"The work is in the middle," A conversation about courage with Loki Mulholland

In the Cultivating Community Plenary, HEARD was joined by filmmaker and author Loki Mulholland son of civil rights icon, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. The conversation centers around Loki's book, "Get Back to the Counter: Seven Lessons from Civil Rights Icon Joan Trumpauer Mulholland," and the connection between her lessons and the reality of today . Loki also shared a number of clips from his documentary, "An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland," so audio of those clips is included in the pod which brings in multiple voices and perspectives of what it was like to be part of a movement. This is a rich conversation, and a unique HEARD listening experience.

Transcript

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Hi, Acro Community. I'm Ingrid Nuttall and welcome to a special pod drop from this year's ACro annual meeting in New Orleans. In the cultivating Community plenary, Porsche and I spoke with filmmaker and author, Loki Mulholland, who is the son of civil rights icon Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. We spoke with Loki about his book, Get Back to the Counter, Seven Lessons from Civil Rights Icon Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, and we talked about the connection of her lessons to the challenges we're facing today. Joan's civil rights story is woven together with her higher education journey. So we dove into that connection and how it shaped her activism. Loki also shared a number of clips from his documentary, An Ordinary Hero, The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. So you will hear the audio from those clips in this pod, but I also strongly recommend that you check out the documentary in full. It's available online. Just search for the title. Our own acro icon, Rosalyn Perry kicks it off with the introduction, uh, and that's all you need to hear from me. So, all right, let's get started. At the heart of today's discussion is a simple but powerful idea community doesn't just happen, it's built through how we show up and sometimes show out for each other and for the work we care about. We are honored to be joined by Loki Mulholland, an Emmy Award winning filmmaker, author, and storyteller who brings a deeply personal lens to leadership through the story of his mother, Joan Trumpower Mulholland and her her experiences during a pivotal time in our nation's history. Drawing from his book Get Back to the Counter, Loki will share leadership lessons that are as relevant today as they have ever been about courage, consistency, and the impact we can have when we choose to act and of course guiding the conversation are our phenomenal Her podcast hosts Portia Lamar and Ingrid Nuttall who will lead us through what promises to be a really engaging and meaningful conversation and discussion. So sit back, settle in, and please join me and our hosts in welcoming Loki Mulholland. Yeah Thank you. Hello everyone. hello Acro Community and uh welcome to the Heard podcast. I'm Porsha Lamar and I'm Inger Nuttall, and I would be remiss if I did not mention our other podcast sister, which is Tashwna Curtis, and also mention we are not the only podcast. Acro has several podcasts. We have admitted, we have Transfer T, and we have, for the record, yes, so please make sure you listen and subscribe. Loki, thank you so much for joining our community today. Oh, I appreciate it. We are so excited to dig into your book, get back to the counter, but before we do, we always like to hear our guests share more about their background. So can you take the Acro community a bit deeper into your own story? Oh, my own story. Well, I, I never get asked my own story. It's always about my mom's story, so I don't quite know what to say, um. You know, well, Loki really is my name. That's usually the question I get asked the most is that I'm like, yes, my, how'd you get that name? And the short answer is my parents were hippies, uh, and people are like, yeah, that's the response. And it's like, no, really, I have, I have 4 brothers Beano, Django, Jomo, and Geronimo. Oh yes, OK. And we would travel around in a purple VW van. I went to 49 states by car by the time I was 8, so. That that's hippie. Yes it is. So, um, I went to school at Ithaca College and, uh, graduated in 2024. So there's a whole 30 year gap there that, uh, if we get time I'll tell that story because I know I was talking with Amy over at, uh, at Cornell about it and she didn't get the whole rest of the story, but yeah, uh, and you know I do documentaries and I run the foundation named after my mother Joan Trump Power Mulholland to. Teach others about the civil rights movement and how they can make a difference. Wonderful, thank you for that. And now we would love to hear your mother's story. Yeah, there's a lot there, um, you know, and, and there's, and we're gonna talk about a lot of her story. There's a lot of amazing events that she was a part of. I used to say that she was like the Forrest Gump of civil rights, um, because she knew so many of the people and she was involved in so many of the events in these pivotal moments and changes in the movement, but her story really begins when she's 10 years old. And, and I wanna, we're gonna show some clips here from the film An Ordinary Hero about my mom and the student movement. And the first clip is actually, I wanna set the stage before I tell that part of the story, but it's about her and her friends. Her friends are actually telling the stories of growing up in the 50s and 60s under segregation. So if we can play that first clip there, that'd be great. And in the 40s. Uh, in the German occupied, uh, countries, if a Jew walking on the sidewalk did not get off the sidewalk when a German was coming in Doth take his cap off. He was risking his life. So we had that same thing over here. I always wondered why I had to go through the back door of the public library, why I could not go into the stacks to get my own books, um, why I had to go to the colored water fountain. Um, in Sears, I can remember white ladies and colored women