Speaker 1: You were listening to Winning on Reparations, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. What's going on? What's good People? It's
Speaker 1: the one and only Dope Knife. I am one of
Speaker 1: several million lingual Franco okay checking though, if you're like
Speaker 1: one in a million, that means there's thousands of people
Speaker 1: just like you in the world. So I'm one of
Speaker 1: many lingual Francis. And then we didn't even getting into
Speaker 1: like the multiverse. The reparation podcast that is true and
Speaker 1: the entire multiverse. There's only one Winning A Reparations podcasts
Speaker 1: Happy First Day of Black History. But yeah, we're recording
Speaker 1: this on the first day of Black History Month. Um,
Speaker 1: how are you? How do you celebrate the month of
Speaker 1: Black History? You know? I try to, um, stay a
Speaker 1: little just get a little extra black for the month.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. It's like you gotta be black,
Speaker 1: you know, for the other eleven months, and it's like
Speaker 1: just this one month you added like an extra coat
Speaker 1: and walk around You're just super proud, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Might what I always find such to be
Speaker 1: such relief about Black History Month is that there's so
Speaker 1: little Black history that it'll just squeeze into twenty eight days.
Speaker 1: Just cover the whole thing, the whole entire Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like so little to cover. Yeah, I mean, we
Speaker 1: don't need the long extended series. We can get it
Speaker 1: all done in this one, the full cinematic universe. Speaking
Speaker 1: you want to speak, speaking of wax stuff happening on
Speaker 1: Black History Months, so the day before Black History Months
Speaker 1: and even I think some of this ship was today,
Speaker 1: but over a dozen or it just about a dozen
Speaker 1: historically black colleges got bomb threats. Yeah, my my former
Speaker 1: album about her, Howard University, Alcron State University, Coppin State,
Speaker 1: Edward Waters University, Fort Valley State, the University of the
Speaker 1: District of Columbia, Morgan State, Kentucky State, Xavier University, and more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they got bomb threats, they had to cancel classes
Speaker 1: or clothes altogether. Um, what do you think something like
Speaker 1: that means? I mean, apparently, uh, throughout the past few months,
Speaker 1: these colleges have been getting threats leading up, but um,
Speaker 1: with it kind of happening seemingly, it's I mean, I
Speaker 1: obviously it's not a coincidence. What what do you think
Speaker 1: about that? Does that make you feel okay? I'm zooming
Speaker 1: way out. I'm zooming way way out into thinking about
Speaker 1: how do we transition white people into the coming multiracial
Speaker 1: democracy that is that is inevitable. I mean maybe the
Speaker 1: democracy part. I don't know. Do we live in a
Speaker 1: democracy now unclear? But our multiracial society, it's coming. They're
Speaker 1: going to be the minority. Um And this is going
Speaker 1: to be an unpopular take, but let's get for getting
Speaker 1: into the black history months. Let's think about at the
Speaker 1: end of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. The only
Speaker 1: black person to UM ever have a mass movement that
Speaker 1: achieves things. By the way, is the nuts only one.
Speaker 1: Don't let them, you know, Huey Newton fictional. Uh. I
Speaker 1: don't want to like, I don't want to parse like
Speaker 1: you know, hairs or anything like that. But do we
Speaker 1: mean like me in terms of getting getting a movement.
Speaker 1: I'm just playing. I'm just playing on the on the
Speaker 1: whole like there's not a whole lot of black history
Speaker 1: and things. All these other cats like yeah, didn't exist
Speaker 1: in the textbooks, didn't exist in real life for all
Speaker 1: I know, Uh, you know, that's just the fodder of
Speaker 1: like HBO Max features. But anyway, um. So during the
Speaker 1: end of his life, m Ok started to recognize that
Speaker 1: they needed a multiracial working class movement of people all
Speaker 1: fighting for economic freedom together in order to take on
Speaker 1: the government. That's effectively why you got assassinated, right, And
Speaker 1: so also to answer the question, so taking like a
Speaker 1: couple of leaps forward of like I bomb threats against
Speaker 1: universities because white people are feeling insecure about their increasingly
Speaker 1: marginal status in our society. How do we get people
Speaker 1: less freaked out? And we're talking about this on the
Speaker 1: show before about like you know, working class or a
Speaker 1: blue collar white people, like are they racist? I don't know,
Speaker 1: I can't remember what we were talking about, but like
Speaker 1: I think one way to diffuse these tensions is to
Speaker 1: come up with like universalists, like you know, policies that
Speaker 1: if you are, you know, a white like Wendy's worker
Speaker 1: or a black um Wendy's worker, all y'all can agree with, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're down with free college. That's something I'm going in
Speaker 1: because like there's this fear that like black people are
Speaker 1: taking things away from everyone else. Well, affirmative action, Oh,
Speaker 1: they're putting the interracials in the in the Okay, cubid
Speaker 1: ads and like ship people, like, let's give everybody at
Speaker 1: the bottom some ship so we can stop fighting amongst ourselves,
Speaker 1: and maybe white people will stop giving bomb threats to
Speaker 1: black schools. I don't know. I mean now I agree,
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree, although I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel also this is overly optimistic. I think some
Speaker 1: were like fascist procalcitrants. There's really there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 1: The radicalization is just not my field. So get about
Speaker 1: that's what you do. But yeah, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: feel I mean it definitely, you know, it's it rings
Speaker 1: of all that stuff that we were talking about with
Speaker 1: Christopher Goldsmith the other day, Like it just it rings
Speaker 1: of some fucking social media hoax e type of you know,
Speaker 1: like threats at the beginning complay history with me and
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it seems like super in
Speaker 1: silly and ship like that. And I don't know, I
Speaker 1: hope that, you know, worst case or best case scenario.
Speaker 1: I guess at this point is like I hope that
Speaker 1: it's just threats and it's I do too, I people stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope it's hope it's just threats. I am also
Speaker 1: in this conversation reckoning with how dead and I have
Speaker 1: become to like threats of all kinds. Like people talk
Speaker 1: mad ship, they're gonna do ship, They're don't do ship
Speaker 1: when it's like nah, man, sometimes like ship goes a
Speaker 1: really bad and like you should take it really seriously.
