Everybody at my God I got a smooth guy on the channel today you gonna like this situation what this brother got to say he’s serious too he is well thought of I mean we on to something here at strong Inspirations I’m Anthony Brogden and I don’t play
With you I give it to you straight no chaser I let the people do the talking so we can intoxicate your not staggering DUI but staggering from what they got to say so you will have to say whoa I didn’t know that whoa that I’m a better person by hearing this
Information this is what I’m doing here I’m an ordinary guy trying to do something extraordinary as a result of the people who come on the show they vet me man ladies out there and they know that my intentions are well because I want you my viewers to hear
This because it has made me a better person there’s no question about it you’re gonna like what this young man’s got to say this is a serious situation here on today’s show so hit the Subscribe button it’s free I don’t ask no money nothing you can donate if you
So choose but hey I want you to get it I come on now hit the like button on this video you’re going to like it a whole lot hit the uh notifications Bell for when the videos come up you get a ding a shock a smoke signal something to let
You know that is new content on strong Inspirations and I’m trying to put at least one or two up a week we over 500 videos here just did you see the one I did with the guy whose great-grandfather they bombed his house why he was protecting 16th Street Baptist
Church and and it didn’t do you know they still got to the church too watch that video did you see the one I did with the lady with no with the guy who is a very well accomplished uh uh an attorney professor at I think it’s
Georgetown uh but as an attorney he was fighting for civil rights down in the uh you know in the South Deep South uh you know and he’s older gentleman so let’s say this is about the 50s and 60s he said I carried a gun with me every day
Just in case one of them races wanted to pull something I was ready he said and then when they would be out there shooting their gun I shot mine you should watch that video did you see the one the lady who said that her great great great grandfather mightbe
Three of them who was enslaved my man got his freedom and moved to Liberia watch that video how about the lady whose great great great grandfather got his freedom and was on one of them ships that ended up in Nova Scotia Canada watch that freedom that video how
About the lady whose great great grandfather was Harriet Tubman’s Minister over in Canada watch that video yeah just go down the list it’s a lot of them it’s over 500 like I said just go down look at any one of them come on share this with your kids y’all sit
Around and watch it you can go past me just scroll if you need to and and get to where you want to get to watch this stuff hit the like button on it too tell somebody I really appreciate it my friends uh come down uh June 7th through
The 9th 202 24 I’m having my own Festival in Kansas City Kansas it’s called freedom quind darl for a nominal price I will feed you the whole weekend at the fish fry on Friday and on Saturday at the Gathering we won’t call it a picnic and Quin Daryl
In Kansas City Kansas is in my estimation America’s largest Underground Railroad stop when they fled out Missouri they could go across that River and end up in Kansas that’s not to say that the man didn’t come looking for him but I got a guy on the
Show when the when the guy came looking for him he said let me tell you something sir I’m not going back so it’s either your life or mine and my man let him go he thought twice about that one he said this guy serious he ain’t coming back forget that
Little bit of money so come check me out out on that regard now you might know I’m a filmmaker business in the black is my documentary on the rise of black business in America that were enslaved black folks who own businesses and I did not know that they didn’t teach that to
Me in school and I was you know pretty decent student so I want you all to get it and it’s in this film which is streaming on Amazon then I took it one step further and I wrote this book this has become America’s number one black business history
Book if you read my book and don’t learn nothing new I give your money back boom shaka Locka book with a money back guarantee I’m that confident and every 10th book I sell I donate one to a school and last year I think I donated close to 400 something books this year I
Want to donate 10,000 I want to grow with y’all being growing with me so get you a copy of this you go to my website business intheblack domnet and I will autograph it and it is available on Amazon but I don’t ship the Amazon books all right
Now you hear me uh use this term strong a lot strong is my my favorite word in my world strong stands for strength tenacity resilience and a sense of Oneness nobility and Grace and that is my introduction to the gu today he’s a strong so Brother come on man let’s get
It on thank you for being on the show thank you for having me I loved hearing your commentary uh it reminds me of the days when we listen to the radio so and you know being in Detroit this is like uh as my cousin Dwayne would say like the radio capital of the
Of the country if not the world so it it made me feel uh like I travel back in time a little bit so yes okay now tell us your name tell us your name so I am anoir uru I am a professor in African-American studies at Wayne State
University I am a native detroiter so it is nice to be home I okay uh in Academia we have to go where the job is so I’m very grateful that I get to be back home and I’ve home for two years now so okay okay let me let me ask you a question
You you let and it’s just a c about you let my audience get to know you you said you from Detroit what what side of town did uh may I ask so I am literally in my childhood home so I am technically uh New Center Boston area Edison now you
Know they everything so I’m 14th in uh Taylor okay did you know did you know Detroit being a predominant black town as it is and you know I grew up here also did you know any white kids growing up were or were you only exposed to
Black people I I I grew up amongst kind of a Melting Pot so I got you know grew up with Polish kids um uh Filipino kids uh so but predominantly black but I did have that like mixture of both because of my age so like as kids as the whites
Were starting to leave I still had that um kind of interracial uh upbringing and then when you hit your teams you have a different experience of them but I’m BM okay what do you mean by that what do you mean by that so growing up you know
Parents allowed us all to play together but like as you know you’re hitting that teen Mark uh girls aren’t allowed to play with you anymore if they’re white and boys start realizing that they’re white men so then they start to have that separation because of probably what
Their parents were telling them so like from I would say from age like two to about 12 we all played together but I noticed as we got into our teens uh there was that Division and then often times the kids then move away um so yeah
So I feel like and I mean you hear older Generations talk about this where uh you know we were all uh and you saw during the 2020 protest where it’s like when did I go from being cute to being a threat and so I started to notice that
