February 10, 2022 • 59 mins
This week, DK & LF talk briefly discuss how not to be white, as recently illustrated by Joe Rogan. LF also speaks with Joan Mulholland, a white Freedom Rider and steadfast civil rights icon, and Loki Mulloholand, her son, about the role of art in movement-making and the lessons of the civil rights struggle-- in essence, the best way to be white.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening Waiting on Reparations, a production of I
Heart Radio. Yo Yo Yo, you are listening to Waiting
on Reparations. My name is Dope Knife Frank, and we're
here and we're back in effect another week. It is
the second week of Black History Month. How are you
(00:24):
holding up and celebrating? I'm good. So one way I'm
celebrating is um posting. So the full archives of the
Black Panther newspaper are available online, and so I've been
posting just pages of it, you know, with the ones
with like cool visuals as well as like descriptions of
what they contain. So today, you know, I've posted the
Black Panther ten point Program. A couple of days ago,
(00:46):
i posted about UM Huey Newton UM, one of the
founders of the Black Panthers, And so I'm just trying
to my best to like elevate the parts of black
history that people don't want to talk about because it
does not serve their political agenda, um and things like that. So, so, yeah,
what about you. What I have been celebrated. I mean,
(01:08):
this is kind of like some down the line sort
of celebration. But one of the things I'm trying to organize.
I'm trying to put together a little festival in Savannah,
like a music festival, but have it be like a
fundraiser for Stacy Abrams. What's up? Yeah, either either Stacy
Abrams or something to do with Georgia voting. One of
the two things. I'm just gonna focus around. I know,
(01:30):
I know. That's like I'm planning it to be around
like four you know, planning it now. So it's technically
my Black History mont celebration. You know, who's not celebrating
Black history a lot of it's not only been disinvited
from the cook out, like he's not even allowed to
eat barbecue. Wait, it was Joe Rogan ever really invited
(01:51):
to the cookout this whole that Yeah, when everything was
going down, it was one of those rare occasions where
I was on Twitter like to start my day and
just was kind of vegging out on Twitter for most
of the most of the night before in the day,
so like I kind of saw all this ship happening
in real time and like for real, like first it
was the Okay, So for anybody who doesn't know, so
(02:14):
Joe Rogan, one of the biggest podcasters in the world.
He hosts a show called The Joe Rogan Experience. Back
in it was it was an independent podcast for years,
crazy millions of listeners and and subscribers, all that whole
thing you got At this point, I'm just assuming that
everybody knows who Joe Rogan and what his podcast is. Right.
(02:34):
So a couple of years ago he gets a deal
with Spotify for a hundred million dollars, which now makes
him a mainstream corporate entity. I don't give a funk
what anybody says, but um, you know, Joe Rogan's had
He's had problematic instances in things on his show for
a while, but it's all kind of taken ahead and
(02:57):
come into public eye with his COVID disinformation that he
spreads on his show, and that led to this whole
standoff with Spotify or Spotify standing by their hundred million
dollar investment. But you've got artists like Neil Young and
Jody Mitchell and others who were taking their music off
the platform and effort to not be associated with the
COVID misinformation. But uh SCAD graduate Savannah College of Art
(03:21):
and Design graduate and Grammy Award winning artists India Iri
Sook to her Instagram to kind of point out something
that I in particular had been pointing out about Joe
Rogan just amongst my friends and stuff like that in
personal conversation for years now, which is a lot of
the racist quasi Nazi ship that goes on on the
Joe Rogan podcast. It's dispersed enough that you know, you
(03:45):
could watch ten episodes in a row and not encounter it.
But when it's there, it's there, and it's they're pretty
strong and indie. A re started off by running a
montage Joe Rogan using the N word that was followed
up by a joke that he told about going to
a black neighborhood in Philly to see the movie Planet
of the Apes and a commentary about how the all
(04:08):
black crowd was like the Planet of the Apes, and
so on and so forth. Joe Rogan issued an apology
um for all of the cries of cancel culture, there's
not really any cancelation going on Spotify standing by him
saying that silencing is not the way to handle it. Um.
But for the most part, it's it's just illuminated this
(04:29):
particular aspect of the Joe Rogan Show for the general
public for normans who weren't really paying attention, whether they
are supporters of his or detractors. So, um, that is
the situation as it stands. Like I said, there's not
really any consequence to be taken out of it except
for his apology and that, you know, the opinions are
(04:52):
now you know, it seems like the opinions are now
solidly formed. You know, you've either got the people who
are like, oh, I don't think that's a big deal,
or you've got the people who are like, hey, this
is what I've been saying. Joe Rogan has been on
this ship for a long time. And then you've got
a bunch of regular people who are now either oh,
I didn't know Joe Rogan was like that funk that guy,
(05:12):
or you know, the opposite swing of that pendulum. I
didn't know Joe Rogan was like that. Awesome, I'm with it. So, so,
what have you been thinking of this whole thing, whatever,
however much of it you've been consuming. Yeah, I mean
I've long been skeptical of Joe Rogan and like the
Joe Rogan too like crypto fascist pipeline um sort of
(05:34):
veiled in the fact that he does have many different
kinds of people on his show, his platforming of folks
like Stephen Wilno, like um, even Elon Muskle's just like
Notisanapolis and only know of him because of It's interesting
to me that this hadn't come come out earlier, Like,
(05:57):
you know, if people are watching his podcast religiously and
he has this, you know, a million strong fan base,
how did no one bring up before now that there
were a hundred and eleven podcast where he used a
racial slurn, which I then think, yeah, okay, um, yeah, no,
that's all I said right now. Well, I mean, um, okay.
(06:19):
So one of the biggest reason why I think it's
not even necessary that people didn't notice, but he wasn't
like mainstream then as big and popular as his podcast was.
I think having that Spotify corporate stamp, Fortune five hundred
stamp on it, it now makes all of that stuff,
(06:40):
you know, um issue for him because beforehand, I mean,
for example, the the video of him telling the Planet
of the Apes joke. I saw that shipped back in surprisingly,
do you know who put that out? Alex Jones was
the one who first put that out. Him and Joe Rogan.
(07:00):
We're beefing. Alex Jones was like, all right, well, if
me and Joe Rogan is not gonna have the other show.
Everybody thinks he's so cool, he's got a black daughter,
and listen to what he says about black people. And
then that happened in the summer of nineteen, you know,
and that's something like you see it and you you know,
a it was getting posted around, but it doesn't really
matter because ultimately it's just this dude's podcast in his
(07:23):
basement or in a spare room in his house that
he's doing on his own. So there is no when
you don't have like when there's no corporate entity to
pressure you know about it, then I don't know, I
think it can easily slip through the right you got.
You gotta go after the money. You can't just criticize
Joe Rogan for what he does. Anybody in the basement
(07:45):
can do what he does. You like he has. He
has the prominence that he does because he has the
backing of Spotify. It's the backing of huge corporations, right,
and so you gotta go after the money. That makes
you think of like with the stop Pop City Um
struggle down here in Atlanta. Uh, like when they weren't
getting anywhere at Atlanta City Council, they started going for
the people that were funding the Atlanta Police Foundation, so um,
(08:06):
Coca cola, um, other organizations. Or even if you want
to think about the voter suppression bill that passed in
the state legislature. Here, I guess sometime last year, folks
are going after Delta and all of these other corporations
that were like, oh, black Lives Matter or whatever, and
then you know, bankrolling Republican campaigns to the tune of
hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so another thing that
(08:28):
rises it raises for me is like how unfortunate it
is but necessary to like bring their receipts. Like everyone
knew he was shitty for a long time. It took
like a comprehensive compilation of all the reasons why and
like here are the links for people to be like,
you have a pretty strong case. I see that over
and over again with like anecdotal evidence versus pulling like
the actual receipts in a lot of organizing spaces where
(08:51):
it's like people are telling you something's wrong, but until
you find like the archival data where like the segregationist
senator was conspiring to destroy their neighborhood. Like that's when
you finally like, all right, I guess I'll do something
about it. So that also strikes me as really funny
about the circumstances that, right, well, um, you know, we'll
have to expand on this because it's it's uh, it's
(09:13):
opened up, you know, further conversation about um censorship and
what is censorship versus what isn't? Should Joe Rogan be silence?
Should he be removed from the platform, And I definitely
do want to dive into this stuff. We were also
we're supposed to talk about the NFL coaching situation, but
(09:33):
I think we'll save that for another day too. But
I mean, you know, before we go into what we're
talking about for the day, I do just want to
touch on that one subject. It's just if the only
thing that existed in this situation was the compilation of
the N word, I don't think it would be that
(09:55):
big of a deal. And just me personally well to
the problem, I mean, because here's the thing, right, is
like he gave an explanation for the N word compilation
in terms of like, oh, well, this was me using
it as a quote, and I was using I was
recalling it in the story. Now for me personally, it's
(10:16):
really not that complicated. There's twenty three n words in there,
and he gave like three examples of him, you know,
quoting it that it's like, all right, I'm gonna need
to see like a detailed breakdown of like how each
of these was a quote. But besides the point, if
just for the benefit of doubt, all of those where
he's quoting a story, he's telling a story or something
like that. I mean, it makes me still not like
(10:37):
Joe Rogan, but it makes me ultimately not really like
you know what I'm saying. It's like, oh yeah, I
wasn't listening to that show anyway, you know what I'm saying. Well,
but I think the aspects of like the jokes, and
then when you further do even deeper digging and you
look into the type of people that he's platformed, that
is that's the aspect and the element of it to me,
(10:58):
that is like all right, now this is still you know,
sensor removed, that's still like a subject for discussion, But
that is the aspect of Joe Rogan that is like, oh, no,
this is serious now because like you know, you can,
you can say whatever should you want. I don't care.
It doesn't have to affect me. I don't have to
listen to it. But if you're like luring people unsuspecting
(11:22):
people in by like, hey, we're interviewing m M a guy,
a comedian, a nuclear physicist, a white supremacist, you know
what I mean, And you're doing that cycle over and
over again. And I mean I've I've have people personally
in my life who otherwise are like normal, well adjusted
left leaning people that have fallen down the Joe Rogan
crypto fashionst pipeline. It's very easy, it's not difficult at all. Well,
(11:45):
I think it speaks to the fact that the left
has to get better at its media game. Um, like
you know, we need to we have to win the conversation.
We can't just say oh, um, like you, I guess
to a degree, like you shouldn't have these people on,
like I like, I don't think he should, but I
think i'd rather than like sensor him. I think we
(12:05):
just need to do a better job of convincing people
and creating our own pipeline to like liberatory ideas because
otherwise if this is all we have, and it's like
all you have is Joe Rogan as like a huge
name in podcasting, like that's partially our failure. That's true,
that's true, but it's not even you know, just personally,
I don't know what anybody else thinks. For me, it's
(12:27):
not even the platforming like people that I check out,
like Vosh who's a YouTuber, YouTube, twitch, political streamer, or
um even what is Homie's name? Who got fired from
CNN's Quomo Andrew Quomo, one of the quotma no no,
no no um black dude, he was a commentation Mark
(12:49):
Lamont Hill. Mark Lamont Hill on his channel, he's always
talking to right wingers in like these fringe like you know,
quasi alt right figures who are spewing their ship. The
difference is how you go about it. If Mark Lamont
Hill sits across from somebody and the person says, he,
you know, black people have an intrinsic violent gene that
(13:11):
makes them more violent than the other races. That's interesting.
Oh dude, really, dude, bros, that word dude like that,
you know that's not gonna be Vosh is going to
like push back like there's ways that you can do
it where it becomes a straw man to be like, oh,
you want a silence, you don't want people to be platformed.
