 Hello. Oh, that was loud. I'm ready. So we're going to go ahead and get started. This is really awesome. Thank you all so much for coming up. My name is Hannah. I'm the director of Placemaking for the Mill District. And tonight we're kicking off what we hope will be an ongoing in perpetuity speaker series, just opening up stories in the community and giving an opportunity to have some conversation and learn things about one another. So the Moseley family has incredibly graciously agreed to kick it off tonight for us. So we do have some post-its around. If you have questions, please feel free to write them down. And I'm going to go around and gather them towards the end and then hand them off to the family so they can answer some questions after they've had a chance to share openly. And we did want to point out that tonight is being videotaped just so everybody's aware of that because we want this conversation to be able to have a wide reach. So we'll have it online and give people a chance to watch it and hopefully that will inspire them to come to future series. And if there are any of you in the room or people that you know that you think those stories should be told and would be really wonderful to put out there, please let me know. I have some business cards, but we just want to open it up and have it be a really organic community thing that people feel is accessible to them to tell their story. So we're going to start it tonight. I'm going to hand it off to Amelia and the Moseley family and thank you again for making the time. Thank you, Hannah. Hi, everyone. How is everybody doing tonight? Woo! I'm going to get right into things. I'm going to start off with some questions. How many people read about school integration in the newspapers? Raise your hand. Okay, a couple. How many people read about school integration in the history books? All right. Well, my parents were there. And do you know how many black people in America, how black people in America were treated when they were called the N-word? And would you like to hear what it means to me and my family today? We'd like to have a civil conversation around these issues and around race and tell our unique story. So I'm here to tell you our story. It's a story of success. It's a story of triumphs. It's a story of challenges. And sadly, the role that oppression plays in this evolution. Oftentimes there is a monolithic representation of what it means to be black throughout the history of the United States. But we're here to show you that every story is unique, starting with ours. Our story is that of civil rights progress in America. But don't make the mistake of assuming our experience or opinions are the same as other black people's because they're just ours. So maybe we're more open about talking about these issues because we share the Mill District's goals of respect, understanding, and progress. So you guys were given handouts of information. I urge you to consider the timeline of these historical events in relation to my family's own personal accounts of our histories. And are you guys ready to get deep? All right, let's do it. So first I want to introduce, this is my dad, Dr. Albert Mosley. This is my mom, Kathleen Mosley. My brother, Charles Mosley, a.k.a. Moses. And my daughter, Yasola Dowdoom. First topic that we're going to start with is Brown versus Board of Education. How many people know about Brown versus Board of Education? All right, so we're going to tell you a little bit about that today. And my experience of it is only through the history books. It took place in 1954. It's when the schools were desegregated. So prior to Brown versus Board of Education, all of the schools in this country were divided by race. So black kids went to black schools, white kids went to white schools. And obviously class played a role in that. Access to materials, access to the proper education played a role in that. In 1957, nine black students known as the Little Rock Nine were actually blocked from integrating into Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. In the Deep South, this is where desegregation was really not well received. And it was so bad that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to send federal troops in to escort these children to school so that they weren't harmed. I want to start off by... My parents were there, not in Arkansas, but they were part of this movement. So I want to start off with you, Dad, and just tell us your experience growing up in Tennessee during that time. Thank you very much. Thank you much, everyone. I was born in Tennessee about 10 miles from the Mississippi River. And this was in 1941, so you're looking at a dinosaur. But it's good to be able to share my life this way. In 1954, Brown v. the Board of Education outlawed a constitutional segregation in this country. In 1897, it had been legalized by Plessy v. Ferguson. So this was a huge turn around in 1954. At that time, I would have been 13 years old, and the school I went in was totally segregated. I graduated in 1958, four years after Brown, and segregation was still de jure. That is a matter of fact throughout the South. I was raised in a small town, about 10,000, where most people make their living picking cotton, or growing cotton, so that the schools were time to harvesting, and everyone was expected to be in the fields. I was spared a lot of this because my father was a businessman. We owned a cafe, a pool hall, and a hotel, mostly a hotel. So I was raised counting money and playing pool. I graduated in 1958, and I went to the segregated college for Tennessee called Tennessee State A&I, Agricultural and Industrial, which had been founded to, again, train freedmen in the mechanical arts. I was at Tennessee State from 1958 to 1960. I majored in math there, but my true major was music. I played a lot of music at Tennessee State, and a lot of great bands. In fact, I left Nashville because my brother warned my parents that I'd probably go on the road with one of the bands that were coming through, and I would have been a great adventure. But instead, they shipped me out of Tennessee, and I went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I