Speaker 1: But like my reaction is I'm just like so dead
Speaker 1: inside from like being threatened a great deal. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like I don't know. I just can't see
Speaker 1: anything about it. I don't know what the statistics are
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but I'm imagining that for the
Speaker 1: most part, when people call in a threat or when
Speaker 1: people like send a threatening letter or something like that,
Speaker 1: that those ones on average don't result in anything. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of the ones that you have to worry
Speaker 1: about just going out and doing the ship. It's more
Speaker 1: of the worry. That's That's why I'm saying. This one
Speaker 1: made me think that it was more like of a
Speaker 1: you know, social media something to do to see the
Speaker 1: headlines of Twitter and everybody retweeting the story, that sort
Speaker 1: of ship. But you know, I'm some more positive notes.
Speaker 1: I started um because I've been you know, I've been
Speaker 1: working on the same graphic novel for the last few
Speaker 1: years I've been talking about out on the show. It's
Speaker 1: still being colored by the way us almost. But I
Speaker 1: started writing again and I was brainstorming some ideas for
Speaker 1: a new comic and ship, and I came up with
Speaker 1: an idea to do something that's kind of like Lord
Speaker 1: of the Ring zy Conan, the barbarian ish sort of thing,
Speaker 1: but set in like ancient Africa, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like a Middle Earth, but with the basis of it
Speaker 1: being like pre colonial or even like BC Africa, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: and what it went. So, so what is your okay?
Speaker 1: What is your process of something like that? Worked in
Speaker 1: the last one like three years, so like, yeah, when
Speaker 1: does this ship drop? I'm trying to like I want
Speaker 1: to read it. I want to read it now, where
Speaker 1: is okay? So for the for the last one that
Speaker 1: I was working on, So the process for that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll write this, wrote the story like a little treatment
Speaker 1: of what the story is. Then uh, storyboarded out all
Speaker 1: the pages, then drew all the ship, and then after
Speaker 1: drawing it, you know what I mean. It's like visualizing,
Speaker 1: knowing what the story is, visualizing it and drawing it
Speaker 1: and then afterwards going out and writing the dialogue and
Speaker 1: filling in the bubbles based off of the ship that
Speaker 1: I read your So it's like, I don't really draw
Speaker 1: it with the dialogue per se mind ship, but for
Speaker 1: something like this, the new one that I'm working on,
Speaker 1: it's gonna move pretty fast because I'm not going into
Speaker 1: it thinking about making after day. It's coming. It's coming
Speaker 1: right now. I'm in the I'm in the light research
Speaker 1: phase because I kind of thought at first I was
Speaker 1: gonna do like a crime story about Liberia, and then
Speaker 1: in the middle of doing the research for that, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh man, I'm gonna put that on the
Speaker 1: back burner and I want to do something a bit
Speaker 1: more out of my element because I usually write crime
Speaker 1: stories and stuff like that. So it's like, I want
Speaker 1: to do something that's you know, been done, you know,
Speaker 1: dragons and and I want the dragons African African witch doctors, dragons,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, A shot kaZulu West figure
Speaker 1: instead of I don't know what the nigga from Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings name is, but one of those yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: who's who was the not not not the Dwarf, Orlando Blue,
Speaker 1: the other Vigo I don't know I can picture of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know who this name was, y'all. Motherfucker's anyway, anyway,
Speaker 1: what do I do? What do we doing today? So
Speaker 1: today we're speaking with Walter English, a former love poet.
Speaker 1: Are gonna get a more thorough introduction for him here
Speaker 1: in a second, but it's really really love to talk
Speaker 1: about his brister English project, um studying the genealogies of
Speaker 1: of African descendants of slaves and connecting people with their history.
Speaker 1: So you want to go ahead and get on into it. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get into it. U. My man's is popping on
Speaker 1: TikTok right now that this is this is our first
Speaker 1: time talking with somebody just doing stuff on TikTok. I
Speaker 1: think I think I kind of want to make it
Speaker 1: a personal mission to like breaking all the skeptical the
Speaker 1: few if there already left out there, the skeptical adults
Speaker 1: who haven't really gotten on TikTok and utilize the different
Speaker 1: spaces and communities that are on there. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I think partially it comes into like, um, just digital literacy,
Speaker 1: like because it's not something we're really taught in school
Speaker 1: other than this is how you type, like this time
Speaker 1: you make a power resident. Look, I got locked out
Speaker 1: on my Facebook account for like four months. I got
Speaker 1: back out on that ship, and I literally don't know
Speaker 1: how to do a goddamn thing. I'm like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't check my messages, like I don't understand. I get
Speaker 1: on TikTok and like I had that new single come
Speaker 1: out this week. They were like, go on TikTok and
Speaker 1: make a viral TikTok dance from the music video. Until
Speaker 1: I got on there, I go excided, like oh my god,
Speaker 1: the old day. It's like, yeah, let's go, and like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I got like four likes. I'm like,
Speaker 1: how does this work? Well? I supposed to do. You
Speaker 1: gotta keep at it. You can't. You gotta keep at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I know. I just don't have it. I
Speaker 1: just don't have that persistence all that time. So, well,
Speaker 1: you're busiest, Yeah yeah, Oh I got in speaking of
Speaker 1: a good news. I out of another crazy announcement for listeners.
Speaker 1: Slash you mac, I can tell you this yet. So okay.
