- Hello and welcome to an NET News special, "Ernie Chambers Through the Years."

I'm Fred Knapp.

We're focusing on a man who's been inspiring and sometimes outraging Nebraskans, largely from here in the Nebraska Legislature, for half a century.

He's the longest serving legislator in state history, State Senator Ernie Chambers.

- [Ernie] I'm a politician.

There's nothing dirty about the term, it's those who've carried it that have sullied it, but I'm a politician.

- [Fred] Chambers was first elected to the Legislature in 1970 and his North Omaha constituents sent him back until 2021.

When term limits for the second time, mandated he step aside.

- I don't think anything I say could change anybody's mind.

- [Fred] Early in his legislative career, Senator Chambers sparred with Senator Terry Carpenter, a legendary master of legislative maneuvering.

- [Terry] As far as knowledge and capabilities in debate, he has no par in this state.

And he has a great capability and some of it is, and he's done a lot of good.

It's really his mannerism, the action.

He's really helped the people in the penitentiary and the women in there, he's done a lot to scare almost every lawyer in the state of Nebraska.

- [chanting] Free South Africa.

Free South Africa.

- [Fred] Senator Chambers was a trailblazer.

He helped put Nebraska in the national spotlight as the first state to pass legislation calling for divestment from South Africa he forced Omaha to hold district rather than at large elections giving Black candidates greater opportunities to be elected to the school board and city council.

His legislation equalized state pensions for men and women and banned corporal punishment in schools.

- [Ernie] I'm opposed to the death penalty under all circumstances.

- [Fred] Chambers worked constantly to abolish the death penalty.

And in May 2015, it happened.

That victory was short-lived as Nebraska voters reinstated capital punishment in 2016.

For half a century, he pursued his goals in a way that sometimes involved pragmatic politics, sometimes righteous rhetoric.

- There are some communities in Nebraska which are out of touch with the trends of this modern society, this modern world and these particular communities have to be dragged even if it's kicking and screaming into the 20th century.

(upbeat music) - Senator Ernie Chambers joins us to talk about his life and career.

Thanks for being here, Senator.

- It's a pleasure.

- As those clips showed you've been challenging the Legislature and the people of Nebraska for most of your life.

As a reporter, I've had the opportunity to hear you tell lots of stories to explain why you've taken the attitudes and the actions that you have.

So what I'm hoping to do here is have you explain to folks what some of the things that went into your thinking, who influenced you, where you're coming from, and why you've gone in the directions that you have.

And one of the stories that I've heard you relate over the years is you were taught by your parents to respect teachers and you went to school and tried to practice that and early on you had some disillusioning experiences.

- I went to an almost all white school in those days believe it or not.

There was a handful of Black children in that school.

It was Lothrop Elementary School.

My parents would never have taught me or allowed me to use derogatory names to call other children.

And when I went to school, I was naturally expecting to be taught things that I didn't know.

One day the teacher had this storybook and it was called "Little Black Sambo" and the term I hadn't heard, but it didn't sound good to me.

When she would read, the child's name was Sambo.

The mother's name was Mumbo.

The father's name was Jumbo.

And these were the kinds of things that seemed like they were designed to make fun of the way Black people are expected to talk.

She'd read a bit then when she held up the book so we could see the picture.

There was a caricature of a Black child.

The face was like, as I remember it, a blob, with a thousand little sprigs of hair going every which way, ribbons on it, big red gash for a mouth, eyes like saucers with dots on them, and garish, outlandish clothing that I thought maybe a clown would wear in the circus.

And the little white kids, as children will do when they see something funny, laughed.

And when they laughed, they looked at me, being the only Black face in the room to them I became little Black Sambo and I sat in this wooden desk and I got a position that I could hold.

And maybe what kicked in for me was the survival instinct that little animals have when you're in danger and you can't protect yourself and you don't know anything else, just be still.

And it was the most horrible experience that I can remember.

And I don't remember any other thing at that period in my life like I remember that story.

I'm 83 years old and I remember it like it was yesterday.

- I remember another incident that you talked about from your early school days where there was a white kid who showed up in coveralls.

- It was his birthday and he came to school and he had these overalls.

We call them overhauls.

They, it had a bib up here and a little straps and they fit over these buttons and he had some little brogans and I guess he thought he was sharp.

And he was a poor white child because the clothes were new and the kids laughed at him and they made fun.

And I remembered how it felt when they laughed at me.

So I stopped them and I said you're not going to laugh at him.

And if he's by himself, you might do it.

But there are two of us that you have to laugh at.

From that day on anytime I saw somebody being bullied or ganged on, then I would be on the side of the one who was being bullied.

- You mentioned your being brought up in the church.

And I think I remember your saying that you suffered a similar disillusionment about when you saw the hypocrisy.

- Oh yes.

Church people are some of the biggest hypocrites you can find.

