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
My Raw Reaction to America’s Dark Past Our Alabama trip changed how I see America forever.
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Join Isaiah Thomas, a young Black man from Colorado, as he navigates Alabama’s civil rights history, from Birmingham’s bombed churches to Selma’s iconic bridge.
His raw reflections on fear, hope, and purpose in 2025 will move you to rethink your own path. This story sparks inspiration to engage with history and build a better future.
Walking where history happened changes you. That's the revelation at the heart of this powerful conversation with Isaiah Thomas, a Colorado youth minister who recently joined a civil rights pilgrimage through Alabama's landmarks of struggle and resistance.
The journey—spanning Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery—began with mixed emotions. "The excitement to go somewhere I've never been before," Isaiah reflects, "but also apprehension because of the state of the world and racial relations that aren't necessarily safe for everyone." This tension between curiosity and caution frames an experience that would ultimately transform his perspective on American history and his own purpose.
What makes this episode particularly compelling is the contrast between learning about civil rights in classrooms versus standing in the places where blood was shed for freedom. As Isaiah stands on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, he grapples with profound questions: "Did Dr. King know what was on the other side? Did they know the value of their lives walking across this bridge?" These moments of connection—touching the past instead of merely reading about it—bring history vividly alive.
The emotional core of the conversation emerges when Isaiah describes visiting the Equal Justice Initiative Museum, contrasting it with Washington DC's National Museum of African American History and Culture. While the latter celebrates Black achievement alongside acknowledging struggle, the EJI Museum confronts visitors with the full weight of America's racial violence. When a fellow traveler discovers his own family name among lynching victims, the past collapses into the present with stunning force.
Perhaps most thought-provoking is Isaiah's reflection on returning home: "I came home and never felt more like a slave—just working, continuing working the same way these people fought for our lives." The trip sparked a spiritual and vocational reckoning that challenges listeners to consider what they're willing to fight for beyond daily survival.
Ready to engage more deeply with stories that matter? Subscribe to the Journey to Freedom podcast and join us as we explore the intersections of faith, justice, and human dignity in our complicated world.
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The excitement to go somewhere I've never been before. I think it's important to go places you've never been. So Alabama and the South as a whole is somewhere I've never really visited. But I think on the other side of it was a little bit of apprehension, just because of the state of the world and kind of the racial relations that we're having that aren't necessarily safe for everyone. The Ku Klux Klan is still existing, those are all right. There's a lot going on in the world.
Speaker 1:And so I was like do I really want to go? Do I really want to put myself in a position, you know, like you know, I hadn't even researched sundown towns enough to know like the part of town we should be on, kind of those things. But putting all like angst and fear to the side, I just really wanted to have an opportunity just to learn about the city, learn about alabama. I had known some folks who were from there and so I just wanted to kind of get the full scope of what Alabama had to offer and what was going on there. And you always hear weird stories about the South, about how it's different and it's like a little different country within itself. So I just really wanted to explore the history of the world and what had happened there and what has perspired from, you know, martin Luther King, to the civil rights movement, to all those things. It's important just to kind of be where they were All right.
Speaker 2:Welcome to just another wonderful edition of the Journey to Freedom podcast, and this is our Alabama edition. And so, for those of you who have been kind of following along with our trip to Alabama and what we did and how we were able to go there, we combined the trip with an organization called Issachar, which is the leadership development in urban Denver, and so able to go out and really see what leaders are doing in our community, and so part of the trip was combining it with folks from Issachar and folks that we met from Journey to Freedom. Thank you to Grand Design for helping us with sponsoring some of the folks to be able to get out there. But just thinking about the trip and thinking about what we do and today I get to talk to Mr Isaiah Thomas, and Isaiah is a native here in Colorado and has just been doing some phenomenal things and was able to go on the trip, and so I was wanting to do a podcast with Isaiah anyways, and so this is a great opportunity just to have him to be able to talk. We've become friends, we've been able to just talk about a whole lot of things that happened in our lives, and this trip just happened to intersect, and so we went on. You know, in the end of January, first of February, and so we went on. You know, in the end of January, first of February, there were 27 of us that ventured over to starting out in Birmingham, then Selma, then Montgomery, and it was really. We were talking about reconciliation and justice and what justice means, as well as you know, civil rights and what does it mean in 2025, different than 2024? And you know, yesterday, or you'll see on the podcast, if you look up the podcast from Kellen, you'll see somebody that you know is getting his life going and has his businesses and that kind of stuff. And then you know there's folks that are. You know, we had Josh, who's in his early 30s, and now we have, you know, isaiah, who's, you know's some of the younger generation, who wasn't alive.
Speaker 2:I can't really say I was alive In the 1960s, I was born in 65, but I can't say I can remember from 65 to 70 and everything that went on, because I was three years old. I remember TV shows. I think our memory plays so many tricks on us. Isaiah, like I remember because I saw it on TV. But did I see it on TV in 1967? Or did. I see it on TV in 1987 when it was a repeat of the TV show Right. Then I'm like, oh, I remember that. No, you don't. I didn't remember hardly anything when I was a three, or maybe I do, you know, because our brains just play this.
Speaker 2:But I really want to talk about, you know, the trip and where we want to go and kind of the. You know what led up to it before we actually jump into the trip. You know, I say, can you just tell us your story? Tell us your or I guess the origin story is what we call it now and you know what was life like when you grew up. I know you were a pastor's kid and you know maybe that's a little bit different than other folks in schools that you went to and all those wonderful things. And maybe we'll start out there and then we'll just kind of chop it up after that. So thank you for being on the show, thank you for willing to share with us all these wonderful things that are going on, not only in your life now but as a result of the trip. So the floor is yours. Can't wait to hear what you got.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for this opportunity. Yeah, as you were saying, I'm a passionate kid. I grew up in Colorado, mostly in Aurora. I can't say I'm a Denver native. Didn't really grow up in Denver like that, mostly the east side of Aurora. Did go to George Washington High School. Yeah, grew up in a Black household. Both my parents are Black, and so just kind of the dynamic of just pastoral living, Christianity, living like church every day, almost every day of the week, to also just figuring things out. Colorado is a different place and so, yeah, I grew up with like a village, not just within the dynamic of church, but just my family. A lot of my grandparents helped raise me. You know watching me when my parents were at work.
