Entrepreneurial Appetite

The Defeat of Black Power: A Conversation with Leonard N. Moore, PhD

• Leonard Moore • Season 6 • Episode 4

Share episode

What if a single event could redefine a movement? Join us as we explore the transformative 1972 National Black Political Convention with insights from esteemed educator and author, Leonard N. Moore. Discover how this pivotal moment aimed to bridge the divide between integrationist and separatist factions within Black politics, transitioning from protest to political action. We unravel the complexities of unifying diverse ideologies and learn valuable lessons for contemporary political engagement, emphasizing strategic voting and political literacy.

Through a deep dive into the intricacies of Black political unity and engagement, we highlight the significance of local governance and the often overlooked narratives of the Congressional Black Caucus. Our discussion peels back the layers of political divisions, even within families, and acknowledges the diverse backgrounds of the Black community, including Caribbean and African immigrants. We question the feasibility of another national Black political convention and call for action to leverage political power through strategic engagement, while addressing the dominance of the Black elite in public discourse.

Finally, we consider the interconnected challenges and opportunities within Black education and political unity. From the psychological impact of police violence to the role of HBCUs and college athletes in advocating for change, we underscore the responsibilities of higher education institutions in combating racism. With personal stories and historical references, including the tragic lynching of Sam Holes and Jesse Washington, we reflect on the power of authenticity and community connection in navigating societal challenges. Join us for an inspiring conversation filled with insights and strategies for fostering political literacy and genuine connections within the Black community.

Support the show

https://www.patreon.com/c/EA_BookClub

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of Entrepreneurial Appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. What's good everyone.

Speaker 1:

I'm Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting Black businesses. Welcome to another throwback episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite. For three days in 1972 in Gary, indiana, 8,000 American civil rights activists and Black power leaders gathered at the National Black Political Convention, hoping to end a years-long feud that divided black America into two distinct camps, integrationist and separatist. While some form of this rift existed within black politics long before the 1968 assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, his death and the power vacuum he created heightened tensions between the two groups, and convention leaders sought to merge these competing ideologies into a national, unified call to action. What followed, however, effectively crippled the Black Power movement and fundamentally altered the political strategy of civil rights proponents. An intense and revealing history Leonard N Moore's the Defeat of Black Power provides the first in-depth evaluation of this critical moment in American history.

Speaker 1:

Without further ado, I'm going to introduce our speaker for the day, dr Leonard Moore. What I love about Dr Moore personally is that he's invested in the lives of students, faculty and staff at the university. He teaches over 1,000 students every year. He teaches over 1,000 students every year, and so for those of you who are in higher ed to be in the position that he's in, to have a commitment to still be in the classroom in that way, I think, is unprecedented around the country. And on top of that, he is an alumnus of Jackson State University, and if any of you all saw Deion Sanders give his speech about how he got to Jackson State, you might get the fire shot up in your balls to caught the Holy Ghost a little bit.

Speaker 1:

But what I love about Dr Moore is that every time he teaches the way Deion Sanders did that introductory speech, that's the type of classroom you're walking in, and so as soon as you get tons of encouragement, tons of guidance and a tremendous amount of leadership from him, and so, on top of that, he's a great family man, so right now he's at his son's football game, and so he is spending quality time with the family, but also taking his time out today to speak with us about his book the Defeat of Black Power, civil Rights and the National Black Political Convention of 1972. And so I want to begin just by asking you, dr Moore, what was your motivation for writing this book, and how did the National Black Political Convention get lost in black history? Because I never heard of it.

Speaker 2:

If you look at, you know the long struggle for civil rights. Most of us would say it started in 1954 with Brown v Board of Education, or 1955 with the lynching of Emmett Till. But nobody ever talks about the ending point and I would argue that the National Black Political Convention sort of is the end of an era. I think it's the zenith of the black freedom struggle, because the three days black folk got together from all over the country, came to Gary, indiana, in a small high school gym and they realized that they needed to make the transition from protest to politics right.

Speaker 2:

So Bayard Rustin's write this article in 1966, you know, from politics to protest. But it took like six years for them to realize, ok, we've done enough protesting, we've done enough marching. Now at what point do we begin to make some, you know, I would say, significant change for the community. So it gets lost because most people we don't even talk about the Black 70s period. You know, and I would say three biggest issues for the black community in the 70s were, you know, affirmative action, school busing, you know, in this convention. But we don't even really talk about the 70s.