Naturally when you're a child you pay attention to things that are about children.

And there was, there were times when you'd hear them, quote where Jesus said, how you shouldn't mess over little children, will not mess over little children.

You shouldn't offend against little children, For such are the children, the kingdom of the kingdom of heaven.

And it said, suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not.

Well after I was in church, a while I said they didn't read that right.

They read it to say, send the little children to me and I'll make them suffer because this teacher had a switch.

- This is a Sunday school?

- A Sunday school, and if somebody didn't know the answer she'd hit them with that switch.

And that wasn't according with what I thought Jesus meant.

And so that was the first break that I saw between what they taught and what the Bible was supposed to have said.

- So you said you'd read the Bible completely through eight times - When I was in high school.

- Okay.

- Looking for answers.

- What did you get out of that?

- Well, there's a song that I think U2 sang it, and it was true then and it's true now ♪ I still haven't found what I'm looking for ♪ So I kept reading and reading and there were things in the Bible that I thought were valuable and I'm not one to turn my back on something and discard it all, if there's something of value in it.

So the fact that I quote the Bible and will take some moral principles from it, doesn't mean I believe in the mysticism and all the ghosts and things that are there also - [Fred] You went to Tech High?

- [Ernie] Yep.

- Why did you do that?

I assume that that was more trades oriented and Central at the time would have been the academically oriented?

- Right?

Well see, all of the kids in my neighborhood went to Central.

It was supposed to be the smart school.

Everybody who was going to go to college or whatever, went to Central.

And I became early on somebody who's going to follow my own path.

So even though all my brothers and sisters who were older than I went to Central, I went to Tech.

Tech was supposed to be the dumb school.

It was supposed to be the rough school.

And I feel that I must have got as good an education at Tech as those kids who went to Central.

Because when I graduated from Tech, I went to Creighton which I was told was an academic university but I scored so high on the entrance exam I was put in honors English.

- So Creighton's obviously a Catholic school.

Did, given your attitude towards religion as it had evolved at that point, did that cause you any hesitancy to go there?

- None whatsoever.

I thought I could show these Catholics the right way because I thought Catholics worship idols so I spend a lot of time trying to show them the errors of their ways.

- Was that successful?

- It put them in turmoil and sometime they come around and they say, Ernie, talk to me about some heresy.

- Despite your not accepting the doctrine, did the way of thinking that you absorbed from some of that reading stick with you?

- When they talked about logic, I liked their logic because they were always trying to use it to show that the Catholic way was the right way.

It reached to a point where one Catholic, one of the priests in a philosophy class told me I should have been a Jesuit.

Those are the soldiers of Christ, the soldiers of the Pope.

I said, why do you say that?

He said, because like a Jesuit when you really set your mind to it, you can split a hair between the North and the Northwest side.

And I took that as a compliment.

But I made it through Creighton.

- After Creighton, you went into the army, is that right?

- I took my basic training at Fort Leonard Wood which was in the Ozarks.

- So when you were in training at Fort Leonard Wood.

I think I remember you were talking about being in with these white soldiers from the Ozarks who called themselves hillbillies and you objected to that.

And I think that's similar to your objection to the N-word.

- Yeah.

I didn't think they should do that.

But then when it became clear to me that that's what they call each other then I just got out of it.

But I was, they weren't going to call me anything.

And I was the only Black one in the barracks too.

- But you object to when Black people call themselves the N-word.

- Oh, no question about it.

That is worse than a white person using it.

And when white people to use it and say, well Black people use it.

I'll say so then if you know a man who beats his wife, then the fact that he beats his wife means you can beat her too?

I say, you know, better than that.

And the fact that that's the word you pick to use means that you mean it to mean what white people want it to mean.

So say it again to me now.

And then they wouldn't say it.

- You've also talked about your time in the military and said you learned how to use a gun there.

- [Ernie] Mm hmm.

-[Fred] But your - - Don't call it a gun it's your piece or a rifle.

- [Fred] All right.

- [Ernie] All right.

- And yet you have been adamantly against people carrying guns.

You didn't... - I was against killing.

I learned how to do what we were supposed to do.

I did all of the exercises.

I volunteered for KP, which is called kitchen police.

Because on Sunday there was no place to go.

You couldn't leave the barracks.

So I'd be bored.

So I did that.

- It seems so out of character with your iconoclastic mentality.

- I wasn't there to kill anybody.

I was there to discharge a duty, a very unpleasant one but I volunteered for it.

So everything that I was required to do, I did it the best that I could.

- After the Army, you at some point went to work for the Post Office.

And there's a picture of you, it's behind you now about standing when the Postmaster General came to town.

Can you talk about the... - First of all, and as Billy Joel says, that's when ♪ I wore a younger man's clothes ♪ There was this supervisor and he used the term 'boy', cause see, I was a good worker.

