May 21, 2024 • 43 mins
Robert was the beneficiary of older black men who assigned him to a church, placed him in a job, bought him $2,200 worth of professional clothing, and mentored him. They challenged him to do the same for the next generation and he's doing just that through his initiative called Friends After 5, which hosts happy hours to fix the sad reality that not enough black and white Americans are friends after the work day is done. By doing so, Robert believes that we can grow the middle class of both.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, everybody is Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with Robert Hill. Right after these brief messages from our
general sponsors, I kind of want to recap. I think
(00:29):
it's important to collect thoughts here and I have a lot. Well,
one of the biggest things that I have learned is
one of the more difficult situations for a black person
enter the middle class and trying to enter into a
(00:50):
world of entrepreneurism is access? Is access? Tim Russell? Did
you ever meet Tim Russell? Pastor in Memphis? He died
from COVID anyway, He came from up in Philadelphia and
started was the first president of Dcottz, the Memphis Center
for Theological Seminary. He was an associate pastor at Second
(01:14):
Presbyterian Church. By church, just think James Earl Jones. That's him,
all black, proud, big as hell. I still miss him.
He was my friend and my pastor, and there were
a number of times I called on his council about
(01:35):
a number of different things in my life and he
he meant a lot to me. And I've had a
lot of friends now at my age, come and go,
but I missed Tim Russell on a daily basis. He
and I had a lot of racial conversations, candid, open, thoughtful, honest,
(01:58):
sometimes painful only as my pastor, but as my friend.
And one of the things he said to me early
in our conversations I'll never forget as he looked at
me and he said, have you ever been to a
black dentist? You laugh? Just the question is funny. Why
would a white man go to a black dentist? Right?
(02:20):
Have you ever been to insurance? Have you ever been
to a black doctor? Have you ever had a legal
problem and gone to a black attorney? And he said,
if you think about, have you ever had a black accountant?
And he said, Now you've got dentists, you've got doctors,
you've got accountants, got and now one of them are black.
(02:40):
And he said, and in fact, you could have in
Memphis chose from over two hundred at a minimum, dentists, doctors, accountants,
and any professional service you need, and not one of
them on the list that you were choosing from. What
I'm black.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, that's why you see how your teeth? What that's
probably why how your teeth?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Then he said, then he said a black man cannot
say that. One it's just about access. And two, when
you think about the term privilege, just take white privilege
(03:28):
out of it, because that seems to upset everybody. Let's
just talk about privilege in general, and let's call it
social privilege or call it cultural privilege. Let's not call
it white privilege. Just just put a He said, that's
that's really bad marketing calling it white privilege, because you
immediately put white people on the defensive when you say
(03:49):
white privilege. So forget it. Call it social privilege or whatever.
He said. It is absolutely the fact that it is
a privilege that you can go to get any professor
service you need in your whole life, and you never
have to go outside your culture or your world. Black
people can't say that that in and of itself is
(04:12):
a lack of privilege, but more importantly, from an socioeconomic standpoint,
it's also points to a lack of access. So when
you talk about why black people got involved in the
post office and the all of those things, it's because
it was access. It was access to a pension, it
was access to a good job, it was access to
(04:33):
a an environment that allowed you or allowed black people
an opportunity at the middle class, which is great and
I get it. But the problem is where's the access
to then raise out of the middle class. Very limited,
(04:54):
very difficult. And then I want to before we go
to friends after five. That's one thing I would like
our listeners keep their mind on. The second thing is
something you said that I find just poignant. We have
now shifted. No, I'm gonna say it a different way.
We are now seeing a shift away from this. And
(05:20):
when I use the word conservative, I don't mean it politically.
I more mean it socially and inside the family. This
black conservative approach to family and advancement, largely that in
the South was fostered by the church, as in your case,
and that you said, somehow that's getting reversed, and as
(05:42):
to the Dutchman of the black community, it is. And
so I did this on my own a couple of
days ago, and I thought, what are the top ten
issues in Memphis? And if I went down the list
top ten issues in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, this pick one
and it's number one is crime and two, three, four, five,
(06:05):
sixty seven, eight, nine, ten is crime. But then if
you do crime, do subsets next to crime. So if
one's crime, two is crime poverty, poverty leading to crime,
and then three is crime poverty education, a poor education
leading to poverty leading to crime, and then you can
do crime poverty, education access. And the point is, if
(06:30):
crime seems to be the most prevalent problem we see
in social media and everywhere else because it's in your
face and season to put on the news at six o'clock,
what leads to it? And it's a poor education, a
lack of access, poverty, all of the things that happen
with kids that are too hungry to go to school
(06:50):
and study and learn, that get stuck in a cycle
of poverty, generational poverty, all of it eventually leads to
the disintegration of our culture. Are sciety, crime and all
the things that the freaking out urban cities. And then
I ran into you and you're like, it's about the
(07:11):
middle class. It's about access to the middle class. It's
about what you just said, home ownership, rather than what
you say, clothes and hose.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Clothes and hose.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean, it's a it's a mental change. And so
now as we transition to what you were doing and
what it's about, the reason I wanted to go through
everything we've gone through for is I want our listeners
to have perspective that this is a black guy that
came from a hard working mom and dad, who who
(07:45):
came up the black middle class experience and understands that
that's the answer, and that's the strength of of of culture.
Is that middle class? And you're not here trying to
There's no ads here, there's no sell out here, there's
(08:06):
no Uncle Tom. You are clearly a proud black man
from a proud black upgringing. There's no there's none of
that sell out. This is you saying this is the
way we make us better.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I want to unpack something you said. See, we
don't have a cram problem, and we don't have an
education problem. We have a middle class problem.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That's what I mean.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, and so when you look at the history of
how blacks moved into middle class, many of them came
out of rural areas, out of well I call it
putting down cotton secs and started driving Cadillacs. So yeah,
and so from the backwoods to Hollywood, from the house
(08:51):
and so little girls with pigtails now sporting French nails.
I mean, the history of how we have come from this.
It is very simple. So historically the black woman was
the one who went to college. The black man ended
up going off in the army. Most cases, he served
in the Korean War or he served in Vietnam, so
(09:14):
when he came home from the service. Back then, they
really valued veterans, so most veterans were hired at civil
service jobs like the post office, the VA, the police department,
the fire department. So they had the backdrop of it
on mlgn W mess like yes water because they were
electricians in the navy and stuff like that. So he
would yield and then continue to send his woman to school,
(09:38):
so they would go to HBCU's like Lane College and
La morn One and Rust and m I or any
southern school valley to the Loo Jackson State and she
would be at home to where she worked a job
to where she could teach, be home by three or
four o'clock to raise the children. He would get off
(09:59):
from the post office or the police department wherever he
had to work, and didn't go work on a second
job in order for them to move into the middle
class and then stay there, which is why the black
man most in cases died when he was in his
early sixties from heart disease and stress and everything else
could hell. He worked itself to death in order to
provide for a family. And so then gave the black
(10:19):
woman the opportunity to be at home to raise the
children and to help rear them and you know, help
with the homework. So and we didn't really have the
greatest quality of education back then, but at least you
can learn how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic,
and then you could pick up the rest of it.
And the encyclopedias if the man came to your house
to sell them to you. And uh, before we had
(10:42):
the internet, and that's where we had the encyclopedias. And
then some of us would only get one or two
books and then we would share them on the street.
So many of us say, hey, do you have A
through Z? I mean A through B, And we go
and get the A through B to But they're finally
do a home.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Are you saying in the neighborhood this family by A
and B, this family that's right, that neighborhood would have
it's like run around.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yes, on that whole street. And we didn't have any
grass that went uncut if you was old and sick
and fell on hard times, we would go cut your grass,
were spread with msm A, which I used to call
endzar Den. We'd spray with ansar and put some trip
with thirteen down on the trimo shrubs. Your house didn't
go unpainted, we'll go to series and buy seis was
a beater and we'd all pitch in and paint your house.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Sounds like a black Amish village.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Well, it was just what the Jews have been doing
for years, and we did.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
It because that was the black middle class experience.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Well because it was taught that in the rural areas.
