good morning. it's sunday, february 21st. i am al ali velshi. we pay tribute to the people and their struggle in this historic city during black history months. first, let's take a look at some of the days's top headlines. president biden calling on gop lawmakers as the house prepares to take up the bill and cast a vote by the end of the week. the plan is to leave the senate enough time to work out the unresolved $15 an hour minimum wage. also on the capitol hill docket this coming week is the senate confirmation hearing for merrick

garland. that gets under way tomorrow. "the new york times" reports, quote, he will almost certainly be asked about the department of homeland security's warning that the united states faces a growing threat from violent domestic extremist and the january 6th mob attack on the capitol may not have been an isolated episode. we're also learning the former president may emerge from the shadows and it will be the first time he has been seen publicly since leaving the white house shortly after his impeachment. he is expected to speak in orlando next weekend and expected to close out the program on friday, february 28th. this comes as new reporting comes up as there's an investigation for roles in the capitol hill riot.

i spoke with representative stacy plasci tkeufplt. >> what this report says, i think it is solidifying that the president was, in fact, not only an instigator but planner of the attack on january 6th. i think it leads to other law enforcement agencies having additional support in making the case of what the president's involvement was. >> meanwhile gop lawmakers are proposing a flury of voting restrictions. it's an effort the washington post reports is dividing republicans some warning it will tar the gop as the party of voter suppression ahead of the 2022 midterms. "the posts" reporting the proposals include measures that would curtail eligibility to

vote by mail and prohibit the use of drop boxes. critics labeled a flagrant attempt to thwart souls to the polls. is that the perfect place to turn our attention back to birmingham where i am right now, in front of a church, in fact, here to honor the past, present and future of black americans and their struggle for justice and equality in this country. birmingham has long been considered one of the most racially divided communities in northern america, and they were punished sometimes violently when they spoke out or drew attention to their equality, and punishment offeren meant prison and here in alabama, prison meant labor in the coal mines.

mining railroad and steel, it was wholly supported by convicts. joining me now is dr. brittany cooper, a professor of african studies and women and gender studies and author of "eloquent rage," and also with us aaron haines, editor at large and an msnbc contributor. good morning to both of you and thank you for being here. you are in atlanta and we were talking earlier about the fact that atlanta and birmingham are similar places where in one way there was opportunity for black workers but the way in which that opportunity came about was inequal and unfair, and pay was not fair and this labor leasing business was comparable to

slavery in a way because you got your very, very cheap labor from the state that benefited from leasing companies, black convicts, so people were rounded up for nothing so they could be leased out and make the state money. >> that's exactly right. it was a loophole of the 13th amendment, right, and that was a way that states were able to enforce this and i am so glad that you brought up the legacy of conflict leasing because that is a legacy that is still very much with us today in the private prison system, which, you know, president joe biden addressed in one of his early executive orders saying the department of justice will end their contracts with 11 or so prisons that the government still continues to do business with, and there's tens of thousands of people in prisons at the state level across this country and whether or not that will be addressed, a lot of

people make the correlation between the relationship between private prisons and this legacy of the 13th amendment, so it's really good that you are bringing this up. >> brittany, talking about black people being in prison, there was a famous black person in prisoned here in birmingham, martin luther king jr., and when he was here he penned the letter from the birmingham jail -- i'm going to hopefully go and see the jail site after the show today, but you teach about that in your course. >> i do. we talked about it this week, and it's an important document in birmingham where king challenges the birmingham establishment, and not only does he call them out for their violence and he also talks to white allies and talks about the problem of the white moderate and the way they sort of continue to slow down progress by asking black people to want

to negotiate, and he says, look, many of you want a negative piece, right, which is the absence of tension, you don't want to be pushed but you don't want a positive piece, which is the presence of justice. he used his time in prison as many black thinkers in periods before, to impose upon the black freedom fighters saying we can be better than this, and that letter has become an important teaching tool and it really shows king at some of his best thinking and his way of being confrontational and calling out the kinds of ideas that sustain the systems of injustice. >> i want to remind people, project c launched at this church over my shoulder, and the "c" stood for confrontation, and

