February 3, 2022 • 45 mins
This week, the hosts chat with Walter English, aka Former Love Poet, about the power of discovering one's genealogy and how he's giving that power to the people.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
You were listening to Winning on Reparations, a production of
I Heart Radio. What's going on? What's good People? It's
the one and only Dope Knife. I am one of
several million lingual Franco okay checking though, if you're like
one in a million, that means there's thousands of people
(00:26):
just like you in the world. So I'm one of
many lingual Francis. And then we didn't even getting into
like the multiverse. The reparation podcast that is true and
the entire multiverse. There's only one Winning A Reparations podcasts
Happy First Day of Black History. But yeah, we're recording
this on the first day of Black History Month. Um,
(00:46):
how are you? How do you celebrate the month of
Black History? You know? I try to, um, stay a
little just get a little extra black for the month.
You know what I'm saying. It's like you gotta be black,
you know, for the other eleven months, and it's like
just this one month you added like an extra coat
and walk around You're just super proud, you know what
I'm saying. Might what I always find such to be
(01:08):
such relief about Black History Month is that there's so
little Black history that it'll just squeeze into twenty eight days.
Just cover the whole thing, the whole entire Oh yeah,
it's like so little to cover. Yeah, I mean, we
don't need the long extended series. We can get it
all done in this one, the full cinematic universe. Speaking
(01:31):
you want to speak, speaking of wax stuff happening on
Black History Months, so the day before Black History Months
and even I think some of this ship was today,
but over a dozen or it just about a dozen
historically black colleges got bomb threats. Yeah, my my former
(01:52):
album about her, Howard University, Alcron State University, Coppin State,
Edward Waters University, Fort Valley State, the University of the
District of Columbia, Morgan State, Kentucky State, Xavier University, and more. Yeah,
like they got bomb threats, they had to cancel classes
(02:13):
or clothes altogether. Um, what do you think something like
that means? I mean, apparently, uh, throughout the past few months,
these colleges have been getting threats leading up, but um,
with it kind of happening seemingly, it's I mean, I
obviously it's not a coincidence. What what do you think
(02:35):
about that? Does that make you feel okay? I'm zooming
way out. I'm zooming way way out into thinking about
how do we transition white people into the coming multiracial
democracy that is that is inevitable. I mean maybe the
democracy part. I don't know. Do we live in a
democracy now unclear? But our multiracial society, it's coming. They're
going to be the minority. Um And this is going
(02:57):
to be an unpopular take, but let's get for getting
into the black history months. Let's think about at the
end of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. The only
black person to UM ever have a mass movement that
achieves things. By the way, is the nuts only one.
Don't let them, you know, Huey Newton fictional. Uh. I
don't want to like, I don't want to parse like
(03:18):
you know, hairs or anything like that. But do we
mean like me in terms of getting getting a movement.
I'm just playing. I'm just playing on the on the
whole like there's not a whole lot of black history
and things. All these other cats like yeah, didn't exist
in the textbooks, didn't exist in real life for all
I know, Uh, you know, that's just the fodder of
like HBO Max features. But anyway, um. So during the
(03:44):
end of his life, m Ok started to recognize that
they needed a multiracial working class movement of people all
fighting for economic freedom together in order to take on
the government. That's effectively why you got assassinated, right, And
so also to answer the question, so taking like a
couple of leaps forward of like I bomb threats against
universities because white people are feeling insecure about their increasingly
(04:08):
marginal status in our society. How do we get people
less freaked out? And we're talking about this on the
show before about like you know, working class or a
blue collar white people, like are they racist? I don't know,
I can't remember what we were talking about, but like
I think one way to diffuse these tensions is to
come up with like universalists, like you know, policies that
(04:28):
if you are, you know, a white like Wendy's worker
or a black um Wendy's worker, all y'all can agree with, Like, yeah,
we're down with free college. That's something I'm going in
because like there's this fear that like black people are
taking things away from everyone else. Well, affirmative action, Oh,
they're putting the interracials in the in the Okay, cubid
ads and like ship people, like, let's give everybody at
(04:50):
the bottom some ship so we can stop fighting amongst ourselves,
and maybe white people will stop giving bomb threats to
black schools. I don't know. I mean now I agree,
I agree, I agree, although I don't know. I mean,
I feel also this is overly optimistic. I think some
were like fascist procalcitrants. There's really there's nothing you can do.
The radicalization is just not my field. So get about
(05:13):
that's what you do. But yeah, I don't know, I
feel I mean it definitely, you know, it's it rings
of all that stuff that we were talking about with
Christopher Goldsmith the other day, Like it just it rings
of some fucking social media hoax e type of you know,
like threats at the beginning complay history with me and
(05:35):
you know what I mean, it seems like super in
silly and ship like that. And I don't know, I
hope that, you know, worst case or best case scenario.
I guess at this point is like I hope that
it's just threats and it's I do too, I people stuff. Yeah,
I hope it's hope it's just threats. I am also
(05:57):
in this conversation reckoning with how dead and I have
become to like threats of all kinds. Like people talk
mad ship, they're gonna do ship, They're don't do ship
when it's like nah, man, sometimes like ship goes a
really bad and like you should take it really seriously.
But like my reaction is I'm just like so dead
inside from like being threatened a great deal. Yeah, I
don't know, Like I don't know. I just can't see
(06:18):
anything about it. I don't know what the statistics are
or anything like that, but I'm imagining that for the
most part, when people call in a threat or when
people like send a threatening letter or something like that,
that those ones on average don't result in anything. It's
it's kind of the ones that you have to worry
about just going out and doing the ship. It's more
(06:40):
of the worry. That's That's why I'm saying. This one
made me think that it was more like of a
you know, social media something to do to see the
headlines of Twitter and everybody retweeting the story, that sort
of ship. But you know, I'm some more positive notes.
I started um because I've been you know, I've been
working on the same graphic novel for the last few
years I've been talking about out on the show. It's
(07:00):
still being colored by the way us almost. But I
started writing again and I was brainstorming some ideas for
a new comic and ship, and I came up with
an idea to do something that's kind of like Lord
of the Ring zy Conan, the barbarian ish sort of thing,
but set in like ancient Africa, you know, kind of
(07:22):
like a Middle Earth, but with the basis of it
being like pre colonial or even like BC Africa, you know. Um,
and what it went. So, so what is your okay?
What is your process of something like that? Worked in
the last one like three years, so like, yeah, when
does this ship drop? I'm trying to like I want
to read it. I want to read it now, where
(07:43):
is okay? So for the for the last one that
I was working on, So the process for that, I mean,
I'll write this, wrote the story like a little treatment
of what the story is. Then uh, storyboarded out all
the pages, then drew all the ship, and then after
drawing it, you know what I mean. It's like visualizing,
knowing what the story is, visualizing it and drawing it
(08:06):
and then afterwards going out and writing the dialogue and
filling in the bubbles based off of the ship that
I read your So it's like, I don't really draw
it with the dialogue per se mind ship, but for
something like this, the new one that I'm working on,
it's gonna move pretty fast because I'm not going into
it thinking about making after day. It's coming. It's coming
(08:28):
right now. I'm in the I'm in the light research
phase because I kind of thought at first I was
gonna do like a crime story about Liberia, and then
in the middle of doing the research for that, I
was like, oh man, I'm gonna put that on the
back burner and I want to do something a bit
more out of my element because I usually write crime
stories and stuff like that. So it's like, I want
to do something that's you know, been done, you know,
(08:51):
dragons and and I want the dragons African African witch doctors, dragons,
you know what I mean, A shot kaZulu West figure
instead of I don't know what the nigga from Lord
of the Rings name is, but one of those yeah, no, no,
who's who was the not not not the Dwarf, Orlando Blue,
(09:13):
the other Vigo I don't know I can picture of that.
I don't know who this name was, y'all. Motherfucker's anyway, anyway,
what do I do? What do we doing today? So
today we're speaking with Walter English, a former love poet.
Are gonna get a more thorough introduction for him here
(09:35):
in a second, but it's really really love to talk
about his brister English project, um studying the genealogies of
of African descendants of slaves and connecting people with their history.
So you want to go ahead and get on into it. Um, yeah,
let's get into it. U. My man's is popping on
TikTok right now that this is this is our first
time talking with somebody just doing stuff on TikTok. I
(09:57):
think I think I kind of want to make it
a personal mission to like breaking all the skeptical the
few if there already left out there, the skeptical adults
who haven't really gotten on TikTok and utilize the different
spaces and communities that are on there. So I mean,
I think partially it comes into like, um, just digital literacy,
like because it's not something we're really taught in school
(10:19):
other than this is how you type, like this time
you make a power resident. Look, I got locked out
on my Facebook account for like four months. I got
back out on that ship, and I literally don't know
how to do a goddamn thing. I'm like, well, I
don't check my messages, like I don't understand. I get
on TikTok and like I had that new single come
out this week. They were like, go on TikTok and
make a viral TikTok dance from the music video. Until
(10:41):
I got on there, I go excided, like oh my god,
the old day. It's like, yeah, let's go, and like,
I don't know, I got like four likes. I'm like,
how does this work? Well? I supposed to do. You
gotta keep at it. You can't. You gotta keep at it.
Yeah yeah, I know. I just don't have it. I
just don't have that persistence all that time. So, well,
you're busiest, Yeah yeah, Oh I got in speaking of
(11:01):
a good news. I out of another crazy announcement for listeners.
Slash you mac, I can tell you this yet. So okay.
