S12E11 – Legacy and Community: Bridging Generations through History

S12E11: Legacy and Community: Bridging Generations Through History

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver,

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is Legacy and Community, Bridging Generations Through History.

Dr. Val: That's right. And this one's a little personal for me.

Andrew: It is Val. We are, we are going into your day job world a little bit with this episode. I'm very excited about it.

Dr. Val: That's right. So in my day job, I get to serve as the Chief Education and Strategic Partnership Officer at the Levine Museum of the New South. And this past year I had the honor, privilege, and pleasure of leading nine college students through a fellowship.

Andrew: So tell us a little bit about the Levine Museum of the New South.

Dr. Val: So our vision and our work that feels really important to us is to use history to build community. And so from its inception, now 35 years ago, the idea was to really have our museum rooted in community based stories, right?

Oftentimes you'll visit a museum space and you'll know the big dates and names and important places, but not necessarily all of the, the people who made these things happen. And we recognize that you can be a history maker, you know, regardless of your job or the role that you play in the world, right? And like we can all be history makers. And so, that is something that feels really important to us and felt important for us to invest in the young people in our community so that they know they can do the same.

Andrew: So this is how this fellowship came about.

Dr. Val: That's right. We recruited students from our local universities to apply for this experience, which includes a year long experience with readings, guest speakers, uh, they have to implement a community-based project, and they had a chance to go on a really special trip to Montgomery, Alabama and Selma, Alabama.

Andrew: Some, obviously important locations in the history, particularly the history of the South, this history of the Civil Rights movement. Where did the trip take you all?

Dr. Val: So if you've never been to Montgomery, everyone should take a journey to Montgomery. Because as you mentioned, Montgomery can be identified as one of the true hubs of the Civil Rights movement. And so while we were in Montgomery, you know, we, we passed some of the well-known landmarks, Rosa Parks' bus stop, the 16th Street Baptist Church. But also we got to spend time at all of the Equal Justice Initiative Museum related sites. And so they have three sites based in Montgomery, their Legacy museum, the Lynching Memorial, and then the Sculpture Park as well.

Andrew: So this is the work of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. Trying to create an intentional spot to commemorate the work that happened. As you said, Montgomery was one of the key hubs of the Civil Rights era. And then you kept on going right?

Dr. Val: That's right. We took the trip from Montgomery to Selma. And we had a chance to be in the very community in which the Selma March was birthed, where the young people trained, where people were activated, where people from all over the country came to support, uh, we were able to be there and we were able to listen to, uh, a tour by one of the foot soldiers, one of the people who was a teenager at the time who participated in the Selma March. Mm-hmm.

Andrew: With nine current college students...

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: …around the same age as she probably was when she was participating in the march.

Dr. Val: Yeah. She was actually a little bit younger. Yeah.

Andrew: So I'm imagining that it was a powerful trip.

Dr. Val: It was a very powerful trip and it's one that I think every person should make. I can't stop speaking about it enough. And you will get more from it than you can possibly imagine, I promise. Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Yeah. And one of the people who got a lot out of it is our guest today who is one of your fellows, Logan. And she was nice enough to come on and tell us about her trip.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Logan is one star of nine stars in this fellowship program. And I'm just, I'm thrilled that she said yes, but I promise you all of them would've said yes to this conversation, as well.

Andrew: Yes, I'm blown away by her. I mean, she was originally a poet and a writer before she started studying history, and I think you can tell from the way that she expresses herself and the way she synthesizes ideas and the perspective that she brought. Uh, yeah. Very, very impressive young person.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And again, I got, I got lucky. I got nine stars. Nine stars. I absolutely.

Andrew: Amazing. Well, let's take a listen to Logan and hear the story of her journey through this fellowship.

Dr. Val: Awesome.

[THEME MUSIC]

Logan: My name is Logan Tilton. I am a junior at North Carolina Central University, majoring in history, specifically African American Studies, with a minor in mass communication. I'm a fellow at the Levine Museum as well, which is where I've met the lovely Dr. Brown, and I'm glad to meet you now today.

Andrew: Absolutely. We're glad you joined us. Excited to get in, but maybe to start, you can tell us a little bit about why you're studying history, specifically African American studies. What appeals to you about that?

Logan: So I took an African American studies class in college, not my major. I was a language major at the time, and I was into poetry, but I couldn't for the life of me get into fictional books and narratives that weren't telling more of a current perspective I at least felt I could tie…

Andrew: Hmm.

Logan: …into my community. And then I took this class. And I took it with a Black professor and I was learning Black history, history I've never heard before, and mind you I’m in college. So I was expecting like, okay, I should have heard something before now.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: Before an optional class that I decided to just see you know? If I hadn’t took the class, I may have never even known that this history existed in this way. So I took the class and my professor at the time, Dr. Robinson, he introduced me to Earl E. Thorpe 'cause I asked him, I wanted to read. I was into the readings because they made me question things. I was, I was questioning how the patterns that were showing up in the readings I could still see. And that's what did it, I could connect it to now.