Because when you came out of Mississippi. In these rural areas,
everybody share food. You share food, and we had hog
killing day that kept fifteen to twenty hogs and everybody
had meat for the whole winter. No one went hungry. Well,
you know, you'd have four or five acres of purple peace.
People would blanch them, go down from the city to
(11:54):
the country and bring back bushel bags of them and
give them to everybody on the street. You can blanch
them in hot water and put them in freezer bags
and freeze it, so no one went hunger. We didn't
have welfare and food stamps. We didn't do that. And
so somewhere in our culture we had a generation that
was given too much too soon, like prodigal sons, some
(12:15):
prodigal children. And when you give a child so much
to live on, that child now has nothing to live for.
It takes the hypoxic drive out of him. It takes
the hunger away from them.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Say that again, that is profound.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, I mean does too much too soon? If you
give a child, you give, If you give if they
don't have. What if you give a child too much
to live on, a child to have nothing to live for.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
If you give a child too much to live on,
he ain't got nothing to live that's right. I mean
you didn't.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
You don't bought him his first car, and you don't.
You don't keep wearing sporty clothes, you don't know about
no work, liveing in White Haven, modest middle class income
and house. I mean he didn't understand how to cut grass,
so you didn't make him get off his butt and
go cut no grass, use out to cut grass at
the working two jobs because you wanted you y'ad to
look a certain way. Well, hell if you mess it up.
(13:05):
He got to learn. I made my boys cut it.
If they scalped it, y'ad they scalped it, it'll grow bad.
You have to work around here, if not all coming
off my belt. I'm believe in that. So we have
this weak generation because we thought our parents are too
hard on us, and as a result, we became slack
(13:27):
and lexa days ago. With this generation that we see now,
and it has ruined us. It has ruined us to
take government subsidies because now you've been inoculated with warfare
and food stamps and and wick instead of learning how
to just sacrifice and work.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
We'll be right back. Chevis Daniels, who played football at
me from a Nasses, spent time in jail, came from
rough Hubrand. We were coming back from an event we
(14:11):
did in Little Rock, driving and we got on this
very conversation. And now Chavis this time was twenty years old,
and we got on wick and food stamps and conversation
about it. And he looked at me and he said,
I've eaten and existed on some of that stuff. And
he said, and I hate it. And that was near
(14:34):
floored me, because a lot of kids from a nasses.
That's just reality, you know, for whether it's whether it's
right or wrong. That's how they grew up. And I said, really,
you hate it? And he said, it's a crutch to
my people. And first of all, the whole my people conversation.
I don't even like that because I want I yearned
(14:58):
for a day where my people are your people and
it's we people. But I got where it came from.
I certainly understand it. I don't want to be over idealistic.
And I said, what do you mean and he said, man, coach.
He said, if you got a crutch, you walk with
a limp. And if they give you a crutch for
(15:19):
rest of your wife, you always gonna limp. And he said,
when you provide them with a crutch, you are building
a limp into their existence. And he said, I hate
this stuff and I will never forget this. Nineteen to
twenty old kid saying that to me. A fly damn
near drove off the road in the ditch. When I
heard it, I couldn't believe I was hearing that out
of a young black man's mouth from the hood who
(15:41):
recognized what the systems did in terms of limping his community.
But on the other side, understood that many in his
community had come to a point that they couldn't.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Exist without it. You get caught in this horrible catch
twenty two, Lynda Bane Johnson. He's the one who implemented
it on his war on poverty, and we fell for
the okidoe. And so my mother, who grew up doing
a great depression, they wouldn't take commodities. They raised their
own food. My grandfather was born eighteen ninety five and
gave certain World War War. When it came back, they
(16:21):
allowed them some VA money, so they brought about thirty
seven acres then by Hay in Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
He farmed.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And so when men who died in the community, the widows,
all of them would pitch in and they wouldn't take
subsidy from USDA. They wouldn't take it. They said, the
grits that you could boil wouldn't even fit for a
dog deed because they wouldn't break down. It was, of course,
and so once you get inoculated with social services, it
(16:48):
takes away your hypostic drives to thrive. And I've never
have ever taken any subsidies ever. We never didn't allow it.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
But what you're saying, is that also destroys the ability
to get to the middle class for the black.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Fill There's a lot of things that destroyed I tell
black women this all the time. You know, I don't
care about you emailing me and see mailing me. Hell,
I don't read that stuff anyway. I'm retired now, so
I don't have to answer to nobody but me the
good Lord above. And I tell folks all the time,
and I tell my sons this, be careful who you
lay with. The sex is expensive, it's a luxury item.
(17:29):
Don't live with somebody that you know you can't be
married to and have a family with. So don't appropriate
and have babies all out of wed lock and then
you can't be married to them. And because it takes
a man and a woman to effectively raise a child,
don't don't fall for that saying I can do it
on my own. No, you really can't. It takes a
(17:50):
man to raise a man. And had it would not
have been for those older black men and Bishop Grays
Ben Hooks, I would have been a nothing, a loser.
They taught me a lot about what it really meant
to be a black man that was intelligent, I remember
I went to visit mister Tona and this girl across
the street. She was cute and fine, and they was tonguing,
(18:14):
and mister Tawny was mad as hell. He saw me
out there talking to her. He said, you can get
your in his house right now. He said, what this man?
I said, she's cute, she's fine, she got three children
out of wed lock. If you go out there and
lay with her and she get her pregnant. And then
they got to walk past all these baby daddies to
get to her. You're young, you don't have any children.
Go get you a woman that you can be married
(18:36):
to and have your own set of babies so you
can raise your own family and have your own influence.
And I didn't understand that as a twenty year old man.
Understand it now. And that's the that's the hardcore conversation
that we're not having. I mean, it's and.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
You're never gonna get to the middle class with all
that hanging around.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, it's bad. Need you get it out of court.
I mean, there's been programmed. The Asians don't do it,
the Hispanics don't do it. This baby mama drama stuff
at the juvenile court is a mockery. And I really
think if you changed the laws to say, look, if
whoever the custodial parents says you want to get child
(19:19):
supports so bad when your child cuts up in the
street and run the streets and he's not accounted for,
locked the pairent up with the child, then all of
a sudden, now you're no longer the custodial parent. Now
you want to fall out, to be active in the life,
and you will see a change in how children and
this just destructive youth can can get better.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
So this is the mindset, This is where the man
comes from. This is all of it. And you believe
that my list of poverty, with all its subsets caught
crime problems leads all subsets. You disagree with me. You
say we don't have a crime problem, we have a
middle class problem. And when you said that to me,
(20:03):
that's when I thought this has got to be We
got to talk about Friends after Five on our show.
All of what we said sets up to to give
perspective for why I'm starting to agree with you that
Friends after Five has a real opportunity to change so
(20:24):
much of what ails us. What is Friends after five friends.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
After five, we have thousands of young black men and
women who have done everything we've asked them to do.
Is it in technical school or in college men and
my HBCU schools. When they graduate from technical school or college,
no one is there to embrace them, to give the mentorship,
(20:52):
and no one is there to help them build relationships
within a job market. That's the access, that's the access piece.
Because we keep operating these segregated salos and at the
end of the day, most white Americans, you know, you
got almost three hundred and thirty million people in America,
forty eight million of which are black. Most companies are
(21:16):
ram by whites in America. Just being realistic, and if
you do not have an understanding on how to get
out of your circle of where you've been programmed, then
you cannot build relationships to be able to get quality employment.
And you should not have a a BBA walking around
working flipping burgers and frying chicken. But what a whole
(21:39):
purpose of going to school or you don't want to?
You know, we are are more technical school and now
you're still working in the jutting and come lucky shed
in the backyard on cars. When you should be working
at Ford Motor. You should be working at GM or
somewhere that's going to pay you a pension or pay
you a quality wage or pay up a quality job.
