Ep 4.14 - Ed Morris - AfterGate

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following podcast is being brought to you by the
Defile Life podcast Network.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to Aftergate, powered by the Defile Life Network.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Are you all Ready?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Aftergate is a podcast series highlighting Colgate alumni of color
in their professional endeavors.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Aftergate Are you all Ready?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Aftergate is hosted by Alvin glim aka al and Herman
Dubois aka A.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Jerry? Are Already?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
We are doing Aftergate because Colgate University has produced innovators
who have changed the world every day. Yet many alumni
of color and the mainstream Colgate community are unaware of
the amazing accomplishments of alums of color?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Are you all ready?

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to another episode of Afteright.
This is your Alvin Glimph and as always, I'm here
with my co host, mister Hedmind dubois As. We are
honored to be in our fourth season creeping Like Luca

(01:15):
Vangel she used to say, creeping, creeping, creeping up to
episode number ninety, looking forward to more and more great interviews,
looking forward to talking to our guests tonight before I
do that, mister Herman, what you got going on?

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Brother?

Speaker 4 (01:30):
How you doing all as well?

Speaker 5 (01:32):
All as well, of course, I'm still floating off of
our family high as I got a chance to engage
with the Glymphs in recently and that's always a positive thing.
And be part of a historic twenty nine year anniversary
celebration of mister and Missus Glyph, which couple I've been

(01:54):
a witness as before. You know, they tied to not
And although I can't take any credit, you know, I
try to think. I try to believe that, you know,
along the way, I had some parts to play in
the journey, and even if it's just the good times,
then that's meaningful because I ain't got too many piers.

(02:16):
Twenty nine years in the game with the Missus and
that's a big deal, and that's a really big deal.
So plaug y'all, and it was, it was. It was
great to celebrate with y'all.

Speaker 4 (02:27):
Well, one, I'll give you a little credit because many
times that I'm messed up. I'm sure you don't whisper
it in her ear once or twice.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
He ain't that.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
Bad, He ain't that bad. Hang on in the girl,
He's gonna be all right. But no, seriously, I think
when you think about, you know, coming down to Miami,
you know, hanging out with you and your lady and
then my brother. It's just it made for a great
week and one that we needed.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
You know.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
We talk about taking care of ourselves and healing and
restoring and self care and that was just part of
the journey. So appreciate the hospitality, Appreciate the good vibes,
the good time, the good energy. But you know, it
was that was last week. This is this week. You know,

(03:13):
I think we took a nice little summer break. We're
back at it with a string of shows. So can
I get your blessing, your permission to bring this week's
guests into the Aftergate studios.

Speaker 5 (03:28):
And as the Cogate Congregation will say, to deck the blessings,
let's move forward.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
Then, after Gate Family, O Gate AOC our listeners, I
ask your permission to bring the one, the Only good brother,
Ed Morris, class of nineteen sixty nine into the studio.
Welcome to Aftigate, my brother.

Speaker 6 (04:12):
My brothers, Thank you very much. I appreciate being here.
Thank you, thank you. I just you know again, I
thank you brothers for seeking out this old timer, bring
him back and let him, let him try to maybe
speak some words of wisdom or or say something that

(04:33):
might be helpful to the Aftergate audience. So I do
I do appreciate.

Speaker 5 (04:39):
That we know and our listeners know that we exist
that Colgate and sustained and survive and succeeded at Kogate
because we stand on your shoulders, and so we thank you,
We thank you. It goes uh, you know sort of.
I don't think there's enough accolades and enough appreciation. We

(04:59):
always great stories of folks, and to know that ours
was challenging, but it was only more challenging the for
the brothers and sitters who came before us. So we
are in great appreciation for all that you did, even
without this interview. But now we just get to share
it with the rest of the world.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Here it is there.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
It is again for inviting me tell my little tale.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
Looking forward to it, you know, it is our honor
to be here. And in our tradition we always like
to give a little context of how do we know
each other? How did we cross pass? Well? Obviously class
of nineteen sixty nine, we didn't. We weren't on campus

(05:45):
at the same time. This is actually a instance where
going up the Colgate reunion, we met and mentioned after
Gate podcast, the concept, and you were very interested in
intrigued from the beginning, and so I appreciate just weeks

(06:05):
later you are willing to come on the show and
have actually pointed me in the direction of other alumni
of color, including your cousin who I spoke to this morning,
because I couldn't get on the couldn't get on the
podcast and not have spoken to I haven't spoken to Frank.
I didn't do that, couldn't do that, but looking forward
to him in a future show. So that's how we've

(06:27):
of course passed.

Speaker 6 (06:30):
Yeah, we ran into each other at the Cultural Center, Elena,
you were there. I myself have not been back to Cogate.
I hadn't been back to Cogates for over forty years
when I came back for my.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
My fortieth I live out west.

Speaker 6 (06:53):
I live up in the Seattle Tacoma area, and you know,
when you're this far out west, uh, you know, you
become very disconnected with with Kogate, and so you know
the fact that there's an association.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Alumni of color.

Speaker 6 (07:14):
You know, when when I start started at Kogate, it
was so rough in terms of you know, there weren't
very many people of color on campus. But you know,
we'll we'll get to that. So, uh, living out west
is been interesting from New York, but we'll we'll get

(07:37):
into that a little later. I think what intrigued you
about me is I said I from Bedsty and that
perked you up.

Speaker 4 (07:49):
Originally from bed Stye, we're in Bedsty just for those
we got best Sty listening.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah. I lived on Green Avenue between Bedford and no Strom.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah yeah, so yeah, that's official, on the other side
of Atlantic Avenue from where I was I was born.
But still good to have another Brooklyn night in the building.
So from Brooklyn. But so class of nineteen sixty nine
from Colgate. You graduate high school? What high school did

(08:22):
you attend? And I graduate high school nineteen sixty five?
What high school do you attend?

Speaker 6 (08:27):
I attended Stadium High School out here in Tacoma, Washington. Okay,
you folks probably have either seen it or heard of it.
It was in the movie Ten Things I Hate About You?
Was that beautiful in that beautiful high school building that
overlooks Pewteret Sound has a great panoramic view, But of

(08:51):
course when I went there, it wasn't quite as panoramic
as it is, right now you know they've taken advantage
of that. But yeah, uh, being out here has been interesting.
As I said, I mean, I walk around with Colgate
memorabilia on and Colgate hat and stuff, and I don't

(09:11):
get very many recognitions only because you know, I'm so
far away. And if I do, the first thing they
say to me is, oh, it's not an Ivy League school. Yeah,
and I got to correct them and say no, or
if they think about Colgate, they always end up saying, oh, well,
how is Cornell.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
I'm going out. It's not Cornell.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
It's not Cornell.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
You know.

Speaker 6 (09:35):
I got to tell them where Colgate is and what
and what it's all about. But yeah, how did I
I guess I want to say how I got to Kogate?

Speaker 4 (09:47):
I mean that first, how did you get out to Seattle? First?

Speaker 5 (09:50):
Right, it's not a Seattle. That's not exactly like a
wrong term.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
No it's not.

Speaker 6 (09:56):
But uh yeah, So let me start kind of like
at somewhat of a beginning, and that has to go
back to the fact that my family really revers cherishists
the idea of education. And that really started back with

(10:18):
my great grandfather, who was a slave and at the
end of the Civil War. He was and his family
were down in Mobile, Alabama. I don't know if you
ever heard of Plateau, Alabama. That's the place it's Have

(10:39):
you ever heard of the slave ship called the Clotilda.
It was the last slave ship that came to the
United States, last known slave ship, and that was in
the eighteen sixty It was completely illegal. The last either

(11:00):
one was like an eighteen o seven was after that.
You can bring a ship in. But you know, at
that time, you know, the commodity of slavers of slaves
was such that you know, it was costing too much,
and they said, hey, we can go back to Africa,
steal some more, bring them over and we won't get caught.

(11:21):
They got caught. The thing was, this was in eighteen sixty,
right before the start of the Civil War, and so
there was one hundred and ten.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Slaves.

Speaker 6 (11:37):
When the Civil War was over, they formed the only
surviving community that was founded by Africans. And that community
was one that my grandfather grew up in. And you know,
as he told his son, who told me, he said,
you're going to have to be twice as good to

(12:00):
get half as far, and education is going to help
you be twice as good.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
So wow.

Speaker 6 (12:10):
Yeah, And my grandfather started, he and seven other guys
started a Mobile County Training School, which still exists in Plateau, Alabama.
They started like in nineteen excuse me, in like nineteen
o nineteen eight, nineteen nine. So education has always been

(12:37):
important to my family. And in fact, that's how they
got out of Alabama and ended up in Boston.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Is that my aunt had.

Speaker 6 (12:48):
A chance to be a nanny, and so she left
and came to Boston and eventually ended up going to.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
BEU.

Speaker 6 (13:01):
At that particular time, she and her brothers were there,
but you know, we're talking nineteen twenty eight, nineteen twenty nine,
and at that time you couldn't be anywhere without having
a nanny.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Especially as a single lady.

Speaker 6 (13:15):
So they had a nanny, and the nanny got mad
at my aunt because they weren't attending or they were
skipping Wednesday night prayer meeting. You couldn't do that. So
because of that, she got tired of him and went
back to Alabama, and my grandmother said, I think we

(13:41):
need to move, and so they moved the family.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Up to Boston.

