Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to the latest edition of one hundred The Ed
Gordon Podcast Today, a conversation with civil rights activist, scholar
and author Been Jealous. In two thousand and eight, he
became the youngest head of the Double A c P.
He is currently the executive director of the Sierra Club,
a nonprofit environmental organization. As a lifelong activist, he has
(00:46):
fought for equal rights and the eradication of racism. In part,
that fight and passion was the impetus for his new book,
Never Forget Our People Were Always Free, A Parable of
American Healing. We started out my talking about the impetus
(01:07):
for the book. Grandmother was dying chronologically. She's a hundred
and three granddaughter. Three people had been born enslaved, and
she was leaving us with riddles I wanted to solve
and stories I wanted to preserve. And that's what got
me writing in and thinking about it. You know, the
big woman title of the book didn't make any sense.
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How could you say, never forget Our people were Always Free?
It's my grandma's had over and over three year old
grandparents were born into slavery. And what I figured out
doing research and talking to psychologists and figuring out, kind
of why does sometimes our elders say things that don't
make any sense to us? Is that she was echoing
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something that's been said to her and and her grandmother,
her great grandmother had done the same thing, just like
I saw my I sent to make that assertion which
made no sense when we were when we were teenagers.
And I, with the help of Hanry Lewis Gates Jr.
And a bunch of the DNA folks, I was able
to figure out this is actually an echo of a
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battle cry from the first woman in that maternal line
to be delivered to the United States as a slave.
And we figured out where she was from, figured out
her culture. Uh, kind of when I'm my own little
Alex Haley journey, and it just it just blew my mind.
There's also a deeper, deeper meaning for me in the
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sense of the mentality of right. Even if you are enslaved,
there can be a mindset of freedom as well. And
you know, I think the older we get, the more
we realize that. For example, Dr King's leadership was a
reflection on the mindset of his elders, not just of
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his own genius um and hours as well. You know,
I was sitting with Harold Ford yesterday and we were
talking here a friend of ours is actually conservative journalists,
and just kind of breaking down for him. You know that, Uh,
there's a lot of black folks who come from families
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that have been in college since slavery, and black folks
who come from families that were freedom fighters even in slavery.
And that's and that's that was absolutely mindset training for
enslaved children. The first woman in the maternal line would
have said that because it was true. She came from
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a pirate community in East Africa, one of very small
number of slaves to be delivered from Madagascar to Virginia
on a slave ship that was shipped that was piloted
by a known European pirate group of pirates, European at
war with African pirates. Well, what else would a pirate
woman say to her children and grandchildren but never forget
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our people were always free. And how would she say it?
She would say, it has a call to insurrection at
least inspiration, because a child who knows that freedom is
this people's history, knows that they have a responsibility to
make it their people's destiny. And the interesting thing is
that even when the women in the women in the
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family had long since forgotten where are people were from,
even um when they stopped even questioning, uh, like how
this could possibly be true? Bill gave him like steel
in their spine. And that line, more than any other
line in my family, black or white, was rebellious. Every
single generation ran away from slavery, sued their high school
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when they were twelve. My mama when she was twelve,
having grown up at that point most of her child
in the housing projects. Stein's on to be a name
plain if to sue Western High School for girls in
Baltimore to be in the first class to desegregated, because
Baltimore Ville didn't. They tried to resist desegregation of four
and uh yeah, you know this seems to be, if
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you will, the mindset that was handed down first by
generation seven slave women to the children, but you didn't
by my grandmother to her children and grandchildren. Let's let's
talk racism in America for a second, and the idea
let me extend the title, if you will, when you
talk about America, healing racism has clearly been a reoccurring
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illness in this country. We've been trying to heal from
it from the day that slaves were brought. How much
do you buy and obviously you do with the book
the idea that there is that that there is a cure.
There are those who believe there is no cure for it.
You know, my generation, we were impacted by Derek Bell.
(05:44):
His book faces at the bottom of the well. The
argument was the permanence of racism. Um. It wasn't long
after that that Randal Robinson left America piece out and
the reality is, uh, I just don't believe that it
needs to be true. And this is why my folks
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are from Virginians. We all know the slave trade and
Virginias are like sixteen Well, that slave trade had been
going on in Virginia had been a thing for a
hundred years before the modern barbaric American notion of races
and racism was created. Race prior to early seventeen hundreds
was a European word for tribe, where nation when applied
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to people, genus or type when applied to things. That's
why you have old phrases in the language like we
Scots are a mighty race and we Irish are a
mighty race. Talking about being a nation get together by blood.
But in the sev seventeen thirties, something starts to happen
which is really different in human history. No longer are
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the slaves that are being delivered categorized as people of
nations as they had been in the sixteen hundreds. They're
categorized as an animals, subhuman need rose and grouped like
on lists, not as people have been even fifty years earlier,
twenty years earlier, but like cattle were being in horses.
