The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Journey to Freedom serves as an exclusive extension of the Living Boldly with Purpose podcast series—a platform that inspires powerful transformation and growth. Journey freedom is a podcast hosted by Brian E. Arnold. The Journey to Freedom is an our best life blueprint exclusively designed for black men where we create a foundational freedom plan. There are five pillars: Identity, Trust, Finances, Health and Faith.
The Journey to Freedom Podcast
How a Judge Changed My Life at 15 - Dante’s Story
How a Judge Changed My Life at 15 - Dante’s Story
Hear Dante Wright's inspiring journey from a challenging childhood to becoming a successful attorney.
A chance encounter with a judge saved four-year-old Dante from being hit by a car while playing in the street. Little did he know this moment would completely alter the trajectory of his life. Eleven years later, that same judge would welcome him into her home when he faced going to a group home, providing the stable foundation that launched his journey to becoming an attorney.
From his earliest days, Dante stood out. As the youngest of seven children born to parents without high school diplomas in rural Virginia, statistics weren't in his favor. Yet his voracious appetite for knowledge—reading over 200 books by age nine—revealed something special. When displacement and family instability threatened to derail his potential, Judge Gamal and her family of attorneys provided the environment where Dante could truly flourish.
"The osmosis effect played a role," Dante reflects, describing how living with successful professionals who valued education transformed his perspective. This mentorship carried him through college and law school, where despite initial doubts ("I thought my luck would run out"), he graduated with honors. Now at 31, he's come full circle, establishing a law firm with the very judge who changed his life decades earlier.
Beyond professional accomplishments, Dante shares profound wisdom about embracing life's challenges rather than avoiding them: "Our experiences are meant to shape us, not break us." He approaches health, relationships, and personal growth with this same thoughtful intentionality, believing that maintaining strong foundations in all aspects of life is crucial to supporting others.
For anyone facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Dante's story offers powerful hope. As he powerfully states, "Failure is certain, but how you deal with failure is actually what matters most. Failing isn't something to be ashamed of, but not trying is what you should be ashamed of." What battles are you facing today that might be transforming you into exactly who you're meant to become?
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Explore how faith, mentorship, and resilience shaped his path, and gain insights on overcoming obstacles, building a strong family foundation, and giving back to the community.
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When I was 15, I was in a very, very bad spot where I was looking at going to group home or shelter and she stepped in with her husband and they allowed me to live with them at 15. This woman was a judge, her husband was a lawyer, both her sons were attorneys, and so my last two or three years in high school I lived with them and that's really where I began to take off. At that point I was in that environment. The osmosis effect played a role. I got to see people who really worked hard, who were very much like me. They love books, they love cultural competency. These were the premier people in my life. Once I got there I said, okay, I got a chance. I was maybe wasn't on my radar beforehand, but I got a chance.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome, welcome, welcome to another just incredible addition to the Journey to Freedom podcast. And I'm Dr B, I am your host here and I'm excited. Today it has just been one of those days. It's raining outside right now. I've got my workout in all the wonderful things that I wanted to get done today, but one of the things I've been looking forward to all day is having this conversation with Dante, and so when I think of the journey to freedom, dante, I was able to to take in January, 18 black men to do a civil rights tour in Alabama and there'd only been, like you know, out of the 18 men because we're mostly from the West Coast and don't spend time in the South, had never even been to Alabama and so you know I had.
Speaker 2:I went last year, so this is my second trip. But just starting to think about our world and where we live in right now and all the things, and I felt like I went back in time. I felt like I was in Birmingham and we're doing a tour and I'm like this feels like the 1970s. Now, I was a little kid, I was born in 65. So 1970, I was, you know, five years old, but I saw stuff on TV. You know the things that we studied in school. It's one thing to study in school. It's one thing to see the movie Selma. It's another thing to walk over to Pettus Bridge after seeing Selma and go oh my gosh, this stuff really happened here.
Speaker 2:And so I've been able to start interviewing some of the folks that went with us on the trip, and what they're doing now and to a T-boat, like a lot of them are just saying, I couldn't have that experience and come back and not do anything about it. And I started thinking about the things that we get to do and the place that we hold in our society and the things that we hold in our country. And you know our ability to go through. I know you've been. You know you were able to go to college and you were able to get a degree, and you were able to get a law degree and you were able to do all these things. And I know you're a person who wants to give back and do things and make sure your community is a better place. And sometimes we get into these cycles of you know, I don't know what to do, or I'm not sure how I can help, or this place is just crazy. Right now I don't even you know, the guy interviewed a little bit earlier.
Speaker 2:He was telling me he's like you know, what is amazing is I went there and we went through these tours and we went through this time and we had this story stuff and it feels like we haven't progressed. What the folks were willing to do, it is we had a meeting with a lady named Janice Kelsey and she was almost 80 years old now and she was in high school when they had the children's marches and they you know they were the fire hoses were on them, and then she went to, she left high school to go to jail and she talked to us about that time and he was just talking about the things that they were willing to do. Are we willing to do some of those things in order to make sure that we have? And I'm like you know, I think what we do is different, but there's so many folks that are just concentrated on, you know, ourselves, and so when I came up and started doing the journey to freedom, I wanted to.
Speaker 2:You know, I went to a trust. It was called the Trusted Edge Leadership Conference. It was in Minnesota and it was a gentleman who was probably one of the world's leading experts on leading with trust in, and trust is. The problem was is we went there, 400 people in the room and there's like 30 folks of color, I guess typical from. You know, the higher you get up in some of these circles, the less of us there are. And so my thought why is my community not getting this? Why are we not talking about these issues? We have some trust issues Sometimes we have. Not only do we not trust ourselves, we don't trust our women, we don't our women don't trust us, we don't trust the white, but we just don't trust our communities. And so how can we take some of this information and disseminate it in ways that make a difference?
