Speaker 1: If the US were to seriously tackle the racial wealth
Speaker 1: gap and all the injustices past and present that have
Speaker 1: led to today's economic inequalities, it might not actually start
Speaker 1: with preparations, but with something much simpler, a full reckoning
Speaker 1: of our history the truth. Truth commissions can be the
Speaker 1: starting point for much broader national reform and a national
Speaker 1: effort to deal with the enduring legacies of past violence
Speaker 1: and current violence. Kerry Wiggham is a professor at Binghamton
Speaker 1: University's Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention. He also
Speaker 1: runs a similar center at the Auschwitz Institute. He points
Speaker 1: out that truth commissions are a relatively new phenomenon, a
Speaker 1: lot newer than ideas about reparations or restitution. They're the
Speaker 1: first step and what scholars call transitional justice away for
Speaker 1: countries to deal with their own large scale human rights abuses.
Speaker 1: It's built on four different pillars. Truth is the first
Speaker 1: of those pillars, and it's often positioned as first because
Speaker 1: it becomes a sort of prerequisite for dealing with some
Speaker 1: of those other pillars, like justice and reparations and guaranteeing
Speaker 1: non recurrence. The first one happened in Argentina in four
Speaker 1: to investigate the quote disappearances of thousands of people, including
Speaker 1: children and infants, during the country's military dictatorship. It started
Speaker 1: where most truth commissions start. An independent body investigates what happened.
Speaker 1: It identifies the victims and all the forms of violence
Speaker 1: that occurred against them, and then it asked those harm
Speaker 1: to tell their stories. This is important because changes the
Speaker 1: historic record and often reveals atrocities perpetrators have tried to
Speaker 1: keep hidden. In the end, Argentina's Truth Commission led to
Speaker 1: a series of reforms. Truth commissions have since been used
Speaker 1: across Africa and Latin America, and in Eastern Europe and
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia. Some US lawmakers think America is long overdue.
Speaker 1: In February, Representative Barbara Lee and Senator Corey Booker reintroduced
Speaker 1: a bill that would set up a truth commission in
Speaker 1: the US. The resolution, if passed, would urge the establishment
Speaker 1: of United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation.
Speaker 1: Here's Congresswomanly talking about the bill last summer during a
Speaker 1: virtual event. We call ours truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation,
Speaker 1: not reconciliation, because there's really nothing to reconcile. There's no
Speaker 1: no value in four hundred and one years of ago
Speaker 1: of a two d fifty plus years of slavery, and
Speaker 1: so we call it trail formation. I asked Carry about
Speaker 1: what a truth commission in the US could accomplish. There
Speaker 1: is still the reality that many white Americans have a
Speaker 1: difficult time understanding how slavery was directly connected to, for instance,
Speaker 1: mass incarceration and police brutality today. Or it could help
Speaker 1: explain how slavery is connected to today's racial wealth gap.
Speaker 1: But it's not an easy process and it won't magically
Speaker 1: fix all inequality, especially if it doesn't go deep enough.
Speaker 1: And that's not the only challenge. In the US. Even
Speaker 1: the idea of something like a truth commission faces a
Speaker 1: lot of resistance from people who don't want to dwell
Speaker 1: on the past. They say that it's so far in
Speaker 1: the past that having a truth commission will only highlight
Speaker 1: and and sustain the divisions that are already present, that
Speaker 1: really what we need to do is turn the page
Speaker 1: and look towards the future. The reality Carry says is
Speaker 1: that the people who are saying those things, who are
Speaker 1: eager to move on, they tend to be the people
Speaker 1: who have benefited throughout history and for them the status
Speaker 1: quo is working. The data shows that the median white
Speaker 1: family has ten times more wealth than the average black family.
Speaker 1: One of the drivers of that wealth gap is redlining.
Speaker 1: When it comes to understanding financial inequality in this country,
Speaker 1: economists often point to the absence of African American generational
Speaker 1: wealth see the Black mag Ota Plai the White mag Who.
Speaker 1: Many of the Bedrock policies, in fact, that ushered generations
Speaker 1: of Americans into the middle class were designed to exclude
Speaker 1: African Americans. It's much easier to integrate a lunch counter
Speaker 1: than it is to guarantee an annual income, for instance,
Speaker 1: to get rid of positive It's really intended as much
Speaker 1: to terrorize people in a physical sense as it is
Speaker 1: to kind of deprive them of the opportunity to gain
Speaker 1: equality through economic standing. It's a trend propelled not just
Speaker 1: by economic forces, but by white racism and local white
Speaker 1: political and economic power. Welcome back to the Paycheck. I'm
Speaker 1: Jackie Simmons and I am Rebecca Greenfield. This is our
Speaker 1: last episode this season. Our goal going into this was
Speaker 1: to understand a bit more about the racial wealth gap.