Speaker 1: So I had a show last Saturday, and one of
Speaker 1: my professors in my department came, So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about on the show whole lot. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm getting my PhD ship and so this been, I mean,
Speaker 1: this person, this lady, she's very nice. Lady. Um came
Speaker 1: up to me after the show. I was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: that was your dissertation and I was like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? She was like, you should just submit
Speaker 1: that and graduate. I was like, excuse me what? And
Speaker 1: then I emailed her this week and she was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: people do like arts based dissertations all the time. There's
Speaker 1: ever there's like been one other rap one, but like
Speaker 1: just write it at thirty page intro paper about like
Speaker 1: why this count says like hip hop education research and
Speaker 1: then like graduate son be graduated with a doctorate in
Speaker 1: Like April was good. I can't wait to be good
Speaker 1: my life anyway. So let's get into all right, So
Speaker 1: we'll be back with former love poet right after the joke.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, So today I am very honored that
Speaker 1: we are joined by Walter English, the former love poet, rapper, poet, activists,
Speaker 1: and founder of the Bristo English Project, which seeks to
Speaker 1: help descendence of enslaved people find their history at no
Speaker 1: charge to them. Very popular on TikTok Um spreading you know,
Speaker 1: messages anti racism, and so we are very very excited
Speaker 1: to have you here today just for everybody out there
Speaker 1: who doesn't know, because I've been you know, checking out
Speaker 1: your TikTok page and seeing the different things that you
Speaker 1: cover in the different things that you talk that you
Speaker 1: talk about. Maria has been doing the same and through
Speaker 1: that is how we've come across the Brister English Project.
Speaker 1: So if you could, could you explain to our listeners
Speaker 1: in your own words, exactly what is the Brister English Project? Um,
Speaker 1: the Bristo English Project. Like to begin with, it's named
Speaker 1: after my second grade grant of it. Uh, I saw him,
Speaker 1: saw his name when he went by just Bristow on
Speaker 1: a slave ship manifest that fourteen years old. Um, to
Speaker 1: see that and and to see what he went through
Speaker 1: and what he became, and just the history, the amount
Speaker 1: of history that that comes that comes with this, that
Speaker 1: comes with it's hard to explain always some people, is
Speaker 1: really hard to explain it. So it's an amazing feeling. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a different feeling. I want to give people that feeling.
Speaker 1: I don't believe Black Americans should have to pay to
Speaker 1: get their genealogy done and so with the Bristi English project,
Speaker 1: people sign up on the list. UM. I'm in phase
Speaker 1: two right now with the project. So I have volunteers
Speaker 1: helping me. UM. I'm talking about people who have years
Speaker 1: of experience and doing this UM for helping me for free.
Speaker 1: Everything is runs off donation, so I make sure I
Speaker 1: have stuff paid for people to UH to make sure
Speaker 1: they're able to work UM as well as I got
Speaker 1: runners will go to grave sites for me. He'll go
Speaker 1: to historical sites to take pictures or whatever. It's just
Speaker 1: one big project to to help UM American descending some
Speaker 1: chatel slavery connect with the past. That it's just like
Speaker 1: us tell people's more than just dreams a chance. So
Speaker 1: where did this project come from? We spoke something about
Speaker 1: you know, I think you said your your great great grandfather, UM,
Speaker 1: and so clearly you know a little bit about your history.
Speaker 1: But how what was your process for actually launching this
Speaker 1: project and as well, like how how it works some
Speaker 1: of the internal processes to help bring this history to folks.
Speaker 1: So UM it started after I was doing I made
Speaker 1: a three database. That's what I started with. I started
Speaker 1: with a free database or resources to help people. UM.
Speaker 1: People still wanted, you know, how do I do this?
Speaker 1: They I have more questions, So I said, why not
Speaker 1: I do it? I was supposed to start off small.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be you know, I launched all Christmas.
Speaker 1: I was planning that him off prior. UM. I got
Speaker 1: the historian who helped me find out all this information.
Speaker 1: She jumped on the project with me. Um. And then
Speaker 1: I got the funding on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, I
Speaker 1: launched everything and um, and that's really that's that's really it.
Speaker 1: And as far as the internal working go, what I
Speaker 1: do is, uh, people fill out a form, uh, your name,
Speaker 1: your grandparents name. Yeah, you know, if you know any
Speaker 1: any kind of info to help us out. We go
Speaker 1: right on ancestry. We start putting information. UM. We use
Speaker 1: sources like genealogy bank, um, a newspaper, archives, newspaper, dot com,
Speaker 1: anywhere information may be found lost friends, UM. When we
Speaker 1: start your tree. UM. A lot of people like like
Speaker 1: the focus going straight back, which is always good. You
Speaker 1: want to know where your great great great great grandparents are.
Speaker 1: But for us Black Americans, we run into a wall.
Speaker 1: At one point we become property. Yeah. UM. And so
Speaker 1: what I like to do is not only focused back
Speaker 1: for focus on what I call the branches, so you
Speaker 1: get to see your cousins, know everybody, um, and like
Speaker 1: working on this project, I'm starting to see people that's related.
Speaker 1: They know that's related, just like it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a good it's a it's a good feeling. And then
Speaker 1: I do like a few videoscause I always asked permission Havie,
Speaker 1: like for me to talk about this on my TikTok Um.
Speaker 1: I'm running across the mirror like amazing history, Um, not
Speaker 1: in niche being able to share that with people, not
Speaker 1: only the people who are who are directly affects, but
Speaker 1: all of us to see finally find one of the
Speaker 1: twelve hundred black lawyers in nineteen thirty just related to
Speaker 1: somebody on TikTok Like it's stuff like, so, what are
Speaker 1: some of the crazy stories you've uncovered and you know
Speaker 1: from history or you know, impressive insights that have you
Speaker 1: have drawn from doing some of that genealogical work. Uh,
Speaker 1: personally just in my family alone. Uh, craziest thing that
Speaker 1: I've seen, I think it's about um in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: or nineteen thirty. Uh, my aunt, one of my grand aunts,
Speaker 1: she had a husband, and when you're looking at everything
Speaker 1: that like the records and where they live dad and
Speaker 1: who they were with, it looked like he was cheating
Speaker 1: on her. So she divorced them. So a woman divorcing
Speaker 1: a man in nineteen thirty, you were you, you could
Speaker 1: be deemed as crazy. Literally they would put you on
Speaker 1: the sane asylum. And so he sent my eye to
Speaker 1: an insane asylum, and she divorced them. Not only an
Speaker 1: insane asylum. Yes, it's not only insane asylum, but um
Speaker 1: Long View or lake View excuse like if you don't
Speaker 1: believe this. In Cincinnati, Ohio was one of the most
Speaker 1: infamous places. You It's like a shutter island type of
Speaker 1: it is. It is awful and she had to spend
Speaker 1: she she ended up spending um at least I think
Speaker 1: at least seven years and then before she passed away.