bathrooms. Uh, you had, you could not sit at Chris's, uh, counters. We used to go downtown and to buy candy or something. We couldn't sit at the counter. We couldn't even even uh. go downtown to eat in a lot of the restaurants, uh, downtown in DC. They said we were supposedly equals. We were being treated that way, and I suddenly off this white person. They had all kinds of things at their disposal to take to, to do me in, and there was nothing I could do about it. He said, um, you ran that light. My dad said, No, sir, I didn't run the light. It was yellow. Morris, I said to you, you ran that light. My dad didn't say anything. And he looked at us in the back seat and I guess we looked like a nice little family and he said um. Morris You like a good So I'm gonna let you. I'm gonna let you off this time. Well, it was a, uh, separate and unequal society, uh, basically buttressed by. Uh, local customs and laws, but you know that was, that was just the way things were, and you wanna go, what do you mean that's the way things were? I met whites all over who had questions raised. I later met blacks who, when they had questions raised, their parents had to tell them, uh, it may be wrong, but don't you try to do anything about it. This is in God's hands, um. Here's how you protect yourself. Maybe you shouldn't ride the bus so much if that upsets you. Your parents did that, but they also told you that it would come to an end, because it was wrong. Anything that's that wrong can't last. Yeah, I love that part of the story with Ruben and Ruben was the first black Supreme Court justice in the state of Mississippi. As a matter of fact, I was a classmate of my mother's at Tugaloo College. Um, so my mom, when she's 10 years old, every summer they would go and visit her grandmother down in Oconee, Georgia, this old logging town company old logging town, and when she's 10, there's a, uh, her, her summer playmate Mary. Um, dares her, uh, to go walk through the black quarters, and this was absolutely forbidden, um, and of course they go, right? And my mom sees how black people are living. Uh, up close and personal this time, and these are this now as poor as the people were in Oconi, uh, you know, the whites like my grandmother had just gotten running water, for example, but you didn't drink the water that came through the pipes because you still get aquatic life, um, that would come through, but that, um, as poor as they were, uh, the blacks in Oconi were even poorer. Uh, these shotgun shacks, and then she gets, and, and people were disappearing. They didn't want to be seen, seeing these two little white girls walking down the street. And then they get to the schoolhouse and it's a one room shack on on stone piles, not a lick of paint, my mom says, and just a potbelly stove and an outhouse out back and she said it rattled her soul and that. Uh, this is in stark contrast to the brand new brick school for the white students. This is post World War II, since 1954, um. And so actually 52, I take that back, it's before Brown versus Board and so she sees this and knowing this contrast and this policy is separate but equal, she says this is wrong and I'm gonna do something about it. She didn't say this is wrong. Oh well, or can you take care of it? She says, I'm gonna do something about it as a 10 year old, and she would get that chance, um, when she goes to Duke University. I think that's amazing that she had the at 10 to be able to say and I am going to do something about it instead of saying what can I do? Someone help me guide me, so I'm excited to have this conversation. So less than a decade later, your mother Joan's journey to a sit-in at the Woolworth counter in 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi came in part via her higher education journey. She was enrolled at Tugaloo College, which you mentioned in HBCU when she sat at that counter. So how have you come to understand your mother's higher education journey as a part of that story? What was the influence of higher ed on her journey? That's interesting. So my mother actually wanted to go to a, a small church school, um, in a, in. Oh gosh, where was it? I forget the, the state, but it was she wanted to go there because um it was where her Sunday school teacher and her husband went. Her Sunday school teacher was John Glenn, right, the astronaut name drop, yeah. Um, but my grandmother. Said, well, no one's ever heard of that school, and she wanted her to go to something school of prestige. Now my grandmother grew up as a sharecropper in Georgia, and so, you know, this was important to her, but as well she also wanted her to make sure she was going to a safe school and safe meant segregated. Uh, she was afraid she might have a, a classmate or even a, you know, um, you know, a roommate who was black. So, uh, she insisted on going to Duke and my mom said, you know what, if it gets me out of the house and gets away from mama, I'll go to Duke, which. For my mom, if my grandmother, if her idea was to keep her away from all this, it was the worst place to send her because right down the road on February 1st, 1960 is the Greenboro sit-in, the A&T 4 sit-in. Now let's be clear, I know there's, I talked to some A&T folks here, um. Yes, it was the 4 guys who sat down. But it was the Bennett Bells who came up with the idea, OK, so which is the pattern you'll see throughout the movement. The women get the idea and the guys get all the credit. OK, so that's usually how it works. Sound familiar, yes. But the next sit-ins pretty much were in Durham, and my mom was invited to this secret meeting at her, at her Presbyterian Church, you know, they can't tell people because the rowdies might show up and the school could shut things down and so forth, and it was the North Carolina students who, um, North Carolina College at the time who came and talked morally and legally about the sit-ins and then to her surprise, invited them to join the picket line. And so she does, which leads to the sit-ins, you know, I think twice in the jail twice and you know, and eventually that case leads all the way to the Supreme Court, which would come back to haunt her in '63 