Episode 8 | Dr. Keith Woods: Academics Meets Accountability

Today, we are honored to be in the presence of a master storyteller, a historian who doesn't just teach the past-he makes it breathe, shout, and dribble down the hardwood of memory. Dr. Keith B. Wood is a thirty-year veteran of the classroom grind, currently shaping minds in the Social Studies Department at Christian Brothers High School in Memphis, Tennessee. But let's be clear—he's not your average history teacher.

Hailing from Schenectady, New York, Keith grew up in a vibrant stew of cultures and perspectives that planted the seeds for his lifelong devotion to understanding race, sport, and Southern identity. His work is where research meets rhythm-unpacking Memphis' soul through its courts and diamonds, through ballers and batters who carried the weight of Jim Crow on their backs and still dared to win. 

He's the author of Memphis Hoops: Race, Basketball & the Bluff City, a deep dive into the post-MLK assassination era of Memphis State University basketball, where the legendary Larry Finch emerged as both player and coach, helping to heal and redefine a wounded city. 

But Keith didn't stop there. His most recent project, The Memphis Red Sox: A Negro Leagues History, unearths the electric, under-told legacy of Black excellence in baseball-right in the heart of the South. Through this Black-owned team and their very own stadium, Dr. Wood shows us how the game was more than a pastime—it was a platform for political power, pride, and protest. 

Now, he's cooking up Showboatia in Memphis, chronicling the city's unlikely journey to gridiron glory through the upstart USFL. Because if there's a story to be told about race, sports, struggle, and Southern culture-Keith Wood is gonna find it, frame it, and fling it with scholarly finesse. 

So buckle up. We're about to go beyond the textbooks and into the real trenches of American history. This is Students of Life, and today's guest is the truth-teller Memphis didn't know it needed-but most definitely deserves.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Here, y'all, This is Erica with Students of Life podcast.
If you're finding value in the Students of Life Podcasts,
we love your support. Your support allows us to grow
and continue to bring you medical content. You can share
your support by checking out our exclusive merchandise at Students
of Life Podcasts dot com. Every purchase not only gives
you something unique to wear, so directly fuels the podcast growth.

(01:02):
Prefer to donate, that's cool, Just hit the donate button
on our homepage. Every bit of support helps us expand,
reach more listeners and dive even deep into the topics.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
That matter most. Team. So, and this being the first
time the courtney is not here, I don't know how
viewers are going to take it. We'll see what happens, right,
But I did know that it was important to get
somebody on here who I trusted, who I cared about it,
who I knew had a lot to offer. That's what

(01:32):
matters to me, right, Like your bio alone is pretty amazing.
I'm gonna just read for people. Let folks know who
Doc is. Right. So, today we are honored to be
in the presence of a master storyteller, a historian who
doesn't just teach the past. He makes it breathe, shout,
and dribble down the hardwood of memory. Doctor Keith Wood

(01:56):
is a thirty year veteran of the classroom grinding and
currently shaping minds in the Social Studies department at Christian
Brothers High School. Shout out to the brothers, all right,
but you know, we have to be honest. Right, Although
you're a white man who teaches history, your story goes
far past that. You surpassed that by far, and you're

(02:18):
definitely not an average teacher. Being someone that had you,
I can I can speak to that, you know, knowing
that you grew up in New York, you know, amongst
different cultures and perspectives, where you came from what we
would consider an inner city, right right, you know, and
being there you learned about race sports and now being

(02:40):
someone who's from up north, you now have a but
not just a Northern identity, but also a Southern identity,
absolutely right.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
The other day, I was out shopping with my wife
and we were having a conversation about Negro League's baseball,
and I was at Lids, and I was trying to
explain to the young brother that was there looking at
the hats with me. I said, well, we're from Memphis.
And my wife looked at me, and I think that's
the first time in our thirty year marriage that I
actually said I'm from Memphis and I'm not from New York.
So she appreciated that. She held me to it as

(03:12):
quiet as she is. She was like, oh, really, where
where are you from again? And so she tells me
all the time that I've lived in Memphis longer than
I've lived in New York. I left New York at
twenty two, so I've been in Memphis for almost thirty
one years now, so there's a nice gap there. So
I actually have been adopted by Memphis, and nine on
one has adopted Keith Wood. And I had some great

(03:35):
experiences and some opportunities to teach and to coach throughout
the city, inner city schools, county schools, private schools, and
just those opportunities have shaped me as a historian and
as a teacher.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
So being that you taught at all of these different institutions,
which institution would you say had the most impact on you,
not just as a teacher, but as a white man
in Memphis.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
You know, I think at twenty two, I probably thought
I could come in and change the world. I had
very little understanding of the culture of the city of Memphis.
To be honest, for your listeners out there, Keith Wood
had to pull out a map. It was before Google,
so I actually had to pull out analysis and figure
out where Memphis was in Tennessee. I knew where Tennessee was.

(04:26):
I knew about Elvis Presley. I knew that Martin Luther
King was assassinated here. I knew that I was a
big fan of sports, so in the eighties, I knew
that Memphis showboats had played in the USFL and I
knew about Reggie White a little bit. And that was
it right. It was very minimal, but I was willing

(04:47):
to come to the Memphis City schools and to try
to give it a try. To go back home wasn't
an option. I wasn't going to fail like there was.
To go back home was not. I didn't want to
move back into the neighborhood where I grew up. I
needed to find who Keith Wood was, and Memphis nurtured

(05:08):
that I was able to land a teaching job. I
was able to be an assistant basketball coach for a
couple of years and then get the varsity, the head
coach at the varsity, and then really in that time
figure out who I was as both a teacher and
a coach, a mentor, all those things. And to be honest,

(05:31):
a lot of the times I used the fact that
I that I was from New York, that I did
have a different identity the construction of who I am
and where I came from. You mentioned being from New York, right.
So Schenectady is a very much like you take New
York City and then you go up two hours. It's
an industrial town. There are Italian neighborhoods, Irish neighborhoods, Polish neighborhoods,

(05:52):
each with their own Catholic parishes. There's the Black neighborhood.
And then they threw us all together at one high
school and it was a huge melting pots. So I
had to find my way there. And here I am
a white Anglo Saxon Protestant, you know, and I'm the
other And how do I navigate that? How do I

(06:13):
figure out who I am? And what I found out
was I could just be me inside of that community.
And then I was embraced by Italians, Poles, Irish, African
Americans and they just the brotherhood, the community. And that's
how when I look at students, I don't see a

(06:34):
or B I just see a kid, because in my neighborhood,
we were just all kids and we all weren't the same, right.
And so not that it was a utopic experience, because
there were definitely challenges, but I think that really impacted
the way that I saw the world. And then my
mother just just taught me to love people for who
they are, and I think that's pretty important. Like if

(06:55):
we can just look at somebody across the table and
just love them for who they are and not put
some kind of social norm that society expects us to have,
then we can be better people.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
You know that that's beautiful. You and I share the
same same thought with that. We discussed that all the time. Right,
people are people. I don't care if you are part
of the LBGTQA community. I don't care if you are white,
I don't care if you are black, if you are
a Latino descent, it doesn't matter to me. Right, as
long as you are not a horrible person, I will
stay with you. Period.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
I think that I think all of us can agree
with that. Right. I think if we would just look
at the person, like I said, like look at the
person on the other side of the table of the room,
and just see that person for who they are, right,
Like we all have struggles, we all navigate, you know,
growing up in the neighborhood I grew up in is
because my father had issues with mental health. Right when

