Speaker 1: And now.
Speaker 2: Watching my mic back like that, we just strike waters
Speaker 2: from headquarters behind him.
Speaker 3: And if you're just tuning in the civic cipher, I'm
Speaker 3: your host Rams's job.
Speaker 1: I go by the name q Ward.
Speaker 4: But reminding everybody again that today I am more specifically
Speaker 4: Grayson and I Coho's father.
Speaker 3: Indeed, be sure to stick around. We still have more
Speaker 3: UH to bring you. We're going to be discussing what
Speaker 3: public safety means. Really, this is a conversation we've had
Speaker 3: on this show before, but something happened recently that I
Speaker 3: think you is going to bring to life for us,
Speaker 3: and we're going to have a conversation about that because
Speaker 3: I think all of us have grown up in a
Speaker 3: world where we it's one way and that's the way
Speaker 3: we know it, and we haven't taken the time to
Speaker 3: re imagine what that could look like. So stick around
Speaker 3: for that. We're also gonna discuss Memorial Day, despite being
Speaker 3: a bit past Memorial Day, but we didn't want to
Speaker 3: forget about it all together, I mean just a little
Speaker 3: late on it. But first let's discuss becoming a better
Speaker 3: Ally Bobba. So this week the story comes from NBC Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: This was incredible by the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, be like this guy, all right? The title you
Speaker 3: speak English. Lyft driver kicks out writer over racist comment.
Speaker 3: A lift driver in the Lehigh Valley is getting worldwide
Speaker 3: praise after video posted online shows and kicking out a
Speaker 3: couple from his car Friday night. The driver said the
Speaker 3: writers were making racist comments and now the Internet is reacting,
Speaker 3: from block pages to donations. The incident happened Friday night,
Speaker 3: so this would have been a few weeks ago. We
Speaker 3: hadn't had a chance to get to it, so forgive me.
Speaker 3: Outside of Katasauqua Bar Fossil's last stand in Lehigh County,
Speaker 3: the Boroughs Police Department confirmed they're investigating the incident.
Speaker 1: Please say.
Speaker 3: The woman in the video, so there's video you can
Speaker 3: check out, is Jackie Harford, who owns Fossils. The video,
Speaker 3: just over a minute long, starts when Harford gets into
Speaker 3: Bode's car. He asked if the ride is for Jackie,
Speaker 3: and she confirms it is. You're a white guy, Harper
Speaker 3: says as she gets into the car on the rear
Speaker 3: passenger side. Boad asks, what's that? Are you like a
Speaker 3: white guy? Ask Hartford, who was then making her way
Speaker 3: to the center of the car. You're like a normal guy.
Speaker 3: Harford says, you speak English. There's a quick pause before
Speaker 3: Harford laughs, Pat's Bode's shoulder and apologizes. Boad then tells
Speaker 3: her to get out of the car, saying what Hartford
Speaker 3: said was inappropriate. Quote if somebody was not white sitting
Speaker 3: in the seat, what would be the difference, Boad asked.
Speaker 1: The car is a rear pass.
Speaker 3: Door are still open, but it repeats to a man
Speaker 3: unidentified at this time standing outside the car that he
Speaker 3: won't be taking this ride.
Speaker 1: And the video goes on.
Speaker 3: They exchange some cusswords, and a lot of folks have
Speaker 3: come up to support this lift driver, and a lot
Speaker 3: of other folks have made it a point to leave
Speaker 3: one star reviews on these people's business. And we loved it.
Speaker 3: We loved that video. We don't get a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff like that around here. But that is our bah
Speaker 3: blah for this week.
Speaker 4: If you get a chance, google that story and watch
Speaker 4: the video because in transcript it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Happen, it doesn't translate. Yeah, but if you see it,
Speaker 3: you're like, Yeah, that's what you gotta do. You got
Speaker 3: to stand up to that, You got to stomp it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Rethinking public safety I definitely want to talk about this,
Speaker 3: but you were having a conversation with me before. Just
Speaker 3: to kind of piggyback off of that, Baba, I think
Speaker 3: you were at an event recently where there were people
Speaker 3: that were using some languages. Wasn't entirely appropriate. Tell a
Speaker 3: little bit about that story and how folks can challenge
Speaker 3: that type of behavior. I think we've gotten to a
Speaker 3: place and this isn't something that's new, right. We just
Speaker 3: sometimes sometimes and I mean we specifically ramps, and I
Speaker 3: don't even mean everybody, We get let into spaces where
Speaker 3: we're considered where we're considered special. If you've ever seen
Speaker 3: the movie Django, you know what I mean. If you
Speaker 3: haven't watched it, and the way that Leonardo DiCaprio uses
Speaker 3: the word special will shine some light on what I mean.