But Thorpe specifically, I was reading his book on the theme of Black History, and I believe his writings were around the 1970s but his focus was the unconscious and the conscious. He got into more of the person and the patterns, the psycho history was psychology and history. So it made me curious.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: So for me what really drew me to history in general, was the fact that it began to feel human and something that I could align with. And then the more I got into my studies, I started learning about redlining and I started learning about the School to Prison pipeline.

I always believed in community work. My mother was in the nonprofit field in Detroit, actually. She was at AmeriCorps at one point. She did Communities in Schools, she did some grant writing, so she always was giving back to the community. Then my father on the other end, he had been in jail. So that created that interest for me to learn about the prison system. And how was it that so many people I knew, or just a friend that was not too far knew someone that existed within the system?

Andrew: Hmm.

Logan: So the, I guess between the making it real and also me being able to connect with the history, that's what made me wanna do it. And I learned if I could learn about me and I could, and it could do this for me 'cause it could make me wanna read.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Logan: And it could make me wanna learn and it could make me curious, and it could also gimme pride, not only sadness, but it could give me some type of pride as well.

Andrew: Hmm. I feel like. Like it took me a really long time to see the, the relevance of history to my life today. I feel like history was always sort of like, well, this is what happened then and now, like is now, and these things are unrelated. What helped you see that connection and make that link at a young age? Then you wanted to study it.

Logan: I would say, first of all, it being personal. So that prison aspect of it all, me being able to see, okay, this is a system that took my father and took other people's, fathers and brothers, and it's not a coincidence. So that was some type of connection, but also slave narratives did it. Slave narratives did it because listening to the human, like I, my mom is gone.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: My child is gone. My brother was just beaten. Like, that makes me feel.

Dr. Val: Mmm.

Logan: And to me that was like, okay, I can feel that as a human being. I feel, I feel empathy, or even understanding of like, wow. It would hurt to lose my mother.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Hmm.

Logan: Beyond everything else. Beyond the harsh conditions. And like just very, very, very inhumane things that sometimes bring out a sad emotion. There was also this very human thing about the way slaves felt that was not being highlighted.

Logan: They would talk about it like a system. It was slavery. It's like, it was just, it was just it's slavery and slave narratives for me made them, more like, this is a human being. Or, for example, on the plantation there was a personality that was developed because of this system in both the slave and the slave master. For example, it would say, depending on who my master was, it created a certain version of me. Because if your master is like this or super strict or one that wants you to smile because they feel guilt if you don't.

Andrew: Hmm.

Logan: Depending on the way that your, your master reacts to their own psyche in this system, you begin to develop a reaction and also a different sense of self. You are in the constraints of a system and what does that do to a person. That made me feel connected 'cause the sadness, then I could start to humanize them as like, okay, these are people.

These are all people too. Because when you don't highlight that slave masters are people, you also ignore the accountability because if you just say they're evil, you don't have to hold them accountable as people for being evil.

Andrew: It was because you happened to opt into this class in college that you were first exposed to that. That was not part of your education up until that point.

Logan: And that problem, that is really what troubled me, because I was like, I was frustrated, but I was actually happy. Like I was both, I didn't know how to feel.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: Because it's like, I'm, I'm so frustrated because what you've taught me has been wrong or has been your version. But as a writer going into history, I was able to see that who holds the narrative is very important.

I was able to see like, okay, who gets to write these stories? Who gets to define how the story went? Who gets to end and begin it? Where do they get to start? Where do they get to finish? What did they get to say? And I realized a lot of times what we did say was either hidden or destroyed.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: And that bothered me too. And history was a place where it felt kept in collective memory. Oral history also helped me feel that connection.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: Yeah.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: I'm so proud.

Andrew: For real.

Dr. Val: And so you found your way to this fellowship, and there was something that drew you to it, and you mentioned your desire to be connected to be connected to community. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose to apply for the fellowship and what your hopes were for your time there?

Logan: So I chose to apply for the fellowship because I love what they were doing with community and their history. To see this type of community forward mission, and also collective understanding through different events, through communication, through community to tell these stories in a way where the people get to write them.

That's what I love, that's what I was connected to because like we just said, a lot of times these stories aren't discussed. They're either hidden or one person gets to shape the narrative. So I like that it was a mutual shaping.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Logan: And the fact that you guys wanted to do this for the youth, 'cause it is important my age and that I'm learning this now and that you guys are creating a space to teach me. Yeah.

