Galveston’s Hidden Slave Markets: The Truth Beneath Juneteenth

Juneteenth began in Galveston, Texas, but the story beneath June 19, 1865 is deeper than most Americans are taught.

This week on Rethinking Freedom, I sit down with Anthony Paul Griffin — attorney, writer, and author of The Water Cries — for a powerful conversation about memory, justice, and what it truly means to be free.

For over three decades, Griffin tried high-profile cases that tested the limits of constitutional principle. He has written about Black cowboys in Texas, Gulf Coast foodways, and the stories that official history leaves out. Now, in The Water Cries, he turns his gaze toward the deepest questions of American life: What does freedom actually cost? Who is still waiting for it? And what do we owe each other across the distance of history?
This episode is part of our summer series: The Other Side of Freedom — The USA at 250.



📩 Connect with Anthony Paul Griffin: anthonypgriffin@gmail.com

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#Juneteenth #BlackHistory #GalvestonHistory

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning everyone, and welcome to another edition of Rethinking Freedom Ifold IFR and LED. And today, I probably say this for every episode we have, but today truly, you wanted to get your notepads out. If you're driving, of course, we stayed. But those of you who watch us on YouTube and those of you who download the podcast, we thank you for your support, but today is truly a special episode. So on June 19, 1865, a union soldier wrote into Dallas and Texas, right, and read aloud a general order, General Granger. It said in plain language that all enslaved people were free. The war had been over for two months. The emancipation proclamation had been signed two and a half years before, two and a half whole years. Freedom had existed on paper, in law, in proclamation, in the language of the victorious, while hundreds of thousands of people of African descent remained in bondage, working fields, answering to masters and mistresses, living in a lie the powerful had chosen not to correct. That gap between freedom declared and freedom delivered is not ancient history. I think most of us who are conscious know we're still living it today. It is the very fault line that runs beneath everything we will talk about today. My guest today is a man that I am profoundly humbled to talk to. His life has been shaped by an uncommon willingness to stand in difficult places. Anthony Paul Griffin has practiced law for more than three decades from 1978 to 2014. Among them is representation of the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. I certainly want to hear more about that. But Mr. Griffin is not only a lawyer, he is a prolific writer. As I sat with his book the first time I read it, I stayed up all night, although I had court experience the next day. I could not put it down. And I could not stop the tears from falling either. And when I read through it the second time, I found myself researching the slave records for the county in which I live, Bell County, Texas. And to other works that insist on the richness and the complexity and dignity of a people too often reduced to their suffering alone. And now he has written The Water Prize, which was published in 2025. A book about freedom, memory, and for me, what it means to reckon honestly with the past. Anthony Paul Griffin, I welcome you to Rethinking Freedom.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Before we go any further, I've got to ask you this. When you held a finished copy of The Water Cries in your hands, what did you feel that first time? What do you still feel?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Um I was surprised they published it. I tried my uh after they agreed to publish it, I remember talk calling the publisher and saying, You really want to do this? Do you really want to um and and he he's like, I think it was very weird for him because he didn't he didn't understand what it meant just to for the person who seeks to get it published, then turn around, you can change your mind. I then asked him, Do you really realize who I am? And I don't I don't think I still don't think that registered for him. He had no concept of what my history was. And then when I was writing it, I remember having a a palpable fear in my gut. Can you really put this out? Can you really say some of the things that are in this book? And I I literally dwelled on that for maybe a couple months. Um, I harassed more friends of mine than you know, and strangers. Can I do this? Can we put this out? Can we make these statements? Because what the book really did is the book uh sort of examined Texas history in the midst of Texas history and basically said, and it I tried to tell it, I told it from my stand, my standing as a grandchild of a man and woman who were slaves and was still living in my lifetime. They were my great-grandparents, and that they uh they were, you know, their farm was in central Texas between Mahé and Tig. Um and and I as I was researching and writing, and I realized how close our counties were. How black folks ran from Matagoda Bay, and they called it the Black Belt, all the way up to Waco. And that's Waco, Bahia, Tig 45 didn't exist at that point in time, across 45 over to Tower, Smith County, Palestine. That was a black belt. And African Americans are not numbered whites, 41, uh, because they it was an agrarian society and they needed our labor. Uh, because we fed the South, we fed America, we fed Texas, we, you know, the things that we did provided supported the cotton uh brokers in Galveston and New York and other the railroad and every everywhere else. And and the reason, and and so it was very difficult. I mean, I I I literally I think the title is app uh because uh I probably cried more than I should have cried. Uh I uh I couldn't for the first two or three times I spoke on the book, I cried in the speeches. Because the reality of it is it's all of our stories. And it's the story, whether you grew up in Bell County, whether you grew up in Tarrant County, whether you, it's you know, it's it's that it's that that fear that our parents lived under and our grandparents lived under that they wanted to see their child come home. Uh, and and that they always told us be safe and they always were worried about us, and they they held us with an iron fist because they knew at the other side of that fist there was someone willing to for our ready destruction, and how proud they were when we got degrees, or or we got training, or we got jobs, and we got married, and we had life. And and and and part of that is they were happy that we were living. So I I know I've talked a little bit too long about it, but that that's that's what the book meant to me. And and and I tried to tell that story um in terms of what it's like to be African-American in the in Texas, but I also tried to provide the research, the data that we all have a blueprint where we sit there and go, he's not lying about this, he's not making this up. He's not, it's not rumored. That which they saw, what which our elders saw, I tried to put in the put put not only in the text, but also in the footnotes in terms of telling that history. And and and so when I finished, I went, I think you did it. Um you definitely did it. But can you tell, can you, can you, can they publish this and can you can you try to explain to people what it means and will people understand it? And so that that's what the book is about.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