Speaker 1:

So that's why I think it sort of gets lost so, as I was reading the book, we know what the ending is. It's from the title, but I'm reading it and I'm thinking they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it, going to do it. And then it is like Game of Thrones the people that you think are going to be the heroes aren't the heroes and everything falls apart. And I'm going to read a passage here and then we're going to kind of open it up for some dialogue with the audience. What I want to do.

Speaker 1:

This passage stuck out to me because it speaks to, I think, a lot of the feelings we have right now about you know, do we choose Democrats or Republicans? We're in a weird space because we haven't really seen, or people feel like they haven't seen, the benefits from your party, and so this is a poll from Carl Stokes. There's nothing inherently responsive about the label Democrat, nor the label Republican. Black people can ill afford belonging if the only thing they get out of belonging is to be able to say I belong. As Stokesared the end of his speech, he reiterated that electoral politics was not for the politically ambitious. Politics is tough. Good rhetoric, good looks, don't mean you can get elected. Dog catcher, and don't round up a bunch of entertainers, football players and performing artists. God love them and permit them to make political decisions. They can help you raise funds by giving a concert, but unless you have the folks registered to vote, unless you know how to get the vote out on election day and know the ones you will get out and vote right, unless you know how to count precincts and wards and counties and delegates and electoral votes, you may end up with pleasant memories of a campaign but you won't end up in office.

Speaker 1:

In closing, stokes laid out a five-point strategy for the 1972 election that Black elected officials and Black voters make no commitment to any of the announced and easily draftable candidates for president, so they weren't committing to anybody to be president. That Black voters concern themselves with issues, not personalities. That Black voters in their respective states start now in the process of deciding upon delegates to next year's political party conventions. They were planning ahead that communication be developed with other political minority groups as issues are formed and common interests identified for coalition purposes. They were interested in interest convergence with other minorities and oppressed people.

Speaker 1:

And the last one is that black delegates go to the conventions with a full understanding of why they are there, so they needed to go to the convention with a purpose. This passage right here to me outlines all of the things we're talking about right now. We got athletes and entertainers being the face of what our politics are. We've got tension between do we be Republicans or do we be Democrats. So I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about, like how what happened in the past got us to here today and what are some of the parallels.

Speaker 2:

First off, I think Stokes was being prophetic. You know, he was the first black mayor of a major city and what he always said was that any other political office, being mayor of a city gives you the immediate opportunity to improve people's lives. So and he's also talking about building a black political structure. You know. You know voter registration, voter mobilization and voter participation. You know what I mean. So he's been very prophetic. Now when he talks about entertainers and stuff, don't get me wrong. Our entertainers are gifted in their area of expertise. But when you got comedians and rappers, in many ways being a voice of black community, what's your brother's name out of Atlanta, who everybody just gushes over? Dick's son? What's his name? Killer Mike.

Speaker 1:

Killer.

Speaker 2:

Mike. You know I mean Killer. Mike speaks for our constituency, but I'm just amazed at the platform our entertainers get and then you go. People who've been in the struggle, you know, registering voters, people who've been all the elective office. They can't get a one-on-one with Joe Biden for an hour, you know what I'm saying, but you'll give it to an entertainer who's not even from the US and who are not even African-American. And so now, as it relates to leveraging the black vote, understand this. The black vote typically is the swing vote, and I was teaching a class this summer for UT faculty and staff. You had about 2000 people on every week.

Speaker 2:

Dr Clark and I made the statement that black folk don't have to vote. You sound like a candidate, and so they got upset because they understand that if the Democrats in office, their issues will get addressed. Right, the feminists will get their issues addressed, the queer community will get their issues addressed, but black people, we rarely get our issues addressed. Even Barack Obama and we all love him, we said. We said what about us? And he said I got to govern for everybody.

Speaker 2:

So there's a great book man. It's called the Price of the Ticket. Everybody. So there's a great book man. It's called the Price of the Ticket and it talks about how, when Obama got elected, black activism basically was silenced because it was like be quiet. You know he's trying to do the best he can. He ain't got nobody to go to for advice. Don't mess it up for him and we get lured to sleep. And I remind everybody that the infrastructure for mass incarceration was laid with Bill and Hillary Clinton All right. So I think black folk need to be strategic about their vote. Joe Biden right now, right now knows he's going to get 90 percent of the black vote. So I think we need to be a little more strategic and leveraging and not just give it away.

Speaker 1:

So I'm always wondering, like, within our community, if you say things like that, you know you run the risk of being, like it's communicated. You know, if you say you're not going to vote, people look at you. Like Joe Miley said, if you don't vote for me, you're not Black. And there were some people who didn't like that. But the other folks were like yeah, and I'm thinking like we talk about issues in the Black community. We talk about finances right, we got to control our money, all of those different things. We need financial literacy. We need literacy in a traditional sense of being able to read books. But I'm almost wondering, like, how do we up the game in terms of political literacy?

