May 21, 2024 • 36 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 (00:01):
I got my first check. It was seven hundred and
forty eight dollars and thirteen cent. I never forget oh
back then, Oh yeah, oh yeah. I went to TJ.
Tony's house and I brought him the whole check because
when I was younger, he had taken me to this
place called Imperial Men's where it was this high end
clothing store Union Avenue, and he bought me three suits,
(00:22):
bought me a pair of Johnston Murphy's shoes, a pair
of bottle, a bottle of Airmi's cologne, and three shirts
and three neckties. TJ spent twenty two hundred dollars that day.
Never forgot it as long as I live. And I
went by and brought him the whole check because I
had never had anybody ever do anything for me, and
so I tried to give it back to him, and
he said, silly Negro, He was my favorite student. This
(00:48):
is such an insult. It was our job to train you,
it was our job to mold you into this intelligent,
upper black middle class man. It's your job now to
pass it on to somebody else.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach at
Inner City Memphis. And the last part, somehow it led
to an oscar for the film about our team. It's
called Undefeated, y'all. I believe our country's problems will never
(01:25):
be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice
suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CINN
and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks,
us just you and me deciding, hey, I can help.
That's what Robert Hill, the voice we just heard, has done.
Robert's passing on the support and membership that TJ. Tony
(01:49):
gave him to the rising generation of young black men,
just as he told him to. I cannot wait for
you to eat. Robert and his endeavor called Friends after Fire,
right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Robert Hill,
(02:21):
my brother, what's up?
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Glad to be here, Thank you for the cord and
limb vite Bill. Good to see you man. I'm glad
to have you with me. When David Lenore what was
office he held? Count Trustee? Shelby County Trustee.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
When David and I have known each other actually since
high school. Kind of knew of each other in high school.
He was a really good football player, played at Alabama
and actually was friends with his brother more but certainly
known David forever did. David and I had kids that
(02:56):
played sports and went to school together. And then David
coach with me at Manassis one year, believe it or not,
remember that, and so David and I became buddies. And
then I became aware of you through David because you
worked with David in his administration, his office. But i'd
really never I knew who you were. We'd met, but
I really didn't know who you were and what you
(03:18):
were about. And then there was this gap of five
six years where David's gone on about his life, you've
gone on about you that I got about mine. And
recently I was invited to speak at a rotary club lunch,
which I did, and you were there and before lunch
set hello and everything cordials as usual, and then after
(03:39):
the speech, when there's a little time for Q and A,
you looked up at a room full of about one
hundred and twenty people and thanked me for my comments
and then turned to the room as a whole and said,
I would just like to know why I'm the only
white guy in the room, which is interesting because you're
a black dude.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Let him blade, I am dead.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But the yeah, it's by players at Manassas. I would say,
you are black blad right, I did quack coast of Manasas.
I didn't even know the difference in light skin and
black skin. I just thought African American do black dude
and white dude. But now I understand there's a whole
(04:23):
shade thing that goes on. But anyway, you're black. And
when you said that, everybody kind of in the room
looked at you a little bit, and I chuckled because
it did not surprise me that you would say something
like that. But then I had to parlay on your comments,
which was I said to the rest of the room,
you know, guys, you really need to think about what
Robert just said as more than just a joke to
(04:44):
make you maybe think. The city of Memphis is sixty
five percent black, two thirds black, and the room in
the Rotary Club was if there were one hundred people there,
it was one percent blat And how is it that
we expect to actually have any true meaningful interaction and
(05:07):
action on one of the things that divide us most
in this country, which is race. When we gather together
and we all look like ultimately, that leads to to
thought and conversations and actions that are in a vacuum
(05:28):
because we don't know one another well enough to consider
one another's perspectives well enough to actually grow. And so
we're going to get to what Robert Hill is trying
to do about that, because I think the work you're
doing has enormous potential to fix what is one of
(05:51):
our largest problems. And we're going to get to it.
And teaser here it's called Friends after five, and we're
going to get to that. Let you go into it first. Unfortunately,
the truth is a guy like you walks a fine line.
And I want my listeners to hear this because I
learned this also first while I was at Manassas, but
(06:13):
even more after Manassas and up to this point engaging
with people of other races who have the temerity to
drop preconceived notions at the door and have an open
mind and listen. What I have found out is a
lot of black dudes do that somewhat at their own
social peril. Because they can be called sellouts, they can
(06:38):
be called Uncle Tom's from one side and then from
the other side. Oftentimes they're looked at with an air
of what's this guy want? You know, what's he in
this for? What's his angle here. It's a tough place
to be as a black person trying to do this
kind of work. It's tough place to be as a
white person. But specifically, since you're our guest and you
(06:59):
are black, I think it's important for our audience to
just stop for a second and think when a black
man reaches across racial lines, black folks are wondering what
he is up to, and white folks are wondering who's
running up to And they're doing it from two very
different perspectives. And it's hard work to get people to
(07:19):
understand the authenticity of your efforts and that they come
from your heart and they also come from a pragmatic
view that we've got to fix this mess. And so
your effort into Friends after five come with probably a
little bit of personal heartburn along the way, but I
know you believe that effort's worth it. So before we
(07:41):
get to that, so we can understand where you come
from and why you're doing the work you are doing,
and that this is not you with an angle. Why
don't you tell us about how Robert Hill grew up? Oh?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Maness a, I've had a very blessed and fortunate life, Bill,
and thank you for having me on the show today.
I think there's this misconceived notion we operate and these
segregated silos for so long, and oftentimes I tell people
(08:17):
of color, I see, I'm not African American. I'm not.
I mean, we've we've transcended so many definitions of who
what we are. Yes, my skin tone is black, but
when I wake up in the morning, I don't look
at myself as a black man. I look at myself
as Robert Hill, as a man that God created to
do something great, have something wonderful with their life. And
(08:39):
so my background is not very uncommon for most people.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
You mean, like, are men normal people? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I'm just normal.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, Oh tell me about it?
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Are working well? I grew up in Memphis, grew up
in a working class community called alse Ball off Alsea Road,
went to Alsia School, Cordi School. We walked acor and
it was busted Overton High School. My mother, you know,
we had three of us three children, father, who decided
to advance his own career for got he had a
(09:12):
wife and three small children. And what you died, mom did?
My mom was a school teacher, my dad was a preacher.
So they divorced in nineteen eighty one. I was probably
seven eight years of age, and I'm the baby in
the family. My mother died in twenty seventeen, And so
(09:35):
we grew up in a working class community of mostly
the black middle classes teaching, preaching and working at the
post office. So everyone in our neighborhood either was a
school teacher or you had some civil service worker that
worked in the household. And it was a solid working
middle class neighborhood, middle class community. And so my mother
made just enough to for us not to qualify for
(09:57):
financial aid trying to go to college, but not enough
to send us. So I went to work. When I
was thirteen years of age, I would leave Corr Junior
High School, catch the thirteen lout of their bus. It
would drop me off at Brooks Road, and that was
Presley was a restaurant back then called the Pancake Man
Restaurant at the corner next door to Cob and Taylor Transmissions.
