Justice, Power, and Resilience: A Conversation with Judge Hatchet

In this episode of Across Generations, host Tiffany Cross engages in a powerful, in-depth conversation with the trailblazing Judge Hatchet. As the first Black woman TV judge, Judge Hatchet reflects on her journey of using her platform for authentic, impactful community service. They discuss critical topics including the state of the judiciary, representation of Black women in power, and the importance of systemic change in the criminal justice system. This episode sheds light on activism, judicial reform, and the ongoing fight for justice while celebrating the strength and leadership of Black women.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to a Cross Generations where the voices of black
women unite. I'm your host, Tiffany Cross. Tiffany Cross. We
gather a season elder myself as the middle generation and
a vibrant young soul for engaging intergenerational conversations. Prepared to
engage or hear perspectives that no one else is happy.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You know how we do.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
We create magic, cate magic. Hi everybody, I'm Tiffany Cross,
your host of Across Generations, And let me just start
by saying I'm not judging you, but she is. On
today's episode, I'm sitting down for a one on one
conversation with Glinda Hatchett, better known to you all as
Judge Hatchett. Now she's the star of the former court

(00:49):
show Judge Hatchett and currently The Verdict with Judge Hatchett.
She's also a founding partner at the Hatchet Firm, and
Judge Hatchett is currently practicing at Stuart Miller's Women's Trial Attorneys.
And I'm a little jealous because she was vibing out
with Usher apparently and even got a private audience with
him in his concert. So I have quite a few questions.

(01:09):
We're going to talk about everything from how she handled
a share for somebody groping her to the most challenging
parts of aging, which I want to know about, and
what needs to change exactly in our criminal justice system.
So let's get right to it. Judge Hatchets, I am filter.
When I told me that we booked you, I literally yelped.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
I was like, are you kidding?

Speaker 1 (01:30):
I love it? So you're such a legend. One thing
I didn't realize is you were the first black woman
TV judge.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Did you know that? I hadn't thought about that. Yes, Yes,
you were.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yes you were a.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Pioneer in that space. And what I appreciate about it
is you were an actually appointed jurist, not a caricature
of a judge. Right, were actually let's stress.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
That, right, I was a real just yes, And we
can talk about that at some point. But that's why
I fused. Originally. It kept coming to me asking me
to do it, and I'm like, no, I'm a real judge.
I you know, I don't want to play that craziness
on TV. And so the first time I said no
several times, really several times.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Did you think it would diminish your career?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I thought it was not authentic. I thought that it
was not the fitting right, and so I mean, I'm
just going to tell you now. But what happened is
that a friend called up and said, Glinda, you know
you've got to take this meeting. And I'm like, Nancy,
I'm not taking this meeting. And she said, they know

(02:39):
that you and I know each other, and I'm calling
in a chit. You've got to take this meeting. And
I took it because of her. And I took the
meeting with Sony and they said what would it take
to get you to say yes? And I said, I
would have to develop the show consistent with everything that
I believe in. And that was that was what made
the difference. That my show was designed so that people

(03:05):
hopefully would leave in better shape than they came in.
Now it's real life, and that didn't always happen. So
I asked for support in terms of social workers and
mainly resources. So when I sent someone to drug treatment,
Sony paid for it.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
When I sent somebody for whatever rehabilitation, Sony paid for it.
And they literally literally brought in the President's studio in
that meeting.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
He came in to at the end of the meeting,
and he sat in front of me and he said,
what would it take? And I just, off the top
of my head listed the things that I thought were important.
And so that's why that show is very different with
the interventions, with the follow up with treatment. I have
stopped in the middle of taping Tiffany and sent a

(03:58):
child to the hospital, right, I mean, call the ambulance
to the studio and sent that child because it occurred
to me that he had been sexually molested by his grandmother.
Oh wow, And I just stopped. I just stopped tape.
I mean like, stop, stop, stop, because I thought something
about this is not right something. You know. I've been

(04:22):
doing this long enough to have known, because I was
a real judge for a while, and I always tell
people I was a mama before I was a judge,
you know. So I my instincts kicked in, and so
we would send like a child who came with her journal.
I'll make this short. She came into court with her

(04:43):
journal and she had had one hundred and twelve sexual
partners at twelve, she was sixteen, she was sixteen, she
had one hundred and twelve sexual partners. So I said,
first of you know, it was this kind of it
was this bluffing so and so. But she had kept

(05:05):
a journal. Wow, And so I stopped tape, and I
sat down to look at the journal. And the journal
was authentic as some of us in pen and some
of us and stuff it spilled on it. She had
had one hundred and twelve sexual partners, sometimes at the
same time. Right, So I sent her to South Africa

(05:27):
right with our crew, sent her to spend time in
a village where there was an orphanage where all those
children were there because all of their parents had died
from eight right as a wake up call. I had
sent her. Then another girl in a similar situation, who

(05:51):
is a prostitute, right, sixteen year old prostitute. I sent
her out all night to spend on the streets of
New York with Pommy, I remember vividly, who had been
a prostitute. And then she said, Judge, I want to
tell her. I wanted to tell her that I am

(06:14):
HIV positive. If I can't let you go on air,
because you know, we do it in segments, we take
part of it. They send them off and then tape
them when they get back, you know, a few weeks later,
a month later or whatever, and Pommy said in my
office in the studio, and she said, Judge, I need
to tell her my story. I need to tell her
that when I was sixteen, I was doing what she

(06:35):
was doing and now I'm HIV positive. And I said,
you can't a national TV. I can't let you say that.
So we delayed taping for another month or so, and
I put Pmmy in the treatment, therapeutic treatment, and for
me to be satisfied that she was really at a
place because nobody knew. She hadn't told her family, she

(06:56):
didn't told anybody. But she took the young girl to
a bridge in Brooklyn where the guy had thrown her
over for dead rather than to pay her after she
had been the prostitute wow, and left her there to die.
And so I took great pride in the fact that

(07:18):
we did a lot of interventions in ways. You know,
we went to crackhouses and pulled people out of the crackhouse.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
You know.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Of course, my camera people, I would say, oh my god,
we was Judge sitting us now, you know. But it
was raw and it was real because I wanted to
use it as a way to help people, and the
number of letters, the number of emails, number of people

(07:50):
have stopped me on the street when I'm in New York,
or I'm walking down the street in a small real
town and a grocery store visiting relatives in Louisiana. Judge,
I want to tell you my story. I want to
tell you that I watched you and I felt that
you were telling me that you were cheering for me too.
And that's the power of television. So I go back