So, what compelled you to write this book?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I have some land in Galveston, and that's not in the book, and it starts off in the first chapter where I'm actually going out to look looking at the land.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

That chapter was so compelling. Yeah. I've grown up with the ant mound in it. Anyone who's ever been attacked by ants, I think it was it, it was I I was living every word you wrote. You were so great with words, but yes, please.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

And when we were in practice of law, one of the things that I noticed when I was practicing law is that they would always attack me financially when I got involved in something that they were angry with me about, whether it was redistricting the counties so that African Americans could be elected, whether it was representing someone they didn't like, whether it was suing a bank that I shouldn't be suing, that they felt as somebody who had power and I was stopping them from doing something to my clients. I went to my office manager and I said, We have an opportunity of growing. And and by growing, I meant getting to uh we probably were at eight employees, uh getting to 15 people, maybe six, seven, eight lawyers, or we can invest in property uh because what I was trying to do is I knew that the the nature of what I did for a living was so threatening in our legal community that they would do anything it would to put me out of business. Um I saw that every day. And so one minute we would be flush with cash, uh, and the next minute we maybe six months be broke scum, didn't have a dime. And so I started buying this property in this um two blocks from downtown uh neighborhood. They called the jungle. Black folks didn't own it, but black folks lived there.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Who named it the jungle?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

They uh I don't know whether black folks did, but that was how how they referred to it in Galveston. They told people don't go down there. They allowed they allowed gambling to take place and prostitution to take place. This is when I went to Galveston in 78. So we're not talking about 1940, we're talking about 1978. And I started buying property, and I got to about a block and a half, two blocks of land. And it's two blocks from the strand, two blocks from the cruise ship terminal. And um at some point in time, I had to transfer it out of the fictitious people I was buying the land under back into my name. And that's when it occurred to them what I had done.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Now that's a story.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah, that's a different story.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

That's a that is a story. So you bought it, you had to just to even purchase the land, it could not initially be done in your name.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

