Assistant to the president. We worked together. So our relationship actually transcends politics. And when i asked him to do it, he said he would review it. He did. He felt that the booksome portions of it he didnt agree with but that overall, he thought it was a great book. Maxine the same way. I mean, we served together for 11 years in the house of representatives, so we have a good relationship, close relationship. And i felt also that it, in many ways, reflects my overall political ideology, and that is kind of at the center where i deal with people as opposed to just being an ideologue one way or the other. So if you get people who are about 180 degrees apart on the cover of your book, it means that this is not just something that you do on a haphazard basis, but you actually believe in people relationships, regardless of their ideology. Cspan how did you get george will and bob johnson of Black Entertainment Television both to endorse your book . Guest yeah. Well, george will called me one day and hahad heard about all of the things we were doing in the church and in the ministry and asked if he could come and visit. So we had him to come. He came to the school and saw what we were doing with the kids, saw what wed done to revitalize the community, felt it was a great thing and wrote an editorial on it, and so i thought that was great. And bob johnson and i have had a great relationship. We frequently sit and eat together and talk about futuristic ideas, and when i was in congress, kind of shared a lot of ideas with him about what i wanted to do, and even when i left, he was one of the persons i sat and talked with. So weve had that kind of relationship over the years. Cspan how many years were you in congress . Guest eleven years, served from 1986 until the end of 97, and when i ran for office, i told the constituents that id serve from 10 to 12 years, and so left at the end of 11, so thats about as close to a promise as you can keep. Cspan did you leave midyear . Guest i left midterm, yeah, and aat the lastbecause i had just finishedwed just finished building a 23 million church, and it was growing so fast that i never had established a residence here in washington. I traveledeach night, i commuted to new york back and forth. So i just reached that point where the responsibilities there had become so great, i couldnt do both, and since i was called into the ministry at 15 and pastoring since 19, thats obviously my first love, and i made the decision to go home and minister at the church. Cspan this will take about a minute, but i want to read you something said by four people in your book. Guest ok. Cspan first by you. You said, bootstrappers can articulate with great substance and eloquence of speech, but if given the choice, they would prefer to walk the walk rather than merely talk the talk. guest right. Cspan bill bennett writesif i can find it here. I underlined it. floyd flake is a man who walwho walks it like he talks it. Maxine Waters wrote, if i can find her, he does not simply talk the talk. He, indeed, walks the walk. and then earlier in an endorsement, bob johnson writes, floyd flake doesnt just talk the talk. He walks the walk. guest oh. Cspan whats that mean . Guest thats interesting. Cspan whwhats it mean . Guest yeah. Well, what it means essentially is that, as you know, most people are given to a great deal of verbiage. I mean, theres a lot of talk about what needs to be done, what we ought to be doing, how we solve problems and issues and so forth. I think what theyre saying, in essence, is that the model that ive created, both in terms of my own personal life as one growing up in a family of 13 and fifth in asixthgradeeducated parents, a reality of what ive had to do to work my way through school and work my way into the various situations that mark a level of success. I think thats one category. I think the other category is what ive tried to do in terms of changing the whole scope of ministry in an urban community from one of just a sunday morning worship experience to one where we, in fact, build homes and sell them to firsttime home buyers. We, in fact, built a school so im notwhen i talk about educational issues, it is not just rhetoric. It is reality of what weve been able to do in transforming the lives of kids from communities where they say they cantthey cant learn. And when you look at the overall level of programs that we havepsychiatric services to medical services toyou name itwic programs and so forthi think what theyre saying, in essence, is that rather than just talking about it, ive tried to be that person who rolls up onesmy sleeves and become a real a bootstrapper and make things happen so that when people argue with me about things, i dont have to just lean on the rhetoric of it, but i can actually show them practical realities that, in fact, this works. Cspan exactly where is the church . Guest my church is in jamaica, queens. It is inabout seven minutes from Kennedy Airport and within about 20 minutes from la guardia and sits in an area called st. Albans, which has historically been one of those communities that was for upward mobile people. Its a pretty middleclass community. Yet many of the amenities and services, quality of education, not nearly what it ought to be. And thats what we focused on, andand its been a very successful ministry for the last 23 years. Cspan you have how many seats in your church . Guest twentyfive hundred, 2,500 seats in the church, and we run three services a sunday there 6 30 in the morning, 8 30, 11 15. Im at all three services, and i preach two of them. And then i run another service for young people where we have 1,500 kids, 700 a week or so attending. And thats run at the same time as the 11 15 service in the old church building. Cspan how many churches in america have 2,500 seats in them . Guest oh, i would thinkoh, i would not have any idea, but i. Cspan a lot . Guest yeah. Inot a whole lot. I think thats a pretty big number, but there are some bigger. I was in one last week over in atlanta sthat has 7,500, so theres some big churches out there. Cspan you say in your book you write all your own sermons. Guest i write every sermon. Every week, i write two sermons, and i write them from startfrom scratch, and i do that because i dont take the old material and just rehash it i thinki think people get to a point where old sermons are pretty much like leftovers. They dont want to hear the same stuff over and over. And i think, as you know, if you make a choice of a fine restaurant where you go and eat, you go and eat there because you know theres a quality to the food and a quality that you can expect to be consistent. What i try to do is give people a quality, consistent message and a new message, a fresh message, and feed them a new word every week, and it pays off. Cspan hohow do you know your preaching works . When you look out there, whatwhats the tipoff to you . Guest i think the ultimate tip is that, you know, one of the things they taught us at xerox when i was a marketing analanalyst was, you know, look at people, and if you see their heads shaking, you know that you have them in the son the same page with you. I think thats the first tipoff. I think the second thing becomeslast year alone, we had 1,100andsome new members to join the congregation. So immediately after a sermon, theres always an invitation. At that point, generally, we average about 25, 30 people a sunday, so we know that were being effective to a major degree. Cspan how much money does your ministry raise every year . Guest we raise, in the Actual Church offerings, aboutlast year, we raised 7. 2 million. And we leveraged that to about 27 million in the various other kind of Community Projects we do. So wewe dont go to government or Financial Institutions asking to give us anything, but we say to them that, with our 7. 2 million, we want to leverage these dollars and get the best that we can so that we can offer the maximum amount of services to the community thats possible. cspan if i followed you around to all the places that you have control over, what would you have . How many buildings . How many. Guest well, we would haveweweboa recent New York Times piece said that we controlled, managed or have some continvolvement in 26 different blocks. Thats about 50 million worth of development. And, of course, that includes the homes which we actually built and sold, so there are 173 of those. We no longer own them, but we do have a great deal of interest in building because we realized that stable families and stable communities generally rise in environments where people have a sense of homeownership. Homeownership gives them a stake in the community, a share of the american dream, and their responses to homeownership is quite different from the response to rental. And so we feel its important to do it. We also buy up boardedup, vacant, commercial properties, any commercial Properties Around us in that 26block area. We generally will buy those and put them back on the market, either for entrepreneurs or we use them for various programs that we have. Cspan whats the main reason that you gave up congress . Guest i gave up congress in large measure thatbecause, one, i was aat a point where the church was exploding. I needed to be there a little bit more as we moved into this new facility, andand so thats a primary issue. The other issue is, having served 11 years, i felt that it was time for me to move on. I went to congress with an idea that i could take the model of ministry i had, expand that to some degree in terms of Community Economic development, by getting projects into the community. Right now, that is the only Congressional District in the country, except maybe mr. Byrd in west virginia, im not sure, but certainly one of the few where you would have three federal projects currently being builttwo regional buildings, the fda and the faa, as well as a rail link. And that brings jobs into the community. It changes the aesthetics of the community. And what i wanted to do was take the time from being locked into this congress where i was on somebody elses schedule, to free myself, to travel this country, as i do, to teach other ministers, to be able to energize them and inspire them to turn their communities around as well. So in essence, ii traveled to about 35 different states last year either doing ministerial workshops or different kind of groups. I do a session at harvard with 40 ministers that they bring in in the summertime. And that allows me to be able to help to get them to see a new approach to dealing with ministry, which is community development. Cspan the way of the bootstrapperwhered you get thatthat phrase, bootstrapper . Guest well, it stuck with me over the years. When i was growing up, people used to talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and then we went through a period where it was almost presented as a negative if you talk about bootstraps, because we got into this sense that you cant ask people who are victims to lift themselves up by bootstraps if they have no boots. Well, i began to think about this and came to the realization that coming out of my kind of background and watching the people who were able to rise to level oflevels of success, the question was not about not having bootstraps but, in fact, knowing that we all had bootstraps, and our bootstraps were our dreams, our imaginations, our sense of destiny, what we wanted to do with our lives and teachers who challenged us to look within ourself and find our inner strength and grow from those strengths, as opposed to what others perceived to be our weaknesses. And so out of that challenge, i felt it was important to try to reshape the notion of what bootstrapping is, to put it into some kind of language that people could understand and connect with a historical past where people did not give up so easily or allow themselves to rise to points of depression simply because they did not have, as measured by material things, but understand that within them, they have the strength to be able to overcome various kinds of backgrounds, various kinds of discriminations and be able to do something positive with their life. Cspan how old are your four kids . Guest my kids are 22, the one that just graduated last sunday; one is 20, who is in college; one is 18, who is in college; and then i have a 14yearold who is finishing his first year of high school. Cspan you say you bought a house in atlanta for your two daughters. Guest right. Cspan and your sons going to join them there. Guest thats correct. Well, its a sensible thing to do. Once youyouyou know, they both go to spelman college, and now that hes at morehouse, i would have been paying room and board for three kids, so this way, with buying a housebecause i teach in the church homeownership and use of money so that you invest in appreciating assets. So when we did the analysis and realized that paying room and board would not get us any tax benefits or longterm equity, it just made sense, if they were all going to be in one city, put them in a house together. Now their problem is how theyre going to live together in terms of how they share the food and the bathrooms and so forth, but at least theyre in the house. Cspan you have an Investment Club in your church. Guest thats right. Right. Cspan how did an Investment Club get into a church . Guest well, what happened was, about a year and a half ago, i had a meeting. I meet on monday nights with about 120 men, and i was looking at the stock market asat that point, i guess it was doing about 7,000. And i said to the men that night, you know, the stock market about three or four years ago was doing 4,000, and people were rejoicing about it. Today the market hit 7,000. Does that mean anything to anyone in this room . How many of you have investments in stocks and bonds . only three hands went up. And when thatwhen i saw that, i said, my god, i have to do something about this. so i asked them where their investments were, and to my surprise, the majority of them talked about either their home, which was great, or an insurance policy. And i related to them that if you look at the fine print, insurance policies pay 3 1 4 percent, 3 1 2 percent after you die. And the rest of them had their money in savings, and i said, how can you be in a city like new york and not understand that you can be a player, you can be involved . we keep talking about being a people of poverty. Were not a people of poverty. We have to learn to take advantage of opportunities. So i started one Investment Club, and they grewit grew so fast that we had to skind of branch out. Now we have 12 clubs. They focus on various areas, one in teltelecommunications, real estate, utilities. Everything the market is involved in, we have a club, basically, that deals with it, andand its been very good, very positive as a learning experience. Cspan you point out in your book, though, that the bible says that money is the root of all evil. How do you teachhow do you teach thethethe money thing . Guest wellwell, the bible says the love of money is the root of all evil. Cspan ah. Guest its a matter of priority. Its a matter of where you put your treasure and how you manage that treasure, so that if money becomes your predominant guiding force, in reality, you will do almost anything to get it and almost anything to keep it, even if it means ruining the lives of other people. If you put it in the proper perspective, though, you realize that in a Capitalistic Society that you have an opportunity to make the kind of investments, starting with homeownershipi think thats just one great starting block because it builds equity without you having to put much into it other than whatever you do to maintain and keep the home up, but also beyond that, once you build that equity, you have a primary asset out of which you can draw from, send kids to college, start a business, do whatever you want to do. And so it is not quite an issue about money itself. Its how you deal with it, and my concept is simply you dont have to wait to face the eschatic, logical reality of death in order to enjoy the privileges of heaven. Everybody ought to enjoy the privileges of their definition of heaven right here, and you cant do that without money. Cspan how many people belong to your parish . Guest i have 10,850 as of december 31st. Its grown considerably since then, butand so its about 11,000a little over 11,000 members. Cspan how many schools do you have . Guest one school for 480 kids to 500, depending on the mix, but we keep a base of 480, and about 150 on the waiting list. Cspan whats the name of the church . Guest the Allen Ame Church in jamaica, new york. Cspan who was allen . Guest Richard Allen was a person who bought his own freedom. He had been a slave in delaware and was able to buy his freedom and move to philadelphia, and on a particular sunday, as they were worshipping in the balcony, they made a decisionhe and those who were his followersto come down to the altar and worship to pray. As they got on their knees to pray, they were physically removed from the church, st. Georges Methodist Church in philadelphia. So he went a block away and bought a blacksmith shop, and in that blacksmith shop, they were able to start a church, and eventually those free slaves built a church from the ground up, which still stands today and serves as the Mother Church of the denomination. Soand then Richard Allen also, inin philadelphia, when they had the plague that swept through that city, it was his group that worked to bury people and developed a Burial Association and did work for the city that was historical, and out of that, a denomination grew that has about three million members now. Cspan how long have you been there . Guest ive been in allen church for 23 years. I came in 1976. I had been the dean of students at Boston University, and a bishop asked me if i would come andand take the church and i did, and iat that point, i thought i was headed toward college presidency, and as fate would have it, new york has turned out to be a great and wonderful blessing for me. So its been 23 good years. Cspan now could you do both jobs while you were in congress . Guest i pastored, yes. I kept the church while i was there, and i was a member of the house, and as i said, iti committedi commuted every night and came back in the mornings. I helped with homework at night or went to the church and worked and then dropped the kids off on the way to the airport and commuted back here. And so i felt that it was important to be there for the kids. They did not need a politician who had no relationship to the family, and so i made it my business to make sure that unless we got out after 8 00 from congress, i was home. Otherwise, i was on the next shuttle on my way tototo my house. Cspan were those two fulltime jobs . Guest they wereitsthey were two fulltimemore than fulltime jobs because, you know, it became a matter of time management so that when i was in the city, i learned that you dont sit at a banquet or a luncheon for three hours. You actually sit as long as is necessary, do what you have to do and move on. So it was a matter of kind of mixing those schedules, and it worked out very well, as members in the church were very cooperative and supportive. But i also came back and preached every sunday morning. During that time, i took very few outside engagements, so they did not feel that i had disconnected from the church but, in fact, that i was still pastor. Cspan just quickquick question on theon thetheon the rules of it all. If you were wanting to be a lawyer and have a fulltime job in new york city and also do that, you wouldnt have been allowed to do that, would you . Guest under the rules at various pointsyou know, the rules kept changing while i was there. At a point, you could have been a lawyer, as later, the moverules were modulated for some of the members who came as medical doctors, but at a point, you couldnt do it, and then by the time i left, you could. But there was always a provision that allowed a clergyman to continue to pastor. I could not receive a salary from the church that exceeded 15 percent of my salary, but otherwise, i couldi could do the functions there. Cspan you were born where . Guest i was born in los angeles at the end of my fathers military term. He served with thethree years in the army, but houston is what i called home because i was less than six months when they moved back home, and so thats where i grew up. Cspan howyou say 13 kids in the family. What did your mother and father do . Guest my father was a janitor most of his life. My mother was a housewife. My father worked two and three jobs at a time because he was determined that we would not go on welfare and that mother would not have to work. And so what he did was, he had a day job, and hed come home about 3 30, wed eat as a family, unless we were involved in something at school, and then he would go to the night job, taking one of the boys with him, and, in essence, at the night job, he would sleep after showing us what needed to be done, and we learned how to do Office Cleaning from the time i was about 10 years old until i graduated and left for high school. My brother had done it before me. My brothers who came behind me had to do it. So we learned that kind of work ethic. Mother was home. She taught us allboys and girlshow to cook, wash, iron, sew. We could do everything in the house, and the house was clean when we left in the mornings on the bus. And then what we did after we went, whoever did not go with him to help clean up the offices went with him on the paper route. Hed come home and sleep about three or four hours and get up and we had the morning paper route in the community. And, of course, one would sit in the backseat and roll the papers, put them over the seat, and then he would drive through the community throwing the newspapers. So what we learned from him was a very strong work ethic and a sense of responsibility for family. What we learned from mother was a real keen sense of what it means to love as a family, and we also learned from her how you not only assume responsibility but how you manage your time to get things done that you would not otherwise get done. Cspan are there 13 or includeare the other 12 still alive . Guest no, no. We have eighteight who are living now, four boys and four girls, most of whom are in houston. Cspan and where are you in the age . Guest i am number threenumber three in the age category, so i automatically assumed a great deal of responsibility, and as the oldest boy after my brother left to go to the air force and the sister between us had died from jaundice when she was about four years old, so that most of the responsibility fell on me for a few years. But, you know, youyou assume those responsibilities as a child. You grow up with that. And i would confess that i became a workaholic as a child, or a bootstrapper, and that followed me for the rest of my life. Cspan who was wilberforce . Guest wilberforce was a Freedom Fighter andin england, and made some declarations about education and the value of Higher Education and then, in a trip to america, started the first africanamerican college in this country. And so i went to Wilberforce University because he started the college with a denomination that im a part of, the ame church, out in xenia, ohio, and because i had accepted the ministry at the age of 15, i felt that it was imperative that i go to the denominational school. Plus, if i had stayed in houston and gone to Texas Southern or prairie view, i probably would have run track or something, but i probably wouldnt have graduated, just given the reality of what most of the kids whowho left my community and went to school did. So i made a decision to leave home, which my mother didnt understand why you had to go that far away for education, but i did it, and so i went to wilberforce, and it was a good education and went on to seminary from there. Cspan what year did you graduate . Guest i graduated in 671967. Cspan and you lived in a house there that had some special meaning. Guest yeah. Ii lived withthere was a teacher, mrs. Ware, who was a french teacher, and she had a heart attack. She could not take care of the responsibilities of her house, so she put a notice up that she was looking for someone to live in and take care of the house, so mothers training paid off, and im glad she made no distinction between boy jobs and girl jobs. We all learned to do everything and so i moved in, and i kept the floors andand washed the dishes and cooked for her and made the bed and did everything and basically took care of her. She was about 70 years old, and i felt very good about not only helping her but i didnt have to pay rent, so it was good for me cspan where did you meet your first wife . Guest i met my first wife in a church ini think it was middletown, ohio, iin thatin that region, andbeautiful lady, and her father was a minister, and we got married very young, too young. Everybody told us. Cspan how young . Guest i was 21 when i got married. And young because i was still in seminary, so i did not have a fulltime job. I was a social worker in the Child Development center, and she was in school, so i made sure she stayed in school. So what happenedonce we got married, the stresses and strains of finance and so forth just weighed heavily on us. When i got the offer to come tand then i took a job at reynolds tobacco my last year of seminary, and then i got the offer to come to Lincoln University as an associate dean, so she went there with me. But we were still in stress because our debts had mounted, and the marriage didnt survive so what i do in the book is talk about the fact that no matter how hard you try, it is always possible that youre going to have some crises in your life, and you have to learn how, if you have a bootstrappers spirit, to really live beyond the crises and not scspend your lifetime blaming the other person. I dont blame her for what happened. She doesnt blame me. We had a chance to sit down a few years later and talk about it and, you know, i think wewe didnt take it asas difficult as many people take aa separation and a divorce. And then i waited four years because i didnt want to bring the baggage of that marriage into a new marriage, and ive been married now for almost 24 years, and thats been good. Cspan so you worked for a Tobacco Company for a while. Guest then i went to xerox. Cspan xerox. Guest . As a marketing analyst, and then i was recruited to lincoln by my former college dean. I was associate dean. Cspan in pennsylvania. Guest in pennsylvania as the associate dean there. And then Boston University asked me to come to direct the Martin Luther king africanamerican center. I did that all three years because the second year, the chaplain died. They asked me to take over as interim chaplain, and then in the third year, the dean of students lost his job, and i was also the dean of students aton the campus. So it was great for me because one of the things id said to dr. Silber, who was the president when i came to bu, was i would take the king center job, but i dont want to be relegated to mere africanamerican jobs. I want to be a part of this campus and community and university, and i think i bring skills that would allow me to be useful here. So immediately after the chaplains death, he called me and put me in the chaplain and elevated me to dean of students, so it was a good experience. Cspan and thethe year again that you went to allen church . Guest i went to allen church in 1976, when the bishop asked me if i would come and pastor fulltime, which i had never done and pretty much had made up my mind i wouldnt do that. Aas i said, i thought id be a college president. But it seemed like a great opportunity. It had about 1,100 members then, active, and about 1,400 on the rolls. So it was a good, strong, solid church with a foundation. And the first question i asked was, whatwere they willing to be involved in education. And we started the process of fundraising for the school, which we opened in 82. Cspan but later on in the book, you talk about something that wasnt a lot of fun for you. And im just gonna read you a little bit. Guest mmhmm. Cspan . And get you to tell us more about it. You say, the writing of this book is a means of bringing some closure to this chapter of painful experiences. I find comfort in the ability to forgive and move on. Im convinced that this whole episode was all a part of gods plan for our life and for the future growth and development of the allen church. what are you talking about . Guest well, what happened there was we had aas the church grew and if you know, not only churches but almost any organization, when you have as rapid a growth as we were having, we ran into some situations with a few of the officers, who, basically, initially liked the growth, but then reached a point where they were concerned because many of the people were coming with different ranges of skills that they didnt have. I mean, we had mbas and lawyers and all kinds of people. They saw themselves, unfortunatelyi guess, the biblical analogy would be as grasshoppers among giants, which was not true because they were the treasurer or the secretary of the board and so forth andandand the chief officers. But they did not see themselves as fitting in as the church grew. And what essentially they did was went to Internal Revenue and said i was stealing money. Now the interesting thing about that is when i came we had much more of a cashbased operation, and i changed the cashbased operations to voucherbased operations, where you actually had to have a voucher to get any money. And so we moved away from that operation. So all of the operations then were checkbased. You had to have a check to do any kind of business with the church. So it was an accusation that i dont think they expected to ever reach the level of a federal trial. But by this time, i had been elected to congress, and, of course, i was in the public light. And so my wife and i went to a federal trial with these accusations about having stolen church money. They subpoenaed every organization, the 11 corporations of the church. We spent about 2 million defending ourselves and the church, only to go to trial, and after four weeks having the Justice Department drop its own case based on the fact that they did not have enough evidence. Well, when i say it affected the church in terms of growth, the daily reporting in the paper was so positive because as those persons who had made the accusations got on the witness stand, they in fact testified for us because they begin to talk about the success of the church. They looked at checks and said, yes, we wrote the checks. i wrote no checks. So all the checks were written to me, whether they were for vacation or whatever they were for. And when the trial was over, two people from the jury came and joined the church. And from that, when people that seen what this church had done in community development, the church began to grow. I mean, our fastest growth came the year after we had had that trial. And that year was phenomenal growth. So i think it was a blessing for the church overall, even though it was a very painful, traumatic experience. Cspan gogo back to thethe beginning of all this because you talk about somebody thatthe church made you hire an aide. Guest yeah. These three guys had made me hire aaan Administrative Assistant. And the Administrative Assistant put herself in a position where she basically took credit for the accomplishments of the church, and with these three personswhich was shocking to me, because, i mean, these were like brothers to me. We were very close. Cspan did you know her before . Guest did not know her before she came into the church. Cspan how old was she . Guest about 20in her late 20s, i think. And i was in my late 30s at that point. Cspan and this was what year . Guest this was inwe hired her in 1983, and i terminated her in 1985, and got elected in 86. So. Cspan and she went to thei mean, how does this work . Inwhat im getting atbecause i want to ask you how you bootstrapped your way up in that project. Guest yeah. Well, she seemed to havei think she started the process and i think they basically supported her in terms of getting it to the federalto the federal level. For some reason they saw fit, there wasi think it really had also to do with the fact that i had defeated a state senator, who then took a role on the state commission on investigation, which was a special commission something like, i guess, the independent counsel, whose responsibility was to investigate corruption in politics. So nothing occurred until the time i got elected to a political office. And when i defeated himremember, i had not been in politics. I ran for the office. He was the state senator who was supposed to come to congress. And an assemblyperson ran who was supposed to replace him. And somebody else was supposed to replaceso i basically messed up the pecking order by running out of order, having never served in the political office. And from that state Investigation Commission she made some contacts, and from that relationship, managed to get to the feds. And before long, the feds were subpoenaing and everything. And i didnt even know about it until it began to come out in the newspapers. Cspan was there actan actual indictment . Guest yes. They werewe were indicted. Cspan your wife was indicted. Guest my wife was indicted as a coconspirator or cocoinvolved person in this process. Cspan whats that feel like . Guest well, my wife has a lot more hard feelings against people than i do. Ii think ive been a lot more forgiving in this process. But i dont think my wife will ever be totally forgiving of it, because these people were so close to us that we could not believe that this could happen. We could believe that the young lady could do it. And as you know, she evenwe didnt even know where the Sexual Harassment charges were coming from, because shes beenhad been out of the church a couple of years. And then we realized that all of this was one big case and that the level of involvement had to do with basically bebesmirching me in such a way that by the time they got their trial to court i would not be as clean as my reputation was. Cspan how does this kind of thing happen in gods house . Guest well, it happens all the time. I mean, ii think churches are no different from other organizations. Youre dealing with human beings who have the same basic needs that Peter Drucker and others in management talk aboutrecognition and, you know, a need toto be involved in a process where they have some sense of power and authority in that relationship. And so i think what happens is that at a point when people get power in a church and theyve had it for a long time, and you then begin to stretch the band, so to speak, by including other people, they begin to have that feeling that they are less value than they were. And now as you begin to expand the base of leadership, it becomes a difficult problem because people are no longer looking to two or three people as leaders, theyre looking at a number of leaders, aa ma myriad of leaders. And that becomes difficult for people who have historically had the primary resprole ofof authority. Cspan on page 193 you write, i began to experience chest pains, so severe at times that i could not stand up straight. guest that is correct. Cspan when did that happen . Guest that happened during this crisis, leading up to the crisis. Iid reached a point where if i got out of the bed in the morning i was leaning almost to the level of my stomach. I mean, ii could not stand up straight because i was in severe pain. Went to doctors, and they said, theres nothing physically wrong with you. It has to be nerverelated. and when they said that, i realized that at a pointyou know, im the kind of guy who generally accepts a lot of things. My wife says i do it to the point until im painted in a corner and then i react. Well, at that point, i realized i was in the corner. And thats when i began to move and terminated the young lady and move these persons off of the board and decided that i was gonna get my health together. And i did by just making decisions that i had long delayed in making and realized i had to do it. Cspan what do you recommend to somebody in your bootbootbootstrap philosophy when they get themselves in a position like that . Guest what i recommend to people in thatin that stage is that, one, you confront the problem. Dont act as if the problem is not there and try to carry the burden of that problem by yourself. Physically, we dont know how weak we really are until were in a crisis and we have to confront it rather than let it defeat us. And it will destroy us if we dont. And what i tell people in the book essentially is that once you confront that problem, you make your decisions, you move on those decisions. Whatever the cost of it, you have to pay that cost. And somehow or another, in the end, if youre right, i tend to believe you will come out better than you were if you didnt confront the situation. Cspan you give us a couple glimpses of your personal choice in life, like driving all night long from atlanta to new york. Guest yeah. Yeah. Cspan . With your cds. Tell us about that. Guest yeah. Well, you know, what iwhat i realized after the kids started moving to atlanta to go to college, i did not want them on the highway driving their own cars. So in order to move the cars back and forth between new york andand atlanta in the summertime, i would drive. Well, id leave like 10 00 at night, and i can get there by 10 the next morning. And what i say in the book is essentially i drive the way i lead my life. I like to be in the fast lane. And so leaving at that hour, im able to drive much faster than i can during the daytime, and i find that the police generally are, you know, resting or whatever theyre doing at that time of night. And at the same time, as i see the clusters of light ahead, i just wind my way around until im back in the front. I figure i cant have an accident unless i fall asleep if im in the lead. And thats the way i do in life iii kind of maneuver my way around. When i see the boxesi call them the boxesand when the boxes are in the way, rather than getting in the boxes, i find myself move aroundmoving around them, doing whatever is necessary to get to that point where im in the fast lane. I get upset when people drive slow in my lane. They justyou know, in the book i talk about the people who wont and the people who do. And people who wont generally get in the way of people who do they want you to do for them, but they wont do anything for themselves. And then they just get in your way and try to block you. So thats the way i lead life is thatmoving all the time. Cspan and you say that in the middle of youryour legal crisis that youand it was in the middle of a campaign, tooyou metsecret meeting at la guardia airport. Guest thats right. Cspan . That turned into a publicity deal before it was all over. What was that all about . Guest that wasyeahwell, what happened was, because of my denomination, there was about to be a meeting at which the young lady had threatened that she was gonna come andand essentially blow up the meetingi meanyou know, with some accusations and things from the floor. So that the bishop asked if i would meet with themi met with them in a public place, the la guardia airport, without the knowledge thatwith this other investigation that we were not knowledgeable of going on that they had, in fact, set me up. So that when i looked around, there werethere were cameras there from local newspapers. And so i just left. I mean, i just made a decision that this was not the way this was going to be resolved. And i had made a decision i was not going to give money for a situation from which i was innocent. And so after that, i had no more meetings. I just made a decision that whatever came through the court process, id have to deal with. Cspan when was the trial . Guest my trial started in 1991. My trial was inoh, we started that trial in the summer of 91. Cspan how long did it last . Guest my trial lasted four weeks almost. Cspan what. Guest three and half weeks. Cspan what was the verdict . Guest the verdictthere was no verdict. The Justice Departmentthe judge said that if they could not present evidence in the next week that he would drop the charges. But they came in the next week and asked for a dismissal of the case. Cspan but you say they went on to have civil action in a. Guest theythey came and brought civil action for the same things for which they had brought criminal action, which me and my wife paid about 200,000. And it was in things that werewe thought was ridiculous because the average pastor gets paid vacation pay, various kinds of meetings. The church supported those things. The problem was they were not documented. And so over a sevenyear period, they came up with what they considered to be seven 200,000 or so worth of civil charges. And i think that was in large measure because they spent 7 million to 10 million investigating us. And in the end, i think they had to show something for all of that money and all of that time that they had put into the case. Cspan and you say that youyou paid off a lot of your debt, but you still have 400,000 in legal debts . Guest i have about 400,000 now in legal debts that i still owe. And, you know, every now and then we have a little fundraiser so we can keep the interest up and, you know, itll get paid over time. And ii justi dont worry about it now. I just feel that its gonna get paid when we can pay it. Some miracles gonna happen and its gonna happen. Cspan how did you get rid of these chest pains . Guest my chest pains just kind of dissipated after i got to a point of confronting the issues and realizing that i had to go on with life and move these people out of the way, almost miraculously. I was able to stand, the pains were gone and i started an exercise program. And since that point, ive been in probably the betterbest health that ive ever been in in my life. Because after paying twice to health spas and not going, i decided to bring equipment in the house and start exercising. And that has made all the difference in the world. So at 5 30 in the morning, i do a section here called stretch; 5 30 in the morning, im up and im on the equipment and now my wife is doing the same thing. And changed my eating habits, andand so now ii offer as a means of dealing with some of our issues, aaa method for physical, emotional and Spiritual Health in synergy with one another, as well as changing ones diet to be able to better cope. Because i work 16 hours a day, and i cant afford to carry the burden of either overweight or lack of being in good shape. Cspan as you know, besides telling your own personal story, theres a lot of advice in here. Guest right. Cspan nine steps on the bootstrapping thing. Whenwhen did you think that you should do a book . Guest ii have been thinking of a book for, i guess, about the last seven or eight years. Ive had people like dr. Cohen up at Union Seminary and gayraud wilmore, who has written extensively, to tell me i should do a book on the work that id done in the ministry. When i came out of congress, i realized that this was the time i wrote my doctoral dissertation traveling back and forth to washington, buying all the books at the dining table and writing all night long and then flying back to washington in the morning. And then after leaving congress, i said to myself, now if i could do that while i was in congress and i keep sayingprocrastinating about writing a book, why cant i now, before i get too engaged in too many other things, begin the process of writing a book . and so in february 98, two months out of having left congress, i began to sit and put together an outline, not knowing exactly which way i would go with it. But my former chief of staff, marshall mitchell, introduced to me to imar hutchins, whos a book agent. And we began to sit. And i told him what i wanted to do. I wanted to write this book about bootstrapping. They thought it was a great idea. And we began to market a proposal. And by, i think, aprilend of april, first of mayharpercollins had approached me and said they were interested in looking at me as an author. And so we came to a deal, andand heres the book. Cspan who is Donna Marie Williams . Guest Donna Marie Williams is a young lady that they gave me to help in editing the book, who did a tremendous job in trying to keep me focused on not only shaping the outline but gave me outlines and details on how she felt we could make a book that was marketable, and in the final analysis, giving me the leeway to just go on and write myself. But i think she laid out a good track for us in terms of just an outline that we could work from. Cspan ive got to ask you about some of the books shes written before. Guest yes. Cspan the sexy womans guide to using abstinence for rechargingno, nolet me justsensual celibacy the sexy womans guide to using abstinence for recharging your spirit, discovering your passions, achieving greater intimacy in your next relationship. Guest she said to me that i would not accept her ideas about it; therefore, weve had no major discussion on that. No, i have not read that book. Cspan and blackeyed peas for the soul, and finally, sister feelgood. Guest yeah, i think on her blackeyed peas for the soul was just kind of a playoff of the chicken soup for the soul model in terms of giving advice to people. And the last book, im not sure shes quite finished yet. It may be on the shelves, but im not sure. Cspan you say in the book you also you wrote as early as 4 am in the morning. Guest oh, yeah. I wrotei generally do my best writing after midnight. Between 12 and 6, i get a lot done. Cspan how do youhow do you survive . I mean. Guest well, you know, ititsits a strange thing. Imy adrenaline gets to flowing when im in the middle of a project, whether thats building and developing something or whether its writing. If thats my focus, im able to do that. And generally, during those times ill work on getting a nap for an hour or so during the day before i go into my evening schedule. And again, i find that being in good physical shape means that i need less sleep. Cspan now i wrote down every name as i went through the book that you mention in there. Im just gonna mention a bunch of them and have you tell me why you put them in the book. Guest ok. Cspan cathy sumler. Guest cathy sumler is a young lady who, in our church, started liturgical dance ministry. And its a ministry that was not known particularly in the black church in a major kind of way. Now she has about 350 young women who are part of that dance ministry. And it is the most phenomenal thing in the world. It starts with little kids, and then intermediates and then young adults, and now we have a senior company. So she has five Companies Inclusive of men now. And shes just done a phenomenal job, and thats why shes there. Cspan john glenn. Guest john glenn is there because i think john glenn represents something positive for me. Whenwhen the firstwhen they did the first space shuttle, i was a kid in high school. The teacher made us not only watch it but do book reports on it. John glenns name was prominent then. And then to go and get elected to congress and find john glenn in the senate, and then to see him at a latter age saying he wanted to go back in the shuttle and do it, i felt that was important, so people could see that youre not restricted by age. He had done it when he was young. He came back and did it when he was older. And i respect him highly. Cspan which gill took this picture, and who is gill . Guest mr. Charles gill is a local photographer in my community who has done most of my photography over the years. And gill started his own business. He left a job in the private sector and decided he would start his own photography business, and he built that business. I write about him in my chapter on building a lasting legacy. He took one of his sonshe had three sons, one of them decided to work with him. Now he runs the business with his wife and hes passed it on to him, and i think thats a very positive story. Cspan dr. Ben carson. Guest dr. Ben carson is a person who discovered, by working with a particular young man that had been given up medfor medical reasons, and the guy did more than what a doctor would be expected to do by staying with the kid and bringing about a cure toto his life which transformed his own life. Cspan candy lightner. Guest candy lightner, i think, is a young lady who was involved in trying to get a mortgage. Went through a lot of discrimination, but was so determined to get it, that she stuck it out until she had gotten it. Cspan vesta. Guest vesta, of course, as you know, is aa singer. Vesta is one of those persons who struggled with trying to lose weight for a number of years and could not and then at a point made a decision that he was gonna do it andand was finally able to get his life together and do what he had been croprocrastinating about. Cspan chris rock. Guest chris rock is one of those guys whos included because he demonstrates that success does not come without necessaryily having some failures. His initial faforay into trying to being a comedian and trying to follow the lead of eddie murphy, he found himself failing at it. And then suddenly, his career took off because he kept on trying. So i have him here cause i think thats aa true bootstrapping spirit. Cspan fred smith. Guest fred smith is the founder of fedex. And my wife is from memphis, her familys there. So we get back and forth. I remember when fedex was nothing. And as i go back and forth to memphis and seeing the explosion of that company, i realize that this was a true bootstrapper. He thought he had an idea, and he used that idea to develop a whole revolutionary approach toto delivering packages and mail and so forth. Cspan how much did you think about the use of all these names through it . Guest well, actually, donna and i had a lot of discussions about them. And as she threw various names out and we talked about what they did, i felt that it was important to kind of include them inin the book, to make itto give it some substance and people understand that everybody whos a bootstrapper was not born with a silver spoon, but they came with the creative idea, or they gave themself in service to somebody, or they did something special. One of the real special ones in there that you didnt name was freddie dill. Freddie dill came out of georgia with a thirdgrade education, couldnt read or write. And he saw people losing their hubcaps because of the potholes in new york and decided that he would start repairing them. Now he has one of the largest tire distributor businesses in america. Soand now he reads and writes and not only that, but i go in his office and hes sitting at his computer looking at his stock investments. So, i meanand thats a real bootstrapping spirit. Cspan you and donna went to visit mrs. Jewel houston. Guest thats right. Cspan where is she . Guest mrsjewel houston is in houston, texas. Shes so special in my life because when i entered the ninth grade and went into high school, i was also engaged in a lot of church activities. She was a youth director for the houston area for my denomination. She took me into the book store and gave me a position so that after lunch i had to come to the book store every day. She was sort of the book steward, who managed the books for the whole school. What she did, though, was made me do my homework while i was in the book store. And so that kind of vigilance in looking out for mebecause she said she did not want me to lose my potential or get caught up in the things in high school that could destroy my ability to ultimately succeed. And so sheand then in the evenings, she drove me around to various youth meetings. On saturdays, shed pick me up and take me to those meetings because daddy was working all the time. He had one car, and he didnt allallow entertainment miles on it. So she would drive me to those meetings. She propelled me into positions as ypd director for the city and, ultimately, for the state, and youtyouth of the year for the state. And so shes special because shes that teacher who took the time toto help make my life. Cspan now as you well know, the conservatives started to like you when you came out for School Choice. Guest thats correct. Thats right. Cspan why did you come out for School Choice . Guest well, i came out for School Choice not because i thought it was a conservative repubor republican idea. I thought it was an idea that reflected what i had done. It goes back to your walking the walk and talking the talk. I developed a school in 82 because i felt that our kids were not getting a quality education from the system in the community in which we lived. And so my reality became one of being able to produce a better product out ofand not testing kids inthan the Public School was doing in my community. And i see vouchers as a way of either forcing the system to do the necessary reforms to give the same quality of education in the suburin the urban communities that they do in the suburbs, or forcing them to have to compete for students, which i think vouchers is designed to do. In the homestead, ultimately, the system will reform itself and provide a better education for the majority of kids. Cspan at what moment on a daytoday basis in your ministry do you say, this is why im doing this . Guest i never say this is why, it just kind of evolves. If i see a problem, i think there has to be a solution to it. Cspan when do you enjoy it the most . Guest i enjoy it the most at the end, when i can see that the effort, the energy, the time, the prayers, all that i put into it actually paid off. Cspan among all of these names, who is your fmost important person in your life . Guest well, outside of mother and daddy, i think, mrs. Houston, because of the amount of time she spent with me, the amount of time she spent encouraging me, making sure that i did not keep words like cant in my vocabulary. I had to expunge that word. Making me understand that i was not a secondclass citizen, but that it would only cost a little more for me to go first class. Cspan andnow we only have a short time, i shouldnt do this to you. Howwhats elaine like, your wife . Guest my wife ismy wife is a tremendous lady. As you know, she also has an earned doctorate. But more than that, it is her honesty, her candor, her support. Even when we disagree about what i should do, as was the case in running for congress. As you might see in the book, i had now set an 8 00 service, i was not going to run because she wasnt in favor. But she showed up between that and the 11 00 service and said i had to run. And she supported me in the years that i was there. Cspan whered you meet her . Where did you meet her . Guest i met elaine at a church in boston. We were going toin cambridge, massachusetts, as a matter of fact. She was a member of the choir. I was a member of the ministerial staff. And shes just such a dynamic lady. I mean, she speaks in her own right. She travels the country doing workshops and ministries. We do marriage enrichment workshops together. And i encouraged her to go and get her doctorate, and she did that. I think shes my partner as much as my wife and the best friend that i have. Cspan now what will have to happen to make this book a success . Guest i think whatll have to happenhas to happen with making this book a success is people read it and tell other people about it, because the action steps there have no gender specific areas, nothing that is about color and race. It speaks about how you as an individual get your life together by following the three basic outlines, and that is activate; and after you have activated, execute; and after execution, then you accelerate to do more than what you consider the possibility of you being able to do as an individual. Cspan our guest has been floyd flake, former congressman, currently pastor of the Allen Ame Church, which is located in jamaica, queens, about seven miles from the Kennedy Airport . Guest thats correct. Cspan thank you very much for joining us. Guest thank you for allowing me to come. We conclude tonights programming at 11 00 p. M. Eastern with panel on the russian