 It is my honor, pleasure, and duty to begin this new season of Difficult Dialogues. This is Dr. Demetria Rujo Shabazz, and I'm here with the other Dr. Shabazz, Dr. Milcar Shabazz, and we are your hosts for Difficult Dialogues, which broadcasts on Amherst Media in Amherst, Massachusetts. Thank you for joining us. This is a continuation of a series on reparations, and I would just like to say welcome from our studio on the Native American Potomac homeland in Connecticut Valley on Turtle Island, named by settlers as Amherst, Massachusetts. Welcome to a new webisode of our Difficult Dialogues, where we bravely take up the questions that American amnesia and moral cowardice are too afraid to address. Dr. Shabazz, take it away. Today we have Michelle Miller and Matthew Andrews, and anyone else joining us? Just the two of us. To talk about one of the most longstanding and elusive problems in this country we live in, that is the pursuit of justice. We are particularly focused on justice for the descendants of African people who were enslaved on land that is now claimed as part of this country, as far back as 1526, not 1619. Indeed, since the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era, when shadow slavery was abolished and African people became paper citizens of the USA, we have had a demand for reparations and a fight for self-determination, self-defense and self-respect. In my own lifetime, the very idea of reparations to African descendants of slavery here was unthinkable, unacceptable and utterly realistic in the minds of most people. Some of us in the New African independence movement, led particularly by people like Queen Mother Moore and Brother Mario Bedelli, we persisted nonetheless into the 1980s, demanding reparations be paid. Our movement succeeded in getting the late Congressman John Conyers to introduce a bill, HR 40. He introduced this into the U.S. Congress to study the question of the harm slavery inflicted on us, the ongoing ramifications of that wrongful harm and what it would take to repair the damage done. Conyers introduced the reparations bill in 1989 and indeed today the current form of that bill is still in Congress and is known as HR 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. This bill, along with a version in the Senate, has more co-signers than ever before. In recent years and months, the topic of black reparations has become the subject of books, speeches on the campaign trail, embraced by many democratic office holders and office seekers at least. While it seems to be an idea whose time has come, at least to be taken seriously in the public sphere, polls show that across the nation as a whole, only a small minority of whites support the idea. Here in Massachusetts, ever a leader in ideas like the abolition of slavery, universal education and public schools, women's rights, science and technology and so on, reparations has shown signs of a gain in public attention. Our guests today have taken up the reparations issue and have sought to organize local support and action. I first want to welcome you, Michelle and Matthew, to difficult dialogues. And before we begin our discussion, I'd like to ask you to read your petition just to lay the groundwork for what we're talking about on this program right here in this town. Absolutely. And thank you, Dr. Shabazz and Dr. Shabazz, for having us. This is a really touching. I was very touched listening to you opportunity, so thank you. Dear town council and Mr. Backelman, the purpose of this letter is to formally request the town of Amherst's partnership to end structural racism and achieve racial equity and to establish a funding source devoted to local reparations. We understand the town has taken some preliminary steps to begin the process of ensuring equal rights for its community members, including the adoption of a human rights policy, the formation of a human rights commission and the role of director of human rights and an $80,000 investment to identify and dismantle institutional racism. And we are confident these measures are making an impact. However, we strongly believe there is much more work to be done and we are prepared to begin, we hope, with your participation. We are hereby requesting the town of Amherst to take the following steps in a timely manner. Adopt a resolution to end structural racism and achieve racial equity. A written speech act which acknowledges the existence, past and present, of racial injustice and structural racism in the town of Amherst. The resolution will specifically address anti-black racism in the town of Amherst and will affirm the town's commitment to ending it. Establish a funding source devoted to local reparations. Deform a subcommittee to assist with the reparations process and make recommendations about a fund devoted to local reparations for black citizens in the town of Amherst. Reparations as defined for the purposes of this request are a means of preparing past wrongdoing by growing equity and generational wealth for those injured by addressing racial disparities in education, housing and business ownership. It is critical that reparation efforts are directed by the injured. Therefore, we recommend the subcommittee be led by black community members. There's a growing movement of reparations for black Americans. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that house leaders are seeking to approve a commission to study atonement for slavery. In 2019, Evanston, Illinois adopted a resolution which we've used as a model to end structural racism and establish a reparations fund for African American residents. Last month, Asheville, North Carolina apologized for structural racism and approved reparations for black citizens in their community. If you'd like to learn more, please see the Did You Know document we created. I can't see the link here, but if you go to the petition itself, you'll see that there's several links, including a link to it, another document. Our intention is to create responsible and sustainable transformation in the town of Amherst. We have creative ideas like considering cannabis revenues as a possible path for funding, but we expect a meaningful percentage of the funds to come from grants and private gifts. What we're asking for is the town's sincere partnership in confronting the legacy and current manifestations of structural racism here in Amherst. The late James Baldwin said, not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. We ask you to join us to blaze a path forward that truly embodies the vision our country was built upon. Thank you for that. Thank you for reading that. Would you each talk now about how you came to create this petition, how you came to this idea, and where are we in the effort so far? You want to start, Matthew? I can go ahead if you want. Yeah, go ahead. So, around the time of the murder of George Floyd, Matthew and I were sort of sharing some writing, and he read something of mine, and I read something of his, and we seem to be thinking about reparations, and particularly how we in our community could look at reparations, and also around that time we started seeing news from Asheville, North Carolina, and Evanston, and I think for me that was when I really became inspired, and also there was a sense of hope that this was actually happening in other municipalities, and that there was even a road map, in particular the Evanston. They are also a council manager government like we have. And so, their particular process seems something that could be very aligned with ours. And so, I'll stop there and let Matthew jump, Matthew, you want to jump in? I don't know when I first was thinking about reparations, but I remember Dr. Shabazz that you cued me in to an event that was happening in Northampton, I don't know if it was a year or two ago that was a panel discussion about reparations at the Edwards Church, and I attended that, and I remember even looking back at that time, reparations was not, it was kind of an idea, an idea whose time had not yet come, people were talking about it in very theoretical terms, as if maybe one day or probably not, that sort of thing. And so, it's definitely been in my awareness, you know, I come at this from the perspective of healing, I feel like, you know, as soon as you, like one becomes educated, and starts to look at the actual reality and not kind of the sugar coated history story that most of us got in school, if you just start kind of, it doesn't take too much digging, you know, start to learn a little bit about the Supreme Court decisions that made big, big statements about the possibilities of, or the opportunities that Black people should have in our culture. No, it's not just slavery. So just I've been informing myself, I've been learning, and I continue to learn and try to educate myself. I think once that happens, it's kind of obvious that something needs to be done. And so for me, it was kind of, you know, that something needs to be done was hanging there. And it's like Michelle said, suddenly people started doing things and it felt like maybe this is a moment, maybe there's enough collective will, maybe there's enough collective awareness of the ongoing past trauma and the current, you know, the past trauma and the current ongoing trauma and pain and suffering and disparity and oppression. Maybe there's enough awareness now that it becomes instead of a pie in the sky thing, an obvious thing, something that just needs to be done. So this, the moment that emerged after George Floyd's murder opened to me in the same way, the possibility like maybe we can do this now and seeing the Black Lives Matter signs go up all over town and seeing people really, you know, I went to the Youth March, the Black Lives Matter Youth March in Emerson. There was a lot of people there and there was a lot of enthusiasm and it was kind of like, okay, so maybe maybe there's a possibility. And I feel that about this time, I feel if we can get over denial, if we can get past denial, and we can get past despair and the idea that it's not possible, it's too big, it's too complicated, then it's just an obvious thing, it's an obvious next step. And where we're at in the process here is, well, we have, I think, close to 300 signatures, at least over 150 from the town of Amherst. And we've spoken with some of the town council members to sort of figure out what their expectations would be and kind of understand the process. We also, something really that we're excited about is we made connection with the folks in Evanston who have successfully brought reparations. And in specific, Alderman Robin Ruth Simmons we've made connection with, she has led the effort. And they are working on what they're calling a national model for municipal reparations initiative. So we have a call set up with Alderman Simmons on Tuesday. She actually told us she was going this weekend to be with the family of Jacob Blake and because he is an Evanston native. And so she has offered her toolbox to us. She has offered to introduce us to folks that are working on this. And so we're really listening and seeing where that guides us in terms of the next steps here in Amherst and bringing in more voices and collaborations and things like that. So I think, does that, Matthew, if you want to add anything else to that? Just that we're learning a lot about how our town works, about, you know, I just actually moved to Amherst. I've been a business owner in Amherst for the past five years. So I've been in town, but I was living in Shootsbury, so up the hill. And I just moved here in July, actually. So I'm a new resident and I was totally unfamiliar with the nuances of the town political structure. So we're getting an education on that, as well as an education on politics in general and like how something like this, you know, it's nice to get a petition together and get a bunch of signatures on it, but to actually manifest something. Kind of, you know, we're learning as we go what the practical steps are that need to be taken to do that. You mentioned the program at Edwards Church in Northampton, and I'm reminded to give a plug to one of our Amherst media partners. Critical Conversations is a program series like Difficult Dialogues that airs on Amherst media. And they, along with the Karuna Center, organized that event. It was entitled, Writing Wrongs, The Role of Apology and Reparations for Slavery. And I was on it along with Ali Aslam, Kent Alexander, and Ted Johnson. So again, a shout out to our Amherst media partners. Critical Conversations. The tide really does feel like it's changed a lot since that time. And you all just both spoke to a couple of important connections, both the tragic murder of George Floyd, and then even now the more recent shooting of Brother Blake there in Kenosha, and how these tragedies that keep occurring, keep, you know, kind of traumatizing us in many ways. And you talked about this feeling aspect, opening a wound all over again and again and again. How do you talk a little more about the idea of healing and how things like a speech act apologizing and or what in the language of Sanidadi's and Kirsten Mullen's new book, they talk about the arc. And the first part of the arc of reparations is acknowledgement of the wrong, of the wrong, of the harm. So speak a little more about your ideas on how this acknowledgement, the speech act, just that part of it can be vital in your view to this healing and to this situation. Yeah, you know, I mentioned denial before. And I think the book white fragility was, you know, sold out at Amazon, which I think is hard thing to do these days. I don't know if it still is, but it's the book white fragility talks about fragility, human fragility. It puts it in this, the frame of race, which is very relevant. But there's this basic human fragility that we see in a kid, you know, that the kid does something wrong, my kid does something out of line, and they get caught. And what's the first, you know, not all the time, but a lot of, right, I didn't, no, don't don't look at me. So it was my sister. Yeah, exactly. Somebody, no. So I think in some ways, I don't want to say it's understandable, but I see that I see white America saying, well, no, just, it wasn't that bad. It just maybe some, I don't, they did it themselves, or, you know, whatever the things that come out of people's mouths sideways, it's this obfuscation that has to do with, you know, looking at like, oh my gosh, like, not just slavery happened, not just, you know, my ancestors bought and sold human beings for their own benefit and reaped wealth. This country was founded, well, this country became a superpower. You know, we can get into squabbles about how, under what principles the country was founded, but the country undoubtedly became a superpower in the world because of slavery and because of the cotton trade. And every city in every state was banking on that. So not, but not just that, like you said, people are being shot, black men are being shot and women being shot in the street. And just because we're seeing it now doesn't mean it just started happening. There's lots of people whose names aren't being chanted at protests who have been over the past decades, especially since the beginning of the drug war, who have been lost to police violence tragically. So the apology is this acknowledgement that says it takes away that denial. It takes away that feeling about this, I need to hide from this. And it just puts it in the middle of the room and then we can face it. But we're not, until we get through that, we can't think, okay, what does equity look like? How do we repair this actually? How do we, you know, help people who've been cut off from building generational wealth, find some footing and find some equity? How the practicalities of that, we can't get into that until we first say, okay, we did this, or our ancestors did this, or we've benefited from this, this is real, we are benefiting from it. And, you know, I don't want to go on too many tangents, but even just that, you know, the idea that there is a structural inequity of for sure, but we're all caught up in this mess, and we're all tangled up in it, and we all need healing. You know, our souls are not easy, are not resting easy with the current situation. And only denial can keep us from feeling that our souls are not easy. The soul of white America is not easy, is not peaceful, is not calm, and okay with this. But denial covers that up, it papers it over. So, you know, if we can work through that denial, and get to an acknowledgement, and an apology, then maybe we can actually start to put some practical manifestation in place. Michelle, do you think we're at a place to do, to begin to do that here in Amherst? What do you, and what do you say to neighbors who might say, hey, you know, my hands are clean, my family immigrated to the U.S. after slavery was ended, and had nothing to do with that. They derive no benefit at all from black enslavement, or that this town has no structural racism problem today, and that those complaining of racial injustices perhaps just aren't credible. How do you engage in the face of denial, and the face of human fragility? How do you engage folks on these matters? Yeah, this is something I've been thinking about a lot, and it's a really important question, particularly to make this more accessible to more people, the idea, the concept, because really the apology, the speech act, is the first critical step. And in some ways it's the no-brainer, easy step that most people, we hope, would be willing to take, right? But then we get to what do we do about it, you know? It's like, we've got to go beyond that, which is why this petition is in two parts. And as I've been thinking about this, I've been thinking about my own childhood and my own upbringing, and I, my grandfather was a 30-year captain in the Philadelphia Fire Department, and as a patriarch of the family, I was raised with this worldview that, you know, the boot is a good symbol here. I was raised with this worldview that you, you know, you work hard and you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you know? And that is a worldview that a lot of people in our country and in this town have. And unfortunately, the other message that I received as a child was that, that Black people basically weren't able to do that because where they're bad or they're, this was the messaging based on what I was exposed to in my, in my childhood. And that is really difficult for me to talk about, but, you know, I didn't have direct experience with Black community. I had what I was told, what images were given to me, what I was exposed to. And so I wanted to read, I, you know, the sort of the remedy for this bootstrap model is personal responsibility, personal responsibility to hear this. I happen to passionately and almost, I mean, my heart when I think about and talk about it, you know, I, I want to read this quote, if it's okay, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that he, he said this in an interview, and it really for me sums a lot up. He said, I believe we ought to do all we can and seek to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. But it's a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself up by his own bootstraps. And many Negroes by the thousands and millions have been left bootless as a result of these years of oppression. And so my belief system is that it's racial discrimination years of oppression that have led to these disparities that we're seeking to change. And, and the remedy is reform reallocation of funds, which some, you know, there are other groups and Amherst working on those things as well. And so what I would say to my neighbors and to anyone listening is, you know, I've, I've, I've been working on these four truths. I'm writing, I'm trying to write a piece. And the four things I think that I have been able to identify as truths are that black people were enslaved and held as property by whites for nearly 250 years. Anti black racism has existed in the US since its inception. Black people have not been successful in gaining generational wealth and black people have contributed to and continue to contribute to the generational wealth of whites. And so what I would say is no matter where you fall on that spectrum, whether you believe that, you know, it's personal responsibility or whether you believe in reparations and, you know, racial discrimination here as the reason I would say it doesn't really matter. Because unless we tend to these truths, it's impossible to have a healthy and just society. And so I will just finish by saying, I found this amazing quote by an Australian aborigine activist called Lila Watson. She said, if you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. And that really sort of speaks to the heart of what Matthew's talking about in terms of healing. You're reading that quote, give me chills that that indigenous wisdom is so is so strong. It's so powerful and so true. I got a little more time there. I know Dia is in the control room. She's gonna let me know. But I want to mention this, you know, we did a program, the whole town, tuned in through Amherst media to a webinar we did with William Darity Jr. and Kirsten Mullen, the authors of a new book on reparations from here to equality. And one of the points they emphasize, strongly emphasize in their book, is that reparations, a true, a real program of reparations is really targeted at the federal level, the US government that comes about in the 1780s, under the framework of the US Constitution. That is really where slavery was sanctioned, anti-black oppression was sanctioned. And when we say the country was founded on anti-black racism, it's in the Constitution. It's right there from the very beginning, the 35th Clause, the support for the slave trade until 1808 on and on and on. I mean, and it takes an amendment in 1866, the 13th Amendment to overturn that it was founded, the Constitution itself was a document enshrining this as a slave society. So it targets, their work really targets at the federal government level. And we've mentioned the House Resolution 40 and so on. But he doesn't deny the importance of state and local action. But he wants to be very clear that that's not the, that state and local governments don't have the resource base to meaningfully address the reparative justice and to close the wealth gap and all of that. But he does stress the importance of these kinds of local actions. He lives in Durham. He and Kirsten live in Durham and they talk about how that municipality is also working in some serious ways to back reparations in North Carolina and in their own community. So just to be clear, the fund that would be, the spending of it would go towards initiatives of, by and for Black folk. But if, as we work to get the council to come along and the town to come along to that idea, and you've mentioned ideas of where these resources might come from, different revenue streams, talk a little bit more about why and how you see that local action being able to help make a difference in the healing, in the climate, in the pursuit of justice here in this town. Well, maybe be a model too in the way that Evanston is working to be a model. Yeah, you know, when this all started, Michelle mentioned that I read a piece that she wrote and I sent her a message and said, hey, I've been, I really love your piece and I've been thinking about reparations. And, you know, she had been also and what I was thinking about that that time was number one, I mean, there's nobody in Congress that's going to listen to me right now. So I didn't feel like there was anything meaningful I could do on that level. And so, but, but it was, it was what I said before about looking around seeing all the Black Lives Matter signs. To me, actually, the town thing came second. The town thing came from getting together with Michelle and talking through and, you know, she really has been the strategist here. And what I was thinking originally was just a fun, like, you know, maybe there's enough will out there, there's enough good will in the community that we could just develop a private fund. And we just find a bunch of people, you know, maybe you get 100 people to contribute a certain amount per month, $5,000 a year, $10,000 a year, you know, and build, maybe we could build a fund of $100, $200, $300,000 a year that could be used for specific equity building things. This was kind of the original thought bubble. It's like, it was, but it was really like, what could we do? What could be meaningfully done that would help to redistribute resources and build equity? So that, the town's involvement, I think, you know, it's like, that's what, when I said we're learning all about non-politics and how that all works. It is, it has, to me now at this point, having been through this, it feels equally important. It feels like it wouldn't have been right to leave it out and it feels like it's integral to it. And it's, I also see it as a possibility, like what Michelle said, Evanston is doing, they're saying, hey, we did this and other people are interested and we want to help them. And I think a lot of times that's how ideas spread, is they, you know, one place it happens and then they share the information with another place and with another place and, you know, things can grow. And then you see this movement growing to the point where people on the national level can say, okay, I see out there that there's enough will, there's enough positive feeling about this thing that we can really push it now. I mean, that's generally the sense I get is that people are, and people in Washington are looking out to their constituencies to see, you know, how much support they have for different things. So we need to show that we need to show that there's support here and that's what we're hoping to do. Michelle, anything to add to that? Everything Matthew said. Yeah, I, you know, one of the things that this is difficult dialogue, right? So I'm going to go for it. Okay. One of the things or, you know, something that I am feeling the resistance of in our community is this idea of allocation, allocation of funds and who makes those decisions and how are those funds allocated and why? And I think what Matthew and I are trying to do is just, you know, pause. Let's just, we don't have to have all of the answers right now. And even Evanston, they have put together through the subcommittee that they have, similar to what we would hope to have, they put together what they're calling. I forgot to write it down, but it's like a stakeholders group basically. And because as we said in the petition, it's critical that those injured are involved in this process, fully leading the process really. And we have our community, we don't have a large black community here. Okay. So, you know, and that to me is, and Matthew and I have talked a lot about this, that's a problem in our mind that didn't just happen, you know, that Amherst doesn't have more black people living here. So we want to really figure that piece out. We want to, you know, so that this and something that feels really important to me is that this isn't like you give $10 or you give $100 and you walk away, that will be great. But actually for this to be healing, we need to be able to sustain this. And that's why we need the partnership we hope of the town and of others. Because it's important today and it's going to be important in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 100 years. And so, how do we set it up, you know, so that it's a sustainable, it's a sustainable fund and initiative that isn't just for right now in this moment. Yeah, I think that's, that's it. There are, you know, as Dee and I talk with people all over town and there are a lot of ideas, but, you know, it's it is that lack of lack of equity. It's that lack of the intergenerational wealth. We, you know, butternut farm apartments and townhouses, we were here when it when it opened and this is half housing. These are apartments and townhouses where there are income restrictions as to who can live there, they have affordable rents, they don't rent to student households, but but basically with for those with these with certain income restrictions. And it's managed by it's managed by half housing out of Springfield. But idea occurs, what about, you know, a kind of cooperative housing or co housing that we could buy, buy a large home by our couple of homes and create a kind of a real communal kind of setting where three, four however many families could be part of a co housing that they would all have an ownership stake in. But again, where does the initial investment come from? Where is the initial fund that could could help create that kind of cooperative housing that people could then, you know, live in take apart of have a real kind of a state stake in developing and when they move or when they pass on to go to their children or to go to others who are in need that that come in and would live there. But again, it's these kinds of housing that issues that could increase the affordable housing and be part of a black initiative home ownership and cooperative ownership initiative fund such as what what we're discussing here that could provide the the initial funding for something like that. These are these are could really go a long way toward toward making a difference. So, you know, I'm, you know, I hope this program can play a part in extending the dialogue in extending the the conversation and really pushing people privately as well as within town government to to ask what final sort of thoughts or words might might you want to leave through this program. First, I just want to say that, you know, that idea that particular idea that you just brought up, it's not something that I had thought of or probably would have thought of. And that's the beauty of this is like, you know, there's so many good possibilities and there's so many good ideas. But if there's money available, if there's actually a fund available, the possibilities, you know, are just going to grow, you know, the good, well thought out, constructed, you know, as soon as there's actually a fund, it's going to be amazing to see what kind of possibilities emerge and the creativity. And I think that's just the main thing is like, you know, I don't know if white people often think of reparations as like a slap on the wrist or somebody taking something from me or something. This is about a joyful, equal just community. This is about building together a world where there's not one group of people standing on top of another group of people. It's about creating a kind of society where we're taking care of each other. And there's the kind of universal care and, you know, collective reliance that can open possibilities for human experience that we can't even imagine right now. So this is definitely not about some kind of punishment or some kind of, you know, like, giving something away out of shame or whatever, you know, this is about building a beautiful future together. And I really believe that now is the time and that we can do this. And I look forward to all the creative possibilities that emerge along the way. Thanks for you, Michelle. Yeah, just to say, you know, I encourage anyone listening to this, if they have any resistance to the idea at all, ask questions, you know, get curious, you know, because that resistance that we feel and that feeling, as you said, Dr. Shabazz of like, this wasn't mine, you know what I mean? That is a natural, maybe a natural reaction. However, I encourage to pause and to get curious and to ask questions and not to let that sort of dictate your behavior. Because shame is a really powerful emotion and denial. They're really powerful. And so when we feel them, they're sort of like assigned to us to say, well, what might be going on here? And what else can I learn, you know? So that's sort of what I would say. We think of Amherst as having no or a very distant relationship to slavery. And a lot of people point out that, you know, Massachusetts with the lawsuit of Elizabeth Freeman, Mumbet, that in the early 1800s, it's pretty much disappears from here in the Commonwealth with Massachusetts. But it actually, in fact, there's an interesting story from the 1840s, where a young girl named Angeline Palmer was indigent. She was in what they called in that time the Alms House or the poor house. Her mother had been in the poor house, her mother had died, and then she was she had no one. And we didn't have as maybe today have foster care systems or whatnot. But what happened is she became a ward of the town. And the town government, the select men select board at that time, gave her a way to a family, the Shaw family in Belcher town, and to be a servant in their in their household. So she would kind of work for her room and board, so to speak. And okay, so that was something customary at the time to be done a poor white person, white girl as much as a poor 10 year old black girl. But the family there got involved in some investments down south, some of the investments weren't going so well. They were planning to take a trip down to this silkworm thing they had invested in. And they were thinking to take Angeline with her young 10 year old black girl. And there was discussion of once they got there, how much they could get for her, that they could sell her for like 300, you know, what at that time, maybe $300 and modern terms, pretty substantial some maybe 10,000 times that. And, and so the word kind of got out. And the black community rose up to go back to town government to say, Hey, wait a minute, we're kind of hearing something might be a foot to sell Angeline into slavery, you know, we're not supposed to supposed to have that here. And, you know, the town being town as you as we found in 2020 was the same town back in 1840. There's a lot of lip service, a lot of discussion, a lot of debates, a lot of trying to figure it out. And meanwhile, these, these people, the Shaw's out of Belcher town at a train ticket, and we're getting ready to go and take Angeline with them. So these, some three individuals decided something had to be done. A man and he's in our in the background of drawing that was done with him from a long ago, manning Henry Jackson, along with Angeline's half brother named Frazier, along with named Louis Frazier, along with an older man named William Jennings, these three black men decided to take action. They go to Belcher town, they liberate Angeline from the Shaw's before they could take her away. And they put in and she goes from there into the Underground Railroad and just kept safe. We later find out in Colrain, she was hit out for some years because the three men, Jackson, Frazier and Jennings were arrested and did face time for supposedly kidnapping. And they did about a year, a year in prison. They were represented in court. There was the town was kind of divided. Some for law and order, law and order, like we heard at the Republican National Convention a few days ago. Some were saying, you know, no, this is unjust. And what these people did was was righteous. And, and so Emily Dickinson's father actually represented them when they went to trial. And they, they, you know, fought the good fight. Edward Dickinson fought the good fight. But he did not win their freedom. They did get a year. And it was different kind of times they actually could get food. They would work out in the community during the day, and then they had to sleep in this kind of jail at night. And people would bring, could bring them outside food, food from home. So it was a little different than the way our prisons run today. But, but all, but they did do time. And later, they're, you know, particularly as we move closer to the Civil War, they actually were kind of lionized as heroes for the action they took. But, but, you know, I really would like to think of Angeline Palmer, as these conversations go forward about this equity fund and about trying to do something, do this, this apology and do this, some type of equity fund to really think of Angeline Palmer, think of, of Jackson, Frazier, and Jennings who did time to keep her free and to really, you know, realize that this, this crime against humanity called slavery did have a presence right here in Amherst. And that's just one story about that presence here. But again, thank you for, for, for what you're doing here. And thank you for coming on Difficult Dialogues to share.