I bought it under under straw people, I bought it under friends, I bought it under people who worked in the office, but I never connected it to me. And and and to to there was a work for the city of Galveston. Uh came over to, and I had probably eight people working outside of the office, cleaning property, tearing down buildings, buying, we would buy the gambling shack. We bought the gambling shack, we tore it down. We gave everybody a year to get out, but I didn't charge them rent for that year. Put it under someone else's name. I bought houses of prostitution, I brought cracked houses, I tore them down, bought them, tore them down. And the city was planning on what to do with the area, and there was a planning meeting, and the mayor was in the meeting, and one of the guys in the meeting was an African-American man, and he came over to where my guys were. He said, I need to tell y'all something to convey this to Ms. Griffin. We were planning and we were going lot by lot. What are we gonna do with this? How can the city acquire this land? And they and they wanted to identify who the owners were. And they were going lot by lot, and they kept saying Anthony Griffin owns that land. And Anthony Griffin owns that too. She said we did that about 30 times, and the mayor looked up and said, How in the fuck did y'all let this happen? Uh I knew that when I stopped practicing law in 1978, no, 2014, my blood, you know, what I I worked on 18-hour days. I worked 18-hour days, I did six days a week. I survived on four hours of sleep. I traveled all over the state. I litigated everywhere in the state. I litigated around the country. Uh and what happens is your body conspires against you. And my blood pressure was stroke level. And my I had five wrecks in one year, and my ex is a nurse, and she said, Daddy, you're we've preferred each other's daddy and mama most times, sometimes by our first names. And she said, It's your health. You know, you're you got older, and now it's conspiring against you. And my doctor was saying the same thing when we figured out what was going on with me. And my doctor's Palestinian, and she said, either take the medicine or quit practicing law. And my ex said it's your job. She said it's your health, it's your job, the stress of your job. I elected to quit practicing law. And I didn't know what I was gonna do. I had to go broke to quit. Uh it's that strange reality. You got all these obligations to people, and all and you're looking at the money that you have to pay, and you're looking at all this, and and you're realizing the debt, what your assets are, and and you're you're you're in the black, but you you're cash pro, cash poor. So you got a million dollars due to the IRS because I got in a fight with the federal judge. I worked to impeach the federal judge at the pursuant to the request of the newspaper in Houston and the newspaper in Galveston because the federal judge was correct, corrupt, and we won. But this judge went through about a five-year period of time where he was gonna put me out of business. He actually told me I'm gonna put you out of business. Um, and I went, I realized the only way I'm gonna be able to get out of this alive is I gotta go broke. And I quit. And I and and and then this is embarrassing. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing for it to admit it, but every night at two o'clock in the morning, I would just go, I would just start crying. Just cry like a baby. Part of it was I felt I was giving up the fight. The other part was what are people gonna think? Uh the other part was when you do something for so long and you're good at it. I was one of the best lawyers in the state and one of the best lawyers in the country. You do something so long to lose that and say, I'm going to do something else. That's something else, I don't know what it was. Um you gotta cry about it, you gotta let it go. It's like losing a spouse, it's like losing a mom, it's like losing a dad. People say, Well, you'll get over it. Yeah, maybe 10, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, but you you don't ever get over the loss of a mom, or you know, it's always gonna eat at your gut that you'll be sitting somewhere and you may start crying. You went, Why am I crying? Because you're crying because you're missing that person who was so important in your life. And I say all that to give you that background. I can't give you everything, but giving you that background to say that I got a letter from Center Point Energy, the power company here, saying they wanted a block of the land. And I went, oh, come on. You know, you you take this block, you take away my development because I wanted to do a development. And and give you some idea in terms of how much money I spent over the years. I spent, I calculated about 15 to 20 million dollars in terms of this land, tearing property down, uh, the work, cash that came out of my pocket, you know. So we're not talking about that. I just bought a piece of one one lot. I had equipment, I had guys working, we had eight people in the office, we may have 12 people working outside of the office every week. And um, so when I got that letter and I'm writing chapter one, I'm real, and I can't tell that whole survey because I know that's a different story. I'm sitting there thinking, does this fight ever end? Do you keep this? And and and it and and and and we as black folks have to recognize that fight always exists for us. We come from a unique set of circumstances where our country doesn't want to admit the lie, our country continues to tell the lie. You tell you started off by saying the South surrendered April 9th, 1865. That's when the surrender took place. They were in Galveston, the North was in Galveston on June 19th, 1865, two months later. We can't even admit that because what the lie they want to tell is that we didn't know that we were free for two years. They didn't surrender until surrender until uh six two months ago, two months before that, April to June. And within 30 days after the surrender, they started granting pardons to the insurrectionists. And we just saw that happen again, didn't we? Absolutely, absolutely. So January 6th is no different than what happened in in in uh in in after the end of the Civil War.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Or what happened in Wilmington.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Yes, it's that same pattern. We this this our state does not want to admit that their wealth is based on our backs, it's based on our brains, it's based on our history. They don't want to admit how talented African Americans were when within a very short period of time after the freedom of African Americans, you had people serving on city councils and city county government and became the sheriffs of counties, and that ran from Matagory County all the way up to East Texas. And and and and and so it destroys the myth that we don't know what we're doing, it destroys the myth that our people were not spared, it destroys the myth that these kids say over and over again, y'all didn't do anything. Yes, you did. You wouldn't be living if we didn't do anything, or they didn't do anything. Yes, and and and so um that first chapter is literally trying to explain to people without telling the backstory, um, this is all our fight, and it doesn't stop. I I I literally traveled to Dallas, Texas, to meet with a former client of mine, Eddie Bernice Johnson, who was a congresswoman. She was she was the precursor to Jasmine Crockett in the 30th Congressional District, and it was during the pandemic.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Who they just racially gerrymandered after her.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Absolutely. And Eddie Bernice was dying. Eddie Bernice had cancer and she was dying, and she knew she had to retire, but she met with me during the pandemic, just before the pandemic. We no one knew what the pandemic was going to bring us, and she said to me, lawyer, um, this is probably bigger than you in terms of taking your land. Let me help. I was able to keep the land because of Eddie Bernice Johnson. I was able because of an African-American woman who I represented believed in me enough to say, I'm getting involved. I was able to keep the land because she looped Rodney Ellis in, who was a state senator who's county commission in Harris County. And Rodney Ellis thought enough of me to say, Eddie Bernice called me, told me to help, and I'm gonna help you. That he gets on the phone and he loops in all the congressional delegation, black congressional delegation in the United States, and they help.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

So representation matters, huh?