(08:11):
to the original point. I didn't want to do Craziness.
Yes I didn't. I refuse to. So when you say
you had had several people come to you before and
I refused to do it. And the reason I did
it then is because Sony agreed to everything I asked them.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
You know, this is what I love about black women.
You did not take that show for you. You took
that show for community. You were not trying to build
your brand. You were trying to build community. And I
just that makes such a difference. And I think the marketplace,
quite honestly, has changed so much. I was just telling

(08:48):
one of our producers because people who there was a
woman who was a TV judge, like a web series
TV Judge. She literally started referring to herself as like
the honorable, but she was never a practicing lawyer and
was not an actual judge. And I just think when
people traffic in that is self surveying, and you were

(09:09):
community surveying. You were living in service to us, and
that makes such a difference. What do you think about
the landscape, because a lot of you know, I think.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
I think it's unfortunate.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Really, I think it's unportannt the TV landscape.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
I thought you meant about the judicial the judges, Well
I do.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
I definitely have a question about the judiciary. But in
terms of being the first black woman judge on television,
I think that you opened up a marketplace for that,
and then there were other people who came along after you.
Some of them were appointed judges, other people, you know,
were just TV personalities. I'm just curious what you think
about that, because I don't think we see that same

(09:44):
level of seriousness across the board that.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
We saw on your courtroom. No, we don't, and I
think it's unfortunate. I do. I think it's unfortunate. I
think it is a disservice to the profession. And what
I said when I started that show, you realize this
has I've been back in two thousand. Yeah, we're talking
twenty four years ago. And literally I said, my name

(10:08):
is on that show. My father's name miss on that show,
my ancestor's name on that show. And I never wanted
to wake up Tiffany and think, you know that it's
a poor reflection. I don't want my children to see
it and think what is mom doing or whatever. So

(10:29):
my point is that if you have a platform and
I mean this, and you don't use it for the
good of the whole, and you don't deserve it. Yeah,
I mean, I'm really you know, and I know people
disagree with me about that, but I'm very clear about that.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
You have no disagreement here.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
I know, I know you. I know I know that
I won't from you. And so if you are and
I say the same thing about power, I will. I
do have a little bit into that about power, that
if you have power and you don't use it for
the good of the whole, then you really don't deserve power.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
And if you are so busy trying to protect yourself
and aren't willing to take risk, and there have been
situations where I've taken a lot of risk and I
do it again and people are like, you know, you
better not do that. You love sell people. And this
is long before television because I have been the first

(11:31):
in so many instances in my life.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, the first black woman in Fulton County, right, appointed
judge in Fulton County.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
No, there were there were, there were other judges in
Fulton County. I was the first black man or woman
to be a chief judge. That's anywhere in the state
of Georgia. Wow, not just Fulton County, anywhere in Georgia.
There had never been a chief judge of a state
level court anywhere in the in the in the in

(12:00):
the state.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
I want to talk about that a little bit because
we were getting into the state of the judiciary, and
I think it is such a seductive topic in the
country when it comes to the Supreme Court, you know,
like all but stop. Everybody's looking at what's going to
happen with the Supreme Court and it gets to appoint
Supreme Court justices. But I think we have to start
paying attention to these lower courts, absolutely, and the dearth

(12:21):
of black women when those positions. Absolutely, so we should
just say forty five. I won't say his name, but
he appointed over two hundred judges, mostly white men, to
lifetime appointments. It will take a generation to undo that.
When it comes to black women appointed justices across all courts,

(12:41):
we are lacking in number. Curious your thoughts on that
and why, like, why does the landscape look that way?

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Well, let's back up, because we see the numbers not
on the bench of black women in this country. But
we have to back up to the pipeline. Let's just
be rerual about this, about the pipeline of people coming
into profession. And so the American Bar Association has done
studies about the numbers of black people period coming into

(13:13):
the profession. So we have to start there. And so
then that pipeline, we've got to get more people in
the pipeline. But the women who are sitting now we
have far more than we've had, but not nearly the
diversity that we should have on the bench. And it
is going to take more presidents in US Senates who

(13:35):
understand not only the appointment process but the confirmation process
and will value the fact that the judiciary needs to
look like America. It needs to look like the country
it serves. And that's not just the Supreme Court, but
all levels of the judiciary as well as local judiciarys

(13:55):
and so we are elected. A lot of judges are
elected being elected I do, and I'll tell you why,
because well, it's a two pronged answer, and I'll make
a brief too prong issue. The reason I support that
is because I do think that they need to be
known by the community that they serve. But at the

(14:17):
same time, we need to do a much better job
of educating the community so that they understand who they're
voting for and why they're voting for them. The same
thing for district attorneys and all of these communities across
the country that we need to do a better job
of educating people and then encouraging really good people to

(14:37):
run for these spaces and to be in this space. Now.
You know, right here in Atlanta, Georgia and Fulton County,
we have a number of black women on all these levels.
Judge miller Is is stepping down and retiring in the
next couple of days. She's on the Court of Appeals.

(14:58):
Not as diverse on the appellate levels we would like
for it to be, but in the county court rooms.
We are seeing a lot more diversity and a lot
more black women, particularly in this metro area. But there's
still a lot of work to do. However, let me
be quick to say, everybody black, ain't you kunt?

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Thank you? Hello, Clarence Thomas. We know we are clear.
And I think that's what people don't realize too. These
appellate courts, that is the filter that gets to the
Supreme Court. So if those courts don't look like us.
You know a brilliant legal mind who I love, Ellie Mastal.
He writes for the Nation. But he suggests that the
Supreme Court. I think he said they should have thirty

(15:38):
He's all for expanding the court, he said. He wrote
that they should have thirty two. And I think if
that's how many judges they have on the appellate courts
for twenty seven is it twenty seven? I can't remember.
But his point was it should look like the appellate
courts because then if the Supreme Court is like that,
it would be hard to influence them. It would be
hard to have a conservative court or a liberal court,
because they would be chosen at random over what cases

(15:59):
to preside on. Over you cannot get twenty seven or
thirty two justices to agree on anything conservative or Democrat,
and he thinks it would be a much more equitable
way for the country to issue justice. It's really I'm
probably butchering this legal argument, but he does it much
more articulately. Our Harvard trained lawyer does it much better