in dr. king's impression it was nonviolent resistance, but it was meant to confront and i want to read an excerpt from his letter, and history is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily, and individuals may see the light and voluntarily give up their unjust -- he wrote this in 1963, and the struggle is the same today, and people with privilege have to see they have privilege and they have to say, this is wrong and i have to give some of this up. >> you are right, and that's why it's so important that they have to center racial equity, and really what that means to all americans and the idea that racial inequality is harming ugs

as a country, and it's not a zero sum game, and it doesn't mean white people have to lose everything, right? that's not how this works. i am really struck, ali, by being here today, and today is the 81st birthday, what would have been the birthday of john lewis who we lost last year, and he was for all kinds of issues, and poverty and the minimum wage which is in the pandemic relief package for now, but pandemic relief in addressing that in an equitable way, so you know, the -- the gains of the civil rights movement, so many black voters last year saw it as being under threat, frankly, under

this country and whether we would still continue to have those hard gains going forward as a democracy, really was an open question, and that is why we have to address racism from, you know, the perspective of it being systemic and not just in terms of being individuals, because if it's only addressed on a case by case basis, which dr. king understood you don't address the overall original sin of the country and its legacy alive and well today in our society. >> dr. cooper, i have to ask you about this fact. there's something so moving about standing in front of this church, 16th street is over here and over to the side of the church is where 16 sticks of dynamite was planted and 14 little girls killed and others

injured, and like across america, to this day the connection between church and white supremacists exists. how does that get reconciled? they killed people at a church and a lot of those were church-going people. >> absolutely. so glad you brought this up. when we think about the events of january 6th, we have to remember that many of the folks that showed up at the capitol were white church-going people, and part of the thing king is calling out is white religious figures, and he's calling out the white angelical movement, and he's talk you go about the way that movement shored up systems of oppression and saying that black people were inferior, and told people that god is a white supremacist, right, and then part of the thing to understand is that king used the black church, right, to say that

this is a place we could establish dignity and if we use our theology for justice, it meant we had the right to fight for justice and that's why these little girls were attacked in a church because whenever black people start believing in their dignity fully and black institutions get onboard with that then they are a threat of systems of oppression and injustice, and then there's a violent white backlash that ensues and this is why it is important for us to recognize what happened at the birmingham bombing at 16th church, it was in response to king's letter from jail, and that bombing happens in september and he writes the letter in april of '63, so after being called out for moderation and extreme

levels of violence with refuse annual to move and change, the response is not that birmingham gets onboard and changes, it's that they killed little girls. what does that mean for us as a nation? he says in his letter, time is neutral and it could be used for good or evil and as a nation that's the choice we are being forced to make in this moment, will we take care of the least of these and create pieces of legislation that attend to the suffering of folks, and will we reckon and demand that we not go back to the very sorted past, or will we pretend we are some beacon of diversity that does not have these problems and not contend with it and find ourselves confronting the history over and over and over again, so we need to let doctor king's words ring in our ears, right? it's not just enough to

individually divest from racists practices where lots of times people say, i'm not like those white people, and he says as a group we have to reckon and has a nation we have to change. >> is that a good reason for everybody who has not read the letter or read the letter recently to go and understand that point because that point is as valid today in 2021 as it was in april of 1963 when dr. king wrote it and it's as relevant as it was in september of 1963 when those four little girls were killed in this church. thank you both of you. the author of a remarkable book called "eloquent rage", and my friend is the editor at large for the 19. thank you for getting us kicked off in this hour. nothing cleanses the show for me like a successful space

mission. last week nasa landed perseverance on mars, and we'll talk about that next. first, here's a look at birmingham's fire chief, first black fire chief, cory moon and his message to the president with regard to vaccine distribution. >> the things i would like to see from president biden's administration is a better rollout of getting the vaccine out to the communities and making it easier to get access to the vaccine. it needs to be as easy as it is to get a gun in this country. gillette proglide. five blades and a pivoting flexball designed to get virtually every hair on the first stroke. so you're ready for the day with a fresh face for a fresh start. for a limited time get a 5th cartridge free.