As I was hitting my um young adulthood um those same people who used to smile at me as a kids started to act a little different because obviously I’m getting taller uh by frame is getting different and I’m starting to be seen as a black
Male who’s about to be a man and not that little boy anymore okay yeah that’s what I noticed yeah yeah yeah let’s delve into that just a t do you think it’s the physique of black men uh is is is uh that that is so
Scary I know I know I know the media plays up on it but why why do they stop at a certain age because you’re the same kid when you were eight n 10 11 12 13 what do you think that that why that the change happens well I know uh due to the
Racist history of being a black man or a black woman uh it’s that moment as soon as puberty hits they start to see you as a man and the probability of if there’s any type of romantic between their daughter their son and and you then all
Of a sudden there’s an there’s a fear that oh no uh racial interaction and and possible children could come about sure then you have to villainize us so that way she or he knows that don’t go there uh and of course sometimes they do yeah
Sure and not just I won’t even just put it on white folks but other races too because I noticed that uh growing up amongst Arab uh descended people Asian descended people uh Hispanic too um and of course living here Jewish as well so I noticed like
The if there’s a possibility of a a mixture oh no we don’t want to paint our genes we want to keep that that genetic Supremacy so yeah in doing the work I do uh you see this long history of fear of racial uh what they call it uh cont contagion
Uh because that’s really where like vampires and zombies and all of that comes from it’s this idea of contaminating pure RAC and white is always seen as pure so any fear of mixture with that automatically uh creates a hysteria yeah okay okay we’re gonna come back to that
But let’s stay let’s stay on on on on the childhood or or even after that what do you know where the um the uh the plantation is in your family so uh my genetic history and I’m blessed to be able to trace it as far back as I
Can we originated on my maternal and paternal side on the uh around the South Carolina region and my maternal ancestor was sold to a planter in Mississippi around about 1850 or so and um then that ancestor had her daughter who was literally born free she was was born like at that moment of
Emancipation in about 1865 that’s what the records say um so that maternal ancestor that came from South Carolina to Mississippi her name uh was Easter and then her daughter Maggie uh was born free so that’s how we’re able to train uh trace it back and we do have a family home in Mississippi
Uh my grandmother inherited from her father so we do have a home in uh rley Mississippi um and my grandmother just came back uh about a right before Christmas and I live in a lower flat from my maternal grandmother so I’m very uh fortunate and then my uh paternal
Grandmother lives on the east side of town so um and that side is from um Lancaster South Carolina so there’s a strong Carolinian um lineage on both sides of the family okay what was the was the child was a black guy oh uh oh so you mean my my yes who
Father so this is where records get real fun so okay okay ask that question there’s more so my uh the ancestor from South Carolina um it says that she is labeled mulat and then my uh and her her child is also labeled mulato and that’s back when they would actually put that
On birth records what does that mean mulato mulato mixed meaning you know Papa’s maybe which means fathered by a slave owner or his children so they’ll acknowledge that that the child is mixed but they won’t acknowledge the paternity or who the father was or in some cases who the
Mother was um so uh our descendant so we’re descendant of literally descendant of of enslavers and that is in the records so when myself and my uh grandmother’s first cousin were both compiling our genealogy from records and slave dockets Etc and we blessed to have descendants who were counted in the
Senses my uh ancestor Easter Liv long enough to be put in the senses and she was able to give her origin and it says um Charleston South Carolina where she was born and it says about because she doesn’t know the exact date um she was
Able to say you know my father was was a slave master and they put mulato and then her child Maggie they put mul as well or mulat because that’s and so we so it’s in the records that we of mixed descent sure sure and so that was that and of course as time
Progressed I look at my great great grandmother Annabelle who is an identical twin her sister adabel uh you look and you go like oh it’s proof because I mean they were very very fair great blue eyes very fine hair um and for years you know a lot of
People would say oh because we have Indian in the family and it’s like maybe but it’s more got that Master yeah sure sure um and for decades and years I understood why we within my family and we as black people didn’t necessarily acknowledge it because there was no benefit really of being mixed
Unless you could pass and then their the trauma of passing for white is one you have to live your life as a fugitive basically or fear of being caught but also like unless you could truly truly pass and nobody discovered there’s really no benefit of acknowledging that that whiteness because you’re still
Black you’re still treated black uh you’re just lighter so for us we were like no matter how fairy you are or how chocolate you are you’re black so there was a level of um Pro Blackness from the turn of the Century I could trace all the way till now we always acknowledged
Our blackness in my family and we didn’t play colorism in my family so that whole oh okay okay okay but but hold on not I I got to take exception only in this regard lightskinned people did have have it better I mean there were there were organizations and stuff like that I’m
Not acknowledging that especially in the month of January with all of the fraternities and sororities celebrating their you know but I will say my immediate family um you know there might have been one or two who played that colorism but like I know from the feris
To the chocolate um we were all treated remotely you know yeah yeah sure um as as opposed to hearing stories of other relatives experiencing that blatant colorism where um they weren’t even allowed to sit in the front yard they had to come to the back door of their
Own oh is that right yeah so like I’ve heard of stories um from other people experiencing it but in my immediate uh in my maternal family I would say I didn’t witness it directly so we do so uh because there’s variations of color in my family so sure
You know and that’s not to say when they went out in the world they didn’t experience it and and having um very beautiful uh Coco cousins um he hearing their stories of going to school is when they’ve experienced it but within our family it was like no you’re beautiful
Like people would kill for that skin you got white folks trying to tan themselves for that skin and and like stand up straight acknowledge it so um we we made it our business to always love on each other regardless of our melanin but but I will say the world is the world and
We’ve experienced obviously colorism out in the world but within my family yeah yeah sure I know the women made sure that no matter how light or coco you were you were treated beautifully um you weren’t uh you didn’t focus on the external it was like can