at the sit-ins. Um So One of the interesting things on this, well, the Duke University first is beside itself. They can't imagine why a white Southern woman would get involved in the movement, right? And the only, only explanation they can come up with was that she was mentally ill. So they take her in for mental counseling. And my mom wasn't amused and she finished her credit hours there, you know, that semester in the spring and, and then left. Right, uh, which would take her up to Howard University. Now that's because the North Carolina college students had said, hey, we haven't heard anything from the Howard group since the founding of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee over at Shaw University earlier that year. Can you go up and talk to them if they haven't done anything, get them going. So, I mean, I think everyone here knows Howard University, we call it HBCU today. So you can imagine, you know, my mom, all 5'1 of her walking around Howard University asking where the civil rights group is, um. But so this this gets her there now the Freedom Rides, which we're gonna jump to gets her down to Mississippi, but on that journey she sees what happens to because she knew at this point she wanted to go back to school and she saw what was happening to um Hamilton Holmes and Charlene Hunter Gault uh down at the University of Georgia. And having to integrate the University of Georgia under court order with the police and the tear gas and everything else that was going on, she said, you know, Integration should be a two-way street, and to quote my mother, it shouldn't be a bunch of black students catching hell. You know, why don't I go to an HBCU? They didn't call it HBCUs then, but, um, why don't I go to an HBCU? And so, and then instead of just running off and doing it, she at the next SNCC meeting, probably in Atlanta, she has a conversation with John Lewis, who was the head of SNCC at the time, I guess, and what Chuck would do I think was actually, but. The Chuck and and John and so forth. John gets the credit for saying it, but he says, Well, why don't you go to Tuugaloo or don't go to Mississippi. Right, he said it's a good idea, go to Mississippi because they haven't done anything, meaning the sit-ins. And if they haven't gotten started, get them started. Right, which. If you think about it, it's pretty crazy. Let me, let me add a few words in here. Hey, white girl, go to Mississippi and get the black students started. Right, but that also speaks to the level of trust they had in her because at that point she'd already done about 3 dozen sit-ins and demonstrations. And then we get to the freedom rides. If we could play that video This was an idea that caught the imagination of the country. However, the civil rights community thought it was a bit of a, a lark. Um, they thought, oh right, we're, you know, we're just gonna ride on buses through the South, you know, for a couple of months. Um, it was almost seen as like a vacation and some. The people who actually participated initially were viewed as people who were just slackers. They didn't want to do the hard work of going and demonstrating in front of you know hardcore places, so they were just going to take a bus. I think we knew from the start it could be dangerous. On the other hand, maybe to break the tension, maybe half thinking it. Uh, we were teasing Hank and said that, you know, here you're going off on this all expense paid vacation. Good way to end the semester, buddy. How I spent my summer in 1961 and let me tell you the ways. They put together a small group of 13 riders, I think it was 13, who left Washington on two separate buses making their way through the Upper South. In the Upper South they were attacked a few times. A couple of people were beaten up, arrested. Uh, most notably in Rock Hill, South Carolina, but really all hell broke loose when they got to Alabama, and all of a sudden it made national news and everybody realized this was not just a walk in the park. This was the next stage of the revolution. I had already had a taste. I've seen the violence. I just barely escaped the Klan. So I had no Illusions whatsoever. About what was going to happen next. I didn't know anything about Anderston, Alabama, and then we were told. That we are literally going into the belly of the beast. Uh, Aniston was a hotbed of Klan activity and as a matter of fact, uh, Jim Farmer, who was a pretty good stump speaker, um, spoke that night and told a joke about Aniston in terms of foretelling what we were going to be in for, and he said. There was this bus driver driving a Greyhound bus, and as he. Got maybe 3 or 4 miles from Anniston, he heard this knock, knock thumping on the side of the bus, so he pulled over to see what it was. And as he opened the door, The greyhound had gotten down off of the side of the bus and wanted to come inside. And so when he asked and says, why do you want to do that? He said, we're getting ready to go into Anniston. And there are variations of that joke of, he said, one preacher said, Lord, we're getting ready to go down to Alabama and we want you to be with us. And then a little silence. And uh he said, Lord, did you hear me? I want you to be with us. So he heard that voice, I'll go with you. As far as Anderton. So, all kinds of joke about how dangerous it was going to be. And surely enough, When we got maybe a few miles outside of Anniston, we'd all had been singing, um, on the bus and as we did that from time to time. A bus coming from Anniston stopped on the opposite side of the highway, and the two bus drivers got out and spoke. And the driver of our bus got back on and looked kind of looked at us and just kind of smiled. Um And, uh, as we got into Anniston, the streets were deserted. No one And it was telling us this is not good. A mob firebombed the bus as churchgoers brought their children to watch the Freedom Riders burn alive on Mother's Day. Riders were able to escape, only to be beaten with baseball bats until the local authorities finally stepped in. Freedom Riders were attacked two more times in Birmingham and Montgomery, where it appeared things would come to an end. But