dead on the metal of that
balcony he was still gripping tight to
that dream I feel that if we can help
community organizations or schools or
universities all religious institutions
if we can help in any way pull everyone
to the table and have conversations and
purposeful interactions where we
interact more with those who are
different than us we may just end up
making dr. King’s dream a reality
rich soil essence shoots up from
underneath birthing both great oaks and
the small tree Heath would cut and
processed to make a gathering place
where chairs are pushed together tight
around the space the black and white sit
comfortably upon each cushioned seat
chomping fried chicken and sipping tea
in the Georgia Heat white and black
children skip up laughing and clasping
hands for sweet cakes and pies prepared
by each other clans such peace and love
of which the world thought us enable
when we sit in Brotherhood around this
dr. King’s table thank you
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
rich soil has sent shoots up from
underneath birthing both the Great Oaks
and the small tree Heath would cut and
processed to make a gathering place
where chairs are pushed tight together
around the space the black and white sit
comfortably upon each cushioned seat
chomping fried chicken and sipping tea
in the Georgia heat white and black
children skip up laughing and clasping
hands for sweet cakes and pies prepared
by each of their clans such peace and
love of which the world bought us unable
when we sit in Brotherhood around this
dr. King’s table I am naturally a very
scared person no one took more advantage
of this growing up than my own father
who thought it was hilarious my family
would get together and they would watch
old Motown videos and we would sing on
Friday nights and would also watching
Michael Jackson videos and whenever the
Thriller video came I would run
immediately to the kitchen because it
was just too scary to see Michael
Jackson dancing my father would come and
fish him out of the kitchen he would say
son they’re only dancing but what I
thought they were literal monsters and
monsters are scary enough still let
alone dancing synchronized and so
whenever I see them
I’m freaking out
I’m literally hearing his words grizzly
ghouls from every tomb closing in to
seal your doom I’m thinking they’re
talking about me they’re gonna close in
to seal my doom and this is that I was
also quite over exaggerative and
dramatic and so that did not help I
would faint not even with a fainting
couch no fainting couch required I would
just fall there on the ground bit uh no
big and bold enough to hit the floor but
not big and bold enough to do much else
in my life
I remember whenever my brother’s
girlfriend at the time who he’s not
married to we would go over to her
family’s house because we were very
close with that family and they saved a
small kitten when they saved this small
kitten and brought it into the house
from the streets I remember standing
there on the other side of the room
thinking to myself there’s a wild beast
in the house you see mother would not
have allowed us to have animals in the
house you see because mother always knew
that animals cost money and they keep
everything dirty and my brother and I we
did that well all by ourselves
so we were not accustomed to having
animals in the house and so now we have
these animals in the house I’m looking
at this kitten it grows up and I
remember just laying there watching
television in their living room lying on
the floor and this kitten turned into a
cat which was literally a hunting
machine I would be pounced upon and so
then this makes it interesting because I
think much later years later if I really
would have married my wife if I had
known that she was such a cat lover I
wonder if I would have just rethought
the whole thing and said I don’t she
fought for years she said I would love
cats I would like to bring a cat into
our home and I said no it was hard
because her mother and her used to save
cats and her mother passed away and so
it was very meaningful to her but you
see not even the memory of her mother
could make me want to live under that
amount of stress
throughout every single day and so
finally I felt so bad I just felt that I
needed to man up and be the husband that
she thought she married and so I said
Hayley we’re going to consider getting a
cat we are going to think about it
because I think I want to come out of
this and so then I make the mistake of
going out of town and when I return I
find this Ferrari black substance and
the corner of my dining room and it
turns out to be a feline as I’m about to
convince my wife to take it back to the
Humane Society what she rescued it
it gets up and walks away revealing that
it only has three legs and you see I
know she did this on purpose because she
knows she knows that I have a heart for
the broken and she knows that I would
not send back a handicapped or what we
prefer
handi-capable cat and so then I lived in
fear for years and Here I am in my own
home now luckily the cat would sleep for
for the first several months underneath
the bookcase and you know she would
never come out but when she first came
out I told my wife I said babe what’s
all this
the cats moving about the house all
freely I thought that she was on a lift
her whole life underneath the bookcase
as it turned out I conquered my fears I
remember whenever she would first me out
me not being very familiar with cats and