You read okay I will you know so like so family like regardless of how gorgeous somebody is based on melanin or not uh the number one thing that was prized in my family was education I got you so you know so so got so yeah so that’s not to
Say that we didn’t experience it but that was like no like how well you read how well can you articulate I got you you know so let me ask you this you and I’m G to go back just a second you had heard stories of somebody saying you got
To come in the back door because you’re darker complected within the own family so on my paternal side they’re from South Carolina and similar mixture and I remember my uh grandmother telling me her great grandmother would say some racist stuff uh because she was very fair she had red
Hair and green eyes and she was she’s very chocolate um but a stunning woman and so she’d be like who’s that blank baby and she was like that’s your great granddaughter’s like no it’s not we don’t have babies that dark and so really he did tell me so on my maternal
Side there’s like love your skin love who you are but on my paternal side there was that that um issue of colorism that was experienced hold on let me stop let’s delve into that a little bit how could that light skinned person feel that about about another black person
But darker person yeah because what do you think that psychic came from oh and how they did that to him it’s it’s you know it it stems from the plantation where like uh whatever proximity you have to White means that you are no longer that thing and some Masters or
Whomever would separate the children or um allow the child to pass for white or put them in a situation in which they could be white or be viewed as white or the ideal um and as time and oftentimes ignorantly if they didn’t know any better they meaning white folks they
Would assume the person’s white um so so they had that like uh kind of passport if you will in ways that a melanated person never would and so one then starts to think that their entire value is what they presented on on the outside right right okay I got yeah so okay I
Got you yeah but that’s where it comes from and sadly to this day even in our own Community if you think about who is aesthetically the ideal it is some has the the lighter features the finer nose the thinner lips the straighter hair um and it’s really sad because um I think
Lup and yongo uh Naomi Campbell Grace Jones are some of the most stunning women on planet yes but they’re not always seen that way um or they always have to uh present as aggressive or and that’s not to say that women can’t be those things but gaze upon those three in
Particular you have often times in society we have to see beyond their color that’s right and and that’s really sad because my automatically that’s who I go to First in terms of like just jaw-dropping Beauty let alone um pretty much the entire cast of Black Panther we
Just right that’s right that’s right let me ask you this grow growing up as you did uh with white kids initially did you ever wish you were white no so you always had a sense of your Blackness and that kind of thing your parents told you this so on and so
Forth yeah no I I never had internalized white supremacy on that regard um and and it was interesting because because of my intellectual aptitude I always was in like an honors course or so on and so forth and then my parents were just like you know put him in private
School he’s so of course I was in around White kids all the time right and um and then even as I got older my mom uh when I got into college jly I was like uh there ain’t no black people you know to to date or go out and my mom was like
You’ve only dated black and I was like of course and she was like well oh really she even asked you that she even asked me and it wasn’t uh to be harsh she was like because I had been around white kids so often and been friends
With them and I was like no I just I don’t see them that way um and and as time progresses on you and it’s like okay and personally it’s because I refuse to have to translate myself to somebody regardless of how wonderful they are as a person there’s just
Cultural blind spots often um and I’ve had my uh male friends female friends straight not straight friends all have that similar experience of like how much more work they have to do when they do yes yes that’s not to say that there aren’t some wonderful successful inter
Rel there are but I know in my experience it’s one thing to have to explain your field or your experience professionally but another thing personally and sure I’m like uhuh okay I got you there let me let me ask you this how how did you how did you come to like
Black history like you do so I was blessed to have experienced both my grandparents and my parents and like most black kids when you have young parents that’s who raises you predominantly um I got to have my great-grandmother until I was 16 years old and I say that was my first best
Friend um and so uh I didn’t truly know what loss was until she passed um and I even wrote a poem about her um because her last few years where uh she uh was battling Alzheimer’s um but I got to have that oral history and um she graduated from
High school when she was 17 um in South Carolina and she also had a a certificate trade um and then her telling me stories about World War II and how she made met my great-grandfather and just their migration from South Carolina to uh Detroit and then my mother mother her
Story of how she ended up in Detroit so just knowing that and also them telling me like we weren’t just slaves that we were people and we brought things and um learning how to cook they didn’t read recipes they just like take a pinch you know if you use this as a quarter
Teaspoon this is a teaspoon this a half a table you know just fingers and and their palms and um learning how to hand mix a cake as a little kid on on a stool so all of those histories and um my great grandmother the way she would talk
To God it was not uh you sit in a Pew but she would talk to God while she was mixing a cake or so all of that um history and learning um about herbs and things of that nature and interpretation of dreams so I knew we had all of this
Knowledge and then of course when I got to college and learned about afro Caribbean and afro Haitian and then sequently Ura and how that entire culture is is is uh oral it’s not necessarily written down and I was like oh so that’s how I got um involved in
Learning about history and my history and and the larger uh trajectory when when when someone like yourself decides that okay this is a career path my career path is to learn all I can and then to teach this so I mean that’s that’s the that’s the the the the uh how
You make a living is by teaching it but what at some point do you say this is this is what I want do you pick a particular Topic in black history or how does that work so what happened was I had dreams of just going into the Arts
Because I’m a creative person by Nature so I would be I was an only child until about six or so so I knew how to entertain myself and go off into Little Worlds and stuff um so my undergraduate degree was in theater and dance and so I
Did that but studying dance with black teachers brought me back to history again so I was able to study with now a retired Professor Penelope PAB Balo who is Professor of dance at Mary Grove College and now she’s uh like amerita at University of Michigan and she studied