a call back to my mother in DC to send more riders, and a team led by Diane Nash in Nashville, re-energized everyone. However, My mother and the Freedom Riders were now entering Mississippi, a place many would call the heart of darkness. Yeah And so she gets accepted to Duke prior to, I mean, to Duke, to Tougaloo College prior to that, but Duke would not actually send the transcripts to that school. Um And so they, uh, they accept her, you know, anyways, but I actually, I take that back. It wasn't, it was her high school. Her high school wouldn't accept her transcripts. Duke actually did, they won't accept you on your Duke transcripts. I apologize, um, and so she arrives at, at Tugaloo College, and, uh, her, her presence there is such a, a lightning rod in Mississippi that the state actually tried to shut down the school. You know, having a white woman on campus right with these black men it was just oh my gosh, um. But the, the school's charter predated the Jim Crow laws of 1890 when Mississippi had rewritten their state constitution to usher in Jim Crow and so they couldn't do that. It was a private school funded primarily from the North. This is why we care about students. I just wanna say that this is what students do. Um, so when you say I want you to go a little deeper in saying, um, your mother being on this Tulu campus and it was a wow but. It was teetering illegal, correct? A, a white woman could not be seen with a black person, let alone a man, right? So she was, she, she was in uncharted territory, yeah, yeah, it definitely was, and, and, and it was a lot of students there. Um, weren't quite certain about her when she got there. One was because she came, you know, they knew she had gone to Duke, um, they thought, you know, definitely that she had greater opportunities in education. And yet they saw when she was um studying just as hard and you know in the library and so forth late at night as they were that OK she must be all right and then she comes back. So a lot of times what happened was, you know, with these movements like the Freedom Rides, a lot of people came down. It was the summer time and that was intentional because you weren't in school. These were students. They would all come down to Mississippi or wherever, do their thing, get arrested, and then go home in time for school. Well, my mom didn't. She stayed. And that's what really made her different to a lot of folks, um, they, they, they, they recognized her dedication and to, to see it through. Now tell us how did we get to the Jackson Woolworth? Oh gosh, OK we're, OK, yeah, we'll have to skip Dr. King and all that. Um, I hate to say that, but we'll, we'll skip Dr. King for now. Said no one ever, but please continue, Loki. But we get to to the Jackson where we're sit, um, and my mom wasn't supposed to be a part of that sit-in she was part of the conversation, but her role was different so my mom, there's a challenge with my mom, uh, she's a white woman. And while we see these, you know, things that she's involved in her photographs and such, a lot of times she wasn't involved in much because she could just get people killed. It was dangerous for her to be on the front line, but she did whatever was needed to be done, so a lot of her work actually was secretarial. She could, she could type over 100 words a minute on a manual typewriter, right? Um, and when she wasn't working in the SNCC office of course, she was over at Medgar Evers' office, um, working there for the NAACP. But They cook up this idea. So John Salter, Professor Salter at Tugaloo College, and Medgar Evers, who's the field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. He's basically what we call the Doctor King of Mississippi. Um, they cook up this idea to have this sit-in, and it's very intentional what they do as well is, is everyone's sitting at the counter, the initial, you know, sit, sit-in portion that we, you know, well, you won't see what you'll see here, but the famous photo, you don't see that. But the 1st 3 people who were sitting down are all from Mississippi. And that was intentional because Mississippi was like these are just a bunch of outside agitators. No, these are Mississippians who are who are participating in this and my mom was asked to actually using her whiteness to stand in a crowd at a different protest down the street that was a diversion because she could blend in, right? And she would see what was happening and then report back to Medgar's office. And then she goes down. To the Jackson sit-in to what's taking place at Woolworth's, you wanna play that video? Oh, OK. This new movement would explode on May 28th, 1963, when John Salter Megget Evers took the Jackson boycott to the next level. In all, 14 people would participate in what would become one of the most famous and violent sit-ins of the civil rights movement. I've heard At various times from the reporter, the cameraman, and the son of one of the reporters that this was the most terrifying, frightening event they covered. In the civil rights movement now. Guess they weren't in Birmingham or Montgomery with the Freedom Riders. But they got around and um. This to them was the worst. When the three individuals, uh, Perlina Lewis, Memphis Norman, and Ann Moody sat down at the white counter. Nothing happened. Now Joan interestingly was not supposed to be part of this demonstration. And um he said, well, let's go check on what's happening at Woolworth. They had no idea that that that this environment had turned volatile until they walked in the store and it was right at that moment. That uh uh a thug, a former police officer had come in and pulled Memphis Norman, the one black male, off of his stool, knocked him onto the floor, and began kicking him mercilessly. Joan was then stuck in the situation wondering what's going to happen next. Um, Anne Moody had been pulled off of her stool and thrown against some of the counters, um. Pearlina Lewis was also pulled from the stool and was down on, uh, was down on her knees right by the counter when the police officer came on the scene. Both of them rushed back to the counter and so that, so that they were, so the