(21:59):
And so we have thousands and so this isn't something
that I think will work. This is something that worked
for me, and it worked for so many of my
friends who at the same halfway I've had, And so yes,
it is a challenge. This is being can be duplicated
in any urban city. And what I've learned there are
some cities that really need it. Memphis needs it, but
(22:24):
then there are some cities who really want it. And
there's differ between being wanted and wanting being needed. And
Memphis has been one of those cities who have been
reactive instead of proactive waiting to all the stuff and
board out on the stove and then we got to
clean up a mess. And some of our urban cities
(22:44):
like Jackson, Mississippi, they want to be more proactive. You
have six HBCUs in the state of Mississippi along and
now the workforce has changed, and so I want to
be very candid with it. So if you send Hispanics,
you bust them to Chicago on New York, Philadelphia, wherever
you're gonna bust them. And then you have young white
(23:05):
kids who are going to college. I can tell you
right now, your white kid is not trying to work
at a blue Oval or a Ford anywhere in the warehouse.
That's not why he went to school. We went to
school to go to medical school, law school, you know it.
And so your only workforce that you really have now
are those black kids that are trying to go to
somebody's school, and they need to have that interstitial relationship
(23:27):
outside of their communities to make sure that they properly place. Now,
I'm not superman. I'm not walking around here with a
shower cap fold up in the back of my pocket.
Every person I see, I pull it out and put
it around my neck like I'm Captain save somebody. I'm
being nice about it. That's not my intent. And yeah,
(23:50):
I've caught some flack on it, but I really don't care.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And so Friends after five is born of an idea
where you get these middle class young black folks up
and coming that are trying to get it, and you
get white middle class and upper class folks in the
same room. After five, you have a cocktail and you
(24:16):
try to just create relationships friends after five to create
both access really access to one another, which let's be
honest and social circles just doesn't happen very often. Access
to one another, but it's also access for white business
owners to find the next level of talent they have
(24:38):
to have to run their companies' grop. We'll be right back.
Tell me about the first one.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Well, the first one was actually a house I called
eighty one people and I had almost ninety people show up.
I only had one white friend to show up.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I ain't what Friends after five is supposed to look.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well, the first one, that's what it looked like. And
he showed up on my way website where he's standing
there at the fireplace in my living room with me,
and so we had everyone introduce themselves and you had
everything from fireman to aircraft mechanics of fed X, to
nurse practitioners to register nurses, to.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Schooling about the black folks. These are all the jobs.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So he face turned red?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Who turned red?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
My friend who was white, who's standing there at the
fireplace with why then red? Because the stigmata of what
you see in the news when you see young kids
walking around their pants, hanging off their butt and doing donuts.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
And he'd never been in a room for a ninety
middle class black folks that were acting right care of themselves.
He wasn't even aware they existed.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
He didn't. He wasn't even aware of the neighborhood I
live in, which is inner city, prominent, upper black, middle
class community.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
By the way, also insulting, but it's a reality.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
But he didn't his first time he had been to
twinkle Town, and so he's he's he's like, he says,
this got to work. I said, just thousands of us thousands.
So you know, I've had some some nasty emails and phonks.
I don't pay that stuff in mind. I don't have that.
My interest isn't only kids that's not doing what we've
(26:25):
asked him to do. I can't. I can't solve that problem.
So I'm being candid and honest. That's not a problem
I can solve. I think a lot of it has
to do with the relationships of some of filed inner
city churches with not really practicing real ministry. But I
can do something about those kids who are doing what
(26:46):
we've asked him to do. Getting opportunity given them opportunity.
And you know, I did it with my own children.
My own two sons are well employed and they're young,
eighteen and twenty, and they got grown me in jobs
just you know, incomes that exceeded seventy thousand dollars a year.
And the kids almost really because of relationships, because people
have seen that they've had something to emulate to mimic,
(27:08):
and they know the quality of the employee that they're
going to get and the opportunities that they get. And
I want to do that for as many young black
kids that's in school that I can.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
So this white dude in this first meeting who had
an awakening, did what did he do about that?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, we had an event at his dealership or yeah,
he's a general manager for a Ford dealership and he
invited white friends. I said, oh good. So he had
about thirty white friends there. And this was the next one. Yeah,
and we had roughly about eighty five ninety blacks, middle
(27:51):
class blacks, and they kids to show up. Ever since then,
we've had event every every month. We have an event
here Memphis, now we have one in Jackson, Mississippi. We
get ready to start at Birmingham and Jackson, Tennessee at
Lane College. People want it now because you have these
HBCUs that do not have the relationships with a business community.
(28:17):
I'm dumbfounded with that. How do you have a school
that operated for almost one hundred and fifty years in
the community and you know, a white business community or
Bunin's community at whole at large have not went over
to pick the best out the best out of these schools.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Once again, bro access access even for an entire university.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, it's something, and so it's gonna have to change.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And you want to talk about things that can break
down racial problems in our culture. Let's work together, respect
one another, support one another, and all of a sudden,
RACI just doesn't matter that much anymore.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
It doesn't matter once you reach a certain level in
your mind and as God has opened up some doors
for you to have a sense of achievement, Uh, you
realize it's not about black and white. It's just about
you know, God ordering his steps and then having a
purpose for your life. Because life is short and you
(29:16):
have to say to yourself, what kind of fingerprint, what
kind of mark will I leave on humanity when I'm dead?
Did I do anything to make this better before I
left here? Or did I just suck up all the
resources and forgot there was other generations behind us that
really needed it. It only takes so much to live.
(29:40):
I think we missed that mark. We missed it. You know,
at the end of the day, we all dust. Would
you agree with me?
Speaker 1 (29:49):
I've started having the argument, did I think the uh
segregation and prejudiced of our day today it's morphed from
black white and morphed into societon cultural.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I think one of the things I did when I
was directed at Chevy County, I have been to probably
more white churches than any black person you could probably imagine.
I wasn't invited. I just pop up when you set
up second prayers. I've been to second praiers at least
three times. Come on down, sit with my family in
the pew. Next time, well, I was one of them.
(30:26):
I went and there was a C. K Reece. I
don't know if you know C. K. And she said,
mister Hill, are you here? I said yeah, I was
just driving down the street and I said, I want
to stop so all the cars I want to see
what was going on. And I sit in the middle
of the audience. I was the only black person in
there in the middle of that audience w Baptists and stuff.
So the reason why I say that is because King
(30:47):
said to us the most segregated hour in Americas on
Sunday morning.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Which is it's one of my favorite quotes of his
because it's profoundly true. And if we are truly called
by that faith profoundly sinful.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
It is because at the end of the day, I
can tell you right now, Heaven is not gonna be serogated.
Everybody's gonna have to get along just fine. And I think.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Jesus Saint God blonde hair and blue eyes either he
came from the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Dog well, at the end of the day, we all
had to learn how to get along. And one of
my pastors used to always tell me this. He said,
we talk about when we get to heaven hell, we
got to first learn how to live down here. And uh,
doctor Julius Yil Scipio, and he was adamant about that.
And so I've made it my business to get out
(31:36):
of my comfort zones and visit people. And I've had
opportunities where I've been the only black person in the
room and a few black people that was there waiting
on tables and stuff, and they said, well looking at me, like,
what are you doing here? I had one of them.
I never forget this, and uh, he was just staring there,
standing and staring looking at me. I bore a chair
(31:58):
back and said, sit down, man. And he was waiting tables,
so I can't sit down. I said, yes you can.
And I said, they fire you. I'm gonna find you
a job at the county. How about that? And so
the manager came. He looked I said, I asked him
to sit down, no food with him, leave him alone.
Sometimes you had to take somebody out of the conference
zone in order for them to grow.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Sure. My understanding is now some politicians have started to
see the potential and friends after five and are starting
to sports you a little bit.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Governor Haley Barber. We had to kick off last week
at Jackson State University. Doctor Marcus Thompson is the president.