So I had a show last Saturday, and one of
my professors in my department came, So I want to
talk about on the show whole lot. But you know,
I'm getting my PhD ship and so this been, I mean,
this person, this lady, she's very nice. Lady. Um came
up to me after the show. I was like, Yo,
(11:23):
that was your dissertation and I was like, what are
you talking about? She was like, you should just submit
that and graduate. I was like, excuse me what? And
then I emailed her this week and she was like, yeah,
people do like arts based dissertations all the time. There's
ever there's like been one other rap one, but like
just write it at thirty page intro paper about like
why this count says like hip hop education research and
(11:46):
then like graduate son be graduated with a doctorate in
Like April was good. I can't wait to be good
my life anyway. So let's get into all right, So
we'll be back with former love poet right after the joke.
(12:09):
All right, Yeah, So today I am very honored that
we are joined by Walter English, the former love poet, rapper, poet, activists,
and founder of the Bristo English Project, which seeks to
help descendence of enslaved people find their history at no
charge to them. Very popular on TikTok Um spreading you know,
(12:30):
messages anti racism, and so we are very very excited
to have you here today just for everybody out there
who doesn't know, because I've been you know, checking out
your TikTok page and seeing the different things that you
cover in the different things that you talk that you
talk about. Maria has been doing the same and through
that is how we've come across the Brister English Project.
So if you could, could you explain to our listeners
(12:51):
in your own words, exactly what is the Brister English Project? Um,
the Bristo English Project. Like to begin with, it's named
after my second grade grant of it. Uh, I saw him,
saw his name when he went by just Bristow on
a slave ship manifest that fourteen years old. Um, to
see that and and to see what he went through
(13:11):
and what he became, and just the history, the amount
of history that that comes that comes with this, that
comes with it's hard to explain always some people, is
really hard to explain it. So it's an amazing feeling. Um,
it's a different feeling. I want to give people that feeling.
I don't believe Black Americans should have to pay to
get their genealogy done and so with the Bristi English project,
(13:31):
people sign up on the list. UM. I'm in phase
two right now with the project. So I have volunteers
helping me. UM. I'm talking about people who have years
of experience and doing this UM for helping me for free.
Everything is runs off donation, so I make sure I
have stuff paid for people to UH to make sure
they're able to work UM as well as I got
(13:52):
runners will go to grave sites for me. He'll go
to historical sites to take pictures or whatever. It's just
one big project to to help UM American descending some
chatel slavery connect with the past. That it's just like
us tell people's more than just dreams a chance. So
where did this project come from? We spoke something about
you know, I think you said your your great great grandfather, UM,
(14:13):
and so clearly you know a little bit about your history.
But how what was your process for actually launching this
project and as well, like how how it works some
of the internal processes to help bring this history to folks.
So UM it started after I was doing I made
a three database. That's what I started with. I started
with a free database or resources to help people. UM.
(14:36):
People still wanted, you know, how do I do this?
They I have more questions, So I said, why not
I do it? I was supposed to start off small.
It was supposed to be you know, I launched all Christmas.
I was planning that him off prior. UM. I got
the historian who helped me find out all this information.
She jumped on the project with me. Um. And then
I got the funding on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, I
(14:56):
launched everything and um, and that's really that's that's really it.
And as far as the internal working go, what I
do is, uh, people fill out a form, uh, your name,
your grandparents name. Yeah, you know, if you know any
any kind of info to help us out. We go
right on ancestry. We start putting information. UM. We use
(15:18):
sources like genealogy bank, um, a newspaper, archives, newspaper, dot com,
anywhere information may be found lost friends, UM. When we
start your tree. UM. A lot of people like like
the focus going straight back, which is always good. You
want to know where your great great great great grandparents are.
But for us Black Americans, we run into a wall.
(15:40):
At one point we become property. Yeah. UM. And so
what I like to do is not only focused back
for focus on what I call the branches, so you
get to see your cousins, know everybody, um, and like
working on this project, I'm starting to see people that's related.
They know that's related, just like it's it's it's it's
(16:02):
a good it's a it's a good feeling. And then
I do like a few videoscause I always asked permission Havie,
like for me to talk about this on my TikTok Um.
I'm running across the mirror like amazing history, Um, not
in niche being able to share that with people, not
only the people who are who are directly affects, but
all of us to see finally find one of the
twelve hundred black lawyers in nineteen thirty just related to
(16:25):
somebody on TikTok Like it's stuff like, so, what are
some of the crazy stories you've uncovered and you know
from history or you know, impressive insights that have you
have drawn from doing some of that genealogical work. Uh,
personally just in my family alone. Uh, craziest thing that
I've seen, I think it's about um in nineteen forty
(16:49):
or nineteen thirty. Uh, my aunt, one of my grand aunts,
she had a husband, and when you're looking at everything
that like the records and where they live dad and
who they were with, it looked like he was cheating
on her. So she divorced them. So a woman divorcing
a man in nineteen thirty, you were you, you could
be deemed as crazy. Literally they would put you on
(17:11):
the sane asylum. And so he sent my eye to
an insane asylum, and she divorced them. Not only an
insane asylum. Yes, it's not only insane asylum, but um
Long View or lake View excuse like if you don't
believe this. In Cincinnati, Ohio was one of the most
infamous places. You It's like a shutter island type of
(17:33):
it is. It is awful and she had to spend
she she ended up spending um at least I think
at least seven years and then before she passed away.
What no, that towards the end of it. Yeah, and
towards the end of her like like growing that asylum, UM,
it progrestily got worse because it couldn't hold as many people,
(17:53):
but they took in that many people, so people didn't
get fed, they lived over sewage. UM. It was just
it was just a bad environ. But then you also
when you when I'm looking, because I looked through the documents,
I'm not just saying, oh that name match with that.
I want to see through what happened and you and
everybody in her family or in that side of the
family died young. Who was involved with him, um so
(18:16):
her brother who worked with who worked for he died
in his twenties. It's sich the sister that he was
cheating with died in her twenties with her sister sister,
and then he married her co worker according to the city,
and then she died into the same time. Man, niggas
don't ever change. Still they still see like that to
a less of degree, whether you know, similar mindset to
(18:39):
oh yeah, still that's the yeah, that mindset is still going.
I mean that sounds like a plot for a movie. Man,
Like that's wild. The level of detail that you can
get into, not just like oh you're you know, like
your great great grandfather was a famous carpenter in like
the city of what's it, but like down to the
level of this person with cheating with this person, Like
(19:03):
that's that's amazing. That's amazing what you can discover through
the through these databases. So how many of them have
you done so far? Um? Close to personally? Do you
find it? Find it gets easier with each one, or
like you get more of a like an efficiency and
you're being able to research and stuff with each one
that you do efficiency. Yes. Um, once the list jumped
(19:26):
from it literally jumped from seventy four. Will jumped from
fourteen people to seventy four overnight and in seventy twelve hundred.
So once it hit twelve hundred, I like, I need
some help, and so I brought it. I've been doing
a slow process. I brought it from volunteer, see how
they can work, how we can work together. So with
like the volunteers, but personally I did about twenty With
the volunteers. I've been trying off for the past month,
we probably got close to thirty. While I've been doing
(19:47):
the background stuff, in order stuff, they've still been working.
And uh yeah, I finally gets easier because I know
what I'm looking for. And with black history, you gotta
look out for certain things when you're looking in through
our ancestry. Um, you gotta look out for different name spellings. Right,
(20:08):
keep in mind who lived with who? At what time, Um,
going from mixed to black to mixed to black on
different senses. But do you know that's still your that's
young people. So it's that part got easier, you know,
I've been doing it for so long now, like seeing
stuff like that, it's it's easy to know what I'm
looking for, what to look out for, and yeah, yeah,
(20:28):
have you encountered any limitations thus far? I'm sure, like
given the thoroughness of record keeping, particularly when you go
back to like slavery times, um, and then certain whiles
around like antigenation where people weren't you know, showing up
on birth certificates, etcetera, mislistening race. I've you know, been
setting my own like indigenous ancestry and they listened all
(20:50):
the natives as black. There was only white or black
on like the census form. So, um, do you run
into issues like that and trying to trace people's uneage? Yeah,
I mean, um, you come across that where like you
get things that's a maybe like I'm not I'm not
too sure about that, you know. So I like to
ask people. I like to ask people questions when we
(21:11):
get to something. Some of those points and and a
lot of people I find out don't talk to like
their grandparents about their past and their history and stuff
like that, because I told I asked one personal question.
I showed up on first like, hey, this is your
I believe this is your your your grandfather, I'm not
too sure, but this is a this is a mere certificate.
I believe this is your grandmother on there, but they
spelled the name with the king instead up and see
(21:33):
can you shoulder to it? And they she starts to
learn about all different kind of family members that he
had all over like so like it's yeah, with the
you're saying that the number of requests for it, so
it jumped up to twelve dred you said you're a
twelve hundred and currently sitting that two thousand. Okay, so
(21:53):
if you have if you've got like two thousands of
them sitting in the chamber right now, just knowing like
the sort of space of TikTok is, do you do
you ever find do you find yourself like running into
the issue, perhaps like white people not understanding exactly what
it's about and perhaps wanting you to do the yeah, yeah,
(22:15):
oh yeah, I got tagging a video the day like
somebody like people are taggingbody tagging this moody like a
white woman's comments to look for an answer. It's like, oh,
he has a project that help I say, it's not
for her. It's not for her. But I ran into
the issue of people get they let the forgility take over. Yeah.
Do you find there's like broader pushback then you know
there's some people who get mistaken with like this project
(22:37):
ain't for y'all. Are there any is there people out
there that were like nad about it because people on
the internet didn't mad about anything. Oh yeah, no, it's
a ton of people that would matter what. One woman
made three videos about me and like, god, yes, she
made three videos about me. And she was like, look,
I tricked my family that's thirty and this says uh
says they were mixed. His name was Charlie. And I'm like,
(22:58):
so you did the work. It's like you you want
me to find Like I don't know what she thought out.
I was like, a magical negro can just connect to
all black people, but I couldn't. So I'm like this,
I can't do that to bring the great great granddad
back out. Plus your thing you're thinking's like specifically for
descendence of slaves too. It's like, I don't understand how
(23:21):
you had to jump into that, UM people, Hey, I'm Irish.
That's why you're getting I'm irish. We were, we were
slaves you and that your service. Plus you know that
you're Irish, I'm black, Like exactly, that's the difference. I'm
trying to let people know, Like I'm like, you've never
been the butt of a slave joke. You've never been
(23:42):
You've never been in that situation to understand, like, Okay,
I really can't. I don't know what my family did.
I don't know what people were like, I don't know
what part of Africa they were from. That kind of
that kind of level of detail, it's probably lost to
would you say that's like lost to history? Yeah, almost altogether. Yeah, yeah,
yeah definitely. But one thing I'll say that UM with
(24:02):
the um Americans and it's a slave of enslaved people,
is that we created this culture that's from the south
to to the east coast, west coast, we have a
culture that being black that we still made here like
and and and with that culture, you can see it
throughout history, like from occupations to places they lived to
(24:26):
the things they did to what they sold to the
land that was big. Like when when I when I
come across agricultural records and I see land that they
all might see exactly what they grew and how they
they ran stuff. It was it's it's it's it's our
own history. Like I can't go back as far as
like you know, I know you're from Nigeria and I
(24:48):
could find this, but I could show you the not
so bad parts of history that is still black culture.
Yeah yeah, Um what do you find people take away
from for the folks that you for whom you've already completed,
like their genealogy, Like what do they take from it?
Like what what? What? Um does that lend to their
(25:10):
to their lives, like knowing what their roots are. I've
had people everybody cries. I don't know about, but everybody cries.
That's that's one big thing. And like I'm like, that's
the feeling that that's hard to explain. Um. But everybody
I got told I changed people lives. Um I had one. Yeah,
I got told like I've changed people lives by doing this.
(25:31):
Um Um who told me? Somebody wants to help out
the project out there, Like I helped them out. They
wanted to actually join on now to help people because
again they see how that feels and how how the experiences. Um.
Some people said I plugged and missing pieces of their life. Um. Sakitha,
who's on on TikTok, the bigger creator. We've stumped across
(25:52):
her dad by accident. I had my history. She never
knew her father. As soon as we saw the picture
of his high school photo, I'm like, Wow, that's her face.
That's her exact faces. It's like the email. And I said,
I gotta picture your dad. I don't know if you
want to see it, but she said sure and sure
enough and so like that. She said that she felt
(26:14):
like like an alien and her family she didn't look
like anybody, but now she felt like she belongs. So
it's like that's kind of fellers. So this might be
kind of a technical question, but what is it about
TikTok that makes it the right platform to do this?
Oh man? A lot of eyes, A lot of eyes.
Things can go like that and heart people in a
(26:37):
in a heartbeat. Like I was talking about the brist
Of English project since the seven Team, I think right,
I kind of announced it to people launched it a
week later. Um, and I wasn't really getting I had
seven people I respond to a racist white person on
there with with me talking about it, and then boomed
twelve hundred people like that, just TikTok is a great
(26:59):
is a great flat one right now? Still believe number
one at the moment if you want to grab somebody's attention. Yeah, Um,
I mean I was asking just because I mean, you'd
be shocked at how many people in my age even
now are still under the impression when I talked to
them about TikTok having interesting things are like, oh man,
it's all dances of you know what I mean, Like
(27:19):
we're still we're still at this page is getting people
over that stigma of TikTok, right that is just people
just kids up there dancing. I'm like, nah, but I'm
telling you that's like it's different size and TikTok that
like it's literally of a corner of TikTok for like
any interest that you have, really any interest you you mentioned,
like people often have really strong emotional reactions to hearing
(27:42):
about their genealogy and sometimes they cry, and um, this
actually made me think of I'm not sure I'm well, actually,
I feel like you of all people will probably know
about this. But when they did George Floyd's genealogy, um,
and finding like all the way is that the system
in various, in various you know ways screwed over his
family over and over again to sort of create a picture.
(28:03):
You know, people people on the right, you know, white
supremacists want said, oh he was a drug addict. Ooh
he you know, beat his wife or whatever. But if
you go back in his genealogy, I believe it was
his great great grandfather, Um, when he got his freedom,
he accumulated five hundred acres of land that then we're
just stolen, straight up stolen by white settlers. And then
(28:26):
later on I think if his grandmother she was like
very you know, she was very accomplished academic in high school,
wanted to become a lawyer. They wouldn't let her go
to law school. Um, she she taught herself how to
read and write and stuff and ended up being like
a really you know, really good at school. Couldn't go
to law school because they just said, we don't accept y'all.
And so thing after thing after a thing, which kind
(28:47):
of like helps us understand and give context to how
somebody like George Floyd ended up in the situation he
ended up in, Like, yeah, he might have been on drugs,
might have had you know, priors, etcetera, but like it
contextualized in a way, like you understand how someone could
become that way. So do you ever find people who
get emotional about their results in having to face the
(29:08):
kinds of struggles that are people have always gone through.
I don't think I have. I don't think I've ran
into that just ship where people like are really upset
or get kind of emotional to be like that, that's
what I kind of faced. Well when I take that back, Um,
(29:29):
it's normally folks who I can find slave sensors for
if I can find a slave census and and I
can show you that. Um, I showed somebody I was like,
I didn't looking for their fifty I was looking for
a fifty five year old black woman because they didn't
have names on there. So looking for a fifty five
year old black woman. And I find the census with
the same location area, and it's kind of like the
(29:51):
same reaction I had that they had, where it's like
you got just kind of quiet, you just got things
to yourself, Like it makes sense, very tangible. Yeah, and
it's just like that's what they did. But I think
a lot of people, a lot of people who are
taking part of this are are are proud, are come
with pride to that, Hey, they the ancestors went through this,
to go through that and now they're here. True, like
(30:12):
histories of struggle also histories of triumph in a sense,
like even if all that our people have had to
live through can kind of just be really heavy on
the heart to like just think about that sorrow and
that pain, but also we survived, you know, they survived
enough to have their own kids and then have their
own kids and here we are today. So in another way, yeah,
(30:33):
I totally make sense if that could be inspiring, even
if like if you know the story you told about
what was that your great great grandmother or you know,
getting in the natat that that's happy. That's happy man,
you know, but also like being able to actually know
you're yeah, like just have I guess I can imagine
like really understanding your history after sort of being told
(30:54):
all when we're growing up that it's lost to history,
even though it's not, it's not really you can find
it if you look for it. Um can I can
be really empowering. So speaking of history, UM, a bunch
of talk us a little bit about yourself, Like who
who are you? Yeah, so you're activist, You're a poet,
you're a rapper, so like yeah, so you not now
(31:19):
it's a theologist and so how did you get Yeah,
so talk to talk to us a little bit about
your arts background. Um, I've been writing forever. Um I
love used the story right. Um. I think when I
was in the third grade, I started writing poetry. Um.
I used to I'm a nineties baby is to watch
Deff Paultry jam with the most Deff and stuff. So
(31:40):
I got in the spoken word. My family is big
in the music, and so I was like, I can.
I can write some songs and every whatever. By the
time I turned eighteen, I was going to college. Uh. Nineteen,
I booked my first like big show here in my
city at a club. I was under aged four, but
they still let me perform. Um. Uh that led to
just just a lot more opportunities. I end up performing
(32:05):
at Castel Breech is one of the biggest wineries here
in New York. Um I ghost I was ghost right
in for for a little while, wrote for Dorito's MTV, Nickelodeon,
over fifty other company and then two thousand nineteen, like
I've always been a poet, but I always kept my
poetry to myself because my music, I'm like, this is
(32:25):
my I can go out here. I got the music
going poetry. Everybody's eyes on you. It's quiet. That's so funny. Yeah,
because I had the opposite experience. I was like a
poet in high school. I did slam poetry and like
college but and I wrote rhymes, but I didn't tell
nobody because like that was a whole It was like
a kind of taboo in a way. I'm like, oh,
tip out like your gang bang, like what um? And
(32:46):
then later like stepping out, like man, I'm not gonna
just sit here and not like I got sick bars.
I don't know what I'm doing sitting on all this.
But from person to person, I was telling everybody in
the world that I want was like yo, yeah. I
was like I was walking around with my notebook and
You're like, yo, look at how many words my vocabulary? Yeah. Yeah,
(33:08):
I was priedful about my rap, like I knew I
can I can piece together a story. So who are
some of you? Who are some of your influences? Um
writing scheme to people here, how how I write sometimes
um Rock him just his gotta be the way I
think I break I break things down to a science almost,
(33:29):
and I was just like, wow, I like how he
rhyme in the middle of beginning the end and how
he flipped that. And then just for writing prefaces of
Royster five nine was big with my writing. UM Wayne
when I when it came to similes, He's crazy with it.
To this day, I'm just like man. Yeah. And then
um nas nas And then when I got older, jay Z,
(33:50):
I like jay Z when I was younger. I got older,
I could appreciate it. I could appreciate the bars. Anything
it's about that makes sense, that makes sense. Yeah. So
those did probably my biggest, biggest and people put it,
don't chew me up for this. It's gonna be Kanye.
We've talked about him on the show. Physically good yeah,
like back like, because I like bro, I have fifteen
(34:11):
surgeries coming up. And so when I heard through the
Wire for the first time as a kid, that resonated
and I was like, is he correct? Correct. Yeah, and
then so I'm like, Kanye gave me that big thing
and I saw my death poetry Jim, I'm like, oh,
you're writing poetry too. I can write poetry as well.
You know. So that was kind of like, yeah, I'm
here because of Yeah, yeah, is there Do you think
(34:35):
at all there's a relationship between like the hip hop
aspect of your identity and some of the work that
you're doing with the Breast Ranglich project. Yeah, I believe. So,
I believe. So I think, um, the creativity, it's getting
his message across so people. So it's so it's digestible
(34:56):
for people. I can get up here and talk about
all the boring facts and everything like that, but if
I make it exciting, Um, I talk in poems sometimes
in my my my videos, that gives people attention. If
I get it, Oh, I want they want to hear
what I'm gonna say next. And so I just just
how my my hip hop's owner. I can. I can
(35:16):
come up here with all the confidence in the world
because I feel like I'm the best at what I
do right now. You can't tell me otherwise, and I'm
gonna say what I gotta say. So you think it's
like it helps out like with the because I'm I'm
I'm an advocate of like using hip hop as like
a form of communication to like it makes people learn
things to retain information better. Just you know, as far
(35:36):
as I so, do you think like that aspect of
hip hop you know helps all of us mcs be communicators?
You think that's like the biggest way it helps out.
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely, because we gotta get our message across.
That's the big that's the big thing. We have to
get our message across in a short amount of time.
That the same thing I learned like slam poultry, Like
you've got three minutes, go talk to your talk and
(35:57):
you've got to make this connection with somebody. And so
I think we when people here like rappers talking certain
situations and stuff for people who are like they got
this preconceived no ship of like like with dump or
something like that. But I'm like, can you can you
write a three minutes song that makes sense and this
like that so I can talk and talk to people
like it's nothing. That's why a lot of us be
able to do that. It's like, oh they so cares, Mattic.
(36:19):
We we gotta be. So maybe it's answered because of
like how important the Prester English Project is to you.
But is there a particular like political issue or social
issue that you would say, just on a personal level,
is like at the top of your priority in terms
of things that you're usually thinking about or talking about, um,
(36:43):
the top of my list. Reason I joined the Double
A CP to get closer to UH to help black women. UM.
They died at four times high rate norm maternity UM
and even higher in my city. So we got Rochester
General out here UH to change to get more Black
midwives and to get more black nurses and for all
(37:04):
black doctors black ob g y n's to help black women,
you should be dying at four times high ranking in
the other race down here in Georgia, black women have
a higher maternal mortality right than Iraq. And there are
a lot of other like developing que quote developing countries.
So yeah, maternal Black maternal mortality is a huge issue.
(37:27):
Some harm to hear you're working working on that. What
are some of the reasons that they give for it?
They don't or do they not even bother? It's nor
even bother. But when you look at history, you look
at Um the father gonna college. Look at Jay Marry
and Sims, right, Jay Marry and Sims got the enslave
woman's name. But he's to operate on enslaved people, um
(37:51):
normally women. Um he was. He was the one used
to take the trigger warnerful folcus to take this tool
to open up shoes and they cracked baby skulls. That
guy black baby skulls because the Negro brain. Yea yeah,
so like, um, what he used to do wasn't when
he operate on the black women awake. That's why we
(38:11):
have to bias now in the medical field that black
people don't feel pain like a racist and used to
operate them on on them awake, dirty table tensils whatever.
And if they survived it, they want be developed a
kidney infection or urinary track something because filthy, he told him,
just because as they fall, they didn't take care of themselves.
(38:33):
So it's black women not taking care of themselves that's
the issue, and not not these doctors mishandling people. No,
so so they try to they do the culture and
genetics thing for like that too. Yes, they did a
study with nurses. UM nurses going to school, Um a
(38:55):
few years back, and they did a poll on do
black people feel less pain or more and they thought
that black a lot of them thought that black black
people felt less pain among current current um medical students,
right yep, current Yeah, with that, like it's close to
me because that they hit home, like I woke up
(39:16):
in the middle of surgery, my love and surgery. Uh,
I woke up in the middle of my love and surgery.
And the nurse looked at the doctor clears day, I'm
up clear to day. I'm trying to catch breath. Nurse
look at the doctor, said you can finish while he awake.
Bro what she looked at the doctor say, you could
finish while he's awake. Oh my god, that's insane, and
(39:38):
then went on the on the subject of maternal mortality.
I think I mean, and this is just understanding a
lot of issues through like sort of an intersectional lens.
If you look at the disproportionate numbers of black women
living in poverty, that might then call somebody they're not
really they're not making their prenatal you know, gynecology appointments
(39:59):
to check up on how things are going, so they
might not know they have gestational diabetes. They might not
know they have hypertension or something like that. And then
and additionally, UM, you know, if you're in working poverty,
if you're working forty fifty hours a week while you're pregnant, um,
you know, up until you up until you deliver pretty
much UM. And then you know you've got to be
(40:19):
back at work a week later because otherwise you get
fired or you get fired anyway, the kinds of pressured
folks are under because we just you know, disproportionate race
of poverty UM. And you know, environmental racism, environment you know,
toxic stress from racism, etcetera that I imagine play into
that as much as you know, medical racism UM and
(40:41):
things like that. It's wild. But I'm really glad to
look at your you know, it's I think it's an
under understudied, under advocated for area. And so especially as
someone that isn't directly impacted, though you have experienced political
racism yourself, it's great that you know you're using your
voice to help elevate an issue of that you know
doesn't directly impact you, but it's incredibly important. So where
(41:05):
can people find you when they if they want to
check out? And what can they do if they want
to help you with everything that you're doing. So if you, um,
if you want to reach me out, reach out to
my social media. I'm a former love poet everywhere uh Instagram, Twitter,
tink top Facebook. Um, if you want to help out
with the Briston English Project, monetary donations help a ton.
(41:28):
I make monthly payments on stuff, and I, like I said,
I provide everything for everybody who's helping. Monetary donations. Um,
if you go to brister ep dot me, brister ep
dot me, um, there is a there's to donate links
as well as all the information about the project. Word
all right, well, thank you so much for being here. Um,
(41:49):
one of these days, once your listens out a little bit,
once you make some dent in it, I might have
to put my name down there to find a little
bit for sure. Thank you for stopping talking to us. Hey,
thank you for having me. Yeah yeah, yeah, that was
(42:14):
former love poet dropping. It's so cool to see people
just like be passionate about something and just like offer
that their passion to the world. Like, oh, I found
out a lot about like my own history. So now
he's gonna offer everyone the opportunity. I want about the
history to do it on their own. Yeah, and who know,
I mean, you know, I mean the whole time that
we were talking to him, I just have this feeling
(42:34):
in the back of my head that's just gonna blow
the hell up even more than it already is. I
think I think yeah, but I think I'm talking more
I'm talking. I think he's I think he's gonna be
really busy in the I think he's gonna need to
expand the team. But yeah, thank you sitting his work.
I would not recommend getting all the waiting list right now,
(42:55):
because the man is busy as hell. But if you
do have geneological you know our tribal research skills, hit
them up, help out, help connect people with their history.
It's like a beautiful and if you can't contribute to
if you can't contribute in that form, hey, a couple
of dollars helps, you know, So throwing something help them
(43:16):
fund that thing and keep it going. But um, speaking
of keeping it going, we gotta end this ship and
get the wraps going. You feel like wrapping, Yes, you
gotta wrap. I am gonna wrap. God damn it. All right,
let's hit it. Joel dropping. I know I know I'm
gonna do rap music. Yo. Joel dropped that. Oh yeah,
(43:45):
yeah yeah. Life is coming too fast. We can't catch up,
and we keep it in too cool. You can't stress us.
If you want to, Nanny, go get you a frank
dress up. Beat you so bad feeling my ancests to
think about it often. It makes me crazy. You lost
track of a fan who's traced to slip avery. You
want to just know it, You're gonna just show it.
That's my Homeboys project. Form a love poet with the
Nazis marching all up in Orlando, Canda. So we're still
(44:07):
acting like she's Sambo, your favorite rapper, still talking about
a Lambo. I'm in a waiting line, trying to buy
me some Ammo dope knife, give me my reparations. Now
superhero ship when I rocket Cap and cow Killer Mike,
then I gotta go and take a bow which the
sacred cow make him way the towel through it with
a smile. I see, I's not give the rules happily.
(44:28):
Back at the family lunch, our folly would have grabbed me,
drag me off for lunch. Counter Back in Greensboro, prest
and Tea quotas getting filled but maintaining the status quo.
I know history isn't imparting when I checked it got
it's a mystery. I'm looking back at my family tree
(44:50):
for none. Listen, least I know who my mama's father
Wasn't all the sisters, but to deep and down into
it my check got that, Preston, hmm, yeah, yeah, you
are listening Waiting on reparations on Dope Knife, Frank if
we will see y'all next week. Listen to Waiting on
(45:13):
Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts
You were listening to Winning on Reparations, a production of
I Heart Radio. What's going on? What's good People? It's
the one and only Dope Knife. I am one of
several million lingual Franco okay checking though, if you're like
one in a million, that means there's thousands of people
(00:26):
just like you in the world. So I'm one of
many lingual Francis. And then we didn't even getting into
like the multiverse. The reparation podcast that is true and
the entire multiverse. There's only one Winning A Reparations podcasts
Happy First Day of Black History. But yeah, we're recording
this on the first day of Black History Month. Um,
(00:46):
how are you? How do you celebrate the month of
Black History? You know? I try to, um, stay a
little just get a little extra black for the month.
You know what I'm saying. It's like you gotta be black,
you know, for the other eleven months, and it's like
just this one month you added like an extra coat
and walk around You're just super proud, you know what
I'm saying. Might what I always find such to be
(01:08):
such relief about Black History Month is that there's so
little Black history that it'll just squeeze into twenty eight days.
Just cover the whole thing, the whole entire Oh yeah,
it's like so little to cover. Yeah, I mean, we
don't need the long extended series. We can get it
all done in this one, the full cinematic universe. Speaking
(01:31):
you want to speak, speaking of wax stuff happening on
Black History Months, so the day before Black History Months
and even I think some of this ship was today,
but over a dozen or it just about a dozen
historically black colleges got bomb threats. Yeah, my my former
(01:52):
album about her, Howard University, Alcron State University, Coppin State,
Edward Waters University, Fort Valley State, the University of the
District of Columbia, Morgan State, Kentucky State, Xavier University, and more. Yeah,
like they got bomb threats, they had to cancel classes
(02:13):
or clothes altogether. Um, what do you think something like
that means? I mean, apparently, uh, throughout the past few months,
these colleges have been getting threats leading up, but um,
with it kind of happening seemingly, it's I mean, I
obviously it's not a coincidence. What what do you think
(02:35):
about that? Does that make you feel okay? I'm zooming
way out. I'm zooming way way out into thinking about
how do we transition white people into the coming multiracial
democracy that is that is inevitable. I mean maybe the
democracy part. I don't know. Do we live in a
democracy now unclear? But our multiracial society, it's coming. They're
going to be the minority. Um And this is going
(02:57):
to be an unpopular take, but let's get for getting
into the black history months. Let's think about at the
end of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. The only
black person to UM ever have a mass movement that
achieves things. By the way, is the nuts only one.
Don't let them, you know, Huey Newton fictional. Uh. I
don't want to like, I don't want to parse like
(03:18):
you know, hairs or anything like that. But do we
mean like me in terms of getting getting a movement.
I'm just playing. I'm just playing on the on the
whole like there's not a whole lot of black history
and things. All these other cats like yeah, didn't exist
in the textbooks, didn't exist in real life for all
I know, Uh, you know, that's just the fodder of
like HBO Max features. But anyway, um. So during the
(03:44):
end of his life, m Ok started to recognize that
they needed a multiracial working class movement of people all
fighting for economic freedom together in order to take on
the government. That's effectively why you got assassinated, right, And
so also to answer the question, so taking like a
couple of leaps forward of like I bomb threats against
universities because white people are feeling insecure about their increasingly
(04:08):
marginal status in our society. How do we get people
less freaked out? And we're talking about this on the
show before about like you know, working class or a
blue collar white people, like are they racist? I don't know,
I can't remember what we were talking about, but like
I think one way to diffuse these tensions is to
come up with like universalists, like you know, policies that
(04:28):
if you are, you know, a white like Wendy's worker
or a black um Wendy's worker, all y'all can agree with, Like, yeah,
we're down with free college. That's something I'm going in
because like there's this fear that like black people are
taking things away from everyone else. Well, affirmative action, Oh,
they're putting the interracials in the in the Okay, cubid
ads and like ship people, like, let's give everybody at
(04:50):
the bottom some ship so we can stop fighting amongst ourselves,
and maybe white people will stop giving bomb threats to
black schools. I don't know. I mean now I agree,
I agree, I agree, although I don't know. I mean,
I feel also this is overly optimistic. I think some
were like fascist procalcitrants. There's really there's nothing you can do.
The radicalization is just not my field. So get about
(05:13):
that's what you do. But yeah, I don't know, I
feel I mean it definitely, you know, it's it rings
of all that stuff that we were talking about with
Christopher Goldsmith the other day, Like it just it rings
of some fucking social media hoax e type of you know,
like threats at the beginning complay history with me and
(05:35):
you know what I mean, it seems like super in
silly and ship like that. And I don't know, I
hope that, you know, worst case or best case scenario.
I guess at this point is like I hope that
it's just threats and it's I do too, I people stuff. Yeah,
I hope it's hope it's just threats. I am also
(05:57):
in this conversation reckoning with how dead and I have
become to like threats of all kinds. Like people talk
mad ship, they're gonna do ship, They're don't do ship
when it's like nah, man, sometimes like ship goes a
really bad and like you should take it really seriously.
But like my reaction is I'm just like so dead
inside from like being threatened a great deal. Yeah, I
don't know, Like I don't know. I just can't see
(06:18):
anything about it. I don't know what the statistics are
or anything like that, but I'm imagining that for the
most part, when people call in a threat or when
people like send a threatening letter or something like that,
that those ones on average don't result in anything. It's
it's kind of the ones that you have to worry
about just going out and doing the ship. It's more
(06:40):
of the worry. That's That's why I'm saying. This one
made me think that it was more like of a
you know, social media something to do to see the
headlines of Twitter and everybody retweeting the story, that sort
of ship. But you know, I'm some more positive notes.
I started um because I've been you know, I've been
working on the same graphic novel for the last few
years I've been talking about out on the show. It's
(07:00):
still being colored by the way us almost. But I
started writing again and I was brainstorming some ideas for
a new comic and ship, and I came up with
an idea to do something that's kind of like Lord
of the Ring zy Conan, the barbarian ish sort of thing,
but set in like ancient Africa, you know, kind of
(07:22):
like a Middle Earth, but with the basis of it
being like pre colonial or even like BC Africa, you know. Um,
and what it went. So, so what is your okay?
What is your process of something like that? Worked in
the last one like three years, so like, yeah, when
does this ship drop? I'm trying to like I want
to read it. I want to read it now, where
(07:43):
is okay? So for the for the last one that
I was working on, So the process for that, I mean,
I'll write this, wrote the story like a little treatment
of what the story is. Then uh, storyboarded out all
the pages, then drew all the ship, and then after
drawing it, you know what I mean. It's like visualizing,
knowing what the story is, visualizing it and drawing it
(08:06):
and then afterwards going out and writing the dialogue and
filling in the bubbles based off of the ship that
I read your So it's like, I don't really draw
it with the dialogue per se mind ship, but for
something like this, the new one that I'm working on,
it's gonna move pretty fast because I'm not going into
it thinking about making after day. It's coming. It's coming
(08:28):
right now. I'm in the I'm in the light research
phase because I kind of thought at first I was
gonna do like a crime story about Liberia, and then
in the middle of doing the research for that, I
was like, oh man, I'm gonna put that on the
back burner and I want to do something a bit
more out of my element because I usually write crime
stories and stuff like that. So it's like, I want
to do something that's you know, been done, you know,
(08:51):
dragons and and I want the dragons African African witch doctors, dragons,
you know what I mean, A shot kaZulu West figure
instead of I don't know what the nigga from Lord
of the Rings name is, but one of those yeah, no, no,
who's who was the not not not the Dwarf, Orlando Blue,
(09:13):
the other Vigo I don't know I can picture of that.
I don't know who this name was, y'all. Motherfucker's anyway, anyway,
what do I do? What do we doing today? So
today we're speaking with Walter English, a former love poet.
Are gonna get a more thorough introduction for him here
(09:35):
in a second, but it's really really love to talk
about his brister English project, um studying the genealogies of
of African descendants of slaves and connecting people with their history.
So you want to go ahead and get on into it. Um, yeah,
let's get into it. U. My man's is popping on
TikTok right now that this is this is our first
time talking with somebody just doing stuff on TikTok. I
(09:57):
think I think I kind of want to make it
a personal mission to like breaking all the skeptical the
few if there already left out there, the skeptical adults
who haven't really gotten on TikTok and utilize the different
spaces and communities that are on there. So I mean,
I think partially it comes into like, um, just digital literacy,
like because it's not something we're really taught in school
(10:19):
other than this is how you type, like this time
you make a power resident. Look, I got locked out
on my Facebook account for like four months. I got
back out on that ship, and I literally don't know
how to do a goddamn thing. I'm like, well, I
don't check my messages, like I don't understand. I get
on TikTok and like I had that new single come
out this week. They were like, go on TikTok and
make a viral TikTok dance from the music video. Until
(10:41):
I got on there, I go excided, like oh my god,
the old day. It's like, yeah, let's go, and like,
I don't know, I got like four likes. I'm like,
how does this work? Well? I supposed to do. You
gotta keep at it. You can't. You gotta keep at it.
Yeah yeah, I know. I just don't have it. I
just don't have that persistence all that time. So, well,
you're busiest, Yeah yeah, Oh I got in speaking of
(11:01):
a good news. I out of another crazy announcement for listeners.
Slash you mac, I can tell you this yet. So okay.
So I had a show last Saturday, and one of
my professors in my department came, So I want to
talk about on the show whole lot. But you know,
I'm getting my PhD ship and so this been, I mean,
this person, this lady, she's very nice. Lady. Um came
up to me after the show. I was like, Yo,
(11:23):
that was your dissertation and I was like, what are
you talking about? She was like, you should just submit
that and graduate. I was like, excuse me what? And
then I emailed her this week and she was like, yeah,
people do like arts based dissertations all the time. There's
ever there's like been one other rap one, but like
just write it at thirty page intro paper about like
why this count says like hip hop education research and
(11:46):
then like graduate son be graduated with a doctorate in
Like April was good. I can't wait to be good
my life anyway. So let's get into all right, So
we'll be back with former love poet right after the joke.
(12:09):
All right, Yeah, So today I am very honored that
we are joined by Walter English, the former love poet, rapper, poet, activists,
and founder of the Bristo English Project, which seeks to
help descendence of enslaved people find their history at no
charge to them. Very popular on TikTok Um spreading you know,
(12:30):
messages anti racism, and so we are very very excited
to have you here today just for everybody out there
who doesn't know, because I've been you know, checking out
your TikTok page and seeing the different things that you
cover in the different things that you talk that you
talk about. Maria has been doing the same and through
that is how we've come across the Brister English Project.
So if you could, could you explain to our listeners
(12:51):
in your own words, exactly what is the Brister English Project? Um,
the Bristo English Project. Like to begin with, it's named
after my second grade grant of it. Uh, I saw him,
saw his name when he went by just Bristow on
a slave ship manifest that fourteen years old. Um, to
see that and and to see what he went through
(13:11):
and what he became, and just the history, the amount
of history that that comes that comes with this, that
comes with it's hard to explain always some people, is
really hard to explain it. So it's an amazing feeling. Um,
it's a different feeling. I want to give people that feeling.
I don't believe Black Americans should have to pay to
get their genealogy done and so with the Bristi English project,
(13:31):
people sign up on the list. UM. I'm in phase
two right now with the project. So I have volunteers
helping me. UM. I'm talking about people who have years
of experience and doing this UM for helping me for free.
Everything is runs off donation, so I make sure I
have stuff paid for people to UH to make sure
they're able to work UM as well as I got
(13:52):
runners will go to grave sites for me. He'll go
to historical sites to take pictures or whatever. It's just
one big project to to help UM American descending some
chatel slavery connect with the past. That it's just like
us tell people's more than just dreams a chance. So
where did this project come from? We spoke something about
you know, I think you said your your great great grandfather, UM,
(14:13):
and so clearly you know a little bit about your history.
But how what was your process for actually launching this
project and as well, like how how it works some
of the internal processes to help bring this history to folks.
So UM it started after I was doing I made
a three database. That's what I started with. I started
with a free database or resources to help people. UM.
(14:36):
People still wanted, you know, how do I do this?
They I have more questions, So I said, why not
I do it? I was supposed to start off small.
It was supposed to be you know, I launched all Christmas.
I was planning that him off prior. UM. I got
the historian who helped me find out all this information.
She jumped on the project with me. Um. And then
I got the funding on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, I
(14:56):
launched everything and um, and that's really that's that's really it.
And as far as the internal working go, what I
do is, uh, people fill out a form, uh, your name,
your grandparents name. Yeah, you know, if you know any
any kind of info to help us out. We go
right on ancestry. We start putting information. UM. We use
(15:18):
sources like genealogy bank, um, a newspaper, archives, newspaper, dot com,
anywhere information may be found lost friends, UM. When we
start your tree. UM. A lot of people like like
the focus going straight back, which is always good. You
want to know where your great great great great grandparents are.
But for us Black Americans, we run into a wall.
(15:40):
At one point we become property. Yeah. UM. And so
what I like to do is not only focused back
for focus on what I call the branches, so you
get to see your cousins, know everybody, um, and like
working on this project, I'm starting to see people that's related.
They know that's related, just like it's it's it's it's
(16:02):
a good it's a it's a good feeling. And then
I do like a few videoscause I always asked permission Havie,
like for me to talk about this on my TikTok Um.
I'm running across the mirror like amazing history, Um, not
in niche being able to share that with people, not
only the people who are who are directly affects, but
all of us to see finally find one of the
twelve hundred black lawyers in nineteen thirty just related to
(16:25):
somebody on TikTok Like it's stuff like, so, what are
some of the crazy stories you've uncovered and you know
from history or you know, impressive insights that have you
have drawn from doing some of that genealogical work. Uh,
personally just in my family alone. Uh, craziest thing that
I've seen, I think it's about um in nineteen forty
(16:49):
or nineteen thirty. Uh, my aunt, one of my grand aunts,
she had a husband, and when you're looking at everything
that like the records and where they live dad and
who they were with, it looked like he was cheating
on her. So she divorced them. So a woman divorcing
a man in nineteen thirty, you were you, you could
be deemed as crazy. Literally they would put you on
(17:11):
the sane asylum. And so he sent my eye to
an insane asylum, and she divorced them. Not only an
insane asylum. Yes, it's not only insane asylum, but um
Long View or lake View excuse like if you don't
believe this. In Cincinnati, Ohio was one of the most
infamous places. You It's like a shutter island type of
(17:33):
it is. It is awful and she had to spend
she she ended up spending um at least I think
at least seven years and then before she passed away.
What no, that towards the end of it. Yeah, and
towards the end of her like like growing that asylum, UM,
it progrestily got worse because it couldn't hold as many people,
(17:53):
but they took in that many people, so people didn't
get fed, they lived over sewage. UM. It was just
it was just a bad environ. But then you also
when you when I'm looking, because I looked through the documents,
I'm not just saying, oh that name match with that.
I want to see through what happened and you and
everybody in her family or in that side of the
family died young. Who was involved with him, um so
(18:16):
her brother who worked with who worked for he died
in his twenties. It's sich the sister that he was
cheating with died in her twenties with her sister sister,
and then he married her co worker according to the city,
and then she died into the same time. Man, niggas
don't ever change. Still they still see like that to
a less of degree, whether you know, similar mindset to
(18:39):
oh yeah, still that's the yeah, that mindset is still going.
I mean that sounds like a plot for a movie. Man,
Like that's wild. The level of detail that you can
get into, not just like oh you're you know, like
your great great grandfather was a famous carpenter in like
the city of what's it, but like down to the
level of this person with cheating with this person, Like
(19:03):
that's that's amazing. That's amazing what you can discover through
the through these databases. So how many of them have
you done so far? Um? Close to personally? Do you
find it? Find it gets easier with each one, or
like you get more of a like an efficiency and
you're being able to research and stuff with each one
that you do efficiency. Yes. Um, once the list jumped
(19:26):
from it literally jumped from seventy four. Will jumped from
fourteen people to seventy four overnight and in seventy twelve hundred.
So once it hit twelve hundred, I like, I need
some help, and so I brought it. I've been doing
a slow process. I brought it from volunteer, see how
they can work, how we can work together. So with
like the volunteers, but personally I did about twenty With
the volunteers. I've been trying off for the past month,
we probably got close to thirty. While I've been doing
(19:47):
the background stuff, in order stuff, they've still been working.
And uh yeah, I finally gets easier because I know
what I'm looking for. And with black history, you gotta
look out for certain things when you're looking in through
our ancestry. Um, you gotta look out for different name spellings. Right,
(20:08):
keep in mind who lived with who? At what time, Um,
going from mixed to black to mixed to black on
different senses. But do you know that's still your that's
young people. So it's that part got easier, you know,
I've been doing it for so long now, like seeing
stuff like that, it's it's easy to know what I'm
looking for, what to look out for, and yeah, yeah,
(20:28):
have you encountered any limitations thus far? I'm sure, like
given the thoroughness of record keeping, particularly when you go
back to like slavery times, um, and then certain whiles
around like antigenation where people weren't you know, showing up
on birth certificates, etcetera, mislistening race. I've you know, been
setting my own like indigenous ancestry and they listened all
(20:50):
the natives as black. There was only white or black
on like the census form. So, um, do you run
into issues like that and trying to trace people's uneage? Yeah,
I mean, um, you come across that where like you
get things that's a maybe like I'm not I'm not
too sure about that, you know. So I like to
ask people. I like to ask people questions when we
(21:11):
get to something. Some of those points and and a
lot of people I find out don't talk to like
their grandparents about their past and their history and stuff
like that, because I told I asked one personal question.
I showed up on first like, hey, this is your
I believe this is your your your grandfather, I'm not
too sure, but this is a this is a mere certificate.
I believe this is your grandmother on there, but they
spelled the name with the king instead up and see
(21:33):
can you shoulder to it? And they she starts to
learn about all different kind of family members that he
had all over like so like it's yeah, with the
you're saying that the number of requests for it, so
it jumped up to twelve dred you said you're a
twelve hundred and currently sitting that two thousand. Okay, so
(21:53):
if you have if you've got like two thousands of
them sitting in the chamber right now, just knowing like
the sort of space of TikTok is, do you do
you ever find do you find yourself like running into
the issue, perhaps like white people not understanding exactly what
it's about and perhaps wanting you to do the yeah, yeah,
(22:15):
oh yeah, I got tagging a video the day like
somebody like people are taggingbody tagging this moody like a
white woman's comments to look for an answer. It's like, oh,
he has a project that help I say, it's not
for her. It's not for her. But I ran into
the issue of people get they let the forgility take over. Yeah.
Do you find there's like broader pushback then you know
there's some people who get mistaken with like this project
(22:37):
ain't for y'all. Are there any is there people out
there that were like nad about it because people on
the internet didn't mad about anything. Oh yeah, no, it's
a ton of people that would matter what. One woman
made three videos about me and like, god, yes, she
made three videos about me. And she was like, look,
I tricked my family that's thirty and this says uh
says they were mixed. His name was Charlie. And I'm like,
(22:58):
so you did the work. It's like you you want
me to find Like I don't know what she thought out.
I was like, a magical negro can just connect to
all black people, but I couldn't. So I'm like this,
I can't do that to bring the great great granddad
back out. Plus your thing you're thinking's like specifically for
descendence of slaves too. It's like, I don't understand how
(23:21):
you had to jump into that, UM people, Hey, I'm Irish.
That's why you're getting I'm irish. We were, we were
slaves you and that your service. Plus you know that
you're Irish, I'm black, Like exactly, that's the difference. I'm
trying to let people know, Like I'm like, you've never
been the butt of a slave joke. You've never been
(23:42):
You've never been in that situation to understand, like, Okay,
I really can't. I don't know what my family did.
I don't know what people were like, I don't know
what part of Africa they were from. That kind of
that kind of level of detail, it's probably lost to
would you say that's like lost to history? Yeah, almost altogether. Yeah, yeah,
yeah definitely. But one thing I'll say that UM with
(24:02):
the um Americans and it's a slave of enslaved people,
is that we created this culture that's from the south
to to the east coast, west coast, we have a
culture that being black that we still made here like
and and and with that culture, you can see it
throughout history, like from occupations to places they lived to
(24:26):
the things they did to what they sold to the
land that was big. Like when when I when I
come across agricultural records and I see land that they
all might see exactly what they grew and how they
they ran stuff. It was it's it's it's it's our
own history. Like I can't go back as far as
like you know, I know you're from Nigeria and I
(24:48):
could find this, but I could show you the not
so bad parts of history that is still black culture.
Yeah yeah, Um what do you find people take away
from for the folks that you for whom you've already completed,
like their genealogy, Like what do they take from it?
Like what what? What? Um does that lend to their
(25:10):
to their lives, like knowing what their roots are. I've
had people everybody cries. I don't know about, but everybody cries.
That's that's one big thing. And like I'm like, that's
the feeling that that's hard to explain. Um. But everybody
I got told I changed people lives. Um I had one. Yeah,
I got told like I've changed people lives by doing this.
(25:31):
Um Um who told me? Somebody wants to help out
the project out there, Like I helped them out. They
wanted to actually join on now to help people because
again they see how that feels and how how the experiences. Um.
Some people said I plugged and missing pieces of their life. Um. Sakitha,
who's on on TikTok, the bigger creator. We've stumped across
(25:52):
her dad by accident. I had my history. She never
knew her father. As soon as we saw the picture
of his high school photo, I'm like, Wow, that's her face.
That's her exact faces. It's like the email. And I said,
I gotta picture your dad. I don't know if you
want to see it, but she said sure and sure
enough and so like that. She said that she felt
(26:14):
like like an alien and her family she didn't look
like anybody, but now she felt like she belongs. So
it's like that's kind of fellers. So this might be
kind of a technical question, but what is it about
TikTok that makes it the right platform to do this?
Oh man? A lot of eyes, A lot of eyes.
Things can go like that and heart people in a
(26:37):
in a heartbeat. Like I was talking about the brist
Of English project since the seven Team, I think right,
I kind of announced it to people launched it a
week later. Um, and I wasn't really getting I had
seven people I respond to a racist white person on
there with with me talking about it, and then boomed
twelve hundred people like that, just TikTok is a great
(26:59):
is a great flat one right now? Still believe number
one at the moment if you want to grab somebody's attention. Yeah, Um,
I mean I was asking just because I mean, you'd
be shocked at how many people in my age even
now are still under the impression when I talked to
them about TikTok having interesting things are like, oh man,
it's all dances of you know what I mean, Like
(27:19):
we're still we're still at this page is getting people
over that stigma of TikTok, right that is just people
just kids up there dancing. I'm like, nah, but I'm
telling you that's like it's different size and TikTok that
like it's literally of a corner of TikTok for like
any interest that you have, really any interest you you mentioned,
like people often have really strong emotional reactions to hearing
(27:42):
about their genealogy and sometimes they cry, and um, this
actually made me think of I'm not sure I'm well, actually,
I feel like you of all people will probably know
about this. But when they did George Floyd's genealogy, um,
and finding like all the way is that the system
in various, in various you know ways screwed over his
family over and over again to sort of create a picture.
(28:03):
You know, people people on the right, you know, white
supremacists want said, oh he was a drug addict. Ooh
he you know, beat his wife or whatever. But if
you go back in his genealogy, I believe it was
his great great grandfather, Um, when he got his freedom,
he accumulated five hundred acres of land that then we're
just stolen, straight up stolen by white settlers. And then
(28:26):
later on I think if his grandmother she was like
very you know, she was very accomplished academic in high school,
wanted to become a lawyer. They wouldn't let her go
to law school. Um, she she taught herself how to
read and write and stuff and ended up being like
a really you know, really good at school. Couldn't go
to law school because they just said, we don't accept y'all.
And so thing after thing after a thing, which kind
(28:47):
of like helps us understand and give context to how
somebody like George Floyd ended up in the situation he
ended up in, Like, yeah, he might have been on drugs,
might have had you know, priors, etcetera, but like it
contextualized in a way, like you understand how someone could
become that way. So do you ever find people who
get emotional about their results in having to face the
(29:08):
kinds of struggles that are people have always gone through.
I don't think I have. I don't think I've ran
into that just ship where people like are really upset
or get kind of emotional to be like that, that's
what I kind of faced. Well when I take that back, Um,
(29:29):
it's normally folks who I can find slave sensors for
if I can find a slave census and and I
can show you that. Um, I showed somebody I was like,
I didn't looking for their fifty I was looking for
a fifty five year old black woman because they didn't
have names on there. So looking for a fifty five
year old black woman. And I find the census with
the same location area, and it's kind of like the
(29:51):
same reaction I had that they had, where it's like
you got just kind of quiet, you just got things
to yourself, Like it makes sense, very tangible. Yeah, and
it's just like that's what they did. But I think
a lot of people, a lot of people who are
taking part of this are are are proud, are come
with pride to that, Hey, they the ancestors went through this,
to go through that and now they're here. True, like
(30:12):
histories of struggle also histories of triumph in a sense,
like even if all that our people have had to
live through can kind of just be really heavy on
the heart to like just think about that sorrow and
that pain, but also we survived, you know, they survived
enough to have their own kids and then have their
own kids and here we are today. So in another way, yeah,
(30:33):
I totally make sense if that could be inspiring, even
if like if you know the story you told about
what was that your great great grandmother or you know,
getting in the natat that that's happy. That's happy man,
you know, but also like being able to actually know
you're yeah, like just have I guess I can imagine
like really understanding your history after sort of being told
(30:54):
all when we're growing up that it's lost to history,
even though it's not, it's not really you can find
it if you look for it. Um can I can
be really empowering. So speaking of history, UM, a bunch
of talk us a little bit about yourself, Like who
who are you? Yeah, so you're activist, You're a poet,
you're a rapper, so like yeah, so you not now
(31:19):
it's a theologist and so how did you get Yeah,
so talk to talk to us a little bit about
your arts background. Um, I've been writing forever. Um I
love used the story right. Um. I think when I
was in the third grade, I started writing poetry. Um.
I used to I'm a nineties baby is to watch
Deff Paultry jam with the most Deff and stuff. So
(31:40):
I got in the spoken word. My family is big
in the music, and so I was like, I can.
I can write some songs and every whatever. By the
time I turned eighteen, I was going to college. Uh. Nineteen,
I booked my first like big show here in my
city at a club. I was under aged four, but
they still let me perform. Um. Uh that led to
just just a lot more opportunities. I end up performing
(32:05):
at Castel Breech is one of the biggest wineries here
in New York. Um I ghost I was ghost right
in for for a little while, wrote for Dorito's MTV, Nickelodeon,
over fifty other company and then two thousand nineteen, like
I've always been a poet, but I always kept my
poetry to myself because my music, I'm like, this is
(32:25):
my I can go out here. I got the music
going poetry. Everybody's eyes on you. It's quiet. That's so funny. Yeah,
because I had the opposite experience. I was like a
poet in high school. I did slam poetry and like
college but and I wrote rhymes, but I didn't tell
nobody because like that was a whole It was like
a kind of taboo in a way. I'm like, oh,
tip out like your gang bang, like what um? And
(32:46):
then later like stepping out, like man, I'm not gonna
just sit here and not like I got sick bars.
I don't know what I'm doing sitting on all this.
But from person to person, I was telling everybody in
the world that I want was like yo, yeah. I
was like I was walking around with my notebook and
You're like, yo, look at how many words my vocabulary? Yeah. Yeah,
(33:08):
I was priedful about my rap, like I knew I
can I can piece together a story. So who are
some of you? Who are some of your influences? Um
writing scheme to people here, how how I write sometimes
um Rock him just his gotta be the way I
think I break I break things down to a science almost,
(33:29):
and I was just like, wow, I like how he
rhyme in the middle of beginning the end and how
he flipped that. And then just for writing prefaces of
Royster five nine was big with my writing. UM Wayne
when I when it came to similes, He's crazy with it.
To this day, I'm just like man. Yeah. And then
um nas nas And then when I got older, jay Z,
(33:50):
I like jay Z when I was younger. I got older,
I could appreciate it. I could appreciate the bars. Anything
it's about that makes sense, that makes sense. Yeah. So
those did probably my biggest, biggest and people put it,
don't chew me up for this. It's gonna be Kanye.
We've talked about him on the show. Physically good yeah,
like back like, because I like bro, I have fifteen
(34:11):
surgeries coming up. And so when I heard through the
Wire for the first time as a kid, that resonated
and I was like, is he correct? Correct. Yeah, and
then so I'm like, Kanye gave me that big thing
and I saw my death poetry Jim, I'm like, oh,
you're writing poetry too. I can write poetry as well.
You know. So that was kind of like, yeah, I'm
here because of Yeah, yeah, is there Do you think
(34:35):
at all there's a relationship between like the hip hop
aspect of your identity and some of the work that
you're doing with the Breast Ranglich project. Yeah, I believe. So,
I believe. So I think, um, the creativity, it's getting
his message across so people. So it's so it's digestible
(34:56):
for people. I can get up here and talk about
all the boring facts and everything like that, but if
I make it exciting, Um, I talk in poems sometimes
in my my my videos, that gives people attention. If
I get it, Oh, I want they want to hear
what I'm gonna say next. And so I just just
how my my hip hop's owner. I can. I can
(35:16):
come up here with all the confidence in the world
because I feel like I'm the best at what I
do right now. You can't tell me otherwise, and I'm
gonna say what I gotta say. So you think it's
like it helps out like with the because I'm I'm
I'm an advocate of like using hip hop as like
a form of communication to like it makes people learn
things to retain information better. Just you know, as far
(35:36):
as I so, do you think like that aspect of
hip hop you know helps all of us mcs be communicators?
You think that's like the biggest way it helps out.
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely, because we gotta get our message across.
That's the big that's the big thing. We have to
get our message across in a short amount of time.
That the same thing I learned like slam poultry, Like
you've got three minutes, go talk to your talk and
(35:57):
you've got to make this connection with somebody. And so
I think we when people here like rappers talking certain
situations and stuff for people who are like they got
this preconceived no ship of like like with dump or
something like that. But I'm like, can you can you
write a three minutes song that makes sense and this
like that so I can talk and talk to people
like it's nothing. That's why a lot of us be
able to do that. It's like, oh they so cares, Mattic.
(36:19):
We we gotta be. So maybe it's answered because of
like how important the Prester English Project is to you.
But is there a particular like political issue or social
issue that you would say, just on a personal level,
is like at the top of your priority in terms
of things that you're usually thinking about or talking about, um,
(36:43):
the top of my list. Reason I joined the Double
A CP to get closer to UH to help black women. UM.
They died at four times high rate norm maternity UM
and even higher in my city. So we got Rochester
General out here UH to change to get more Black
midwives and to get more black nurses and for all
(37:04):
black doctors black ob g y n's to help black women,
you should be dying at four times high ranking in
the other race down here in Georgia, black women have
a higher maternal mortality right than Iraq. And there are
a lot of other like developing que quote developing countries.
So yeah, maternal Black maternal mortality is a huge issue.
(37:27):
Some harm to hear you're working working on that. What
are some of the reasons that they give for it?
They don't or do they not even bother? It's nor
even bother. But when you look at history, you look
at Um the father gonna college. Look at Jay Marry
and Sims, right, Jay Marry and Sims got the enslave
woman's name. But he's to operate on enslaved people, um
(37:51):
normally women. Um he was. He was the one used
to take the trigger warnerful folcus to take this tool
to open up shoes and they cracked baby skulls. That
guy black baby skulls because the Negro brain. Yea yeah,
so like, um, what he used to do wasn't when
he operate on the black women awake. That's why we
(38:11):
have to bias now in the medical field that black
people don't feel pain like a racist and used to
operate them on on them awake, dirty table tensils whatever.
And if they survived it, they want be developed a
kidney infection or urinary track something because filthy, he told him,
just because as they fall, they didn't take care of themselves.
(38:33):
So it's black women not taking care of themselves that's
the issue, and not not these doctors mishandling people. No,
so so they try to they do the culture and
genetics thing for like that too. Yes, they did a
study with nurses. UM nurses going to school, Um a
(38:55):
few years back, and they did a poll on do
black people feel less pain or more and they thought
that black a lot of them thought that black black
people felt less pain among current current um medical students,
right yep, current Yeah, with that, like it's close to
me because that they hit home, like I woke up
(39:16):
in the middle of surgery, my love and surgery. Uh,
I woke up in the middle of my love and surgery.
And the nurse looked at the doctor clears day, I'm
up clear to day. I'm trying to catch breath. Nurse
look at the doctor, said you can finish while he awake.
Bro what she looked at the doctor say, you could
finish while he's awake. Oh my god, that's insane, and
(39:38):
then went on the on the subject of maternal mortality.
I think I mean, and this is just understanding a
lot of issues through like sort of an intersectional lens.
If you look at the disproportionate numbers of black women
living in poverty, that might then call somebody they're not
really they're not making their prenatal you know, gynecology appointments
(39:59):
to check up on how things are going, so they
might not know they have gestational diabetes. They might not
know they have hypertension or something like that. And then
and additionally, UM, you know, if you're in working poverty,
if you're working forty fifty hours a week while you're pregnant, um,
you know, up until you up until you deliver pretty
much UM. And then you know you've got to be
(40:19):
back at work a week later because otherwise you get
fired or you get fired anyway, the kinds of pressured
folks are under because we just you know, disproportionate race
of poverty UM. And you know, environmental racism, environment you know,
toxic stress from racism, etcetera that I imagine play into
that as much as you know, medical racism UM and
(40:41):
things like that. It's wild. But I'm really glad to
look at your you know, it's I think it's an
under understudied, under advocated for area. And so especially as
someone that isn't directly impacted, though you have experienced political
racism yourself, it's great that you know you're using your
voice to help elevate an issue of that you know
doesn't directly impact you, but it's incredibly important. So where
(41:05):
can people find you when they if they want to
check out? And what can they do if they want
to help you with everything that you're doing. So if you, um,
if you want to reach me out, reach out to
my social media. I'm a former love poet everywhere uh Instagram, Twitter,
tink top Facebook. Um, if you want to help out
with the Briston English Project, monetary donations help a ton.
(41:28):
I make monthly payments on stuff, and I, like I said,
I provide everything for everybody who's helping. Monetary donations. Um,
if you go to brister ep dot me, brister ep
dot me, um, there is a there's to donate links
as well as all the information about the project. Word
all right, well, thank you so much for being here. Um,
(41:49):
one of these days, once your listens out a little bit,
once you make some dent in it, I might have
to put my name down there to find a little
bit for sure. Thank you for stopping talking to us. Hey,
thank you for having me. Yeah yeah, yeah, that was
(42:14):
former love poet dropping. It's so cool to see people
just like be passionate about something and just like offer
that their passion to the world. Like, oh, I found
out a lot about like my own history. So now
he's gonna offer everyone the opportunity. I want about the
history to do it on their own. Yeah, and who know,
I mean, you know, I mean the whole time that
we were talking to him, I just have this feeling
(42:34):
in the back of my head that's just gonna blow
the hell up even more than it already is. I
think I think yeah, but I think I'm talking more
I'm talking. I think he's I think he's gonna be
really busy in the I think he's gonna need to
expand the team. But yeah, thank you sitting his work.
I would not recommend getting all the waiting list right now,
(42:55):
because the man is busy as hell. But if you
do have geneological you know our tribal research skills, hit
them up, help out, help connect people with their history.
It's like a beautiful and if you can't contribute to
if you can't contribute in that form, hey, a couple
of dollars helps, you know, So throwing something help them
(43:16):
fund that thing and keep it going. But um, speaking
of keeping it going, we gotta end this ship and
get the wraps going. You feel like wrapping, Yes, you
gotta wrap. I am gonna wrap. God damn it. All right,
let's hit it. Joel dropping. I know I know I'm
gonna do rap music. Yo. Joel dropped that. Oh yeah,
(43:45):
yeah yeah. Life is coming too fast. We can't catch up,
and we keep it in too cool. You can't stress us.
If you want to, Nanny, go get you a frank
dress up. Beat you so bad feeling my ancests to
think about it often. It makes me crazy. You lost
track of a fan who's traced to slip avery. You
want to just know it, You're gonna just show it.
That's my Homeboys project. Form a love poet with the
Nazis marching all up in Orlando, Canda. So we're still
(44:07):
acting like she's Sambo, your favorite rapper, still talking about
a Lambo. I'm in a waiting line, trying to buy
me some Ammo dope knife, give me my reparations. Now
superhero ship when I rocket Cap and cow Killer Mike,
then I gotta go and take a bow which the
sacred cow make him way the towel through it with
a smile. I see, I's not give the rules happily.
(44:28):
Back at the family lunch, our folly would have grabbed me,
drag me off for lunch. Counter Back in Greensboro, prest
and Tea quotas getting filled but maintaining the status quo.
I know history isn't imparting when I checked it got
it's a mystery. I'm looking back at my family tree
(44:50):
for none. Listen, least I know who my mama's father
Wasn't all the sisters, but to deep and down into
it my check got that, Preston, hmm, yeah, yeah, you
are listening Waiting on reparations on Dope Knife, Frank if
we will see y'all next week. Listen to Waiting on
(45:13):
Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.