demonstration would continue. Jones sees all this and realizes first of all, she is beginning to communicate with the, the demonstrator. She's, she sees a man with a knife walk by Ann Moody and she calls out, um, Annie, he's got a knife. Um And all of a sudden she's identified with the people at the counter. Who's this white girl talking to those black girls, you know, so all of a sudden she realizes that she's in danger. But then I sat down. That's when I became a problem. She walked through that mob in the Woolworth store. And they realized of course immediately where she stood. She joins Perlina and Annie at the counter, the first white to join the demonstration, and at this, the crowd is just incensed. They become like hornets. They start screaming at her. I went immediately to the lunch counter to sit with Joan and Annie Moody. When Salter joined, the crowd turned violent. He was knocked in the back of his head with uh brass knuckles. Um, there was a student who put his cigarette out on the back of Salter's neck. There were several cigarettes and you can still see it to this day if you look on the back of his neck, he has scars in the shape of a cigarette, um. They threw pepper and water mixture into his eyes. Things were just going out of control and. At that point, Joan. Has said that she believed that they were not going to make it out alive. None of them were going to make it out alive. That's, that's a lot to take in that's a lot, um, and again the fact that these individuals did this and. Had no withdrawal they stood strong stood strong and stood their ground, can you explain a little bit, this is in the book but explain the. Atmosphere and the idea of now that we are like oh where are the authorities they should intervene can you explain how that went? So yeah, so the police were all outside because I mentioned previously in 1960 that Supreme Court case so that came back to haunt them. So the Supreme Court had ruled that demonstrating is, you know, actually constitutional, right. Um, but that the police just couldn't come in and just arrest people. They had to be invited in by the store owners, and that's only if the demonstrators refuse to leave and so forth and so what ends up happening is the police are just all out there letting this chaos take place, right? And this is a mob of 2 to 300 people at this point. So my mom walks in, she sees Memphis getting attacked, um. And this is this former police officer. He this actually the, the police officer was considered too violent for the Mississippi for the Jackson City police, right? uh, so he's kicked off the force. That's how bad this guy is, um, he gets arrested and so does Memphis. Memphis gets arrested for being attacked, OK, um, breach of peace is what they called it. And so my mom walks in, sees what's taking place, sits down. This guy grabs her by the hair. Wraps her up, drags her through the mob, and gets outside. And that's where all, and there's a mob outside as well, and that's where the police are, but the police. Can't imagine that my mum is the agitator. Right? So they arrest the guy for, you know, manhandling my mother. She gets free and she goes back through the mob again and sits back down, right? And that's when John Salter joins because Memphis wanted to be there. But John had said if you go you're gonna be killed, so John goes instead, and that's when all hell breaks loose, right? They just tear this place apart, um, and this was, these are 5 and 10 type stores basically kind of take like a dollar store and combine it with a McDonald's, right? One side is you can buy supplies and so forth, the other side you can go and eat, but only if you were white. If you were black, you could do, you could buy stuff, but you couldn't sit at the counter. Right, and that just wasn't fair. Right, that was the law and the moral codes at that time, they said, you know what? Well, we're gonna sit. And I remember asking my mom very specifically, what were you thinking when they, when they were dragging you through that mob, and she said just get back to the counter. Right. That's where they need to be. The job wasn't done. I, I think the first time I can remember seeing that picture was actually in a documentary called Making Sense of the Sixties that I watched as a child probably um and what strikes me, what struck me then and what strikes me now is the amount of history that happens in this short period of time because we have the, the sit-in at Woolworth's and, and. Other things are other things come later. Can you take us through some of the incredibly, the immediate aftermath of that? What's happening in this movement? So in '63, a lot of people take a look at '63 and they go, the March on Washington, right, for jobs and freedom, but '63 was a very huge year. You, you had the in Danville, Virginia, you had the fire hoses and police dogs. Then you see that happening in Birmingham. Then the Jackson sit-in. Two weeks later, Medgar Evers would be killed. Shot in the back B Byron De La Beckwith while standing in his driveway. And in his hands were t-shirts that said Jim Crow must go. Um After that is the march on Washington. This is the high point And the, the It wasn't actually they weren't certain if it was actually going to be. Even take place because the federal government wasn't sure, you know, how this was gonna go down. They, they had troops on the other side of the bridge, you know, in Virginia waiting, um, they were actually talking about closing everything up because there was a afraid there's this fear factor. If you get that many black people together, what's gonna happen. And nothing happened, right? Um. Except for this peaceful demonstration. But then 2 weeks later, would be the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. And we have one more video on that if you'd like. On September 15th, 1963, tragedy would befall the most innocent of victims in the battle for racial equality when a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church. We've all seen the footage of people getting sprayed by the water hoses and, and things like that. Well, that was the pro the protests that were going on at that time, and they were essentially being staged from the 16th Street Baptist Church because it was a downtown church and they could gather there and then leave from there for their protest. And that, so that's what was happening. Well, the clan didn't like that, so what they did is they planted a bomb underneath the steps on the side of that church,