Speaker 2:

I don't know and I'm just being honest. This is terrible.

Speaker 1:

I'm a college professor, I don't know who my local representative is in terms of like at the city level. Now, that may be on you, that is on me.

Speaker 4:

That is on me and there's no excuse. But there's no excuse.

Speaker 1:

But we always know every four years who's running for president. We don't know our senators, the complexities of state government, so I'm more than like whose responsibility? Is there an institutional responsibility?

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's ours, Langston. What county do you live in? Be Bexar County. You can go to Bexar County. Right now there's a sample ballot. You can see who's running, what issues are on there. But we can't blame people for us not taking the time to go do it and research it. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

I guess what I'm saying is like how do you make it so like going to school. When I was in fourth grade in New Jersey, we learned New Jersey state government in history, but I don't live in New Jersey anymore and I never even consider what the county government does. We got a judge.

Speaker 3:

We got a judge Like what's the judge of the county do, and I had no understanding of any of those things I mean.

Speaker 2:

I tell people this although a president can use the bully pulpit and set the social and political climate for a country, I believe there's people at the local level who have a much bigger impact on your life than Donald Trump or Joe Biden. But let me suggest this Just because black people have the right to vote, they don't have to exercise, and I just don't think we've nearly we've been strategic enough. I've never understood why we don't vote the Republicans and say OK, just a percentage of vote. We got. What are you offering? You see what I'm saying. And so the Democrats never have to work for our vote. They, they never had to work for it and in many ways, we've just sort of given it to them.

Speaker 1:

So we will open this up to the audience. So if you have questions, you could type it in the Q&A and then we will have DJ Christopher Cutt-Kelvin. Kind of direct us to your questions.

Speaker 4:

You can put it in. You can put it in the Q&A, or you can raise your hand and I'm going to go with Dr Nelson. Our hand has been raised for a while now, so I'm going to allow her to talk, dr Nelson.

Speaker 3:

So thank you guys so much for allowing me to join. I just want to say where I needed this book. I just wrote about the Congressional Black Caucus and the book was under review and I needed your book then.

Speaker 4:

It's too late.

Speaker 2:

I needed this book.

Speaker 3:

And I say that because this is the. So, like you said the, and this is the question I asked for you like you said this, this history gets lost and what comes out of it? Although we may have not gotten the heroes that we thought that we should have gotten, what we do get is a black declaration of independence out of this meeting.

Speaker 3:

My question to you is where did you do the research to find this? Because I went to Howard University and did an archival dig and had there was very little. There was very little remnants of it. It was inside of the congressional papers and the founding papers. I knew what happened, I knew some of the players, but where did you really go to research and get the foundation?

Speaker 2:

You got to go to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Poetry, harlem, new York. Everything is at Schomburg Center. You get everything you want there. There are boxes and boxes of materials and that's where the richest materials are at the Schomburg Center. Go look up the Robert S Brown research papers at the Schomburg Center and you'll get a lot of everything you want right there. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

So, speaking about the CDC, I think if people knew what happened towards the end of the book with the congressional black caucus happens by 1970, 71, you have two camps of black people. You got black elected officials, educated black folk in one camp. In the other camp you've got Black nationalists. So the professional Black caucus represents one segment. People like Mary Baraka and others represent another segment. Now here's the issue.

Speaker 2:

Black nationalists were always criticized by these Black congresspeople. But I remember these Black congresspeople would say Mary Baraka, who the hell are you? Who do you represent? And they would say how the hell can you call me an Uncle Tom when I was elected in an all-Black district and got 90% of the vote? So the division came with. Black nationalists had nothing tangible to offer. They could offer symbolism, they could offer slogans, but at the end of the day, black elected officials, they could offer jobs, they could offer so much more, and so in many ways it was a debate over which way is the black community sort of going to go. So I don't look at the Congressional Black Caucus as sellouts. I mean, I think they understand they were not going to join the Republican Party. They did not have an infrastructure nor the population to support an effective third party effort. You see what I'm saying. So they said we're going to stay in the Democratic Party but try to form in many ways a collective political bloc in a sense within the Democratic Party.