was still majoring in mathematics, even though the high school I went to did not even offer a geometry course. So even now, I've never had a course in geometry. But I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in mathematics in 1963. This was a time of great upheaval in this country where the citizens and the freedom rights, I had participated in Nashville and the sit-ins at the lunch counters where you have to go through a lot of training because people would come in and hit you, spit on you, throw you off. But it clearly was a time of change. As I said, in 1963, I graduated from Wisconsin and I went into philosophy to do something that would bring me closer to the civil rights struggle that was going on. I got a bachelor's and then I went on for PhD work in philosophy. I studied at Oxford. My field is logic and philosophy of science. From Oxford, I went to Washington, D.C. I taught at Howard University and then at the newly formed Federal City College, which became the University of the District of Columbia. I have tried to devote my life to helping people who have been oppressed and who have inherited oppression. While in Washington, I taught in the prisons there. When we left Washington, we went to Ohio and I taught in the prisons in Appalachia, Ohio. From Ohio, we came here to Northampton and I've been here for the last 20 years. Now I am retiring. But I'd be glad to answer any questions you might have about any or all of this or any of the professional things I do. Things done. And remember, I said we were going to talk about our challenges. I don't think I can imagine majoring in mathematics having not taken geometry. I can barely help my eighth grader with her math homework now. We have tutors for that. But the challenges are real and overcoming them is really important. I think my dad said something very powerful when we think about inheriting oppression. There's a lot of things that many of us have inherited in this room, but we don't often think about inheriting oppression and how to help people under those circumstances. So thank you for that, dad. Mom, tell us about your experience with the effects of Brown versus Board of Education. Okay, hello. Good evening. My goodness, is this coming up? Okay, so first of all, let me just say one thing. My name is Kathleen Sims-Mosley and I grew up in Washington, D.C. I was born in 1944. So by 1950, whatever it was, Brown versus Education had already started and was already in place. But before I say anything else, I want to say one thing about Washington, D.C. because it was still highly segregated and nobody was called black in Washington, D.C. We were called colored and we were known as colored people. So that was something that, again, or Negroes, okay, so there was no black, there was no Afro-American, there was just colored people and Negroes and most of us were called colored people and if we saw a friend, we'd say, you know, hey, whatever. So that's just a moniker that existed then in Washington, D.C. and probably all over the South if they weren't called girl or boy. So growing up in Washington, D.C., my parents' mother actually and her side of the family grew up in South Carolina and they migrated first with my aunt and my mother to Washington, D.C. to get jobs in the government there. There were lots of clerical jobs that were available because of the fact of World War II and there was a lot of money and they needed to fill the positions with government clerical workers. So my aunt and mother were glad to get out of the South. They lived in Sumter, South Carolina and they were glad to migrate north along with many of the other great migrations that were going on at the time. And my grandmother, who taught school, she was the first one really in our family who got a college degree. Her father was a Presbyterian minister and she was able to go to a Presbyterian-run school called Scotia Seminary and she got a degree from there in early childhood education and she became a teacher. She remained in the South for 30 years before she came north and then she came and joined my mother and my aunt. So we composed the nucleus of the family. When we got, when I lived in D.C. for the first seven years of my life, I lived in an area that was so segregated. It was wonderful, but lots of children to play with, lots of friends. Parents had all good friends. It was like almost a little heaven but I never really knew anything about white people other than when I got on the bus or something and I put my school token in, you know, to pay my way on the bus. So I didn't have a relationship or any kind of concept of what it meant to be a white person from a black person's perspective. So, because everybody, everybody was black and there was a community of black people that we thrived on. The churches were black. They had all kinds of things going on. I went to a dancing school that was black. And so I didn't have any sense of what it meant to be a black person dealing with racism or white. And I didn't think about it. Even looking at TV, it was just TV. It wasn't about, oh, there's some white people on TV. You know, if I like to show Howdy Doody, you know, then we looked at it. So that was the way it was until we moved. And once we moved out of this environment that we lived in, which was marvelous, we moved into an area in the northwest section of D.C. it's called the Petworth section. Once we moved to Petworth, all of that changed because we lived, we were the second black family to move onto the block. So there were all these white people around and it was a different kind of dynamic, which as a child, I saw immediately. And it was okay too because kids are kids. And that's how it was. And we all played together because nobody wouldn't anybody's house back then. We all played in the street, kickball, jump rope, hopscotch, whatever it was, we were always outside. So we didn't have that sense of, you know, you can't come into my house because you're black or I can't go into your house because, you know, whatever, you know, because you're white. And so it was a very different kind of dynamic. But what actually happened and what