February 6, 2024 • 44 mins
In Melvin’s family, you were either a drug dealer or a junkie. At 8 years old, he remembers choosing between these two options and joined his family’s cocaine ring that was arguably the largest in West Tennessee history. It led him to one of the most desperate situations you could imagine and making a deal with God to get out of it. He promised to save other inner-city Memphis kids just like him and that’s exactly what PURE Academy has done.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It could have been an eighteen bedroom house.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
If ain't no love being passed out, that don't mean
you go on, man.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I'm kids looking for love. When I hit the screech,
I was looking for love. When I joined my gang,
I was looking for love. I was looking for acceptance.
I was looking for people that wanted me to be
around you. If you men selling weed or blowing your ass,
I just.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Wanted to praise. I wanted to feel good about myself.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I wanted to belong. That's all these kids want. That's
what anybody wants.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
That's why we joined for Turning is that's why we
get these good jobs, and why we get all in
these social groups.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Because what in the end of the day, everybody want
to belong. That's our biggest thing. Get period. Man, Before
we do anything, we're gonna love on you.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
inner City Memphis. And the last part it unintentionally led
to an oscar for the film about our team that's
called Undefeated. Guys. I believe Our country's problems will never
(01:14):
be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice
suits talking big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox,
but rather an army of normal folks US, just you
and me deciding, Hey, I can help. That's what Melvin Cole,
the voice we just heard, has done. Melvin is straight
from the hood in Memphis, and he has a truly
(01:36):
wild story of drug dealing and gang banging. But thankfully
he has an even wilder redemption story to get out
of the one of the most desperate situations you could imagine,
he made a deal with God that he'd pour healthy
love into kids who grew up just like he did today.
His inner city boarding school, Pure Academy has graduated around
(01:59):
fifty kids in twenty of them have received full athletic
scholarships to play college football. I cannot wait for you
to meet Melvin. Right after these brief messages from our
Jenner sponsors, Okay, everybody, before we go any further, I
(02:30):
felt compelled to share warning about this particular episode. As
you know, we've covered a lot of really heavy topics
on the podcast, and I'm going to tell you something.
I think this one may be the heaviest, as you know,
if you've listened a lot. We usually try to edit
out occasional swear words out to respect for families that
may be listening and those of you who may be
(02:52):
put off by that kind of language. But frankly, in
Melvin's story, there is so much detail and there are
so many swear words it would sound really, really weird
to edit it that way, So fair warning. This is
(03:14):
an unbelievable deep topic. It's explicit gangs, drug dealing, prison
in very explicit detail, with very raw language, and if
that is going to bother you, I'd recommend listening to
a past episode of the podcast you may have missed,
or just skipping this one altogether. But if you can
(03:38):
make it through all of that, the story of redemption
in this episode is worth telling, and it's why we're
putting it out there. Melvin's an amazing guy who's been
through more than most and has come out on the
other side to give so much of himself because of
a deally made with God. But to get there, it's
(04:02):
a bumpy road with a lot of rough language, and
I just want to warn you that's what this podcast.
If you listen to it. That's what you're in for.
So if you're okay with it, roll with us. If
you're not, we'll see you next week. So let's begin
with Melvin on what his upbringing was like in South Memphis.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
The biggest, the biggest thing for me is I like
to tell people all the time that I think it
was typical.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
H yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I mean, because that's why I grew up and that's
why I was around. So for me, my grandma was
a hair and attic, and my other grandma was an
angry drunk so and all my uncles and cousins were
drug dealers. So from there, that became my reality from
day one, you know what I mean, watching my grandma
and get fucked for hair, run guys going in and
(04:55):
at the house my grandma. I used to tell people
all the time when I first got to school, when
they called my name, I didn't respond cause I was used.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
To motherfucker, niggas, sit your ass down and all of that.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So that became the norm to me.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
On listen, that's how you talk a lot of people say, man,
why you cut someone?
Speaker 1 (05:13):
That's how I grew up. I mean, I didn't see
anything different. That was our norm. The drugs, the violence,
the gangs.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
That's what we saw. I mean, that's what we saw.
That's where we lived.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I remember my grandma was.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Telling me make sure you wash your hands or the
rats weren't nibble on your fingers when.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
We stayed there.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I mean, so that was that was my reality. That
was my like I like to tell people, that was
my first introduction to the world.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
I mean, I read that your mother and father could
not handle the death of your sister when you were
very young.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, that was a.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I'll be honest with you, that drew a wedge between everybody.
And when I say everybody, from my mom, my dad,
my brother, nobody knew how to cope with it.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
And how old were you and how was your sister?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
So I was two and my sister was four and
so so. But I think more importantly what kind of
got me that I learned at the early age later
on in life that my parents couldn't cope with it
Because so my mom was a teenage parent, she was
kicked out of her house at the age of sixteen
when my brother she worked three jobs, and my father
(06:35):
had a daughter before my sister who was killed by
the baby Mama put her next to a window in Boston,
and she got caught pneumonia and died because.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
They wasn't seeing eye to eye.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
My my father didn't choose her, so with him with
his second death, it drew a wedge between everybody. Father
came drunk and just kind of sorrowed in his own thing.
My mom, she really can She she couldn't process life.
So that that left me kind of creating my own
(07:07):
image of life. That kind of helped me shape my
own feelings and different things like that, because growing up
I didn't understand why I was left out, you know
what I mean. That was the biggest thing that frankly
pissed me off. I mean it was times when my
father get drunk and he be like, why the fuck
God didn't take you instead of the girls. I was like,
(07:28):
I don't fucking know, want you die and ask them.
So growing up I didn't understand, dude, I don't fucking know.
I don't know why they died, you know what I mean.
So and my mom she couldn't, she couldn't process it.
I mean she my sister actually died in the bed
with her, so she was she wasn't able to process it.
(07:51):
And now when we talk about it, that was kind
of why she pushed me into a teenage father, because
my daughter and her mind were the replacement of her.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Daughter, not realizing I it fucked me up.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
So the grandmother, you got one angry drunk and one
heroin out of your words, right, one of those was
your mother's mother, correct, till your mother grew up the
same trauma you did.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Absolutely, So the angry drunk was my grandma, my mother's mother.
So when my mom became pregnant at fifteen, my grandma
gave her an ultimatum, have abortion or get the fuck out,
and my mom chose to get the fuck out.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
She worked three jobs.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
And my brother's dad left her and went to the
army and never looked back. I mean, so she grew
up with her own chip on her.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Shoulder, which you inherited. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
So the thing about it is shit fucking heroded. I
mean I it was passed down to me. It was
basically shoved.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Down thro So.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
You told me this when we first met, and then
you won't remember this. But when we first met, I'm
skipping ahead to pure which we'll get to down the road,
and we were talking about all that you're doing. And
I was walking around looking at this place, going what
am I seeing here? I remember you saying that you
knew at a very early age, preteen, that you had
(09:26):
a choice. There were two tracks. You either be an
addict and a junkie, or you'd be a dealer.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Clear, it was it was, It was simple.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
That's what you saw.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
That's what I saw. This where I lived, that was
the talk.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
So when did you decide you were going to be
a dealer not a junkie.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think I was like eight or nine, nine, you
know it, eight or nine.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
You're supposed to be reading Curious George and going to
incredible pizza and driving go karts.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
No, not in poverty. That may be your life, that
may be the life for your kids, but in privacy.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
It was in my life, but it is the life
of my kids.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But you ain't.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Ain't no fucking incredible pizza. You just open to get pizza.
But I'll never forget. I was walking I walked in
on my grandma fucking and the guy says, get.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
The fuck out of here, you nickt. The guy said
that to you yet and I knew right there in
no way.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Meaning I ain't gonna be the junkie.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I ain't gonna be the junkie. I'm not I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna be the victim. If anything, I'm
gonna be the guy in power.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
I'm gonna be controlling this. That's not gonna happen to me.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
So I don't know if you know a guy named rs. Cooper.
He was a guest some months ago. He's from West
Side Chicago. He is from the same you put what
you're from in Memphis and put in Chicago or Chicago here,
same same world. And he describes his environment like this.