Speaker 1:

I want to give the audience a chance to speak, but I got to say this At the end of the book, I think is the last chapter. It's the representative from Indiana I forget his name and he said something that was pointed to me. He was like if in South Africa two percent of the population can control the other 98 percent, or something like that the minority in South Africa can, can one control the population of resources, and all of that talking about colonizers. Now, why can't the I don't know 10% of black folk who live where he was, where he represented, have substantial political power where he was? And I think this goes back to my question about do we have in this conversation the development of black political literacy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, we need to develop a black political culture. You know I don't know what it means anymore. You know, many of us saw what went on in Louisville the other day and it was interesting because people were hating on the brother, the attorney general, calling him a sellout, and they said Kamala Harris was doing the same stuff in California. You know what I'm saying. So they like well, why is she getting the pass? And this brother, in many ways, is getting crucified. So I think that the development of black political culture is so critical and I think you said it best, dr Clark we don't even know who our city council rep is, who our state rep is, who our state senator is.

Speaker 4:

So we got a lot of work to do at the local level. So, doc, there's a question that came in from Clarence Williams, a graduating senior from Prairie View. I know you've got that swag love. Does everyone know what are the books that they need, that you would recommend for them to be politically literate?

Speaker 2:

That is a big question. It depends on what you want. I mean, the first thing I would do, like I said, whatever county you're in, go print out the sample or go through every candidate and see what they're talking about. I mean, so I don't know about books to read per se. I'm a big fan, you know. You can watch some documentaries and probably learn, you know, and probably get a whole lot more out of documentaries. I mean, we're in a very unique political moment. I will say that. Let me say this to the audience If you look at the lowest point in Black life, the period between 1877 and 1900, lynching, sharecropping, convict leasing, that's the darkest day of the Black community, 1877 to 1910.

Speaker 2:

Do you realize? That was the period when we did all of our institution building? 90% of our HBCUs were founded during the Jim Crow period. What? Eight of the nine Black Greek organizations founded during that period? All of your major African-American church denominations, with the exception of the AME Church, founded during the Jim Crow period. Every Black professional association, doctors, funeral home directors, educators, literally every Black professional organization founded during the Jim Crow period the National Urban League, the NAACP. So understand this when we realize that we don't have any help in DC or from the White House, and when we realize we got to rely upon ourself, what we typically do we do some amazing institution building.

Speaker 4:

The next question that was brought in was from anonymous attendee. They want to know if. Why did some of the African-Americans become Democrats if the KKK spawned from the Democratic Party and Democrats were against the emancipation of Slaters?

Speaker 2:

All right, so you're talking about. So basically, what happened? The Democratic Party would be the party of white southerners for the most part. Well up until, I would say, the Great Depression. What you see with the Great Depression when FDR gets elected 30, 32 or 36, don't quote me on that, but anyway, black people shift from being Republican to Democrats because of the New Deal programs. You know FDR had this belief that the government had a responsibility to lift everybody out of poverty. So that is where you see the shift.

Speaker 2:

The South will still say stay Democratic. They'll become Dixiecrats in the 1940s and 50s. And then when LBJ passed a civil rights legislation, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, what he said when he signed both pieces of legislation, he said the white Southerners will no longer be there. He said we have just lost generations of white Southerners to the Republican Party. And that is what happened. White Southerners, beginning in 68 with Nixon's election and 72 with Nixon's re-election, they begin to vote Republican. So things in many ways get sort of flipped over the course of the 20th century.

Speaker 4:

We're going to go to Maurice Gibson for our next question. You know that I was not going to miss this opportunity, columbia?

Speaker 2:

what's going on, man? Not too much. First of all, you know I've been, you know, just lauding and praising your book ever since you wrote it, particularly because of my interest in the same subject matter and one thing I want to comment on and then just get your thoughts on. You know, you, while you spend the majority of the time, rightfully so, on the first one, you know you briefly mentioned the second one, right, and I think it's important to to contextualize this moment.

Speaker 4:

You had this huge eight thousand person event in Gary and Deanna and then, just a year later, 600 people. A little rock.

Speaker 2:

So my you know, sam you say defeat, it absolutely is the defeat of black power. But you know, my question for consideration is you know what? What does this say about the failure of coalition building? Right, you know, we see this. We see this in the early sixties, with SNCC moving into this black power phase. Now we're talking about the sevents the exact same type of breakdown, just in reverse. What does this say about coalition building amongst black people?