Dr. Val: We've had many experiences, but one in particular took us out of Charlotte, on a charter bus across the south to Montgomery, Alabama, and Selma, Alabama. And we had a chance to visit the Equal Justice Initiative sites. And also speak with a foot soldier in Selma who participated in the Selma to Montgomery march. So that was obviously a super powerful experience for me. But I'm, I'm really curious about what it was like for you. What did you learn? What did you wonder about? What did you feel? What did you see?

Logan: So, I think when I was going I had this idea of like, racism number one, history, Southern life, and movements. But I thought of it very location geographically. This is where these Civil freedom walk is, and this is where these marches happen. This is where Bloody Sunday occurred. When I got to Selma, I realized this is a community that made it happen.

Dr. Val: Mmm.

Logan: Like it, this is the people, this is the resilience. This is the burning desire for freedom. The foot soldier, Barbara, her talking about her time when Martin Luther King actually gave her a peppermint. It makes that humanization we're talking about that…

Andrew: Right.

Logan: …the being human, like the human connection to it all. The community, understanding that these were people who lived in this community. You know, these were people who existed here. Because I think the historic movements are so important. I think sometimes the people, the people get overlooked, the community that made it happen. You're like, okay, march, this Bloody Sunday happened here in Selma, Alabama. It stops there.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: It’s a period. And coming to Alabama, it opened that into an open-ended sentence and it let me start to question more about, okay, what is Selma? Who is Selma and who helped make all of this happen that's still here today? It created that living history.

Dr. Val: We walked over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and that was really, really important. But what felt equally if not more important to me was to see foot soldier Barbara, Barbara, connecting with people in the community. Like they came off their porches…

Logan: Yes.

Dr. Val: …because they heard her voice.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: It was like that powerful. And Andrew, the part of Selma that we saw primarily, I would say, at least 65% of it felt discarded, in that windows were broken…

Logan: Yes.

Dr. Val: … roofs were caved in. It looks like an abandoned town in many respects.

Andrew: Hmm.

Logan: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Val: The movement, the planning, the action, the housing of folks happened in Selma.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: And I think knowing that this is where it started, should give everyone there a sense of pride, right? Like we are from a powerful people in this place.

Andrew: It didn't just happen in Selma. It happened in Selma because of Selma. It happened because of everyone who was in Selma who made it happen in Selma. Right.

Logan: Yeah. It was a Songbird, which is a woman she referred to that was on that civil rights freedom walk.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: Someone who sang in the community was on the Civil Rights Freedom Walk. You have to start to look at the people. It’s not the people who have a certain education. Or a certain, or in a specific caste, or a certain race or demographic. It's, it's this community.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Logan: Everyone that's in it, and everyone who has been in, and that's what I meant when I said it was a transition from a geographic location simply.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: To a place where it's like, this happened here because of who you guys are.

Dr. Val: Right.

Logan: And they have everyday struggles as well because of it.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: And you can see that their resilience and their desire for freedom had to be, more, it had to be more. Because if you, if you look at what they're going through they were going through enough. Where it's like they, it had to be something that they wanted to make space for and they just believed in it.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Logan: Because it's part of their community even if you go in our capitalistic minds and say, okay, well this is poverty stricken, just lowest caste available, and you think of what they actually did.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: It even confuses the “truth” that we've been given, because if this version of people is what they say, then how was this community able to do this, and why also is it not talking about as much? Like I said, we know the name of the place, but we don't know the names of the people who helped this place be chosen to be the place where all of these beautiful movements occurred.

Dr. Val: Barbara mentioned that, part of the reason why young people were encouraged to take part is because the working adults, their employers would stand around and they would know who was going to the marches. And they said, you know, if you continue to do this, you're gonna lose your job. And so they needed the young people and their bodies to be part of the movement. And so Joanne Bland, who recently passed, she's honored there. She's the one who started the Foot Soldier tour. By the time she was 11, she had been arrested 13 times.

Andrew: Jeez.

Dr. Val: So just as a young person, knowing that there were young people in Selma who were putting their bodies on the line and being a part of the movement, how did that make you feel? What, what were you thinking about when you heard those stories?

Logan: I felt accountable.

Dr. Val: Okay.

Logan: I felt accountable for myself because people died for this and, and people participated for me, for my right to vote specifically in a lot of these places, like how important is it? And also the fact that they were children. It shows that like we matter, the youth does what we do does matter and how we choose to continue this progress that the people before us put in motion. We have to keep pushing it forward. Like we have to keep doing that. When you see that people have died for you to be able to do this, it would be so wrong for me not to. And I do matter.

And it shows me also the importance of like, not only me and what I do, but us, like my, my people, my demographic of people, my age group. Understanding that us together is powerful because it's like, yes, I can do everything I want to do, but even sitting in these moments with them. Being with my other fellows and be able to see each other's emotion and recognize, oh my God, you can feel, you can cry, you can be mad.