really turned the tables for me was that the schools were still segregated. And when we moved there, I was in the fifth grade. So I stayed in a black school in the fifth grade, which was fine. It was just farther from my house, but it was okay because I didn't know anything else and I didn't want anything else and I didn't think of anything else. But when my parents put in for transfer because they again knew what was going on and they wanted me to be in what they considered to be a better school. So I was transferred to a school called the William B. Powell Elementary School. I have a picture. Yeah, I have a picture. I actually found my sixth grade picture. But anyway. But it was a really cool school because this was in like 1956 or 57. It looked just like something you would see today because it was so diverse. It was really, I mean we had an Indian captain of the patrols. I became the second lieutenant. We had such a wonderful mix of people there. So life continued to be very happy. And I was very happy about being there. And the teacher I thought was a wonderful teacher. So it didn't seem like there were any problems. Everybody got along again. We played outside unless it was raining. So we were always doing some sports or doing something together. Tell us what your teacher said. Well, I'm getting to that. So that's my bubble. And it was really great and everybody was really good and it was so much fun and it was nice because the rooms in the school were not hot like at my other school and everything. It was just great. However, one day my seatmate was white by the way. Her name was Beth. My best friend was black. Her name was Jackie. But if you see the picture you can see there was a really good mix. And on this particular day I don't know what caused it but my teacher, our beloved teacher, I don't know, I guess she just lost it and all of a sudden she said, will you little colored children please just stop talking. You're always talking. I'm sick of hearing you talk. Just stop. Why is it always the little colored children? Why? And she was just red in the face and upset and we were stunned. So my seatmate, Beth, and I both looked at the teacher and then we looked at each other and we burst out laughing. And that was the end of it. But that was my first sense of some kind of actual racism. Because, I mean really, and it was just, that's what it was. So that's what started me to really think about it and be more observant of it and then of course this time went on, lots of other things happened too and it was DC. But that was the very first time. And we have lots more to cover so we will uncover those times as well. But I can't imagine myself living in those times. I am extremely outspoken and verbally aggressive and I would have probably found myself in big trouble if not dead. Which is sad. It's funny now. Do you have a question, Joel? Yeah. You said your grandmother graduated from college? Yes, she did. Was she black? Yes. Yeah? She must have been... Oh, her diploma is here. Her college... That's from 1894. So that's my great grandmother's diploma. Yeah. So in my family... I'm sorry, but how many... Very rare. Very little. Very few women and very few black people and even fewer black women. But be very careful when you pass this around because... Oh, and DC? Well, they moved because... they moved because basically where we lived was... it was a place called Benning Heights and it was developed for people who were coming from the south it wasn't a project, but it was a developer and it was developed for people who were coming from the south to work because they were trying to bring people to fill those clerical jobs and so it was developed because of that. And the places were very nice. It was very large, but my mother and father and aunt and grandmother just wanted to get it. They wanted a house and these were... even though they were three and four bedroom units and very, very nice, they wanted a house and my grandmother had brought money that she got from her house that she sold when she moved to be with her daughters and so she and my aunt were able to buy a house and that was their goal to have a house and so that's why we moved. And we moved into an area in Washington DC that was still a... it was a very white area but it was more like I guess you would say maybe working class but it was really, really, really, really nice. Shepherd Street was where it was in Washington DC, the Petworth area and what happened was as I said, we were the second people on the block and by the end of the year most of the white people had moved out to the suburbs and there were just very few white people left because again, this was another type of migration and white people were seeing this influx of black people because of the clerical jobs and the better economic status and everything and so they were fleeing and black people were moving into the city which became an urbanized thing after a while and the white people were going out to the suburbs so by the end of a year or two most of them had gone but we still had a wonderful time because the people who came in were still black and very cool and wonderful and so that's why there's economics and just wanting to have a house everybody wanted to have a house in the 50s Dr. Mosley actually has to leave in a couple of minutes to go give a talk in Northampton so I want to cover a few more things before he takes off but before we get to these topics I did want to just talk about the education system I guess from my perspective my brother's perspective and my daughter's perspective because we have three generations here and I think my parents experience is so vastly different from our experience which is also so vastly different from my daughter's experience it's good to have an idea or a sense of how generational shifts occur and not only oppression is invested but opportunities and challenges and so on and so forth so when we were growing up I was born in D.C. so I lived in D.C. partly in D.C. and then partly in Appalachian Ohio as my dad said he moved to Todd at the Ohio University there and it was a very different experience for me because D.C. where I grew