They have over a thousand kids to graduate this year
from JSU, but medium have not been placed, so we
had to kick off. We had almost two hundred and
forty people of police captains to Commissioners of safety, because
(32:51):
you know, you have kids who's majoring in criminal justice
computer science. And so we tried to have a plethora
of those who were hiring to try to retain them.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Why wouldn't Memphis needs five hundred officers, they're short, and
we got kids graduating from Jackson State with criminal justice degrees.
Why ain't Memphis down there recruiting those skills.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
The lazy the lazy, and believe it or not, fifty
percent of the students it's at the HBCUs in North
Mississippi throughout Mississippi are from Memphis.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
And we'll have the degree to get a job. I mean,
we can back fill up the police department.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Tomorrow, police department, school system, you name it.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Fired.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
But because Memphis has this mindset, you know, we're lazy,
as some of the people we elect are not competent
to run a city. And it's just not Memphis. We
see it in Chicago, we see the Detroit, we see
it in all the urban cities. And if you do
not attach to this young generation, then they won't come back.
And right now, once Blue Oval and some of these
(33:55):
other places open up, it's going to suck fifty thousand
jobs out of the atmosphere. What's going to be left
to other people that's here, and not just in Memphis,
but in these urban cities.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
What happens to tax space, Well, the.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Rate we're going now, you know, sixty percent, sixty five
percent of the home ownership now Memphis is rental property
owned by outside rental people getting sixty five percent of
all the inner city homes and two for the loop
I'm not owned by people, they're owned by companies and corporations.
And so like with some of the stuff we see
(34:26):
in the news of possible tax increases and board services
and potholes, you have not done anything to reinsure the
middle class growth and base.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
But that's but that's to your point. If you have
a robust middle class, sixty five percent of the homes
ain't no by rental properties that are owned by homeowners
who are paying into their own community.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
But even though the investors are paying into it from
tax you know, property taxes. What happens is if you
allow so many people to have this sense of hopelessness
of not having home ownership, and all you're doing now
is have a mayor and a government that's running a
city that's now one large housing project, which what it
was down to, and so then you will have nothing
(35:10):
but a plethora and a vacuum of crime and poverty. Uh,
it will be a sodom and.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Gomorro, which speaks to the power of friends. After five
and your belief we don't have a crime problem, edu case,
probably have a middle class problem. Middle class problem. You
build the middle class and it fixes all this. She
does and banks the same way. We had some banks
that tried to merge. They had no CRA credits because
they didn't have enough participation in urban cities Memphis. When
(35:38):
you look at the poor zip code was the poor
zip code in America was three one o six three
one two six s eighty South Memphis, South Memphis. Right,
And are you proud of me for knowing that?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Well, yeah, you should know about BTWD the Warriors, and
but they're down to just one bank in that community.
One bank.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
How many grocery stores two when you got two gross
stores on one brank.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
It's back to my buzzword access success to nothing. But
a lot of it has to play into when you
hire people. You need to hire people from a community
to be managers of these stores, to be managers of
these banks, because it's all about relationships. And so when
you hire people that have graduated from JSU or TULU
(36:27):
whatever with a BBA or bachelor's degree in business or finance,
hire them to be the manager at a Dollar General
or our family dollar, then you wouldn't see all this stuff.
You wouldn't see all that because nobody wants to say, hey, Robert,
no little Johnny, Johnny, you better stay out here. See
does a relationship And when you have a relationship with people,
then it builds this sense of community.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Which then builds the middle class, which then builds talk space,
which then more people crawl out of poverty into the
middle class, which then reduces crime, which then means more
parents involved in schools, which builds ptas, which makes the
school a better educational system. I mean, I buy what
you're selling. Man.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It's a lot of hard work, and I've been, you know,
I've had some disenchantment a little bit here in the city.
Sometimes it's hard to raise money. All of our students
between eighteen and twenty six, they come for free and
we don't turn anyone away, but it is it's very costly.
But you know, I'm alright with I've put my own
(37:31):
personal money into it. But it's working. And at the
end of the day, I think we can make an
investment in a future, or we can make an investment
in building prisons and institutions. Because we didn't make an
investment in generations. Kind of a choice in it. It
(37:54):
shouldn't be a choice. Someone made a comment to me,
and I know you probably out of time can include
the time. Yeah, all right, I want to say this.
So I had a young man, he was doing some
treat work for me, and he said to me, he said,
he looked at my sons. My sons are doing welding.
If you pull up on Facebook, they were fourteen and
fifteen year old kids. And I have this closet hunt
(38:16):
in my backyard and had to got to rewire with
two twenty wires and made into a welding shop. And
I probably invested maated about twenty grand my savings into
all this welding equipment that they wanted and needed. And
so this man who working on my trees, who was black,
he says, mister Hill, I want to ask you a question.
I said, what is it named Roy? He says, if
(38:39):
they weren't your children, would you do this for other
young black boys, black women? Chunking and laughed. He walked
into it. Bill he did, I said, I've adopted a
total of I have a toll of five children. I
have three that adopted legally adopted. Only two of them
are biological. I said, I took you in children that
(39:01):
weren't my children because they needed somewhere to stay. I
sent him to school, sent him to private school. I
gave him a hair company they needed and asked them
when they needed, and sent him to college out of
my own money. And I said, I would rather spend
twenty thousand dollars in a closet hut for hiding in
well and equipment, or spend twenty thousand dollars keeping them
out of juvenile court. The choice is yours. And what
(39:25):
most black men and women are doing is choosing to
buy corvettes and buying cad of like escalades, and going
on vacation and trying to look the part to impress
people they don't know what things they don't have, instead
of making the investment back in those of their own children.
And that's the problem. So yes, I've done it for everybody.
(39:47):
I've sent helped kids go to school of taking them,
that's what it's.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
About Friends after five building the middle class because we
can either build the middle class or we can build
more child's it's your choice.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
It's your choice, Robert, Do.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
You have yet, because Friends after five's fairly new concept,
do you have yet any stories of some connections made
at a fends after five that has helped some folks.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Well, there's a lot of them. I put them on
the website at ww dot Friends after in the number
five dot com. Hayley Barbara also gave a testimonial. Our
next event is going to be April twenty fifth. Butler snow,
we have a standing invitations every third Thursday or the
(40:38):
month will now be a Jackson State University building that community.
We'll be heading to Lane College. On Lane College now
is I certainly wanted, which is in Jackson, Tennessee, and
trying to pour together Old miss and Northwest Community colleges
for North Mississippi because you have so many middle class
blacks moving across that state line going towhere in the country.
(41:00):
We had invitation and we had resources that can go
into any urban city with this.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Somebody wants to get in touch with you.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Phone numbers real simple, nine, O, one, six, four, to
three fifteen seventy eight. I'm not having from nobody leave
me a message. I'm not having from no bill collectors
you can find and that is if you want to
attend to Friends after five event, if you want to
host one or just going, you want to support it financially,
(41:29):
going thrus Robert Friends.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
After five, everybody we are. We're talking to a man
who you heard the way came up, and his belief
is you build the black middle class, you fix all
the problems in front of it and behind it. And
if you listen to his argument, it makes a lot
of sense. And this is just another great example of
(41:54):
a normal dude working hard, coming up, seeing a place
of need and working his off to fill that place
and need. And from both a social cultural and a
pragmatic sense, Friends after Five feels like it has an
opportunity to fix a lot.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
What else is Robert, Well, pray for us. Consider if
you've want some helping some of the urban cities, please
contact me. I have capacity. I burn up a toyo,
the truck and toyo to tires on it. But no,
this is a lot of work and I need as
much help as I can.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It's awesome. Thank you, Robert Hill, Friends after Five. I
can't wait to see where this goes. Thanks for joining us.
So I'm court thank you, and thank you for joining
us this week. If Robert Hill or other guests have
inspired you in general, or better yet, inspired you to
take action by joining a Friends after five gathering, by
(42:55):
donating to them, by helping bring their model to your community,
or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love
to hear about it. You can write me anytime at
Bill at normalfolks dot us and I will respond. And
if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends
that on social, subscribe to the podcast, rate and review it,
(43:19):
become a premium member at normalfolks dot us. All these
things that can help us grow an army of normal folks.