Speaker 1: It's been fifty years since the end of segregation in
Speaker 1: Jim Crow. Why has an economic inequality between black and
Speaker 1: white Americans budge at all? It brought us back to
Speaker 1: slavery and everything that grew out of that system. And
Speaker 1: the truth is that as a country, the United States
Speaker 1: has never really reckoned with slavery or any of the
Speaker 1: racist violence and oppression that followed. We have created a
Speaker 1: narrative of denial. We've created a narrative that says we're
Speaker 1: not going to talk about the mistakes we make. I
Speaker 1: think it's because we've become such a punitive society. We
Speaker 1: think if we own up to our mistakes, something bad
Speaker 1: is going to happen to us. We're gonna get punished.
Speaker 1: And I'm not doing these projects because I want to
Speaker 1: punish America. I want us to be liberated from the
Speaker 1: change that this history has created. That's Bryan Stevenson. He's
Speaker 1: a lawyer and the executive director of the Equal Justice
Speaker 1: Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. In three years ago, this month,
Speaker 1: he opened the first memorial to the thousands of black
Speaker 1: Americans killed in racial terror lynchings from the end of
Speaker 1: the Civil War up to nineteen fifty. The museum and
Speaker 1: the memorial in Montgomery and the National Museum of African
Speaker 1: American History and Culture, which opened in ten in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c our steps toward correcting the historical record in
Speaker 1: the US, but also universities, media companies, and investment banks
Speaker 1: are increasingly owning up to the ways they participated in
Speaker 1: or benefited from the slave trade. Earlier this spring, the
Speaker 1: Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the city of Charlottesville can
Speaker 1: go ahead and remove statues of Confederate soldiers, an effort
Speaker 1: that's happening around the country. But there are plenty of
Speaker 1: people who choose to ignore this part of America's history
Speaker 1: and how it connects to the present. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: there's also people like my Bloomberg colleague, Claire Stuff. It's
Speaker 1: the easiest thing to do is not to say something.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of what this country is
Speaker 1: going through and has been going through over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, often stems from the fact that white
Speaker 1: people are ignorant of their own actions and ignorant of
Speaker 1: their families past actions. Claire's white. She grew up in Chicago,
Speaker 1: but her parents were from the South, and they took
Speaker 1: her to visit relatives on a big plantation in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Called Codsworth. If you've seen the movie The Help, well
Speaker 1: that's Codsworth. It was originally owned by a man named
Speaker 1: James Z. George, who was a U. S. Senator, colonel
Speaker 1: and the Confederate Army during the Civil War and also
Speaker 1: my great great great grandfather. Also he owned many slaves.
Speaker 1: Claire wanted to learn more about James E. George. Not
Speaker 1: only did he own slaves, he fought hard to preserve
Speaker 1: white supremacy even after the Civil War ended. She learned
Speaker 1: that he was a pioneer and crafting some of the
Speaker 1: very first Jim Crow era legislation that kept black people
Speaker 1: from voting. He also created the Understanding Clause, which required
Speaker 1: people to be able to read or understand the Constitution,
Speaker 1: that effectively removed tens of thousands of black people from
Speaker 1: voter rolls. Claire wrote about her journey in an essay
Speaker 1: for an online magazine called The delic Court Review. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to her about why she felt it
Speaker 1: was important to tell her family story and what it
Speaker 1: was like to reckon with their past. Hi, Claire, Hey, Jackie,
Speaker 1: Obviously I know you and we've been colleagues for for
Speaker 1: years now, but you know, until I read your story
Speaker 1: about your family's history and about Codsworth. I didn't really
Speaker 1: know that much about you or about your family in
Speaker 1: their history. Why did you decide to write about Coatsworth
Speaker 1: and what you called the two sides of Coatsworth in
Speaker 1: your peace? I think you have to understand just how
Speaker 1: unusual and rarit is for a family too still in
Speaker 1: present day own, and not just own, but live in
Speaker 1: a plantation that the same family has lived in since
Speaker 1: before the Civil War. So there's that. But then also,
Speaker 1: my grandmother died before I was born, and my middle
Speaker 1: name is her name. Her name was Vernon, which is
Speaker 1: also very unusual if you're a woman, and Colts was
Speaker 1: the only connection, aside from my name, that I had
Speaker 1: to her. But then as I started actually researching the
Speaker 1: past of who was James E. George? Who owned it?
