Redeem a Nation: Tulsa, Heritage, and the Path to Repair

[00:00:08] How are you guys feeling? How y'all feeling? It was raining, now it's not raining, then it was raining, so it's sun, so I'm excited. But first of all, thank you all for being here tonight. My name is Ramonda Young and my husband and I own MahoganyBooks. This is my husband back here, Mr. Derek Young. Yes, yes, yes, okay. We are the owners of MahoganyBooks and we've actually been in business now 19 years.

[00:00:35] 19 years, right? Thank you! Okay, I appreciate that. 19 years and the whole reason why we started MahoganyBooks was how do we make black books accessible, right? I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma and I always say this intro, but this is the first time in 19 years that I could say I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma and the author that's presenting tonight is from Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I'm all extra, okay, I'm all extra excited.

[00:01:03] I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, maybe about a mile from Black Wall Street and when I tell you I never had Black Wall Street taught in my classes, it was crazy. I never knew it existed and it was a mile from my home. And so for us when creating MahoganyBooks, we never wanted somebody else to feel like their history was overlooked, was insignificant, because someone in the classroom thought it was not important. And so now we ship books all over the United States and for us we did not want to leave it in somebody else's hands.

[00:01:31] It's in our hands whether somebody has access to their history and their books. And so here we are 19 years later and we're making these books accessible and we're having these type of conversations that are important to our community, important to other people in the community, and for you all to be out tonight means something very deep to us.

[00:01:49] So give yourselves a round of applause for being here. Yes, yes, yes. Some of y'all had to get babysitters, some of y'all left work early, a lot of different things, but you made it here tonight and that's important to us. And let me get into our nights because I'm ready to hear this conversation as well. And I brought my notes so I would not, so I wouldn't miss anything. Oh, but let me go back with Mahogany Books. We are also, we're here at National Harbor right across the street here is our actual bookstore.

[00:02:17] But probably in the next 60, hopefully 60 days or sooner, we're opening up another location at Woodmore Town Center and Glen Arden. Yes, right? Yes. So not only do we ship all across the United States, but we'll have another physical location. So I'm just letting you guys know here, y'all got options. You got options when it comes to shopping with us. So let's get into it. Tonight, we are here for the book, Redeem a Nation. Yes. Y'all need to clap for that. Redeem a Nation.

[00:02:50] And our conversation host tonight is none other than Dr. Greg Carr from Howard University and all the things. Right? Okay, H-U, I hear y'all. And so Dr. Carr is, let me go back. Dr. Carr is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. H-U. Oh, okay, H-U. That's our events coordinator, H-U, back here. Yeah, either one. Over here?

[00:03:19] Mm-hmm. Okay. Howard University adjunct faculty and the Howard School of Law. He holds a PhD in African-American Studies from Temple University and a J-D from Ohio State University College of Law. Please help me welcome Dr. Greg Carr. Yeah, Dr. Carr bad in his own right. Right? Everybody's like, yeah, I know.

[00:03:49] And so tonight, our featured author is none other than Demario Solomon Simmons. Let me be, yes, we clap it up. Okay. And a fun fact about this brother who's very dear to me, he and his wife. We both attended the same high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I'm just, I'm through the moon tonight because I never get an author that's from my hometown. You gotta name the school. Booker T. No question.

[00:04:17] Booker T in Tulsa. Okay, I see some Tulsa. Booker T in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So that's where our high school was. So let me read his credentials too because I don't want to miss anything. Demario Solomon Simmons, Esquire, graduated with honors from the University of Oklahoma and became the first African-American to receive the Joel Jankowski Award for Most Outstanding Law Graduate. He has been practicing, a practicing civil rights attorney for almost 20 years and currently is the managing partner of Solomon Simmons Law.

[00:04:46] He is the co-founder and executive director of the Justice for Greenwood Foundation and co-founder of the MVPs Foundation. He has been featured on CNN, The View, Good Morning America, ABC News, ESPN, The New York Times, and more. And he lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with his wife, Mia. So please help me welcome a classmate of mine and a dear, dear friend, Mr. Demario Solomon Simmons.

[00:05:09] I see all of y'all. Man, this is amazing. I'm speechless and most of y'all know me. That doesn't happen a lot. I am very, very forward to be here in D.C. to have all of you.

[00:05:39] I've seen so many people that's been a part of my journey to get here. I came here in 2003 as a law student, fell in love with D.C. And so many people in this room. I'm seeing my boy, my frat brother Isaac King. I'm seeing Ben Wilson. I'm seeing Joe Briggs. I'm seeing my client, Carlotta Mack, who's in this room. So many folks. My co-counsel, Mackenzie Hayes. So many folk, Catherine and Barry, who saved my life when I was about to be in a snowstorm. About 15 inches of snow. I was living in there, back in their basement apartment.

[00:06:07] And I was like, I'm going to die up in here. They came and saved me. I'm so happy to be here, guys. This is wonderful. And then with Dr. Carr, give it up to Dr. Carr. My man, David Miller. Oh, my beautiful wife, Mia Fleming. Give it up for my wife. Yeah. Yeah. So many people.

[00:06:35] So I put my glasses on like I was going to. I'm going to take these off so we can just get started. Professor, in case y'all didn't know, you decided you were going to go ahead and practice law, but you was going to join us in the professoriate. I tried it for a little bit. Yeah, you did. Yeah. Yeah. African American Studies major. So anybody ask you what you can do with a degree in Black Studies, that's what it look like right there. Yeah. And my wife's grandfather, when I first told him that he was 90 years old, he was born like 1910.

[00:07:04] And I told him I was majoring in African American Studies. He said, you went to school for Negroes? Wait, wait, what? You went to school for Negroes? That's a true story. That's a true story. That was a reevaluate, nigga. This is going to work out. I got a PhD in Negroes. I guess I'm really messed up. Wow. And y'all got to update that bio. I'm not the chair anymore. I got promoted back to the faculty, but they treat me like Mary and Barry. I guess as a chair for life. No, I'm not the chair anymore. But maybe we can start there.

[00:07:34] How many people, did anybody here this morning when DeMarie was on Sirius? Oh, good. Some of y'all, okay. So, you know, we started with 1866, but I thought tonight maybe we'll start somewhere else. With that professor that introduced you to something that by rights every Tulsan should know from birth. Tell us a little bit about that prof you encountered that kind of introduced you to. Oh, absolutely introduced me. So, you know, I grew up in Tulsa in the Greenwood area.