Speaker 2:

Maurice, let me say this and thank you for calling me the black community is not politically monolithic, and I'll just share a personal story. We were at Thanksgiving 27, 2018, and my sister revealed that she voted for Trump. And Maurice, the whole house went silent you know what I'm saying. And her son, my nephew he runs in these white evangelical circles. He's a gospel singer but grew up black went to Morehouse. So he said he was at a prayer dinner the day after the Trump election Listen to this y'all. And he said he was meeting with these two dynamic prayer warriors, these two older white sisters, and they told him that when Fox News showed that, you know, trump had all showed the red, that all the states that Trump had won on the map, they said when they saw all that red. They said that was the blood of Jesus. And the big question was I said well, what did you say? He said, well, I sort of agreed with them. I'm like, oh, that's crazy.

Speaker 2:

So here's the issue, maurice the black community is politically divided. We don't want to admit it, we don't want to talk about class at all. That's why police brutality is the issue that gets us all riled up, because that's the one issue that affects rich, poor, light skinned, dark skinned, boule lakes, jack and Jill alphas you know everybody. And so the problem is we don't. And I'll say this I've been very strategic about not giving a lot of interviews since the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. You know why? Because the black elite typically hijacks the conversation, and when black folk take to the street, it's the black elite. We get book deals, we get consulting contracts, we get speaking gigs, we get all that stuff.

Speaker 2:

But understand that, no matter how woke I can't claim to be, maurice, I've never done poor before, and so I think at some point the black middle class has to begin to articulate the issues of the black poor and really become invested in it. We can't be spending time over getting Negroes into UCLA and Harvard and Michigan. That to me is a waste of time. All right. So we got to begin. I would say switch our focus. Switch our focus a little bit you know what I'm saying and find out what is it the black poor needs. Sorry y'all, sorry if I'm rambling, my apology, you're good Doc.

Speaker 4:

I think that a lot of people, some of the questions that are coming, talk about that collective politics. Right, and I know we talk about the African-Americans, but me being from the Caribbean, what does that look like? You know, in this new age of black? We talk about Nigerians being in the country. You know Caribbean people being here. You have Cubans who identify as black. You have other Dominicans and Panamanians and all these other cultures. What does that new age of black collective look like today?

Speaker 2:

Very diverse. We don't have a shared experience of suffering. And our Caribbean brothers and sisters? You know they weren't forced to come. Many came for better opportunities. So while they are Black, they still have in many ways an immigrant frame of mind, and there's nothing wrong with that. The US is sort of a place of opportunity and we have to quit making it seem as if we all have a shared experience. Now, if you follow I don't know how many of y'all follow like Tariq Nasheed and Boyce Watkins, but you know there's a big divide. Now they got something called the American descendants of slaves foundational black Americans, and basically what they're talking about in this whole reparations debate. They say that should be strictly for the American descendants of slaves.

Speaker 2:

Now let me say something about immigrants, one of the things that disturbed me. When I was at Ohio State, I was a graduate student, I was talking to a brother from Donna and he called us cotton pickers. He said that's who we were. He said we were lazy. He said we got all this opportunity in the US but we're lazy, we don't value education, and so it was just interesting at his approach. But he had no idea that if it wasn't for the civil rights legislation passed in the late 60s, he wouldn't even be allowed to come in the country. So too often many of our immigrant groups these are the ones who are in diaspora and also from Europe and Asia have no idea that in many ways the struggles of black folk opened up the floodgates for them to come during this wave of immigration.

Speaker 1:

So I think with that is there any hope to have another national black political convention. Is it even worth?

Speaker 2:

attempting to do.

Speaker 2:

What's the issue? What issue is going to bring us together? Is it going to be what Lack of lack of health care? Well, most of us on this call got health care. Is it going to be messed up public schools Most of us on this call we got school choice. If we live in a district that we don't like, we got the money to go put them somewhere else. So I've been asking what is the issue and I would say the black elite too often dominates the conversation. We dominate the conversation way too much.

Speaker 4:

So someone asked I think it's Talbert Hill, they say you say leverage of political power. What are some specific things that people should do to leverage the political power? And I know you talked about the ballot. I just want to make note. I put the ballot sample so if you live in Texas you can go to Ballotopia. It's a link in there you can find your sample ballot for November elections. Early voting starts on October 13th. You know, go to the polls. But, doc, specifically for you, what are some ways that you can leverage your political power?

Speaker 2:

Let me say this and we don't even have. We can start with the Homeward Association, we can start with PTA. So you will start with school board, pta, homework Association and you would be amazed just how much stuff people do in public. You know what I'm saying. But we have got to take time and go to the meeting. You got to go on Monday night, you got to go on Wednesday night, you got to go on Thursday night and I think we also, you know, I mean, I would say just start small, but we have got to begin to make the effort to go and get active and participate. Awesome, we're going to call on Cameron McCoy now.