(16:20):
than I can. But when he said that, I thought
that is weak, because we have to start reimagining America,
like all of its social infrastructure, all of the even
the branches of government. We have to reimagine it. So
I like that perspective as a non legal person.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
And I disagree with that perspective. I'll tell you why.
Oh absolutely, let me tell you why, because I don't
want different branches of the US Supreme Court here in
certain cases, I want the entire panel, all nine, all twelve.
All the tire ends up being we've got nine. Now,
are you for expanding the court? I am for expanding
the court, but I'm not for expanding the court to

(16:58):
be like this, my huge panel. I don't want that, okay,
And I won't want it to be that. I don't
think it should be any more than twelve or thirteen, Okay.
I really don't. It has been an odd number. Yeah,
it has been a odd number. So thirteen thirteen thirteen
would be it for me, I think would be ideal.
Max Okay, But the reason I don't want it to
be heard like the appellate courts because the appellate courts

(17:19):
here cases in what we call panels, and so there
may be three p TP three judges that will hear
this particular case. I don't think that's appropriate for the
Supreme Court. I want every one of them hearing the
case and weighing in.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Perjective, and that's what makes us health is conversation. Different
people have different perspectives exactly. Well, you guys are the experts.
I am, Well, I don't have all the curiosity, not
any of the answers. So I appreciate your frien and
I don't know that that's the right answer, but I
think that that is a perspective that it's worth looking at. Well.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
I think most people at this point, given this court,
are for expanding the court, So I definitely appreciate that.
I'm just asking this because it just occurs to me
because you were out of Fulton County, say, share whatever
you like. Curious if you have any thoughts on Fannie Willis.
I do, oh perfect, So just for our viewers who
may not be following the minutia of politics like we do.
She is the prosecutor out of Fulton County. The main

(18:15):
important point out of this that I want to remind
our viewers and listeners is there is a recording of
forty five saying please find me eleven thousand votes. This
is a clear case of election interference. She was the
prosecutor of prosecuting that case against the former president and
there was all this hoopla because she had a relationship

(18:36):
with someone on her team. So that's the quick background story.
There's been a lot of opinions about it, and I'm
just curious, as a fellow person out of Fulton County
your thoughts.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well, let me full disclosure. Fani is a mentee. Ah,
she's a minte, right. I have known her. I have
enormous respect for her, And what I said on an
interview on national television when asked about this is that
I don't know of anybody better prepared to be a

(19:09):
prosecuting attorney anywhere in this country. On rico matters, she's
phenomenal and she knows her stuff, and I don't know.
I mean, there are people who have had experience, and
I won't say she's the only one, but I will
say I don't think there's anybody better than her. Let
me say that, and I will go a step further.

(19:29):
I don't know that there is anyone who would have
been more tenacious in bringing these charges, now only against
former president, but also several other people involved in that situation.
And she got a lot of criticism because it took
so long, but she took her time, and she did

(19:50):
a very very thorough piece that she took the grand jury. Now,
have we been distracted by Nathan Wade and all of that, Yes? Yes?
And do I wish that didn't happen. Absolutely, I wish
it didn't happen, right, But it did. But that was
not enough to disqualify her from that, and that's exactly
the way the judge rule.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
What has happened now is gone up on appeal, And
in my opinion, that was the strongest case of any
of the cases, either federal or state level anywhere in
this country that could have really been successful in prosecuting
trunk Right and the rest of the game.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, which made sense that they would pay keen attention
to her. And I have to say the best response
from her during those court proceedings where they acted like
she was on trial, and she let them know, you're confused.
You think I'm on trial and these people are on
trial for trying to steal this election. And the story
became about that. And it's like even the media failed

(20:52):
us so much then because they focused on her. And
every time you talk about this story, it should have
included audio from Donald Trump saying find me eleven thousand votes,
because that was that was the court hand, that was
exactly the court I was.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Actually in the courtroom that morning, really actually in the
courtroom that day. It was important for her to see me.
It was important for her to know that I was
there and that I was there to be supported. But
she ran in. She they were arguing that she shouldn't testify,
let's be clear. And I looked up out of the

(21:27):
corner of my eye, and she looked over and I
mean she ran and she looked at me and she
kept running and I'm testifying, Yes, I remember testifying. I
am testified.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
I thought it was a beaute. I mean, you can't
silence a black woman who want to speak, you know,
say no, I will not sit here and muzzle.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
So I think that she. I think we owe her respect,
and I think we owe her a gratitude. And I
don't know too many prosecutors who have taken this on right.
I don't, you know, because it really other thing we
have to understand too about this case. Not to get
into the weeds, but in charging them on the Rico statue,

(22:08):
it really does make it such that you have these
other people who are tying in. And what people don't
understand Tiffany often enough, is that there is no right
of pardon by the governor in Georgia. Right, he can't
part right, he can't parton. And so if she's able

(22:28):
to prosecute that case, there is no pardon because this
is not a federal case. It's a state case. And
in Georgia the governor cannot pardon and has not been
able to parton since the forties. And that's a whole
another history lesson we won't get into today. But I
have respect for her. I am constantly saying to her,
stand strong, be strong.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
We stand with her, We stand with her, because there
is something beautifully poetic in this country that the people
who will bring this man to heal are black women.
You have kiss James new York, the New York Attorney General,
then Fannie Willis right here in Atlanta. You have the
judge in the District of Columbia who will hear his case,
Judge Chetney. And then you have, of course Vice President

(23:11):
Kamala Harris. Here one thing I love too in reading
about you, I maybe I knew this at the time,
but it reoccurred to me. You represented Filando Castile's family.
When I've read that, I'm like, oh my god, I
don't I don't know that that stood out at the time.

(23:32):
So just a reminder because sadly, there were so many
people who we lost. But Filando Castile was shot by
an officer in Minneapolis. This is the case where he
was pulled over. He was in the passenger seat, his
girlfriend was driving.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
No, it's just an opposite.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
He was he was driving and the girlfriend was in
the passenger and she live streamed it and this officer,
Geronimo Yanez I believe it was his name, shot him.
And so we sadly watched this man it was just
awful to see. But it was in a string of
other very unfortunate deaths. Let me not say death. It
was in a string of other unfortunate murders.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Murders, that's all what it is. Yeah, it was murdered.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
So I were you a part of the criminal prosecution
or civil civil? Okay? And whatever happened? Did they ever?
I don't want to say that they see justice, because
justice would be their son still being here would be
filan Okay, still here.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
But something happened, Well, you're going to fall out of
your chair, because what people don't know is that there
had never been a police officer ever indicted in the
history of the state of Minnesota. Wow, before I pushed
that and I went and so people say, were you
on the criminal side? That's because I was pushing so
hard for the prosecutors to do what was right. And

(24:43):
fortunately at the time, the Red of Lynch was Attorney
General the United States and Cross deputized a US attorney
to also come in and prosecute the case. The Jewelry
found him the police officer, not guilty, which was very
disturbing because there was no broken tail light. He shouldn't

(25:03):
have been stopped. He was armed and he said, I'm armed,
but it wasn't on him. It was in the glove
compartment and the guy just opened fire and there was
no way he could survive hollow point bullets that literally
exploded his heart. And in my office there's a artist

(25:24):
did a piece out of ceramics with the heart is
just open and exposed, because that's how he died. But yes,
I did do that case, and it was a push.
It was a push because they didn't understand that this
needed to happen. They did intellectually, but didn't know how
to get it done because they'd never done it before.

(25:44):
And that was really the forerunner to George Floyd, you know,
because by that time Filando's case had already been done.
But yes, I was on the civil side. And I
still have a wonderful communications with his mother because I
walked into the house, Tiffany, I'll never forget this, and

(26:06):
I said, I am so sorry about your son. I
never said that again after that day because it was
my son too. Yeah, yes, my son too, and my
son was with me, and it was just hard. And
I'm a very strong woman. I am a very strong woman.

(26:29):
But when I had to walk into that morgue and
pull his body out on that slab, and it was
just ripped, you know, eh, different shots just ripped his
body apart. He had been stopped fifty three times in
that is a suburbs, even Minneapolis suburb, by the police.

(26:53):
And so the good thing that came out of them
is that the US Department of Justice opened an investigation
on the stops and the disparity and the racial disparity,
because it's not just enough to win these cases. You
have to have systemic change, right, and you've got to
have that done.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
The frustrating thing about that is is one, there is
no justice. There is no justice for the Castille family.
Justice would be Filando still being here. And two, we
have to die in outlandist fashion to pierce the white
narrative of what happens to us in our lives. We
have to be the perfect victim. We have to conduct
ourselves in the perfect way. And the thing is, no

(27:32):
matter what we do, we are still subject to violent
whims of law enforcement or anyone who deputizes themselves an
authority over you, which is a long tradition in this country,
and it's just heartbreaking to go through that which I'm
curious your thoughts on as someone as a judge, because
there are a lot of people who, you know, I

(27:52):
hate to make this specifically about black men, but there
are a significant number of black men who have challenges
with black people, but mainly black women, being prosecutors, being judges,
being a part of this system that harms them. I
don't want to deny them their humanity. Brothers. I understand
how you can feel that way, because this is a
system that has harmed you, and all you see from

(28:13):
a distance is y'all have crossed the line and gone
on the side of an oppressive, unforgiving criminal justice system.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
And that's a lot of the problem that Kamala is having, right.
I mean, that's like with.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Vice President Harris, who is a former prosecutor. But the
thing is you have to remind them prosecutors decide what
charges to bring, if any. When these police officers fire
off and use as a target practice, it is a
prosecutor who decides to indict them. When low level crime
offenses like weed and prostitution, they can decide, well, we're
not going to spend resources on these low level crimes.

(28:47):
So I'm just wondering how we can bridge that gap
with our understanding of the criminal justice system and what
you think needs to happen to change to really disrupt
and eradicate this system that has caused so much harm.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Well at it. It's not going to change overnight, and
there's not a magical bullet that's going to just fix
it overnight. But I do think that that having prosecutors
and again going back to seeing who's elected in these communities,
and it doesn't always have to be a black person.
It can be a very very astute white person. Yeah,

(29:22):
it can be who's aware hispanic when I marry and
I want a human person in these offices making these
decisions that you just talked about. And so we have
to pay attention to who's being elected. Let's start there,
and then encouraging people and supporting people in these positions.

(29:43):
So the system is I mean, we have to also
go back to what's happening with the prison system and
that there's such a disapportion number of black people, particularly
black men in the prisons, and that goes back to
the juvenile court system too. I mean, it didn't just
start there. To look at what's happening in the pipeline.
And I know I'm trying to cover a lot quickly,

(30:05):
but this is important. There was a study that's said
by the US Department of Justice that said that in
the year two thousand, out of every black male child
born in the year two thousand, one in three would
end up at some point in their lifetime in prison.
When you think about that for a minute, Wow, And
I talk about this in speeches and conferences all over

(30:27):
the country. One in three, one in three, that's your son,
that's your brother, that's your husband, that's your uncle, that's
your cousin, that's your neighbor, that's your friend. These are
nice statistics. And what I have been saying is that
is the prejict, the projection, but it doesn't have to
be our reality. And so what are we doing. What

(30:47):
are we doing that really is putting a different floor
under our children so that we are not then seeing
And that was the big thing that I was doing
in juvenile court, and that I was building these relationship
and programs all over the country, testifying in Washington, going
to Washington and say, look, we've got to change this.

(31:07):
Until we start really talking about this pipeline to prison,
that's real that we have got to change it. So
instead of building more prisons, why aren't we investing more
in headstart? Why aren't we putting There was an article
this week talking about the number of children in Georgia

(31:28):
who are homeless who are coming into the system. But
since is that made because you are homeless, that you
are ripped from your parents and put in foster care?

Speaker 1 (31:39):
But how is that possible? Because the governor here is
so what he would call pro life, So obviously he
cares so much about children, and obviously he leaves his
coalition of white Christian evangelicals who want to deny US
agency over our bodies. So how is it possible in
Georgia with all these quote unquote pro lifers that you
have all of these children in harm's way? Is rhetorical?