SPEAKER_01 20:53

It matters. All the stuff that we don't vote, all the stuff that we it doesn't make any difference, all the stuff that they don't do anything, that they're they're the very nature of who we are as a people, you know, is I'm not saying it's perfect. Please don't hear me say that because if it was perfect, we we as a community wouldn't be in the condition we are. Uh I'm saying being there and uh having someone look like us is so important who thinks like us, who knows the fight. Because a lot of times when you know the privilege of being white in America, they they believe, well, you're lucky to have the land. What? Yep, you don't do that to white guys. Well, you were able to spend 13 13 15 20 million dollars on this land over a number of years, and you you should feel fortunate. America's been great to you.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

What America has been great to you, yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Do you understand if I if I engage that type of investment to property, how the bank. Would open up if I was a white guy, how all of a sudden the funding would be there for you to do the development, how you how they would they would figure out a way. We're gonna convert these, and we were figuring out a way in terms of combining resources and allowing the banks and allowing the state and federal government where they pour those funds in that community and improve the community. That community was called the jungle, but by design. That community was was was you know you know was populated by African Americans because they ultimately was gonna move that population out and it was gonna be a population of whites. It's done all over America.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Gentrification.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Which is a nondescript term for we're gonna replace you. And and and and and and when we do it ourselves, Tulsa. When we do it ourselves, Longview, when we do it ourselves, uh uh uh Elaine, Arkansas, violence takes place where they're slogan, Texas. Yeah, they're between 1919 and 1921, there were more places in the United States where black folks were attacked and killed because of the our developments and because of what we were doing. And that's what I tried to I saw. I had to tell the story. I had to start off by saying, You I don't think you ever, ever tell a story where uh I don't care, I don't care if it's an art final argument, I don't care if it's writing a screenplay for a movie, I don't care if you're doing something for TV, you don't tell a story by saying this is the story, now you follow me. I think that good storytelling is to try to convince people how all of we all of us are affected by what this story means.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

So what so in that beginning chapter, what do the ants represent for you?

SPEAKER_01 23:55

I try to interrelate the ants all throughout the book. Um we're always being attacked, and they were a metaphor for sometimes that attack is organized, it's inanimate, it's inhuman, we don't understand what's going on. But if you put your foot in that in that towel, you're gonna get bit. And um I tried to explain um from a just a violent standpoint. Maybe I'm wrong. I tried to kill them. I went out there the day before and tried to kill them. And they waited for me to come back and they were ready. And they they they and and so it it's that it's that push and pull between violence, organization, survival. You know, you know, we as a people have survived. We we tell the stories in our poetry, we tell the stories in our music, we tell the story in who we are, what we look like, our beauty, and our thoughts, and our ability of taking a religion, religions that have been that wiped us off the Bible and the Quran and uh and pretend that we didn't exist, um, and we survived. And um, and so so a lot is going on in the book, and and and and I and I I can't I can't explain. Um the publisher sent me a letter somewhere in the thing, and it was a criticism from a guy, and and it was a reader, and they don't tell you when they do that, you don't know who the reader is, you they don't give you the information, they just simply let you read the letter. And the letter read something along the line. We don't want to know who Anthony Griffith is. So he needs to please not, we don't want to know about his family. Oh we don't want to know, um he should just write history and tell us history and leave it alone. And and the the the editor sent me that the guy who made the decision to publish the book, and I said, he said, I don't agree with him, but I just want you to see the letter. And I and my response was I didn't, I don't think I responded, I just doubled down.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Well, that was actually a really powerful aspect of the book for me, is because you wove in, I mean, this felt really intimate to me. And unlike, you know, in the academy where quote unquote told we should write objectively, whatever that means, and and take yourself outside of the text, but you wove in some very personal stories here. Yeah. And also the way you move between the past and the present, the archive and the living.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

And and and and and and thank you. And that's what made me cry so much in the book. As I'm writing, I'm crying. As I'm as I'm telling the story, I'm crying. As I go to bed at night and I'm thinking about how what what does the story lead to? And I'm thinking, I'm hearing my grandmother's voice, baby, the water cries. And and I and I remember getting up in the middle of the morning.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

So your grandmother used to say that?