Speaker 4:

All right. So one of the things that you bring up, you talk about the rights of people, you talk about how you know blacks have not been politically active, politically mobilized, but how much of that weighs on and through your research you know. I'd like to know what trends you saw throughout your research, when trends you can connect to today through Black political activism. Can you talk to me about fears of white people and how that hampers Black political activism? Or maybe it might be part of the system and integrated into it, Because we see that through the school system.

Speaker 2:

That's a deep question, cam. I would say in terms of, in terms of trends, I don't know. It's just that the political situation, the black community, you know, is so fluid. You know what I mean. And again, like I said, I don't think we ever we want to acknowledge just how much divided by class we are. When Donald Trump made a statement about a month ago, he was talking about you don't have to worry about poor people moving to your neighborhood, bringing your property values down, bad values. He, that wasn't to me. That wasn't a race discussion, that was a class discussion, because you can go to some middle-class black folk in Houston and Dallas and Atlanta and Cleveland, detroit, and they will tell you we do not want to live around the Black poor, alright. So what I've just been trying to get people to focus on, cameron, is to acknowledge that we have class. Dude, our churches are divided by class. So much of the Black community is divided by class, but we don't want to acknowledge it.

Speaker 4:

But I think we need to Alright. Next up we're going to go to Christopher Bell. What are the psychological effects of the killings that are happening in the black community? Is that, is that correct?

Speaker 2:

I mean it's nothing new. We all can go Google Malcolm X's speech in 1962 in Los Angeles after the LAPD killed Ron Stokes and Mayor Sam Yorty and the DA that you know. These people went up into the mosque and killed these Muslim brothers. And so the point is it is nothing new under the sun. That was what 58 years ago. So we understand the deep psychological effects. But my issue is that we have been through worse. We have been through a lot worse, and we know how to deal with racism. We have dealt with it before, but we can't get so psychologically I would say, defeated where we don't want to try. We know this stuff has been going on, but we've always been able to persevere through it.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking about.

Speaker 1:

We just had the disappointing announcement about the indictment of the officers, with the whole Breonna Taylor situation and I think a lot of the points that you're making, even with this, like we see these things on TV in ways we haven't seen before, I think you would concede that the assumption is that situations like that would bring all of us together.

Speaker 1:

But even with you know what's perceived as riots or protests to your point, I don't think Black people who are middle class and well-to-do, I don't think they're getting down with that. Like those are debates that we have, you know, within our communities and things like like what's the response to the police violence, both in the moments after it's happening but preventative in terms of the politics. So I think there's, there's got to be a space where we can at least say, around this idea of police brutality, that there's got to be some political overlap among the different factions of black politics, that we could at least try to address that issue and, like sir, you know, I believe you think so and let me tell you what was profound about what these college athletes did this summer.

Speaker 2:

Right, I mean, these are primarily middle class black kids, right At these universities, you know. And what is more threatening to the system, what is more threatening to the system in some of these southern states Texas, alabama, places like that then these athletes would generate hundreds of millions of dollars for that enterprise Standing up and saying, you know, we're not going to participate. We love to put stuff, love to put pressure on athletes, entertainers, what you going to do, what you going to do? My question is, you know, what are we as adults going to do? And I don't think everybody's right to protest or be in the street, but I think we all got to find our individual lane. Because here's the deal Whenever black folk protests, it's the middle class that benefits. We get all of the benefits of it. We just sit it all and we intellectualize and we get jobs, these companies create diversity, positions and we eat off black misery. That's the real and we got to begin to acknowledge that. We got time for a couple more questions.

Speaker 4:

The one that came in is kind of in the higher education space. I really want to get this one to you. What does higher education institutions need to do to reconcile the past and current racist practices? We saw it happen, with the athletes taking the stance right, but as institutions, what do they need to do?

Speaker 2:

Let me say this, and let me say this as someone who spent 24 years at predominantly white institutions, nine at LSU and this is my 14th year at the University of Texas. I've talked to some black students about this. I'm like, okay, now we're going to fight to get a statue up or we're going to fight to change the name of that building, but the name of that building is not having any effect on your ability to come to that school and kill it academically. And I remember somebody told me when I was in grad school, leonard, the most radical thing you could do is graduate. And I thought that was a conservative statement. I thought this guy was kind of selling out, kind of being soft, but now I get it and so. But what kills me, cuddy, is when people say they feel traumatized and here's when they enjoy it with Cuddy, I'm 49, is when people tell me they feel traumatized because the building is named after a slave owner. My professorship is named after George Littlefield. Just go Google him. Okay, and when they were deciding what kind of fellowship to give me, dr Ted Gordon said, no, give him the George Littlefield professorship.

