As the pages of African-American history are turned, the profound insights of Dr. Malveaux illuminate our podcast with the authenticity and depth of black narratives. Our discussion transcends mere storytelling, delving into the emotional resonance of African-American literature, from the cherished tales at Mahogany Books to the haunting echoes of Tulsa's Black Wall Street. We honor the entrepreneurial spirit, resilience, and richness of black storytelling, celebrating the legacy of icons like Maggie Lena Walker and Dr. Phyllis Ann Wallace. Their stories of overcoming immense challenges to leave indelible marks on our history serve as powerful beacons for economic empowerment and generational wealth.
The thread of literature weaves through our conversation as I recount a childhood framed by books and the pioneering spirit of my social worker mother, shaping my own journey into economics and social justice. Dr. Malveaux and I explore the intricacies of black economic history—a landscape fraught with the dualities of entrepreneurial triumphs and the scars of lynching and racial violence. The episode uncovers the nuanced relationship between economic envy and the atrocities committed against thriving Black communities, bringing to light the indomitable resilience that defines our past and continues to shape our present.
As we traverse the narrative of Tulsa's Greenwood District, the essence of community among Black bookstore owners emerges, reflecting a legacy of strength and unity. We grapple with the complexities of preserving African American history in the face of erasure and the critical role of education in this endeavor. The conversation concludes with an emphasis on the vitality of black-owned banks and landmarks, urging our listeners to engage in the support and retention of our cultural heritage. Join us in this vital dialogue, where literature, history, and economics interlace to form the fabric of the African-American experience.
MakerSPACE is here to meet the needs of today’s entrepreneurs, creatives, and work-from-home professionals. We do this through private offices, coworking spaces, and a host of other resources, including conference rooms, a photo studio, podcast studios; a creative workshop, and a retail showroom—that is perfect for any e-commerce brand. Mention code MAHOGANY for all current specials, as we have two locations to best serve you.
Thanks for listening! Show support by reviewing our podcast and sharing it with a friend. You can also follow us on Instagram, @MahoganyBooks, for information about our next author event and attend live.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Mahogany Books Podcast Network,
00:00:03
your gateway to the world of African-American literature.
00:00:06
We're proud to present a collection of podcasts dedicated
00:00:09
to exploring the depth and richness of African-American
00:00:12
literature.
00:00:12
Immerse yourself in podcasts like Black Books Matter, the
00:00:16
Podcast where we learn about the books and major life moments
00:00:20
that influence today's top writers, or tune in to Real
00:00:23
Ballads Read, where brothers Jan and Miles invite amazing people
00:00:27
to talk about the meaningful books in their lives.
00:00:29
So whether you're a literature enthusiast, an advocate for
00:00:33
social justice or simply curious about the untold stories that
00:00:36
shape our world, subscribe to the Mahogany Books Podcast
00:00:40
Network on your favorite platform and let
00:00:42
African-American literature ignite your passion.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna get us started.
00:00:47
How y'all doing, how y'all feeling.
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First of all, I just want to say thank you for coming.
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It's cold, it's dark, it's December, but we're here and I'm
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just excited that you all are here for an amazing conversation
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with an amazing woman, somebody who I have just been enjoying
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talking to and getting to know.
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Really, I think what resonates most with me is your
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authenticity.
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I don't see that a lot of times .
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I don't know if you guys see people out here faking, stutting
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, doing everything, but whenever I can connect with somebody
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who's so authentic, it is refreshing to me.
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So I just want to say thank you for that.
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I've been enjoying that, whether it was on your show,
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whether we were talking before the show, whether we were just
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talking today.
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Your authenticity really appeals to me.
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So I just want to say thank you for that.
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Speaker 3: Well, thank you.
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I don't know who else to be but me.
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Speaker 2: Hey, but people out here doing a lot of stuff though
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, dr Malbo, but I'm gonna read some of your bio, because you
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got a lot going on as far as accolades, and I don't like
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missing people's accolades and I want to make sure people know
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who we are in the presence of.
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So but first I'm gonna give you a little bit about Mahogany
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books.
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So my name is Ramunda Young and my husband and I created
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Mahogany books wow 16 years ago.
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I mean, we've been married for 21 years, so that's a whole
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other book how you do that and do that.
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You know, be married and being in business together, but I love
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it.
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But we started.
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This is our first location that was open about seven years ago
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here in Anacostia.
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We just opened up our second location in National Harbor in
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the middle of the pandemic.
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That's a whole another testimony too.
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And then in September at National Airport, we don't call
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it Reagan, we call it National.
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Thank you, yes, I don't know.
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Yeah, they tripping with that.
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Speaker 3: You gotta have arguments with airline people.
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They'll say are you going to Reagan?
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No, I'm going to National, that's right.
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They say Reagan.
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I say National, we can do this for five minutes, we sure can,
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we sure?
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And then I finally say DCA, let me help you out, dca.
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And they say why can't you say Reagan?
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I said because I don't like cussing to people.
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Speaker 2: I do not know Exactly Like it's okay to be national.
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It's been national all these years but we just opened up like
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a footprint in National Airport in September.
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We partnered with thank you, thank you, thank you a footprint
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.
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Speaker 3: What gate is?
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Speaker 2: it near it is Concourse D, it's the American
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Airlines section and I don't know if you all know Juanita
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Busy B Britton, so we partnered with her, so she has the bigger
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store and a lot of different travel essentials and gifts and
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things of that.
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But then there's a section of black books that Mahogany books
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has, and so we have books in there that you don't see at
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Hudson News or anywhere else, like we have a Sada, we have the
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autobiography of Malcolm X, we have with this I know we were
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talking about.
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Yes, yes, yes, yes, this will be in the airport too, but it's
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just been refreshing to see how fast they are moving and it just
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let us know that people are been looking for our books and I
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say are, as black authors and readers that are here want
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access to those books.
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So fast forward to Mahogany books now, like I said, 16 years
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, and we started online in a one bedroom apartment in Alexandria
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those years ago because we wanted people to have access to
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black books.
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And before I read your bio, I just want to tell this last
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little thing I grew up in Tulsa, oklahoma, and you referenced
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Tulsa quite a bit in your book.
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Speaker 3: Tulsa.
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I just came back from reparations meeting 200 local
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reparations activists and the Tulsa pieces are one that
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resonates.
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It's not the one that resonates the most but it's the best
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known.
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I will let you finish it, because I'll talk about that a
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little bit, about the other places that were like Tulsa,
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that we really don't know that much about.
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I mean, I'm working on this new book and it's like the things
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those people did to us, dr.
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Mao, I don't go there, I'm sitting in the back of the
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Library of Congress, in the back , and I'm reading this lynching
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story, and I said y'all forget my profanity, but if y'all know
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me, you know I cuss, I'm in the back.
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I said, oh god damn.
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So the little brother, cute little boy, just graduated from
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Howard, maybe two or three years ago, and we always exchanged
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greetings pleasure.
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She came back to me, dr Mao, but you can't sit back here
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cussing like that.
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I'm in the stacks, I'm not out in.
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But I said well, read this.
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So he read it.
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He said oh god damn, I'm sure, I'm sure.
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No, some of the things.
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I mean, let me let you do what you do.
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I mean, it's just so.
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What can I say?
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When people talk about where we are as a people, they'll take
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all this devilment into account.
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Yeah, what they did, you know?
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Yes, diabolical is what I say.
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And you can't some of the stuff I was telling my brother, my
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sibling, some of the things they did to men.
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He said, well, give me an example.
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I said, brother, I really don't want to talk to you about this.
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You know, I mean, they castrated people, that's right.
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You know they lit people on fire, living while they were
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living, you know, and worse if you could think of it.
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And worse.
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And worse.
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Yeah, and then they have the temerity to talk about it, the
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abject, utter nerve to talk about our people in disparaging
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ways.
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It's a wonder they don't wonder we alive.
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It's a wonder they alive.
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I mean because, like I said, if I was, my grandmother used to
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tell us a story about one of my foremothers who apparently this
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is folklore, we can't prove it killed about four white people
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by grinding glass in a food when she got tired of their mess and
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she had been raping multiple times.
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It was like great, great, great grandmother, and grandma Rose
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said well, she has something for them, and so her life was
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always let me bake a cake for her.
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Just let me bake a cake for her .
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Speaker 2: Okay, bake your cakes .
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I'm gonna have to watch all I'm eating nowadays, but no, no, no
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, if the wrong white people gave it to you.
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Speaker 3: You should be careful .
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I don't eat white people food.
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I don't care if they my friends .
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Nope, nope, nope.
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Yeah, I'm not racist.
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I racial, okay, racial.
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Speaker 2: I've learned some new terminology this week, anyway,
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on a lot of different things, but what I was gonna say, too,
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is the last thing with Mahogany books.
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I grew up in Tulsa and my parents still live in Tulsa to
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this day.
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We're about two miles from Black Wall Street and growing
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all the way up through Tulsa, I never knew Black Wall Street was
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there.
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It was never taught in my books .
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That's the reason for that it's a reason for that.
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It was never taught in my books .