Speaker 3: You are that one in ten thousand, bright boy.
Speaker 4: Once upon a time, I used to work for an
Speaker 4: alcohol and spirits company, I'll say that, and when going
Speaker 4: to meetings with distributors and venue owners.
Speaker 1: I had several people out to me.
Speaker 4: How much they enjoyed me, specifically my energy, the way
Speaker 4: that I spoke, the way that I articulated myself, just
Speaker 4: how nice and well spoken and kind and educated.
Speaker 1: I was. However, my crowd.
Speaker 4: Wasn't exactly what they were looking for was in the
Speaker 4: crowd that they hoped to draw to their establishment.
Speaker 1: We like u Q, we like you, we don't like
Speaker 1: your people.
Speaker 4: And they would say that to me like that, like
Speaker 4: they don't think they just said anything offensive at all.
Speaker 4: They even think they just paid me a compliment. So
Speaker 4: sometimes I won't even say we're in mixed company. There's
Speaker 4: spaces that Ramses and I are let into where we're
Speaker 4: the only people there that look like us, and in
Speaker 4: the instance that there might be one or two others
Speaker 4: there in a domestic capacity, are the help if you will.
Speaker 4: And I've always been certain that things like this were
Speaker 4: said behind our back, with no hesitation, with no apology,
Speaker 4: with no shame. But I recently witnessed it again firsthand.
Speaker 4: You know a room full of people that are not melanated,
Speaker 4: enthusiastically singing hip hop lyrics, repetitively saying the N word
Speaker 4: in my company and no look of oops I messed up, No,
Speaker 4: not even the hesitation to continue to do.
Speaker 1: It over and over and over again.
Speaker 4: It hurts more than you realize, because I do realize
Speaker 4: that we have people who listen to our show that
Speaker 4: are not black that may do this and don't see
Speaker 4: it as something wrong or problem.
Speaker 1: When Drake and Kendrick.
Speaker 4: Lamar and Lil Wayne and whoever you know future, whoever
Speaker 4: your favorite rapper is says that word in his record,
Speaker 4: Kanye West and jay Z come to mind, because their
Speaker 4: grimmy has the word on it. That is not a
Speaker 4: license for you to use that word.
Speaker 1: And I know.
Speaker 4: Some of you honestly don't think that you're doing or
Speaker 4: saying anything wrong. I can tell by the expression on
Speaker 4: the face of these people that I was around recently.
Speaker 1: They were really really excited about the song that was playing.
Speaker 4: It was a song that they liked, not because that
Speaker 4: word was in it, but they definitely did not shy
Speaker 4: away from the parts of the song where that word
Speaker 4: was expressed. And I won't say the name of the song,
Speaker 4: but this song said it a lot, and they gave
Speaker 4: me all I could handle as they enthusiastically rapped along
Speaker 4: to this song. So, in the name of becoming a
Speaker 4: better ally, have a real sense of how that feels
Speaker 4: when we're present, and don't be so cavalier. It's about
Speaker 4: respect our absence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even if even if you think it's cool, and
Speaker 3: even if you're right, if you're around your friends and
Speaker 3: you think then they you think you're good, and they
Speaker 3: think you're good. I think there's a way you can
Speaker 3: show a little bit of respect. You know, the world is.
Speaker 3: It feels different to different people. You know, I would
Speaker 3: I would show respect to I don't know whoever else,
Speaker 3: anybody else if they if I felt like their tribe
Speaker 3: generally wanted that for me. And so I think respect
Speaker 3: comes into play there anyway. So let's talk about public
Speaker 3: safety and what that means. Obviously, the first part of
Speaker 3: the show, we talked about some police officers failing to engage.
Speaker 3: A couple of weeks ago, we talked about, you know,
Speaker 3: shooting in Buffalo, and we've been having conversations a good
Speaker 3: guy with a gun, bad guy with the gun. We've
Speaker 3: been dealing with white supremacy. We've been dealing with white
Speaker 3: supremacist institutions since the inception of the show. But one
Speaker 3: thing that we keep coming up against is what we
Speaker 3: need police officers. We need public safety, We need someone
Speaker 3: that you can call the end of the number. I'll
Speaker 3: not argue against that, right, but I want to have
Speaker 3: you listen to a real world example of what public
Speaker 3: safety is so that you can rethink what it should
Speaker 3: be and we can have a critical examination of what
Speaker 3: public safety means. Que the floor is yours.