'Cause first of all, this might have been the first time we felt so connected to history. 'Cause now it's alive. And most of the time we read about, there are people who have heard about these things 30 times and still felt a different emotion. So it's important to be around people who could understand me and understand the history enough to feel it as well. It's so human to wanna hug. And it, and it was so available. And that just shows like in these bigger things, when we're fighting for these different injustices, now whatever ones are more specific to our time right now we will need each other and we do need for some of this emotion to go somewhere else. We need to come together and if it's art, we need to have these poetry, painting nights, whatever we like, we need to figure out what we all like and come together and do something with all this emotion. Do something for the betterment, but also do something for the sustainability because it, I feel we can do something quick, but I think having a community makes you continuously do something.

I do feel like, I feel like being in connection keeps it going, like I do think even though we need to keep going, I don't think you can do that alone. I think you need to have a group of people also holding you accountable to see this, to be accountable for this change. Like accountable also to each other's emotions, like being able to like, okay, feel this with someone. You're not alone and the experience mattered.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Logan: Yeah.

Dr. Val: So leaving Selma is a 50 mile walk to Montgomery. And when we got to Montgomery, we were able to go to the three EJI sites, the museum itself, the sculpture garden, and then the memorial. Uh, talk about the museum.

Logan: That place did it for me. So you walk in. You hear waves, you see sand and slaves that have pieces of chains around their neck, their hands are cuffed, they're connected. And this water where they're sinking immediately. Immediately, there is no transition. There is, there is no…

Andrew: They don't ease you in.

Dr. Val: No, there's, there's no easing in.

Logan: And immediately you feel something. The sounds, the visuals. To the point where I knew, I knew I was gonna start to feel something. We're following a timeline of injustice, starting in slavery, the Jim Crow era, ending in the current prison system. And between that there are different exhibits where you feel different emotions. At least for me specifically, I went from very sad to very angry.

Andrew: Yeah.

Logan: Very sad to very angry. So I see Ruby Bridges, so that's about integrating schools and also how kids were spit on and abused just because they desire to have an education.

Andrew: Yeah.

Logan: You see the Trans Atlantic slave trade, you hear stories. Now, this is, there's a part where there's a cage, where there's a slave. And it's a girl or a man. Sometimes a child. The one that really broke me down was there was a girl, and she said, where's mama?

Andrew: Hmm.

Logan: Like I said, kids and the women, they do it for me every time. The baby did it. And so immediately I'm, I'm sad.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: We go into mass, mass incarceration. And there was a quote specifically, and it said, “You went from the white robe to a black one, but they're still sentencing you to death.”

Dr. Val: You know, like the white robe being the Klan robe, the black robe being the judge's robe.

Andrew: The judge's robe, right?

Logan: Yeah. I was hearing phone calls. So they had a specific place where you could go and sit down and pick up the phone and you can hear people tell their story.

So there was a mother who was raped by one of the guards in prison and gave birth, and her baby was taken from the day after. And I know the statistics of the prison system and I know the average rate of reincarceration for the Black male, and I know how unfair it is. And how targeted it is and how political sometimes it can be because there's money involved because of private prisons. But to go in and hear this story, it broke me down. There was also a story about a man and he was unjustly sentenced and he stayed in jail for about 30 years.

For something he did not do, and he told them he did not do, and no one actually took time to reflect on his case. And it was disproved once the ballistics report came back, he was unjustly sentenced for 30 years, got out and that was it. He was a grateful man though. When he got out, all he was, was happy. After watching that, all I was was mad.

Andrew: Yeah.

Logan: I was furious about the fact that people were being treated like this. I was furious about the fact that the truth didn't matter because I thought the whole point of the system was the truth. I thought the whole point of the system was the truth. But I realize it really wasn't, and that is frustrating to deal with, and to accept, but it also starts to make everything make sense.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: It starts to put pieces together, even if the pieces don't feel great. And also I love our people because the pride in all of it, when he gets out, he's grateful. He's like I have my life back.

Andrew: After not having it for 30 years.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Logan: For something I didn't do. I didn’t do it. And his mom died. That's the other, that's the other part. His mom died, while he was in jail. So it's not just 30 years of fun, it's 30 years with his mother he cannot get back.

Dr. Val: Mmmm.

Logan: So I think for me that like once again it's family, it's human, it's love. You took it away, you took it away without proof. And you gave it back 30 years later and you had the power to do that. And this is not the only time you've done it.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: So the second site we went to was the Lynching Memorial. And at the Lynching Memorial we saw some of the reasons that people were lynched. And we saw names and we saw counties.

Logan: There was lists of names in one county. And one time we stopped at one and there was like 15 killings at least in the same day. I'm like, oh, so you just decided, you were feeling like killy today? You wanted to kill today?

Dr. Val: You’re feeling killy today?

Logan: You're feeling killy today. Like, I just wanna, I just wanna kill a few people and I was just blown away by the reasons. Oh my gosh. I killed you because my wife looked at you. I killed you because kids threw rocks at you and you defended yourself. I dragged you out of your courtroom and shot you and no one did anything about it.

