 We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These words from the Declaration of Independence are familiar to many of us, and yet it took 143 years for women to get the right to vote and 189 years for black people to get the right to vote. And still today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are still only words for many people. Here in Boston, life expectancy varies by 30 years depending on where you live. In Roxbury, with many poor and black people, life expectancy is 59 years. In the back bay, wealthy and mostly white life expectancy is 91 years. It's tough to have liberty when you are in prison. The United States incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 people. Our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most countries in the world. Millions of people in our country don't have health care, a decent job, good education, a home they can afford, and that makes it pretty hard to pursue happiness. So on this show, you are going to meet people who are making it possible to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People today who are making the words of the Declaration of Independence come true. Hello, welcome. My name is Michael Jacoby Brown. I'm your host who we hold these truths. And today, we're very lucky to have with us Kamayo Marcheria, a social justice organizer from Fairfield County, South Carolina, a former elected commissioner and county commissioner in Fairfield County. And so Kamayo, welcome to We Hold These Truths. And I know you'd like to start by reciting a poem you wrote recently in honor of Black History Month and social justice organizers. So I invite you to do that. Thank you, Kamayo. Well, thank you very much, Michael. I actually wrote this poem some time ago, but I want to dedicate it in Black History Month to all those who are fallen, past and present, those who continue to struggle in the name of love and to uplift humanity. And the poem goes like this, I'm building this poem and I'm calling it a city just for you. It is built on the rock of my mind so that it will last and carry your name through time. I'm building this poem and calling it a city just for you. I'm planting flowers in the streets and I'm hanging stars on corner lamp posts. I'm hanging stars on corner lamp posts to light your way when you walk the streets of my memory. I'm building this poem, you're calling this city to you for you to show my gratitude. From this moment on, you have a home. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Kamayo. So to introduce you to our listeners and viewers, I'd like you to say a little bit about where you grew up. I know some of that, but your early life, I know you are accused of a crime you never committed or committed to 10 years in an adult prison, even though you are a minor. And I wonder if you can just say something about that and that experience. Yeah, just briefly, Michael, at the age of, I thought I was 16, but they said I was 17. I was arrested with a group of six other people in the queues of rape, kidnappers, assault, battery, county, concealed deadly weapon when I was 17. I was not present during that commission of this crime. I went to trial with an all-white jury, all-white judge, lawyers, victims. And with this, I was convicted and sitting to 50 to 57 years in the maximum security in Trenton State Prison. Despite the testimony of the victims and other people, I told them that I was not there, that I was not part of it, and I was charged with charges of a gun, which I was never there. So I started 10 years, got out of the prison and tried to uplift myself and admit a commitment promise to my mother. I'll try to be a decent human being and do something to be proud of. And of course, I lived in between Philadelphia and South Carolina, considered South Carolina home, but I was actually born in Philadelphia. So after the conviction, I moved back home and started to work here in South Carolina, created a whole lot of different groups. And eventually 47 years after my conviction or relief, I was recharged and placed on a sex offenders list 47 years after the crime and told them I want to be offered to go back to New Jersey and get off the list. I was never placed on a sex offender list. They never even had a sex offender listen to the Megan Morgan, Morgan, I'm trying to say, the Megan case out in New Jersey, which was years after, before they ever created a registration. They placed me on that list and I've now been on that list and I have to pay $150 fine every year. And of course it has stopped me from getting jobs and a number of other things. But despite that, the community has elected me to the office here where I've organized for 18 years. I wonder if you could talk something about after a little bit about how you were able to get out of prison, even though you were falsely accused. And what were some of the influences that led you here you are without much of a formal education to work in social justice? What led you to do that? And who influenced you to become the person you are today? Well, Michael, when I first went in, actually I couldn't read and write and I was 17. I didn't learn to read and write to I was really like 21. I got my GED and applied myself to some of the college programs. And along that way, I met a person that was in prison that told me about a student lawyer at Harvard School by the name of Andrew Vatch, who happened to be white and Jewish. And a Puerto Rican brother by the name of Ramon Jimenez, who happened to be black, who was stoned at the Harvard Law School, heard about my case, came down, filed a number of briefs over the years, and eventually they got me out of prison after writing a book called Perot as Post-Conviction Relief, The Robert Laws Decision, 1973, The Harvard Review. And upon that and riots and other things that happened in the prison, I was released in 1973, September 18, 1973, because of the investigation of Andrew Vatch and Ramon Jimenez and Keith Giorgio. Right. So, and how did you get into the work of organizing for justice after that? Well, Andy and Ramon were both organizers. I never knew where the organizers were. And I kind of listened to the things they'd done. And I was very angry at that particular time, but particularly against white folks, because I was convinced that white folks were born with a serious dose of Novacaine to the brain. They could see everything that was going on, but they couldn't feel it. And I truly felt