Speaker 4: I spent most of the last year away from my kids,
Speaker 4: accepted a job that relocated me to Atlanta, Georgia. A
Speaker 4: lot of our listeners know this. We did the show
Speaker 4: remote for almost ten months.
Speaker 1: As a result, my daughter.
Speaker 4: Who is two, and my son, who was four, they
Speaker 4: both did a lot of growing up in dad's absence.
Speaker 4: You know, ten months almost a year, does not sound
Speaker 4: like a lot to those of us that are forty
Speaker 4: years old, but when you're two, ten months is a
Speaker 4: very long time. Even when you're four, you know, almost
Speaker 4: one fourth of your life. As a result, my children
Speaker 4: have what I jokingly called, you know daddy PTSD.
Speaker 1: If I go to the.
Speaker 4: Bathroom and it's a bathroom that's not in my bedroom,
Speaker 4: my kids think I am leaving forever. So they chased
Speaker 4: me out of the room, ask me very aggressively where
Speaker 4: I'm going, and determine that they are going with me.
Speaker 4: I've seen this happen there and not asking my permission.
Speaker 4: They are not listening to me try to discourage them
Speaker 4: to go back to the room with their mom. No no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I'm going with dad. I am thankful and fortunate that
Speaker 4: that same job recently promoted me and relocated me back
Speaker 4: here to Arizona where I can be with my babies.
Speaker 1: And that is cost for celebration.
Speaker 4: And you know, a lot of perspective was built over
Speaker 4: this last year as I spent that amount of time
Speaker 4: away from them. Also because of this job, Ramses knows this.
Speaker 4: I keep a very very irregular schedule. My day starts
Speaker 4: at about two thirty am, when a lot of people
Speaker 4: that are Ramses and I call colleagues have not gotten
Speaker 4: home from work yet. My day is starting, which means
Speaker 4: going to bed is a really strange thing because the
Speaker 4: sun is out when I go to bed. Took the
Speaker 4: family to dinner at about five o'clock and tried to
Speaker 4: get home and into bed at a decent time. On
Speaker 4: the way home from dinner two days ago, the initial
Speaker 4: plan was to go grocery shopping, but it was getting
Speaker 4: a little later than we hoped and we decided we're
Speaker 4: going to table grocery shopping until the weekend. So I'm
Speaker 4: just going to run into the store real quick to
Speaker 4: get some milk so that my kids can have breakfast
Speaker 4: milk and eggs and some fruit so they can eat
Speaker 4: in the morning before their mom also goes to work. Now,
Speaker 4: those of us that have children, those of you that
Speaker 4: have children, know that the grocery store can be a
Speaker 4: challenge with young children, especially multiple young children. So I'm
Speaker 4: just going to run in the store myself. I'll be
Speaker 4: right back. Well, I think I told you guys, my daughter,
Speaker 4: for lack of better, don't play that.
Speaker 1: Daddy, I'm going with you. It was not a question
Speaker 1: mark on the end of it.
Speaker 4: She declared she was going with me, and she's a
Speaker 4: little bit more difficult to reason with because she's too
Speaker 4: I can have a conversation with my son, explained to
Speaker 4: him to stay in the car with his mom. Daddy'll
Speaker 4: be right back. I'm just running in to grab a
Speaker 4: couple of things. My daughter, none of that reasoning would matter.
Speaker 4: She would scream her lungs off and just stress her
Speaker 4: mom out for no reason. So I'm just take her
Speaker 4: with me. But baby, I'll be right back. Stay with
Speaker 4: your mom. Now, my son wants to go too, but
Speaker 4: he also wants to make his dad happy, so he'll
Speaker 4: be grudgingly stay in the car, except sometimes, and again,
Speaker 4: those of us with young children know sometimes our children
Speaker 4: will push right to the edge to see maybe if
Speaker 4: I try this again, Daddy won't say no again. So
Speaker 4: sometimes I have to stop and tell him again, like no,
Speaker 4: get back in your car seat, stay in the car
Speaker 4: with your mom, because he's gonna try to go again.