I volunteered to do the work that others didn't want to do.

I would dump big mail sacks.

I do hand stamp, all of the kind of things once again in self-defense, I didn't like to be idle, so I would be busy around there.

And so he used the term 'boy' and I objected to it.

They charged me with insubordination and they fired me.

So when I found out that the Postmaster General of the United States was coming to Omaha then as I've often done, I put my sign and I went and I stood out there and I picketed the hotel where the dinner was being held.

- Was that your first protest or that's the earliest picture I've seen?

- This is the first time that I can recall that I put on a sign and went and stood.

- And you've continued to do that through the years.

- Right.

Generally alone, because of the kind of situations that other people don't want to get involved in.

And I can understand that people are fearful.

- But you kind of prefer that, you're kind of a loner, are you not?

- I would rather other people be present but if they're not, I'm not going to beg them or I'm not going to try to shame them into doing it.

- At some point you became a barber and that can be a very social setting, the barbershop, you know, people go in there and they talk about everything from their home life to politics.

Did that influence you as you thought about running for public office?

- I've never thought about running for a public office.

Is not something I thought about when I was little.

It's not anything I wanted to do.

I didn't plan to become a politician.

I didn't even like the word.

I didn't like the people who were called that.

I had to make a living and I was not going to work for a white person.

I had offers of employment but I didn't want a white person telling me what to do and based on what happened in the post office I'm not going to put myself in that position voluntarily.

So I had to find something to do, where I could make a living, honest living and be my own boss.

- After you graduated from law school?

- No I didn't, it took.. From the time I first entered law school to the time I finally was allowed to graduate.

It was more than a decade.

I went to Creighton Law School for two and a half years.

Three years is what you need.

Never flunked a class or an exam, but also didn't attend class.

Some of the reason I didn't go to class because I was working at the post office.

And when I would go to school there was a lounge on the basement floor not on the basement floor, but a sub floor.

And they had a leather couch and I go down there and I'd sleep because I'd work all night.

So they'd asked me, "Why do you sleep?"

I said, "Cause I'm sleepy, "and that's why it's laid out like that so you can lay down."

And I wore khakis, white t-shirt, and army boots.

They'd say, "Why are you dressed like that?"

And this was after my first semester.

And I came out number four on the Dean's List, academically.

It infuriated some of them.

So they said, "Why do you dress like that?"

I said, "Maybe you spend more time hitting those books "and not worrying about how I dress you'll make the Dean's List, too."

- You never did take the bar exam.

Right?

- [Ernie] No.

- And you didn't become a lawyer despite having all this training.

And despite having the aptitude that you did.

Why not?

- I should not have to take an examination to enter the profession that I prepared myself for.

I said, if somebody jumped through all those hoops then it shouldn't be necessary to join the bar association.

And why take the exam if I'm not going to join the bar association?

Everybody knew I could pass the exam, even some of the people who testified before the judiciary committee.

One time a prosecutor, his name was Donald Knowles, he said, "Senator, you going make somebody a whale of a defense lawyer."

I said,"But I'll never be able to practice law because I won't take the bar exam."

He said, "You'd pass it like that."

- [Fred] So... - But I have principals.

My principal was challenged at that time.

And my principal won.

- Through all this, you were married, you had four children.

Were you able to balance that all out?

I mean.

- My family came first, but I still did things that worried my wife.

When somebody would get arrested late at night or early in the morning but when it was still dark Somebody from the community or the family would come to tell me, and I would go down to the police station to make sure nothing happened to them.

Don't ask me what I thought I could do.

I just felt that I needed to be there and somebody should be there and they could have done anything they wanted to, to me all of that was taken into consideration.

But because I believe the way I do I had to go.

- [Fred] And you were arrested several times.

- Several times, but not convicted.

One time I was standing on the barbershop step and I looked at a cop when they pulled up and parked in the bus zone.

And if anybody else had done that, they'd get a ticket.

I was looking at the cop.

So one of them got out, he asked me what I'm looking at, I said "I'm looking at you."

He said, "Well, you're under arrest."

I said, "For what?"

He said, "Interfering with an officer and disturbing the peace."

I said,"What are you doing that I interfered with?"

"What did I do to disturb the peace?"

He said, "You disturbed my peace."

So we got in the car and we're pulling off.

I asked him, I said,"Hey man, I'm under arrest?"

So he looked at his partner and he said, "No."

I said, "Then take me back where you picked me up from."

So then that's when he said, "Well, you're under arrest now."

And that's the way it came out in the court during the trial and the judge dismissed it.

So I know what it means to not have committed a crime and you'd have a long arrest record.

I wasn't, if I'd been convicted of what they charged me with, carrying a concealed weapon and other things that would be felonies, I couldn't have gotten in the Legislature.

- Well, that's why I want to ask about next.