up was also predominantly black so I went to a Catholic school and I was predominantly black and my neighborhood was predominantly black my parents stayed in the Petworth area in northwest so there wasn't a lot of even though segregation wasn't legal and it wasn't something that was talked about it was still something that was you had black neighborhoods and you had white neighborhoods so it was still very much present and then when we moved to Ohio we were one of the only black families and Appalachian Ohio is extremely poor it's one of the poorest places in this country and we were one of the wealthier families there so it was odd because it was there was jealousy coupled with envy coupled with I want to be your friend coupled with how do you have this house going to school that you know I the first time I was called the N word but you know what I'm going to give my brother a chance to talk about his experience and then I can dive into mine because I can talk forever too so you talk about yours and then I'll ask dad one more question and then you'll take off and I'll take your seat hello everybody we moved to Ohio I was born in 1986 Ohio I think was 90, 91 and I was about 4 or 5 years old I used to pinch I'd never been around white kids and I used to pinch kids because their skin would turn red this was fascinating to me can you imagine that as a little kid I was first called a nigger in the fourth grade I didn't understand this is a good friend of mine they called me this word I didn't understand it I just slept over at this kid's house we were good friends I didn't understand it I think he wanted to fight me for some reason I don't know and I asked my sister said anybody call that name you beat them up in the fifth grade it progressed in the fifth grade it got a lot worse everybody and so I got a lot of fights I didn't understand it I didn't understand how to react to this today I realized that these kids these were maybe they saw me and had a financial advantage that they didn't have trying to lash out I don't know but I beat them up when somebody called me the n word I got into a fight I got in trouble they never got in trouble I got in trouble and the principal my teachers could never understand my perspective on why I react this way I don't understand it I understand it you know that's a nasty word I don't call other people that word unless I'm using this as an insult I never do and so I guess that's my perspective well I I won't talk about my first experience but I'll talk about I think the most pressing experience so my boyfriend in high school his name was Chad and he was white I was black he is white I am black and I remember going over to his house one time I was with my friend Terry and he had like this vicious pit bull and you know we always ran like if the pit bull wasn't chained up we would like run back to the car who could get back to the car the fastest go in the car and lock the doors and this was before cell phones we had pagers but what could are those in a car so one day we go over and the pit bull is a loose and we went back to the car and I made it to the car first and I accidentally locked the door before Terry got to the car and that was not good then I unlocked it but the dog had gotten a hold of her so we go back home to my house and we are talking about it and Terry is like oh my god I can't believe Mengele bit me and we were talking just about Mengele biting her and my mom is like Mengele how many people have heard of Joseph Mengele well Joseph Mengele this dog was named after was a Nazi scientist for Hitler and my mom is like who is Mengele and I am like that is Chad's dog and she is like why does Chad have a dog named Mengele and I am like I don't know it is a cool name she is like Amelia sit down so she starts to teach me about who Mengele was and I am like what the hell so I go back to my boyfriend at the time and I am like why do you have a dog named Mengele and he is like well it is my cousin's dog and he is in jail and we are just watching it for him and I am like oh okay well since you didn't name him I guess it is okay so long story short his cousin comes home and that is a whole other story that I will say for another time but just in the essence of time you know a few years later I go to a party with Chad and Chad was like a bad boy when I was younger so he like would fight for no reason I mean if like you looked at him wrong he is like you know and I am like oh that is so hot he can protect me so we go to this party and there is this other guy named Chad at this party and we walk in and I knew Chad the other Chad very well also and we walk in Chad says hey girl what are you doing here you guys aren't supposed to be here and I am like I look at my Chad and I am like okay there you go and my Chad looks at me and is like why are you overreacting and like that was heart breaking to me like you would fight somebody for no reason at all with very little logic behind it but somebody says something that is so insulting to me and we are reacting needless to say that was the end of our relationship but you know in the 12th grade I thought Chad and I were going to get married I thought like that was it he was my end all be all it was a horrible break up but it was very sad and it was very eye opening for me the way that racism exists still exists in Appalachia Ohio and the triumphs and challenges that we have to go through so with that said I do want to give you an opportunity to speak and so we'll say goodbye to Dr. Mosley but do you have any quick questions for him before he takes off send a does oh tell your band story dad so this is segregation in the south this is related to lynching people know about lynching so it was very common and people were made spectacles and so it was very scary for especially black men in the south so tell your story about being in the band well this is the start even though I remember it but in my high school we had a dance band that was formed by the principal and we often played at events that were given by local elite people like the country club veterans of foreign affairs, VFW these were all segregated events but we still had