Speaker 4: Because I know this, I am approaching the grocery store
Speaker 4: now with my daughter in my arms, listening for my
Speaker 4: son to try to get out of the car and
Speaker 4: come with me, because he always does, like clockwork, here
Speaker 4: goes the door, and here I go turn it around
Speaker 4: and tell Grayson's So it's really hard not to tremble
Speaker 4: at this next part because when I turn around to
Speaker 4: tell Grayson to stay in the car with his mom,
Speaker 4: I notice that the person that opened his door is
Speaker 4: not Grayson, but some strange man. And to paint the
Speaker 4: picture for you, imagine yourself opening the rear door of
Speaker 4: your car to reach in to get anything out, your child,
Speaker 4: a bag, groceries, whatever is on the back seat. I
Speaker 4: say that intentionally because there's a very, very specific way
Speaker 4: you go about opening a back door and reaching in
Speaker 4: to get something. So when I turn around, I don't
Speaker 4: see a man yet, so I have to like.
Speaker 1: Look down into the car.
Speaker 4: His mother, like me, thinks that the door she just
Speaker 4: heard open was her son and that his dad is
Speaker 4: about to tell him to get back in the car,
Speaker 4: so there's no need for alarm, except as I stopped talking,
Speaker 4: something in her looks over her shoulder and sees a
Speaker 4: man reaching into our back seat to grab our child.
Speaker 4: Had I not been preparing to tell my son to
Speaker 4: stay in the car, I just walk into the grocery store.
Speaker 4: This man grabs my son, gets into his car that
Speaker 4: is running next two hours with two other people in it,
Speaker 4: and drive away with him and with my daughter in
Speaker 4: my hand, I could not have gotten into the car
Speaker 4: fast enough to pursue them in a way that I
Speaker 4: know I'm going to see my son again, safe and alive.
Speaker 4: So I lean down into the car and I see
Speaker 4: this strange man reaching into the car. She freezes, because
Speaker 4: what else do you do? Like all of us think
Speaker 4: these very heroic things about ourselves. You know, if it
Speaker 4: would have been me, this is what I would have done.
Speaker 4: I did not drop my daughter and jump over the
Speaker 4: car and attack this man who looks like he's trying
Speaker 4: to grab my son. I'd like to think I was
Speaker 4: trying to process what to do if this man doesn't stop.
Speaker 4: But just like we speak of the lack of heroism
Speaker 4: and police officers, they're human beings.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 4: I am play, you know, put in my position to
Speaker 4: be the hero. With my daughter in my arms and
Speaker 4: some man attempting to take my child, all I can
Speaker 4: do is make sure that this man sees me, see him,
Speaker 4: and hope that the fact that I'm.
Speaker 1: Coming towards him will startle him or stop him.
Speaker 4: And it did, thank god, because I didn't run, I
Speaker 4: didn't sprint, I didn't jump. I didn't grab him and
Speaker 4: beat him up and throw them to the ground and
Speaker 4: rescue my son. No, but this man saw me, see him,
Speaker 4: stood up, said oops, wrong car, jumped into the running car.
Speaker 4: That his friends were in his friends or partners or
Speaker 4: whatever you call them.
Speaker 3: I want, I want you to talk about this because
Speaker 3: you have a friend that described that they move in
Speaker 3: units like this, a kidnapping people, they move in units like.
Speaker 4: The next morning, I'm still shaking because I haven't slept
Speaker 4: because you can't stop replaying.
Speaker 1: What I watched happen, and he used to be a
Speaker 1: police officer in Brazil.
Speaker 4: A colleague of mine and I say, hey, man, somebody
Speaker 4: almost took my kid last night, and he says, where
Speaker 4: were you? I said, at the grocery store. His immediate response,
Speaker 4: with no hesitation, was it was a woman and two men,
Speaker 4: wasn't it. This was startling. The accuracy was almost no
Speaker 4: details that he described what almost happened to us, right,
Speaker 4: a woman present to disarm you as a parent, to
Speaker 4: calm the child that they're going to take, and had
Speaker 4: this happen inside of the store, maybe to just distract me. Hey, sir,
Speaker 4: do you know what alda? And whatever question she's asking me,
Speaker 4: I don't notice my kid is now gone. This is
Speaker 4: how this is supposed to play out for them. The
Speaker 4: easy way to tell this story is, hey, somebody almost
Speaker 4: took my kid, but they didn't, so we're cool. The problem, however,
Speaker 4: somebody almost took my kid, Not I caught someone following
Speaker 4: me and that might have let no, no, no, no, the
Speaker 4: attempt happened.