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yes, yes, yes. Water cries. And what do you what do you think she meant? I had gone to the fishing, there was a there were tanks on the land. One was for feeding livestock. The pigs went in the tank, the cows went in the tank, they they would drink the water, they would pigs would wallow in that tank. One was fishing. They stocked that, they stocked that that tank. I think it was perch in there, primarily perch. One was for baptism. You know, every every now and then I would see an animal go. It was a hot tank, so the animals didn't necessarily they didn't want to climb that hill. Every now and then one would go up there. But I never saw the, you know, so when the animals went out to the field, they would, you know, during the daytime they would go, but most of the time in the evening, you never saw them there because they were in. And then in the summertime, they had back to baptisms in that in that tank. And one day, um, my I don't know what I was doing. I was just hanging out on the land um toward the evening time, and I heard I went down to the tank where fishing takes place, and I heard these voices. And I swear to God, I'm not making I heard voices, and I ran in the house and I told my grandmother that I heard voices down by the tank, and I told them what tank. And her and my grandfather just looked at each other and they said, Baby, the water cries. Wow, I I didn't know what that meant. I couldn't be no more than five, five, six, seven years old. Uh, and you know when grand when grandparents tell you stuff, you just listen and you go, maybe I get older and I don't understand what they mean. Yes, maybe they're just crazy. I don't know what they are. I I don't I didn't want to say I'm I I know I don't have any idea what you're talking about. I just said okay. Um and then as I'm writing the book, I it hit me. Um and I and I and I was too ashamed to call my brothers and sisters and ask them, did they ever tell them that? I was too ashamed to think maybe I'm making it up. Uh, because you know, as you get older, your memory fades. You don't remember stuff when you were generally that you know every day of your life when you were we our minds do not work that way. Our minds are allowed to we we absorb information and we we retain stuff that we need to survive. And but I remember getting up and going to the computer at three or four in the morning and writing the water cries. And and I and I spent maybe a month or two thinking about it, that you know uh that that becomes the title of the book, and so that it is personal, it and and and and I just encourage people to read it, you know. And they won't. I had one woman call me, she sent me a text, and she said, I'm mad at you. And I said, Why? And she said, I bought your book, I read it this weekend, I thought I was gonna get a book on slave auction houses, and I was gonna read about slave auction houses in Galveston. And she said, she said, you did provide me the slave auction houses, but you had me laughing and angry and twisting and turning. You you had three stories woven into you throughout the book, there were three stories going, and and and I'm sitting there going, Oh my god. And when I finished, I went, What did I just read?

SPEAKER_00 31:19

And she's absolutely right. One of the ones that got me was the prayer time because that just reminded me of my childhood. It would be my siblings, my parents, and always a host of other extended family members. And yes, those prayers were too. We gotta read the Bible and say, and we gotta be able to answer the questions about what we what we heard and what we read, and then there'll be prayer requests, and then we're kneeling down, and it's like, oh my God, like whoever prayed. If it was one of us praying at the end after we were not with our parents, we're like, why'd you have to pray so long? What's wrong with you?

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I I I remember saying one time, I don't, I don't go on enough, I don't go on to enough church. I couldn't bend no more than 10 11. I'd gone to enough church and prayed on my knees so long. I gotta, I'm I'm I'm good to I'm 70, you know. I done been to some church. But you know, and and but it all started making sense. Being in bondage, thinking of hope for the future, being an intelligent group of people coming from a history in Africa that we're not told that we're lied about, uh knowing that your kids are just as smart and smarter than those white kids that you're taking care of and who's sucking your breasts, knowing that you're just as much you're watching them do work and they don't know what they how to work, they can they can they can't work in the sun, and and and then praying that your daughter will be saved, praying that your son will be safe, and being put under a system of an inhuman inhuman system, uh not only in doing slavery, but apartheid after slavery.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Because although we think of South Africa as apartheid, we had it right here in the United States. They studied us, we are moving exactly in that direction, yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah, South Africa studied us. Germany, Germany studied us, yeah, Germany studied us, and and and this whole notion that we were better off. Do you know how many Africans were killed? Africans who were killed during the transatlantic slave trade? If one out of what is it, one out of three per persons are dying? Yes. Coming over, that's millions of people. Yes, that's millions of people that died in the transatlantic slave trade. Do you realize that they had immunity to kill us at any point in time during slavery and after slavery? That's the problem with our judicial system. That as a lawyer, we have to figure out how we use the law to benefit our people for a system that doesn't view us as equal. And that and for system that was never meant to be.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

But I I have a theory. I might be wrong, and and I'll love to hear what you what you think about this. That which I don't fear, I'm not really bothering that much with. I think to the extent that this country has worked so hard, white nationals, white separatists, the the Ku Klux Klan, you know, whatever you want to call them. I don't call them conservative because I don't feel that that name, that that that term accurately represents what they are doing. To the extent that you're so obsessed with us, that you take stone to your own detriment, you try to hurt us. I think that it's not so much that you don't think we're as good at, it's that maybe you actually know just how great we are. And the only way you in your mind believe you can compete is if you're holding us down. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

And and and that very well may be true. I don't know. I know that this system has been set up where they created this artificial construct of race for their benefit.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

They created what did Lyndon Johnson say uh that when the passage of the Civil Rights Act that we've assured uh that the South will be Republican for the next 50 years.

unknown 35:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

Because someone has to be at the bottom and someone has to be at the top, because they train this whole concept of white superiority, is that I'm better than you. And and and and and to and and and if you're going to enslaver people, you have to, you have to, and that's what I tried to explain, what a slave was. I tried to explain what they did to strip us of our human inhumanity, our names, our our religion, our the whole color divide. We as a community suffer from the color divide even to this day.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