Dr. Val: I killed you because you wouldn't let me beat you in a fight.

Logan: Yes. Oh, one said you didn't address him with enough, sir in like your tone. So like you, anything. I mean, you can do anything. And guess what? You don't have to prove these things. When they were committing these lynchings, that's what made me believe that the law was not existing that to hold them accountable. You're allowed to drag me out of a room where I'm supposed to be on trial for justice and take, take that away from me and kill me whenever you like. You're also allowed to make me have to live in a state of fear because I don't know what I'm going to do that's going to just be the reason that I'm dead or someone near me dies. I think about how you grow up in a place like that. How do you learn normal human responses when you're not allowed to, you know, you're not allowed to make mistakes as a Black child. You're not, you're not a child. You know, you're not allowed to improperly look at a White man or a White boy who was once your friend. You might be killed for that. Or you can't talk to that White woman because someone may look at you and because you're Black, you may die. Or like there's just so many ORs and it's like, it doesn't like, have to be proved. You don't have to prove it. And that's, that's the saddest part, is like you can kill me without proof or reason, you don't really need a reason and that's, yeah.

I saw, the justification or lack of needing to justify lynching. And I saw people with some crazy strength and resilience. Crazy…

Logan: I’m so glad we did the foot soldier tour after because I think it brought back pride. And it brought back proof of resilience and proof of strength. And if they could do this and if the children were 11 years old doing this, then just possibly we can work through this. Crazy strength and resilience to even continue to live in different conditions, to fight, to walk knowing, to cross this bridge, knowing there's dogs and police on the other side of it. I don't know.

I don't like, I wish I could say automatically yes, but I, it would take a minute. I would get there. I would say yes, but it would take a minute. You know.

Dr. Val: Um, you opened this conversation with the fact that you kinda stumbled into this in your academic career. I wanna make, make that connection to like what you've been learning and the fact that it, it is something that you've had to choose for yourself. Why are these conversations important to start early and often? Not only in home, but in community spaces, in schools.

Logan: So, one thing I will say is I'm grateful for my grandma because she did give me something I wouldn't have had and most families might not have. She gave me a space to question my own history and to talk about it with her, and to ask her about her own story. And that allowed me some type of leeway. But what I'll say is, teach your kids the history you wish you knew because schools aren't gonna do it still.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: Until maybe college or one course. So like the things that you're curious about, like for me specifically I wanted to know like, who else were we besides slaves? Were we funny you know? Could you make me laugh, you know?

Dr. Val: We were funny, obviously we were funny!

Logan: I know you know, like what are our personality archetypes? And if you don't know what to teach them, teach them to question everything. Because that’s the only way I learned anything.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Logan: Like, okay, so I don't know this and there's still so much I don't know, which is why I was able to learn so much when I did go, 'cause I was, I wasn't stuck in my head and like, I believe this and this is everything. I'm willing and I'm excited to learn. And I think most kids, they don't know this is even out there. Let them know this is out there. Let them know that their history didn't stop with Rosa Parks. Like, I'm sorry, I love my girl down, but we hear about her every Black History Month. That's all we hear about. That's all we hear about is slavery and Rosa Parks. And there's so much more nuance to our history. There is Black joy, Black grief. There is Black personality, Black people, culture.

Teach them about their culture, teach them what you should value in that, what you shouldn't, what you hope they keep with them where it came from. Where did this recipe come from that you're cooking right now for me? Who taught you how to make it?

These are normal questions, but these are questions that you might not be asking because, a lot of times we don't have time. I realize with my baby brothers, I always listen to them when they talk to me because I realize adults don't have time. And that's why I appreciate times and spaces like this, when you guys make time. When you're asking me why the conversation's so important? So we can be heard and also learn. There's a lot I don't know that I get to learn by talking to you guys about this. There's times where I get to be corrected or just heard.

So I think I would tell them to make time to ask these questions, to talk to the ones they love, and just tell them like, about themselves, about how they got to where they're at.

Andrew: There's a way that we can think of history, and I think, you know, you, you sort of came to the realization that history informs today and your current life in really meaningful ways that it sometimes takes people a while to get to. But there's a way that we can even hear the story of the Edmund Pettus Bridge of, Ruby Bridges, of lynchings and feel like, well, that is the past and now we are in a different time. And I'm just wondering what links did you draw from all those lessons that you learned to the world that you're looking at entering into adulthood into today?

Logan: There was a lynching in Marietta, Georgia about two weeks ago, and there was another one right before that. One was a Black boy. There's Black women. These things are still occurring.

Andrew: Yeah.