Speaker 2:

So I think, while symbols building names. I think that's very important. I think that's only one. I think that's only one part of the struggle, and I would say number two what I'm liking now is there's a resurgence in HBCUs. You know there's a resurgence. People go to HBCUs. You know there's a resurgence. People go to HBCUs. You see a lot of these high-profile athletes. Howard University just signed these two twins. I think they're 6'2 from the Dallas area. You know they go play volleyball at Howard and so I think what you're beginning to see is a resurgence in the HBCU. So what I would say? I think it's time we and to reinvest in many ways in our institution.

Speaker 4:

Well, doss, since you brought it up, you know I got to ask you. This is a personal question for me. We're both in the SWAC, right. Can you help me understand why does the SWAC and other APCU conference keep playing by the NCAA rules when they can go help all these families create wealth in their schools and really change the way that some of these athletes are living and giving them their actual right? Here's the issue, cuddy.

Speaker 2:

If Prairie View, texas A&M say they're leaving the NCAA, they're going to go join the NAIA and they're going to start paying players, all right. When players in Texas begin to ignore UT and A&M and Texas Tech understand, the state legislature will shut that down within five minutes. The only way that model could work, cuddy, is that your small HBCUs Wilberforce, houston, tillotson what school is Mike Sorrell president at up in Dallas? That's the only way it'll work. All right, because you don't understand. You know they're not going to allow Jackson State, alcorn and Valley to have a competitive recruiting advantage over Mississippi State, ole Miss and USM. And that's the one part I agree with you in theory. I think that's the one part. People don't realize that the state legislatures control these institutions ultimately.

Speaker 4:

Langston, it looks like we are coming to the end with all our questions. Do you have another one for time for some more?

Speaker 1:

I kind of want to just have you talk about, like, how you feel about the different personalities and not just the rappers right, we got killing Mike, but Candace.

Speaker 1:

Owen, cause it's about 80% of things. Like people like Candace Owen say, maybe about 85%, I kind of. I kind of agree with what she says and then it's like her and Martin Mahill had a conversation and it's about Martin Mahill. It's about 80, 85% of the things that he said I agree with. Well, we get caught up, just miss the little pieces and we can't come together politically.

Speaker 2:

Candace Owens is nothing new. You know we have her uncle. We got people in our family that think like that. I think that the pieces that can, what can is always is doing. She is breaking the number one unwritten rule Don't get us on a white folks and tell our business Right. And it's funny that most people don't realize I tell folks that we can. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, meaning people get upset.

Speaker 2:

We all protest in police brutality. What about your families? What about Black-on-Black violence? And I say we do both. We do it all the time. I tell my students at UT yeah, I'm going to fight for you on campus. You know I'm going to fight for you. We understand you got to handle your business in the classroom. So I think that the message from Black-to-Black community it has always been very, very nuanced and we shouldn't allow ourselves just to get upset because Candace Owens Candace Owens is only saying stuff publicly that we say around the kitchen table and the dining room table all the time. And if you don't believe me, get with some middle class black folk. Go to a nice restaurant, have some original black folk in the restaurant, come in there talking loud and what's the first thing we say you can't go nowhere without blank, blank, blank, messing stuff up. So we just as guilty of it. We just keep it private and we don't go public with it.

Speaker 3:

Yes. So this is the question that I have. Doc, you said you know middle class black folks, so this is something that I struggle with very, very often, right, so I may have not been poor, but my father is a blue collar worker, my mother worked for the state of California. For all intents and purposes, you know, if I'm not the black poor, I'm very close to it. So now I'm a professor, right, and for me, the community sees me in the position that I'm in and not really understanding that. I understand the struggles where they are, because in many ways, as you know, I got ran out of white institutions because of the things I said and the things that I championed in the name of them, right? And so my question to you is is that how do us and I don't want to say all of us are in this position, but there's more and more of us who are becoming first generation PhDs, first generation inside of this higher class how do we then connect back to that community so that they don't see the level of separation, because it doesn't really exist? So how do we break that barrier down? Because I think that, like you said, this classism thing is huge, and so how do we break that down?

Speaker 3:

Especially now for me, who you know, when a lot of folks come into the restaurant, I don't feel bad, right, like, I'm like, why are y'all tripping? Why are y'all mad at them? They just Right. So there's, there's that thing. That's still there for me. That's lingered, which is why I'm in the slot right now. Right, which is why I'm a Southern teacher.

