Journeys Featuring Leatrice De Bruhl and W. Ralph Eubanks

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Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.

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I want to personally thank you for listening to the podcast.

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If you like what you're hearing, then I need you to do a few things.

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First, I need subscribers. I'm on Patreon at patreon.com slash amomentwitherikfleming.

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Your subscription allows an independent podcaster like me the freedom to speak

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truth to power, and to expand and improve the show.

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Second, leave a five-star review for the podcast on the streaming service you

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listen to it. That will help the podcast tremendously.

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Third, go to the website, momenterik.com. There you can subscribe to the podcast,

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leave reviews and comments, listen to past episodes, and even learn a little bit about your host.

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Tell someone else about the podcast. Encourage others to listen to the podcast

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and share the podcast on your social media platforms, because it is time to

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make this moment a movement.

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Thanks in advance for supporting the podcast of our time. I hope you enjoy this episode as well.

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The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.

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Hello and welcome to Another Moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.

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So today I have two guests.

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One is going to talk about her personal journey and it's fitting that her story

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is dropping in this episode because the day that this episode drops will be her birthday.

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So happy birthday to my guest.

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And then my other guest is one of the more renowned writers from Mississippi.

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And we're going to talk about his latest book, which really touches on a part

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of the state that a lot of people know the truth, but there's still some mythology behind it.

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And he breaks it down pretty good and I think you'll enjoy our discussion.

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I think you'll enjoy the book better, but you'll definitely enjoy the discussion.

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Anyway, I'm just really glad to have y'all listen and hope you enjoy those interviews.

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And if you do, show your support, not just by listening, but go to www.momenterik.com.

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That's www.momenterik.com.

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And show your support either by subscriptions, writing a review,

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giving a five-star rating, all that good stuff, right?

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If you want to catch up on some stuff, you can basically catch up to every episode

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that I've put out there through the website.

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So I'd appreciate if y'all do that.

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All right, let's go ahead and kick this program off. As always,

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we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.

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Thanks, Erik. The House rejected a Senate funding agreement for most Department

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of Homeland Security components, including the TSA and Coast Guard,

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while leaving ICE and Border Patrol out of the deal for future negotiation.

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The Senate confirmed Republican Senator Markwayne Mullen as the new head of

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the Department of Homeland Security.

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President Trump signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to eliminate

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diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. The U.S.

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Department of Justice is moving to drop criminal charges against two former

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Louisville officers accused of falsifying the search warrant in the Breonna Taylor case.

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The state of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice and

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Department of Homeland Security to gain access to evidence regarding the fatal

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shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

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An Air Canada Express jet collision with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport resulted

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in the deaths of both pilots and numerous injuries.

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A federal judge has halted a restrictive Pentagon policy that would have allowed

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the government to label journalists as security risks.

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Alexia Moore, a 31-year-old Georgia woman, has been charged with murder after

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taking abortion medication that led to the death of a premature infant.

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A California jury ordered Bill Cosby to pay nearly $20 million in damages to

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Donna Motsinger after finding him liable for a sexual assault that occurred in 1972.

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A Florida Democrat, Emily Gregory, successfully flipped a Republican state house

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seat near President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

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A Los Angeles jury found Google and Meta liable for social media addiction.

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A New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in penalties after finding

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the company violated state consumer protection laws.

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And former FBI Director Robert Mueller died at the age of 81.

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I am Grace Gee, and this has been a Moment of News.

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All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. And now it's time for

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my next guest, Leatrice De Bruhl, speaker, life and grief coach, storyteller, expert,

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mental health professional, CEO, and founder of Phenomenal Black Women, LLC.

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From trauma to testimony, Leatrice De Bruhl turned pain into purpose after surviving

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abuse, injustice, mental health battles, and the heartbreaking loss of her only child to suicide.

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Now she speaks to heal, uplift, and help others rise.

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She walks alongside other women who feel alone and suffer in silence.

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Leatrice has experienced the fires, yet her flame is still lit.

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Life has been both her experience and years of expertise, although on paper

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she possesses two degrees, one being a master's degree in psychology.

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Leatrice has over 20 years of law enforcement experience and years working as

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a mental health professional.

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Her greatest accomplishment was being a single mother who raised her son alone.

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Grace to grieve, keeping faith, is her focus to conquer any adversity,

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turning pain into purpose to motivate women to continue their journey,

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live, and love to lead their legacy.

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Leatrice offers hope in the hearts of women, tools in their hands,

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and the courage to move from brokenness to breakthrough.

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She empowers them to face adversity with courage, embrace grace in their grief,

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and take actionable steps toward emotional and spiritual healing.

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Through her story of loss, trauma, and redemption, the audience will learn that

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pain doesn't have a final word, and they can find grace and strength to rise again.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest

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on this podcast, Leatrice De Bruhl.

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All right, Leatrice De Bruhl. How are you doing, sister? You doing good?

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I'm doing fantastic now.

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Well, so am I. Thank you so much for doing this.

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All right, so when I do these interviews, I start off with a couple of icebreakers.

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So the first icebreaker is a quote I want you to respond to.

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And the quote is, I will walk by faith even when I cannot see.

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Absolutely. I will walk by faith even when I cannot see. And that's exactly what my life is about.

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Okay. All right. All right. So now the next one is what I call 20 questions.

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So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.

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12. All right. What advice do you have for recognizing fake news?

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For me, it's like when people critique a movie that just came out and they want

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to give their own input before you see it for yourself,

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I always see it for myself if it's something of interest to me instead of listening to the hype.

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So I treat fake news the same way. If I don't find the truth on my own,

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I don't focus on it. Okay.

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All right. Your friend, Dr. Marianne Rivera Dannert, said, Every woman has a

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story, one shaped by pain, transformed by courage, and reborn through wisdom.

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So let's talk about your story. What was your life like before 2015?

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It was...

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Really awesome. I felt like I was living the dream of being a U.S.

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Federal agent and black female came up the ranks.

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Well, not really came up the ranks, but I was in law enforcement prior to that

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locally before I became a federal agent.

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And my son was here. Now, I will say I was married, but that really wasn't the

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highlight. But I was traveling around, seeing the world, just like I always dreamed of doing.

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I just felt like things were great. So are you from the DMV originally?

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I sure am. So you were born and raised in Washington, D.C., Northeast proper.

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Okay. All right. So from 2015 to 2025, your life dramatically changed.

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You lost your career, your freedom, and your beloved son, Malik.

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How did you find the strength to reimage that shattered period in your life

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into what we call a beautiful present?

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I am living by the scripture, walking by faith.

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And when I walk by faith, I have to see things for what they are right now because

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of so much that has gone on in my life.

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So that living by faith in the present day is all I can do for now.

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But in a sense, I have a line of sight, as I like to say, for the heavenly kingdom to see my son again.

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And that's what I work towards with my keeping his legacy going,

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taking care of his daughters, my granddaughters,

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anything that I can do within my business of phenomenal Black women to help

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other women as they grieve, giving back to the community however I can.

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And all that encompasses my present day of just still serving as I should,

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living by faith, and praying for good things to come before I meet my maker.

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All right. So tell the listeners a little bit about Malik.

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He is considered my second heartbeat. I've always said that.

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I was not supposed to have kids.

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Malik came around after something traumatic had happened to me at a young age

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and Malik came around out of nowhere and I felt like it was God sent.

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So I treated him like God sent ever since he was born and he became a second

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heartbeat to me because he made me live again.

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He gave me a reason to live again.

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And I raised him by myself. Through everything that I've gone through,

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Malik was my focal point.

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You know, if I had a bad day at work, I knew I can come home and my son would make me laugh.

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If my son had a bad day at school, he'd come home, talk about it with me,

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and we both make each other laugh.

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And that was the highlight of my life because he knew what I went through to raise him.

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He knew what I went through just to be a black woman.

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And he just knew so much of what I struggled with without having his father around.

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He knew and even as my child

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he was just always my supporter my

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biggest fan my second heartbeat my reason for when I was down I looked at my

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son and I wanted and and I wanted the best of the situation but I looked at

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my son and like it doesn't matter because I got my son he was full the laughter.

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Like I said, he knew when to make light of a situation.

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And even at his funeral.

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So many people showed up saying the exact same thing about my son.

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He was fun-loving, high-spirited, and just always willing to support and give

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help to somebody in need.

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And that's the way I raised him. And to hear that from other people,

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it really put a smile on my heart.

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So by him not being physically here anymore,

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that continues to be my way of saying, but

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I remember who he is and that stays in me

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and I think that's even better than him being for me

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to move forward physically here like he stays with

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me all the time his spirit his it's

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like a second breath as well as a second heartbeat it

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stays with me so he's still here but he

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literally is the light of my life but now I

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have a double dose of him with his two daughters

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and they are my light right now and

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they do definitely have every aspect of my son and it that keeps me going as

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well yeah that's beautiful during this re-imaging period you started the grace

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to grieve movement explain to the listeners the concept of that.

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Grace to Grieve. I'm a certified grief coach. I actually have a background in

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psychology with a master's degree in psychology as well.

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And I didn't, I'm a big advocate of therapy, but I'm also a teacher at heart,

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a coach at heart, a mentor at heart, an advocate at heart.

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And for me, I think it's better for me to reach people as an advocate, as a mentor,

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as a coach, someone to hold them accountable, let them know I have been there

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with you, but I'm not just holding you accountable, I'm walking with you because

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I know what you're going through.

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I'm very familiar with what you're going through.

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And I want you to see the value in this life. I want you to see the value in yourself.

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I want you to see the value in your faith.

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And the only way to do that, in my mind, in my conversations with God,

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is to show these women that grief is not the end of our story.

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And healing is not necessarily the beginning. Healing is the process.

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But our beginning starts with us moving forward.

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Our beginning starts with us being able to get up out that bed,

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out that dark room, out those dark thoughts.

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And as a grief coach and a mentor, someone who you can talk to about anything, I represent that woman.

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It doesn't even matter if they're black, white, Hispanic.

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It doesn't matter your background.

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We all go through a lot.

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But in particular, women of color, to speak of myself.

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I've lived a life so many years of suffering in silence.

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And with the various cultures of women out there, we all suffer in silence because

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we want people to see the best parts of us.

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So Grace to Grieve allows me to help the women to see their value,

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see how they can move forward, see how it has been done for me.

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See how God has blessed me from one tragedy to another, from one traumatic situation

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to another, to one redemptive story and testimony to another.

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Because that's basically what all that was.

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And I want them to see that for themselves. I want to point them to God.

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I want them to think that if it wasn't for God, they would not be where they are right now.

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And they still have a way to connect with God.

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Live the rest of their life here with whatever is going on.

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And in a sense, it's kind of weird to say this, but I actually heard someone

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say this before, but in a different way.

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I'm actually thankful for the tests, the many tests that I've been through,

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because without those tests and without my faith, I would not have a testimony

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to prove that God, that was evidence that God was there the entire time.

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So no matter who you are, where you are in life, as a woman, yes, it is harder on us.

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As a black woman, it is harder on us. Mix, it is harder on us because all people do is see what they see.

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But what's deep down inside needs to overshadow that.

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And I feel like God has given me that living testimony to show people domestic violence, check.

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He can help you through that. He can walk you out of that.

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Sexual assault, a victim of rape, check. He can walk you through that.

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He can get you out of that.

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Being incarcerated when you shouldn't have been, he can get you out of that.

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He can walk you through it in any aspect of your life.

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So I'm actually thankful for all the tests, even more grateful.

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I continue to trust and have faith, but that he's using that in me to help so

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many others that I hope that I can help.

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Yeah. When I hear a title like Grace to Grieve, that's almost like you giving

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yourself permission to do that.

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And I think a lot of people feel that they feel guilty about a natural emotion.

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And I think it's very important that, you know, in our faith,

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we talk about getting grace from God, but a lot of times we have to give grace

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to ourselves and we feel that we can't do that.

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So I appreciate the concept in what you're trying to do.

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That was spot on, Erik. That is exactly it. And sometimes I just get to talking, but that was spot on.

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Thank you so much. That is exactly what most of the movement is about,

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giving yourself the grace.

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Yes all right well i'm glad i

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can help thank you uh what is

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a phenomenal black woman so phenomenal black woman and actually it's not a race

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is just for those listeners it's actually spelled in an acronym form of b-l-a-q-u-e

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and it's it's representative of a woman blessed like a queen in every way.

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So that's what black stands for.

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So, and with the grief movement, with my speaking, motivational speaking.

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With my being a mentor, all that encompasses you being a phenomenal woman yourself.

00:20:41.666 --> 00:20:45.626
So I'm embracing every woman to be phenomenal.

00:20:45.626 --> 00:20:53.546
I'm embracing every woman to be the queen that they are and to show that,

00:20:53.786 --> 00:20:56.846
you know, they can get through this no matter what we go through.

00:20:57.046 --> 00:21:00.926
We got to have God on the focus focal point and giving that,

00:21:01.106 --> 00:21:03.586
giving yourself that grace moving forward.

00:21:03.666 --> 00:21:07.626
If you need me to come talk to you, talk to your church, talk to your,

00:21:07.786 --> 00:21:12.166
to a group or a woman's group, book group. I'm an author.

00:21:12.366 --> 00:21:16.666
Like I've gotten so much to the point where it's like.

00:21:17.694 --> 00:21:22.034
This is phenomenal to get through all of this. So that name just came to me.

00:21:22.134 --> 00:21:23.714
But that's really who it's for.

00:21:23.914 --> 00:21:28.874
It's for every woman that feels like they're not phenomenal, but they are.

00:21:29.114 --> 00:21:31.214
And I hope to help bring that out of them.

00:21:31.934 --> 00:21:36.674
Yeah. Yeah. When I saw the acronym, I said that was pretty cool how you do that. Thank you.

00:21:37.574 --> 00:21:42.154
So your life journey, as stated before, has given you a unique wisdom.

00:21:42.154 --> 00:21:46.954
If you had a chance to impart that wisdom with public policymakers,

00:21:47.574 --> 00:21:49.234
what would you share with them?

00:21:50.294 --> 00:21:56.494
I apologize. Try that one more time. If you had the chance to impart your wisdom

00:21:56.494 --> 00:22:00.234
with public policymakers, what would you share with them?

00:22:01.214 --> 00:22:05.574
Okay. Your mental is so important.

00:22:06.014 --> 00:22:10.074
Your mental well-being, your mental welfare, your family's mental,

00:22:10.294 --> 00:22:12.894
anybody you surround, your children. If you don't have children,

00:22:13.034 --> 00:22:16.574
whomever that you have that's close to your partner, your husband,

00:22:16.714 --> 00:22:20.714
your spouse, whomever it is, your mental health.