You're afraid of discussion, you're afraid of debate, and it's
(13:31):
like how you engage with them? Yeah, if you're engaging critically,
actually have to engage like like like for people to
want for the Joe Rogan stands out there, a lot
of whom are straight up Nazis and a lot of
whom are just like people who don't give a funk
about issues like this and stuff like that. But if
(13:53):
they if they don't want people to jump to the
conclusion of yo, I heard Joe Rogan said this, so
I think this about him and everything that he is,
then you know it probably would have behooved Joe Rogan
over these years if like he could counter with clips
of him passionately going back at like some of these
guests that he has has on his show, because he
(14:15):
shouldn't be interacting with my Unapolis the same way as
he does with Cornel West if I'm supposed to think
that he's cool, yeah, or even just yeah, this like
engaging critically with both of them like instead of just
being huh, that's interesting, Oh black people skulls are like
con cave and commend whatever. Commended. But that's not racist.
(14:37):
I have supported Bernie, supported by you know, yeah you
said you might vote for him once whatever the other
thing you want to bring up about Joe Rogan, And
like I like to be hyperbolic sometimes because it's more entertaining. Um,
Like there's a level of like almost stochastic terrorism that
comes with uh, COVID misinformation. Um. And so like just
(14:58):
a couple of days ago January, a big fan of
his and friend who was you know, talking about his
show all the time on his Instagram, UM, comedian Christian
Cabrera UM died of COVID, you know, and often talked
in conjunction with you know, loving Joe Rogan about like
vaccine hesitancy and um it's also you know, spread a
(15:21):
lot of Joe Rogan's vaccine and misinformation. And now this
person is dead and so like he's a famous person,
you know, he's a comedian, but how many other people
who watched his show also We're like maybe that is
sketchy and like are dead now we don't know, we
don't have those numbers, whether you want to call that
murder or whatever, whatever. I don't think that it's even
(15:42):
debatable that that has happened. No, it's not even debatable.
It's just like there's there's no way to know the
impact negatively in a very literal, concrete way. But um,
we have a great on about Joe Rogan for a while,
So why don't we talk about like white people that
don't suck? So Yeah, this week we had the honor
(16:04):
to interview Joan and Loki Moholland Um. Joan Um was
a freedom writer, UM whose mug shot was called one
of the most iconic and American history. UM. She Um,
at the age of twenty three, had participated in over
fifty sent ins and demonstrations like the Freedom Rights the
Jackson Woolwrith set in the marchin Washington, and Um, you know,
(16:27):
knew some of the biggest names in the civil rights movement,
from Mega Evans, Mega Evans, Fanny lew Haymer, John Lewis,
Julian Bond. And so we'll be speaking with her as
well as her son, who has recently made a documentary
about her called an Ordinary Hero. Yeah, and he's the
executive director of the Joan Moholland Foundation. Um has actually
(16:51):
directed um Sello documentaries and Um wrote a book She
Stood for Freedom, Um, which was nominated for a war.
So they're both very involved into this day in civil
rights struggle in their own different ways. And the somewhat
details what we're talking about with regards to art and
the role of you know, shaping the political discourse in
(17:12):
the sense that, like Joe Rogans over here, it's kind
as podcast, which itself is a form of media that
is shaping the political discourse, and Um Loki, especially as
a filmmaker, is doing the same with his work. And
we have a lot of discussion in the interview about
the role of arts in movement making. So without further ado,
let's get on into it. We'll be right back with
(17:33):
that after the jump. So today I am super honored
to be joined by Joan and Loki Muholland. I will
let them introduce themselves in their own words, because the
breadth of experience they bring with them is kind of impressive.
It's sort of like, yeah, there's a lot, there's a
(17:54):
lot going on there, but yeah, whoever, like to start
tell us a little bit about yourselves and what y'all do.
Go on, boy, I was gonna say ladies first, but well,
my name is Loki maholl Um, I'm Jones's son. Um,
I'm a filmmaker, activins author, and uh yeah, we see
(18:15):
you represent over there. Yeah, Joan Mahaland I'm Loki's mama.
And Loki was after the Norse god of mischief or sidekick,
and he's lived up to it. Um, I'm a Delta.
I got into a lot of good trouble back in
the day, and you know, freedom writer and all that
(18:39):
sort of stuff. Good, Yeah you are. You knew a
lot of folks that people may recognize when you know
we're studying the history of the civil rights movement. Um,
Mr Evers, Danniel Hammer play people like that. It's Fannie
Hammer Hamer. Oh my god. If I've been saying that
around my whole life. See, this is what we need
better civics and lack history education in schools. Because I'm
(19:02):
growing up, I've taught myself most well. I feel like
most of what I know as an adult, like you know,
reading online, reading books, etcetera. Because they don't really teach
you what you need to know in school. Unfortunately, word was,
you know, the slaves were happy and the slave masters
were kind. Yeah. I actually have a friend who is
a professor at um University in Hartford who studies how
(19:24):
even back to like slavery texts from like ancient Greece,
the way that like the happy slave narrative was even
a thing then, and like how that then, you know,
factors into the way people sometimes use classics, like in
white supremacist movements to say like, oh, the purity of
the Western tradition. But yeah, like unless you unless you
really teach yourself, um, you can, yeah, get stuck with
(19:48):
some of these. Oh that's interesting back to the ancient
Greeks because when we had standardized testing, I think it's
pretty much out now in Virginia. But one of the
questions for the kids his foot, what did we get
from the Greeks? And you were supposed to say, you know, democracy,
voting rights, stuff like that. I said, no, no no, no,
(20:09):
that's that's all. We got voting rights for free property
owning white men. Precisely, we got some highways. Yeah, maybe
some like column shapes, you know, like some art, but yeah,
we're still trying to get voting rise today. And what
I'm saying, so, um, well, I'm really really excited to
(20:32):
have you all here today. Particularly I'm super interested in
the way that movement work manifests in the various different
kinds of things you do. And also we've got two
generations of people here. Um, we're doing the good work. UM.
And I think that like the idea of intergenerational like
liberation movement struggle is not when we talk about enough
(20:54):
like they got the young kids out here, like the
Sunrise Movement or etcetera. And then we study you know,
civil rights history um as if it you know, would
happened long ago, and like we don't need to be
marching um anymore things like that. So, um, how do
you see your work from two different generations overlapping or
(21:15):
diverging at certain points? Well, I say my generation got
rid of the segregation laws underlying racism. It's still there
and that's what folks need to work on. Now. Um.
We marched, we sat in, we went to jail, um,
(21:36):
you know things like that. We could sing real good,
except for me, I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
That the Jackson, Mississippi. The joke we had a little
joke in the movement that if the police were marching
on us, they just pushed Joan to the front and
she would sing loudly right in their face and they
(21:57):
would back off because I say, Okay, what is that? Yeah, yeah, backup,
But you're a singer two on top of everything logy yeah, yeah, yeah,
play guitar on Hey. Well, maybe we'll come back to
the question about like generational differences, because we're kind of
(22:19):
starting to talk about art. And that's something that I
don't understand. I don't know a lot about from my
studying of like civil rights and like other liberation movements,
is like what the role of art was during that era? Looky,
you know, brilliant filmmaker and as I as a hip
hop artist, see the potential for use of that um
too spread stories that bring people into the movement and
(22:41):
educate people, etcetera. UM. But Joan, like, what what role
did like music and film and art and stuff like
that play in in your time? Well, film want a
big deal, except you know, watching the evening news on
TV and UM singing. That was the backbone of the movement.
That is what gave us strength and courage to keep
(23:02):
on keeping on mhm um it was you know, songs
that were sort of adapted from the church songs and
it's it's it sounded if you weren't listening to the
words like you were in church when we had these
Yankees coming down and you know, they were good people,
but they sang like they were on a picket line,
(23:24):
a Union picket line, yeah, which they didn't have a sing. Art. Well,
you needed art for posters and picket signs and things
like that. So that was sort of where it was at.
And so, um, Loki today working in film and you know,
a variety of media. Honestly, Um, what do you see
(23:44):
as the role of art in movement making today? Well,
I mean, and I want to kind of um like
what my mom says, but roll back a little bit further,
because obviously art was used even um during the time
of slavery. Yeah, absolutely used to give direction and how
to get north. Artistry that went into quilts. Um, the
(24:05):
literature was a key component. And oh gosh, and the
abolitionist movement. Yeah, yeah, you know, so those those sort
of things, and it continued. I mean obviously during my
mom's time, I mean, film was used as well. Um,
the a lot of times that was you the documentary.
It's not like it is today when we have so
much more access to that. It was more underground. Um.
(24:29):
But that was that burgeoning movement of art to really
kind of push forward these ideals, um, and these and
these alternative narratives to the prescribed history that was taught
in our textbooks and as what we're seeing today as well, UM,
and continuously obviously, UM, you know during the eighties and
nineties in particular, you know, with public Enemy in w
(24:50):
A and so forth. I mean all of that. Um,
those scenes were just these narratives that people hadn't heard before.
You know, when I say people, I mean America. So
they control the media pretty much. Um, the photographers, with
the press, they were powerful. I say, you take it
to the lunch counter, the lawyers take it to the court,
(25:13):
but the press takes it to the world. And when
things will start flying, the press was in every bit
as much danger as the demonstrators, and sometimes they were
the first ones attacked. So the picture of the Jacks
and Woolworths sit in which I'm sure you've seen what
I'm having sugar dumped on my head, as I like
to say, like I wasn't sweet enough already, but that
(25:38):
went worldwide. It was colorized. Color was added to the
black and white. They didn't have color photography and the presdent.
But in the Paris Match front page above the centerfold,
the most powerful place in the newspaper. And this was
the most powerful newspaper in Europe. It was like the
New York Times. So that you know. Went and when
(26:02):
I was in South Africa, um a few years ago,
thinking of the music um down in Cape Town, a
bunch of US ladies went to um A school for
a morning of volunteer work and I ended up since
I used to work in the schools up here. Um well,
(26:23):
I was up from Georgia. You know, it's still down
south and Arlington Commany Lee's hometown. But um we told
the students what we had, what we did back in
the States. We had Q and A, and then we
had our closing statement, and I said, back in the
days of our civil rights movement, we had a song
(26:44):
we shall overcome. Now. My intention was to say, whatever
difficulty you're facing in life, tell yourself those three words
and things will get better. No, I got cut right
off by the school teacher. This is a room packed
with fourth graders and he said, oh, we sang that
song in our partid demonstrations class. Let's all sing it together.
(27:08):
So there I was, over fifty years since our civil
rights you know, the student civil rights movement, singing we
Shall Overcome in Cape Town, South Africa, in the room
packed with fourth or fifth graders, and it just about
brought me to tears. So it traveled. Yeah. I think
(27:29):
about that. I think about as I said previously, about
the public enemy and w A I mean Spike Lee
Yea works and these messages that were putting forth that uh,
why America hadn't heard and didn't really to understand or
want to understand. And if you go back and and
I mean it was almost it's like a canary in
(27:50):
the mind sort of thing. I was like, wow, I
mean all of that has come to pass. And then
some yeah, aldy today you know what's uh, you know
the the my mom was talking about the press and
the cameras and stuff. Obviously the quickest way to censor
that was his bash a camera. I'm about the film
which they did, which they did, and today we have
(28:11):
you know, those those other techniques now of of of
blocking channels and or streams on social media and so
forth saying you know this this content is offensive or
whatever else and being these filters now. Um, so they
did that with the Evening News and get h Yeah,
that's right. Difficulties Uh yeah, like ever speech. Um, I
(28:37):
just think about like, you know, these these new opportunities
that exist like TikTok and so forth. That's that is
a very quick way to get the message across and
how people are learning. Yeah, no, I mean there's still
space for longer formats and so forth, and obviously the
tools that are there to share those messages. Probably part
of the pitfall of that is so much disinformation that
(28:58):
gets out there, um, the lack of research, the lack
of study, the lack of understanding and context and so forth.