Speaker 1: What no, that towards the end of it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: towards the end of her like like growing that asylum, UM,
Speaker 1: it progrestily got worse because it couldn't hold as many people,
Speaker 1: but they took in that many people, so people didn't
Speaker 1: get fed, they lived over sewage. UM. It was just
Speaker 1: it was just a bad environ. But then you also
Speaker 1: when you when I'm looking, because I looked through the documents,
Speaker 1: I'm not just saying, oh that name match with that.
Speaker 1: I want to see through what happened and you and
Speaker 1: everybody in her family or in that side of the
Speaker 1: family died young. Who was involved with him, um so
Speaker 1: her brother who worked with who worked for he died
Speaker 1: in his twenties. It's sich the sister that he was
Speaker 1: cheating with died in her twenties with her sister sister,
Speaker 1: and then he married her co worker according to the city,
Speaker 1: and then she died into the same time. Man, niggas
Speaker 1: don't ever change. Still they still see like that to
Speaker 1: a less of degree, whether you know, similar mindset to
Speaker 1: oh yeah, still that's the yeah, that mindset is still going.
Speaker 1: I mean that sounds like a plot for a movie. Man,
Speaker 1: Like that's wild. The level of detail that you can
Speaker 1: get into, not just like oh you're you know, like
Speaker 1: your great great grandfather was a famous carpenter in like
Speaker 1: the city of what's it, but like down to the
Speaker 1: level of this person with cheating with this person, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's amazing. That's amazing what you can discover through
Speaker 1: the through these databases. So how many of them have
Speaker 1: you done so far? Um? Close to personally? Do you
Speaker 1: find it? Find it gets easier with each one, or
Speaker 1: like you get more of a like an efficiency and
Speaker 1: you're being able to research and stuff with each one
Speaker 1: that you do efficiency. Yes. Um, once the list jumped
Speaker 1: from it literally jumped from seventy four. Will jumped from
Speaker 1: fourteen people to seventy four overnight and in seventy twelve hundred.
Speaker 1: So once it hit twelve hundred, I like, I need
Speaker 1: some help, and so I brought it. I've been doing
Speaker 1: a slow process. I brought it from volunteer, see how
Speaker 1: they can work, how we can work together. So with
Speaker 1: like the volunteers, but personally I did about twenty With
Speaker 1: the volunteers. I've been trying off for the past month,
Speaker 1: we probably got close to thirty. While I've been doing
Speaker 1: the background stuff, in order stuff, they've still been working.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, I finally gets easier because I know
Speaker 1: what I'm looking for. And with black history, you gotta
Speaker 1: look out for certain things when you're looking in through
Speaker 1: our ancestry. Um, you gotta look out for different name spellings. Right,
Speaker 1: keep in mind who lived with who? At what time, Um,
Speaker 1: going from mixed to black to mixed to black on
Speaker 1: different senses. But do you know that's still your that's
Speaker 1: young people. So it's that part got easier, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been doing it for so long now, like seeing
Speaker 1: stuff like that, it's it's easy to know what I'm
Speaker 1: looking for, what to look out for, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: have you encountered any limitations thus far? I'm sure, like
Speaker 1: given the thoroughness of record keeping, particularly when you go
Speaker 1: back to like slavery times, um, and then certain whiles
Speaker 1: around like antigenation where people weren't you know, showing up
Speaker 1: on birth certificates, etcetera, mislistening race. I've you know, been
Speaker 1: setting my own like indigenous ancestry and they listened all
Speaker 1: the natives as black. There was only white or black
Speaker 1: on like the census form. So, um, do you run
Speaker 1: into issues like that and trying to trace people's uneage? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, um, you come across that where like you
Speaker 1: get things that's a maybe like I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: too sure about that, you know. So I like to
Speaker 1: ask people. I like to ask people questions when we
Speaker 1: get to something. Some of those points and and a
Speaker 1: lot of people I find out don't talk to like
Speaker 1: their grandparents about their past and their history and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, because I told I asked one personal question.
Speaker 1: I showed up on first like, hey, this is your
Speaker 1: I believe this is your your your grandfather, I'm not
Speaker 1: too sure, but this is a this is a mere certificate.
Speaker 1: I believe this is your grandmother on there, but they
Speaker 1: spelled the name with the king instead up and see
Speaker 1: can you shoulder to it? And they she starts to
Speaker 1: learn about all different kind of family members that he
Speaker 1: had all over like so like it's yeah, with the
Speaker 1: you're saying that the number of requests for it, so
Speaker 1: it jumped up to twelve dred you said you're a
Speaker 1: twelve hundred and currently sitting that two thousand. Okay, so
Speaker 1: if you have if you've got like two thousands of
Speaker 1: them sitting in the chamber right now, just knowing like
Speaker 1: the sort of space of TikTok is, do you do
Speaker 1: you ever find do you find yourself like running into
Speaker 1: the issue, perhaps like white people not understanding exactly what
Speaker 1: it's about and perhaps wanting you to do the yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I got tagging a video the day like
Speaker 1: somebody like people are taggingbody tagging this moody like a
Speaker 1: white woman's comments to look for an answer. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he has a project that help I say, it's not
Speaker 1: for her. It's not for her. But I ran into
Speaker 1: the issue of people get they let the forgility take over. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you find there's like broader pushback then you know
Speaker 1: there's some people who get mistaken with like this project
Speaker 1: ain't for y'all. Are there any is there people out
Speaker 1: there that were like nad about it because people on
Speaker 1: the internet didn't mad about anything. Oh yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: a ton of people that would matter what. One woman
Speaker 1: made three videos about me and like, god, yes, she
Speaker 1: made three videos about me. And she was like, look,
Speaker 1: I tricked my family that's thirty and this says uh
Speaker 1: says they were mixed. His name was Charlie. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: so you did the work. It's like you you want
Speaker 1: me to find Like I don't know what she thought out.