And I noticed that you were, I mean, the way you would initially when you started, and I'm I started reading, I'm like, why is he describing his grandmother like this? And why, like, why this upset him? But then it made sense.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Yeah, and and and and it's it's um I I'm working on a a work, uh friend of mine who taught history at the University of Houston. She called me one morning at five in the morning, and we don't see each other until people die. It's that kind of friendship. We've known she was a teaching assistant when I was a maybe a freshman of sophomore university of Houston, undergraduate school. And she called me at five in the morning. I said, What's wrong? So I answered the phone, what's wrong? She said, Nothing. I was calling to say hi. It's five in the morning. What's wrong? She said, Griffin, I was calling to say hi. I said, Veronica, uh, please tell me what she said. I I thought about you. I want you to write a book. So what? And she said, I want you to write a book on um the migration of African Americans from Louisiana to Texas because you love history, and why they came, and um the food that came with them that you like cooking and how that food changed. And and that was three years ago. I I've I've written I've done one interview, I have a list of people I need to interview. Um, I interviewed my I call my mother-in-law, you know, she's 105.

unknown 38:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Yeah, 105. Uh I have a l I have a list of 10, 15 people in the Gulf Coast area I'm gonna interview. Um, but just even talking about food that brings up so many different things. The color line. How how was that color line manipulated in Louisiana and in all the communities that exist between, let's say, going down I-10 and where black folks settle coming from Louisiana, a smaller state with which had a lot of slaves, coming into Texas, which was a bigger state and more opportunities? Um, you know, how does that reflect in our food? How does that reflect in our diet? How does that reflect in where we live? And you know, there was a joke where we live by railroad tracks. Do you understand why we live by railroad tracks? Because that's where the cheap land was. Do you understand that they were they were dropping dropping chemicals, chemical dumps near our near our land, uh, and uh, and and we have a higher grade of cancer than than anyone else. And uh and and and so it it brings that book itself, the brilliance of this African-American woman who was a history teacher, who ultimately became a lawyer representing people with AIDS and HIV, uh is far deeper than just writing a book about food and migration. It is. In my initial interview of my mother-in-law, and she's still living. I asked her how did she get to Texas? She said there was a flood in 1927 in the state of Louisiana. I looked it up and she was 14 at the time.

unknown 39:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

And and it said it displaced hundreds of thousands of African-Americans. Sounds like Katrina. Absolutely. And on top of that, she said we lived in a tent city for three years. Three years. She lived they her her family lived in a tent city for three years. And we we shouldn't pay homage to these people.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

So that's the that's the other thing that you you really highlight over and over again in the book. In fact, I'm gonna read directly from your words. If you said, our history has been bastardized and laden with false assertions of facts far too long. What is in your mind, your opinion, uh what is the danger of us forgetting? Or of allowing these little kernels of truth, like you pointed out, that they now build these edifices, these mythologies around, and we buy into it hook, line, and sinker. What is the danger of forgetting? Why must we remember?

SPEAKER_01 41:08

History repeats itself. That's the first thing. But the other point is not knowing is dangerous. I was a practicing lawyer in this community for close to 40 years, and I did not know that there was a lawyer who came in that that came to Galveston from Greenville, Mississippi. He went to Boston University Law School, ultimately went back to Greenville, then came to Galveston, and he went to the Supreme Court in 1898 and won. It was the first African-American that won a case at the United States Supreme Court, first African-American to argue and win. He then went back in 1902, two four years later, won another case at the United States Supreme Court and won again. Why do we know why we don't know that history? What's the virtue of not telling us about the lawyers and doctors and people, doctors who came out of Maharry, who came to Galveston and came to Texas and spread out in the community to treat people? Why why do we tell that story? Why don't we tell the story of the buildings that they built, the the the communities that they created, and why are those communities still not in existence? And the danger of that is it creates a circumstance that our children have this inferiority complex that they can't do.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Because they've been told that they can't do, because telling the stories of those.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

We always have to rely on them to provide their brains and their talents and their their money and everything else when we can do for ourselves a lot of time. And and that's what my fear is. And and inherently, what I'm doing is I'm basically saying, y'all, please stop. We need to understand how important it is. And I was embarrassed. I didn't know about this boy. I had no idea. Which boy are you speaking about? Is it Samuel Lowry? No, it was Wilford Grey. Uh Wilfred H.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Smith.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Wilford H. Smith. Think how bad that brother was. Yeah. He represented Booker T, Washington, and Marcus Garvey. Booker T lived in the state of Alabama. Marcus Garvey lived in the state of New York. He had an office in Galveston, Texas on 24th Street and in Harlem, New York Harlem, in Madhattan. No, not Harlem, I'm sorry, Manhattan. And I remember going back to the old those old New York Times articles and found his office. And the old New York Times, New York Times wasn't a liberal paper, then they used more, they used the N-word more than more than anything else, you know, in terms of the Times. And this is you know when Wolf Smith was practicing law. Wow. And And I'm and I'm reading this, I'm going, this this this brother is traveling between Galveston, Texas, and and uh and Manhattan on a regular basis by train to represent people.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

He was so active that he traveled and I graduated from law school and never heard his name.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