and it blew up at about 10: 34:52

22 in the morning. In fact, the, these, these girls were getting ready. There was a youth service that morning, and in fact the title of the lesson was called The Love That Forgives. And the and the bomb blew up and killed those 4 girls. Time for sadness. There was nothing to celebrate. Glass that we picked up out of the gutters at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The day that 3 of the little girls who had been blown up there were buried. And the police shot over the heads of the people who came out of the church. To disperse the mob, right. We attended the funeral, we were standing outside and uh we were going to follow the cartege until uh, Ed King and uh Diane Nash pointed and showed us the um National Guard standing with guns. Aimed down at us in the streets, the, the National Guard who had been deputy who had been nationalized by the president of the United States had rebel flags on their uniforms, and I was holding this American flag which was not liked they just fell in love with the American flag recently in the South, and so this flag was a sign of resistance that I was holding, so you could see them standing all up around with the guns drawn. Wherever they on top of the church? Yeah, all around. I didn't look up at them and so um. Ed and Diane said, look, look, look, look, look, look, the same way they did at Medgar's funeral in Jackson when John Doe came out and started screaming, yelling, said, uh, you must stop because they're gonna shoot you, pointing to the guns aimed at people in the streets down on Ferris Street. It would have been like Sharpeville massacre. I'm not sure they were gonna shoot us. Oh, we were standing. You're not sure? No, the church, you, you're talking about during the time the funeral was going on? Yes, ma'am. They just blown the church up, George. Yeah, but what makes you think that Martin Luther King was inside, so he was killed at the funeral. He was killed. Listen, let me speak, please. Oh, you indulge me a little. No There were a lot of people standing in front of that church. And I don't know whether they were going to shoot or not, but If there was any restraint to be had on that day, they would have had it. We bring from these experiences different. Feelings, impressions, and so on. Well, this is reality I'm dealing with. So I would have been shot too. Yes, ma'am. You know what? We will find something to laugh about that's what we will do. Um, so this is, uh, the sad event, but I know that you had a great point that, um, a picture, that picture that was found gave proof to what was happening. Yeah, so I had, when I was making the documentary, I was, um. I had requested, we'll see if I can get permission from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to use the Anniston video, the bus bombing video, you know, photo, and they said, oh yeah, sure, um, I said, well, you know, actually we have a couple of photos, you know, uh, would you be willing to take a look at those, and they sent them over, and I'm like, Well, that's Mom and Dory, and they didn't know who they were. And I said, Well, I don't know who the other ones are, but my mom can tell you where did you get this photo from. They said it was from the sniper's nest, and so. That was confirmation because my mom, she said I, I guess I didn't look up either, right? She doesn't remember. So when you all get this book, and I do recommend that you get this book, um, it is layered out in several, uh, leadership skills that she is mother, Mrs. Joan. Pulled from all of these instances that we truly believe can be in our day to day in fighting the good fight, um, and I feel like my favorite takeaway was um this quote that said adapt or quit but either way. Get out of the way of those willing to accept necessary change and that really stood out to me so this is us trying to figure out where we are. If you get this book you gotta figure out where you are, where are you in the fight? What skill do you have that you can utilize? Yeah, you know, um, my. I think too often we There's so much to say. There's so much to say, but Uh, I, I think about. My mom's story and And I asked her, I said, well, what made you so special? She said absolutely nothing. So are you a hero? She goes, no. I saw something was wrong. And decided to do something about it. It takes all of us to make a difference. We just have to make the choice. And recently, you know, I was talking with her and she said, you know, um. I can't do everything But I can do something because doing nothing is not an option. We have to find what we can do. And, and just keep doing it and there's no quick fix. Everyone wants that quick fix and there's not. It's, it's, uh, I mean, Brown versus Board was 1954. The, the Civil Rights Act was 64, voting 65, right? So 1011 long years of the modern civil rights movement, right? Um, are you willing to put in that type of effort to make that type of change? Right, and that's really what it's about at the end of the day, but I think most critically to me the most important lesson is the one on empathy. Well, you just segued into empathy and I have a whole question about it and we also had 2 minutes left, um, so I'm, that is my, that is my favorite chapter. I, we're, you're gonna be selling books after the talk after we wrap up here. Um, we're hoping that folks have questions, so start to think of them and make your way to the mics as we kind of bring it to the last question of the podcast. Before we sat down here together, we were talking about this last question and the idea of storytelling, and, um, and I, I said storytelling is part of the work of enrollment professionals. I feel we're keepers of stories, we're keepers of student stories and. I was curious about with that in mind as we talked about