(10:19):
It was owned by a guy named Mr Choi and
Asian fella and I would bus tables at night, washed dishes,
and then I would get off around ten o'clock and
go home, do my homework and go back to school.
We all had to pitch in to help out. My
mother's health was starting to fail, and so as I
(10:39):
became an adult, young adult in high school, I started
busing tables at the people by the Hotel Dutch restaurant.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Hey Ducks, I was wondering, I remember that you said
that it was Ducks. It's DUTs there anymore. I don't
think Duck's gone.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
That was a traditional Americano restaurant. John Vogler, who was
the food and bearage director, opened it up up sometime.
Laugh and I have opportunity to talk run bellt so
longs now and those were some very classic days of quality.
And so I busting tables there. My brother, who's five
(11:14):
years older than me, had just went into army because
he was went to the army, so cond go for
the GI bill money be able to go to college.
And then I was sitting there saying, and I said,
I guess when you get out, I'll go into army
so I can get Gi Bill money so I could
go to school. That particular night at the Peabody Hotel,
working in Dutch restaurant, there was two black guys sitting
at the table, and this shy, skinny kid with an
(11:37):
afro walks over to the table, and I said, excuse me,
you don't know my name, but you probably know my father.
In the seventies, my dad was deputy director of the
Memphis Urban League and a prominent pastor in the city.
And so I told my father's name, and they both
started to laugh. They said, oh, we know your father well.
And the two guys that were there was Bishop wesh
(12:00):
Graves of Siemme Church and doctor Benjamin Oer Hooks of
the NAACP.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Would you, for those who aren't from Memphis, when you
say doctor Benjamin Hooks in these parts you say a mouthful.
Just let everybody know a little bit about Benjamin Hooks
so they understand who's sitting at this stable.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Well. Dtor Hooks was the first black judge to ever
serve on a bench in Chevy Counting and during the
sixties when we still had segregation, and then of course
he was appointed the first Commissioner by President Nixon for
the FCC commission Prominent Republican, prominent Black conservative. And when
(12:41):
he finished as FCC Commissioner, he was tapped to be
the national director for the NAACP.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
HEAs also involved with King at one time on it.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Oh yes, oh yes, they ran on something called a
volunteer ticket back in nineteen sixty two. It was Benjamin o' hooks,
Sheep Wilburn, Henry Clay Budden, who would later become a
seaman bishop, and one other guy. The ticket is still
there at the Pink Palace Museum, the volunteer ticket. And
(13:11):
so there was this group of middle class black conservatives
who wanted to have this concept of self sufficiency but
equal rights, equal opportunities, equal access to capital.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
So Benjamin Hooks sitting at this table, who laughed when
you said, I think you know my father. He was
on the leading edge of this one side fiscal family
conservative notions, but a very what would have been at
that time, a very liberal notion toward equal rights and
(13:46):
freedom for the black folks to become middle class and miionaires.
He was fighting for both sides. He was walking that line.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
He walked it, and I think now equal opportunity is here,
this now excuse for it. And I do think that
once you have this propaganda that plays over and over
and over in certain communities, it leaves you with this
mindset to where you think that is the truth instead
(14:17):
of finding out on your own, and you have to
get out of your comfort zones in order to grow.
My life has been you know, friends at the five
is a reflection on relationships I've had with people who
don't look like me over the last thirty years, and
a lot of it was because of what Bishop Graves
and Benjamin Hoods pushed me to do.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
So take us to that day you're in the Peabody.
Oh yeah, you say that, and well take it from there.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Well, so Bishop Graves, he wrote his number down. He says,
I want you to come see me tomorrow to see
me publishing house. So I was. I got off work
that night. That morning I went over and met him
at to see me publishing House, which at that time
I was in South Memphis on South Parkway. It was
the world headquarters for the See of Me Church. And
he said, look, I'm looking for a driver. Can you drive?
(15:08):
I said, yeah, I can drive, So he hired me
to be his driver. And he was over Tennessee in
Arkansas two hundred and seventy five churches at the time,
the first episcopal district, and so here I was driving him.
And so one Saturday he asked, he said, I'm gonna
need you to driving me to Little Rock, Arkansas. And so,
as a young skinny kid for an Afro driving Bishop Graves,
(15:31):
one of the first places I went was to the
governess mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Clinton was president.
Clinton was the governor at the time, and here I
am a young skinny kid trying to, you know, figure
out what is really going on. So he exposed me
to politics. He exposed me to the importance of voting
and then getting behind candidates that we could approve and
(15:54):
believe in. So, of course Bill Clinton became president, and
it was my introduction den to politics with Governor Don
Sunquist and so many others. But as a result, I
wasn't going anyone's church when I was young. I didn't
have any interest in it. So he says, look, you
(16:14):
can't drive me and don't go to anyone's church. So
none of this really works. None of it works period.
Without this relationship with God. So he hassigned me to
about all the cathedral seeing me. He hassigned you assigned
me like I wanted to see me preaches, So I
(16:34):
didn't think much about it. He said, well, you're not
driving me on the weekends, you have to go to church.
So I said, okay, And now a few messages from
our general sponsors.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
But first, I hope you'll follow us on all of
your favorite social media channels where we can share more
powerful content from the army. We're at army of normal
folks on every channel. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
So I went down to Mount of Cathedral, and back
then this was one of the most prominent churches we
had in the city of Memphis. It was mostly made
up of the black bourgeoisie. It was well educated lawyers, doctors, pharmacist,
school teachers, you name it. It was EASi at Monto
Cathedral or Metropolitan at that time for blacks. And so
(17:42):
hit this little skinny kid trying to blend in. It
was all this opera music, which was boring, I thought,
And it was very elitist back then. And so this
older black man walks up to me, who I realized
later was in his mid eighties. I thought he was
in his early sixties. He was the retired principal Jitter
(18:03):
High School TJ Tony, and he walks up to me,
shakes my hand like a bull. He was strong as
the ox. He says, look, I've already checked a bishal grade.
You're not supposed to be driving him this weekend. We
got to me as prep breakfast Saturday at eight o'clock
and we want you here. So my best friend Antonio
that grew up since fourth grade, he and I had
(18:26):
went down the studio G on Bell Street and we
were down there gangster walking that Friday night. You were
doing what gangs to walking. You know, that was the
lell coo J. And we would put the kanos on
and we would have ours a bagos on, I dusk
head pants and our eyes are shirts. We would start
with Luke Skywalker lell coo J. You nigh it. We
(18:48):
would start gangster walking around. You know, the building is
a dance and we would slip mad Dog twenty twenty.
I preferred to.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Own not orange.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Stupidly I had the orange twenty twenty string.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I always liked ard. Yeah, I don't know why I
liked any of it. Because maybe it's sick as hell.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
But yeah, did you know back then we could get
it for two dollars. We was slipping in KFC cups
and bring it into the parties.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Of course you were.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And so here it is one o'clock, two o'clock in
the morning. Got home. It dropped a tonio off you
little a couple of streets over from me, and uh
walked past my mother's bedroom abbreviated and trying to hold
my composure and fell over into bed. I've had those nights,
so yeah, it was one of them. And uh, just
(19:35):
by the grace of God, he covered us. And so
around seven fifteen that morning, my mother's phone was ringing.