Speaker 6 (13:44):
So all my dad's brothers and sisters grew up in Boston,
and so when came time he lived got married with
my mother and lived in Brooklyn, and so my life
was going to be one of them. Being on the

(14:05):
West coast, I mean, on the East coast. Right turns
around that even even back then in the early fifties,
Bedstide was a rough area. It was you know, it
was not always the blessed place to be, but you know,
we make do with what we have. And so because

(14:27):
of that, my father would always complain to his brother
in law who lived in Seattle. He complained to him about,
you know, how bad it was. My uncle would always
come yearly. He was a Mason, so he'd always come

(14:49):
yearly to Philadelphia to go to the annual convention, and
he would just whenever we was there, my dad would
tell him how bad it was, blah blah blah blah.
My uncle said, look, you fly out to Seattle. I've
been trying to get you to come out. You fly
out to Seattle. If you don't like it, I'll give

(15:09):
you your ticket back. So my dad said, yeah, okay,
I'm gonna take you up on that. So my dad
came out here June thirtieth, July fifth, He called my
mother up and said we're moving, packed the kids, We're
going to Seattle. And I had to give my dad

(15:31):
a lot of credit because he was unskilled labor. And
at that time in Seattle was Boeing and they were
making the seven O seven and if you could walk
and chew gum, Boeing needed you. So he got a
chance to become a Boeing worker and he worked out

(15:53):
here at Boeing for until he retired. So that's how
my family got from Brooklyn to Seattle.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
And so.

Speaker 5 (16:04):
How old were you when that, when that transition occurred
that your family relocated.

Speaker 6 (16:09):
I was ten years old, so you know, you can
imagine back in Brooklyn at about ten years old, I
was starting to figure out the subway system, you know,
I was starting to figure out I could get I
was starting to get into the streets a little bit
as much as I as my parents would let me in.
My dad said no, no, you're not going to do that.

(16:30):
We'll take you out west. And for me that it
was it was another world. And the reason why I
say that is, you know, if you know anything about Brooklyn,
you know, if you don't tie it down, you don't
have it. You leave it out, it's gone. And so
you know, I lived in Tacoma, Washington, and you know,

(16:50):
my cousins would ride their bikes, drop them on the
front porch, run inside, run back out later and the
bike is still there, you know.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
In Brooklyn, not the case, it's gone.

Speaker 6 (17:07):
You know, people didn't lock their didn't lock their back doors,
you know. And the other thing that was always astonishing
to me is out in front there was this thing
called a lawn, and I'm going, what's that, you know,
because I'm in Brooklyn, I'm in you know, you know,
in Roundstones. And the only lawn that we saw, the

(17:28):
only grass we saw was at the park, you know.
So it was it was just a completely different world
for me, but I got used to it.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Grew up.

Speaker 6 (17:42):
In the Northwest, and the time I was graduating from
high school, I had pretty good grades and I was
looking for something that was gonna be excuse me, somewhat
small and I'm going to provide me with a good

(18:05):
education and had a good reputation. And my cousin, Frank,
who you will talk to, was working in Seattle at
the time, so he told me about Kolgate.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well he did.

Speaker 6 (18:18):
He told me the truth, but He didn't tell me
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
You know.

Speaker 6 (18:25):
He he told me about those winners, but you know,
he lied. He didn't fill me in with exactly everything
that was that was happening.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
But he convinced me that I should go.

Speaker 6 (18:38):
And one of the things that one of my uncles
was happy when I said I was going to go
to Kolgate. He was living back here in the East.
He said, oh, yeah, Colgate's going to be for the
Morris family what Harvard was for the Kennedys. That's what
I want. I want us to have that kind of

(18:58):
relationship with with the with the institution. Now having said that,
I couldn't get any of my cousins the follow suit,
In fact, I had. I had one cousin that came
to Kolgate. It's nineteen sixty nine. It's one of the
things that we did. We had they were getting black

(19:19):
people to come to Kogate to check it out, and
he came and he saw how all the brothers tussled
over the ladies that were there. He said, no, I
can't handle this. So we ended up going to Harvard.
I'm not sure he would have gone to h to
Cogate anyway. But yeah, so that's how I ended up

(19:44):
coming to Kogate.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
Wow, So what's the transition like when you first get
there because all male school, you went to co ed
high school?

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, I went to co ed high school.

Speaker 4 (20:00):
So what's that transition on the gender?

Speaker 3 (20:04):
Oh uh? Going to Kogate was was interesting.

Speaker 6 (20:14):
I mean, first of all, you get there and you know,
I'm being facetious, but nobody ever heard of grits. There
was no place to get your hair cut. Maybe when
you guys came through, they were you had one of
the brothers, they could they they could stye up.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Hey.

Speaker 6 (20:31):
But for me, we you know, we had to I
had to go down to one of the barbers and
in downtown Hamilton. I was, I go by there, when
I'm there, at his sharp's not there any longer, try
to get him to you know, I said, okay, now
that's not right.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
You know, I had to.

Speaker 6 (20:47):
Keep going back. You know, I had to break in
this guy to cut my hair. What was really and
I look back on it right now, something that I
wish that Kogate had at that particular time. There was
no staff, no administrators, no faculty of color. There wasn't

(21:15):
anybody there except for when I got there, the.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
Twelve of Us.

Speaker 6 (21:22):
But when I got to Kogate was the turbulence sixties.
And I got there at the end of that turbulence,
you know. I mean in the years that I was
at Kogating, right before, you know, you had the Watch Riot,
you had a Detroit Riot.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Vietnam was going on.

Speaker 5 (21:44):
There.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
It's now changing.

Speaker 6 (21:46):
The group called now On National Organization of Women were
being developed. As far as African Americans were concerned, are
black people, you know, we were just starting to become
I won't say proud, because we were proud before that,

(22:06):
but we became aware, you know, awareness of what black
people could do and what black people could mean.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Was happening.

Speaker 6 (22:15):
James Brown was singing say it Loud, I'm Black and
I'm Proud. There was a Broadway show called Young, Gifted
and Black. I mean, the Panthers were forming. Schnick was around,
Martin Luther King was killed, Kennedy was killed, and at

(22:38):
the same time, the great Colgate alumnus, Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
Was saying, keep the faith, baby, keep the faith. So
you know, when I got to Colgate in nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
There were.

Speaker 6 (22:58):
Seven of us, of which seven freshmen. Five were football
players who had been highly recruited to come to Kogate.
In high school, I ran track, so you know, I
was a decent runner. I mean, they didn't recruit me,
but the fact that I was coming made it easier

(23:19):
for them to say, oh, yeah, we want and a
guy by name Bill Smokey Robinson who could have become
a wrestler, but he never wrestled. And as I said,
you know, that was the seven of us. There were
three sophomores, one junior, and one senior. So just the

(23:44):
fact that it was such a small group made, especially
as freshman for the first couple of years, become real tight.
It was one of those situations where I was forced
to a certain extent to make these guys my brothers.

(24:07):
I mean I would have it would have happened anyway,
but I was forced given the fact that there was
seven of us and we and we were were.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Close, and we became close.

Speaker 6 (24:20):
But one of the things that I don't think any
of your guests has has mentioned before, so I want
to I want to get it out there, is that
the brothers that were there brothers are always going to
be brothers or as they say, brothers will be brothers.

(24:42):
I've never heard I'm from the West or you know,
I'm kind of outsider outside of the group. That's East
coast mentality of black men on the East Coast is
a little different mentality of black men on the West Coast.
But I've never heard so many guys I talk so
much smack.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
People need to know that. Uh yeah, there's an education in.

Speaker 6 (25:08):
And of itself when you deal with black men, especially
with reguards to the ladies.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
So when you talk about being all male, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (25:19):
That that was That was an education that I received
my first year there. That was too, to say, enlightening.
Uh you know, I I had to figure out what
my niche was, and my niche was. I couldn't compete
with the smooth talking brothers from from from Jersey and

(25:40):
New York.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Couldn't handle it. Man.

Speaker 6 (25:42):
I had to say no, no, I had to find
my little niche and you know, and hang in there with.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
With that.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
But yeah, I mean what was socializing Like I mean,
like you mentioned in girls, but then not on campus.
So are they busting them in y'all going to other campuses?

Speaker 5 (26:04):
Road trip?

Speaker 6 (26:05):
Hey, road man, uh wells, vaster skid more only honor,
el Judica, you name it. We were somebody was there.

(26:26):
Somebody was on a road trying to trying to get there. Yeah,
they had what they call mixers. But they would bring
uh you know that that they would bring in girls.
But some of my and I say this with a
straight frace, some of my white colleagues did not treat
the ladies very well. I mean, they were they were

(26:49):
objects in which one of the reasons why I'm glad
Kogate is co ed. Right now, you need to understand that.
You know, they are ladies, they're smart.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
They can they can they can do that.

Speaker 6 (27:04):
But even as a as a brother, you know, I
I I found out that if you went somewhere and
you found some ladies, you surveyed, you, you you establish
your beachhead because if you didn't, you were in trouble.
Because the brothers, like I said, it was, it was.

(27:27):
It was an education that I got. It's one of
the best that it's it's one of the fun things
I think about now and I I think about all
the stuff that happened. Uh you know this this is
a a PG rated program, but you know when I
see you, brothers, I can break some stuff down to you.

(27:48):
That's a that's a little more prolific than what I
can talk about.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
Now, but I look forward to it.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
So you involved in extracurricular activities.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yeah, Yeah, I.