When you ran for the Legislature, you had objected to some subservient statements that Black incumbent had made about whites.

- He said, something that indicated that white supremacy was God's will and we had no choice.

Words to the effect that God put the white man in command and all we can do is follow along behind.

And the community was outraged and they thought somebody should run against him.

And they said, "Ernie."

I said, "I'm not interested in politics, and I'll find somebody who will run," and nobody wanted it.

So then I said, "I'll do it."

And when I went there, I came to do what I should do and be me and not become like them.

- Did you ever think about playing the game, you know, putting on a suit and a tie?

- Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

I wasn't even wearing a suit in the community and I tell people, this is the way I dress when I'm cutting people's hair and if it's good enough for the people who give me my living it's good enough for anybody else and if they don't like the way I look, don't look at me.

- Early in your legislative career, though you had specific projects that you advocated for.

We can talk a little bit about those early days.

- There were a number of bills that I got passed that dealt with things but the major ones were to try to get a chance for Black people to be represented on the city council, the county board, and the school board.

All of these were elected at large and no Black person could get enough votes from the city at large to be in any of those positions.

So I knew the only way it could be done was to have a district system.

My school board bill was vetoed three or four times before I finally got it.

City council bill, same thing.

The county board didn't generate as much opposition but all the members of the county board and the people in Omaha didn't like it.

But I don't remember whether that one was vetoed, but if so it hadn't been vetoed as many times as the other two.

Those were the ones that I went down there with the intent to get something done about as well as getting rid of the death penalty.

- And early in your career, you were the chair of the Government, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee.

I remember you ran for chair of the Judiciary Committee but in your latter years, you didn't seek any of those leadership positions.

- [Ernie] No.

- And I wondered if you switched from playing offense to defense.

- Well, it was clear that I was not going to be elected chair of the committee when they elected some people who had no training in the law, nothing.

Then I knew it was against me.

So I let that go.

And I decided that I would do my work a different way.

And they were going to make me an outsider and I was going to have to fight them tooth and nail.

Then I would fight them and I would beat them.

And the way I would do it is to learn their rules and beat them at their own game.

(upbeat music) - [Fred] That game produced some epic drawn out battles as Chambers mastered legislative rules and the art of filibustering.

- On this proposed rule change and on other things, this session we're going to fight like scorpions in a bottle.

I promise you that.

- I wanted to ask you when you do that, and I know you don't call it a filibuster - Right, extended debate.

- You call it extended debate.

Right.

Do you have it all mapped in your head in advance or do you... - I don't need to do that.

It's like the river, no bit of the river is always the same.

So you never see the same river.

You can see the water cause it's a continuum.

Well, that's the way my thoughts are.

Sometimes I'll look at somebody on the floor while I'm talking, they'll have a certain expression.

And based on that expression, I will go off on what they would call a tangent.

And then I might call attention to the person who led me into that, maybe I won't.

But when you're in the Legislature and you have to be able to think on your feet, you have to talk a long time there has to be a multitude of subjects that you can call on.

You have to be able to change your direction on the spur of the moment.

You know how to make what they call pregnant pauses you know how to overwhelm them with detail.

You can throw in rhymes, even a, like a croaking toad, a song, well, a lyric or two from a song.

So I will often say, I'm not addressing my words to the people in this chamber those who are watching us, those who will listen those who will understand are the ones that I'm talking to.

And if I were in a bad enough set of circumstances where the only ones who heard me were the ones in this place, I would take a different approach.

The way I would be able to describe my talking then, if the only ones I was talking to are those in this chamber, it would not be a filibuster.

It would not be extended debate.

It would be casting pearls before swine.

And the court said, no, you can't.

You can not... -[Fred] Chambers routinely fired verbal shots at anyone in his way.

Yet twice convinced a majority of his fellow senators to side with him on one of his main legislative agenda items.

- [Official] Execution sequence began at 12:14 AM.

Sequence ended at 12:15 AM.

Death was pronounced at 12:22 AM.

- [Fred] In 2015, the Legislature repealed the death penalty, which voters reinstated a year and a half later.

(upbeat music) - [Fred] You mentioned the repeal of the death penalty in 1979.

You actually got that done or got the senators to vote for that twice, again in 2015.

The first time it was the subject of the governor's veto.

The second time that you overcame the veto, but then there was a referendum campaign and the repeal was repealed.

You introduced the repeal year after year.

You've already talked about how difficult it is to get that passed.

Why persist on that?

- I don't think the state should kill anybody.

And even though I don't have a religious corpuscle in my body, maybe it came from when I was very young.

I didn't think a human being had the right to kill another human being.

And maybe it could grow from what happened when I felt the way I did about being laughed at and I didn't want to see anybody else laughed at.

I just didn't think that one person had the right to do certain things to another person, no matter what.