So there's and then obviously the immediate feedback that you
get from people who and the bombing, you know, the
trolling and so forth that takes place media to just
kind of discredit and take people down rabbit holes away
(29:19):
from the core message. Someone I did a post this
the other day about a mere luck I took nine seconds,
and someone said, well, it's actually a six second because
there was a wait for three of them, like Okay, okay,
right exactly, yeah, yeah, the way people parts details to
de legitimize, like very real thing. Oh, we used humor
(29:42):
also in the movement. If your mama ever told you
not to drink coffee because it would turn you black,
you know, back and back in the days before black
was beautiful, I am living proof that it ain't. So
mama probably just wanted all that coffee for her so self. Yeah,
she could have probably used some of that sugar they
(30:03):
dumped on you though, So you know, sweeten up a
little bit. But I think you started to get into
my next question. Looky, it's about um. I mean, we've
spoken really to two parts of it. I'm really interested
in the way you sort of describe the long history
of the arts in various movements, highlighting the way that
even the abolitionist movement for the abolition of slavery, you know,
(30:25):
literature and songs were so critical. Um. And so I'm curious,
you know, sticking to this theme of intergenerational struggle, UM,
what parts do you see yourself carrying forward from previous
movements having been very um, I guess in meshed in
its history growing up with Joan and what sorts of
(30:47):
new things. I mean, you mentioned TikTok already, but what
are some of the differences that you try to lean
into in your modern day work. Um, there's so much differences.
For me, it's, um, you know, I've I've been asked
repeatedly what I have set the lunch counter, And I'm like, yeah,
I don't know if I would have, but I don't
(31:07):
have to because my mother already did this kind of Yeah,
those different there's like things like that, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And and it really it's we all have a role
to play. Not everyone could set the lunch counters. Not
everyone this position. Uh, there was threats for on families,
you know, they could lose their tuition all these different jobs,
or houses be bombed and whatever else. Um. And and
(31:30):
some people you know this, they just weren't at that
place at that time, you know. And and so they
found other ways to contribute. Um. So I use the
gifts that I've been given to you move that work forward,
move that message forward, and to highlight the history. At
the end of the day. Um, whether we're gonna go
back to abolitionists or civil rights movement or any sort
(31:52):
of movement, it really comes down to that one on
one opportunity of seeing those individuals, seeing those people sitting
at the lunch counter, that you have to actually confront it.
It's right there in front of you that you just
can't replicate in a film or or you know, the
photograph or anything yeah yeah, or rap song. It just
(32:14):
becomes those The art becomes a way to motivate people, um,
you know, to inspire, to inform, But really it's to
do all that to get you down to those lunch counters,
on the buses or in the streets. Carrying the signs
and putting forth that message to move things forward and
designing a petition online is not you know, really bringing
(32:38):
about a big change. It's just making you feel good.
Mm hmm. Yeah. I had post a TikTok earlier about
getting off Twitter and like getting in the streets, whether
that's knocking on your neighbor's doors or marching or go
into city hall, whatever you gotta do. Um, but yeah,
I like the idea of everyone having their role to play.
That kind of makes me rethink my question and a
(33:00):
lot of the things we need to do are the same,
and that like certain people put their bodies online, certain
people's are documenting it. It's really about folks finding the
intersection of their passion and what the gifts they're given
with the tools that are available at the time. So
now we do have TikTok and Instagram to like make
sure those images of protests are circulated. Um, so it's
(33:21):
the same kind of project, just new tools. Yeah, and
and and and you know, I mean we're in a
capital society. Money makes the world turn. I mean you
had people, um, beyond the Harry Belafontes of the world.
You had actually white women whose husbands were probably either
in the clan or in the White Citizens Council and
(33:42):
Jackson who were giving money to the Mays, to the
help Right to give back to Medgarrever's office. They knew
they couldn't give it directly, so they would sneak it in.
And this is this is known. There was a gentleman's
great story. He um, his gift was robbing jewelry stores. Hey, whatever,
that's what you got. He would time out the train
(34:03):
and how long it would take the police to get
to the jewelry store, rob the store, hopped the train,
go the next town, sell the goods to rent some repeat,
and that money went back to the act. Now they
had no idea where it was coming from. They did,
they might be like, yeah, that's amazing, but yeah, I mean, hey,
you use the gifts you've been given the stores and
(34:26):
selling the goods for money. But obviously, yeah, I could
use being white to the advantage of the movement. Could
um blend into the crowd and be an observer of
what was happening. I could At Glen Echo Amusement Park
just over in Maryland, I could go in and buy tickets.
(34:47):
And I heard it buy me to have a ticket
for each ride you got on, ticket in hand, and
I could go back out and hand him out from
the Howard students who popped on the Merry Go Round
ticket in hand and got arrested. What were the passes
that you gave me when I was a two blue student.
I went up to the state legislature and got a
(35:09):
handful of passes to you know, sit in the galleries
and watch the legislature debate things. Went back, gave those
to Mega and he handed him out to the most
prominent black ministers he could find, and they got arrested.
Gallery pass in hand, m hm. And by the next
(35:30):
day the law had changed you had to personally get
your pass from your representatives, but there would a number
of times just being white could be used to the
advantage of the movement. So you got to use what
you got. Yeah. Yeah, And I think people are still
waking up to that today of thinking about how I
mean broadly people say use your privilege, etcetera. But the
(35:53):
specific ways for us, like, yeah, use use your whiteness
to like get in those spaces where others can um
and things like that I'm doing. I had one question
for you, So we talked a little bit about what
Loki takes from movements before. But I was wondering if
there's anything that young movement makers are doing today that
you find interesting or inspiring. Well, I find the complete
(36:16):
diversity of the crowds and the marches, to say nothing
of the size of the crowds and the marches. But
I think you've got a much you know, like a
no majority massive demonstration. Um, we didn't have that. We
had just a handful of Wie or Hispanic or Asian
(36:36):
folks in our activities and marches. Um, well, we didn't
have so many marches because you all get arrested. Um
before we got down the block before and the police
are even joining the marchers and protesters with them, mailing
(36:57):
to pray with them, if just for those my mind. Um,
that makes me think as well about talking about like
then and now that and now so at the time,
from my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jones,
it seemed like a lot of folks that took part
in the civil rights movement were somewhat demonized. I saw
recently a comic from I think the Birmingham News where
(37:18):
they were painting MLK as UM starting riots even though
non violence was the core of the movement. And then
yet today the same people that are disrupting modern movements
sending the National Garden when folks are marching and tear
gassing folks are heralding um civil rights movement leaders at
the same time. And so I was wondering what you
(37:40):
both make of trends like that where you see a
sort of contradiction in the way folks um treat both
historic and modern civil rights movements. Yeah, well, I mean
immediately comes to mind as someone like Ted Cruise, who
in one breath will praise quote doctor King and his
convenie and then say that appointing a you know, even
(38:03):
the idea of appointing a black woman is an affront
to an insult to black women, and uh, you know,
and inequality, which it was just absurd to begin with,
like he cares um. But yeah, you know Dr King
when he when he was killed, study percent of white
America you know, didn't like him, if you holes and stuff.
(38:23):
But now you know, it's it's weaponizing Dr King to
push forward. Uh you know these agendas of like you know,
anti CRT, which of course not taught taught in school
is not even a Yeah, it's a whole thing to
roll back, you know, the narrative that they feel uncomfortable with.
Um because then and and quite frankly don't even understand. Yeah,
(38:46):
it's it's it's a fascinating thing. Um do you do
you even contemplate? But uh, that's that's where it's so
vital for the rest of us to be informed. And
and I when I have people who quote Dr King
like that, like, hey, yes, that's wonderful. What about the
rest of his speech? Yeah, do you know any words
after the first seven Well do you know the words
(39:07):
that you said before that? Oh? Yeah, yeah, everything before
that was about reparations I mean, let's talk about that
for a moment. It's talking about that. Let's talk about
you know, a federal job guarantee. Let's talk about the
evils of capitalism and militarism. Nobody wants to get into that.
But John, from your perspective, having lived through that and
seeing the way that people treat it today, what is
that like for you? Um? Aside from comical, Um, they
(39:32):
want to idealize of what we did and we were
not perfectly made mistakes. Um, there are things we could
have done better. Um, all that, But um, they want
to use us as you know that we did it
all and they don't need to do anything, and they
(39:54):
need to look deeper. I mean, like I said, we
took care of the laws for segregation, but there is
so much more the racism behind, and then the forms
that the racism takes. Um. Housing, Yeah, whose neighborhood does
(40:14):
the interstate care up? Where does the school money go?
It's not you know that some schools get hand me
downs anymore like it used to be. But certainly, um,
they say, you know, I'm in Arlington, and they say
South Arlington gets the least and North Arlington gets the
most because the rich folks lived there in the power base.
(40:37):
But um, it doesn't need to be that way. Discrimination
against people because of their first language, um, their ethnic origins,
their religion, all that stuff. I was impressed a few
years ago when the anti Muslim thing got going that
(40:58):
college kids, girls and some places, we're walking around with
their classmates wearing his jobs, just like the classmates were.
But there are lots of ways to show solidarity. There's
lots more forms of discrimination that we now recognize. And
(41:18):
part of that comes to mind as well, is how
we you know, so part of it is like Dr
King was a comedy, right, all that sort of stuff.
It's like the Washington football team will now be hailed
to their and I didn't think about that. I love
that it's funny, but um, you know, so so those sames,
those same terms are thrown around. They don't even know
what they mean. But um, I think what's really fascinating
(41:42):
is there's part of this element of the civil rights
movements kind of safe to talk about. Well you don't
talk about why it happened, of course, but there's this,
you know, the sort of glorification if you will. You know,
there's the freedom writers and the sit ins and all this,
you know, John Lewis and the other impettish Ridge and
Dr King. I had a dream all that sort of
stuff because it means hey problem solved. And I actually
(42:07):
did a TikTok video on this recently, just talking about
you know what scares um white America about teaching history
is that it's there. It's it's their own history. Because
my age, when I was in elementary school, Dr King
had only been killed, you know, sixteen years earlier. So
World War Two had only ended about forty years earlier.
(42:29):
So um, if you if you take today and roll
back that same time period forty years ago, forty years ago, Uh,
the Philadelphia Police Department was bombing their own city and
people know about that stuff. Off in your math. World
War Two ended, and you were in elementary school and
(42:54):
the late mentally seventies, right, I wasn't how much schooling
to eighties? Mom? I was ten years old, nineteen eight. Okay,
Well that's store up forty years okay, mother. Nonetheless, world
War two was raging forty years earlier. Yeah, that's let's safe.
