A 23-year-old civil rights activist from Alabama named John Lewis was the youngest speaker at the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led by Martin Luther King Jr. Lewis delivered a fiery speech to hundreds of thousands of marchers gathered on the Washington Mall. Lewis went on to serve on the Atlanta City Council and was elected to Congress in 1986, where he earned a reputation as one of the most liberal members of the House. He also teamed up with Andrew Ayden and illustrator Nate Powell to write “March,” a nonfiction, three volume, graphic series documenting Lewis’s life. We listen back to a conversation we had with Lewis in 2014. Lewis died in 2020.
We also listen back to a conversation recorded in 2018 with Oregon state Republican Sen. Jackie Winters about her role as Senate Minority Leader. Winters died in 2019.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we’re gonna start with a conversation with the legendary civil rights leader John Lewis. Over 50 years ago, a quarter of a million people streamed into the nation’s capital for what became known as the March on Washington. That’s where King made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. It was also a breakthrough of sorts for a young activist from Alabama. John Lewis was only 23 years old at the time. He was the youngest person to speak at the march. Lewis went on to serve as a representative to Georgia’s 5th Congressional District for 33 years. He died in 2020.
I spoke to Lewis in January of 2014. He came to Portland to publicize the graphic memoir trilogy about his life called the “March.” I asked him what he was thinking about as we approached the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
John Lewis: I’ve been thinking about Martin Luther King Jr. I met him when I was growing up in rural Alabama, about 50 miles from Montgomery – 15 years old, in the 10th grade. I heard the words of Martin Luther King Jr. on the old radio. His words inspired me.
Miller: That was the first time you ever heard of him, hearing him on the radio?
Lewis: Hearing him on the radio was the very first time. Just listening to the words, his voice, seemed like he was saying, “John Robert Lewis, you, too, can make a contribution. You, too, can do something.”
Miller: How was what you heard from him different from what you might have heard in your own church on Sunday, or other things you’d hear on the radio?
Lewis: Growing up, I’ve heard many ministers preach and they would be talking about, “over yonder,” “by and by.” But Martin Luther King, Jr. was talking about “here and now.” He was talking about the streets of Montgomery … what was happening in Alabama. And that really appealed to me. It was not talking about crossing the River of Jordan, but he was talking about crossing the Alabama River. And we all have rivers to cross.
Miller: What did your parents make of him? You’re a 15-year-old at this point. Were you listening with the family?
Lewis: I listened to radio growing up a great deal with my family, my sisters and brothers. And I identified with Dr. King. First, when we would visit Troy, visit Montgomery, visit Tuskegee, I’d see those signs that said “White men,” “Colored men,” “White women,” “Colored women,” “White waiting,” “Colored waiting.” And I asked my mother, my father, my grandparents and great grandparents, “Why?” They was, “That’s the way it is! Don’t get in the way, don’t get in trouble.”
But hearing about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. inspired me to find a way to get in trouble – good trouble, necessary trouble. And I was determined to find a way to get in trouble. Dr. King provided a way in and a way out for me.
Miller: So let’s go back a little bit earlier. You, in this fantastic, illustrated memoir, say that from the time you were 4 years old, you wanted to be a preacher. And there are some hilarious pictures of you preaching to the chickens that you took care of. What would you say to your chickens? What kinds of sermons would you give to them?
Lewis: I fell in love with raising chickens. And I knew I had to take care of those chickens. I would tell the chickens, I would say to them, “Be kind. Stop fighting, stop fussing,” and just encouraging them to be chickens. Don’t try to be anything … just be a nice hen. Be a nice rooster.
Miller: Why were you doing this?
Lewis: I wanted to be a minister, so [I was] testing out some of my sermons, I guess, on the chickens. These are the little creatures that I raised. I wanted to save them. I wanted to save their souls.
Miller: They were literally your flock.
Lewis: Oh, my flock.
Miller: Was this for you, or for your chickens?
Lewis: It was not so much for me, it was for my chickens. These are the innocent creatures that someone needed to take care of and look out for, to provide them with food, with water, shelter. I tried to baptize some of them to save their souls, and it didn’t work so well.
Miller: You gave your first sermon to a human congregation when you were what, 16?
Lewis: In 1956 at the age of 16, I gave my first sermon.
Miller: What was it about preaching, about being a minister? This was your plan, at this point, to be a minister. What attracted you to that life?
Lewis: I felt it was a calling, it was a mission. It was the ability to be able to reach people and try to encourage people to live a good life. To do better, to be kind, and create a sense of community, a sense of one family.
Miller: You went to seminary for that and you were on the way to being a minister, but your life obviously took a different turn. You ended up in a career as a civil rights leader and eventually in politics. Do you ever think back and wonder what it would have been like for you to actually go into and stay in the ministry?
Lewis: In a real sense, I don’t think I really left the ministry. Being in the civil rights movement, being in American politics, you’re still preaching, you’re still trying to convince people that there’s a different way, there’s a better way, that we can be a little more humane, we can be kinder, we can be on the right side of history. That we can create a sense of community.
But I had this feeling, this unbelievable feeling that organized religion, and especially the church, was becoming more and more of a … I guess you’d call it … rather than being a headlight, it was the tail light. And I think the religious community should be out front, leading people. And in the movement, I discovered that. You can get out there, you can push, you can pull, you can say, “This is where we must go, and let’s do it.”
You have to be prepared to put your body on the line. You have to show overall courage. And I thought the church was a little too timid. I didn’t want to limit myself to the four walls of a building. I wanted to be out there, in the midst of the fight, in the streets, being willing to get beaten, get arrested, go to jail.
Miller: And you were, all of those – beaten, arrested and sent to jail.
Lewis: Well, you know, I didn’t choose to go to jail. I didn’t want to be arrested, but that was part of the price that I had to pay to be able to dramatize an issue.
Miller: You talked about the first time that you heard Dr. King on the radio. Can you tell us the story of the first time you met him?
Lewis: Well, in 1957, at the age of 17, after I finished high school, I wrote Martin Luther King Jr. a letter. I didn’t tell my mother, I didn’t tell my father, any of my teachers, any of my sisters or brothers. I wanted to attend a little college. It was called Troy State College, now known as Troy University. I never heard anything from the college. So I wrote a letter to Dr. King. I told him I needed his help. He wrote me back, sent me a round trip Greyhound bus ticket and invited me to come to Montgomery to meet with him.
In the meantime, I’d been accepted at a little college in Nashville, Tennessee. So, in September 1957, an uncle gave me a $100 bill – more money than I ever had – gave me a foot locker, one of these upright big trunks. I put everything that I owned in that foot locker, except those chickens that I had raised, and took a Greyhound bus from Troy, Alabama through Montgomery, through Birmingham, to Nashville. And after being there for about three weeks, I told one of my teachers that I’d been in contact with Dr. King, so they knew each other. He informed Dr. King that I was in Nashville.
Martin Luther King Jr. got back in touch with me and suggested when I was home for spring break to come and see him. So on a Saturday morning in March of 1958, by this time I’m 18 years old. My father drove me to the Greyhound bus station, I boarded a bus, and traveled 50 miles from Troy to Montgomery.
Miller: And at this point, your father knew what was going on. Your father knew why you were going to Montgomery.
Lewis: My father knew, but he didn’t try to discourage me and he didn’t try to do much to encourage me. But he thought it was ... “No, there must be something good about this, what is it, that he’s gonna go and meet with Martin Luther King Jr.” And we didn’t talk much on the way to the Greyhound bus station, said very little. But I boarded a bus.
I arrived in Montgomery. A young lawyer by the name of Fred Gray – a lawyer for Rosa Parks, Dr. King and the Montgomery movement – met me and drove me to the First Baptist Church. We passed by the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a colleague of Dr. King and one of the leaders of the Montgomery Bus walkout … ushered me into the church. I saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy standing behind a desk. Dr. King said, “Oh, are you the boy from Troy? Are you John Lewis?” And I said, “Dr. King, I am John Robert Lewis.”
I gave my whole name. I wanted him to know that I was the right person. That was the beginning of my relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. It changed my life. I was scared. I was frightened, but it changed my life to be in the presence of this man.
Miller: My understanding is that he said that you could be, in a sense, the public face for desegregating Troy State College. And he said that if you’re going to do this, you have to go back to your family and tell them what this would mean – that you could be ostracized, they could be ostracized, or much worse – to be the public face for this effort. So you went home. What kind of a conversation did you have with your parents?
Lewis: Well, I had a somewhat eerie conversation with my mother and my father. They had earlier, in 1944, when I was 4 years old, bought 110 acres of land for $300. They thought they would lose the land. They thought that our home would be burned, a bomb. So they were frightened. My mother more than … I think my father would have went along with it, but my mother was so afraid. She didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
So I made a decision that I would continue to study in Nashville. And I continued to study there. It was in Nashville, along with other students, that we started studying the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence.
Miller: Were you disappointed in your mother, that she said “No” to that different action, to pushing forward to desegregate this college?
Lewis: I was disappointed, but I understood the fear she had, understood the pain that she shared, that something could happen to the family, to our home, to the land. But I think she was really troubled that something could happen to me. So, by going back to Nashville, I think it all worked out.
I start studying with other students from several colleges and universities. What Gandhi attempted to do in South Africa, what he accomplished in India. We had role playing, what we called “social drama,” pretending that we were sitting in, and someone would come up and spit on us or put a lighted cigarette out in our hair, down our back, or pull us off the lunch counter stool or beat us. That we would be arrested …
Miller: And you would do all that to each other to test yourselves?
Lewis: Well, we did it, we called each other names. We prepared ourselves. We did test ourselves.
Miller: You know, this is something that really stood out in the book, that nonviolence, it’s not just an idea or something that happens, but it’s a set of skills that you actually have to practice. It’s a craft that, in some ways, you have to learn. What was the hardest part for you in that? And as you were going through that role playing, what was the hardest part for you?
Lewis: Maybe the most difficult thing for me: to be able to absorb violence. None of us like pain. And we all want to live. And people say you can die. But you come to that point where you accept the way of nonviolence, not simply as a technique or as a tactic but as a way of life, as a way of living. And by the time that we were ready to sit-in, or go on a freedom ride, we were ready to die for what we believed in. I grew to accept nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living.
Miller: You were arrested on more than 40 occasions, but the very first time was February 27, 1960. What do you remember from that day?
Lewis: Oh, I would never, ever, ever forget that day when I was first arrested. Twenty years old. I was dressed in a very inexpensive suit, had a vest. I think I was looking pretty clean or sharp. And I walked with pride and dignity when I was placed under arrest. I was almost smiling.
Miller: I gotta say, you were almost smiling a minute ago, when you said, “I’ll never forget that day.” What was it that made you almost smile?
Lewis: We were prepared, we were ready. We were ready to put to a test what we have been trained for. When the officer came and placed their arms under me, their hands around my shoulder and said, “You’re under arrest,” I was ready. The moment you say “You’re under arrest,” I felt liberated. I felt like I had crossed over.
Miller: Crossed over to what?
Lewis: To another place. Crossed over to another stage in my life. Growing up in the rural South, you’ve been told over and over again, “Don’t get in trouble! Don’t break the law. Don’t get arrested. It’s bad for the family. It’s a reflection on the family name.”
Miller: Not just that, but you could be lynched. You could be strung up on a tree. I mean, it’s not just that it looks bad, this was a concern for you as someone who they loved.
Lewis: My mother, my father, both my sisters and brothers, my cousins, my grandparents, they all were afraid … but they didn’t know that I was so involved, that I had been going to these workshops, role-playing and social drama.
Miller: Did that cause tension in the family?
Lewis: During that period, there was a real gulf in my family. My mother said, in effect, “You need to do your homework, study, stay in class and get out of that mess.” She wrote me a letter, saying, “Get out of that mess.” I wrote her back and I said, in effect, that I acted according to my conviction, and went on to say, “So help me God, I cannot do any less,” or paraphrasing somebody … I don’t think she understood what I was talking about.
Miller: You were a grandiose 20-year-old.
Lewis: I was just trying. And when I look back on it, I was being led by what I call the spirit of history. I got in the way. I got in trouble – good trouble, necessary trouble.
Miller: Did your parents ever ever write back to you or say to you, “We understand now. You were right.”
Lewis: Many years later, after the sit-ins, after the freedom rides, after I had been beaten, left bloody and unconscious at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, May of 1961. They kept on saying, “You’re gonna get hurt. You need to get out of the mess.” But not until the Voting Rights Act was passed, several years later. My mother couldn’t register to vote. My father, my grandfather, my uncles and aunt, simply because of the color of their skin. But when they had an opportunity to register and cast a vote, they became crusaders, really. My mother thought everybody must get registered and vote. We can make decisions and we can participate. So she put it all together.
Miller: What were you arrested for the first time?
Lewis: The first time I was charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace. And I was orderly. I was just sittin’ on a stool at a lunch counter.
Miller: In the book, in the new graphic memoir, you have a section about, I think it’s the first trial following that first arrest. And in one of the drawings, the judge turns his back to your lawyer as the lawyer is talking. The judge completely turns around, just is not listening at all. Is that what happened?
Lewis: That is exactly what happened. I remember the judge. George Harris was a big man. There was a whole group of lawyers defending us, several. And he just showed disrespect for them as members of the bar. We were fined. We went off our so-called recognizance bail, and we went back to jail. And more and more people in the larger community identified with us, were ready to start sitting-in and marching.
Miller: As we’re talking about this era, I think it’s worth mentioning that on January 10, just a few days ago, Greensboro civil rights leader Franklin McCain passed away. Who was he, and what did he mean to the movement?
Lewis: Oh, this young man was one of four students. On February 1, 1960, they had been reading another book. Another comic book, if you want to call it that, called “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story,” published by an organization called the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Fourteen pages sold for 10 cents. Those of us in Nashville had been reading the same thing. It was Franklin McCain and Israel Blair and others, who said, “We should do something here, if they can do it in Montgomery.” And those of us in Nashville would say, “We should do something.”
So it’s like this group, not even talking or communicating with each other, just sort of came together. And that’s why I call it the spirit of history. Some force, saying it was time for us to do something. There was a slogan going around saying, ‘”The whole of Africa would be free.” That’s what the African students on predominantly Black college campuses said. In 1959, in 1960, and 1961 – the whole of Africa would be free before we were able to get a soft drink and a hamburger at a lunch counter. Then the NAACP had a slogan saying, “Free by ‘63.”
So we had to act, we had to do something. We had been inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks, and the Montgomery bus boycott. And we had read this comic book.
Miller [narrating]: [John Lewis] was also the youngest person to speak at the March on Washington in August of 1963. I asked him what it was like to look out on that crowd of 250,000 people.
Lewis: On August 28, 1963, I was 23 years old, weighed about 135 pounds, I guess …
Miller: With a hat on.
Lewis: Had a head full of hair then, had all of my hair. I remember so well, when A. Philip Randolph – this Dean of Black leadership, this prince of a man – said, “I present to you, brother John Lewis, the National Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,” I went straight to the podium. I looked to my right and I saw all of these young people, young CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] workers and volunteers, young members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee …
Miller: … Your generation.
Lewis: My generation. Some of these young people was much younger, but they were there. A lot of them had on coveralls, denim. Then I looked to my left, up in the trees. I saw all these young people, Black and white young men up in the trees, trying to get a better view of the podium. Then I looked straight ahead and I saw all these people with their feet in the water trying to cool off. And I said to myself, “This is it. I must go for it.” And I started speaking.
It was a sea of humanity. I thought I would be nervous, but I was at home with that audience. It was so supportive, it was just beautiful. It was a hot day, but it was beautiful. It was so moving just to be able to stand there, because people had said that we couldn’t pull it off. President Kennedy didn’t like the idea of us marchin’, bringing hundreds and thousands of people to Washington. It was like a great camp meeting.
Miller: A day before, did you think that it was going to work, that this great sea of people coming from all directions would actually convene, that it would actually happen?
Lewis: I was convinced. I really was convinced that it was gonna work out, everything was gonna go well. Early that morning, the leadership, the 10 of us, including Martin Luther King Jr., went up on Capitol Hill. We met with the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and of the Senate. And we were coming from the Senate side, walking down Constitution Avenue. We looked toward Union Station, and we saw hundreds and thousands of people coming from the station. The people were already marching.
We were supposed to be the leaders. So we just locked arms and it was almost like saying, “There go my people, let me catch up with them.” And it was the people that literally pushed us, moved us toward the Washington Monument and on to the Lincoln Memorial.
Miller: So on that day, you’re talking about meeting the Congressional leadership. If I had told you that 50 years from that day you would be a 14-term Congressman and the second-term president was an African-American man, what would you have said?
Lewis: I would have said “You’re crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You must be dreaming.”
Miller: It seemed completely impossible.
Lewis: On August 28, 1963, it would have been impossible for me to think like that. Because in America at that time, and especially the American South, the great majority of African-Americans couldn’t even register to vote. We had to pass a so-called literacy test. In my native state of Alabama, people were asked, in one county, to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. Count the number of jelly beans in a jar.
There were one county in the state, back in 1963, 1964, 1965, that had a Black voting-age population in this county of 80% – but there was not a single registered African-American voter in the county. People stood in an unmovable line, people arrested and jailed. People beaten, shot and killed.
Miller: This is a context in which you gave your speech. I think it’d be great if we could just listen to a short bit from it.
Lewis [recording]: I appeal to all of you to get in this great revolution that is in this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom come, until the revolution of 1776 is complete. We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution, for in the Delta, Mississippi, in southwest Georgia, in the Black belt of Alabama, in Harlem, in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and all over this nation, the Black mass is on the march for jobs and freedom. [Audience applause]
Miller: Now, half an hour before your speech, as I understand it, Dr. King and A. Philip Randolph asked you to remove a pretty good-sized chunk from the end of yours, make other changes to the speech, but especially and most famously a part near the end where you essentially said it’s time for “another Sherman’s March.” This one a nonviolent one, but you said that, ‘”We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground nonviolently.” They told you to get rid of that and to replace it with less incendiary language. And you said, “Yes.” Why?
Lewis: The reason I said “yes,” ... I couldn’t say “no” to Martin Luther King Jr.
Miller: Why not?
Lewis: Dr. King had said to me that afternoon, when he read the line in the speech, he said, “John, this didn’t sound like you.” And A. Philip Randolph had said something like, “John, we’ve come this far, together. Let’s stay together for the sake of unity. Can you change that?” There were people within the Kennedy administration. We had the Archbishop of the Diocese of Washington saying that he would refuse to give the invocation, people thought it was too inflammatory. And I agreed to make the changes.
Miller: When Dr. King said that this doesn’t sound like you, do you think he was right?
Lewis: Well, I think Dr. King had the feeling that other people within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had suggested some of the language. Dr. King knew me very well. And he knew of my commitment to the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence. But even that line was not calling for violence, it said, let’s do it in a nonviolent fashion. But he still thought it was inflammatory.
Miller: This gets to a theme that I think is run throughout our conversation so far, which is the tensions between your young generation of civil rights leaders in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and the elder statesman that you’re talking about – including Martin Luther King – that was, in some ways, in between. How do you summarize those tensions? What was at stake for the two sides, the two generations?
Lewis: We had a situation where the students, the young people, it was not just a revolt against segregation and racial discrimination, but also the pace of change. It was a revolt against part of the old-guard leadership. So we waited and we waited. Part of that speech, I said, “You tell us to wait. You tell us to be patient. We don’t want our freedom gradually. We want our freedom, and we want it now.” Young people, we had a sense of vigor, we had energy, we wanted to move now, here and now, this feeling that we cannot wait any longer.
Miller: So now the years have passed, and it’s fair to say, with respect, that the role that you’re in now is as an elder statesman of the civil rights movement, in various ways. Do you feel some version of that tension now, between yourself and younger generations?
Lewis: I don’t really feel it because I have not lost that sense of readiness. I still go out there, fight, speak up and speak out. I still go out and get in the way, whether it’s about gay rights, comprehensive immigration reform, I stand up. I defended the right of people to fall in love and get married, but it was not popular more than 17 years ago.
Miller: What goes through your mind when you hear, among proponents of same-sex marriage, “this is the civil rights topic of our day”? And it’s very common to make direct comparisons between anti-miscegenation laws, say, from pre-1970s America and laws against same-sex marriage today. Do you support those metaphors?
Lewis: Well, you cannot have equality for some and not equality for all. It’s my belief that no government, the state or federal, can tell a person who they can love and not love.
Miller: You wrote a memoir before this graphic, illustrated memoir. Why write a new book and have pictures with it?
Lewis: This graphic novel … make it plain, make it simple. It’s for another generation, to inspire people to stand up, to speak up, to speak out, to get in the way. To make it real and simple, and in “March: Book One,” Nate Powell, with his ability to just join.
Miller: I should point out, he’s the 35-year-old Arkansas white man who was the illustrator of this book.
Lewis: Yes, but he lived in the South.
Miller: Did that make a difference to you, having the illustrator of this book be a Southerner?
Lewis: Well, I think it’s important. I’m not sure it makes a big difference, but he understands the pain, the suffering, the hurt. And to have three guys come together – two white Southerners and a Black Southerner, come together and say, “This is it. This is for real,” I don’t think in doing it we saw a plan, that we saw it that way. But I see it that way.
Miller: Congressman, it’s been an honor talking with you. Thank you.
Lewis: Well, thank you very much. Good to talk with you. Thank you.
Miller: That was Congressman John Lewis, in a conversation from January of 2014. He died in 2020.
Jackie Winters was unique in many ways. For one thing, she was the rare lawmaker who was well liked by members of both parties and from all corners of the state. Winters was a Republican from Salem, but she worked across the aisle on many issues, especially on reforms to the criminal justice system.
She was also the first African American, man or woman, to lead a legislative caucus in Oregon’s House or Senate. Jackie Winters died in 2019 of lung cancer. She had just won re-election. “I’ve lost my partner in public service,” said Senate President Peter Courtney.”The legislature and Oregon has lost a dedicated servant. We’ve lost the best of the best.’”
Geoff Norcross spoke with Jackie Winters in 2017, just after she was elected Senate Minority Leader. He asked if she was surprised to be nominated for a leadership position in the Senate.
Jackie Winters: Actually, I did not seek it. I was encouraged and asked by my colleagues to consider it. It’s always an honor when your colleagues ask you to undertake a responsibility such as this, and then actually elect you to do it.
Geoff Norcross: You’ve been in the legislature since 1998?
Winters: I was elected in 1998; sworn in in 1999 in the House.
Norcross: And at no point during your history with the legislature did you seek or think about a leadership position?
Winters: No, I did not. I served my two terms in the House and then was elected by my community to the Senate in 2002. Of course, that was the year that we were tied 15-15. I was also selected to be a part of the group, both R’s and D’s, to craft the rules at which we were to govern ourselves. And there was the skeptics who thought that we could not get the job done in a timely manner, so we surprised them. And that was probably the closest to actually immediately doing bipartisan work.
Norcross: That session of 15 senators on both sides has been held up as a model for other state Houses around the country. I wonder what you think?
Winters: You know, I would have to agree. It’s kind of interesting. I said the closer our numbers are together, R & D, it forces us to have to have serious conversations. And that occurred with that model of 15-15. It also occurred in the House, when they were tied, and they also ended up having a shared model, sharing power. So I think those sessions, we did our best. I know the session of the House, we did our best work. I find it interesting, it’s like anything else, when it’s actually tilted too much on one side or the other, we spend more time haggling than we do actually taking care of the business of the citizens.
Norcross: We’ll talk more about the business of the citizens in the next legislative session in a bit. But first, you can’t ignore the fact that you are the first African-American to lead an Oregon legislative caucus, man or woman, House or Senate. And former state GOP Chair Kevin Mannix calls your selection symbolically important. Is it important to you?
Winters: Oh, of course it’s important. It’s important any time you can say to young girls and young men that they, too, can achieve. I have to go back, and I’m gonna borrow her phrase, and that was Rep. Janelle Bynum when she was on “Straight Talk.” She was asked the question about the significance of me being elected, and she talked about the respect. But she also said something else, and I was very amused by it. She said, “She’s one bad mama jama.”
[Laughter]
Norcross: You know, Oregon is plagued by exclusionary laws, especially when it comes to Black people. And the exclusion of Blacks was codified into our original Constitution. I’m wondering if you feel that any of that exclusionary history still hangs over Salem?
Winters: I don’t think so, because I’m reminded that the population in my community is 0.06% African American …
Norcross: In Salem.
Winters: In Salem, and my last election I was fortunate to get, I think it was somewhere like 82% of the vote. So, that transcends this whole issue of talking about race.
Norcross: And the fact that you’re a Republican is remarkable, because nationally just 7% of Blacks identify as Republican or leaning Republican. What’s different about you? Why do you identify with that party?
Winters: Well, I think we identify where we grow up. And I grew up with the policies of Hatfield, McCall, Governor Atiyeh and …
Norcross: Republicans all.
Winters: Republicans that … Norma Paulus and Nancy Ryles. Some of those, I was thinking this morning, those who have actually had some influence to me. I had Betty Roberts, she’s a Democrat. I grew up where you had both parties and women working together to solve problems. So that was the culture and the climate that I grew up in.
Norcross: You mentioned some iconic names there – Tom McCall, Vic Atiyeh and Norma Paulus. I’m wondering how the Oregon Republican Party has changed since you’ve been in the legislature?
Winters: I think it’s changed. Unfortunately, I question whether or not you could have a Tom today, yet Tom, Hatfield and Norma all took risks. I was thinking this morning the vote by mail was Norma’s. I was looking at some of your work, and I think it was Vortex I, which is…
Norcross: Tom McCall’s music festival outside of Portland, during the time of the Democratic National Convention.
Winters: Those were different times then. And the times are different today. But I just happen to feel really blessed that I actually learned from – I call them – real icons, who cared about what’s happening in the state.
Norcross: You had to sit out the entire 2016 legislative session because of a heart attack.
Winters: Let me qualify that. I did not have a heart attack. I had vascular surgery, but without having a heart attack.
Norcross: All right.
Winters: I need to qualify that because I read that in one of the articles, but I’ve never had a heart attack.
Norcross: OK, fair enough.
Winters: So I had no muscle damage or any of those kinds of things.
Norcross: But it’s part of a broader question about your health because you were recently diagnosed with lung cancer.
Winters: Yes.
Norcross: How’s your health?
Winters: Excellent. I’m in remission. I attribute that to all of my extremely competent medical team. Two things – one, I think that going in early and not ignoring the fact that I had this cough that was persistent, that I couldn’t get rid of, and having an incredible family nurse practitioner who said, “OK, here’s what we’re gonna do,” who was very proactive. In being proactive, the treatment and everything just really went extremely rapid. First, the identification, and then after that it was like, “Hey, I’ve completely finished chemo.” So that remission part is done and we’re only doing the radiation to make certain there’s no little hidden cells someplace.
Norcross: Do you have any doubts about your ability to serve?
Winters: No. I outworked everybody before I ever had this. [Laughter] I think in the building, they know that I have been keeping a very, very intensive schedule, as you probably have gleaned from looking at my past assignments. I chaired Public Safety, the Subcommittee on Ways and Means, and actually I am the vice co-chair of Joint Ways and Means, along with Senator Betsey Johnson. I control Ways and Means and serve on Human Services as well. So I’ve always had a large load since I’ve been elected as a legislator.
Norcross: We’re gonna talk about health care in a moment, but I’m curious how your recent bout with cancer has changed the way you view the state’s obligation to provide health insurance to residents.
Winters: I felt, going through all this, extremely blessed. I had, and have, great access to a medical team. I said to them their job was to keep me vertical, and they’ve done that. And it makes you think that you don’t want to deprive others of that kind of access. Going through the cancer center there in Salem, you’re seeing others that are waiting to be seen – they’re young, old, all shapes and sizes. I tell them that disease has no respect for person. It doesn’t say, “I’m gonna pick you, and not you.” That’s not how it works. And so, to me, access is important. It’s important that we are able to provide care to our children.
Norcross: Yeah, but there’s a lot of uncertainty about health care and health care law in America right now. So how do you legislate health insurance when you don’t even know what the Affordable Care Act is going to be like?
Winters: I think that was why we went ahead and took the leap. Not knowing what was gonna happen nationally, but knowing that we had a population of 350 to 400 thousand individuals who would be affected and needing to provide a safety net, if you will, while Congress is actually working on getting its act together. And what was added this time was the premium interest tax, which was new.
Norcross: And that tax has been referred to voters, and there will be a special election in January. The measure is called Referendum 101. It’s essentially asking the voters if they agree with you and that tax should be implemented. How do you feel about that Referendum?
Winters: I hope they do agree with what we did. It’ll be debated between now and January, on both sides, as to the merits. As to, one, whether or not we continue what we’re doing to provide access to health care or not. And the other part of that, if we don’t, what then happens in Oregon. And we have not had that kind of discussion.
Norcross: What would happen if the voters say, “No?” What are the legislative options?
Winters: The option then … unlike the federal government, Oregon by constitution cannot operate in a deficit. That means we will have to do budgetary adjustments and changes. Most people don’t realize we don’t have a printing press down in the basement of the Capitol, unlike Congress [which] can increase their debt ceiling and all those kinds of things. The wisdom of our framers said, “Oh no, I don’t think I’m gonna let legislators do that.”
Norcross: We have just about 90 seconds left, so let’s look ahead. You are in a leadership position now in the Senate. What priorities do you have for the next agenda?
Winters: A couple of them, because I’m still doing my public safety work. So I’ve spoken to the Senate president of wanting to continue some of that, particularly some of that work that has to do with domestic violence and trying to clean up where I think that we’ve got some gaps. But I think importantly, now, my role and function is to try to lead the 12 other members of my caucus. So I’ve been busy now having conversations with them, and began crafting our plan and our agenda going forward. So that’s my years of experience.
Norcross: Senator Winters, thank you so much. It was a pleasure to speak with you.
Winters: Oh, thank you.
Miller: That was OPB’s Geoff Norcross talking to then Oregon Senate Minority Leader Jackie Winters in 2017. Winters died in 2019.
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