Speaker 1: And what did he do? And what does it really
Speaker 1: mean to own slaves? That was when I realized that
Speaker 1: whatever feelings I have towards my grandmother and any living
Speaker 1: relatives is separate from how I feel about what my
Speaker 1: great great grandfather did d fifty sixty years ago. I'd
Speaker 1: like to know what are your first memories of Codsworth?
Speaker 1: So I knew that This was a house that my
Speaker 1: family had had for a really long time, and I
Speaker 1: remember thinking it was really cool. It was like this
Speaker 1: relic from the past. All the furniture was over a
Speaker 1: hundred years old, all the floorboards creaked. I could run
Speaker 1: around the grass, which wasn't the meticulously kept suburban lawns
Speaker 1: that I was used to. And I was really into
Speaker 1: horses when I was a kid, so I brought all
Speaker 1: my plastic horses and played with them in the front
Speaker 1: yard of Codsworth. The other memory that I have was
Speaker 1: that there was this small sort of rectangular shack behind
Speaker 1: the house and off to the side that I think
Speaker 1: is the last remaining structure that had been slaves quarters.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't allowed to go inside because it was
Speaker 1: structurally unsound and it was full of wasps nests. So
Speaker 1: I never went inside, and I could never really even
Speaker 1: peek inside because I couldn't get close enough to it.
Speaker 1: But I remember knowing that it was there. So you
Speaker 1: went back to Cotsworth with your dad in what was
Speaker 1: your biggest takeaway from that trip? It's interesting to visit
Speaker 1: something that you saw as a child and then revisited
Speaker 1: again as an adult, because things that seemed huge and
Speaker 1: almost unknowable, are as an adult probably much smaller and
Speaker 1: more easier to comprehend than when you're a kid, And
Speaker 1: so visiting it when I was young, I didn't really
Speaker 1: understand the context of coats Worth, and my dad and
Speaker 1: I went down there because I had started to become
Speaker 1: interested in writing about it and researching it, so I
Speaker 1: asked him if he would go with me. And that's
Speaker 1: when I realized that at what I had sort of
Speaker 1: romanticized as a child, or even or just focused on,
Speaker 1: you know, how big the house was, how expansive the
Speaker 1: land was, the fact that she had cows, it was
Speaker 1: really cool when I was six, was actually, in reality
Speaker 1: quite sad. It was a relic of the past in
Speaker 1: more ways than one. But then also looking at the
Speaker 1: the former slaves quarters, I realized how poignant it was
Speaker 1: that they were still there. I have to ask about
Speaker 1: the slave quarters. Did your family tell you about the
Speaker 1: slave quarters? Did they How much did they talk to
Speaker 1: you about that part of the plantation? I probably asked
Speaker 1: what it was when I was six. I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but I remember. I do know that when I returned
Speaker 1: as an adult, I new to look for it, so
Speaker 1: I must have known that it was there. How did
Speaker 1: you have a conversation about the use of that space?
Speaker 1: I mean, what did you give you an opportunity to
Speaker 1: talk with your family or your dad about what had
Speaker 1: happened there. The one thing that I have never fully
Speaker 1: understood about my family and Codsworth is the house and
Speaker 1: land is still meaningful to my family, even people who
Speaker 1: don't live there, but they don't like to talk about
Speaker 1: what it means to have owned a plantation in Mississippi
Speaker 1: before the Civil War. So while my dad and relatives
Speaker 1: never shied away from admitting that, yes, obviously my great
Speaker 1: great great grandfather owned slaves, they didn't know much beyond
Speaker 1: that because their parents never told them, and their parents
Speaker 1: never told them, and so they just left it at that, like,
Speaker 1: obviously that happened. But then the Civil War came along
Speaker 1: and then we didn't have slaves anymore the end, And
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I think there's probably much more to that.
Speaker 1: And when you fully appreciated James E. George's significance with
Speaker 1: regard to Mississippi politics and shaping the outcome of black
Speaker 1: lives at that point in our history, what kind of
Speaker 1: introspection did that provoke? In you about race in America
Speaker 1: and especially as it relates to black lives today. I'm
Speaker 1: less upset by my direct connection to this then I
Speaker 1: am by the fact that I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was an elementary school in high school,
Speaker 1: every year in history class we would learn about the
Speaker 1: Civil War. Every year. I memorize the Gettysburg address in
Speaker 1: fifth grade, and I still haven't memorized. I think I've
Speaker 1: been to the battlefields. I've been to Gettysburg, I've been
Speaker 1: to Vicksburg. But I I don't think there's very much
Speaker 1: discussion among white people about white people's role in that.
