Speaker 1: This is my legacy. Welcome to our bonus episodes, dropping
Speaker 1: every Thursday Today. More from our interview with sports journalists
Speaker 1: and truth teller Jamil Hill and her husband Ian Wallace,
Speaker 1: featuring moments you didn't hear in the main episode.
Speaker 2: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 3: Even though she's the one who said I love it,
Speaker 3: I not say so. Here's the story, and I think
Speaker 3: it was just a bit of a disconnect. We were
Speaker 3: in Dallas and this was probably what maybe four months
Speaker 3: into like meeting each other, and she was leaving out
Speaker 3: and I said I love you jokingly, and she she thought,
Speaker 3: like I was really serious. She wanted me to be serious.
Speaker 4: He totally said it because I called my girl and
Speaker 4: I was like, girl, he said he loved me or whatever.
Speaker 1: So so you threw out a I love you as.
Speaker 3: A joke, Like love you context is everything.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 3: She was leaving for work and we were playing house
Speaker 3: that weekend because as we were in a long distance relationship,
Speaker 3: so it was just a kind of a funny thing.
Speaker 4: Well, I thought he was serious, and so you know,
Speaker 4: it wasn't like him. I kind of had the same
Speaker 4: approach when we started to get to know each other.
Speaker 4: I wasn't looking for a relationship either. I wasn't looking
Speaker 4: to fall in love, which I guess again to some
Speaker 4: given our pro tips. Another thing, usually when you're not
Speaker 4: trying is when it happens right. And so neither one
Speaker 4: of us were in the space where we were looking
Speaker 4: for something super serious. But as we spent more time together,
Speaker 4: we just were having so much fun with one another
Speaker 4: and the.
Speaker 2: Connection was really seamless.
Speaker 4: And you know, I probably I knew for sure that
Speaker 4: when I knew for sure that I loved you when
Speaker 4: we went to the SPCE together. I think that was
Speaker 4: right around the time where I was just like, Okay,
Speaker 4: this is a feeling that's not going to be going away,
Speaker 4: because you know, we were dating, but we didn't put
Speaker 4: any boundaries necessarily that we we didn't have that will
Speaker 4: you go with me conversation quite yet. So we were
Speaker 4: dating for almost a year by the time we had
Speaker 4: that conversation, which I will I will openly admit I
Speaker 4: was the one who introduced this conversation.
Speaker 2: It was me.
Speaker 4: I told him, you know, he came to Connecticut to
Speaker 4: visit me. It was right around his birthday, and I said, like, listen, I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to play around anymore.
Speaker 3: I want you.
Speaker 2: I was smooth. I was smooth with it.
Speaker 3: I think Jamel is hard to read, so you know,
Speaker 3: while I knew she had feelings for me, it almost
Speaker 3: came out of nowhere. But I was happy.
Speaker 2: I was happy. I told him.
Speaker 4: I was like, hey, I'm ready to do this for real.
Speaker 4: So you know, if you if you got some little
Speaker 4: situations you need to take care of on the side,
Speaker 4: and you tell them their time is over.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: So I definitely was the one who broached and asked
Speaker 4: him about like, hey, I think we should try to
Speaker 4: do this for real and be in a relation and ship.
Speaker 5: You've said Ian makes you laugh and makes your spirit lighter.
Speaker 5: What does he do to make you laugh?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: I get to snitch on him a little bit, okay,
Speaker 4: or brag on him. I should say he has a
Speaker 4: tremendous sense of humor, Like maybe you know you're really funny.
Speaker 3: You're very joyful. I mean I could say like the
Speaker 3: smallest thing, and you're laughing, like you have a lot
Speaker 3: of joy I do, but you're funny.
Speaker 4: So it's not just that I don't laugh at everybody's
Speaker 4: jokes like that.
Speaker 2: It's it's you.
Speaker 3: So Hell'm kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: But he has a great sense of humor, a real
Speaker 4: zest for life. I mean, like another one of our
Speaker 4: sort of common love languages is that we both like
Speaker 4: to travel, and so we spend a lot of our
Speaker 4: free time traveling to different places. He has an explorer
Speaker 4: and adventurous spirit, and it's really contagious and infectious, and
Speaker 4: you know, just in little things that he does every day.