I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week.
Hey, everybody is Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with Robert Hill. Right after these brief messages from our
general sponsors, I kind of want to recap. I think
(00:29):
it's important to collect thoughts here and I have a lot. Well,
one of the biggest things that I have learned is
one of the more difficult situations for a black person
enter the middle class and trying to enter into a
(00:50):
world of entrepreneurism is access? Is access? Tim Russell? Did
you ever meet Tim Russell? Pastor in Memphis? He died
from COVID anyway, He came from up in Philadelphia and
started was the first president of Dcottz, the Memphis Center
for Theological Seminary. He was an associate pastor at Second
(01:14):
Presbyterian Church. By church, just think James Earl Jones. That's him,
all black, proud, big as hell. I still miss him.
He was my friend and my pastor, and there were
a number of times I called on his council about
(01:35):
a number of different things in my life and he
he meant a lot to me. And I've had a
lot of friends now at my age, come and go,
but I missed Tim Russell on a daily basis. He
and I had a lot of racial conversations, candid, open, thoughtful, honest,
(01:58):
sometimes painful only as my pastor, but as my friend.
And one of the things he said to me early
in our conversations I'll never forget as he looked at
me and he said, have you ever been to a
black dentist? You laugh? Just the question is funny. Why
would a white man go to a black dentist? Right?
(02:20):
Have you ever been to insurance? Have you ever been
to a black doctor? Have you ever had a legal
problem and gone to a black attorney? And he said,
if you think about, have you ever had a black accountant?
And he said, Now you've got dentists, you've got doctors,
you've got accountants, got and now one of them are black.
(02:40):
And he said, and in fact, you could have in
Memphis chose from over two hundred at a minimum, dentists, doctors, accountants,
and any professional service you need, and not one of
them on the list that you were choosing from. What
I'm black.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, that's why you see how your teeth? What that's
probably why how your teeth?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Then he said, then he said a black man cannot
say that. One it's just about access. And two, when
you think about the term privilege, just take white privilege
(03:28):
out of it, because that seems to upset everybody. Let's
just talk about privilege in general, and let's call it
social privilege or call it cultural privilege. Let's not call
it white privilege. Just just put a He said, that's
that's really bad marketing calling it white privilege, because you
immediately put white people on the defensive when you say
(03:49):
white privilege. So forget it. Call it social privilege or whatever.
He said. It is absolutely the fact that it is
a privilege that you can go to get any professor
service you need in your whole life, and you never
have to go outside your culture or your world. Black
people can't say that that in and of itself is
(04:12):
a lack of privilege, but more importantly, from an socioeconomic standpoint,
it's also points to a lack of access. So when
you talk about why black people got involved in the
post office and the all of those things, it's because
it was access. It was access to a pension, it
was access to a good job, it was access to
(04:33):
a an environment that allowed you or allowed black people
an opportunity at the middle class, which is great and
I get it. But the problem is where's the access
to then raise out of the middle class. Very limited,
(04:54):
very difficult. And then I want to before we go
to friends after five. That's one thing I would like
our listeners keep their mind on. The second thing is
something you said that I find just poignant. We have
now shifted. No, I'm gonna say it a different way.
We are now seeing a shift away from this. And
(05:20):
when I use the word conservative, I don't mean it politically.
I more mean it socially and inside the family. This
black conservative approach to family and advancement, largely that in
the South was fostered by the church, as in your case,
and that you said, somehow that's getting reversed, and as
(05:42):
to the Dutchman of the black community, it is. And
so I did this on my own a couple of
days ago, and I thought, what are the top ten
issues in Memphis? And if I went down the list
top ten issues in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, this pick one
and it's number one is crime and two, three, four, five,
(06:05):
sixty seven, eight, nine, ten is crime. But then if
you do crime, do subsets next to crime. So if
one's crime, two is crime poverty, poverty leading to crime,
and then three is crime poverty education, a poor education
leading to poverty leading to crime, and then you can
do crime poverty, education access. And the point is, if
(06:30):
crime seems to be the most prevalent problem we see
in social media and everywhere else because it's in your
face and season to put on the news at six o'clock,
what leads to it? And it's a poor education, a
lack of access, poverty, all of the things that happen
with kids that are too hungry to go to school
(06:50):
and study and learn, that get stuck in a cycle
of poverty, generational poverty, all of it eventually leads to
the disintegration of our culture. Are sciety, crime and all
the things that the freaking out urban cities. And then
I ran into you and you're like, it's about the
(07:11):
middle class. It's about access to the middle class. It's
about what you just said, home ownership, rather than what
you say, clothes and hose.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Clothes and hose.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I mean, it's a it's a mental change. And so
now as we transition to what you were doing and
what it's about, the reason I wanted to go through
everything we've gone through for is I want our listeners
to have perspective that this is a black guy that
came from a hard working mom and dad, who who
(07:45):
came up the black middle class experience and understands that
that's the answer, and that's the strength of of of culture.
Is that middle class? And you're not here trying to
There's no ads here, there's no sell out here, there's
(08:06):
no Uncle Tom. You are clearly a proud black man
from a proud black upgringing. There's no there's none of
that sell out. This is you saying this is the
way we make us better.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I want to unpack something you said. See, we
don't have a cram problem, and we don't have an
education problem. We have a middle class problem.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That's what I mean.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, and so when you look at the history of
how blacks moved into middle class, many of them came
out of rural areas, out of well I call it
putting down cotton secs and started driving Cadillacs. So yeah,
and so from the backwoods to Hollywood, from the house
(08:51):
and so little girls with pigtails now sporting French nails.
I mean, the history of how we have come from this.
It is very simple. So historically the black woman was
the one who went to college. The black man ended
up going off in the army. Most cases, he served
in the Korean War or he served in Vietnam, so
(09:14):
when he came home from the service. Back then, they
really valued veterans, so most veterans were hired at civil
service jobs like the post office, the VA, the police department,
the fire department. So they had the backdrop of it
on mlgn W mess like yes water because they were
electricians in the navy and stuff like that. So he
would yield and then continue to send his woman to school,
(09:38):
so they would go to HBCU's like Lane College and
La morn One and Rust and m I or any
southern school valley to the Loo Jackson State and she
would be at home to where she worked a job
to where she could teach, be home by three or
four o'clock to raise the children. He would get off
(09:59):
from the post office or the police department wherever he
had to work, and didn't go work on a second
job in order for them to move into the middle
class and then stay there, which is why the black
man most in cases died when he was in his
early sixties from heart disease and stress and everything else
could hell. He worked itself to death in order to
provide for a family. And so then gave the black
(10:19):
woman the opportunity to be at home to raise the
children and to help rear them and you know, help
with the homework. So and we didn't really have the
greatest quality of education back then, but at least you
can learn how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic,
and then you could pick up the rest of it.
And the encyclopedias if the man came to your house
to sell them to you. And uh, before we had
(10:42):
the internet, and that's where we had the encyclopedias. And
then some of us would only get one or two
books and then we would share them on the street.
So many of us say, hey, do you have A
through Z? I mean A through B, And we go
and get the A through B to But they're finally
do a home.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Are you saying in the neighborhood this family by A
and B, this family that's right, that neighborhood would have
it's like run around.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yes, on that whole street. And we didn't have any
grass that went uncut if you was old and sick
and fell on hard times, we would go cut your grass,
were spread with msm A, which I used to call
endzar Den. We'd spray with ansar and put some trip
with thirteen down on the trimo shrubs. Your house didn't
go unpainted, we'll go to series and buy seis was
a beater and we'd all pitch in and paint your house.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Sounds like a black Amish village.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Well, it was just what the Jews have been doing
for years, and we did.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
It because that was the black middle class experience.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Well because it was taught that in the rural areas.