(32:00):
Y'all got to think about that. But this is Judge
Hatchet my frustration with this coalition that we're building with
these voters, because it's like you all created this landscape,
and now that it's cannibalizing, now that Frankenstein is coming
for your rights and encroaching on you, now all of
a sudden, you want to come over here and be
on the right side. Of history when you rem and sharpen.
Our common friend says this, you can't pull the knife

(32:22):
six inches out of my back and expect a reward
for it, because it's still some inches in my back.
So when you say things like that, it first because
it's not specific to Georgia. An interesting thing about Georgia.
In twenty sixteen, Governor Brian Kemp ran on anti choice legislation.
He called himself a pro lifer. White women here outpaced
even white men in voting for him. So I'm really

(32:42):
hopeful that this time around, this coalition of voters will
do the right thing and give us agency back over
our bodies. Which brings me to a question I've been
wanting to ask for. I didn't even bring this full
circle on purpose. It just came to me because we're
talking about agency over our bodies. Who would have the
temerity to put their hands on you in a way
that was not welcome. I read that a member of

(33:04):
law enforcement groped you. I would love to hear that story,
and I'm sorry that happened to you. I would love
to hear that story and how you.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Are, And I don't want to be the post a
child for sexual assault. I don't. I didn't want to,
but if it had to happen, it's best that it
happened to somebody like me who understands the law, had
the knew what to do, and then had a community
that supported me. So what happened is I was a reception.
I was a reception of sheriffs in Georgia at their conference,

(33:34):
their winter conference, and I was standing at a table
and right here on the long end, and this man
comes up who I did not know. I was introduced
to him Tiffany as Judge Hatchett, and I was cordial,
and I said. He told me where he was from,

(33:56):
from Bleckley County, and I said, my family is from
Troop County. I don't know where Blackley Kinntly is. And
he took his finger and he poked right there, which
I didn't take offense. He said, in the heart of Georgia,
right there. But what he did next is that he
then reached over, grabbed my breasts, squeezed it, rubbed it

(34:16):
and said, in the heart of it, in the heart
of Georgia. I was frozen. And you know how you think, well,
why didn't you, why didn't that woman slap in one
and she kicked him. I was absolutely frozen. I was
there as the guest of a retired shriff, Thomas Brown,
my dear friend, who was turned his back was turned
to me, so he didn't see it. But the woman
across the table got his attention. He had to literally,

(34:40):
Thomas Brown had to literally go and pull his hand
off of me and push him away.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Did this man look like us? No, he was a
white man.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
He's a white man from rural Georgia. Oh my god,
from rural Georgia. That is, I say, find only black
woman in the room. He came up to my table uninvited, right,
So he then said he didn't remember blah blah blah,
and then he wanted to apologize and he said he

(35:12):
was John Ada whatever. But you just have to wonder
what really is going on with him? And then he
left the country. He literally he left the country on
a missionary trip right when they were trying to find
him to arrest him, right, And so it's just you

(35:32):
know the gall how dare you?

Speaker 1 (35:35):
And he was a sheriff.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
He was the sheriff, not a deputy shriff. He was
the sheriff of Blackly count So.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
You wonder if a man like that is in a
position of authority, how else might he have abused his authority?
How many other women may he have growths? I mean,
I just believe there's a racial component. Anytime a white
man looks at you, I don't I wonder how would
he have behaved that same way with a white woman
who's a judge.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
I was black woman in the room, right, I was
the only black woman in the room. He didn't do
it to anybody else? Right?

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Who else got growth that night?

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Right?

Speaker 1 (36:05):
You just the temerity of that, But you took action.
You didn't just leave mortified. And look, I don't think
anyone's asked, well, why didn't you fill in the blank,
like what could you have done in that moment?

Speaker 2 (36:16):
But you did take action. So I did press charges,
and I thought I was fine. And this is important
for your viewers to understand too. I thought I was fine, right,
you know, I'm a strong black woman and fine. And
in fact, I went the next night to a dinner
because I thought, I'm not gonna let this man push me,
and so I went with Thomas to the dinner the

(36:39):
next night. So this happened on a Tuesday night, Wednesday night,
I went to the dinner Thursday morning, I couldn't get
out of bed. I couldn't stop crying. Wow, I was
a wreck. I just was.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
I was just it's humiliating.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
I was, well, you know what, because it was the
first time in my life, my adult life, that I
felt powerless and that this how could someone make me
feel powerless? And I didn't want to be a victim.
I didn't want to feel like a victim. And in fact,

(37:14):
it's very hard for me even now to refer to
myself as a victory, you know. But I did foul
charges because it was important that I do that, that
he beheld accountable. It took almost a year for us
to go to court. He resigned the morning of the hearing.
He designed vision you want to hold on to his

(37:34):
benefitiness pension. But he did. He did in a guilty plea.
And when I stood it before the court, I really
thought that I was okay. Very importantly, because I'm very
transparent about this. That morning I woke up in tears
and could not function. My assistant at the time she

(37:55):
had to get food over to the house. I couldn't function.
But then studying in corners a year later and that's
the first someone I'd seen him obviously since then, and
I was talking and the tears just.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah. I think that's ancestral too, because you think about
like all the times that black women were subjected to
violence in that way, sexual violence, being grope, you know,
being lusted after. I felt that connection to your story.
I felt that connection when Donald Trump talked about how

(38:29):
beautiful Vice President Harris looked on the color of Time magazine.
He was like lusting after her, and it's like, yeah,
that's not flattering, So like that makes us feel disgusted.
It makes me want to crawl out of my scaring
skin hearing that, and I just they behave that way
when they are not outnumbered. He would not if he
was at the at Reverend Sharpton's nationally actually network once

(38:50):
and in New York, he would not have done that.
If he was at you were speaking at a HBCU congerence,
he would not have known how drunk he claimed to be.
He'd a sobered up real quick and thought twice about it.
He felt like he had license to do that. That's
a disgusting shame on that man.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
But the other thing too, that again I didn't want
I didn't you know. I didn't sign up for this,
but the number of women who've reached out to me,
women have stopped me. I was at car dealership getting
some suff repaired and swimming, literally jumped out of a
cart in tears and just broke down and cried. Women
who I have known, I have known, who've said when

(39:27):
I've never told this story before. I watched the press
company that I just wept the entire time I was
raped thirty years ago, and I never said anything. The
number of women who told me that they've been raped
and sexually assaulted, and so they were saying, thank you
for standing up for us, thank you for taking a
position on this, thank you for holding him accountable. And

(39:49):
so now I'm actually taking on cases in my law
firm of sexual assault cases on the civil side because
it's important, just like I'm taking a turn on death
cases now because my own daughter died needlessly after having
given birth.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
And so you don't ever know why you're in these situations,
but I have to believe that I'm there because God
has a purpose for me, and so I'm trying to
honor that.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yeah, and I want to say my condolences to your
daughter in law. This was after her doctor you described
him as butchering her. This was a batched sinesarean section
that she had to have and bled out after her
child survived. Thank God, your beautiful grands.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Eight Wow. Try to believe it's been eight years.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Wow, But that even that story is so familiar to
black women. Many yes of being denied our care, denied
our humanity, even in the medical profession. It's belief that
we can, you know, carry more pain, we can stand
more pain. It's just awful. I've been talking to you