Speaker 1: It's like somebody almost killed me. Not I was in a.
Speaker 4: Situation where someone may have tried like no, the person
Speaker 4: actively pulled out a gun and shot me, and or
Speaker 4: this person walked up to my car, opened the door,
Speaker 4: and it's going to take my son.
Speaker 1: The worst case scenario of this story.
Speaker 4: Happens if I take one more step away from the car,
Speaker 4: because the timing has to be that she's going to
Speaker 4: be paying the least amount attention. And so am I
Speaker 4: when I just got out, grabbed my daughter, and am
Speaker 4: about to walk into the grocery store. I've committed to
Speaker 4: walking in there. I just got out, so there's no
Speaker 4: need for alarm. The door has not been locked yet.
Speaker 4: They take my kid, They're gone by the time I
Speaker 4: get back to the car. It doesn't matter, and they
Speaker 4: can ambroleert all they want. We live really really close
Speaker 4: to the border here.
Speaker 1: Now you reached out to the police, because of course
Speaker 1: you do, right, I'm not talking around this. I'm talking
Speaker 1: to you. Someone attempt to kidnap your son, break in
Speaker 1: your house, vandalize your house, hits your car. You call
Speaker 1: the police. So what do they do? They take a statement? Excellent.
Speaker 3: Now, had you told me this story twenty years ago
Speaker 3: when I was nineteen, maybe actually there's no point in
Speaker 3: my life you had told me the story. But there
Speaker 3: are people who've grown up in a world maybe they
Speaker 3: weren't educated in the way that I was right, And
Speaker 3: you can tell them that story. You can tell them
Speaker 3: that story now, and then you tell them, yeah, I
Speaker 3: called the police, and they will assume great, you called
Speaker 3: the police. So the police got out there. They didn't
Speaker 3: invest again, they had detectives. They looked up then numbers
Speaker 3: they looked or license plate numbers. They chased down the
Speaker 3: bad guys. They found them, they arrested them, put them
Speaker 3: in jail. Which does happen. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, right,
Speaker 3: But you just told a story, and then you said
Speaker 3: you called the police. Someone broke into my house one time.
Speaker 3: I lived in a really nice part of town. When
Speaker 3: I bought my first house, I was nineteen actually at
Speaker 3: that time, bought a really nice house, really nice part
Speaker 3: of town.
Speaker 1: Someone broke into my house.
Speaker 3: The police took a statement, they didn't even dust for fingerprints,
Speaker 3: and then they left.
Speaker 1: Right, They probably gave you a business card exactly.
Speaker 3: And so what happens a lot of times is that
Speaker 3: we need to understand that police only show up after
Speaker 3: a crime has been committed. They if someone's ever broken
Speaker 3: into your car, you understand this they can only show
Speaker 3: up after the crime has been committed and do their best,
Speaker 3: and a lot of times their best nothing.
Speaker 4: They don't do their best. And that's kind of the point.
Speaker 4: Now there's not going to be an investigation because people
Speaker 4: might still be listening because I said they took a
Speaker 4: statement and there was like ellipses.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a period like I was done.
Speaker 4: It took a statement and gave me a business card
Speaker 4: and these words specifically were said.
Speaker 1: In the event that someone else reports.
Speaker 4: Something like this, will have this information from you.
Speaker 1: Now. The reason it's important for us to say this
Speaker 1: is because.
Speaker 3: A lot of us think that police make us safe.
Speaker 3: Police are more often who we call after we've already
Speaker 3: been violated, and we say it on the show quite
Speaker 3: a bit. Obviously it has not achieved enough support, but
Speaker 3: I'll say it one more time. The movement to defund
Speaker 3: the police is really a movement to reallocate the fiscal
Speaker 3: resources of police departments into programs and systems that will
Speaker 3: prevent crime from happening in the first place. If you
Speaker 3: do a little bit of research into it, you will
Speaker 3: see that the ideas have merit, and the traditional policing
Speaker 3: system model often leaves people who might have their children
Speaker 3: taken from them in a state of worry, with no
Speaker 3: real finality to it. You're just left to live in
Speaker 3: fear and move on.
Speaker 4: Can I borrow thirty seconds from you? I describe the man,
Speaker 4: what he was wearing, and the car that they drove
Speaker 4: off in. There is not going to be an investigation.