the best music so once we were playing this lady became so inebriated she decided she wanted our principal who played the saxophone she began to dance to the way he was playing she danced closer and closer everybody in our band got scarier and scarier because she was white she was white and he was black and all of the men there were half drunk anyway but my principal was a very ingenious man and he saw that he had to break this woman of her spell so he took his saxophone and began to play it like this as if he might hit her if she came too close and then she got the message but you didn't have to be very ingenious in avoiding all of the entrapments and all of the the sources of violence that was in the south I will tell you my experience with the N-word the N-word was primarily used for me among blacks among one another it signified the fact that whether you were educated or poor or whether you were wealthy or not that you were still a black person you were a nigger to white people and so it it reflected a solidarity rather than a denigration but again these are different times and different places well it certainly is disparate one of the leading rap groups was called niggers with attitude and so that is almost like an oxymoron really niggers are not supposed to have attitude or be proud okay so it is used in the black community in ways that I think it is important that for non-black people to know that they don't have that kind of experience that would produce the solidarity of being a nigger so tonight I have to leave thank you all very much I'm going to be on a panel on animal rights and climate change thanks dad so we will continue this discussion I think that especially with that topic it can be so loaded but Dr. Mosley partly answered your question Lisa because when it comes to the solidarity that he is speaking of and the experience that black people have to put a non-black person to put themselves in those shoes and assume that entitlement can often be dangerous and still offensive it's like the word bitch sometimes women say that to other women but if a man would say that regardless of his intentions how would we take that so but Yusola tell us about your experiences at school and they are very different from all of ours so can you hear me hi I'm Yusola and I'm 14 I go to the Bement school in Deerfield I've been going there since I was since I turned 6 and I've had a great time there next year will be my last year it's really sad but recently there was an incident involving the N-word and one of my friends who never thought would say this word like said it and he started asking me for an N-word pass and if you don't know what that would is it's a pass to say the N-word but you have to get it from a black person so they would come up to me and be like Yusola can such and such have an N-word pass I'd be like no that's not a thing if you say that I would get so mad and infuriated that my blood boils at this so they'd always be like can I have a pass can you can I say the N-word I'm like no so if anyone white or black or black so if anyone like says it I immediately get mad and I say well if you're going to say the word then you can't be friends with me like I don't want to talk to you I don't want to have any association with you if you're going to use that word like you can either stop and not say it at all or we can be fine but anyway so this kid came up to me and was like can I have an N-word pass and he came back the next day and at recess he whispered the word in my ear and I was like okay I'm not going to completely overreact about this because I did want to punch him I'm sorry I did it's just how I felt in the moment I did but I was reasonable Mr. Belcher who is our Dean of Students and he handled the situation very quick very quick like the next day he came up to me and he was like um well I talked to someone and he talked to the other kids who also antagonized me with the word like I text them and they would like type N-N-N over and like N-I over to me as if they're going to say it and I'm like you know what if you're going to do that don't talk to me at all don't and I told my Dean of Students about this and he was like okay so he had to talk with these kids um he gave them a very strong lesson he's like um I handled it very well but I think I scared the crap out of him and I was like good and well so that was what happened the kids apologized to me so we're okay now um it's very very I don't want to say maddening but that's a word is that a word? yeah it's a word okay maddening and it makes me so mad to the point where I want to scream so it just it's not that I can help what they're thinking and what they do but if I did if I did I wouldn't have them have this mindset that they think they can say this word um this is not the first time it's actually happened the second time I had a friend um and she she went there for one year and we still kept in touch even though she left she went to um yeah she goes to a different school now she's fine but we would still FaceTime and when we FaceTime she'd always be listening to you know like rap music and they'd always say the N word in it and she would say the word when she's listening to it and I'm like can you not say that word please like can you just not and she would be like N word no and I said what? and she called me the N word and said no and I said and well I hung up and I don't know what happened after that yeah so I hung up and then I sent her this long paragraph of saying look you can say the word and not be my friend and have no association with me at all or you cannot say the word and I said not say the word and not be a racist and be my friend and she said she texted me the N word back and I said no and I was like well we're just not going to be friends and she said okay bye and then this is a long story but she so we haven't she didn't talk to me for about a year and then she texted me writing this long paragraph saying I'm sorry you know at the time I didn't know it was hurting you and I feel really really truly horrible for what I did and I said okay well I forgive you and thank you for apologizing because she I could also