Speaker 1: I was like, a magical negro can just connect to
Speaker 1: all black people, but I couldn't. So I'm like this,
Speaker 1: I can't do that to bring the great great granddad
Speaker 1: back out. Plus your thing you're thinking's like specifically for
Speaker 1: descendence of slaves too. It's like, I don't understand how
Speaker 1: you had to jump into that, UM people, Hey, I'm Irish.
Speaker 1: That's why you're getting I'm irish. We were, we were
Speaker 1: slaves you and that your service. Plus you know that
Speaker 1: you're Irish, I'm black, Like exactly, that's the difference. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to let people know, Like I'm like, you've never
Speaker 1: been the butt of a slave joke. You've never been
Speaker 1: You've never been in that situation to understand, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I really can't. I don't know what my family did.
Speaker 1: I don't know what people were like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what part of Africa they were from. That kind of
Speaker 1: that kind of level of detail, it's probably lost to
Speaker 1: would you say that's like lost to history? Yeah, almost altogether. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah definitely. But one thing I'll say that UM with
Speaker 1: the um Americans and it's a slave of enslaved people,
Speaker 1: is that we created this culture that's from the south
Speaker 1: to to the east coast, west coast, we have a
Speaker 1: culture that being black that we still made here like
Speaker 1: and and and with that culture, you can see it
Speaker 1: throughout history, like from occupations to places they lived to
Speaker 1: the things they did to what they sold to the
Speaker 1: land that was big. Like when when I when I
Speaker 1: come across agricultural records and I see land that they
Speaker 1: all might see exactly what they grew and how they
Speaker 1: they ran stuff. It was it's it's it's it's our
Speaker 1: own history. Like I can't go back as far as
Speaker 1: like you know, I know you're from Nigeria and I
Speaker 1: could find this, but I could show you the not
Speaker 1: so bad parts of history that is still black culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Um what do you find people take away
Speaker 1: from for the folks that you for whom you've already completed,
Speaker 1: like their genealogy, Like what do they take from it?
Speaker 1: Like what what? What? Um does that lend to their
Speaker 1: to their lives, like knowing what their roots are. I've
Speaker 1: had people everybody cries. I don't know about, but everybody cries.
Speaker 1: That's that's one big thing. And like I'm like, that's
Speaker 1: the feeling that that's hard to explain. Um. But everybody
Speaker 1: I got told I changed people lives. Um I had one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got told like I've changed people lives by doing this.
Speaker 1: Um Um who told me? Somebody wants to help out
Speaker 1: the project out there, Like I helped them out. They
Speaker 1: wanted to actually join on now to help people because
Speaker 1: again they see how that feels and how how the experiences. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people said I plugged and missing pieces of their life. Um. Sakitha,
Speaker 1: who's on on TikTok, the bigger creator. We've stumped across
Speaker 1: her dad by accident. I had my history. She never
Speaker 1: knew her father. As soon as we saw the picture
Speaker 1: of his high school photo, I'm like, Wow, that's her face.
Speaker 1: That's her exact faces. It's like the email. And I said,
Speaker 1: I gotta picture your dad. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: want to see it, but she said sure and sure
Speaker 1: enough and so like that. She said that she felt
Speaker 1: like like an alien and her family she didn't look
Speaker 1: like anybody, but now she felt like she belongs. So
Speaker 1: it's like that's kind of fellers. So this might be
Speaker 1: kind of a technical question, but what is it about
Speaker 1: TikTok that makes it the right platform to do this?
Speaker 1: Oh man? A lot of eyes, A lot of eyes.
Speaker 1: Things can go like that and heart people in a
Speaker 1: in a heartbeat. Like I was talking about the brist
Speaker 1: Of English project since the seven Team, I think right,
Speaker 1: I kind of announced it to people launched it a
Speaker 1: week later. Um, and I wasn't really getting I had
Speaker 1: seven people I respond to a racist white person on
Speaker 1: there with with me talking about it, and then boomed
Speaker 1: twelve hundred people like that, just TikTok is a great
Speaker 1: is a great flat one right now? Still believe number
Speaker 1: one at the moment if you want to grab somebody's attention. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean I was asking just because I mean, you'd
Speaker 1: be shocked at how many people in my age even
Speaker 1: now are still under the impression when I talked to
Speaker 1: them about TikTok having interesting things are like, oh man,
Speaker 1: it's all dances of you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: we're still we're still at this page is getting people
Speaker 1: over that stigma of TikTok, right that is just people
Speaker 1: just kids up there dancing. I'm like, nah, but I'm
Speaker 1: telling you that's like it's different size and TikTok that
Speaker 1: like it's literally of a corner of TikTok for like
Speaker 1: any interest that you have, really any interest you you mentioned,
Speaker 1: like people often have really strong emotional reactions to hearing
Speaker 1: about their genealogy and sometimes they cry, and um, this
Speaker 1: actually made me think of I'm not sure I'm well, actually,
Speaker 1: I feel like you of all people will probably know
Speaker 1: about this. But when they did George Floyd's genealogy, um,
Speaker 1: and finding like all the way is that the system
Speaker 1: in various, in various you know ways screwed over his
Speaker 1: family over and over again to sort of create a picture.
Speaker 1: You know, people people on the right, you know, white
Speaker 1: supremacists want said, oh he was a drug addict. Ooh
Speaker 1: he you know, beat his wife or whatever. But if
Speaker 1: you go back in his genealogy, I believe it was
Speaker 1: his great great grandfather, Um, when he got his freedom,
Speaker 1: he accumulated five hundred acres of land that then we're
Speaker 1: just stolen, straight up stolen by white settlers. And then
Speaker 1: later on I think if his grandmother she was like
Speaker 1: very you know, she was very accomplished academic in high school,
Speaker 1: wanted to become a lawyer. They wouldn't let her go
Speaker 1: to law school. Um, she she taught herself how to
Speaker 1: read and write and stuff and ended up being like
Speaker 1: a really you know, really good at school. Couldn't go
Speaker 1: to law school because they just said, we don't accept y'all.