She pulled the cord down the hall, the long cord,
and she says, hey, there's a TJ. Tony here. He
wants to talk to you. So I go to the
phone and he says, looking at you and get you up.
I want you to get up right now. Don't you
(19:57):
dare be late, because a black man is only as
good as his work. You better make sure you be
here about eight o'clock. He slams the phone down. So
I jump up and I put my clothes home, brush
my teeth, slap my feet in my Sobagos jumped my
little Volkswagen beat a bug. He had a little seventy
three Volkswagen Beat a Bug. And I'm racing to mat
Olive Cathedral downtown. I get in there at seven fifty
(20:18):
nine am. He's sitting there eating sausage and grits. Will
groom smelled like airmis cologne at his Alpha Phi Alpha ringo,
and I mean he was groomed up. And he says,
you are almost late, But I'm not, mister Tony. He said, Remember,
a negro is only as good as his word. You
(20:38):
don't ever be late. Once you give somebody your word,
your word is your bond. And that taught me your
word is your bond. Being a man of your work
can opened up so many doors that really developed your
credit profile, more so than the actual credit profile. So
I stayed for the event. It was very boring, all
that opera singing and elitists.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, twenty old kid, don't care nothing about that. I
was eighteen eighteen. Really don't care nothing about.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Anything about that at all. So I got home around
eleven o'clock. My mother was crying, and I said, mother
was wrong. She says, well, you haven't heard. I said,
heard what she said? Whatever rested Intonio, the guy you
were with the night before? You best my best friend? Yeah,
I said, what do you mean, arrested Antonio? I dropped
(21:26):
him off last night at two o'clock with me, And
most of the time Antonio would have been with me,
He would have went with me to the Men's Prayer breakfast.
But I assume because we got in so late, and
then I was running late, and I just knew he
would be at home sleep, so I didn't wake him up.
And Bill that has haunted me for many, many years.
I never even talked about the story until after I
(21:49):
started Friends at the Five, and it's still a very
hard conversation for me to talk about. So that particular morning,
around nine o'clock, some of them, other friends, he banded
and Michael, went and picked Antonio up. They said they
were going to get their check from Church's Chicken at
the third Fairway. So Antonio gets in the back seat
(22:10):
of the car and didn't know, you know, nothing unusual,
and so he band went in. He said his check
was short one hundred dollars. Got into a physical altercation,
verbal altercation with the manager pushed, the manager, assaulted the manager,
took the money out the cash register, jumped in the car.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
He thought he was over to check, and so he
didn't go robbed the place.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
He thought he was old.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
More on the check, I see, and he was gonna
get his.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
He was gonna get his. And so Antonio didn't know
what was going on. He was sitting in the back seat.
He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time,
on the wrong ride. And the manager calls the police
and they pulled a little car with three young black
boys the summer of nineteen eighty nine, my high school
senior year, and as a result order that they gave him,
(23:04):
charged him with successful armed robbery, assault and robbery, and
gave him eleven months of twenty nine days. And I
often wonder what that would have really been like, had
I would have got up off my ass earlier enough
and when't got him, but it could have changed his life.
And back then as a convicted felon, and you didn't
have opportunities that you see now, and he really caught
(23:27):
hell trying to get on his feet, and many of
us pitched in throughout the years to try to help him.
He's been in ill health. If I had a master stroke,
But had I would not have gotten a call from TJ.
Tony that morning. I would have been the driver it
would have called me. I would have picked him up,
and I would have been a totally different trajectory of
my life from that those older black men mentored me
(23:52):
at Mount ol Of Cathedral.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
But the point is the small all things in life
and to end up the biggest things. Had you not
been at docs and said a load of mister Grays
who assigned you the church sided we introduced you this
man who got your up off the out of the
(24:16):
bed to come church, to be a man of your word, yep,
your life trajectory would have been completely.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Different, completely different. And I've had a wonderful life considering
all things. The order black man taught me how to
save money, showed me how to open up an irab
when I was nineteen years of age. When I finished college,
I was going to teach school, because that's what most
blacks did, taught school. And this older black man walks
up to me at church and he says, look have
(24:42):
you been have you been placed? I said, what do
you mean placed? All of our college graduates trying to
make sure to have jobs. I said, well, I'm waiting
for Man t to come back National Teacher Exam to
see kind I teach in the Memphis City schools at
the time. He says, no, I want you to meet
me at af at too Fast out Third Street, the
main post office in the morning eight o'clock.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
He said, No, you got assigned to church. Now you're
getting assigned to job.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And that's that's how they row. That's how he used
to row. And he was the h and I c
he had Negro in charge of the post office.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And uh, hold it. You hear what this man just said.
I can't say that, So I want our listeners hang
on now, let me just.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
He was I have.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Heard that phrase in the South my entire life. But
folks from look like me don't never say nothing like that.
But people need to understand that is really not everybody
needs to drop their sensibilities at the door. That is
honestly in the black community, that is not a derogatory term.
(25:52):
That is like that is the precursor of what people
now say.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Is the man well mayor Coleman Young us to have
it on his name, played on his desk when he
was the Mary of Detroit. He did not, Yes, he did.
Mayor Coleman Young h n I c.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
He had hn ic on his name plate.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
My dad worked for him, the head Negro in charge.
And he had a big ashtray sitting on the desk.
I remember this little kid going to see him, and
he was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, no kidding, yeah,
and keep an astra on his desk and smoking. And
so Howard Betts toole me to get down there. I
did at eight o'clock that morning, and made me pick
(26:29):
up a fifty pound mail bag, put it on my
shoulder and bring it across the room and drop it.
He said, you hired And yep, and that mail bag
was giving me hell because back then I was beside
twenty nine and the waist and I had to weigh
but one hundred and fifteen pounds. It weighed almost as
much as me back then. Hired me on a fifty
two thousand all of your job because the post office
(26:49):
making one thousand dollars a week back then before overtime.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
That's a job.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
It was a job.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
We'll be right back. You said something to me, I
don't know. When we were having lunch three or four
weeks ago talking about doing this interview, you said to
(27:21):
me that there's something that dawned on me that I
didn't think about, which is, back then black folks wanted
to work in education or civil service jobs.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
That was kind of a hood. Take pension.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
You're talking about the pension, right, and so you were
looking for post office banks.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Maybe no, another facts we didn't attracted that it was
mostly post office, police officers, fireman, school teachers, the defense
dep pole.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
So where you get where you get largely good hour pay,
probably part of a union and a pension. Yeah, that
was that was.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Strange crack and a lot of it came out of
segregation because unions would never designed for blacks to begin with.
And so as baby boomers started to have children, and
their children, these white children were able to go to
school and college, the union started to lose enrollment. So
you had blacks working side by side with whites in
the sixties, fifties and sixties and seventies. The UAW that
(28:30):
worked part of the union, it wouldn't allow blacks to
part of the union. So once they started allowing me
in around seventy seventy one, because they needed the union dudes.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, I was gonna say, don't think that was some
social construct. What it was about money. It was about money.