it, the academic record is telling. A very important story of students' history as they go on to the next thing so that they can go out and do good work so that they can employ these principles. So how, how would you see your maybe approach to storytelling as a documentarian being connected to the work of us keepers of stories as enrollment professionals? Yeah, well, as a documentarian, I mean that's what I do and we tend to see the civil rights movement only in these outcomes. Right, or a beginning, like say in the till. But, um, and particularly with individuals to tell the whole story is the story in between all this like I said my mom's story we have at the very beginning, right, she's 10 years old, right, makes this decision and then we get to the Jackson sit-in and and there's more there's the time the Klan tried to kill her and all that sort of stuff, but. Um, everything in the middle is so critical, and we don't wanna lose that. We don't want that distorted as well, and it's so important to preserve that because memories fade, right, um, as we, we're kind of racing against time for on a lot of this in regard regards to civil rights history to preserve these, you know, these, these stories and to get them right. Um, so I see the same thing, right? It's too easy to go, yeah, there'll be a time, no, there's not, it's, it's in the moment, preserve those stories because I think it's also important to understand the journey. And where you can, you know, see where you've come from. You know, yes, you've achieved something, but to remember what it took to get there and that you can do it. We can do hard things. Loki, maybe your next book can be don't forget the middle. Don't forget the middle of the story, Loki in the middle, uh, where he at in the middle. Loki, thank you so much. I know we have time for questions. We would love to see some folks come up and lend their voices to this conversation and the podcast. Hello everyone, uh, Rock Hall, vice president Ithaca College. Loki, good to see you again. We talked the other day, man. Uh, it was a pleasure bumping into you on the floor and just having a, a quick time to chat. You know, Doctor King once said that the greatest threat within civil rights isn't the people with the pointy hats, but it's the people who are indifferent in the middle. One thing that strikes me every time I look at those pictures from the civil rights era, you have the act of aggression in the middle, but there, there's a wall of people behind them. And the different the different facial expressions, the indifference, the curiosity. Maybe through conversations with your mother could she describe the mood or the spirit of the space where you had the actual aggressors in the middle but then you had just an audience around them just kind of captivated within that moment and what that must have felt like uh as she was trying to fight for change. You know, I've never asked her that. Um, they were, they were just focused on surviving, like the sit-in, I mean, they, she's like, well, you know, we're all gonna die, um. But I think about as well, to, to your point, I'm not kind of related to your point I think I can share for everybody is, is, um. Not everyone can do what my mom did. Right. And we shouldn't beat ourselves up for thinking that you know we can't be out there. Not everyone can be out there. There were plenty of black people that couldn't be involved in the movement. I know a lot of people today go, Well, every black person was involved in the movement, right? Well, no, that's not the case. Uh, they, they could have a bomb, you know, houses bombs, they could lose their jobs, their lives, and so forth. Um, but people found other ways to get involved, uh, in Mississippi, for example, in Jackson. Uh, there were, there are many white, I shouldn't say, I don't know how, I, I can't say the number, I'll just say many, but don't assume it's every single person. But there are many white women who couldn't get involved because, you know, their husbands, right? You know, in Mississippi, um, so what they did was, you know, involved directly. They would actually give the help money. To give to Medgar Evers to help that way they found the ways that they could do things, and we just have to find our way to do something as long as you are doing something. That's, that's great. Start there. And then if you can, then sure, expand on that, but don't. Don't beat yourself up for it. I used to do that all the time, go, I'm not sitting at lunch counters like my mom and so forth, but I found my voice in the way that I could do things, which was doing the films and the, the foundation and so forth. So we all have our, our lane. Just make sure you're going down it, alright. Thank you. What's up, bro? Hey team. It must be Kenny. Yeah, yes, it's Kenny, uh, Kenny Evans, uh, from Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas, uh, very riveting story, and something you said really stood out, uh, to me, um, is that we're losing that history and time is ticking, uh, in the today's climate where the history is being reduced, being hidden, um, being, uh, turned against. How do we continue that story fighting against um forces that are trying to erase the story at the same time and and preventing people from telling that story? Yeah, um, well we fight, right? Uh, back to the Doctor King quote from Rock, to another, to quote him the end is, is we have to have that fierce urgency of now. Um But so the, the, a lot of people don't understand this, so, um. The history of slavery and so forth that we were fed. Was rewritten in the early 1900s by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. So all of our history books, if you grew up, you know, if you're my age and stuff and grew up, you learn that history that it's the happy slave narrative story, right? But there were people who preserved the right, the proper stories and continue to tell the right story, and we have to constantly be engaged in making sure that that the truth is always told, right, so. Suddenly the 1619 project happens. And people have this revelation, it's like no that's always been there. History has always been