Because when you came out of Mississippi. In these rural areas,
everybody share food. You share food, and we had hog
killing day that kept fifteen to twenty hogs and everybody
had meat for the whole winter. No one went hungry. Well,
you know, you'd have four or five acres of purple peace.
People would blanch them, go down from the city to
(11:54):
the country and bring back bushel bags of them and
give them to everybody on the street. You can blanch
them in hot water and put them in freezer bags
and freeze it, so no one went hunger. We didn't
have welfare and food stamps. We didn't do that. And
so somewhere in our culture we had a generation that
was given too much too soon, like prodigal sons, some
(12:15):
prodigal children. And when you give a child so much
to live on, that child now has nothing to live for.
It takes the hypoxic drive out of him. It takes
the hunger away from them.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Say that again, that is profound.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, I mean does too much too soon? If you
give a child, you give, If you give if they
don't have. What if you give a child too much
to live on, a child to have nothing to live for.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
If you give a child too much to live on,
he ain't got nothing to live that's right. I mean
you didn't.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
You don't bought him his first car, and you don't.
You don't keep wearing sporty clothes, you don't know about
no work, liveing in White Haven, modest middle class income
and house. I mean he didn't understand how to cut grass,
so you didn't make him get off his butt and
go cut no grass, use out to cut grass at
the working two jobs because you wanted you y'ad to
look a certain way. Well, hell if you mess it up.
(13:05):
He got to learn. I made my boys cut it.
If they scalped it, y'ad they scalped it, it'll grow bad.
You have to work around here, if not all coming
off my belt. I'm believe in that. So we have
this weak generation because we thought our parents are too
hard on us, and as a result, we became slack
(13:27):
and lexa days ago. With this generation that we see now,
and it has ruined us. It has ruined us to
take government subsidies because now you've been inoculated with warfare
and food stamps and and wick instead of learning how
to just sacrifice and work.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
We'll be right back. Chevis Daniels, who played football at
me from a Nasses, spent time in jail, came from
rough Hubrand. We were coming back from an event we
(14:11):
did in Little Rock, driving and we got on this
very conversation. And now Chavis this time was twenty years old,
and we got on wick and food stamps and conversation
about it. And he looked at me and he said,
I've eaten and existed on some of that stuff. And
he said, and I hate it. And that was near
(14:34):
floored me, because a lot of kids from a nasses.
That's just reality, you know, for whether it's whether it's
right or wrong. That's how they grew up. And I said, really,
you hate it? And he said, it's a crutch to
my people. And first of all, the whole my people conversation.
I don't even like that because I want I yearned
(14:58):
for a day where my people are your people and
it's we people. But I got where it came from.
I certainly understand it. I don't want to be over idealistic.
And I said, what do you mean and he said, man, coach.
He said, if you got a crutch, you walk with
a limp. And if they give you a crutch for
(15:19):
rest of your wife, you always gonna limp. And he said,
when you provide them with a crutch, you are building
a limp into their existence. And he said, I hate
this stuff and I will never forget this. Nineteen to
twenty old kid saying that to me. A fly damn
near drove off the road in the ditch. When I
heard it, I couldn't believe I was hearing that out
of a young black man's mouth from the hood who
(15:41):
recognized what the systems did in terms of limping his community.
But on the other side, understood that many in his
community had come to a point that they couldn't.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Exist without it. You get caught in this horrible catch
twenty two, Lynda Bane Johnson. He's the one who implemented
it on his war on poverty, and we fell for
the okidoe. And so my mother, who grew up doing
a great depression, they wouldn't take commodities. They raised their
own food. My grandfather was born eighteen ninety five and
gave certain World War War. When it came back, they
(16:21):
allowed them some VA money, so they brought about thirty
seven acres then by Hay in Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
He farmed.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And so when men who died in the community, the widows,
all of them would pitch in and they wouldn't take
subsidy from USDA. They wouldn't take it. They said, the
grits that you could boil wouldn't even fit for a
dog deed because they wouldn't break down. It was, of course,
and so once you get inoculated with social services, it
(16:48):
takes away your hypostic drives to thrive. And I've never
have ever taken any subsidies ever. We never didn't allow it.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
But what you're saying, is that also destroys the ability
to get to the middle class for the black.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Fill There's a lot of things that destroyed I tell
black women this all the time. You know, I don't
care about you emailing me and see mailing me. Hell,
I don't read that stuff anyway. I'm retired now, so
I don't have to answer to nobody but me the
good Lord above. And I tell folks all the time,
and I tell my sons this, be careful who you
lay with. The sex is expensive, it's a luxury item.
(17:29):
Don't live with somebody that you know you can't be
married to and have a family with. So don't appropriate
and have babies all out of wed lock and then
you can't be married to them. And because it takes
a man and a woman to effectively raise a child,
don't don't fall for that saying I can do it
on my own. No, you really can't. It takes a
(17:50):
man to raise a man. And had it would not
have been for those older black men and Bishop Grays
Ben Hooks, I would have been a nothing, a loser.
They taught me a lot about what it really meant
to be a black man that was intelligent, I remember
I went to visit mister Tona and this girl across
the street. She was cute and fine, and they was tonguing,
(18:14):
and mister Tawny was mad as hell. He saw me
out there talking to her. He said, you can get
your in his house right now. He said, what this man?
I said, she's cute, she's fine, she got three children
out of wed lock. If you go out there and
lay with her and she get her pregnant. And then
they got to walk past all these baby daddies to
get to her. You're young, you don't have any children.
Go get you a woman that you can be married
(18:36):
to and have your own set of babies so you
can raise your own family and have your own influence.
And I didn't understand that as a twenty year old man.
Understand it now. And that's the that's the hardcore conversation
that we're not having. I mean, it's and.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
You're never gonna get to the middle class with all
that hanging around.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, it's bad. Need you get it out of court.
I mean, there's been programmed. The Asians don't do it,
the Hispanics don't do it. This baby mama drama stuff
at the juvenile court is a mockery. And I really
think if you changed the laws to say, look, if
whoever the custodial parents says you want to get child
(19:19):
supports so bad when your child cuts up in the
street and run the streets and he's not accounted for,
locked the pairent up with the child, then all of
a sudden, now you're no longer the custodial parent. Now
you want to fall out, to be active in the life,
and you will see a change in how children and
this just destructive youth can can get better.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
So this is the mindset, This is where the man
comes from. This is all of it. And you believe
that my list of poverty, with all its subsets caught
crime problems leads all subsets. You disagree with me. You
say we don't have a crime problem, we have a
middle class problem. And when you said that to me,
(20:03):
that's when I thought this has got to be We
got to talk about Friends after Five on our show.
All of what we said sets up to to give
perspective for why I'm starting to agree with you that
Friends after Five has a real opportunity to change so
(20:24):
much of what ails us. What is Friends after five friends.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
After five, we have thousands of young black men and
women who have done everything we've asked them to do.
Is it in technical school or in college men and
my HBCU schools. When they graduate from technical school or college,
no one is there to embrace them, to give the mentorship,
(20:52):
and no one is there to help them build relationships
within a job market. That's the access, that's the access piece.
Because we keep operating these segregated salos and at the
end of the day, most white Americans, you know, you
got almost three hundred and thirty million people in America,
forty eight million of which are black. Most companies are
(21:16):
ram by whites in America. Just being realistic, and if
you do not have an understanding on how to get
out of your circle of where you've been programmed, then
you cannot build relationships to be able to get quality employment.
And you should not have a a BBA walking around
working flipping burgers and frying chicken. But what a whole
(21:39):
purpose of going to school or you don't want to?
You know, we are are more technical school and now
you're still working in the jutting and come lucky shed
in the backyard on cars. When you should be working
at Ford Motor. You should be working at GM or
somewhere that's going to pay you a pension or pay
you a quality wage or pay up a quality job.