00:22:21.313 --> 00:22:26.393
Any type of relationship, work relationship, personal relationship is important.

00:22:27.093 --> 00:22:30.693
It should be right under your spirituality.

00:22:31.393 --> 00:22:36.393
It should be about, okay, God, and then is my head straight? Am I good today?

00:22:36.933 --> 00:22:42.053
Because what you feed in this brain of ours, it will dictate your entire day.

00:22:42.193 --> 00:22:43.453
It will dictate your mood.

00:22:44.053 --> 00:22:48.173
It will dictate whether you want to get into the physical aspect of your body.

00:22:48.333 --> 00:22:51.873
You want to go work out. No, I really don't. Well, that's that mental aspect.

00:22:52.353 --> 00:22:55.833
For work, for individuals that work all the time, if you don't give yourself

00:22:55.833 --> 00:23:00.093
that grace to take some time off for yourself, your mental will be off balance.

00:23:01.093 --> 00:23:04.873
When you are going out and you're in a relationship and you're dating,

00:23:05.193 --> 00:23:09.233
if your mental is not there because you're still focused on the prior relationship

00:23:09.233 --> 00:23:14.213
that hurt you so badly that you don't know how to function with the next person,

00:23:14.333 --> 00:23:15.693
that probably is good for you.

00:23:15.693 --> 00:23:20.473
But you don't know that because your mental is off. It works in so many ways.

00:23:20.693 --> 00:23:28.333
When we're parents and we're inundated with work, spouse, no spouse,

00:23:28.493 --> 00:23:31.653
no partner, you're doing it by yourself. Your kids are hungry.

00:23:31.873 --> 00:23:33.893
You still got to do this. You got to do that.

00:23:34.253 --> 00:23:40.353
Your mental is important. And that is why I went from a forensic science major

00:23:40.353 --> 00:23:43.193
thinking about science because I love science.

00:23:43.293 --> 00:23:47.193
However, I love the mental aspect of human beings.

00:23:47.953 --> 00:23:58.413
And I have so much to share, so many techniques, so many advocacy messages that

00:23:58.413 --> 00:24:01.533
I want to share with people, individuals, not just women.

00:24:01.533 --> 00:24:08.833
But to share, to show that if your mental isn't okay, no matter where you are,

00:24:09.073 --> 00:24:11.113
that dictates your mood.

00:24:12.059 --> 00:24:15.899
You can have God in your life. You can leave church. And your mental,

00:24:16.159 --> 00:24:21.019
if you're depressed about something and you were good when you left that church

00:24:21.019 --> 00:24:24.659
building, but now your mental has gotten to you. It can happen anywhere.

00:24:24.779 --> 00:24:29.459
So, yeah, that spirituality is there, but that mental has to be number two in my book.

00:24:30.319 --> 00:24:34.259
So I want to promote that as best I can to anyone listening.

00:24:34.599 --> 00:24:38.659
I want to, like I said, I'm an advocate of therapy. I'm an advocate of mental

00:24:38.659 --> 00:24:42.859
health care, taking that day off. for you.

00:24:43.339 --> 00:24:47.279
My birthday is coming up on my next Monday, the 30th of March.

00:24:47.659 --> 00:24:49.579
And people are asking me, what

00:24:49.579 --> 00:24:53.239
am I going to do? Guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to do Latrice.

00:24:53.839 --> 00:24:57.359
I'm going to relax. I want to say a me day. Seriously.

00:24:57.619 --> 00:25:02.519
It's not about a party. It's not about going out to eat. I just want to do me.

00:25:03.279 --> 00:25:08.879
And that's what I hope individuals, when they come to me and they ask me, how do you do it?

00:25:08.999 --> 00:25:11.339
What's going on? How can I do it?

00:25:11.579 --> 00:25:16.979
You walk around with this smile and you got so much going on because it's my mental.

00:25:18.190 --> 00:25:22.590
Well, consider this interview your birthday present for me, because it's going

00:25:22.590 --> 00:25:24.050
to drop right around your birthday.

00:25:24.650 --> 00:25:26.970
But happy birthday in advance for that.

00:25:27.610 --> 00:25:34.170
Thank you. I guess from from your answer, what you're saying is that if you were talking to people,

00:25:34.670 --> 00:25:43.510
public policy makers, is that that they need to put more focus in on mental

00:25:43.510 --> 00:25:48.750
health and give people like you more opportunities to talk to constituents and

00:25:48.750 --> 00:25:54.030
and people to try to help them and prioritize that. Correct. Yes.

00:25:54.530 --> 00:25:59.090
Yes. All right. So now I'm going to ask you the same question,

00:25:59.390 --> 00:26:01.590
but it's going to be a different group of people.

00:26:02.710 --> 00:26:08.470
If you had the chance to impart that wisdom with white women, what would you share?

00:26:08.470 --> 00:26:11.170
The same thing that's why

00:26:11.170 --> 00:26:14.330
i said black means queen blessed like

00:26:14.330 --> 00:26:21.670
a queen in every way it doesn't matter if they are caucasian it just well the

00:26:21.670 --> 00:26:26.450
stigmatism is different for caucasian women i mean just like it is for black

00:26:26.450 --> 00:26:31.710
women indian women native american it doesn't matter it does it.

00:26:32.810 --> 00:26:36.970
We all go through so much of the same thing, but not the same way.

00:26:37.470 --> 00:26:45.970
You know, like I'm divorced. But if I had, I know of several women like this.

00:26:46.370 --> 00:26:51.430
If they, they're Caucasian. And if they got the divorce, it will be detrimental

00:26:51.430 --> 00:26:53.370
for them because they're bred.

00:26:53.790 --> 00:26:56.210
Everything is in their spouse working.

00:26:56.690 --> 00:26:59.790
And they're just so focused on taking care of home.

00:26:59.790 --> 00:27:05.270
I mean, they see themselves as valuable, but if something were to happen to

00:27:05.270 --> 00:27:10.330
that spouse, I would be highly concerned of them because they wouldn't even

00:27:10.330 --> 00:27:13.810
know how to probably handle stress, only because I know them personally.

00:27:13.930 --> 00:27:18.270
But I can't speak for every Caucasian woman because we're all so uniquely designed.

00:27:18.510 --> 00:27:24.390
But I'm just trying to say that it really doesn't matter, Caucasian, any color, any race, no.

00:27:25.257 --> 00:27:28.697
Your mental just has to be on point. And when I say on point,

00:27:28.897 --> 00:27:35.237
I mean, get it under control before you deal with your day. I love meditation.

00:27:35.757 --> 00:27:40.637
So I don't care who you are. Meditate. Do more sitting there in peace and quiet.

00:27:41.197 --> 00:27:44.937
You can hear a lot about yourself and you could talk to yourself and you could

00:27:44.937 --> 00:27:48.597
probably find some answers before you even jump in that shower about what you

00:27:48.597 --> 00:27:50.057
need to do for your next task.

00:27:50.697 --> 00:27:55.117
So it honestly, I really can't gear that toward a specific race.

00:27:55.257 --> 00:27:57.877
But I think my answer remains the same. Gotcha.

00:27:58.837 --> 00:28:04.597
When a person sees Leatrice De Bruhl today, what do you hope they observe?

00:28:06.557 --> 00:28:13.597
Someone that may have gone through so much in her life that she still can wake

00:28:13.597 --> 00:28:17.977
up with a smile, even if she's crying, because there are tears of joy as well.

00:28:18.297 --> 00:28:23.077
But when I see God's work, sometimes it makes me tear up because I'm grateful.

00:28:24.697 --> 00:28:27.617
But honestly if you really look at my life you

00:28:27.617 --> 00:28:32.737
would say I literally and actually I've had this from a close friend tell me

00:28:32.737 --> 00:28:36.957
this and I just want to leave with this she said I was I was actually it was

00:28:36.957 --> 00:28:41.477
many years ago and I was still going through a lot back then and she said to

00:28:41.477 --> 00:28:47.277
me man if I was I don't know how you're doing it because if that was me I would have you know I would I.

00:28:49.896 --> 00:28:53.096
Let me just give you a little piece of advice. When a person is that close to

00:28:53.096 --> 00:28:58.416
the cliff, don't help push them because that statement was not helpful at all.

00:28:58.556 --> 00:29:02.716
But so I am grateful that when people look at me, they're like,

00:29:02.816 --> 00:29:06.316
man, you might've been through a lot, but you're strong.

00:29:06.316 --> 00:29:11.496
You look strong because you're walking around here still the same Latrice,

00:29:12.136 --> 00:29:16.776
still taking charge, still cracking a humorous joke just to lighten someone's mood,

00:29:16.776 --> 00:29:19.736
giving advice for free just because you

00:29:19.736 --> 00:29:22.756
see someone down just it's nothing is

00:29:22.756 --> 00:29:26.176
really about money with you it's about happiness comfort and

00:29:26.176 --> 00:29:28.936
security that's exactly it but you'll

00:29:28.936 --> 00:29:34.016
never see that i'm lonely you never see that i wish i can get married again

00:29:34.016 --> 00:29:38.836
you'll never see that you know i was recently incarcerated you'll never see

00:29:38.836 --> 00:29:43.716
i just lost the love of my life the true love of my life you'll never see that

00:29:43.716 --> 00:29:46.616
distance away from my granddaughters who i wish I could see every day.

00:29:46.776 --> 00:29:51.576
You'll never see that. You'll never see I lost a 20-year career in law enforcement.

00:29:51.936 --> 00:29:56.236
You'll never see that on my face and the way I walk.

00:29:56.756 --> 00:30:00.416
And that is all given because of the glory of God.

00:30:01.036 --> 00:30:06.476
That's given to him. So the Leatrice today has been the Leatrice for years,

00:30:06.696 --> 00:30:09.056
and no circumstance is going to change me.

00:30:09.636 --> 00:30:15.576
All right. So finish this sentence. I have hope because.

00:30:16.316 --> 00:30:20.156
I have hope because I know God is in control. All right.

00:30:20.516 --> 00:30:24.896
That's another mic drop. I like that. And I greatly appreciate that.

00:30:25.196 --> 00:30:30.756
So look, Leatrice De Bruhl, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to do this.

00:30:30.936 --> 00:30:32.796
I know your schedule is kind of tight.

00:30:34.151 --> 00:30:38.231
Tell people how they can get in touch with you, how they can get involved with

00:30:38.231 --> 00:30:41.851
the Grace to Grieve movement, the Phenomenal Black Women organization.

00:30:41.891 --> 00:30:44.351
Just go ahead and make your pitch.

00:30:45.311 --> 00:30:53.091
Yes. So you can reach me. I'm actually on LinkedIn, social. God, let me get it together.

00:30:53.471 --> 00:30:56.591
I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

00:30:57.131 --> 00:31:02.111
And under LinkedIn, you'll see my name, Leatrice De Bruhl, and you'll also see

00:31:02.111 --> 00:31:03.311
Phenomenal Black Women.

00:31:04.231 --> 00:31:09.571
If you, when you see Instagram or TikTok, it's Latrice speaks life.

00:31:10.431 --> 00:31:15.971
So, and that's on purpose. Like I want to speak life into existence.

00:31:16.291 --> 00:31:21.611
You know, I don't want to focus on the things that are kind of going south in your life.

00:31:21.811 --> 00:31:26.231
I speak life. So hopefully that will remind you to look me up with Leatrice,

00:31:26.411 --> 00:31:32.611
which is L-E-A-T-R-I-C-E speaks life. And you'll remember that.

00:31:33.431 --> 00:31:37.091
And so that's a way you could definitely DM me, look me up that way.

00:31:37.371 --> 00:31:40.711
And you'll see all kinds of messages. You'll definitely know who it is because

00:31:40.711 --> 00:31:43.371
you'll see a lot of messages with me and my son or me in the business.

00:31:44.540 --> 00:31:47.800
And there's another way you can contact me. I'll give out my work sale.

00:31:48.020 --> 00:31:56.280
I don't mind doing that. And it's area code 757-284-6283. Had to think about it.

00:31:57.480 --> 00:32:01.340
That's my business sale. But either way, if you get me on either three of those

00:32:01.340 --> 00:32:03.760
platforms, I will definitely respond to you.

00:32:04.020 --> 00:32:07.700
And I also have another book that's coming out. I have one book that's already

00:32:07.700 --> 00:32:09.180
out. It was an anthology project.

00:32:09.780 --> 00:32:14.140
It's called In the Pursuit of Living. and that's authored with other,

00:32:14.280 --> 00:32:17.400
co-authored with other women with fantastic stories.

00:32:17.520 --> 00:32:20.820
But that was really just an opener, a sneak peek for my book,

00:32:20.980 --> 00:32:23.900
which is on the way. And it's called Craziness Faith.

00:32:24.280 --> 00:32:28.780
So please be on the lookout for that. And I can't wait to do speaking engagements,

00:32:29.160 --> 00:32:32.740
hint, hint, for anyone that's interested in hearing more about my story.

00:32:33.360 --> 00:32:39.420
Well, when you, our rule is, is that with the podcast, is that you have an open

00:32:39.420 --> 00:32:43.060
invitation now that you've been on, have an open invitation to come back.

00:32:43.200 --> 00:32:46.780
So once that book is completed and you're ready to, you know,

00:32:46.900 --> 00:32:51.920
share that with the world, then feel free to come back on and we'll talk about that book as well.

00:32:52.840 --> 00:32:55.800
Amazing. Thank you so much, Erik, for this opportunity. Well,

00:32:56.120 --> 00:32:58.300
Leatrice, I thank you for taking the time.

00:32:58.340 --> 00:33:03.940
And I know you got to go and we'll chat some more later on, but I really appreciate

00:33:03.940 --> 00:33:10.320
you taking the time because I wanted my audience to meet somebody.

00:33:11.200 --> 00:33:15.880
My goal is always to get somebody on that inspires other people.

00:33:16.160 --> 00:33:19.740
And I felt that you were that kind of a person. So I'm really,

00:33:19.880 --> 00:33:21.940
really glad that we were able to make this happen.

00:33:22.580 --> 00:33:25.520
Wow. And that means a lot. You're right. This is an early birthday gift.

00:33:25.640 --> 00:33:28.360
Thank you so much. Guys, we're going to catch y'all on the other side.

00:33:47.823 --> 00:33:55.043
All right, and we are back. And so it is time for my next guest, W. Ralph Eubanks.