(40:56):
a lot because I'm so interested in politics and your
perspective on things, but I'm also just interested in, I guess,
guidance in life. You know, I am in my forties
now and I'm navigating so many things. You know, I'm
my face is changing, my body's changing. I'm perimental, pausal.
I feel like there are times wre I'm just like

(41:17):
super sad. I don't know why, and I'm like, oh,
maybe this is very minal pause, or I get nauseous. Lately,
there's all these changes happening in my body and my mind,
and I also feel like I'm being confronted with my
own mortality. You know, like, what is my legacy? How
do I want to spend the latter part of my
years in this like middle age. So I'm just curious
from you because you're in your seventies and yeah, looking
at you, you can't tell. That's the thing with black women,

(41:39):
you never know how old we are.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
I am seventy three. I haven't had a facelift yet.
I'm not. I don't planning to have a facelift. But
I know I'm seventy three and I'm very proud of that. Yeah, yeah,
I'm seventy three. I don't feel seventy three yet. Well,
I was going to ask, how old do you feel?
I don't. I don't feel seventy three. I mean a
days like, gick up, my knee is hurting your mind? Yeah,
hip is hurting and stuff. No, I don't feel it.
And people don't think I'm seventy three because I know that. Yeah,

(42:03):
it's a guy came up. He So I judge, if
you don't want me to take you out, you don't
have to lie about your age. I'm blattered. I'm flattered,
but that's how oh I am.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Well, how but literally, like if there's an age like
how old does I know you're sixty you feel sixty, Okay,
like I'm sixty. Okay, I feel like I'm sixty.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
And so of your seventy three years, what was the
most challenging time in life for you?

Speaker 2 (42:29):
There have been several periods of time that have been
really challenging for me. My father died thirty one years
ago this year. Suddenly he got to the hospital nine.
He got there at nine. I got that nine thirty
he was dead. Wow, I live. And and then of

(42:50):
course Kira's death I always refer to as my daughter
and not my daughter in law, have just been probably
two of the most difficult times of my life because
it's so final, they're never coming back, and particularly with Kiara,
with these two precious babies, and Charles was not yet

(43:14):
three but very articulate, and they lived with me, your grandson,
my grandsons live with me because Charles is nineteen months
old when Kira died. So there's this new baby and
a nineteen month old, and I brought them back from
la and said, you've got to come home to Atlanta.
And so one night, and I'm a light sleeper, and
the doors were open so I could listen out for them,

(43:36):
and I heard him get up, and this is Charles
Spurgeon Johnson the Fifth And he came up and he said, Grandma, gee, yeah,
my mommy's cell phone. And I said, no, sweetie, I
don't And he said, I need you to find it

(43:56):
because I need you to call and tell her that
God to let her come home. Now, this is a child,
he's not quite three, who is able to articulate. That's
what you say, She's never coming home. Yeah, And it
was unnecessary. So what I want you and people listening
to know is that eighty four percent of deaths, and

(44:18):
these maternal deaths are preventable. That's outrageous. So eighty four percent,
my son says, mom, you have to look at it differently.
That means we've got a lot of room to improve.
And so it's hard. It's hard. So those were the
most difficult times of my life, you know, because my
father was my hero, will always be my hero, very

(44:38):
close to him, and just thought the world of him
and still do. And he is. His handprints are all
over I know that so much of who I am
is because of how he poured into me and sacrificed
for me. Yeah, So to not. I mean, he was
perfectly healthy and then you know, and then he's gone.

(44:58):
He's just gone of the massive heart attack. Didn't smoke,
you know, didn't do all the thing, wasn't overweight, he
was seventy heyn almost my age, seventy two. And and.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
I don't know what's what's more challenging if you have
time to plan for it, you have to watch a
parent die or sudden. But they're so heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
I think they're so heartbreaking. I wouldn't have wanted him
to suffer. I wouldn't want him to suffer. And I've
dealt with that question in my own soul, and as
hard as it was for me to lose him like that,
I would not have wanted him to suffer. Yeah, I
would not have wanted him to suffer. So those have
been the challenging things. Now professionally, you know, I've gotten

(45:40):
my ass kicked on so many different situations. When I
left law school, I went to clerk in the Northern
District Attle Court here in Atlanta, Georgia, there never been
a black person man or woman. Yeah, clerk, And I
went to clerk for the first black judge in the
Deep South Federal judge in the Deep South, right, Well,

(46:00):
you know, come on, yeah, I'm like trying to protect
him and I'm making sure that everything is just super excellent.
And That's always kind of been the story that I'm
always there and first I'm getting my ass kicked. People
don't think you deserve to be there, and I'm always
trying to prove that I am a badass and I

(46:20):
deserve to be here.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
The quintessential black woman's story. I think we all go
through that. But you're doing that while dealing with other things,
while raising two kids, while navigating your personal life, while
maintaining a marriage, while losing your father, right, like all
the things that we carry. What about your mom?

Speaker 2 (46:37):
My mom passed in twenty twenty doing COVID, not from COVID,
but to doing the isolation of COVID. But she would
have been ninety nine a few months later, and she
had been still driving her hard top convertible Lexus with
the top down until she was ninety seven, with her
dark glasses on. So let's be very clear. She had

(46:59):
been working on her pilot's license when she was ninety.
She was just, I mean, she was just And I
write about her in this book the collection memoirs about mothers,
and I said, with all due respect me, she was.
She was truly the badass. Yeah yeah, and so that
was pretty amazing. But she would, you know, she and
my dad would remind me too. So I left the

(47:22):
clerkship and then I went to Dobta Airlines and they
had never had a black woman attorney, right, and I
was the highest ranking woman of any color, black, Hispanic,
Native American worldwide.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Yeah, and so you can.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Imagine when I'd show up in court, right, Yeah, I
know I had to be the legal secretary. I had
to be the parallel, I had.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
To be assistant something. Yeah, of course you could not.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
Be right, Yeah, I couldn't be the attorney. I couldn't
be the attorney representing a global airline. But I never
lost a case, right, my ass on cousin. People would say,
but just it's not fair. I said, I didn't say
it was fair. So that was my reality, so that
I could pry that door open for you. So, just

(48:10):
a couple of weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas
Corporate Council Women of Color and now there are you know,
thousands of black women who are in house counsel for
different corporations, right, and on the stage, I said, forty
three years ago, I watched into Delta Airlines and none
of you are anywhere, right, I was it. There was not.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Strength and numbers. There is strength and that is what
it takes. That's why I say it's so important to
build community, not brand.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
So you want to know about headaches and perimental pause?

Speaker 1 (48:41):
Well, yes, I guess I'm trying to figure out. I'm
forty five, okay, seventy three, so I won't do the math.
But that's thirty something years. Okay, what do I look
forward to? Yes? Like, what do I need to brace
myself for? What do I need to look forward to?

Speaker 2 (48:57):
All? Right, So you need to make sure that you
are investing in your health. Right what that means? Which
is what I didn't do, and so I'm telling you
to do it. So I would work long hours, I
eat on the run, and I ended up with pneumonia
and I was so sick. My son had to fly
to New York to bring me back to Atlanta. And

(49:19):
I said, God, I know I've said this before, but
if you get me off of this spit, I promise
I'm going to do better. I said. I know I've
said this before, but I was taking care of everybody else,
and so that would be the first thing to pay attention.
I always say to women, make sure that you are,
you know, keeping those annual mammogram and your annual physical

(49:40):
and doing that, and take time for yourself. I didn't
do that. I didn't do that when I was your
age because I was so busy taking care of everybody
and trying to save world. Yeah, and I didn't do that,
and I've only recently come to that. I think one
of the saving graces is though in five I became

(50:02):
a vegetarian. Me too good, good, I saw me. That's important.
So I haven't I love animals?

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Well mine wasn't philosophical. Mine was you know, I just
thought I needed to be healthier, and so.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
It is healthier. You know.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Oh, I'm as major because I mean, I don't think
i'd be in this kind of condition if I hadn't been.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
So you look, Look, do you work out?

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Not as much as I should? You look? Thank you?

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Is that residual or you just blessed with I.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Think I think a lot of his genes. If you
saw my mom and you saw the women in her family,
I mean, I think a lot of that is just blessed.
But I need to I need to do my part. Okay,
I need to do better. I need to do better.
I used to buike, for instance. I used to go
out on the Silver Comic Trail. This is years ago,
and I would that would just be my therapy. I
would leave my phone, which is not smart, and I

(50:52):
would just go and bike for miles on a comet.
And then a woman was raped Jesus, and so my
team was like, no, no, no, they cannot go out there
by yours. Because that was my thing. I would just
go and it was like not of course. Now sometimes
I go so far out and then I get, oh god,
I gotta go all the way back. All the squirrels

(51:13):
were wonderful on the way up, and they're like if
they come in front of me, now they ran over.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
We had a peace agreement with the squirrels that they
agreed to move out the way, and I don't know
who violated first, but now they're like, go around, like
we're here too.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
And I think there has to be some stuff that
just makes you happy.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
Well, what makes you happy?

Speaker 2 (51:31):
I love long walks on the ocean. Me too.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
I love long walks anywhere.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
I love the water, I love the waves. I love
watching the sunrise, I love watching the sunset. And now
I'm in a place now where I literally wake up
to the sunrising in my bedroom window and I can
go out in the back balcony and watch the sunset.
For those are things that are really peaceful. And the

(51:58):
time that I spend with the boys, you know, I'm
kind of reliving baseball and soccer and swim team, and
we name it. I'm doing it. And then I do.
I take the two boys here to see their brother
in Hawaii, and we go for two weeks every summer.
And so those are things for me that are just
a girl. That was a wonderful vacation. So I have

(52:18):
three little boys. Yeah, you know, three little boys. I mean,
that is not a vacation, not at all, you know,
but you know it's for me. It is such a blessing. Yeah,
I have them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Do you like hang out with girlfriends? So are you married?

Speaker 2 (52:34):
No, I've been divorced for years. Okay, I've been divorced
for oh god, thirty plus years.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Well, then, how is dating in the seventies?

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Dating is horrible?

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Really? Why?

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Because because I don't think dating is horrible in the seventies.
I don't. I think it's dating is horrible because it's
me say more about that, because I don't. I don't
want to be with someone who wants to be with
me for the notoriety. Yeah. Yeah, And so I do date,
and I'm very quiet about it, of course, because I'm

(53:06):
very private about it. You know that's best. Yeah, you know,
so you're not going to read about me and the tabloids, right,
You're not going to read about me and this, and
you never will. Yeah, because I am so my life
is so public. Yeah, that my private life is very
very guarded special, it's very special. Yeah, and that's important too. Yeah,
it's very very I am.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
I want to say, I'm disappointed to hear dating is
horrible in the seventies because I'm not married either, and
I just wonder. I think so many people, especially black
women my age, have kind of decentered romance, and so
I'm definitely open to partnership, but I'm building a life
right now that I'm so in love with that if
a partner never comes, I'll be Okay.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
You got to be in love with yourself and you've
got to be comfortable with yourself. Women. I have seen
women colleagues who are my age or a little bit
younger who are so desperate to be in relationships that
they've lost themselves. And that's tragic. That's a bad place
to be. That is a bad place to be. And

(54:08):
then they don't understand why the guy left.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yeah, and there is no you. There was no you there, right, there's.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
No you there. And you became so needy and so
desperate to be that you didn't take the time just
to be you. Yeah, and you lost yourself in the process,
and that's not good. But you also, you know, as
you grow older, you also want to be sure that
it's someone who appreciates you and is there to really

(54:36):
support you and your empowerment.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
And if they can't. I tell young women this all
the time, if they aren't committed to your empowerment, they
gotta go. You gotta go. I don't care how fine
he is, how much you think you're in love with him.
If ultimately he is not supportive of who you are
and supportive of your empowerment and wants to see you

(54:59):
even sore higher.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
They gotta go that this is a shallow question. But
when you said, like, you don't care how fine he is,
like my definition of fine has changed. So like if
I saw somebody's seventy, I would like, oh, he's so fine.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
It's like, oh, he's a handsome, older gentleman. I was
telling these young ladies a guy who I used to date,
and I asked him, do you guys know him? And
they were like, oh yeah, like he's older, like heavy,
and I'm like, I would never I thought he was
so handsome to me, but the way that they talked
about him, like he was the older man and he
was in my age bracket and I thought I thought wow,

(55:34):
like and they were like thirty, I'm like he was fifty.
So of course, to them, it's a T shirt. I
saw it on Instagram. I want to find it.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
But this is funny.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
It encapsulates how I feel. It's a T shirt that
says it's so strange being the same age as old people.
That is how I feel. It's like age is catch up.
But to you, you might look at me like, girl,
you don't even know, Like my mom looks at me
like you don't even know age yet, but I feel
you don't. But this is the thing that scares me.