[00:08:00] I went to school at George Washington Carver Middle School, right on Greenwood Avenue. There you go, Carver. Right on Greenwood Avenue. And I never knew anything about the massacre. I never heard anything about Greenwood, the greatness of Greenwood. Until I was playing football down at the University of Oklahoma. And I was in a class intro to African American studies. My professor was a man by the name of Dr. Kepra Nurakim. Wow. And he became a great friend and mentor. He's deceased now, unfortunately.

[00:08:30] And he's about 6'5", about 330 pounds. He had long locks down his back and shaved head on the side of the Mohawk. And he had a big, booming James Earl Jones voice. And you know, I'm just an athlete. I'm trying to chill. I'm in the back. I'm just trying to chill. And he's talking about this Tulsa and this massacre and all this wealth of these black folks. I'm like, man, I'm from North Tulsa. That's not true. And I'm sitting there thinking, man, should I say something?

[00:08:59] Because I don't really want to get in this guy's crosshairs. But I raised my hand and said, Dr. Kepra, I'm from North... I said it with my chest. I'm from North Tulsa. That's not true. And he humiliated me, as he should have. But it lit a fire in me that has never been extinguished. And what did he tell you to do to make sure to verify what he was saying was true? He told me to go home and talk to my elders. Wow. There's the life lesson right there. He said, ask your elders. They'll say everything I'm telling you actually happened.

[00:09:29] And man, that lit a fire in me has never been extinguished. I wanted to educate myself and others about Greenwood and get justice and reparations for my community. Because, you know, I grew up in a single mom household and had a great family, but we struggled financially. Many years, we didn't have a car. It was a big deal when we got our first VCR. Like, that was a big deal, VCR. Think about that, right? And so I'm talking about where's all this wealth? You know, the neighborhood I grew up in started out like most black neighborhoods, all white neighborhoods.

[00:09:58] And when we moved in in 1978, all the white people moved out and all the businesses and stuff started moving out. So by the time I'm 10 years old, our neighborhood is very dilapidated going down, right? And so he's talking about this gray area of all these black businesses and black millionaires and professionals. Where are they at? And when I found out what happened, I said, we got to do something about that. And it's, oh, before I do anything else, can we thank Mahogany for this? Mahogany books. We can definitely, please, just get them. The Youngs.

[00:10:27] I was telling them, I sneak out here. I'm a member. If y'all not members, y'all go across the street and get y'all membership. So I come and buy books. Usually I miss y'all, but I leave my money here, which is what I absolutely have to do. But I want to make sure before we do anything else that we kind of level set. So how long do you want us before we open it up? Because there's a lot of folk in here who can, what are you? Okay. Got you. Thank you. I want to make sure that. Because we could just talk. See, there we go. Oh, he's Q's in here. But you only need one out. There's a bunch of Q's in here. Watch out, Dr. Cough. You only need one out. Watch out.

[00:10:57] You only need one out for this. But you say your father-in-law is Rosi? My father-in-law was Rosi? In 1957, Tennessee State University. Yes, I'm talking about it. That's all right. This is a hella black story in these pages right here. Just letting y'all know. But what does that say to you, DeMario, that you not only a son of Tulsa, you are not only born and bred, you live and breathe that and continue to breathe, but you could come to manhood in that city and not know.

[00:11:25] So, now that you are doing this work and bringing all these clouds of witnesses with you, Mother Randall still with you. How was she in it? Mother Randall, Mother Leslie Bennefield Randall, our one living survivor, is 111 years old. Yeah, man. No question. Yes, indeed. So, but these elders, was there a break in the chain of transmission, mouth to ear, the stories?

[00:11:53] Because what you're doing now, I don't think it's probably an overstatement to say that we all at least know Black Wall Street, the name. We know something of what happened in 1921. But for you to grow up right there, was it something that people didn't talk about? The elders just didn't, you know, were they reticent or? Yeah. Well, you know, there was an official 75, 80-year conspiracy of silence by the government officials that perpetrated the massacre.

[00:12:23] And people were afraid. I mean, this was a, we're talking about just a level set, what we're talking about. We're talking about the worst, most deadly domestic terrorist event that ever happened in the history of this country. You're talking about a community of about 11,000 people. 1,550 homes and businesses destroyed. 8,000 people made homeless overnight. 3,000 people disappeared. So, so just, I want you to really understand when I say that.

[00:12:50] 3,000 people that were in Greenwood on May 30th in 1921, on June 2nd, 1921, we never heard from them again. We don't know if they were thrown in the Arkansas River, thrown in a mass pit, burnt up, or did they just leave town and say, I'm never going back to that place.

[00:13:07] So when you really understand the horrors of what actually happened, men, women, children being raped, bludgeoned to death, stabbed, shot, hung, bombs dropping from there. There's a first time in US history that planes dropped bombs on the US city. This is what we're talking about. So people were afraid to discuss this. And so about the time I'm coming along, this is just not a part of the discussion at all.

[00:13:36] Now, were there black people obviously that knew this happened? And was there some rumblings? Sure. But as a discussion, don't talk about this. Because these people were afraid that this can happen again if you talk about it. The people that perpetrated the massacre, they didn't come in from some other place and come to Tulsa. They lived in Tulsa. What's up, Jay? They lived in Tulsa. So these people had to live with the same perpetrators who had walked among them shooting people with impunity.

[00:14:05] Remember, no one was ever held accountable. No one was ever arrested. No one ever paid any compensation or reparations. And they went on with their life like nothing ever happened. So that conspiracy of silence was very, very real. Okay. So now, and by the way, the book is in five parts. And you know us beautifully at the end of the book, you articulate the principles that you've kind of organized. But the book is organized by this. So by the time you get there, you realize, oh, I see what you did.

[00:14:35] And I mean, I suppose there are the academics who knew, as we know. And then in most recent years, what everybody from Carlos Hill, Floyd Cooper did the illustrated children's book. But, yeah. Well, let me just say to the academics, no, because literally, when people would try to write about it, there was someone trying to do a writing. And then in 1976, that would have been the 50th. 1971, that would have been the 50th anniversary. And there was a white reporter that wanted to write a story about it. He got death threats. Okay.

[00:15:05] And you go to the Tulsa Tribune, which was the newspaper that said we're going to have a lynching tonight of a Negro. When you go to that newspaper, that portion of the newspaper is gone. The Michael Fish. Some of y'all remember Michael Fish. The Michael Fish is deleted. It's gone. And you know how crazy that is for a Michael Fish to be gone. That page is there, but that article is cut out. But there was one. What's the sister's name? 1922. She took testimony. Yeah, Mary Parrish. You can tell us about it. Yeah, so Mary Parrish.