Speaker 1: And I don't really understand why, Because if you claim
Speaker 1: to want to make things better, and if you claim
Speaker 1: to disagree with all the stuff that has happened in
Speaker 1: the past, you know why, why can't you talk about it?
Speaker 1: You have a passage about this in your essay. Could
Speaker 1: you read it? America has lurched and fits and starts
Speaker 1: towards equality, But with every inch gained comes one side's
Speaker 1: declaration that things are fine. Now, that's enough, but it's
Speaker 1: not enough. The effects of what men like Jay Z
Speaker 1: George did ripple through this country. Even now we encounter
Speaker 1: this truth again and again, but somehow we still managed
Speaker 1: to avoid facing it head on. I can't stop loving
Speaker 1: my family, and by extension, I'll always be fond of
Speaker 1: Coad's worth. But it's possible to care for something and
Speaker 1: know that what it stands for is deeply wrong. It's
Speaker 1: been a few years since you wrote that, does it
Speaker 1: still resonate? You know? I don't love my grandmother because
Speaker 1: she died before I was born, but my dad loved
Speaker 1: her loves her still probably, and she in turn loved
Speaker 1: her parents, who loved their parents. So by extension, you
Speaker 1: could say that there has been love lasting through the generations.
Speaker 1: And so someone that I'm connected to today is connected
Speaker 1: to someone is connected to someone who did love someone
Speaker 1: who owned slaves, And I think that is something that
Speaker 1: I've actually never really articulated before, and also something that
Speaker 1: I think is necessary for us to understand. There seems
Speaker 1: to be this feeling that in admitting your past wrongs
Speaker 1: here somehow admitting that everything about you in the past,
Speaker 1: or everything about your family in the past is bad
Speaker 1: and terrible. You did this amazing thing, Claire, where you
Speaker 1: sought out descendants of people who were enslaved at Codsworth,
Speaker 1: one of them agreed to meet you. What was that like?
Speaker 1: In hindsight, Great Carlos is a lovely human being. He's
Speaker 1: really nice, funny, warm, But in the act of meeting him,
Speaker 1: and beforehand, I was definitely nervous. I had never met
Speaker 1: anyone under the pretext of the fact that my great
Speaker 1: great great grandfather had enslaved his great grandfather. How do
Speaker 1: you start a conversation when that is the one fact
Speaker 1: binding you. Luckily, like I said, Carlos is nice and funny,
Speaker 1: and so he brought his wife Tie along and sort
Speaker 1: of diffused the initial awkwardness with warmth and humor, and
Speaker 1: we took it from there. One of you had suggested
Speaker 1: taking DNA tests after learning that you might be related
Speaker 1: through James E. George. What happened was I, when I
Speaker 1: was researching about jez George, I heard this rumor, and
Speaker 1: I first heard it from the historian, the professor who
Speaker 1: had written the one biography about him, and he told
Speaker 1: me that none of the white people he had ever
Speaker 1: interviewed had mentioned this, but he had heard it from
Speaker 1: a number of black people, and he had heard that
Speaker 1: Jay Z George had fathered children with women that he
Speaker 1: had enslaved and when I first heard that, I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: what do I do with that information? I can't ignore it,
Speaker 1: and I'm a journalist, so I'll just follow up on
Speaker 1: that rumor as I would if this were not my family,
Speaker 1: if it were someone else's family, How would I follow
Speaker 1: up on it? And the historians suggested that I reach
Speaker 1: out to this group that is called, I think the
Speaker 1: African American Genealogy Group of Carroll County, and they're on Facebook.
Speaker 1: So I messaged several people who were people with the
Speaker 1: last name George, so ostensibly former slaves of James C.
Speaker 1: George from quotes Worth, and I asked them if they
Speaker 1: had heard that rumor, and a number of them said
Speaker 1: that they had. And when I talked to Carlos, he
Speaker 1: said that while his immediate family had never talked about
Speaker 1: that necessarily, he had heard that rumor over time, and
Speaker 1: he said, you know, it would be great to be
Speaker 1: able to take a d DNA test and you know,
Speaker 1: put this room to rest one way or the other.
Speaker 1: And so I thought, all right, you know, all I
Speaker 1: can do is say yes. So we ordered DNA tests
Speaker 1: through twenty three and me and we took them and
Speaker 1: it turns out that we are not related. What did
Speaker 1: it feel like when you first learned that you weren't related?
Speaker 1: What was your first reaction. A lot of people have
Speaker 1: asked me that, and a lot of people have asked,
Speaker 1: weren't you relieved that this terrible thing hadn't happened? And
Speaker 1: in the sense that I am glad that I know
Speaker 1: that my great great grandfather didn't grape Joe George's mother, Yes,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm glad that that did not happen, but I'm
Speaker 1: well aware that I didn't answer the question fully. And
Speaker 1: also while we were waiting for the results was when
Speaker 1: I was doing more research and I learned about this
Speaker 1: understanding clause and his role in enshrining white supremacy in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I guess that one answer is the
Speaker 1: easier answer, but I mean, it's hard to feel good
Speaker 1: about that knowing everything else. I will say that I
Speaker 1: took the DNA test without telling the rest of my family.
Speaker 1: I did that because if I told them before I
Speaker 1: took it, I wouldn't know what the answer was and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know what to tell them. So I was
Speaker 1: going to wait until I had the results, so that
Speaker 1: I would only have to tell them once. So I
Speaker 1: told them, and because the result was that we weren't related,
Speaker 1: I think they were like, okay, that answers that. Yesterday
Speaker 1: and we were talking, you said that your family react
Speaker 1: to it in a way most people would react. Tell
Speaker 1: me more about that. Well, I assume they read it,
Speaker 1: but they've never said anything to me about it, which
Speaker 1: I take to mean they didn't hate it, but they
Speaker 1: may not have totally loved it. And I've also never
Speaker 1: asked them. It's a two way street, but it's out there,
Speaker 1: and I told it because I felt a responsibility too.
Speaker 1: And what do you say to white people who say, well,
Speaker 1: I never I don't have a direct connection to slavery.
Speaker 1: You know, my parents came here only in you know,
Speaker 1: year X and had nothing to do with it. And
Speaker 1: I've traced my past, so therefore I don't feel accountable.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you say to that? I
Speaker 1: think that's the easy answer. But I think if you
Speaker 1: only look at your family and that ends, if you're
Speaker 1: missing a lot. Right, I've lived my whole life in America.
Speaker 1: I would say that I have an above average understanding
Speaker 1: of American history, but only when I decided to sit
Speaker 1: down as a side project and really research reconstruction in
Speaker 1: my family's history. Did I really learn about this? Has
Speaker 1: anyone else in your family reckoned with this history at all?
Speaker 1: So you know, my dad is retired now and he
Speaker 1: lives in Florida, and one of the projects that he
Speaker 1: came up with to keep himself occupied during the pandemic
Speaker 1: was he is working on this book about his family.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be publicly published. It's like this
Speaker 1: book that he's putting together with pictures and anecdotes about
Speaker 1: this far, stretching as far back in history as he
Speaker 1: can and going sort of as wide as he can.
Speaker 1: He's including my mom's side of the family and my
Speaker 1: step mom, my husband's side of the family. And he'll
Speaker 1: publish it on snapfish or something like that and print
Speaker 1: five copies or something and give it to people for presents.
Speaker 1: Hopefully I'm not ruining future Christmas gifts for people, So
Speaker 1: just acts surprised when you open it. So he's been
Speaker 1: doing this, and he told me the other day we
Speaker 1: were talking um that he had just finished the page
Speaker 1: on James C. George and he said he had put
Speaker 1: in the information that I had found about this understanding
Speaker 1: clause and what he had done, but he wasn't really
Speaker 1: sure how he felt about it. And it's in there
Speaker 1: for now, but maybe if he needs to revise the
Speaker 1: book later, he would leave it out. And I said,
Speaker 1: I think he should keep it in. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what hell decide. I guess I'll find out when
Speaker 1: I opened my future Christmas present in a year or
Speaker 1: something like that. But he has thought about it at least,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a good sign that it's in
Speaker 1: the first draft. So you gave birth to your first
Speaker 1: child last year, Yeah, in a pandemic, little little Kate. Right,
Speaker 1: So how did all of this research into your family
Speaker 1: and to Codsworth make you think about the kind of
Speaker 1: conversations you're going to have with little Kate down the
Speaker 1: road that maybe your own family didn't have with you
Speaker 1: about these topics. I may not ever take her to Codsworth,
Speaker 1: or maybe I will, but it probably would be one time,
Speaker 1: one trip two we're all Mississippi to see where she's from.
Speaker 1: Maybe she'll be twelve or thirteen. Kate will grow up
Speaker 1: as a generation even further removed from this past than me,
Speaker 1: And in some ways that's how it should be. I
Speaker 1: think the only way we can move forward is to
Speaker 1: actually move forward. But I will tell her about her family,
Speaker 1: and when I tell her about who would now be
Speaker 1: her great grandmother's side of the family or her great
Speaker 1: great great great grandfather, I will tell her all of
Speaker 1: this and she'll grow up learning about it, and she
Speaker 1: won't have to spend, you know, six months, nine months
Speaker 1: of her life researching it to find out. Claire was
Speaker 1: able to learn a lot about her family's history going
Speaker 1: back centuries. That's something most people can't or won't do.
Speaker 1: When I think back to my family's story of land
Speaker 1: lost in Ease, Texas, where it all began, there's a
Speaker 1: lot my research didn't yield. So, for instance, I never
Speaker 1: figured out about my great great grandparents migration from Tennessee
Speaker 1: to Texas. I also didn't know how they lived as
Speaker 1: slaves and then as free people. I did, however, manage
Speaker 1: to track down the original deed to my family's land
Speaker 1: with the help from Jason, a listener in Ohio. So, Jackie,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, having gone through this process in a more
Speaker 1: personal way, what gives you hope Spending months diving into
Speaker 1: the causes and consequences of the racial wealth gap. It
Speaker 1: could feel dark. It's just such a big problem with
Speaker 1: no simple solutions. No, there's not. But let's be honest.
Speaker 1: We might not get to closing the racial wealth gap
Speaker 1: anytime soon. And if I'm totally honest, I'm not even
Speaker 1: hopeful we'll get there in my lifetime. There is one
Speaker 1: underlying thread that ran through my research, and that's resilience.
Speaker 1: I don't think we talk about that enough. It's resilience
Speaker 1: that keeps black people proud and thriving in our own ways.
Speaker 1: Take my cousin Yolanda and Dallas. She walked away from
Speaker 1: our family's land in Kilmur. She's now trying to develop
Speaker 1: another hundred acres of land in a town nearby, land
Speaker 1: that her family initially acquired after slavery. My cousin had
Speaker 1: to tell me, he said, your grandfather would turn over
Speaker 1: in his grave to know that you all have done
Speaker 1: nothing on this property. You need to be ashamed of yourself.
Speaker 1: And so this got me to thinking that I owe
Speaker 1: it to my grandmother and grandfather two cultivate this land
Speaker 1: and to make it where what he would have wanted
Speaker 1: it to be. Tna her grandparents. Jolana wants to build
Speaker 1: a pavilion on the land. That's really some balked to me,
Speaker 1: because most black families never managed to pass on wealth
Speaker 1: from generation to generation as white families have. But the
Speaker 1: way I see it, Yolana's vision shows that black families
Speaker 1: do pass on hope and they pass on the ambitions
Speaker 1: of their ancestors. And that's one of the biggest take
Speaker 1: aways from season three of The Paycheck. We went as
Speaker 1: far back as forty acres in a mule, right through
Speaker 1: to the late eight nineties, when a black woman called
Speaker 1: Kelly House proposed reparations and was eventually jailed for it.
Speaker 1: We talked about local initiatives to address past wrongs in
Speaker 1: places like Evanston, Illinois. Now the US is weighing a
Speaker 1: bill in Congress to study reparations, and it's the resilience
Speaker 1: of people behind those efforts. People like Kellie or my
Speaker 1: cousin Yolanda, or my colleague Claire. They're willing to speak
Speaker 1: up and talk honestly about our past, present in future.
Speaker 1: It's people like them who give me hope that will
Speaker 1: get there eventually. This is the last episode of our season.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to The Paycheck. If
Speaker 1: you liked this show. Please rate, review, and subscribe. This
Speaker 1: episode was hosted Aimy, Rebecca Greenfield, and Me Jackie Simmons.
Speaker 1: This episode was reported by Claire Sadeth and Rebecca Greenfield.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson and Lindsay Cradowell,
Speaker 1: and it was edited by Rocksheeta Saluja, Jackie Simmons, Janet Paskin,
Speaker 1: Francesca Levi, and Me. Special thanks to Katie Boys, Laura
Speaker 1: Carlson Chaufer for has Laura's Alenko, and all the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: reporters and editors who made this season possible. Original music
Speaker 1: is by Leo Sidron. Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening.