“But the most powerful part of that plaque for me is “Love, Dad”—because it really tells the story of our journey. For many years, I referred to my father by his first name, in conversation with others, and maybe even to him directly, or I didn’t address him really in any sort of paternalistic way. But he has earned that title.”

Pressley Credits Her Commitment to Criminal Legal Reform to her Family’s & Father’s Experience with Incarceration

Video (YouTube)

WASHINGTON – In their first joint interview, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) shared a heartfelt conversation with her father Martin and GBH Boston Public Radio hosts Jim and Margery ahead of Father’s Day. Through stunning personal anecdotes, Congresswoman Pressley and her father explore the winding journey, joys, and hardships of their relationship through and after her father’s incarceration.

Congresswoman Pressley credits her commitment to criminal legal reform to her family’s and father’s experience with incarceration.

A full transcript of Congresswoman Pressley’s interview with her father is available below and the video is available here.

Transcript: In First Joint Interview, Rep. Pressley and her Father Mr. Martin Terrell Share Stunning Personal Story of Forgiveness, Growth, & Love

U.S. House of Representatives

May 18, 2026

JIM BRAUDE: Welcome to BPR, I’m Jim Braude, she is Margery Eagen, and we are streaming at YouTube.com/GBHNews. We’ve talked often with Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley on the show. Born in Cincinnati, raised in Chicago, Pressley’s an only child like me. 

Raised by the late tenants’ rights organizer Sandra Pressley, her rock during childhood and college, Pressley credits her mother with instilling in her dedication to public service and activism. Her father, Martin Terrell, was not there for much of her childhood, struggling with addiction, spending 16 years in and out of prison. 

Ayanna Pressley came to Boston to go to BU. She stayed here, and in 2009 she became the first woman of color elected to Boston City Council, and in 2018 another first—winning a seat in Congress, the first woman of color ever to do so in our state’s history.

“Can a congresswoman wear her hair in braids, rock a black leather jacket, and wait a minute, and a bold red lip? When it comes to women of color candidates, folks don’t just talk about a glass ceiling, what they describe is a concrete one. But you know what breaks through concrete? Seismic shifts.”

Listening proudly in the crowd that night, her father, Martin Terrell. Once free, went on to spend two decades working in higher ed, including at the United Negro College Fund, and writing in 2021, You’re Only Innocent Once and Once Is Not Enough, and more recently, an incredibly powerful collection of poetry that was in 2024, Unseen Scars. You can find more about his work and writings on his website, martinterrell.com.

Father and daughter both join us on Zoom for their first joint interview. Congresswoman, Martin Terrell, it’s a pleasure to have you here both together. Thanks so much.

MR. TERRELL: It’s good to be here, particularly with my daughter.

JIM: I had a feeling that was true. 

MARGERY EAGEN: Let’s start with that. Congresswoman, what was it like to have your dad with you that night when you, your election night?

REP. PRESSLEY: Well, you know, in my formative years, there were so many milestones that we were robbed of, and so increasingly it’s been a great joy and a privilege to have him for so many of these defining moments in my life. 

When he was at my high school graduation when I gave the commencement speech, he was there in the City Council when I first was inaugurated, he was there election night for Congress, and most of all, he walked me down the aisle to the love of my life, his son-in-love, who he has an extraordinary bond with. So I’m just so grateful for our journey.

MARGERY: What was it like to be there for those moments?

MR. TERRELL: Each of those things were very important to me, but I think the crowning achievement—her mom had gotten married to another man who was important to her—but what was important to me was that I was the one chosen to walk her down the aisle, and that to me was one of the crowning achievements of our relationship. 

And throughout the years we had done many things together, one of the most important was how I had gone to her high school graduation, and she, in her kindness, showed me her speech, like I could look at her and judge what she could talk about, because she was always a better talker than her dad. She continues to do that. 

What do we want with our children? We want them to be better than us, and she’s proven that, because she’s better than I am.

JIM: You know, Martin Terrell, I feel I have to be transparent with you. I don’t know if your daughter’s ever told you that election night, when she was running for Congress, I had predicted regularly on this show that Ayanna Pressley was going to get crushed by the incumbent by 30 points, and it didn’t turn out that way. I just feel I have to tell you that to establish our relationship. 

