Suburban activist on Charlottesville: 'Everybody has freedom of speech and the right to march. But you don't have the right to destroy.'

Editor's note: Rev. Jimmie Daniels, 69, of Inverness, grew up in the Deep South. He came to Chicago after graduating from high school and worked with civil rights groups. He was president of Operation PUSH in the mid-1990s and is the pastor of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Summit, president of Total Facility Maintenance in Wood Dale. In this question-and-answer interview, Daniels said he was a Republican until the emergence of Donald Trump.

Q. What motivates you to speak out now?

A. Growing up in Mississippi, there was always racism and prejudice and white supremacy groups like the KKK. I wanted to believe that we had outgrown a lot of that, especially at the highest level in our country.

It sickened me when I got a call from my son-in-law. He just couldn't believe what he was seeing. Our president seemed to support these groups.

I'm not only concerned about President Trump's agenda and his lack of understanding of what we went through to get to where we are today, I am concerned about a lot of the people that voted for him. Because what you see in President Trump, he never hid it. They knew his agenda.

Q. What was your reaction to Charlottesville?

A. Everybody has freedom of speech and the right to march. But you don't have the right to destroy. You don't have the right to do the things that they were doing down there.

I don't have a problem with the marching because I'm used to seeing marching all my life, whether it was Operation Push or SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference). It's all right to march. But we don't have to agree with your purpose.

When we marched with Rev. Jackson, Rev. Sharpton and Dr. King, it was all nonviolent. I'm not saying there weren't a few bad apples here and there. But it never got to this magnitude.

Q. What did you think of Trump's response?

A. I think it was a sad day for America. The leader of the free world should have came out immediately and denounced what took place down there.

When I see how he refused to denounce the David Dukes of the world and how he refused to denounce these white supremacy groups, I'm becoming more convinced that that's just him. And that should not be representative of us - the United States.

Q. How should the president respond to such a crisis?

A. The president should be the first one out denouncing this kind of racism and this type of violence - whether it be from white supremacists or Black Lives Matter.

But in this particular case, let's make no mistake about it. These white supremacists, the KKK, they were out to create the scene that they did. They had no intention of making it a peaceful march when they went into Charlottesville.

I understand there was counter-protesting. But to try to make it sound like this group (of counter-protestors) created most of the confusion, he (Trump) is absolutely out of his mind.

Donald Trump should have been the conciliatory voice. He should have come on the air right away and denounced this. But he did not. To give a script and then come back and reverse it, he still hasn't denounced it.

Q. How do protesters ensure their message is heard in a peaceful way?

A. You can get your message across without resorting to violence. It has been proven through (Nelson) Mandela. It has been proven through Dr. King. You march and you sit down at the table and you negotiate. If you've got issues, you call both sides together and you negotiate a solution. You destroy your goal when you resort to this kind of violence. But let's be clear: I don't believe that hate groups are looking for an amicable position.

Q. What is emboldening these groups?

A. When our president says "Make America great again," it was a calling card for some of them. I don't think Trump meant to take us back to the early 1900s. But some of these hate groups - fragments of them - have been around for so long. They're still lurking in the shadows. I think they took his message and twisted it. And the problem is I don't think we have a president that's smart enough to understand that when he said "Let's make America great again," some of these radical groups took it another way.

Q. You have participated in and organized protests in the past. Have you witnessed violence similar to what we're seeing now?

A. Not to this level.

Q. How did you keep those protests under control?

A. We would discourage people with radical votes to be part of them. We would not allow that. And they understood the guidelines and the rules.

The groups that I marched with were not out there to inflict harm. We were marching for a cause. We were marching for better paying jobs. We were marching for a better community.

Q. What should suburbanites do?

A. They need to come together and denounce this type of rhetoric taking place in Charlottesville. Even though it's not happening here ... we have a responsibility and a duty to denounce it everywhere. These families that were marching (against racism) need to know that we stand in solidarity with them - not with these hate-mongering groups.

Q. How do we start to mend fences?

A. We need to start a dialogue. Every municipality should have somebody working with them on race relations. Because race relations are not getting better. They're getting worse.

Q. Where do we go from here?

A. We need to begin to have a dialogue. We need people to sit down and put together plans to make a difference on race relations.

You're going to have to bring people together. Somebody - whether it's (U.S. Sen.) Tammy Duckworth or some local congressmen - needs to call a special meeting and solicit ideas for how we can make race relations better in our area. The ones who can play a big role in all of this - and maybe should be taking the lead - are the churches.