That's right. He traveled, he was so active, he went up to Montgomery County in Conroe, which is by car from Galaston is a two-hour drive. I wonder what toll, I wonder what toll that took on his health. He he died, and the only thing I could track was that he died in a mill institution. You know, you know, that's one one version. And years ago, when I was researching the man, they they said that he in in in one of the versions in terms of the research that uh that his he disappeared. So so I I haven't been able to track down which version is true. I there was one newspaper clipping saying his daughter lived in Houston at the time and she reported him having died, that he was put in a mill institution for African uh for for colors.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

And and and but but it's and and Wilfred Smith existed all over Texas. Wow. Existed all over the country. The water cries is really a story for every all of our communities. All of our communities have those people's stories that need to be told, whether it be Beaumont, whether it be in Belton, Texas, whether it be in uh Tyler, Texas. You know, Maha, Texas at one time was predominantly Hispanic, black and Hispanic. Where do you get the name Maha from? That's kind of that comes from a Hispanic woman. Maya then was dominated by whites when they discovered or sounds familiar.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Sounds familiar. I tell people that you know there used to be over 500 black towns in the state of Texas. Yeah. Oh, when they discovered orb, they start killing people. Yes. So in the time that we have left here, Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, and what people are gonna be celebrating this weekend. And yes, there's genuine joy in that recognition. But based on what I have read from you, um, I think you would also be pretty attentive to what can be lost when that celebration, that commemoration becomes comfortable. What do you want people to focus on?

SPEAKER_01 46:52

As I think what we I think we do what our grandparents did, and our parents did. We still have to celebrate, we still have to pray, we still have to tell the truth, we still have to tell the stories, we still have to, we have to remind each other. I give a speech tomorrow on African-American food culture. Why is that related to Juneteenth? Because the good food and cooking and storytelling and meeting with our families, it gave us hope. And and I'm not saying all African Americans can cook because we can't. You know, all African Americans can't cook, and I and and and and and and we and our families, we made sure that the people who cook could go in the kitchen, but the people who could cook, you need to go get some ice. Go do something else, yes. Go do something else. We see you later. And and and and and it's an it's an understood part of the culture, and and we have to remind ourselves that there was something very prophetic about A. D's pound cake. That um if we can do nothing else, we're gonna make sure our family eats. I don't care. All through my life, no matter how poor I was or how rich I was, always made sure we ate well. One of my grandmothers used to say that I used to use it in final argument all the time if you do anything in your life, sleep on clean sheets and eat well. And I don't remember when she told why she told me it was on my dad's side, my dad's mom. And she lived in Fort Worth, Texas. And then when I became a when she I was at her funeral, it hit me what she meant. There's certain things we can't control in life. We can't control people lying on us, we can't control the judices of the world, we can't control evilness that exists. If you and I would tell the jury take care of yourself if you do anything, sleep on clean sheets and eat well. And and and so what she's really saying is I can't control what goes on outside this this house, but you know, but what I want you to remember, you always have to eat well. What I want you to remember, sleep on clean sheets and take care of yourself. And you what you're really telling the jury is use your wisdom, use your power, use your collective whole and take care of yourself and render a proper verdict. And and and so for Juneteenth, we have to tell the stories, and it shouldn't just be a day of celebration, it should be a day where we reflect and we do the research, and we and and and when when we suspect, when I'm looking in chapter one and I'm looking out on the field, and I'm going, what am I gonna do now?

SPEAKER_00 49:50

So, because in the book you you you speak to the danger of a memory that flatters and the necessity of a memory that wounds a little. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

And and and so I'm I'm looking on it, I'm being bit by answer. I'm wondering what I'm gonna do now. I'm worried. I'm like, but my mind is compelling me to say you have to do something else. You and my mind is telling me, where were our people? I'm sitting in a community that's on a port that they said that didn't have anything to do with slavery, and where are our people? Where did they come in? And and and I'm I'm I'm I and I and I guess I was finally hearing the cries. I'm hearing the the the the the the them saying this land is greater than you realize when you started buying land, and what did the mayor say? How the fuck did y'all let that happen? How did you let that happen? And and and then it hit me, that's what this fight has been about. That's why they're doing whatever they can to stump me and stop me from doing this. That's why it's costing me millions of dollars when it shouldn't be costing me millions of dollars. It should, I should be able to get help. Or you them saying, What are your plans? and and let's see whether we can make this work. I'm not the first African-American who's tried to do this. I'm not the first in Texas or anywhere else. And and when we go to our given communities, we we realize we don't own the land, we don't own the buildings, we don't own the complex, we don't own the commercial developments. We we may have a very small percentage in the corporate structure, and we and and we and we think we're we're all bad for that. But the reality is we don't get the wealth, we don't get that generational wealth, and and and and that's what's important, and that's you know, and and and it that sounds kind of schizophrenic. I know I've been going long. It's it's schizophrenic behavior on my part where I'm trying to tell multiple stories that speak to someone who looks like me, that sits there as a child or sits there as an adult and go, you know, you're absolutely right, I get it. And and that's what and that, and I get why that woman was mad at me, because I put I put so much out there that I'm saying, I'm saying, y'all, it's more complex, our lives are more complex than we ever realized.