(10:57):
In his apartment, they had a fan because the air
didn't blow very cold in their project, and the fan
had a blade a little ht of balance, and so
every time it rolled around it clicked. So it was
like just this fan click click, click, click click click
when it ran. Well, it did that all the time.
(11:17):
So when you lived there, you didn't even hear the clicking.
You got used to it, right, But if you walked
in their apartments, the first thing you'd hear is that
air take and click. But it was so common to
them that the clicking of that fan was, you know,
no big deal. They didn't hear it. It was just common.
And he said, drugs, junkies, drug dealers, murder, gunshots, blood
(11:42):
on the street, the wells of yet another mother, losing
a son to gunfire, crime, beatings, jail. All of that
was so common in his environment that it was like
the clicking of that fan in his apartment. You just
didn't even hear it anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Absolutely, I mean you gotta think in terms of you
only think some foreign if you go to a foreign place.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
I mean, so when you.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Start looking up, man, your auntie getting that ass kicked
by boyfriend. So she called you and your brothers and
your cousins to come over.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Well, I mean, it's all part of it. It's all intertwined.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I mean, from every part of the family. You're gonna
get this dysfunction.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
It's hard for our listeners to understand or even maybe
even believe it. But I'm gonna ask you a question,
and I want you to just did you not know
all that was wrong? No?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So here's the thing. Here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
The one with the biggest gun determines what is right
and what is wrong. If somebody walks into this building
right now said get the fuck down, and he got
a Draco guess what, everybody's gonna get their ass down
because that's what's right.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
You do right and wrong is what determines to save
your life, not a law.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
So what perceived to be wrong to somebody else is
right to somebody else that's fighting for their life.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
So there is no respect for the law, the police,
what society norms are because none of those survival.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
How are you gonna respect something that don't respect you.
Ain't nobody, Ain't nobody coming to the hood checking on you,
ain't nobody trying to help you out. So I mean,
that's a learned behavior. If it's fucked me, it's fuck
you like, it's a learned it's a learned behavior, it's
(13:47):
not the law. So look at the law like this,
I'm selling coke to provide for my family and the
law is coming to stop me.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
The fuck.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Like, how can I respect that You're not coming in
with an application from from Medtronic?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Come in?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
What are you saying? Get the fuck down? So where's
the respect there?
Speaker 4 (14:12):
I'm gonna play a Devil's advocate. Free school. You can
get breakfast in the morning, you get lunch in the afternoon,
you can get an education. Uh, Society is trying to
provide for your basic needs. You can get government assistant housing,
you can apply for if you're a mother with children,
you can apply for a wick or whatever they call
(14:34):
it now, And.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
All of that's cool, But tell me what a kid
can do. Like, yeah, if your mom, if she go
and get that, then yeah cool. But what if she's
a fucking junkie and she's selling the food steps, Well
then you ain't got that meal.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Oh, like like so, yeah, that's that's cool for the adults,
But I always try to tell people what about the kids.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
The kids can't sign up a week.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I mean, the kid.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Can't stop the mama boyfriend from a lessen them, can't
stop that shit like I mean, so when you look
at it.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
The kids are powerless.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, we can put in all these government assistance, but
it's still based on what the adults that grew up
in a bunch of bullshit, so they don't even know
how to take advantage of the opportunity in front of them,
so that opportunity never meets the kid.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But
first I hope you'll consider becoming a Premium member of
the Army at normalfolks dot us. By becoming one for
ten bucks a month or one thousand dollars a year,
you can get access to cool benefits like bonus episodes,
a yearly group call, and even a one on one
(15:51):
call with me. Frankly, guys, premium memberships also help us
to grow this army that our country desperately needs right now.
So I hope you'll think about it. We'll be right back.
(16:15):
One thing I learned of a Nassis that floored me.
I am the son of a five times divorced woman.
My struggles throughout my forties stemmed around favolessness for me.
I dealt with the truth is I still deal with
some of it at fifty five years old.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Man, Never go the way.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Not that level hurt. You start to ask yourself, you know,
why do I lack so much value that not a
single grown ass man will invest in me? And you
start to think of yourself as broken and then self
fulfilling prophecy takes over and you do broken shit. And
(17:00):
that was my reality. Having said that that, I'm a
big father, stay in kid's life guy. I think it's
paramount for our society and our civilization. I think a
lot of what ails our children today is folowlessness. It's
a multitude of problems, but I think it's a big one,
(17:20):
especially since it's very personal with me. I got straightened
out one day by a mom who had three kids,
and the father of those three kids was SAMN and
they lived in the apartment together, and I was like,
why don't you show your kids what marriage looks like.
Why don't you actually go down the courthouse, get a
(17:41):
marriage license, be married, and start to do the things
to break that proverbial chain. And she looked at me
like I was half out of my mind, and she said,
you don't know nothing. And I'm like, She's like, don't
you know that if I get married, I lose all
my government support. So what I learned was, on the
(18:05):
one hand, our national narrative is we've got to do
things to support the organic family and keep families together
and and and that'll help. And then on the other hand,
we incentivize women with children to not get married because
if they do, they lose their assistance, and that's all
(18:26):
over the inner city. Seems to me like that makes
government a little paternalistic.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
It depends on how you look at it.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Help me.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
So in terms, that's how she grew up, So that's
how she knows, right, That's how her mom grew up, right,
So that's how she knows.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
So like your mom.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
So in terms, government assistant is the way to go.
So we'll all right, we can go down hand and
get married. This motherfucker still make twelve dollars an hour, though,
so we're gonna get mad to be get married, to
be in a fucked up a situation because you got
to think about that shit with him starting when he
was six seven years old. So all he doing is
(19:15):
the best he can now. So in terms, she's looking
at it from a strategic self preservation mode. Yeah, we
love him, he's down, but what's the realization of.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
He can't take care of us.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I can't take care of us. So that's been passed
down generation of generation of generation. So now that woman
and many women women, and my mom and the.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Same rest of them, they look at it as a
survival tool.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
I get it. I didn't. I get it now. I've
got that for a while. But I wanted our, I
wanted our I wanted our audience to hear it and
we can stand it because most people don't really get
that loving.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
But here's the thing about it, because the reason most
people don't get it is two reasons. The shoe always
fit different when it's on your foot, that's first and foremost.
And what people feel to understand is the same knowledge
that you have access to that I have access to.
It's not guarantee that person in North Memphis, South Memphis,
(20:19):
Orange Mound, or Stoney Island in Chicago, they don't have
access to that same information. So it's like, why you
can't get up and get a fucking job. Okay, how well,
den Lee, Well we got this program across town, all right,
But the mentality has been embedded.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
So this is what a lot of people didn't understand
about women.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Women carry their kids when they're born, so their kids
are going through trauma as those moms are growing up.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
They don't just automatically at.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Thirty, Oh, I got a fucking egg.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Now I'm about to spit something out. Those eggs was
born with.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Them, So through those years of trauma, what do you
think those eggs are doing.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
They're ingesting it too. It's the same thing if you
smoke weed.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
The whole pregnancy you mean, you're gonna come out with
a fucking pie head.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
You're gonna come out with a crackhead.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
What's the same thing that trauma is embedded inside of them?
I mean, because the baby is a part of them,
the trauma is a part of them.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Trauma it shapes your decision making.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Why the fuck would he do that?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Look what he was up against.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I mean, like I said, it's easy to say, oh man,
I wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
How you know how you know?
Speaker 3 (21:35):
That's why I tell people all the time, how you
know what you do if your family will starving?
Speaker 4 (21:39):
You don't know?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
You stick bill l ass up if your family will start.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
I mean, that's the reality of what's the what's the
What's the first thing a baby does when they'rehunger?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
They cry?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
So it's self preservation. It's the same way. It's nothing different.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
It's just that these are the things that's been put
into the hood to call it survival mode.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And then let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, okay, you.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Got people living off the government and this, this and this,
but those budgets are so big, somebody's getting a kick
back cause you know, just like I know, wherever.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
There's property it's fucking profit.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Poverty equals profit.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
So uh, that's what you grow up in. Now you're
eight and you decide, I ain't gonna be no junkie.