00:33:55.483 --> 00:34:00.143
W. Ralph Eubanks is a faculty fellow and writer in residence at the Center for

00:34:00.143 --> 00:34:03.183
the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

00:34:03.183 --> 00:34:09.023
He is the author of A Place Like Mississippi, A Journey Through a Real and Imagined

00:34:09.023 --> 00:34:12.783
Literary Landscape, as well as two other works of nonfiction,

00:34:13.403 --> 00:34:17.303
Ever is a Long Time, and The House at the End of the Road.

00:34:17.483 --> 00:34:21.303
A Guggenheim Fellow and a Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow,

00:34:21.463 --> 00:34:29.003
he is also the recipient of a 2023 Mississippi Governor's Arts Award for Excellence in literature.

00:34:29.323 --> 00:34:33.143
His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, The American Scholar,

00:34:33.423 --> 00:34:35.583
The Georgia Review, and The New Yorker.

00:34:35.763 --> 00:34:40.863
His latest books, which we are going to discuss on the podcast,

00:34:41.403 --> 00:34:43.843
is When It's Darkness in the Delta.

00:34:44.283 --> 00:34:48.803
Ladies and gentlemen, it is truly my distinct honor and privilege to have as

00:34:48.803 --> 00:34:52.803
a guest on this podcast, W. Ralph Eubanks.

00:35:04.364 --> 00:35:09.744
All right. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know from this podcast that I spent

00:35:09.744 --> 00:35:12.164
a long time in Mississippi.

00:35:13.024 --> 00:35:18.544
And, you know, one of the things that Mississippi is known for,

00:35:19.204 --> 00:35:26.224
surprisingly to a lot of people, is that there have been some literary giants that have existed.

00:35:26.304 --> 00:35:30.844
You've heard names like William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright.

00:35:31.204 --> 00:35:35.244
Matter of fact, there's a statue of the three of them in downtown Jackson.

00:35:35.724 --> 00:35:44.284
John Grisham, Jesmyn Ward, and I have another member of that writing pantheon

00:35:44.284 --> 00:35:46.224
as a guest on the podcast.

00:35:46.384 --> 00:35:54.604
Ladies and gentlemen, I want y'all to enjoy the conversation I'm going to have with W.

00:35:54.924 --> 00:35:58.664
Ralph Eubanks. Mr. Eubanks, thank you for coming on the show.

00:35:58.784 --> 00:35:59.904
I greatly appreciate that.

00:36:00.424 --> 00:36:02.704
Oh, thank you. It's great to be with you.

00:36:03.244 --> 00:36:06.724
Great to be with, I guess, another fellow Mississippian. Yes, sir.

00:36:06.904 --> 00:36:10.944
Yes, sir. I spent 34 years there. And I used to tell people,

00:36:11.024 --> 00:36:14.084
I grew up in Chicago, but you know the history of the migration.

00:36:14.364 --> 00:36:16.704
So my dad was born than Mark's.

00:36:17.284 --> 00:36:20.044
So it's, I tell people, I used to

00:36:20.044 --> 00:36:22.724
tell people all the time, I'm from North Mississippi, a little small town.

00:36:24.184 --> 00:36:29.264
Yeah, well, you're from the town where the mule train started out for the Poor

00:36:29.264 --> 00:36:31.244
People's Campaign in 1968.

00:36:31.484 --> 00:36:33.444
Yeah, that's right. That's right.

00:36:34.755 --> 00:36:40.615
So, Mr. Eubanks, what I'd like to do is to do a couple of icebreakers to kind

00:36:40.615 --> 00:36:41.875
of get the conversation going.

00:36:42.415 --> 00:36:46.775
So the first is a quote that I want you to respond to.

00:36:47.095 --> 00:36:53.795
And the quote is, brethren, I could not myself to have apprehended,

00:36:54.035 --> 00:36:55.955
but there's one thing I do,

00:36:56.435 --> 00:37:01.835
forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things

00:37:01.835 --> 00:37:05.035
which are before. What does that quote mean to you?

00:37:06.263 --> 00:37:09.883
Well, that quote is from the Apostle Paul.

00:37:09.883 --> 00:37:17.243
It's also from the King James translation of the Bible, which is why it's a

00:37:17.243 --> 00:37:21.563
little bit kind of obtuse in the way that it's constructed.

00:37:22.323 --> 00:37:28.983
And it's one that sits outside of the—it's all over the State Penitentiary Department,

00:37:28.983 --> 00:37:32.183
where I taught writing for a year.

00:37:33.163 --> 00:37:40.623
And what it says to me, it is about the Apostle Paul, and he's talking about

00:37:40.623 --> 00:37:45.123
his, the Apostle Paul is actually kind of taking a victory lap here.

00:37:45.683 --> 00:37:50.123
And he's not really talking about, you know, the stoning of St. Stephen the Martyr.

00:37:50.743 --> 00:37:53.563
He's ignoring all these things that have happened.

00:37:54.303 --> 00:37:59.643
And it is about this forgiveness that he's being granted.

00:37:59.643 --> 00:38:04.943
And what I realized from that quote that's there, he's being granted this forgiveness,

00:38:05.323 --> 00:38:14.643
yet I'm going every week at the time to teach in Unit 29 at Parchman State Penitentiary,

00:38:14.723 --> 00:38:17.163
which is where people are in prison for life.

00:38:17.163 --> 00:38:22.003
And there is no forgiveness that's being granted to these men.

00:38:22.503 --> 00:38:26.743
There's none of the grace that the Apostle Paul is talking about that's going

00:38:26.743 --> 00:38:34.503
to be bestowed on these people, which makes me question why is this sign even outside of the prison.

00:38:34.583 --> 00:38:39.723
It also speaks to me about the way that Parchment was once a place that was.

00:38:40.904 --> 00:38:43.844
As a means of social control, race was a means of social control.

00:38:44.144 --> 00:38:50.144
What it says to me now is that religion is being used as a means of social control

00:38:50.144 --> 00:38:56.404
to make people passive and not really resist the forces that they're having

00:38:56.404 --> 00:38:58.844
to confront while they are incarcerated.

00:38:59.544 --> 00:39:04.264
Yeah, yeah. And I got that sense from the book.

00:39:04.644 --> 00:39:07.604
So the next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.

00:39:08.344 --> 00:39:11.984
Okay. So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.

00:39:12.904 --> 00:39:16.404
Okay. I'm going to give you my lucky number, 13. Okay.

00:39:16.884 --> 00:39:22.124
Do you think there is such a thing as unbiased news or media and why?

00:39:22.624 --> 00:39:26.864
There is not such a thing as unbiased news or media.

00:39:27.124 --> 00:39:37.484
I think we all bring our biases into what it is that we are writing about or reporting on.

00:39:37.484 --> 00:39:45.344
But it's how we actually present those biases.

00:39:45.704 --> 00:39:52.324
For me, I'm very upfront about my connection to Mississippi,

00:39:52.624 --> 00:39:55.384
my relationship with the South,

00:39:55.644 --> 00:40:01.324
and that I look at writing about the South from a perspective of exile.

00:40:01.884 --> 00:40:06.904
That's very much a part of the way that I frame the way that I am writing about it.

00:40:06.964 --> 00:40:11.344
But that doesn't mean that anything that I'm writing is less truthful,

00:40:11.344 --> 00:40:14.744
but it is coming from that particular lens.

00:40:15.044 --> 00:40:19.364
And I think we all kind of put our lens over what it is.

00:40:19.464 --> 00:40:24.504
And it's important to understand what is the author's particular lens.

00:40:24.664 --> 00:40:30.504
And there are people who may not engage with my writing because of that lens.

00:40:31.324 --> 00:40:36.844
But can it ever be completely unbiased?

00:40:37.264 --> 00:40:39.404
No. Can it be...

00:40:41.418 --> 00:40:47.238
Even-handed. And yes, but I think the most important thing is truthful.

00:40:48.018 --> 00:40:53.518
Truth is probably the most important piece of it. And I see this connection

00:40:53.518 --> 00:40:55.338
between knowledge and truth.

00:40:55.838 --> 00:41:04.278
Once we learn about things, more about them, and we can kind of come to what

00:41:04.278 --> 00:41:07.878
we see as the truth, Or at least a shared truth.

00:41:08.838 --> 00:41:15.198
Okay. Well, the way you answer that kind of helps me ask this personal question

00:41:15.198 --> 00:41:18.178
I want from you. I want to ask you, I should say.

00:41:18.518 --> 00:41:23.658
Do you look back on your life and think about your success, especially as a

00:41:23.658 --> 00:41:25.938
purveyor of Mississippi stories? stories.

00:41:26.578 --> 00:41:30.898
And I don't know if you, I don't know if you heard the, the, the,

00:41:31.678 --> 00:41:38.978
when I was starting off the interview, when I was citing all those names and stuff, and, you know,

00:41:39.238 --> 00:41:43.558
I, I put you in that pantheon with those other Mississippi writers,

00:41:43.578 --> 00:41:49.118
but do you, because you feel that you're, you're writing from a position of exile,

00:41:49.378 --> 00:41:53.518
are you surprised of how successful you have been, how people have received

00:41:53.518 --> 00:41:55.618
your work talking about Mississippi.

00:41:56.956 --> 00:42:00.056
Guess i am but there's another important thing that i have to say that i always

00:42:00.056 --> 00:42:05.076
do is that someone told me a long time ago never believe the publicity about yourself.

00:42:09.376 --> 00:42:16.476
So um so yeah i just i it's it's great to be you know for people to kind of include me in that,

00:42:17.076 --> 00:42:23.276
pantheon but do i actually kind of walk around thinking about being part of

00:42:23.276 --> 00:42:25.236
that pantheon no i don't.

00:42:26.636 --> 00:42:28.656
I think more about.

00:42:31.096 --> 00:42:35.876
This. I want, I write about the South, and I write about Mississippi because

00:42:35.876 --> 00:42:38.876
I want it to be a better place.

00:42:39.056 --> 00:42:48.756
And I do use that perspective of exile in order to try to get to some type of truth about the place.

00:42:48.836 --> 00:42:55.256
I fear that if I get too close to it, there are things that I won't see,

00:42:55.776 --> 00:43:01.676
that I want others to see, and that I may be kind of engaging in some,

00:43:01.676 --> 00:43:06.756
bringing some coding of nostalgia to writing about the place.

00:43:07.016 --> 00:43:13.416
And I try to stay away from that as much as I can. Does it creep in sometimes?

00:43:14.116 --> 00:43:19.616
Yeah, it does. Because this is the place where I'm from, this is the place that shaped me.

00:43:19.616 --> 00:43:22.916
But I'm also trying to keep, you know,

00:43:23.436 --> 00:43:30.556
that perspective of outsiderism while at the same time being an insider,

00:43:30.556 --> 00:43:34.616
having been born here, being, as Richard Wright would say, a native son.

00:43:35.416 --> 00:43:43.496
Right. So you've had the privilege of teaching at UVA, George Mason, Howard, Millsaps.

00:43:43.916 --> 00:43:47.256
But do those students compare to the writers you taught at Parchman?

00:43:48.502 --> 00:43:59.602
Do. I would put them as their equals. And I think what separates them is I guess

00:43:59.602 --> 00:44:02.942
the thing that really separates them is very often privilege.

00:44:03.982 --> 00:44:10.142
So many of the students that I worked with in Parchman said I saw this connection

00:44:10.142 --> 00:44:11.942
between poverty and violence.

00:44:12.142 --> 00:44:18.182
That poverty and violence at an intersection led them to commit crimes that

00:44:18.502 --> 00:44:20.602
landed them in Parks and Rec.

00:44:21.062 --> 00:44:27.882
Whereas my students at Millsaps and all these great schools that I've had the

00:44:27.882 --> 00:44:30.602
opportunity to be a professor at,

00:44:31.702 --> 00:44:37.782
those students were able to, they had a more middle-class background that shielded

00:44:37.782 --> 00:44:41.722
them from kind of having to move into that violence because they had the things

00:44:41.722 --> 00:44:43.862
that they needed that didn't lead

00:44:43.862 --> 00:44:49.322
them into committing crimes that they committed because they were poor.

00:44:49.842 --> 00:44:55.382
And that's the thing that separates them. Are they just as perceptive?

00:44:55.422 --> 00:45:02.282
And also, the other thing is, I realize too, is so many of the men that I worked

00:45:02.282 --> 00:45:09.642
with at Parchman didn't quite fit into the round hole.

00:45:09.882 --> 00:45:14.082
They're the square pegs that didn't fit into the round hole of the education system.

00:45:15.276 --> 00:45:22.296
And they did not come from families that had the means to figure out where I

00:45:22.296 --> 00:45:25.576
can take this child to get them to learn these things.

00:45:25.916 --> 00:45:29.996
I mean, I have three children, and they all went to three different schools

00:45:29.996 --> 00:45:33.736
because I saw they were all very different.

00:45:33.936 --> 00:45:36.336
And I wanted to find somewhere that fit for them.

00:45:37.096 --> 00:45:43.596
And I did that because I'm a person of great privilege. But these men did not

00:45:43.596 --> 00:45:44.896
come from families of privilege.

00:45:45.276 --> 00:45:47.756
Have the power to do that. Yes.

00:45:48.756 --> 00:45:54.116
All right. So this book we're discussing, When is Darkness on the Delta?

00:45:54.516 --> 00:46:00.576
You said only by looking at both the forces of history and the way we live now

00:46:00.576 --> 00:46:05.516
can we begin to understand not only the Mississippi Delta, but also the forces

00:46:05.516 --> 00:46:08.716
of inequality that have shaped America itself.

00:46:09.076 --> 00:46:13.336
That means the story of the people of the Delta is not just the Mississippi

00:46:13.336 --> 00:46:15.676
story, nor is it just the Southern story.

00:46:15.856 --> 00:46:19.216
At its very core, the Delta story is an American story.

00:46:19.616 --> 00:46:25.896
Was that your motivation to write this book, to have the world understand the

00:46:25.896 --> 00:46:27.216
importance of the Mississippi Delta?

00:46:28.617 --> 00:46:32.277
Was to understand the story of the Mississippi Delta, but I have to say it's

00:46:32.277 --> 00:46:34.057
maybe not where I started.

00:46:34.457 --> 00:46:40.537
It's kind of where I ended up with this, realizing that it was,

00:46:40.677 --> 00:46:44.517
I think I started out writing about the Mississippi Delta.

00:46:44.737 --> 00:46:49.877
It wasn't until I was deep into the project that I realized I wasn't really

00:46:49.877 --> 00:46:51.037
just writing about the Delta.