They needed black money.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
They needed black money, and they realized that black money
was green. And so that's how blacks became unionized. But
my mother had uncles and aunts and worked for the
railroad in the forties and fifties in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
That did not get the same representation the white workers.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
And by the time he retired at seventy, you just
got to seventy. Where that made them had to pay
the railroad pension when they win't even part of pension.
He started working for him back in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
So you're working at the post office, and as people
need to hear you because of this construct. The recent
I interrupted this to get to this is I want
people to understand you'd arrived. This is like shit. I mean, yeah,
I got a job at post office. I'm making one
thousand dollars a week. I'm gonna get a pension. And
this man, this man didn't tell you not to go
(29:38):
into teaching, but he was doing you a favor of
getting you.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And they just had to sell a dope to do it.
Because see, most most of them black kids were selling
dope back then. You know that was that was the
boom in Memphis. You know, you had to cocaine, cowboys
and the cartel going on in the city. So if
you're making a thousand dollars a week and you could
do it lawfully, legally, I mean using high kiting and
so as a young twenty two year old, I remember
(30:04):
when I got my first check. He was seven hundred
and forty eight dollars and thirteen cent. I never forgets
oh back then, oh yeah, oh yeah. I went to TJ.
Tony's house. He lived over there on Foster Avenue, glen
View Heights, and I brought him the whole check because
when I was younger, he had taken me to this
place called Imperial Men's where it was this high end
(30:25):
clothing store and Union Avenue where all the preachers bought
all the Canali suits and stuff. And he bought me
three suits, a black suit, a David Blue suit, and
a gray suit. Bought me a pair of Johnston Murphy's shoes,
a pair of bottle a bottle of Airmin's cologne, and
three shirts and three neckties. They said you can't drive
the Bishop any kind of way representing us. Those suits
(30:47):
lasted me almost fifteen years and couldn't wear them out
they were so well made. TJ spent twenty two hundred
dollars that day. Never got it as long as I live.
And I went by and brought him the whole check.
Because my mother born in nineteen thirty three doing a
great depression, we didn't have it. You didn't know we
didn't have it. We didn't never beg for. If you
(31:07):
caught begging for something or asking for something that you
had to worked for, you got beat and get you
a good beating. And they believe in whipping you back then.
So we didn't give her any trouble. So I had
never had anybody ever do anything for me, and so
I tried to give it back to him, and he said,
this is a very candid conversation. He said, silly Negro,
(31:32):
silly Negro. He was our favorite student. This is such
an insult. It made me feel empty. I said, what
do you mean, mister Tauny, He says, son, we knew
who you were. I've been knowing your daddy thirty years.
When Bishop Grace called and said that we had another
one to train, we knew exactly who you were. It
(31:54):
was our job to train you. It was our job
to mold you into this intelligent, upper black metal class man.
This wasn't my money that I spent the patratuition at
schools all of our money. I would go down in
the finance room on Sunday morning and said, look, we
need to collect some money. Give me your Johnny Walker money,
give me a cool cigarette money, give me a girlfriend money.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Give me the Johnny Walker cool cigarette and girlfriend money.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
That's right, because back then you had so many black
men that working in these high opinion jobs held. The
church looked like the Cadillact dealership and the Lincoln dealership.
And they had fine cars, they had fine homes, good homes.
And I tell people all the time, all black folks
are from Missouri. To show me steak. You know, you
(32:38):
can talk it, but you got to walk it like
you talk it. And they taught me so much. And
so when I try to give them the money back
expressed to me, he says, it's your job now to
pass it on to somebody else. And I left there
thinking about this. This is in nineteen ninety three. They
taught me how to save money. They taught me the
importance of keeping your credit, your bills paid. I was
(33:01):
getting ready to go buy a Mustang when I started
working at the post office, and it wouldn't let me
buy made me buy a little small Toyota truck. Paid
eight thousand dollars for a brand new and coming in
Pike Toyota back in nineteen ninety two, said the black
man should always have a pickup truck because you don't
never know what kind of work you gotta do on
the side, cut grass or whatever you gotta do to hustle,
take care of your family even while working a job.
(33:24):
So I remember I was trying to buy a house.
My mother wouldn't let me have girlfriends at the house anymore,
so I wanted to live in the neighborhood there was
still a prominent black middle class neighborhood. The house came
up for sale, sixty one thousand dollars house back in
nineteen ninety three, and I went to every bank in Memphis,
(33:44):
the black bank we used to be. Try to State Bank,
they turned me down. Teacher, Credit Union turned me down.
Everybody turned me down. And so this older black lady
runs out from try to State Bank. She says, baby,
go out to Bank of Bartlett in Bartley, Tennessee. So
I did, and I went out there and this lady
was typing up the loan information and I was sitting
(34:07):
at her desk frustrated. And this little short guy walking
down the hall real fast with jet black hair, saw
me sitting at the desk distraught. He turns right and
comes back. He said, sir, you're all right. I said, no,
not really. He said, I've been to at least nine
different banks. I'm trying to figure out why I came
by sixty one thousand dollars house. And I too young,
(34:27):
my too black, my too young and black. And so
he picks up the Manila photo off of Vivian's desk.
She's still at the bank, and he looks through the
fol excellent credit. He says, uh, how much money you make?
I said, I work at the post office. I grosser
thousand dollars a week. He says, uh huh. He said,
(34:48):
do you have any money save it? I said, I
got ten thousand dollars. Say, and I got about eighteen
hundred dollars in an IRA. I went the town credential
and I had about fifteen hundred dollars a double le
savings bus. He said about the double saving. Tricky your
mind that think you'd get more because of the face value.
You pay half of the face value. And he signed
a Manila envelope with his pen. His name was Harold Bergs,
(35:09):
president of Bank of Barlot. He said, let him have it.
That was the first house I bought, twenty three years old.
The house was three hundred eighty six dollars a month.
Because we knew, we were trained that if you can't
put a house into a black person's portfolio, you cannot
move into middle class. So I couldn't buy clothes, and
we used to call it clothes and hose couldn't. We
(35:30):
didn't invest in clothes and hose. We invested in houses
and saving, sacrifice and family. Family life was very important
to us. And so somewhere we have forgotten some of
the traditional values that have propelled us into middle class.
And now we see the shrinking middle class. And a
lot of it has to do with a liberal mindset,
(35:51):
this liberal society to say it's a free fall, it's
not somebody's gonna pay for it. In the middle class
right now, it's paying fift per cent of his income
to do so. So when I established Friends at the five,
I had a reflective opportunity and so you know, semi
retire too young to retire. Would what would just really
(36:13):
look like if more blacks had the same opportunities I've had.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
And that concludes Part one of my conversation with Robert Hill,
and you don't want to miss Part two that's now
available to listen to as we're about to dive into
Friends after Five. Together, guys, we can change this country,
but it's going to start with you. I'll see you
in Part two.
