Transcripts

TOM CRANN: And to the Minneapolis City Council chambers, they erupted in applause and a standing ovation this morning.

SPEAKER: We have a unanimous approval. Congratulations.

[APPLAUSE]

TOM CRANN: That's what happened when Medaria Arradondo was appointed the city's first African-American police chief. One of the dozens of supporters in the chamber today was civil rights leader Dr. Josie Johnson. Reporter Brandt Williams asked Johnson what Arradondo's appointment signals to members of the city's African-American community.

JOSIE JOHNSON: At 86 years old, the fact that I could live long enough to see the first Black president elected and now the first Black chief, this police chief for the city of Minneapolis seems almost unbelievable. For me, it represents the struggle that we have been not only actively engaged in, emotionally engaged in, but educationally engaged in, to promise our children that the struggle that is before us all will yield this kind of result, not only to have a chief who cares about us, appreciates the history of what this position means, but suggest to our children that the belief system that we've had as a people can pay off if we continue the struggle, continue the belief and then support our chief.

We have elected a person to do a historic and a heroic job, and it's up to us to be his back. What do we mean by, I have your back? That's what we must be-- is his back. So thank you, son, for asking that question.

TOM CRANN: That's Dr. Josie Johnson, who is regarded as a hero in the civil rights movement here in Minnesota, responding to our reporter Brandt Williams, when he asked her about the appointment of Medaria Arradondo as the first Black police chief of the Minneapolis Police Department.