that. And, but anyway, they got, I'm losing track of myself, but they kind of got me out. And out there, with the college, I wanted to be a social worker. And they told me I couldn't be a social worker. And I liked it when Andy and Ramon was known as the organizer. And so I wanted to be an organizer. And so we had riots in the prison. And I was elected to the first prisoner inmate committee in Triton State Prison about the riots and took some prison guards, prisoners and all that kind of stuff. So my first election was in prison as the committee member. And when I got out, we started the ad hoc parole committee that was fighting for a contract for parole for prisoners, because you didn't know what to do to get out of prison and what you did do or didn't do. It didn't seem to matter. And I wanted to be a social worker or a teacher. I really wanted to be a teacher. And I didn't think I could make it because of my penal record. And so rather than being a teacher, I thought the best way to be the teacher was being an organizer. How do you go into a community and take the steps to find out like six steps? Like number one, what are people aware of in the community? And pinpoint that awareness. And then walk them through that process of awareness. And what does awareness really mean of that? And walk them through a process of how they adopt that awareness and how they adopt a vision. And then how they adopt a strategy to deal with the things that they want within the community on a grassroots level. And since I couldn't be a teacher, I said I'll be an organizer. And years later, 1991, the South Carolina Social Workers Association nominated me to be a number one award winner of the Social Workers South Carolina. Now it's not amazing. That's amazing. And you're also a teacher, if not in a formal school, but you've taught many, many people. And I wonder if you can talk about how you came to South Carolina when that was. I know your family has owned land there for many years. I know some of that land was stolen by white people and some of the campaigns you worked on there in South Carolina. Yeah, I kind of finally left Philadelphia in 1979, 80, once I became off of parole, I was taken off of parole. I was on it for 50 something years, it was supposed to be. And I came back and when I came back to South Carolina, I found that there was a doctor's office, there was restaurants, I'm talking about in the 1980s that black folks weren't allowed in. And that police officers would, you know, stop you along the highway and give you fines and charge you things. And they stopped me one time on Highway 39, and I was the third car in line. And then when they got up to my car, they asked me, say, All right, boy, I want to see your driver license and registrations. Well, me with myself, I say, Well, driver license and registration say, Yeah, boy, yeah, yeah, boy, I say, let me tell you all one damn thing. I ain't no boy. The only damn boys I know are cowboys and white boys. I need the one of them. And let me tell you something, Michael, before guy got the news, guys was no stuff before it happened. Before guy got the news, they snapped me out my truck out of the van. So me and our car and had me in Saluda County deal before guy got the news. So that's what really got me involved with what was going on. What was going on there? Because they told me I was in the heap of trouble and I asked them how much was the heap. And they bought me upside the head. So I'm trying to be funny with them. I didn't know what he was. So after that, I started an organization with young people called PALS, P-A-L-S is still for praise, assurance, love and security. And that's what our kids need. And I made it kind of political. And I would organize them around political issues at even at the age of 11 and 12 or 13 years old, took a group of them to the ocean. They never knew the ocean was salt water, never seen it before. Things like that. And then working with the community around issues that black people, a group called the JCs, black people were not allowed to swim in the swimming pool that we received in federal funds. I got together with a group of people and sued them. Community based organization received federal funds and had a sign out front, no niggers allowed. They didn't say black people, they said no niggers allowed. So that was a state, that was a salute where all my people were born. That was going on in the 80s. And right now, today, the Grand Dragon of the Kukka Clan lives in salute. So stop, Mike, because I'm just talking here. No, no, that's great. I remember when I was down there, you showed me a place where there had been a swimming pool and rather than allowing black people to swim in the pool, they filled it in with cement. Can you remind me where that was? That was in Saluda. And also it was another place I worked in Arkansas where that happened, where I worked with a known organizer named Miss Brown at that particular time. Some years ago, I was working with Kathy Howell and we were down there, they had covered up a swimming pool while we were working there and this is like in the 90s. Right. So rather than even allowing the white people to swim there, they filled it in with cement. They filled it in with cement and covered it over, yes. That's really amazing. And can you tell us a little bit more about some of the things you mentioned, the PALS organization with the young people? I wonder what were some of the other campaigns and issues you were involved with down there in South Carolina? Well, I was also involved with some of the big things we were involved with with the petty jury system in Fairfield County in 1983. Black people were not allowed to sit on the jury and at that particular time when a decision was made about our land or any other thing, blacks weren't allowed to sit on the jury and we filed a complaint with the federal government and the FBI that came down there and kind of broke that up. Now, people might think that's funny. That's in 1983. We also had a nuclear power plant where most of the people here were 70, 80% black. They built a nuclear power plant, bought a land cheaply from black people and black folks really didn't understand what was going on. And we have a nuclear power plant in our black backyard where over the years it's been an extraordinary number of people with cancer and we can't prove where it's coming from. But allegedly people think it comes from a nuclear power plant. Right. And I remember you said some of the land that your family had owned had been stolen. Can you describe how that happened and what happened there? Well, the records that I couldn't investigate, I went through the archives and looked through the records. I've gone back and this is in the 30s and 40s where our family owned some land in Saluda where, given to my understanding, white folks just took it. They took it off the land and took it for a led tax purposes, which wasn't tax purposes. And of course, the black folks had no resource to turn to fight them. And so my family lost a considerable amount of land by that kind of thievery. Right. And you mentioned Kathy Howell. I wonder if there were other organizers that you worked with and what kind of work you did with Kathy. And I know you worked with others throughout the southern part of the US. I wonder if you can describe some of that. Well, in Fairfield County, you know, working here, it was 1990 when I joined the grassroots leadership organization, who's a great leader at that time was Sycon. Everybody knows Sycon, the author, poet, the writer, singer. And that's when I first met Kathy. She would work with various organizations. And as I worked with grassroots leadership, I learned a whole lot of new skills of how to organize and started to travel Ron Charity. I don't remember Gina remember Ron Charity. Sure. Yes, I'm sorry. Yes. Yeah, I remember Ron. Yeah. Yeah, he taught Arthur Ash how to play tennis. And he was on the grassroots leadership staff when I first started. So I learned a lot from Ron, Ron, rather. And then we started working in Little Rock, Arkansas, where we had a whole lot of issues down there. We worked in Mississippi. And I worked along with Kathy, who is a great organizer and excellent person in terms of strategy and other things that she really handles good. So I learned a lot from her and the people that I worked with grassroots leadership for 16 years. Right. And then some time after that, you decided to run for office for County Commissioner in Fairfield County, just north of Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. Can you describe how you made that decision and what that was like running for office? Yeah, 1988, after we had the fight around the grand jury selection process, there were some other issues that we had, you know, the black folks living in rural areas didn't have access to plumbing and other amenities. I decided to run because a seat became vacant and the community kept asking me to run. Now, one of the things I did before I even ran when I first came to this county, I visited every church in this county. I told them about my background. Before anything ever became issue. Told them about the book and they knew my history. And so I decided in 1990, people asked me to run and five people ran at that particular time at that campaign. And blessed as it be, I won that election in 1990 for a two-year term. And then the next year, when I ran, there were four people ran against me in 1994. And I won every election all the way up to 19, I mean, 2016. Right. And can you describe what that was like being on the County Commission in Fairfield County in South Carolina there? What sort of things you did and what the experience was like? Well, the experience is when you deal them with a whole lot of people who, you know, everyday people, if I go to the church and ask them to announce, you know, county council meeting, other meeting, as zoning board meetings and whatnot, a lot of times the church wouldn't do it, but they would stand up and announce there and we'd mingle, you know, and I'm like, I can figure that. So people kind of fell out with me instead. I was pushing too hard in some instance. So the fights were really about the quality of life in this county, majority African American county with a substantial budget, but none of those resources were coming back to the community. So my immediate fight around the environmental stuff was the fight to get a recycling center because we thought everything in the green contained alongside the road, dead animal, dead people and everything else is appeared over a period of time. And then I started fighting for recreation issues and I had a recreation center built. I started fighting for fire services and I had a fire station built. Then I started fighting around the nuclear power plant that electricity went out, they didn't have a solar way of warning the people that they were in danger. Then we started fighting for things around housing and got a $250,000 grant to rehab some of the updated housing and things that were in the community. Another fight Michael that I had was the local bank entered into an agreement with them and won $10 million for the minority appendicitis program where they were red line in the black community and we won that kind of program kind of handedly. And I'm just looking at some I don't want to just read from it but it's a whole lot of different things that I started. One of the places I had was taking some of the power groups and other groups to see Nelson Mandela when he came to Atlanta. Right. I know you describe redlining although some people are likely to know what it is. I wonder if you can describe exactly what it meant in your county regarding the bank and housing loans. Well we had Dr. John Roof do all the statistical data on the lending and following up on those loans and what I mean by redlining that when it came to certain zip codes in certain areas where you were a black population you just couldn't get a loan if it did it put the real skin and many of these to it what you have to pay and find. So we kind of looked at that and tried to organize statewide with a group of organizations that wasn't willing to attack the banks and so we went around and looked at move your money day we kind of named that total organization look at the banks and all the information out move your money there when the banks heard that they called us in for a negotiation that's great and that's when we entered into I asked for 20 million dollars we wound up with 10 million dollars that they would give to minority people you know first time folks but all the fight was we needed to get folks into the banking industry that was more than just entry level clerks we needed folks to be loan officers and bank managers and all all that so that was part of the fight and we did get some concessions with that. Yeah it's really good and one of the