I got my first check. It was seven hundred and
forty eight dollars and thirteen cent. I never forget oh
back then, Oh yeah, oh yeah. I went to TJ.
Tony's house and I brought him the whole check because
when I was younger, he had taken me to this
place called Imperial Men's where it was this high end
clothing store Union Avenue, and he bought me three suits,
(00:22):
bought me a pair of Johnston Murphy's shoes, a pair
of bottle, a bottle of Airmi's cologne, and three shirts
and three neckties. TJ spent twenty two hundred dollars that day.
Never forgot it as long as I live. And I
went by and brought him the whole check because I
had never had anybody ever do anything for me, and
so I tried to give it back to him, and
he said, silly Negro, He was my favorite student. This
(00:48):
is such an insult. It was our job to train you,
it was our job to mold you into this intelligent,
upper black middle class man. It's your job now to
pass it on to somebody else.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach at
Inner City Memphis. And the last part, somehow it led
to an oscar for the film about our team. It's
called Undefeated, y'all. I believe our country's problems will never
(01:25):
be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice
suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CINN
and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks,
us just you and me deciding, hey, I can help.
That's what Robert Hill, the voice we just heard, has done.
Robert's passing on the support and membership that TJ. Tony
(01:49):
gave him to the rising generation of young black men,
just as he told him to. I cannot wait for
you to eat. Robert and his endeavor called Friends after Fire,
right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Robert Hill,
(02:21):
my brother, what's up?
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Glad to be here, Thank you for the cord and
limb vite Bill. Good to see you man. I'm glad
to have you with me. When David Lenore what was
office he held? Count Trustee? Shelby County Trustee.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
When David and I have known each other actually since
high school. Kind of knew of each other in high school.
He was a really good football player, played at Alabama
and actually was friends with his brother more but certainly
known David forever did. David and I had kids that
(02:56):
played sports and went to school together. And then David
coach with me at Manassis one year, believe it or not,
remember that, and so David and I became buddies. And
then I became aware of you through David because you
worked with David in his administration, his office. But i'd
really never I knew who you were. We'd met, but
I really didn't know who you were and what you
(03:18):
were about. And then there was this gap of five
six years where David's gone on about his life, you've
gone on about you that I got about mine. And
recently I was invited to speak at a rotary club lunch,
which I did, and you were there and before lunch
set hello and everything cordials as usual, and then after
(03:39):
the speech, when there's a little time for Q and A,
you looked up at a room full of about one
hundred and twenty people and thanked me for my comments
and then turned to the room as a whole and said,
I would just like to know why I'm the only
white guy in the room, which is interesting because you're
a black dude.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Let him blade, I am dead.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But the yeah, it's by players at Manassas. I would say,
you are black blad right, I did quack coast of Manasas.
I didn't even know the difference in light skin and
black skin. I just thought African American do black dude
and white dude. But now I understand there's a whole
(04:23):
shade thing that goes on. But anyway, you're black. And
when you said that, everybody kind of in the room
looked at you a little bit, and I chuckled because
it did not surprise me that you would say something
like that. But then I had to parlay on your comments,
which was I said to the rest of the room,
you know, guys, you really need to think about what
Robert just said as more than just a joke to
(04:44):
make you maybe think. The city of Memphis is sixty
five percent black, two thirds black, and the room in
the Rotary Club was if there were one hundred people there,
it was one percent blat And how is it that
we expect to actually have any true meaningful interaction and
(05:07):
action on one of the things that divide us most
in this country, which is race. When we gather together
and we all look like ultimately, that leads to to
thought and conversations and actions that are in a vacuum
(05:28):
because we don't know one another well enough to consider
one another's perspectives well enough to actually grow. And so
we're going to get to what Robert Hill is trying
to do about that, because I think the work you're
doing has enormous potential to fix what is one of
(05:51):
our largest problems. And we're going to get to it.
And teaser here it's called Friends after five, and we're
going to get to that. Let you go into it first. Unfortunately,
the truth is a guy like you walks a fine line.
And I want my listeners to hear this because I
learned this also first while I was at Manassas, but
(06:13):
even more after Manassas and up to this point engaging
with people of other races who have the temerity to
drop preconceived notions at the door and have an open
mind and listen. What I have found out is a
lot of black dudes do that somewhat at their own
social peril. Because they can be called sellouts, they can
(06:38):
be called Uncle Tom's from one side and then from
the other side. Oftentimes they're looked at with an air
of what's this guy want? You know, what's he in
this for? What's his angle here. It's a tough place
to be as a black person trying to do this
kind of work. It's tough place to be as a
white person. But specifically, since you're our guest and you
(06:59):
are black, I think it's important for our audience to
just stop for a second and think when a black
man reaches across racial lines, black folks are wondering what
he is up to, and white folks are wondering who's
running up to And they're doing it from two very
different perspectives. And it's hard work to get people to
(07:19):
understand the authenticity of your efforts and that they come
from your heart and they also come from a pragmatic
view that we've got to fix this mess. And so
your effort into Friends after five come with probably a
little bit of personal heartburn along the way, but I
know you believe that effort's worth it. So before we
(07:41):
get to that, so we can understand where you come
from and why you're doing the work you are doing,
and that this is not you with an angle. Why
don't you tell us about how Robert Hill grew up? Oh?
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Maness a, I've had a very blessed and fortunate life, Bill,
and thank you for having me on the show today.
I think there's this misconceived notion we operate and these
segregated silos for so long, and oftentimes I tell people
(08:17):
of color, I see, I'm not African American. I'm not.
I mean, we've we've transcended so many definitions of who
what we are. Yes, my skin tone is black, but
when I wake up in the morning, I don't look
at myself as a black man. I look at myself
as Robert Hill, as a man that God created to
do something great, have something wonderful with their life. And
(08:39):
so my background is not very uncommon for most people.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
You mean, like, are men normal people? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I'm just normal.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, Oh tell me about it?
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Are working well? I grew up in Memphis, grew up
in a working class community called alse Ball off Alsea Road,
went to Alsia School, Cordi School. We walked acor and
it was busted Overton High School. My mother, you know,
we had three of us three children, father, who decided
to advance his own career for got he had a
(09:12):
wife and three small children. And what you died, mom did?
My mom was a school teacher, my dad was a preacher.
So they divorced in nineteen eighty one. I was probably
seven eight years of age, and I'm the baby in
the family. My mother died in twenty seventeen, And so
(09:35):
we grew up in a working class community of mostly
the black middle classes teaching, preaching and working at the
post office. So everyone in our neighborhood either was a
school teacher or you had some civil service worker that
worked in the household. And it was a solid working
middle class neighborhood, middle class community. And so my mother
made just enough to for us not to qualify for
(09:57):
financial aid trying to go to college, but not enough
to send us. So I went to work. When I
was thirteen years of age, I would leave Corr Junior
High School, catch the thirteen lout of their bus. It
would drop me off at Brooks Road, and that was
Presley was a restaurant back then called the Pancake Man
Restaurant at the corner next door to Cob and Taylor Transmissions.
(10:19):
It was owned by a guy named Mr Choi and
Asian fella and I would bus tables at night, washed dishes,
and then I would get off around ten o'clock and
go home, do my homework and go back to school.
We all had to pitch in to help out. My
mother's health was starting to fail, and so as I
(10:39):
became an adult, young adult in high school, I started
busing tables at the people by the Hotel Dutch restaurant.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Hey Ducks, I was wondering, I remember that you said
that it was Ducks. It's DUTs there anymore. I don't
think Duck's gone.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
That was a traditional Americano restaurant. John Vogler, who was
the food and bearage director, opened it up up sometime.
Laugh and I have opportunity to talk run bellt so
longs now and those were some very classic days of quality.
And so I busting tables there. My brother, who's five
(11:14):
years older than me, had just went into army because
he was went to the army, so cond go for
the GI bill money be able to go to college.
And then I was sitting there saying, and I said,
I guess when you get out, I'll go into army
so I can get Gi Bill money so I could
go to school. That particular night at the Peabody Hotel,
working in Dutch restaurant, there was two black guys sitting
at the table, and this shy, skinny kid with an
(11:37):
afro walks over to the table, and I said, excuse me,
you don't know my name, but you probably know my father.
In the seventies, my dad was deputy director of the
Memphis Urban League and a prominent pastor in the city.
And so I told my father's name, and they both
started to laugh. They said, oh, we know your father well.
And the two guys that were there was Bishop wesh
(12:00):
Graves of Siemme Church and doctor Benjamin Oer Hooks of
the NAACP.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Would you, for those who aren't from Memphis, when you
say doctor Benjamin Hooks in these parts you say a mouthful.
Just let everybody know a little bit about Benjamin Hooks
so they understand who's sitting at this stable.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Well. Dtor Hooks was the first black judge to ever
serve on a bench in Chevy Counting and during the
sixties when we still had segregation, and then of course
he was appointed the first Commissioner by President Nixon for
the FCC commission Prominent Republican, prominent Black conservative. And when
(12:41):
he finished as FCC Commissioner, he was tapped to be
the national director for the NAACP.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
HEAs also involved with King at one time on it.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Oh yes, oh yes, they ran on something called a
volunteer ticket back in nineteen sixty two. It was Benjamin o' hooks,
Sheep Wilburn, Henry Clay Budden, who would later become a
seaman bishop, and one other guy. The ticket is still
there at the Pink Palace Museum, the volunteer ticket. And
(13:11):
so there was this group of middle class black conservatives
who wanted to have this concept of self sufficiency but
equal rights, equal opportunities, equal access to capital.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
So Benjamin Hooks sitting at this table, who laughed when
you said, I think you know my father. He was
on the leading edge of this one side fiscal family
conservative notions, but a very what would have been at
that time, a very liberal notion toward equal rights and
(13:46):
freedom for the black folks to become middle class and miionaires.
He was fighting for both sides. He was walking that line.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
He walked it, and I think now equal opportunity is here,
this now excuse for it. And I do think that
once you have this propaganda that plays over and over
and over in certain communities, it leaves you with this
mindset to where you think that is the truth instead
(14:17):
of finding out on your own, and you have to
get out of your comfort zones in order to grow.
My life has been you know, friends at the five
is a reflection on relationships I've had with people who
don't look like me over the last thirty years, and
a lot of it was because of what Bishop Graves
and Benjamin Hoods pushed me to do.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
So take us to that day you're in the Peabody.
Oh yeah, you say that, and well take it from there.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Well, so Bishop Graves, he wrote his number down. He says,
I want you to come see me tomorrow to see
me publishing house. So I was. I got off work
that night. That morning I went over and met him
at to see me publishing House, which at that time
I was in South Memphis on South Parkway. It was
the world headquarters for the See of Me Church. And
he said, look, I'm looking for a driver. Can you drive?
(15:08):
I said, yeah, I can drive, So he hired me
to be his driver. And he was over Tennessee in
Arkansas two hundred and seventy five churches at the time,
the first episcopal district, and so here I was driving him.
And so one Saturday he asked, he said, I'm gonna
need you to driving me to Little Rock, Arkansas. And so,
as a young skinny kid for an Afro driving Bishop Graves,
(15:31):
one of the first places I went was to the
governess mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Clinton was president.
Clinton was the governor at the time, and here I
am a young skinny kid trying to, you know, figure
out what is really going on. So he exposed me
to politics. He exposed me to the importance of voting
and then getting behind candidates that we could approve and
(15:54):
believe in. So, of course Bill Clinton became president, and
it was my introduction den to politics with Governor Don
Sunquist and so many others. But as a result, I
wasn't going anyone's church when I was young. I didn't
have any interest in it. So he says, look, you
(16:14):
can't drive me and don't go to anyone's church. So
none of this really works. None of it works period.
Without this relationship with God. So he hassigned me to
about all the cathedral seeing me. He hassigned you assigned
me like I wanted to see me preaches, So I
(16:34):
didn't think much about it. He said, well, you're not
driving me on the weekends, you have to go to church.
So I said, okay, And now a few messages from
our general sponsors.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
But first, I hope you'll follow us on all of
your favorite social media channels where we can share more
powerful content from the army. We're at army of normal
folks on every channel. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
So I went down to Mount of Cathedral, and back
then this was one of the most prominent churches we
had in the city of Memphis. It was mostly made
up of the black bourgeoisie. It was well educated lawyers, doctors, pharmacist,
school teachers, you name it. It was EASi at Monto
Cathedral or Metropolitan at that time for blacks. And so
(17:42):
hit this little skinny kid trying to blend in. It
was all this opera music, which was boring, I thought,
And it was very elitist back then. And so this
older black man walks up to me, who I realized
later was in his mid eighties. I thought he was
in his early sixties. He was the retired principal Jitter
(18:03):
High School TJ Tony, and he walks up to me,
shakes my hand like a bull. He was strong as
the ox. He says, look, I've already checked a bishal grade.
You're not supposed to be driving him this weekend. We
got to me as prep breakfast Saturday at eight o'clock
and we want you here. So my best friend Antonio
that grew up since fourth grade, he and I had
(18:26):
went down the studio G on Bell Street and we
were down there gangster walking that Friday night. You were
doing what gangs to walking. You know, that was the
lell coo J. And we would put the kanos on
and we would have ours a bagos on, I dusk
head pants and our eyes are shirts. We would start
with Luke Skywalker lell coo J. You nigh it. We
(18:48):
would start gangster walking around. You know, the building is
a dance and we would slip mad Dog twenty twenty.
I preferred to.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Own not orange.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Stupidly I had the orange twenty twenty string.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I always liked ard. Yeah, I don't know why I
liked any of it. Because maybe it's sick as hell.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
But yeah, did you know back then we could get
it for two dollars. We was slipping in KFC cups
and bring it into the parties.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Of course you were.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And so here it is one o'clock, two o'clock in
the morning. Got home. It dropped a tonio off you
little a couple of streets over from me, and uh
walked past my mother's bedroom abbreviated and trying to hold
my composure and fell over into bed. I've had those nights,
so yeah, it was one of them. And uh, just
(19:35):
by the grace of God, he covered us. And so
around seven fifteen that morning, my mother's phone was ringing.