00:46:51.297 --> 00:46:57.457
I was writing about America itself and beginning to see the Delta in so many

00:46:57.457 --> 00:47:02.677
ways as a mirror to America, Mississippi as a mirror to America.

00:47:02.897 --> 00:47:08.317
So those are things that I really came to in the course of doing my research,

00:47:08.517 --> 00:47:09.637
in the course of writing.

00:47:09.777 --> 00:47:14.357
And this is a book that I started 10 years ago, and I put aside,

00:47:14.537 --> 00:47:17.897
and I wrote a book called A Place Like Mississippi, which is a journey through

00:47:17.897 --> 00:47:19.757
Mississippi's literary landscape.

00:47:19.757 --> 00:47:26.297
And it was while I was working on that book that I began to kind of get a sense

00:47:26.297 --> 00:47:28.837
of my voice to tell this story.

00:47:29.277 --> 00:47:34.257
And my editor was reading a chapter in a place like Mississippi,

00:47:34.297 --> 00:47:37.617
and he said, I really like what you're doing here, but where are you?

00:47:38.117 --> 00:47:42.817
And I was kind of deliberately kind of taking myself out of the narrative.

00:47:42.817 --> 00:47:46.117
One of the things that I learned from them is kind of like, where could I kind

00:47:46.117 --> 00:47:50.897
of go into the narrative, and how did I begin to kind of fade out of it and

00:47:50.897 --> 00:47:56.157
let these other voices kind of expand and have and take hold of the narrative?

00:47:57.577 --> 00:48:00.997
And that's what that editor taught me. It was that lesson that I learned while

00:48:00.997 --> 00:48:05.817
writing that book that I began to apply what I returned to this book.

00:48:06.437 --> 00:48:09.857
And when I returned to it, that's when I kind of,

00:48:10.784 --> 00:48:16.364
to that revelation, this is really about America itself. The original subtitle

00:48:16.364 --> 00:48:17.744
was An American Reckoning.

00:48:18.024 --> 00:48:22.244
And I use that as a working subtitle because I realized that's what I'm doing.

00:48:22.244 --> 00:48:27.184
It is not just a Southern Reckoning, it's an American Reckoning. Yeah.

00:48:27.784 --> 00:48:31.084
All right, so what is the deal with all the blues lyrics in the book?

00:48:33.284 --> 00:48:41.704
You know, the reason I use the blues lyrics as epigraphs is I wanted the reader

00:48:41.704 --> 00:48:48.144
to see that the blues tells the story of the Delta.

00:48:48.484 --> 00:48:57.004
And that everything that I'm writing about, whether it is health care, education, place,

00:48:57.924 --> 00:49:05.244
history, there's some thread from the blues that connects all of those things.

00:49:06.124 --> 00:49:11.304
And I wanted people again to think of them the way that sociologist Clyde Woods

00:49:11.304 --> 00:49:13.604
said we should think about the blues.

00:49:13.744 --> 00:49:18.604
We should think about people who wrote the blues as sociologists,

00:49:18.944 --> 00:49:23.204
as therapists, as, you know, poets.

00:49:23.604 --> 00:49:28.864
So that's how I wanted people to begin to think about the blues.

00:49:29.524 --> 00:49:35.104
And if you go to Spotify, I actually have a Spotify playlist with all the music,

00:49:35.124 --> 00:49:38.504
so it's almost like it's a soundtrack for the book.

00:49:39.573 --> 00:49:42.713
I wanted the reader to kind of get this story

00:49:42.713 --> 00:49:45.873
of of it but i also wanted them to kind of have these

00:49:45.873 --> 00:49:48.813
this other other soundtrack that kind

00:49:48.813 --> 00:49:51.953
of told a parallel story along with it yeah and

00:49:51.953 --> 00:49:55.233
you you're kind of self-revelatory when you said you

00:49:55.233 --> 00:49:58.073
know you was young i think you were had a chance to meet one of

00:49:58.073 --> 00:50:00.773
the the blues greats a book of

00:50:00.773 --> 00:50:03.913
white yeah and you were like yeah mama why why

00:50:03.913 --> 00:50:07.433
are we going to dab dinner with this dude you know what i'm saying so yeah

00:50:07.433 --> 00:50:13.733
so as your evolution in your exile as you put it is that evolution and in the

00:50:13.733 --> 00:50:20.313
love of the blues grown it has grown and it has you know it's it's interesting

00:50:20.313 --> 00:50:25.873
i i i came to that revelation about book of white,

00:50:26.493 --> 00:50:31.613
while I was on a fellowship at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

00:50:31.953 --> 00:50:37.093
And I got to go into this archive that had this interview that was done with Booker White.

00:50:37.693 --> 00:50:42.753
He was going to make an appearance at Club Passing in Harvard Square in Cambridge.

00:50:43.253 --> 00:50:46.593
But on the trip there, he had a stroke.

00:50:47.013 --> 00:50:50.553
And a local journalist sat down and did a long history with him.

00:50:50.673 --> 00:50:55.293
And I'm reading this, and I'm thinking about the date. And I'm saying, this is 1976.

00:50:56.133 --> 00:51:03.633
I saw him in 1976. What I realized is that he left that performance and went

00:51:03.633 --> 00:51:08.793
to Massachusetts after that, had the stroke, and was dead six months later.

00:51:10.496 --> 00:51:15.776
And that's when I began to realize this great missed opportunity I had as an

00:51:15.776 --> 00:51:20.036
arrogant 19-year-old telling my mother the blues is the music of oppression,

00:51:20.036 --> 00:51:24.896
because that's the way that my friends and I saw that music.

00:51:25.396 --> 00:51:32.756
We saw it as connected to slavery, but it had no connection to slavery at all.

00:51:32.976 --> 00:51:38.856
It had connection to survival, people in the 20th century post-Reconstruction.

00:51:39.776 --> 00:51:46.156
And that's when I realized what an arrogant, ignorant little snot I was at 19.

00:51:48.796 --> 00:51:55.036
And it began to, I mean, my relationship with the blues had been evolving,

00:51:55.196 --> 00:52:00.196
but that was, making that connection was a real revelatory moment for me. Yeah.

00:52:00.976 --> 00:52:06.316
All right. So why is Mileston a significant place for you and for the history

00:52:06.316 --> 00:52:08.076
of black folks in the Mississippi, don't you?

00:52:09.196 --> 00:52:13.056
And it's significant for me because my father went to work there in 1949 after

00:52:13.056 --> 00:52:14.336
he graduated from Tuskegee.

00:52:14.556 --> 00:52:19.376
He never really told me why. And I said, you know, why did you come to the Delta?

00:52:19.576 --> 00:52:20.956
He said, I came there for opportunity.

00:52:22.676 --> 00:52:27.936
And being very young, my father died when I was 18, I didn't ask more questions about it.

00:52:28.056 --> 00:52:31.796
So in some ways, this is a way for me to kind of probe a lot deeper.

00:52:31.956 --> 00:52:37.016
But the reason it's much so important for Black people of the South is it was

00:52:37.016 --> 00:52:40.856
a resettlement community that took a former plantation,

00:52:41.136 --> 00:52:45.496
subdivided, the federal government bought, subdivided it to,

00:52:45.496 --> 00:52:47.976
I think it was 111 families,

00:52:48.476 --> 00:52:50.616
if I'm not mistaken, the number there.

00:52:50.956 --> 00:52:54.576
And move them from sharecropping to land-owning.

00:52:54.716 --> 00:53:01.116
And today, that segment of land is the largest Black-owned segment of land in the Mississippi Delta.

00:53:02.376 --> 00:53:06.376
That's why it's significant. And there could have been more milestones had the

00:53:06.376 --> 00:53:11.856
state of Mississippi not blocked more of those black resettlement communities from happening.

00:53:12.216 --> 00:53:16.876
And they stopped it because they had these white politicians,

00:53:17.156 --> 00:53:23.076
these white segregationist politicians believed that if more black people owned

00:53:23.076 --> 00:53:26.096
this land, that they were going to ask to vote.

00:53:29.236 --> 00:53:34.176
They And Mileston and Holmes County, those were the first people to demand

00:53:34.176 --> 00:53:37.796
to register to vote in that county. So they were right about that.

00:53:38.096 --> 00:53:42.676
But that was the fear. That fear was actually a very real one.

00:53:43.376 --> 00:53:49.936
Yeah. Yeah. And it's a very significant place. I never had the privilege of stopping there.

00:53:50.336 --> 00:53:54.776
I always ended up either going to Tchula or Ruleville on that side of Holmes

00:53:54.776 --> 00:54:00.476
County if I had to go up that way. But you had to pass it if you took 49E.

00:54:00.856 --> 00:54:06.716
Yeah. And a lot of people need to understand the history of Mileston.

00:54:06.936 --> 00:54:10.776
And I'm glad that you highlighted it. But speaking of special places,

00:54:10.936 --> 00:54:15.416
Mount Bayou is a special place for me because I have family there.

00:54:16.236 --> 00:54:20.456
But why is it a special place for most black Mississippians?

00:54:20.456 --> 00:54:25.516
It's a special place because it was a black-owned town, an independent,

00:54:25.976 --> 00:54:35.496
black-owned, black-run town, established by formerly enslaved people from around Vicksburg,

00:54:35.656 --> 00:54:40.836
who were enslaved on the plantation of the brother of Jefferson Davis,

00:54:41.016 --> 00:54:42.616
the president of the Confederacy.

00:54:43.216 --> 00:54:46.456
And once there were some...

00:54:46.964 --> 00:54:50.084
Land that they were on was contested and crops started to fail,

00:54:50.644 --> 00:54:57.344
they left that place and moved to the Delta and created their own world there

00:54:57.344 --> 00:55:03.244
in Mound Bayou and were incredibly independent.

00:55:03.904 --> 00:55:08.604
And I'd say Mound Bayou went through two really significant periods,

00:55:08.604 --> 00:55:15.524
from its founding in the 1890s, probably through the collapse of Cotton in the 1920s.

00:55:15.764 --> 00:55:22.764
And then it undergoes a renaissance in the post-war era with the arrival of Dr.

00:55:22.904 --> 00:55:27.304
T.R.M. Howard, the establishment of Taborian Hospital, which becomes kind of

00:55:27.304 --> 00:55:30.744
a key spot for health care in the Mississippi Delta.

00:55:31.124 --> 00:55:37.884
And Meadow Bayou becomes a place of refuge for Mamie Till Mobley during the trial of Emmett Till.

00:55:38.564 --> 00:55:45.944
Yeah yeah we uh we we had our last family reunion i i went to we were in mount

00:55:45.944 --> 00:55:49.424
bayou we did like one thing and then we spent most of the time in cleveland.

00:55:50.144 --> 00:55:53.064
Just up the road but yeah there was

00:55:53.064 --> 00:55:56.284
a colleague when i served in the mississippi house there was

00:55:56.284 --> 00:55:59.524
a young lady named linda coleman was a state representative there

00:55:59.524 --> 00:56:02.264
at the time she's a judge now and i

00:56:02.264 --> 00:56:05.924
used to tell everybody you give linda what she wants because she represents

00:56:05.924 --> 00:56:10.884
my people and she always thought that was like why you putting that pressure

00:56:10.884 --> 00:56:16.224
off i just i mean you know it's the truth she represented my people so yeah

00:56:16.224 --> 00:56:21.624
mount bayou is a cool place what was the big deal about chinese grocery stores.

00:56:23.001 --> 00:56:26.501
Grocery stores, the Chinese were brought to the Delta to pick cotton.

00:56:27.001 --> 00:56:34.041
As the Exodusters were leaving, the ones that I guess Irving Painter referred

00:56:34.041 --> 00:56:35.921
to as Exodusters were beginning to move west.

00:56:36.001 --> 00:56:38.661
They brought in the Chinese. They also brought in the Italians.

00:56:39.181 --> 00:56:42.441
And both of those groups said, we are not doing this work.

00:56:42.881 --> 00:56:49.201
But what the Chinese did is they started grocery stores that were largely in Black communities.

00:56:49.321 --> 00:56:54.041
In a lot of ways, what they did is they competed with the plantation commissaries.

00:56:55.341 --> 00:56:59.581
And all of the clientele of those stores were Black.

00:56:59.981 --> 00:57:05.361
And actually the same with some of the Lebanese businesses too.

00:57:05.601 --> 00:57:09.061
It's like I was speaking with a friend of mine who's from Greenville and his

00:57:09.061 --> 00:57:11.501
family owned a grocery store in Greenville is Lebanese.

00:57:11.721 --> 00:57:15.581
And he said all of our clientele was Black.

00:57:15.781 --> 00:57:20.661
We served those communities because the white stores did not.

00:57:20.661 --> 00:57:26.001
And that's the significance of the Chinese grocery stores, as I see.

00:57:27.201 --> 00:57:32.921
Once they left, that's why I think the Delta is a food desert today,

00:57:33.541 --> 00:57:35.381
is those Chinese grocery stores

00:57:35.381 --> 00:57:40.021
filled a very important need in Black communities across the Delta. Yeah.

00:57:41.201 --> 00:57:46.321
You know, people look at Mississippi and they listen to the politics now and

00:57:46.321 --> 00:57:49.261
they're like, oh, that can't be a good place for immigrants.

00:57:49.261 --> 00:57:51.381
But it's like Mississippi was...

00:57:52.564 --> 00:57:59.624
So really, a haven, well, haven might be too altruistic a word,

00:57:59.724 --> 00:58:03.324
but it was a place where a lot of immigrants landed and contributed.

00:58:03.864 --> 00:58:09.024
One of the most popular weathermen in the history of Mississippi was this guy named Woodie Assaf.

00:58:09.444 --> 00:58:12.904
I know. I remember Woodie Assaf. And people were like, you know,

00:58:13.504 --> 00:58:15.124
it was like, oh, that's Woodie. That's Woodie.

00:58:15.244 --> 00:58:17.904
That's Woodie. But they didn't concentrate on the Assaf part.

00:58:18.124 --> 00:58:20.864
Right. And he, you know, he's Lebanese.

00:58:21.164 --> 00:58:25.484
And so his family, you know, I think his daughter was a city council person

00:58:25.484 --> 00:58:27.784
in one of the suburbs of Jackson and all that.

00:58:28.184 --> 00:58:34.204
So, you know, they were accepted because they had roots, right?

00:58:34.464 --> 00:58:38.764
The same as going to the Delta. It was a mind-blowing experience to walk into

00:58:38.764 --> 00:58:42.404
a store and you see somebody of Asian descent.

