October 4, 2022 • 40 mins
Dr. Tiffany Crutcher is the founder of the Terence Crutcher Foundation (TCF), focusing on criminal justice, police reform and policy advocacy. She was thrust into the national spotlight following the death of her twin brother Terence Crutcher, who was shot by a police officer in Tulsa while holding his hands in the air. She has since chosen to turn her personal tragedy into an opportunity to bridge fear and mistrust and help reform our criminal justice system.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam, the podcast where
I have the privilege of speaking to some of today's
most prominent and active agents of change, people who see
the wrong in the world and are driven to make
it right. My guest today is directly descended from the
Oklahoma community of Greenwood, also known as Black Wall Street,
the site of the infamous Tulsa massacre, in which hundreds
(00:31):
of black citizens were killed by white marauders. Sadly, our
guests came face to face with those same forces of
injustice when her twin brother was murdered by police shortly
after their fortieth birthday. If I think about my ancestors
here in Black Wall Street, who fought to rebuild and
who fought for their community, think about the black men
(00:54):
who were killed, just like Terence with their hands in
the air by the same least department that killed innocent
black men back in and burnt down my great grandmother's
community is the same police department, the same state sanctioned
violence that killed Terrence. Almost one years later, what has changed?
(01:18):
But instead of giving into despair and anger, Dr Crutcher
chose to turn that tragedy into her life's work, fighting
relentlessly and courageously for justice on behalf of not just
her brother, but countless other people of color affected by
police violence, brutality, and racism. Right now on Righteous Convictions,
(01:40):
the woman known as America's Sister, Dr Tiffany Crutchery. Welcome
back to Righteous Convictions today's episode. Well, I don't even
(02:00):
know what to say that. The woman who I'm interviewing
today is somebody that I'm actually in awe of, and
you're going to find out why very shortly. So, without
further ado, I want to introduce my esteemed guest, Dr
Tiffany Crutcher, Doc. Welcome to Righteous Convictions. Thank you so much, Jason.
(02:21):
It is so good to be here and to to
see your face again. I'm honored. So Dr Crutcher, I
call you Doc. I know people call you Tiffany. They
you're not so formal and fancy, but nonetheless, I think
it's the respectful thing to do. You've had an extraordinary life,
but you've had extraordinary lives before your life, and I'm
(02:42):
talking about of course, was it your great grandmother that
lived in Tulsa during the infamous race riots? Of yes,
absolutely it was my great grandmother, My my father's grandmother,
Rebecca Brown Crutcher, who lived in one of the most
prosperous economic enterprises in the grim days of Jim Crow.
(03:04):
Jason and I didn't even know about it until I
went off to college. And so I come from greatness.
I come from black excellence. Uh successes in my DNA,
and so yeah, I'm really proud of my ancestral legacy.
Um that once possessed the community of Greenwood and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Right,
(03:29):
and just quickly, what we're referring to is what was
known back then as Black Wall Street, which was sort
of the epicenter of black culture success excellence, an area
where the black community had come together to build a
almost a utopian situation. It's probably a slight exaggeration, but
(03:50):
where there were black people who were bankers and doctors
and lawyers and were they were thriving. And that created, um,
a situation where the whites in the area became very um.
But I'm gonna say jealous, jealous. Yeah, that's that's right,
(04:13):
That's exactly you're spot on. And then in May, a
young black man, a shoeshiner named Dick Roland, was falsely
accused of assaulting a white woman in a hotel elevator
and arrested. While he was in jail, a group of
vigilantes tried to kidnap and lynch him, which led to
a confrontation between black and white armed mobs. Shots were fired.
Things escalated quickly, and over the next few days, white
(04:36):
rioters invaded, looted, and burned the Greenwood community of the ground.
It's been estimated that as many as three hundred people
were killed. But your great grandmother miraculously and thankfully survived,
and thank goodness she did, because that led to you
and you're I could say, you're innate sense of justice
which was born out of her legacy and that sense
(04:58):
of black excellence human and before. And just to go
through a little bit of your bio, you have a
b a. In medicine and a clinical doctorate as well
from Lancaster University and Alabama State University, the only HBCU
in the state of Oklahoma. And you're also a graduate
of the James W. Right Leadership Development Institute in Montgomery, Alabama.
(05:18):
Now that's just a small slice of your incredible accomplishments.
But it was the incident that involved your twin brother,
Terrence that set your life on the trajectory it's on now.
So tell us about you and your twin brother. And
you have some other brothers too, is that right? It
was actually four of us. I was the only girl.
I had three three brothers, um actually five, but one
(05:41):
of my brothers passed away before Terence and I were
born of SIDS of crib death, and that was two
years be for us. And so we had an older brother, Joey,
who actually unfortunately passed away in of stage war colon cancer.
And of course we'll talk about what happened to Terrence
(06:04):
in and and then we had a baby brother two
years behind Terrence and I, Darrell's, who is still with us,
who was actually just released from prison after nineteen years
for a non violent, uh drug crime that they say.
And so we've fought every aspect of this system. My
(06:27):
family has been affected all the way, from state sanctioned
violence to this war on drugs to a flawed health
care system. And and then I'll just say that my
my dear mother passed away in of the infamous novel Coronavirus,
totally unexpected. And so you know, when you say this,
(06:51):
this wonderful life I wouldn't wish my life on anyone,
but I hope that people will see resilience and strengthened,
you know, have a reason to keep fighting. Yeah, I
would say remarkable would be the word I would use
to describe your life because of the fact that you
have um endured and overcome such tragedies that would I
(07:14):
think break a lesser human into little pieces and um
just be laying on the floor in the corner somewhere
in a fetal position, and no one could blame you
after everything had been through it. And but let's talk
about your twin brother. Your twin brother was a man
who had no criminal history, no not and by the way,
(07:35):
if he did, it wouldn't matter. Nobody deserves the faith
that befell him. But tell us about your brother. Yeah, well, well,
I will just say that Terence did have a few
run ins with the law because he was dealing with addiction.
And when you're dealing with addiction, uh, you know, you
(07:58):
find yourself in situation and because you may not be
in your right mind or uh you know. And this
this city, this state, they haven't really done a great
job at at coming up with alternatives and diversion programs
or investing money and into mental health. But but to
(08:19):
tell you about my my brother, Terrence, my twin. Of course, Uh,
we were three minutes apart. You know, he came out first.
He always made it clear that he was the big brother,
even though I felt like I guided him along. And
so we we had that argument many birthdays. You would
(08:39):
never find us a part. I mean, we were in
the same classrooms, whenever we went on field trips, they
would not separate us. And finally, when we got ready
to decide which high schools we wanted to go to,
of course, me being the overachiever that I was, I
I went to Booker T Washington, the the the smart
school they call it, and he said, I want to
(09:02):
go play football with my friends at the school in
the neighborhood. And that's when we finally separated. But I
cannot remember a time that we didn't celebrate our birthday
up until the last birthday I went off to college.
I was in Montgomery, Alabama, and we would still my
parents would still get us a birthday cake that said
(09:22):
Happy Birthday, Terrence and Tiffany. There was something Jason special
about twins, and uh, he loved to sing he was
a gospel singer. You would find Terrence in church every Sunday,
even through his struggles, because that's the place he found solace.
He loved to cook. He called himself the rib King,
(09:43):
you know. One of his specialty dishes with chicken spaghetti.
And he loved his children with all of his heart.
And uh, he had just started school or started back school.
He was enrolled at Tulsa Community College. And uh, the
day he was tragically executed, he was leaving school and
(10:05):
fifteen minutes later he was dead. And uh, you know,
I was in Montgomery and got that call from one
of my cousins who lived in Dallas at the time, Jason,
And she asked me, when was the last time I
called home. I said, it's been a couple of days.
She said, I think you need to call home. And
I said, what's wrong? And she got quiet, and I said,
(10:29):
spit it out. She said, I heard something about Terrence.
I think he's dead. And I immediately hung up the phone.
My body went numb, and I got in my car
and I started driving, and my hands were shaking on
the steering wheel, and I said, why haven't my my
(10:49):
mom or dad called? They would have called by now.
Thirty minutes went by, an hour went by, two hours
went by, and I was praying the whole time, please
don't let this be true. And I thought that maybe
it wasn't because I hadn't heard from my parents. And
then my phone started blowing up area code that's the
(11:14):
Tulsa area code, and that area code kept coming through.
It was all sorts of people, family and friends, and
I would not answer. I said, I will not pick
up this phone until it's either my mom or dad.
And finally I saw Daddy pop up on the screen
(11:35):
and I didn't want to answer, and I went to
a friend's house and he said, you need to answer.
When I answered the phone, Jason, it was my father,
my hero, on the other end of the phone line, hysterical,
screaming they killed my son. They killed my son. And
I had never heard my father cry like that. And
(12:01):
I said, Dad, who killed Terrence? And he said the police,
and we are in the hospital and they won't let
us see him. They're treating us like criminals. There's police
officers everywhere, and I just lost it. I think I
blanked out at that moment, and uh, I tried to
(12:24):
get in my car and drive home. And my friends said,
you can't drive home, and there's a twelve hour drive
from Alabama to Oklahoma. And so I got on the
first plane, smoke in the next morning, made it to
the home. Homicide detectives finally made it to tell my
parents what happened. I didn't even have enough decency to
(12:46):
talk to them the night before, and that's when I
decided that I'm not gonna let them get away with this.
I remember wanting to to to go down to Florida
to to to protest what happened to Trayvon Martin. I
remember wanting to go to to Baltimore and and and
(13:08):
and and protest what happened to Freddie Gray. I remember
wanting to go to to to Ferguson to protest what
happened to Michael Brown. But I never in a million
years I would have thought that I would be on
the other side of it, that I would be in
the same place and shoes that Sabrina and Leslie and
(13:31):
those families were in at a press conference with a
Ben Crump, with an attorney to Mario Solomon Simmons. But
I told them, this is war. You all killed the
wrong person. You didn't know that he came from a
(13:52):
family that loved him, a community that loved him, a
community that my parents, my mom and dad, grew up
in that they served with all of their hearts. And
I declared war on state sanctioned violence. And you know,
(14:13):
it's really common that the police there spokespeople. They get
out ahead of the situation, and they started controlling the
narrative right out the gate, and they told everybody that
Terrence wasn't complying, that Terence was belligerent, that Terence was
(14:34):
attacking the police officer, and that's the reason why he
was killed. He didn't comply, so he had to die.
And so we demanded that they released the footage, any
video footage. And it just so happened, Jason, that there
was a helicopter flying overhead who had a police officer
(14:58):
in it by the name of Dave Shelby, who was
Betty Shelby's husband, her husband, And you could hear through
the audio them saying that that looks like a bad dude.
What does a bad dude look like that far up
in the air. You tell me what bad dude intentionally
(15:22):
is enrolled in community college. You tell me what bad
Dude is singing at church every single Sunday. You tell
me what bad Dude tells his twin sister that I'm
gonna make you proud and God is going to get
the glory out of my life. All I could suspect
is that they saw the color of his skin, and
(15:44):
I made a promise that I wouldn't let hate, racism,
or bigotry control my brother's story, control my family's narrative.
And I haven't rested since Righteous Convictions with Jason Flamm
(16:14):
is super excited and honored to have the support of
a great organization like Galaxy Gives. Galaxy Gives leads the
filanthropic efforts of the Novograds family. They invest in organizations, campaigns,
and leaders who are directly impacted by and working to
dismantle the current punitive justice system. Galaxy Gives also builds
power for the community's most harmed by mass incarceration and
(16:36):
forges transformative solutions for responding to that harm. They envision
a society where the structural barriers created by racism, poverty,
and inequality are no more, where instead all people have
the dignity, freedom, and rights needed to thrive. It took
(17:07):
a while for me to get that visual of Terence
lying in the street like road kill out of my head.
It took a while. I have yet to see him
being executed. I cannot watch the video, but I couldn't
help but see his body on on the ground because
(17:28):
it was plastered onto every media outlet. It was plastered
on the front page of of the Tulsa World. They
didn't even render aid. They trampled over him and they
went to go check and see if Betty Joe Shelby
was okay, and they told her not to render first aid.
And she was a trained e m T had over
(17:50):
twenty dollars worth of medical equipment, and they said, don't
touch him because there's gonna be a bunch of black
people mad. That was what came out of the criminal
try l. But I will say because of the pressure,
for the first time in the history of Tulsa, Oklahoma,
for the first time in a hundred years, a police
(18:12):
officer was indicted for the first time, and we just
knew that we were going to get justice. And fast forward,
Betty Shelby went to a criminal trial. She was charged
with first degree manslaughter and they deliberated if the jury
deliberated for nine hours. I knew somebody was back there
(18:34):
fighting for us, but they came back with a verdict
of not guilty. And that night I said I would
not rest until I transformed policing, just not in the
city of Tulsa or the state of Oklahoma, but across
this country. And I've been doing just that. Before George
Floyd was killed, before Brianna Taylor was killed, I frequented
(18:59):
cat Little Hill, did briefings, testified before House Judiciary committees,
asking them to change the use of force standard, asking
that they abolished qualified immunity. And if they would have
(19:19):
taken those recommendations and put them into effect, maybe George
would be alive, maybe Brianna Taylor would be alive. And
so am I exhausted, Yes, I am. But can I
(19:41):
complain and rest? No? I cannot, because I think about
the shoulders that I stand on. I think about John Lewis,
who continued to fight until his death. I think about
my ancestors here in Black Wall Street, who who fought
to rebuild and who fought for their community. Think about
(20:03):
the black men who were killed, just like Terence, with
their hands in the air by the same police department
that killed innocent black men back in and burnt down
my great grandmother's community is the same police department, the
same state sanctioned violence that killed Terrence almost one hundred
(20:23):
years later. What has changed? You know? What's remarkable about
this story, aside from so many other things, is that
the jury, my understanding, is that they acquitted Officer Shelby
(20:48):
of what should have been obvious to any jury, maybe
anywhere except Oklahoma, maybe anywhere except America, a first degree manslaughter.
But they did say that she was no longer fit
to serve on the police force. UM. And I think
most people probably now are breathing a sigh of relief,
thinking that she's no longer out there with the ability
(21:12):
to take the lives of more other innocent people, or
who knows what else she's done. But that's not how
it works in America. Dot. Can you explain what happened
and what I'm referring to here? Yeah? Sure, UM, I
get triggered too, and I'm trying not to get emotional.
(21:33):
I've shared this story so many times and it never
gets easier to talk about this. Um. Even though it's
been a little bit over five years, it seems like
it was just yesterday. But yeah, the jury came out.
There ended up being three blacks on the jury. Initially
it was too and there was a black man who
(21:56):
was an alternate, and one of the white women got
sick and so he ended up being in the deliberating room.
And the jury foreman penned the letter to the verdict.
And no one had ever seen, no expert had ever
seen anything like that happened before. And I'm paraphrasing. What
(22:18):
they simply stated is that, um, she should never be
a parole officer again, and that she's not blameless, you know.
And so what they did was they acquitted her, but
they didn't really exonerate her. And they said because of
the way the laws were written, they had to render
(22:39):
this verdict, that they had no other options. Of course,
that broke my heart. And a few days later one
of the jurymen when and spoke to the media and
he said that he's been haunted, he can't sleep. He
should have hung the jury. He said, it was split
(23:02):
fifty fifty and everybody was stuck, and finally that they
got tired and hungry and they just start flipping their
answers to not guilty. So they could go home. And
I talked with some of the people within the d
(23:22):
a's office and they said they didn't have money in
their budget to feed the jury. And I said, well, damn,
I would have went at least bought them pizza. And
so I don't feel that they were empowered to be
there that long. And I do think that the d
(23:45):
A at least he brought charges, But I think that
that they did a shoddy job and they didn't bring
any in any use of force experts. He just thought
it was clear and convincing. And we're in Oklahoma. The
other side, they hired actors and all sorts of people.
(24:06):
They spent a lot of money. The FOP spent a
lot of money protecting someone who was unleashed onto our community,
who had a record herself of drug use, who had
restraining orders on her, who should have never been allowed
(24:27):
to carry a gun, who was let go at the
Sheriff's department in Tulsa, who was let go from Tulsa
Public Schools because of her violent temperament, but yet because
her new husband, Dave Shelby, was on the force. And
there's a a culture of nepotism within Tulsa police department.
(24:52):
There's a good old boy system. They led her on
the force anyway, and they unleashed this violent cop onto
our community, and as a result, my brother was killed.
She should have never been a police officer. And to
add insult to injury Jason, after she was acquitted, they
(25:17):
allowed this woman to go around the country training other
law enforcement officers on how to how to survive the
aftermath of a critical incident, how to get away with murder,
how to deal with what she called the Ferguson effect,
(25:40):
and black activists. An incident that Terrence didn't survive. And
she went on sixty minutes and said, I would rather
be tried by twelve than to be carried out by six.
And she said she had never been so afraid in
her life. And then she said he made me do it.
(26:05):
He made me do it. But yet, in her testimony
and in her statement, she said Terrence wasn't threatening her
physically or verbally, and that she thought he was having
a mental health crisis, or that he could have been
high on something. So instead of helping him, instead of
(26:27):
protecting and serving, she gives him a bullet. And she
says that she he was tracking her Terrence had a
prosthetic eye. Terrence was disabled, Terrence was hard of hearing.
People didn't know that, and so I I often think about,
(26:52):
or ponder or wonder what Terrence was thinking those last
few minutes with hell copters looming and mobs of white
police officers coming toward him. He didn't know what was
going on, and with the limited mental capacity that he had,
(27:19):
he remembered to do what my father taught him, and
that was to put his hands in the air. So anyway,
I hope by'm making him proud by keeping his legacy alive.
(27:42):
And granted I can't bring him back, but he has
a son who just turned ten years old, who was
four years old at the time, going on five when
he was killed. But his son, Terrence Jr. It's the
spinning Emma. H He's like my little twin reincarnated. But
(28:06):
I have to fight like Hill to make sure that
Terrence Jr. Doesn't have his dad's same faith, which is
why we started the foundation in his honor. M talk
(28:45):
to us a little bit about the work that you're
doing now. Um, of course, I'm talking about Oklahoma's for
Criminal Justice Reform, the Met Harris Foundation, the Historic Greenwood
Main Street Justice for Greenwood Foundation on the board of directors,
and then the Youth United Justice Polition where you and
I served together. I mean, I'm not even going to
try to list all the awards and honors you received
(29:07):
because it would become dizzy. But we'll put links in
the bio. So what is what? What like? What's it?
What is your day? You get out of bed? What's
the first thing on your mind when you wake up
in the morning? Coffee? Probably? Right? Well, well, you know what,
I don't drink coffee. I don't because I'm caffeine sensitive
and I would be bouncing off the walls and I
(29:29):
don't need any more energy. Um. But I get up
at four thirty every morning, um, Jason, and that is
my meditation time. That is the time that I feed
my mind and I work on my mental tough toughness,
and I starved my doubts. Whether it's a daily devotion,
whether it's a podcast, whether it's a nice song. But
(29:55):
I do that every single morning because if I don't
feed my mind or commit my thoughts to something positive
or something healthy, I don't know if I would make
it through the day. Because my own thoughts are too
toxic and the world is too toxic for me to
(30:16):
navigate and fight this fight. And so that's what I
do every morning, and then I start to return emails. Uh.
I try to plan my week on Sunday nights because
if I don't plan my week, something that's going to
slip through the cracks, and then I have to prioritize.
I have to prioritize was urgent, was lingering? Uh, what
(30:40):
can wait? And so my day is back to back meetings.
If I'm not in back to back meetings, I am
trying to build relationships. From not building relationships, I'm taking
care of Dad or or the kids. If I'm not
doing that, I'm trying to figure out what my next
move is. How am I going to fulfill the mission
(31:02):
of this foundation and make sure um that what happened
to Terrence or what happened to to our community in
Greenwood doesn't happen again. And so I'm always sort of
thinking and praying and trying to make sure that my
my next move it's my best move. And what I
(31:23):
haven't really gotten good at is carving out that that
time for me, with the exception of my daily devotion
in the morning, but really saying, you know what, some
of this can wait is not going anywhere. And so yeah,
my days are are pretty fool and I find myself
leaving the office, um, you know late into the evenings sometimes.
(31:48):
Well you become known as America's Sister, and I think
that's a beautiful, um, a beautiful title. And the Terrence
crut your Foundation otherwise known as TCF, now named obviously
after your twin brother, on which you serve as the
executive director, and the primary focus of the foundation is
(32:09):
criminal justice and policing reformed no surprise there, as well
as providing scholarships to African American students, community and youth development,
and policy advocacy. And you were recently awarded among all
the other things you've been um honored for, but importantly,
you were recently given a Galaxy Gives Fellowship just just
(32:30):
this year, right, So tell us about TCF, Yes, well,
TCF Terrence Krutcher Foundation. Um, you know, we'd like to
say that we work in three buckets or three pillars,
and that's a that's advancing policy, uh, strengthening communities and
honoring the legacy of our ancestors. And so through that
advancing policy bucket. We're building a massive organizing apparatus here
(32:56):
in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We realize that in in this state,
we're going to have to build a base of of
of people who care about this work. Organizing as the
secret sauce, that's the only way we're gonna advance policy.
So that's really priority right now. Uh, We're we're fighting
for oh I am, oversight bodies of our police department.
(33:19):
We're fighting for reparations. We're tackling all of the treacherous
bills that are being passed down are signed into law,
like the anti protest bills, critical race theory um. But
as far as strengthening communities, we've just launched a restorative
justice pilot trying to find alternatives to policing, incorporating mental
health training up community members to deal with crisis response.
(33:42):
And then of course honoring the legacy of our ancestors
still in this fight for reparations for what happened one
hundred years ago, fighting for repair, respect and restitution. And
I'm so grateful to Galaxy Gifts for you know, investing
into me and believing in me and in this work
that we do across the state of Oklahoma. Yeah, Amen
(34:05):
to that, and thank you again for the incredible work
you're doing. Now, before we finish up here, I want
to invite our listeners to tune in next week when
my guests will be odd and non con I've not
spent sixteen years behind bars under California's felony murder statute
for a crime in which he was not the killer.
But what he did when he came out is nothing
short of amazing. So tune in and listen. I know
(34:27):
you're gonna want to hear this story. You're you're gonna
have a hard time forgetting it. It's tragic and beautiful
and powerful. You got to hear this story. So Doc,
here's how we wrap up the show. Two things, and
the first one's a question. Here it goes you Ready,
if I had a magic wand and can grant you
one wish, just one, what would it be? Wow, Jason,
(34:51):
I would man, I only get one wish. I would
re right the Constitution of the United States of America.
That's a good one. We've never heard that one before
on the show, but that's a good one. I'm with
(35:11):
you on that, and I can imagine some of the
changes that you would make because I think we'd be
totally aligned on that, as we are on most things.
And then the closing of the show is simply called
words of Wisdom, and it works like this. I'm going
to first of all, thank you again for your you're
almost otherworldly courage and determination and advocacy. But words of
(35:35):
wisdom works like this. I'm gonna turn my microphone off,
this kick back in my chair, on my headphones on,
and just listen to anything else you want to share
with me and our audience. Wow. Well, first of all,
Jason has definitely been a privilege and an honor, truly
(35:55):
humble to to share this platform with you today. You know,
I'm always grateful when and when people allow me to
keep my brother's name alive, because there's been so many
that's come after him, and sometimes we get swallowed up,
you know, and the fights get suppressed. But appreciate this
(36:19):
platform and you putting a spotlight on on what needs
to change in this country. But what I would share
with your listeners is that we have to get good
at controlling our stories and controlling the narrative, and we
have to get mad. We have to get mad, and
(36:43):
what that simply means it's an acronym for make a decision.
We have to make a decision to never stop fighting
for the least of these. We have to stop making
decisions as to who were what deserves our outrage, Jason
(37:05):
any type of injustice deserves our outrage. Terrence Crutcher deserves
your outrage. Black lives deserve your outrage. Julius Jones deserves
your outrage. And Tulsa, Oklahoma, we had one of the
(37:28):
most prosperous black meccas in the nation. I can't help
but think about J. B. Strafford, who had a three
story hotel with chandeliers and and and in Lula Williams,
who had a car, and we had airplanes, and we
had doctors, and we had lawyers, and and But it
(37:53):
was a love story. Greenwood was simply a love story.
And it wasn't the love story you would think about
when they talk about Dick Roland, the black boy who
allegedly assaulted Sarah Page, elevator operator, and rumors have it
that they were in love. But that's not the love
story that I'm I'm speaking of. I'm speaking about the
(38:17):
community of Greenwood, the black men and women, the World
War One veterans because they loved every community member, not
just the members who owned businesses who had money, but
they loved Dick Roland, who was the simple shoeshine boy,
(38:39):
and they went and they risked their life to make
sure that he wasn't lynched. That's what the community of
Greenwood represented. That's the true love story. And so I
challenge everyone to be outrage each when you see injustice
(39:05):
hit your television screen or your workplace or your community.
Fall in love with what the constitution and the ideal
of it is supposed to represent life, liberty in the
pursuit of happiness. And that's why I fight so hard,
(39:28):
because I love so hard and justice work is simply
a radical act of love. And I won't rest, and
I always like to end with the great Lady Ella Baker. Jason,
those who believe in freedom cannot rest. Thank you for
(39:56):
listening to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam. I'd like to
thank our product and team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Jeff
Kleber and Lila Robinson and Kevin Wardis. The music in
this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Rout. Follow us on Instagram Facebook and Twitter at
Lava for Good. You can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason plom Right. Just Conpictures
(40:20):
with Jason. Plomb is a production of Lava for Good
podcasts and association with signal company Number one
Welcome to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam, the podcast where
I have the privilege of speaking to some of today's
most prominent and active agents of change, people who see
the wrong in the world and are driven to make
it right. My guest today is directly descended from the
Oklahoma community of Greenwood, also known as Black Wall Street,
the site of the infamous Tulsa massacre, in which hundreds
(00:31):
of black citizens were killed by white marauders. Sadly, our
guests came face to face with those same forces of
injustice when her twin brother was murdered by police shortly
after their fortieth birthday. If I think about my ancestors
here in Black Wall Street, who fought to rebuild and
who fought for their community, think about the black men
(00:54):
who were killed, just like Terence with their hands in
the air by the same least department that killed innocent
black men back in and burnt down my great grandmother's
community is the same police department, the same state sanctioned
violence that killed Terrence. Almost one years later, what has changed?
(01:18):
But instead of giving into despair and anger, Dr Crutcher
chose to turn that tragedy into her life's work, fighting
relentlessly and courageously for justice on behalf of not just
her brother, but countless other people of color affected by
police violence, brutality, and racism. Right now on Righteous Convictions,
(01:40):
the woman known as America's Sister, Dr Tiffany Crutchery. Welcome
back to Righteous Convictions today's episode. Well, I don't even
(02:00):
know what to say that. The woman who I'm interviewing
today is somebody that I'm actually in awe of, and
you're going to find out why very shortly. So, without
further ado, I want to introduce my esteemed guest, Dr
Tiffany Crutcher, Doc. Welcome to Righteous Convictions. Thank you so much, Jason.
(02:21):
It is so good to be here and to to
see your face again. I'm honored. So Dr Crutcher, I
call you Doc. I know people call you Tiffany. They
you're not so formal and fancy, but nonetheless, I think
it's the respectful thing to do. You've had an extraordinary life,
but you've had extraordinary lives before your life, and I'm
(02:42):
talking about of course, was it your great grandmother that
lived in Tulsa during the infamous race riots? Of yes,
absolutely it was my great grandmother, My my father's grandmother,
Rebecca Brown Crutcher, who lived in one of the most
prosperous economic enterprises in the grim days of Jim Crow.
(03:04):
Jason and I didn't even know about it until I
went off to college. And so I come from greatness.
I come from black excellence. Uh successes in my DNA,
and so yeah, I'm really proud of my ancestral legacy.
Um that once possessed the community of Greenwood and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Right,
(03:29):
and just quickly, what we're referring to is what was
known back then as Black Wall Street, which was sort
of the epicenter of black culture success excellence, an area
where the black community had come together to build a
almost a utopian situation. It's probably a slight exaggeration, but
(03:50):
where there were black people who were bankers and doctors
and lawyers and were they were thriving. And that created, um,
a situation where the whites in the area became very um.
But I'm gonna say jealous, jealous. Yeah, that's that's right,
(04:13):
That's exactly you're spot on. And then in May, a
young black man, a shoeshiner named Dick Roland, was falsely
accused of assaulting a white woman in a hotel elevator
and arrested. While he was in jail, a group of
vigilantes tried to kidnap and lynch him, which led to
a confrontation between black and white armed mobs. Shots were fired.
Things escalated quickly, and over the next few days, white
(04:36):
rioters invaded, looted, and burned the Greenwood community of the ground.
It's been estimated that as many as three hundred people
were killed. But your great grandmother miraculously and thankfully survived,
and thank goodness she did, because that led to you
and you're I could say, you're innate sense of justice
which was born out of her legacy and that sense
(04:58):
of black excellence human and before. And just to go
through a little bit of your bio, you have a
b a. In medicine and a clinical doctorate as well
from Lancaster University and Alabama State University, the only HBCU
in the state of Oklahoma. And you're also a graduate
of the James W. Right Leadership Development Institute in Montgomery, Alabama.
(05:18):
Now that's just a small slice of your incredible accomplishments.
But it was the incident that involved your twin brother,
Terrence that set your life on the trajectory it's on now.
So tell us about you and your twin brother. And
you have some other brothers too, is that right? It
was actually four of us. I was the only girl.
I had three three brothers, um actually five, but one
(05:41):
of my brothers passed away before Terence and I were
born of SIDS of crib death, and that was two
years be for us. And so we had an older brother, Joey,
who actually unfortunately passed away in of stage war colon cancer.
And of course we'll talk about what happened to Terrence
(06:04):
in and and then we had a baby brother two
years behind Terrence and I, Darrell's, who is still with us,
who was actually just released from prison after nineteen years
for a non violent, uh drug crime that they say.
And so we've fought every aspect of this system. My
(06:27):
family has been affected all the way, from state sanctioned
violence to this war on drugs to a flawed health
care system. And and then I'll just say that my
my dear mother passed away in of the infamous novel Coronavirus,
totally unexpected. And so you know, when you say this,
(06:51):
this wonderful life I wouldn't wish my life on anyone,
but I hope that people will see resilience and strengthened,
you know, have a reason to keep fighting. Yeah, I
would say remarkable would be the word I would use
to describe your life because of the fact that you
have um endured and overcome such tragedies that would I
(07:14):
think break a lesser human into little pieces and um
just be laying on the floor in the corner somewhere
in a fetal position, and no one could blame you
after everything had been through it. And but let's talk
about your twin brother. Your twin brother was a man
who had no criminal history, no not and by the way,
(07:35):
if he did, it wouldn't matter. Nobody deserves the faith
that befell him. But tell us about your brother. Yeah, well, well,
I will just say that Terence did have a few
run ins with the law because he was dealing with addiction.
And when you're dealing with addiction, uh, you know, you
(07:58):
find yourself in situation and because you may not be
in your right mind or uh you know. And this
this city, this state, they haven't really done a great
job at at coming up with alternatives and diversion programs
or investing money and into mental health. But but to
(08:19):
tell you about my my brother, Terrence, my twin. Of course, Uh,
we were three minutes apart. You know, he came out first.
He always made it clear that he was the big brother,
even though I felt like I guided him along. And
so we we had that argument many birthdays. You would
(08:39):
never find us a part. I mean, we were in
the same classrooms, whenever we went on field trips, they
would not separate us. And finally, when we got ready
to decide which high schools we wanted to go to,
of course, me being the overachiever that I was, I
I went to Booker T Washington, the the the smart
school they call it, and he said, I want to
(09:02):
go play football with my friends at the school in
the neighborhood. And that's when we finally separated. But I
cannot remember a time that we didn't celebrate our birthday
up until the last birthday I went off to college.