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touchdown confirmed, and the rover is safely on the surface of mars seeking evidence of past life. that never gets old. a roar of cheers and applause erupted in mission control last week when nasa successfully landed its robotic rover on mars. there was something yet more notable about mission control

that day. it's diverse crowd. america's space program, amazing though it has always been has been an overwhelmingly white man's club. it's first diverse group did not take off until 1978. recent workforce data showed 72% of nasa employees are white, and 7% asian-american and 1% american indian and only 34% of its employees are women. but the control room provided a welcomed snapshot of nasa, and the woman you just heard announcing the successful landing was an american scientists born in india. she sat front row of the control room leading the guidance, the navigation and the control operations. she spent years working on this rover, persevering, you might see. perseverance already sent back the high-quality photos from the

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the student debt crisis in america has never been worse than it is right now with four-year colleges now costing a quarter of a million intuition and other education-related expenses. many americans are saddled with unimaginable debt, many spending decades paying it back. president biden spoke about his debt plan last week in the cnn town hall. >> we need loan forgiveness beyond $10,000, and we need a $50,000 minimum. what will you do to make that happen. >> i will not make that happen. it depends on whether or not you go to a private or public university, and it depends on the idea that i say to a community i will forgive billions of dollars in debt for people who have gone to harvard,

yale, and -- i went to a state school, but is debt going to be forgiven rather than use that money to provide for early education for young children who come from disadvantaged circumstances. everybody should be able to go to community college for free. for free. that's $9 billion, and we should pay for it. >> now to be clear, biden did not reverse himself on anything, and he cannot plan on wiping $1350,000 of debt, and the average debt is $37,000 per person. according to data from the u.s. census bureau, black americans have a much harder time paying off student debt, age 35 to 44

black americans have unpaid school loans. the system is not working that way for a lot of americans. a new democratic plan is asking biden to consider relieving up to the $50,000 mark per person, which would shrink the balance and forgive the student loan barrowers are 36 million americans. joining me is the co-sponsor of that plan, and mr. jones of new york and andre perry, the author of "know your price: valuing black lives and property." representative jones, you and i finished your last conversation where you brought up your own student debt situation, and you and i agreed we would come back

and we would talk about this. talk to me about why this makes sense to you? >> let me clarify that i myself would not benefit from this, but so many millions of americans would. the fact is this is crushing student debt and that's locking an entire generation of people, disproportionate is women, and disproportionately members of color, and lgbtq community members, and if the government is serious about building back letter and delivering relief for the american people, part of the equation must be forgiving student death. i have hearing folks saying i had to pay off my student debt, and the fact is wages have been stagnant for decades, and we

have to correct for that in this economy. >> dr. perry, let's talk about this. the good news is there's some movement on this, but what does success look like here? we've got president biden saying community college should be free. he's talking about possibly forgiving the debt of people who have gone to state colleges, which is at the lower end of the average i stated of the $37,000, so what is important to forgive or reduce so as to help the productivity of americans. >> let's look at k through 12 education, where everybody receives a grant, and everybody receives a pell grant of sorts, and nobody complaints people can go to a public school for free because we know if you don't get a basic education the economy

will suffer. today in today's economy, this knowledge economy, we need everybody to go to college, not just two-year schools, but also four-year schools. i would never quibble with an attempt to limit that to public colleges and universities, and certainly that's a choice but there's a deeper issue here that if we are going to move the economy we have to treat higher education like basic education, not saying it's the 13th and 14th grades, but it's really close -- coming close to that if we don't do that the economy will suffer. by the way, the $10,000 number is helpful because according to the white house's research, two-thirds of folks that default hold loans of less than 10,000. but the difference here is that many black american and brown americans who were denied wealth

take on higher loans, so you have a greater likelihood of middle class black americans who hold loans, and the default rates of black americans are much higher, 52% of black households have zero or negative net worth. we have to rethink the $10,000 mark because it doesn't capture the wealth inequalities in this country. >> to that point, not only is there more loan being taken on by black students but you wrote an op-ed representative jones in the daily news where you wrote black students need to take on the debt more likely and five times more likely than their white peers to default on their loans and student debt is held

by lgbtq who most likely lack parental support through their formative years, and so the $10,000 debt doesn't paint the picture you are going to seat. >> yeah, the vast majority of people did not go to stanford and harvard, so it was not responsive to the young lady's report about crushing student debt, afflicting so many millions of people in the community, including people that say you should not have to get debt to get good-paying wages. we have to, for that reason, pair this with tuition-free public colleges and universities, and not just

community colleges but the same way that k through 12 is. >> gentlemen, i wish we could spend an hour on this, and this is a matter of importance to many millions of americans. thank you for your time this morning. the author of "know your price," and thanks to both of you this morning. when we come back, another conversation with birmingham locals, we talk about the race inequality and the civil rights abuses history in this city. first, what went wrong with a united airlines plane dropped from the sky, and it landed in a neighborhood outside denver, colorado, and one piece landed

on somebody's doorstep, literally. flight 328 from hawaii landed back at denver.

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so you can enjoy it even if you're sensitive. yet some say it isn't real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs. sit! i said sit! psst! psst! allergies don't have to be scary. spraying flonase daily stops your body from overreacting to allergens all season long. psst! psst! you're good. for hundreds of thousands of people who have grown up and lived here in birmingham for decades, the fraught history is in their blood and bones. the word birmingham is almost synonymous with the civil rights movement, and both good and bad happened here and it's embedded in these streets and ingrained

in these people. i had a reach conversation in which we covered a range of topics including how the city's past informs the future of african-americans across america today. watch. >> of course birmingham has been on the forefront of the civil rights struggle and it certainly has contributed its contributions to the civil rights struggle from the four young girls kid at the church on 16th street to the jailing of martin luther king jr. here and his letter from the birmingham jail has been an impactful situation all over the nation and world as far as civil rights is concerned. we're very proud of the contributions we have made to the civil rights, the progress from where we were to where we are now.

certainly there's a lot to be learned and a lot to be had. >> we are trying to find our way and there are things we are doing now from the church community where we are trying to get black pastors and white pastors together, and something we started, and it started because we did not want the church to sit on the sidelines like it did back in the 1960s where so many churches -- that's what spurred martin luther king jr.'s letter from the jail, because the white pastors doing nothing, and we got together, black pastors and white pastors to talk about the issue to make sure the church is not sitting on the sidelines this time. >> how is that going? >> it's going slowly but surely,

and we wanted it to go that way because we want to be purposeful. there are times you can start something very fast and it has no substance to it. we are taking our time and talking about issues. >> we're at this remarkable space, these furnaces which are a big part of birmingham's history. this is an iron town, a steel town and it was an industrial town for a long time. you have a personal attachment to this space that is not the best memory. your great grandfather worked here. >> yes, my dad's grandfather, my dad's grandfather, he fell into one of the furnaces, and it was a detriment and a hurt to our family as it relates to my great grandmother's ability to be able to pay and maintain because they were operating on a one-family income. i don't want to take a picture that as black people

individually, yes, we are doing extremely well and we have a black chief of police and black dean and those things are important, but when you bring my grandfather up it makes me think even in 2021, we're still marching and talking about the same thing my great grandparents were talking about 50 and 60 years ago, basic human rights and needs and respect and equality. being an attorney, a business law attorney at that, you see how loans are given out and how people are color are charged higher interest rates on business loans opposed to those that don't look like them. when we say we have all these amazing things we accomplish, those things are extremely important. we are still asking for the very basic. until we can get past that point, all of our individual accomplishments, they pale in comparison to what we need as can a community in my opinion. >> the thing about the pandemic is that we were quarantining at the time when a lot of brown and

black people had to go out in the streets and protests for people that looked like us and it's like you can't ignore us any more, we're here, and my grandmother lived in the time when segregation happened, and a lot of people tend to forget how recent a lot of that stuff happened. >> do you think given what has happened in the last year, do you think the plight and circumstances of black people improved because of what happened in 2020, or do you think we exposed raw wounds and things are not better? >> i do think it resurfaced a lot of wounds for minorities, specifically black people, just because we have had to live with it our entire lives. there has not been a time when i have grown up and i don't remember being reminded of the fact that i am black, and a black woman at that.