Speaker 6 (28:06):
Ran track And that was one of the things that
I miss about Kolgate is the for me, track was
really really important. It helped stabilize my confidence of nothing else.

(28:28):
The first thing you know when you're at Kogate is
that it's a bunch of really smart people. And you know,
I was like a big fish in a small pond
and I got to Kogate and you know, my eyes
are open. So the fact that I could run track,
and at that particular time, Kogate had a really I

(28:51):
didn't know this, but Kogate had a really good reputation
in terms of track and field. Between sixty five and
seventy two, we had three outstanding athletes. One one an
indoor ic it NCAA indoor championship in the six hundred,

(29:11):
and one of my colleagues made the Olympic team as
a high jumper later on, and in sixty five we
had a hurdler that was great and made it to
the NCAAA National Championship.

Speaker 5 (29:28):
So what was your event?

Speaker 3 (29:31):
Oh, I tried.

Speaker 6 (29:32):
I ran sprints one hundred, okay, two hundred and quanter mile.
Really yeah, I'll say with pride. We still got a
couple of records that are within the top three on
the list.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
I was there.

Speaker 6 (29:48):
Every time I go back, I go to the track
coach and I say, okay, so where are we right now?
We have you guys bumped us down? Have you know
someone beat beat us? And you know, and took a
couple of years before our four by one hundred relay
was was bettered. But yeah, I still got a couple
of records. But again, track was really important. I got

(30:12):
to do things that I never would have done and
had been out west. We ran at the Boston Garden,
We ran at Madison Square Garden, We ran at the
Millrose Games. We ran at the pen relays. If you've
ever been to the pen relays, you know, especially if

(30:32):
you're running that quarter, you go around that last turn,
you have all those back floes up there just yelling
and screaming. They're cansing you, they're catching you. Gotta run faster,
you got it, you know. But we went to the
Florida Relays. So you know, it was a great experience
with a great group of guys. And I am convinced

(30:56):
that because I was a decent runner, all the turmoils
and troubles I went through as a freshman getting oriented
to classes and studying and.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
All of that.

Speaker 6 (31:14):
You know, I had a decent GPA and in high
school was over you know it three seven three a's
something like that, you know, And at the end of
my freshman first semester, I think I had a like
a one nine. I mean, I just but the fact
that I was doing okay in track said Okay, I

(31:37):
can do this, It's possible. Keep going, you can do it,
you know, So that acted as support for me. So
that's why I'm always in favor of intercollegiate athletics. It
gives a person a chance to get acclimated when you're

(31:57):
when you're when you're trying to understand how what it
is to be a college student. And that's hard enough
as it is. Forget about gender, race, color, whatever, just
being a college student, being away from home and all
those things that they that that entails. Where's on you

(32:18):
and uh, you know, to have a community to help
you can rely on and support. And that's what That's
what the seven of us did. That's how we made
it that first couple of years.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
I just it just occurred to me as you talked
about just issues of race, that and how the sixties were.
I mean, there's a lot of assassinations that's happening, from
Malcolm X to King and Kennedy's and just a real
turbulent time and it's just seven of y'all. What do
you remember about being a black man on Colgates camp

(33:00):
during those era, during that era, what all of those
things happening also in our nation?

Speaker 6 (33:08):
Well, we started off, I guess I want to say,
you know what that being on campus? What do we
think we accomplished? We knew at that particular time that

(33:32):
Kolgate was going to change, that it had started a movement.
Normally they didn't let more than three African Americans or
people in any particular class. Mine had jumped to seven.
A couple of years later, it jumped to eighteen nineteen,
and it started to go forward. It made me recognize

(33:55):
that I needed I couldn't shirk my duties as being
an African American. What I said, what I did reflected
not only on me, but reflected on all the brothers
that were on campus. So we had to in essence

(34:16):
keep ourselves together. And we're fighting for things that hopefully
you guys took for granted, we didn't because it wasn't there.
And I don't know if you knew some of the
the mess that we had to deal with in sixty

(34:40):
five to sixty nine. I mean, one of the things
that happened is that there was a fraternity on campus
by adults and then they discriminated against a Jewish person.
They kicked him out only because he was Jewish. Well,

(35:03):
at that time, the ABC Associated of Black Collegiates, I
can talk about how that got started. We said, no,
we're not going to let that just slide. And so
I don't know if you want to call it a
sit in, a takeover or whatever, but we occupied.

Speaker 4 (35:25):
The fact that I like that word occupied.

Speaker 6 (35:29):
We occupied the faculty building now the administrative building, for
I think it was five days, and not only did
we do it, but we had the whole campus backed
us on that effort because at that particular time, again

(35:49):
people are starting to ask the real questions, Okay, are
we really at democracy here? Are we really treating people equally?
I care about you enough that I want to make
sure that your experience here is is good. So yeah,
we fought that battle. Next year, two brothers were walking

(36:15):
down Broad Street and a drunk guy in one of
the fraternities, Sigma Nu put out, pulled out a starting
pistol and started shooting at him, and so we said, nah,
and I ain't gonna go either. So that's when. Uh,
by that time, we had more than just seven of us,

(36:36):
maybe twenty of us on campus. You know, you said
you would elect the term occupied. Okay, we occupied the
fraternity for three and a half days until the administration said, okay,
we'll look into it, we'll actually stop. You know, we

(36:59):
were closed fraternity for a year because of what they did.
And again, yeah, I don't want to give the opinion
that Kolgate was was willing to do the things that
it needed to do. Okay, but there may have been

(37:24):
old white guys who were in charge, but they weren't dumb.
They were smart enough to recognize that if they if
they didn't handle this correctly, they would get in trouble.
And because of that, that's how the ABC got started.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
I don't.

Speaker 6 (37:42):
I don't know if you recognize that. But the ABC
got started because I think some of the other institutions
around the country were setting up black student unions and
so Kolgate said, no, we you know, we're going to
send you and send a couple representatives down to Princeton,

(38:02):
and Princeton had a two day course or whatever talking
to black students about about organizing, and so, you know,
they recognize that if they didn't deal.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
With us, they were going to have to deal with us, and.

Speaker 6 (38:22):
The best thing to do was to go ahead and
find and have some kind of organization that they could
deal with, rather than trying to deal with yeah, twenty
five angry black people running all over the place.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
You know.

Speaker 6 (38:35):
So they they figured out that that's what they needed
to do.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
And but yeah, wow, being there.

Speaker 6 (38:51):
Was I look at it now and you know, it's hindsight,
it's twenty twenty, and you kind of see some of
the dualities and you say, okay, yeah, it maybe really
wasn't that bad. But you know, when you're an eighteen
year old kid, and you know, somebody pulls a gun
out on you and starts firing, whether it's blanks or not,

(39:14):
you ain't happy, right, and so you're trying to make
it a safe environment and.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Ah, yeah, we.

Speaker 5 (39:27):
Amidst all of this activity. I'm curious, well, where did
you live the four years, because you know, we were
able to benefit from HRC and our special interest houses
that were literally created as a result of a lot
of the work and sacrifices of those who came before us.

(39:48):
But obviously those weren't there when you were there. So
I'm just curious where did they have you, guys residing.

Speaker 6 (39:58):
In the early sixties, the living arrangements for campus was
basically the fraternities.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
Fraternity row was it? Oh wow?

Speaker 6 (40:11):
And if you were in a fraternity, then you could
live the good life as as such, they had independent
housing or for students, but you know, most people wanted
to go across Broad Street and be in the fraternity.

(40:32):
Uh there was not enough black people that have a
black fraternity, all right, But there was a fraternity, the
Teaks Tks. It was basically a Jewish house, but they
recognize and accept the brothers. So if you belonged to
a fraternity, you normally belong to Teaks. That's not always

(40:56):
When you guys talk with Ron Burton, he'll tell you
about his experience in his with his fraternities, but fraternities
who were it? And then what would happen is that
by the time you became a junior and your senior,
a lot of the brothers lived in homes independent, away
from fraternities, and they would just eat at fraternities. I

(41:17):
was fatigue for four years. And that's again another one
of the things that that I that I missed about
Kolgate is the friendships I made as with my Teak brothers,
Bob sea Berg, Tom Himmel, John McCarty, b Kelman, four

(41:42):
guys that stood behind not only me, but stood behind
the brothers and the things that we wanted to do
on campus, making life life better for us.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
And but yeah, I mean all that change.

Speaker 6 (42:00):
I mean when when by the time you got there,
what happened on one side of broad Street could happen
on the other.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
When I was there, you.

Speaker 6 (42:12):
Know, it was like crossing, uh you on one side
it's it's the Wild Village, it's Mardi Bar, and on
the other side it's mister Rogers neighborhood.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
I mean, you know, it was It's that much of
a difference between.

Speaker 5 (42:28):
Brush Street was like the tracks when you cross the tracks, it's.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
It's a different world.

Speaker 6 (42:36):
Well, one thing I think I asked al, I said,
do they still have party weekends? And you kind of
look at me and say, what's the party weekend? Oh,
back in the back in the day, that was it.
That was the day that you brought ladies to campus
and you found housing for them, and you and folk
folks would party from Friday.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
The yeah, this Sunday.

Speaker 6 (43:02):
But again, one of one of the things I found
out as as as I grow older and recognized when
I was there, everything is relative.

Speaker 4 (43:15):
Hm.

Speaker 6 (43:15):
And you know when we were juniors and seniors, man,
we'd hold a party up at at Kogate and we'd
have all these ladies come down and you know, we
we we whoop it up. I thought we were partying.
I really thought we were until I think it's my
junior year a friend of mine invited me to go

(43:39):
to come down and spend the weekend at Harvard.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
At at Howard Hello Hello. I came back. I looked
at my brothers and I said, no, man, we're not
partying at all.

Speaker 5 (43:51):
We're not even close.

Speaker 6 (43:54):
We're not even I mean I was tired by Saturday
after the noon is and no, no, you gotta get the
Saturday one and the Sunday one. It says that, you know,
Thursday night, we're just getting started. I'm going, so you know,
it's it's all relative, and that's that's one of those

(44:16):
things I learned at Kogate.

Speaker 7 (44:19):
I'm sitting here listening like I'm watching a movie, like
trying to envision.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
Okay, so we were at Kogate uh at a time
where yeah, there were definitely things were different. But when
I'm listening to you talk about, you know, broad Street
and and you know, we had our own experiences with
with frat roll that weren't the highlights of our of
our Cogate time there, as well as other things. It's
really even you're talking about Teak and how positive that

(44:46):
sounded at a time when nobody would have expected for
the camaraderie between black and white students to be what
it to be what it was, It's pretty awesome. And
I have to say, those are the kinds of stories
and testimonies that I think are current students of Colony
to hear about, because I don't know if those types
of experiences still happen.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Well, I hope they do. And then they should.

Speaker 6 (45:14):
Uh, Kogate strikes me as as as a great place
to go right now.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
I think it.

Speaker 6 (45:22):
You know, if you're looking for a liberal arts education.
You know, I've heard Casey, I've heard him speak, and
he seems to be someone who will who recognizes, you know,
this is this is my this is my this is
my higher end hat going on now recognizes the benefits

(45:48):
higher end, recognizes what it takes to make a campus
one that's beneficial to each and everybody that's there.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Excuse me, and so.

Speaker 5 (46:01):
I'll take it a step further. I think beyond the
fact that he recognizes the benefits of it, I think
it allows for the Coviate experience to be a leader
in higher ed across the country. When you think about
I mean all the standards that are created from from

(46:22):
you know, GPAs and status and you know graduates, and
that's all great and that all measures out. But at
the end of the day, is the experience in as
equally enriching, enriched for all students. Knowing that there's different
kinds of students, students learned in different ways, there's different
types of teaching, and can you truly be an institution

(46:46):
that embraces it all. And I think that to hear
your story, especially at a time when there was so
much sort of revolution in the country, you would think
that that would be something you'd be hearing occurring now,
not in the sixties, And so it's enlightening to hear

(47:10):
that there was that type of unification, There was that
type of brotherhood that cut across race, bought more about
the cause and what was right.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
Frustrating to hear that.

Speaker 6 (47:23):
Well, you know, I want to paint a nice picture
of Kogate, but you know, they were biggots. There were
people who are yeah, who I knew, call me a
nigga behind my back. I mean, you know, but you
know there were also people that when they heard that,

(47:43):
would say, no, you can't do that.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
We're not allow you to do that.

Speaker 6 (47:49):
You know, I didn't have to fight, We didn't have
to fight the battle all by ourselves.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
They were good people on cameras.

Speaker 6 (47:57):
And again, you know what, as I'm getting prepared for
you guys and thinking about it, I'm going damn, this
was all done with individuals who are twenty three years
and younger. There's nobody with any kind of seniority in

(48:19):
terms of age and experience to help us on campus.
There's there There is no one, And so you know,
when you guys came through that you had to have
some black administrative, black somebody on campus.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
We did that that you could turn to and go.

Speaker 6 (48:41):
And and have the same experience experience of being black
and how to put.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
It and how to put it all together.

Speaker 6 (48:49):
Absolutely, we had to fumble with that, and so you know,
that's that's one of the things. I look at Kogate
and I smile and I go, Okay, at least got
that right.

Speaker 4 (48:59):
Yeah, Fortunately, through the efforts of brothers like yourself and
many that came after you, we did have some representation
and faculty. We had some representation and administration as well
as I think decades of that student of color experience

(49:22):
that was being passed on. So as y'all are fumbling
and learning lessons and then passing those lessons on to
the students that came after you, if you could just
imagine that those lessons eventually are being built on, stacked on,
stacked on, and stacked on. So by the time we
get to us, while we're not really appreciating that, we're
receiving the wisdom of people from the sixties and that

(49:45):
as it gets passed on, we're just soaking it up.
As people are saying, well, you need to do it
this way, you need to study this way, you need
to organize like this, we're just receiving it. But what
we're learning through this podcast, and that's why we really
appreciate the lessons and how we're able to see this
through line, is that yes, people are learning passing it

(50:08):
on to the underclassmen. Those underclassmen become upperclassmen, they pass
it on to the underclassmen that come on. So you know,
as Jerry mentioned earlier, when we talk about like we're
standing on the shoulders like you know, we might have
said that ten fifteen years ago, not truly appreciating it,
but this podcast and the seat we sit in really

(50:32):
allows us to truly appreciate it, and like literally can
point to people and say, you know, this person meant
to it, that person and that person meant to it,
that person and that person mentor that person. Ultimately they
mentor us, Like to me, like, that's real, real powerful
of this Colgate thing.

Speaker 5 (50:52):
Further, you know, it's always a beautiful thing to acknowledge
those human beings that just something about sort of recognizing
the effort that was made by an individual without them
even knowing the domino effect.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
That was going to have.

Speaker 5 (51:06):
But beyond the human influence, we're talking about impact that
became part of the institution, a cultural center, an hrc,
a student organizations, the we functions, the different sort of
programming that occurred. That all is stuff that's still going

(51:31):
on and still exists because not only was there the
influence of individuals like yourself, but it was about that
fumbling that led to no, no, no, no, this sain't enough.
It's not just numbers, it's not just having bodies here.
It's and not just having faculties. It's majors that exist
that didn't exist when you were there. It's study abroad

(51:53):
that didn't exist when you were there, as well as
the physical space that we were there at the reunion
in the Cultural Center, and we were just like time
warping back to when we were student workers. Alvin and
I were there in the first year it opened up
and heard about the transition from the shed or the
maintenance building, you know, but there were you guys.

Speaker 6 (52:18):
We and that's that's that's that's one of the things
I think one of the accomplishments. The seven of us
who who can can take somewhat credit for we have
been asking for the cultural center, and Kogi kept.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Saying, yeah, we're gonna do it.

Speaker 6 (52:43):
And so when we were seniors on our way out,
we said, okay, we're going We're gonna really rock the boat.
So in the same the spring of my senior year,
we I'm gonna say, took.

Speaker 4 (53:00):
Over occupied, occupied.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
The faculty building.

Speaker 6 (53:08):
You know that where the faculty have their their luncheon
and their dinners and stuff. We took that building over
and said we aren't leaving until you promise us in
writing or come up with something that we're going to
have this center. Because Kolgate, you know, just like any
other institution, you know, we'll say yeah, we're going to

(53:30):
do it, and then it doesn't happen. I mean, when
I first got to Kogate, they told me they were
going to have a new chemistry building. It was going
to be built as a freshman that that building was
not built for another twelve years, which is eight years
after I left, before they did it. I mean, that's

(53:50):
for an academic building. So what do you think is
going to happen to this cultural center? That you that
you guys want and you know, so yeah, I feel
every time I walk into that Atlanta said, I'm going yeah, yeah,
it happened. And and again, you know, yeah, when we

(54:12):
were on campus, I can't remember that that there may
have been one Puerto Rican guy. There was one guy
who was from Puerto Rico. But you know, we were
so interested just in black people that we didn't worry
about other people. And now to see that the growth

(54:35):
is including everybody, and again it's it's it's it's relative,
you know. And one of one of the things when
we were when we took a track meet, a track
visit down to East Carolina University, and uh, it's it

(54:59):
was it's a great we had a we had a
good track meet, great time, et cetera. But I'm talking
with some of the black students there and I'm telling
them about the ABC and what great job we're doing
and how we're doing this and doing that, and they're
they're looking at me like, I'm crazy, what do you

(55:21):
mean that you can you can do this? You actually
have an organization? I said, so what are you folks?
I mean, what what what do you what kind of housing?
What d you looking for he says, man, we are
interested in that. All we want them to do is
to stop playing Dixie and take down the flag.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (55:41):
And I'm going, okay, all right, it's all relative, Yeah,
it is all relative.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
So hm, what is you major?

Speaker 5 (55:54):
In?

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Mathematics? That was my major?

Speaker 6 (55:59):
Which surprising, and in fact, that's that's what I ended
up doing for the rest for the most of my life.
I for forty four years or forty one years, I
was a teacher of higher ed education. I taught at
a community college, taught mathematics for those many years.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
And so so I have to ask.

Speaker 5 (56:20):
I have to ask because it's such a classic component
of the Cogate experience in terms of how we arrived
at our majors. You know, did you go into Colgate
knowing you were going to do mad where you were
a math feedom in high school it was in a
default major because you just had enough classes that worked out.

(56:41):
How did you end up being a math.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Major in the seventh grade. I knew it was going
to be a math major. I knew it was going
to be a mathematic Wow. Okay, that's because it was.
It was easy for me.