And if one person doesn't have the right to do it to an individual, two of them don't.

Well that might seem a long way around, but I came to the conclusion that no matter what anybody has done, the state does not have a right to destroy that person.

So regardless of what a person has done you can put that person in prison put him or her in a situation where they can not harm anybody else.

But it's counterproductive and it's even counterintuitive to say that a state can prevent a certain kind of conduct by engaging in that conduct itself.

- You got the Legislature in the early eighties to pass what was, I believe the first resolution to divest from South Africa.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- People have said that was the first blow struck to get Nelson Mandela out of prison because it ultimately led to the collapse of the apartheid government.

But here's what happened.

There was some old racist who gave some Krugerrands to the University of Nebraska to either build or improve an engineering school.

They wanted to sell Krugerrands, those are gold coins, high quality, gold coins all over the world because every gold coin sold was another brick in the wall of apartheid.

So when he gave these Krugerrands to the university, I said the university should not accept these.

And the students said the same thing, but naturally the love of money, as says the Bible, is the root of all evil.

And they love that money.

And they said, give us some more of that root.

So I say, well, I'm going to have to take some away from you.

What I'm going to do is calculate the value of those Krugerrands.

And I'm going to cut that money from the university's budget.

They said, if you will not hurt the university then we will support the resolution to have the state divest from all companies doing business in or with South Africa.

I say, well, you got a deal.

Cause see, I wasn't going to make the So now that's where I'm a tactician and a strategist.

When the iron is hot, I know how to strike it.

- And a deal maker, in spite of your - Oh yeah.

♪ Cause I know when to hold, 'em know when to fold them ♪ So that was one item that had international impact.

And I became the person who was identified with it and probably more people on the national and international scene are aware of what I did with that then people in Nebraska, see Jesus said a prophet is without honor in his own hometown, but at least they didn't do to me with the people in Jesus's own hometown did to him although they probably felt like it.

So the way they came as close to it, as they could was to put term limits in the constitution which memorialized and enshrined me in their constitution and hurt every white person who will ever run for that office and weaken the Legislature forever and no longer is their government one of checks and balances.

A weakened Legislature does away with the entirety of the concept of checks and balances.

- Is there a trade-off though between getting rid of dead wood and bringing in fresh blood on the one hand versus... - Whenever you're talking about wood and blood no doubt about it, but we're talking about human beings.

So we have to have the knowledge, the integrity, the drive and the understanding of the system to make a supposedly democratic system work.

You cannot have people with good intentions but no knowledge.

And that's why it was essential that there be somebody like me until they got rid of me that first time, who would be a check and a balance on the Legislature itself.

Reached a point where I was doing more stopping bad legislation than the value of the legislation I got enacted.

- That's what I was asking about before the defense versus offense.

- Right.

But I still had to do some offense.

Like I did get rid of allowing the execution of juveniles.

And then later on the U.S. Supreme Court did that, did the same thing.

They cannot execute people who are mentally, the word then was retarded.

Later on, years later, the U.S Supreme Court did the same thing.

And there were probably other things I can mention that I did get enacted into law, but I had to spend literally hours and days stopping bad legislation.

And they knew I would.

- One of the things you got passed was a requirement for Nebraska schools to have multicultural education talking about the contributions of various groups.

And I believe it was in the course of that that you received a death threat?

- Yes.

- Talk about that incident.

- This, a computer generated picture was sent to me with two pistols pointing and the threat against me all the racial slurs, all of them.

And I saw that the postmark was Norfolk, Nebraska.

So I notified and the media printed a story that I was going to go out there and visit and it was based on this threat that I was going to be at a park at high noon.

If I survived that, I would go to this restaurant, which was well known and if I survived that, I would be on a radio program.

And I survived all of it.

I put a red bullseye on the tar- on the shirt so that they'd know who they're after.

And I even gave them a target if they wanted it.

And I still have that shirt to let them know words are not going to defeat me.

And look, I'm not, I don't have a death wish and death, none of us knows when, where, or by what means death will surprise us.

And since we don't know that, we should let it surprise us doing what it is we believe we ought to be doing.

There's a standard that I have to reach.

So for me, there is a logic to everything that I do.

- Is that perfectionism?

- No, it's Ernieism.

(laughing) - I am what I am and that's all that I am.

What you see is what you get.

What somebody else thinks or says is of no moment to me.

I look at criticism and praise the same way.

They're like perfume, you sniff, but you don't swallow it.

So when people wanna come to me at a time like this, because they're fascinated with beginnings and endings and talk about a legacy, I say you're too high on the anatomy.

Not a legacy, not an anklassi, maybe a footlasy.

(laughing) - But legacies are for other people to talk about not me.

(upbeat music) -[Fred] Part of that legacy concerns football, Chambers donned a uniform to dramatize his early quest to pay the players and spoke about it in the early 1980s.