I'm gonna be a dealer. And you you've you've got
a built in training model how to do that because
all your cousins and uncles are dealers.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
I got the manual right there.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
The instruction manual and the trainer.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
What to do, what not to do?
Speaker 4 (22:48):
So tell you what you do?
Speaker 1 (22:50):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Hey, hey, listen, I don't want to do that. I
wanna do what y'all do. Then, for you know, what's
the best way you learn?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Look and listen.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You ain't gotta teach me nothing.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Just put me around and I'm gonna look and listen.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Okay, that's how he could get Okay, so he get
the money first in it.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Well, there you go.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
No different than a kid growing up in suburbia watches
their DDE being accountant.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
No difference. Hey dad, where are you going to work?
See you like a journey or a doctor?
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Doctor? What you doing?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Hey, I say three lives today. I delivered four babies today.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
So when I'm sitting around the house talking with a
couple of my old fraternity brothers from Ole Miss and
my eight, nine, ten eleven twelve year old sons are
here just and all of that. He's thinking, Oh, you
go to college, you join attorney, you make good friends,
you graduate, you get a job, you get a nice
house and a car.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Because that's what you see, that's what he see or me.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
You grow up in the hood. Your uncle was dealing
crack and weed, your grandmother's a junkie. You make a
choice to be a drug dealer, and that's what you do.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
You think about, so you think about like this, you
can pick the best person in the world.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
And he said, hey, what the fuck you want to be?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You want to be a junkie or you're gonna be dealer.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
I'll never gonna pick what I picked.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Who want to get fucked for drugs?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
You want to be a doctor or a drug dealer?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Doctor?
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Sign me up.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
That's what Eric kidd in the hood?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
But how how what's the resources?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Who's gonna show me? But more importantly, who asked that question?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
All right? You can easily say, all right, Bill, you
want to be a doctor?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, yeah, of course I want to be a doctor.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
But if you.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Don't provide me with the resources, if you don't put
me around the people, if you don't give me access
to the knowledge, if you don't give me access to
these things, well, all you did was waste my time.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
That's all you did. Are you so?
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Are you?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
What you did was if we talked for sixty minutes,
if we talked for forty five minutes, all you did
was blow smoke, made yourself feel good. Because the reality
of it is, until you turned me on to a
doctor or showed me the pathway, there's no way I'm
gonna be a fucking doctor.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
It's not rocket it's not rocket science.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
I didn't.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
I was born in March fourth, nineteen eighty five, and
I can assure you when I came out and said, hey, God,
turn me into a killer and drug dealer. That's what
I choose to be, and I want to dodge the
Feds and niggas and bullets.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
All day long. No, that ain't what I said. That
ain't with no kids?
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Are you saying? The zip code at the time of
your birth doesn't necessarily persuade you toward drug dealing.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
It absolutely does because you don't have a choice. But
it shouldn't tell me why, let me tell you you about.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
My children were born into the same zip code that
you were born in to in that same environment, it'd
be just like highly unlikely they'd be where they are
to done.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Correct, that'd be just like.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
But it doesn't mean that genetically those children are predisposed
towards drug dealing or whatever because of the zip CUD
at the time of their birth. It's not a genetic thing.
It is an environment thing. I think it's both. I
think it's both. Tell me how in terms of.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
You know, how you breed a horse or you breed
a dog.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yeah, you breed gang members the same way. I know, guys,
my granddaddy was a vice lord.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
My dad it was a vice lord. I'm gonna be
a vice lord. My son gonna be a vice lord
this generation.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
So you gotta think about some of those kids that's
born into gang families from from get up.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
This is what we do.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So this is what you do.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
We'll be right back. So you're honing your skills at
drug dealing at eight nine years old, falling around your
uncles learning the trade, and you find out that, uh,
(27:23):
you might like football too. How that happened?
Speaker 1 (27:26):
You know? The crazy part about it is football always
got everybody around around the TV.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah, no matter where you go, the drug dealers are
coming people. Everybody everybody love football, so you know, even
the junkies, everybody.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Everybody won't be a Cowboys.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Pat Yeah no, don't even bring that Cowboys stuff over here,
but go ahead.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
So when you look so back then, yeah, you know
Notre Dame was always on five. So when people were
crowd around the TV, though, like, fuck, I want to
be celebrated. Like anybody you find that say they don't
want to celebrate, there be a damn line.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So I said, okay, well.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Football make people happy and celebrate you, and people celebrate
drug dealers as well.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well shit, there you go.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And I knew it from there. So even with my
parents they liked football.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Everybody's liking football, so I said, that's the coming ground.
I said, well, I can make people like me and
I can provide.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
For me and my daughter. So that's what I wanted
to do.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Well at the time my family, so I was like, well,
this is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
You skipped to your daughter, howld were you?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
So I was fourteen, So that was that was That
was kind of my stay in of it all. But
growing up, it was just like, this is what we're
gonna do.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Like, howd was your daughter's mother? So she was fifteen,
you're fourteen, she's fifteen pregnant yea, And now you're a
fourteen year old father.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
And now now my hustling done turned up. Now I
got an even bigger reason.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Because you you do feel a responsibility to provide for
your daughter.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
So the thing about me was I had grown up,
I had so much resentment for my father.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I wanted to be shit like him.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
So I wanted to pour all my efforts into being
a father because I didn't understand at the time why
he can't give me what I needed, what I wanted,
you know what I mean, Why I couldn't get that love,
why I couldn't get that support. Was so I figured
I said, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna be the father
that I wish I could be. And at the time,
my child mom, she was poor, she couldn't afford clothes
(29:41):
that she was going through the pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
And at the time, my best friend, he was already hustling.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
And so it was it was a simple way, like
I had the best friend that was hustling. I had
my uncles and cousins that was hustling and all. And
the decision was was across the board. He you got
a kid, you gotta step up. This is the way
you step up, no.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Matter you can't well about school.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
School.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
School ain't paying bills. I mean we're gonna show up
so they won't call. But school ain't paying no bills. Yeah,
man for me, how did you?
Speaker 4 (30:15):
How did you get promoted from one grade to the next.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Shit, you have been to a Memphis public school.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
I'm yeah, Oh yeah, letting you tell the story.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Are you gotta do a show up and say? Here baby?
Speaker 3 (30:25):
That is it?
Speaker 1 (30:27):
No, shad I left behind.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
I'm here. One of my biggest surprises my first year
is manasis. When I walked in, there was a class
that had five periods of history and each class had
about thirty kids in it, and there were thirty textbooks.
Now thirty times five's one hundred and fifty kids, meaning
there should be one hundred and fift textbooks. So kids
can take their books home, do their homework, bring aback
those books sat on the desk. Kid came in, book
(30:51):
was on the desk. Teacher did whatever teaching they call
themselves doing bookshut kid left no way to do homework,
no way to study outside the hour in the classroom.
And as long as the kids showed up, shut up,
didn't cause too many problems, and was able to kind
of pass rudimentary tests, they're promoted.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
What's the first letter in attendance.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
First letter in a sentence.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
In attendance A show up?
Speaker 1 (31:20):
We get you A.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
That's how you gotta do.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Show up, which perpetuates the poverty, perpetuates the helplessness, perpetuates
the hopelessness, and perpetuates the feeling that I got to
do something. I ain't got an education, now to go
get a job. Nobody cares, so I got a hustle.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
You just by giving me an a by showing up,
you just showed me the value of an education.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
That's a great point. Say that again. That's really good.
You show this school system itself gives you an a
for showing up.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
You just showed me the value of education.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Nothing. You're just shown to be present. And so or
do you have? Teachers have employed people who show up
every day for six months and do a pretty average job.
They just get through the day. Take two or three
bathroom breaks. Now I got I got a break, a
lunch break, and a break in an eight hour shift.
(32:21):
And in addition to those, three or four more lunch
breaks or breaks during the day, go the bathroom, whatever.
And after six months say I want to race good
and I at first I might why you haven't earned anything?
And they're like, I'm here, I'm here, I showed up.