Logan: We have different problems now, where sometimes we take this route, and we focus on this, we focus on jobs maybe instead of maybe the prison system because one seems understandable or justifiable. One seems like, okay, these are criminals, so why should we focus our time here. Not that this is a system that specifically targets a group of people, which is why we're criminals. But they’re just criminals so it justifies the inhumane treatment and it justifies the fact that now we grow up without fathers in the home.

So you're saying what connections did I draw today? Well, number one, everything still isn't equal. Redlining still exists. I went to high school in a place that was 30 minutes away from my home. And why did I have to do that? Because at that time specifically, we were in the process of moving. I moved into my grandmother's house, and I was like, wow, I can't go to school here, 'cause they wouldn't want me to, they didn't want me to go to school. And I was like, why? You know, I'm not understanding that I moved out of a community where the schools were a luxury, and I moved into a community where the schools are a deterrent for the children.

I was having a conversation with my father actually, and we went to the Auto Zone Show in Detroit, and he told me that building at one point was his school, because they were remaking his school. He specifically said he got to go to the White people's schools. That was his direct quote.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Logan: And he said, I had a blast, and I had so much fun and I couldn't wait to go to school. But then it was time to go back to our school and I just stopped going. And I realized, like, there's power in the environment you create for children. And sometimes, our environments look the same, sometimes we still are impoverished. How do we focus on classes at that point? We're targeted. You know, our schools, we get hand-me-down books in certain schools still. That's not okay. Like, that doesn't show improvement, because I'm sure 60 years ago we were still getting hand-me-down books.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: I’m sure 60 years ago the houses in this neighborhood were still terrible in comparison to this one. With what the people are being paid, it isn’t creating affordable living. These are what I mean when I say there are patterns that you can still hear today. Even if you don’t hear about them in specific forms, you can hear like, okay, the school system still need help.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: We still have black robes putting people to death. We still have disproportionate access to education, to clean environments, to safe environments. I mean, policing is harmful to us. Like there's, there's just so many things that still are not in favor of us and still kill us to this day. You're telling me that it's okay that there’s still broken families in this community still, that they don't have access to food. There's food deserts still.

Andrew: Right.

Logan: There's all of this access that still needs to happen. Because it’s inhumane not to give it to people. And all I know is if I could be introduced to people like Selma and people like Charlotte and see what is it really about these places, what are the people in these places doing for these places? Who do I become for my community? What do I get to do? I would feel better about everything that I've seen.

I know who did what for me and why I should vote, and why I should go to school and what education really means. Because I know what it meant to them. And I know, I know if they tried so hard to take it away, it must mean something, if they killed people so I wouldn’t have access to these things it must do something. It must! It has to! So I would say I'm lucky enough to have the ability to learn my history because I get to be connected to it, and I think everyone should have access to it.

Andrew: Where do you get hope? Is it, is it that kind of the history that you've seen and the things that people went through that then encourages you to keep going? Because I can imagine walking through these historical sites, seeing the themes that keep showing up all the way back from the slavery period, all the way through today, and seeing these similar themes coming up - I would understand the inclination to throw up your hands and say, what's the point? Like, why, why should I get involved? What good is it gonna do? Look at, look around at the world and, and its current state and, and throw your hands up. But you seem to have a really positive, energetic attitude about not just learning this stuff, but also then like doing something with it. Like, how, how do you hold onto that?

Logan: There were people there with me. That's why community is so important. Community inspires hope. It's not just looking at these things, it's the fact that Dr. Brown was right there, and my fellows are right here and there's collective memory now.

Now there's community that inspires hope. There's people who still care. That's what gives me hope. The fact that you guys are asking these questions, that means there's people who care. That means that's something that's the start islearning about it is something. That’s what gives me hope.

That's why we have foot soldier tours now. This might not have been the same thing as meeting Martin Luther King Jr, but for me it inspired the same feelings. It taught me that all the children matter. It showed me this is history, that this is still alive. It does something when there's people around you because it lets you know that you're not in this alone. That there's people who have, yes, I'm looking at my ancestors and I'm getting resilience and strength to move forward because they've done this before. But then I look to my right and there's people to do it with me, and those two things together, let me, they give me something. They give me something that I wouldn't have had without both.

Dr. Val: I'm so proud. So, so proud.

Logan: Well, thank you.

Andrew: Thank you. I like, it sounds like it was an incredible trip. It sounds like an incredible fellowship, but largely because it seems to have pulled in incredible people like yourself, who embrace it and get the most that you can out of it. And I always come back to this. I feel like when we speak to younger folks is where I get hope, is where I feel like, okay, maybe, maybe we will be okay.

Because it doesn't look great in a lot of ways right now, but I think the understanding our history, knowing where we came from, and then being in community to experience it, I, I can't think of anything else that's gonna help get us through it. So I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story.

Logan: Thank you guys for having me.

Dr. Val: Yeah Logan. Thank you. I am so glad you chose us. I'm so glad you are, you know, you're following the path that is laid before you. I think you have picked up your baton, you know what is to be your role in this work. And we could not have a better representative.