[00:15:34] I'm glad you brought her up because there was a book that was written in 1980 by an academic, and it's called The Death of a Promised Land. And they really try to say that was like the first real book about the massacre. And this is an academic who's a great academic. But Mary Parrish was a survivor, a black woman survivor who wrote the first person account of it. Mary Parrish, the book is back in print. So you can go and get that.

[00:16:00] And she really does a good job of explaining, you know, what happened, what was lost. And she gets lost to history. They don't talk about her being the first book. They talk about this book in 1980 from this professor from the University of Michigan. Well, I'm glad you ain't beat up a whole lot of people. When you read this book. Well, that's because my wife won't let me. Yeah, clearly. You put that in here as well. That's what I say. I mean, because the indignities, the continued attempt to erase.

[00:16:24] And while there's only one 1921, they come back for a second round a few decades later with gentrification. Talk about that. Well, let's start right after the massacre. Then they passed a racist law that said the black folks who did survive that we could not rebuild unless we use brick. And that's going to be way more expensive because remember, everybody lost everything.

[00:16:51] Now, they lose everything and not get their insurance claims paid. But anybody heard of a bank book? A bank book is back in the day, you have a bank books how much money you go to the bank. What happens in fire? The bank books burnt up. Well, no, but one of the genius parts you write about, all their money wasn't gone. Where was the money, brother? Some of the money was in the chimneys. They had money in the chimneys because niggeros don't trust the bank. So they burnt the whole house down, but they were able to go back. Some people, some people, but for most people, they couldn't get their money out the banks.

[00:17:21] So you're talking about so many survivors who did survive had money in banks and they were able to receive it. So now you tell them they have to spend so much more money to rebuild using brick. But there was a famous black, you ever heard of Dr. John Hope Franklin? Yes. Okay, his father was a powerful black attorney whose shoulders I stand on Barbara R. Wine. His name was B.C. Franklin. And he started filing lawsuits days after the massacre in a tent. It's a picture in the book. They're sitting in a tent with his law partner, I.W. Spears, and they're filing lawsuits.

[00:17:51] And they're secretary. And they're secretary, that's right. Hey, sister, come on, man. They got their sister. They can't practice in law in a tent. Come on, in a tent. I say that to say, man, we were dealing with opposition even after the massacre, right? Because understand this, those who survived, they put them, this is not my words, these are the words that they used at the time, they put them in internment camps. And they were in internment camps. And they were in internment camps. Some people were up to 18 months. And in these internment camps, you had to wear a green tag.

[00:18:21] And you couldn't leave that internment camp unless your white employer came and signed you out. Or the city forced you to clean up your own community so these people were re-enslaved. And so this is what we're talking about. People were living in tents. And then in 1923, they built the largest KKK Clavern in the United States right next to Greenwood in 1923. Then they continued, even though, and B.C. Franklin, by the way, he won that case.

[00:18:50] Somehow he won that case. But then they decided we're not going to give Greenwood any services. We're not going to give you any water. We're not going to give you electricity. We're not going to pave your roads. Many parts of Greenwood didn't have paved roads until the end of the 1940s. So this is what we're dealing with this whole time. And as people were able to get back on their feet, then what comes? The Eisenhower era comes. And that brings in what we call Negro removal, urban renewal.

[00:19:17] Whereas a person like Mother Randall, who is seven years old, six years old, had a run for her life because her grandmother's home was burnt. In 1980, the city of Tulsa comes and takes her home and gives it to a white business. How much did they give her? $11,000. What's up, Kwesi? $11,000. So in the book, you talk about this really truly remarkable career.

[00:19:45] For a young man, I'm like, man. I mean, because, and there are folks here, us, and Keechee is here, Taifa, of course. So, you know, you go to law school, and I don't know if you want to talk about the years before that when you were such a stellar student before. But at any rate, no. And the C in driver's head. Brother Sheldon knows that. You said you earned that C though. I didn't earn it. The coach is just like me. I was a pretty good football player. I graduated 238 out of 255 in my bottom of my high school class.

[00:20:11] And that was only because people, I have such a great personality. But you was going to the league anyway. I was going to the league. It didn't matter. Okay. And then life happened, huh? Some injuries. Go ahead. You want me to hold it? You got it? You straight? All right. But in that process, I want to talk a little bit about it because your mother's line and your father's line really represent the journey of African people and the journey of indigenous people.

[00:20:38] So even with all this work around Tulsa and reparations, which you've kind of expanded with all this great cloud of witnesses into a real thrust and a model for talking about reparations, you also 10 toes down at your father's side with the Black Creeks. And I thought it was fascinating that 1866 year. Could you talk about the significance of 1866 and how that plays into not only your bloodline,

[00:21:06] but your justice fight on behalf of the indigenous people? Yeah, absolutely. Well, to talk about 1866, we have to first back up to anybody heard of Trail of Tears? Well, a lot of people don't realize on a Trail of Tears about 40% of those people look like me. They were considered quote unquote African or African blood. Many of those people were enslaved by the so-called five civilized tribes.

[00:21:32] And the reason they call these people the five so-called five civilized tribes, which is the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Seminole, Choctaw, and Cherokee. I'm sorry. And a creek. Muscogee Creek, my tribe. Is because they adopted European culture. Meaning they spoke English, they adopted Christianity, and they also adopted plantation style economy. And enslaving Africans and their own black members. And I want to be real clear.

[00:22:01] There were black people in these nations when Columbus and them showed up in this hemisphere. And people don't realize that. So in 1828, when President Andrew Jackson, a virulent racist, decided to kick these nations out of the Southeast United States and march them to Indian territory, which we now know as Oklahoma. These people were on the Trail of Tears. So my ancestor, several ancestors, but the one that's most key, his name was Cal Minko, also known as Cal Tom.

[00:22:31] Hey, one of my relatives over there. She said, hey, what's going on? He came on this Trail of Tears. And then they rebuilt themselves back in Indian territory. And then the Civil War popped off. And a lot of people don't realize during the Civil War, these nations, some of them split and went with the Confederacy. Because Confederacy came in and said, you can continue to enslave these Africans if you fight with us.

[00:22:59] And one thing you have to really realize about these nations. We didn't own Native Americans, these nations at least, we didn't own land individually, individual land ownership. It was communal land ownership. So your biggest source of wealth was your enslaved people. You can own a person, but you can own the land. And during that Civil War, Cal Tom became a chief of the Creek Nation because he could speak English and Creek. He saved the lives of thousands of Creeks who were starving to death at a place called Fort Gibson.