00:58:42.644 --> 00:58:45.284
And Sinners, the movie Sinners kind of highlighted that.

00:58:45.984 --> 00:58:49.384
When you walk into the store, you had this person of Asian descent,

00:58:49.384 --> 00:58:52.564
and they're talking just like Bubba from right down the road.

00:58:53.864 --> 00:59:00.204
Well, I went to school at the University of Mississippi with a number of Delta Chinese.

00:59:00.304 --> 00:59:06.024
My dear friend, Gwendolyn Gong, her family owned a grocery store in Boyle, Mississippi.

00:59:06.464 --> 00:59:09.464
And her mother arrived there from China.

00:59:10.304 --> 00:59:14.624
You know, very complicated story, kind of getting there. but her mother said

00:59:14.624 --> 00:59:16.804
her mother learned to cook from,

00:59:18.185 --> 00:59:22.125
the Black women who were patrons of the store. And she always asked me,

00:59:22.305 --> 00:59:23.185
what do you make with that?

00:59:23.685 --> 00:59:27.385
And because her mother wanted them to eat like Southerners.

00:59:28.465 --> 00:59:31.425
And those Black women taught her mother how to cook.

00:59:32.245 --> 00:59:36.865
Yeah, yeah. It's just a cool experience.

00:59:38.385 --> 00:59:43.185
So I want to get in a couple more questions while I have you.

00:59:43.185 --> 00:59:48.265
In another part of the book, you said, Caste may no longer divide the Delta's

00:59:48.265 --> 00:59:54.805
people into perceived superior and inferior groups, but race still regulates

00:59:54.805 --> 00:59:56.145
the behavior of each group.

00:59:56.505 --> 01:00:01.345
The plantation system is gone, but the remnants of that system still wield power.

01:00:01.665 --> 01:00:03.705
Break that down for the listeners.

01:00:05.345 --> 01:00:11.225
Well, race is still very much a divide, largely because the school systems are divided.

01:00:11.225 --> 01:00:16.745
There was never school integration, for all practical purposes,

01:00:17.185 --> 01:00:21.165
never really happened in most of those delta towns.

01:00:21.865 --> 01:00:27.085
And the other thing that I would say with the idea of the plantation that's

01:00:27.085 --> 01:00:34.345
there, the plantation mindset continued over time because there was nothing

01:00:34.345 --> 01:00:36.425
that kind of came into pain.

01:00:36.425 --> 01:00:41.785
I mean, getting suffrage really, and getting the vote and getting political

01:00:41.785 --> 01:00:47.985
power changed things a great deal, but economic power did not come with that.

01:00:48.785 --> 01:00:54.205
And therein kind of lies that divide, and then that allowed this whole idea

01:00:54.205 --> 01:01:00.305
of the plantation mentality to persist, because even though you've got political

01:01:00.305 --> 01:01:01.505
power, you've got political,

01:01:02.494 --> 01:01:08.894
There was never really this real change in mindset that happened there.

01:01:09.114 --> 01:01:13.114
It's all part of this continuum from the past.

01:01:14.174 --> 01:01:19.834
And I'm always looking for these connections between the past and the present.

01:01:20.154 --> 01:01:25.634
And when you go around the Delta, you see that connection to that plantation past.

01:01:27.454 --> 01:01:32.194
You see it on the landscape. And among the way that people interact with people,

01:01:32.494 --> 01:01:34.374
with each other all the time.

01:01:34.694 --> 01:01:41.154
It is a constant. So there may not be, you know, the idea of caste separating

01:01:41.154 --> 01:01:45.254
people, but race still separates people. Yeah.

01:01:46.134 --> 01:01:51.094
And, you know, you mentioned the schools because, you know, one of the things

01:01:51.094 --> 01:01:55.394
about being involved in Mississippi politics, you can travel the state.

01:01:55.574 --> 01:02:03.234
It's, you know, it's a good-sized state, But it's not huge, like Texas or somewhere like that.

01:02:04.394 --> 01:02:09.574
And I remember going and it was like, you know, if you live in Jackson,

01:02:10.214 --> 01:02:14.454
it's like when you say these private academies, right?

01:02:14.554 --> 01:02:18.354
And you use the term segregated academies because that's what they were because

01:02:18.354 --> 01:02:20.934
all of them started like after the Brown decision.

01:02:22.668 --> 01:02:26.228
Go to Jackson Academy, Jackson Prep, you see like, oh, wow, these,

01:02:26.468 --> 01:02:30.468
oh, yeah, you know, and, you know, the white folks paid for that.

01:02:30.608 --> 01:02:33.448
You know what I'm saying? But if you go up to the Delta, right,

01:02:33.668 --> 01:02:37.128
it's like where you've got the public schools and then you say,

01:02:37.248 --> 01:02:42.628
well, I want to go to, I think it's Pillow Academy, I think it's one of them. Pillow Academy. Yeah.

01:02:42.988 --> 01:02:48.048
And it's a bunch of permit steel buildings. And I'm like going, y'all paying for that?

01:02:48.688 --> 01:02:53.548
Y'all would rather pay for it to be in school, the permit. They go into a brick and mortar building.

01:02:53.748 --> 01:02:56.828
I just, you know, I said, oh, the racism is strong.

01:02:57.088 --> 01:03:02.368
You know what I'm saying? It just, you know, so that's why I want people to

01:03:02.368 --> 01:03:03.788
understand Mississippi has

01:03:03.788 --> 01:03:09.828
evolved in a certain way, but it's still that race thing is still real.

01:03:09.828 --> 01:03:14.788
And you highlighted the fact that it's more on the economic power rather than

01:03:14.788 --> 01:03:19.508
anything else. It is with respect to the economic power.

01:03:19.688 --> 01:03:23.988
And what is so interesting about the segregated school system,

01:03:24.148 --> 01:03:26.408
and one of the things that I kind of highlight in this book,

01:03:26.588 --> 01:03:36.588
is how that shift toward segregated academies, it's accepted by everyone that's there,

01:03:36.608 --> 01:03:41.748
because no one kind of remembers that time of integration.

01:03:41.748 --> 01:03:47.988
And it's so as when I interviewed students there, they had no idea that they

01:03:47.988 --> 01:03:52.688
said they're just these schools here that only white people go to because you have to pay to go to them.

01:03:53.088 --> 01:03:56.948
And they didn't understand that there was a whole history with those.

01:03:58.299 --> 01:04:05.679
Yeah. All right. So talk about the impact of philanthropy versus government

01:04:05.679 --> 01:04:08.339
assistance as it relates to the Delta.

01:04:08.539 --> 01:04:11.239
And I found out something in the book that I didn't even know.

01:04:11.619 --> 01:04:18.559
At one time, it was hard. It was a challenge for a native Mississippian to start a foundation.

01:04:19.079 --> 01:04:24.539
I did not know that. And when I was reading, I was like, huh, that's that's amazing.

01:04:24.539 --> 01:04:30.419
That explains why you have more foundations from outside of the state giving

01:04:30.419 --> 01:04:32.779
money as opposed to the local foundations.

01:04:32.779 --> 01:04:38.039
I just assume because Mississippi underpays everybody that you didn't have the

01:04:38.039 --> 01:04:43.819
abundance of rich folks to give money back. Right.

01:04:44.239 --> 01:04:48.819
That question I began to ask myself is, there's all this wealth that's created

01:04:48.819 --> 01:04:55.219
with cotton. And why didn't any of that wealth create a Carnegie or Rockefeller Foundation?

01:04:55.899 --> 01:04:59.379
And the reason it didn't is because there was something called a mortaring statute

01:04:59.379 --> 01:05:05.439
that did not allow people to leave estates to nonprofit organizations.

01:05:05.899 --> 01:05:09.959
You could if you were a bachelor. And so the Hardin Foundation,

01:05:10.139 --> 01:05:13.619
which is a foundation in Mississippi that supports educational initiatives,

01:05:14.399 --> 01:05:16.379
Phil Hardin was a bachelor.

01:05:16.539 --> 01:05:18.719
So he was able to establish a foundation.

01:05:19.479 --> 01:05:23.719
And those laws did not change until I think it was the mid-1980s.

01:05:24.559 --> 01:05:29.239
But thinking about philanthropy government is that the way that Mississippi

01:05:29.239 --> 01:05:33.799
has viewed philanthropy, people like the Kellogg Foundation coming to Mississippi

01:05:33.799 --> 01:05:35.279
with their Mississippi Delta Initiative,

01:05:35.699 --> 01:05:40.559
is they viewed them as, okay, you want to tackle that? You go right ahead.

01:05:41.339 --> 01:05:44.739
We don't have anything to do with it. Whereas what.

01:05:45.903 --> 01:05:48.763
Philanthropy is thinking, we're going to kind of do some work here,

01:05:48.863 --> 01:05:51.623
and we're going to figure out what actually works here.

01:05:52.143 --> 01:05:55.523
And then we want government to kind of come in and take that over,

01:05:55.983 --> 01:05:56.763
you know, state government.

01:05:57.063 --> 01:06:00.823
And then, you know, you have to have the federal government with monetary policy.

01:06:01.143 --> 01:06:06.083
You know, Mississippi Delta is on the supervision of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

01:06:06.303 --> 01:06:10.183
So you've got to have connections here. And if all those things could work together,

01:06:10.423 --> 01:06:13.063
there could be some transformative impact.

01:06:13.223 --> 01:06:17.263
But they don't really work together. They're not really coordinated in the way that they should be.

01:06:18.103 --> 01:06:22.783
As someone at the St. Louis Fed said to me, the Dalton has been philanthropy-bombed.

01:06:23.103 --> 01:06:28.243
So it's like there's lots of philanthropy that has come in, and nothing has

01:06:28.243 --> 01:06:34.303
really stuck because no one really asked the local people what it was they needed.

01:06:34.483 --> 01:06:39.403
And what was needed in Drew is different from what's needed in Greenwood than

01:06:39.403 --> 01:06:43.303
what's needed in Mount Bayou, what's needed in Clarksdale.

01:06:43.303 --> 01:06:48.423
So realizing these are all places with unique histories and cultures,

01:06:48.423 --> 01:06:52.143
and you have to figure out what's going to work each of those places. Yeah.

01:06:52.623 --> 01:06:56.603
Yeah. And there's so many things. I had so many questions for you, man.

01:06:56.743 --> 01:07:01.723
It's like, you know, because you highlight Robert Kennedy's tour of the Delta

01:07:01.723 --> 01:07:06.243
and you really get into why that was a monumental thing.

01:07:06.503 --> 01:07:13.003
You highlight people like Gloria Carter Dickerson and her family and their big

01:07:13.003 --> 01:07:14.503
role in the Delta and all that.

01:07:14.903 --> 01:07:18.363
But we don't have time to do all that. I just want people to read the book.

01:07:18.363 --> 01:07:21.303
But what do you want readers of this book

01:07:21.303 --> 01:07:24.383
to take away from it what i want readers

01:07:24.383 --> 01:07:31.823
to take away is i want them to begin to see and know things about the delta

01:07:31.823 --> 01:07:37.403
in a very different way as i say you can't read i mean thinking about piggybacking

01:07:37.403 --> 01:07:43.523
what robert kennedy said when he came to delta unless we change what we see.

01:07:44.779 --> 01:07:54.139
Can't change what we know. And he really wanted to kind of change what we see

01:07:54.139 --> 01:07:58.979
and what we know, and then to kind of create greater social change there.

01:07:59.139 --> 01:08:04.199
And that's the big takeaway I want people to come away from with this book,

01:08:04.239 --> 01:08:08.899
is how do we change our way of seeing the Mississippi Delta?

01:08:09.199 --> 01:08:13.199
And the way we change it is by what we know about it. I want them to learn about it.

01:08:13.399 --> 01:08:18.939
And then I want them to think about how many other places around the country are deltas.

01:08:19.319 --> 01:08:23.739
You know, whether it is Appalachia, whether it is the Black Belt of Alabama,

01:08:24.059 --> 01:08:26.119
or whether it's Western Pennsylvania.

01:08:26.559 --> 01:08:31.199
There are all these places. I think about, I quote the photographer Latoya Ruby

01:08:31.199 --> 01:08:33.599
Frazier, who's from Braddock, Pennsylvania.

01:08:33.819 --> 01:08:37.359
She says, I go around the other parts of the country and I see Braddock.

01:08:37.559 --> 01:08:40.759
Well, I go to other parts of the country and I see the Mississippi Delta.

01:08:41.239 --> 01:08:45.899
And I want people to begin to see that and make those connections and realize

01:08:45.899 --> 01:08:51.159
that the connections between these places and the roots of American income inequality.

01:08:51.399 --> 01:08:52.579
That's what I want people to take away.

01:08:53.439 --> 01:08:58.159
And ladies and gentlemen, I think Braddock, Pennsylvania is the place that Senator

01:08:58.159 --> 01:09:01.259
Fetterman was the mayor of before he got elected as the senator.

01:09:01.579 --> 01:09:03.079
That is exactly right. Okay.

01:09:04.039 --> 01:09:06.859
There's a tie-in to that later on in the podcast. But anyway,

01:09:07.419 --> 01:09:10.079
I'm glad you brought that up.

01:09:10.779 --> 01:09:14.119
Finish this sentence. I have hope because.

01:09:15.059 --> 01:09:22.419
I have hope because there are people in the Mississippi Delta who have hope

01:09:22.419 --> 01:09:28.699
and are actually doing the work to transform the place in spite of forces to

01:09:28.699 --> 01:09:31.679
the contrary that would say that they should not have any hope at all.

01:09:32.860 --> 01:09:38.360
Okay. So how do people get this book?

01:09:38.660 --> 01:09:43.040
When is darkness on the Delta? How can people reach out to you?

01:09:43.460 --> 01:09:49.640
Just go ahead and make it. People can find my book in bookstores everywhere.

01:09:49.880 --> 01:09:53.780
And if you would actually like a signed copy of the book, you can order one

01:09:53.780 --> 01:09:58.140
from Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi at squarebooks.com.

01:09:58.280 --> 01:10:02.620
You can find me at wralfeubanks.com.

01:10:03.120 --> 01:10:09.100
Well, W. Ralph Eubanks, it is truly an honor of mine to have you as a guest

01:10:09.100 --> 01:10:13.960
on the podcast. When I was approached and said, would you like for him to come on? I was like, sure.

01:10:14.220 --> 01:10:18.640
It was just kind of like, so let me put it in perspective for you, sir.