Logan: Thank you!

Dr. Val: Yeah! No, absolutely.

Andrew: Beautiful.

Logan: Thank you guys for giving me the opportunity and listening. We need people to listen! Just like you guys need us to talk, we need people to listen.

Dr. Val: That's right.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Logan: Thank you. Thank you guys.

Andrew: Thank you.

Dr. Val: Thank you.

[THEME MUSIC]

Dr. Val: So Andrew, what'd you think?

Andrew: Wow. Like the tables are turned here, Val. Yeah, I, I'm just just blown away by, by Logan. And by what sounds like an incredible trip.

I think this idea of like, who are the people, not just the places and, and really making it personal, really resonated for me. I think about the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but not the people who made that happen, not the community around it, not the struggles that people there were going through, and people in that community are still going through.

Her ability to kind of tie what feels like a, a very mature perspective on the value of history and the ways that it applies to her life today that, that Logan has already come to, I was just really blown away by her.

Dr. Val: Yeah. You asked me why I picked Logan to be a part of this conversation.

Andrew: I'm sure it's abundantly clear to listeners now, why, why you chose her.[Laughter]

Dr. Val: No, literally I got nine stars. I got nine stars, and they're gonna listen and I don't wanna get into trouble. I do not have favorite kids. Okay? Every kid is my favorite.

But one thing that Logan talked about just from the beginning in her application, and throughout this fellowship is about community. And that's something that we emphasize here all the time, right? The importance of community, the importance of having a group of people that you can be in lockstep with as you are trying to make this change in your community, in your world.

And so I recognized that in Logan, and I knew that she would pick those things up, you know, as we were traveling together. That she would recognize it and she named them so clearly you would think that she's already written the book about it. Right. And so it's, it's, it's a message that I wanted us to continue to emphasize. And we talk about it as old fogies, right? We're in a generation like we are old enough to be Logan's parents!

Andrew: Yep.

Dr. Val: And you don't always know if, if the lessons are coming across. Like you just, you aren't sure. And so to know that, that young people are seeing and knowing that a community is important for the change that you wanna make, that was significant to me from the, from the very beginning. And I'm so glad she picked those things up.

Andrew: And I think that the idea of community, you know, I mean, she said she's drawing inspiration from her ancestors, but then also turning and immediately has community with her experiencing it together. And not just to kind of process intellectually, but also like to have community to share the emotional journey of it all.

That there is space for emotions and that it's important to share those emotions and that the way you do that is also through community and that that's where we find sustenance. That's where we find the ability to keep going. That's where we find hope.

Dr. Val: Yeah. As she mentioned, the legacy museum itself, it evokes a lot of emotion and one room that she did not talk about that evoked the emotion… I, I was crying throughout the museum, but once I got to the reflection room…

So I want you to imagine a big room about the size of a high school basketball gym, and along the walls are huge head shots of all of the Black ancestors you can possibly think of, right? We got James Baldwin. We got Audrey Lord. We got Harry Belafonte. We got, just literally everybody you can possibly think of all around. It's light, right? Stevie Wonder was playing, and I heard Stevie's voice and it was joyful. And I started. . . if I'm honest, like I wanted to spin. I wanted to spin. I don't think I, I don't think I did a full spin, but it felt like a true like praise and worship moment.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: Because I felt surrounded and grateful, and safe, and like the tears just started to flow. And I put my head down and I was just, I was just crying. 'Cause I'm so incredibly grateful that people chose to take these steps on behalf of me and you, and people that they would never see.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: Because it was about their humanity, their dignity, and the dignity and humanity of the people that came after them. And it was such a purifying moment. Um. I felt like a miracle. I feel like a miracle being here after spending time in Selma and Montgomery. Because, as Logan mentioned, my ancestors had to do next to nothing to get lynched, had to do next to nothing to get humiliated. And they survived, and I am here. I can use my voice and I can be in community with others, and I can teach young people the same.

Like what a gift. What a gift. There's, there's not a more important trip to me that you can take in the United States. There's not a more important trip that you can take to understand American history and Black American history than to Montgomery and Selma.

Andrew: Yeah. Starting to plan my summer trip.

Dr. Val: Yeah, you should go. You should go. And you'll get great catfish.

Andrew: I am thinking about Gholdy Muhammad, when we had Gholdy Muhammad on, you know, and talking about, like we can choose which ancestors we want to raise up and which ancestors we don't. And something that Logan said about the importance of understanding the history, not just sort of what happened, but also how those people felt and the emotional responses that people had and the ability to relate to that. And, also trying to understand the experience of being an enslaver.

Um, and you know, I, I, I hear you talk about, and I can imagine the power of walking into that room, with Stevie Wonder and everybody from your stick of knowledge.