She pulled the cord down the hall, the long cord,
and she says, hey, there's a TJ. Tony here. He
wants to talk to you. So I go to the
phone and he says, looking at you and get you up.
I want you to get up right now. Don't you
(19:57):
dare be late, because a black man is only as
good as his work. You better make sure you be
here about eight o'clock. He slams the phone down. So
I jump up and I put my clothes home, brush
my teeth, slap my feet in my Sobagos jumped my
little Volkswagen beat a bug. He had a little seventy
three Volkswagen Beat a Bug. And I'm racing to mat
Olive Cathedral downtown. I get in there at seven fifty
(20:18):
nine am. He's sitting there eating sausage and grits. Will
groom smelled like airmis cologne at his Alpha Phi Alpha ringo,
and I mean he was groomed up. And he says,
you are almost late, But I'm not, mister Tony. He said, Remember,
a negro is only as good as his word. You
(20:38):
don't ever be late. Once you give somebody your word,
your word is your bond. And that taught me your
word is your bond. Being a man of your work
can opened up so many doors that really developed your
credit profile, more so than the actual credit profile. So
I stayed for the event. It was very boring, all
that opera singing and elitists.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, twenty old kid, don't care nothing about that. I
was eighteen eighteen. Really don't care nothing about.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Anything about that at all. So I got home around
eleven o'clock. My mother was crying, and I said, mother
was wrong. She says, well, you haven't heard. I said,
heard what she said? Whatever rested Intonio, the guy you
were with the night before? You best my best friend? Yeah,
I said, what do you mean, arrested Antonio? I dropped
(21:26):
him off last night at two o'clock with me, And
most of the time Antonio would have been with me,
He would have went with me to the Men's Prayer breakfast.
But I assume because we got in so late, and
then I was running late, and I just knew he
would be at home sleep, so I didn't wake him up.
And Bill that has haunted me for many, many years.
I never even talked about the story until after I
(21:49):
started Friends at the Five, and it's still a very
hard conversation for me to talk about. So that particular morning,
around nine o'clock, some of them, other friends, he banded
and Michael, went and picked Antonio up. They said they
were going to get their check from Church's Chicken at
the third Fairway. So Antonio gets in the back seat
(22:10):
of the car and didn't know, you know, nothing unusual,
and so he band went in. He said his check
was short one hundred dollars. Got into a physical altercation,
verbal altercation with the manager pushed, the manager, assaulted the manager,
took the money out the cash register, jumped in the car.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
He thought he was over to check, and so he
didn't go robbed the place.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
He thought he was old.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
More on the check, I see, and he was gonna
get his.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
He was gonna get his. And so Antonio didn't know
what was going on. He was sitting in the back seat.
He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time,
on the wrong ride. And the manager calls the police
and they pulled a little car with three young black
boys the summer of nineteen eighty nine, my high school
senior year, and as a result order that they gave him,
(23:04):
charged him with successful armed robbery, assault and robbery, and
gave him eleven months of twenty nine days. And I
often wonder what that would have really been like, had
I would have got up off my ass earlier enough
and when't got him, but it could have changed his life.
And back then as a convicted felon, and you didn't
have opportunities that you see now, and he really caught
(23:27):
hell trying to get on his feet, and many of
us pitched in throughout the years to try to help him.
He's been in ill health. If I had a master stroke,
But had I would not have gotten a call from TJ.
Tony that morning. I would have been the driver it
would have called me. I would have picked him up,
and I would have been a totally different trajectory of
my life from that those older black men mentored me
(23:52):
at Mount ol Of Cathedral.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
But the point is the small all things in life
and to end up the biggest things. Had you not
been at docs and said a load of mister Grays
who assigned you the church sided we introduced you this
man who got your up off the out of the
(24:16):
bed to come church, to be a man of your word, yep,
your life trajectory would have been completely.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Different, completely different. And I've had a wonderful life considering
all things. The order black man taught me how to
save money, showed me how to open up an irab
when I was nineteen years of age. When I finished college,
I was going to teach school, because that's what most
blacks did, taught school. And this older black man walks
up to me at church and he says, look have
(24:42):
you been have you been placed? I said, what do
you mean placed? All of our college graduates trying to
make sure to have jobs. I said, well, I'm waiting
for Man t to come back National Teacher Exam to
see kind I teach in the Memphis City schools at
the time. He says, no, I want you to meet
me at af at too Fast out Third Street, the
main post office in the morning eight o'clock.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
He said, No, you got assigned to church. Now you're
getting assigned to job.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
And that's that's how they row. That's how he used
to row. And he was the h and I c
he had Negro in charge of the post office.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And uh, hold it. You hear what this man just said.
I can't say that, So I want our listeners hang
on now, let me just.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
He was I have.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Heard that phrase in the South my entire life. But
folks from look like me don't never say nothing like that.
But people need to understand that is really not everybody
needs to drop their sensibilities at the door. That is
honestly in the black community, that is not a derogatory term.
(25:52):
That is like that is the precursor of what people
now say.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Is the man well mayor Coleman Young us to have
it on his name, played on his desk when he
was the Mary of Detroit. He did not, Yes, he did.
Mayor Coleman Young h n I c.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
He had hn ic on his name plate.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
My dad worked for him, the head Negro in charge.
And he had a big ashtray sitting on the desk.
I remember this little kid going to see him, and
he was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, no kidding, yeah,
and keep an astra on his desk and smoking. And
so Howard Betts toole me to get down there. I
did at eight o'clock that morning, and made me pick
(26:29):
up a fifty pound mail bag, put it on my
shoulder and bring it across the room and drop it.
He said, you hired And yep, and that mail bag
was giving me hell because back then I was beside
twenty nine and the waist and I had to weigh
but one hundred and fifteen pounds. It weighed almost as
much as me back then. Hired me on a fifty
two thousand all of your job because the post office
(26:49):
making one thousand dollars a week back then before overtime.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
That's a job.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
It was a job.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
We'll be right back. You said something to me, I
don't know. When we were having lunch three or four
weeks ago talking about doing this interview, you said to
(27:21):
me that there's something that dawned on me that I
didn't think about, which is, back then black folks wanted
to work in education or civil service jobs.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
That was kind of a hood. Take pension.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
You're talking about the pension, right, and so you were
looking for post office banks.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Maybe no, another facts we didn't attracted that it was
mostly post office, police officers, fireman, school teachers, the defense
dep pole.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
So where you get where you get largely good hour pay,
probably part of a union and a pension. Yeah, that
was that was.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Strange crack and a lot of it came out of
segregation because unions would never designed for blacks to begin with.
And so as baby boomers started to have children, and
their children, these white children were able to go to
school and college, the union started to lose enrollment. So
you had blacks working side by side with whites in
the sixties, fifties and sixties and seventies. The UAW that
(28:30):
worked part of the union, it wouldn't allow blacks to
part of the union. So once they started allowing me
in around seventy seventy one, because they needed the union dudes.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, I was gonna say, don't think that was some
social construct. What it was about money. It was about money.