- Everybody wants money.

So I'll say in the same way that they pay academic students for being various flunkies on the campus, they work in this office, work in that office, cover for a professor who doesn't want to do his job.

They get paid for it.

Then pay the athletes.

These other students using undergraduate school to prepare them for profession, undergraduate school prepares a football player or an athlete for his profession which is athletics.

And he ought to be paid just like the other students are.

(upbeat music) - You got a pay the players bill passed, but it was vetoed there was another one you got that had a contingency in it once a certain number of teams... - Right.

- What do you think of where that issue is going these days?

- Well, it went, it came, it's going to be, it's going to happen.

And I'd said way back there over 30 years ago I started in about 1979, however many years ago that is, I had said some old white man is going to get credit for it finally, he's going to say this ought to be done.

But as it turns out, it was a white woman out in California who got that bill that said, let the players at least benefit when their name or likeness is used.

- We're talking about college athletes.

- Right college athletes.

I think since these young men have regular hours, they have regular duties, they are employees.

If somebody writes for the newspaper they can get a stipend.

If they work in these houses where students live and they can take other jobs around campus and be paid.

The players work harder than all of them, in a hazardous occupation.

And unlike any other employee in the university they generate revenue rather than sucking it up.

These players are like indentured servants and the contract as they call, I call it a contract of indenture.

You call it a scholarship.

I'll say they're not there to be scholars.

They're there to be players.

And you keep them eligible by slacking up on the scholar end of it.

- Another subject, you got a bill passed to require anti-bias training for police.

You called it a Peewee bill.

- Yes.

- But it's an issue that's very much at the forefront now.

And I wonder what your thoughts are on where that issue should go.

- First of all, they call it implicit bias.

Somebody may not be aware of what they're doing.

So I call it a Peewee bill because I shouldn't have to give my time to something like this.

What it might possibly do is take away an excuse that cops have been allowed to give.

Well I acted in accord with my training.

They didn't train me not to do this.

Well, if they have to give that training, they won't be able to say, well I didn't realize that hating Black people and acting on that was wrong because they didn't train me on that.

Well, now they just take away an excuse.

A bill that had far more significance came to my....

I've felt I had to do something.

because an incident happened in South Omaha where the cops were chasing a guy.

He went through a stop sign.

He hit a car, which was driven by a white man who was a teacher.

He left a widow and four children and they couldn't recover anything because they said the police did not behave in a negligent manner.

I realized that there's no way if you're going to have to argue about whether the cop was negligent or not that the innocent third party is going to prevail because they're never going to say the cop was negligent.

If I would've made the individual cop liable the person wouldn't get any money cause the cops don't have any money.

So what I did was got a law passed and I had to fight to get it.

And it said, "In any high speed chase or any police pursuit an innocent third party is hurt or killed, the agency which employs that cop is liable."

Because they all have deep pockets.

I look beyond what other people look at.

I don't do things to white people that they do to us.

I've saved them from a lot of bad things because of my humanity and because they're human beings and here's something else, I'm looking now at white people crying because of the pandemic.

And a lot of them are about to lose their homes because their rent is not subsidized.

There's no requirement that says they cannot be kicked out.

And I'm saying, what are they crying about?

That's us all the time.

They're lining up at these food places to get food.

And when it was us, these are people who just are lazy.

We're supposed to live on nothing.

We are unemployed.

We are underemployed.

And the government has a responsibility to do for people what they can not do for themselves.

That's what white privilege is.

But all of a sudden, that's not socialism.

That's not a handout.

This is what white people expect to be able to get and they are not getting as much as the bad of the bad things that happen to us routinely.

And it has happened to us ever since we've been in this country.

- So the condemnation of racism that underlies that critique that you just expressed also underlies a lot of the controversies that you've provoked over the years.

You've called the police your ISIS.

- And they are.

- You've talked about, what would the reaction be if you raped a white person?

You called the flag a rag.

Do you think that those kinds.. - Trump said he grabs a woman's crotch and laughed about it and y'all made him President.

He's cheated on his wife.

He's paid hush money to these women.

And they're going to get mad at me because I just use words and tell the truth on them?

That question shouldn't even be put to me.

They killed Floyd in front of everybody.

And that has been happening all the time.

That's what I was talking about.

- My question was not going to be whether should people should be mad about that.

But whether you think that you've limited by some of the rhetoric.

- No, no because the fact that I stand out strongly and speak for what I believe are what causes white people to come to me and say, you're my only hope and I know you're not afraid.

There was a white Senator who wanted to allow people to carry guns in taverns.

I said, guns and liquor don't mix.

What are white people afraid of?

They're just going to be around each other.

He said, well there's you had mentioned them before there's ISIS.

And I said, "ISIS?"

I said, "So you're over here in America ISIS is over there and you're worried about ISIS?"