I was in Montgomery, Alabama, and we would still my
parents would still get us a birthday cake that said
(09:22):
Happy Birthday, Terrence and Tiffany. There was something Jason special
about twins, and uh, he loved to sing he was
a gospel singer. You would find Terrence in church every Sunday,
even through his struggles, because that's the place he found solace.
He loved to cook. He called himself the rib King,
(09:43):
you know. One of his specialty dishes with chicken spaghetti.
And he loved his children with all of his heart.
And uh, he had just started school or started back school.
He was enrolled at Tulsa Community College. And uh, the
day he was tragically executed, he was leaving school and
(10:05):
fifteen minutes later he was dead. And uh, you know,
I was in Montgomery and got that call from one
of my cousins who lived in Dallas at the time, Jason,
And she asked me, when was the last time I
called home. I said, it's been a couple of days.
She said, I think you need to call home. And
I said, what's wrong? And she got quiet, and I said,
(10:29):
spit it out. She said, I heard something about Terrence.
I think he's dead. And I immediately hung up the phone.
My body went numb, and I got in my car
and I started driving, and my hands were shaking on
the steering wheel, and I said, why haven't my my
(10:49):
mom or dad called? They would have called by now.
Thirty minutes went by, an hour went by, two hours
went by, and I was praying the whole time, please
don't let this be true. And I thought that maybe
it wasn't because I hadn't heard from my parents. And
then my phone started blowing up area code that's the
(11:14):
Tulsa area code, and that area code kept coming through.
It was all sorts of people, family and friends, and
I would not answer. I said, I will not pick
up this phone until it's either my mom or dad.
And finally I saw Daddy pop up on the screen
(11:35):
and I didn't want to answer, and I went to
a friend's house and he said, you need to answer.
When I answered the phone, Jason, it was my father,
my hero, on the other end of the phone line, hysterical,
screaming they killed my son. They killed my son. And
I had never heard my father cry like that. And
(12:01):
I said, Dad, who killed Terrence? And he said the police,
and we are in the hospital and they won't let
us see him. They're treating us like criminals. There's police
officers everywhere, and I just lost it. I think I
blanked out at that moment, and uh, I tried to
(12:24):
get in my car and drive home. And my friends said,
you can't drive home, and there's a twelve hour drive
from Alabama to Oklahoma. And so I got on the
first plane, smoke in the next morning, made it to
the home. Homicide detectives finally made it to tell my
parents what happened. I didn't even have enough decency to
(12:46):
talk to them the night before, and that's when I
decided that I'm not gonna let them get away with this.
I remember wanting to to to go down to Florida
to to to protest what happened to Trayvon Martin. I
remember wanting to go to to Baltimore and and and
(13:08):
and and protest what happened to Freddie Gray. I remember
wanting to go to to to Ferguson to protest what
happened to Michael Brown. But I never in a million
years I would have thought that I would be on
the other side of it, that I would be in
the same place and shoes that Sabrina and Leslie and
(13:31):
those families were in at a press conference with a
Ben Crump, with an attorney to Mario Solomon Simmons. But
I told them, this is war. You all killed the
wrong person. You didn't know that he came from a
(13:52):
family that loved him, a community that loved him, a
community that my parents, my mom and dad, grew up
in that they served with all of their hearts. And
I declared war on state sanctioned violence. And you know,
(14:13):
it's really common that the police there spokespeople. They get
out ahead of the situation, and they started controlling the
narrative right out the gate, and they told everybody that
Terrence wasn't complying, that Terence was belligerent, that Terence was
(14:34):
attacking the police officer, and that's the reason why he
was killed. He didn't comply, so he had to die.
And so we demanded that they released the footage, any
video footage. And it just so happened, Jason, that there
was a helicopter flying overhead who had a police officer
(14:58):
in it by the name of Dave Shelby, who was
Betty Shelby's husband, her husband, And you could hear through
the audio them saying that that looks like a bad dude.
What does a bad dude look like that far up
in the air. You tell me what bad dude intentionally
(15:22):
is enrolled in community college. You tell me what bad
Dude is singing at church every single Sunday. You tell
me what bad Dude tells his twin sister that I'm
gonna make you proud and God is going to get
the glory out of my life. All I could suspect
is that they saw the color of his skin, and
(15:44):
I made a promise that I wouldn't let hate, racism,
or bigotry control my brother's story, control my family's narrative.
And I haven't rested since Righteous Convictions with Jason Flamm
(16:14):
is super excited and honored to have the support of
a great organization like Galaxy Gives. Galaxy Gives leads the
filanthropic efforts of the Novograds family. They invest in organizations, campaigns,
and leaders who are directly impacted by and working to
dismantle the current punitive justice system. Galaxy Gives also builds
power for the community's most harmed by mass incarceration and
(16:36):
forges transformative solutions for responding to that harm. They envision
a society where the structural barriers created by racism, poverty,
and inequality are no more, where instead all people have
the dignity, freedom, and rights needed to thrive. It took
(17:07):
a while for me to get that visual of Terence
lying in the street like road kill out of my head.
It took a while. I have yet to see him
being executed. I cannot watch the video, but I couldn't
help but see his body on on the ground because
(17:28):
it was plastered onto every media outlet. It was plastered
on the front page of of the Tulsa World. They
didn't even render aid. They trampled over him and they
went to go check and see if Betty Joe Shelby
was okay, and they told her not to render first aid.