so i do think that we may be moving in a direction where we can finally start to see some change, some real change. but i also think that there's a lot of -- a lot of division in the country right now. i think that right now we are in the healing stages, and i don't want the race for civil rights to die down just because the pandemic is ended or just because we got a certain administration out of office. >> i think it's important to point out that we have had a lot of success over the years, we made a lot of progress since the '60s, and birmingham is the heart of the civil rights movement but we have to acknowledge we have a lot of progress to make and the past 2020 has uncovered some of the wounds that people were under illusion that these things were solved but they were brought back to the forefront to show

there's still work to do when it comes to inequality and justice. >> you are a person that would not have existed in your job 50 years ago in this city, and are a fire chief in a city 50 years ago did not have black fire chiefs or police chiefs or things of that nature. >> yeah, we did not have our first black firefighter until 1968, so i would not be in the position i am in today if it were not for the fights he had to go through in the '60s. we need more equality and more spaces for women to be in power, and we're working towards making sure that's a reality, and we still have a lot of room and space to go in those efforts. >> this is always my favorite part of the road shows. i enjoyed talking to each and every one of you this weekend. i thank you for opening up to me and my viewers at home. don't go anywhere. we have more from birmingham coming up, and i will talk to

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we are here in beautiful birmingham, alabama. let me show you where we are, we are in front of the 16th street baptist church at the intersection of 6th avenue north and 16th street, one of the most famous intersections in the city and in the state and country. that was where the tragic bombing took place in september of 1963 resulting in the death of four little girls and i put my mask on, and i will be speaking on to the city's mayor

in just a moment. birmingham, it's a remarkable history, a city that once turned against its own people in order to keep segregation intact. the heartbreaking images 60 years ago are how people 60 years ago witnessed the movement. martin luther king jr. wrote a virtual reign of terror is still alive in birmingham, alabama. it's by far the worst big city in race relations in the united states. his describes the aftermath of the 16th street church bombing behind me. those images were shown by every media outlet in the country. it compelled federal action from the government. that was critical, turning local disputes into national policy.

while the commander-in-chief sets the tone for the nation, the real policy changes that we are all calling for like police reform happened much more closer to home. local officials like the city's mayor over see all the municipal departments, and if improving relations between the police and the public increases accountability. birmingham's mayor is working to do just that. and he's going to join me after the break. stay close. for this. love you, sweetheart. they guide me with achievable steps that give me confidence. this is my granddaughter...she's cute like her grandpa. voya doesn't just help me get to retirement... ...they're with me all the way through it. come on, grandpa! later. got grandpa things to do. aw, grandpas are the best! well planned. well invested. well protected. voya. be confident to and through retirement. we made usaa insurance for members like martin. an air force veteran made of doing what's right,

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we talk about in birmingham, 1963. it led to a revolution as activists grew outraged by police brutality against black americans in birmingham and other cities around the country. some 58 years later that struggle against police violence and systemic racism continues. joining me is the mayor of birmingham, alabama. good to see you. >> good morning, ali. >> we've had a chance to talk in the past about things having to do with covid. the majority of your work has been to move forward with the lives of people, the majority of whom in this city of african-american. >> that's correct. >> and you're concentrating on stuff that really affects them. one of them is in areas of concentrated poverty across this country. food deserts. >> it's one of the top things i've been focused on since i've been mayor. when you have concentrated