lessons that you would looking back over your years as an organizer as an elected official what do you think are the most important things for younger people now thinking of working for social justice what do you think are the real important lessons and things that they should think about today and in the future Kamayu. Michael let me say this now I'll kind of expound a little bit right now I am so I am so perplexed and confused about having a vision for for the future because I live through a time in my sense that we had boundaries there are certain things you just didn't do you know you had respect you know and you know somewhere along the lines of my organized and in prison stuff and where we at now those boundaries are gone you know I mean like where do you go when you don't have boundaries and no respect and no civility and what so I that's what's going to go on what's trying to go on with young people I was raised up with young people why is 16 you having a baby 15 16 years old because my life expecting to see if I can live to be 18 18 years old that'd be or that'd be great and that was at mindset a lot of young like people I have babies you know me because I'm not going to live to be 17 uh uh losing track of myself. Michael you were saying about boundaries you say people uh some young people today are lacking boundaries could you explain a little bit what you mean by that not only not only them uh just we just lost respect respect through technology or whatever it is my brain fog technology or taking over their minds and whatnot I just don't see that cohesiveness but on the other hand nothing's going to survive if the young people don't step up and do what they need to do to uh to study to to study history to examine the world around them to be aware of what's going on and what is the purpose of life and what are we really fighting about it isn't really discrimination because I've talked to some young people they don't see racism like I did you know my family's bi-racial and I did and I got good friends and you talked about racism like they don't even want to hear it because they just don't see racism that way so how do you how do you how do you explain institutionalized kind of racism that's going on that impacts them in a way that they can comprehend what you're talking about as it relates to racism yeah how have you tried to do that when someone says they don't see the racism even black folks what have you tried to say about institutionalized racism I try to point to uh you know examples of races and institutionalized you know in terms of pay for women in terms of discrimination uh for health care like for instance if I'm standing in the in the Senate in South Carolina and I see a black person gets up and say uh my good friend and colleagues of course are out there uh blah blah blah your friend and colleague all his life all his history all his institution and everything he tried to do in South Carolina is demise you take away your health care your education your child your protection police lock you up mass incarceration what the hell is that to your good friend across the aisle and you know why the black mindset like that is what puzzles make is to make young people have that kind of crucial kind of critical analysis that when something happened happened that analysis about what's going on right and what have you learned you you are a county commissioner and at least when I was there you were the only black county commissioner in Fairfield County with four other white folks I think it was what did you learn from being an elected official there you know I learned a lot in terms of what's going on with their budgets and what's and how the government kind of operates and how it kind of leads minority people people of color uh people with no power out of the loop but they're included in the foolishness and I you know I would go in rooms and I would sometimes be only black sometimes there'd be like 10 15 people be three blacks and two the two blacks and I don't care what white folks are saying they grinning and laughing and agreeing and not asking what were you agreeing and laughing about because I didn't see them see the damn thing that's been attested to up and they gave me you know we the personnel walk away from it they want to deal with that so I mean just learning and being in rooms by myself in Washington DC you know with elected officials and how deeply ingrained that the racism and bias and things are going on and how do you hold your silence in the middle of that how you as uh as um um what's called I'm said about if a black man lives in America there's no way in world he moved here by day to day would not be in just a kind of complete rage James Baldwin like that so so whether I've learned a whole lot of patience I've learned that ignorance is not always curable um I learned that old wounds might stop uh they don't they don't heal they just stop bleeding uh those those type of things and then you learn how to talk to people you learn to listen to what they really see what's really going on and those are some of the lessons that I learned and um I'm still learning Michael no I know you are well uh I wonder if you have just a few other last thoughts about uh people who are thinking about running for office what would you suggest they do right now what's the what's one thing they should pay attention to if they're thinking of running for office well the first victim of running for office or any debate that you have now they the first victim is truth you know that uh you go to argue do everything that can keep truth off the off off the floor what I would advise for them to do uh Michael's read and study like I said I didn't learn to read 12 21 and once I'm not to read and read books and whatnot I was just unbelievable that black folks were knowing the things they were doing I just didn't know but it is trying to accumulate as much knowledge as you can try thank you sorry accumulate as much knowledge as you can we're just about out of time but I want to thank you Kamayo Marcheria elected official and community organizer one of the most important people in South Carolina for being on We Hold These Truths and my name again is Michael Jacoby Brown I'm the host of We Hold These Truths and Kamayo Marcheria a community organizer and former elected official of the County South Carolina very honored to have our guest today thank you so much Kamayo thank you and follow you thank you