Speaker 1:I have an older sister and younger brother. I'm the middle child. My brother is 17. He'll graduate high school here shortly, probably in the next year or so. And then my sister is 14 months older than me and she lives in Oklahoma and she's been there since 2015.
Speaker 1:And so she's just, yeah, living her life, got married, all the things and I'm figuring out my life here, been doing mostly youth ministry for the last decade since leaving high school. I originally wanted to go to the military. That didn't pan out the way I thought it was going to, unfortunately just because of a medical condition. And so I've just really been trusting God with my life and just really been figuring out day by day did some staying with Young Life, youth for Christ, working kind of across the city kind of a Swiss army knife? When it comes to things, I'm kind of plugged in a little to a lot of places, whether it's church or community or outreach or just you know anywhere I can plug myself into. But yeah, man, I just I'm just trying to take it day by day, moment by moment.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. The dynamic you said you went to George Washington High School. Is that what you said I did? Okay, so you went to GW, and so that's in the era when I was growing up. It was a predominantly black high school. I don't know what the dynamics were when you went in there, and so did you have just kind of getting the lay of the land? Did you have a lot of, maybe, black history or talk about the things that had happened? Did you have some, you know, knowledge of what Alabama was probably going to look like? You know, what I was thinking yesterday was, as I was, you know, doing a podcast.
Speaker 2:I can't remember from 1970 when I started elementary school because we lived in Park Hill and then my dad got an affirmative action job and so we moved out to like I-25 and Arapahoe Road and so I went to Cherry Creek High School, so there were like 35 folks of color in the whole 3,000, 3,500 school that I went to. I thought it was a bad, it was just, it was what it is, but we didn't learn anything about Black history. In fact, from my 1970, through my PhD, through my doctorate, I don't remember ever having a Black teacher, I've had some Black administrators and that kind of stuff, and so you know that just everything we got was from relatives and from people. And so you know that just everything we got was from relatives and from people, and so I had a viewpoint of the South probably different than maybe you had, and so maybe kind of walk us through or talk about, you know, maybe some of the things you might have learned just by growing up in the community you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So I have a completely different kind of growing up. So the first school I went to was a was a black private school in Parqueo, and so I had all black teachers for my first couple of years of school, from kindergarten to second grade basically, and so we learned, you know, the preamble, we learned the black national anthem, we learned kind of black history, numbers one through a hundred in Spanish and in English, so we learned just like kind of like just what it meant to be American really. And then a culture shock of moving to Castle Rock and living there for a couple of years as well and it being kind of the complete different. We didn't really learn anything about black history. We didn't really learn anything about. We learned about history. We learned about how to play chess, just kind of like a whole different dynamic. So everyone was in this entire school was required to learn how to play chess, and so it's just two different dichotomies of like a Black excellent and honoring who you are and learning kind of the facets of life of both different cultures to kind of just a white privileged community, because we lived in a community where we were me and my sister were maybe two out of five or six people of color in Castle Rock and this is before it kind of got developed too. So it's completely different now. But Black history was kind of embedded in who we were from early into our childhood.
Speaker 1:On. From there I've had black teachers far and few since then. So I think when I moved into, we moved back to Denver, slash, Aurora, like the Lowry area we had a plethora of students that have different colors, but maybe one or two different black people of color or people of color in elementary school and then went to a private middle school for a couple years and they had different people of color there but they were more Middle Eastern. So that was different dynamic. And then my last year I went to Prairie and that I had again a plethora of different teachers of different colors. And then in high school I had, funny enough, just a white person teaching Black history, but she loved people of color and she was really passionate about it. It just was an awkward dynamic, because you're telling my history to me but you don't look like me. So that was a weird dynamic. But she but she was a very good person and I love Miss Rosen, so shout out to Miss Rosen. She was just a dynamic teacher and and she taught African American history. And then I had a black English teacher and I think that. And then I had a black science teacher, but he he was African, I don't know what part of Africa.
Speaker 1:So I've seen and known of kind of the history of our country, but not enough to be able to touch it, because we're just so far away, like Colorado and Alabama felt so far away. I was like, oh, that's in the past. You know, I have no real connection to it. Most of my family is from Mississippi in terms of our history, but I'd never been. My great grandmother had passed away in 2014. So the discussions about sharecropping or, you know, being light skinned, or having you know slave owners, you know family members, or being slaves, it just wasn't a conversation I was able to have. Also, maybe not even of age to really understand it, but my grandma and her siblings she has 10 of them they all have an understanding of what that lifestyle was. They grew up in Kansas and they knew about the Mississippi heritage and they had a good father and a mother who was embedded in who they were. So I had a good scope of Alabama, but not necessarily hands-on connection to it myself.
Speaker 2:Cool. So we're getting ready to go on the trip and you know, scott, you know, and everybody who's part of it is saying okay, isaiah, you want to go on this trip. What were your initial thoughts? It's like I'm in, I can't wait to find out more. I mean, the fact that you even had a class called African American history while you were in high school is huge, right, because it just isn't taught everywhere, and so is it. I wanted to see some of the things I'm learning, or you just was like I'm in because of the people that were you were able to go with. What was your initial thought?
Speaker 1:Mix of both, I think. Think excitement to go somewhere I've never been before. I think it's important to go places you've never been. So Alabama and the South as a whole is somewhere I've never really visited. The people as well like, scott is a wonderful person and the team at Issachar are just good people.
Speaker 1:But I think on the other side of it was a little bit of apprehension, just because of the state of the world and kind of the racial relations that we're having that aren't necessarily safe for everyone, let alone, you know, again, the Ku Klux Klan is still existing. There's a lot going on in the world. And so I was like do I really want to go go? Do I really want to put myself in a position? You know? So, like you know, I hadn't even researched sundown towns enough to know, like, what part of town we should be on, kind of those things.
Speaker 1:But uh, putting all like angst and fear to the side, I just really wanted to have an opportunity just to learn about the city, learn about Alabama.
Speaker 1:I had known some folks who were from there and so I just wanted to kind of get the full scope of what Alabama had to offer and what was going on there and you always hear weird stories about the South, about how it's different and it's like a little different country within itself. So I just really wanted to explore the history of the world and what had happened there, what has perspired from Martin Luther King to the Civil Rights Movement, to all those things. It's important just to kind of be where they were. I had been to DC in October of last year and able to stand where Martin Luther King stood and go to the African-American Museum, and so this was just like something. I was like oh, I need to add more knowledge and I need to have more experiences to just really walk in on myness uh, really know my history, um, and just explore that hey, it's dr b and let me ask you something just here, real quick.
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Speaker 2: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. Cool, so we get to the airport and now you start seeing the people that we're going to go on this trip with. Was there a feeling of like, oh man, this is going to be great. Or was it still like I'm not sure who these people are, because a lot of them you hadn't met yet? You know, you met others as we got there, but was you know because a lot of them you?
Speaker 1:hadn't met yet. You know we met others as as we got there, but was there like this excitement or was it kind of like a? I just got to check this out excitement for sure. I saw some familiar faces bj um, stephen, or some people I know um but I was excited just to see the people that looked like they were going. I think it's important who don't look like us to go. Obviously, I think they should know the history as well, but I think it's important for people who don't look like us to go.
Speaker 1:Obviously I think they should know the history as well, but I think it's important for people who, especially if you're from Colorado or if you grew up in Colorado, again there's this level of detachment that you don't have with your history, because the distance within itself is there. Obviously, I grew up in Denver and there's still some Black history there, but it just doesn't, it's not, it doesn't sit. The same. There's not as much a claim as if you were to go to Alabama, mississippi, georgia, kind of those places. And so I was excited looking around at pastors and you know historians and you know black leaders in the community and people who really do love the culture, and I was excited for those things.
Speaker 1:And even people who might not have the same opinions or thoughts or feelings as us. That would have been cool too. I don't know if we had any people who were Muslim or anything like that who came on the trip, but I think it's important to have different perspectives of people who love history and love black people to come on to the trip. So I was excited, cool.
Speaker 2:So we fly there. We get there Kaelin reminded me and BJ reminded me it was a rough landing. I don't remember the landing at all, but I guess it was. It was. It was pretty rough as we. I sat down and, uh, we were on that small plane that you know what's not like, what a lot of folks are used to when we get there to do the shuttleworth airport.
Speaker 2:One of the things that at least Kellen said yesterday is, uh, where we kind of started developing relationships as a group, as a team, was around that barbecue machine. That was, you know, a vending machine at the baggage claim where we're waiting for our vans. When you saw that and saw the people reacting, did you feel kind of more comfortable? Because what I kind of thought about yesterday is we all came around something common that we all knew about. Right, we all think about and know about barbecue, and so now we're comparing stories to barbecue all over the world that we've ever had or not had, and who's got the best barbecue, and we're kind of having some fun in that moment. Was that something that was kind of fun for you, just to kind of get to know people around some barbecue, or yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Breaking bread is everything, man. I think it's embedded in how you connect with people. So that was cool. I personally wouldn't have ate anything out of a vending machine, so kudos to those who did. But yeah, barbecue is best smoked not smoked in machine, smoked in a smoker. So kudos to, but it is. It's those moments because you have the debates of well, who has the best barbecue, where's the best barbecue from? Is it Texas, is it Tennessee? Is it vinegar-based, is it tomato-based? You get those people who have different perspectives and opinions and thoughts and you're you're like okay, let's see who who's, who really knows their stuff and who's just been like you know, they've had a little bit of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great way for us to just start coming together as a group and as a team around the, you know, an object or a thing or a thing that just happened to be where we had to wait Was kind of neat. So we go to the hotel, then we end up and we have our first session with Jeff Campbell, who is the Emancipation Theater, and he kind of goes through story and we even get to have a group, you know, start creating a story together and we're meeting with different groups and starting to learn people, was there anything in that session or anything that you said oh man, this is, this is going to be a good trip, uh, or this is going to be, is this whole trip going to be? Like this guy? You know, we kind of don't know what's happening. You know, you haven't, you know, other than we got to the hotel and now we're talking about this story, stuff, what, how did you react or feel after or during that, that, that session that we had?
Speaker 1:Oh, I loved it, Uh, in the storytelling competitions all the time. So just to see Jeff and his element was cool. The storytelling part was probably one of the most influential things. It's just because you have to have people who are actively paying attention and doing their part and you can't control them and they can't control you and all you can do is play your part.
Speaker 1:So we were trying to get all these certain words to fill into the story. People were so worried about the words that we were forgetting that we had to tell the story, and so just to have that dynamic of how stories are told, how people connect, how we connect through story, was just really important, and even just the way that we all had to introduce ourselves and connect with each other breaking bread over food the food was pretty good. Just to have each other in the space being present. I think often that's the hard part too in the fast where we live in is like people are always going, going, going or the attention span is minimal. But with the ability just to sit and be, participate and tell a story and engage with each other was just super awesome to be in, so I was excited.
Speaker 2:And I think that was the first part where we started just exploring the tension between races and tension in 2025 and what's going on. And you know, we were able to look globally, nationally, and then you know, community-wide as to we just began that conversation. We didn't do a whole lot with it, but we were able to do it within our own space and allowing folks to spend that time and tell their story from their perspective and who they were, I thought was was really cool. So we go back and then the next day we do another session kind of similar and and dig more into that, and then we decide we're going to go on this tour. We're going to go in the tour of Birmingham Alabama. We're going to go on this tour.
Speaker 2:We're going to go in the tour of Birmingham Alabama and we have Ray Clay Tours who is taking us and we have this you know, kind of like what you said in high school where it's a white gentleman who is now going to teach us the history of Birmingham and take us to places that some of us had never even thought about. You know the famous places like the 16th Street Church. You know the famous places like the 16th Street Church. You know that was a famous place. We've all probably heard about it, but maybe you've heard about the theater, but Shuttleworth House where it got bombed was probably not in that community. Kind of walk us through your feelings as we began to embark on that tour, and what you were thinking it was going to be and then what it ended up being.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew it was going to probably be heart-wrenching, just because you're hearing history, a sad history at that. What I didn't expect it to be was eerie and kind of sad, like the environment itself, because as we're going through the city, you just see the downcline of it all, just the fact that the city is not thriving, that there's really no people out here, that there's no real economic happenings here.
Speaker 1:That was kind of a duh moment, but it's also like you wouldn't know unless you go, as we were going through the different places and we're hearing Clay talk kind of a duh moment, but it's also like you wouldn't know unless you go, as we were going through the different places and we're hearing Clay talk. I think Clay was just a very dynamic teacher professor in this way because he was just so direct.
Speaker 1:He was just very honest, he was very to the point, he didn't really sugarcoat anything. He didn't sugarcoat anything at all, actually. And so just to have him just be honest about what had happened there, honest about his story and his connection to the city and him living there and why he does what he does, and then just kind of again him living there and why he does what he does, and then just kind of again the planter feet in places, in spaces all across Birmingham, was just crazy. So whether it's we're on the bus and we're looking at the houses that all had been bombed, we're looking at the different neighborhoods as we're riding on the bus, or we're looking over and you talk about well, this place got bombed and this happened here, and this is where Shuttlesworth, like all the just everything, culminating.
Speaker 1:It was just, it was heartbreaking as well as it was just eye-opening because it's just like this is not just a story in a book, this is actually something that happened here. This is like this is truth being lived out, truth being lived out. And so I think I was definitely processing just like the fact that, like how truthful everything we had heard in books and had been watching on TV had been, but it's a different dynamic when you're actually putting your place in your physical body somewhere. So I struggled with having hope for the future as well as mourning what was. It was a very give and take kind of moment, bittersweet for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is there one or two things that you could say okay after the tour? These are two things that probably impacted me more than any other part of the tour, or and maybe why that was and how you had that connection with those particular pieces in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think all the facts, just the fact that there was so much information that was being shared, that impacted me because you're learning so much in such a small amount of time, but I think anything that nothing hit me more than the last maybe two minutes with Clay and his quote that he always instituted and just how he had lost hope in his and just the deep feeling you felt when he just talked about hopelessness, Because I think I can understand that more than anything. I think in the time, in the times we're living in and the history of our country and the way that the world is, hope can be far and few, especially with you know, whether the political system we're looking at, the economic system or just, you know, homelessness, the state of the world and just any and everything can just cause you to be more and more hopeless, and so I just sat with that.
Speaker 2:And I can you know, for me, because I was able to go the year before and I, you know, I got to meet Clay, and this is the second time here in Clay and you know Clay doesn't change, I mean he's, he's Clay. You know over and over, as he's done thousands of these same tours. But I think what was different for me, and maybe you can tie it here, is when I went in 2024, it was before our presidential election. When I went in 2025, we just had a presidential election where there was so much divisiveness in our country over this election.
Speaker 2:And now we're sitting in a city and we're learning about politicians, we're learning about police chiefs, we're learning about the political system of the 1960s, and then now I have the ability to compare it to what's happening right now, in 2025, in Birmingham, Alabama, and it didn't seem as much of a different, like there wasn't a whole lot different in Birmingham. It didn't seem that way. I mean there was, I mean, you know, but it was so quiet and so still so segregated and still so, you know, project housing on one side of the street and nicer houses on the other side of the street, but then this decrepitation of a city where there was nothing going on. There's, like you said, no e-commerce, no people walking around. It didn't look like there was any business being done. Do you think that election or what we've just gone through as a country, affected some of the way that you viewed Birmingham?
Speaker 1:Yes and no. I think initially yes because you're like okay, how did it affect the South? Because we always talk about the South as like it's already a divisive, different place. But then, when you look at Birmingham as a whole, it just didn't feel any different. I felt like, because of the way Clay had described it, it was like this is just how it's been.
Speaker 1:Once the economy and all the money had left, you get this dead grass, these uncared for places, you get the exit. The mass exit is results. And so I think it was like oh, this is what happens when division takes place. Results, you know. And so I didn't. I think it was like oh, this is what happens when you know when division takes place and then, after division takes place, when choices are made and what those those choices, uh, have result in. Because, as he was talking about it, he said like, when the people why people decide to leave the economy, left with them because they were kind of helping you know the city as a whole. And so I was like, oh, I guess you know, but it then just in a global or a national way. It's like oh, this is what happens when you, when you don't like what's going on and you decide to just go ahead and leave. Leave the things in shambles, wow so.
Speaker 2:So we finished the tour and we decided we're gonna go meet, meet Janice Kelsey that evening, and a different perspective, because Janice Kelsey had lived during that time and so maybe kind of just walk through, you know, I don't know what the expectation was, but when she started talking and then her brother was there and they started talking about those times and then the son was there as a result of things that mom had done, you know what kind of impact or what were your thoughts from from that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's different to hear about history, but it's a different.
Speaker 1:It's even different when you are talking to living history, people who are there, who people experienced it, whether it's you know, you talk, talk, people who are at ground zero at 9, 11, or you know, even you know, colorado history, somebody who's at the theater shooting, but they survived or they were the other opposite end of the thing. It's just, it's different to have those conversations versus being, you know, in proximity. So just to have those conversations with her, to hear her story and see, like, the impact that youth and children have versus adults, and just to see that we all have a part to play, was super cool. But just also to see, you know, hear and hear about the sadness of, like her, being, you know, two or maybe one or two different degrees away from the 16th street bombing. You know she's like, oh, we went to school together, I knew, I, we, you know, we knew who these people were. These weren't just figurative beings. This wasn't marvel captain america, this was, you know, susie from down the street, you know, just to see.
Speaker 1:That was very different, um but it was encouraging because again, she gets to tell her story and it doesn't die like the truth doesn't die because, uh, it's been hidden or it's been whitewashed or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1:It's actually continuing to move on, and whether it's just her brother or her son or just the family dynamic, you get to see the fact that just because something bad happened doesn't mean we don't talk about it. Actually, we talk about it more and we actually get to acknowledge what truth took place in our city, and also as we deal with traumas of life and that she didn't, and also as we deal with, you know, traumas of life that she didn't have to stay there. You know, when I think about, like rosa parks and having to leave her, leave, uh, her state, like she, her life was never the same. She couldn't just be, uh, another worker somewhere else. She was, you know, idolized and epitomized for this one moment for the rest of her life, and so the fact that she was able to move on and have kids and live her life and grow, to go, be all the things that she could be, was beautiful too, because you don't have to let a particular season of your life or moment in your life define you. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Were you able to talk to her or her brother? Or anybody afterwards, or just as, or just part of the thing that we were doing, did you get any time alone with them?
Speaker 1:I did want to but I didn't really get a chance to. But just to hear her story, to ask her questions, to see where her heart and head were, to see the joy in her heart I know she had had a lot going on in the last year Just to see her in good spirits was beautiful within itself and I think it just provides another layer of hope. You know this too shall pass is just kind of where you know we are in our lives.
Speaker 2:And we were meeting at. You know where we met her and got to talk. It was one of the bigger churches that's in the Alabama area and I know, as you are a youth pastor and think about church and the dynamics, did you notice anything about the church or how it was laid out or the people that were there that seemed anything different than how we go to church here? Or was it just another place where you could worship? What was your thought of that? I guess the atmosphere there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, the size gets you first because it's huge. It was a huge church, I think. Also, I haven't been in Black church in so long and I don't mind the multicultural church or interdenominational churches. I think it's beautiful for sure. But just to be in a black church was super cool and even to hear about the expansion of like hey, like we're doing this and this, like just what black church meant in a former time, being lived out in a in a present time, was beautiful to see because it wasn't just, you know, sunday, like it was not what it is now, where it feels like, oh, it's just Sunday and then maybe a Wednesday night Bible study. Actually it's invigorated into the community. It's like, oh no, we're doing this with the kids and we're doing this with the elderly and we're doing this for we're raising this money to go send these people to this place and we're sending kids to camp. It's embedded in what the community is already doing.
Speaker 1:It was just cool to see that happen, and it was. You know, it just sucks that we don't get to experience that here. I think that was also the hard part of it. It's just like I would love for there to be a Black church dynamic that is embedded in Colorado. That gives us an opportunity to have kids to know their history but to support the community. I think oftentimes the churches out here unfortunately become siloed because they all have certain missions that they're trying to accomplish that don't necessarily align with another church, or somebody has to be the head of it, or they don't necessarily know how to lock arms. But this church seemed to know how to do that within their own community. I'm sure there's probably other churches within that community. It was dark when we got there so I couldn't necessarily see the lay of the land, but I'm sure they were just doing so much the way that the church has been called to do that. I'm just like man.
Speaker 2:This is beautiful yeah, and just like you said, that dynamic of community seems to be lost, at least in our communities, here in the modern church where so much is online or so much is. You know, you could tell this community wrapped herself around this church and that church wrapped itself around that community and it was a place where people could gather and people were gathering and stuff. So I thought that was really neat and so next day we go to, we have a few more sessions and then we move and head towards Selma, and so we get to Selma and there's this bridge, the Pettus Bridge. We've watched the movie Selma, but it's one thing to see it on TV and another thing to be standing on it. What were your thoughts as we're walking across this bridge?
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, it's the ability to be present with what's going on. You know, when you're standing at the place where Dr King delivers his, I have a Dream speech to walking across the bridge where he was fighting for freedom.
Speaker 1:It's a different dynamic, for me, because it's just freedom feels so far away, especially when you have people who died for freedom. When I think about the assassinations of so many Black people who are just fighting for the right to live or the rights to have everything that they should have as an American or as a person, it just it was heart-wrenching, because it's just another moment of like man. Did he know, like did Dr King know, what was on the other side of walking on this bridge? They know the value of his life walking across the bridge. Did they know what this was gonna lead to? You know it. Just.
Speaker 1:It reevaluates for me just the counting the cost. Is it easy? Are you fighting for something or are you just living day to day? Or are you in survival mode? And just the fact that a lot of people in my generation, we are often so far off from the ability to think about freedom and think about justice because we are so embedded in a survival mode or so embedded in hopelessness or embedded in just our situations that there's nothing further than us to fight for had someone and a group of people who are actively looking for more, and we get to be direct descendants of those things and directly affected by those things. It was just beautiful, but also it was just it was. It was sad. It was just sad again, because why are we having to fight for something that should naturally be our own?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you think, thousands of bridges all over the world and the country, millions of bridges, and you know that's just a bridge, but that bridge has so much significance into, you know, and for me, you know, I kind of said in the bridge, this time a little bit differently than last time, because the first time I'd watch Selma, then I'd go to the bridge and, ok, you know, this bridge isn't as big as it looks in the movie and all those people are walking through. This time, because I watched Selma again and I had already been to the bridge, selma made a new because now I can, you know, I'm watching the movie, it's a little bit different, and so, but just the significance. And then that, walking back from the end of the bridge to the Amy Church and just thinking, you know, I was thinking this time, what were the folks who were going on this march, thinking as they were, you know, and when the march actually happened, that our bloody city already happened. So the next time they're doing it, they're going, we could do this and die. The next time they're doing it, they're going, we could do this and die. And we're willing to walk from this AME church. We're going to walk over this bridge that's named after this really bad man, and on the other side is this group of Army National Guard folks that hate me and I'm still going to go through it, and you stand there and go.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, they were willing and I thought to myself, was I willing or would I have been willing? And I hope I would have been. I mean, I can't go back to that time and say I did it, but I don't know. Based on what I know now and thinking about your family and thinking about my kids and thinking about my wife, all the dynamics of my life that are so important, would I have packed up a suitcase, willing to walk for three or four days, you know, to fight something that this injustice is happening. So the AME church. So now we walk over to the AME church and it's just quiet. It's like you know, obviously not open because it's nighttime. Any thoughts when you got to that church and it's just quiet. It's like you know, obviously it's not open because it's nighttime. Any thoughts when you got to that church and about you and you just walked the bridge, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the dilapidated parts of where we walked through were just like, man, it's never. I've never been to a ghost town, I've never been to something so worn down. Whether you know, I've heard about Chicago, places like those, places like that, where it's like it's just a ghost town, and so to actually experience it was just weird, it was again an airy feeling. But to get to the church and just see like okay, this wasn't just a stroll of like you walked to here and there, it's like actually, and the amount of people, just like the amount of people who are willing to again fight opposition, is that I think we don't necessarily have in the same dynamic, you know, people like a physical, actual physical, uh, threat to your livelihood, um, and so, yeah, it was just, it was, it was cool to be there, but also to see that um, the again the honor, respect that was given, that's still being maintained today, because it's one thing to say, oh, this happened, let's give honor to it.
Speaker 1:But to actually have his statue still be there and the monuments, just like the names, like again something holding weight today that meant so much then still having meaning now is super life-giving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so cool.
Speaker 2:So then we we we leave the church and we go have a dinner together and we were still creating relationship and still talking about story and getting to know each other.
Speaker 2:And I know what's coming and I know that the next day is going to be something that's probably hard to go through. So I wanted to make sure that we fulfill some kind of enjoyment and some fun the night before. So and I think everybody got that and you know we're at this restaurant, you know it's a Mexican restaurant and those people work so hard to be able to serve us and I think we just super enjoyed our time together. And then the next day we start driving to Montgomery and I have a guy named Dr Mack who comes on and he and he kind of shares with us maybe some of the insights of history, what types of things we might see at the museum, any thoughts on Mack's talk or things that you remember from it that you may have known or may not have known after hearing all the work that he did in order to lift up folks of color in his calendar and these things that we've had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the depth of truth that he knew like I think we often talk about history and the facts, but the fact that he just knew so much and that he wouldn't sugarcoat, it was what I appreciated, because there is a little bit of cussing and a little bit of just like he's, just like this is what it is, and I appreciated that because, um, I think the thing that often is missing is just the ability to give just unfiltered truth for there to be change, and so his ability to develop this calendar, to do the historical studying, to acknowledge the hardships and the truth and the dates, and just to see a physical manifestation of hard work and dedication put into knowing what's actually happened, which is so super encouraging.
Speaker 1:And, you know, and it was an invitation and not just to, you know, put it up somewhere and have it, but it was an invitation to actually experience the fact that this is something that somebody had took the time to really dedicate, to want to share with others, to not just hold it in and become again a silo or isolated, but actually share with the world, like this is what's going on, this is what has happened, and again, a level of blood like it was respectful, even in his ability to share the truth. It wasn't like I was offended, it was like, oh man, he could have said that differently. It was actually man.
Speaker 2:That was, that was a way to say it cool. So we get to the museum. You've been now to the african-american museum in dc so you, you've seen that, you've kind of experienced what that is and you're probably feeling like this is going to be similar or close to that museum. Um, talk to me about the, the museum, and maybe even make that comparison, because the folks we've talked to so far haven't been able to make that comparison of the two and maybe kind of walk us through some of the things that you saw and heard that maybe be a little bit different than the other museum or just what I guess maybe surprised you that you didn't, that you saw that you weren't thinking you were going to that you didn't, that you saw that you weren't thinking you were going to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, um, so I also saw the holocaust museum in dc, so it's like I have a different lens as well. Yeah, when walking into african-american museum in dc, you have a lot of joy, like it's like a very upbeat happy place. The basement has the soul food, um, you're hearing, you know beyonce and like a whole bunch of different artists as you go throughout the museum. So you're, you're exploring the history in a different way. They had the and I think at that point they had the emmett till um images and like stuff, like they were focusing on him. So there was a lot there, um, but it was completely different when we were in.
Speaker 1:Uh, because it's it's, it's it's just sadness, it's just brutality, it's it's violence, it's harsh, it's, it's in your face. Whether you're going to um kind of the tombstones that are hanging at the lynching museum, part of it, or if you're going inside, you're seeing just like the dynamics of the slave ships and how they got here, or just like the entire timeline that you're able to see, whether it's be picking up the phone call to talk to convicts who have been wrongly convicted, or you're getting the talk, you know having an interpretation of what the slaves were feeling or thinking, and you step into a certain room and it's like a cell. So you get this eerie feeling. Contrary to even the Holocaust Museum, which they're both kind of, the Holocaust Museum is huge, but it just doesn't feel as real as something that happened in your own country to your own people.
Speaker 1:That directly affects you to the point where we're at the lynching museum and, um, josh sees a name and the name is of a person that belongs directly to him, and you just feel that it's like another gut punch, because it's like this is it again? This isn't far off. This is something directly affecting because josh was my roommate, so it's just another thing. You're like man. This is directly affecting me, but also it just speaks to the fact that, like there is always going to be something worth fighting for. You just have to be willing to put yourself out there to fight for it and so just have that be a truth and reality of and a reminder, because I think, again, we get caught up, so caught up in life that we we rob ourselves of opportunity to be like you know what.
Speaker 1:Actually, there's something more important, there's something bigger than me that I should be fighting for, whether it's me, or it's my family, or it's wrongful convictions. You were at the wrongful convictions. The year is a car. Um, there's someone somewhere needing your voice to be added to the conversation and you have to be willing to use your voice, and sometimes not even your voice.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you just have to be willing to step in Like.
Speaker 1:I think there's a power in silence and just action within itself that we can miss if we don't put ourselves in those positions. So I think I was grateful for the opportunity. But also, as you were beginning your walk through the museum, there is a acknowledgement of like the truth and the distance and the depth of how far back it goes. And then if you get to the uh, the beautiful part of I didn't get to get on the boat, but you go to the, the outside museum you get to really see that there's still um power in, in joy and in happiness and in choice, and there's still a freedom dynamic that's happening on both sides of it, whether the freedom was robbed or the freedom was chosen, and it's just in the different dynamics. So I was blown away, especially when you get to like the big wall in the outside with all the names and all the people who were now free and what that meant to be free and just the ability to change your name and what that meant.
Speaker 2:I think both museums celebrate getting through it. But the Equal Justice Museum really lets you understand what folks went through. It's one thing to say, yeah, this was bad when we went through. It's one thing to go, wow, we're talking to somebody who really went through it. Or just to you know that big screen at the beginning that has just the ocean, and realizing that somebody was taken from their home and saying what if I was taken, like right now, over and be on a ship for three or four months and then, or a month, whatever it is, and then never to see anybody that I grew or knew up with ever again? You know, and then having to start with was it'd be like, what would that be? Because it gives you that, it allows you to have that feeling, you know, whereas, whereas the you know the museum in dc just celebrate, hey, yes, this is part of my heritage, this is, you know, we've made it through. We're not all the way done yet, but we still. You know this is we got to jump the broom and you know all the things that are the cool parts of it. And then you walk out of this museum.
Speaker 2:Just, I guess you know for me, angry at both times still that we've only come a little bit. I mean, we haven't come as far as what the dream was. We haven't come as far as maybe we'd want to be. It's still a process. We still have issues that are going on. So you get down, we get down with the trip. We have this last gathering together as we kind of talk and that one kind of felt, as we had white brothers and sisters and Black folks that were there that had just come to the museum decompressing. It seemed like it was. I'm glad we did it, but there was tension in the air. There was, you know, whether it was Josh finding his family or James just going. I'm going through this stuff that feels like this my whole life. How do I reconcile? What were your thoughts? As we're finalizing our story and relationships? I'm glad that we have them about. I'm in this room and now I have to go home and be in rooms like this all over again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it left me with a choice to make about how I wanted to engage with people whether it was Black people or whether it was white people or just going home to deal with myself, Because I came home and I was thinking about just working as a self and I had never felt more like a slave. Until after I left I was like man, I'm just going to do all this work.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to continue working the same way that these people have fought for our lives. They're just working. There was no culmination of anything but today, tomorrow, and this is what it was, and so I was struggling with that. I was like, okay, I want to do something more than just go to work every day. I want to do something more than just um clock in, clock out and put money towards bills, like it just felt. Yeah, it's a struggle there, for sure, um, but I also wanted to choose to be, um, loving and kind and be a peacemaker, not a peacekeeper, um, and I think, oftentimes, in order to do that, you have to be willing to listen and not really willing to talk. So oftentimes, you're like, man, you talked today, I'm like, yeah, but the reason why I'm often quiet is because, often so, there's somebody in the room who's not willing to speak, who needs an opportunity, and oftentimes it's not me.
Speaker 1:I'm like I have a decent gift of gab so I don't feel that it's necessary. I've got plenty of people in my family who love to talk and talk a lot. I'm kind of just like hands off in that way, but I think I felt it. I felt James, his angst, his frustration, his anger, and then also him being a father, him being a husband there's different levels to it of I have to go home to my wife and look her in the face and tell her I love her and care for her, but be angry. And so it just talks about your manhood and how you handle those things. And then I also felt Jason, when he was like why are you? I forgot what his name I think it was.
Speaker 2:His name is David, yeah, yeah, whenid started speaking, he was like hey, he's like why are you like?
Speaker 1:you know, I felt his, his frustration. He was like why are you speaking when we just went through all these things, you know I I understood that. Or if it was josh's feelings of you know the biggest amount of anger, but still wanted to love people, um, I think I felt all those things but, um, I think, more than anything, I just wanted to deal with the things that were going on with me inside, where there was the conflict of do I really want to deal with white people in a certain way? Do I know how to love them well, or do I know how to receive their love?
Speaker 2:Because there's some days where I'm like no, I can't.
Speaker 1:There's some days where like, and also knowing that it's okay to feel those things, it's okay to feel both sides of it, because the refusal to feel those things on either side actually doesn't bring any growth, doesn't bring any change. It actually makes you even more stagnant than before if you don't actually feel both sides. It's the beauty of being human, because it can be very traumatizing to sit at the museum for hours because we were there for a full day. It can be very traumatizing just to sit in it, but it can also be very healing to be taken out of it and then talk about it and feel all the things, think of all the things and then decide what you want to do from there. Wow, that's cool.
Speaker 2:So we come back and now Isaiah is a different man because of some of the experience that we had, and we all are different for any of the experience that we have. But we're thinking of okay, how do I interact? How do I change? How do I not just go to work? Just to go to work, what? What are some of the things you know we've been back 100 days that you may have changed, or some things that you have a vision for as the future moves, on, things that you would like to see happening and that you'd be a part of here in our area, in our community? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of Robert Jelanis, so reading his first book was very eye-opening, just because of obviously it's a historical fiction book based on Denver, so that has been beautiful, and going to the wrong fiction thing has been awesome. I've been off of social media for a while now and so that's been life-giving as well. I think it just takes the ability just to separate yourself from some things. I'm in therapy, so I'm talking to my therapist about all the things going on in life, so it's just really been character development. It's just been really dealing with what you're dealing with. Even one of the questions you had in the questionnaire before we got on was how do you define trauma and how do you deal with it and what is the goal to heal those traumas and building resilience. It was just like it takes just sitting in the quiet. It takes sometimes just sitting, you know feeling sitting in the darkness but not choosing to be dark and acknowledging the light in you know, in the little sparks of light that you know life has to offer.
Speaker 1:So I'm not sure what I want to do with all of it, though I think there's something that I'm trying to produce out of it, whether it's internal or external, but I truly think, as I'm back home, I really want to lock arms with people who have a vision for how they want to change the city for everyone, whether it's young, old, black, white or indifferent Just who really wants to go out and be a peacemaker and love people. Well.
Speaker 2:You talked about doing. Are you doing stuff with Pastor Gelinas at Colorado Community Church? Are you doing youth ministry somewhere else? Where are you at right now as far as ministry and the things that you're trying to move forward with it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, I'm kind of a joker of all trades right now. I guess I'm tied to CCC. For sure it's important to Joe Ines in any way I can. I've bought both his books. I'm looking forward to the third one that's coming out. I've sat down with him a couple times just to talk about his heart and his passion towards wrongful convictions. I've even got an opportunity to talk to jason the most recently, uh. Second most recently, excuse me, a person who's been helped by the uh innocence project out here in color.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I'm trying to just keep my ear to the ground. I'm not sure, uh, what to do or who to do it with. I've worked with the history of Carl, history of churches out here with Jerry Mackey. I'm kind of tied with a lot of the churches out here, whether it's a Christian Bible church, the Connection Church Refuge with Stephen Cartwright, so I'm really just trying to be plugged in as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Indicative is mostly in a youth youth lens, just because that's my expertise at the moment, but church lens as a whole. Because I've been in church my whole life, you know I probably count on my hands and toes how many times I've missed church on a Sunday, you know, kind of thing. But I think, more than anything, I really want to change the way that the church is for me and for the people around me, that it can be everything we saw in Alabama with Dr Kelsey's knowledge. It's meant to serve the community, it's meant to serve others. It's not just a pop-in, pop-out kind of thing that we've made it to be in the last couple of years post-pandemic, wow.
Speaker 2:What didn't we talk about that you wanted to make sure that we covered in this conversation today.
Speaker 1:I think we covered most of it. I think my prayer and goal is for the Journey to Freedom podcast and just the next trip is that we bring more Black men in the room Outside of Rhonda Williams, who's a lovely person. I think it's important to just have another perspective in the room that speaks to a dynamic, and I hope that she would be able to bring some more enlightenment that we didn't necessarily get, because I think with a lot of Black men in the room it can be very angry and it can be limited emotions. I think we're able to feel a lot of things but not necessarily have the ability to communicate those things. I think we're able to feel a lot of things, but I necessarily have the ability to communicate those things. And so I think I hope we have people who are able to kind of articulate and communicate those feelings of you know, disgust or anguish, or lost or depression, maybe communicate those very well. So Wow.
Speaker 2:So you would go back and maybe even bring somebody for the experiences. Is, you know, a worthwhile experience that you think for a whole lot of folks right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think it's important, whether it's my grandma who is a she's 76, or it's my brother who is 17. I think it's important for people to again talk about your history, experience your history, but also know where you need to go, where you can go from here. You know, I think you know. We always talk about where would Martin Luther King be had he not been assassinated. We talk about what Malcolm X could have produced if he had not gone. You know what the Black Panther Party would have done had it not necessarily been disbanded or in the way it was. Yeah, oh, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for for being a part of this today. Thank you for, uh, sharing your heart, sharing your mind. This isn't going to be the end. We're going to do this journey. We're going to take more people uh, you know and you know, I I hope that the folks that are listening and this is the first episode you've ever seen there are some other really good ones. Please go ahead and subscribe and all those wonderful things that you do to notifications and that kind of stuff, to make sure that you're a part of what we do. If you want to get more information or make comments, please go ahead and do that.
Speaker 2:Isaiah, it has been, just like I said, a pleasure to have you on today and to have you, and for those of you, I want to always end with this that you're God's greatest gift. You are, and he believes in you. He wants you, if you allow him to, he wants to love on you the best that he possibly can. So you guys have a wonderful, just amazing, incredible day and we'll look forward to talking to you on the next one. Any one last closing thought, isaiah.
Speaker 1:No, God bless All right, God bless.
Speaker 2:We'll see you on the next one.