(21:59):
And so we have thousands and so this isn't something
that I think will work. This is something that worked
for me, and it worked for so many of my
friends who at the same halfway I've had, And so yes,
it is a challenge. This is being can be duplicated
in any urban city. And what I've learned there are
some cities that really need it. Memphis needs it, but
(22:24):
then there are some cities who really want it. And
there's differ between being wanted and wanting being needed. And
Memphis has been one of those cities who have been
reactive instead of proactive waiting to all the stuff and
board out on the stove and then we got to
clean up a mess. And some of our urban cities
(22:44):
like Jackson, Mississippi, they want to be more proactive. You
have six HBCUs in the state of Mississippi along and
now the workforce has changed, and so I want to
be very candid with it. So if you send Hispanics,
you bust them to Chicago on New York, Philadelphia, wherever
you're gonna bust them. And then you have young white
(23:05):
kids who are going to college. I can tell you
right now, your white kid is not trying to work
at a blue Oval or a Ford anywhere in the warehouse.
That's not why he went to school. We went to
school to go to medical school, law school, you know it.
And so your only workforce that you really have now
are those black kids that are trying to go to
somebody's school, and they need to have that interstitial relationship
(23:27):
outside of their communities to make sure that they properly place. Now,
I'm not superman. I'm not walking around here with a
shower cap fold up in the back of my pocket.
Every person I see, I pull it out and put
it around my neck like I'm Captain save somebody. I'm
being nice about it. That's not my intent. And yeah,
(23:50):
I've caught some flack on it, but I really don't care.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And so Friends after five is born of an idea
where you get these middle class young black folks up
and coming that are trying to get it, and you
get white middle class and upper class folks in the
same room. After five, you have a cocktail and you
(24:16):
try to just create relationships friends after five to create
both access really access to one another, which let's be
honest and social circles just doesn't happen very often. Access
to one another, but it's also access for white business
owners to find the next level of talent they have
(24:38):
to have to run their companies' grop. We'll be right back.
Tell me about the first one.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Well, the first one was actually a house I called
eighty one people and I had almost ninety people show up.
I only had one white friend to show up.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I ain't what Friends after five is supposed to look.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well, the first one, that's what it looked like. And
he showed up on my way website where he's standing
there at the fireplace in my living room with me,
and so we had everyone introduce themselves and you had
everything from fireman to aircraft mechanics of fed X, to
nurse practitioners to register nurses, to.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Schooling about the black folks. These are all the jobs.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So he face turned red?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Who turned red?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
My friend who was white, who's standing there at the
fireplace with why then red? Because the stigmata of what
you see in the news when you see young kids
walking around their pants, hanging off their butt and doing donuts.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
And he'd never been in a room for a ninety
middle class black folks that were acting right care of themselves.
He wasn't even aware they existed.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
He didn't. He wasn't even aware of the neighborhood I
live in, which is inner city, prominent, upper black, middle
class community.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
By the way, also insulting, but it's a reality.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
But he didn't his first time he had been to
twinkle Town, and so he's he's he's like, he says,
this got to work. I said, just thousands of us thousands.
So you know, I've had some some nasty emails and phonks.
I don't pay that stuff in mind. I don't have that.
My interest isn't only kids that's not doing what we've
(26:25):
asked him to do. I can't. I can't solve that problem.
So I'm being candid and honest. That's not a problem
I can solve. I think a lot of it has
to do with the relationships of some of filed inner
city churches with not really practicing real ministry. But I
can do something about those kids who are doing what
(26:46):
we've asked him to do. Getting opportunity given them opportunity.
And you know, I did it with my own children.
My own two sons are well employed and they're young,
eighteen and twenty, and they got grown me in jobs
just you know, incomes that exceeded seventy thousand dollars a year.
And the kids almost really because of relationships, because people
have seen that they've had something to emulate to mimic,
(27:08):
and they know the quality of the employee that they're
going to get and the opportunities that they get. And
I want to do that for as many young black
kids that's in school that I can.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
So this white dude in this first meeting who had
an awakening, did what did he do about that?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Well, we had an event at his dealership or yeah,
he's a general manager for a Ford dealership and he
invited white friends. I said, oh good. So he had
about thirty white friends there. And this was the next one. Yeah,
and we had roughly about eighty five ninety blacks, middle
(27:51):
class blacks, and they kids to show up. Ever since then,
we've had event every every month. We have an event
here Memphis, now we have one in Jackson, Mississippi. We
get ready to start at Birmingham and Jackson, Tennessee at
Lane College. People want it now because you have these
HBCUs that do not have the relationships with a business community.
(28:17):
I'm dumbfounded with that. How do you have a school
that operated for almost one hundred and fifty years in
the community and you know, a white business community or
Bunin's community at whole at large have not went over
to pick the best out the best out of these schools.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Once again, bro access access even for an entire university.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, it's something, and so it's gonna have to change.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
And you want to talk about things that can break
down racial problems in our culture. Let's work together, respect
one another, support one another, and all of a sudden,
RACI just doesn't matter that much anymore.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
It doesn't matter once you reach a certain level in
your mind and as God has opened up some doors
for you to have a sense of achievement, Uh, you
realize it's not about black and white. It's just about
you know, God ordering his steps and then having a
purpose for your life. Because life is short and you
(29:16):
have to say to yourself, what kind of fingerprint, what
kind of mark will I leave on humanity when I'm dead?
Did I do anything to make this better before I
left here? Or did I just suck up all the
resources and forgot there was other generations behind us that
really needed it. It only takes so much to live.
(29:40):
I think we missed that mark. We missed it. You know,
at the end of the day, we all dust. Would
you agree with me?
Speaker 1 (29:49):
I've started having the argument, did I think the uh
segregation and prejudiced of our day today it's morphed from
black white and morphed into societon cultural.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
I think one of the things I did when I
was directed at Chevy County, I have been to probably
more white churches than any black person you could probably imagine.
I wasn't invited. I just pop up when you set
up second prayers. I've been to second praiers at least
three times. Come on down, sit with my family in
the pew. Next time, well, I was one of them.
(30:26):
I went and there was a C. K Reece. I
don't know if you know C. K. And she said,
mister Hill, are you here? I said yeah, I was
just driving down the street and I said, I want
to stop so all the cars I want to see
what was going on. And I sit in the middle
of the audience. I was the only black person in
there in the middle of that audience w Baptists and stuff.
So the reason why I say that is because King
(30:47):
said to us the most segregated hour in Americas on
Sunday morning.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Which is it's one of my favorite quotes of his
because it's profoundly true. And if we are truly called
by that faith profoundly sinful.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
It is because at the end of the day, I
can tell you right now, Heaven is not gonna be serogated.
Everybody's gonna have to get along just fine. And I think.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Jesus Saint God blonde hair and blue eyes either he
came from the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Dog well, at the end of the day, we all
had to learn how to get along. And one of
my pastors used to always tell me this. He said,
we talk about when we get to heaven hell, we
got to first learn how to live down here. And uh,
doctor Julius Yil Scipio, and he was adamant about that.
And so I've made it my business to get out
(31:36):
of my comfort zones and visit people. And I've had
opportunities where I've been the only black person in the
room and a few black people that was there waiting
on tables and stuff, and they said, well looking at me, like,
what are you doing here? I had one of them.
I never forget this, and uh, he was just staring there,
standing and staring looking at me. I bore a chair
(31:58):
back and said, sit down, man. And he was waiting tables,
so I can't sit down. I said, yes you can.
And I said, they fire you. I'm gonna find you
a job at the county. How about that? And so
the manager came. He looked I said, I asked him
to sit down, no food with him, leave him alone.
Sometimes you had to take somebody out of the conference
zone in order for them to grow.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Sure. My understanding is now some politicians have started to
see the potential and friends after five and are starting
to sports you a little bit.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Governor Haley Barber. We had to kick off last week
at Jackson State University. Doctor Marcus Thompson is the president.
They have over a thousand kids to graduate this year
from JSU, but medium have not been placed, so we
had to kick off. We had almost two hundred and
forty people of police captains to Commissioners of safety, because
(32:51):
you know, you have kids who's majoring in criminal justice
computer science. And so we tried to have a plethora
of those who were hiring to try to retain them.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Why wouldn't Memphis needs five hundred officers, they're short, and
we got kids graduating from Jackson State with criminal justice degrees.