And he said, "Yeah."

I said, "The police are my ISIS."

Now that is an analogy.

And I mentioned the number of times I've been arrested by the police.

ISIS has never done anything to me.

ISIS does things to people who would do things to me.

And what do white people say?

My enemy's enemy is my friend.

That's what a white people state as a principle.

Well, if the white cop is my enemy then the cop's enemy is my friend.

These white Americans were never enslaved.

If Patrick Henry can say that he preferred death to slavery, why are they upset when Black men would fight to get their freedom?

Nat Turner, if liberty or death is good enough for old Pat, Patrick Henry, it ought to be good enough for old Nat, Nathaniel Turner, but Nat Turner was executed.

Patrick Henry is lionized.

And my child goes to the school, the kind of school that said I'm Little Black Sambo and are taught that the slave holders are great men.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison.

Great men.

That's what my child is taught.

And you going to say I'm a racist because I speak against that?

That I hate white people because I just speak their history.

And I still, through all that will do things to try to help those of your kind who are mentally disadvantaged, who are physically disadvantaged, who are impoverished, who are sick, who are hungry.

- So wait a minute.

So you're okay with the white folks who are lined up to get the free food - They're hungry.

And there are people who got food.

- Because a minute... - The hungry should be fed.

The hungry should be fed.

I don't ask "Are you a Democrat or Republican or Christian or Jew?"

It makes me no difference.

If I can help you, I'll give you the help.

- Your district obviously likes you.

They reelected you 11, 12, whatever it is - Or they hate me and they think the Legislature is a punishment.

- But the district still suffers from crime... - Racism.

- And poverty.

- Racism.

Look as many times as I've been arrested white people would say, he's got to be a criminal.

How do you know there's crime in our community?

Because white people say there is.

You don't know.

- Well, don't the statistics bear that out?

- Who writes the statistics?

You know what I'm doing Fred?

I'm trying to show you that when white people deal with us they deal with all these esoteric notions that they can't even explain, that they don't even know, and they're mouthing words that they haven't even thought about.

- What I was getting at, where my question was going was you yourself have talked about the problem of guns in your district.

- Absolutely.

- And obviously - And I'll lay it at the feet of the police.

- So what I was going to ask was could you have done more by paying more attention to those bread and butter issues as opposed to the kind of criminal justice issues - I was paying attention to them in the community where the problem exists.

I was the one who often would help people when they had a complaint against the police or talk to somebody at the housing authority.

See white people like to say, well, why don't you do this?

There's more poverty in the rural areas than in the city.

Why don't y'all talk about those senators and ask them why don't you bring some jobs out there for those people?

And he would say, or she, I can't create jobs, people with the companies and the money have to do that and they won't come out here.

Well, am I going to create a business in my community out of thin air and the Black people who say that they're helping in our community don't live in our community.

They work with white people.

They're bankrolled by white people.

Do you think that if by popping my fingers I could bring full employment to the people in my community that I would sit here and not pop my fingers.

If by giving thought I could fix all of the bad streets that are in my community that we pay taxes for, by the way, and they're not fixed, you think I wouldn't fix those streets?

You think I wouldn't make it possible for every mother who needs food just to survive and her children, I wouldn't see that they're all fed?

If I can do something, I will do it.

But people want me to do what Jesus didn't do.

He didn't feed all the hungry people.

What welfare agencies have not been able to do what all of the churches and good people have not been able to do working together.

And they want me to do it as a member of a Legislature from which I'm expelled by white people because in the province where I can operate I'm too effective.

I took the time to become a part of the operation of the system.

I'm not of the system, I'm in the system.

And you won't find another person with the combination of traits that I have.

And the thoughts that I have, who will limit his or her activities to a backward reactionary Legislature, and a backward hate-filled racist state, Jesus won't do it then Ernie ought to do it.

Why don't they condemn Jesus for not feeding everybody?

Why don't they condemn Jesus for not giving everybody a job?

He's the one they worship.

He's not doing it.

God's not doing it.

The government's not doing it.

Other politicians are not doing it.

Why should there even be a community where people because of the pigmentation of their skin suffer every disadvantage that can be in a society.

And then they blame it on the person who has the least actual political power in that state.

- If I might switch gears for a second, you have I think it's fair to say a special relationship with young people.

What do you, given everything that you've expressed here, what do you tell them?

What's your message to them when they ask you to speak to them?

- I want to let them know that they all have talents.

They all have abilities and it's just a matter of trying to develop it.

And then I give them examples.

I say, now, if you see a tree, when it first comes out of the ground, it doesn't have fruit on it.

It has to grow and get strong and get branches.

And then the fruit comes and then people see it as a fruit tree.

But without the fruit you may not even know what kind of tree it is.

I'll say when you're little you are in the process of growing.

You have talents inside of you that have to be developed.