(56:03):
I remember twenty five like it was six months ago.
So if I remember twenty five like it was six
months ago, that says to me that sixty five is
gonna come like.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
That, it's gonna come fast.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
Yes, it's like the more we live, the faster time.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
So but to that point, and very important footnote, I'm
talking to you as a daughter here. Yes, a very
important footnote is that you got to live it in
a way that you don't look back and say, God,
I wish I had. Yeah, you know that I have.
I do have regrets in my life. I do what
I do. Like, for instance, my father tried to get

(56:37):
me to learn how to play golf with him. I
had two young children at a job. I'm trying to
figure out this brief for this ant trust case. I'm
flying all of it. You know, I'm like, I just
I was like, but I wish that somehow I had
figured out how to capture that time with him, because
I thought he would be here a lot longer for

(56:57):
me than he was. I you know, I regret a
couple of these crazy fools I dated when I was,
you know, in my twenties. I mean, like what the
hell was I thinking? Right, Yeah, I mean I don't
have serious regrets about because you know, fortunately the one
I thought I was going to marry, I didn't marry,
thank God, and Hallelujah help us Jesus it be in

(57:19):
prison somewhere. Really, I would just be like, oh, I
look back on that. I think you did what you had,
what you were what.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, you know, but we all have that.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
I think, yeah, that's true, that's true.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
That even making mistakes.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yeah, right, right, right right, And so I think that
it's I think that what you want to do at
forty five, because you're still very young, and I know
that you are at some pivotal places in your careers.
You're thinking about me pieces and how you how you
build on that and what doesn't work anymore. And what
you need to do is that you don't want to

(57:54):
then have a lot of regrets, Like I can really
look at seventy three and say, I have very very
few regrets in my life, very very few regrets in
my life, you know, And that's the way you want
to live your life. And also you have to give
yourself some grace. Now I'm just learning that, and I

(58:14):
don't want you to wait to be my age to
learn that.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
I'm trying to get that's the heart of thing.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Got to give yourself. I didn't give myself grace, you know,
I just did not allow myself to make mistakes. And
I give myself grace now and I wish.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
How what does that look like? How? Because I'm trying
to do that.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
So what I do is, first of all, I pray.
I mean, I start my day every day on my
knees in prayer. The other thing is I do I meditate, right,
And I did it in law school. I started doing
in law school at the suggestion of a good buddy
in law school. So it's having horrible migraines headaches, I mean,
just like debilitating, couldn't function and I didn't want to

(58:56):
be on medication, and so I learned how to medic
and then I stopped, and then I got busy, and
then you know, life got in the way, and so
I'm back at that place now where I'm making time
to do that. So, for instance, my good friend and
her husband and mother took me to Anguilla for my
birthday this year. I mean, you know, it was just

(59:18):
like huh, just like Linda, just get there, yeah, you
don't have to think about anything. And so that very
small circle of friends, it is so important in your life.
You don't need a bunch of people. And when I
was pregnant a thousand years ago, a woman who had
had a baby three months before I had she said, Glinda,

(59:40):
I have had to learn to live in the sunshine
and to rid my life of weeds. And I write
about that in one of my books, and I've often
thought about that. That's what you need to do, because
there are going to be some weeds. You just need
to be like girls. Yeah, I'm going to love you
at a distance, you know, dude, you know I'm gonna

(01:00:00):
feed you with a long handle spoon that okay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Yeah, you have inspired me and I just love your
life advice. You know, I was telling you about my
grandmother before this, and that's really what I am navigating here.
Like every woman I meet who is an elder to me,
who's a seasoned woman, I'm like, teach me, pour into me,
because I just think black women are oracles. And you know, there,

(01:00:24):
I can be a mature person, I can be immature person,
but it ain't nothing like just days spent on this earth.
So the days that you spent on this earth, we
have wisdom to share with us, and you've certainly done
that today. So thank you so much, attacking for being here.
I will cherish this time. My last question slash request
is I know your home is your sanctuary, but I

(01:00:45):
would love to come over and have tea or something.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
I will pull us some wine.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Okay, even that communion.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
You can have tp W, but also plus one, I'll have.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Some communion with you. We'll do that. Thank you so
much in here, and I love this. My other request,
I was trying to decide do I want to come
over or do all this jacket she's wearing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Well, this jacket was designed for me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
And there's a black woman who did this jewel. Oh,
this is by Hen beautiful and so and then I
do a lot of wear stuff on the show. That
young black artist died recently and just broke my heart.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Yeah. So I try to support black people, yes, and
I try to do that in ways that then uplifts
them so well.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
On behalf of the community. We thank you for all
that you've done, and I just thank you for taking
the time. It's been a delight to get to know you,
and I'm fuller for the experience. So thank you so much,
and thank you guys. I hope that you guys feel
just as full watching at home or listening at home.
Please drop us a comment like subscribe, do all the
things and let us know how you felt about this episode.
I feel enlightened and just happier for having met Judge hatchet.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
So I practiced law. People don't think I practiced law.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
Yes, I still practice law.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
You are, yes, law, so we'll post that how to
get in touch with me?

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
She yes, Judge Hatchett practices law. So if you do,
do you practice everywhere here in Georgia?

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
I practice here. I practice everywhere?

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Okay, so here in Georgia. If you need legal representation,
you can reach out to Judge Hatchett. And the next
time I'm in Georgia, I'm going for some communion at
Judge Hatches's house. Until then, we'll see you on the
next episode of Across Generations. Thanks for tuning in. I'm
Tiffany Cross. Across Generations is brought to you by Will
Packer and will Packer Media in partnership with iHeart Podcast.

(01:02:32):
I'm your host and executive producer Tiffany d Cross from
Idea to Launch Productions executive producer Carla will Meris produced
by Mandy B and Angel Forte editing, sound design and
mixed by Gaza Forte. Original music by Epidemic Sound Video
editing by Kathon Alexander and Court Meeting