Dr. Val: Everybody was, it's literally that. It was my stick of knowledge on the wall!

Andrew: And, and imagining - I haven't been, and you know, I, I want to go and experience it, but also like what parts of that do I get to hold onto and what parts of that are not for me?

Dr. Val: Hmm. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. I don't have the answer for that for you, and I would be curious to, to walk through that space and just, you know, be next to you as you are experiencing it from your body. You know, your positionality. 'Cause there there are things that are troubling, obviously. Right? And you know, I, I do remember thinking, I'm like, I wonder what White people feel good about this.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: I wonder how White people feel. It's gotta be a lot. It's gotta be a lot.

But one of our fellows is from Brazil, and one of her takeaways, uh, was she was able to see the parallels between how enslaved were treated here and how they were treated in Brazil, and the difference in the United States wrestling with that history publicly.

Her name is Sophia, and Sophia shared that in Brazil, much of it is Whitewashed. It's not a story that you hear very often. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. And they recruited Europeans to come to Brazil to help lighten the population, right? Because they were a dark people.

And so, I think in being in that space, there are lots of parallels that anybody can make about their own country's history, especially if they know it. Right. Um, there's, there won't be a country in which you won't have folks that were ostracized, oppressed, you know, on the outside.

Andrew: Hierarchy of human value is a, is a universal thing. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Absolutely. And so I think that, regardless of your identity, there are things that you can take away. And hopefully a desire to, to do things differently, right? Because you've seen, what happens if we go down one path.

Andrew: Right. Yeah. I think that the theme that Logan kept coming back to as well, right, of like knowing the people of, of humanizing the history, of knowing the people is, is the most powerful way to do that. And I think that's what it sounds like the museum does such a powerful job of doing, is, is really telling stories of individual people that really humanizes the whole enterprise in a way that it's “enslaved people”, not just like the enterprise of “slavery”, like Logan said.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Thankfully the designers recognized the heaviness of it all, and they ended with not only the reflection room. So you leave that reflection room where there's music and the ancestors and joy and light, and you walk into another like super bright art gallery with gorgeous art everywhere.

And then you go to this sculpture park with gorgeous 3D art. And sometimes that helps people in a different way. And that feels important to remember as well. Like there's, there's multiple mediums in which we can tell this story,

Andrew: We need to hear the story, not just with our heads, but also with our hearts. And I feel like that's where art plays such an important role, and music. These things that connect us to our bodies, and to our feelings, and to our souls a bit, are the other ways that we need to understand. There's plenty to understand intellectually, and we also need to feel it in our bodies.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Recently I heard a performer say if they're trying to erase the history, just listen to the music. It's in the music. You can always find it there.

And to that point Logan made about what caregivers can do if you don't know an entry point, start there, right? And then keep leaving space for, for young people to ask questions. Which they will. Have you been around a young person? Goodness gracious.

Andrew: Yep. Never ending.Yeah, it sounds like an incredible trip. Those fellows are very nice. You wanna shout out the rest of your fellows?

Dr. Val: I do wanna shout out all my fellows 'cause I don't have only one favorite kid. I have all favorite kids. So, Hajar, Mandy, Lincoln, Kendall, Sana, Sophia, Sarah, Jade, and Logan - thank you for trusting your time and energy to me. Y'all are helping me become a better person. I'm so grateful for who you are and what you're doing in the community and what you will do moving forward. I believe in you so, so much.

Andrew: Definitely. Uh, left me with some hope hearing that Logan is the type of person who will soon take over the world. I think gives me a, a sense of possibility and really grateful that she was willing to come on and, and share about this incredible journey.

Dr. Val: That's right. So I, I wanna encourage everybody to take their own journeys, right? There's journeys that you can take virtually. There's journeys that you can take through books if you can't physically get there right away.

But certainly you can share this episode as a way to start the conversation, not only about the history of our country, but certainly what we should know and learn from young people and how we can continue to support them. And I think listening, as Logan said, is one easy thing that we can do.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. If you enjoyed this episode and you are sharing it with other people and you wanna support this work, we would be grateful for that. You can go over to patreon.com/integratedschools and join our Patreon. You can also just go to the website integratedschools.org and click that big red donate button.

We would be grateful for your support.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And if you've, if you've been to any of the EJI sites, or Montgomery or Selma and you wanna tell us about it, we'd love to hear about it and we'd love to hear what other people think. So please leave us a voice memo at speakpipe.com/integratedschools, that's S-P-E-A-K-P-I-P-E.com/integratedschools.

You can leave us a voice memo there.

Andrew: Yep. Or just record a voice memo on the Voice Memos app and email it to us. podcast@integratedschools.org. We would love to hear what you're thinking. Val, this was amazing. It's nice to be able to delve into your professional work a little bit on here and hear about all the great things you're doing there.

And, uh, as always, it is an honor for me to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.