Speaker 4: So on the marking lot where it happened has video cameras,
Speaker 4: there's not going to be an investigation. So in essence,
Speaker 4: these people have to actually kidnap someone's kid first.
Speaker 1: For that kid, they'll have to be missing.
Speaker 4: For a certain amount of time first, and then the
Speaker 4: police will start to try to investigate and find this
Speaker 4: missing child.
Speaker 3: With that said, I think it is upon you to
Speaker 3: begin to rethink what public safety means in our culture
Speaker 3: and to all of us. Now, with that in mind,
Speaker 3: it is time to move on to the way Black
Speaker 3: History Fact. This week, he comes from Hip Hop Weekly
Speaker 3: as the sponsor Hip Hop Weekly magazine.
Speaker 1: We love those guys around here.
Speaker 3: Our producer, Miss Maggie aka Maggie b No One sent
Speaker 3: this one over to us. He'd be knowing, she'd be knowing.
Speaker 3: This comes from Time Magazine. So the overlooked black history
Speaker 3: of Memorial Day. I will read nowadays. Memorial Day honors
Speaker 3: veterans of all wars, but its roots are in America's
Speaker 3: deadliest conflict, the Civil War. Approximately six hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: thousand soldiers died, about two thirds from disease. The work
Speaker 3: of honoring the dead began right away all over the country,
Speaker 3: and several American towns claim to be the birthplace of
Speaker 3: Memorial Day. Researchers to trace the earliest annual commemoration to
Speaker 3: women who laid the flowers on soldier's graves in the
Speaker 3: Civil War hospital town of Columbus, Mississippi, in April eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty six, but historians like the Pulitzer Prize winning David
Speaker 3: Blight have tried to raise awareness of freed slaves who
Speaker 3: decorated soldiers' graves a year earlier to make sure their
Speaker 3: story gets told too. According to Blight's two thousand and
Speaker 3: one book, Race and Reunion, the Civil War in American Memory,
Speaker 3: a commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries
Speaker 3: took place on May first, eighteen sixty five, in Charleston,
Speaker 3: South Carolina, at a former planter's racetrack where Confederates held
Speaker 3: captured Union soldiers. During the last year of the war.
Speaker 3: At least two hundred and fifty seven prisoners died, many
Speaker 3: of disease, and were buried in unmarked graves, so black
Speaker 3: residents of Charleston decided to give them a proper burial.
Speaker 3: In the approximately ten days leading up to the event,
Speaker 3: roughly two dozen African American Charlestonians reorganized the grave into
Speaker 3: rows and built ten foot tall white fence around them,
Speaker 3: and archway overhead spelled out Martyrs of the Race course
Speaker 3: in black letters. Now real quick, I've been to Charleston,
Speaker 3: South Carolina, went to a museum there, learned about this.
Speaker 3: This is a real thing, and we are on the
Speaker 3: air in Charleston as well. Sorry, we're on the air
Speaker 3: in Florence, South Carolina. I meant to say we're on
Speaker 3: the air in South Carolina and Columbia as well. So
Speaker 3: I want to shout out one hundred point seven the beat,
Speaker 3: and I want to shout out one oh five point
Speaker 3: five the beat in Florence.
Speaker 1: Thank you for helping us echo the message in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: All right, About ten thousand.
Speaker 3: People, mostly black residents, participated, and they may first tribute.
Speaker 1: According to coverage.
Speaker 3: Back then in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New
Speaker 3: York Tribune. Starting at nine am, about three thousand black
Speaker 3: school children paraded around the racetrack, holding roses and singing
Speaker 3: the Union song John Brown Body, and were followed by
Speaker 3: adults representing eight societies for free Black men and women.
Speaker 3: Black pastors delivered sermons and lead attendees in prayer and
Speaker 3: in the singing of spirituals. And there were picnics, and
Speaker 3: there were picnics. James Redpath, the white director of Freedmen's
Speaker 3: Education in the region, organized about thirty speeches by Union officers, missionaries,
Speaker 3: and black ministers. Participants sang patriotic songs like America and
Speaker 3: will rally around the flag and the Star Spangled banner.