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And so fast for me, and when I talk to people now, when I think
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about you know, I think I'm bold and audacious now, but I
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can only imagine how bold I really would be knowing that,
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two miles from me, innovators, educators, entrepreneurs were
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there, and so I to walk and stand on their shoulders with, I
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mean, the immense respect and confidence that I would have
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gained knowing that it was there .
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And so to grow up and not know it was blocks from, I mean I can
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walk to it, to that, to Black Wall Street in Greenwood, so,
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but didn't know it.
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So when I think about books and for us, why we opened up
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Mahogany books, we said no, nobody should be subject to that
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.
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If we can do our part and make Black books accessible, no
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matter where you live Tulsa, new Hampshire, whatever then that's
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what we're going to do.
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So here we are, 16 years later and with Mahogany books.
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So I just appreciate every person that comes to our doors
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and comes to our events, because it's a dream realized all the
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time that it's working, that it's a good idea, that it's
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needed.
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So thank you all for coming tonight.
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So let's get into this.
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Let me read I feel like I'm on NPR.
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Let me I'm using my NPR voice, my Dr Malvo voice, but I'm using
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my PFW voice.
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Oh yes, yes, let me use my PFW voice.
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Let me get it together.
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Yes, my WPFW voice.
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But Dr Julianne Malvo is an economist, author, television
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and radio commentator and the recent dean of the College of
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Ethnic Studies of California State University in Los Angeles.
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Her weekly columns appeared nationally through Black Press
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USA and the Trice-Edney Newswire .
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She writes about economics, politics, gender and race, most
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recently tackling issues of body autonomy, student loan, debt
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and inflation.
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Dr Malvo is present emerita of Bennett College, serving from
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2007 through 2012.
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And Dr Malvo is a radio host radio show host where she hosts
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Malvo.
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That airs on W PFW on Monday.
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So please help us welcome Dr Julianne Malvo and Dr Malvo.
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We have to talk into our mice because we are recording this.
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We're talking to the mic.
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Yes, all right, I will All right.
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Yes, but I would love to know we can read, and this book is
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amazing.
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So all of you who are getting this book she's definitely gonna
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sign it today but I want to know about you, your origin
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story.
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Like you're an economist, but what in your life, what part of
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your journey helped, shaped you becoming an economist?
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There's not a lot of black economists out here in these
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streets, but what shaped you to even do that?
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Do that work?
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Speaker 3: Well, economics is a study of who gets what, when,
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where and how, and as his politics, how do you divide the
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pie up?
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And as a kid, I was always really curious about that, about
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why.
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I mean, I was like a total nerd .
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So, for example, some of the younger people don't know about
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encyclopedias, but we had encyclopedias.
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My mother was a book person, my parents, everybody in my family
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is a book person.
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My mom died two years ago and I inherited like 3 books that
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I have to figure out where to put.
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But she read everything and everything.
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She a lot of religion, da, da da, but she was a book person.
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My dad was a book person.
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He was a one of the first black assistant superintendents in
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the San Francisco Public Schools .
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My mom was one of the first black social workers.
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So but anyway, and whenever you something happened, she said go
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look it up.
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She wouldn't tell you anything.
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Go look it up.
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So with an encyclopedia, you know you've read an entry at the
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bottom and say, see also.
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And then they would have something and they would say,
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see also.
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Well, I wanted to have an uninterrupted read.
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So I would line encyclopedia down the hallway and make my
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siblings go to the back door because I was trying to read
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encyclopedia and I wanted to read it all at the same time.
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I didn't want to have to stop and go to and stop and go to.
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So first of all, the nerdy thing comes from that I broke my arm
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at nine.
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It's really funny.
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So we have books everywhere and there was this book, la Vida,
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by Oscar Lewis.
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It was about Puerto Rico and he was an anthropologist and it
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was kind of scatological, had a lot of sex in it.
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So I was nine, okay.
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So I was like mommy, I want to read that book.
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And she's like no, it's too advanced for you.
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So after two or three tries I just climbed up to top.
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She had put away at the top shelf.
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So I climbed up there to get the book and I fell and broke my
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arm.
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And so she said well, you want to read it?
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That bad, go for it.
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So every other word I'm like mommy, what is fornication?
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Look it up.
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I mean, it did have a lot of sex in it.
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It was a little much for a nine year old, I mean.
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But everything I said she's like go look it up.
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But that stuff is in the dictionary, so I learned from it
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anyway.
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But so she was a social worker who used to bring people home.
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I was telling you about my clothing addiction, which is a
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function of the fact that my mother would bring people home
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from the Department of Social Services and then she'd give
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them my clothes, mine and she would say Julianne Malvo, you
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have many things, you don't have to worry about it.
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But I had an aunt who worked at Macy's and she brought me a
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pink cash miss sweater.
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And why did mommy give that pink cash miss sweater to one of
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them?
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Welfare people?
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She said you have many things.
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I think today I have 50 cash miss sweaters.
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I'm still trying to compensate for that cash miss sweater.
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But the social work part of her made me know we weren't wealthy
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because my parents were divorced and da da, da.
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So we weren't wealthy.
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But we weren't pitiful either.
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We were okay.
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If they had stayed together we would have been wealthy.
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But they liked to go to court.
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So that's a whole other story.
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They went annually.
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When I was 21, they were the court for the custody of me and
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I was grown.
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They were fighting over the tax deduction.
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I can tell you stories but I won't.
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But anyway, they were crazy.
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They were very intense black people, which is how come I got
00:13:16
to be a very intense black person?
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But when she would bring the public assistance people home,
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we got to talk to them, we hung out with them.
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Sometimes they stayed with us two and three weeks and that's
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how I learned about poverty, real poverty, not sort of
00:13:33
gentile poverty, but real poverty, and it also so it may
00:13:37
be curious about how, and so I started looking at numbers
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before I was even an undergrad and I'm like how come black
00:13:43
people always have less?
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And you know, dr King once said that the good things black
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people have half and of the bad things we have twice.
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Now I'm misquoting him slightly , but he said that in the 60s,
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before he was assassinated.
00:13:56
So that kind of drove me to economics.
00:13:59
Then, when I was an undergrad at Boston College, I took a econ
00:14:04
class.
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You had to take some social science.
00:14:06
I really wanted to be a lawyer and actually if I were wealthy I
00:14:10
would be a bookstore owner.
00:14:12
I remember you telling me that.
00:14:15
I actually had hooked up with some street people who had money
00:14:20
and we were trying to figure out how to get bookstore.
00:14:22
And then my brother, who is a street people, he is serious
00:14:26
with them, but now that he's 67, I think he probably grew out of
00:14:32
that, but he told me at the time he said Julia, you cannot
00:14:35
do business with them people.
00:14:36
I said why?
00:14:37
He said I don't want to find your bones on the side of the
00:14:39
road.
00:14:39
I said, uh, they that bad.
00:14:41
He said take my word for it.
00:14:43
But we have found a space where I want to do a bookstore on the
00:14:46
ground floor, a club on the second floor, and this is back
00:14:51
in the 80s, so it preceded like an Airbnb kind of thing, rooms,
00:14:58
not rooms, like little spaces where people, if they came to
00:15:01
San Francisco, they could hang out like rent a room for night
00:15:04
or something like that.
00:15:04
My brother's like no, you cannot do that.
00:15:07
But see, I mean I would love to own a bookstore.
00:15:11
I probably wouldn't make any money because I would take
00:15:15
everything home.
00:15:17
But the econ piece was just who gets what, where, where, how?
00:15:21
And I couldn't figure out why black people never had anything.
00:15:23
And so I mean not never had anything, but why we were always
00:15:26
lagging.
00:15:27
And so that was the impetus.
00:15:29
And then I did.
00:15:30
I think I did a paper as a freshman and the professor took
00:15:35
the paper and copied it and well , I typed the paper.
00:15:38
So I guess that was made it unusual and he passed out to
00:15:41
other people in the class and said this is what excellence is.
00:15:44
I was like, oh, ok, and he said you need to be an economist.
00:15:48
So I'm like, ok, so that was kind of that got me to econ.
00:15:52
Wow.
00:15:54
Speaker 2: I'm still stuck at the.
00:15:55
You had these dictionaries and Britannicas laid out.
00:15:59
I do remember those in second grade and others go to the back.
00:16:02
Speaker 3: Yes, which was that was always an issue why we got
00:16:04
to go to the back door.
00:16:05
I said because I'm the oldest.
00:16:06
There's no other reason.
00:16:08
I'm the oldest.
00:16:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm the oldest, so I understand some of that.
00:16:11
So this book Surviving and Thriving 365 Facts in Black
00:16:17
Economic History this is the second edition.
00:16:20
I think the first edition came about.
00:16:21
Was it 2010?
00:16:22
Was?
00:16:23
Speaker 3: it, 2010.
00:16:24
So I'll tell you, I was in the airport I think it's Detroit and
00:16:31
a young brother had this, the first edition, and he apparently
00:16:35
had well, read it because it was really beat up.
00:16:37
And he came up to me and he's like he's pointing and pointing
00:16:41
and I'm like, yeah, that me.
00:16:42
And so we're chatting and he said, well, how come you won't?