01:10:19.300 --> 01:10:23.780
When I was student body president at Jackson State, we were trying to put together a homecoming concert.

01:10:24.400 --> 01:10:28.100
And initially, we had this rapper named Joski Love that was coming in.

01:10:28.220 --> 01:10:31.680
He was kind of popular, but, you know, he wasn't big time.

01:10:31.880 --> 01:10:35.140
But it was somebody we thought we could afford, right?

01:10:35.480 --> 01:10:41.540
And so the promoters called us and said, yeah, Joski Love ain't going to make it.

01:10:41.900 --> 01:10:44.220
Would y'all accept Run DMC instead?

01:10:44.760 --> 01:10:47.920
And we were like yeah we'll take

01:10:47.920 --> 01:10:50.740
run dmc so when i was

01:10:50.740 --> 01:10:53.780
approached for you coming in it was that same kind of enthusiasm it

01:10:53.780 --> 01:10:59.960
was like uh yeah yeah mr eubanks wants to be on my podcast sure sure so it's

01:10:59.960 --> 01:11:04.900
really really been an honor to talk to you and to form and to meet you and the

01:11:04.900 --> 01:11:09.360
rule is is that once you've been on you have an open invitation to come back

01:11:09.360 --> 01:11:11.900
so when you write your next book or whatever.

01:11:13.100 --> 01:11:16.060
Yeah, feel free to come on back and we'll talk about that too.

01:11:16.780 --> 01:11:21.640
I would love to do that. All right. All right. All right, guys,

01:11:21.780 --> 01:11:23.160
we're going to catch y'all on the other side.

01:11:34.918 --> 01:11:41.558
All right, and we are back. So I want to thank Leatrice De Bruhl and W.

01:11:41.738 --> 01:11:46.258
Ralph Eubanks for coming on the podcast.

01:11:47.318 --> 01:11:53.938
It really is cool when people feel comfortable enough to tell their stories.

01:11:53.938 --> 01:12:00.158
And I know Leatrice has been through a lot,

01:12:00.178 --> 01:12:08.018
but the fact that she has decided to take all of those experiences and try to

01:12:08.018 --> 01:12:12.018
help others as they go through is commendable.

01:12:12.018 --> 01:12:19.918
And, you know, the timing couldn't be any more perfect in that she's celebrating

01:12:19.918 --> 01:12:28.198
another year of life while she's working to help people get through their life

01:12:28.198 --> 01:12:30.318
and the challenges that they face.

01:12:30.578 --> 01:12:39.178
So I think that's commendable and I wish her continued success in that journey and in her work.

01:12:39.898 --> 01:12:49.818
And then to sit down and talk to Ralph Eubanks, man, that's, you know, I try to,

01:12:50.550 --> 01:12:54.990
to be starstruck. But, you know, I'm human.

01:12:56.050 --> 01:13:03.430
And, you know, it's not like, you know, I got like this Eubanks fan page and

01:13:03.430 --> 01:13:04.790
all that stuff. It's not like that.

01:13:04.970 --> 01:13:08.150
But I mean, to have somebody of his magnitude,

01:13:08.430 --> 01:13:14.490
somebody of his talent, and, you know, the fact that he is teaching,

01:13:14.490 --> 01:13:19.150
we had to get through that interview as quick as possible because he had to

01:13:19.150 --> 01:13:23.250
meet a student like right away after the interview.

01:13:23.750 --> 01:13:30.450
You know, it's just that rare combination. He's very humble and down-to-earth

01:13:30.450 --> 01:13:33.030
person, but a tremendous talent.

01:13:33.570 --> 01:13:42.130
And just another reminder to the nation and to the world that Mississippi has a lot to offer.

01:13:42.510 --> 01:13:49.830
You know, I remember growing up in Chicago, you know, Mississippi was the butt

01:13:49.830 --> 01:13:55.230
of a lot of jokes, and that was based off of bitter and terrible experiences.

01:13:56.788 --> 01:14:03.048
And even living there, you know, you would hear the connotations.

01:14:03.468 --> 01:14:10.028
So it was always important for me whenever I was on a national stage or platform,

01:14:10.368 --> 01:14:14.408
whatever, whether it was at a convention or a meeting,

01:14:14.748 --> 01:14:18.648
conference, whatever, that I was,

01:14:18.908 --> 01:14:25.288
one, on my best behavior, and two, I put my best foot forward because I wanted

01:14:25.288 --> 01:14:29.988
people to have a different mindset about Mississippi.

01:14:30.528 --> 01:14:39.068
And for some folks, I was probably the first person or the closest they ever

01:14:39.068 --> 01:14:42.208
got to somebody from Mississippi, right?

01:14:43.728 --> 01:14:50.328
And, you know, and it wasn't just me. It was a lot of us that had the privilege to do that.

01:14:50.508 --> 01:14:53.448
We kind of felt we had that obligation.

01:14:54.268 --> 01:14:59.608
You know, when we were in a position to relax and, as the folks say,

01:14:59.648 --> 01:15:01.328
let your hair down and all that stuff.

01:15:01.448 --> 01:15:06.268
I mean, you know, we enjoyed, like if we were out of town or whatever,

01:15:06.468 --> 01:15:08.608
enjoyed the city we were in.

01:15:09.788 --> 01:15:17.208
But when it came down to business we were about that business and it's,

01:15:18.646 --> 01:15:22.986
obligation because people say so many bad things.

01:15:23.146 --> 01:15:26.166
And when you look at all of these people, it doesn't matter what,

01:15:26.626 --> 01:15:36.786
whether it's music or sports or film, the arts, as far as, you know, sculpting or whatever.

01:15:37.226 --> 01:15:43.306
I mean, writing, Mississippi has contributed in a great way.

01:15:43.986 --> 01:15:49.986
And I hope that some people recognize that there's been some decent people that

01:15:49.986 --> 01:15:52.066
came out of Mississippi in politics as well.

01:15:53.546 --> 01:15:56.906
So, you know, it's just that kind of vibe.

01:15:58.126 --> 01:16:04.366
And to just be in the presence of somebody else that has represented Mississippi

01:16:04.366 --> 01:16:06.586
well was really, really cool.

01:16:08.066 --> 01:16:14.446
And so y'all need to get that book. when it's darkness in the Delta.

01:16:16.346 --> 01:16:20.026
Please get that. And I hope I said that right.

01:16:23.066 --> 01:16:29.766
But it was really a treat to talk to both of them.

01:16:30.866 --> 01:16:34.206
But now I got to get into the dirty stuff.

01:16:35.906 --> 01:16:42.426
And this particular rant is directed toward two individuals.

01:16:43.086 --> 01:16:49.146
Now, I know I'm just a voice out here in the wilderness and my opinions are

01:16:49.146 --> 01:16:55.066
based on my experience and, you know, what I see and what I hear,

01:16:56.464 --> 01:17:02.164
You know, I have the right to say it. And if by some chance these people hear

01:17:02.164 --> 01:17:05.684
it and they got a problem with it, well, you know, refine me.

01:17:06.744 --> 01:17:09.304
And, you know, or they can find out.

01:17:10.804 --> 01:17:15.524
And, you know, we can deal with that. because, you know, when I was elected,

01:17:15.884 --> 01:17:21.564
people had no problem saying, Fleming, I think this, or I don't agree with that,

01:17:21.764 --> 01:17:22.784
or whatever the case may be.

01:17:23.584 --> 01:17:27.244
So I expect people to live by that same standard.

01:17:27.564 --> 01:17:32.624
Now, I know that in this day and age, because I have to remind myself that I

01:17:32.624 --> 01:17:37.664
haven't been an elected official in almost 20 years, things have changed.

01:17:38.524 --> 01:17:41.244
Personalities have changed of people that get elected.

01:17:42.164 --> 01:17:47.844
And, you know, I just, the biggest thing I miss is the honor part of it,

01:17:48.504 --> 01:17:50.644
right? The accountability part of it.

01:17:51.124 --> 01:17:54.424
And, you know, leadership sets the example.

01:17:55.204 --> 01:17:59.524
And if we've got a president that never admits when they're wrong,

01:17:59.844 --> 01:18:06.044
doesn't have any sense of morality or accountability for himself,

01:18:06.344 --> 01:18:11.984
let alone others, has no empathy for other people, then that fans out.

01:18:12.564 --> 01:18:15.664
It's a ripple effect. It fans out throughout the nation.

01:18:16.204 --> 01:18:21.864
And so the people that are aligned with him politically are going to act the same way.

01:18:22.364 --> 01:18:28.584
Even people that are opposed to him will dive into that behavior, right?

01:18:29.324 --> 01:18:31.484
So there's two examples, two gentlemen.

01:18:33.024 --> 01:18:37.884
One, I didn't expect anything better. The other one, I had high hopes for,

01:18:37.884 --> 01:18:40.124
and it's been a total disappointment.

01:18:41.304 --> 01:18:45.744
And, you know, I'll start with the disappointment first.

01:18:46.904 --> 01:18:51.504
And that's the senior senator from the state of Pennsylvania,

01:18:52.524 --> 01:18:55.324
or I guess if I was being formal, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

01:18:56.897 --> 01:19:09.097
Fetterman, you know, when he ran, it was kind of an awkward deal because he was so favored to win.

01:19:09.377 --> 01:19:12.117
And this was his second time running for the U.S. Senate.

01:19:12.277 --> 01:19:16.757
But this time, you know, he had been mayor of a town, Braddock,

01:19:17.557 --> 01:19:24.857
Pennsylvania, and he was the lieutenant governor of the state at the time he was running.

01:19:24.857 --> 01:19:27.337
And so he had built up a cachet.

01:19:27.517 --> 01:19:31.837
So by the time he ran the second time, even though a U.S.

01:19:32.017 --> 01:19:35.757
Congressman was running against him, he was still the favorite.

01:19:36.457 --> 01:19:37.877
And then he got sick.

01:19:38.657 --> 01:19:42.577
Right. He beat, I think it was Congressman Lamb.

01:19:42.817 --> 01:19:48.837
He beat him in the primary. And then he got, he had the stroke right at the end of the primary.

01:19:49.357 --> 01:19:55.557
And so, you know, his Republican opponent is Dr. Oz.

01:19:56.057 --> 01:19:59.497
That's who Fetterman beat. He beat Dr. Oz.

01:20:00.237 --> 01:20:07.037
So, of course, you know, Dr. Oz is, you know, he is what he is.

01:20:08.410 --> 01:20:15.410
And, you know, while he's busy trying to explain to us what a chudery,

01:20:15.690 --> 01:20:19.970
a chudery or, you know, hors d'oeuvres is, right?

01:20:20.110 --> 01:20:22.690
The fancy word for hors d'oeuvres.

01:20:23.090 --> 01:20:31.410
He was trying to explain how that was a problem in grocery stores and prices.

01:20:32.310 --> 01:20:37.470
You know, Fetterman was trying to recover from a stroke, a serious stroke.

01:20:37.470 --> 01:20:42.310
I mean, anytime you're dealing with a stroke, that's life or death, right?

01:20:42.990 --> 01:20:50.870
So, you know, we rallied around him because he really needed surrogates.

01:20:51.530 --> 01:20:57.310
You know, whether it was through our podcast or interviews or actually going

01:20:57.310 --> 01:21:01.810
to Pennsylvania and campaigning on his behalf alongside his wife,

01:21:01.830 --> 01:21:05.090
who, you know, was the second lady of Pennsylvania.

01:21:05.090 --> 01:21:09.830
It was like it was kind of a crusade to get him over the finish line.

01:21:11.030 --> 01:21:17.190
And there were concerns. But then when he started his recovery process and was

01:21:17.190 --> 01:21:22.110
brave enough to step in front of a microphone, knowing that he wasn't quite all there.

01:21:22.790 --> 01:21:26.050
I mean, you couldn't help but rally around him.

01:21:26.810 --> 01:21:31.090
You know, and we knew he was a different kind of cat because he didn't like to wear suits.

01:21:31.930 --> 01:21:34.910
He always liked to wear a hoodie or whatever the case may be.

01:21:35.090 --> 01:21:38.650
And, you know, I guess when he had to speak on the Senate floor,

01:21:38.910 --> 01:21:44.370
he's he's conformed to wear at least a jacket and a tie for those moments.

01:21:44.610 --> 01:21:47.790
But, you know, most of the time he's casually dressed.

01:21:48.290 --> 01:21:51.990
That was just kind of his quirk, his nature. Right.

01:21:53.190 --> 01:22:02.890
But as he recovered and I assume he was back in his right mind, fully functional.

01:22:04.864 --> 01:22:10.464
Still got some side effects from the stroke, but he's a lot healthier now than

01:22:10.464 --> 01:22:12.524
he was when he won the seat.

01:22:13.404 --> 01:22:17.624
Now we're seeing a side of him that is very, very concerning.

01:22:19.224 --> 01:22:28.864
Because in December of 2021, he made a statement that, you know,

01:22:28.924 --> 01:22:32.144
this is when everybody was gearing up to run for the Senate in Pennsylvania.

01:22:32.144 --> 01:22:34.804
He made a statement that he wasn't going to be a U.S.

01:22:35.124 --> 01:22:39.784
Senator like Joe Manchin of West Virginia or Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

01:22:40.284 --> 01:22:44.344
He wasn't going to be that kind of Democrat. He was going to be a progressive

01:22:44.344 --> 01:22:46.544
Democrat. That's what he said.

01:22:47.604 --> 01:22:53.024
Now, since he's been up there, he hasn't been the most reliable vote.

01:22:53.244 --> 01:22:58.544
He's been more of a Manchin or a Sinema Democrat, especially when it comes to

01:22:58.544 --> 01:23:07.044
issues dealing with Israel, right? It was one thing to stand with Israel when October 7th happened.

01:23:07.924 --> 01:23:12.984
That was understood. That was just, you know, we went through 9-11. So we understood.

01:23:13.584 --> 01:23:16.444
All right, we got to deal with these folks.

01:23:17.984 --> 01:23:23.404
But then when it got to the point where it was a bloodlust, it was a genocide

01:23:23.404 --> 01:23:29.144
deal, then it was like, okay, we didn't sign up for that.

01:23:29.904 --> 01:23:35.264
We were down with you to deal with Hamas. We weren't down with you to wipe out

01:23:35.264 --> 01:23:37.244
every Palestinian that you see.

01:23:39.571 --> 01:23:46.511
If you got somebody from a mall shooting back at you and you take them out, that's one thing.

01:23:46.771 --> 01:23:50.151
If you got somebody standing in line to get food and you shoot them,

01:23:50.411 --> 01:23:51.871
that's something totally different.