(43:14):
The message your worst subject and you're trying to school
me on a mother, But if you go back one
years ago, Rodney King was beaten. Four years ago, you know,
James Bird was was lynched Jasper, Texas, right dragged behind
a pickup truck, chained by his feet till his body
fell apart. Ten years ago, is Trayvon. Yeah, these were
(43:35):
the things that that's the type same type of stuff
they would have been teaching us back then. If they
were even going to teach that. They weren't going to
teach it. But so if you take a look at
that time frame, that's what really scares him because they
were alive during that. They understand that, and they it's like, wow,
that happened on our watch and did yeah, And and
(43:56):
the history of racism is so it's taught as black
history when it's really white history, and that it's a
lot of white people as well, folks like Joan that
were out there marching with people. It was like a
shared struggle for some folks, but is just straight out
in our US history, it's a sewers history. Yeah, I
(44:20):
was very I was very interested in something you said, Joan,
about how you all made mistakes. There's things that you
would have done differently, and that's certainly not a piece
of history that they teach people in the in the
way that they idealize the struggle at the time we
levon Brown. Mom talks about that my jog memory a
little bit. But um, when there was that schism in Snick,
(44:41):
the Snake leadership between John, Yeah, I think I think
the thing that I I kind of focus on at
times about the civil rights movement is we kind of
forget you know, we we we focus on these key
singular moments, the Greensboro sit in and the freedom rise
into setness. Um, but you know, and assume that one
(45:01):
thing took care of everything, and that you know, we
can condense these things down to just a couple of
days here and there and hoof everything. Saw. I mean,
Greensboro did not fix Jackson. Greensboro fixed Greensboro Jackson Jackson
right right. We all need to work within the space
where we live, as my mom would say. And that's
(45:22):
the hippies say, you know, bloom where you're planted right right. Um,
we tell kids, don't try to change the world, change
your world, whatever that might be. And what for my
mom it was the South right want I didn't care
about them. Let them fix their own stuff. They got
their own different problems that they'll tackle. Well, you know,
Malcolm X was working on that, right, so right, yeah, yeah,
(45:43):
but yeah, I really appreciate you raising that because I
think I speak to like middle schools, high schools all
the time, and I've been thinking a lot about how this,
like civil rights history is kind of painted for a
lot of kids like something that happened somewhere else as
part of the way where they're trying to discourage people
from like carrying those struggles forward. It's like, oh, they
were marching, Yeah, they're marching on Washington, They're marching down
(46:03):
in Mississippi. Was like, no, they were marching in Athens, Georgia,
Like we had our own movement here. Yeah, they don't
want you to know about because at the university, Wait,
you when integrating. Yeah, yes, I do recall that they
don't teach you about that. That inspired me to, um
(46:25):
go to two Galoup that watching that so close to
where my family was from Nicholson, that if integration was real,
I was thinking, it's got to be a two way street.
Maybe I should applied to a colored school, not being
put like term then and um I talked it over
with my friends. You know, the leadership of Snick and
(46:47):
they thought it was a good idea. And somebody said, well,
if you're gonna do what you may as well go
to Mississippi. Those students haven't done anything yet, meaning demonstrations,
maybe you can help them. And so I applied, and
two of the lutives. It was the only nationally accredited
school that colored students could go to. Sorry about that phone,
(47:08):
I don't know how to remut it. It's all that
I got a baby yodel in the background, we got phones,
It's all. It's an orchestract. And I was accepted in
two Glue, even though my high school up here refused,
very pointedly, without spelling it out, to send my transcripts. Um.
But they still accepted me and said, oh well we'll
(47:30):
take you on your Duke University transcripts and go on
there for one year, reported company when I wanted to
go back to school, and it was right after the riots.
And that is such an interesting idea that I don't
think people and brave enough that like integration does have
to be a two way stream. Um, it's not just
about like advancing, you know, getting people of color and
(47:51):
positions of power and into these white spaces. It's also
like I got this one friend that's like, why dude
who like shows up at like all of these like
all black events, cetera. Does it just happened to be
in black communities. But he's out there doing the work
of meeting people, of helping people, of talking to folks. Um.
But so many people are scared to do that because
there is helping green racism. Like even if you try
(48:13):
to be an anti racism, it's like, well if I
show up, like people will laugh at me or I won't,
you know, I don't want to understand, etcetera. But that's
a really important thing for us to remember as well.
And there are lots of different ways to make a difference.
I mean I was sitting in and all that. Then
I had a family and that really I had to
(48:35):
take care of the kids. But at their elementary school
I made a difference. Um, I particularly one of and
a number of different ways. But the music teacher who
lived a couple of blocks so I may wanted to
a good song to teach for I think it was,
you know, Black History Month, and I said, we'll lift
(48:56):
every voice and sing. He had not a blue but
she looked it up. She wanted to teach it to something,
to teach to the chorus to sing it and um
our big international dinner. She ended up teaching that song
to every kid in the school and they sang it
(49:18):
at the international dinner with the chorus standing on the stage.
But every kid, you know, singing on probably the first
I'm you know, not a nine point nine for St.
Suard's the first formerly all white school in the county,
if not the state, for all the kids to learn
lift every voice and sing. But there were a number
(49:40):
of other things too, But the biggest deal in my book,
it's not just like study again, like the big event studying,
you know what happened in Greensburg's also just knowing about
cultural artifacts from our communities, like taking the time to
learn a very important song test and things like that. Yeah,
I took care. They had all these white doll baby
(50:00):
and olders sounds kindergarten class, and it was the girl's
corner and the boys corner. Well, I took care of
the doll babies by making a bunch of cloth dolls
out of different skin tone. Perhaps I had an interchangeable
clothes and those white plastic doll babies disappeared, and then
I said, well, now, my son, he's going to be
(50:22):
upset by you pauling that the girl's corner because he
likes he wanted an ironing board, small ironing board for Christmas,
and he's not gonna be happy about you saying that's
a girl thing. Well it quickly changed to the housekeeping
corner and the workshop corner. When the school I was working,
and I would go in with the second grade classes
(50:44):
every year and read books about segregation, Dr King and
the American South. I mean, that's why they will play
picture books to the second graders and alternate those with
um South Africa part time that Nelson Mandela mm hmm.
I've had now decades later, adults walk up to me
(51:07):
and remind me they remember when I taught them all
that in class. So I think I made a difference
in my small ways. Oh absolutely, absolutely, Yeah. I really
appreciate you sharing so much history I didn't know about
and reframing the history that I knew. But I also
love to ask you all about what you're working on
these days. So um, let's start with you. Look, what's
what are you getting into these days? Oh? Gosh, who
(51:29):
am I working? On right now. What are you doing
these days? You know, I've discovered TikTok after a while.
I've been working on that, sharing a lot of content there, um,
you know, and yeah, more of my mom's stories, kind
of stuff you don't hear about from the sol I
love it. Yeah, and then trying to interject a few
(51:49):
little things that I have as well. Um, you know,
I'm just we finished shooting a film, a little short documentary, um,
about a gentleman who every day he goes He's ninety
two years old and every day he goes the Evan
Pettish Bridge to pray for the state trooper that beat
him on bloody Sunday. Um. I'm working on a whole
(52:11):
diverse the equity inclusion training modules you know, that will
be a whole online platform, but that that incorporates my
mom's story and in the various films now that I've
done and using those as kind of a training tools
as well. Um, you know, working on an Emmett til film.
That's been a long process that continues. You know, they
(52:33):
just got kind of gag with with the COVID and
so forth. I'm starting to yeah, okay, let's start, let's
go back and reevaluate that a little more and than another.
Now working on another season of our Uncomfortable Truth podcast,
so we're gonna cramped up for that. So yeah, you
know the usual, the usual, you know the usual. Well
(52:57):
that's a really exciting and what about you and John?
What you what I got in the fire these days? Well,
I can't march anymore because my knees have given out,
but um, I can run my mouth pretty good. I
do a lot of public speaking. The Deltas had me
out to Memphis the alumni chapter, and I was talking
(53:17):
out there and I just um. I was talking at
a Hampton Sydney University and um with Loki along with
me on this and showing video clips in Farmville, Virginia,
which was crucial to getting the schools integrated in Virginia
and even went into Brown versus board. I'm moving to
(53:39):
high school and um, I speak in local elementary schools,
you know, colleges and anybody that invites me. And if
I got transportation issues, they got to pay for my transportation.
Put me up and feed me somewhere, private home, five
star hotel either way. Yeah, run in my mouth is
(54:00):
my main thing. Now. I love that I'm going to
remember that for the rest of my life as long
as the brain cell still work. Cut me off and
they don't. Yeah, oh man, Well, um, any closing words
of hope for our listeners. Y'all have been at it
for a minute, creating beautiful art and sharing beautiful stories
to you know, keep this movement alive. But what's one
(54:22):
last thing you'd like people to know as they as
we part ways? Um, to give them the do something?
Get out there? Yeah? I feel that things things do
get better. People didn't believe slavery went in, but it did,
and I believe Jim Crow was gonna end, but it did. Um.
But it ended because you know, like the echo the
(54:45):
words of FAINTI low hammer. Uh, they were stick and
tired of being sick and tired. We we we gotta
keep pressing forward because the other side's not tired. Um.
But yeah, how do people keep in touch with your work?
Find your work? Um? You know, continue to learn from
you on Obviously you know what I said before. We're
(55:07):
all we're on TikTok so Loki Malholland is it is
it a page a channel where they I'm really new
to TikTok. Also so yeah, I think a page but
I don't know. But it's fire fire content. Please go
check it out. Yes, yeah, we know. We're on Instagram
and Facebook and stuff foundation with Mama's name on it. Yep,
I was good. So if you go to our website
(55:30):
www dot the j t M Foundation dot org. Um.
I don't know why I put the www at the
beginning of that. That shows how one way I am now.
Um yeah, I mean so the jt M Foundation dot
org um, and that's where we have h we have
scholarship programs there that we're doing. We've got obviously our films.
(55:51):
People can contribute. Please go check out the jt M
Foundation dot org to learn more. Follow Loki on TikTok
and Instagram at Loki Mohammed at Loki Moholland and keep
up the fight. You know, they've been out here doing
it for a minute, creating beautiful, our cham peutiful stories.
But we're gonna make our own new stories, carrying forward
the fight. But yeah, thank you, thank you for being here.
(56:13):
Thank you a yo, we are back. That was Joan
Maholland and her son Loki. That was quite a robust conversation.
You'll have there. Yeah. I tried not to get into
like specific like what was it light to meet megger ever,
but still kind of like understand more of just like
what lessons can be drawn from the work that they
(56:35):
have done. And so I hope that's been helpful to
everybody listening and thinking about your own role in movements,
the work that is still left to be done, etcetera.
I definitely feel like I got a lot of that. No,
you definitely did. Definitely did. And you'll make sure that
you'll check out that documentary so you can get a
more robust picture of her full biography and the things
that she did well I do. Oh, you know what,
(56:58):
we gotta throw out a congratulate sations Mariah, our homie,
the person who you've never heard who spends us the beats.
Joel brought a new bundle of joy. Dad's dad is
now Dad's dad times too. Congratulations Joel. He's not going
to hear this because he's probably like knee deep and
(57:20):
dirty diverse right now. But who's taken over? I think
it's Taylor taken over? A Taylor. You know, we know
you're new to this, Taylor, but we we gotta wrap
to close this out, So can you can you pick
through one of those instrumentals of mine and play something? Yeah, wait,
(57:44):
no reparation to get in and sitting in their bodies
on the line, get in jail the kit and fund
dement that. But right at the time they deep but
not the John no surprised. They's saying the times to
the best on the right and like they would have
set up but really they would have set up a
wouldn't cross and burning like some terrorizing the neighbors of
what they hoods up. They really shook watching all the
(58:05):
people out they mobilized, looking back and them Okay, like
I know that guy, they don't even know to have
motherfucker's I know you're whack when the revolutions over exploded
like a nova. I just took a ride to Croker
and nobody pulled me over. I got the love Song
site and ain't nobody sober. You know my name dope night.
My mamma called me toga go and smoke up. It's
all legal. We all regal all ball. No such things
(58:25):
as small people, gun sticks, pots and pans were fought evil.
Now we got plots of land for a zero told
you not to dreams that it's all in your hand.
They told you not to lead to the followers. Stand now,
you can get a good job keeping all of your dreads,
and we can party without caring. Go and call the fans.
Everybody dapping on one having a fuss. Came a long
damn way from the back of the bus, and we
let in the white folks that we happen to trust,
(58:47):
and everybody else can come, but as black as a fuck. Yeah,
waiting a reparation, Oh knife, Frank, we are waiting on reparations. Peace.