And so what happened, Well, you have the creation of
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a new notion of race. It's a pseudo scientific theory
that there are literally multiple human races. I mean, it's
bullshit from a science perspective, but uh and and it's
immoral from a religious perspective. But that was the assertion,
and you have to step back and ask yourself, well,
what was this all about? Well, well, it is both
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easy to observe that as far as the impact, it
was devastating to the black community and it still is.
Witness what's going on in Memphis. Even our own people
have they treat our own people like the humanization has
tremendous impact. But you have to ask yourself what was
in it for the king. What was in it for
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a colonial society? Why was this so value to them?
Valuables them? Because it split people the in the sixteen
hundreds or there were slave rebellions in America. There were
colonial rebellions even in the seventeen hundreds. Uh. The Boston
Massacre maybe the most famous rebellion. H was portrayed as
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all white by Paul Revere. He just made everybody look white.
But if you look at the defense of the Red
Coats by John Adams. Yes, John Adams was the defense
lawyer for the Red Coats who massacred the Americans the
Boston Massacre. He describes the crowd with words and he says,
they're negroes, moolatos and jack tars. Jack tars are poor whites. Well,
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what was that? What? You know? What was going on?
There was a magnetism when people at the bottom of
the of the economy, regardless of their color, and it
went back to European and dangerous servants and African slaves
repeatedly rebelling in the sixteen hundreds, and the colonial government
tried a military response, didn't really work. They tried new laws.
Folks kept rebelling and then they reached for the acts,
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for the cudgel that is cultured. And when they change
the definition of a word, when they literally said to
those European adangerous servants, you are human and these ones aren't.
M that's what split folks, and why is splitting them valuable? Well,
their assertion was we deserve freedom, we deserve better pay,
we deserve, we deserve, we deserve and all that costs
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the king money. So you could either give in to
their demands or you could split them by de humanizing
one group and convincing the other that the greatest asset
was their European ancestry. I was gonna ask you and
you touch on it. There the idea that to a
great degree, You know, when race has been talked about
over the years, over the decades, over the centuries, race
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can be an enigma in terms of conversation, often depending
on who is defining it and how you define it
and the like. One of the interesting points is and
what you write about you say, uh, you want to
see a mission to restore the country strength and unity.
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There will be those who will push back and say,
this country never had unity. What do you say to
those people of this country? Were united in their struggle
for human dignity from the first days. That's what you
see in Gloucester, Virginia in sixteen sixty three when folks rebel,
and that's what you see throughout that next decade, all
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the way through Bacon's Rebellion. We thought about in school,
this is sort of the precursor to the American Revolution.
And that's what we saw on the eve of the
American Revolution when when when Paul Revere himself was afraid
to show the American people who was rebelling in Boston,
but John Adams and trying to excuse the officers murderous
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behavior as their defense attorney laid at bear. It was Negros,
it was Mulatto's, it was Jack tars And And why
is that importive? Because there is a magnetism, uh honestly
between parents, regardless of all, when their children are facing
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a similarly bad faith. Suddenly people, you know what, everything
kind of fades away except for Junior's future, you know,
except for a little you know, Susie's future, and and
people are are willing to come together, you know, you
see it when you have kids with special needs. And
the way is that those movements can be suddenly very inclusive.
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But you also see it um quite frankly, in the
Great Depression. You see at the moments of great poverty.
There was even a headline, you know, back in two
thousand and eight when we were dealing with the Great Recession.
I mean it was two thousand nine, and it was
The New York Times that it's about Georgia and it
said stuck in the same job line people come together
across old racial lines, like so this is the think
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thing is this? And I know you're a historian and
you've paid attention to the history of our social movements.
Three really earth shaking assassinations in the Black freedom struggle
of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties Martin Luther King,
Fred Hampton, and we go back to the go on
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in the nineteen fifties, Harry and Harriet Moore, they were
blown up Christmas Night. I think that we roughly n
what each one of them has a common is they
were assassinated in the context of trying to bring more
whites and black folks together. Then poverty case of Fred,
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you know, in the case of Fred Hampton and Martel
the kid to end poverty and the end of Vietnam War.
Those are two things that they were working on. King.
It was a poor people's campaign, Fred Hampton. It was
bringing together the um Black Panther Party, a range of
groups of color are and the young patriots who were
Southern whites who had moved up to northern factories with
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their parents, who flew Confederate flags proudly. At the end
of the day, they were upset about two things. And
factory jobs were disappearing, and the Vietnam War was treating
them like a meat grinder. And guess what the black
pants had the same concerned. They tried to come together,
and then all of a sudden, that old phrase from
Cohen talpro the counterintelligence program to the FBI, prevent the
rise of the Black Messiah. That was their mission. He
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started to wonder, way was did they mean himssidah for
black folks or a black person who would try to
unite everybody in the Casa Hampton in the case of
of in the case of King, That's what they were
trying to do. They were trying to unite everybody. Would
go back to Harry Moore, he and his wife are
sleeping in a bedroom in the first flour of a
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ranch house. The children are in the other wing on
the second floor. Met one of the daughters. She's in
their eighties, really a shell of a person because our
parents were evaporated. That's how much dynamite was packed under
the bandroom. Harry and Harriet More by the Kooplex claimed
to in sneak attacks. They literally and they literally filled
the crawl space with dynamite, just loads and loads of dynamite.
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And then they went and they could even found a
fingernail parents And it was done. That's why the n
a CP down in Florida is so fierce. They start
every year they're convention, going to the house and Harry
and Harriet read More and and honestly, this was like
the youth in college, the youth in college division members, Uh,
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who are kids? Then there's still leaders in there might
be eight, there's still leaders at the end of a
CP down at Florida, and their fears let me ask you. Oh,
but here's the thing. We remember Harry Moore as an
end of a CP president. We remember Harry Moore as
a guy who registered a million black folks before the
Voting Rights Act. Is a single year, biggest voting registration
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driving Florida until Andrew Gillham a few years ago, we
forget he was also president of Florida Progressive Party, which
was a majority white party, populist party, and he was
bringing them together with the end c F. And so
that's ultimately sort of people know the Alto power plan
is society for four people is to come together a
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cross lines and race and the alter purpose of racism,
The ald purpose of racism is to split the four
so both groups are weaker. So when you ask yourself, well,
who's really hard by racism, you've got to include poor
whites because they're may politically weaker by being split from blacks.
And there's almost twice as many whites trapped in poverty
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as blacks in the book you talk about. In order
to eradicate this, you've got to deal with three lies.
Let's talk about what you what you put forth and assert.
Line number one is uh that it has always been
this way? You know. Yeah, so so so there's three
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big lies. First one is that it's always been this way,
so it's gotta be the you know, it's always gonna
be this way, right. That was kind of Derrek Bell's
argument it's not the case. You go back far enough.
Something ow Derek Bell also taught me is that you're
gonna be a good civil rights leader, you better know
three hundred years American history. At least when you go
back four hundred years, you know one century beyond that.
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And what you see is the rebellions weren't slave rebellions,
that were colonial rebellions, and that supportive Because Charles V.
Hamilton and wrote Black Power would tell you politics a
lot like physics. Something in motion. Will you know, first
rule for at reaction to equal opposite reaction. You know Clinton,
Bush Um, you know Bush Obama, Obama Trump. The second
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rule something emotion will return to its original state. The
original state of the struggle was actually people from Europe
and Africa coming together to rebel, not just one or
the other. The second big lie is only why it's
paid a price for desegregation. It's called that the arch
bunker myth. Well, you know what the truth is, Mr.
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And Mrs Jefferson did too. Black businesses were wiped out
by the millions. So let's go to line number three,
which is racism only hurts black people and people of color.
And what Dr King was trying to teach us when
he when he was assassinated, was that racism is ultimately
a wedge meant to divide people who are struggling, to
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keep them from asserting their common demand for fair pay
for full day's work, better education for their kids. He
was trying to unite the poor across the lines of
race because he understood that the only way to unleash
the American dream for all of us is to make
sure that none of us are trapped in poverty. And
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today we have over eight million blacks trapped in poverty.
We have more than sixteen million whites trapped in poverty.
And what makes both groups weaker is the wedge that
is race and racism. Let me ask you before I
moved to I want to get your thoughts on the
civil rights movement and and the justice movement today. But
I'm curious about this, the idea that racism may not
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be able to be eradicated because there are enough people
that don't want to see it wiped out. You know,
we we look for the good nature of people to
assume that they don't want this um. There are those
who say what Trump uncovered was the idea that even
though there may be people that don't deem themselves racists
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or that we wouldn't necessarily see as racist, and its
traditional terms would in fact be those that don't want
the white privilege to go away. Yeah, it's important to
remember that. Don't Trumps a bit in there. Strategic racism.
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It's a thing, you know, Donald Trump wants paid for
the entire national action that we're conventioned one year. You know. Um,
he tried, you know, other strategies, and then he found
a strategy that worked for him. That's the story of
George Wallace deeply regretted the format Alabama governor segregation and
segreation forever, deeply regretted taking that turn. At the end
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of his rice of his life when he remembered the
most post folks forgot was that before he ran successfully
for governor in nineteen fifty two, he ran unsuccessfully in
Night as an n Double a CP endorsed candidate. He
would later rule the in Double a CP a terrorist organization,
but first he accepted their endorsement. He'd come out of
FDR's movement, and his whole raised on Detra was about
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ending poverty for his community, for poor whites by uniting
them with poor black folks and building a movement, you know, um,
creating a new deal, you know. And he was somebody
was lined up at that point with l G with
L B J would going to lead the war and poverty.
But he got beat by a guy who slogan was
essentially was the N word in y eight. And he
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said that he would not be out in warded again. Uh,
and he shifted. And you know what happened as a
result in his community in Alabama didn't get you wealthier.
Poverty was maintained for the white folks down there, not
just the black folks down there. And at the end
of his life he realized he had wasted a whole
lot of time on on the vanity um. You know,
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that is served by just leaning in the old patterns
that hate. Frankly, that attracts money that is made by
keeping those two groups apart. Donald Trump is a very
rich man. In the book, I tell a story about
a clansman who went crazy in the late forties, early
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nineteen fifties. Um, because I think in forty seven he
had been part of a um of a lynching of
a black man as a Methodist preacher, an Alton, and
he was He was a clansman and a Methodist preacher,
and the clan was revived by a Methodist preacher and
Stoneman Mountain, Georgia. So there are a lot of Southern
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Mathis teachers in the claim then. And he went crazy
because of the dissidents, because of the conflict between the
teachings of Jesus and the teaching the Claim. And he
got to sen his back and he restored his pride
in himself and his dignity and his sanity and the
health of his family by leading his family into the
civil rights movement in Alabama in the very early nineteen fifties,
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right around when Harry Harry Moore were killed over in Florida,
and he um his storming became this. He's say, any
white man who has his hand on the neck of
a Negro needs to recognize pushing him down in the ditch,
needs to recognize he's down in the ditch with him.
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And the rich man walks down the middle of the street,
and he laughed at both men in the ditch, the
negro and the white woman. That's wisdom from an old clansman.
And so we have to reckon it's the game. Dr
King was trying to explain, it's a game. The whole
purpose of the Poor People's campaign was to shut down
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Washington so thoroughly he was willing to risk five years
and more in prison. According to Andyo, all of them
were because they were trying to call America to the
moral imperative that is ending poverty for all of this,
and the understanding that racism. Yes, it's like a boot
that's down pushing black folks down, but it's also a wedge.
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And that was the value to the rich from the beginning,
was to divide us. You've had a lifelong run of activism.
Head of the End Up l c P, the youngest
when you were elected appointed, are elected in in two
thousand and eight. Give me a sense of how you
see the movement today. I believe they were living in
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the moment of the darkest before the dawn. My grandmother
she passed a hundred five last summer, God bless her.
It was very much living in the balcony of history.
And she was a firebrand of social worker civil rights workers.
She had trained Barbara mcculskey to be a social worker.
You want to see old center mcculskey cry, ask her
about made me playing todd, and she said, you know,
(23:14):
we have had four hundred years as white supremacy as
the operating of our of our democracy. You would you
would expect that that that as it was coming to
an end. You would have some white folks like my
dad would say, you know, finally our people got to
get along with other people. Let's just get on with it.
You would have other white folks who would get very
(23:36):
scared by the chief, get very scared by the change,
and try to crawl on. It's best they can the difference.
She would say, you know, we had the New South
twice before, but every time it was based on a
numerical lot. We had this franchise the old Confederates. We
they had to be reinfranchise. That ended the first one,
and then the second time we had folks who are
aligned with their values, with the claim of the voting
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straight democratic tickets. Well that was in the end. At
some point too said, this time everybody becomes a minority.
Folks are gonna have to figure it out. And that's
ultimately my faith is that the American people will figure
it out. How optimistic are you that we are going
to see better days ahead relatively soon. I'm not I
(24:20):
think there's gonna be a tug of war now why
it's becoming a minority to It's gonna take a lot,
But honestly, the momentums in the right direction. I live
in a conservative community down my local y m c A.
I see a lot of grandparents and conservative you know,
movement hats and T shirts with black grandchildren at the
pouring a lot of love into it. Was like before
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marriage equality became a thing, and you start, you know,
and you started to notice that people sort of there
was a shift in the culture that proceeded a shift
in the law. I think that there's a shift in
the culture happening that is leading us in a right direction.
And we should not be put off by the fact
that some folks are ge more aggressive trying to hold
onto old entitlements and old ways of doing things. Um
(25:04):
that actually, uh, you know, it's like we have a
fox backed into a corner. You know, farmer knows the
fox is the most vicious when the fox realizes that
everything is about to change in a way that fox
ain't ready for. Um. And it's similar think in our
society right now, Ben Jealous The book is Never Forget
Our People Were Always Free, A Parable of American Healing.
(25:27):
Congratulations man, good to see you, Thank you, appreciate you again.
Ben's new book, Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,
A Parable of American Healing, is available now. One is
(25:49):
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