Brian Lehrer: Voice and music of Stephanie Mills, one of her classics, I Have Learned to Respect the Power of Love, right? We're coming into the segment with that one because Mill's new song, which I really wanted to play, called Let's Do the Right Thing is still under wraps until Saturday when it will officially drop. Saturday, because that's Juneteenth, so we will wait on that, but if Stephanie Mills long ago learned to respect the power of love, so did our other guest now who will be hosting the release party for the new song on Saturday at Riverside church.

It's the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village well-known for her theology of revolutionary love. She'll even have a book coming out later this year with the title, Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World. We can always use a little more rule-breaking kindness in this world and to learn to respect the power of love, too. What a treat to have with us, Rev. Jacqui Lewis and Stephanie Mills, Rev. Jacqui, always great to have you on and Ms. Mills, it's an honor. Welcome to WNYC.

Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Lewis: Hi, Brian. I'm so glad to be back with you. It's Jacqui. Hi, Stephanie.

Stephanie Mills: I'll see you soon. I'm on the plane. They're going to make me get off this phone in a few minutes.

Brian: Oh, boy.

Rev. Jacqui: I know.

Brian: Let me start with you before the airline enforcers come and get you. The coming song, Let's Do the Right Thing, the title will bring to mind the Spike Lee movie for many people, want to describe what people will get to hear on Saturday?

Stephanie: Oh, it's really inspiring. I got a call from Charles, and Charles wanted me to write a song for a show, and then we didn't do that, and then I just made it more urban for me. It's about the community, in particular, the Black community coming together and doing the right things for us, and helping us, lift us up, show more love, Black on Black crime, I want that just to stop. It's just, we need to do the right thing for us. That's really what my song is about. Just giving love to our community.

Brian: I read that you hadn't recorded a studio track since 2004, and thought you had put that part of your life behind you. Is that true and what brought you back?

Stephanie: I had no intention of going in the studio because I love to tour. I love to sing live and do my live shows. I really wasn't interested in going to the studio because I didn't think I would be able to find someone who was a lover of live music like I was, but happy that I happen to have a really phenomenal keyboard player who co-wrote the song with me, and produced the song, Marcus Malone, and it just worked out that I was able to get it done, but Charles really inspired us. Charles Wright inspired that, he started this.

Brian: Marcus Miller's an amazing producer, too.

Stephanie: Yes, he is.

Brian: You're probably best known for your love songs and playing Dorothy in The Wiz. This turn to something more political is new for you. What inspired you to be public facing with this side of you after all this time doing other things?

Stephanie: With everything that's gone on, I felt like we were terrorized as a nation, and everything that was going on, the police brutality, all the murders of the transgenders, and the women of our community, I just needed to write something and express, because I was really saddened by all the brutality and by hate that's going on in this country. I think music should reflect what's going on and that's what Marcus and I tried to do. His name is not Marcus Miller, it's Marcus Malone.

Brian: Marcus Malone, to keep our Marcus music producers straight. Rev. Jacqui, I haven't meant to ignore you, just, we weren't sure when Stephanie Mills was going to get kicked off her phone by the airplane-

Stephanie: I think I'll get kick off now. I think I have to go now.

Brian: You got to go now? Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Good luck with the--

Stephanie: Thank you. Jacqui, I'll see you in an hour or two.

Rev. Jacqui: I can't wait to see you, my friend. Bye. Thank you.

Stephanie: Bye-bye. Much love.

Brian: I'm glad we got that far with her before she had to go. I realize she's at the airport. Rev. Jacqui, you want to tell us about this musical spiritual historical event happening on Saturday?

Rev. Jacqui: I will. I will be so glad to, Brian. First of all, let me just say that Charles Randolph-Wright is the other producer that Stephanie's referring to. They are personal friends, and Charles is my brother from another mother, if you will, a member of Middle Church and producer of movies, art, TV, commercials, theater, and he actually inspired Stephanie to get back into the studio. That he had wanted her to write a song for a piece that he did, Delilah on OWN, and that didn't work out for them, but this I think, was the right outcome. I traffic in spiritual right outcomes, Brian.

This is our Juneteenth Now celebration that will be live-streamed on middlechurch.org. It is in partnership with the Riverside Church, because as you know, our sanctuary burned down, and they wanted to help us to do something both to celebrate Black resilience, resistance, and joy, but also both of our congregations, Brian, are multiethnic congregations. Black-led multi-ethnic congregations.

We thought that's a really powerful statement that we are white, Black, Chinese, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, queer and straight, both congregations, so diverse, but also really standing for the value of Black lives. Juneteenth, of course, stands for the value of Black freedom. We're saying, Juneteenth Now: Get Us Free. We are not free, but we're going to be, so we're excited to have Loretta Devine, and Tituss Burgess, and Tisha Campbell, and Stephanie Mills, and so many others coming to help us celebrate this moment.

Brian: Can people just show up there on Saturday or do they need reservations or anything?

Rev. Jacqui: Yes, actually there's a few people. There's room for 50 live. We're still doing COVID protection at Riverside and there's room. There's still room, there's still about 20 seats. Please go to middlechurch.org, and look for the Juneteenth ticket. Brian, it's a fundraiser and a friend raiser, and a let's say, consciousness raiser, but our tickets range from $19 to, are you ready? $1,619, because that's when Africans landed here on the shore.

We are really wanting to, with The 1619 Project, we're so proud of that work, to keep this conversation about African American life, African American resistance, resilience. Brian, the space between where we are today, the violence, the lack of similar wages that the, the difference in healthcare, the difference in family wealth, the difference in incarceration rates, you know all of that, we want to make sure people keep paying attention to that as we think about really independence, right?

The 4th of July is Independence Day. Juneteenth is Black Independence Day. Can we close the gap, Brian, between what happens in America, and white Western culture, versus what happens for Black folks, what happens for Jewish folks, what happens for Asian folks. Let's all get free, is the message we're trying to put out in the world.

Brian: On that history, Congress as you know, just yesterday, voted Juneteenth and new national holiday, the first new official national holiday since Martin Luther King's birthday was established nearly 40 years ago. I saw that you retweeted Sherrilyn Ifill, head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund who wrote, "It's not a win if this time next year, we have Juneteenth off, politicians are saying Black Lives Matter, Lift Every Voice plays at NFL games, and Mississippi has a new flag, but we have no new tools, laws, or investments for ending voter suppression, and educational, economic, criminal injustice." All those things you were talking about before, Reverend.

For you, what does the establishment of the holiday mean and what doesn't it mean?

Rev. Jacqui: Thank you so much for that. The folks can find my own tweet about that. I think Sherrilyn retweeted mine. It is really true that the holiday is an important symbol. It is an important symbol, but more than an important symbol, we need important legislation. I would like our senators. I would like our Congress to be thinking about how the filibuster actually doesn't "protect the minority", but what it actually does is slow down the process of democratizing America.

I want our electeds, instead of just making the symbol, to be thinking, if we erode voting rights, when we take the Voting Rights Act and gut it, we take away the work of thousands, thousands who've marched, who suffered, who struggled, who went to jail. Let's make sure that we keep that happening. When we think about blocking the progressives on the courts, what we do is we're saying we don't want to be the America of Dr. King's dream. We don't want to be the America of John Lewis's dream, and we don't want to be the America of Jacqui Lewis's dreams.

What I want is incarceration rates to go down. I want people who went to jail for smoking pot to get out of jail. I want reparations, Brian. I want Black schools to get resources. I want Black neighborhoods to get resources. We are owed 40 acres and a mule, but at least give us a better starting place. Give us a better place in the race, so we can get to the finish line and raise families, have excellent healthcare, have a chance at the dream that is America, that it lives up to its potential. Brian, that's what this holiday needs to be about.

As we go into the New York elections, and as we go into the midterms, I want everyone who listens to your show to be thinking to themselves, Jacqui Lewis, and all of the Black folks in America, want America to be equal and just. What do you do? How do you live your life? How do you vote? How do you spend your money so that you lift up Black folks? That's what I hope for.

Brian: That would be an ongoing observance in a certain respect.

Rev. Jacqui: Exactly. You are singing my song, my friend. That's right. We do this work every day. Every day, small acts of justice, is in my book, Fierce Love, just to change the way you live your life, Brian, so the Jewish people, so that Latinx people, so that Asian people, so that Muslim people, so that so-called marginalized people are centered, and that everyone has enough, and all of our children live free.

Brian: Can you talk about the phrase in the subtitle of your coming book, rule-breaking kindness. I love that.

Rev. Jacqui: Did you like that? [laughs]

Brian: I loved that.

Rev. Jacqui: I have had that experience so many times, Brian, but the short story that I'll tell to illustrate it when I was a young woman, I had a catastrophic car accident, right across the border in Windsor, Canada. I was 22 years old, no one was around, just me and the car was totaled, had flipped in in the highway. I'm standing in the lobby of a hospital, and this white woman. I'm a Black woman with a big Afro. This white woman walks over to me and sees me crying and was like, "What is wrong?" When I tell her my story, she takes me to get food. She takes me to the drug store to get toiletries. She takes me to a hotel and pays the bill, Brian, and helps me get my car the next day, my new rental car.

She was the good Canadian, like the story and the Christian Scriptures of the good Samaritan. She broke all the rules. She didn't know me. We're not taught to reach out to strangers in that way. She crossed the lobby in the hospital, and she broke all the rules to give me love. I experienced that so much. Like the people who go to the border to stand up for immigrants. My friend, Edna, who raised money to rebuild Puerto Rico. The people who stand up for Muslims, the people who take the risk to say somebody like Linda Sarsour, who for some folks, is controversial. Then you have Jewish friends and Catholic friends saying, "Not on our watch."

The people who march for racial justice, all of that, is rule-breaking kindness. Brian, all of us who stand up for each other, Muslim, Christian Jew, Palestinian, all of us who understand that we all deserve to be free, that breaks the rules that sometimes America makes that only benefits a few. That's what I mean by rule-breaking kindness.

Brian: Beautiful. When the book officially comes out, because I gather it hasn't yet, you know you're invited automatically for a book interview here.

Rev. Jacqui: I can't wait.

Brian: Let's do that at that time. Just tell people again how they can get tickets, or contribute, or if there's a live stream, see a live stream. We just have 15 seconds for the event on Saturday at Riverside Church in which you will be leading, and the new Stephanie Mills song, Let's Do the Right Thing will be dropping.

Rev. Jacqui: Go to middlechurch.org and you'll find the Eventbrite for all kinds of ticket levels to help Riverside keep doing the work of racial justice, and to keep Middle Church doing the work of racial justice and hear that beautiful music from Stephanie.

Brian: Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Lewis, we always love having you on. Thank you so much.

Rev. Jacqui: I love coming. Thank you, Brian. Have a beautiful day, okay?

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.