(59:07):
Listen to Waiting on Reparations on Apple Podcasts or wherever
you get your podcast.
You are listening Waiting on Reparations, a production of I
Heart Radio. Yo Yo Yo, you are listening to Waiting
on Reparations. My name is Dope Knife Frank, and we're
here and we're back in effect another week. It is
the second week of Black History Month. How are you
(00:24):
holding up and celebrating? I'm good. So one way I'm
celebrating is um posting. So the full archives of the
Black Panther newspaper are available online, and so I've been
posting just pages of it, you know, with the ones
with like cool visuals as well as like descriptions of
what they contain. So today, you know, I've posted the
Black Panther ten point Program. A couple of days ago,
(00:46):
i posted about UM Huey Newton UM, one of the
founders of the Black Panthers, And so I'm just trying
to my best to like elevate the parts of black
history that people don't want to talk about because it
does not serve their political agenda, um and things like that. So, so, yeah,
what about you. What I have been celebrated. I mean,
(01:08):
this is kind of like some down the line sort
of celebration. But one of the things I'm trying to organize.
I'm trying to put together a little festival in Savannah,
like a music festival, but have it be like a
fundraiser for Stacy Abrams. What's up? Yeah, either either Stacy
Abrams or something to do with Georgia voting. One of
the two things. I'm just gonna focus around. I know,
(01:30):
I know. That's like I'm planning it to be around
like four you know, planning it now. So it's technically
my Black History mont celebration. You know, who's not celebrating
Black history a lot of it's not only been disinvited
from the cook out, like he's not even allowed to
eat barbecue. Wait, it was Joe Rogan ever really invited
(01:51):
to the cookout this whole that Yeah, when everything was
going down, it was one of those rare occasions where
I was on Twitter like to start my day and
just was kind of vegging out on Twitter for most
of the most of the night before in the day,
so like I kind of saw all this ship happening
in real time and like for real, like first it
was the Okay, So for anybody who doesn't know, so
(02:14):
Joe Rogan, one of the biggest podcasters in the world.
He hosts a show called The Joe Rogan Experience. Back
in it was it was an independent podcast for years,
crazy millions of listeners and and subscribers, all that whole
thing you got At this point, I'm just assuming that
everybody knows who Joe Rogan and what his podcast is. Right.
(02:34):
So a couple of years ago he gets a deal
with Spotify for a hundred million dollars, which now makes
him a mainstream corporate entity. I don't give a funk
what anybody says, but um, you know, Joe Rogan's had
He's had problematic instances in things on his show for
a while, but it's all kind of taken ahead and
(02:57):
come into public eye with his COVID disinformation that he
spreads on his show, and that led to this whole
standoff with Spotify or Spotify standing by their hundred million
dollar investment. But you've got artists like Neil Young and
Jody Mitchell and others who were taking their music off
the platform and effort to not be associated with the
COVID misinformation. But uh SCAD graduate Savannah College of Art
(03:21):
and Design graduate and Grammy Award winning artists India Iri
Sook to her Instagram to kind of point out something
that I in particular had been pointing out about Joe
Rogan just amongst my friends and stuff like that in
personal conversation for years now, which is a lot of
the racist quasi Nazi ship that goes on on the
Joe Rogan podcast. It's dispersed enough that you know, you
(03:45):
could watch ten episodes in a row and not encounter it.
But when it's there, it's there, and it's they're pretty
strong and indie. A re started off by running a
montage Joe Rogan using the N word that was followed
up by a joke that he told about going to
a black neighborhood in Philly to see the movie Planet
of the Apes and a commentary about how the all
(04:08):
black crowd was like the Planet of the Apes, and
so on and so forth. Joe Rogan issued an apology
um for all of the cries of cancel culture, there's
not really any cancelation going on Spotify standing by him
saying that silencing is not the way to handle it. Um.
But for the most part, it's it's just illuminated this
(04:29):
particular aspect of the Joe Rogan Show for the general
public for normans who weren't really paying attention, whether they
are supporters of his or detractors. So, um, that is
the situation as it stands. Like I said, there's not
really any consequence to be taken out of it except
for his apology and that, you know, the opinions are
(04:52):
now you know, it seems like the opinions are now
solidly formed. You know, you've either got the people who
are like, oh, I don't think that's a big deal,
or you've got the people who are like, hey, this
is what I've been saying. Joe Rogan has been on
this ship for a long time. And then you've got
a bunch of regular people who are now either oh,
I didn't know Joe Rogan was like that funk that guy,
(05:12):
or you know, the opposite swing of that pendulum. I
didn't know Joe Rogan was like that. Awesome, I'm with it. So, so,
what have you been thinking of this whole thing, whatever,
however much of it you've been consuming. Yeah, I mean
I've long been skeptical of Joe Rogan and like the
Joe Rogan too like crypto fascist pipeline um sort of
(05:34):
veiled in the fact that he does have many different
kinds of people on his show, his platforming of folks
like Stephen Wilno, like um, even Elon Muskle's just like
Notisanapolis and only know of him because of It's interesting
to me that this hadn't come come out earlier, Like,
(05:57):
you know, if people are watching his podcast religiously and
he has this, you know, a million strong fan base,
how did no one bring up before now that there
were a hundred and eleven podcast where he used a
racial slurn, which I then think, yeah, okay, um, yeah, no,
that's all I said right now. Well, I mean, um, okay.
(06:19):
So one of the biggest reason why I think it's
not even necessary that people didn't notice, but he wasn't
like mainstream then as big and popular as his podcast was.
I think having that Spotify corporate stamp, Fortune five hundred
stamp on it, it now makes all of that stuff,
(06:40):
you know, um issue for him because beforehand, I mean,
for example, the the video of him telling the Planet
of the Apes joke. I saw that shipped back in surprisingly,
do you know who put that out? Alex Jones was
the one who first put that out. Him and Joe Rogan.
(07:00):
We're beefing. Alex Jones was like, all right, well, if
me and Joe Rogan is not gonna have the other show.
Everybody thinks he's so cool, he's got a black daughter,
and listen to what he says about black people. And
then that happened in the summer of nineteen, you know,
and that's something like you see it and you you know,
a it was getting posted around, but it doesn't really
matter because ultimately it's just this dude's podcast in his
(07:23):
basement or in a spare room in his house that
he's doing on his own. So there is no when
you don't have like when there's no corporate entity to
pressure you know about it, then I don't know, I
think it can easily slip through the right you got.
You gotta go after the money. You can't just criticize
Joe Rogan for what he does. Anybody in the basement
(07:45):
can do what he does. You like he has. He
has the prominence that he does because he has the
backing of Spotify. It's the backing of huge corporations, right,
and so you gotta go after the money. That makes
you think of like with the stop Pop City Um
struggle down here in Atlanta. Uh, like when they weren't
getting anywhere at Atlanta City Council, they started going for
the people that were funding the Atlanta Police Foundation, so um,
(08:06):
Coca cola, um, other organizations. Or even if you want
to think about the voter suppression bill that passed in
the state legislature. Here, I guess sometime last year, folks
are going after Delta and all of these other corporations
that were like, oh, black Lives Matter or whatever, and
then you know, bankrolling Republican campaigns to the tune of
hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so another thing that
(08:28):
rises it raises for me is like how unfortunate it
is but necessary to like bring their receipts. Like everyone
knew he was shitty for a long time. It took
like a comprehensive compilation of all the reasons why and
like here are the links for people to be like,
you have a pretty strong case. I see that over
and over again with like anecdotal evidence versus pulling like
the actual receipts in a lot of organizing spaces where
(08:51):
it's like people are telling you something's wrong, but until
you find like the archival data where like the segregationist
senator was conspiring to destroy their neighborhood. Like that's when
you finally like, all right, I guess I'll do something
about it. So that also strikes me as really funny
about the circumstances that, right, well, um, you know, we'll
have to expand on this because it's it's uh, it's
(09:13):
opened up, you know, further conversation about um censorship and
what is censorship versus what isn't? Should Joe Rogan be silence?
Should he be removed from the platform, And I definitely
do want to dive into this stuff. We were also
we're supposed to talk about the NFL coaching situation, but
(09:33):
I think we'll save that for another day too. But
I mean, you know, before we go into what we're
talking about for the day, I do just want to
touch on that one subject. It's just if the only
thing that existed in this situation was the compilation of
the N word, I don't think it would be that
(09:55):
big of a deal. And just me personally well to
the problem, I mean, because here's the thing, right, is
like he gave an explanation for the N word compilation
in terms of like, oh, well, this was me using
it as a quote, and I was using I was
recalling it in the story. Now for me personally, it's
(10:16):
really not that complicated. There's twenty three n words in there,
and he gave like three examples of him, you know,
quoting it that it's like, all right, I'm gonna need
to see like a detailed breakdown of like how each
of these was a quote. But besides the point, if
just for the benefit of doubt, all of those where
he's quoting a story, he's telling a story or something
like that. I mean, it makes me still not like
(10:37):
Joe Rogan, but it makes me ultimately not really like
you know what I'm saying. It's like, oh yeah, I
wasn't listening to that show anyway, you know what I'm saying. Well,
but I think the aspects of like the jokes, and
then when you further do even deeper digging and you
look into the type of people that he's platformed, that
is that's the aspect and the element of it to me,
(10:58):
that is like all right, now this is still you know,
sensor removed, that's still like a subject for discussion, But
that is the aspect of Joe Rogan that is like, oh, no,
this is serious now because like you know, you can,
you can say whatever should you want. I don't care.
It doesn't have to affect me. I don't have to
listen to it. But if you're like luring people unsuspecting
(11:22):
people in by like, hey, we're interviewing m M a guy,
a comedian, a nuclear physicist, a white supremacist, you know
what I mean, And you're doing that cycle over and
over again. And I mean I've I've have people personally
in my life who otherwise are like normal, well adjusted
left leaning people that have fallen down the Joe Rogan
crypto fashionst pipeline. It's very easy, it's not difficult at all. Well,
(11:45):
I think it speaks to the fact that the left
has to get better at its media game. Um, like
you know, we need to we have to win the conversation.
We can't just say oh, um, like you, I guess
to a degree, like you shouldn't have these people on,
like I like, I don't think he should, but I
think i'd rather than like sensor him. I think we
(12:05):
just need to do a better job of convincing people
and creating our own pipeline to like liberatory ideas because
otherwise if this is all we have, and it's like
all you have is Joe Rogan as like a huge
name in podcasting, like that's partially our failure. That's true,
that's true, but it's not even you know, just personally,
I don't know what anybody else thinks. For me, it's
(12:27):
not even the platforming like people that I check out,
like Vosh who's a YouTuber, YouTube, twitch, political streamer, or
um even what is Homie's name? Who got fired from
CNN's Quomo Andrew Quomo, one of the quotma no no,
no no um black dude, he was a commentation Mark
(12:49):
Lamont Hill. Mark Lamont Hill on his channel, he's always
talking to right wingers in like these fringe like you know,
quasi alt right figures who are spewing their ship. The
difference is how you go about it. If Mark Lamont
Hill sits across from somebody and the person says, he,
you know, black people have an intrinsic violent gene that
(13:11):
makes them more violent than the other races. That's interesting.
Oh dude, really, dude, bros, that word dude like that,
you know that's not gonna be Vosh is going to
like push back like there's ways that you can do
it where it becomes a straw man to be like, oh,
you want a silence, you don't want people to be platformed.
You're afraid of discussion, you're afraid of debate, and it's
(13:31):
like how you engage with them? Yeah, if you're engaging critically,
actually have to engage like like like for people to
want for the Joe Rogan stands out there, a lot
of whom are straight up Nazis and a lot of
whom are just like people who don't give a funk
about issues like this and stuff like that. But if
(13:53):
they if they don't want people to jump to the
conclusion of yo, I heard Joe Rogan said this, so
I think this about him and everything that he is,
then you know it probably would have behooved Joe Rogan
over these years if like he could counter with clips
of him passionately going back at like some of these
guests that he has has on his show, because he
(14:15):
shouldn't be interacting with my Unapolis the same way as
he does with Cornel West if I'm supposed to think
that he's cool, yeah, or even just yeah, this like
engaging critically with both of them like instead of just
being huh, that's interesting, Oh black people skulls are like
con cave and commend whatever. Commended. But that's not racist.
(14:37):
I have supported Bernie, supported by you know, yeah you
said you might vote for him once whatever the other
thing you want to bring up about Joe Rogan, And
like I like to be hyperbolic sometimes because it's more entertaining. Um,
Like there's a level of like almost stochastic terrorism that
comes with uh, COVID misinformation. Um. And so like just
(14:58):
a couple of days ago January, a big fan of
his and friend who was you know, talking about his
show all the time on his Instagram, UM, comedian Christian
Cabrera UM died of COVID, you know, and often talked
in conjunction with you know, loving Joe Rogan about like
vaccine hesitancy and um it's also you know, spread a
(15:21):
lot of Joe Rogan's vaccine and misinformation. And now this
person is dead and so like he's a famous person,
you know, he's a comedian, but how many other people
who watched his show also We're like maybe that is
sketchy and like are dead now we don't know, we
don't have those numbers, whether you want to call that
murder or whatever, whatever. I don't think that it's even
(15:42):
debatable that that has happened. No, it's not even debatable.
It's just like there's there's no way to know the
impact negatively in a very literal, concrete way. But um,
we have a great on about Joe Rogan for a while,
So why don't we talk about like white people that
don't suck? So Yeah, this week we had the honor
(16:04):
to interview Joan and Loki Moholland Um. Joan Um was
a freedom writer, UM whose mug shot was called one
of the most iconic and American history. UM. She Um,
at the age of twenty three, had participated in over
fifty sent ins and demonstrations like the Freedom Rights the
Jackson Woolwrith set in the marchin Washington, and Um, you know,
(16:27):
knew some of the biggest names in the civil rights movement,
from Mega Evans, Mega Evans, Fanny lew Haymer, John Lewis,
Julian Bond. And so we'll be speaking with her as
well as her son, who has recently made a documentary
about her called an Ordinary Hero. Yeah, and he's the
executive director of the Joan Moholland Foundation. Um has actually
(16:51):
directed um Sello documentaries and Um wrote a book She
Stood for Freedom, Um, which was nominated for a war.
So they're both very involved into this day in civil
rights struggle in their own different ways. And the somewhat
details what we're talking about with regards to art and
the role of you know, shaping the political discourse in
(17:12):
the sense that, like Joe Rogans over here, it's kind
as podcast, which itself is a form of media that
is shaping the political discourse, and Um Loki, especially as
a filmmaker, is doing the same with his work. And
we have a lot of discussion in the interview about
the role of arts in movement making. So without further ado,
let's get on into it. We'll be right back with
(17:33):
that after the jump. So today I am super honored
to be joined by Joan and Loki Muholland. I will
let them introduce themselves in their own words, because the
breadth of experience they bring with them is kind of impressive.
It's sort of like, yeah, there's a lot, there's a
(17:54):
lot going on there, but yeah, whoever, like to start
tell us a little bit about yourselves and what y'all do.
Go on, boy, I was gonna say ladies first, but well,
my name is Loki maholl Um, I'm Jones's son. Um,
I'm a filmmaker, activins author, and uh yeah, we see
(18:15):
you represent over there. Yeah, Joan Mahaland I'm Loki's mama.
And Loki was after the Norse god of mischief or sidekick,
and he's lived up to it. Um, I'm a Delta.
I got into a lot of good trouble back in
the day, and you know, freedom writer and all that
(18:39):
sort of stuff. Good, Yeah you are. You knew a
lot of folks that people may recognize when you know
we're studying the history of the civil rights movement. Um,
Mr Evers, Danniel Hammer play people like that. It's Fannie
Hammer Hamer. Oh my god. If I've been saying that
around my whole life. See, this is what we need
better civics and lack history education in schools. Because I'm
(19:02):
growing up, I've taught myself most well. I feel like
most of what I know as an adult, like you know,
reading online, reading books, etcetera. Because they don't really teach
you what you need to know in school. Unfortunately, word was,
you know, the slaves were happy and the slave masters
were kind. Yeah. I actually have a friend who is
a professor at um University in Hartford who studies how
(19:24):
even back to like slavery texts from like ancient Greece,
the way that like the happy slave narrative was even
a thing then, and like how that then, you know,
factors into the way people sometimes use classics, like in
white supremacist movements to say like, oh, the purity of
the Western tradition. But yeah, like unless you unless you
really teach yourself, um, you can, yeah, get stuck with
(19:48):
some of these. Oh that's interesting back to the ancient
Greeks because when we had standardized testing, I think it's
pretty much out now in Virginia. But one of the
questions for the kids his foot, what did we get
from the Greeks? And you were supposed to say, you know, democracy,
voting rights, stuff like that. I said, no, no no, no,
(20:09):
that's that's all. We got voting rights for free property
owning white men. Precisely, we got some highways. Yeah, maybe
some like column shapes, you know, like some art, but yeah,
we're still trying to get voting rise today. And what
I'm saying, so, um, well, I'm really really excited to
(20:32):
have you all here today. Particularly I'm super interested in
the way that movement work manifests in the various different
kinds of things you do. And also we've got two
generations of people here. Um, we're doing the good work. UM.
And I think that like the idea of intergenerational like
liberation movement struggle is not when we talk about enough
(20:54):
like they got the young kids out here, like the
Sunrise Movement or etcetera. And then we study you know,
civil rights history um as if it you know, would
happened long ago, and like we don't need to be
marching um anymore things like that. So, um, how do
you see your work from two different generations overlapping or
(21:15):
diverging at certain points? Well, I say my generation got
rid of the segregation laws underlying racism. It's still there
and that's what folks need to work on. Now. Um.
We marched, we sat in, we went to jail, um,
(21:36):
you know things like that. We could sing real good,
except for me, I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
That the Jackson, Mississippi. The joke we had a little
joke in the movement that if the police were marching
on us, they just pushed Joan to the front and
she would sing loudly right in their face and they
(21:57):
would back off because I say, Okay, what is that? Yeah, yeah, backup,
But you're a singer two on top of everything logy yeah, yeah, yeah,
play guitar on Hey. Well, maybe we'll come back to
the question about like generational differences, because we're kind of
(22:19):
starting to talk about art. And that's something that I
don't understand. I don't know a lot about from my
studying of like civil rights and like other liberation movements,
is like what the role of art was during that era? Looky,
you know, brilliant filmmaker and as I as a hip
hop artist, see the potential for use of that um
too spread stories that bring people into the movement and
(22:41):
educate people, etcetera. UM. But Joan, like, what what role
did like music and film and art and stuff like
that play in in your time? Well, film want a
big deal, except you know, watching the evening news on
TV and UM singing. That was the backbone of the movement.
That is what gave us strength and courage to keep
(23:02):
on keeping on mhm um it was you know, songs
that were sort of adapted from the church songs and
it's it's it sounded if you weren't listening to the
words like you were in church when we had these
Yankees coming down and you know, they were good people,
but they sang like they were on a picket line,
(23:24):
a Union picket line, yeah, which they didn't have a sing. Art. Well,
you needed art for posters and picket signs and things
like that. So that was sort of where it was at.
And so, um, Loki today working in film and you know,
a variety of media. Honestly, Um, what do you see
(23:44):
as the role of art in movement making today? Well,
I mean, and I want to kind of um like
what my mom says, but roll back a little bit further,
because obviously art was used even um during the time
of slavery. Yeah, absolutely used to give direction and how
to get north. Artistry that went into quilts. Um, the
(24:05):
literature was a key component. And oh gosh, and the
abolitionist movement. Yeah, yeah, you know, so those those sort
of things, and it continued. I mean obviously during my
mom's time, I mean, film was used as well. Um,
the a lot of times that was you the documentary.
It's not like it is today when we have so
much more access to that. It was more underground. Um.
(24:29):
But that was that burgeoning movement of art to really
kind of push forward these ideals, um, and these and
these alternative narratives to the prescribed history that was taught
in our textbooks and as what we're seeing today as well, UM,
and continuously obviously, UM, you know during the eighties and
nineties in particular, you know, with public Enemy in w
(24:50):
A and so forth. I mean all of that. Um,
those scenes were just these narratives that people hadn't heard before.
You know, when I say people, I mean America. So
they control the media pretty much. Um, the photographers, with
the press, they were powerful. I say, you take it
to the lunch counter, the lawyers take it to the court,
(25:13):
but the press takes it to the world. And when
things will start flying, the press was in every bit
as much danger as the demonstrators, and sometimes they were
the first ones attacked. So the picture of the Jacks
and Woolworths sit in which I'm sure you've seen what
I'm having sugar dumped on my head, as I like
to say, like I wasn't sweet enough already, but that
(25:38):
went worldwide. It was colorized. Color was added to the
black and white. They didn't have color photography and the presdent.
But in the Paris Match front page above the centerfold,
the most powerful place in the newspaper. And this was
the most powerful newspaper in Europe. It was like the
New York Times. So that you know. Went and when
(26:02):
I was in South Africa, um a few years ago,
thinking of the music um down in Cape Town, a
bunch of US ladies went to um A school for
a morning of volunteer work and I ended up since
I used to work in the schools up here. Um well,
(26:23):
I was up from Georgia. You know, it's still down
south and Arlington Commany Lee's hometown. But um we told
the students what we had, what we did back in
the States. We had Q and A, and then we
had our closing statement, and I said, back in the
days of our civil rights movement, we had a song
(26:44):
we shall overcome. Now. My intention was to say, whatever
difficulty you're facing in life, tell yourself those three words
and things will get better. No, I got cut right
off by the school teacher. This is a room packed
with fourth graders and he said, oh, we sang that
song in our partid demonstrations class. Let's all sing it together.
(27:08):
So there I was, over fifty years since our civil
rights you know, the student civil rights movement, singing we
Shall Overcome in Cape Town, South Africa, in the room
packed with fourth or fifth graders, and it just about
brought me to tears. So it traveled. Yeah. I think
(27:29):
about that. I think about as I said previously, about
the public enemy and w A I mean Spike Lee
Yea works and these messages that were putting forth that uh,
why America hadn't heard and didn't really to understand or
want to understand. And if you go back and and
I mean it was almost it's like a canary in
(27:50):
the mind sort of thing. I was like, wow, I
mean all of that has come to pass. And then
some yeah, aldy today you know what's uh, you know
the the my mom was talking about the press and
the cameras and stuff. Obviously the quickest way to censor
that was his bash a camera. I'm about the film
which they did, which they did, and today we have
(28:11):
you know, those those other techniques now of of of
blocking channels and or streams on social media and so
forth saying you know this this content is offensive or
whatever else and being these filters now. Um, so they
did that with the Evening News and get h Yeah,
that's right. Difficulties Uh yeah, like ever speech. Um, I
(28:37):
just think about like, you know, these these new opportunities
that exist like TikTok and so forth. That's that is
a very quick way to get the message across and
how people are learning. Yeah, no, I mean there's still
space for longer formats and so forth, and obviously the
tools that are there to share those messages. Probably part
of the pitfall of that is so much disinformation that
(28:58):
gets out there, um, the lack of research, the lack
of study, the lack of understanding and context and so forth.
So there's and then obviously the immediate feedback that you
get from people who and the bombing, you know, the
trolling and so forth that takes place media to just
kind of discredit and take people down rabbit holes away
(29:19):
from the core message. Someone I did a post this
the other day about a mere luck I took nine seconds,
and someone said, well, it's actually a six second because
there was a wait for three of them, like Okay, okay,
right exactly, yeah, yeah, the way people parts details to
de legitimize, like very real thing. Oh, we used humor
(29:42):
also in the movement. If your mama ever told you
not to drink coffee because it would turn you black,
you know, back and back in the days before black
was beautiful, I am living proof that it ain't. So
mama probably just wanted all that coffee for her so self. Yeah,
she could have probably used some of that sugar they
(30:03):
dumped on you though, So you know, sweeten up a
little bit. But I think you started to get into
my next question. Looky, it's about um. I mean, we've
spoken really to two parts of it. I'm really interested
in the way you sort of describe the long history
of the arts in various movements, highlighting the way that
even the abolitionist movement for the abolition of slavery, you know,
(30:25):
literature and songs were so critical. Um. And so I'm curious,
you know, sticking to this theme of intergenerational struggle, UM,
what parts do you see yourself carrying forward from previous
movements having been very um, I guess in meshed in
its history growing up with Joan and what sorts of
(30:47):
new things. I mean, you mentioned TikTok already, but what
are some of the differences that you try to lean
into in your modern day work. Um, there's so much differences.
For me, it's, um, you know, I've I've been asked
repeatedly what I have set the lunch counter, And I'm like, yeah,
I don't know if I would have, but I don't
(31:07):
have to because my mother already did this kind of Yeah,
those different there's like things like that, yeah, yeah, yeah,
And and it really it's we all have a role
to play. Not everyone could set the lunch counters. Not
everyone this position. Uh, there was threats for on families,
you know, they could lose their tuition all these different jobs,
or houses be bombed and whatever else. Um. And and
(31:30):
some people you know this, they just weren't at that
place at that time, you know. And and so they
found other ways to contribute. Um. So I use the
gifts that I've been given to you move that work forward,
move that message forward, and to highlight the history. At
the end of the day. Um, whether we're gonna go
back to abolitionists or civil rights movement or any sort
(31:52):
of movement, it really comes down to that one on
one opportunity of seeing those individuals, seeing those people sitting
at the lunch counter, that you have to actually confront it.
It's right there in front of you that you just
can't replicate in a film or or you know, the
photograph or anything yeah yeah, or rap song. It just
(32:14):
becomes those The art becomes a way to motivate people, um,
you know, to inspire, to inform, But really it's to
do all that to get you down to those lunch counters,
on the buses or in the streets. Carrying the signs
and putting forth that message to move things forward and
designing a petition online is not you know, really bringing
(32:38):
about a big change. It's just making you feel good.
Mm hmm. Yeah. I had post a TikTok earlier about
getting off Twitter and like getting in the streets, whether
that's knocking on your neighbor's doors or marching or go
into city hall, whatever you gotta do. Um, but yeah,
I like the idea of everyone having their role to play.
That kind of makes me rethink my question and a
(33:00):
lot of the things we need to do are the same,
and that like certain people put their bodies online, certain
people's are documenting it. It's really about folks finding the
intersection of their passion and what the gifts they're given
with the tools that are available at the time. So
now we do have TikTok and Instagram to like make
sure those images of protests are circulated. Um, so it's
(33:21):
the same kind of project, just new tools. Yeah, and
and and and you know, I mean we're in a
capital society. Money makes the world turn. I mean you
had people, um, beyond the Harry Belafontes of the world.
You had actually white women whose husbands were probably either
in the clan or in the White Citizens Council and
(33:42):
Jackson who were giving money to the Mays, to the
help Right to give back to Medgarrever's office. They knew
they couldn't give it directly, so they would sneak it in.
And this is this is known. There was a gentleman's
great story. He um, his gift was robbing jewelry stores. Hey, whatever,
that's what you got. He would time out the train
(34:03):
and how long it would take the police to get
to the jewelry store, rob the store, hopped the train,
go the next town, sell the goods to rent some repeat,
and that money went back to the act. Now they
had no idea where it was coming from. They did,
they might be like, yeah, that's amazing, but yeah, I mean, hey,
you use the gifts you've been given the stores and
(34:26):
selling the goods for money. But obviously, yeah, I could
use being white to the advantage of the movement. Could
um blend into the crowd and be an observer of
what was happening. I could At Glen Echo Amusement Park
just over in Maryland, I could go in and buy tickets.
(34:47):
And I heard it buy me to have a ticket
for each ride you got on, ticket in hand, and
I could go back out and hand him out from
the Howard students who popped on the Merry Go Round
ticket in hand and got arrested. What were the passes
that you gave me when I was a two blue student.
I went up to the state legislature and got a
(35:09):
handful of passes to you know, sit in the galleries
and watch the legislature debate things. Went back, gave those
to Mega and he handed him out to the most
prominent black ministers he could find, and they got arrested.
Gallery pass in hand, m hm. And by the next
(35:30):
day the law had changed you had to personally get
your pass from your representatives, but there would a number
of times just being white could be used to the
advantage of the movement. So you got to use what
you got. Yeah. Yeah, And I think people are still
waking up to that today of thinking about how I
mean broadly people say use your privilege, etcetera. But the
(35:53):
specific ways for us, like, yeah, use use your whiteness
to like get in those spaces where others can um
and things like that I'm doing. I had one question
for you, So we talked a little bit about what
Loki takes from movements before. But I was wondering if
there's anything that young movement makers are doing today that
you find interesting or inspiring. Well, I find the complete
(36:16):
diversity of the crowds and the marches, to say nothing
of the size of the crowds and the marches. But
I think you've got a much you know, like a
no majority massive demonstration. Um, we didn't have that. We
had just a handful of Wie or Hispanic or Asian
(36:36):
folks in our activities and marches. Um, well, we didn't
have so many marches because you all get arrested. Um
before we got down the block before and the police
are even joining the marchers and protesters with them, mailing
(36:57):
to pray with them, if just for those my mind. Um,
that makes me think as well about talking about like
then and now that and now so at the time,
from my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jones,
it seemed like a lot of folks that took part
in the civil rights movement were somewhat demonized. I saw
recently a comic from I think the Birmingham News where
(37:18):
they were painting MLK as UM starting riots even though
non violence was the core of the movement. And then
yet today the same people that are disrupting modern movements
sending the National Garden when folks are marching and tear
gassing folks are heralding um civil rights movement leaders at
the same time. And so I was wondering what you
(37:40):
both make of trends like that where you see a
sort of contradiction in the way folks um treat both
historic and modern civil rights movements. Yeah, well, I mean
immediately comes to mind as someone like Ted Cruise, who
in one breath will praise quote doctor King and his
convenie and then say that appointing a you know, even
(38:03):
the idea of appointing a black woman is an affront
to an insult to black women, and uh, you know,
and inequality, which it was just absurd to begin with,
like he cares um. But yeah, you know Dr King
when he when he was killed, study percent of white
America you know, didn't like him, if you holes and stuff.
(38:23):
But now you know, it's it's weaponizing Dr King to
push forward. Uh you know these agendas of like you know,
anti CRT, which of course not taught taught in school
is not even a Yeah, it's a whole thing to
roll back, you know, the narrative that they feel uncomfortable with.
Um because then and and quite frankly don't even understand. Yeah,
(38:46):
it's it's it's a fascinating thing. Um do you do
you even contemplate? But uh, that's that's where it's so
vital for the rest of us to be informed. And
and I when I have people who quote Dr King
like that, like, hey, yes, that's wonderful. What about the
rest of his speech? Yeah, do you know any words
after the first seven Well do you know the words
(39:07):
that you said before that? Oh? Yeah, yeah, everything before
that was about reparations I mean, let's talk about that
for a moment. It's talking about that. Let's talk about
you know, a federal job guarantee. Let's talk about the
evils of capitalism and militarism. Nobody wants to get into that.
But John, from your perspective, having lived through that and
seeing the way that people treat it today, what is
that like for you? Um? Aside from comical, Um, they
(39:32):
want to idealize of what we did and we were
not perfectly made mistakes. Um, there are things we could
have done better. Um, all that, But um, they want
to use us as you know that we did it
all and they don't need to do anything, and they
(39:54):
need to look deeper. I mean, like I said, we
took care of the laws for segregation, but there is
so much more the racism behind, and then the forms
that the racism takes. Um. Housing, Yeah, whose neighborhood does
(40:14):
the interstate care up? Where does the school money go?
It's not you know that some schools get hand me
downs anymore like it used to be. But certainly, um,
they say, you know, I'm in Arlington, and they say
South Arlington gets the least and North Arlington gets the
most because the rich folks lived there in the power base.
(40:37):
But um, it doesn't need to be that way. Discrimination
against people because of their first language, um, their ethnic origins,
their religion, all that stuff. I was impressed a few
years ago when the anti Muslim thing got going that
(40:58):
college kids, girls and some places, we're walking around with
their classmates wearing his jobs, just like the classmates were.
But there are lots of ways to show solidarity. There's
lots more forms of discrimination that we now recognize. And
(41:18):
part of that comes to mind as well, is how
we you know, so part of it is like Dr
King was a comedy, right, all that sort of stuff.
It's like the Washington football team will now be hailed
to their and I didn't think about that. I love
that it's funny, but um, you know, so so those sames,
those same terms are thrown around. They don't even know
what they mean. But um, I think what's really fascinating
(41:42):
is there's part of this element of the civil rights
movements kind of safe to talk about. Well you don't
talk about why it happened, of course, but there's this,
you know, the sort of glorification if you will. You know,
there's the freedom writers and the sit ins and all this,
you know, John Lewis and the other impettish Ridge and
Dr King. I had a dream all that sort of
stuff because it means hey problem solved. And I actually
(42:07):
did a TikTok video on this recently, just talking about
you know what scares um white America about teaching history
is that it's there. It's it's their own history. Because
my age, when I was in elementary school, Dr King
had only been killed, you know, sixteen years earlier. So
World War Two had only ended about forty years earlier.
(42:29):
So um, if you if you take today and roll
back that same time period forty years ago, forty years ago, Uh,
the Philadelphia Police Department was bombing their own city and
people know about that stuff. Off in your math. World
War Two ended, and you were in elementary school and
(42:54):
the late mentally seventies, right, I wasn't how much schooling
to eighties? Mom? I was ten years old, nineteen eight. Okay,
Well that's store up forty years okay, mother. Nonetheless, world
War two was raging forty years earlier. Yeah, that's let's safe.
(43:14):
The message your worst subject and you're trying to school
me on a mother, But if you go back one
years ago, Rodney King was beaten. Four years ago, you know,
James Bird was was lynched Jasper, Texas, right dragged behind
a pickup truck, chained by his feet till his body
fell apart. Ten years ago, is Trayvon. Yeah, these were
(43:35):
the things that that's the type same type of stuff
they would have been teaching us back then. If they
were even going to teach that. They weren't going to
teach it. But so if you take a look at
that time frame, that's what really scares him because they
were alive during that. They understand that, and they it's like, wow,
that happened on our watch and did yeah, And and
(43:56):
the history of racism is so it's taught as black
history when it's really white history, and that it's a
lot of white people as well, folks like Joan that
were out there marching with people. It was like a
shared struggle for some folks, but is just straight out
in our US history, it's a sewers history. Yeah, I
(44:20):
was very I was very interested in something you said, Joan,
about how you all made mistakes. There's things that you
would have done differently, and that's certainly not a piece
of history that they teach people in the in the
way that they idealize the struggle at the time we
levon Brown. Mom talks about that my jog memory a
little bit. But um, when there was that schism in Snick,
(44:41):
the Snake leadership between John, Yeah, I think I think
the thing that I I kind of focus on at
times about the civil rights movement is we kind of
forget you know, we we we focus on these key
singular moments, the Greensboro sit in and the freedom rise
into setness. Um, but you know, and assume that one
(45:01):
thing took care of everything, and that you know, we
can condense these things down to just a couple of
days here and there and hoof everything. Saw. I mean,
Greensboro did not fix Jackson. Greensboro fixed Greensboro Jackson Jackson
right right. We all need to work within the space
where we live, as my mom would say. And that's
(45:22):
the hippies say, you know, bloom where you're planted right right. Um,
we tell kids, don't try to change the world, change
your world, whatever that might be. And what for my
mom it was the South right want I didn't care
about them. Let them fix their own stuff. They got
their own different problems that they'll tackle. Well, you know,
Malcolm X was working on that, right, so right, yeah, yeah,
(45:43):
but yeah, I really appreciate you raising that because I
think I speak to like middle schools, high schools all
the time, and I've been thinking a lot about how this,
like civil rights history is kind of painted for a
lot of kids like something that happened somewhere else as
part of the way where they're trying to discourage people
from like carrying those struggles forward. It's like, oh, they
were marching, Yeah, they're marching on Washington, They're marching down
(46:03):
in Mississippi. Was like, no, they were marching in Athens, Georgia,
Like we had our own movement here. Yeah, they don't
want you to know about because at the university, Wait,
you when integrating. Yeah, yes, I do recall that they
don't teach you about that. That inspired me to, um
(46:25):
go to two Galoup that watching that so close to
where my family was from Nicholson, that if integration was real,
I was thinking, it's got to be a two way street.
Maybe I should applied to a colored school, not being
put like term then and um I talked it over
with my friends. You know, the leadership of Snick and
(46:47):
they thought it was a good idea. And somebody said, well,
if you're gonna do what you may as well go
to Mississippi. Those students haven't done anything yet, meaning demonstrations,
maybe you can help them. And so I applied, and
two of the lutives. It was the only nationally accredited
school that colored students could go to. Sorry about that phone,
(47:08):
I don't know how to remut it. It's all that
I got a baby yodel in the background, we got phones,
It's all. It's an orchestract. And I was accepted in
two Glue, even though my high school up here refused,
very pointedly, without spelling it out, to send my transcripts. Um.
But they still accepted me and said, oh well we'll
(47:30):
take you on your Duke University transcripts and go on
there for one year, reported company when I wanted to
go back to school, and it was right after the riots.
And that is such an interesting idea that I don't
think people and brave enough that like integration does have
to be a two way stream. Um, it's not just
about like advancing, you know, getting people of color and
(47:51):
positions of power and into these white spaces. It's also
like I got this one friend that's like, why dude
who like shows up at like all of these like
all black events, cetera. Does it just happened to be
in black communities. But he's out there doing the work
of meeting people, of helping people, of talking to folks. Um.
But so many people are scared to do that because
there is helping green racism. Like even if you try
(48:13):
to be an anti racism, it's like, well if I
show up, like people will laugh at me or I won't,
you know, I don't want to understand, etcetera. But that's
a really important thing for us to remember as well.
And there are lots of different ways to make a difference.
I mean I was sitting in and all that. Then
I had a family and that really I had to
(48:35):
take care of the kids. But at their elementary school
I made a difference. Um, I particularly one of and
a number of different ways. But the music teacher who
lived a couple of blocks so I may wanted to
a good song to teach for I think it was,
you know, Black History Month, and I said, we'll lift
(48:56):
every voice and sing. He had not a blue but
she looked it up. She wanted to teach it to something,
to teach to the chorus to sing it and um
our big international dinner. She ended up teaching that song
to every kid in the school and they sang it
(49:18):
at the international dinner with the chorus standing on the stage.
But every kid, you know, singing on probably the first
I'm you know, not a nine point nine for St.
Suard's the first formerly all white school in the county,
if not the state, for all the kids to learn
lift every voice and sing. But there were a number
(49:40):
of other things too, But the biggest deal in my book,
it's not just like study again, like the big event studying,
you know what happened in Greensburg's also just knowing about
cultural artifacts from our communities, like taking the time to
learn a very important song test and things like that. Yeah,
I took care. They had all these white doll baby
(50:00):
and olders sounds kindergarten class, and it was the girl's
corner and the boys corner. Well, I took care of
the doll babies by making a bunch of cloth dolls
out of different skin tone. Perhaps I had an interchangeable
clothes and those white plastic doll babies disappeared, and then
I said, well, now, my son, he's going to be
(50:22):
upset by you pauling that the girl's corner because he
likes he wanted an ironing board, small ironing board for Christmas,
and he's not gonna be happy about you saying that's
a girl thing. Well it quickly changed to the housekeeping
corner and the workshop corner. When the school I was working,
and I would go in with the second grade classes
(50:44):
every year and read books about segregation, Dr King and
the American South. I mean, that's why they will play
picture books to the second graders and alternate those with
um South Africa part time that Nelson Mandela mm hmm.
I've had now decades later, adults walk up to me
(51:07):
and remind me they remember when I taught them all
that in class. So I think I made a difference
in my small ways. Oh absolutely, absolutely, Yeah. I really
appreciate you sharing so much history I didn't know about
and reframing the history that I knew. But I also
love to ask you all about what you're working on
these days. So um, let's start with you. Look, what's
what are you getting into these days? Oh? Gosh, who
(51:29):
am I working? On right now. What are you doing
these days? You know, I've discovered TikTok after a while.
I've been working on that, sharing a lot of content there, um,
you know, and yeah, more of my mom's stories, kind
of stuff you don't hear about from the sol I
love it. Yeah, and then trying to interject a few
(51:49):
little things that I have as well. Um, you know,
I'm just we finished shooting a film, a little short documentary, um,
about a gentleman who every day he goes He's ninety
two years old and every day he goes the Evan
Pettish Bridge to pray for the state trooper that beat
him on bloody Sunday. Um. I'm working on a whole
(52:11):
diverse the equity inclusion training modules you know, that will
be a whole online platform, but that that incorporates my
mom's story and in the various films now that I've
done and using those as kind of a training tools
as well. Um, you know, working on an Emmett til film.
That's been a long process that continues. You know, they
(52:33):
just got kind of gag with with the COVID and
so forth. I'm starting to yeah, okay, let's start, let's
go back and reevaluate that a little more and than another.
Now working on another season of our Uncomfortable Truth podcast,
so we're gonna cramped up for that. So yeah, you
know the usual, the usual, you know the usual. Well
(52:57):
that's a really exciting and what about you and John?
What you what I got in the fire these days? Well,
I can't march anymore because my knees have given out,
but um, I can run my mouth pretty good. I
do a lot of public speaking. The Deltas had me
out to Memphis the alumni chapter, and I was talking
(53:17):
out there and I just um. I was talking at
a Hampton Sydney University and um with Loki along with
me on this and showing video clips in Farmville, Virginia,
which was crucial to getting the schools integrated in Virginia
and even went into Brown versus board. I'm moving to
(53:39):
high school and um, I speak in local elementary schools,
you know, colleges and anybody that invites me. And if
I got transportation issues, they got to pay for my transportation.
Put me up and feed me somewhere, private home, five
star hotel either way. Yeah, run in my mouth is
(54:00):
my main thing. Now. I love that I'm going to
remember that for the rest of my life as long
as the brain cell still work. Cut me off and
they don't. Yeah, oh man, Well, um, any closing words
of hope for our listeners. Y'all have been at it
for a minute, creating beautiful art and sharing beautiful stories
to you know, keep this movement alive. But what's one
(54:22):
last thing you'd like people to know as they as
we part ways? Um, to give them the do something?
Get out there? Yeah? I feel that things things do
get better. People didn't believe slavery went in, but it did,
and I believe Jim Crow was gonna end, but it did. Um.
But it ended because you know, like the echo the
(54:45):
words of FAINTI low hammer. Uh, they were stick and
tired of being sick and tired. We we we gotta
keep pressing forward because the other side's not tired. Um.
But yeah, how do people keep in touch with your work?
Find your work? Um? You know, continue to learn from
you on Obviously you know what I said before. We're
(55:07):
all we're on TikTok so Loki Malholland is it is
it a page a channel where they I'm really new
to TikTok. Also so yeah, I think a page but
I don't know. But it's fire fire content. Please go
check it out. Yes, yeah, we know. We're on Instagram
and Facebook and stuff foundation with Mama's name on it. Yep,
I was good. So if you go to our website
(55:30):
www dot the j t M Foundation dot org. Um.
I don't know why I put the www at the
beginning of that. That shows how one way I am now.
Um yeah, I mean so the jt M Foundation dot
org um, and that's where we have h we have
scholarship programs there that we're doing. We've got obviously our films.
(55:51):
People can contribute. Please go check out the jt M
Foundation dot org to learn more. Follow Loki on TikTok
and Instagram at Loki Mohammed at Loki Moholland and keep
up the fight. You know, they've been out here doing
it for a minute, creating beautiful, our cham peutiful stories.
But we're gonna make our own new stories, carrying forward
the fight. But yeah, thank you, thank you for being here.
(56:13):
Thank you a yo, we are back. That was Joan
Maholland and her son Loki. That was quite a robust conversation.
You'll have there. Yeah. I tried not to get into
like specific like what was it light to meet megger ever,
but still kind of like understand more of just like
what lessons can be drawn from the work that they
(56:35):
have done. And so I hope that's been helpful to
everybody listening and thinking about your own role in movements,
the work that is still left to be done, etcetera.
I definitely feel like I got a lot of that. No,
you definitely did. Definitely did. And you'll make sure that
you'll check out that documentary so you can get a
more robust picture of her full biography and the things
that she did well I do. Oh, you know what,
(56:58):
we gotta throw out a congratulate sations Mariah, our homie,
the person who you've never heard who spends us the beats.
Joel brought a new bundle of joy. Dad's dad is
now Dad's dad times too. Congratulations Joel. He's not going
to hear this because he's probably like knee deep and
(57:20):
dirty diverse right now. But who's taken over? I think
it's Taylor taken over? A Taylor. You know, we know
you're new to this, Taylor, but we we gotta wrap
to close this out, So can you can you pick
through one of those instrumentals of mine and play something? Yeah, wait,
(57:44):
no reparation to get in and sitting in their bodies
on the line, get in jail the kit and fund
dement that. But right at the time they deep but
not the John no surprised. They's saying the times to
the best on the right and like they would have
set up but really they would have set up a
wouldn't cross and burning like some terrorizing the neighbors of
what they hoods up. They really shook watching all the
(58:05):
people out they mobilized, looking back and them Okay, like
I know that guy, they don't even know to have
motherfucker's I know you're whack when the revolutions over exploded
like a nova. I just took a ride to Croker
and nobody pulled me over. I got the love Song
site and ain't nobody sober. You know my name dope night.
My mamma called me toga go and smoke up. It's
all legal. We all regal all ball. No such things
(58:25):
as small people, gun sticks, pots and pans were fought evil.
Now we got plots of land for a zero told
you not to dreams that it's all in your hand.
They told you not to lead to the followers. Stand now,
you can get a good job keeping all of your dreads,
and we can party without caring. Go and call the fans.
Everybody dapping on one having a fuss. Came a long
damn way from the back of the bus, and we
let in the white folks that we happen to trust,
(58:47):
and everybody else can come, but as black as a fuck. Yeah,
waiting a reparation, Oh knife, Frank, we are waiting on reparations. Peace.
(59:07):
Listen to Waiting on Reparations on Apple Podcasts or wherever
you get your podcast.
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