Speaker 6 (56:55):
And the reason why it was easy is that I
like structure and mathematics is nothing more than the study
of patterns. And once I figured out what those patterns were,
I'm often gone. And one of the one of the
things that a little different from people majoring in other

(57:19):
areas is because I was good, they couldn't tell me, no,
you can't do this. You know, no one could convince
me I couldn't do math. Why because I could do it,
and you knew I.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Could do it, and so you know, numbers don't lie, numbers.

Speaker 6 (57:36):
Do not lie, and so yeah, I always knew I
wanted to be a mathematician. Now ending up teaching is
a whole different thing.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
I didn't think i'd end up being a college instructor.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
Let's let's take a pause right there. Yeah, yeah, and
we'll show love to our sponsor and we'll come back
for the second half of the conversation as we walk
through what your life has been like since graduation and
your professional career and learn more about good brother Ed
Morris last of nineteen sixty nine. So this episode is

(58:21):
sponsored by Hope Murals.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
Hope Murals is.

Speaker 4 (58:24):
A nonprofit that provides adolescent youth with an interactive experience
of creative expression via an urban arts platform that stimulates
both mental and physical development.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
Please visit that.

Speaker 4 (58:37):
Website at www dot Hopemurals dot org to learn more
and find ways you can support the.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
Work they do.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
Welcome back. This is the second half of this conversation
with brother Ed Morris, class of nineteen sixty nine. This
is of course Aftergate season four, looking forward to learning
more about his professional journey. But before we do that,
let's make sure we thank our sponsor, Hope Murals. Make
sure you show them some love. Get on their website

(59:11):
hopemurals dot org. Learn about what they're doing, make a
donation because they are doing some amazing things exposing our kids,
our adults. Urban arts, have phenomenal projects in the works,
phenomenal projects in the pipeline. So just get on their website,

(59:32):
get on their social media at Hope Murals, and just
show them some love. They are doing some amazing, amazing things.
Also want to show some love to our network, the
file Life Network www. Godefilife dot co. Is that network
some real interesting and empowering written content. They also have

(59:55):
a podcast hub. You can find a podcasts like Aftergate
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of your major podcast streaming services that spreak us, Spotify,
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(01:00:16):
sure you are checking us out, like and subscribe so
that when we drop another one at thirteen hundred hours,
you will get an alert on Saturday. That is it.
So let's jump back into the conversation with brother Morris.
So before we get into how you have become this

(01:00:39):
amazing man since you graduated in nineteen sixty nine, just
want to probe ask a question that really has been
the topic of many conversations I have had recently, and
I think, as you are someone who has experienced with
higher ed, a couple of topics that I would love

(01:01:02):
you to touch on because they are just again, whether
it's the barbershop, whether it's conversations at work with my siblings,
these topics come out quite often. So one is the
cost of education. I love to hear your thoughts on
how we're going to deal with that because even in

(01:01:23):
my last Alumni Council meeting, President Casey rejected that at
some point pretty soon Colgate's going to hit that one
hundred thousand dollars a year mark. The other thing I'd
love to get your thoughts on is AI and how
is how is artificial intelligence impacting the work enroll of

(01:01:45):
faculty professors at Higher Ed. And then the last one
is DEI because we recently had the Affirmative Action ruling
from the Supreme Court and where they have made it
illegal for institutions to consider race when enrolling students, and

(01:02:06):
so to me, it is making it. It's a test
can institutions still create diverse, equitable, inclusive experiences where students
feel like they belong without going against the law. So
love to get your thoughts on those three topics as
someone who has walk the walk and Higher ED.

Speaker 6 (01:02:31):
Yeah, I'm going to start out by just talking a.

Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
Little bit about about AI.

Speaker 6 (01:02:39):
I've got colleagues who right now are somewhat frustrated when
they give an assignment because they're not sure, you know,
is this authentic thought, this original thought or is this
something that is regurgitated from AI? AI and Higher ED

(01:03:01):
is is great, but one of the things you want
to do and education is have student structure what they're
what they're learning, and put that into perspective and creating
that scaffold, if you want to think about it, is
a mental process that you have to go through. And

(01:03:25):
if you have AI, it basically does that for you.
And if it does it for you, then then what
are you supposed to do? I mean, just throwing on
the covering at the end is not good. And at
one time, when this first, I say, five or six

(01:03:46):
years ago, my colleagues could look and say, oh, yeah,
that's something that came from that's not your original work,
that came from someplace else.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
But AI has gotten so good that you can't tell.

Speaker 6 (01:04:01):
And you know that create you know, that cheats an
individual out of the benefits of going to college, and
that brings you to brings you to number two.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
The cost right now.

Speaker 6 (01:04:17):
I mean, I'm when I went to the reunion, I'm
sitting back there and I'm talking with one of the
students and he's telling me it's going to cost him eighty.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
Four thousand dollars a year room board tuition to go
to Kolgate. I'm going, what eighty four thousand?

Speaker 6 (01:04:38):
You know, you're now getting close to, you know, escalate
money every year to.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
Go. And the thing is it's not so much the money, but.

Speaker 6 (01:04:51):
People thinking it's worth that, is it worth going through
all of that and to get that kind of education,
and especially you want to get your money's worth, as
as the case may be, and how do you best

(01:05:12):
get your get your money's worth, get the experience out
of all of that. And I really don't know. I
think it's going to get to a point where people
will decide college is not the way to go, and
for some individuals it is not. I I wish I

(01:05:34):
could say everybody ought to go to Kolgate, but it's
it's a situation where everybody that has the right mindset
should go to Colgate. And this is what they're they're
they're going to receive. You know, jobs in the trades
are playing paying well, and you know, trying to tell

(01:05:56):
somebody that you need to go and and and end
up one hundred thousand dollars in debt when you get out.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
Is not worth it.

Speaker 6 (01:06:07):
Even though supposedly, and I'm sure that the statistics will
change that the average income of a high school graduate
versus someone who doesn't graduate, you know, those things will
continue to somewhat. I think they'll shrink instead of increase.

(01:06:28):
Having that PhD may not bring in as much as
just having a good master's and.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
Making that work. I mean, the.

Speaker 6 (01:06:37):
Cost of education has just gone sky high. And even
though you can take away the grants so that someone
can maybe get out of four your worth of undergraduate
without any debt, you know, that's still a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
And the thing is that.

Speaker 6 (01:07:01):
When you cut out any population, or any dynamics or
any group from the from the college experience, it's not
only a detriment to that group, but it's a detriment
to all the other students that are on campus. And
so that's why, you know, guy down in Florida says, no,

(01:07:27):
we're not going to have any diversity. Equity and inclusion,
you know, doesn't do there, doesn't do education any good.
I mean, if I learned anything from my years and
higher ed is that the more diverse your population is,

(01:07:47):
the better the experience is for the students. The more
they will learn, the more they will change, the more
they will become I don't want to say this, more
human in terms of their appreciation of things which are
different than them. Yeah, and you know that's one of

(01:08:09):
the things about a liberal arts education, being exposed to
things that you normally wouldn't have been exposed to so
that you can make the determination as to whether that's good,
that's bad. You get to do it. But you know,
if you take away the incentive or you take away

(01:08:30):
the provision that helps provide that, you've hurt yourself. You've
hurt the education of the students that you have.

Speaker 4 (01:08:39):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:08:39):
So I don't know how to I don't know how
to get around that, but I know one thing, they'll
figure out how to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
It will happen. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:08:51):
I may not be able to look at you and say, oh,
you're a black student, so we want you. Somehow I'm
going to be able to end up getting you as
part of my population because you're going to provide something,
and so you may you may be able to say.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
It's it's background. Yeah, maybe it's in terms I don't know.
The language.

Speaker 5 (01:09:12):
Language has to change.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (01:09:14):
Yeah, the labels change, but the causes remain.

Speaker 6 (01:09:18):
You got you gotta do it. You got to do it,
and if you don't, then education has lost its value.
I mean that's I'm sorry to be so so blunt,
but those are the kind of things that that that
make this world go around and starting to cut them

(01:09:39):
out where we ad it doesn't Yeah, it doesn't help.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
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Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
Reach out to the Defile Life.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Podcast network and we will work with you throughout the
entire process. We have special packages to get you started.
Contact us at info at godfirelife dot com. Every week,
professionals of color, ranging from politicians to educators, to judges,
to entrepreneurs, to lawyers, corporate leaders, and even retirees.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
Aftergate reaches an array.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Of successful bipod listeners contact us to learn more about
how we can benefit you.

Speaker 5 (01:10:33):
With that being said, it actually actually serves as a
great segue into the second half of our interview with you.
And you know, although we know you're in higher ed
and you ended up there. Now, I'd love to hear
sort of the journey graduate Hamilton, you graduate Koge University, leave,

(01:10:53):
how you survive and escape Hamilton, New York in sixty nine.
The winters are behind you even though Seattle has its
own weather challenge, the climate challenges, what happens next? You know,
were you that, you know, a student that went to
the career Planning Center and planned the whole post COVID experience,
was that, Hey, I'm just happy to graduate and go

(01:11:15):
back home and I'll figure it out when I get there.
If you can shed some light on that and kind
of walk us through the journey from sixty nine to
twenty twenty four and what in the highs and lows professionally, personally, spiritually,
take us along with you.

Speaker 6 (01:11:35):
Yeah, when I was at well, you got to remember
in nineteen sixty nine, when I'm graduating, the war is
in full fledge.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
It's going great guns.

Speaker 6 (01:11:50):
And in fact, before I can get home from my graduation,
I've got a letter from Uncle Sam saying, please come
in and we want you to take your physical And
I hadn't, you know, I graduated in May May a third.
By the maid the thirtieth, I had to go in,

(01:12:11):
and I had been thinking about that ahead of time,
and I said, oh, well, I'd like to teach.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
I liked teaching.

Speaker 6 (01:12:22):
And this was ironic because as a freshman I said
to a teacher that I met in New York. I said,
I'll never be a chalk pusher. I'll never push chalk,
and then I just turned around and end up doing
it for over over forty years. But at Kogate we

(01:12:43):
used to have something which is called a jam plant.

Speaker 4 (01:12:45):
You guys don't Oh, yeah, January, I.

Speaker 5 (01:12:49):
Did a jam plan. I think it ended shortly after
all time there.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
Yeah, well my jam plan.

Speaker 6 (01:12:54):
My senior year was I student taught at Hamilton Elementary
School in Appleton, New York, and I was teaching sixth
grade math and enjoyed it. It was really great. I said,
this is a profession I could see myself doing. I

(01:13:18):
had thought a little bit about being an applied mathematician,
which means dealing in the area of statistics and actuarial science.
I thought about that as a possibility, but you know,
I thought that maybe teaching might be what I wanted.

(01:13:40):
Seattle public schools were begging for teachers, begging, and in
fact I applied there and they told me that they
would work it out because I didn't have all the
credits that I needed. I was short one particular class
that I needed that it made me a certified teacher

(01:14:01):
in the state of Washington. They said, we'll hire you
no matter what. You know, you can go get that
particular class and you'll and you'll be Okay, well we
want you. And again, you know, I don't know whose
fate it was, but somebody over up there was watching

(01:14:23):
me because I called the the the people who were
in charge of I can't remember what the what the
term is the it's not the parole board, but what
is it the board that uh, that tells you whether

(01:14:47):
you're in the.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
Army or not.

Speaker 6 (01:14:48):
I'm sorry, guys, I can't think of of of what
it is.

Speaker 5 (01:14:54):
They just knew you had records at Kolgate and they
were like, we need this brother.

Speaker 3 (01:15:01):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:15:07):
Anyway, I called him up and I said I've got
this job in Seattle, and the lady just laughed at me.
He said, that don't make any difference, right, so we
we Uncle Sam is calling.

Speaker 3 (01:15:18):
You, and so I was going to be uh.

Speaker 6 (01:15:22):
I had worked something out that if I had passed
my physical then I would have I would have joined
the Air Force. But luckily enough, I had a small
back problem and the government said, hey, we won't we
won't make you one A will make you one f

(01:15:42):
which means if there's a war, war induct you. Otherwise
you're good. And so that's how I got into teaching.
I taught at for the Seller public schools for one
year to Inner City School. Great, had a great time,
great people, brothers and sisters were interesting. You know, I

(01:16:08):
understand the aha moment when you get something that's that's
really good and you go ah ah they see it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
And then at the end of that one year, I
said to myself, Okay, where are you going to go?
What are you going to do?

Speaker 6 (01:16:27):
And I decided if I stayed in public schools that
eventually I would become a vice principal, then a principal
then you know, and I said, no, I don't want
to do that. I want to teach. I want to
be in the classroom. I want that one on one
experience with with students. So I went back to the

(01:16:52):
University of Washington, got my master's degree in mathematics and
applied to every single community college in the state of Washington,
and Highline College, which is located in des Moine, Washington,
which is midway between Seattle and Tacoma, recognized here's our opportunity.

(01:17:16):
This is nineteen seventy two. So they're starting to expand
they're starting to look for a faculty of color.

Speaker 5 (01:17:24):
They were doing BI before it existed.

Speaker 3 (01:17:26):
Huh yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:17:31):
They said, mister Morris, you want a job. I said, yeah,
I'd love to. And then from first couple of years,
you know, I'm just getting myself acclimated understanding how how
higher ed works and started to see stuff. And then
I started to recognize that if you want to be

(01:17:54):
a good teacher, an excellent teacher, then you can't be
what it's referred to as a sage on this stage.
That does not work. And so if that's not the
correct way, then what is. So you know, I ended
up and pondering the question of is knowledge transmitted or

(01:18:17):
is knowledge constructed? And so I came to the conclusion,
as some people have, that it's constructed. In other words,
you know, it's sometimes at Kogate, and I watched Kogate
change on this, which is really tremendous. You know, it's
kind of like I'm going to throw out the seeds.

(01:18:39):
I'm going to water you and if you guys get it, great,
If you don't, it's not my fault. It's up to you.
And you know that's giving that transmission is the way.
But if you're constructed where the student makes its own framework,
and based on that framework he starts understand how things work,

(01:19:03):
especially in the area of mathematics, you can become a
good teacher. In other words, I've fought for the last
twenty years of my career to create better teachers by
doing something that's referred to as reflective teaching. Now that's

(01:19:25):
not new, it's not something that is unique just to
community colleges, is to education, but it's something that's necessary.
And so because of that, I have a mantra that says,

(01:19:52):
they'll care how much you know when they know how
much you care, which means that if I can convince
you that I care about what you learn, then you've
got a better chance of listening to what I say.
If I can convince you, I mean, just think about it.

(01:20:13):
If you look out, there are movies like Stand and Deliver,
Dead Poet, Society, Freedom Writers. If all these movies that
are out, you understand that those students really get and
understand education when they feel that that teacher cares about them,
When the teacher gets to them and understand they understand

(01:20:35):
that he really cares. That's when learning can start to
take place, and reflective learning means nothing more than I'm
going to ask myself to do in my teaching, what
I want you, as a student to do, and what do.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
You mean by that?

Speaker 6 (01:20:55):
Well, as a teacher, when you instruct, you have to analyze, Okay,
what am I trying to achieve. Once I've made that decision,
I'm going to go ahead and do it. Then I'm
going to evaluate it. Then I'm going to think about

(01:21:16):
what I've done, was I successful, Why wasn't I successful?
What could I do that's a little bit better? Change
and then start that cycle all over again. What are
you asking your students to do? You're asking them to okay.
I want you to construct for yourself what this particular

(01:21:38):
topic means. You know when the last part I was,
one of the last things I did was talk about
CATS classroom assisted teaching, where you asked, as students, maybe
at the end of a class, okay, in one word,
summarize what you learned today, and then take that summary

(01:22:02):
and share it with the students that are near you
or are asking students to Okay, I want you to
create a question that's going to be on the next
exam get together with your colleagues decide what would be
a good question. All right, And this is not necessarily

(01:22:22):
talking about mathematics. When you talk reflective teaching is not
just something that's done in math.

Speaker 3 (01:22:27):
It's just something that's.

Speaker 6 (01:22:28):
Done in all kinds of kinds of topics, all kinds
of subjects. There's a guy by the name of Edgar
Dale that said something like this. He says, you remember
ten percent of what you hear, twenty percent of what

(01:22:51):
you read, thirty percent of what you see, but ninety
percent of what you do. And so a good teacher
gets his students to do stuff he's not. You're not
just taking notes for the whole entire hour. That's not

(01:23:11):
that that doesn't work. You've got to break it up.
You've got to get them involved. And when they get involved,
they become interested, you know. And I've spent time one
of one of my well maybe for about five years,
i ran the Faculty Resource Center in Highline.

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):
But it's a teaching facility where teachers.

Speaker 6 (01:23:35):
Could come in talk about new techniques, talk about new
ways of instruction, share their expertise. It's surprising most colleges,
most community colleges, think you've got to go out and
have somebody from the great University of blah blah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:54):
Come in and teach you on stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:23:56):
You've got colleagues there that have so much insight that
you could share with them. They can share with you
and you can learn as much as bringing in a
big named outside of facilitated to facilitate stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:24:14):
And without that, without that bill, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:24:20):
With without that bill, and so yeah, I was fortunate
enough to be involved in that. Not only that, but
I was also fortunate enough that Highland College in the
beginning two thousands had a us AI D grant with

(01:24:43):
with the government to share this kind of information on
teaching with other folks throughout the world.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
So I have.

Speaker 6 (01:24:53):
A great relationship or with Cape Peninsula Tech u Versity
which is in Cape Town, South Africa, and Namibia University
of Science and Technology, which is in vin Hook, Namibia.
So I'm taking trips to Africa to talk about reflective teaching,

(01:25:16):
to talk about teaching, to talk about what it is
to be a good teacher, how to facilitate that. And
when I'm there, I'm I'm I guess I learned as
much making those presentations as I as I did, as

(01:25:38):
I hope they got from me. It wasn't the one
way thing where I went and split it out. This
is how we do it in America, and blah blah
blah blah. I said, hey, take what you what you have,
put a little tang on it. That's going to make
it work in South Africa. Put a little tang on
it's going to make it work in Namibia. Because it's
not the same problems. Are not the same problems of education.

(01:26:06):
I'm chuckling now because when I was there, I was
talking with a math instruct He's a good friend of mine.
Now name is Peter Koran, but he's in Namibia and
he's teaching seventh grade math and he's I'm telling him
good techniques and whatever. And he says, oh, but you know,

(01:26:28):
you don't know my students. And he and I said,
they can't be that bad. And he said, well, come
to my class and you and you'll see. And I said, okay.
So I walk into his classroom. Brothers, my brothers, those
folks stood up and said, good morning, dear teacher, and

(01:26:50):
I'm going you ain't had any problems, brother, you have
no problems at all. Again, it's relative, you know. And
again I was talking. I said to once principal, I said, so,
what's the hardest thing about teaching. What's the hardest thing

(01:27:11):
about getting your students to complete and do their homework? Now,
I thought, you know, of all the answers that we
have here in America, what the answers would be. She
looked at me and says, the hardest part about my
students completing their homework is they can only work until
the lamp goes out. And I'm sitting there going okay.

Speaker 3 (01:27:33):
And so.

Speaker 6 (01:27:35):
Those kinds of experiences affect how I when I got
back to my classroom started to teach. I mean, I
looked at all the foreign students. We had a whole
lot different than when I left. You know, it's it
was not only informative, but it changed the way I

(01:27:55):
perceived myself. And again that's that's a lot about teaching.
How we think of ourselves is reflected and how we teach,
and how we collaborate and you know, student involvement and

(01:28:16):
and all those different different kinds of things. But yeah,
that's that was my life, is to try to make.

Speaker 3 (01:28:27):
Better teachers.

Speaker 6 (01:28:28):
So you know, one of the things I did after
I retired is I would go back and I'd run
some faculty seminars for a new faculty on our campus.

Speaker 3 (01:28:38):
For a couple of years, I did that. Yeah, I retired.

Speaker 6 (01:28:44):
It's got to be ten years ago now, and so
you know, I've been out of the loop for of education.
And I'm sure it's changed. I'm not sure right now.
If given the fact that you have to, you know,
online teaching, and never let anybody convince you that online

(01:29:08):
teaching is easier than teaching face to face, it's a
whole lot harder and for me, and it's it's it's
not as pleasurable. I don't think it would have been
as pleasurable because I like to look at your eyes.

(01:29:29):
I like to see that twitch that you give or
that frown that I say something. You know, and I'm talking, Yeah,
I'm talking to thirty six blank screens. You know, I
can't tell you whether you're there or not there. I
can't tell you whether you're following me or not following me.

(01:29:49):
You know, it's it. It has changed. I to be
a good teacher. Now, there's certain things that's still you
gotta do, but it's it has changed, it has changed forever.
So yeah, that's what I've been doing. Then, That's that's
what I love to do.

Speaker 5 (01:30:10):
When you're going back to South Africa or.

Speaker 3 (01:30:16):
Libya.

Speaker 5 (01:30:18):
Wait when you're going back.

Speaker 6 (01:30:20):
Uh, I don't know that I did. Last time I
was back was in twenty fourteen. I had a chance
to finish up the grant and so I had a
chance to go back.

Speaker 5 (01:30:35):
So you're dude, ten not ten years ago.

Speaker 6 (01:30:37):
Yeah, I know, I'm I'm doing to go back.

Speaker 3 (01:30:42):
But again, the.

Speaker 6 (01:30:46):
South Africa that I knew is not the South Africa
that's now, you know, it's you know, Nelson Mandela is
to a certain extent gone. And again that was another
thing that was really intriguing to me when I'm in
South Africa is watching their reaction to apartheid or after apartheid.

(01:31:19):
You know, you know, you think they want to go
out and ring every every white person's neck that they
can get their hands on, and it's the exact opposite.
They're trying to they're trying to make it work. They're
they're trying to figure out how they can become, in fact,
the country that they wanted, you know. And I'm also

(01:31:44):
chuckling because I'm in South Africa and I'm talking to
a group of African students and I say, yeah, and
I'm an African American. And they looked at me and
they go, no, you're not. I said, what do you mean,
I'm an African American. They looked at me and says, no,

(01:32:04):
you're an American. I said, what do you mean? And
I pointed to my white colleague. I said, you don't see,
there's no difference between you, and you said no, there's
no difference.

Speaker 3 (01:32:15):
Between you two.

Speaker 4 (01:32:16):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:32:17):
And I'm going hold it. You know, I can't call
myself an African American. So I said to them, I said, oh, okay,
what's important to you? Is it that you're a South
African or that you're from this particular tribe? And they
all said, oh, the most important thing is my tribe.

(01:32:39):
My tribe is the most important, and then I'm a
South African. Afterwards, I said, okay, well, guess what, we
in America have been stripped of our tribe. And so
the only way we can get that kind of feeling
that you have about your tribe is for me to

(01:33:00):
put that name African in front of American. By doing that,
it gives me a connection back here, back to an
essence of what what I had before I was we
were stripped of everything. When they get to America. It
looked at me and said, yeah, okay, you can call
yourself African.

Speaker 3 (01:33:22):
I convinced, yes, I'm good. Thank you, brother.

Speaker 5 (01:33:26):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (01:33:28):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 6 (01:33:31):
But yeah, those those those kinds of experiences are experiences
that that I've had through uh through education and through
teaching higher ed. It's it's it's been phenomenal. I would
not have given it up for anything. There are times
when I was given the opportunity to to leave and

(01:33:58):
you know, they said, well you can come back and
become in actuary and you can make ten times what
you're making now is there? And I got now now
there there are too many brothers and sisters out there
who who can understand math. I mean when I talked
to somebody, I said, hey, if you can make it

(01:34:18):
in the streets, guess what and why can you make
it in the streets.

Speaker 3 (01:34:23):
Well, I know the rules.

Speaker 6 (01:34:25):
I know how stuff is supposed to go, and if
it doesn't go that way, i'm I'm I said, Okay,
once you learn the rules of mathematics, it's the same
thing applying you can you can You'll see where what
the next thing is. You can see where you need
to go, you can see what you need to do,

(01:34:45):
and it's doable.

Speaker 3 (01:34:46):
I mean, look at me, I'm here. Yeah, learn the rules.

Speaker 5 (01:34:53):
With that being said, let's take one last, you know,
sort of reflection on back back back in nineteen sixty five,
you're entering Kolgate. You're thinking about, you know, what's to come.
What might be the words of wisdom you give your

(01:35:14):
you know, eighteen year old self entering Kogate to to
you know, best navigate that experience. And then what are
also the words of wisdom you provide two brother Mars
graduating Kogate in six and nine going into the world.
What would be your insight that you would provide.

Speaker 6 (01:35:34):
You, Jerry, you just hit my heart button. Man, you
just got to the essence of of me. I'm gonna
I'm going to address the eighteen year old coming to Kogate.

(01:35:55):
What I would tell him is, you are aware you belong.
Don't let anybody convince you that you are not there,
that you are not as good.

Speaker 3 (01:36:08):
And that's true for anybody.

Speaker 6 (01:36:13):
Again, you know, it's hard enough just being a freshman.

Speaker 3 (01:36:18):
And one of the things that.

Speaker 6 (01:36:21):
I would tell myself at eighteen is don't listen to
your freshman roommate.

Speaker 4 (01:36:32):
You don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:36:37):
I had a freshman roommate who.

Speaker 6 (01:36:43):
It's a complete different situation, not what you guys are thinking, probably,
But I had a freshman roommate who was who went
to deer Field, big prestigious private school. He came in
the second day of class from aemistry class. He walked up.
He came in and he was sweating. He's going, ed,

(01:37:06):
I'm going, what's wrong, man? He said, Man, that guy
went through all of my high school chemistry in the
first ten minutes of the class.

Speaker 3 (01:37:16):
Man, I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (01:37:17):
I'm done.

Speaker 3 (01:37:19):
I'm done.

Speaker 8 (01:37:20):
And the thing is, I listened to him. I listened
to him, so I know I didn't take chemistry only.

Speaker 6 (01:37:31):
Because that Now, how did I figure out that he
didn't know what the hell he was talking about?

Speaker 3 (01:37:39):
The next quarter he took a calculus class.

Speaker 6 (01:37:42):
He walked in and said, hey, guess what, ed, Man,
the guy went through my first all my high school
mathematics in the first year, and calculus is going to
be difficult. I'm looking at him, Oh God, you were
so wrong. So you know, I tell my students all
the time. You know, other people's experiences are not yours.

(01:38:08):
You can't let their experience inflect you. Chemistry may have
been hard for me, that may have been the case,
but it may not. I can't base what I'm going
to do on what you experienced. That's and again I
would tell myself, you know, this too shall pass.

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
You can make it.

Speaker 6 (01:38:32):
Man. Don't let them look down on you. Don't let
them convince you otherwise, and be steadfast in that. Now,
what would I say to the graduating person. I would
say to him what I say to every one of
my classes for the last twenty.

Speaker 3 (01:38:52):
Three years.

Speaker 6 (01:38:53):
I taught my class when the very first day of
of class, I pass out the syllables, and most people
would spend the whole class period talking about syllables. I go, now,

(01:39:14):
I'm not going to do that. Remember, I say, when
they know how much they care, they're care how much?

Speaker 4 (01:39:22):
You know?

Speaker 6 (01:39:24):
I try to convince those folks in my very first
class that I care about them. So I asked them
this question, and I asked my twenty one year old self,
there are three kinds of people in this world. People
who make things happen, people who watch things happen, and

(01:39:46):
people who wonder, what in the world just happened? Which
one do you want to be? And most people, I mean,
if you want to be the second two, I mean,
you don't need me. But if you want to be
that first, you need to understand that there are certain
principles of success that you need to follow if you

(01:40:07):
want to be successful. And I spend my class telling
these students, all of them. Whether I'm teaching algebra or
differential equations doesn't make any difference. I asked them that question,
and I say, if you want to be successful, here's

(01:40:27):
what you got to do. And they say, oh, yeah,
well you need to study, and I say, no, no, no, no.
These success principles are principles that work. Whether you're want
to be a mathematician, whether you want to be a physician,
whether you want to be running a fortune five hundred company,

(01:40:49):
whether your desire is to be have your own street
pharmaceutical industry, industry running for it, it's all the same.
And I said, these are the five things you have
to do. So if you allow me, gentlemen, I'll tell

(01:41:12):
you what it is. Number One, you gotta have a dream,
a want, a desire, a need, and that need has
got to be something that drives you each and every day.
When your friends see you coming, they're gonna go, oh, Henna, he's.