00:16:45
He's, I can't find it.
00:16:46
He said why don't you re-release it?
00:16:48
And I said I got other stuff to do, boo.
00:16:50
And he said, well, he said just think about it.
00:16:55
And then our mutual friend, patrick Oliver I raised.
00:16:58
Patrick Oliver is a literary activist.
00:17:01
He has an organization called Say it Loud.
00:17:03
He especially focuses on black boys and literacy, so check him
00:17:08
out.
00:17:08
But anyway, patrick's like we can do this, we can do this.
00:17:12
And then, in the middle of me moving from DC to LA, we were in
00:17:17
the middle of doing that and doing that, so we really didn't
00:17:20
market it appropriately, but we did it.
00:17:22
And that was I check the call the young brother.
00:17:26
He said he was one of the first .
00:17:28
He said I'm buying five copies for my friends.
00:17:30
So they're doing like discussions of the facts, of the
00:17:36
various facts which he said, a lot of them.
00:17:38
He just didn't know, just like you didn't know about Tulsa and
00:17:42
you know then the Tulsa story.
00:17:43
I mean just evil white people.
00:17:48
But there's a concept that I'm working on new book and one of
00:17:53
the concepts that I'm playing with is economic envy.
00:17:55
I mean, if you hear about lynchings, economic envy.
00:17:59
Yeah, white folks see, they had so structured enslavement to
00:18:05
make any white person be able to do anything to any black person
00:18:09
with no consequence, so they basically brainwashed themselves
00:18:15
into thinking we were less than so then when we performed, when
00:18:19
we achieved, they couldn't take it.
00:18:21
Economic envy.
00:18:22
So the first lynching, as an example that Ida B Wells
00:18:27
investigated, was a three black men.
00:18:29
Tommy Moss was her friend.
00:18:31
Here's what happened there was an area in Memphis called the
00:18:35
curve that a lot of black people lived in, and in the curve
00:18:40
there was a grocery store owned by a white man and he was
00:18:44
ignorant, he was criminal.
00:18:46
It was this 1896.
00:18:48
Anyway, he was selling liquor when it was against the law.
00:18:54
He had more than 10 citations for illegal whatever.
00:18:58
He just was a low life and black women did not like to go
00:19:02
into his store because people talked under their clothes white
00:19:06
man might grab a sister, whatever.
00:19:09
So Tommy Moss was a postmaster, a deacon in his church.
00:19:12
He was like one of those A plus brothers.
00:19:14
He decided we don't have to take this, we'll start our own
00:19:17
store.
00:19:18
So they started a store called the People's Grocery.
00:19:20
So at the People's Grocery black people were respect two of
00:19:23
his friends, so there's three of them Black women were
00:19:26
respected, people were respected , the prices were better.
00:19:29
All right, two boys get into a fight over marbles, a black boy
00:19:33
and a white boy.
00:19:34
The white boy runs to the white man's store and says the black
00:19:37
boy stole his marbles.
00:19:38
White men go to the black store with guns.
00:19:42
Now, this was a little bit after the Spanish-American War.
00:19:46
Brothers had guns, so they brought their guns.
00:19:49
Brothers brought their guns.
00:19:50
No black person was hurt, but a white boy was shot.
00:19:55
They didn't kill him, I mean, they just shot him.
00:19:59
Well, the next day the sheriff came back and arrested the three
00:20:02
brothers and then lynched them.
00:20:03
Now the economic piece of this story is and then a white man
00:20:07
got the store and his contents for eight cents on a dollar.
00:20:10
That's economic envy.
00:20:13
Wilmington, north Carolina.
00:20:15
Similar story.
00:20:18
This brother named Mr Manley I forget his first name, I old, I
00:20:23
said my notes but a Mr Manley owned a newspaper and after a
00:20:28
white woman Roberta Shelton, I believe her name, was she's
00:20:32
first woman senator of the United States, this heifer wrote
00:20:37
an article that said if we have to lynch a thousand black men
00:20:43
to protect our virginity, she was too old to have virginity in
00:20:47
the first place.
00:20:47
But if we have to do that, we will all right.
00:20:52
So Mr Manley wrote an editorial saying let's be real, this is
00:20:58
not.
00:20:58
All of these.
00:20:59
Consensual relationships are rape.
00:21:02
Some of these people are together because they wanna be,
00:21:06
and he had some very he's like.
00:21:08
If a comely last would like to couple with a handsome black man
00:21:14
, let her do it.
00:21:16
Well, you know, white folks went crazy and they did all
00:21:22
kinds of things.
00:21:22
But Ida B Wells had similar rhetoric.
00:21:25
She said something like we're so worried about your women's
00:21:31
virtue, you really need to worry about your women, because you
00:21:34
know.
00:21:34
So they burned her.
00:21:37
You know.
00:21:37
They burned her press down and ran her out of town.
00:21:41
In the case of Williamson, north Carolina, in 1896, there was.
00:21:45
They were interesting.
00:21:49
The Republicans were the good guys then.
00:21:51
Then they had these people called the red shirts and the
00:21:53
white hats, where the white hats were the precursors to the Klan
00:21:56
, and so there was gonna be an election and the Republicans and
00:22:00
the black people and some kind had come together for the
00:22:05
election.
00:22:06
So what they did was arrested all the black men who were
00:22:09
prominent about 60 of them and then put them on buses and
00:22:13
trains and ran them out of town.
00:22:15
And then they basically did.
00:22:17
This was 1896, before the 1921 Tulsa.
00:22:20
Then they did there what they did in Tulsa they burned
00:22:24
everything.
00:22:24
They don't know how many people died.
00:22:26
They said it could be as many as 600.
00:22:29
But the oral history says that the river ran red, which the
00:22:33
Wilmington River ran red.
00:22:35
The other thing they did they deputized all these random white
00:22:38
people who went door to door forcing black people to sign
00:22:42
over their property.
00:22:44
And then the brother who, manley's great grandfather, who
00:22:49
was all that in a bag of chips.
00:22:50
He was a wealthy black man, and now, also with these lynchings,
00:22:54
the subtext is wealthy people, economic envy.
00:22:58
He ended up being a house painter and Philly, after he
00:23:02
escaped, they were looking for him, they had a price on his
00:23:04
head, and so then, so you have this Memphis, wilmington, and so
00:23:10
Tulsa.
00:23:10
And Tulsa is interesting because they lynched a white man
00:23:15
who stole a car and killed somebody.
00:23:17
And then the newspaper said if we could lynch a white man, we
00:23:21
could lynch a Negro.
00:23:21
It was almost celebratory oh gee, we can do this.
00:23:27
And so the little Tulsa story, which is ridiculous a black man
00:23:30
named Dick Rowland he was only 19 years old, he was an orphan
00:23:34
and a white woman named Sarah Page she was 17, also an orphan.
00:23:37
From what I read, there was a very vibrant orphan community.
00:23:43
These young people had no adult supervision and they partied
00:23:46
all night with each other black, white, whatever and then they
00:23:49
got up the next day and went to work.
00:23:50
So no one knows what happens be happened between Dick Rowland
00:23:55
and Sarah Page, but here's what we do know she refused to press
00:23:58
charges.
00:23:59
They made they try to make her press charges to say that he had
00:24:02
assaulted her and she wouldn't do it.
00:24:04
What seems to have happened is that he made.
00:24:07
She was an elevator operator.
00:24:08
The only place you could go to the restroom in downtown Tulsa
00:24:11
was at the top of this building, so we had to take the elevator
00:24:14
and go up there.
00:24:14
So what seems to have happened?
00:24:17
My interpretation is these are ragny elevators in 1921.
00:24:21
You've ever been a hand operated elevator?
00:24:25
You see how sometimes it's just unsteady.
00:24:26
I think he must have just jostled her and she must have
00:24:29
exclaimed.
00:24:32
But a white man witnessed it and so he went around and said that
00:24:37
Dick Rowland had raped Sarah Page.
00:24:38
And then they had a headline that said to lynch a Negro
00:24:42
tonight.
00:24:42
That was a headline of the newspaper to lynch a Negro
00:24:46
tonight.
00:24:46
And so the brothers again.
00:24:49
Now this is the group of black men that we just have to give
00:24:52
high praise to.
00:24:53
They fought in World War I because they thought it would
00:24:57
earn them respect, but it didn't .
00:24:59
But they still weren't playing and they had guns.
00:25:02
So when the white folks said they were gonna lynch Dick
00:25:05
Rowland, the brothers were downtown.
00:25:07
They're like mm-mm, that's right, not on my watch.
00:25:09
And so the next thing, somebody got shot and I gave white
00:25:12
people permission to literally eviscerate a whole community.
00:25:17
And what you have to know about black Tulsa, which you must know
00:25:21
, the black people bold and bodacious and entrepreneurial.
00:25:25
The first automobile in Tulsa was driven by a black man who
00:25:30
was so brilliant that he took it apart, put it back together and
00:25:33
then started an auto repair shop, a theater that held 750
00:25:38
people we're talking 1921, y'all A theater.
00:25:41
Because black people were not admitted to the regular hospital
00:25:45
, black doctors built a hospital .
00:25:47
I mean, this was economic self-sufficiency all the way
00:25:51
through.
00:25:52
So, basically, I had the enormous privilege of knowing
00:25:56
one of the survivors, dr Olivia Hooker.
00:25:58
Do you know about Dr?
00:25:59
Speaker 2: Hooker.
00:26:00
In your book I read some about Dr Hooker.
00:26:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, dr Hooker was a trip.
00:26:02
I met her because she and I were both speaking in Syracuse,
00:26:06
new York, and I had the cutest little outfit to work out in,
00:26:12
but I forgot my shoes.
00:26:13
I always forget something when I travel.
00:26:14
I forgot my shoes.
00:26:16
So I'm in her suite.
00:26:17
They just gave me a room but she was old so I guess I'll
00:26:21
forgive them.
00:26:21
But I'm in her suite fussing.
00:26:24
I had on my little cute outfit and I had on some regular flats
00:26:28
and she said where are your jogging shoes?
00:26:30
And I said I'm gonna be an evil ass.
00:26:32
You know what If I don't get my workout on, because if I don't
00:26:36
work out three days a week, I ain't really mean, because I
00:26:39
just had to get my endomorphs and all them things.
00:26:41
They had to get a line.
00:26:42
And she said well, I don't wanna be around the evil people.
00:26:45
She said we're on the same program tomorrow.
00:26:46
I said well, what would you suggest?
00:26:48
She said what size?
00:26:50
And I was all.
00:26:50
I really was evil.
00:26:51
So I put a little old lady.
00:26:53
I said what size you are?
00:26:55
I said 10.
00:26:56
She said go in my room and see if you can find some shoes.
00:26:58
Because she said I'm getting on my nerves.
00:27:00
So I went in her and she had size 10 sneakers and so she used
00:27:05
to always after we became very close, we talked a lot and she
00:27:09
used to tell people I was her soul sister and people thought
00:27:11
it meant soul sister.
00:27:13
She said it meant soul sister, that's my soul sister.
00:27:18
No shoes, yep.
00:27:20
But Dr Hooker said she was six when it happened.
00:27:24
She remembers a lot.
00:27:26
She remembers looking out the window and seeing troops and she
00:27:30
said she asked her mother why is my country trying to Kill us?
00:27:35
She remembers the crazy white people again economic envy
00:27:39
invading their house and taking that, her mother's Caruso
00:27:42
records.
00:27:43
I mean she remembered that details, the Caruso records and
00:27:48
but what she she what?
00:27:50
She also remembered what her dad said.
00:27:52
Her dad owned the department store and the blessing of that
00:27:59
is a lot of people kept their money in the vault in the store
00:28:02
Mm-hmm before they went to the bank, so like they go to bank
00:28:06
maybe once a week.
00:28:07
So that was some of the money that they were able to use to
00:28:10
rebuild.
00:28:11
But you know she said that this had been.
00:28:14
She believes that something had been brewing, that the dick
00:28:18
rolling.
00:28:18
Sarah Page, they was just an excuse that you know they have
00:28:22
because she's a white man have been collecting guns.
00:28:25
Law enforcement had cracked down and that article, if you
00:28:29
can kill, if you can lynch a white man, you can lynch a Negro
00:28:32
.
00:28:32
She said she thought it gave a lot of people ideas.
00:28:35
Sure, and you know, to this day there's been nothing.
00:28:38
I'm, you know, I'm gonna try to go down to Tulsa they're doing
00:28:42
a Juneteenth thing and I'm gonna try to go the.
00:28:45
There were some Tulsa folks.
00:28:46
There's a one black woman on the city council in Tulsa.
00:28:50
I think her name is a Vanessa with a hyphen.
00:28:55
Speaker 2: I'm not Hawkins, is it?
00:28:56
Speaker 3: maybe he'll some.
00:28:58
Anyway, she's got a hyphen in there and she's a pistol and she
00:29:02
raises it all the time.
00:29:03
But should they they're not doing anything.
00:29:05
The brother who was the pastor of the church that the one of
00:29:09
the surviving buildings.
00:29:10
He now lives in Baltimore.
00:29:12
He took over Jamal Jamal Bryant's church, I think.
00:29:16
Speaker 2: I know that.
00:29:18
Speaker 3: Reverend Robert Turner.
00:29:19
Once a month he walks for 40 miles from Baltimore To the
00:29:25
White House and he calls it 40 for 40.
00:29:28
So he walks 40 miles for HR 40 and reparations.
00:29:32
And he's joined us in narc, the National African-American
00:29:35
reparations Commission.
00:29:36
So he, but he, he talks about Tulsa.
00:29:39
He's you know, he knows about every.
00:29:41
You know everybody should know about it.
00:29:43
I'm the only thing I'm grateful to the orange man for.
00:29:45
I ain't grateful to him for much.
00:29:47
In fact I pray every day for his untimely demise.
00:29:49
I really I know you're not supposed to do that, but, uh,
00:29:53
the Lord will forgive me or not, but when he tried to do
00:29:59
something in Oklahoma, people pushed back and he brought a lot
00:30:03
of attention for that to Tulsa.
00:30:05
I'm like, okay, you know, the devil might have brought up a
00:30:08
God used it.
00:30:09
Speaker 2: Yes, you know he did and I we went.
00:30:12
This is what December, maybe three weeks ago, maybe four
00:30:15
weeks ago this is our second time but me and another young
00:30:18
lady brought 25 black bookstore owners to Tulsa, flew them
00:30:22
everything.
00:30:22
We got a grant, pay for hotel flights, food, because we wanted
00:30:26
black bookstore owners.
00:30:27
When you think of black bookstores and what they've
00:30:30
meant to communities over the years and what it meant to black
00:30:34
people in pride and information , all that kind of stuff.
00:30:36
But we wanted them to go to Tulsa.
00:30:38
So we walked, we stayed there for three days.
00:30:40
We also kind of brainstormed at what it looks like to bring
00:30:43
black bookstores together and create community.
00:30:45
I want that list.
00:30:46
Yes, easy, easy, easy.
00:30:48
And so for the past three years I've been leading this group
00:30:51
once a month on zoom.
00:30:53
But we took him to Tulsa and on the grounds of Tulsa, down at
00:30:57
Greenwood in black Wall Street, you'll see names and on plaques
00:31:00
in the ground and the sidewalk of where this was, where
00:31:03
so-and-so Barbershop was and it's gone now, of course,
00:31:06
there's a plaque there and this was so-and-so hospital here and
00:31:10
it's a plaque in the ground with the name of that, the person
00:31:12
who owned that hospital and if it was Destroyed in the riot or
00:31:17
after the riot, a lot of people think that's good, it wouldn't
00:31:19
arrive a massacre.
00:31:21
Come on, yes, yes and the massacre.
00:31:24
And so all throughout the streets down in Greenwood You'll
00:31:26
see all these plaques where the actual businesses were.
00:31:29
The last thing I really love about black Wall Street, too, is
00:31:32
I mean so many things, but when I think of community, there
00:31:35
were nine barbershops in that.
00:31:36
It's a large area.
00:31:37
Where we were, black street was but nine different barbershops.
00:31:40
And when I think of community, now a lot of black people feel
00:31:43
like we got to be In competition or compete with a lot of
00:31:46
different things.
00:31:47
But yet we existed and I think a lot of that Competition or I'm
00:31:50
out for you and you out for me came, did not come from our
00:31:53
community.
00:31:53
We are a communal people.
00:31:54
We came from us all helping each other.
00:31:57
So it's just interesting to know that we could coexist.
00:31:59
Like you mentioned, there were several hospitals, there were
00:32:02
several theaters, there were several Businesses of the same
00:32:06
type in that community, all serving, all thriving In that
00:32:10
space.
00:32:10
So we took those bookstore owners there and took them on an
00:32:13
in-depth tour.
00:32:13
Speaker 3: That is amazing, so that they would know that.
00:32:15
Yeah, you know one of the things about Tulsa also this
00:32:18
young lady she works for the council woman.
00:32:20
They got a grant.
00:32:22
We don't know how many of our people were swallowed by evil.
00:32:26
We don't know how many people were killed.
00:32:28
And Tulsa, we don't know how many people were killed.
00:32:30
In Wilmington there's a book called by hands, now known, that
00:32:35
talks about all the.
00:32:36
You know they were somebody black would die.
00:32:38
They said, well, oh, they died by hands unknown.
00:32:41
And so there's a, there's a lab in at Northeastern University
00:32:45
Led by a sister, and they're looking at all of this stuff.
00:32:48
But in Tulsa, as an example, you know, they don't know how
00:32:52
many.
00:32:53
So this young sister who works for the council woman was
00:32:56
telling me that they, um, where there these trees?
00:33:01
That was in the middle of the area when everything went down
00:33:07
and she said the trees, what does she call the trees?
00:33:09
I wrote it down somewhere, but it's like the trees, by the way
00:33:12
they grow after they've been burned, show trauma.
00:33:15
So they believe that there were people buried In trees.
00:33:20
So they had whatever technology they did and they found some
00:33:24
children who were had been killed.
00:33:26
They found their bones and everything.
00:33:28
They took them to Corner and they were about to do autopsy.
00:33:32
Some the mayor of Tulsa said no, and so they just reburied them.
00:33:36
They didn't even try to, but what they want to do was DNA
00:33:38
testing to figure out, because they have DNA, dna from some of
00:33:43
the people, the elders, some of the people who were, you know,
00:33:46
basically so.
00:33:47
But the the mayor said no, I mean, the white people in Tulsa
00:33:51
now are trying to reclaim it and they don't want the stigma of
00:33:55
what happened with the massacre.
00:33:57
And so, you know, this little sister was telling me.
00:33:59
She said oh, they had a little ceremony but they didn't tell
00:34:03
the black people.
00:34:04
So they had some committee that was.
00:34:06
They didn't tell, they didn't tell the black people, they did
00:34:09
the ceremony, like seven in the morning, you know.
00:34:11
And so they and they reburied them in the same place, whereas
00:34:15
they knew who they were, they could have united their remains
00:34:18
with their families, you know, but this is, this is the evil.
00:34:22
Speaker 2: Yes, speaking of the evil, there was a question.
00:34:25
I have my questions on here, so I'm not just not looking at it
00:34:27
but when you talked about, you said, economic envy.
00:34:30
There was also something you mentioned predatory capitalism.
00:34:34
You mentioned that throughout the book and of course, you got
00:34:36
to 365 facts in here right, they're all there.
00:34:39
But I just thought it was so Intriguing and beautiful and
00:34:44
needed the preface in the book Um, that you talked about it.
00:34:48
But you mentioned, um predatory capitalism, um, as pretty much
00:34:53
a.
00:34:53
It's a travesty that happened in our country.
00:34:55
How do you define predatory capitalism and what should we
00:34:59
know about it?
00:34:59
You talk about it in this book.
00:35:00
What does that mean?
00:35:01
Speaker 3: Well, predatory capitalism is regular capitalism
00:35:04
on steroids.
00:35:04
It's exploiting x, it's exploiting people's excess value
00:35:09
.
00:35:09
So let's say that you're making 25 dollars an hour but your
00:35:13
employer is getting 50 dollars an hour from your labor.
00:35:17
Predatory capitalism is underpaying you that way.
00:35:22
Predatory capitalism is what happens in the rental market,
00:35:25
when people are having their basically surplus value
00:35:29
extracted from them.
00:35:30
So I guess, as capitalism on steroids, I think something is
00:35:33
wrong with capitalism in and of itself.
00:35:35
But I'm a mit trained economist , which means you know I don't
00:35:38
have an alternative.
00:35:39
You know I was trained in capitalism, although you know I
00:35:43
play with the possibilities of socialism, the possibilities of
00:35:47
Communalism.
00:35:48
But at the end of the day, you know, the capitalist system
00:35:51
doesn't have to be as exploitive as it is.
00:35:55
I mean, basically, I look at capitalism as a wolf, I look at
00:36:00
government as the dentist.
00:36:02
So here's the deal Do you sharper the wolf's teeth or do
00:36:05
you you playing them down?
00:36:07
See, what we have in the past, probably 40 years, is the Wolf
00:36:13
be having his teeth sharpened.
00:36:15
So we've had past law after law after law that allows people to
00:36:19
exploit.
00:36:19
In a more quote, gentle period you would have the basically the
00:36:25
wolf's teeth Playing down so that people could thrive.
00:36:29
We could look at a bunch of numbers that show that.
00:36:33
Well, I can.
00:36:34
The last recession, not the the 2008 the top 10% came back with
00:36:45
115% of what they lost.
00:36:47
But people at the bottom never came back.
00:36:50
But the top, the people at the top, they got theirs back and
00:36:55
then some.
00:36:55
But that because we're giving banks money because they were
00:36:59
failing, we'll give the people who were depositing some money
00:37:02
because they were failing.
00:37:03
I mean so predatory capitalism.
00:37:05
Like I said, it's capitalism on steroids and has no moral
00:37:08
compass.
00:37:09
The compass.
00:37:10
That compass is profit maximization.
00:37:13
So the job of the catalyst is to make as much money as they
00:37:18
can, no matter who you hurt.
00:37:21
Speaker 2: Got it cause I was like, ooh, let me get my.
00:37:23
When I see her I'm gonna ask her about this, cause I just
00:37:25
thought it was.
00:37:25
I love that you gave it a name and gave it words that we could
00:37:30
continue to use.
00:37:31
So in this book you have 365 facts.
00:37:35
I wonder how did you stop at 365?
00:37:39
Cause there's probably so many more.
00:37:40
What was that determining factor for you to stop there?
00:37:43
Speaker 3: A fact today, in a year.
00:37:45
Fact today, I mean I will probably.
00:37:48
I mean I'm working on my lynching book.
00:37:50
Now it's called the lynching culture, not just lynching the
00:37:53
lynching culture, the wealth gap and reparations.
00:37:56
So I'm working on that and I'll probably come back to the facts
00:37:59
because there are plenty and in fact people have written into
00:38:03
how come you didn't have this, how come you didn't have that.
00:38:05
So I will probably come back to it.
00:38:08
Speaker 2: So why a second edition?
00:38:09
Why now?
00:38:09
Why 2023?
00:38:12
Come on, what a second?
00:38:13
Why now?
00:38:14
Speaker 3: Like I said, a little brother rolled up on me in the
00:38:15
airport and it just seemed to me actually also, it just seemed
00:38:21
to me that we need to know what has happened to our people.
00:38:25
What I call this age is a graceless age.
00:38:29
There is no grace in this age that we're in to the point that
00:38:34
books are being banned, facts are being denied.
00:38:37
One of the first states that passed that anti-CRT stuff was
00:38:42
Oklahoma, and which means can you actually teach the story of
00:38:47
Tulsa given that law?
00:38:49
And so it seemed to me that just, even though these facts
00:38:53
have been out there, it just seemed to me that it made sense,
00:38:58
with less work than writing a whole new book, cause it seemed
00:39:02
just let's just release it so people know and people can use
00:39:06
it and people can talk about it.
00:39:07
And there are more facts.
00:39:09
Because I've been mostly what I do these days I need to do more
00:39:13
writing and less reading, but the reading is so intriguing
00:39:16
it's like it got me like this and I just can't let it go.
00:39:18
But some of the things, some of the reasons that people were
00:39:22
lynched you could get lynched for spitting on the sidewalk,
00:39:24
lynch for not saying sir to a white person.
00:39:26
A man was lynched because a random white woman.
00:39:30
He didn't know her.
00:39:31
She asked him to run an errand for him and he said no.
00:39:33
So they lynched him because he was disrespectful.
00:39:36
But there's a case in Paris, texas, where two black men
00:39:42
unrelated that happened at the same time.
00:39:44
In one case the brother was renting his land and white folks
00:39:48
wanted it and the woman who was renting the land to him,
00:39:52
leasing land to him, told the white folks who wanted it you
00:39:56
have to work that out with him.
00:39:57
Guess how they worked it out.
00:39:59
They lynched him.
00:40:00
And in the same year in Paris, texas, there was an older black
00:40:04
man and I'm reading this.
00:40:06
There's a book that the NAACP put out in I forget 1920
00:40:13
something, and this brother was described as very inoffensive,
00:40:19
elderly and prosperous.
00:40:21
So he was asked to sign his land over and he said no,
00:40:26
lynched him.
00:40:27
I mean so when people you know and the issue here is the
00:40:32
collective trauma that people you said you didn't know
00:40:35
anything about it.
00:40:36
There's a book called Lynching and Spectacle and the woman
00:40:39
talks about how people want to spare their children the trauma
00:40:45
of knowing.
00:40:45
And so they didn't talk about it.
00:40:47
And then there were people who were afraid to talk about it In
00:40:50
the Rosewood case people.
00:40:54
There's a book about Rosewood and there's a woman who was
00:40:59
there and knew she was really old, but she was afraid to even
00:41:03
talk about it Because, you know, her son knew about it.
00:41:07
He had, she had told him.
00:41:09
And when she told him about it she said to him you can't talk
00:41:12
to anybody else about this.
00:41:13
Then this white man found learned about Rosewood and wants
00:41:18
to write a book about it and he did.
00:41:19
But he what?
00:41:20
Was going door to door asking people did they know what
00:41:23
happened?
00:41:23
And people would say no.
00:41:24
And then finally someone said you need to talk to this guy.
00:41:27
And the brother actually got the man in the car and drove him
00:41:31
out of town before he was willing to talk about it.
00:41:34
He didn't want anyone to overhear him talking about it.
00:41:38
That's the.
00:41:39
But Richard Wright, the author who wrote Black Boy, said if I
00:41:45
hear of a lynching in Mississippi, I could feel it in
00:41:48
Chicago.
00:41:48
That's the collective trauma that our people have experienced
00:41:52
and that's why we need comprehensive reparations.
00:41:55
Speaker 2: And that that just leads to me, and I know James,
00:41:58
but I don't have his quote in front of me.
00:41:59
But what I do have is my question to you in that kind of
00:42:05
same vein what can Black folks do today, if anything, to quiet
00:42:10
our minds about what was wrongly taken from us, like whether it
00:42:13
be the case in Tulsa or Black Wall Street, or colleges who
00:42:16
built their institutions off of enslaved selling enslaved folks?
00:42:20
How do we quiet our minds?
00:42:21
It's just very complex emotions , or do we not?
00:42:25
Do we keep moving?
00:42:26
Do we keep fighting for reparations?
00:42:28
How do we quiet our?
00:42:28
Speaker 3: minds with all of that.
00:42:29
Well, we, you know, if we're not whole and I'm not whole when
00:42:34
I read about lynchings I get real angry.
00:42:36
I told somebody the other day.
00:42:38
I said this would not be a day for a white person to step on my
00:42:40
foot.
00:42:41
This will simply not be the day , and I think there's a level of
00:42:46
anger with many of us.
00:42:47
Others just stuff it in.
00:42:50
I think, first of all, we have to fight for our own mental
00:42:52
health and give it and understand the trauma that our
00:42:55
people have experienced, and basically fight for wholeness,
00:42:59
and wholeness does mean talking about it, it doesn't mean
00:43:01
stuffing it in.
00:43:02
But I think, secondly, the fight for reparations, for
00:43:07
social and economic justice.
00:43:08
I think the history of our people ought to basically
00:43:12
invigorate us in struggle.
00:43:14
I mean, if we do nothing, we're basically saying that it was
00:43:17
okay, and so I think now others disagree.
00:43:20
I mean I've got a dear friend, dear dear friend, and she's like
00:43:26
I don't wanna talk to you about reparations, that's how it goes
00:43:28
.
00:43:28
She's like I don't wanna talk about it.
00:43:29
She's like that was then and this is now, and she tells me
00:43:33
you would be better, your time would be better spent doing
00:43:35
something else, blah, blah, blah and I respect her position, but
00:43:39
I disagree.
00:43:40
I think that as long we're struggling for justice, we're
00:43:44
saying we resist evil, we resist what happened, we're gonna make
00:43:49
it right, and then they're just really.
00:43:52
We have a wealth gap and that wealth gap determines the terms
00:43:57
and conditions of the way so many of our people live In terms
00:44:01
of what we have access to, in terms of the fact that 70% of
00:44:06
white people own their homes.
00:44:07
For black people it's 44.
00:44:10
It got up to about 48 or maybe 47.
00:44:14
And then it went back down after the recessions.
00:44:16
So I mean, what does that mean?
00:44:19
Well, I know people whose parents borrowed money against
00:44:23
their house to send them to college.
00:44:25
You know, I mean I had a little dry spell.
00:44:28
I own a home downtown.
00:44:30
When I bought it was $300 and I couldn't buy it today.
00:44:34
But when I went through a little dry spell, what did I do?
00:44:37
Refundance my house so that I could and I had access.
00:44:41
Home equity is the way that middle income people get a foot
00:44:50
into the door, develop wealth and especially intergenerational
00:44:55
wealth.
00:44:56
So while our kids, somebody's kids, their mom, took a loan out
00:45:02
against their house, some other kids, our black young women,
00:45:07
have more than twice the student loan debt that white young
00:45:10
women have.
00:45:11
So they're starting out in life with basically a shackle of
00:45:17
that student loan debt.
00:45:18
Brother Biden I call him brother when he does the right
00:45:21
thing, which ain't all the time, but Brother Biden tried and the
00:45:26
Supreme Court knocked it down to try to provide some relief
00:45:29
for people in terms of that student loan debt.
00:45:31
So the wealth gap is a function of the disparate treatment of
00:45:37
our people and we don't have to go all the way back to
00:45:41
enslavement.
00:45:42
We can look at the reconstruction era or we can go
00:45:45
and look at the 1940s where the GI Bill was unevenly applied so
00:45:50
that black men in particular, and black women, but with many
00:45:54
of these military things, as it's black men.
00:45:56
In Mississippi, fewer than a thousand black men were able to
00:46:00
go to college on the GI Bill.
00:46:01
Why?
00:46:02
Because they had this board.
00:46:03
You have to ask the board.
00:46:04
You say I'm John Jones, I've served blah blah and I wanna go
00:46:09
to Tuskegee and they would say, well, no, maybe you could go to
00:46:13
barber school.
00:46:14
So the GI Bill was designed to have former soldiers come out
00:46:25
and be home, but black men were.
00:46:26
It wasn't every.
00:46:28
Obviously we got our Whitney Youngs, we got many.
00:46:30
Brothers were able, but many were also not, and especially in
00:46:34
those southern states where they basically don't get me
00:46:36
started.
00:46:37
Don't get me started because I will have to tell you the story
00:46:40
about Isaac Woodward.
00:46:41
Isaac Woodward was a black man who served in the military,
00:46:45
served in the army.
00:46:46
He was returning to South Carolina for Washington DC,
00:46:50
actually on a bus.
00:46:51
They didn't have bathrooms on a bus then, so the rule was if I
00:46:55
asked the bus driver, could you make a bathroom?
00:46:57
Stop, you're supposed to do it.
00:46:58
Isaac Woodward.
00:47:00
The bus driver called him a boy .
00:47:03
This man is in uniform, called him a boy and blah, blah, blah.
00:47:06
I said he wasn't gonna stop.
00:47:08
Isaac Woodward had some choice words for him.
00:47:10
He radioed the police.
00:47:12
When he stopped at the next place, they pulled him out, beat
00:47:16
him, blinded him, blinded him, took the backs of their Billy
00:47:21
Cubs and blinded him.
00:47:23
And then they poured liquor on him.
00:47:25
He didn't drink.
00:47:26
They poured liquor on him and said he was drunk and disorderly
00:47:28
.
00:47:28
This is how we got the Civil Rights Commission, because Harry
00:47:33
Truman learned about it.
00:47:35
He was a racist, he was a segregationist, but he learned
00:47:38
about it.
00:47:38
He said how could they do it to a man in uniform?
00:47:41
Coincidentally, in the same year, 1946, two couples, two
00:47:46
black couples, were lynched, and again, one of them was a
00:47:51
veteran.
00:47:51
And the president was just horrified.
00:47:54
It's like how could this happen ?
00:47:55
This was a veteran and because he had high regard for military
00:47:59
service, so he's like he didn't mind other lynchings, but he did
00:48:04
, you know.
00:48:04
But the military part really got to him.
00:48:07
But when you think about Isaac Woodward, I mean that's, you
00:48:12
know, like I said, my mental health ain't right, but I'm okay
00:48:15
with that.
00:48:15
Speaker 2: I think a lot of us, you know, like I said, just
00:48:18
reconcile it sometimes, especially as I read, and we
00:48:21
have customers that come in our stores.
00:48:23
It's just just staving it off sometimes, cause I can't.
00:48:26
When I think of Tulsa, when I think of not knowing, when I
00:48:29
think of the book bannings and all these things that are
00:48:31
happening, having to keep that rage sometimes under.
00:48:34
It's a balance sometimes.
00:48:35
Then other times I'm smiling and hey, how you doing.
00:48:37
You know it's just this balance and dance that we have to do
00:48:40
all the time.
00:48:40
So I was just curious, you know how do we combat that.
00:48:44
But I do want to open it up to the audience for questions.
00:48:47
But my last question for you is out of all these amazing facts
00:48:50
that I went through and I have some of them earmarked, but were
00:48:52
there one or two that when you discovered them that you were
00:48:55
like, oh my gosh, like this was just mind blowing for you?
00:48:58
Or were they?
00:48:58
Was it all of them Like?
00:48:59
Was there one that sticks out, one or two Facts that you recall
00:49:03
that really like blew your mind once you read, discovered it?
00:49:07
Speaker 3: The things that I was most excited about were lifting
00:49:10
up some of the black women who people didn't know about we all.
00:49:16
Everybody knows about Madame CJ Walker.
00:49:18
Very few people know about Maggie Lena Walker, who was just
00:49:22
an amazing woman from Richmond, virginia.
00:49:24
There's a big old statue to her in downtown Richmond.
00:49:27
She started a bank, the Penny Savings Bank, which became a
00:49:35
consolidated bank.
00:49:36
She was brilliant and just.
00:49:39
I've been down to her papers.
00:49:40
Actually, at one point I was thinking about writing a book
00:49:42
about her but I didn't.
00:49:43
So this has been a circuitous route to get to this particular.
00:49:47
But Maggie Lena when I think about her I just smile.
00:49:50
She, because she was just so before her time she started a
00:49:54
department store and it failed because the white people made it
00:49:58
fail.
00:49:58
What happened was she was very successful.
00:50:02
We as black people, we have all these ceremonial things, we Elks
00:50:05
and we granddaughter rulers and all that, but all those
00:50:08
uniforms were being obtained from New York and she said, well
00:50:11
, why we can do that at my store ?
00:50:14
So they were selling.
00:50:15
But then the white people told the distributors from New York
00:50:19
if you supply to her, we won't buy from you.
00:50:22
And that's how her.
00:50:24
The store lasted for seven years and it ended up failing.
00:50:28
But I just like I said, and then in 1929, when we're looking
00:50:35
at the depression she suggested to two other black banks that
00:50:40
we should consolidate because we won't be able to make it if
00:50:43
we're on our own.
00:50:43
You think about that, just like what she said about the
00:50:46
barbershops.
00:50:48
And she, I mean it wasn't easy but she managed to do it, and so
00:50:51
I was excited to write about her, excited to write about my
00:50:54
own mentor, dr Phyllis Ann Wallace, who was the first black
00:50:57
woman to doctorate in economics from Yale and she was the first
00:51:03
black full professor, black female full professor at MIT.
00:51:06
So she was one of my professors and just a lot of people don't
00:51:10
know about her and they should.
00:51:13
She was a researcher at the EEOC Equal Employment
00:51:17
Opportunity Commission and she just just so many things.
00:51:21
And she was my friend who put up with me Every time I curse.
00:51:25
She said, don't we have other language?
00:51:28
And I'm saying, yeah, we do, we ain't using it today.
00:51:30
That's the one I chose.
00:51:32
That's the one you chose right.
00:51:33
You know Addy Wyatt, who was a labor leader who a lot of people
00:51:38
don't know about when we talk about the labor movement.
00:51:41
She's had another one.
00:51:44
So that excited me is to bring some of these black women to
00:51:48
light and to life, because and the brothers too, I mean ain't
00:51:53
Philip Randolph, you know, but I always, you know, for some
00:51:59
reason our black history so often sidelines women, and so
00:52:04
it's always important for me to include them.
00:52:08
And I think even with Dr King, he certainly was all that, you
00:52:13
know, he was amazing, but he couldn't have done half of what
00:52:15
he did without Coretta and we very rarely lift up Coretta, and
00:52:20
she was as passionate, as much an activist and you know and she
00:52:26
was his thought partner.
00:52:28
He wrote her a letter in 1957 and said if he wasn't, how did
00:52:34
she put it?
00:52:35
Basically, he said he could be considered a socialist.
00:52:38
And if you look at his speeches , like what, I have the audacity
00:52:43
to believe that people everywhere can have three meals
00:52:45
a day for their bodies, education and culture for their
00:52:48
minds, peace and freedom for their spirits.
00:52:49
That's an economic conversation , but this is an economic
00:52:53
conversation that was developed with his thought partner, and so
00:52:56
all too often we don't think about her when we think about Dr
00:53:01
King and his legacy.
00:53:02
Speaker 2: I love that.
00:53:03
I'm thinking about Mahogany Books.
00:53:04
There's a thought partner here.
00:53:05
There's Ramunda and Der.
00:53:06
Ok, I'm just I need to go to therapy back.
00:53:08
No, no, I do want to open it up for questions to.
00:53:13
If the audience has questions, I'll open it up to you all.
00:53:17
So raise your hand if you do have one, and if not, I got to.
00:53:20
Ok, I see your hands, so I'm just trying to come to you,
00:53:22
since it's going to be recorded.
00:53:24
So, yeah, I want to make sure you can speak into the mic.
00:53:30
Speaker 5: Thank you.
00:53:30
This has been so enlightening.
00:53:32
You kind of mentioned in home ownership and kind of going
00:53:36
through a little dry spell and refinancing, which I think most
00:53:40
of us maybe do.
00:53:40
Is that not advised to refinance?
00:53:44
When you kind of talked about then legacy of generational,
00:53:47
wealth.
00:53:48
Speaker 3: Well, it's not the best thing to do, frankly, but
00:53:52
it's your asset.
00:53:53
So, rather than borrow in another way or it was right for
00:54:00
me at the time I have a financial advisor.
00:54:03
We talked about it.
00:54:04
I have six figures worth of equity in my home.
00:54:07
So you know it makes sense, when I croak which I will one of
00:54:13
my God children will get my house and if Actually, I'm
00:54:17
probably out of there in a minute because those steps are
00:54:19
getting on my nerves, but you know, the equity is what they'll
00:54:24
inherit, or it's what, when I move to the next chapter, a
00:54:29
one-story, something you know that will be what you know sees
00:54:36
me through.
00:54:36
It's my retirement, you know so .
00:54:40
But it depends on where in life , when in life, you are in terms
00:54:44
of refinancing, and it depends on the interest rate you get.
00:54:47
You know, like today, if anybody refinanced today with
00:54:51
these higher interest rates, no, just know, figure something
00:54:55
else out.
00:54:57
Speaker 2: I think you had a question.
00:55:01
Speaker 4: Good evening.
00:55:02
This has been amazing.
00:55:04
I listened to you on WPFW and so being able to see you has
00:55:10
been a treat.
00:55:13
I am a historic preservationist.
00:55:15
I grew up loving history and I believe that the reason why I
00:55:22
was able to really dive into history as a young age was
00:55:27
because I went to a school where , in the fourth grade, I had a
00:55:31
class that was especially about African American history and
00:55:36
that sparked it and I just kept going with it.
00:55:39
I was always encouraged that history was something that was a
00:55:43
positive thing to learn and you should grow in it, and so, with
00:55:48
any interest, world War II with African studies.
00:55:52
I took it through college and now I work in it, and I talked
00:55:57
to a lot of African American communities about preserving
00:56:03
history and what I hear is a lack of education, a lack of
00:56:10
knowledge of what's around them.
00:56:11
So, for example, I'm doing work on Nanny Helen Burroughs.
00:56:17
I'm trying to preserve her campus, which is here in the
00:56:21
Deanwood area.
00:56:23
It is not designated a landmark.
00:56:26
It is six acres that she designed and vision for a campus
00:56:30
for African American women and was able to be a leader for it
00:56:35
for over 30-plus years and had great like just amazing
00:56:39
connections throughout the city and throughout the country, and
00:56:43
when I tell people that I'm even studying Nanny Helen Burroughs,
00:56:46
they're like the avenue oh well , I never, really they never put
00:56:53
a person with that actual avenue, the naming system that
00:56:59
we even have for streets.
00:57:01
It's not being transferred into the education system and oh
00:57:07
okay.
00:57:08
Well, I was in a lecture previously with Khalil Muhammad
00:57:13
and he spoke about how to combat the anti-woke movement was to
00:57:22
instill African American history in education and we should be
00:57:25
trying to push that.
00:57:26
But the question was how do we get African American history
00:57:30
into our education system if they're banning our books?
00:57:33
Your book is something that I think would be a great
00:57:37
introduction for younger people to learn facts about excellence,
00:57:42
but how is there a way we can get your book into younger
00:57:46
people's hands?
00:57:47
Is that something that you've been thinking about, or even
00:57:51
speaking at schools?
00:57:53
Speaker 3: Well, whenever schools call me and can pay me,
00:57:55
I can't come, and when it's in the district, though, I'm always
00:57:59
happy to show up in the district and I usually don't
00:58:02
charge them much.
00:58:03
But and I have been thinking about how to my friend Patrick,
00:58:08
who helped with the book, has been looking at librarians and
00:58:12
how we can get the book into libraries, and I've actually
00:58:15
donated boxes but my accountant says I can't do it anymore of
00:58:20
books to various schools, with friends who our teachers call
00:58:25
and say can I get a book?
00:58:26
I'll just send them a whole case because I want people to be
00:58:30
able to read it.
00:58:31
With the Nettie Helen Burrows thing, though.
00:58:34
So first of all, let me start with how we learned it.
00:58:37
I don't wanna say something about Nettie Helen Burrows.
00:58:39
We have to start doing Saturday schools.
00:58:42
We have to start.
00:58:45
We cannot depend.
00:58:47
Malcolm X said one time only a fool will allow the enemy to
00:58:50
educate their children.
00:58:51
Now, so just thinking about Saturday schools, even for an
00:58:56
hour, about churches doing or education, but more people on
00:59:01
boards of education have to push .
00:59:03
I don't think we have the problem here in the district,
00:59:05
but we might, but I know that there are many places where it
00:59:08
is the whole banning of books, and they're banning stuff like
00:59:12
Toni Morrison's Beloved.
00:59:13
You know Alice Walker, not Alice Walker who I'm already
00:59:18
talking about the Bluest Eye.
00:59:19
I mean.
00:59:20
1640 books at last count have been banned in some place or
00:59:26
another.
00:59:27
It's absurd.
00:59:28
So we have to.
00:59:29
But whether you have children or not, you have to have some
00:59:33
engagement with public education to ensure that our young people
00:59:38
are having access.
00:59:39
And, as I said, we can't depend on even in a almost even in
00:59:45
chocolate it ain't chocolate city number.
00:59:47
Even in chocolate chip we have to basically try to emphasize
00:59:51
the chocolate.
00:59:51
But with many Helen Burrows is there's no marker, there's no
00:59:55
nothing.
00:59:56
Speaker 4: We're working on it.
00:59:57
I picked this up after my mentor.
01:00:02
She had been working for almost 10 years to get this
01:00:05
designation.
01:00:06
There was some issue with the ownership of the property
01:00:09
because oftentimes landmarking requires some sort of
01:00:13
preservation of a site.
01:00:14
You can't just do whatever you want and that wrote contention,
01:00:20
so it took a long time.
01:00:21
In the meantime, there was designations of the corridor,
01:00:25
there was designation, there was mention of a day of many Helen
01:00:29
Burrows, which is in May.
01:00:30
But the designation of the preservation of physical
01:00:34
landmarks, for example, like Anacostia Historic District, is
01:00:38
the only historic district in Ward 8.
01:00:40
There are several historic districts all throughout the
01:00:43
rest of the Ward and so when you think about just the inequality
01:00:46
of historic preservation within our African-American community,
01:00:50
it really does start with us, because we have to be the
01:00:53
bullhorn to say that something is significant.
01:00:56
But if nobody knows things are significant, then they're very
01:00:59
much likely to disappear more easily.
01:01:02
So yeah, it's a tough battle.
01:01:08
Speaker 3: Well, I would love to know more about it at another
01:01:10
time.
01:01:13
Speaker 2: I love it.
01:01:13
So I want to make sure people get their book signs.
01:01:15
I'm going to do one more question and then we'll go
01:01:18
across the hall If you have a book.
01:01:19
If you don't have a book, we have books there.
01:01:21
Oh, we have.
01:01:22
Look, I'm going to say two questions.
01:01:24
Make it brief, y'all.
01:01:26
We want to make sure y'all get your book sign.
01:01:27
You can make it brief, and then we'll make sure.
01:01:28
So I'll do you, and then we'll have you as our last one.
01:01:32
Speaker 6: Okay, this has been fabulous, fabulous, fabulous and
01:01:36
very informative, and thank you for coming to Ward 8.
01:01:39
My question is this what can we do to further support and stop
01:01:48
the erosion of black banks?
01:01:50
Your thoughts on that?
01:01:54
Speaker 3: You can patronize them.
01:01:55
Once upon a time in our history there were more than 100
01:01:59
black-owned banks.
01:02:00
Now we're down to 23.
01:02:02
Many of our Industrial does a great job.
01:02:06
Doyle Mitchell was my leadership Washington classmate.
01:02:08
Wonderful brother supports the community, does a lot and you
01:02:13
know.
01:02:13
But for black banks like Doyle's or Magdalena I mean back
01:02:18
when she started her but their people in Richmond today will
01:02:21
tell you they wouldn't have their home were it not for
01:02:23
Magdalena and the work that she did.
01:02:25
And Doyle does all kinds of community education about home
01:02:28
ownership and things like that.
01:02:30
A lot of us, however, want all the bells and whistles that
01:02:34
majority banks have and in wanting all those bells and
01:02:37
whistles, we don't support our banks and we just need to do a
01:02:42
better job at it.
01:02:43
And we can, but it's not.
01:02:45
But even if the deposits were greater, what we also need to do
01:02:50
is to figure out how we can incent more investors.
01:02:54
You know, I've had this conversation with Doyle a couple
01:02:56
of years ago and he was saying that the deposits are great, but
01:03:00
you really don't make money off deposits but investors are
01:03:05
people who buy stock and then basically hang in there.
01:03:09
But again, with investors, if you go, let's say I don't.
01:03:15
I wanna get a good if you buy that bit crap.
01:03:20
Whatever you can say oh, I got 30% return on investment.
01:03:26
You're not gonna get that with bank stock.
01:03:28
You're gonna get 5%.
01:03:29
That's how it is.
01:03:30
It's a low turn-up, it's a low profit industry.
01:03:34
But if you care about it, you'll support it and we're
01:03:39
blessed in.
01:03:40
Washington.
01:03:40
Industrial is one of the oldest surviving black-owned banks,
01:03:44
consolidated bit the dust in, I think, 2003 or 2005.
01:03:50
And the banking regulatory system doesn't often work well
01:03:56
in the favor of small banks, not necessarily black banks,
01:04:00
although black banks tend to be judged far more harshly than
01:04:04
others are.
01:04:05
Speaker 6: But I think it's three in Chicago and I think all
01:04:07
of them are from who?
01:04:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last one was.
01:04:10
I forgot the name of it, but yeah, you're right, I think it
01:04:15
all went from Pullman Seaway and after that yeah Seaway, they
01:04:17
had a couple of friends who were on that board.
01:04:19
I don't know what they were doing, but the bank failed.
01:04:25
Speaker 7: Okay, sir, you said you were good.
01:04:26
Excuse me, this is a question about black pedagogy in general,
01:04:33
about how black people learn and how we teach things.
01:04:38
Based on some of the things you just said, I consider white
01:04:44
people, in particular white males, the most dangerous animal
01:04:48
on the planet.
01:04:49
Okay, wherever I tend to agree with you Wherever they go,
01:04:53
wherever.
01:04:54
That was there when they got there is worse off after they
01:04:57
got there.
01:04:58
But black people, I find, have been anesthetized into teaching
01:05:07
their young people, their children and followers that
01:05:11
white men in particular are the enemies of black people and they
01:05:15
try to assimilate into a society that Dr Keane said is a
01:05:20
burning house.
01:05:21
So my question is how do black people begin to start to
01:05:29
objectively state what their condition is vis-a-vis white
01:05:33
people so that all these young men and people who are around
01:05:39
here who become disillusioned because they were not told by
01:05:43
other black people that white people will not allow them to go
01:05:47
into their systems up to a certain level and that there
01:05:52
needs to be more specific behaviors and actions and goals
01:05:58
for black people to become independent and not see white
01:06:04
people, white systems, white structures as the basis for how
01:06:08
and why and what to do things for.
01:06:12
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a mouthful.
01:06:12
That's a dissertation I was trying to process some of that,
01:06:15
not a question.
01:06:17
But you raised several very important points about
01:06:20
developing and encouraging black independence.
01:06:22
Many points about how we encourage, how we teach our
01:06:27
young people to be more independent and to necessarily
01:06:32
separate themselves from the superstructure.
01:06:35
And at the same time if I ever write an autobiography, that's
01:06:40
something that I will write about is a sort of
01:06:42
contradictions of basically what does our view?
01:06:45
Lots, lord say that master's tools cannot dismantle the
01:06:49
master's house, and when I think about that as a MIT trained
01:06:53
economist, I think about what kind of indoctrination did I
01:06:59
have?
01:06:59
And when I talk about revolution reparations, these
01:07:04
are things that were not taught at MIT.
01:07:06
Of course, I read extensively so I can talk about those things
01:07:10
, but there's always.
01:07:12
Do you encourage people to embrace a capitalist system or
01:07:16
do you encourage them to resist it?
01:07:18
And if they resist it, how do they resist it and what does
01:07:20
that mean in terms of their own livelihood?
01:07:23
And because the capitalist system is our system, and if you
01:07:29
can't win, if you don't play, and so you've seen a lot of
01:07:31
people play, and play very well.
01:07:34
You look at a Bob Johnson, you look at a Robert Smith, you look
01:07:37
at an Oprah.
01:07:38
They play, and they play very well, but at the same time, they
01:07:42
represent what percentage of the black population?
01:07:45
And what do we say to our young people?
01:07:47
No, you're not gonna be Oprah.
01:07:49
Well, you might, but the likelihood is low.
01:07:52
What can you build for yourself ?
01:07:54
So it's the internal contradiction of, as Du Bois
01:08:00
talked about it in terms of living in white America, two
01:08:03
warring souls and one black body .
01:08:05
And I think that that's.
01:08:07
Some people will go that's route, some will go the other
01:08:11
route.
01:08:12
But what we must do, and what we are not doing very well, is
01:08:15
we must be connected.
01:08:19
We don't have to be on the same page.
01:08:20
You can be a socialist, I can be a Marxist and somebody else
01:08:23
can be a capitalist, but we have to be connected, and that's
01:08:27
what's missing is the connection .
01:08:29
Speaker 7: Well, Carter G Woodson said about Du Bois,
01:08:32
Harvard, because Du Bois was the first one to get PhD out of
01:08:35
Harvard.
01:08:36
And Carter G Woodson said, who lived in DC, of course, started
01:08:41
Black History Week, then became Black History Month and they
01:08:44
kind of had an argument.
01:08:44
And Carter G Woodson said about Du Bois Harvard has ruined more
01:08:50
good Negroes than bad whiskey.
01:08:54
Speaker 3: He did say that, yes, he did.
01:08:56
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's the perfect way.
01:08:58
That's in this evening.
01:09:01
Please help me give it up for Dr Julianne Malvo Woo Woo.
01:09:06
Thank you, I appreciate you, we honor you and we just thank you
01:09:11
for making space for us here at Mahogany Books.
01:09:13
Thank you so much.
01:09:14
And people can buy the book all over the United States.
01:09:16
It's in our warehouses, so people can buy it online and
01:09:20
here at our stores as well, but we do have them online as well.
01:09:23
So thank you all, and we'll be hosting the signing on the other
01:09:25
side here, but thank you all for coming out tonight as well.
01:09:27
Give yourselves a big round.
01:09:29
Speaker 1: Thank you all for that.
01:09:30
Appreciate it.
01:09:31
Thank you.
01:09:32
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