Speaker 2:

And you do and you do it a different set of issues there. If you haven't already, I would say this. Number one you don't have to prove yourself to anybody Right, and I think sometimes when black folk get a lot of formal education, we are, we have this. We have this internal battle going on. You know, like I got to show that I'm super down. Be your authentic self. I'm a suburban guy. Cleveland Heights, ohio.

Speaker 2:

Cleveland Heights Ohio was probably like a like a working class suburb. We had people at my high school with the Princeton and some brothers were going to Princeton everything under the same roof. But you got to be your authentic self and so you don't got to go to trying to be super down. I mean, I tell people all the time I'm at the University of Texas, I'm like, hey, I have access to resources. How can I help you move the needle forward? You see what I'm saying. So, doc, and don't worry about this shadow you got. You know you got these mind games going with yourself. It's all about just being your authentic self and I just tell people you just love folk. That's all you got to do. But the problem is because I know a lot of black folk from the suburbs who want to front, like they from the hood, and that's when you get called out and you really get your black card revoked.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going to piggyback off the question from the Zach Goodlow how do we teach the content in this book to our children? How do we raise the political voice, the political literacy, and tell the stories like the one you've told right here?

Speaker 2:

Let me give you a quick. You can go watch it. It's on the prize clip. It's volume two or series two Eyes on the Prize clip. I think that the title of that clip is going to be called Our Time has Come or something like that, and that video is five or six minutes long. I remember when my kids were young we were sitting up watching Emmett Till videos on the real, watching Emmett Till videos when my kids were like five, six, seven. So to utilize the resources you have at your disposal, because you may not have the time to sit down and read a 200 page book.

Speaker 4:

There's one more question that came up. Do we need more black leaders like Jackson King X in order to make change or major issues, or do we just need to galvanize in a different way?

Speaker 2:

I think what the biggest difference is, cuddy. We don't have people who are charismatic anymore. What happened to? You know a lot of our leaders who are charismatic. You know, I look at sort of like Bastard McKenzie, a bishop of the Ami Church, somebody like Trady Haynes, and I think our generation doesn't have that anymore. I think there is cutting. And when you look at a civil rights piece, you have some people who are mobilizers and some people who are organizers.

Speaker 2:

Ok, fannie Lou Hamer I think she represents the best of black America. Right, they said it was like Mississippi within her bones. She had charisma. This sister worked on a plantation till she was like 50, but she could take these complex political issues, bring them back to the plantation and you got black folk going to Bowdoin, rural Mississippi, 1960, 1961, largely because of her. All right, so we gotta get some charisma and I don't know what has happened to it. I'm still transfixed when I watch Malcolm speak, sort of an H-Rap Brown speak and a Feeney Shakur. There's a certain magnetism you get from watching them speak and I don't know what has happened to that. It seemed like in many ways we have lost all our soul. We've lost our soul when it comes to being able to move the crowd.

Speaker 4:

That's a really good point. I also think the translation between middle class and lower class and middle class and higher class is kind of lost in some sense too. Even though we have more social media than ever, why do you still think they get lost in translation between higher education and low-key community? Right?

Speaker 2:

We haven't done a good job. I remember when I was at Jackson State, I was taking economics class and we were dealing with these complex theories, right, and I remember my boy looked outside. He looked outside the classroom, it was on the edge of campus and he said you know, dr Jeffries, can you teach us some economics that will help us rebuild the community that we live in? And I remember the whole class just got silent because here we were learning abstract theories, right, and now you let other folk come in our community and build thriving businesses, okay, and so that stuff is profiled. We have got.

Speaker 2:

I think the gap between the campus and the community has gotten so large that we got to sort of bring it back to what it was. And I'm going to indict Black Studies, I'm going to indict Latino Studies. All these ethnic studies programs, I would argue over the last 15, 20 years have become very boutique-ish when you think about their founding San Francisco State places like that it was very much rooted in. How can we use the resources at the university to solve problems in the community?

Speaker 1:

Thank you, dr Moore. Appreciate coming through and joining us. Don't want to keep you much longer from your son's football game, just appreciate you. You come in and bless us with your knowledge.

Speaker 2:

So, if y'all get a chance, google Sam Holes right quick, and that's why I'm about to get on this highway real quick. The lynching of Sam Holes it was in the Sam Holes that was at Jesse Washington, jesse Washington, waco, texas. It'll blow you away if you Google that and that is where I am at Midway High School. Well, dr Park, thank you and the crew for having me this evening.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.