Speaker 3 (01:41:33):
Gonna talk about this again. I don't want to.

Speaker 6 (01:41:38):
That's how passionate you have to be about what you
want to be successful at. And I never tell my
students what success is. I say, you decide what it is.
But if you don't have that dream, you're not going
to get there. And it's got to be a big dream.
So don't dream. I just want to have a.

Speaker 3 (01:41:58):
Summer camp for sixty kids.

Speaker 6 (01:42:00):
Know you want to have a summer camp for six
hundred kids in thirty counties in sixty and forty states.

Speaker 3 (01:42:07):
I mean, if you're.

Speaker 6 (01:42:08):
Going to dream, dream big, you gotta have that number two.
Beside the dream, what are you willing to give up?
You've got to give up something to get that dream.
We live in a Latto mentality world where I put
down my dollar and I'm an instant winter. No, you
got to work at it. You got to be willing

(01:42:28):
to give up to get what you want. You know,
whether it's sleep, whether it's I tell him, you know,
you may have to quit that second Bowlding league you're in.
You know, you may have to put all that aside
to get to what you want to do. But whatever
it is, you have got to give up something, You

(01:42:49):
got to sacrifice to get that. And third, don't think
you can do it by yourself. You need a mentor.
You need somebody that you can hang with, Somebody who's
gone where you want to go. He can show you
the ropes, tell you what's up, what's not. You need
to be able to find that person, and once you do,

(01:43:11):
hang in their back pocket, hang in there tightly. But
I don't know anybody that's doing what I want to
do it has that kind of dream volunteer. That's a
great thing about America. You can go work for somebody
for free. They'll take you in, they'll show you the ropes.
But you gotta have that. If you think that you
can do it all by yourself, you're missing the boat

(01:43:33):
cause you can't.

Speaker 3 (01:43:35):
Fourth.

Speaker 6 (01:43:36):
You got to have a plan. You know, they're saying,
if you fail the plan, then you plan to fail.
You gotta have that plan. And you know, there are
a lot of books out there that can tell you
how to set up this plan.

Speaker 3 (01:43:50):
But it's real simple.

Speaker 6 (01:43:51):
What do you want to be in twenty years, determines
where you're going to be in ten, determines where you're
going to be in five, determines what you're going to
do in a year, which says what you gotta do
the next six months. It's you got to have that plan.

Speaker 3 (01:44:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:44:04):
Well, you know someone will say if you have a plan,
then you know you sometimes you won't make it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:12):
Yeah, then you get a new plan, just revise it, right.

Speaker 6 (01:44:17):
I mean the Seahawks wanted to be uh want to
make a Super Bowl.

Speaker 3 (01:44:23):
They didn't make it.

Speaker 6 (01:44:24):
So they didn't turn around and say, hey, well guess what,
We're going to close the franchise, cut down loom.

Speaker 3 (01:44:30):
And Field and forget it. What do they do? Get
a new coach?

Speaker 6 (01:44:35):
Yeah, do something else. You've got to have that plan.
And the most significant thing is the fifth one. And
I don't think that we stress this enough you It's
called self efficacy, but that really means is you got

(01:44:55):
to believe you can do this plan. You got I
believe it. Not your mama, not your papa. You got
to believe that that's possible. Because if you don't believe it,
you're right. If you do believe it, you're right, whatever
you believe.

Speaker 3 (01:45:14):
Got to have that.

Speaker 6 (01:45:16):
And at this point in time, especially after the Olympics,
if I was talking to somebody that was twenty one,
I'd say, hey, take a look at every single Olympic
athlete that performed at the Olympics. You think they had
a dream, did they sacrifice, did they have a mentor

(01:45:38):
did they plan what they were going to do? And
there was it ever in their mind that they weren't
going to be at the Olympics. And so that's what
I would tell my twenty one year old self. I'd say,
if you want to be successful, these are the five
principles you gotta follow. And I'm you know, it took

(01:45:58):
me a long time to either realize it or figure
out that that's.

Speaker 3 (01:46:06):
The name of the game.

Speaker 6 (01:46:07):
And that's why I tell my students when I see
them at the beginning of a class, I want you
to know this. Whether you get an A out of
this class or a C, if you follow this, you'll succeed.
And it's always interesting because in the class of thirty,
there are twenty seven who will say, yeah, man, he's talking,

(01:46:31):
I'm not listening. There'll be two that will say, I
don't know, maybe he's got something there. Let me think
about that. And then you got the one kid who's
sitting down there who's writing everything down, going yeah, okay,
I needed to hear this right right. You just gave
me a way to get to where I want to go.
I'm writing it down. And it's really interesting that that's

(01:46:55):
about three percent, and about three percent of the people
in this world are the makers or shakers.

Speaker 3 (01:47:03):
Man.

Speaker 6 (01:47:04):
Maybe it's just a coincidence that three percent matches. I
don't think so, but maybe that's the case. But anyway,
I'm sorry you got me on a high horse there.

Speaker 3 (01:47:18):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:47:19):
I appreciate it because there's three percent of our listeners
who're gonna appreciate what you just said.

Speaker 3 (01:47:25):
Yep.

Speaker 7 (01:47:27):
So, and you just gave me a lot of content
for the new school year as I worked in higher
ed and I'm engaging uh in every way possible with
undergrads and high school kids, and so I truly truly
appreciate the pearls you just dropped.

Speaker 5 (01:47:45):
Thank you, brother.

Speaker 3 (01:47:46):
Yeah, you're welcome, man, You're welcome.

Speaker 4 (01:47:49):
Final final segment is just an opportunity for you to
plug something that is important to you. So whether it's
a website, a call as an initiative, we really want
to leverage our listeners to get behind something that is
important to our guests. So if there is something that

(01:48:12):
you'd like to shout out to just get people to
support it, here's your opportunity.

Speaker 6 (01:48:18):
Yeah, there is. I've heard other podcasts, I've heard people
you know, picked stuff. I don't think anybody has picked this.
What I want to promote is progress. I want to
promote progress. You've already said it, but it's one of
my one of my quotes. If I can see further,

(01:48:41):
it's only because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
That's from Sir Isaac Newton. And so if you went
to Kogate, you've been provided with knowledge, insight, aptitude, ability,

(01:49:02):
and your work experience has given you the insight that
you need for you to be the shoulders on which
somebody else is going to stand. And so if that's
the case, then you need to use your Cogate education
to help further the progress.

Speaker 3 (01:49:23):
I don't care. It can be in.

Speaker 6 (01:49:28):
Civil rights, social justice, economy, human rights, in your law firm,
I don't care what it is. One of my favorite
quotes out of the Bible is Luke twelve forty eight.
It says to who much is given, much is expected.

(01:49:53):
If your coogate grad you were given a lot. You
need to stand tall so that other people can use
you as a light. And you need you need to
recognize also that somebody's watching you. You may not think it,
but somebody is watching you. And when you stand tall

(01:50:16):
or whatever it is, and progress and push an agenda
that you have forward, then mankind is better. Yeah. The
Association of Alumni of Color, they improve, everything improves. So

(01:50:39):
I guess I'm saying is pay it forward.

Speaker 4 (01:50:42):
Pay it forward? Simple, my brother. Any words before we
get out of here, any last words.

Speaker 6 (01:50:51):
Now again, thank you, hope I didn't stutter too much
and hopefully you know somebody will get something out of this.

Speaker 3 (01:51:00):
In my family.

Speaker 4 (01:51:03):
So greatly appreciate you. Greatly appreciate you. And let me
just take us out because this has been another episode
of Aftergate season four. Thank you to our guests, Thank
you to our listeners. Aftergate is always powered by the
fire Life Network, so make sure you check us out
in the future on all of your favorite podcast streaming

(01:51:26):
platforms because there are many more dope episodes to follow
and in the words of Winsome Rudd's mother, who dropped
this on episode eighty one. She said, doe the best
you can, in all the ways you can, for as
long as you can, for all the people you can,
and remember that the good day is not the covid

(01:51:49):
of today, and it's certainly not the coviate of the future.
Peace family.

Speaker 1 (01:51:58):
You hear that's and closer that, my friend, is the
definis out of focus.

Speaker 3 (01:52:04):
It drowns out all the useless noise that can clutter and.

Speaker 1 (01:52:07):
On it nay sayers don't exist, haters, smaters, the peanut gallery.

Speaker 3 (01:52:14):
Who's that? When you're in your zone, all that noise
and all that buzz is just elevator music.

Speaker 1 (01:52:20):
So enjoy your journey, focus on your goal, and bask
in the choiet role that is progressed, because when it's
your time to shoot that shot, spit that verse, or
close that deal, the only voice that matters is yours.

Speaker 3 (01:52:34):
The firelight

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Ep 4.14 - Ed Morris

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 4.14 - Ed Morris