Speaker 2: He likes to roast me quite a bit, which.
Speaker 4: You know, and so I always find this to be,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of funny and endearing.
Speaker 2: My husband is also super playful.
Speaker 4: I know women out there could identify with this, is
Speaker 4: that there is this thing that happens inside of a
Speaker 4: relationship where at some point your husband just wants to
Speaker 4: treat you like a younger sibling.
Speaker 2: They want to wrestle you, they want to like I'm.
Speaker 3: Like what, But here's the thing, Jimmell. You act like
Speaker 3: you don't like it, but you like it. It's one
Speaker 3: of those.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, you know, neither one of us grew
Speaker 4: up with We have siblings, but we didn't grow up
Speaker 4: with them necessarily like in our house and are not
Speaker 4: close in age, so I feel like you're getting all
Speaker 4: of that sort of older sibling energy out on me.
Speaker 3: What you like it?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 4: Well, I'll say this, and I think women can also
Speaker 4: relate to this. Is they do it, there's nothing you
Speaker 4: could do about it. But when they stop doing it,
Speaker 4: you're like, hey, what's wrong? Because you haven't you know,
Speaker 4: you haven't tried put me in a full Nelson today.
Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on. So but yeah, his
Speaker 4: sense of humor, the lightness, those are all things that
Speaker 4: I love because, as you all know, especially when you're
Speaker 4: in the brand of media that I'm in, I talk
Speaker 4: about sports, of course, but I talk a lot about
Speaker 4: the intersection with sports with social justice, culture, gender, race.
Speaker 4: Those are heavy subjects, and I think because of what
Speaker 4: I talk about a lot of people think that I'm
Speaker 4: a super serious person all the time. But he is
Speaker 4: able to tap into that lightness that I have and
Speaker 4: the fact that, yes, I am a joyful person and
Speaker 4: I do have a good sense of humor, and he
Speaker 4: has all of those qualities as well, and so it
Speaker 4: just adds a sort of a lightness to our relationship
Speaker 4: that is really endearing and important to me.
Speaker 1: You know, people ask us a lot of times, all
Speaker 1: three of us, because, like you just said, Jamul, the
Speaker 1: work that we do, in particular in this time is
Speaker 1: so heavy. So it's very important to have the time
Speaker 1: and space to to laugh, to make sure every day
Speaker 1: that you're finding something to laugh about, which i'm I
Speaker 1: used to be more serious by nature, funnier, but it's
Speaker 1: it's and then i'm and i'm just when you have
Speaker 1: given tributes, you said that Martin is part of the
Speaker 1: reason you like Martin.
Speaker 6: He will say that because of him, but and but
Speaker 6: it also reminds listeners and even during the civil rights movement,
Speaker 6: I think people are surprised to find out that, first of.
Speaker 1: All, that your father actually had a sense of humor
Speaker 1: and bought a sense of laughter and lightness to to
Speaker 1: the house. And then even you know, amongst you know,
Speaker 1: people on the road with them, and like they would
Speaker 1: find ways to laugh.
Speaker 5: And you know, Dad is seen as extraordinarily serious. But
Speaker 5: as a minister, I guess you're always bringing humor to
Speaker 5: the two life experiences. So while the public didn't necessarily
Speaker 5: see that, all of his colleagues, including you know, others
Speaker 5: who happen to be around, would see that. And I
Speaker 5: guess it's I mean, some of the things they joke
Speaker 5: about would make one think are you joking about this?
Speaker 5: But if they didn't, I'm not sure how they would
Speaker 5: have made.
Speaker 2: It through it.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because I think it was last year I
Speaker 4: was asked to be in a documentary about your father
Speaker 4: that focused on his relationship with basketball and about how
Speaker 4: he used basketball to connect with people, and I thought
Speaker 4: it was a great perspective and a great entry point
Speaker 4: into talking about his legacy because you know, it's sort
Speaker 4: of hard for people to imagine, you know, doctor Martin
Speaker 4: Luther King junior playing basketball. And I think I made
Speaker 4: the joke during the interview, like, I mean, was he
Speaker 4: out there hooping in church?
Speaker 2: Who's like? What did his joper look? Like? I need
Speaker 2: to know this, you know, but it is.