Up under uh Katherine Dunham and has all of her notebooks so learning that uh afro Caribbean um dance and then learning um some of the West African steps and learning all the history and a step is not just a step but you’re doing this dance for celebration for times of
War for sorrow so all of that um so even in my artistic path it was like no there’s an intellectual aspect to doing what you do or even when I learned classical dance um every gesture every movement is telling a story uh so that’s how that happened and as time got older
And the body does what it does I was like I got enough to teach and uh everybody said throughout I would make a great teacher um and so of course you got to pay the bills like you said and so uh that’s how it happened and then I fell
In love with it but more importantly I fell in love with the research aspect and so I knew to pursue a PhD um and that’s how it all what what what is the research aspect what is I mean I know that’s an easy question but what does a
PhD teach you so a yeah go ahead yes a PhD great question um I wish more people would ask this question a PhD teaches us or makes us humble to the aspect that you made a lifelong commitment to learn until you cease to breathe and what’s going on now in
Culture is people truly aren’t taking the time to really deal with the discomfort of learning everybody wants a quick and oh I can Google that and it’s like all right 20 minutes later what was that thing you Googled uh uh uh because they didn’t really learn it they just learn a
Insert a fact but what a PhD teaches you is you know so little even if you’ve read 20 30 books you still know so little because there’s still so many facets um to this gemstone and that’s one thing so no matter what that area is you know so little because there’s so
Much out there that is yet to be collected and that’s the the the the blessing and the burden of uh what that research teaches us c c can you could C so what is your uh okay go back to this one so let’s say you pick a topic yeah
And you know a little bit about it give me an example of how there is so much more expansion to this one little topic that a person needs to think about you follow my question oh absolutely so uh yesterday uh we just started this past week was our first semester back our
First week back for the winter semester uh at Wayne State and I asked my students who were the first to discover the Americas Columbus and then another student was like the Vikings no one said the people who are already here I got you you know I was and I said excuse you
And they were like what I said what what about the people who’ve been here for tens of thousands of years how can you discover something that’s already been settled that’s like me coming to your book your doorstep and saying I discovered this this uh historical home
And they’re like no but I got no no I discovered it and they were like I was like to say why did you say that well that’s what I was taught and I was like all right let’s un learn this so that’s just that alone yeah I got you because they
Because we rarely talk about the indigenous people that were already here yeah and and they’re so here even the names of like we got the panop Scot building we got Port uh hon Lake you know all of these names that signify uh that they were here and even the the
Original roads of the lot of streets that we still honor are the paths of the indigenous people that’s right you know so so there is that um and then if you just go a little north of here by by way of going especially towards Buffalo that’s where a lot of them uh resettle
But yeah um and and then telling my students where those uh indigenous people ended up because of uh greed and Supremacy but yeah what what is there a haha moment for you in in your studies or something like that when you in school and it said wow I just could
Never you know do you remember any of one or two of those yeah one of the biggest is the myth about uh Detroit as being the side of the Underground Railroad um because there is an eraser of the first 200 years of uh Detroit being Detroit or deis uh the history of
Slavery here that part was like and it kind of I think I was in maybe undergrad maybe the first or second year and I was just like but wait isn’t this city like a established City since 1704 and then there was at least a 100 years prior and the French had slaves in
Louisiana and then I started to dig and I was like okay okay okay okay I got you yeah and and luckily uh I had a brilliant Professor um Ellis Ivory who was at M Brad was at uh marry Grove and he taught African-American history and I remember
One day knocking on his door and I said Professor Ivory like like why don’t we ever talk about this and he was like cuz it’s a better story to sell Second Baptist Church and I was like oh um and and he was one of those professors who
Remind me of like a Howard Zen who always about seeking the truth even if it made people uncomfortable and so he was like go with it and so then I started to go to the archives um the Burton Library and places like that and like finding these dockets and then of
Course then I just left it alone and then Tia miles uh wrote her book about uh the history of slavery here in Detroit and Canada and that’s another story like people don’t realize Canada had slaves um because it’s always seen as a site of emancipation and then kather mckitrick wrote demonic grounds
Uh and she talks about the fire in Quebec and how a enslaved woman was falsely accused of starting at fire and of course she was executed and we never talk about the executions of enslaved women or black women too so like all of these like I was
Like God sure sure sure yeah and then um I just recently came across an archive of this enslaved uh then emancipated person Francis Thompson who was living her life as a woman but she was born male um and and and she sued because um these people raided her home and then
She was uh assaulted and so like all of these like moments and I obviously I still have aha moments but that first one yeah the history of slavery here in Detroit I was just like yeah you know so much of uh in particular black history excuse me and I
Don’t know how else to put it has like a negative slant to it just the beat down of black people does that does that ever get to you to some point where you like dang and then you gotta go with let me tell you about a person who overcame
That to help you get you back above water or how does that word yeah one of the things uh regardless of how our ancestors got here and up until 1867 realistically we think about juneth um from every ounce moment grain of that long chunk of history from the moment of
Capture to the moment of of sometimes taking their freedom they fought back that is one of the the myths that we were just docile and yes Mass yes yeah right there you go like we were just like we just took it and it was like no
We did not for the amount of um people of African descent from enslavement that population should be much higher considering how often women took puses and potions to abort the fetus or uh sometimes did what Margaret Garner did and just kill the baby or sometimes uh
Died because they fought back and all of these moments um and then after slavery the amount of men and women and children who were lynched and killed just because white folks felt like they could do it um there’s always a capital R resistance in fighting back and when you read these
Archives of Masters and Mistresses they were always terrified of us always always always that’s why the law really the Yoke was so tight and um you read stories even with Martha Washington she was always sick and you’re like why was she always sick we know sanitation conditions in
The 18th and 19th century were but why and I realized because a black woman was cooking their food oh really and our ancestors knew herbs and new ways to grind stuff up real fine right so like if you think about it they were always sick or something was going on and then when
They got suspicious they pulled back a little bit or often times those white women’s babies didn’t live very long really yeah so you think about ways in which in um oh uh there’s a beautiful novel that came out recently called the prophets and it talks about that
Resistance it’s it’s a novel but but when you read those archives you’re like wait a minute and and Harriet Tubman’s um aunt was a was a root woman she knew herbs because the master was always having um seizures or what they call fits that’s hold on let me stop y like
This you you don’t hear this that often oh no no no like that’s why um those of us who got some sense as the elders would say automatically uh shoulder tap young people when they make these erroneous statements were like we ain’t nothing like our ancestors and I’m like
No you ain’t nothing like your ancestors because our we we are this level of strengths compared to our ancestors when you realize what they did in even in the moments of uh being reduced to nothing they fought back they were resistant they were resil ion and so uh we don’t
Have often times the our ancestors had okay let’s do this because I know I know this might be easy one for you name a couple stories a couple people that we don’t know that like you like like you just talked about I didn’t know the lady
Did Martha Washington in that way any a couple Nam couple names that come to mind and which sidea harman’s work and a lot of these um what they called uh new new historians or revisionist historians where they’re like wait a minute you got to read in between the lines like if uh
You have a slave master a slave mistress who just did something foul to that person’s child why are they sick the next day you know what I’m saying or I never thought of this right if you just sold my baby off and I’ve nursed your baby and you wonder why you keep keep
Having these dizzy spells and all of that you ever wonder why you know I might have put a little mug work in your food or your suit or you know you’re having violent vomiting or diuretic spells or why the master got extra drunk and was knocked out for a day like people don’t
Think about that because you know um and when women and while we have midwives and why the more the infant mortality rate even in those conditions without vaccines were very low for black babies and why the mortality rate is so high now for black babies and mothers yeah I never thought of that
Right like like so so so what give us examples of some of the things they would do then how about that so uh one thing I I know from archival research is uh black women invented the vaccine for small poox okay so for example we knew do due to
Our oral knowledge of of medicine um you have to expose a little bit of ourselves to the thing in order to build up immunity so an woman knew to do that so she was doing that amongst the slaves so it was this myth that like we were
Resistant like we had the we had the super Gene to fight off small pox but literally we were just giving ourselves that and then they got a hold of it and so of course a white man gets credit for curing small poox um so that’s in the
Archive but uh to answer your question more directly um there are so many accounts that we starting to uh dig up of uh resistance in forms of uh fleeing in in forms of uh like I mentioned Margaret Garner which Tony Morrison bases her book beloved on um this woman was
Enslaved in um was it Kentucky and she flees and the master uh catches up with her and instead of having herself and her children be brought back into slavery she says oh no and and like takes her children out by uh killing them and yeah and the thing about that
Story is it’s not that she killed her children it’s she she destroyed her master’s property because we were seen as property that’s why he uh presses charges because she was accus she was tried of destroying property I never heard this story yeah so what happens is
Um it’s just a little clipping um of this story and you got to dig through the archives and Tony Morrison when she writes uh the black book because her main job before she becomes the author the Nobel prizewinning author she was an editor and so she is responsible for
Publishing so many authors that we know she publishes Angela Davis’s first book uh Muhammad Ali’s first uh his his autobiography I mean she to me is the reason why we have the Arc of black Publications from the 70s to the mid 80s really um and then in a spare time she
Sitting there writing her work and then she becomes the great Tony Morrison but she comes across this when she’s putting together the black book and so she was like I’m going to store it and then she says one day she was just sitting there and then the character just came
Literally out of the water to her and hence while we get um beloved and so uh but that is a true story about Margaret Garner where she in instead of seeing her kids be put back into slavery she said I’d rather kill them than to let them go back into um into shackles
And so um and that’s such a deep philosophical question because I work mainly in philosophy even though I know the history and so what does love look like for an enslaved person what does love look like for someone in the the midst of Jim Crow what does love look
Like with police brutality uh what does love look like with infant mortality rates being the way they are for black uh children and brown children and black mothers right like what does that look like um black women are still having the audacity to still give birth to black
Babies knowing that this the hospital could kill them so you know what I’m going to do I’m going to get a doula and I’m gonna get a midwife and I’m have that baby at home go back right okay that’s why um there’s been legislative moves to um
Have doulas and midwives covered in our Health Care system and largely because of our white counterparts were like you know that’s way more organic and way more and black black women are like yeah okay well that leads to this one then and I think kind of what you talking
About you you jamming you jamming that they talked about Voodoo as one of those things you know that was bad B Voodoo was just a science of the herbs speak on it brother speak on it is I’m I’m give everybody the cliffs notes of of the origin of voodo in America so
Everybody treats those of Africa descent like you know we just got that little wand W in front of us like a man in Black and all our memory was erased but it was like no we brought that with us and no matter how hard that crack of
That Whip and chopping off fingers and toes and branding us and beating us and all of those heroic things that they did to us we still kept it in us and so two events happened one in South Carolina with the Stono Rebellion that is still the largest
Rebellion in enslaved history a lot of white folks died in that Rebellion so much so that they had to crank up the laws on enslaved people so okay hold on hold on hold on yeah go ahead so for people who don’t know the Stono tell us
A little bit about that so in 17 uh was it 30 n in South Carolina lot of lot of linkages back to South Carolina right because that was one of the largest ports for enslaved Africans that’s part of the reason why and it’s so close to the Caribbean geographically right so
This is the rice Plantation this is an Indigo Plantation so that dark blue dye that we wear in our blue jeans and you see it on on China and all that that die that die that originates from Africa by the way um which was sacred to our
Culture um and then they brought it over here because of the richness of that Dy um but it’s a very strong and can be toxic right so uh if you saw Daughters of the Dust uh you see that the blue stained hands that’s that D so they’re working in those plantations and they’re
Even contemplating growing sugar and those enslave so they’re being exposed to malaria it those plantations are brutal and they’re like F this no and those enslaved men and women got together and took a lot of folks out so much so that other people had to come from neighboring uh colonies and stuff
To like get rid of them and of course uh the the the enslaved people uh were disbanded but a lot of them fled to Maroon places any as a result of this this Rebellion um they removed the right to assemble that’s why slaves couldn’t gather and that’s why to this day racist
White people like oh it’s a lot of black people what’s going on if you notice group of white black people and white people see it they’re like oh hi hi right you know they do this we get together and just have a kickback the police are called on us right that’s
Right that’s right okay so we couldn’t gather don’t let us read anymore because we there was no laws on it quite yet uh only assemblies have to be monit by white folks um don’t let them drum no more don’t let them clang Bells anymore so you know the Dr African people yes
Yes all of those like direct ties to how to conjure spirit because that’s what drums do that’s what bills that’s why when you hear what they call those flat-footed singers They’re calling literally Spirit down because that’s the history of how we talk to God yes and so
Much so you know in a black church we call it catching the spirit but um ancestrally that’s how Spirit enters us right being able to call it down in eura culture that’s called uh oriki which is the sacred song to channel God down so they were like oh no but what had
Happened was yeah started being able to slap on our hands being able to pound things stump clap and so that’s how tap dancing originated because we were able to replicate the drums with our hands and our feet and and then scatting that’s another way to replicate a drum right especially when you hear
Somebody right we didn’t get rid of our culture and then what happens is we let it get absorbed in Christianity but also we invent this other thing called The Ring shout and if you’ve ever seen a ring shout it’s like you are going to a vodun
Fet or EUR buffet and they even go in the same circular direction as you would if you were in dahomie present day eura land or in Cuba or in Brazil it’s the same way and even sometimes they make drawings on the floor which is similar to a vodom v okay
So that myth that black Americans did not hold on to their African spirituality and ancestry and all of that is false gay go tell her I will say as Christian as my grandmother is she will tell you what she drunk about last night she will if she smells like me brewing a
Tea she’ll ask for a cup of it right so those are that and even my mother she’ll be like hey Juju man that’s her nickname for me what can I take to get rid of this thing and I’ll be like oh get some
Eona or get some um I love it yeah so so so i s at say uh that’s one example to go to part two of this Haiti AKA sand doming 1791 similar situation a bunch of pissed off slaves on a sugar Plantation the life expectancy of a slave on a sugar
Plantation is about two to three years that’s how brutal those conditions are to turn sugar cane into sugar is a very physically ous process period and you’re under the Lash of a whip in hot sweltering sun and then you’ve got sugar boiling so that’s attracting all kinds
Of bugs that Hot Sugar is imprinting itself in your skin and then bugs would get on it it’s very brutal very very very brutal and so the slaves are pissed and so Bookman was like let’s go to the mountains and talk which means let’s talk to God and
So book mom was like but before we go bring a wild boar and so they bring a boar on the Mountaintop which is where the maroon people were and belied to be the indigenous people who fled there and that’s why Haiti is called Haiti that is to believe that is
The indigenous word for that island but I’ll get back to that so brings that that that boore and they start chanting and clinging and stuff and all of a sudden a storm comes and lightning stri and that ignites a fire and then they offer that boore to uh the gods a boar
Is an animal right a boar is a wild pig a wild just like get folks you know Old Testament but a boy is a wild pig right often with horns and stuff I mean and I’ve seen one I was like okay right right y y y so they offered that
And so people’s like ah and I’m like offerings are in the Bible That’s What Halal means that’s what kosher means that is sacrifice hint hint wink wink they do that and they are able after 13 years of consistent fighting and and honoring their African Roots their honor African ancestry their
Spirituality and sense of being are able to Def defeat one of the most powerful uh military empires in the world that’s why vodun is demonized because that means it could defeat white people that is there you go there you go you think about it if you
Got a spiritual system and knows men and women and children all they had were bayonets whatever they could put their hands on and they were able to beat a military that was backed by other European entities including the US and they still tell them to go where the
Blank don’t blank right why wouldn’t you demonize that why wouldn’t you demonize any sense of black people African descended people knowing their purpose and refusing to be under somebody’s foot of course you’re gonna demonize that that’s right of course you’re gonna say it’s demonic first of all there is no
Demonic in vodon the the belief of African spirituality is the dark or the bad is within oneself we are responsible for how much pain violence Etc we inflict on each other there is no outside boogy man so that’s number one number two this idea of zombie is the
Belief that a force or person can take over one’s mind H sounds like a slave master to a slave doesn’t it yeah there you go that’s really where zombie comes from right uh and so that’s that’s that belief but yeah of course you’re going to demonize villainize a system that
Emancipates the people that you once controlled and vodun like all African spirituality 99% of it is herbal medicines and having a connection with Mother Earth and father sky right it is it is the same thing that that left white folks are trying to do now about like we need to care about
The Earth that we need to care it was like already did that you brought us here for that gas for not about the environment when you racially put us in environmentally unsafe places yes because there was a lady who was the the I forgot her name
You know it the queen of voodoo in New in Louisiana what what was her name you remember Mar laau yes yeah and and the reason why she was a queen is because a white man went to her because he had a court case he was like I heard you know
You you can do some things so she was like all right I’ll help you and so for two weeks she did her rituals and the guy was acquitted and so he was like we gonna leave y’all alone we gonna let y’all do y thing that’s the story that’s
Why it was able to survive because the white folks as racist as they were with their history of slavery and Jim Crow and all that they was like we gonna leave these folks alone over here as long as they stay over there on by T in
That area we G yeah yes yes that’s yeah cuz I had I met a young lady on you know online or something who said she was her great great niece yeah I would not and I did all my best to convince her to come on the show but she said that she
Couldn’t do it because it’s it’s such a taboo that it wasn’t a good look for her to come on the show and tell about about her about her great honor something like that yeah the the thing is um I totally understand her kind of anonymity because
Um in Nigeria right now uh there’s a campaign called ESU or papba is not Satan because there’s such a strong um uh Evangelical Christian Movement there uh that anybody who practices or acknowledges their ancestry and their ancestral practices um face a lot of uh harm so there’s a there’s a huge thing
Going on in places like the birthplace of vodun and Benin or or the orisha in Nigeria or um Brazil is going through a huge issue with preserving um condom blé because of those uh Evangelical Christian movements that have paired with these uh gangs that are there um so
There’s a lot of persecution that can happen if you outwardly come out as a practitioner of uh either vodun or or orisha or whatever it’s very serious yeah so I totally understand her like yeah that’s what she say I think the one the other thing that you come and and
And then you’re sharing so is that they did a mind game on everything good about black people Ain that the the go ahead no no no absolutely I mean the amount of men in women who I’ll just use an example uh this obsession with being thin that is
Going on uh right now there’s a product called OIC which is a uh diabetic medicine it’s for people with diabetes but now it is considered the new weight loss drug and I’m like why are you all obsessed with losing weight did the doctor say you know anything’s wrong
With you did your lab results no no no I just want to be thin because and I’m like where did this obsession with thinness uh come from which is just one example of not loving yourself right right um and even our food and diets are demonized everything in moderation of
Course but like the thing that kept us alive and sustain us and honors our ancestry is now bad if we do it but it appears in a gourmet restaurant backed by white folks so like all of a sudden kale collars are super expensive um so those are examples yeah
There you go like like you know how much is an oxtail cost now my goodness you know right right right but I still like to say that’s just one example of not loving yourself and loving your culture um and you notice uh skin skin lightning is is a global issue wherever there are
African people now because we’re told our skin isn’t beautiful um those same people want our lips and our backsides but they don’t want our our melanin uh they want our Rhythm but our blues and I I tell anybody like there is no such thing as good hair or bad hair only only
Bad here is if you don’t grow any you know like yeah yeah yeah tell it tell it I love it I love my melanin and if anything I I stay out in the sun so I’ll get even more chocolate you know that’s right that’s right
That’s right you know so uh right I grew up with that that sense and I grew up with a mother you know who was like we said it we got brown and people like oh you got black we like yes you know yes yes I love it all that uh it’s sad
Because um there still is this idea that if I can’t be white then I want my kids to become it and and that’s that’s farthest from the truth um and and we see what’s happening with the way the system is now uh the way that we’re still being criminalized at a higher
Rate yes that’s right white or non- melanated counterparts but uh right that’s right then we got the government uh per state trying to get rid of africanamerican studies and black studies um changing words from slave to worker and last time I checked workers got paid so even the curriculum is trying to
Go back to uh Jim Crow days or or so with what we’re allowed to say and not to say let me me let me just couple more uh for timing and stuff like that one of the things that we talk about and and and this goes to what you do in your
Study is we study history black history as you do so that it doesn’t repeat us itself is that part of your mission to to to bring the light these things so that at least we can say watch out for this absolutely part of my my mission is
If nothing more my students walk away with is the the freedom to question everything and to think about why things are the way they are and not say this is the worst it’s ever been you know those those that was like my biggest like how
Dare you say that like this the wor I’m like my ancestors survived all these things this this is not you know somebody uh occupying the White House from 2016 to 2020 is not the worst uh white folks getting so upset and overthrowing government I’m like that’s happened often that’s why we’ve had
Civil Wars like this is not the worst um and real and or realizing don’t blame people who are in dire situations for their conditions blame the powers that be so those are the things I want my students and anyone who who breaks bread metaphorically or literally with me is
To be like wait a minute it’s not that person’s fault directly as to why they stole a car radio is not that person’s fault why they’re on Public Assistance or why someone is living in dire situations or even substance abuse that’s often socially impacted responses to their conditions and also there may
Be mental health concern soing the least of these and real like does anybody really need a billion dollars like do we really no I got you I got you you know our elders deserve Health Care they should not be rationing how much money for their medications or their food they
Contributed 65 what is it up to age 65 worth of Labor we should be taking care of them you know yes okay I got I got one more how about this one and and and your opinion uh give me a historical story that what closes out
That we need to be most proud of I know Haiti is one of them but like a little small story that you know of something happen happed in South Carolina where they did something and then became such great people let me give you an example
One I might lead you into it is the what happened in Mount Bayou uh and how that guy on that Plantation and I I’ll say this the enslaver allowed his enslaves to to have to learn how to read and write and and and operate their own schools and things
Of that sort when they got their freedom they then moved to another territory and then were able to operate under that same uh uh condition among themselves is there another one like that that comes to mind that you say if y’all didn’t know anything else know this story you
Know I won’t even say one story I say there are I will I will even leave us with this it is our absolute duty to talk to the oldest person we know whether it’s our relative somebody who lives down the street Etc because it will unlock so
Many passages and saves to who and what we are and the legacies that we LED behind um I my dear friend Deborah Shany her husband who’s now passed on John told me a beautiful story about his migration from Yugoslavia to here and why he made it his mission to not to be
Anti-racist he said when they migrated they were fleeing the Holocaust and they were on that boat for however long it took and somebody stole all their food he his siblings his family and they were starving and this he said this tall African man with pearly white teeth
Looked at him and reached in his pocket and gave him a candy bar and then fast forward he meets col young because they were both students at Wayne State and so on and so forth I say all that to say as a people we all have an innate
Ability to know what not having and what it means to share the little bit that we have so we have such a beautiful oral history that it would be disrespectful to our ancestors to not sit with that oldest person and pick their brain and know what they know because there’s so
Much history just in our city alone of people like that so I say it is our his our duty as black folks in particular to collect those stories and we’ll walk tall be prder and really own our legacies our living Legacy of just being embodied
Sell of why we matter in this space we built this for free and we will build and continue to have longlasting institutions long after we leave so I leave us with that task more so than just one particular I got you I love it yeah I got one more question man
Question statement does it does it upset you when black people say we have not come we have not we have not succeeded and all the other issues that they say is wrong with us when they when when when you know and I know that there are so many that counteract those
Thoughts absolutely number one and that’s why I could never say I’m truly I can’t be a pessimist per se I I understand pessimism and sometimes I’m there uh the fact that we’re still here after a 500-year project of trying to annihilate us there you go it 500 years and I’d say about 1460
Is the trading of Africans began and then since you know Columbus and all of that and by the by 1510 or 15 so 500 years till now of trying to annihilate black folks and we’re still here there you go he won right right right right you know I wouldn’t turn down a
Paycheck via reparations you know right right right right sure but I already won because I’m still here and you have to deal with us because we won’t go away there you go with that said have you written a book or anything how can we PR
You stay in touch you know than for that question and now I I feel like I got the you know yeah yeah you but you know when Rocky gets on the top of that yeah there you go the dog uh I am working on a book right now and it’s
Called uh the uh case for reparations and it’s not reparations from the financial aspect but it’s really like how do we as a community of black folks think about reparations what does it mean for us to love all of us regardless of what of our you know conservative
Politics or whatever then once we love on each other unconditionally um or just respect each other unconditionally then we can push back and say this is what we want so that’s that’s what the text so it’s basically from the idea of an imaginary domain a domain a space for us
To imagine that we not only occupy but thrive on and then we can push back against uh anti-black racism and ask for uh restor Justice because I want to be respected when I’m at the checkout line at the grocery store or I’m literally jogging in my neighborhood I care more
About that necessarily than just cutting a check I need you to think about that I got you I love so that’s what that book is about okay well you you know when whenever it comes out I know you working on it and you gonna get it done you
Follow through and and any point after this before that come back on the show we we we only covered a little bit I understand yeah just a little there’s much more that can be said and and we’ll talk offline because I I got some plans for
You yeah yeah I plan on see you next month for a talk you’re giving so yeah yeah cool cool cool um thank you uh for coming on the show everybody did he explain it did you get drunk off of this did he intoxicate your mind I I I just man I
Did what I could to ask a question I didn’t I let me tell you folks hit the Subscribe button on strong Inspirations hit the like button on this because there is no love button and I know you loved it hit the notifications Bell tell somebody about strong Inspirations we
Gonna stay in touch uh uh with this brother no question um and and and promote the book when it comes out and his efforts because he’s on to something big with this thought process and he ended up with how we need to with a game plan there’s a game plan in
Place and it’s easy to do you can do that tonight and there got me some thinking too um and to uh so go to my website everybody business inthe black.net watch my movie business in the black it’s on Amazon read my book black business book um and and come to
My Festival too more information is on the website and and the events that I do and speak and so on and so forth let’s stay in touch with this brother he’s on to something big he’s gonna be a national figure in a matter of moments watch don’t be scared of that neither
Man thank you for that don’t be scared of that man this thing is bigger than you because you already thought it through all you got to do is let it communicate and I’m letting strong Inspirations be part of uh how it communicates to the world and so I say
This to you and I mean this With all sincerity I want you to stay strong stay safe stay on your grind I love what you’re doing what you became what you are because you grew up as you did and you didn’t let them change you cuz some
Of them tried to some of them said something to you I’m sure time again they thought you were different hey you ain’t like the rest of of them you know how you hear them comments so come over here and lose that and you said no that
No I I I’mma deal over here and y’all come to me beautiful thing and for getting that doctorate too and for following it up did you did did your parents I mean your mom still alive did they all see you get it and everything thank you for that
Question I was I’m so blessed that I got to share with my my grandmother who’s you know been my biggest champion since I can remember and my mother and we had a little scare there but she she she’s fine now U but my mom and you know all
My living uh women in my family came all the way to New York because that’s where I got my PhD at St John’s and they were there for me when I got hooded so so I I’m very blessed that they got to see that um my oldest cousins were
There too so good good we all proud of you man all right um do you do you speak another language or something like that or I I can can communicate in eura pretty EAS okay okay how about this if that’s the case close us out in goodbye and
Whatever however you want to say it uh uho B omo Africa uh odabo which means uh thank you very much children of Africa and um see you soon he that’s it thank you
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