Speaker 2:And so I got to start this podcast and you know, like I said, 175 episodes later, I get some incredible stories of people who are doing things that I had no idea that they were doing, and a lot of it is just because we talk in the barbershop or we talk in, you know, sports events, sporting events and that kind of stuff, but we just sometimes don't get to talk about some of the things that we get to do.
Speaker 2:And so that's why I'm so excited about our conversation today and us being able to talk, and just you know the things that you've been able to do, and so I'm going to give you the opportunity right now to just tell your story and tell us you know not just what you do, but who you are and how you became the man that you are today. And then I mean, you just told me you're getting ready to get married and so excited about you know that chapter of life and what that means and what does that mean with the family and all those wonderful things that you kind of have a vision of what that's going to look like. And then how do we come behind you as a community and say let's make this work in a way that just not only lets you be an example but then lets you thrive as well, and so go ahead and start your story wherever it starts at, and then we'll just continue to move on from there.
Speaker 1:So thanks, yeah, absolutely. I do want to say, dr B, just to jump off of what you said, what you're doing is so important because you really are a conduit between all of these different people doing different things. And you said you just took 18 people down to Alabama. You guys got to walk the bridge that we saw in the movie Selma and it's so important to really understand. You know, listen, we are not as different as we make ourselves out to be. No, we all have, you know, some kind make ourselves out to be. No, no, we all have, you know, some kind of commonality to us.
Speaker 1:So what you do in the podcast and the name is beautiful journey to freedom. Because the journey, you know, you hope the journey at some point ends with you actually finding the freedom, whatever the freedom means to you. That can be a financial freedom, emotional freedom, intellectual freedom, whatever that means for you, historical freedom. And I think it's just so important to have these conversations, to take those trips, to do all of that type of stuff. So you are becoming a conduit, I would say, because you're connecting all of these different people through these conversations that are very, very important Because, like you just said, they're no longer remaining inside the barbershop. We're trying to now get this out right. Spread this information, so it's beautiful. So thank you for doing this, man. I'm happy to be here. I'm looking forward to talking.
Speaker 2:Excited. Yes, so tell us about who is Dante.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, yes sir. So, dr B, I am a child. My mother had seven children. She is from New York originally but I'm from Virginia. I was born in Surry County, virginia. It's a very, very small town. It's 6,000 people in the county, so very small area, and that's where I was rooted initially. So she had her first six children in New York, moved to Virginia, met my dad, had me when she was 29. So at 29, she had her first six children in New York, moved to Virginia, met my dad, had me when she was 29. So at 29, she had seven children, which is Wow, wow, wow is exactly the response I have now as a 31 year old man.
Speaker 1:I just can't imagine having that many children at 31 years old. She was 29 when she didn't finish high school. My father didn't finish high school, so education was not something that we were. Clearly we didn't know a lot about it. But what I will say is that, you know, she was a very loving person, she was a sweet person and she did try her best. She just she didn't have a lot of support.
Speaker 1:So that's where I started, you know, in a household with six older siblings chasing after them and just running around playing video games, playing sports and, to my knowledge, at that point I had a pretty happy childhood. I didn't know what was around the corner for me, I didn't know what was going on and, you know, most times there's always a tribulation that's right there waiting for you. No matter where you are in life, you can be at the highest high. A tribulation can just pop up on you. No matter where you are in life, you can be at the highest high. A tribulation can just pop up on you.
Speaker 1:So at that point, when I was four, we all got removed from the house and we got dispersed to different homes and my journey really started from there. And that's when things kind of just took a turn and it became a little bit more difficult. And I lived with a grandmother for a while and then she got sick, lived with a cousin for a while. That didn't work out because of what she was going through. So I kind of popped around different places, stayed with my dad for a couple of years and that didn't work out because he was going through certain things too, and so I was just kind of being moved around place to place to place.
Speaker 1:And when you're displaced so much, you know, as a young person, a lot of emotional trauma is attached to that. You feel abandoned to a degree and you have to deal with that as you deal with it and you just try to wonder, okay, well, what am I doing incorrectly as a child? So that was my start, you know, and the journey kind of went from there and we can dig more into that. But I eventually went to college, got a bachelor's degree, I went to law school, got a law degree and passed the bar examination, which is what you have to become a licensed attorney. And I just kind of went from there and I kept going and it's a lot in between that, but that's the bird's eye view of it.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's Dr B and let me ask you something just here real quick. Are you tired of doing the same thing over and over and not getting the results you want? Are you serious about making some changes this year that will impact you in a huge way? Maybe you're putting out content right now and it's not turning into customers. Or maybe you're uploading videos, but you're not sure why or how it's even going to help. You know, I see a lot of people that are making a whole bunch of cold calls to the wrong people and no one's answering. No one wants to talk to you. It might just be that you're just doing what you've been doing and crossing your fingers hoping it finally works this year, but let me tell you what. That is not a strategy and it will continue not to work.
Speaker 2:That's why I created the podcasting challenge and it's coming up fast. In just a few days, I'm going to walk you through the mindset, the tool set and the skill set you need to create a powerful podcast. That's right, a podcast. You won't believe what a podcast can do, one that builds real value and creates new clients. And if you grab a VIP ticket, you'll get to join me for a daily Zoom Q&A sessions where I'll personally answer your questions and help you tailor everything to your goals. This is your moment. This is your year. Go to thepodcastingchallengecom right now and save your seat. The link is in the show notes and the description. Thank you for watching these podcasts. Now let's get back to the conversation. Oh my gosh, wow. So much to impact there.
Speaker 1:A lot to impact. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:And you're 31. So I was born in the 60s and so I have eight children, and out of the eight children that I have, my oldest is 36. He works for Pop Pixar. I have a 35-year-old, my youngest is 29. So you would fit right in the middle of, which is just so cool because, you know, as I asked them questions, and so three of the three of the uh folks of those 18 folks that I got to go to Alabama were my boys, you know. So I have five boys and three girls. Uh, and them come back. My 36-year-old came, a 35-year-old came, and then, oh, so I had those two, and then I had two son-in-laws, so my daughter's- husband were able to come.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. And so you know. So they're kind of in that same age group and to see what they're doing now and seeing how they progress. And you know, so proud of you for the things you're doing at such a young age with all the, all the stuff that you had in there I was. I did a show that you'll want to look up. That James Smith is the guy who did it. He was an attorney, a prominent attorney in North Carolina back in the likes and 90s, one of the few black attorneys that were there and just super prominent. He got into gambling and he said I'm going to kill myself. He has his 20.
Speaker 1:He's going to shoot himself in the head, looks across the street, sees a bank and decides, instead of killing myself, I'm going to go rob the bank, the lesser of two evils, huh yeah.
Speaker 2:So he's driving home from the bank and he gets pulled over because he's driving erratically and the policeman says you know, mr James, you need to slow down. You need to calm down because they all know he's the attorney right. So they let him go. He gets pulled over again, they let him go again, goes home and they finally realize he's the one who robbed the bank, ends up spending like seven or eight years in prison and then comes out and now he's like one of the largest churches as a pastor, that's in.
Speaker 2:But just to think of the you know the things that we go through and the struggles that can still turn into these amazing things. So I would love to kind of just if you can impact your identity during this time, because that's got to be. When I think of somebody who's being displaced, or all these different schools you're going to and all these different friends that you're going to living with different relatives, how does that impact the identity? Like, if you think back to your identity as a child and going through this, was there something that was constant, that said I have this to achieve. Or there was a, I mean, you went to college in which probably didn't seem likely. I don't know how many of your six brothers and sisters were able to go to college, yeah, so what was different about you, that had that identity, that allowed you to to excel.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't necessarily know if there's a there's this one answer to what I have to be, but what I will tell you is that at a very early age I cared so much about academia and I cared about reading a whole lot. When I was nine, they put me into the local paper because I read over 200 books. When I was in fourth grade I was just an avid reader. As a matter of fact, I can pull the thing for you right here. This is what they did when I was in fourth grade. I cared so much about reading and academia and I was a very competitive person. You know I knew at that point they said oh hey, dante, this is the record for the last child who read this many books. If you read this many, you can break this record, and I just went all for it.
Speaker 1:So I cared about grades, I cared about competition, I like sports and that's kind of how I developed who I was as a person. I just held on to that. No matter where I went, I always made friends. I could fit in pretty well. If you're smart and you can play sports and you've got a nice personality, you're going to be okay pretty much in life, you'll be all right. So I was always fine. I had no problems making friends. I still have great friends from all these different areas where I live, but I just I cared so much about sports and academia and I just wanted to be competent. I just cared about being competent, that's all I cared about, and so I knew, if I stuck with that, you can drop someone like me into different atmospheres.
Speaker 1:But if I can just adapt to the atmosphere and I care about being a competent person, I think I will be OK. And I was, and that's really what I cared about.
Speaker 2:What's so amazing about that? Because, if success leaves clues and you know, through my life you try to find people that are successful and it is all come down to, I think think one of the number one traits of a successful person is who you associate with, who you hang around, and when you tell me by the you know, by the nine years old you're reading 200 books, that's 200 associations, that you had that most of the people didn't have, because you're learning from the experiences of 200 different people and that ability to read and to continue to read and that love for reading continue going will just take a person who's here like that all day long because you're interested in what everybody else is doing, not just on you.
Speaker 2:And I would probably be able to get that if we looked at your family and compared the amount of books that they read compared to what you read.
Speaker 1:Probably a stark difference.
Speaker 2:A huge difference, you know. I guess the other part of it is like who in your life was encouraging you? You know the competition is great and you know I know a lot of us talk about sports so much and you know, sometimes you know, as you're getting ready to have a family and you know we go to the bar, we were around people They'll know more stats about, like a Michael Jordan or LeBron James or you know Kobe Bryant or all these folks that and then they'll know about their own kids and their own family things that are going on.
Speaker 2:You know the sports were a part of it, which I think is important. I was an athlete and it paid for college and stuff for me, but at the same time I'm not like always talking to. I don't want any other man's name on the back of my jersey, right, I want my name on the back of my jersey. So how did that progress for you? That you were able to find that you know the love of reading and then be able to not just get caught up into the community and the normal things that our culture tends to do all the time?
Speaker 1:I really wanted to see whether or not I was someone who could do something that was beyond what even I believed I could do. So I was very self-driven. So no one ever told me Dante, do your work, I do my work. It's perfectly fine, you know, I will take care of it, because I want to feel as though I'm competing with people around me. I'm like you know, these people are smart, they're very intelligent, and I just want to be someone who can stand next to the Dr B's of the world and say, ok, we can have a conversation, we can have dialogue, and I actually belong here because I put the work in to be here, and so I just wanted to. I really wanted to be competent. Now, a large part of it that occurred for me too. When I was four years of age, dr B and I think this is the person that you should definitely bring on the podcast my brother took my bicycle and he ran out into the street with the bicycle. My brother took my bicycle and he ran out into the street with the bicycle, and so I chase after him. And again, I'm four years of age. My mother has seven children in the house. She can't look after everybody and keep a lot of single child Right. So I chase him into the street and at the same time this vehicle pulls up and the vehicle stops and this woman gets out and almost like a halo was over her head, I swear. And she pushes back into the yard and she says man, your kids are out here playing in the street. You should really keep your eyes on them. So I have seven kids. I'm sorry, I'm trying, I'm trying. And that woman happened to be a judge. The black woman was a judge. And so from there she goes and she buys this big van to start transporting us to the skating rink and the swimming pool and football games, just spending time with us. And it was incredible because I said who is this woman and why is she doing all of this? Is she a distant cousin? Who is she to us? And we had no blood relation. But this woman was a judge, her husband was a lawyer, both her sons were attorneys, and so we developed this bond at that age and it just kind of took off from there. So we developed this bond at that age and it just kind of took off from there. We kept in touch.
Speaker 1:Later on in life, when I was 15, I was in a very, very bad spot where I was looking at going to a group home or a shelter. She stepped in with her husband and they allowed me to live with them at 15. So my last two or three years in high school I lived with them. That's really where I began to take off. At that point I was in that environment. The osmosis effect played a role and I got to see people who really worked hard, who were very much like me. They love books, they love cultural competency. I mean these were the premier people in my life. I thought they were amazing. They are still amazing. So that's really where you know.
Speaker 1:Once I got there I said, okay, I got a chance. I got a chance. Now, you know, college maybe wasn't on my radar beforehand, but I got a chance and she was someone. She's from Louisiana, baton Rouge, and she moved to Virginia after she finished law school at LSU. Then she lived in DC for a little while. She came to Virginia, met her husband and she's like a historical woman out here. She was the first black judge in a certain area in Virginia. She was the first black elected commons attorney which is a prosecutor in a certain area in Virginia and she's just an incredible person. So if you look at the website, that's her next to me on the website. So if you look at the website, that's her next to me on the website. Our story has been covered by the local paper, by the Christian Broadcasting Network, and you know it's really been an amazing connection that I've had with her.
Speaker 2:So that's really where I think I took off. When you think of, like, how God places us in different places that allow us to be able to thrive. And then you know back to my associations, right, not only association but an example. You know, like when you see somebody like that that is taking you in, you believe everything's possible. A lady who came from Louisiana if she could do all this?
Speaker 1:how could I not be able to do that? I can show you that picture of her in law school. It is her and one other black woman and about 30 or 40 white men. There's no black men there, it's just two black women and about 30 or 40 white men, and she had to go through all of that. So please continue.
Speaker 2:I just want to tell you, yeah, when she did it in the time in our country, in Louisiana, in the South.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh man, yeah, I can't wait to interview her. She'll have me on the podcast. She's phenomenal. She's phenomenal, but then also just thinking about the experiences. Is that other part, when success leaves clues? You think of the experiences that you were able to now have as a result of you running out into the street that you wouldn't have had, like how you know how many of us get to end up going to the swimming pool and learning how to swim, and learning how to do up in a van and probably going to museums, all kinds of things that sounds like in your, in your world, as your mom was doing the best that she could, that those things would not have happened.
Speaker 2:Those things would not have been part of your trajectory, into where you're at and just to realize that if we can create experiences, if we can create examples, if we can be those examples and be those experiences and and have help people with those associations, what an amazing. So you take off. You know, you have an example. She lets you live with her. You're still reading, you're meeting new people and you decide to go to college. Did you already know that you wanted to be an attorney? Was it because of, maybe, her, or was it just that was something you thought, hey, this is what I'm going to go. Do I mean? Did you know that when you went to college? Or you found that out?
Speaker 1:Oh no, oh no, dr Dean. So again I was at that point. I said, well, you know, okay, I actually got here. I got in, you know, I'm here, I'm doing fine. But in my mind I thought my luck would run out at some point because I had been so unlucky early on in life and so much had happened. And so I said, okay, well, at some point something's going to happen, Like maybe I will make it through college, maybe I will somehow flunk out, I don't know, something's going to happen and so this is not going to work out for me. But then I get there and I thrive, I do very well in college, and I get to my senior year and I said, oh, hey, listen, I'm going to take the LSAT. He says, ok, go for it, I'm going to do it really. He said, ok, you should definitely do it.
Speaker 1:Go for it. I said I'm going to apply to Howard University because that's where your son went. That's I'm going to go. Ok, you can get in, down to your, your brilliant, you're going to be fine, go ahead and do it. And so I signed up for this LSAT class and it was like every Tuesday from 6 pm to 10 pm, very boring, very mundane, but necessary, yeah, professor. And so I take the LSAT and I do well, and I get into maybe 10 or 11 law schools and Howard's. One of them didn't choose Howard, but Howard was the first one that accepted me and I was very happy about that. I felt good, like I felt that, okay, wow, I got into the same law school as one of her sons. This feels great.
Speaker 1:And I chose to go to law school in North Carolina central and Durham, north Carolina and I had a great experience there. I made some really, really great friends that I love to death, and it just went from there. Now, when I got into law school, the first week is called Law School 101. It's the orientation to get you comfortable if that's even the word you can use with law school, to acclimate you to what law school is, and I recall the older students and the professors saying a third of your class is not going to make it through the first year, and we had 180 people and they were not at all incorrect. After, after the first year, we lost roughly about 60 people and by the third of the class, and I recall saying OK, you know what? Here is where I finally tap out. This is probably going to be it, right, but even even me getting here is so beyond belief that if it does not work out, I don't think they would be disappointed in me, so that was my mind for like the first half of the year.
Speaker 1:But I did fine, I did well. Actually, I finished with honors. I did perfectly fine, perfectly fine. And so now I begin to be convinced that, okay, this is no longer luck. There's probably maybe some luck into how you met this woman, but this has to be some level of destiny that was driven by God or divine intervention, because you got here and you didn't struggle your way through. You actually did very well and you're doing very well, and it not what you thought. I thought it'd be an insurmountable mountain that I just could not even begin to think about summoning, but that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1:I did it was challenging very challenging, but I did well. I had good support, good friends, so that's what I came from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, somebody who reads 200 books when they're nine years old and I'm thinking probably close to a thousand books by the time you're at this point where you're yeah, I still read, I love it, yeah, yeah, oh my gosh. And so so you make it through law school and then you decide this is what I want to do. So now your undergraduate degree. What was that? In Criminal justice? So, criminal justice. So you were in the law enforcement, criminal justice side of the world Say, okay, I'm going to go to law school, I'm going to become an attorney. What kind of attorney did you decide that? I mean, what kind of attorney are you? I guess?
Speaker 1:Yes, I do criminal defense.
Speaker 2:And I'm a prosecutor.
Speaker 1:Yes sir, so I do all criminal. Well, I do mostly criminal law. I do personal injury too, which is like auto accidents, things like that, but primarily criminal law is what I do.
Speaker 2:Okay, Gotcha. And then, and what is like? Now that you're, you went back to Virginia, so you left North Carolina, got done with school and I'm not hanging out in North Carolina for the rest of my life. I'm going back to go back home. What has life been like since? Since you've graduated and now you're an attorney and now you're working and you know, I know, you have probably have many other goals and dreams I mean, you're 31. So there's got to be, you know, a set thought or things you want to achieve. What does that look like for you?
Speaker 1:So when I returned to Virginia, it was in the really in the midst of COVID. I think it was 2020 when I May of 2020 when I initially returned, so it looked a lot different, you know, than the way it looks right now. The, the courts were pretty much closed for the most part.
Speaker 1:You know, we had some restrictions and we did some cases when I, when I got here, but, yeah, when I got here, I actually before I came back to Virginia, dr B, I was living in New York for a year, in New Jersey for a year, and I was licensed to practice law in New York, and so I was working for a company out there. And when COVID occurred this is maybe March of 2020, maybe, I guess and so we go remote and I think I stayed in New Jersey at my apartment for maybe four to six weeks and I said, ok, well, I could go back to Virginia. It's a very rural area, won't be as many restrictions and I can still work while I'm down here. And so I came to Virginia and while I'm here, I'm working. I said, hey, I'm going to take the Virginia bar exam to see if I can get licensed here, because my license in New York didn't qualify me to practice law in Virginia. These are different bar exams. And she says well, you can take a second bar exam. And I said well, you know, if I don't pass, option and a choice to make to see whether or not I actually want to return to Virginia and try to build on the legacy that you all have left here. And so that was my primary goal. And so I just and you know, she cried the day that I passed Virginia because it was like, ok, I have a son that's now coming back to Virginia to actually be an attorney and I think that was a very, very monumental moment for her. And I recall her crying and she called me oh my God, you passed, you passed, you passed, and it was very beautiful, it was very beautiful, very beautiful, it was very beautiful.
Speaker 1:And so I get back to Virginia and she makes a phone call to a friend who is now a friend of mine and all like an older brother, mentor, vincent Robertson, and he said hey, I got a job for you here as a prosecutor. And I said I've never done one trial in my entire life. I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. He says well, you'll learn, don't worry about it. You know it's trial by fire, you'll figure it out and I'm going to be here to kind of walk you through everything. And so I started there. I started working there. I had no idea what I was doing, made a fool of myself in my first trial, but you know, I got better, learned the ropes. He taught me a whole lot. His second in command, regina Sykes, was fantastic. She taught me a whole lot and eventually I kind of find my footing as a trial attorney and I become a lot more comfortable with what I was doing.
Speaker 1:And I did that for about three years and I'm leaving and I say, hey, talk to my mom at this point. I said what do you think about actually opening a law firm? Like you know, you've been kind of in semi-retirement mode for the last few years, but you're still enjoying it. We should join forces. And she was all for it at that point because I had my experience, I had proven myself and, as a matter of fact, I prosecuted in the same county where she used to be a judge. Oh, wow, okay. So you know we had that connection and it went from there. We opened a firm and then I got engaged a year after that and you know, now I'm there working hard, working long hours, having a good time helping people, trying to fight for people, advocating for folks. So it's been good.
Speaker 2:I love it. You're 31 years old, it's been good, I love it. You're 31 years old and our country has changed since. You know I kind of started out talking about, you know, alabama. You've been to North Carolina and I don't know if I've ever even asked anybody this. You know, cause I don't know how many.
Speaker 2:You know I've had some young folks on, but was there awareness that you were black and that the experiences that you had did that shape anything that you did or change? You know how you were doing things, or did you have to compete to get where you're at differently than what you thought other folks did? You know, cause I know for me, as I, you know, there was a whole lot of. You know my mom and dad moved us to a white neighborhood. We had names written on walls and everything else. We had to fight because of it, but I tried to keep my kids where. It didn't matter, and then they still said it did. But I would love to hear your experience on that, maybe even like the fraternity that you decided to pledge to and that kind of stuff. How is your experience of being a black man at 31 maybe different than what you see the rest of society as?
Speaker 1:So my experience, I think, has been I don't know whether it's been unique or not as as being, you know, a young black man, and at least in my era. What I will say is that I was very much aware of my station in life and my older brother, chris, when I was in ninth grade, told me hey, listen, man, I'll pay you 50 bucks If you read the autobiography of Malcolm X. I said I'll read it for free, like you know, like I'll just read it, I'll just read the book for free. And I recall reading that book when I was 13, 13 to 14. And the book may be just three or 400 pages long, but it's a fantastic book, fantastic memoir. You learn about stories of him and Red Fox back in the day when they knew each other and all these different things.
Speaker 1:When I read that book my mind was open to okay, this is not actually the way things, the way you believe things work and the way you believe you were viewed upon by society. Perhaps it's not actually that way. Dante and I just began to delve further into it, into the history, and reading other books, the Miseducation of the Negro, all of these different books that I just really started to check into and I just got further and further into it to try to fully understand where I was situated and really understanding, too, that you know, education takes you a long way. It opens certain doors, puts you in certain rooms. Like you just said, the conference you went to, there were 30 blacks there of 400 people or so is what you said. So it'll put you in certain rooms if you really, you really really open yourself, open your mind to it. But you should not forget that if you are in this room, somebody else is not in the room and you need to try your best to bring them into the room yeah and so that's where my mind went.
Speaker 1:and I also recall in my fraternity we did a what we call a forum. We would invite people out from the campus and we would have this open debate and my forum topic that time that year was Malcolm versus Martin Luther King. You know, whose side are you on, whose perspective do you agree with, and people they would raise their hand and they would say certain things and say why they agreed. And so I was super aware you know of my position in life and my station, and I took it very seriously and I respected it very much and I still do. And I think it's very important that we educate ourselves on our history, and there's so much history that I don't know and that I'm never going to know, because I can tell you the big names I can give you the Martins and the Malcolms and people like that, but there are so many that I don't know about and I shouldn't know about, and at 31, I can't use my age as an excuse because I should know more and I gotta do better. So I'm trying to do better.
Speaker 2:oh, my gosh. Well, that's cool. I mean the, the awareness is there, but then still knowing, like you said, your station and and the social economic side of it, and I'd love to have you come down to Alabama with us.
Speaker 1:Let me know Dr B, I have a really, really good friend, like an uncle, who'd be a great person for this podcast as well. He has a fantastic story, richard Dickerson, who has a house down there, still, I believe and he knows all about all about Alabama. He has, I mean, this guy has experience in politics that go way back to the eighties and stuff, and so you know he and I would just sit back and talk about all of this stuff, have a good conversation and yeah, so I listen if you tell me he would love to come as well, because he's all about that stuff, he loves books, he can even share things that we don't get to.
Speaker 2:That we don't know about that. Yeah, you know, as Bryan Stevenson made the your one of our. You know, culminating things that we do is in Montgomery. We go down to the Bryan Stevenson Equal Justice Museum and you know, that is just an experience that you know. You live in Virginia so you've probably been to the African-American Museum that's in Washington DC, but there's nothing like the Equal Justice Museum.
Speaker 1:I've been to both.
Speaker 2:The African-American Museum is good, but it doesn't put you into the South, in the 18, 1900s, where slavery was prevalent.
Speaker 2:I mean it talks about it, but the equal justice meeting makes you feel like you're there, Like you walk through there and go oh my God, this is for real. They have a video of Emmett Till and all the things that went on there and then so it goes through the stages of the African-American slave trade and then it ends up with mass incarceration. So you literally sit down at like the glass where you pick up a phone, and then there's an inmate. I mean, you know, it's a video of an inmate that talks to you about him being incarcerated and what he went through. It all Wow.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, wow, wow. It is that's deep Wow.
Speaker 2:There's a time we go down to Selma, we go over the Pettus Bridge and then we're in Birmingham and we're going through all the way the bombings were. I mean it's just yeah, it's one of those things that everybody all of us should do at one point in our lives.
Speaker 2:I would love to make that trip. When you think about, like health, you know I can tell that you, you, you, you care about your health and the things that that make that. What are some of the things that you do that allow you to have the energy to be able to do and work and, you know, spend all these hours trying to help people. You know, and there's so many of us. They say our average age is like 72. I hope it's a lot longer, because I'm 60 now. I hope I live a lot longer than 12 years.
Speaker 1:You got 40, 50 years.
Speaker 2:My dad is 86 and he's still running in track meets, so I feel pretty good about it. What are some of the things? Because our culture sometimes doesn't do enough to stay healthy. What are some things that you've done?
Speaker 1:I think one of the first things that I have to tell myself and I have to really make myself adhere to this principle is that you really need to get sleep. That's the bedrock of it all. You need to get six, seven, eight hours. Get some sleep. Number one, because during that process all of this deep healing occurs at a very, very cellular level. So that's the first thing Try to get some sleep.
Speaker 1:I know we want to live in the culture where it's hustle culture and you want to work 24-7. And we just can't do that. I work a lot of hours. I certainly do, but only because I sleep at least six to seven hours most nights. So if I can get 14 hours of work in, then that's a pretty good day for me. You know I really like doing stuff like that, but I can't do it without sleep. That's the first thing.
Speaker 1:The second thing I would say is that keep it simple, just keep it simple. People want to adhere to all of these different diet programs and workout regimens and it's very complicated. On this day, I do 25 different workouts. On the next day, I do 17 workouts. I'm going to add three more on the Wednesday. It's cheap and simple. Go outside and just go for a light run, go for a walk, walk with your partner, just do simple stuff. Activity is the most important thing. Constant activity, I would say, is the most important thing. Stagnation being still for too long is obviously going to be a killer because it's a silent killer.
Speaker 1:We have in our community. We have hypertension, high blood pressure, we have all diabetes. I mean, you know, we, we are pretty much predisposed to those, to those disorders. So I would say, as far as your workouts, just keep it simple. You know, say I'm going to go for a 30 minute walk a day, hey, I'm gonna go. And you know, just move a few weights, a few free weights, do a couple of the machines, maybe jump on the elliptical, jump on the bike, do a few minutes there Enough where it's sustainable. And you're making this gradual progress. We have a hard time with gradual progress. We say, listen, I got to jump from here to the moon, yeah, progress. We say, listen, I got to jump from here to the moon, yeah.
Speaker 1:If I miss the stars, I don't care, I just want to hit the moon. The stars are also nice, don't forget about those. Clouds are nice, the stars are nice. The air up there is probably a little bit more thin, but it's still nice. Just try to enjoy it at different levels.
Speaker 1:I just keep it very simple, dr B, I will go for 30 minute jog, maybe do some pushups, maybe do some pullups. Sometimes I'll just go walk, sometimes I'll go and do calisthenics. You know, just regular, I do regular stuff. I don't do anything that's very complicated, I just try to be consistent with it, that's it. You know very complicated, I just try to be consistent with it, that's it. I don't do the best. I try to do very well and be very disciplined. As far as my eating, I do well for the most part, but I got my vices. I like ice cream, love ice cream, can't get over it. I like apple pie Just can't get over it. It's just certain stuff that you really enjoy. You come from a certain type of household and, again, the woman that I was with she was from Louisiana and you know she can cook. Oh, I bet Fried chicken, all the goods. We had some yesterday here for Memorial Day.
Speaker 2:She can make some good stuff.
Speaker 1:But I just say, you know, health wise, keep it simple as far as your workouts. Be aware you, you know, get a blood pressure monitor. Be, just be aware, take some supplements, take omega-3s for your heart, fish oil, take multivitamins. If you're a man or a woman, just keep it. Don't try to overdo it. You can add things into your regimen as you go along, but don't say, hey, I to go buy every single piece of workout gear just to even know. Just go buy a pair of shoes. Shoes work just fine, just fine, and to see, you see where you go from there.
Speaker 1:Get your checkups. You got to get, you got to get screenings at certain ages. Be I mean be on top of that, because we know that prostate cancer is a major issue for black men. I can, maybe men in general, but I know certainly it is for us Black men. Maybe men in general, but I know certainly it is for us Black men. Yeah, so get your screenings, go get your blood work done a couple times a year and just see what's going on inside your body. And just don't ignore your temple, because this is a vehicle and it's temporary. We've got to be here as long as it allows us to be here. So just do a little bit to help it. Get your oil changed every so often. That's what I say. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:This question is going to be fun to ask, because you're not there yet, you haven't been married yet you don't have the family and all the dynamics that go into it yet.
Speaker 2:But you've seen and seen a lot of examples of what seems to work, what doesn't work, what makes it hard, what makes it easy. You've seen, you know relationships, like I did. I was doing a podcast on Sundays. It was called why Love Weight. Eyeopening to me that it said that almost 49 point something percent of black women over the age of 40, uh, have never been married, and out of that, 75% of them have at least one child.
Speaker 2:And when you think of and then the whole show is based on what women think about men and who we are as black men and what, what we're supposed to be. So I would love to know from you, like what type of, based on all your experiences and all the things that you believe you're going to do because you don't know, because it's just you know all you could do is, you know, come up with what you think, how, how do you plan on being the best husband and eventually probably dad that you could possibly be? What are some things that you've already set up in your mind? Because you're a planner, I know that already about you, yeah, so I mean, this is something you've thought about and so maybe share with us the man that you're up in. Then we'll come back in 10 years and we'll see how you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the way I view that, dr B, is that I have got to absolutely conquer who I am as a person to be what they need me to be. So not that I'm going to be invulnerable, because that's impossible, but I need to have such a strong foundation in who I am emotionally, physically, financially that whenever things begin to sway, they can just fall back on me, you know, and maybe I'll bend, but I'm not going to break Because, again, I'm not invulnerable. I'm not God, I'm not invincible, but I need to be very steadfast in who I am for them and if I do that, then I think we're going to be fine. And by that I mean making responsible decisions when it comes to our finances, when it comes to the way that I am towards my fiance, when it comes to her emotional wellbeing and being someone that's available for her to talk to and things of that nature to vent to, and eventually, when we have children, it'll be that as well when it comes to them, but also having expectations, I would say. You know, we tend to bury things down inside of us, because trauma teaches us to do that, and these things surface in a very ugly way if you allow them to, and I was someone that never wanted to allow my trauma to affect how I treat somebody else. That's just not like I. I have.
Speaker 1:I had to emotionally heal myself through my own experiences, which were nothing, nothing bad, you know, essentially as far as what I did to heal myself. But it was just me always having these conversations with myself, just building myself up. But it was just me always having these conversations with myself, just building myself up, building my confidence up and just being someone who would talk to people, learn from people and say, ok, cool, well, this person was able to deal with their trauma by doing this. All right, cool, dante. This other person dealt with it by, as you stated, the guy you were talking about. He did gambling, he robbed a bank. That was his trauma extracting itself from his body and saying, okay, this is how we're going to act it out and that's the absolute wrong way to do it and it's nothing to be ashamed of if you do those things. Don't rob a bank, obviously, but people live in shame whenever they do things that they're not proud of because, you know, trauma leads them to that.
Speaker 1:But I think their mistakes are not there. Our mistakes I make mistakes too. Our mistakes qualify us to help other people, and so having that mindset and my opinion, my perspective is is how I'm going to be able to be the person that my wife and eventual children need me to be, and that's how I go about what I do in life. I just that's how I carry myself, that's what I believe in and you know it's working so far. And I make mistakes. You know I don't make all the best decisions every single time, but I try to be very, very logical in my choices and make sure I'm not impacting anybody negatively whenever I make a choice, to make sure I'm not impacting anybody negatively whenever I make a choice.
Speaker 2:Yesterday I was able to interview a submarine captain whatever they are that spent eight years on a boat and all the days. But he's put together these leadership things and one of them is leadership inside of a family and I guess whatever they did in the Navy that said this is our mission. It was a one page and taking strategic plans and putting it all into one page no-transcript. But he said the thing that professionals do is we work so hard at what we do and we get involved in what we do that we say that our family is our priority. But what our actions show is not that, you know it's, it's that call that comes at seven o'clock at night and you're trying to, you know, work through something with. You know a client or somebody who's there because it's important and it's life and death for them and that kind of stuff. And then you know you you do that once and then you do it again, and then you do it again and pretty soon your wife's looking at you like I'm here Help, I would love you to spend time with me instead of spending that 10 minutes and saying you're going to have to wait till tomorrow. You know you're going to have to wait till then. And it's just being congruent.
Speaker 2:I think I went to Tony Robbins thing one time. He said the most powerful force in the universe is being congruent with the identity that you hold for yourself. And if that identity is saying that my family and my spouse is number one in my life, then do my actions show it. And is there a checklist that you put together that says, all right, this week I said you know, I want to have quality time with my spouse. I said you know I want to have quality time with my spouse and I promised her that I was going to spend five hours with her. You know, this week and I've spent one. You know what do I need to do next week? To either make up for that or just put that five hours in and don't let those continue to add up and have those balances and checks.
Speaker 2:If you do that, you're going to have an amazing relationship with you. If that's the priority, yeah, and there's nothing, you know, if you do that, then you're going to have an amazing life. And then when you kids I mean their kids say the same thing Is there a game night? Is there time we just spend together. Is that because that time that we let go away and it's not something that we do on purpose, it's not something that you know, it's just our lives and we get involved and you know you already have that great, amazing work ethic and now you're going to add another person to it and I'm sure she knows exactly what you do because she talks to you all the time right now. But it's easy to continue that and not add that extra time. So, whatever it's worth right now, as I'm saying that last question that I have, and then I'll find out from you what you. What we didn't talk about is just has faith played a part in your life and if so, what? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Certainly so. To take everybody back to that day where I met Judge Gamal, point next there, I always say, if she had driven by five seconds earlier or maybe a few seconds later, we never meet and perhaps I never become who I am, maybe I become something or maybe I become someone who is also, uh, just another person, you know, who fell to the system. You know, fell victim to societal influences, neighborhood influences, all that impact that young black men have to experience and try to overcome. So I always ask, well, why was I selected? I always ask well, why was I selected?