there. It hasn't changed, obviously our understanding of it has grown, but that truth is revealed, and we see the reaction to that. People ask my mom a lot right now. Do you feel like things are moving backwards? Right And she says, you know, how do you feel about this? She says, Well, we're definitely repeating history. Right, and there's that negative, negative cognotation that we have to that, and, and understandably so. I said, but let's not forget the other part of history. Those who resisted, those who said, you know what, not on my watch, those who like Mrs. Hamer said they were sick and tired of being sick and tired. And they said, you know, I'm gonna do something about it because doing nothing's not an option. We have to remember that part. And they, and, and they changed history. My mom and her friends, segregation was ingrained. This was society, this was, this was the government, right, sanctioned. And they said, you know, people thought it was going to last forever. My mom and her friend says not on our watch. And they ended Jim Crow and segregation. So imagine what we can do. Thanks, Brooke. Might have time for one more question. Because I have long answers. No, that's not what I said, Loki. I could ask the empathy question now. Ask it. Alright, so we talk a lot on the podcast about it's gonna happen now. We talk a lot on the podcast about allyship and what it means when it can kind of shift into, into something else and just some. Of those challenges, and there isn't a specific chapter in your book called allyship, but it's a thread, I think throughout all of the leadership lessons. So what would you like the acro community to consider as the lessons of allyship from the 1960s as we navigate the 21st century and what does empathy have to do with any of that? Well, yeah, the reason allyship is not mentioned in the book is because, well, my mom is that kind of epitome of it, even though that's, that's kind of a more of a modern term now. I mean allyship and accomplice and so forth. Um, I, I sometimes folks will call my mom an ally, and the activists back in the day, they get, they get hot. They're like, no, she was an activist, they're willing to kill her as quickly as they were willing to kill us. She was there doing it, um. And, but she, she never put herself out there in front. She was always invited. It's a, it's a constant story as well, and the narrative through there is that the invitation to do something, whether it was, you know, joining the picket lines or go up to Howard or, you know, John saying go to Mississippi, all the, the freedom rides, she gets a phone call, right, um, all every single time I was there, but I think the important part as well is that they, there was a level of trust that they had for her. That she was not gonna, you know, cut bait when things got hot, right? She was gonna be in the fight, and they knew they could trust her on that level. There was, there's a reason, even though she wasn't part of the, supposed to be part of the sit-in itself, she was part of the conversation in the room. Because the question became was like, you know, what's gonna happen when it hits the fan? Right, can we trust you with our very lives? And clearly they felt they could. Um But she has this amazing level of empathy and in the book we call it compassionate empathy, right? It's not just. You know, I feel bad and I can project understanding of what it is. It's acting on that, you know, that's the compassion part, actually acting on your empathy. Um, there's, there's always a space for us to do that. So, uh, I, I hate, I hate telling stories like this because it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn, right? But just recently I, I posted a video on Instagram and, and such of there's been these videos this time of year we have these prom videos and, and graduation videos, and there's this, this theme that always happens every year we have prom videos. Uh, and there's always these, these negative comments and stuff and even a negative perspective on these videos, particularly videos of African American youth doing prom. They call them ghetto proms or hood proms. Um And there was one particular one that just really struck me because, well, this was a very middle class family. And if you, when they pan the camera, there's the, the community's all out. You know, it was like wow, I mean look how many people are coming out to celebrate this young man, right? And I, and honestly I didn't know if it was prom or graduation, right, but it was like wow. And yet, Every all these comments were just. It's horrible. So I, I, I, I made a video about it just saying, you know, let's reflect on what this video is about, right? You know, the, the pride of the parents. We don't know the circumstances around what's going on in their lives beyond just wanting to celebrate their son, right? But for all we know this, this, this kid could have a terminal disease and they just want to make the best memories they can for him. But then at the end I say something to the effect of Consider what it means to them. Think about what it means to them instead of what it means to you. Right? And that's what my mom did. She said She looked at that schoolhouse. As a 10 year old. And she said it just again it rattled her soul. And You know this is wrong. And I'm going to do something about it. Right, uh, and, and to, to quote her from the end, it's, it's, we just have to make the choice. Right What strikes me about what you said about being invited is that in order to be in a position to be invited you have to be in community and I think that is a lesson for me from the conversation and from your book is to make sure you are in community to position yourself to be invited. To the fight, yeah, always be present, always be present. Loki, thank you so much for being on Heard Acro Community. Thank you so much for showing up for the conversation. Thank you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Heard. We'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email at her@acro.org with any feedback you have for us or show ideas. This episode was produced by Doug Mackey. Thanks, Doug.