Congresswoman, speaking of your father and his pride, I was told by a reliable source that when you were sworn in to Congress, your father gave you a plaque that you keep in your office.

You’re nodding. What does that plaque say?

REP. PRESSLEY: It just speaks to his pride, I think. What’s most resonant for me, I mean, my dad is a wordsmith. He is a, he is a writer. He was a professor of journalism. He’s written textbooks, he’s written biographies, autobiographies, poetry. So he’s never short for words, and he’s very eloquent.

But the most powerful part of that plaque for me is “Love, Dad”—because it really tells the story of our journey.

For many years, I referred to my father by his first name, in conversation with others, and maybe even to him directly, or I didn’t address him really in any sort of paternalistic way. But he has earned that title. 

I’m extraordinarily proud of him, and Dad, one of the moments that stays with me, perhaps at my high school graduation, when I was delivering the commencement address, and afterwards you said to me, you were very emotional, and I said, “Dad, why are you so upset?”

 And you said, “Because you’re extraordinary, and I didn’t have much to do with it.”

And, and I corrected you then, and I have many times since then, because it’s simply not true. I don’t only have your cheekbones and your long nose, you know.

I credit you for informing and shaping my Black consciousness. For all of the books that you sent me when you were incarcerated. It’s because of you that I know Baldwin and Malcolm X and Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.

And so I just hope you know that even when life got in the way, I knew I was loved by you. You were still parenting me.

And although my mother has been featured prominently in my origin story, that I claim you vigorously, gladly, proudly, and you have so much to do with who I am today.

MR. TERRELL: That has always meant the world to me. Because I see you, I’ve written some, and some poetry about you, and it’s just too long to read here.

But you are my flower. 

I mean, from the moment, you know, when you came home, you were an early child, and you had to be in an incubator, and your mom and I, you couldn’t sleep by yourself, so you couldn’t—you had to sleep on my chest right here.

And somehow that, that chest melted into my heart. That’s where you really fell, and I don’t know, never left there.

REP. PRESSLEY: Thank you, Dad. I always knew that I was loved, and you know, I have to say, my mother did an extraordinary job in that way.

She always made sure I knew when my father was incarcerated that I was conceived in love, that I was wanted, that my father wanted a daughter, that he was often the only one that could call me.

And so, even in my childhood, not understanding addiction, and that it is a disease, and even in all the ways that I felt resentment for his absence—I always knew that I was loved, and I always knew that I was wanted.

JIM: How are you able, Congresswoman—it’s interesting what you just said. How were you able, in one body, to feel resentment at the same time, that the person whose lack of physical presence you resented, you also felt loved by? How did they fit into each other?

REP. PRESSLEY: Yeah, because my mother never spoke ill of him, you know. And you know, as a child, when there would be moments when he would call, and I wouldn’t want to speak to him, but she prioritized those things.

And when I would travel to Ohio, where he was incarcerated, to visit my godmother in the summers, it was very important to my mother that I visit him, that we have time together, even if that could be traumatizing or triggering in its own ways. 

So those lived experiences really shape the work that I do now in criminal legal reform. Why I understand how important those familiar bonds are when someone is incarcerated, and how important they are in re-entering, to break the cycles of recidivism.

JIM: We want to discuss the work you’re both doing, but I don’t want to leave this just for a second. I want to hear Martin, if I may—on the other side of the spectrum, your daughter described what it was like not having you there, even though she also described the connections. How hard was that for you?

MR. TERRELL: Well, at first it was extremely hard, because when she left, she went to Chicago with her mom, and leaving me there in Ohio, it was like part of my soul had been taken away

But as she said, her mom kept, kept the time—her mom never berated me, and that kept me alive with Ayanna. Though at times it was difficult for her, as she said, but that spark was alive in me, and that kept me churning inside, even as I was locked up.

But I was able to do little things that kept me in touch with her, that I knew that we were still alive to one another.

So I was able to continue on in her success, and the little things that she had, that I could touch her, and those small things. So our absence was not a total absence.

It was a knowledge, and we cared for one another, and we still had a link. But talking is the key—that there was still a link there, and without that link I would have been crushed.

MARGERY: Martin Terrell is, of course, the father of our Congresswoman, Ayanna Pressley, here in Boston, written two books, You’re Only Innocent Once and Once Is Not Enough, plus, your book of poetry from 2024, Unseen Scars. You said you could grace us with reading one of your poems today, Martin. You got one picked out for us?