Speaker 1: And so thing after thing after a thing, which kind
Speaker 1: of like helps us understand and give context to how
Speaker 1: somebody like George Floyd ended up in the situation he
Speaker 1: ended up in, Like, yeah, he might have been on drugs,
Speaker 1: might have had you know, priors, etcetera, but like it
Speaker 1: contextualized in a way, like you understand how someone could
Speaker 1: become that way. So do you ever find people who
Speaker 1: get emotional about their results in having to face the
Speaker 1: kinds of struggles that are people have always gone through.
Speaker 1: I don't think I have. I don't think I've ran
Speaker 1: into that just ship where people like are really upset
Speaker 1: or get kind of emotional to be like that, that's
Speaker 1: what I kind of faced. Well when I take that back, Um,
Speaker 1: it's normally folks who I can find slave sensors for
Speaker 1: if I can find a slave census and and I
Speaker 1: can show you that. Um, I showed somebody I was like,
Speaker 1: I didn't looking for their fifty I was looking for
Speaker 1: a fifty five year old black woman because they didn't
Speaker 1: have names on there. So looking for a fifty five
Speaker 1: year old black woman. And I find the census with
Speaker 1: the same location area, and it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: same reaction I had that they had, where it's like
Speaker 1: you got just kind of quiet, you just got things
Speaker 1: to yourself, Like it makes sense, very tangible. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's just like that's what they did. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people, a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: taking part of this are are are proud, are come
Speaker 1: with pride to that, Hey, they the ancestors went through this,
Speaker 1: to go through that and now they're here. True, like
Speaker 1: histories of struggle also histories of triumph in a sense,
Speaker 1: like even if all that our people have had to
Speaker 1: live through can kind of just be really heavy on
Speaker 1: the heart to like just think about that sorrow and
Speaker 1: that pain, but also we survived, you know, they survived
Speaker 1: enough to have their own kids and then have their
Speaker 1: own kids and here we are today. So in another way, yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally make sense if that could be inspiring, even
Speaker 1: if like if you know the story you told about
Speaker 1: what was that your great great grandmother or you know,
Speaker 1: getting in the natat that that's happy. That's happy man,
Speaker 1: you know, but also like being able to actually know
Speaker 1: you're yeah, like just have I guess I can imagine
Speaker 1: like really understanding your history after sort of being told
Speaker 1: all when we're growing up that it's lost to history,
Speaker 1: even though it's not, it's not really you can find
Speaker 1: it if you look for it. Um can I can
Speaker 1: be really empowering. So speaking of history, UM, a bunch
Speaker 1: of talk us a little bit about yourself, Like who
Speaker 1: who are you? Yeah, so you're activist, You're a poet,
Speaker 1: you're a rapper, so like yeah, so you not now
Speaker 1: it's a theologist and so how did you get Yeah,
Speaker 1: so talk to talk to us a little bit about
Speaker 1: your arts background. Um, I've been writing forever. Um I
Speaker 1: love used the story right. Um. I think when I
Speaker 1: was in the third grade, I started writing poetry. Um.
Speaker 1: I used to I'm a nineties baby is to watch
Speaker 1: Deff Paultry jam with the most Deff and stuff. So
Speaker 1: I got in the spoken word. My family is big
Speaker 1: in the music, and so I was like, I can.
Speaker 1: I can write some songs and every whatever. By the
Speaker 1: time I turned eighteen, I was going to college. Uh. Nineteen,
Speaker 1: I booked my first like big show here in my
Speaker 1: city at a club. I was under aged four, but
Speaker 1: they still let me perform. Um. Uh that led to
Speaker 1: just just a lot more opportunities. I end up performing
Speaker 1: at Castel Breech is one of the biggest wineries here
Speaker 1: in New York. Um I ghost I was ghost right
Speaker 1: in for for a little while, wrote for Dorito's MTV, Nickelodeon,
Speaker 1: over fifty other company and then two thousand nineteen, like
Speaker 1: I've always been a poet, but I always kept my
Speaker 1: poetry to myself because my music, I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: my I can go out here. I got the music
Speaker 1: going poetry. Everybody's eyes on you. It's quiet. That's so funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I had the opposite experience. I was like a
Speaker 1: poet in high school. I did slam poetry and like
Speaker 1: college but and I wrote rhymes, but I didn't tell
Speaker 1: nobody because like that was a whole It was like
Speaker 1: a kind of taboo in a way. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: tip out like your gang bang, like what um? And
Speaker 1: then later like stepping out, like man, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: just sit here and not like I got sick bars.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm doing sitting on all this.
Speaker 1: But from person to person, I was telling everybody in
Speaker 1: the world that I want was like yo, yeah. I
Speaker 1: was like I was walking around with my notebook and
Speaker 1: You're like, yo, look at how many words my vocabulary? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was priedful about my rap, like I knew I
Speaker 1: can I can piece together a story. So who are
Speaker 1: some of you? Who are some of your influences? Um
Speaker 1: writing scheme to people here, how how I write sometimes
Speaker 1: um Rock him just his gotta be the way I
Speaker 1: think I break I break things down to a science almost,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, wow, I like how he
Speaker 1: rhyme in the middle of beginning the end and how
Speaker 1: he flipped that. And then just for writing prefaces of
Speaker 1: Royster five nine was big with my writing. UM Wayne
Speaker 1: when I when it came to similes, He's crazy with it.
Speaker 1: To this day, I'm just like man. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: um nas nas And then when I got older, jay Z,
Speaker 1: I like jay Z when I was younger. I got older,
Speaker 1: I could appreciate it. I could appreciate the bars. Anything
Speaker 1: it's about that makes sense, that makes sense. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: those did probably my biggest, biggest and people put it,
Speaker 1: don't chew me up for this. It's gonna be Kanye.