Speaker 1:Because you know you say, all right, well, we all have something special to give to the world. I always say that too we don't really know, unless there is something or somebody who can tap into that and really extract your potential from you, because it's hard for us to know as we're coming up. Okay, what should I be doing? We need somebody to guide us through all these different corridors in this labyrinth of life, and it's very difficult to know unless you have a guide. And luckily, I met her when I was four, had no idea that she would be this person for me and that her husband would be that person for me and that her sons would be these people for me. I had no idea and they couldn't have known either. I think you know they said, well, this is a great thing, these are very nice kids. And maybe it only goes as far as it goes and maybe that's where it stops, because there was no obligation to us whatsoever. And when I think about that and I think about the way faith actually works, I always say well, our experiences are meant to shape us, not break us. And that's what I live by. And I think, when you think about God, we always want to say well, we pray to God for the sunshine and we don't want the rain most times, and sometimes you get the rain because you need to appreciate the sunshine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I had to really change my mindset when I was a young man, dr B, because I was very upset that I had to experience all of those things and I thought that I was not loved by God. I said, why would I have to continue to experience this after that and this after that? And then you reach this place where you are eternally grateful for the tribulations because you found so much beauty in them and they shape who you are as a person, and without the tribulations you can never walk your current path. So you should actually be grateful for hard times and you should not try to avoid hard times, because the hard times created who you are and I think you know we're not going to ask God to give us only hard times. We're not going to ask for that because we're rational people for the most part.
Speaker 1:But we should be appreciative when we make it through something, because we all have the choice is to lay down, accept it and let the rest of the world walk over top of you and say, wow, what happened to him? He stopped, he chose to lay down. Or you take whatever is occurring to you in stride and you keep walking, and when somebody else is laying down, you say, hey, come on, get up, man, don't lay there, life is not done for you. You can keep going, get up. And that's the mentality that I've chosen to adopt a long time ago, and my mind worked this way when I was a teenager, and so I began to look at faith that way.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. What do we not talk about? That you want to make sure that our audience gets to hear or know about Dante and the things that you're doing and the things that you're continuing to do.
Speaker 1:Only that. I think we discussed everything really, dr B, but just that. I want people to understand their true potential in life, and I don't think we give ourselves enough credit. You know, I think we sell ourselves short and we choose to not chase what our dreams actually are because we're afraid of the boogeyman, which is failure. And there is no boogeyman, you know. Failure is certain, but how you deal with failure is actually what matters most. Failing isn't something to be ashamed of, but not trying is what you should be ashamed of. And so just that there's so much more that people have to offer the world and they're not allowing the beauty of their light to be seen. They have so much, they have so much, they have so much. And I know this because I was someone who you would have believed didn't have much to offer If you only looked at my background. Pluck me out of a group of people. You say, well, wow, this kid has a lot to offer, but pluck somebody else because they also have a lot to offer. So I would. I would say that, dr B, and I also.
Speaker 1:When I talk to my friends and I talk to particularly other men, black men, about these things I say whatever your internal battle is, you shouldn't try to avoid that. The battle is certain, so you really can't avoid it. Whether it's an internal battle, whether it's a psychological battle, whether it's a financial, physical battle, the battle cannot be avoided. So you may as well go ahead and embrace the battle and try to find the best weapon to use during the battle and the best weapon sometimes may be. You know, I'll grab the Bible or I'll get up. I'll get some more work done I got to keep working or I'll go talk to my partner because we just had a disagreement and we're not in a good space right now. This is a battle. It is a battle every single day that you're here, because you need to understand the fact that you have to fight to keep what you have and fight to get what you've always desired. So that's what I'll say. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, dante, thank you so much for coming on to sharing your experiences and your wisdom and your childhood, because that's not the things we always love to talk about, the things that we went through that make us who you are. You just talked about the battle, and one of the things I love to say is you don't have to do the battle alone. Sometimes we think, because of our pride and because maybe we've been shamed which is a horrible emotion of the shame that we have to do everything by ourselves. And there are folks like Dante, there are folks like myself that are out there, folks like the judge that helped you out in such a way, that want to and are able to help out. And so you know, don't try to do it alone. Reach out, we'll find somebody that you want. I guess I would say, if you're going to commit a crime which I don't say that you should and you should not but do it in Virginia, because then you can get an insurance.
Speaker 1:Give me a call. Give me a call, I'll try my best to help you, but do not commit crimes. I will not. I will never hear it's committing crimes.
Speaker 2:Absolutely do not, oh my gosh. But if you find yourself and you are there, oh my gosh, what an amazing man that you're becoming and that you have already gone through and that things and I just appreciate you spending the time with us today to share those things with us. And so, for those of you who have, this is maybe your first episode. You know, Dante, you know sent this out to you and you're watching it. Please subscribe, Please find somebody else in the, in the episodes that we have, that you can identify with, that you can either emulate some of the things they did or say I'm never going to do that because that's you know, I see what happened when this person went through this.
Speaker 2:We'd love to have you hit the notification, the subscribe button. We're going to continue to do this. I set out to do 100 black men in 2024 and we hit 105. And so you know, the goal now is, you know, hey, at some point we're going to get to a thousand black men who are successful, who are doing things that make a difference. And so, again, thank you, dante, for being on, thank you for, you know, just being part of the Journey to Freedom broadcast. You know what you, I believe, as I say this every episode, you are God's greatest gift. He loves you, if you allow him to, and we look forward to seeing you on the next one. You guys have an amazing, awesome, just incredible. Rest of your day.