And she was a trained e m T had over
(17:50):
twenty dollars worth of medical equipment, and they said, don't
touch him because there's gonna be a bunch of black
people mad. That was what came out of the criminal
try l. But I will say because of the pressure,
for the first time in the history of Tulsa, Oklahoma,
for the first time in a hundred years, a police
(18:12):
officer was indicted for the first time, and we just
knew that we were going to get justice. And fast forward,
Betty Shelby went to a criminal trial. She was charged
with first degree manslaughter and they deliberated if the jury
deliberated for nine hours. I knew somebody was back there
(18:34):
fighting for us, but they came back with a verdict
of not guilty. And that night I said I would
not rest until I transformed policing, just not in the
city of Tulsa or the state of Oklahoma, but across
this country. And I've been doing just that. Before George
Floyd was killed, before Brianna Taylor was killed, I frequented
(18:59):
cat Little Hill, did briefings, testified before House Judiciary committees,
asking them to change the use of force standard, asking
that they abolished qualified immunity. And if they would have
(19:19):
taken those recommendations and put them into effect, maybe George
would be alive, maybe Brianna Taylor would be alive. And
so am I exhausted, Yes, I am. But can I
(19:41):
complain and rest? No? I cannot, because I think about
the shoulders that I stand on. I think about John Lewis,
who continued to fight until his death. I think about
my ancestors here in Black Wall Street, who who fought
to rebuild and who fought for their community. Think about
(20:03):
the black men who were killed, just like Terence, with
their hands in the air by the same police department
that killed innocent black men back in and burnt down
my great grandmother's community is the same police department, the
same state sanctioned violence that killed Terrence almost one hundred
(20:23):
years later. What has changed? You know? What's remarkable about
this story, aside from so many other things, is that
the jury, my understanding, is that they acquitted Officer Shelby
(20:48):
of what should have been obvious to any jury, maybe
anywhere except Oklahoma, maybe anywhere except America, a first degree manslaughter.
But they did say that she was no longer fit
to serve on the police force. UM. And I think
most people probably now are breathing a sigh of relief,
thinking that she's no longer out there with the ability
(21:12):
to take the lives of more other innocent people, or
who knows what else she's done. But that's not how
it works in America. Dot. Can you explain what happened
and what I'm referring to here? Yeah? Sure, UM, I
get triggered too, and I'm trying not to get emotional.
(21:33):
I've shared this story so many times and it never
gets easier to talk about this. Um. Even though it's
been a little bit over five years, it seems like
it was just yesterday. But yeah, the jury came out.
There ended up being three blacks on the jury. Initially
it was too and there was a black man who
(21:56):
was an alternate, and one of the white women got
sick and so he ended up being in the deliberating room.
And the jury foreman penned the letter to the verdict.
And no one had ever seen, no expert had ever
seen anything like that happened before. And I'm paraphrasing. What
(22:18):
they simply stated is that, um, she should never be
a parole officer again, and that she's not blameless, you know.
And so what they did was they acquitted her, but
they didn't really exonerate her. And they said because of
the way the laws were written, they had to render
(22:39):
this verdict, that they had no other options. Of course,
that broke my heart. And a few days later one
of the jurymen when and spoke to the media and
he said that he's been haunted, he can't sleep. He
should have hung the jury. He said, it was split
(23:02):
fifty fifty and everybody was stuck, and finally that they
got tired and hungry and they just start flipping their
answers to not guilty. So they could go home. And
I talked with some of the people within the d
(23:22):
a's office and they said they didn't have money in
their budget to feed the jury. And I said, well, damn,
I would have went at least bought them pizza. And
so I don't feel that they were empowered to be
there that long. And I do think that the d
(23:45):
A at least he brought charges, But I think that
that they did a shoddy job and they didn't bring
any in any use of force experts. He just thought
it was clear and convincing. And we're in Oklahoma. The
other side, they hired actors and all sorts of people.
(24:06):
They spent a lot of money. The FOP spent a
lot of money protecting someone who was unleashed onto our community,
who had a record herself of drug use, who had
restraining orders on her, who should have never been allowed
(24:27):
to carry a gun, who was let go at the
Sheriff's department in Tulsa, who was let go from Tulsa
Public Schools because of her violent temperament, but yet because
her new husband, Dave Shelby, was on the force. And
there's a a culture of nepotism within Tulsa police department.
(24:52):
There's a good old boy system. They led her on
the force anyway, and they unleashed this violent cop onto
our community, and as a result, my brother was killed.
She should have never been a police officer. And to
add insult to injury Jason, after she was acquitted, they
(25:17):
allowed this woman to go around the country training other
law enforcement officers on how to how to survive the
aftermath of a critical incident, how to get away with murder,
how to deal with what she called the Ferguson effect,
(25:40):
and black activists. An incident that Terrence didn't survive. And
she went on sixty minutes and said, I would rather
be tried by twelve than to be carried out by six.
And she said she had never been so afraid in
her life. And then she said he made me do it.
(26:05):
He made me do it. But yet, in her testimony
and in her statement, she said Terrence wasn't threatening her
physically or verbally, and that she thought he was having
a mental health crisis, or that he could have been
high on something. So instead of helping him, instead of
(26:27):
protecting and serving, she gives him a bullet. And she
says that she he was tracking her Terrence had a
prosthetic eye. Terrence was disabled, Terrence was hard of hearing.
People didn't know that, and so I I often think about,
(26:52):
or ponder or wonder what Terrence was thinking those last
few minutes with hell copters looming and mobs of white
police officers coming toward him. He didn't know what was
going on, and with the limited mental capacity that he had,
(27:19):
he remembered to do what my father taught him, and
that was to put his hands in the air. So anyway,
I hope by'm making him proud by keeping his legacy alive.
(27:42):
And granted I can't bring him back, but he has
a son who just turned ten years old, who was
four years old at the time, going on five when
he was killed. But his son, Terrence Jr. It's the
spinning Emma. H He's like my little twin reincarnated. But
(28:06):
I have to fight like Hill to make sure that
Terrence Jr. Doesn't have his dad's same faith, which is
why we started the foundation in his honor. M talk
(28:45):
to us a little bit about the work that you're
doing now. Um, of course, I'm talking about Oklahoma's for
Criminal Justice Reform, the Met Harris Foundation, the Historic Greenwood
Main Street Justice for Greenwood Foundation on the board of directors,
and then the Youth United Justice Polition where you and
I served together. I mean, I'm not even going to
try to list all the awards and honors you received
(29:07):
because it would become dizzy. But we'll put links in
the bio. So what is what? What like? What's it?
What is your day? You get out of bed? What's
the first thing on your mind when you wake up
in the morning? Coffee? Probably? Right? Well, well, you know what,
I don't drink coffee. I don't because I'm caffeine sensitive
and I would be bouncing off the walls and I
(29:29):
don't need any more energy. Um. But I get up
at four thirty every morning, um, Jason, and that is
my meditation time. That is the time that I feed
my mind and I work on my mental tough toughness,
and I starved my doubts. Whether it's a daily devotion,
whether it's a podcast, whether it's a nice song. But
(29:55):
I do that every single morning because if I don't
feed my mind or commit my thoughts to something positive
or something healthy, I don't know if I would make
it through the day. Because my own thoughts are too
toxic and the world is too toxic for me to
(30:16):
navigate and fight this fight. And so that's what I
do every morning, and then I start to return emails. Uh.
I try to plan my week on Sunday nights because
if I don't plan my week, something that's going to
slip through the cracks, and then I have to prioritize.
I have to prioritize was urgent, was lingering? Uh, what
(30:40):
can wait? And so my day is back to back meetings.
If I'm not in back to back meetings, I am
trying to build relationships. From not building relationships, I'm taking
care of Dad or or the kids. If I'm not
doing that, I'm trying to figure out what my next
move is. How am I going to fulfill the mission
(31:02):
of this foundation and make sure um that what happened
to Terrence or what happened to to our community in
Greenwood doesn't happen again. And so I'm always sort of
thinking and praying and trying to make sure that my
my next move it's my best move. And what I
(31:23):
haven't really gotten good at is carving out that that
time for me, with the exception of my daily devotion
in the morning, but really saying, you know what, some
of this can wait is not going anywhere. And so yeah,
my days are are pretty fool and I find myself
leaving the office, um, you know late into the evenings sometimes.
(31:48):
Well you become known as America's Sister, and I think
that's a beautiful, um, a beautiful title. And the Terrence
crut your Foundation otherwise known as TCF, now named obviously
after your twin brother, on which you serve as the
executive director, and the primary focus of the foundation is
(32:09):
criminal justice and policing reformed no surprise there, as well
as providing scholarships to African American students, community and youth development,
and policy advocacy. And you were recently awarded among all
the other things you've been um honored for, but importantly,
you were recently given a Galaxy Gives Fellowship just just
(32:30):
this year, right, So tell us about TCF, Yes, well,
TCF Terrence Krutcher Foundation. Um, you know, we'd like to
say that we work in three buckets or three pillars,
and that's a that's advancing policy, uh, strengthening communities and
honoring the legacy of our ancestors. And so through that
advancing policy bucket. We're building a massive organizing apparatus here
(32:56):
in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We realize that in in this state,
we're going to have to build a base of of
of people who care about this work. Organizing as the
secret sauce, that's the only way we're gonna advance policy.
So that's really priority right now. Uh, We're we're fighting
for oh I am, oversight bodies of our police department.
(33:19):
We're fighting for reparations. We're tackling all of the treacherous
bills that are being passed down are signed into law,
like the anti protest bills, critical race theory um. But
as far as strengthening communities, we've just launched a restorative
justice pilot trying to find alternatives to policing, incorporating mental
health training up community members to deal with crisis response.
(33:42):
And then of course honoring the legacy of our ancestors
still in this fight for reparations for what happened one
hundred years ago, fighting for repair, respect and restitution. And
I'm so grateful to Galaxy Gifts for you know, investing
into me and believing in me and in this work
that we do across the state of Oklahoma. Yeah, Amen
(34:05):
to that, and thank you again for the incredible work
you're doing. Now, before we finish up here, I want
to invite our listeners to tune in next week when
my guests will be odd and non con I've not
spent sixteen years behind bars under California's felony murder statute
for a crime in which he was not the killer.
But what he did when he came out is nothing
short of amazing. So tune in and listen. I know
(34:27):
you're gonna want to hear this story. You're you're gonna
have a hard time forgetting it. It's tragic and beautiful
and powerful. You got to hear this story. So Doc,
here's how we wrap up the show. Two things, and
the first one's a question. Here it goes you Ready,
if I had a magic wand and can grant you
one wish, just one, what would it be? Wow, Jason,
(34:51):
I would man, I only get one wish. I would
re right the Constitution of the United States of America.
That's a good one. We've never heard that one before
on the show, but that's a good one. I'm with
(35:11):
you on that, and I can imagine some of the
changes that you would make because I think we'd be
totally aligned on that, as we are on most things.
And then the closing of the show is simply called
words of Wisdom, and it works like this. I'm going
to first of all, thank you again for your you're
almost otherworldly courage and determination and advocacy. But words of
(35:35):
wisdom works like this. I'm gonna turn my microphone off,
this kick back in my chair, on my headphones on,
and just listen to anything else you want to share
with me and our audience. Wow. Well, first of all,
Jason has definitely been a privilege and an honor, truly
(35:55):
humble to to share this platform with you today. You know,
I'm always grateful when and when people allow me to
keep my brother's name alive, because there's been so many
that's come after him, and sometimes we get swallowed up,
you know, and the fights get suppressed. But appreciate this
(36:19):
platform and you putting a spotlight on on what needs
to change in this country. But what I would share
with your listeners is that we have to get good
at controlling our stories and controlling the narrative, and we
have to get mad. We have to get mad, and
(36:43):
what that simply means it's an acronym for make a decision.
We have to make a decision to never stop fighting
for the least of these. We have to stop making
decisions as to who were what deserves our outrage, Jason
(37:05):
any type of injustice deserves our outrage. Terrence Crutcher deserves
your outrage. Black lives deserve your outrage. Julius Jones deserves
your outrage. And Tulsa, Oklahoma, we had one of the
(37:28):
most prosperous black meccas in the nation. I can't help
but think about J. B. Strafford, who had a three
story hotel with chandeliers and and and in Lula Williams,
who had a car, and we had airplanes, and we
had doctors, and we had lawyers, and and But it
(37:53):
was a love story. Greenwood was simply a love story.
And it wasn't the love story you would think about
when they talk about Dick Roland, the black boy who
allegedly assaulted Sarah Page, elevator operator, and rumors have it
that they were in love. But that's not the love
story that I'm I'm speaking of. I'm speaking about the
(38:17):
community of Greenwood, the black men and women, the World
War One veterans because they loved every community member, not
just the members who owned businesses who had money, but
they loved Dick Roland, who was the simple shoeshine boy,
(38:39):
and they went and they risked their life to make
sure that he wasn't lynched. That's what the community of
Greenwood represented. That's the true love story. And so I
challenge everyone to be outrage each when you see injustice
(39:05):
hit your television screen or your workplace or your community.
Fall in love with what the constitution and the ideal
of it is supposed to represent life, liberty in the
pursuit of happiness. And that's why I fight so hard,
(39:28):
because I love so hard and justice work is simply
a radical act of love. And I won't rest, and
I always like to end with the great Lady Ella Baker. Jason,
those who believe in freedom cannot rest. Thank you for
(39:56):
listening to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam. I'd like to
thank our product and team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Jeff
Kleber and Lila Robinson and Kevin Wardis. The music in
this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer
Jay Rout. Follow us on Instagram Facebook and Twitter at
Lava for Good. You can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason plom Right. Just Conpictures
(40:20):
with Jason. Plomb is a production of Lava for Good
podcasts and association with signal company Number one
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