01:23:52.411 --> 01:23:56.491
And for some reason, there are people that don't get that.

01:23:57.211 --> 01:24:02.191
There's some reason that people can't make the difference in that.

01:24:03.951 --> 01:24:10.691
Nobody cheerleads for people that kill thousands of folks, kidnap people.

01:24:11.971 --> 01:24:15.671
Nobody cheerleads for that except the people that do that kind of stuff.

01:24:16.111 --> 01:24:24.771
But on the flip side, you can't kill their third cousin who's not involved with

01:24:24.771 --> 01:24:27.491
any of that at all for no reason.

01:24:27.851 --> 01:24:34.991
You can't do that. I tell this story because this guy was a good guy as far

01:24:34.991 --> 01:24:38.111
as our relationship goes, but he was an inmate.

01:24:39.191 --> 01:24:46.091
And the reason why he was in jail was because somebody killed his brother.

01:24:46.571 --> 01:24:50.471
It was back in the day. They were gambling and stuff.

01:24:51.071 --> 01:24:57.011
You know, you all know that gambling culture, rolling dice, whatever.

01:24:57.491 --> 01:25:03.091
So his brother got killed. So he killed the dude that killed his brother, right?

01:25:03.631 --> 01:25:08.511
So he got charged with manslaughter instead of murder.

01:25:09.411 --> 01:25:12.851
So he went to jail. He did his time.

01:25:13.451 --> 01:25:21.331
And then when he came out, he killed other people in that family.

01:25:21.611 --> 01:25:29.011
The family of the person he had already killed, he came back and killed a couple more of them. Right.

01:25:29.711 --> 01:25:33.111
So at this point now, he's in jail for life.

01:25:34.716 --> 01:25:39.316
And he has been in jail, you know, for both of his adult life now.

01:25:41.336 --> 01:25:49.116
And before I left the sheriff's office in Mississippi, he was assigned to what

01:25:49.116 --> 01:25:51.956
we call the county farm, where I was in Hines County.

01:25:52.816 --> 01:25:57.556
And so a lot of us in the sheriff's office was trying to appeal to the governor

01:25:57.556 --> 01:26:05.216
to give him a pardon because, you know, he had died over 40, 50 years in jail. Right.

01:26:06.156 --> 01:26:13.076
And so at that point, you know, we were working it and it seemed like we were getting some movement.

01:26:14.816 --> 01:26:19.856
But a couple of us talked to him about it and let him know and say,

01:26:20.036 --> 01:26:23.636
well, hey, look, you know, you've been a good trustee all these years.

01:26:23.636 --> 01:26:28.516
And, you know, you've done more than your time.

01:26:29.976 --> 01:26:37.516
And, you know, we want to see you at least the last few years of your life be free.

01:26:38.236 --> 01:26:45.216
And he told us that if he got out, he was going to finish the job.

01:26:45.356 --> 01:26:47.936
And he said, finish the job, what are you talking about? He said,

01:26:48.136 --> 01:26:55.416
as long as those people, that family still exists, the family of the person

01:26:55.416 --> 01:26:57.676
who killed his brother, they still exist.

01:26:58.456 --> 01:27:01.596
He's going to deal with them. He's going to take them out. I said,

01:27:01.616 --> 01:27:05.356
you're too old to do all that. He said, I would do my best.

01:27:07.124 --> 01:27:10.544
Basically, we said, yeah, you know that pardon thing we were talking about?

01:27:10.824 --> 01:27:13.024
Yeah, don't worry about that, right?

01:27:13.564 --> 01:27:16.544
And that's what he wanted. He wants to die in jail.

01:27:17.744 --> 01:27:24.424
He's a grown man. He can make that decision, right? And he told us why he should stay.

01:27:25.904 --> 01:27:31.724
The mindset that he has, the hatred he has for that family that killed his brother,

01:27:31.724 --> 01:27:38.524
is the same hatred we see in Netanyahu and the Israeli government when it comes

01:27:38.524 --> 01:27:41.124
to Palestinians, right?

01:27:42.684 --> 01:27:47.824
Because Hamas is an organization that you can pinpoint the leaders and take

01:27:47.824 --> 01:27:50.104
out, which they did. They took out the leaders.

01:27:50.564 --> 01:27:54.244
And, you know, after they negotiated with them for a while and got some of the

01:27:54.244 --> 01:27:59.764
hostage out, they decided to take them out. So the remaining hostages were released

01:27:59.764 --> 01:28:04.744
by the temporary leadership that Hamas had put together to finish the deal.

01:28:06.332 --> 01:28:11.552
You started killing everybody else just because they're Palestinian and you're

01:28:11.552 --> 01:28:16.812
still going into the West Bank with the people who are ruled by the Palestinian

01:28:16.812 --> 01:28:20.272
Authority, who are not friends of Hamas.

01:28:20.872 --> 01:28:26.412
You're still just taking land from them, just building settlements or whatever.

01:28:27.852 --> 01:28:34.212
And, you know, it's just like, it's just like the way that America was set up.

01:28:34.292 --> 01:28:38.832
It was like the Klan was in the South, and then you had all this other stuff

01:28:38.832 --> 01:28:44.452
going on in other cities. You had the riots and the rebellions and all that

01:28:44.452 --> 01:28:47.732
kind of stuff, race-related, you know, throughout the years.

01:28:48.372 --> 01:28:54.332
Well, that's the way it is in Israel. It's like the West Bank is where the Israeli,

01:28:55.012 --> 01:28:56.992
clan, for lack of a better term,

01:28:57.712 --> 01:29:03.692
those extremists go in the West Bank and harass the Palestinians and take land

01:29:03.692 --> 01:29:07.932
and all that kind of stuff, land that was supposed to be set aside for them, right?

01:29:08.672 --> 01:29:12.572
Well, we've got to expand. Well, you're just going to have to build taller buildings.

01:29:12.572 --> 01:29:14.152
You just can't go into other people.

01:29:14.292 --> 01:29:17.032
You set that land, right?

01:29:17.572 --> 01:29:22.392
That's just like if the United States government decided, now that we have all

01:29:22.392 --> 01:29:28.292
these Native American reservations set up, right, and then all of a sudden, you know what?

01:29:29.052 --> 01:29:34.452
We need to build some condos over there. It would be holy hell over here if

01:29:34.452 --> 01:29:36.392
we did that. But that's what's going on.

01:29:36.612 --> 01:29:40.732
And then on the flip side, you just basically wiped out the other settlement,

01:29:41.392 --> 01:29:45.952
because Hamas was based out of there and they were running that part. Right?

01:29:48.752 --> 01:29:53.192
But when you say that, then people want to say, oh, you hate Jewish people.

01:29:53.472 --> 01:29:56.652
Oh, you're anti-Semitic, all this stuff. That is not true.

01:29:57.692 --> 01:30:01.892
But nonetheless, they don't have to worry about that from John Fetterman because

01:30:01.892 --> 01:30:06.572
John Fetterman is down with the genocide. He's down with it.

01:30:08.088 --> 01:30:13.308
And, you know, it's like the minute people started saying, well,

01:30:13.448 --> 01:30:16.448
I think Donald Trump was influenced by Israel to attack Iran.

01:30:17.328 --> 01:30:21.508
And John Fetterman's like, let's go to war. What are we talking about?

01:30:22.288 --> 01:30:28.108
You want to go to war on behalf of Israel and you're a U.S. senator?

01:30:28.628 --> 01:30:38.248
What are we doing? You know, and then he's he he when Rand Paul voted against

01:30:38.248 --> 01:30:42.948
Mark Wayne Mullen to be the DHS secretary.

01:30:44.817 --> 01:30:47.917
Fetterman had voted with his fellow Democrats.

01:30:48.677 --> 01:30:51.497
Mullen wouldn't have got the job because he wouldn't have got a committee.

01:30:52.037 --> 01:30:57.357
But it was because of Fetterman, Mullen got the job, right?

01:30:57.837 --> 01:31:01.737
And it's like, well, you know, I served with him. Rand Paul served with him.

01:31:02.597 --> 01:31:08.077
Y'all were in the Senate together as of like two weeks ago. Y'all were all there together.

01:31:08.657 --> 01:31:13.897
If the chairman of the committee he had to go through did not want him.

01:31:13.897 --> 01:31:17.357
Now, I blame Rand Paul for even having a hearing.

01:31:17.897 --> 01:31:27.377
If I was the chairman, that hearing would be like, maybe we'll do it in November after the election.

01:31:28.177 --> 01:31:33.057
He would be the acting secretary for a long time, if that was me.

01:31:34.017 --> 01:31:37.157
And I had the history that Rand Paul had with him.

01:31:38.017 --> 01:31:43.057
But Paul had the hearing. He said what he needed to say, and he voted against it.

01:31:43.477 --> 01:31:47.357
So in a normal world, that nomination would be dead.

01:31:47.757 --> 01:31:54.397
But John Fetterman decided to be a hero to a guy that doesn't give a damn about

01:31:54.397 --> 01:31:58.517
him or people that look like his wife.

01:31:59.157 --> 01:32:05.337
Right? Which is a whole other dynamic I'm trying to figure out because Donald

01:32:05.337 --> 01:32:06.757
Trump is married to an immigrant.

01:32:07.157 --> 01:32:11.657
John Fetterman's married to an immigrant. J.D. Vance is married to an immigrant.

01:32:12.257 --> 01:32:15.057
But they all hate immigrants.

01:32:15.817 --> 01:32:21.377
And in Fetterman's case, it's your actions, not your words, right?

01:32:21.697 --> 01:32:25.757
Because you voted for Mark Wayne Mullin. You voted for Kristi Noem.

01:32:26.317 --> 01:32:27.857
Let me see how that turned out.

01:32:29.568 --> 01:32:33.788
Like your wife, but you don't like any other immigrants. I'm just saying,

01:32:34.508 --> 01:32:37.628
you know, they've all had kids by these immigrants.

01:32:38.968 --> 01:32:46.168
So all this talk about birthright citizenship and all that. Now they're down with ending that?

01:32:47.088 --> 01:32:54.548
Your current life existence, you have children that fall in that category.

01:32:55.428 --> 01:32:56.588
What are we talking about?

01:32:57.748 --> 01:33:02.768
You know, people are going to be cruel and, you know, say something,

01:33:02.968 --> 01:33:04.848
well, he never recovered from the strokes. I mean, you know,

01:33:04.908 --> 01:33:05.868
that's just how I go ahead.

01:33:06.988 --> 01:33:10.588
Bruh, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt because he's still showing up.

01:33:11.148 --> 01:33:15.588
Yeah, I've heard reports that he's cruel to his staff and all that stuff,

01:33:15.628 --> 01:33:19.648
but that's usually how they try to get you out in a smooth way.

01:33:20.248 --> 01:33:26.768
You know, there's a number of House and Senate members that people say on both

01:33:26.768 --> 01:33:30.728
sides that say, oh, you know, well, yeah, she's really tough to work with.

01:33:31.388 --> 01:33:32.828
He's really tough to work with.

01:33:33.608 --> 01:33:38.288
You know, you are dealing with certain types of personalities that run for office.

01:33:40.055 --> 01:33:47.815
Hung up on this, this mindset where it's like, I don't like immigrants, but I'm married to one.

01:33:48.475 --> 01:33:58.295
I want to support a country destroying an entire population of people for what money?

01:33:59.375 --> 01:34:05.555
I don't get it. And I think, and then you, you, you broke your promise because

01:34:05.555 --> 01:34:08.095
you had people like Bernie Sanders and all these other folks.

01:34:08.795 --> 01:34:12.775
Hell, you had people like me saying, please vote for this guy.

01:34:13.415 --> 01:34:17.155
Now, was he better than Mesmit Oz? Of course he was.

01:34:20.515 --> 01:34:26.195
But, you know, we didn't think we were just getting Oz-like, right?

01:34:27.675 --> 01:34:33.855
So he's safe this year because his seat is not up. His seat won't be up till 2028.

01:34:35.075 --> 01:34:38.635
So we'll have to deal with him Just like we have to deal with the president

01:34:38.635 --> 01:34:40.495
Until that election cycle.

01:34:42.756 --> 01:34:51.556
That something happens, that he has a Damascus Road experience and he gets back

01:34:51.556 --> 01:34:56.276
to the person that people thought he would be,

01:34:57.316 --> 01:35:02.356
the kind of mayor that he was, the kind of lieutenant governor that he was, right?

01:35:02.736 --> 01:35:09.136
That's what they're hoping for. The guy who was listed as one of America's best

01:35:09.136 --> 01:35:14.376
mayors, who single-handedly, because he fought with the city council two for nail,

01:35:15.136 --> 01:35:20.436
single-handedly did everything he could do, whether it was like reviving a building,

01:35:21.096 --> 01:35:25.016
starting a restaurant, whatever, to kind of keep the economy going in the town

01:35:25.016 --> 01:35:30.976
that he was only getting paid $150 a month, I think, to be the mayor of.

01:35:33.036 --> 01:35:37.056
So anyway, that's my deal with Fetterman. Now, this other guy,

01:35:37.276 --> 01:35:40.716
I guess I won't have a whole lot of time to talk to him because he's not really

01:35:40.716 --> 01:35:45.336
worth it, but he's, this guy's name is James Utmeyer.

01:35:46.616 --> 01:35:50.936
So James is an attorney in the state of Florida.

01:35:52.569 --> 01:36:00.689
Was until Marco Rubio became the Secretary of State, the Chief of Staff for Ron DeSantis.

01:36:01.009 --> 01:36:05.369
So already, he's the Stephen Miller of Florida, right?

01:36:07.829 --> 01:36:12.589
So because of Rubio ascending, that meant that the Attorney General,

01:36:12.809 --> 01:36:17.069
I think her name was Moody, DeSantis moved her into the Senate position,

01:36:17.069 --> 01:36:21.729
and then he gave his Chief of Staff the position of Attorney General.

01:36:22.569 --> 01:36:28.549
And, you know, I mean, he was just doing the typical stuff that all these Florida Republicans are doing.

01:36:29.309 --> 01:36:37.309
And, you know, but up until this point, his most egregious thing was Alligator Alcatraz, right?

01:36:37.829 --> 01:36:40.909
Because he was the brains behind that.

01:36:41.449 --> 01:36:49.609
He was the one who made the proposal, picked a spot, came up with a plan to build it, right?

01:36:51.329 --> 01:36:59.129
And, of course, led the fight in court to stop the Native American nation that

01:36:59.129 --> 01:37:03.369
was suing on the land day in Crowadstone.