[00:23:28] At the end of that war, when they were doing the treaties, he was one of the five individuals who negotiated and signed that treaty. And in that treaty, he was principally responsible for putting in Article 2, which ended enslavement within the Creek Nation and granted Creeks of African descent full citizenship. So Article 2 is like the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment of the United States Constitution for black people.

[00:23:53] So in other words, Cal Tom was a lawyer for the black Creeks in 1866. And on June 14th, 1866, it would be the 160th anniversary of the treaty. Now what's so amazing about that, the black Creeks are the co-founders of Greenwood. If there are no black Creeks, there is no Greenwood. Because the black Creeks were able to have land, they were able to be successful, they were able to be free. And that brought in so many other black people from around what we call the United States.

[00:24:22] They used to call the black natives, native blacks. That's what they called themselves. And they called black folks that came in from the United States, state Negroes. That's a whole nother book because that was a big issue. Because these native blacks had been free and independent for up to 50 years before they had even dealed with the segregation level of Jim Crowism. And Oklahoma was mostly settled by the south. People think Tulsa is Midwest. Tulsa is the south by culture and history.

[00:24:53] Both the native folks coming out from Alabama, Georgia area, and the white folks. Do you mind giving a shout out to the young sister whose oil, just the discovery of her land made it possible that? Yeah, Sarah's Oil. It's a movie out right now called Sarah's Oil. But even in that movie, which is a fantastic, you know, I'm so glad about that movie. But they call her an African American girl. She was not an African American girl. She was a black Creeks. She was a Creeks of African descent.

[00:25:20] So my great grandfather, John W. Simmons, was born in 1898 and is on the Grudgin of Dolls Rolls. He would tell my father, we're not the same. You know what I'm saying? You're one of them Negroes. I'm a black Cree. Actually, that's perfect because when you make that turn, you meet Charles Overtree and you and Angela Ryan, all the folks you're in school with with Balsa,

[00:25:48] and you end up with Adjitoro and all the Incobra folks. Yeah, yes. That self-determination line, so important among Africans who were trafficked here. But 1866 is also, remember if it serves me correctly, there's a room full of lawyers, so y'all correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which is the precursor to the 14th Amendment, right? It's still on the books, I guess, 1981, 1982 section, federal law. But the indigenous people are sovereign.

[00:26:18] The American Negro, I don't know what we are to this day. So I'm saying, but in your fight for reparations, I don't think you really are leading with, it's included, but you don't lead with our relationship to the United States as citizens. You ground this in black self-determination. Could you talk a little bit about how reparations isn't necessarily, at least the way you write about it and think about it and speak about it and practice law,

[00:26:46] isn't necessarily about being included in any project that forces us into shrinking ourselves. Particularly as a black creep, your relationship with the United States is different than mine. Is that important? Is that a distinction without a difference? And how can we learn from this complicated idea of being African in this polity? What can we learn as it relates to repair and reparations? What we owe each other and what our relationship is to the state? That's a great question.

[00:27:16] I talk a little bit about this in the book. I talk about the term sovereignty. You know, we talk about like France Fénin talked about the difference between real sovereignty and flag sovereignty. And I think in many cases in our black communities, we have flag sovereignty. Like we're still colonizing our thinking. We're still thinking the same, you know, we're using the same language as our colonizers. We're doing all the same cultural moral ways as our colonizers. And then, but we got something inside of us that said, that just don't feel right.

[00:27:43] That just don't feel right because that's really not where we come from. Like we are a communal people. We're not an individualistic people, but that is the moral way of this culture that we live in. And that's where that tension always is. This is why we always are looking for someone who does well. We say, well, what are they doing for the community? Because that's really like who we've been for tens of thousands of years. It's over in this last hundred and what years that we've really been like a part of this culture.

[00:28:10] You know, Dr. King, one of my heroes, he said, you know, I feel like I have integrated my people into a burning home. Right? And this is this hell that's burning. Right? And we're filling the flames not only from those who want to do us real harm, but it's really a dichotomy within our psyche because we know this is not really who we are. But we have to try to figure out how to survive in this system. Oh, that's good. Actually, you teed it up, man.

[00:28:34] Because, no, because you're in these courts and anybody, as you walk us through the difference between a trial lawyer and an appellate lawyer and how you had to become an expert appellate lawyer because they wanted you to argue the case before the Oklahoma Supreme Court. What you understand is the level of intellectual work it takes to engage in that. This from a guy who wasn't going to practice law. You know what I'm saying?

[00:28:55] But what you just said, I think, is very important because that tension, you've never turned away from it. In other words, you're not surrendering your full personhood when you walk into the courtroom. How difficult is that? Because I'm thinking now when you talk about the Dawes Act and how much blood makes you indigenous because I say we different. But my people from Alabama, my mama's people got some creek in them.

[00:29:24] And we know that creek Seminole beef and who was with us, who wasn't with us. But I'm saying, but I have no interest in trying to prove what level of indigenous I am in front of a racist like John Roberts. Remember the adoptive couple versus baby girl case. Well, how much blood makes you an Indian? You can go to hell and your mama too. All you white people can go to hell. No, no, no, no. But I'm raising this because, man, you'll be mad as hell.

[00:29:53] Every page in here. And then to have that exacerbated by absorbing the stories of these elders. And then you go in the courtroom. That's right. Could you talk a little bit about what it's like to practice law in pursuit of justice on a claim like this in front of people that you know are probably against you and maybe share a couple of them stories of what some judges said to you coming in and out of the courtroom as you were doing that work?

[00:30:21] Well, you know, as I talk about in the book, I have to, I talk about this a lot with Mia. I have to delude myself. And what I mean by that is I have to take away everything that I know about this country, everything I know about this legal system, particularly being in Oklahoma. And I have to say, well, if I can just prepare stronger, be better, be smarter, and understand the law and the facts better than the other side, I can be successful. And so that's what I have to do.

[00:30:48] So it's a mental gymnastics that I have to go in there every time saying I'm going to win despite the odds. So if you're talking about, like, going in front of the Oklahoma Supreme Court and it's me, and I always see myself even here like, this is so dope. I always see myself as this little country kid from North Tulsa that grew up asthmatic, almost died a couple times with a speech impediment, had to go to speech therapy for all my life, and sometimes it still comes out. I always kind of like laugh at that.

[00:31:17] So I'm standing in front of these nine white, they call themselves conservatives, justices that I know are not for what I'm talking about. But I have to stand up there and be more prepared than the other side when the other side, they do the bare minimum. They come in there, they do the bare minimum, they read their arguments. It's just whack. And I got to come up there and I have to be Johnny Crockett at every time, right?

[00:31:46] You said you saw Ogletree, he had no notes. You said I ain't never going to have no notes. Yeah, that's right. That was a high standard too, brother, I'll tell you what. And so that's what it takes, you know. And as I'm thinking about that, I see one of my former clients over there, Carletta, I hope you don't mind. I haven't seen her in a long time and it's very emotional to see her and her husband Lloyd, who I represented them in a very difficult case in 2000. And they were in Oklahoma City. And we lost that case because of racism.

[00:32:15] We tried that case and I destroyed the doctor on the stand, I destroyed the doctor's expert, and we still lost. And I was so dejected after losing that case that I was going to quit practicing law. And Carletta Mack, man. Is this the case where the juror came after? That's her. Wow. Do y'all mind? It's in the book, but please tell. What did the juror say after you had clearly won this case, but the jury didn't give it to y'all?

[00:32:45] The jury said we know the doctor was wrong, but we don't want to hurt the doctor's reputation. That's dumb. Hey man, respect to y'all. That's crazy. That's when you know you just want to walk away at that point. Ain't no rules. But let me finish though. Yes, sir. Because Carletta and Lloyd Mack, they said no, DeMario, the fact how you represented my family, we need people like you to represent our people. And I just want to tell you publicly, Carletta, thank you.

[00:33:15] Because I was going to quit. Because I had just got off of the losing the race massacre case with Charles Ogletree and then. We had just lost that to the Supreme Court. We had just lost the legislative bail that we tried in 2007. I had just lost the Crete case. I did another Crete case back then. We litigated that for three years. I won at the district court level, got to their Supreme Court, and they just overturned it summarily.

[00:33:45] And then we take this case to trial, which we litigate that case, Carletta's case, for like four years. Went all over the country doing depositions. It was a clear wrong. They left a towel on her stomach. It was a clear wrong. It was just too many clear wrongs, and I was like, I can't do this anymore. But that's why I do this work. Somebody got to stand up for our people. And you know it's so beautiful. Oh yeah, absolutely.

[00:34:14] Even as I don't know how you worked those punishing days, brother, but nobody does it alone. And at a critical juncture, you were instructed by a wise person to find you a Phil Jackson. Could you talk about that? Yeah. Yeah, that wise person is my wife. Indeed. And what does that even mean? Talk to us. Well, first of all, I just have to say, and I talk about, you know, me and Mia, we've been married. It'll be 22 years in August. We've been together.

[00:34:43] Well, she don't like me. She don't like me. Since you run out there to Langston chasing white boys on the way to go get here. We've been together over 30 years. I'm proud of the high school sweethearts. And she picked me out of a yearbook in eighth grade. True story. But I was, we were grinding. You got to remember what was happening in the country, right?

[00:35:08] We were, we were going through the first time that this other, this guy that was elected, that's elected now. We was going through that. The Centennial was coming up. I'm working hard trying to figure out a claim. At this time, I had a very small legal team, a couple of classmates, and we were just trying to figure out what could we file. We need to file something. And my good friend, Professor Eric Miller. And I was just like struggling. I was just working and the pandemic was happening. George Floyd happened. And I was just like working crazy.

[00:35:37] My wife kept saying, everybody else in America is taking a break. And you working 20 hours a day. What is your problem? In a suit. In a suit. Oh wait, no, you left that out. You wait, maybe I missed that. You, you getting up in a suit in a pandemic. I was just wanting to keep my mind safe. I just needed to keep the mindset because in my mind. No, no, no, no question. No question. In my mind, I was like. Because Buck Franklin had a suit on. He passed along in that tent. No question. I felt like if we couldn't get something done by the centennial in 2021, like it was like our last shot. That's how I was feeling.

[00:36:07] Like we got to get something done. And so I was just kind of struggling. And Mia was like, and she don't really watch basketball. And she was like, well, who is Michael Jordan's coach? And I was like, what does this have to do with anything? What are you talking about? And she, I was like, Phil Jackson. She's like, okay, you need a Phil Jackson. You need a Phil Jackson to help you, help you get to where you're trying to go. And I was like, well, who do you think about? And I was thinking, it's like, well, you know, Bryan Stevenson is like, he's like, in this work, that's the guy. She's like, well, call Bryan. I was like, I don't know Bryan like that.

[00:36:36] I can't just, I can't just call Bryan Stevenson. He's Bryan Stevenson. And my wife said, but you Demario Solomon Simmons. That's right. Come on, man. You know, God blessed this whole thing because this is like January 2020. This is like right after the, right at the beginning of the pandemic, like February 2020. And I reached out to Bryan. We had a mutual friend, my client, Dr. Tiffany Crutcher.

[00:37:06] Shout out to Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, twin sister of Terence Crutcher, who I represent, her family. And she, she knew Bryan from Montgomery. I had met him a couple of times, but I didn't know him. And she said, well, you know, I can give you his email. He's very busy. I mean, he's Bryan Stevenson. So I email him, tell him what I'm trying to do. Need some help. He's like, you know, I think this is worthwhile. Got a lot going on right now. You know, I'll try to get back to you. And then, you know, Bryan's a great guy. Very nice. And a couple months go by and this pandemic is raging now.

[00:37:35] So everything is shut down. So he has time. And he actually read this memo that I sent him about what we were trying to accomplish. And he called me, he said, man, you know, I got, I got a chance to read this. And I think what I, he said, I never thought about this way of trying to get reparatory justice. I'm going to help you. And he helped fund our litigation. But more important than that, any decision that I made, anything I was able to call him. I mean, we talked, he became my big brother that he is to this day.

[00:38:05] I could call him at any time. I could call him right now and say, hey, I just need five minutes. And we were dealing with an issue. We were trying all type of stuff. And we were trying to get a, figure out how we could bring this intellectual property claim. Because they were utilizing some of the images. The city was utilizing some of the images, people that they had destroyed. And people in homes and stuff. I'm like, you're using this to help with your tourism. You should be paying these people, right? We was trying to figure this out. So I told Brian, I said, hey, I need some help with this intellectual property issue.

[00:38:35] Do you know anybody that can help us? And then he said, you know, I know a firm in New York. And, you know, they're pretty good firm. You know, you got to be careful with some of these big firms. Because they try to take over. But it's a good firm. And he connected me with this firm called Schulte, Roth, and Zabel. And, of course, they were going through their whole George Floyd racial equity. So, you know, it was all good at that time. And I met this. Days ago. Days ago. Days ago. And I got connected with them. And we talked about the intellectual property issue.

[00:39:03] The brother's name was Danny Greenberg. And he came back a couple weeks later. And he said, man, you know, I talked to the firm. And we can help you on this little part. But we want to be a part of the case. We want to be a part of the big case if you have us. And I met a sister who's here right now, Mackenzie Hayes. Sit up, Mackenzie. Sit up. Mackenzie. Mackenzie was co-chair at Racial Justice. And she's short, but she's fired. Be careful. Just like Barbara Irwin. She's sitting right next to Barbara Irwin.

[00:39:32] Number two sisters, you better be careful. You think they're sad too? I know Barbara. They'll tear you up. They'll tear you up. No question. Man, they came on board, man. And I got to meet one of their founders, which is a friend of mine named Bill Zabel, who wrote the brief in Love and Versus Virginia. And so he said, I told him about the story. And he stayed on the phone call. He said, and he called me D, which was like we had never met. How about that? He just went to my nickname. All right, bet.

[00:40:01] He called me D. He said, I never heard this. I can't believe this. He said, whatever you need for my firm. Whatever you need. 30 years old. 30 years old. They came on board, Shorty, Ross, and Zabel. And man, they've been rocking with us ever since that deal. And I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up another mentor of mine, Ben Wilson, right here with Beverage and Diamond Law Firm. He's retired now. But give Ben Wilson.

[00:40:24] Because when we were talking about the Creek case, Ben read a book about my ancestor, Cal Tom, called Citizen Creek that was written as a historical fiction. Ben got a hold of that book because one of his friends on the board he was on, that was his wife, was the author. He read the book and then we got acquainted. And he read the book and he said, Demario, I want to help you with the Creek case. And his firm, Beverage and Diamond, has been working with us since 2018. Man. This is the song. I'm looking.

[00:40:55] I'm going to ask you one more question. Okay. And then let's open it up if that's alright. And believe me, it may seem like we've talked about a lot in the book and we have, but this just scratches the surface. I don't know if you want to talk about your cousin, but the one out there at Berkeley was with you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, but that ain't even the question. We can talk about that in a minute. Y'all may, you may decide whether you want them to read it in the book or not. But, uh, I thought cause you know. Yeah, I know you got a lot of cousins. Yeah. No question. But the framework.

[00:41:26] I don't, again, I'm thinking about this reparations journey because it is too rare, it seems to me. With folk now, reparations being a topic we talk about, but there are so few bridge figures. Cause we about 10 years apart. And 70s, 80s, baby. I'm 60s, 70s, baby. But we were able to become part of communities from those black power, those Pan-Africanists,

[00:41:55] those warrior lawyers, like some of the ones who are here. And now the reparations movement is now increasingly informed by people who don't have that connection, that organic connection. But your framework here has the fingerprints of that black self-determination all over it. And the way that you frame reparations without, you don't avoid the question of compensation and restitution,

[00:42:19] but it's not, could you talk about community love, freedom, mind, state, ownership, wealth circulation, and willful resilience. Those pillars of reparations. And then we're going to open it up. Yeah. Well, cause I look at reparations, both what is owed to us from the outside and what we owe ourselves from the inside. Yes. So those five principles you talk about, I call them the Think Greenwood principles. And these are the principles that built the Greenwood community. And that is number one, community love.

[00:42:47] And that has to be our foundational, where we are. It has to be a radical love. And I always tell people that Greenwood is really a love story that people don't really understand. Because when you realize that how did the massacre actually start? It started because a 19 year old shoeshine boy by the name of Dick Rowland, he shined shoes for white people for a nickel. He was not a business owner. I mean, he was not a property owner. He was not wealthy. He was not well known.

[00:43:17] But he was a member of the community. And so you had him, he was about to be lynched. There was a mob of 2,000 whites outside of the courthouse wanting to lynch him. And some of the most prominent, wealthy, powerful black men and women in America decided we love him so much that we're willing to put everything on the line to protect his life. And although we lost the battle, but for 12 hours, we fought them to a standstill.

[00:43:46] It took 36 hours for them to overcome us. And when I read that little account where they said we were little boys and they told us our job was to keep them supplied with bullets. Right. Like, everybody fought these people. Everybody fought these people because community love is the thing we need more. In this era right now, we need a radical community love. Because the fact of the matter is, and this is just the reality, just like in Greenwood, we eventually lost because we were outgunned and outnumbered.

[00:44:15] We may be outgunned and outnumbered again, but we need to stand together as those people in Greenwood. Because although those men and many of those men, I'm so proud to be from Greenwood. They gave their life protecting their women and their children, their property. And many people escaped like my wife's grandmother. My wife is a direct descendant. Her grandmother at five years old, Geneva Fleming, escaped down the Sand Springs railroad tracks because of those men and women who stood in the way of that mob.

[00:44:44] And so for all of us to have whatever skill set that we have to stand in the way of what's coming down for our community, we only can stand as that community love. Anybody watch Game of Thrones? You remember Game of Thrones, hold the door? We didn't know what that meant. And it finally, hold the door. I mean, that's community love. Nobody's really like wanting to sign up for that. But that's what it takes to build a Greenwood.

[00:45:12] And then you have a freedom mind state. You know, people came to Greenwood to be free. I just told you the story. Black folks were looking for a place to be free. We went to Canada. We went to Mexico. We went to Africa. We went to the Caribbean. But the place was Greenwood, Oklahoma. We went to the P.G. We were always looking for somewhere. Looking for somewhere to be free. So we have to have a freedom mind state. Absolutely.

[00:45:40] And a freedom mind state is to do for self and for self. And the third is that ownership. And not just ownership of property and money. That's important. But the ownership of our culture. Yes. Ownership of our attitude. The ownership of our community. Fourth, wealth circulation. That's what we're doing right here. Because while you guys are purchasing books from my sister, black bookstore, you circulating that wealth.

[00:46:09] But we also circulating our wisdom. Yes. Because our wisdom is our greatest wealth along with our health. Yes. And we circulate that. So in Greenwood, it was a community that circulated amongst each other. People knew each other. They knew their neighbors. They knew the store owners. They knew the people in Greenwood. They knew even Dick Rowland, a shoeshine. My God. And then number five, willful resilience.

[00:46:35] You know, their stated goal on the postcard that they sent around the country after the massacre was to run the Negro out of Tulsa, David Miller. That was their stated goal. They almost succeeded. But this Negro still lives in Tulsa. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Willful resilience. We may lose. We may suffer defeats. But we must continue to move forward with Plan B's.

[00:47:02] And to really highlight that, when we filed our litigation on September 1, 2020, we shocked the world. We filed with our client, Mother Lessie Benefield Randall, as our living survivor. This was before we added Mother Fletcher and Uncle Red. We also had another survivor. But he died in August of 2020 before we could file the case. His name was Hal Singer. Some of you may have heard of Hal Singer. He's a very famous artist, jazz artist. Google him.

[00:47:30] At the time, he was living in France because he moved there in the 60s because of the discrimination that he experienced here in the States. At the time, he was 100 years old. He had just had a stroke. He was blind. He was on hospice. I was talking to his wife, Arlette. She's deceased now. They're both deceased. And I apologized to her because I said, I'm so sorry that I'm bothering you while Hal is dying to be a part of this litigation. And she admonished me. I talk about this in the book.

[00:48:00] She said Hal is going to fight for what happened to his family, his parents, and his community until he died. She said, I'm going to send you something. She sent me a letter that Hal Singer wrote to Professor Ogletree in 2009. This is after we had lost everything. This letter of Hal Singer said, as black people, we very rarely get what we deserve.

[00:48:26] But despite, we must always, always fight for our rights and our dignity, regardless of the odds, obstacles, and opposition. That is what thinking Greenwood is about. Demario Solomon Simmons. All right. We're in your hands.

[00:48:58] I'm so glad you're out here, man. Please give it up again for Demario Solomon Simmons. Dr. Greg Carr. I don't know about you guys, but this is something I could sit and listen to all night. Because a lot of times, this is the first time we've ever heard of this information. And it is a part of all of our history, because we live here in America. So, I'm excited that this conversation took place in our house.

[00:49:26] And I say our, because my husband's back here at Mahogany Books. But thank you, Demario, for your courage. Thank you. I grew up in, you know, same neighborhood, same community. But to step out and be bold like this, it takes a lot of something. And so I'm just grateful for you to do that. Thank you so much. Can you mention he's one of the 100 greatest black lawyers of the 20th? Come on. No, you can mention it. Yeah, yeah. Tell that story, because he was shocked. It's in the book. Come on. No, man, come on. Come on now. Because there's some serious Negroes on that list. Spotswood, Robinson, Charles Hamilton, Houston.

[00:49:56] How you get on that list, brother? I don't know how I got on that list, but I, last year, the people put me on that list. Last year at the National Bar Association in Chicago, and I was just walking down the hall, and they had a magazine. And a lady was like, I said, oh, what's that magazine? She's like, oh, this, this is, you haven't seen this? I was like, no, what's this? She's like, turn the page, whatever, whatever. And they had me listed there as one of the 100 greatest black lawyers of the 20th century, of the last 100 years.

[00:50:25] Last 100 years. Come on. Yeah, and I was like a number of Thurgood Marshall and Johnny Conklin. It was amazing. I'm going to tell you what's so amazing about that, too, also because, so last year was the 100th year of the National Black Bar Association. It was founded in 1925. That bar association was co-founded by a man by the name of C.F. Stratford. C.F. Stratford was the son of J.B. Stratford, attorney J.B. Stratford, who was the richest man

[00:50:52] in Greenwood at the time of the massacre that owned the Dreamland Hotel, which is the largest African American-owned hotel in the nation, who got run out. The lynch mob was trying to get to him. He got arrested in Kansas. They were coming up to extradite him back to Tulsa. And his son, C.F. Stratford, came from Chicago, got there an hour before the people in Tulsa got there, and took his father to safety in Chicago. And that's the same bar association that granted me that great award.

[00:51:23] So now we will open it up for questions. And I need your help with this, because I want you to be able to come up here to the mic. So what I'll do is start with three questions. If you have a question, just come to the left here. We'll do three, and then we'll see what the time looks like, and maybe do two or three more. So if you have a question, please join me up here on the side. Three people, please. And it is a question. Don't go into a whole, you know, dissertation about Black Wall Street or, but we would love to have a question. Just want to honor everybody's time. Come on up. Put you on the spot, brother. No worries.

[00:51:53] Thank you very much. Hey, you want to get... Dr. Carr, brother DeMario Simmons, my name is Tavares Taylor. So I was about, back in 2018, I was in the Air Force, and I was driving to San Angelo, and I stopped through Greenwood. One of the heaviest places I think I've ever been. One of the things that I've noticed was Oklahoma State University has taken over. You have facades of what those buildings used to be.

[00:52:23] You have in AAA baseball stadium, that hotel is now a holiday in. My question... Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Uh-oh. So outside, outside... I know, right? My bad. Hey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ramonda. I'm gonna try. But outside of supporting the Greenwood Cultural Center on a monthly or a yearly donation, what's the best way right now to support the area? Oh, thank you for that question.

[00:52:52] But that swag you got on too. I'm talking about the campus stuff. I'm talking about the black vets. I'm talking about the community. So the question was, what's the best way to support? I would tell all... Thank you. All of you. All of us. You can go to justiceforgreenwood.org, which is my organization. We're doing the work right now of supporting descendants in our community. We do genealogy work. We do oral histories. We have a program called Legacy Protection Program, where we provide free estate planning

[00:53:19] and probate services for our people so they won't lose their land based on just a probate. We also are working to continue to change the narrative. One of the things that we did, we talk about in the book, when I first started this work, they still call it the Tulsa Race Riot, and I set out to change that. We've been working together. And over the last five years, we've changed that. But another thing we did, we got a citywide holiday called the Tulsa Race Massacre Remembrance Day. To our knowledge, it's the only city in the United States that has a holiday to recognize a massacre.

[00:53:49] But it's just an executive order, meaning that a new mayor can come and get rid of it. So we're now gearing up to make that an ordinance. And so that is something that we need everyone to connect with us at Justice for Greenwood and work with us on that. And if you go to the website, justforgreenwood.org, get signed up. If you go to the book website, redeemarnation.com, I also have a full study guide, worksheet on there that's for free. So you can take this work. This book is a blueprint.

[00:54:19] You can take what I provide on that website and hold discussions like this in your own living room, your churches, your businesses, your fraternity homes, and then get engaged with us because participation is not passive. We need active participants in this work. So thank you for that question. Justice for Greenwood. Justice for Greenwood. Justice for Greenwood. Yes, what's your question? Okay, my name is Nikichi Taifa. How you doing?

[00:54:47] And I just need to preface my question by stating that 41 years ago, May 13th, 1985, thank you for doing this on this day. Because that was the day when another bomb was dropped on the U.S. city, Philadelphia, the move. So I just wanted a question I have for you that is that at that time most folks knew nothing about Tulsa. Okay? And there were some of us in the black national media saying, yes, there was another time, but we didn't have facts. We just heard little rumors. So it wasn't until you brought all of this up.

[00:55:16] So my question is, how do we ensure that our history is not erased so that people are not afraid to talk about what happened in the past? So how can we do this? I can't wait to read the book. Thank you for the question. And you know, I have to just say, I met her when I was up here in D.C. in 2003 and went in Cobra and with a professor named Richard America, some of y'all may remember that brother, talking about reparations.

[00:55:42] This is what I want all of you all to do because this is what really changed my life, was learning my own heritage and my own genealogy. So I think the number one thing that you can do today is making sure that everyone in your family, especially the young folks, know who they are, where they come from, what those stories are. And it doesn't have to be anything elaborate like walking a trail of tears, but all our people in here have survived something major.

[00:56:10] To be here, you survived a slave ship. You survived a plantation. You survived an eviction, a bankruptcy. You had to move someplace. I think we have to make sure that our people, our family members know our history. When I found out about the creek, as I talk about in the book, you know, growing up, that's on my father's side of the family. He wasn't in the house, right? He'd come on visitation. He'd tell me some of this stuff. And honestly, I thought he was just like, Craig, you don't have to lie to kick it, you know, type of deal.

[00:56:40] I thought he was just like trying to impress me. It didn't mean as much. But as I really understood it, it made a scenario where this is my destiny. It made you change your life. Like, it did. It did. That's a whole other story. So I would say that just making sure that you really know your family history and pass that down. Before we start talking about the macro history, like know your history. Know your grandparents, the sacrifices that they made to make sure that you can be here today.

[00:57:09] Can I add something to that from a bookstore perspective that I'm working on? It should be launching in the next week or two. But I encourage everybody who can hear my voice to go out and get physical copies of books. And let me tell you why. And it can be not just from our bookstore, any black bookstore. Sankofa's here, Loyalty Books are dear friends of ours. But I urge you to get physical copies of the book. And I really say put it in a safe somewhere, right? Or in a trunk, right? And let me tell you why. No shade on audio books. I love audio books too. No shade on e-books.

[00:57:39] I love e-books too. But let me tell you something. They can go and change a digital file and will impact all millions of e-books at one time. That physical book, that print, that research took, and somebody did the research and get printed up, that's in your house. That's safe. And you can pass that down from generations and generations. They will have to go get that original text and change it and then redistribute that book. So if you have your copies in your home, and Mahogany Books is coming up with the 25 books that everybody should have in their home. There's so many more. Including Redimination, of course. Here we go. This is my class, man. Here we go.

[00:58:10] But I urge you, it sounds far-fetched, but we're seeing it happen now. And if you don't have those copies in your home, then you could be subjected to any kind of glitch, any kind of tech glitch that can change and erase that history when it's a digital file. So get those copies. And that's one way that you can preserve the history and pass it down. That digital book, if it changes it, the USB cord is not, you can't plug it up anymore, that's the only way you have it. But I urge you to get those, put them in a safe place. Go get some other copies, but get your own set and save them and pass them down.

[00:58:39] And nobody can take that away from you. That's my TED talk. Including, I wanted to mention this because this is a memoir, it's marching orders, it's all that together. Another recently published book that you can get here, Black Power, Black Lawyer, By the Warrior Lawyer, and Keechie Taifa. Of course, y'all make sure y'all get that one. And there's a name in there, one of the cats that you wrote with, one of the attorneys, Henry. Is that Amari Obadeli's nephew?

[00:59:08] Maynard Henry? Yeah. Yeah, Maynard Henry, right? Yeah, so if you want to read about the Republic of New Africa, or Salah Shakur, all that, it's in Black Power, Black Lawyer, another genius level work by a Warrior attorney, Keechie Taifa. Get it at law. That's what it meant. Yes, yes. I love that, I love that. Okay, third question, come on down. Before I start preaching. I'm losing track of my questions listening to y'all, like, what was I going to say? All right, I'm here to find out, considering what we're dealing with today, and I know that

[00:59:37] it very much ties into what you wrote about, how do you pick up any shred of hope? Because I'll admit it, I am losing it over here. I'm becoming so despondent over all of this. How do you pick up the hope to keep fighting for what we feel like isn't, it's not worth it? After all the massacres we've read about, it's not just Tulsa, it's a whole, like, consistently in our DNA, we're like, oh God, when is this going to be over? Right.

[01:00:06] So how do you, how do you pick up hope? Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to just acknowledge that the feeling you feel, we all feel it. Mm-hmm. We all feel the exhaustion. We all feel the fear, and we all see what's happening. And I think that's a real emotion right there to sit with. Mm-hmm. And I don't think it's something you need to try to, like, quickly get out of that feeling, because it's real.

[01:00:32] And to be honest, we don't really know what the next steps are in mass. Like, you know, as far as, it's not to move fast. I know that for a fact. It's to get organized. It's to love on each other and have a real plan, right? And so that's what keeps me hopeful, that I, I'm a historian. I know what we have done in the past. I know what, no, my grandmother was a sharecropper, like a literal sharecropper.

[01:01:01] She went from white plantation to white plantation around the state of Oklahoma with her family, poor as can be. She dropped out, she couldn't go past the seventh grade. And yet somehow, some way, she was able to buy a home, raise my mother, who my mother was, if you remember, my mother was born with cerebral palsy. She didn't walk until she was five years old. She had to go back and forth.

[01:01:28] My little black mother and my little black grandmother had to drive a segregated train from Tulsa to St. Louis to the Shriner Hospitals. So she had like eight surgeries before she walked. The first time she walked when she was five years old. So for me, I look at those things and say, man, my mother was black, a female, and disabled in the 70s? In the 60s and the 70s? And she still has her sanity? I mean, she crazy, don't get me wrong, but she still has her sanity.

[01:02:01] So I would just say, listen, just go back into your past. Go back into our past. See what we've accomplished. Think about Greenwood. I mean, as bad as it is, the brothers said they took our land. It was 40 blocks, now it's one half block. But we're here. And people are still here. And this story now, this story is to the world. And Mother Randall is still here at 111 years old. Mother Fletcher just died last year at 111 years old. And this woman went to Africa for two weeks at 108 years old.

[01:02:30] She went to Ghana. She went to Ghana. Very quickly, you see our sister there right there, Aja Azamore. She went to Ghana. So before they made transition, they're citizens of Ghana, right? They're citizens of Ghana. Okay, that's what I want to make sure. Yeah. So yeah, that's what I would say. I would say just really look at, even your own life, you've been through some stuff, I'm sure, right? And you're still here standing. You're still here standing. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think we have time for one more question. Anybody want to close us out? We have one more question?

[01:02:59] If not, we'll go into the signing. One more question? Okay, give it up for DeMario Solomon Simmons, my classmate from Texas.