MR. TERRELL:Here’s one of them, I call this one Still A Slave.

After the war of northern aggression, northerners picked slaves up, dressed them in freedom, pen stroked them free, christened them as negroes, and loosed them blindly upon the land.

And after seeing what they had done, northerners smiled and felt morally superior to southerners.

But southerners knew the negro was still a slave by another name and continued to treat him as one over time.

Negro slave quarters became the ghetto, and the new slave quarters, the inner city.

Slaves of the inner city weren’t negro or even black, they were educated African-Americans with a hyphen, and still treated as slaves.

Inner city slaves became slaves to their own enslavement, unwitting victims and architects of their own destruction.

And Southerners smiled.

JIM: Wow, Mr. Terrell.

You know, I remember reading, Congresswoman, that on a particular Father’s Day, and maybe it was more than one Father’s Day, you spoke to the fact that—I find this number stunning and so depressing—that at any one time, as many as 2 million people in this country have at least one parent who’s incarcerated.

What was the core of your message to those younger people who had at least one parent not with them?

REP. PRESSLEY:I wanted to look to bring visibility to what it is when that is your family model, that you have an incarcerated loved one or parent, and what is the impact of that?

There was great shame that I carried about having an incarcerated parent, about my father’s absence.

There was no shame for me to carry in that, and as I grew older and better understood systems and policies, and the conditions that created that for my father, and what made the path harder, but also the things that uplifted him. You know, like Second Chance Pell Grants, and how central that was to the degrees that he earned while incarcerated, and once he was no longer incarcerated.

So I wanted those children to know that I saw them, and I wanted to bring visibility to their struggles, to their hardship, and maybe take some of that shame and isolation away,

MARGERY: You know, Martin Terrell, we mentioned before, you’ve had an extraordinary career, United Negro College Fund, Academic Dean, higher education, writing these two books. How did, how did this happen for you? I mean, did you, were you studying during the time you were incarcerated? Did you study before? How did it work?

MR. TERRELL: Well, it didn’t begin in prison. I had an opportunity in Cincinnati to go to a college prep school, and at that school, that’s where I got the bug to get educated.

And throughout my life I just had an opportunity to want an education. Now, in different environments, it’s not as easy to find that channel to get a good education.

So, when I went to prison, I was in a different channel, but I never lost that drive to be educated, and I always had the tools to get that education, and I just fortunately was in a prison that had a joint program with the college. And since I was in there for six to 25 years for something I didn’t do, I had a chance to hook into that college, you got free time, use it.

MARGERY: And you got a big scholarship to journalism school, I read as well, which is, you know, that’s pretty impressive.

MR. TERRELL: That was unusual. [laughter]

MARGERY: Yeah, I bet. [laughter]

JIM: You know, Congresswoman, can I go back to something you said before, that is stay with me through this discussion. You said that for a time you referred to Martin Terrell, your father as Martin, and then all of—not all of a sudden, you didn’t say that—but then he was “Dad.”

What was the moment that caused that, and what was the thought process that was in you? [sic] –to make that transition?

REP. PRESSLEY: Yeah, there was more of a regular cadence of communication. Dad, if I might, in my experience, when my dad came out, neither of my parents ever coddled me or patronized me. Like my mother never talked, baby talked to me, you know.

And when you’re an only child, you see the humanity of your parents much earlier, right? So they kind of level with you about things.

And, Dad, you may not remember this, but when my dad came out, he said, “You know, I’ve been gone. I think I’m going to focus first on being your friend.”

He wasn’t someone that came out immediately, like, “Let me go and do the paternalistic, bang my chest sort of thing.”

And maybe there was a part of me that did want that, because I sort of made him a superhero in my mind, and I attributed every hardship that I experienced, every trauma to his absence.

So maybe I wanted some of that paternalistic protective thing. But he just leveled with me, like I’m not going to immediately say, you know, “Hey dad, do this or consider this,” he really wanted to establish a friendship and a trust with me.

And then I would say, Jim and Margery, the inflection point certainly was the transition of my mother. When my mother passed away, he really took on an even more pronounced and active and intentional role.