very sketchy of them she just called
herself meowing when I heard was the
roar of an ancient prehistoric
saber-toothed tiger but as it turns out
time went on and we became close we
named her Bella and we actually love our
cat not just my wife but also me rich
soil has since shoots up from underneath
birthing both the Great Oaks and the
small tree Heath would cut and processed
to make a gathering place where chairs
are pushed together tight around the
space the black and white sit
comfortably upon each cushion seat
chomping fried chicken and sipping tea
in the Georgia heat white and black
children skip up laughing and clasping
hands for sweet cakes and pies prepared
by each of their clans such peace and
love of which the world bought us unable
when we sit in Brotherhood around this
dr. King’s table Mike Brown was shot and
killed August 9th
2014 in Ferguson Missouri a northern
suburb of st. Louis who’s thought that
was you should decide for yourself the
report said that the police officer that
shot him a white man was at fault for
using too quick decision and excessive
force and other report says that Mike
himself was at fault for resisting and
not obeying the orders given to him at
any rate whatever you decide my prayers
and my love goes out to each family
that’s involved there are two sides to
that argument either the police officer
is a racist or the young black man is a
hardened criminal and of course we can
say here without having the time to
discuss it very far that it is possible
for the police officer to be racist and
there are in fact racist police officers
to say that that’s not possible is
really nonsensical police officers can
be racist because they’re Americans and
each American has the prerogative to be
racist and to say that racism doesn’t
exist today it’s not only wrong but also
insensitive on the other hand on the
other side of that argument
whenever a young black men are young
minorities are faced with these types of
situations we can believe that many
times they are completely innocent but
to say that they are never guilty to say
that they never add to the problem is
also just as wrong and just as
insensitive but what we can see is a
deeper truth and it’s this deeper truth
that I would like Americans to try to
grapple with you see whenever I lived in
st. Louis I worked and I lived in
Ferguson and the surrounding areas and
so then when people bring me in to talk
on these things or to speak about
subjects like the one I’m speaking about
now they are wanting to hear great
stories they’re wanting me to say
something very outlandish so that they
can really picture what happened they
expect me to have driven down the
streets in Ferguson and to see a bodies
lynched
to see crosses burning to see riots in
the streets for justice but that was not
the case in fact the only thing I really
saw was separatism
I saw a strict separation
I remember whenever I would drive from
one side of town to the other
after leaving one of my jobs I would
drive across town by the time I got to
Ferguson it was interesting because
around 3:00 p.m. the schools are being
dismissed and on one Street there were
young black kids walking with their
backpacks in hand laughing and joking
and just one Street over just one block
over there were white children walking
with their backpacks laughing and
talking it was as if there were two
worlds living side by side but never
coming together never even interacting
with each other I was not at all
surprised whenever I moved to Memphis to
see and I saw that the same thing that
Ferguson and st. Lewis trouble with
Memphis struggled with as well and so
then when we think about this tragic
shooting we can never know exactly what
happened but I can know one of the
deeper problems that led to something so
tragic
this problem is separatism and it’s a
little formula the problem of separatism
is from your leg it has an outworking
you see where there is separatism
separatism leads to ignorant and then
where there’s ignorance ignorance leads
to fear and then whether it’s fear fear
leads to poor decisions and then finally
if you have enough poor decisions if you
add them up enough that leads to the
destruction of a society there’s no
better proof then bail abba be like a
cat who my friend calls tripod of course
I was separated from cats and animals in
general and so then that separation with
the exception of a couple of bad
experiences made me ignorant of how they
move ignorant of how they operate and so
then that ignorant led to me being
afraid even when the cat was not a
threat and of course when I’m afraid I
could make poor decisions would would
lead me to treat the cat more harshly
than I should as the cats caretaker and
so then we see that this is a trivial
type of example of trivial illustration
but maybe there is some insight and some
deeper implications that we can give
rich soil has since shoots up from
underneath bursting both the Great Oaks
and the small tree Heath would cut in
process to make a gathering place where
chairs are pushed together tight around
the space the black and white sit
comfortably upon each cushion seat
chomping fried chicken and sipping tea
in the Georgia Heat
white and black children skip up
laughing and clapping hands for sweet
cakes and pies prepared by each of their
clans or such peace and love of which
the world thought us unable when we sit
in Brotherhood around this dr. King’s
table perhaps this story of my cat
perhaps a bell of the three legged
animal and my interaction with her could
also have some type of deeper
implication implication that can help us
to maybe sort through or at least
consider some missing components when
looking and observing the types of
situations between young black
minorities and white police officers you
see some white police officers do not
congregate often with black men and this
makes them separate
therefore they are ignorant of how black
men operate their separatism leads to
ignorance and so then if they’re
ignorant of how a black man operates
then they may think that this young
black man is doing something that’s
threatening when in fact it’s not you
see if a white police officer were to
see a young white man doing the same
thing that white police officer may
interact differently because he’s
familiar and so that he’s not as
ignorant and so if it’s not ignorant he
was he is rather not afraid the reality
is the police officer may well have been
a racist the police officer in any of
these situations may well have been
racist or the police officer may well
had been separate and just unfamiliar in
the same way when we have this
separatism it then eventually leads to
ignorance and then this ignorance leads
to fear and so then some black young men
or minorities young men are not as
familiar with the way that white
officers do things or white culture in
general and so then they in their
separateness will be ignorant of how
things go here in this space that they
have found themselves in and so then
they become afraid they interpret the
police’s actions as
ducing and so some people deal with fear
by running in flight or by staying in
fight and so the reality is sometimes
these young minorities they may well be
hardened criminals or they literally may
just be scared and so then when we
become afraid many of us begin to act
rashly we don’t think as clear as we
know that we need to think and so that’s
why in some of these situations a gun is
pulled too quickly that’s why in some of
these situations we are resisting arrest
it’s because whenever we’re afraid then
we start to act out and very unfortunate
ways and so then both parties really one
could be completely racist or the other
could be literally a hardened criminal
or both may be genuinely afraid and this
all starts with separation this is the
art working separation leads to
ignorance then ignorant to fear then
fear to poor decisions and if you add up
enough of those poor decisions that
leads to destruction whenever you turn
on your television and you see someone
else shot someone else’s family up in
arms because their family member who’s
the police officer has been drugged into
this battle the family of the slain when
it just becomes normal to see these
things we are really looking at a
society that is slowly being destroyed
and it was this slow destruction that
dr. Martin Luther King spoke against in
his delivery of his I have a dream
speech given on August 28th 1963
acknowledging separation and how it can
lead to all of these terrible things dr.
King says this in that speech I have a
dream that one day on the Red Hills of
Georgia the sons of former slaves and
the sons of former slave owners will be
able to sit down together at a table of
brotherhood you see there is a lot to be
gained when we sit down at the table of
brotherhood and we listen to each other
in so doing we never become less of
ourselves we never have to stop being
black or stop being white or stop being
a man or stop being a woman because to
be either of those things this beautiful
whiteness is too beautiful blackness is
too beautiful Hispanic Ness is too
beautiful the female and the males are
too beautiful the young and the old it’s
too beautiful we don’t want to cease
being those things we only want to sit
down and come to know each other sit
down across the table and share meal of
love peace and respect we don’t want to
learn about it on television or in the
news but we want to learn face to face
we need to close this gap of separation
because less separation means less
ignorant unless ignorance means less
fear less fear means fewer poor
decisions and fewer poor decisions mean
that we could save the destruction of
our society dr. King was gunned down in
Memphis Tennessee on the balcony of the
Lorraine Motel and as we come upon the
50th anniversary of that event we can
honor his legacy by remembering his
dream because I know that whenever he
fell down dead on the metal of that
balcony he was still gripping tight to
that dream I feel that if we can help
community organizations or schools or
universities all religious institutions
if we can help in any way pull everyone
to the table and have conversations and
purposeful interactions where we
interact more with those who are
different than us we may just end up
making dr. King’s dream a reality
rich soil essence shoots up from
underneath birthing both great oaks and
the small tree Heath would cut and
processed to make a gathering place
where chairs are pushed together tight
around the space the black and white sit
comfortably upon each cushioned seat
chomping fried chicken and sipping tea
in the Georgia Heat white and black
children skip up laughing and clasping
hands for sweet cakes and pies prepared
by each other clans such peace and love
of which the world thought us enable
when we sit in Brotherhood around this
dr. King’s table thank you
[Applause]
you
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