poverty you acknowledge that citizens don't have access to healthy food and proximity to where they live. we created a healthy food fund. we've changed local ordinances. you create spaces where people can have access to. the other thing we've set aside $1 million to brick and mortar as well. it's been a continued focus to make sure citizens have access to healthy food. >> we spent a lot of time talking to people about the old industrial town that this was. people call it philadelphia, pittsburgh of the south, although a lot of people say it was more like johannesburg because of the degree to which there was exploitation of black workers. the future of this city is not as industrial as the past was. it's a lot more to do with technology and medicine. >> that's correct. our future is very bright. you start with the exposure the coronavirus had related to access to health care. now we already know --

we want to share that the future of medicine is genomics and personalized medicine and at the intersection of uav hospital at the intersection of southern research, as well as where personalized medicine and genomics will go birmingham's future is steeped in opportunity as well as being on the front line of saving lives. it's health care. >> we're in a part of the city, the civil rights institute is here, the 16th street baptist church is there. a park over there that has the stat use of the four girls who were killed in this church in 1963. a lot of other statues in this town and there's a move to make sure that some of those old ones that predate the civil rights movement stay here. you've got republican state legislatures -- legislators trying to make sure you don't remove things like confederate monuments. >> that's inappropriate. i think we need to remind people that second place trophies that support treasonist behavior, that's un-american, don't belong in a public square. birmingham was in a position

this past summer to remove a confederate monument between city hall and our county courthouse. i think it's time in 2021 to move past talking about confederate monuments, and we need our legislators to focus on policy that helps alabamans. >> how does race relations look in this city that has had such problems in its past? >> i think we need to be honest. i think the city, we can acknowledge the city is 74% black. the fourth blackest city in america but we need to acknowledge that in 2020, a lot of wounds were exposed. and that our city, what we try to do, is lead. and that there's a long way to go in having conversations. and healing. what i do like about what 2020 exposed is that it doesn't matter if it was in the c suite and the board room, on the ground level or in the community, everybody is talking about pushing past our past, although we need to acknowledge it. we really need to talk about how do we move forward. so i think there's a long way to go, but i like the direction

it's going. >> we had a great discussion with people from birmingham in the last couple of days. one, there were the panelists were split about the vaccine. these were black people, some of whom said we're sort of leaning on their history as black people to say, the system hasn't been all that fair to us. how do you address that? how do you get more people to accept this vaccine and make sure -- and sort of make sure they can get it? >> the first thing is acknowledge the history. black people have a right to have -- to question this vaccine because of the history in america related to how the health care system interacted with black people. when you move past that, you say to people, this will save your lives. and then you overcommunicate that. and then you have to have black leaders out there not only communicating this but showing through presentation, social media, whatever form they use that they take the vaccine as well and they show it through their constituents. they show it through their congregation they lead, whatever

that is. we have to have more leaders in the community showing that they can take -- that they've taken this as well as communicating to their constituents the importance of it. one, it can save lives and, two, it's probably the quickest way to get us back to our way of life. >> mayor, good to see you. it's been an enjoyable few days. >> thank you, ali. that does it for me. thank you for watching this special black history month edition of "velshi across america." warm up your weekend every saturday and sunday with me. i'm going to head back north soon. "the sunday show" with jonathan capehart is action packed, and it starts right now. texas, covid and the urgent push to get help to the american people. senior white house adviser cedric richmond is here to talk about the biden agenda one month

in. food and water still desperately needed in texas nearly a week after winter storms walloped the state. congresswoman sheila jackson lee comes to us live from her district. and using the ku klux klan act to take on donald trump. clever, but twill work. i'm jonathan capehart and this is "the sunday show." this sunday, millions of americans in texas are still reeling from a humanitarian crisis, exacerbated by decades of republican leadership and mismanagement of the power grid. yesterday, president biden signed a major disaster declaration for the lone star state and is considering a visit this week, if it doesn't interfere with relief efforts. but as warmer temperatures begin to bring some relief to the southeast, focus begins to shift to another one of president