(07:52):
I was twenty two, I probably ran from that, but
I think it was a piece that you know, helped
me grow and I had to figured out right my parents.
My father couldn't keep a job, so we lived in
the neighborhood we lived in. My paper route was in
the Steamon's Homes, which was a federally funded housing project.
So at twelve years old, I'm walking through the projects

(08:17):
throwing papers every afternoon after school and then on Sunday
mornings right and collecting. And it was a neighborhood between
the housing projects and what we called the Hill, which
was Hamilton Hill, which was where predominantly the black neighborhood.
And I just when I collected money, I just saw people.
I didn't see what everybody at white, black, Irish. I

(08:40):
just saw people and just treated them like people. And
when that happened. You know, they treated me the same way,
just as a person. And I think, if we could
just do that right. And I don't think I really
saw how people treated us differently from that neighbor until
I got to high school and then we arted to

(09:00):
leave our neighborhood and play schools and other neighborhoods or
private schools, and some of the experiences that coming out
of a high school gym and in Troy, New York,
we'd given a school, uh it was a private school,

(09:23):
Catholic Central, We'd give it them, beat them by eight
to twelve at their house, and you know, just give them.
The business was a packed house, great atmosphere. Right then
on the way out, a number of parents and then
the kids refer to my friends with the N word.
It's the first time I really experienced that. I think
I was like sixteen or seventeen, and it hit me

(09:45):
and I was like, what's going on? And I'm on
the bus and then they continued and I remember the
emergency door in the back of the bus, remember the
old yellow school. Yes, they lifted the red handle and
I in January, New York, there's a foot of snow
on the ground. And these guys are all wearing timberlands,
and I just remember three or four of my teammates
going out the back door and chasing down parents who

(10:09):
were yelling the N word at them. And I remember
my basketball coach, who was Italian, Gary Danola, running out
the front to get them back in line before it escalated.
And at that moment, I struggled with why are these
people doing this? Like these are my brothers. We sweat

(10:31):
blood and tears on that gym floor. It was Mount
Pleasant High School, and I didn't understand why because we
beat you by twelve. Now, before the game, we were cool.
But now after the game, my friends have become the
N word? And how do you navigate that? And that
started for me that game. I think, really it was
that game my junior year in high school that started

(10:54):
me asking a lot of questions. And I think from
that time at sixteen to I am today in my
life at fifty three, I'm still asking questions and I'm
still seeking the answers of why do people treat someone
that doesn't look like them so poorly? And when I teach,
my job is to expose those places the way where

(11:17):
that's happened in history, to keep it real and to
ask this question why, and then to ask the next question,
how can we do better? And I think I hope
as a student that I didn't just expose you guys
to the negativity that was there, because that was real,
But did I also show you that we can do
it better? Like this country. What makes this country great

(11:40):
is that there's hope for the next generation. Our kids,
now my grandkids because I have a granddaughter, are going
to do better than I did than my generation did
because we made a lot of mistakes along the way.
I think we did better than my parents did. And
I think that's the hope that this country offers. And really,

(12:01):
you know, Martin Luther King says it best. He says,
just be true to what you said on paper, and
really that when you think about that, if we would
just be true to these the ideals that the Founding
father set up. And there's a lot of problems with
the Founding Fathers, right, they're not they're not scott free,

(12:21):
they had issues, but what the ideas they put on paper,
if we just live up to those, then this country
has an opportunity to continue to get better.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
I like the idea of that the idea is beautiful,
but as we know, ideas and reality are something completely different. Agree,
you know, and the current times that we're living, unfortunately,
are showing us that right. Right. But you are a
person who I can say you are probably the wedge

(12:53):
where academics music accountability, right because we have had conversations
before for you, totally kids, the white people did this,
they did this, This happened, It shouldn't have happened. But
let's talk about it, right, And that I think, you know,
for me, that's one of the greatest reasons why I
respect you that that comma, but let's talk about it.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Oh absolutely.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
And I think a lot of educators today they try
to steer clear of that. They leave the hard conversations
for somebody else. But these hard conversations are not being had,
you know. And I think it's important to ask when
going through this, right, Like for you, for instance, you're
a white male, right, but you have a PhD in history,

(13:36):
but your area of study was African American history, right,
So being someone who has studied this, whose story is
it to tell? Right? Like? And how do you how
do you talk about black history black stories without exploiting
black pain?

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Right? So this past week and I had the opportunity
to go to Nashville and speak of the Tennessee Museum
on my latest book that came out June twenty twenty four,
The Memphis Red Sox, A Negro League's History. And as
we started that conversation at Nashville, the moderator and I
were going through some very basic stuff, you know, introductions,

(14:16):
all that, and I said, first, let's start here. This
is not Keith Wood's story. This is a story of
black South Memphis. This is the story of black economic nationalism.
This is the story of the players that played in
the Negro Leagues. This is a story of the fans
who sat at Martin Stadium. I'm the storyteller, and one

(14:39):
of the things that I have to confront as a
historian is I have to step out of my shoes
and into the lived experiences of the people, the owners
who were all black, the players who were all black,
and explain their experiences. My job is to share their story,
not to craft it, not to shape it, move it.

(15:00):
What were they thinking, What were some of the things
going on? And I think that becomes challenging because in
the city of Memphis, there are so few records of
black voices. I was just at a recent event with
doctor Charles McKinney over at Rhodes College, and they are

(15:21):
collecting stories right now from the black community, and it's
really exciting to get the actual voices. It's grassroots. It's
starting at the bottom. But when I was writing the
Memphis Red Sox book, there was a documentary done in
the mid nineties over at the University of Memphis and
they interviewed a large number of these players. And they

(15:43):
interviewed like BB King, Rufus Thomas, some other folks that
were fans that are in the music industry that you
may know, Charlie Pride right, And I used the transcripts. Actually,
I went to old school, went back to the u
of M library, pulled out a VHS machine that was
a TV at a VHS machine, and I just listened

(16:05):
to their voices. Because if I'm going to tell this story,
I can't tell the story from Keith Wood's perspective. I
had to tell the story from the story of Verdell Mathis,
who pitched for the Memphis Red Sox, or Larry Brown
or Casey Jones or Bob Boyd. I needed their voices,

(16:28):
and I had to be very intentional with that. Some
of the families that I talked to, to be honest,
we're a little hesitant because other historians that look like
me have taken advantage of the black community and their stories. Right,
So you have to build a relationship, you have to
build a report. And I think eric, to be honest,

(16:50):
those thirty years of teaching, I was able to build
repport and a relationship with students, and I think that
helped as I wrote both books, actually, the Memphis Red
Sox and The Memphis Hoops.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Well, I know that again, I can speak from being
in your class. It took all three of your classes. Right.
My senior year was fun, I'll say that, busy, but
very fun. But I recall being in your class, and
I recall how the classroom was set up. You know,
you come through the door. There was your desk, there
was a table beside your desk. There were desks with

(17:25):
the back facing you, and there were desks with the
front face you in front of windows.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
I remember even in class, this is two thousand and five, right,
So it's not nineteen sixty five, it's not not nineteen
fifty nine. It's not nineteen thirty something in the beginning
of Jim Crow. But I recall that all of the students,
who will say, looked alike, right, we all sat together.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
I think, let's not even dodge that the white students
sat on one class side of the classroom and the
black students sat on the other side of the classroom. Right.
So I never dodged that, right, And we talked about
this before that it was a social experiment. I told you,
guys when you got to class. I absolutely did that
on purpose. Most teachers at Millington, at your high school

(18:10):
were told to use sitting charts. Yeah, never use a
citting chart ever, y you know, I didn't want to
put you by your last name. I did not want
to have that define you. So I wanted you to
sit where you felt comfortable. And that became the social experiment.
And so by allowing you guys to sit where you
wanted to and gals who to sit where you wanted
to in the middle of class. So why did you

(18:31):
sit there? Well, you sat there because you sat there
because you were comfortable. Right, Like if you had gone
to Millington and you would have gone to the cafeteria
in two thousand and five, and you would have sat down.
You would have found the band in one neighborhood at
one set of tables, the choir who did not like
the man in any way, shape or form at another table.
Because we did this with one of my classes. We
took graph paper and we charted it, and you would

(18:53):
have seen the football team, which would have been pretty
much the entire school, right. You would have seen the
baseball team, if we were going to be honest, was
primarily white, and they would have been at a different table.
The basketball team was primarily black, they would have been
at a different table. So why do we as human
beings do that? And that conversation was about comfort. Okay,

(19:13):
So one of the things that I think is important
in my classroom is you need to be It has
to be a comfortable place to be uncomfortable. Let me
say that again. It has to be a comfortable place
to be uncomfortable. And if I was doing my job right,
I think I did. There were moments in my class

(19:34):
where both yourself and your classmates, whether they look like
either one of us, would have found themselves at some
point in time uncomfortable because of the hard histories. Yes,
and we have to confront that. And as an educator,
if I refuse to confront the hard histories, right, that's
educational malpractice and we can't do that. And I think

(19:57):
it's very important that doctor Hassan Jeffrey, Uh you may
know his brother is the Speaker of the House. Uh,
excuse me, the Democratic minority leader in the house. His brother,
doctor Hassan Jeffreys, speaks about that that very thing that
we have to talk about, these hard histories, that we
have to challenge preconceived notions, and sometimes it's going to

(20:22):
be uncomfortable, and that's okay because if we can be
uncomfortable and we can come to an understanding, then we
can grow. But if we just pick up the rug
and we sweep it under there and we don't ever
talk about it, then we're never going to heal and
we're never going to grow and move forward.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
So speaking about, you know, uncomfortable situations in your social
experience with us, I also recalled it. By May of
that year, the class was no lover sigregating, right, So
we were all mixing and mingle together. You know, you
had kids who came to you had of course, you
had some kids who were just those kids, right, And
for the most part, you said with salt and paper

(20:59):
everywhere didn't really matter where we said anymore.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
And I never changed the seating chart. Now you didn't
when you walked in and kids would come, that's my seat,
I said, no, not in this classroom. You do not
own that chair. You get to borrow it for forty
five minutes or whatever class was back then. And I
think that's important, right, like so in your classes, And
I'm glad that you remembered that, right because the old
hat over here was like, wow, that that's to me.

(21:25):
I'm really thankful that you remember that because I don't
remember per se that happening per year, but in that
class that was there, I can say that doesn't happen
every year, right, So sometimes the lesson sticks and sometimes
it doesn't. But I think also as an educator, one
of the toughest things to see is what impact you've

(21:46):
had on students, because, like you said earlier, many students
won't have these conversations that continue to dive deep that
we have and then until you'll see them in a
Walmart or Target fifteen to twel years later, and they'll
go A coach would that class like it was, you know,
and I think in our current moment, the Facing History

(22:07):
class that you took, I've had in the last year,
right as since November, a large number of kids have
said your conversations and Facing History have given me a
vocabulary to have difficult conversations that without the Facing History
class I wouldn't be able to have in our current moment.

(22:28):
And to me, that's that's a win, and it's a
win win for me as a teacher because you know,
I feel good that I'm getting the job done, but
also more importantly that the students, regardless of where we
are in our political moment, have a vocabulary to have
conversations that are going to move us in a forward direction.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, you know, And speaking of moving in a forward direction,
real quick, this is the last time I were refer
back to the class, I promise, I think, but I
vividly recall our African American history class was a class
where everyone tells to mix and mingle are us history class.

(23:14):
Those kids kept the same seats all year, right right,
And it makes me think about our current political climate
and what the US right now is going through as
a whole. Right, you have some of us, primarily millennials.
Everybody hates us, but we serve a great purpose. Right.
We are the generation who we're breaking traditions, and that's
why people don't like us, right, right, That's why the
generations before us are like, you know, oh, they're hell,

(23:36):
they shouldn't be doing this, they shouldn't be doing that.
Everything we do is wrong. But it's not that everything
that we're doing is wrong. It's more so the fact
that we're sitting down and we're realizing that the things
that have served the generations before us, they don't serve us.
They don't work, They're not going to work today. So
things have to change, and so we're fighting for change

(23:57):
in this current moment. We're being silenced or trying to
be siled, but that doesn't stop our voices.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
No, And I think, you know, I always tell my
kids and I hope you remember this. In some way,
shape or farm. History doesn't repeat itself, but it echoes, yes,
And I think in the nineteen sixties there were voices
that were very loud that this country tried to quiet.
And the millennials are speaking their voice, their voices being heard.

(24:24):
They're challenging the paradigm which is good because if you
don't challenge a paradigm, there's not change, right. I think
you guys need to continue to do that, like don't.
I would encourage your listeners out there that are millennials,
this is your opportunity, this is your chance to be heard.
And you know there's going to be you know, the

(24:45):
generation like yet we talked about the sixties, if you
go back to the fifties, you know, and you're talking
about the civil rights movement where those voices were quiet
as well, there was somebody that wanted to quiet those voices,
but somebody had to have the courage to stand up
and to do the right thing. And sometimes you watched

(25:06):
you know, Malcolm X would have been considered the angryst
Negro in America. Or Martin Luther King. You know, when
he came to Memphis in nineteen sixty eight, he was blacklisted, right,
like he by both communities, not just the white community,
but the black community had sort of looked down on

(25:26):
doctor King because he stayed in a white hotel, right
and instead of staying at the Lorraine. And the first
time he came to Memphis, they ran him out of town.
And so you know, there's an interesting story there with
the Invaders, which is a young group of kids from
Northside and Hamilton that didn't think Martin really understood what
it was like to be black and in Memphis, and
so you know, but those kids, they were kids. They're

(25:49):
seventeen and eighteen year old kids that were standing up
and talking about with their voice, using their voice to
make Memphis a better place. And it was interesting as
Martin Luther King goes down seventy eight and gets back
to Atlanta. He's in Atlanta and he's watching the news
coverage and he and he sees the violence that that
that erupts in Memphis after he leaves and the sanitation

(26:11):
worker strike is still going on, and he says, I
have to go back. This is the generation that needs me.
I cannot be remembered as someone for that had violence,
because he believed in passive, peaceful, nonviolent resistance. And so
he returns and he stays at the Lorraine, which we
know is going to be his downfall where James Earroray

(26:33):
assassinates him. But he had the courage to come back right.
And I think it's important for this generation and for
the generation that follows to continue to have that courage
to continue to speak your voice, your truth, to allow
some of us that are older to have to sit
down and think about it. What does that really mean?

(26:55):
And maybe these young kids their voice is something we
need to spend more time I'm listening to.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
You know that that's a great point if people from
you will just say your generation before you, right, if
you're going to sit down and listen and hear people
out without without your biases, you know, I think that
is when a conversation needs to be had about what
does the line between allieship and appropriation at that point? All? Right? Like,

(27:25):
what what does that look like? Because a lot of
times you hear black people say they love our rhythm,
but they don't want our blues, right, So in my
mind that is that's a that's a line where you
have people who want to be allies, but instead of
being allies, you start to appropriate and then you assume
that you know, so what does that line look like?

Speaker 3 (27:44):
Right? So big try called quest fan, right? Q tip,
just just don't pre up the road, like be you
be authentic, rate go go, you know, listen to hip
hop where the clothes rate and then you know, embrace that.
But I think sometimes you know, don't prep the role.
Like if you're you know, if you're listening to hip hop,

(28:07):
but then you're voting for things that are systemically holding
the black community back, that's prepping the role because you're
just using the music and the culture because it fits
your need. Right. I think a lot of times, especially
where I teach now at Christian Brothers High School, I
try to open their eyes to Stag Studios in South

(28:28):
Memphis right next to Lamoito when ask them have they
ever been to Lamoito? And where is lemoyno owhen have
you been on Walker Avenue before? No idea you know
where Lamoyne Gardens is. But that speaks to the history
of our city. We've been so segregated for so long.
What would it take to go over with a group
of your friends and visit a black church in South Memphis? Right?

(28:51):
Like about thirteen to fifteen percent of Christian Brothers is
African American, about the same for Hispanic. Like, what would
it to go to mass as a Catholic student at
Christian Brothers with a Hispanic or a Latino friend of
yours and see a different point of view? Right? And
I think once you can understand that that you are,

(29:15):
you know, and then sort of like in and of
the community, right, and then that's not cultural appropriation anymore, right,
just using that And it's really important and it's very
difficult to teach, but it's important that these kids understand
that this culture when you talk about, you know, they
don't understand our blues right, like and the sadness, the struggles,

(29:38):
and that's where you have those hard conversations. And I
think this past week I was talking with my students.
One of the players that's in the Memphis Red Sox book,
his name is Larry Brown. His son was a Tuskie
yeirman and Larry Brown Junior. And one of the families
that was able to really help me craft this book

(30:01):
on the Red Sox was the Brown family. And in
a recent text thread, the Laurs Brown, who is Larry
Brown's daughter in law and her husband was the Tuskegee Yearman,
and she asked this question. She goes, Keith, why did
the White House take down the story of the Tuskege Yearman.
My Larry was willing to give his life for this country,

(30:25):
and she just said why. And so I read that
thread to my students and in that class, that's particular
class there were there was only one African American student,
so ninety percent of the class was white. And I said, so,
why why do we you know, for political reasons, why
do we take a history that is a part the

(30:49):
Tuskega Yearman don't win World War two. We'll win World
War two with or without the Tuskega Yearman. Yet their
success rate allowed us to win, quicker less lives to
be lost, and they played an intricate role in the
success of the United States military. Why would you take
that story out? And that's the question I wanted them

(31:11):
to sit there and think about. And it was really
neat that that day in class. For the next thirty seconds,
it was pretty quiet. And I think quiet is also
a great tool as well, because now you've got to think,
because no longer are you thinking about, well, you know what,
we need to all this anti DEI take all this
stuff down and instead go about there's Dolores, that's her family.

(31:37):
How does she as an individual feel about her family
history being erased? And you know, she ended the text
thread with this, I'm jumping on a plane and we're
going to Italy, and Italy is going to be recognizing
and honoring the Tusky Yeerman for their work and Operation Shingle,

(31:57):
which was the invasion of Italy nineteen forty four. And
to ask our kids, why is Italy celebrating the Tusky Yeirman,
these black pilots, but here in the United States we're
removing them from history. Why is that? And I think
that's important for us. That's the hard history. That's the
part that we don't want to confront. That we must

(32:20):
confront so that we can think about that. And then
when this group gets to where they are in positions
of power right politically in the business community, they'll have
sat with these questions before, and I think that's important.
We've got to continue to do that, you know.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
So it sounds a lot like I know this is
probably leans to my rebel spirit a little bit, but
it sounds like these are classroom reperations, right, like maybe
we don't financially give you guys the acknowledgement that you
deserve or that you need, or maybe we don't care

(33:03):
enough not educating the country as a whole, right, just
want to clarify that not educators have to who may
teacher friends and take of fans.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Well, no, we'll I think you know when you talk
about the classroom reparations. You know, if you were to
look at my father in law graduated from Hernando High
School in Mississippi in nineteen sixty two, and if you
were to look at his textbook in nineteen sixty two,
my father in law never went to school in the
nineteen fifties with any African American students. He graduated from

(33:33):
Hernando High School and everybody that he went to high
school from from first grade to twelfth grade looked like him.
And if you were to look at his textbook, you
would not find what we have in our textbooks today. Now,
textbooks are created for each state, like the Prentice Hall

(33:55):
other publishing companies go to the state and say what
do you want in that? So the state digged hates
what's in that? And if we were to look at
the book that my my wife and her maid of
honor both went to Hernando High School as well, what
they went through in the nineteen eighties, it would have
been a different book, and it's it would have been
better than the book that my father in law had

(34:15):
in the fifties, but it still would have come up
short today, you know, and we've had this conversation even
in the state. We you know, your daughter's going to
school right now and here in south Haven, right, that
book doesn't confront some of the hard histories. It's better
than the book that my wife used. It's better than

(34:36):
the book that my father in law used. And so
we have to understand that people's perspectives and views. The
state molded that the book that you used at Millington
Central High School, and we didn't use.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
That damn book.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
Well, yeah, we s window.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
We signed them books that I think by the tide
of the shelf, we never used them books.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
It was useful for pictures. Remember this is pre Google,
this is pre Google, and right, and so but I think,
you know, because I could give you the story, have
these discussions, and in fact, while we're talking about this,
I think this is important because Millington was so diverse.
One of the things that I had to sharpen because
when I was at Sheffield, the community was monolithic. Everybody

(35:17):
looked the same, right, and when I come to Millington,
that's not the case, right, And so what I had
to sharpen and hone in on was this skill. My
job as an educator is to teach you how to think,
not what to think, and that that becomes a challenge
when you're looking out in the classroom and there are

(35:40):
so many difference. Millington Central, by far, is the most
diverse school I've ever taught at. And when it's not
just you, there are classmates, your white classmates that still
get in contact with me today and say that. In fact,
one of the guys that I'm most proud of is
Jonathan Moody, who is a high school baseball coach at

(36:03):
a local high school, and he talks about five ten
years ago. We had to sit down conversation and he
was just like, look, the reason why I'm a history
teacher is because the way that you taught history and
we don't sit on the same edge of the political spectrum.
And that's okay, right, because I never taught him what
to think. I taught him how to think. And with

(36:26):
that legacy, as he's teaching, he was originally teaching at FACS,
now he's at Arlington, those students are going to get
taught in the same manner because that's the way that
coach would taught at that point in time, and that
I don't know if I was really that good when
you were in high school at because I'd only been
at Millington for three or four years. I think by

(36:47):
the time I left in twenty eleven, I was much
more adept at that. But with experience you get better, right,
And the more conversations, the better you become.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah. So, speaking of past, and you know the idea
of educating down right, what would you say that repaireds
of education looks like beyond just you know, like placards
and land acknowledgements and MLK quotes, Because mind you, there
were so many other great people from back in the sixties, fifties, sixties,

(37:19):
seventies that we could quote, that we could use. But
Malcolm is the most I mean, I'm Malcolm Lord. I
love Malcolm. I don't like Mark like that. But Martin's
the most suggestible. He is the most he is the
most digestible for white people, absolutely right, because truth be told,
in my opinion, we should have far more acknowledgement of Malcolm.

(37:40):
Ma did you know that you know how I feel
about that? Right?

Speaker 3 (37:42):
What if? Erica? What if? And in one of my
colleagues at Christian Brothers, who is African American and teaches
the civil rights class at Christian Brothers, does a great
job with it. Ask me this question one day, and
I thought this was very poignant. What if in nineteen
sixty five, Martin, that the King gets and then Malcolm
is shot in sixty eight, Right, what if King goes

(38:05):
down first, leaving Malcolm for the next three years? Right?
And I think you know that that changes the dynamics. Right,
And you're one hundred percent accurate with this, Martin, because
of his passive, peaceful, nonviolent resistant turned the other cheek.
It's much more palatable to white America today. He wasn't

(38:29):
palatable in nineteen sixty eight because if you read the
commercial appeal Memphisis newspaper, he was a communist infiltrator who
was a troublemaker who needed to get run out of town. Right.
The Sheriff's department was not a big friend of Martin.
Luther King being in town when Reverend Lawson invited King
to town, that created some animosity within the community. Of

(38:51):
Mayor Lobe was not thrilled in any way, shape or
form that King was here and really didn't want to
sit down at the table with King. Right, So you know,
I think you know, we have to sort of balance
those right there. And I love the fact that you're
much more Malcolm, and I can see that and having
known you for all these years, you're definitely much more Malcolm.

(39:12):
And I think I am too right being from New
York because one of the things I think you've probably
appreciated was in my class, you never have to worry
about what I thought, because I told you, yes, I'm
not looking for friends. They're in New York. I've got them.
I'm not looking for your friendship. I don't need you
to like love me, right, I've got I've got a
wife and three kids they love me, and I've got
friends in New York. Right, I'm giving you the truth

(39:34):
and we're going to talk about it, right. And I
think that's important. And sometimes that gets taken as oh
he's so harsh, right Like, Malcolm, by any means necessary
was very simple because if I did it, then you
get to do it. And that especially here in the South,
after you know, being here for thirty years, that didn't

(39:55):
fly well, right.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Like I didn't really fly at all, actually, and that
was the damn problem.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Right. And so now remember when Martin goes North, he's
in Chicago, and he ends up staying in the projects
in Chicago for I think like three to six months.
That was problematic, right, Like folks in Chicago, like, this
isn't Memphis, right, this isn't Birmingham, this is Montgomery, you know.
And when he was in Bedstye right in Brooklyn, if

(40:23):
I'm not mistaken, and I could be wrong about which
part of the city he was in, they ran him
out of town.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Right.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
There was an assassination temp on him. It was very
low key, it didn't didn't make a lot of noise,
but he wasn't well liked in the North because the
construction of race in the North was what Malcolm talked about.
It was much more like a fox, right, Like you
never had to question the racial ideology of the white

(40:50):
Southerner in the nineteen fifties because he was very upfront
with it and he would tell you exactly how he
felt and where you needed to be and what your
place was in So welcome to Memphis, right. The segregation
that's there, But in the North it was de facto,
right Like in the South it was djure by law.
In the North it was by fact red lining wasn't

(41:11):
just something that took place in Memphis. It took place
in Detroit, it took place in Schenectady. I've actually looked
at the map for redlining in Schenectady. My next book
project is on a neuro league's team in Schenectady, and
my city was every bit red lining. Red Lining goes
all the way through the nineteen eighties. So my parents
bought a house in nineteen eighty as a young white couple.

(41:31):
They were able to buy in neighborhoods that if you're
if you and Courtney were trying to buy, you wouldn't
be able to buy there, right, And I think people
missed that that Malcolm's animis is his is him striving
for a quality for an opportunity, right, And I think

(41:54):
Martin wanted the same thing. They just there were two
different ways to skin a cat. One work better in
the South, one word better than North at that point
in time. Now here's the one that'll deep dive if
we're going to go there. I think the South is
much more like the North in the nineteen sixties, and
it plays fox with its racism. I think it is

(42:15):
very sly.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
You think, oh well.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
I think it's probably come out. The fox is a
little more edgier in the last six months, but they're
they're still using sanitary language. There's still code switching. Right.
They're using words to instead of point blank wearing a

(42:39):
wide sheet in a hood. Right, they're now using words
like dei or anti affirmative action right, anti dei, anti
affirmative action. Right. Instead of just saying segregation, we don't
want blacks here, right, they're using words that are safe
words that fit political goals. When it all actually out
of they might as well just say we don't want

(43:01):
blacks here, right, And so they're not. In nineteen fifty five,
you wouldn't have worried about that because at that point
in time, the segregationist in a white citizens council, right,
the white citizens councils where they're respectable mayors, so on
and so forth, where the klan was sort of hidden. Right.

(43:21):
So those you had those two organizations, you never doubted
where they stood or what they thought. Whereas today, behind
the words it's there. You just have to be able
to put it in a perspective and you have to
confront that, right, and sometimes people don't want to do that.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
So I think publicly, I'll give you that publicly. I
can see how you know you would liken that to
Plan Fox. But being someone you know of color who
grew up in Memphis, I know for a fact, just
like Mississippi, just like in Alabama, Georgia, right, those railroad

(44:04):
cross railroad crossings and tracks still exist.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
Oh absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
I mean, like if you go to Carrville today, literally
you'll see you have like old money Carrierville, you have
the new Callerville. You don't really cross the line at
old money Carerville.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
No.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
And that's not just a racial thing. That's a young
person thing period.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
You know, you have these multi million dollar homes that
have been there forever, but if you look closely, not
far from them, there's a damn railroad track.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Oh absolutely, I think. You know it's interesting. You know,
my father in law lives in Batesville, Mississippi, And when
you go down into the delta, you're on the edge
of the delta, you know, the other twenty thirty miles
you're in the delta, and there's a set of railroad tracks, right,
and there's two sides of the town. Right, you've got
the the in fact, the railroad tracks at Batesville run

(44:53):
right through the town square. And you know it's interesting that,
you know, there's what we refer to as a CABS
school here in Memphis, Citizens Against Bussing. So there's you know,
Magnolia Heights is a little bit north of Batesville, and
then there's another private school, and then South Pinola is

(45:13):
the public school, which is primarily black, primarily black, right,
So I mean those railroad tracks exist, and it's not
just in bates Mississippi. If you look at in nineteen
seventy three, when the city of Memphis, behind a core order,
had two desegregated schools, right, and they did it in
the middle of the school year, which was busted at best, right,

(45:36):
a law school year. What happened in the city of Memphis. Well,
in nineteen seventy three, Harding, Briarcrest, Rossville Academy. You start
naming Okaven Baptist, Skyview Baptist, right, all these schools popped
up in these little Baptist churches. And in fact, if
you read Briarcrest their history set in nineteen seventy three,

(45:57):
we opened up looking for a Christian experience, Well, the
Christian experience they were looking for was an all white
school because if you look at any of the yearbooks
at Briarcress from nineteen seventy three to nineteen eighty three,
they're lily white, literally lily white. Right, So history doesn't
repeat itself at Echoes? Right? When did when the Memphis

(46:18):
City Schools? And I would have to put this into perspective,
I think my Channer graduating in twenty eighteen. I think
it was probably like twenty thirteen twenty right around there
when Memphis City Schools gave up its charter and forced
Shelby County Schools to incorporate all the Memphis City schools.
So you can talk about the inequities economically between the

(46:41):
two schools forcing Shelby County to now incorporate them. It
lasted for one year. What happened the year after that?
Arlington Schools, Lakeland Schools, Germantown Schoolsville Kyierville Schools. So here's
an opportunity for the city to come together and do

(47:01):
what's best for the students holistically, or to take care
of my neighborhood. And you just talked about the neighborhood
the railroad tracks, Yeah, right, and so and out of
all the districts. If we're gonna be honest, brutally honest,
most people think they didn't think Millington had the financial
wherewithal to make a go of it as a municipal

(47:23):
school and they would fall back into Memphis Shelby County schools.
But they have right. And to me as a historian,
it's the same thing because now Collierville economically, those schools
has resources that in East High School where even white

(47:45):
station right would love to have, but they don't, right.
And and that's a byproduct of the tracks right, of
the redlining, of the historical phenomenon that created what we
know is the legal and de facto segregation of Memphis

(48:05):
and Shelby County. And in fact, if you look, when
does Tipton County explode north of Shelby County. When if
you looked at the DeSoto County schools in nineteen ninety,
was there a Lewisbourg was their center? Hill was their
desto central? So why are these schools just south of

(48:29):
the border in Mississippi blowing up? Because as Memphis City
schools are becoming desegregated, right and in essence resegregating as
white families leave the Memphis City schools and in fact
even some of the Shelby County schools before the municipalities

(48:50):
open up. Right then you have northern Mississippi. DeSoto County
is huge. And if we don't talk about these issues,
and many of those issues we're talking about are in
that book, the first book that I wrote on Memphis
basketball and Larry Finch, because when Larry Finch takes the
University of Memphis or Memphis State University at the time,

(49:12):
to the Final four, it's in the middle of the
bussing issue in nineteen seventy three. So when you have
the mayor one minute is talking about we're not going
to desegregate these schools. We don't need these black kids
in Westwood, like Westwood is going to be a white community.

(49:34):
And then and the next moment, when he's at Louisville
for the Metro Conference champion, taking Larry Finch and Ronnie
Robinson from Orange Mound from Melrose and going, this is
what Memphis is about.

Speaker 4 (49:51):
They still do that today though that hasn't changed, right,
But ours, if ours, if we can come to a
better understanding of that and see that and force the
politicians to go hold on why you.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
You can't speak out of both sides of your mouth, right,
You've got to be real with what you're saying. And
you can't at the basketball game be one way, but
then on Monday, when you're talking about desegregating the schools,
be another way. And I think that's part of the
problem that we haven't got over yet. It's because we
don't go back and we don't look at those hard histories.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
So, knowing what you know now out of their thirty
one years of teaching and teaching all different kinds of students, right,
if you could take the knowledge you have right now
and go back ten years, right, all right, So let's
dig deeper. Man. If you could take the knowledge you
have right now and go back ten years you were
back at mcchs, Right, what would you have done differently?

(50:52):
Do you think you would remain in the same trajectory
or would have changed in some way?

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah? I think you know. I've done that every so often.
I think it's important to be introspective and think about
what opportunities. You know, if you asked me thirty years
ago if I'd ever taught at Christian Brothers, I probably
would have laughed you out of the room. I thought
Parkway Village and Sheffield High School where I would be
for my entire thirty year career. When that door was

(51:19):
closed and another opened at Millington, I said, Millington. WHOA
first off, this is like the country, like I you know,
it's pretty country out there for a kid that grew
up in New York in Schenectady, where I could take
my hand from my house and touch my neighbor's house. Right,
So there were like no driveways between, like these are

(51:41):
very small houses, you know. And now I'm out driving
by cotton fields on the way to school until I
actually bought a house in Millington that was part of
the Bolton plantation, right, so I'm just like, wow, I'm
really I drive buy cotton and that smell in the
fall is horrendous. When they spray whatever that is on
the cotton, that's bad. Like they still stuck it me.

(52:04):
I'm like, oh my god, that's a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Ugh.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
You know, I thought that was it, like I'd be there,
my kids would play basketball for me, and I would
just be at Millington. And then that door closed, And
life has a funny way of closing one door and
opening another. When I was at Sheffield and Millington, I
only dreamed of being coach Wood. It wasn't until I
was at Christian Brothers where someone said the school's going

(52:28):
to bankroll you going to grad school and you can
become doctor Wood. And I said, you mean they're going
to pay for the school and they're like the books too,
So excuse me. That was something that I dreamed about.
And you know when I got my master's in two
thousand and four, I was out of money. You know this,

(52:48):
This teaching field doesn't pay. Uh, you know every other field.
You're an engineer, whatever you are, you owe that to
a teacher, but it doesn't pay you. Have you ever
done the math? So if as a teacher, I have
twenty five students and I get ten dollars an hour

(53:08):
for those twenty five kids, we have six hour school
days and we teach one hundred and eighty days, I
should make two hundred and seventy two thousand dollars a year. Jeezuz,
that's what I should make if I was just getting
a babysitter rate for that. That's how we treat educators.
And so as an educator, what was I probably making

(53:31):
thirty five or forty thousand dollars a year at and
Millington Central. I knew I didn't have the money to
go back and get my PhD. And so when I
moved to Christian Brothers and they were willing to bankrow
that here's an opportunity for me to become doctor. Would
when I did my comps for my master's we highly
recommend you. And I'm like, I appreciate that. That's great.

(53:53):
I'm out of money, and so teaching at Christian Brothers,
the privilege, the economic privilege of the private school allowed
me to chase a dream. I really don't think I
dreamed for myself before. Then.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
It's interesting, it's very interesting, you know that. You say
that because when you think about the economic difference, right,
the gap between private schools, public schools, even public schools
in the suburbs, like we said, Carville, Germantown, Lakeland, Arlington

(54:31):
versus inner city schools, the pay gap for the people
who work there and who live there are exponentially different. Right,
So how do we offer these kids in equal education?
What does that look like? In my mind being someone
who has been to both an inner city school because
I went to Fraser High School for a while. That
didn't work out at all. But I went to Fraser

(54:54):
High School and then I went to Woodstockton Millington, right.
But I had friends who were at Westside, who were
at North Side. I had friends who went to you know, Hamiltons.
Interviews w The economic difference in these schools versus the
type of education they received was it was an enormous gap.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
I think what we're doing right now that's really scary
in the state of Tennessee. The State of Tennessee is
pushing pushing vouchers, which is going to take the remaining
students whose parents UH desire better for their kids and
have a little bit of financial wherewithal to take the

(55:37):
best students out of the public schools and move them
into the private schools, which is not going to be
first off, when a when a student of color comes
into a private school, it's problematic. When an African American
parent or a Latino parent drops their kid off at
a private school, they know there are challenges. There's going
to be things that happen, There's going to be racial issues,

(56:00):
there's going to it's kind of come from classmates, it's
going to come from teachers. Maybe not openly per se
like it was nineteen fifty five, but there's going to
be some problems. But the parents that I've seen at
Christian Brothers for fifteen years that are Latino or African American,
their parents understand that and they're willing to make that

(56:22):
sacrifice for those students to see success. Now, if we
have these vouchers, and I'm you know, because I taught
in the public schools for seventeen years, I'm not a fan.
Because you're going to take the best students out of
the public schools put them in private schools where it's
going to be challenging, it's it's not going to be
the same culture that they had. And in fact, I've

(56:44):
had a number of students. I've got a young student
in my classroom right now. He's actually zoned to go
to Sheffield High School. He's at Christian Brothers. He was
at MACE and he would have been the valid victorian
or the salutatorian at MACE, but his mother, who graduated
from Sheffield yourself right said that's not the best option.
I want him to go to Christian Brothers and be challenged.

(57:06):
And he's doing well, but he's not doing is he's
not going to be the valedictorian salutatorian, and he's doing
better than if he was at Mace. But there are
some challenges that he's having to navigate that are there
where if you had left him at Mace or at Sheffield,
he's the valedictorian or salutatorian. Did you know that the

(57:27):
University of Tennessee at Martin will give the salutatorian and
the valedictorian if you're high school class free rights. I
had no idea, right, so when we take these students
from these schools that aren't producing the higher test scores,
which is essence what it becomes now like you've now
being judged not by who you are as a student,

(57:49):
but who you are on that one day, on that
test that it is a money making machine because you
took the end of course test in US history. And
Pearson brought coach Wood to Nashville, put me up in
a four star hotel. I reviewed questions and gave me

(58:09):
fifteen cents a mile to travel from Millington to Nashville
to look at that state test. There were fifteen offices
in this room. There were five other tests. How much
money did Pearson pay to have educators review the questions?

Speaker 2 (58:24):
How much We'll never know.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
We'll never know. And then so here's the deal that
then gets turned around to the state of Tennessee, which
is paying Pearson for the state test, and now they
issue the state test and they're like, well, this determines
whether teachers taught that year. It doesn't because if we
talked about this before, like the last two weeks of class,

(58:48):
I specifically reviewed everything that was going to be on
that test and prepared I talked to the test. Now
when you were in class during the rest of the year,
I taught yeah, right, and so we would cover all
of that stuff. Now there are some teachers in public
schools that are just teaching to that test every day.
So instead of teaching kids how to think, they're teaching

(59:09):
kids what to think. And that's where we students can't
problem solve that way, right, And so this whole system
where state tests dictate how we judge public schools is
ridiculous and I think a lot of times, if we're
going to continue this conversation with it with schools, let's

(59:30):
let's go there. You know a lot of folks are like, well,
there's too much government intervention. Well, then why is Nashville
in Memphis educational business? Why does the state legislature in
Tennessee want to shut down the Memphis City School district
and they want to dictate what is the curriculum for

(59:50):
the Memphis City schools? Right, that doesn't fly with the
less government. That's actually more government. That's more government intervention.
If school districts are designed to teach their communities and
allow those districts to teach those communities, what they need
is funding. Absolutely, they need fund and that's where the thinking. No,

(01:00:12):
and that's where the problem comes in, because they're not
equally funded. And when it's based on tax dollars. How
much does a house cost in Kyierville.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Oh, the low end, yes, maybe four hundred thousand dollars
on the low end.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
What's the house cost in Parkway Village?

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Thirty thousand dollars?

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
Good, where's the tax space. So that's where the money's going.
So you can't say that, well, we're giving everybody an
equal percentage. That's not equitable. Because Collierville is going to
have more money than Parkway Village. They're going to be Well,
these Callerville schools are so good. Well, if they're funded
right fully, fund students across the board, and that's where

(01:00:50):
for me, that's that's problematic in education today. And the
voucher system is only going to create a greater divide
between public and private. Right those schools in what we
call Memphis Shelby County now are going to suffer immensely
as this voucher program continues. Now that being said, the

(01:01:14):
voucher program, for me personally, the more of these kids
that use the voucher, the more students come to Christian Brothers,
creates job security. But if are really to me, I
don't think that's the bigger issue. The bigger issue is
are we educating the students of our community as best
we can? And we're not.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
We're not, you know, And a lot of people they
tend to mix up, you know, equitability versus equality is
not the same thing, right right, And I really want
people to stop using the damn word equality because equality
means all kids have a school to go to, right,
that's equality right now. How you make it equitable is

(01:01:52):
so I put these kids from we'll just say, well
keep using Sheffield, right, yeah, from Sheffield or kids from
Central and I give them the same exact opportunity as
those kids in Collierville or Arlington or Lakeland in those districts.
That's how you make things equitable. But how do you
do that when you have educators who do not want

(01:02:12):
to teach at these schools because not only have they
been watched by the administration inside these schools, now you
have the state right on their ass, left and right.
So that's no matter what teacher does or some mistake.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
And I think you know the other thing that happens
like and I've watched is at Sheffield personally because I'm
still in contact with the community, is that when the
state comes in and they say, well, you guys don't
have the right test scores, and they removed the entire staff.
They did that about ten fifteen years ago. When you
remove the entire staff, you took away teachers that had
taught at that school for thirty years that have built community.

(01:02:46):
And I could give you a series of names that
if I gave you these five names, students graduated from
Sheffield between nineteen seventy five and nineteen ninety five would
know all five of them because they were always there.
They were their mainstays. This is what makes Christian Brothers
a special place. When alumni come back. There are teachers
that have been there for fifteen, twenty, twenty five, thirty years,

(01:03:10):
and we celebrate those and they have alumni reunions and
all every football game on Friday, and it has a
different alumni group coming back from the year that they graduated.
But if we take that community away from Sayah Sheffield
and we had the teachers are no longer there, and
the alumni come back and they're not connected in any way,
they're not going to want to give back, right, And

(01:03:31):
so there's a lot of systemic issues that revolve around
that that are deeper conversations. Right, we could do this
for the next two or three hours and continue to
look at and analyze the issues that would help these
schools get better. Really, as a teacher, I wish I
had more pull. I think when I do post. We've

(01:03:56):
talked about this on social media. A lot of the
posting that I do do that is very public is
about education. Because I'm a thirty one year veteran and
I've been in the three different unique school districts right
like the city, the county, and the private and it's
sad for me, when people in charge that have zero

(01:04:17):
experience and education are making decisions on a systemic level
that are harmful to kids across the board.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
And so your opinions today have been I know to
b PG. Right. But before we wrap up, I do
want to ask you this question, and I want you
to be open and honest, all right, right? What truth
are you holding back out of politeness? Like if you
could say this is one main thing that I want

(01:04:47):
to say, or one feeling that I have that I
haven't said, what is it?

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
Man, that's a tough question. You sent me these questions
earlier and that's the one that I balked at earlier. Right,
so now you're being the teacher, the shoe is on
the other foot, to be honest, like, how do we
you know, we've talked about this because for me it's

(01:05:12):
about education. How do we fix this system? How do
we allow students? You know what pains me? And I
think you might recall this, like when you walk into
class the first week, I was like, yes, my name
is coach. Would but if you think I'm showing videotapes
all day, you've picked the wrong spot. Yeah, right, How

(01:05:36):
do we hold teachers accountable that they're there not to
get a paycheck, not to be there from eight to three,
but they're there for the betterment of the kids. And
I think, you know, we've we've talked about the systemic issues, right,
we just got done talking about some of the systemic
issues at the state level in Tennessee. But but on

(01:05:57):
the grassroots level, right, if we're going to require teachers
to do their job, let's hold them accountable, but let's
also pay them appropriately, right, Like this is I remember
my basketball coach in high school saying, Woodie, like, this
is the most honorable profession. I'm so proud of you
to go into this profession. I'm not going to make

(01:06:19):
six figures ever doing this, right, And so why is that?
Why is that that, as a thirty one year educator
with a doctorate degree, if I were to post something
on Facebook, I would get a large number of responses
from people that have never stepped a foot in the classroom.
They've never subbed, they've never taught a class, but they

(01:06:40):
have the answers to solve the problem because what they
saw when they themselves were in school. And to me,
that's problematic. Right. I think if if I'm going to
say something, I'm like, uh, you know, I thought, you know,
I really want my vote first. The first place I
look when I vote is how do you feel about education? Right?

(01:07:04):
And if you don't line up with how I feel
about education and where that money needs to go and
that the importance of public schools and you're not. There's
a lot of other issues are out there, and I
don't want to minimize the other ones, but for this educator,
education is first and foremost how I look at a candidate,

(01:07:27):
And so politically speaking, I'm not real thrilled right now
that the Department of Education. If you said, what would
I hold back on? The Department Education has issues? I
think it probably could. It has some graft, it has
some issues that could be solved. I think money is
probably needs to be tightened up a little bit, But

(01:07:49):
to wholesale remove the Department of Education not. One of
the things they're going to do is if they do that,
if the federal the Department of Education disappears, i epas
will disappear. If you ever taught and you've ever had
a kid with an I e P. One of the
reasons why we chose to leave our chandler at Millington
Central is be and not take him to Christian Brothers.

(01:08:09):
And one of the perks at teaching at Christian Brothers.
My other two boys went for free. They had full
tuition rids because I teach there. Right, I could have
sent my my middle son to Christian Brothers, but I
said no, the best place for him is Millington Central
High School because he is autistic. It has an I
e P. And the level of support that he received

(01:08:30):
from the administration and the teachers was there. Now, if
you take away the Department of Education and you want
to be real with this, that I EEP disappears, and
I want that this is not a Republican or a
Democrat thing. Think about it's across the board. People have
students with I e P s if that need, whether
they have dyslexia, UH they struggle with, uh, reading, they

(01:08:55):
struggle with They're all over all over the board. Right.
In fact, all three of my sons had IEPs. My
two sons, my bookends were what's the term I'm looking for,
had an IEP for exceptional you know students? Right? Like, so,
what was the program APEX program in Shelby County schools? Right?

(01:09:17):
And so those are IEPs too. That means those programs disappear.
So if the federal government takes the money that they
were sending to the states to make sure that these
federal mandates were followed, the next question is this, will
the State of Tennessee continue funding on the same level
that they have been doing. And the answer is absolutely no.

(01:09:37):
I don't trust them. So if you said if there
was something I was ducking right, my fear is that
when you eliminate this Department of Education this state. If
that was the case, the Memphis City schools would have
been fully been funded. What do you think there's state's opportunity.
The state of Tennessee doesn't have an income tax that
is so regressive. Like I realize, I come from New

(01:09:58):
York and New York state is probably one of the
most heavily tax states. But even my inner city education
in New York was better than probably what most kids
got at Kyerville. Right, let's be blunt about that. The
money in New York goes to education, right, And yes,
you pay more tax dollars. The roads look better, right,

(01:10:19):
the services that the state officers are better. Why because
there's taxes like Tennessee does not have an income tax. So,
by the way, for the heck of it, you know
what Mississippi just did. They got rid of their state
income tax. And so when you get rid of the
state income tax, instead of being equitable based on the
amount of money that you make, you now have to
take those find those tax dollars somewhere. And so in

(01:10:42):
states like Tennessee, when you go buy groceries and gas,
you pay an extra tax. And so what's going to
happen in Mississippi is that money that doesn't hurt the
person that makes five hundred thousand dollars. The person that
makes fifty thousand dollars or less thirty thousand dollars, that
person now has more taxes on their groceries and on

(01:11:02):
their gas. What just happened to them? That's regressive, right,
And so if we're regressive in our taxes here in
Tennessee and in Mississippi, are we really going to fund education? No,
we're looking for places to cut that and have less taxes.
And so instead of running from supporting education, and there

(01:11:23):
are other programs that need to get supported. It so
happens to be the doctor woods an educator, right, then
do it? And if that means I have to pay
a couple more dollars in taxes, I'll do it. But
in reality, Eerica, how many people are going to be
like doctor Wood? And yeah, I'll pay more tax dollars.
That's better for me because it's it's not better for
me for the whole. And I don't worry about the whole.

(01:11:44):
I worry about myself. And that's where we as a
people have felt as a nation have failed in that
and that mentality.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
But that is where we as a nation will always fail,
will continue to fail simply because American culture is that
of individuality. That's just a point blank period what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
Absolutely right, and it saddens my heart that, you know,
I think President Jimmy Carter said this, if you want
to judge our democracy, look at how our democracy treats
the least in that democracy. And so you know when

(01:12:26):
you look at that, right, you know, President Carter, for
whoever he is and how you want to judge him
as a president, spend his life giving back to people. Right.
He truly became a carpenter. Right, he did, he was
the carpenter. And for me, as a Christian, right, this
is where I'll share my faith a little bit. He

(01:12:47):
walked and talked, and you knew just by watching him
as a man that's a Christian. And there's too many
Americans today that claim to be Christians that do not
walk and talk. In fact, if we're going to say stuff,
you didn't want me to put out there. And she said,
I was a little leery of how many evangelical Christians

(01:13:11):
would deport Jesus today.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
And all of them.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
Yeah, that's where we have an issue. That's the problem
that we want our Christianity to defend our capitalism instead
of allowing our Christianity. You know, Mahama Gandhi said it best.
He goes, I love your christ I've read your Bible.
He's a great dude. But I've met your Christians. I
don't like them so much, right, And I think there's

(01:13:37):
far too many in our country that And it saddens
me as a Christian that there are far too many
people that use their Christianity to defend their capitalism versus
just being a christ just being a Christian and walking
and talking like the man you read in the scriptures is.

(01:13:57):
And I may not be perfect, but I attempt to
get as close to that as possible, and I hope
that I'm better today than I was yesterday. And I
think those are conversations that people don't want to have.
And you ask me, where would I shy away from?
So instead of shying away from it, that's it. So
hopefully did I get your Did I go where you're

(01:14:18):
headed with that one?

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
You did?

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
It was just, honestly, was more so something to close.
It's out to leave people with something to think about, right,
you know, it's you know, it's good to be introspective,
and it's good to think about yourself and where you
fit in right right and ask yourself the hard questions.
Make sure that you are questioning yourself, your morals, your ethic.
That is the only way to be a better person, absolutely,

(01:14:42):
you know. That's the only way to facilitate self growth.
And that matters to me with anything else. So if
I can have someone that I look up to to
sit down and think and say, well, damn, how did
I get here? You know why am I afraid to
say this out loud? Then I feel like I've done
something more?

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
Yeah, you know what I think? You know, as we're
winding down our conversation today, one thing I want to
say is I'm incredibly proud of who you are, right
because from the young lady that was sitting in my
class as a senior and taking all three of my classes.
I don't know why you would do that to yourself
in any way, shape or form, but you did. Folks

(01:15:21):
might call that masochism, but you did. You survived. But
the conversations that started in that class that we continue
to have and just this podcast. You know, I've heard
pretty much every episode with you and Courtney. I'm kind
of sad that Courtney isn't here with us today because
I love the conversation, the way that you guys dialogue
back and forth. But the fact that you're doing this,

(01:15:42):
that your voice is there, I am so incredibly proud
of that, and it makes what I do as an
educator worthwhile. No, I don't have the paycheck, right and
so it's not for the income. It's for the outcome,
and this podcast is part of that outcome. Thank you
for that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
Eric, Oh, doctor, appreciate that so much. You know. So
in closing, y'all, this is doctor Keithboard.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
You know, this is academics needs accountability, and this has
been the students

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
Of life podcast and Live and Learn Life is a lesson.