They needed black money.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
They needed black money, and they realized that black money
was green. And so that's how blacks became unionized. But
my mother had uncles and aunts and worked for the
railroad in the forties and fifties in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
That did not get the same representation the white workers.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
And by the time he retired at seventy, you just
got to seventy. Where that made them had to pay
the railroad pension when they win't even part of pension.
He started working for him back in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
So you're working at the post office, and as people
need to hear you because of this construct. The recent
I interrupted this to get to this is I want
people to understand you'd arrived. This is like shit. I mean, yeah,
I got a job at post office. I'm making one
thousand dollars a week. I'm gonna get a pension. And
this man, this man didn't tell you not to go
(29:38):
into teaching, but he was doing you a favor of
getting you.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And they just had to sell a dope to do it.
Because see, most most of them black kids were selling
dope back then. You know that was that was the
boom in Memphis. You know, you had to cocaine, cowboys
and the cartel going on in the city. So if
you're making a thousand dollars a week and you could
do it lawfully, legally, I mean using high kiting and
so as a young twenty two year old, I remember
(30:04):
when I got my first check. He was seven hundred
and forty eight dollars and thirteen cent. I never forgets
oh back then, oh yeah, oh yeah. I went to TJ.
Tony's house. He lived over there on Foster Avenue, glen
View Heights, and I brought him the whole check because
when I was younger, he had taken me to this
place called Imperial Men's where it was this high end
(30:25):
clothing store and Union Avenue where all the preachers bought
all the Canali suits and stuff. And he bought me
three suits, a black suit, a David Blue suit, and
a gray suit. Bought me a pair of Johnston Murphy's shoes,
a pair of bottle a bottle of Airmin's cologne, and
three shirts and three neckties. They said you can't drive
the Bishop any kind of way representing us. Those suits
(30:47):
lasted me almost fifteen years and couldn't wear them out
they were so well made. TJ spent twenty two hundred
dollars that day. Never got it as long as I live.
And I went by and brought him the whole check.
Because my mother born in nineteen thirty three doing a
great depression, we didn't have it. You didn't know we
didn't have it. We didn't never beg for. If you
(31:07):
caught begging for something or asking for something that you
had to worked for, you got beat and get you
a good beating. And they believe in whipping you back then.
So we didn't give her any trouble. So I had
never had anybody ever do anything for me, and so
I tried to give it back to him, and he said,
this is a very candid conversation. He said, silly Negro,
(31:32):
silly Negro. He was our favorite student. This is such
an insult. It made me feel empty. I said, what
do you mean, mister Tauny, He says, son, we knew
who you were. I've been knowing your daddy thirty years.
When Bishop Grace called and said that we had another
one to train, we knew exactly who you were. It
(31:54):
was our job to train you. It was our job
to mold you into this intelligent, upper black metal class man.
This wasn't my money that I spent the patratuition at
schools all of our money. I would go down in
the finance room on Sunday morning and said, look, we
need to collect some money. Give me your Johnny Walker money,
give me a cool cigarette money, give me a girlfriend money.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Give me the Johnny Walker cool cigarette and girlfriend money.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
That's right, because back then you had so many black
men that working in these high opinion jobs held. The
church looked like the Cadillact dealership and the Lincoln dealership.
And they had fine cars, they had fine homes, good homes.
And I tell people all the time, all black folks
are from Missouri. To show me steak. You know, you
(32:38):
can talk it, but you got to walk it like
you talk it. And they taught me so much. And
so when I try to give them the money back
expressed to me, he says, it's your job now to
pass it on to somebody else. And I left there
thinking about this. This is in nineteen ninety three. They
taught me how to save money. They taught me the
importance of keeping your credit, your bills paid. I was
(33:01):
getting ready to go buy a Mustang when I started
working at the post office, and it wouldn't let me
buy made me buy a little small Toyota truck. Paid
eight thousand dollars for a brand new and coming in
Pike Toyota back in nineteen ninety two, said the black
man should always have a pickup truck because you don't
never know what kind of work you gotta do on
the side, cut grass or whatever you gotta do to hustle,
take care of your family even while working a job.
(33:24):
So I remember I was trying to buy a house.
My mother wouldn't let me have girlfriends at the house anymore,
so I wanted to live in the neighborhood there was
still a prominent black middle class neighborhood. The house came
up for sale, sixty one thousand dollars house back in
nineteen ninety three, and I went to every bank in Memphis,
(33:44):
the black bank we used to be. Try to State Bank,
they turned me down. Teacher, Credit Union turned me down.
Everybody turned me down. And so this older black lady
runs out from try to State Bank. She says, baby,
go out to Bank of Bartlett in Bartley, Tennessee. So
I did, and I went out there and this lady
was typing up the loan information and I was sitting
(34:07):
at her desk frustrated. And this little short guy walking
down the hall real fast with jet black hair, saw
me sitting at the desk distraught. He turns right and
comes back. He said, sir, you're all right. I said, no,
not really. He said, I've been to at least nine
different banks. I'm trying to figure out why I came
by sixty one thousand dollars house. And I too young,
(34:27):
my too black, my too young and black. And so
he picks up the Manila photo off of Vivian's desk.
She's still at the bank, and he looks through the
fol excellent credit. He says, uh, how much money you make?
I said, I work at the post office. I grosser
thousand dollars a week. He says, uh huh. He said,
(34:48):
do you have any money save it? I said, I
got ten thousand dollars. Say, and I got about eighteen
hundred dollars in an IRA. I went the town credential
and I had about fifteen hundred dollars a double le
savings bus. He said about the double saving. Tricky your
mind that think you'd get more because of the face value.
You pay half of the face value. And he signed
a Manila envelope with his pen. His name was Harold Bergs,
(35:09):
president of Bank of Barlot. He said, let him have it.
That was the first house I bought, twenty three years old.
The house was three hundred eighty six dollars a month.
Because we knew, we were trained that if you can't
put a house into a black person's portfolio, you cannot
move into middle class. So I couldn't buy clothes, and
we used to call it clothes and hose couldn't. We
(35:30):
didn't invest in clothes and hose. We invested in houses
and saving, sacrifice and family. Family life was very important
to us. And so somewhere we have forgotten some of
the traditional values that have propelled us into middle class.
And now we see the shrinking middle class. And a
lot of it has to do with a liberal mindset,
(35:51):
this liberal society to say it's a free fall, it's
not somebody's gonna pay for it. In the middle class
right now, it's paying fift per cent of his income
to do so. So when I established Friends at the five,
I had a reflective opportunity and so you know, semi
retire too young to retire. Would what would just really
(36:13):
look like if more blacks had the same opportunities I've had.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
And that concludes Part one of my conversation with Robert Hill,
and you don't want to miss Part two that's now
available to listen to as we're about to dive into
Friends after Five. Together, guys, we can change this country,
but it's going to start with you. I'll see you
in Part two.
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