And in order to do that you're going to have to develop your mind, your brain.

And that means when you go to school you have to listen to your teacher.

And I don't tell him what happened to me with the Little Black Sambo.

Some Black kids I do to let them know that sometimes there are teachers who will work against you but you need to learn from them what they can teach in spite of it.

And then I let them ask me questions and engage them in a back and forth.

And then if they're too young for that then I tell them stories.

And I know they can relate to animals more than they will to human beings, because a lot of them have not had good experience with human beings.

So I have to find a way to talk about how somebody didn't have very much but they worked hard and they got it.

And sometimes you can do it with an animal, like the little the fox and the hound.

The little stories that little children would know.

And then those who are a little older, I talked to them about the way adults don't listen to them.

They want to accuse them of things that they didn't do.

They don't want to have you bring matters to them and instead of trying to help you, they'll criticize you.

And then if you're not really strong and you're very sensitive, you get confused, you get discouraged, disheartened, and you feel like the end of the world is here.

So you may as well end it.

But here's where you make the mistake.

In your young mind, you have the notion that if you take your life, you're going to be aware of the people who now wish you were still here, who wished they hadn't done this to you or had, have done that that would help.

But if you take your life, you're gone, you cease to be, you won't know anything.

So what you need to do is what you all call, cooling out chilling out and find somebody you can talk to, so that you won't hurt yourself more than anybody else will.

I live a life that people don't know about.

They don't know me they know of me and they don't need to know me and I don't need to have them know me but I defy you to find an 83 year old white man or a Black man who has gone through all that I've gone through and then come here and do 20 pushups and not even be panting when he's through.

Or who can withstand what I withstood for 46 years and still be sane, and still be active, whose mind is clear.

Who probably can still, now it may take me two or three seconds have you give me a letter in the alphabet and I can tell you the number it is in the alphabet.

- Y - Why does that, what you asked me why?

- Yeah.

I mean the letter Y - Oh, that's 25.

- I heard you once recite the alphabet backwards could you do that?

- If I go to the store, then I got to come home don't I?

And that's what I tell children.

I say, so say the alphabet with me and they say it.

I say, okay, now we're at the store.

Now we've got to go back home.

Now say with me, Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A.

- Well, it's going to be hard to top that, but I guess I'd like to wrap up by asking you, how you think you will be remembered and how you would like to be remembered.

- I don't care about either one.

Cause it's other people's opinion.

People are fickle.

Today they say, "Hosanna!"

And tomorrow they crucify you.

They're saying crucify him.

I don't know what people are going to think and what difference does it make to me?

It has as much impact on me as the sweat of a gnat has on the rock of Gibraltar.

It means nothing.

What control would I have over it?

- Well, would you like to be honored in the Capitol like some, some of those people that have statues for them?

- If you put a statue of me in the Capitol would honor the Capitol, not me.

(laughing) - For real.

- So the last time you were term-limited out you moved on to the Learning Community Council.

What are your plans this time?

- And I'll give the quote that I always give from Stonewall Jackson.

"If the sleeves..." I do have a coat, "If the sleeves of my coat knew my plans, I should have to burn my coat."

- But what if as happened after Stonewall was mortally wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville you cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.

- I have no way of knowing whether I will breathe out and breathe in again.

So what I want means nothing is not going to change anything.

This might sound either idealistic, philosophical, or insane.

I can only live this instant.

So if I live in the present which is the only place I can live then I can endure anything.

So if people are being very mean I only have to endure it this instant.

And they say, yeah, but you know they're going to be mean a long time.

I say, well, I might die before we get there the world might come to an end.

- Would you fill us in with a concluding song that would wrap up what you've said today?

- Well, thinking of the fact that I'm a be term-limited out and I can't sing.

That's the only thing that requires courage on my part.

Courage is doing what you fear.

♪ Oh, the days dwindled down ♪ ♪ To a precious few ♪ That's all I'mma sing.

Cause that's all I've got left.

- [Fred] Well.

- [Ernie] And the precious days.

- Let us hope that you make the most of them.

- I gotta make the most of them.

- Yes.

And thank you very much for spending these precious moments with us.

Thanks to Senator Ernie Chambers for spending some time with us to talk about his life and career.

If you missed part of this program or would like to see it again, you can find it on our website NetNebraska.org For NET news I'm Fred Knapp.

Thanks for joining us.

(upbeat music) - They're whispering in my ear that we need to take a break - Whenever you want to.

- [Fred] Alright.

- I wanna loosen up.

- [Fred] Man!

(laughing) Let's see okay.

What number are you at here?

- [Ernie] 12 - [Fred] 12, 13, 14.

(laughing) - When you sit, when you sit too long you have to get your blood flowing.

(laughing) You say potato.

I say, patato.

- Let's call the whole thing off.

(laughing) - Now see.

We would be a good team.