SPEAKER_00 52:14

So, one of the things that I keep I know I keep saying this, something else that hit me in reading this book. Well, let me just very quickly two things because our time here is getting short. You talked about a C.L. McCarty who was a sheriff, but then also was a major slave owner and a slaver. And I immediately put the book down and started doing research about Bell County. I wasn't raised here, but I've been here for a little bit of time now. And lo and behold, the first sheriff of this area, now known as Bell County, was one of the major slaveholders here. And as I went through the 1860 slave record, the census, you just saw his family members, and they owned a significant number of enslaved Africans. And just the conflation between I am the law enforcer while you're also the one uh depriving people of their freedom, of their humanity. But you something else I want to read here. You said talking about who is honored, you know, the statues and the facts and the names on the buildings and so on and so forth, but you said attempts to scrub history clean have been rejected in this context and others. The same position is required to be taken in the context of African slaves and their heirs. If we don't succeed, we have forever condemned, all of us, to the historical cycle of forgetting, instead of never forgetting, permitting history's well-respected tenet to occur, history repeating itself. And what hit me in my gut as I read that is my family, we can trace ourselves back to Opobo. That's where my family, you know, is from in Nigeria. And we migrated from a place called Bonnie, which I've gone to visit. And there are hardly any markers, any sense of the atrocities that we endured, some that we may have participated in to help us remember what happened to us and so we don't repeat it. And so today when I see African leaders, wherever in the diaspora and here in the United States, still making deals with the devil, so to speak, that hurt us. I'm going, oh my gosh, because we're forgetting. But we we've got just about five minutes, so you can take this to wherever you would like to.

SPEAKER_01 54:57

And and to to to to address what you're talking about, also, we don't realize we're all related to each other. Yes. We don't realize we're we're related to the Nigerians, the Kenyans, we're that Nigeria, that Africa was divided after World War II into false lines and nations where groups of tribes were divided up that that when when we were enslaved, we were dropped all along the Caribbean coast, all along in South America, uh, in uh and and they were related. We are all it was effective, it's it was an effective system that took a group of people that where the origin of music came, where the origin of man came from, where our DNA tells a different story where when the Ethiopians went to you know during the famine and said they might was gonna the Jews were saying you you all Jews around the world are welcome, but when the Ethiopians came, they didn't want to accept them. And they said we have the original Torah, they tested the Torah, it's the oldest Torah in the world. They did with the original Jew, they did the DNA, and the DNA show they are the original Jews. And and it's that type of history, it's that type of history in terms of pyramids. All of a sudden, the gods came down and created the pyramids and built the physical pyramids, and we didn't shut off all the noses. We done we you know in Sudan, and we look at the the the the the pretty colors in Sudan, the colors of people, you know, and and we see that pretty colors in Nigeria, and we see and and we recognize how history has been whitewashed. Yes. And we're we're kin each other, all of us are, but we don't know that because we we've been told to hate each other, we've been told not to invest in each other, we've been told not to use our economic wealth, and when we become too effective at it, you know, our system figures out a way of getting rid of us. And and and and and we we have to have hope. We have to believe that we're we are, we've done, we've survived against all odds. And we can't forget that. And the wonderful thing about the African diaspora, we're always looking at how it affects others. How do you have a man who was put in prison for 25 years, Nelson Mandela, who gets out of prison? He doesn't encourage annihilation of the people who destroyed his people and then now have the economic wealth. He gives speeches where he speaks the truth and he says, we always must remember none of us are free until the Palestinian people are free.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Yes. And look at where we are now.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

That's brief, it's just bringing for somebody that, and and and I, and and you'll never get that from anyone other than an African who realizes we can, we we have to recognize our unique greatness all over the world in terms of what we provided to the world, and ultimately we have to, and that's what I'm I'm basically preaching in the book. I'm basically saying, y'all, do you understand we can do this?

SPEAKER_00 58:16

We can do this. So now, can you tell in the about 30 seconds? Can you tell our audience where they can get the book? And then for those of you on YouTube, we're going to continue this conversation because I want to ask him about representing the grand the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Land. But tell us where can we get your book?

SPEAKER_01 58:33

You can get the book um on uh any of the outlets. Uh, and that's another speech in terms of what they do to authors. Or I haven't set up a website. I created a website where I sell the book myself. Uh, and it's called What the I created the website, and I created an entity called What the What the Intellectual Properties Inc. And I sell the book myself. You can send me an e an email and I can contact you, Anthony P. Griffin, AnthonypGriffin at gmail.com. And I'm selling it at $27.95, which was the list price. Amazon's selling it for $14.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

Well, we want to thank you for our radio guests, and we're going to continue this on the other side for those of you who come on the podcast and on um YouTube.