So where does that mentality come from? Well, it's learned.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
It's learned.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Everything is learned, all behavior is learned.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Been somewhere along the lines. You decided you wanted to
play football. I did, and.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
It just came from wanting to be accepted.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
So I knew if I can be a football player,
people will cry around the TV and watch me.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Do you realize that fewer than one one hundredth of
one percent of the people playing high school football today
will ever make a living play in the game. You
realize just one in ten thousand.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
You realize only one percent of kids and Memphis that
lives in property going to be successful.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
So I still got to be at a chance of going
to the NFL.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
So I'm taking them onds all day long and twice
on Saturday.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Okay, So you wanted to play football. Did you love
the game or did you love what the game might
give you?
Speaker 3 (33:42):
In the beginning, I love with the game I give me,
and then you fall in love with the game. Then
I fell in love with the game. But the game,
the game.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Was hard, game is hard. There's a difference of being
hurt and injured. And you're hurt every play, yeah, I
mean just unless you played. You don't know what I
just said, right.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
And then you're sitting there and you're trying to figure out, like, man,
I'm being held accountable for all these things.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
You know what I mean? And you're sitting there like
and then on top of football is a business, no.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Matter if you're in middle school, you're in high school,
you're in college, you in the national for It's still
a business.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
So when I started to understand that, it.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Was like okay, like, so this is what the world
looks like, no matter what. So in my mind, football
was just like weed and cocaine. It was only a
vehicle to get me where I was trying to go.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Period.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
If them motherfuckers had been sitting around watching soccer, I
would have dreamed of being a soccer player. I was
only trying to get out of my situation. That's the
biggest thing, That was the biggest thing of me growing up.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Situation. Let's talk about that when your three top options
are dealing drugs, planing a professional sport, or becoming a musician,
which is the same. See I didn't even have that option,
but that's in the same world that we're talking about.
Correct once again, Hollywood is not called the City of
(35:18):
broken dreams because everybody that goes out there to be
a musician succeeds. It's because most fail. Most will never
have the requisite talent, character, commitment, and ability to make
a living plan of sport. Absolutely, and dealing drugs is
going to lead you to jail or death.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
So if you aren't the one in ten thousand that
make it in music, the arts, or football, where do
you go?
Speaker 3 (35:50):
What do you mean you're one of these guys that
keep the private prisons feel Because that's what So you
got to think in terms of that's what everybody glorified.
Ain't nobody glorifying the Black Doctor, Ain't nobody glorifying Johnny
Coxy the hood? Yeah, we were talking about Lebron, It's
about Jordan and Kobe. We're talking about Gotti, So in kids' mind,
(36:15):
that's reality because what they're able to see them through
social media, it's able to glorify when they're not able
to see these other messages being glorified.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
Do kids in the hood know who Ben Carson is?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
No?
Speaker 3 (36:32):
And the only reason the boys and the only reason
I know being Carson because they said he was the
first black man to do surgery, but he was only
standing in the room and never.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Really did it.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
What about w de Boce shit, I think he got
a few schools, but most kids I don't.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Even know who he is. I just know he got
some schools.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
So and nobody teaching that.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Ain't nobody teaching that I might come in here, Cordney here,
got them make sure all the kids come in so
we can get they headcount for the state funding.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
I chuckle behind a broken heart.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Because I mean that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
So all the principals and all these people want to
make sure that their head count is up so that
school can get the money that comes out of Nashvia,
no matter giving a fuck about the kid.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
What you just said is really important to understand that
the vast majority of large urban school.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Districts based off attendance.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Right. So at a graduation, most every graduation I've been
through from an urban school district, the guidance counsel, the
principal get on stage and they brag about all the
scholarship money that the graduating class is getting.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Bush it.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
And what you find out is it's accumulation of a
bunch of pel grant money.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
If you left hand, it will give you a dollarship
for five thousand dollars. If your mama was in World
War two would give you ten more thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
And then many of these kids go off to what
I call pel grant processing centers, which is some school
that you've never heard of.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
The kid enrolls, the state sends the institution the pel
grant money. The kid can never pass any work because
he's not educated, because he's never been taught anything. He
falls out. The school keeps pel grant money. And then
here comes another crop every year, and it is year
after year after year, and it starts in the high
(38:40):
school level and permeates through the college level, and it
is a money grap Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Or you got those guys that go off to school,
and then let's say you want those one or two percent.
You do graduate, then you look up four years and
then him colleges and lost their accreditation.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
So now you're looking like, ah, what now what now?
Speaker 1 (39:01):
You know?
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I mean down there you turn into resume and you're
getting Google with it. His college got shut down five
years ago, so they let you know what's coming out
of there.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
And it turns we're back in the.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
Who So you get pretty good at football? Yeah, and
I think you end up at White Station And for
our listeners, it's a national show. White Station is a
city school part of the City School District in East Memphis,
which is a nicer part of the city. It is
actually considered still a pretty good public school that has
(39:38):
nice facilities and is usually pretty competitive in all of
the sports. And they actually have a back laureate program
where a lot of kids go to school there and
get great grades and then they have the normal population.
But in large part it's a good school, correct, And
(39:59):
you end up there. I think as a junior in
high school, sophomore, sophomore, how's that experience?
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Hated it?
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Why?
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I was already into my life, which was man I
had already had a daughter and she had already turned
on I mean, I was already heavily into the drugs
to gangs.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I mean my life.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
I didn't even play my ninth grade year, and after
my eighth grade year, I was kicked out of school
for gang fighting.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
So I spent the latter part of my.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Eighth grade year expelled, and then my ninth grade year,
all I did was sell drugs to kind of we're
going through the pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
With with my baby mom. So it's like that time
had passed me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
It's like, so by your sophomore year, you're grown.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, I'm doing the shit you do.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
And that was that was the argument that I had
with my high school.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Coach at White Station.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Why.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I said, dogs, me and your daughter the same age,
what are you gonna tell me?
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Like?
Speaker 3 (41:01):
He was telling me all this good shit, and I
appreciate him from we still stay in contact to this day.
But the advice he was giving me, it didn't master
the situation that I was going home to.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It wasn't any good. I couldn't use it.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Told you play that year.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
So I did. I p I played that year.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I I battled, I wasn't back and forth, and I
was eventually bored suspended, kicked out of the white station.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
Then what.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
So the coach ops, He says, he takes another.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Job out of coature and he says, I got his friend.
I'm saying, he said, ma'am, but I'm telling you this
football thing can change your life, like you got talent
where it can change your life. And I kept telling him.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I was like, coach, I agree, but what about the now?
Like my daughter needs food now? Like what about now?
Speaker 3 (41:58):
And so he orchestrated where I go to this private school,
the private school it was, it was great.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
What was it called brick Chris And the fact for
our listeners, Briarcrest is a very nice private school out
in the suburbs, large private school, and candidly, it's famous
because it is where Michael Orr went to school. The
story of Michael Orr and the twoies, and it's called
(42:28):
Brockcrest Christian High I think, and if you've ever seen
The blind Side, this is the high school talking about.
And were you there before after Michael?
Speaker 1 (42:40):
So I was before Mike. I'm the one that told
Mike it was cool.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
So you go to Briarcrest And the craziest part of
this story of this football part of The story is
Hugh Freese, who is now the head coach at Auburn,
was the head coach at Liberty, was the head coach
at Ole Miss, was the head coach at Arkansas State,
and before that, they head coach at Lambeth. Actually got
(43:07):
his start as an assistant coach at ole Miss under
coach ed Orgeron because Michael Orr and Hugh Freese went
to Ole Miss together and that's how Hugh Freese broke
into college football coaching. But back then he was your
head coach at Rockcrest High School.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
He was my head coach at Kombweeni State Championship. He
had lost four years in a row. Ecs used to
beat that booty. He couldn't get over to Hump and he.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Got him reinforcements. We got him over there home.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
And that, my friends, concludes part one of my conversation
with Melvyn Cole. And if you thought that was compelling,
you do not want to miss part two that's now available.
We dive deeper into Melvin's excelling at football and drug
dealing empire until he didn't and what he's doing now
(44:09):
to serve inner city kids. But if for some strange reason,
you do miss Part two, make sure to join the
Army of Normal Folks at normalfolks dot us and sign
up to become a member of the movement. By signing up,
you'll also receive a weekly email with short episode sum
reason in case you happen to miss an episode or
if you prefer reading about our incredible guests. Together, guys,
(44:31):
we can change this country and it starts with you.