Speaker 1: We've talked about him on the show. Physically good yeah,
Speaker 1: like back like, because I like bro, I have fifteen
Speaker 1: surgeries coming up. And so when I heard through the
Speaker 1: Wire for the first time as a kid, that resonated
Speaker 1: and I was like, is he correct? Correct. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then so I'm like, Kanye gave me that big thing
Speaker 1: and I saw my death poetry Jim, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're writing poetry too. I can write poetry as well.
Speaker 1: You know. So that was kind of like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: here because of Yeah, yeah, is there Do you think
Speaker 1: at all there's a relationship between like the hip hop
Speaker 1: aspect of your identity and some of the work that
Speaker 1: you're doing with the Breast Ranglich project. Yeah, I believe. So,
Speaker 1: I believe. So I think, um, the creativity, it's getting
Speaker 1: his message across so people. So it's so it's digestible
Speaker 1: for people. I can get up here and talk about
Speaker 1: all the boring facts and everything like that, but if
Speaker 1: I make it exciting, Um, I talk in poems sometimes
Speaker 1: in my my my videos, that gives people attention. If
Speaker 1: I get it, Oh, I want they want to hear
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna say next. And so I just just
Speaker 1: how my my hip hop's owner. I can. I can
Speaker 1: come up here with all the confidence in the world
Speaker 1: because I feel like I'm the best at what I
Speaker 1: do right now. You can't tell me otherwise, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say what I gotta say. So you think it's
Speaker 1: like it helps out like with the because I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm an advocate of like using hip hop as like
Speaker 1: a form of communication to like it makes people learn
Speaker 1: things to retain information better. Just you know, as far
Speaker 1: as I so, do you think like that aspect of
Speaker 1: hip hop you know helps all of us mcs be communicators?
Speaker 1: You think that's like the biggest way it helps out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely, definitely, because we gotta get our message across.
Speaker 1: That's the big that's the big thing. We have to
Speaker 1: get our message across in a short amount of time.
Speaker 1: That the same thing I learned like slam poultry, Like
Speaker 1: you've got three minutes, go talk to your talk and
Speaker 1: you've got to make this connection with somebody. And so
Speaker 1: I think we when people here like rappers talking certain
Speaker 1: situations and stuff for people who are like they got
Speaker 1: this preconceived no ship of like like with dump or
Speaker 1: something like that. But I'm like, can you can you
Speaker 1: write a three minutes song that makes sense and this
Speaker 1: like that so I can talk and talk to people
Speaker 1: like it's nothing. That's why a lot of us be
Speaker 1: able to do that. It's like, oh they so cares, Mattic.
Speaker 1: We we gotta be. So maybe it's answered because of
Speaker 1: like how important the Prester English Project is to you.
Speaker 1: But is there a particular like political issue or social
Speaker 1: issue that you would say, just on a personal level,
Speaker 1: is like at the top of your priority in terms
Speaker 1: of things that you're usually thinking about or talking about, um,
Speaker 1: the top of my list. Reason I joined the Double
Speaker 1: A CP to get closer to UH to help black women. UM.
Speaker 1: They died at four times high rate norm maternity UM
Speaker 1: and even higher in my city. So we got Rochester
Speaker 1: General out here UH to change to get more Black
Speaker 1: midwives and to get more black nurses and for all
Speaker 1: black doctors black ob g y n's to help black women,
Speaker 1: you should be dying at four times high ranking in
Speaker 1: the other race down here in Georgia, black women have
Speaker 1: a higher maternal mortality right than Iraq. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of other like developing que quote developing countries.
Speaker 1: So yeah, maternal Black maternal mortality is a huge issue.
Speaker 1: Some harm to hear you're working working on that. What
Speaker 1: are some of the reasons that they give for it?
Speaker 1: They don't or do they not even bother? It's nor
Speaker 1: even bother. But when you look at history, you look
Speaker 1: at Um the father gonna college. Look at Jay Marry
Speaker 1: and Sims, right, Jay Marry and Sims got the enslave
Speaker 1: woman's name. But he's to operate on enslaved people, um
Speaker 1: normally women. Um he was. He was the one used
Speaker 1: to take the trigger warnerful folcus to take this tool
Speaker 1: to open up shoes and they cracked baby skulls. That
Speaker 1: guy black baby skulls because the Negro brain. Yea yeah,
Speaker 1: so like, um, what he used to do wasn't when
Speaker 1: he operate on the black women awake. That's why we
Speaker 1: have to bias now in the medical field that black
Speaker 1: people don't feel pain like a racist and used to
Speaker 1: operate them on on them awake, dirty table tensils whatever.
Speaker 1: And if they survived it, they want be developed a
Speaker 1: kidney infection or urinary track something because filthy, he told him,
Speaker 1: just because as they fall, they didn't take care of themselves.
Speaker 1: So it's black women not taking care of themselves that's
Speaker 1: the issue, and not not these doctors mishandling people. No,
Speaker 1: so so they try to they do the culture and
Speaker 1: genetics thing for like that too. Yes, they did a
Speaker 1: study with nurses. UM nurses going to school, Um a
Speaker 1: few years back, and they did a poll on do
Speaker 1: black people feel less pain or more and they thought
Speaker 1: that black a lot of them thought that black black
Speaker 1: people felt less pain among current current um medical students,
Speaker 1: right yep, current Yeah, with that, like it's close to
Speaker 1: me because that they hit home, like I woke up
Speaker 1: in the middle of surgery, my love and surgery. Uh,
Speaker 1: I woke up in the middle of my love and surgery.
Speaker 1: And the nurse looked at the doctor clears day, I'm
Speaker 1: up clear to day. I'm trying to catch breath. Nurse
Speaker 1: look at the doctor, said you can finish while he awake.