Speaker 3: In the afternoon, three white and black Union regiments marched
Speaker 3: around the graves and stage to drill. The New York
Speaker 3: Tribune described the tribute as quote a procession of friends
Speaker 3: and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never
Speaker 3: saw before. The grave sites looked like a quote one
Speaker 3: mass of flowers, and quote the breeze wafted the sweet
Speaker 3: perfumes of them, and tears of joy were shed. This
Speaker 3: tribute gave birth to an American tradition. Light wrote in
Speaker 3: Race and Reunion, the war was over and Memorial Day
Speaker 3: had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of
Speaker 3: remembrance and consecration. In nineteen ninety six, Blight stumbled upon
Speaker 3: a New York Herald Tribune article detailing the tribute in
Speaker 3: a Harvard University archive, but the origin story it told
Speaker 3: was not the Memorial Day history that many white people
Speaker 3: had wanted to tell.
Speaker 1: He argues.
Speaker 3: About fifty years after the Civil War ended somewhat at
Speaker 3: the United Daughters of the Confederacy, one asked the Ladies
Speaker 3: Memorial Association of Charleston to confirm that the May first,
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: Tribute occurred, and received a reply from one S. C.
Speaker 3: Beckwith quote, I regret that I was unable to gather
Speaker 3: any official information. In answer to this quote, whether Beckworth
Speaker 3: actually knew about the tribute or not, Light argues the
Speaker 3: exchange illustrates quote how white Charlestonian suppressed from memory. This founding.
Speaker 3: In nineteen thirty seventh book also incorrectly stated that James
Speaker 3: Redpass single handed the organized a tribute, when in reality
Speaker 3: it was a group effort, and that it took place
Speaker 3: on May thirtieth, when it actually took place on May first.
Speaker 3: That book also diminished the role of the African Americans
Speaker 3: involved by referencing them to it as quote black hands,
Speaker 3: black hands which only knew what the dead they were
Speaker 3: honoring had raised them from a condition of.
Speaker 1: Servitude all right.
Speaker 3: The origin story that did stick involves an eighteen sixty
Speaker 3: eight call from General John A. Logan, president of a
Speaker 3: Union Arty Army Veterans group, urging Americans to decorate the
Speaker 3: graves of the fallen with flowers on May thirtieth of
Speaker 3: that year. The ceremony that took place in Arlington National
Speaker 3: Cemetery that day has been considered the first official Memorial
Speaker 3: Day celebration. Memorial Dake became a national holiday two decades
Speaker 3: later in eighteen eighty nine, and it took a century
Speaker 3: before it was moved to before it was moved in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight to the last Monday of May, where
Speaker 3: it remains today. According to Blight, Hampton Park, named after
Speaker 3: Confederate General Wade Hampton, replaced the grave site at the
Speaker 3: Martyrs of the Race Course, and the graves were reinterned
Speaker 3: in the eighteen eighties at a National Cemetery in Beauford,
Speaker 3: South Carolina.
Speaker 1: The fact that the.
Speaker 3: Freed slaves and Memorial Day tribute is not as well
Speaker 3: remembered is emblematic of the struggle that would follow as
Speaker 3: African Americans fight to be fully recognized for the contributions
Speaker 3: to the to American society continues to this day. So
Speaker 3: a little bit more whitewash history for everybody right there.
Speaker 3: Memorial Day was founded by black folks. So that holiday
Speaker 3: that you recently were able to celebrate, you can thank
Speaker 3: some recently freed slaves for honoring the soldiers who fought
Speaker 3: in the Civil War. With that said, that's going to
Speaker 3: do it for us. I'm glad we read that one.
Speaker 3: Glad we read that one.
Speaker 1: We always need to.
Speaker 3: Breathe a little bit of life into some stories because
Speaker 3: you know, our role gets kind of diminished a lot
Speaker 3: of times around here, and it's up to us too
Speaker 3: make sure that we can stand tall on those folks
Speaker 3: that really gave a huge chunk of their life to
Speaker 3: making sure that we stood for something other than helping
Speaker 3: out and picking cotton and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's always good to get new history as well.
Speaker 1: That too, but what that said. Thank you for tuning
Speaker 1: in to Civic Cipher. I'm your host, Ramses Josh.
Speaker 3: This is Grayson and I girl's father listening to the
Speaker 3: Akah Board Show produced by Ms Maggie a KA Maggie
Speaker 3: be Knowing. Be sure to check out the website civiccipher
Speaker 3: dot com is up with any questions comments, make a
Speaker 3: donation and follow us on all social media at Civic
Speaker 3: Cipher and until next week.
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