I'll see you in Part two.
It could have been an eighteen bedroom house.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
If ain't no love being passed out, that don't mean
you go on, man.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I'm kids looking for love. When I hit the screech,
I was looking for love. When I joined my gang,
I was looking for love. I was looking for acceptance.
I was looking for people that wanted me to be
around you. If you men selling weed or blowing your ass,
I just.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Wanted to praise. I wanted to feel good about myself.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I wanted to belong. That's all these kids want. That's
what anybody wants.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
That's why we joined for Turning is that's why we
get these good jobs, and why we get all in
these social groups.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Because what in the end of the day, everybody want
to belong. That's our biggest thing. Get period. Man, Before
we do anything, we're gonna love on you.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
inner City Memphis. And the last part it unintentionally led
to an oscar for the film about our team that's
called Undefeated. Guys. I believe Our country's problems will never
(01:14):
be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice
suits talking big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox,
but rather an army of normal folks US, just you
and me deciding, Hey, I can help. That's what Melvin Cole,
the voice we just heard, has done. Melvin is straight
from the hood in Memphis, and he has a truly
(01:36):
wild story of drug dealing and gang banging. But thankfully
he has an even wilder redemption story to get out
of the one of the most desperate situations you could imagine,
he made a deal with God that he'd pour healthy
love into kids who grew up just like he did today.
His inner city boarding school, Pure Academy has graduated around
(01:59):
fifty kids in twenty of them have received full athletic
scholarships to play college football. I cannot wait for you
to meet Melvin. Right after these brief messages from our
Jenner sponsors, Okay, everybody, before we go any further, I
(02:30):
felt compelled to share warning about this particular episode. As
you know, we've covered a lot of really heavy topics
on the podcast, and I'm going to tell you something.
I think this one may be the heaviest, as you know,
if you've listened a lot. We usually try to edit
out occasional swear words out to respect for families that
may be listening and those of you who may be
(02:52):
put off by that kind of language. But frankly, in
Melvin's story, there is so much detail and there are
so many swear words it would sound really, really weird
to edit it that way, So fair warning. This is
(03:14):
an unbelievable deep topic. It's explicit gangs, drug dealing, prison
in very explicit detail, with very raw language, and if
that is going to bother you, I'd recommend listening to
a past episode of the podcast you may have missed,
or just skipping this one altogether. But if you can
(03:38):
make it through all of that, the story of redemption
in this episode is worth telling, and it's why we're
putting it out there. Melvin's an amazing guy who's been
through more than most and has come out on the
other side to give so much of himself because of
a deally made with God. But to get there, it's
(04:02):
a bumpy road with a lot of rough language, and
I just want to warn you that's what this podcast.
If you listen to it. That's what you're in for.
So if you're okay with it, roll with us. If
you're not, we'll see you next week. So let's begin
with Melvin on what his upbringing was like in South Memphis.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
The biggest, the biggest thing for me is I like
to tell people all the time that I think it
was typical.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
H yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I mean, because that's why I grew up and that's
why I was around. So for me, my grandma was
a hair and attic, and my other grandma was an
angry drunk so and all my uncles and cousins were
drug dealers. So from there, that became my reality from
day one, you know what I mean, watching my grandma
and get fucked for hair, run guys going in and
(04:55):
at the house my grandma. I used to tell people
all the time when I first got to school, when
they called my name, I didn't respond cause I was used.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
To motherfucker, niggas, sit your ass down and all of that.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So that became the norm to me.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
On listen, that's how you talk a lot of people say, man,
why you cut someone?
Speaker 1 (05:13):
That's how I grew up. I mean, I didn't see
anything different. That was our norm. The drugs, the violence,
the gangs.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
That's what we saw. I mean, that's what we saw.
That's where we lived.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I remember my grandma was.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Telling me make sure you wash your hands or the
rats weren't nibble on your fingers when.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
We stayed there.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I mean, so that was that was my reality. That
was my like I like to tell people, that was
my first introduction to the world.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
I mean, I read that your mother and father could
not handle the death of your sister when you were
very young.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, that was a.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I'll be honest with you, that drew a wedge between everybody.
And when I say everybody, from my mom, my dad,
my brother, nobody knew how to cope with it.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
And how old were you and how was your sister?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
So I was two and my sister was four and
so so. But I think more importantly what kind of
got me that I learned at the early age later
on in life that my parents couldn't cope with it
Because so my mom was a teenage parent, she was
kicked out of her house at the age of sixteen
when my brother she worked three jobs, and my father
(06:35):
had a daughter before my sister who was killed by
the baby Mama put her next to a window in Boston,
and she got caught pneumonia and died because.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
They wasn't seeing eye to eye.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
My my father didn't choose her, so with him with
his second death, it drew a wedge between everybody. Father
came drunk and just kind of sorrowed in his own thing.
My mom, she really can She she couldn't process life.
So that that left me kind of creating my own
(07:07):
image of life. That kind of helped me shape my
own feelings and different things like that, because growing up
I didn't understand why I was left out, you know
what I mean. That was the biggest thing that frankly
pissed me off. I mean it was times when my
father get drunk and he be like, why the fuck
God didn't take you instead of the girls. I was like,
(07:28):
I don't fucking know, want you die and ask them.
So growing up I didn't understand, dude, I don't fucking know.
I don't know why they died, you know what I mean.
So and my mom she couldn't, she couldn't process it.
I mean she my sister actually died in the bed
with her, so she was she wasn't able to process it.
(07:51):
And now when we talk about it, that was kind
of why she pushed me into a teenage father, because
my daughter and her mind were the replacement of her.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Daughter, not realizing I it fucked me up.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
So the grandmother, you got one angry drunk and one
heroin out of your words, right, one of those was
your mother's mother, correct, till your mother grew up the
same trauma you did.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Absolutely, So the angry drunk was my grandma, my mother's mother.
So when my mom became pregnant at fifteen, my grandma
gave her an ultimatum, have abortion or get the fuck out,
and my mom chose to get the fuck out.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
She worked three jobs.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
And my brother's dad left her and went to the
army and never looked back. I mean, so she grew
up with her own chip on her.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Shoulder, which you inherited. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
So the thing about it is shit fucking heroded. I
mean I it was passed down to me. It was
basically shoved.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Down thro So.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
You told me this when we first met, and then
you won't remember this. But when we first met, I'm
skipping ahead to pure which we'll get to down the road,
and we were talking about all that you're doing. And
I was walking around looking at this place, going what
am I seeing here? I remember you saying that you
knew at a very early age, preteen, that you had
(09:26):
a choice. There were two tracks. You either be an
addict and a junkie, or you'd be a dealer.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Clear, it was it was, It was simple.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
That's what you saw.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
That's what I saw. This where I lived, that was
the talk.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
So when did you decide you were going to be
a dealer not a junkie.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think I was like eight or nine, nine, you
know it, eight or nine.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
You're supposed to be reading Curious George and going to
incredible pizza and driving go karts.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
No, not in poverty. That may be your life, that
may be the life for your kids, but in privacy.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
It was in my life, but it is the life
of my kids.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But you ain't.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Ain't no fucking incredible pizza. You just open to get pizza.
But I'll never forget. I was walking I walked in
on my grandma fucking and the guy says, get.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
The fuck out of here, you nickt. The guy said
that to you yet and I knew right there in
no way.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Meaning I ain't gonna be the junkie.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I ain't gonna be the junkie. I'm not I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna be the victim. If anything, I'm
gonna be the guy in power.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
I'm gonna be controlling this. That's not gonna happen to me.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
So I don't know if you know a guy named rs. Cooper.
He was a guest some months ago. He's from West
Side Chicago. He is from the same you put what
you're from in Memphis and put in Chicago or Chicago here,
same same world. And he describes his environment like this.
(10:57):
In his apartment, they had a fan because the air
didn't blow very cold in their project, and the fan
had a blade a little ht of balance, and so
every time it rolled around it clicked. So it was
like just this fan click click, click, click click click
when it ran. Well, it did that all the time.
(11:17):
So when you lived there, you didn't even hear the clicking.
You got used to it, right, But if you walked
in their apartments, the first thing you'd hear is that
air take and click. But it was so common to
them that the clicking of that fan was, you know,
no big deal. They didn't hear it. It was just common.
And he said, drugs, junkies, drug dealers, murder, gunshots, blood
(11:42):
on the street, the wells of yet another mother, losing
a son to gunfire, crime, beatings, jail. All of that
was so common in his environment that it was like
the clicking of that fan in his apartment. You just
didn't even hear it anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Absolutely, I mean you gotta think in terms of you
only think some foreign if you go to a foreign place.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
I mean, so when you.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Start looking up, man, your auntie getting that ass kicked
by boyfriend. So she called you and your brothers and
your cousins to come over.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Well, I mean, it's all part of it. It's all intertwined.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I mean, from every part of the family. You're gonna
get this dysfunction.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
It's hard for our listeners to understand or even maybe
even believe it. But I'm gonna ask you a question,
and I want you to just did you not know
all that was wrong? No?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So here's the thing. Here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
The one with the biggest gun determines what is right
and what is wrong. If somebody walks into this building
right now said get the fuck down, and he got
a Draco guess what, everybody's gonna get their ass down
because that's what's right.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
You do right and wrong is what determines to save
your life, not a law.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
So what perceived to be wrong to somebody else is
right to somebody else that's fighting for their life.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
So there is no respect for the law, the police,
what society norms are because none of those survival.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
How are you gonna respect something that don't respect you.
Ain't nobody, Ain't nobody coming to the hood checking on you,
ain't nobody trying to help you out. So I mean,
that's a learned behavior. If it's fucked me, it's fuck
you like, it's a learned it's a learned behavior, it's
(13:47):
not the law. So look at the law like this,
I'm selling coke to provide for my family and the
law is coming to stop me.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
The fuck.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Like, how can I respect that You're not coming in
with an application from from Medtronic?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Come in?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
What are you saying? Get the fuck down? So where's
the respect there?
Speaker 4 (14:12):
I'm gonna play a Devil's advocate. Free school. You can
get breakfast in the morning, you get lunch in the afternoon,
you can get an education. Uh, Society is trying to
provide for your basic needs. You can get government assistant housing,
you can apply for if you're a mother with children,
you can apply for a wick or whatever they call
(14:34):
it now, And.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
All of that's cool, But tell me what a kid
can do. Like, yeah, if your mom, if she go
and get that, then yeah cool. But what if she's
a fucking junkie and she's selling the food steps, Well
then you ain't got that meal.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Oh, like like so, yeah, that's that's cool for the adults,
But I always try to tell people what about the kids.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
The kids can't sign up a week.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I mean, the kid.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Can't stop the mama boyfriend from a lessen them, can't
stop that shit like I mean, so when you look
at it.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
The kids are powerless.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, we can put in all these government assistance, but
it's still based on what the adults that grew up
in a bunch of bullshit, so they don't even know
how to take advantage of the opportunity in front of them,
so that opportunity never meets the kid.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But
first I hope you'll consider becoming a Premium member of
the Army at normalfolks dot us. By becoming one for
ten bucks a month or one thousand dollars a year,
you can get access to cool benefits like bonus episodes,
a yearly group call, and even a one on one
(15:51):
call with me. Frankly, guys, premium memberships also help us
to grow this army that our country desperately needs right now.
So I hope you'll think about it. We'll be right back.
(16:15):
One thing I learned of a Nassis that floored me.
I am the son of a five times divorced woman.
My struggles throughout my forties stemmed around favolessness for me.
I dealt with the truth is I still deal with
some of it at fifty five years old.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Man, Never go the way.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Not that level hurt. You start to ask yourself, you know,
why do I lack so much value that not a
single grown ass man will invest in me? And you
start to think of yourself as broken and then self
fulfilling prophecy takes over and you do broken shit. And
(17:00):
that was my reality. Having said that that, I'm a
big father, stay in kid's life guy. I think it's
paramount for our society and our civilization. I think a
lot of what ails our children today is folowlessness. It's
a multitude of problems, but I think it's a big one,
(17:20):
especially since it's very personal with me. I got straightened
out one day by a mom who had three kids,
and the father of those three kids was SAMN and
they lived in the apartment together, and I was like,
why don't you show your kids what marriage looks like.
Why don't you actually go down the courthouse, get a
(17:41):
marriage license, be married, and start to do the things
to break that proverbial chain. And she looked at me
like I was half out of my mind, and she said,
you don't know nothing. And I'm like, She's like, don't
you know that if I get married, I lose all
my government support. So what I learned was, on the
(18:05):
one hand, our national narrative is we've got to do
things to support the organic family and keep families together
and and and that'll help. And then on the other hand,
we incentivize women with children to not get married because
if they do, they lose their assistance, and that's all
(18:26):
over the inner city. Seems to me like that makes
government a little paternalistic.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
It depends on how you look at it.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Help me.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
So in terms, that's how she grew up, So that's
how she knows, right, That's how her mom grew up, right,
So that's how she knows.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
So like your mom.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
So in terms, government assistant is the way to go.
So we'll all right, we can go down hand and
get married. This motherfucker still make twelve dollars an hour, though,
so we're gonna get mad to be get married, to
be in a fucked up a situation because you got
to think about that shit with him starting when he
was six seven years old. So all he doing is
(19:15):
the best he can now. So in terms, she's looking
at it from a strategic self preservation mode. Yeah, we
love him, he's down, but what's the realization of.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
He can't take care of us.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I can't take care of us. So that's been passed
down generation of generation of generation. So now that woman
and many women women, and my mom and the.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Same rest of them, they look at it as a
survival tool.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
I get it. I didn't. I get it now. I've
got that for a while. But I wanted our, I
wanted our I wanted our audience to hear it and
we can stand it because most people don't really get
that loving.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
But here's the thing about it, because the reason most
people don't get it is two reasons. The shoe always
fit different when it's on your foot, that's first and foremost.
And what people feel to understand is the same knowledge
that you have access to that I have access to.
It's not guarantee that person in North Memphis, South Memphis,
(20:19):
Orange Mound, or Stoney Island in Chicago, they don't have
access to that same information. So it's like, why you
can't get up and get a fucking job. Okay, how well,
den Lee, Well we got this program across town, all right,
But the mentality has been embedded.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
So this is what a lot of people didn't understand
about women.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Women carry their kids when they're born, so their kids
are going through trauma as those moms are growing up.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
They don't just automatically at.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Thirty, Oh, I got a fucking egg.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Now I'm about to spit something out. Those eggs was
born with.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Them, So through those years of trauma, what do you
think those eggs are doing.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
They're ingesting it too. It's the same thing if you
smoke weed.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
The whole pregnancy you mean, you're gonna come out with
a fucking pie head.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
You're gonna come out with a crackhead.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
What's the same thing that trauma is embedded inside of them?
I mean, because the baby is a part of them,
the trauma is a part of them.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Trauma it shapes your decision making.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Why the fuck would he do that?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Look what he was up against.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I mean, like I said, it's easy to say, oh man,
I wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
How you know how you know?
Speaker 3 (21:35):
That's why I tell people all the time, how you
know what you do if your family will starving?
Speaker 4 (21:39):
You don't know?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
You stick bill l ass up if your family will start.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
I mean, that's the reality of what's the what's the
What's the first thing a baby does when they'rehunger?
Speaker 2 (21:51):
They cry?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
So it's self preservation. It's the same way. It's nothing different.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
It's just that these are the things that's been put
into the hood to call it survival mode.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
And then let's be honest.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, okay, you.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Got people living off the government and this, this and this,
but those budgets are so big, somebody's getting a kick
back cause you know, just like I know, wherever.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
There's property it's fucking profit.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Poverty equals profit.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
So uh, that's what you grow up in. Now you're
eight and you decide, I ain't gonna be no junkie.
I'm gonna be a dealer. And you you've you've got
a built in training model how to do that because
all your cousins and uncles are dealers.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
I got the manual right there.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
The instruction manual and the trainer.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
What to do, what not to do?
Speaker 4 (22:48):
So tell you what you do?
Speaker 1 (22:50):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Hey, hey, listen, I don't want to do that. I
wanna do what y'all do. Then, for you know, what's
the best way you learn?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Look and listen.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
You ain't gotta teach me nothing.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Just put me around and I'm gonna look and listen.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Okay, that's how he could get Okay, so he get
the money first in it.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Well, there you go.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
No different than a kid growing up in suburbia watches
their DDE being accountant.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
No difference. Hey dad, where are you going to work?
See you like a journey or a doctor?
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Doctor? What you doing?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Hey, I say three lives today. I delivered four babies today.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
So when I'm sitting around the house talking with a
couple of my old fraternity brothers from Ole Miss and
my eight, nine, ten eleven twelve year old sons are
here just and all of that. He's thinking, Oh, you
go to college, you join attorney, you make good friends,
you graduate, you get a job, you get a nice
house and a car.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Because that's what you see, that's what he see or me.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
You grow up in the hood. Your uncle was dealing
crack and weed, your grandmother's a junkie. You make a
choice to be a drug dealer, and that's what you do.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
You think about, so you think about like this, you
can pick the best person in the world.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
And he said, hey, what the fuck you want to be?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You want to be a junkie or you're gonna be dealer.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
I'll never gonna pick what I picked.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Who want to get fucked for drugs?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
You want to be a doctor or a drug dealer?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Doctor?
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Sign me up.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
That's what Eric kidd in the hood?
Speaker 1 (24:29):
But how how what's the resources?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Who's gonna show me? But more importantly, who asked that question?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
All right? You can easily say, all right, Bill, you
want to be a doctor?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, yeah, of course I want to be a doctor.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
But if you.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Don't provide me with the resources, if you don't put
me around the people, if you don't give me access
to the knowledge, if you don't give me access to
these things, well, all you did was waste my time.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
That's all you did. Are you so?
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Are you?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
What you did was if we talked for sixty minutes,
if we talked for forty five minutes, all you did
was blow smoke, made yourself feel good. Because the reality
of it is, until you turned me on to a
doctor or showed me the pathway, there's no way I'm
gonna be a fucking doctor.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
It's not rocket it's not rocket science.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
I didn't.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
I was born in March fourth, nineteen eighty five, and
I can assure you when I came out and said, hey, God,
turn me into a killer and drug dealer. That's what
I choose to be, and I want to dodge the
Feds and niggas and bullets.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
All day long. No, that ain't what I said. That
ain't with no kids?
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Are you saying? The zip code at the time of
your birth doesn't necessarily persuade you toward drug dealing.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
It absolutely does because you don't have a choice. But
it shouldn't tell me why, let me tell you you about.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
My children were born into the same zip code that
you were born in to in that same environment, it'd
be just like highly unlikely they'd be where they are
to done.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Correct, that'd be just like.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
But it doesn't mean that genetically those children are predisposed
towards drug dealing or whatever because of the zip CUD
at the time of their birth. It's not a genetic thing.
It is an environment thing. I think it's both. I
think it's both. Tell me how in terms of.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
You know, how you breed a horse or you breed
a dog.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yeah, you breed gang members the same way. I know, guys,
my granddaddy was a vice lord.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
My dad it was a vice lord. I'm gonna be
a vice lord. My son gonna be a vice lord
this generation.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
So you gotta think about some of those kids that's
born into gang families from from get up.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
This is what we do.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So this is what you do.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
We'll be right back. So you're honing your skills at
drug dealing at eight nine years old, falling around your
uncles learning the trade, and you find out that, uh,
(27:23):
you might like football too. How that happened?
Speaker 1 (27:26):
You know? The crazy part about it is football always
got everybody around around the TV.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah, no matter where you go, the drug dealers are
coming people. Everybody everybody love football, so you know, even
the junkies, everybody.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Everybody won't be a Cowboys.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
Pat Yeah no, don't even bring that Cowboys stuff over here,
but go ahead.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
So when you look so back then, yeah, you know
Notre Dame was always on five. So when people were
crowd around the TV, though, like, fuck, I want to
be celebrated. Like anybody you find that say they don't
want to celebrate, there be a damn line.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So I said, okay, well.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Football make people happy and celebrate you, and people celebrate
drug dealers as well.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well shit, there you go.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And I knew it from there. So even with my
parents they liked football.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Everybody's liking football, so I said, that's the coming ground.
I said, well, I can make people like me and
I can provide.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
For me and my daughter. So that's what I wanted
to do.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Well at the time my family, so I was like, well,
this is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
You skipped to your daughter, howld were you?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
So I was fourteen, So that was that was That
was kind of my stay in of it all. But
growing up, it was just like, this is what we're
gonna do.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Like, howd was your daughter's mother? So she was fifteen,
you're fourteen, she's fifteen pregnant yea, And now you're a
fourteen year old father.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
And now now my hustling done turned up. Now I
got an even bigger reason.
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Because you you do feel a responsibility to provide for
your daughter.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
So the thing about me was I had grown up,
I had so much resentment for my father.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I wanted to be shit like him.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
So I wanted to pour all my efforts into being
a father because I didn't understand at the time why
he can't give me what I needed, what I wanted,
you know what I mean, Why I couldn't get that love,
why I couldn't get that support. Was so I figured
I said, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna be the father
that I wish I could be. And at the time,
my child mom, she was poor, she couldn't afford clothes
(29:41):
that she was going through the pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
And at the time, my best friend, he was already hustling.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
And so it was it was a simple way, like
I had the best friend that was hustling. I had
my uncles and cousins that was hustling and all. And
the decision was was across the board. He you got
a kid, you gotta step up. This is the way
you step up, no.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Matter you can't well about school.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
School.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
School ain't paying bills. I mean we're gonna show up
so they won't call. But school ain't paying no bills. Yeah,
man for me, how did you?
Speaker 4 (30:15):
How did you get promoted from one grade to the next.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Shit, you have been to a Memphis public school.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
I'm yeah, Oh yeah, letting you tell the story.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Are you gotta do a show up and say? Here baby?
Speaker 3 (30:25):
That is it?
Speaker 1 (30:27):
No, shad I left behind.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
I'm here. One of my biggest surprises my first year
is manasis. When I walked in, there was a class
that had five periods of history and each class had
about thirty kids in it, and there were thirty textbooks.
Now thirty times five's one hundred and fifty kids, meaning
there should be one hundred and fift textbooks. So kids
can take their books home, do their homework, bring aback
those books sat on the desk. Kid came in, book
(30:51):
was on the desk. Teacher did whatever teaching they call
themselves doing bookshut kid left no way to do homework,
no way to study outside the hour in the classroom.
And as long as the kids showed up, shut up,
didn't cause too many problems, and was able to kind
of pass rudimentary tests, they're promoted.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
What's the first letter in attendance.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
First letter in a sentence.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
In attendance A show up?
Speaker 1 (31:20):
We get you A.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
That's how you gotta do.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Show up, which perpetuates the poverty, perpetuates the helplessness, perpetuates
the hopelessness, and perpetuates the feeling that I got to
do something. I ain't got an education, now to go
get a job. Nobody cares, so I got a hustle.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
You just by giving me an a by showing up,
you just showed me the value of an education.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
That's a great point. Say that again. That's really good.
You show this school system itself gives you an a
for showing up.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
You just showed me the value of education.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Nothing. You're just shown to be present. And so or
do you have? Teachers have employed people who show up
every day for six months and do a pretty average job.
They just get through the day. Take two or three
bathroom breaks. Now I got I got a break, a
lunch break, and a break in an eight hour shift.
(32:21):
And in addition to those, three or four more lunch
breaks or breaks during the day, go the bathroom, whatever.
And after six months say I want to race good
and I at first I might why you haven't earned anything?
And they're like, I'm here, I'm here, I showed up.
So where does that mentality come from? Well, it's learned.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
It's learned.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Everything is learned, all behavior is learned.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Been somewhere along the lines. You decided you wanted to
play football. I did, and.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
It just came from wanting to be accepted.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
So I knew if I can be a football player,
people will cry around the TV and watch me.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Do you realize that fewer than one one hundredth of
one percent of the people playing high school football today
will ever make a living play in the game. You
realize just one in ten thousand.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
You realize only one percent of kids and Memphis that
lives in property going to be successful.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
So I still got to be at a chance of going
to the NFL.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
So I'm taking them onds all day long and twice
on Saturday.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
Okay, So you wanted to play football. Did you love
the game or did you love what the game might
give you?