Speaker 1: Bro what she looked at the doctor say, you could
Speaker 1: finish while he's awake. Oh my god, that's insane, and
Speaker 1: then went on the on the subject of maternal mortality.
Speaker 1: I think I mean, and this is just understanding a
Speaker 1: lot of issues through like sort of an intersectional lens.
Speaker 1: If you look at the disproportionate numbers of black women
Speaker 1: living in poverty, that might then call somebody they're not
Speaker 1: really they're not making their prenatal you know, gynecology appointments
Speaker 1: to check up on how things are going, so they
Speaker 1: might not know they have gestational diabetes. They might not
Speaker 1: know they have hypertension or something like that. And then
Speaker 1: and additionally, UM, you know, if you're in working poverty,
Speaker 1: if you're working forty fifty hours a week while you're pregnant, um,
Speaker 1: you know, up until you up until you deliver pretty
Speaker 1: much UM. And then you know you've got to be
Speaker 1: back at work a week later because otherwise you get
Speaker 1: fired or you get fired anyway, the kinds of pressured
Speaker 1: folks are under because we just you know, disproportionate race
Speaker 1: of poverty UM. And you know, environmental racism, environment you know,
Speaker 1: toxic stress from racism, etcetera that I imagine play into
Speaker 1: that as much as you know, medical racism UM and
Speaker 1: things like that. It's wild. But I'm really glad to
Speaker 1: look at your you know, it's I think it's an
Speaker 1: under understudied, under advocated for area. And so especially as
Speaker 1: someone that isn't directly impacted, though you have experienced political
Speaker 1: racism yourself, it's great that you know you're using your
Speaker 1: voice to help elevate an issue of that you know
Speaker 1: doesn't directly impact you, but it's incredibly important. So where
Speaker 1: can people find you when they if they want to
Speaker 1: check out? And what can they do if they want
Speaker 1: to help you with everything that you're doing. So if you, um,
Speaker 1: if you want to reach me out, reach out to
Speaker 1: my social media. I'm a former love poet everywhere uh Instagram, Twitter,
Speaker 1: tink top Facebook. Um, if you want to help out
Speaker 1: with the Briston English Project, monetary donations help a ton.
Speaker 1: I make monthly payments on stuff, and I, like I said,
Speaker 1: I provide everything for everybody who's helping. Monetary donations. Um,
Speaker 1: if you go to brister ep dot me, brister ep
Speaker 1: dot me, um, there is a there's to donate links
Speaker 1: as well as all the information about the project. Word
Speaker 1: all right, well, thank you so much for being here. Um,
Speaker 1: one of these days, once your listens out a little bit,
Speaker 1: once you make some dent in it, I might have
Speaker 1: to put my name down there to find a little
Speaker 1: bit for sure. Thank you for stopping talking to us. Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Yeah yeah, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: former love poet dropping. It's so cool to see people
Speaker 1: just like be passionate about something and just like offer
Speaker 1: that their passion to the world. Like, oh, I found
Speaker 1: out a lot about like my own history. So now
Speaker 1: he's gonna offer everyone the opportunity. I want about the
Speaker 1: history to do it on their own. Yeah, and who know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I mean the whole time that
Speaker 1: we were talking to him, I just have this feeling
Speaker 1: in the back of my head that's just gonna blow
Speaker 1: the hell up even more than it already is. I
Speaker 1: think I think yeah, but I think I'm talking more
Speaker 1: I'm talking. I think he's I think he's gonna be
Speaker 1: really busy in the I think he's gonna need to
Speaker 1: expand the team. But yeah, thank you sitting his work.
Speaker 1: I would not recommend getting all the waiting list right now,
Speaker 1: because the man is busy as hell. But if you
Speaker 1: do have geneological you know our tribal research skills, hit
Speaker 1: them up, help out, help connect people with their history.
Speaker 1: It's like a beautiful and if you can't contribute to
Speaker 1: if you can't contribute in that form, hey, a couple
Speaker 1: of dollars helps, you know, So throwing something help them
Speaker 1: fund that thing and keep it going. But um, speaking
Speaker 1: of keeping it going, we gotta end this ship and
Speaker 1: get the wraps going. You feel like wrapping, Yes, you
Speaker 1: gotta wrap. I am gonna wrap. God damn it. All right,
Speaker 1: let's hit it. Joel dropping. I know I know I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do rap music. Yo. Joel dropped that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Life is coming too fast. We can't catch up,
Speaker 1: and we keep it in too cool. You can't stress us.
Speaker 1: If you want to, Nanny, go get you a frank
Speaker 1: dress up. Beat you so bad feeling my ancests to
Speaker 1: think about it often. It makes me crazy. You lost
Speaker 1: track of a fan who's traced to slip avery. You
Speaker 1: want to just know it, You're gonna just show it.
Speaker 1: That's my Homeboys project. Form a love poet with the
Speaker 1: Nazis marching all up in Orlando, Canda. So we're still
Speaker 1: acting like she's Sambo, your favorite rapper, still talking about
Speaker 1: a Lambo. I'm in a waiting line, trying to buy
Speaker 1: me some Ammo dope knife, give me my reparations. Now
Speaker 1: superhero ship when I rocket Cap and cow Killer Mike,
Speaker 1: then I gotta go and take a bow which the
Speaker 1: sacred cow make him way the towel through it with
Speaker 1: a smile. I see, I's not give the rules happily.
Speaker 1: Back at the family lunch, our folly would have grabbed me,
Speaker 1: drag me off for lunch. Counter Back in Greensboro, prest
Speaker 1: and Tea quotas getting filled but maintaining the status quo.
Speaker 1: I know history isn't imparting when I checked it got
Speaker 1: it's a mystery. I'm looking back at my family tree
Speaker 1: for none. Listen, least I know who my mama's father
Speaker 1: Wasn't all the sisters, but to deep and down into
Speaker 1: it my check got that, Preston, hmm, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: are listening Waiting on reparations on Dope Knife, Frank if
Speaker 1: we will see y'all next week. Listen to Waiting on
Speaker 1: Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts