entire team, i'm charles davis and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (bright music) rabbi eric weiss. nicole zaloumis. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

good morning. and welcome to "mosaic. " i'm ron swisher. it's a real privilege to host "mosaic" on behalf of hugh burrows our producer and co-host. we're fortunate today to have what i call -- i'm not alone in saying this -- one of the icons of oakland. he was once a city -- not city council, but the school board, he was once the editor of the religious "oakland "tribune"" he is the owner of "the post. " when i met him in the late '60s and early '70s he was a community organizer working with the oakland black caucus, you might say he was mr. naacp along with mr. urban fly. always a gadfly when workingworking justice in our community in oakland, grew up in oakland and has been in oakland all of his life. welcome, paul. >> it is a pleasure to be here today. >> great to have you. tell us a little bit about your background. >> i was born in oakland. my parents come from oklahoma and mississippi. >> uh-huh.

>> but i was born in oakland. i have attended schools in oakland and i've had the opportunity to travel all over the country as a journalist and as an activist and as a participant in the civil rights struggle. >> that's right. >> and as an advocate for change. >> now, you told me earlier that you had not taken a course in journalism, but you are gifted in writing a great deal. >> yes. no, i did not take any courses in journalism. i always got great grades in english and in writing and in composition and i remember as a youngster i was a spelling bee champion. so i've always -- >> and no one could beat you in scrabble, right? >> nobody beats me in scrabble. >> now, when you started realizing you had that gift, what made you lead to working in the community to do so? >> well, i have always --

my mother used to tell me that i was named after paul lawrence dunbar. >> oh, the great poet. >> the great poet. and she read to me all of his poems and so forth as a child. so that left an indelible impression. that's my name, paul lawrence dunbar cobb. >> i knew it. >> so i think i was stamped from birth to have a respect for the written word and a joy and a respect for it. so that's what got me started. and in 1965 when i was a reporter for the "oakland post" i went to selma and had an opportunity to have 14 hours of interview and walk with dr. king because i doubled as both a reporter, a marcher and an usher in that great march from selma to montgomery. and that's when i wedded the

two, journalism and civil rights activism. >> since you mentioned selma, what did you think of the movie and the recreation of that this past year? >> well, i think the movie captured, it captured the essence and it was accurate and those scenes showed dr. king in a jocular mood, that was real, that's the way it actually went down. so the viewer got a chance. one of the other reasons i say it was accurate is because i saw myself in there in the old field footage when they showed the eyes on the prize walking with dr. king. so the movie was definitely accurate -- accurate. >> well, when i had met you in the late '60s you were over the oakland black caucus and you were so involved in the community and i was a community organizing myself. i immediately was drawn to all the work you were doing. what inspired you to continue to work that.

>> for the oakland black caucus? >> right. >> we took a unique approach. in 1966 we used to monitor the police -- this was long before the black panther party was even organized. >> uh-huh. >> so i had done a lot of work with black churches and with civil rights organizations. so we formed a thing called the black caucus. this was prior to the congressional black caucus. we formed a black caucus of all the black organizations and 147 black churches. we're members of that caucus. i think the church that you come from was also one of the -- >> taylor memorial. >> the taylor memorial united methodist. so i was the chair of the black caucus and we took on every issue, whether it was unnecessary hysterectomies for black women at kaiser hospital or whether it was the school system and lack of blacks in

administration, whether it was the voting patterns of district and city- wide elections and so forth. >> it was an extremely inspiring and challenging. we're going to come back to that and bring us up to today and see what we're doing and see what you're doing. >> all right. >> thanks for being with us, paul. please join us in our next segment with paul cobb.

♪ ♪ when i introduced paul cobb earlier i was going to say he was a member of the city council when he was a member of the school board, but he reminded me he did run for city council back in 1971, way before anyone, and almost won. tell us about that back then. >> well, i ran -- it was mainly an educational campaign. i ran to expose the district elections where you -- even though you run from a district you had to be voted on citywide.

>> i see. >> even though i won the district in which i wanted to represent, i lost citywide even though i had 70% plus of the district -- >> the district where you were. >> yeah. >> what were some of the issues you wanted to expose at that time? >> the issues the same as they are today. adequate housing, better recognition of our schools, of jobs, getting more jobs for minorities and contracts for minority contractors. so the issues of equity and fairness stream through every single strata of the society. and those issues remain today. today. >> there is an inability for african american men to get jobs, the unemployment rate, and the issue of police brutality. we didn't call it profiling in those days, we just knew

that the police -- and so we had a bold group that literally would follow the police and we would get out of the car and we would recite what is now considered the miranda rights. we would tell people they should cooperate, but there was a limit to what could happen. >> i see. >> and i wound up getting arrested a lot of times. >> a few times i'm sure. >> yeah. for interfering with arrests and things like that. >> now, the mayor's conference was just held last month. >> yeah. >> i believe you went there also. >> i went to the mayor's -- >> what did you think of the efforts there? >> well, i think that the mayor's conference in the wake -- you know, last month they had talked about the charleston incident. >> right. >> that tragic occurrence. that was on the minds of mayors all over the country and mayors who were talking about how they're instituting race and equity departments to be more sensitive. >> that's right. >> and to have fairness throughout the government. i met with steven benjamin, who is the mayor of

columbia, south carolina, because i had worked in south carolina when i was with the southern elections fund, helping to get blacks elected in the '70s. well, i talked to him, he is also the national president of black mayors. so i told him how we were going to organize with him to help mobilize voter registration because i see the wave coming based upon what a lot of politicians, both republican and democrat, are now speaking out on voting rights. >> right. >> as one of the issues that spring from the nine families or the nine individuals that were killed in charleston. >> going back to that awful tragedy, some of the things that people are talking about addressing, what are the things that are so important coming from that tragedy that we need to address? >> well, one of the things that immediately came out is guns, the issue of gun control. the other thing that came out

of there was the flag. i think that romney, republican, mormon republican, give him the kudos, he spoke out and he essentially cut off the ring and boxed in a lot of republican legislators and forced them to back down and reverse their position on flags. same thing with hillary clinton, she was a strong voice. if you look back it forced every -- brought race to the table. >> right. >> romney embraced race in a very constructive way and it caused a lot of others to do the same. as a result of that some of the things that you're seeing now like we established a dashboard kind of display of the progress of voter registration and removing voter suppression and the role that churches and faith- based institutions are playing throughout the south,

11 southern states of the old confederacy and others, like the new confederacy like ohio and michigan when it comes to voting. they are the new confederacy. what they're doing to remove those barriers. >> and charleston is -- i think they said over the news one of the holiest places in the whole south with as many churches. >> yeah. >> you have such a great background in churches also and religion and spirituality. what is your perspective on some of the -- growing up with an emphasis on the spirit and on the bible and how you process that in terms of your community organizing? >> i think that change - - real change in this country, in society, has come with the role, especially for african americans, is the church as an institution has been the pivotal point. all of our great leaders come out of the church. the voter registration drive

was fed by volunteers generated by congregations, both black and white. when we went to mississippi in the '60s and alabama and so forth a lot of white volunteers were volunteers spurred by their denominational fervor and desire to reach equity. so the church is the fundamental fulcrum for change. when the gentleman struck at mother emanuel, a principal church which i have attended when i worked in the south, he struck a blow at the heart of the symbol of black freedom and so that's why when the lds church, the mormon church, rolled out recently the

freidman's bureau names, they rolled out 4 million names of blacks who used to be on plantations and that the government released their names. when that information is now going throughout the country and black people will -- every black person will have an opportunity to have the alex haley experience. >> the mormon church had done this? >> the mormon church had done this. and they -- they bought the names, registers, from the national archives and they put it on a computer disc and it is freely distributed so you can type in your name, ron swisher, and go all the way back to 1865 when lincoln emancipated the slaves, and that will help you then have the journey towards the alex haley -- that's the role of the church and you will see black churches working with them. >> i might want to see that.

let's come back to that in the next segment. that's really, really fascinating and interesting. please join us with paul cobb.

♪ ♪ welcome back to "mosaic," i'm ron swisher. if you've been with us you know that paul cobb has talked a lot about the involvement of

our churches, african american churches and churches across the board. you know, you've heard the expression i'm spiritual but not religious. you have a definition around that and how spirituality plays a part in religion? >> yes. i believe that -- i don't know what you mean by you're spiritual but not religious. i think that we're all god's children and i try to simplify the notion. we all have cell phones and most of them have a gps requirement. >> uh-huh. >> and to be religious and spiritual that means you have to be in attune with the heavenly father or some supreme being or with heaven itself. the cellphone analogy says that you can be tracked anywhere. religion teaches us that his

eye is on the pharaoh. so if it's easy for us to understand that a satellite can follow us to the corners of the earth, surely a supreme being who invented and created man who track each and every one of us with innate spiritual gps system. so i know that i receive signals, just like you and i are sitting here talking now, you can get a cellphone message or a -- yeah, a call that i couldn't get because they didn't number. even though we're sitting in the same place. >> that's interesting. >> so why couldn't godsend a message to martin luther king or to ron swisher and say, go, let my people speak the message and let my people go. so i think that the spirit is the signal that communicates with us. it's the -- it's the --

the energy that drives each and every one of our internal gps systems. >> i have never heard that. >> well, i -- that's my concept of trying to use a modern digital technological terminology to explain a complicated, as you would say, epistomoligal concept. >> preach. >> maybe i should start. to get back to your earlier question i'm going to call romney on his cellphone and thank him for his spirit, for making that call to america that they ought to remove the flag. i'm going to interview him and ask him what does he now think about removing voter suppression. because i think just like in the bible where balem thought he was going to go and curse somebody and god sent a message that touched his tongue and he

wound up blessing, i think that romney through saying something positive could trigger a flood of positive reaction around voter suppression ideas. >> that's great. you know, i used to be the religion editor of "the oakland "tribune."" i remember whether it was in 1998 i wrote a feature article about you. >> right. >> about you coming back home to the church that you grew up in and becoming the pastor. you know, they used to always say that a profit is without honer in his own land but you proved that you could be an honorable man and come back home and be honored by your congregants where you were baptized. >> it was an honor and my home church. >> yes. >> it was great. now, you know that whole history, you live down the street from the church. >> i still live there. >> you've been there how long? >> i've been there where i live now. i live two blocks from where i

went to kindergarten. >> is that right? >> and i'm 71 years old now. >> okay. >> so i'm still there. >> now, i saw something on your 70th birthday the whole city of oakland gave you applause and kudos and so forth. tell us about that. >> yeah, i was -- i was so proud to receive an honor and recognition by some city officials and the city of oakland on my 70th birthday, they were honoring the work that my wife and i have done and are still doing as co- owners of the newspaper, being an advocate. >> that's gaye, 45 years you've been married. >> 45 years. she was one of the original freedom writers who went to baltimore from d.c. i just met the mayormayor who the national president of u.s. congress of mayors. she's from baltimore and i told her about how my wife had been a civil rights pioneer and my

wife also went to the march on washington and so while i was at selma, she was involved in civil rights activity in new york. >> that's right. great history. great involvement. again, i think people that are hearing you are inspired, are challenged. where would you say people need to start today to have that kind of commitment and have that kind of legacy you and gaye are leaving? >> i think that -- you remember earlier i mentioned about these names, freidman's bureau and the freidman bank records that the mormon church had laid out. i think people should do a search of their family history and family routes as a beginning appreciation of how far we've come. how we have come this far by faith. and that i think that we

should have the alex -- every individual can and should have the alex haley experience and i think that will be likelike -- the road to damascus experience. it's like the burning bush experience. it opens our eyes and that database that the mormon church laid out that we're going to proliferate all over the country with a weekly tabloid and all the black churches and all the congregation to show people how to research their roots and how to take the inspiration from the love of their family to convert it into community action -- >> because the roots is key. >> the roots is the fruit. >> key. >> the roots is key to building -- to growing the tree because by the fruits of the tree you shall know them. you need to know your roots and water your roots, and that database, that freidman's database -- >> that's great. i like that. is tantamount to the rosetta stone, tantamount to

the dead sea scrolls. it will be the key to make you -- because once you know your history and know who you are, you develop pride, dignity and a sense of unity with your own people. >> that's very good. in this last segment let's talk a little bit about "the oakland post." we haven't talked about your paper. >> okay. >> you can see why we invited paul cobb to be with us. join us in our last segment.

♪ ♪ i hope you've been with us. we have been really inspired

and enlightened by paul cobb, the icon, the local i call him, but i'm not alone in saying that. he's the owner of "oakland post." tell us about your paper. >> i'm the owner of "the oakland post", which is 52 years old and we have nine newspapers, oakland, berkeley, richmond, san francisco, stockton and so forth. we also have a spanish language paper that is also 52 years old. >> wow. >> and so we also are going national with an insert that will be distributed in every african american congregation throughout the country that will lay out issues like the freidman's bank, will lay out black history accomplishment and will deal with the how to's of what the african american community can do about policing issues, about economic development, about jobs and education. the principal concerns of our community. >> when i was in oakland the paper was always delivered

at our church as well as elmhurst when i was there. i don't remember paying anything. >> yes, well, we freely distribute our paper primarily 75% of our 100,000 circulation is distributed in houses of worship. >> okay. >> and we give it away freely and because of the numbers of our circulation we solicit and gain advertising because of the reach. usually in the newspaper business you are allowed to calculate that for every person that picks up a paper they usually give you a number of one to five how many it touches and the pass- on rate. so you could say that we have a pass- on rate of a quarter of million to 300,000 readers and people who are aware of our various papers. >> i love newspapers and i love books, but they've been in trouble. >> yes. the printed word will never vanish. >> okay. >> meaning -- the printed

word will always be there, but we are also recognizing the emergence of technology so we've expanded to the website. we will be using the innovations of technology as a link and for multiplatform performance and presentation of the news that's a part of the newspaper. >> now, do you continue to write an editorial? >> yes, i do. >> okay. because i know you are a great writer and you write great editorials and that's one of the highlights of the paper. >> and i will be writing about this program. >> okay. >> and i'm going to tell everybody to get up and look at "mosaic". "mosaic." >> and soon, sometimes we are on youtube. so look us up there also. thanks, paul. >> it was a pleasure. >> that was great. >> all right. take care. >> thank you for joining us. i'm ron swisher, see you next month. ♪ ♪

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