Speaker 3 (33:42):
In the beginning, I love with the game I give me,
and then you fall in love with the game. Then
I fell in love with the game. But the game,
the game.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Was hard, game is hard. There's a difference of being
hurt and injured. And you're hurt every play, yeah, I
mean just unless you played. You don't know what I
just said, right.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
And then you're sitting there and you're trying to figure out, like, man,
I'm being held accountable for all these things.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
You know what I mean? And you're sitting there like
and then on top of football is a business, no.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Matter if you're in middle school, you're in high school,
you're in college, you in the national for It's still
a business.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
So when I started to understand that, it.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Was like okay, like, so this is what the world
looks like, no matter what. So in my mind, football
was just like weed and cocaine. It was only a
vehicle to get me where I was trying to go.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Period.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
If them motherfuckers had been sitting around watching soccer, I
would have dreamed of being a soccer player. I was
only trying to get out of my situation. That's the
biggest thing, That was the biggest thing of me growing up.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Situation. Let's talk about that when your three top options
are dealing drugs, planing a professional sport, or becoming a musician,
which is the same. See I didn't even have that option,
but that's in the same world that we're talking about.
Correct once again, Hollywood is not called the City of
(35:18):
broken dreams because everybody that goes out there to be
a musician succeeds. It's because most fail. Most will never
have the requisite talent, character, commitment, and ability to make
a living plan of sport. Absolutely, and dealing drugs is
going to lead you to jail or death.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
So if you aren't the one in ten thousand that
make it in music, the arts, or football, where do
you go?
Speaker 3 (35:50):
What do you mean you're one of these guys that
keep the private prisons feel Because that's what So you
got to think in terms of that's what everybody glorified.
Ain't nobody glorifying the Black Doctor, Ain't nobody glorifying Johnny
Coxy the hood? Yeah, we were talking about Lebron, It's
about Jordan and Kobe. We're talking about Gotti, So in kids' mind,
(36:15):
that's reality because what they're able to see them through
social media, it's able to glorify when they're not able
to see these other messages being glorified.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
Do kids in the hood know who Ben Carson is?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
No?
Speaker 3 (36:32):
And the only reason the boys and the only reason
I know being Carson because they said he was the
first black man to do surgery, but he was only
standing in the room and never.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Really did it.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
What about w de Boce shit, I think he got
a few schools, but most kids I don't.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Even know who he is. I just know he got
some schools.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
So and nobody teaching that.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Ain't nobody teaching that I might come in here, Cordney here,
got them make sure all the kids come in so
we can get they headcount for the state funding.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
I chuckle behind a broken heart.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Because I mean that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
So all the principals and all these people want to
make sure that their head count is up so that
school can get the money that comes out of Nashvia,
no matter giving a fuck about the kid.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
What you just said is really important to understand that
the vast majority of large urban school.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Districts based off attendance.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Right. So at a graduation, most every graduation I've been
through from an urban school district, the guidance counsel, the
principal get on stage and they brag about all the
scholarship money that the graduating class is getting.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Bush it.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
And what you find out is it's accumulation of a
bunch of pel grant money.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
If you left hand, it will give you a dollarship
for five thousand dollars. If your mama was in World
War two would give you ten more thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
And then many of these kids go off to what
I call pel grant processing centers, which is some school
that you've never heard of.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
The kid enrolls, the state sends the institution the pel
grant money. The kid can never pass any work because
he's not educated, because he's never been taught anything. He
falls out. The school keeps pel grant money. And then
here comes another crop every year, and it is year
after year after year, and it starts in the high
(38:40):
school level and permeates through the college level, and it
is a money grap Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Or you got those guys that go off to school,
and then let's say you want those one or two percent.
You do graduate, then you look up four years and
then him colleges and lost their accreditation.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
So now you're looking like, ah, what now what now?
Speaker 1 (39:01):
You know?
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I mean down there you turn into resume and you're
getting Google with it. His college got shut down five
years ago, so they let you know what's coming out
of there.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
And it turns we're back in the.
Speaker 4 (39:14):
Who So you get pretty good at football? Yeah, and
I think you end up at White Station And for
our listeners, it's a national show. White Station is a
city school part of the City School District in East Memphis,
which is a nicer part of the city. It is
actually considered still a pretty good public school that has
(39:38):
nice facilities and is usually pretty competitive in all of
the sports. And they actually have a back laureate program
where a lot of kids go to school there and
get great grades and then they have the normal population.
But in large part it's a good school, correct, And
(39:59):
you end up there. I think as a junior in
high school, sophomore, sophomore, how's that experience?
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Hated it?
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Why?
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I was already into my life, which was man I
had already had a daughter and she had already turned
on I mean, I was already heavily into the drugs
to gangs.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I mean my life.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
I didn't even play my ninth grade year, and after
my eighth grade year, I was kicked out of school
for gang fighting.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
So I spent the latter part of my.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Eighth grade year expelled, and then my ninth grade year,
all I did was sell drugs to kind of we're
going through the pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
With with my baby mom. So it's like that time
had passed me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
It's like, so by your sophomore year, you're grown.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, I'm doing the shit you do.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
And that was that was the argument that I had
with my high school.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Coach at White Station.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Why.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I said, dogs, me and your daughter the same age,
what are you gonna tell me?
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Like?
Speaker 3 (41:01):
He was telling me all this good shit, and I
appreciate him from we still stay in contact to this day.
But the advice he was giving me, it didn't master
the situation that I was going home to.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It wasn't any good. I couldn't use it.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Told you play that year.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
So I did. I p I played that year.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
I I battled, I wasn't back and forth, and I
was eventually bored suspended, kicked out of the white station.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
Then what.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
So the coach ops, He says, he takes another.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Job out of coature and he says, I got his friend.
I'm saying, he said, ma'am, but I'm telling you this
football thing can change your life, like you got talent
where it can change your life. And I kept telling him.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I was like, coach, I agree, but what about the now?
Like my daughter needs food now? Like what about now?
Speaker 3 (41:58):
And so he orchestrated where I go to this private school,
the private school it was, it was great.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
What was it called brick Chris And the fact for
our listeners, Briarcrest is a very nice private school out
in the suburbs, large private school, and candidly, it's famous
because it is where Michael Orr went to school. The
story of Michael Orr and the twoies, and it's called
(42:28):
Brockcrest Christian High I think, and if you've ever seen
The blind Side, this is the high school talking about.
And were you there before after Michael?
Speaker 1 (42:40):
So I was before Mike. I'm the one that told
Mike it was cool.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
So you go to Briarcrest And the craziest part of
this story of this football part of The story is
Hugh Freese, who is now the head coach at Auburn,
was the head coach at Liberty, was the head coach
at Ole Miss, was the head coach at Arkansas State,
and before that, they head coach at Lambeth. Actually got
(43:07):
his start as an assistant coach at ole Miss under
coach ed Orgeron because Michael Orr and Hugh Freese went
to Ole Miss together and that's how Hugh Freese broke
into college football coaching. But back then he was your
head coach at Rockcrest High School.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
He was my head coach at Kombweeni State Championship. He
had lost four years in a row. Ecs used to
beat that booty. He couldn't get over to Hump and he.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Got him reinforcements. We got him over there home.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
And that, my friends, concludes part one of my conversation
with Melvyn Cole. And if you thought that was compelling,
you do not want to miss part two that's now available.
We dive deeper into Melvin's excelling at football and drug
dealing empire until he didn't and what he's doing now
(44:09):
to serve inner city kids. But if for some strange reason,
you do miss Part two, make sure to join the
Army of Normal Folks at normalfolks dot us and sign
up to become a member of the movement. By signing up,
you'll also receive a weekly email with short episode sum
reason in case you happen to miss an episode or
if you prefer reading about our incredible guests. Together, guys,
(44:31):
we can change this country and it starts with you.
I'll see you in Part two.
Host
Bill Courtney
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