Why ain't Memphis down there recruiting those skills.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
The lazy the lazy, and believe it or not, fifty
percent of the students it's at the HBCUs in North
Mississippi throughout Mississippi are from Memphis.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
And we'll have the degree to get a job. I mean,
we can back fill up the police department.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Tomorrow, police department, school system, you name it.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Fired.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
But because Memphis has this mindset, you know, we're lazy,
as some of the people we elect are not competent
to run a city. And it's just not Memphis. We
see it in Chicago, we see the Detroit, we see
it in all the urban cities. And if you do
not attach to this young generation, then they won't come back.
And right now, once Blue Oval and some of these
(33:55):
other places open up, it's going to suck fifty thousand
jobs out of the atmosphere. What's going to be left
to other people that's here, and not just in Memphis,
but in these urban cities.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
What happens to tax space, Well, the.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Rate we're going now, you know, sixty percent, sixty five
percent of the home ownership now Memphis is rental property
owned by outside rental people getting sixty five percent of
all the inner city homes and two for the loop
I'm not owned by people, they're owned by companies and corporations.
And so like with some of the stuff we see
(34:26):
in the news of possible tax increases and board services
and potholes, you have not done anything to reinsure the
middle class growth and base.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
But that's but that's to your point. If you have
a robust middle class, sixty five percent of the homes
ain't no by rental properties that are owned by homeowners
who are paying into their own community.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
But even though the investors are paying into it from
tax you know, property taxes. What happens is if you
allow so many people to have this sense of hopelessness
of not having home ownership, and all you're doing now
is have a mayor and a government that's running a
city that's now one large housing project, which what it
was down to, and so then you will have nothing
(35:10):
but a plethora and a vacuum of crime and poverty. Uh,
it will be a sodom and.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Gomorro, which speaks to the power of friends. After five
and your belief we don't have a crime problem, edu case,
probably have a middle class problem. Middle class problem. You
build the middle class and it fixes all this. She
does and banks the same way. We had some banks
that tried to merge. They had no CRA credits because
they didn't have enough participation in urban cities Memphis. When
(35:38):
you look at the poor zip code was the poor
zip code in America was three one o six three
one two six s eighty South Memphis, South Memphis. Right,
And are you proud of me for knowing that?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Well, yeah, you should know about BTWD the Warriors, and
but they're down to just one bank in that community.
One bank.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
How many grocery stores two when you got two gross
stores on one brank.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
It's back to my buzzword access success to nothing. But
a lot of it has to play into when you
hire people. You need to hire people from a community
to be managers of these stores, to be managers of
these banks, because it's all about relationships. And so when
you hire people that have graduated from JSU or TULU
(36:27):
whatever with a BBA or bachelor's degree in business or finance,
hire them to be the manager at a Dollar General
or our family dollar, then you wouldn't see all this stuff.
You wouldn't see all that because nobody wants to say, hey, Robert,
no little Johnny, Johnny, you better stay out here. See
does a relationship And when you have a relationship with people,
then it builds this sense of community.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Which then builds the middle class, which then builds talk space,
which then more people crawl out of poverty into the
middle class, which then reduces crime, which then means more
parents involved in schools, which builds ptas, which makes the
school a better educational system. I mean, I buy what
you're selling. Man.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It's a lot of hard work, and I've been, you know,
I've had some disenchantment a little bit here in the city.
Sometimes it's hard to raise money. All of our students
between eighteen and twenty six, they come for free and
we don't turn anyone away, but it is it's very costly.
But you know, I'm alright with I've put my own
(37:31):
personal money into it. But it's working. And at the
end of the day, I think we can make an
investment in a future, or we can make an investment
in building prisons and institutions. Because we didn't make an
investment in generations. Kind of a choice in it. It
(37:54):
shouldn't be a choice. Someone made a comment to me,
and I know you probably out of time can include
the time. Yeah, all right, I want to say this.
So I had a young man, he was doing some
treat work for me, and he said to me, he said,
he looked at my sons. My sons are doing welding.
If you pull up on Facebook, they were fourteen and
fifteen year old kids. And I have this closet hunt
(38:16):
in my backyard and had to got to rewire with
two twenty wires and made into a welding shop. And
I probably invested maated about twenty grand my savings into
all this welding equipment that they wanted and needed. And
so this man who working on my trees, who was black,
he says, mister Hill, I want to ask you a question.
I said, what is it named Roy? He says, if
(38:39):
they weren't your children, would you do this for other
young black boys, black women? Chunking and laughed. He walked
into it. Bill he did, I said, I've adopted a
total of I have a toll of five children. I
have three that adopted legally adopted. Only two of them
are biological. I said, I took you in children that
(39:01):
weren't my children because they needed somewhere to stay. I
sent him to school, sent him to private school. I
gave him a hair company they needed and asked them
when they needed, and sent him to college out of
my own money. And I said, I would rather spend
twenty thousand dollars in a closet hut for hiding in
well and equipment, or spend twenty thousand dollars keeping them
out of juvenile court. The choice is yours. And what
(39:25):
most black men and women are doing is choosing to
buy corvettes and buying cad of like escalades, and going
on vacation and trying to look the part to impress
people they don't know what things they don't have, instead
of making the investment back in those of their own children.
And that's the problem. So yes, I've done it for everybody.
(39:47):
I've sent helped kids go to school of taking them,
that's what it's.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
About Friends after five building the middle class because we
can either build the middle class or we can build
more child's it's your choice.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
It's your choice, Robert, Do.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
You have yet, because Friends after five's fairly new concept,
do you have yet any stories of some connections made
at a fends after five that has helped some folks.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Well, there's a lot of them. I put them on
the website at ww dot Friends after in the number
five dot com. Hayley Barbara also gave a testimonial. Our
next event is going to be April twenty fifth. Butler snow,
we have a standing invitations every third Thursday or the
(40:38):
month will now be a Jackson State University building that community.
We'll be heading to Lane College. On Lane College now
is I certainly wanted, which is in Jackson, Tennessee, and
trying to pour together Old miss and Northwest Community colleges
for North Mississippi because you have so many middle class
blacks moving across that state line going towhere in the country.
(41:00):
We had invitation and we had resources that can go
into any urban city with this.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Somebody wants to get in touch with you.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Phone numbers real simple, nine, O, one, six, four, to
three fifteen seventy eight. I'm not having from nobody leave
me a message. I'm not having from no bill collectors
you can find and that is if you want to
attend to Friends after five event, if you want to
host one or just going, you want to support it financially,
(41:29):
going thrus Robert Friends.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
After five, everybody we are. We're talking to a man
who you heard the way came up, and his belief
is you build the black middle class, you fix all
the problems in front of it and behind it. And
if you listen to his argument, it makes a lot
of sense. And this is just another great example of
(41:54):
a normal dude working hard, coming up, seeing a place
of need and working his off to fill that place
and need. And from both a social cultural and a
pragmatic sense, Friends after Five feels like it has an
opportunity to fix a lot.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
What else is Robert, Well, pray for us. Consider if
you've want some helping some of the urban cities, please
contact me. I have capacity. I burn up a toyo,
the truck and toyo to tires on it. But no,
this is a lot of work and I need as
much help as I can.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
It's awesome. Thank you, Robert Hill, Friends after Five. I
can't wait to see where this goes. Thanks for joining us.
So I'm court thank you, and thank you for joining
us this week. If Robert Hill or other guests have
inspired you in general, or better yet, inspired you to
take action by joining a Friends after five gathering, by
(42:55):
donating to them, by helping bring their model to your community,
or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love
to hear about it. You can write me anytime at
Bill at normalfolks dot us and I will respond. And
if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends
that on social, subscribe to the podcast, rate and review it,
(43:19):
become a premium member at normalfolks dot us. All these
things that can help us grow an army of normal folks.
I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week.
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