Speaker 4: You know, just what you said is that you have
Speaker 4: to have some levity even in the seriousness stuff. And
Speaker 4: we see this from black people like all the time,
Speaker 4: you know, you see it on social media. It will
Speaker 4: be the most serious situation, and the jokes that our
Speaker 4: community will have is a way of us trying to
Speaker 4: balance out something that might be terrifying with also saying like, hey,
Speaker 4: we can't stay in a constant state of being paralyzed
Speaker 4: in fear.
Speaker 2: So let's just get these jokes off right.
Speaker 4: Now and try to diffuse the situation a little bit.
Speaker 1: And one thing I would like to add as well,
Speaker 1: because just like you, Jamel, I love all of our
Speaker 1: conversations on this podcast. I think we're incredibly blessed to
Speaker 1: have such phenomenal guests. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: the most about this conversation is the celebration and the
Speaker 1: look into black love. I think that a few years
Speaker 1: ago in Boston there was a monument that was dedicated
Speaker 1: to Martin's parents that here you had on the oldest public.
Speaker 5: Park, the Boston Comments.
Speaker 1: And you had this monument to black love, and that
Speaker 1: conversation was missed, and so it's it's wonderful to have
Speaker 1: this conversation and to celebrate you all and to celebrate
Speaker 1: black love.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I would even take it a step further and say
Speaker 4: I think that part of the story of doctor Martin
Speaker 4: Luther King Junior, the love that he shared with Curtas
Speaker 4: Scott King, is like a major component that I think
Speaker 4: often gets overlooked. And having done extensive reading, I read
Speaker 4: credit Scott King's the biography. She wrote, I read it
Speaker 4: a like maybe like five or six years ago, and
Speaker 4: it was It was very eye opening, and I think
Speaker 4: generally the appreciation for the woman that she was gets
Speaker 4: often overlooked.
Speaker 2: But yeah, their story is a love story.
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Speaker 3: of their strength today.
Speaker 4: I think in today's world, where athletes have a direct
Speaker 4: connection with their fans through social media, that they have
Speaker 4: the power to be able to engage them, especially in
Speaker 4: this moment. The problem is that for as active and
Speaker 4: aware as athletes were in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: To ask I was going to ask this question, Yeah,
Speaker 2: is like they were engaged in a different way. Now.
Speaker 4: There were some factors that were unique that were helping
Speaker 4: this engagement. Number one, you had in the NBA and
Speaker 4: the WNBA. They were both in a bubble. So when
Speaker 4: the WNBA players when they organized against Kelly Leffler, they
Speaker 4: were all together in one place, the former Senator of Georgia,
Speaker 4: and they got Rael Reverend Rafael Warnock elected. They collectively
Speaker 4: came together. It helped that they were all in the
Speaker 4: same place and they single handedly, you know, change things
Speaker 4: in Georgia and more so, it is because we had
Speaker 4: a you know, the tie in Senate that Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: was you know, able to break with her deciding vote.
Speaker 4: That's how we got Kantanji Brown Jackson as a Supreme
Speaker 4: Court justice. Is because of that, because those athletes decided
Speaker 4: to put their voice and their power behind Reverend Rafael Warnot.
Speaker 4: That's how we got Kantanji Brown Jackson. So I say
Speaker 4: that to use that example so that athletes understand that
Speaker 4: they are sitting on an incredible amount of power, especially
Speaker 4: in this moment, and while in many ways it is
Speaker 4: often unfair to ask them to sacrifice for what they
Speaker 4: have or at least put on the line what they
Speaker 4: have worked for their whole careers.
Speaker 2: You know, because I bring up.
Speaker 4: The Atlanta Dream, who were the ones that created that
Speaker 4: protest that went widespread throughout the WNBA.
Speaker 2: Kelly Lefer was the owner of the Atlanta Dream.
Speaker 4: They were effectively turning a campaign against their boss, Okay,
Speaker 4: the person writing their checks.
Speaker 2: That could have turned out all bad for them.
Speaker 4: And we're talking about women who, as we have seen
Speaker 4: with their WNA based salaries, they don't they're nowhere close
Speaker 4: to what men in the NBA make so they were
Speaker 4: putting a lot on the line and they can now
Speaker 4: look back and.
Speaker 2: See that they changed history by doing that.
Speaker 4: And so my concern is that athletes now, especially because
Speaker 4: we're in such a challenging moment, they're thinking more about
Speaker 4: the loss and not about the opportunity to really do
Speaker 4: something that could change the course of history.
Speaker 1: Now Here we are in twenty twenty five, and it seems,
Speaker 1: you know, because for any type of person see progress,
Speaker 1: there's always an inevitable backlash. Right so even now, whereas
Speaker 1: in you know, five years ago, you saw more engagement
Speaker 1: with athletes, you know, it was more it was safe,
Speaker 1: safer if you will to do so, it was more,
Speaker 1: you know, on trend, we're in a different era now.
Speaker 1: So what would you say to athletes that are madebe
Speaker 1: pondering how to use their voice in their power in
Speaker 1: now twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Well, I would say, again, I think it's always unfair
Speaker 4: to sort of ask them, just because I know the
Speaker 4: work that goes into it. But let's just look at
Speaker 4: what's happening on college campuses where you have a number
Speaker 4: of them. Most recently, University of Michigan eliminated all their DEI.
Speaker 2: You know, programs, and.
Speaker 4: Two years ago this university won the national championship in football.
Speaker 4: I if you are an athlete they can about, especially
Speaker 4: a black athlete thinking about going to University of Michigan.
Speaker 4: They have sent you the signal that they are more
Speaker 4: than fine for you to make money for them when
Speaker 4: championships for them entertain them. They are not fine with
Speaker 4: you actually being a full participant at this university or
Speaker 4: other people that look like you that don't have the talent,
Speaker 4: the football talent that you have. And that's never been
Speaker 4: a problem for America. I mean you open. You know,
Speaker 4: throughout our history, Americas have always been comfortable with black
Speaker 4: people entertaining them like they've never even through times of slavery,
Speaker 4: they have never not been comfortable with us in that position.
Speaker 4: So the question I would ask some of these athletes is,
Speaker 4: you know, if that's the only value that you have
Speaker 4: to them, then how do you think that they're looking
Speaker 4: at the people who cannot provide the same value that
Speaker 4: you can. And I think it's a real moment for
Speaker 4: a lot of athletes to assess their relationships with these
Speaker 4: colleges and universities who are making it quite clear that
Speaker 4: they only have room for black people in a specific
Speaker 4: way because when they talk about DEI, even though we're
Speaker 4: not the main ones who benefit, and I realize that
Speaker 4: that's a fraud relationship. They use us as the poster
Speaker 4: child forward to get people to turn against it. And
Speaker 4: so I would love for these athletes to ask the
Speaker 4: question of like, oh, well, if I'm not good enough
Speaker 4: to be at your university, I'm not a player, then
Speaker 4: I'm not good enough to perform this service for you.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: You don't bring up DEI when it comes to football,
Speaker 4: that's for sure, nor college basketball. These are billion dollar industries,
Speaker 4: and with what's happening at the funding and a more
Speaker 4: pressure being put on universities to capitulate to this administration,
Speaker 4: they need football and they need college basketball, so there's
Speaker 4: an automatic point of leverage. So all I know is
Speaker 4: that a few years ago there was a running back
Speaker 4: at Ole Miss who is their best running back, and
Speaker 4: he told the school, I Am not going to play
Speaker 4: unless you do something about that Confederate flag. And what
Speaker 4: do you think they did? They did something about the
Speaker 4: flag because they're not trying to lose any money through sports.
Speaker 4: They certainly aren't, you know, donors. They put up these
Speaker 4: pretty buildings on campus because they love the sports themes.
Speaker 4: So there's an automatic leverage that these athletes have that
Speaker 4: they have to use.
Speaker 1: Do you find yourself studying activism as well? Because you
Speaker 1: talked a lot earlier about a lot of your inspirations
Speaker 1: and mentorships as it relates to journalism, your teachers, and
Speaker 1: since you've had such a very strong activist whether it's
Speaker 1: intentional or not. And I'm curious, like, do you have
Speaker 1: you studied activism, activism and sports or it throughout your
Speaker 1: your career?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was organic, you know really because the the sports
Speaker 4: world often drags you into these things. It's like, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, I didn't know, oh, Colin Kaepernick was gonna happen,
Speaker 4: and it happened, and so then as these things, you know,
Speaker 4: and he wasn't the first person to do it, but
Speaker 4: as these things happen, it's like you have to be
Speaker 4: able to build the institutional knowledge like of course, like
Speaker 4: anybody I was certainly aware of, you know, the legacy
Speaker 4: of Muhammad.
Speaker 2: Ali and Arthur ash and ALTHEA.
Speaker 4: Gibson and will Well Rudolph and Jesse Owens and Jack Johnson,
Speaker 4: like I was aware of those things. But your job
Speaker 4: as a journalist is to be able to connect those
Speaker 4: things between what happened then to what's happening now. Because
Speaker 4: as much as we like to believe that these things
Speaker 4: are new under the sun, we're just don't repeat.
Speaker 2: These things are not new under the sun.
Speaker 4: And as you all mentioned a moment ago, is that
Speaker 4: every point in American history where there has been tremendous progress,
Speaker 4: there has all the backlash has been has far outweighed
Speaker 4: the progress that was made. I mean, reconstruction is probably
Speaker 4: the greatest example you know of this reconstruction got is
Speaker 4: Jim Crow, right, And so it's like there was a time.
Speaker 4: Every time we reach these inflection points where we can
Speaker 4: literally change America into something that is closer to the
Speaker 4: vision that we all want to see, we go the
Speaker 4: opposite direction. So as journalists, we have to make people
Speaker 4: understand that and also make them understand why does that
Speaker 4: keep happening? You know, our job is to provide context
Speaker 4: and so that when somebody looks back on this time,
Speaker 4: they can understand what this time was like and what
Speaker 4: it meant. Because certainly I go back and read I
Speaker 4: to be welles or and if not for her, you know,
Speaker 4: the godmother, the godmother of journalism, we would never have
Speaker 4: understood not just lynching, but I think the all out
Speaker 4: assault in what was intended to essentially eliminate, subjugate, denigrate
Speaker 4: black men in particular, right, we would not have understood
Speaker 4: so much of the psychology of how this country not
Speaker 4: just felt about black people, but about black men in particular.
Speaker 2: And so that's how I see my role.
Speaker 4: As a journalist, and not that I'll ever be out
Speaker 4: to be wells, but that's what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 4: Like you need people who are willing to willing to
Speaker 4: do this difficult work in wartime. It's really easy to
Speaker 4: do it in peacetime. It is so much harder to
Speaker 4: do it in wartime. But it's more significant when you
Speaker 4: do it now because there is so much right now
Speaker 4: that's coming out us on a daily basis, and.
Speaker 2: It feels like people are.
Speaker 4: People are feeling like they want to lay down because
Speaker 4: of the barrage of the volume of it. And I
Speaker 4: understand why people still have not gotten over what happened
Speaker 4: in the election, and we've been dealing with this onslaught
Speaker 4: since this administration took hold. But this is actually the
Speaker 4: time where we to do the very opposite of what
Speaker 4: we want to do.
Speaker 2: And I get it.
Speaker 4: Everybody's tired, but you know, hey, I mean Harriet didn't
Speaker 4: get tired.
Speaker 2: That's all I can say.
Speaker 1: In January, because you're talking about talking points, I talked
Speaker 1: about how I had seen all the means about black
Speaker 1: women saying, look, we're tired. You know, we did our
Speaker 1: pardon less but we don't have the luxury to do that.
Speaker 4: We don't as much as if sometimes it feels I
Speaker 4: can get We had to get that out of our system.
Speaker 2: We had to vent that because we were so frustrated.
Speaker 4: But the reality is, like none of our ancestors laid
Speaker 4: out on us, like we can't do that.
Speaker 2: As much as this country deserves us.
Speaker 4: To check out, we can't actually do that. It would
Speaker 4: be disrespectful to certainly your five days legacy and like
Speaker 4: the legacy of all these terrific ancestors who have gotten
Speaker 4: us to this point.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share,
Speaker 1: and follow us at my Legacy Movement on social media.
Speaker 1: New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday
Speaker 1: until next time. May you find inspiration to live your legacy,