01:37:05.689 --> 01:37:10.049
And, of course, being the attorney general, he fought them and got the case

01:37:10.049 --> 01:37:12.349
dismissed, the lawsuit. Yeah.

01:37:13.643 --> 01:37:17.803
Showed his utter brazen ignorance, right? Because that's where we are now.

01:37:17.943 --> 01:37:22.723
It's not just normal ignorance and naivete. It's brazen.

01:37:23.543 --> 01:37:28.223
A lot of people are humbled by their ignorance. At least that's the way it used to be.

01:37:28.663 --> 01:37:34.883
But over these last 10 years, these folks are wearing their ignorance like a badge of honor.

01:37:35.623 --> 01:37:40.083
And so he got on. He decided he was going to write a letter to the National

01:37:40.083 --> 01:37:43.383
Football League, just random as hell.

01:37:44.123 --> 01:37:52.823
And he decides to write and to state to them that the Rooney Rule was a violation of Florida law.

01:37:53.643 --> 01:37:57.943
And he felt he had jurisdiction to say that because there are two NFL,

01:37:57.943 --> 01:38:01.403
well, there's three NFL teams in the state of Florida.

01:38:01.803 --> 01:38:08.583
The Jacksonville Jaguars, the Miami Dolphins, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, right? Okay.

01:38:10.463 --> 01:38:18.423
So Jacksonville has, the Rooney rule is the rule that was brought in after Tony

01:38:18.423 --> 01:38:22.083
Dungy was fired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

01:38:22.263 --> 01:38:28.423
Tony Dungy had built the Tampa Bay Buccaneers into a contending team and they

01:38:28.423 --> 01:38:30.543
fired him and hired John Gruden.

01:38:30.783 --> 01:38:33.823
And that's the year that John Gruden won his Super Bowl.

01:38:35.546 --> 01:38:42.306
With the Raiders and they lured him from the Raiders to coach Tampa Bay and they won.

01:38:42.506 --> 01:38:47.206
And of course they beat the Raiders, right? The team he had just coached, the team he knew.

01:38:47.926 --> 01:38:53.106
And he took the team that Dungy had built and won. And so Dungy,

01:38:53.446 --> 01:38:57.446
when he played, he primarily played for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

01:38:57.846 --> 01:39:04.986
Well, Mr. Bruni is the owner of the Steelers and him and Tony were close.

01:39:05.586 --> 01:39:10.526
And so he got with the other owners and said, hey, look, we got to protect these

01:39:10.526 --> 01:39:14.826
black coaches from getting fired and they're doing their job.

01:39:15.386 --> 01:39:19.246
They're winning. They may not win the Super Bowl. Not everybody can win the Super Bowl.

01:39:19.406 --> 01:39:24.286
But you get into the playoffs, winning your division, whatever.

01:39:25.186 --> 01:39:26.226
You have a winning record.

01:39:27.486 --> 01:39:30.846
That's the National Football League. It's not supposed to be easy.

01:39:31.546 --> 01:39:35.806
And there was another coach that got fired around the same time, had a winning record.

01:39:35.986 --> 01:39:43.366
And so Mr. Rooney convinced the other owners to come up with a rule that would

01:39:43.366 --> 01:39:50.026
say that all of them have to at least interview, you know,

01:39:51.106 --> 01:39:55.726
black perspective coaches, right?

01:39:55.726 --> 01:40:01.666
They have to at least interview some black candidates for those vacant positions whenever they come up.

01:40:02.386 --> 01:40:08.986
And they agree to that. So that's been going on since, I guess, 2003.

01:40:10.366 --> 01:40:15.046
So since the Rooney Rule has been in place, which obviously Mr.

01:40:15.126 --> 01:40:17.806
Utmeier has no clue about, right?

01:40:18.326 --> 01:40:24.026
Since the Rooney Rule has been in place, two of the three teams in Florida has had a black coach.

01:40:24.766 --> 01:40:32.206
But Ryan Flores was the coach in Miami for a minute, and Todd Bowles is still the coach at Tampa Bay.

01:40:33.935 --> 01:40:39.615
So, I don't know if Mr. Utmire even pays attention to that, for him to write that letter.

01:40:39.935 --> 01:40:44.695
But to sit there and say, well, you know, it discriminates against white men,

01:40:44.755 --> 01:40:48.035
because that's the whole argument about DEI.

01:40:48.275 --> 01:40:53.335
It's like diversity, equity, and inclusion is discriminatory to white men.

01:40:56.335 --> 01:41:00.715
Anyway, so, again, I don't know.

01:41:01.175 --> 01:41:06.155
He ran, Mr. Utmire ran track at Florida. I don't know if he paid attention to

01:41:06.155 --> 01:41:10.575
what happened to the football players that played at Florida during that time

01:41:10.575 --> 01:41:12.795
and where they went in the National Football League.

01:41:12.935 --> 01:41:19.735
But obviously, Mr. Utmire doesn't understand that all of the owners are white.

01:41:20.615 --> 01:41:23.735
Only three of the coaches are black.

01:41:24.775 --> 01:41:31.415
I mean, you know, I think you have a few more general managers than coaches

01:41:31.415 --> 01:41:33.535
that are black. Not many.

01:41:36.675 --> 01:41:40.435
But there's nothing in the National Football League that discriminates against

01:41:40.435 --> 01:41:43.535
white people. Nothing. The commissioner's white.

01:41:44.335 --> 01:41:47.675
I mean, it is, we never had a black commissioner.

01:41:48.615 --> 01:41:53.815
If there's any disparity, it's the fact that 75 to 80% of the players are black,

01:41:54.515 --> 01:41:58.715
which is the reason why people are like, well, these guys that played the game,

01:41:58.935 --> 01:42:03.515
the white guys that don't play anymore, get a shot to coach.

01:42:04.275 --> 01:42:08.555
Why not the black guys, especially since they make up the majority of the league?

01:42:10.862 --> 01:42:18.022
Meyer is too fragile for that. We all know that his boss is too fragile for that, DeSantis.

01:42:20.062 --> 01:42:26.962
So all I need to say about all this stuff is that we've got to get these people out of office.

01:42:28.662 --> 01:42:31.642
Because Udmeyer is running this year in Florida.

01:42:31.842 --> 01:42:36.702
He was appointed to the position, but the position is up on the ballot this year.

01:42:37.282 --> 01:42:40.642
And I hope that Florida can continue to do the thing.

01:42:40.882 --> 01:42:45.742
We congratulate Ms. Gregory for pulling off the victory and flipping that seat.

01:42:45.982 --> 01:42:52.222
So now Donald Trump is actually represented in the state house of Florida by a Democrat.

01:42:53.002 --> 01:42:58.742
Love that for him. And I hope that that's a trend in Florida,

01:42:59.242 --> 01:43:06.522
that we can see some Democrats get the statewide office because the last statewide

01:43:06.522 --> 01:43:09.842
Democrat is now the chair of the party, Nikki Freed.

01:43:10.462 --> 01:43:17.062
And if they had been smart, they would have had her run against DeSantis the second time.

01:43:17.622 --> 01:43:18.742
First of all, they should have

01:43:18.742 --> 01:43:21.042
voted for Andrew Gillum. That was the first thing they should have done.

01:43:21.942 --> 01:43:26.522
But they didn't do that. And so at least not enough folks because it was close.

01:43:27.262 --> 01:43:31.502
But the second time around, Nikki should have had her shot.

01:43:31.982 --> 01:43:37.002
Nonetheless, Ms. Freed is doing a wonderful job as the chair of the Florida Democratic Party.

01:43:37.842 --> 01:43:40.622
And so now we hope that she can...

01:43:42.388 --> 01:43:45.568
Turn statewide, especially for these statewide positions.

01:43:45.828 --> 01:43:55.448
But I promise you, if you can't get anybody else, please get Utmire out of there.

01:43:55.888 --> 01:44:01.428
Get him out. You got it. The positions you got to get is governor,

01:44:01.988 --> 01:44:03.548
secretary of state, attorney general.

01:44:04.188 --> 01:44:07.288
You know, the insurance commissioners, Republican or Democrat,

01:44:07.748 --> 01:44:13.788
you know, I mean, I'm partisan, so I want Democrats to win, right?

01:44:13.948 --> 01:44:18.408
But in the scheme of things, the most dangerous positions right now that the

01:44:18.408 --> 01:44:23.348
Republicans are using as weapons is the Secretary of State, the Attorney General,

01:44:23.528 --> 01:44:24.888
and the Governor's Mansion.

01:44:25.568 --> 01:44:31.788
Those are the three positions that you got to get Republic this MAGA influence out of in every extent.

01:44:32.968 --> 01:44:39.568
And, you know, Utmeier has proven with this letter to the National Football

01:44:39.568 --> 01:44:41.528
League that he's not worthy of the position.

01:44:42.128 --> 01:44:47.968
If you want to have a podcast, bro, like me, if you want to be an advisor to people, that's fine.

01:44:48.628 --> 01:44:53.988
But you should not be given a taste of any kind of power or political responsibility

01:44:53.988 --> 01:44:57.488
because you're crazy, right?

01:44:57.908 --> 01:45:02.508
You didn't have a stroke like Mr. Fetterman. You're crazy on your own fruition.

01:45:03.268 --> 01:45:07.928
The NFL discriminates against white people? As old folks say,

01:45:08.008 --> 01:45:09.968
I didn't hurt at all, y'all.

01:45:10.888 --> 01:45:16.288
It's just, we got to get away from these people. We got to get them out.

01:45:16.888 --> 01:45:21.428
You know, we can't be like the movie The Purge and violently take them out,

01:45:21.568 --> 01:45:24.688
although there's some people I know that desire that.

01:45:25.088 --> 01:45:29.928
But we got to use the process to get them out, which means that you got to show up.

01:45:30.788 --> 01:45:35.108
Shout out to all the people that attended the No Kings rallies, right?

01:45:36.590 --> 01:45:40.830
Up on election day, too. Just like you took the time to show up to any kind

01:45:40.830 --> 01:45:46.530
of demonstration, you got to take the time in your respective states on election day.

01:45:46.710 --> 01:45:50.430
If your state has early voting, take advantage of that.

01:45:51.010 --> 01:45:53.010
But we got to get these people out.

01:45:53.750 --> 01:46:00.550
Again, you know, it's like, and they say that when Rome burned,

01:46:00.830 --> 01:46:06.050
Nero fiddled in the United States, Trump is golfing.

01:46:06.590 --> 01:46:13.890
We're talking about the price of ballpoint pens or how many cognitive tests he's taken, right?

01:46:14.730 --> 01:46:18.810
Enough of that foolishness. It's just time out for that.

01:46:19.490 --> 01:46:24.410
We've got to take it to the new level for the next 250 years.

01:46:24.990 --> 01:46:34.490
And the way we do that is that we don't vote for people who don't have the conviction of their campaign.

01:46:35.230 --> 01:46:39.290
And we just don't vote crazy fanatical people in either.

01:46:39.670 --> 01:46:42.850
We need people that are even keeled, that have common sense,

01:46:42.990 --> 01:46:47.950
that can disagree without being disagreeable, right?

01:46:48.130 --> 01:46:51.670
Because now everybody's going to see the puzzle the same way.

01:46:52.110 --> 01:46:57.550
But if we can all figure out a way to put the pieces together, job done.

01:46:58.250 --> 01:47:02.630
It's more than one approach to solve a problem. them is just which one is the

01:47:02.630 --> 01:47:04.550
most feasible at that moment.

01:47:05.030 --> 01:47:10.350
Which one is going to do the less harm to the people that you're supposedly trying to help?

01:47:12.212 --> 01:47:17.132
Adics don't understand that. They just believe in something and come hella high

01:47:17.132 --> 01:47:22.012
water, no matter how many times it's been disproven.

01:47:22.652 --> 01:47:26.352
That's their belief and they're sticking to it. That's James Utmire.

01:47:27.072 --> 01:47:32.532
No more of those type of folks. And then we have to vet people that say they're

01:47:32.532 --> 01:47:38.572
your friend when they're campaigning and really see if their actions match their words.

01:47:39.432 --> 01:47:46.152
So we won't get another John Fetterman. or Joe Manchin or Kirsten Sinema.

01:47:46.792 --> 01:47:51.712
Again, you don't need to go extreme.

01:47:52.312 --> 01:47:56.892
And there are some folks that are unfairly called extreme because they have

01:47:56.892 --> 01:47:59.252
radically different ideas.

01:48:00.452 --> 01:48:06.252
But if the difference between an extremist and somebody that's radical,

01:48:06.532 --> 01:48:12.292
liberal in thought is that extremists want to tear the system apart.

01:48:13.152 --> 01:48:19.852
Radicals want to change the system from within, do a whole remodel, right?

01:48:21.071 --> 01:48:24.491
Of the building, but the interior, we're going to move this wall here.

01:48:24.651 --> 01:48:28.891
We're going to move this wall there. The bathroom should be in the back instead of the front.

01:48:29.551 --> 01:48:35.851
That's radical thinking. We just want to keep the house, but we don't rearrange

01:48:35.851 --> 01:48:39.551
some things now, right? We're not going to keep the status quo.

01:48:40.671 --> 01:48:43.331
Extremists is like tear the whole fucking house down and start over.

01:48:43.331 --> 01:48:52.071
And right now we have extremists leading us and we got to get them out because

01:48:52.071 --> 01:48:53.631
they don't care about us.

01:48:53.751 --> 01:48:55.991
They care about their extreme.

01:48:56.751 --> 01:49:02.671
They want their agenda and care about you and how that impacts you.

01:49:02.951 --> 01:49:05.171
They just want to see it come to fruition.

01:49:05.551 --> 01:49:07.551
That's why Doge was a failure.

01:49:08.351 --> 01:49:14.371
That's why this latest excursion, as the president refers to it, in Iran is a failure.

01:49:14.991 --> 01:49:17.311
Because you just wanted to do something.

01:49:18.651 --> 01:49:22.471
You had no plan. It is what it is, ladies and gentlemen.

01:49:22.691 --> 01:49:27.411
So I just, just let's be careful.

01:49:27.611 --> 01:49:33.251
Let's commit to electing American leaders, people who actually give a damn about

01:49:33.251 --> 01:49:35.571
the country and give a damn about their fellow citizen.

01:49:36.611 --> 01:49:41.031
And stop voting in these folks that are crazy.

01:49:41.891 --> 01:49:45.331
All right, that's all I got. Thank y'all for listening. Till next time.