JIM: You know, Martin, were you nervous when once you were out and you began reestablishing a deeper relationship with your daughter. Were you worried that she wouldn’t be accepting of you?

MR. TERRELL: Well, I knew that she had established herself, and she knew who she was, and she really didn’t know who I was totally at the time.

So as she said, I was leery about coming on to her as her dad, so I wanted to take things slowly, because I wasn’t sure how to be with her, because I hadn’t taken responsibility for her, I was locked up, so I wanted to take it slow.

I wanted to be her dad, but I didn’t want to put her off by trying to be her dad, and I hadn’t been. I was locked up, so I wanted her to take the time to see me as a dad. That’s what I tried to do.

MARGERY: So, Martin Terrell, you’ve been there for a lot of these moments. As Congresswoman Pressley just said, high school graduation, the night she beat Michael Capuano to become—and went on to become our Congresswoman here. What—

JIM: —Walking down that aisle.

MARGERY: Walking down that aisle as well. What, what are you most proud of in your daughter, Ayanna Pressley? What makes you the most proud?

MARTIN TERRELL: There are so many moments in her life that I’m very proud of, but one of the things that I’m very, very proud of is the way that she takes time to look at where she is and doesn’t jump. I can remember when she wanted to go from City Council, to Councilperson. [sic]

She took her time and decided, this is where I want to go. She didn’t make a decision momentarily to do that.

And she, she had a lot of guys who were interested in her as a woman. But she decided that, look, here’s a guy who’s a man. Here’s a guy who’s interested in me as a woman, and can be the kind of man that I can respect and love. And he was the kind of man that I could love.

He was a real guy, and that’s what I was proud of, her that she could see the difference between a boyfriend and a man friend, and that’s—

JIM: Don’t interrupt him, Ayanna Pressley. I know you’re tempted to, don’t do that. Keep going, Martin Terrell.

MARTIN TERRELL: And to me, she had reached a maturity that made her a real woman, and that’s what I’m most proud of her.

JIM: Ayanna Pressley, before we go, what are you most proud of in Martin Terrell?

REP. PRESSLEY: Yeah, I mean, he just overcomes so much. He’s beloved by his siblings, he’s an adored big brother. You know, I’m just impressed with all he’s overcome, you know.

And I want to say a moment that stands out in my mind, Dad, is that my wedding, and that first dance. And you know, again, my mother always made sure I knew I was conceived in love, and so a song that I really associate with my childhood is Stevie Wonders, “Isn’t She Lovely.”

And we played that every birthday as a tribute to both of my parents, because my mother talked about the significance of that Stevie Wonder song, and how, how much it meant to her and my father about me.

And that was what we danced to, our first song together with Stevie Wonder, “Isn’t She Lovely?”

So I’m just…I thank God that my dad never gave up on me. I thank God that I never gave up on my dad. And that we never gave up on we.

And when I do go to places like MCI-Norfolk, that’s the appeal that I make to the men that are incarcerated there, who I see so much of my father in them.

Don’t stop fighting for your children, even when they ignore you, even when they seek to distance themselves, even when they withdraw. They’re paying attention, and it means everything, even when you might feel that they don’t care anymore.

Because I clung to that, that even in my adolescence, in my lack of understanding that his addiction was a disease, and all the resentments that I had caught up in that, the thing that I clumped to was that I was loved.

He never stopped fighting for me. It didn’t matter if I opened the letters or not. It didn’t matter if I opened the gifts or not. He never stopped.

JIM: On that note, I can’t thank you both enough for spending time with us today. Martin, it was an honor to meet you. Thanks for your time, and Congresswoman, as always. Thank you. This is really something special. Thanks so much.

REP. PRESSLEY: Thanks, Dad. You’re just so darn cute.

JIM: He is pretty cute, by the way. If I may add, he is a pretty cute guy. Good to see you two.

MARGERY: Thank you so much for being with us. And congratulations, Martin Terrell, for your great work. And Congresswoman, thank you very much.

MR. TERRELL: This has been great, thanks for letting us share this.

MARGERY: Absolutely, we’re happy to. Grateful to.

You’ve been speaking with Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and her father, Martin Terrell. You can read all, get information about his books at Martinterrell.com. Thank you again for being with us.

I’m Margery Eagen, he’s Jim Braude. You’re listening to Boston Public Radio, streaming at YouTube.com/GBH News.

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