understand where she's coming from because she actually has not the best it's life that's a different story but she she said I'm sorry and I was like okay and we're mutual we don't talk much but it's just this word and how it's used now because every kid now just says it it's like they think they can say it no matter what their race is like they don't know the history behind the word like they didn't use this term as a term of endearment that's not it's not a nice word kids know that, everyone knows that but they don't care and they don't care how it affects people and that's just something that it happens and I wish I could change how it affects people I wish people wouldn't say it at all but unfortunately I can only do tell them not to say it thank you okay here's the thing, the dean of students is also the history teacher so I think he gave him a lesson so so yeah, so he's a history teacher so I'm pretty sure the person knows that the history and not to say it yeah breaths it's so hard because do they have to take the higher rope when that comes to them out of anger in the way that it is consistently through a game I mean like the coaches and the resonals here are on the field or on the court when the kids are all cuddled up and close together is a reaction like I'm sorry you solo? yeah Charles so the rest don't see what's going on, what they see is the child who pushes the kid that says don't call him our kids will fight back and I'd like to say on the teams that Mike has been involved with are very family oriented so if you consult one of your on the other team it's a whole team kind of feeling but I just really have a hard time sitting down having that conversation with them about like what is the proper response like you're a child so I don't want you to start arguing with the rest that's not your play because you can tell your coach our coaches have gotten technical so it's kind of like how do we handle that because it comes in different angles from when kids think it's okay because it's in a rap song and it comes out straight like I know that this word is going to upset you and I'm feeling salty because you guys are beating us like how do we feel next to our children well that's why I think that doing a forum like this is really important to be able to have a civil conversation and remember one of the goals from this was progress and inviting refs and inviting teammates and inviting them to conversations like this and not letting this conversation end in this room this conversation has really the topic of the inward has definitely taken over we've got like five more topics but it's seven o'clock but I'm glad it's organic right now and we're asking questions and we're interacting and nobody's falling asleep and everybody's drinking and it's great so yeah these kinds of conversations and schools and in the community and having people who you know can express their feelings I mean my child is not an angry child I've actually never heard her say that she like is angry that many times in like one sentence or two this many sentences ever in her entire life her fourteen years of living on this earth so for something to get her blood boiling that much as it does mine too is also a representation of like you know regardless of who says it over here or who gives a pass over here this is how it affects me and that's what people need to understand it's like you know I started off by saying there's no monolithic representation of blackness here like I don't represent all black people rappers don't represent all black people the boy who gave the other kids a pass doesn't represent all black people so if I'm telling you that it's not okay and you don't respect that like you're gonna have a problem too okay things were socially acceptable for a while not that they were acceptable but everyone went along with it because this is what everyone's doing so it was a lot of misogynistic things in the workplace where women were degraded or treated differently and appropriately because it was socially acceptable because everyone it's a mob mentality if everyone does it no one speaks up it doesn't make it okay but it means that everyone accepts it as the norm now the norm has changed right so people are standing up themselves people speak up the key is continually speaking up for things that you disagree with I mean I dealt with you know being Jewish and military all sorts I mean you get I mean you're gonna get made fun of for anything and the problem is is you have to pick your battles because whether it's acceptable or not you still have to fit into your surroundings you still have to deal with work you still have to you know I mean we just watched some documentary on what was that movie that we watched about the woman the bombshell oh yeah bombshell was something about every season you know Fox News you know where they sorry I can't think of her name Kelly Kelly had her had her show and when she spoke up then you know she kind of gave a voice behind it and you know people started coming forward the problem is in an isolated situation you're the only one you're the only I mean sometimes a lot of kids are doing this because they like kids like to push the limits it doesn't mean that they're racist they just they want to say something that they're not supposed to say they want to do something and push the boundaries you know some kids are so you have a balance if some kids are generically racist some kids are not and they're just not educated enough how to respond yeah I think when it comes to racism in this country it is so ingrained in the fabric and the history of this country we all possess a little racism whether it's internalized racism between blacks and blacks or unconscious racism where it's like well I didn't know or overt racism where it's like yeah I'm trying to offend you and I'm trying to get you mad and get a rise out of you so there's so many aspects to racism and it's such a long part of the history of this country that it's almost I don't want to say inherent or natural but the conditioning starts at a very young age and the important thing about racism and combating racism is to be aware of racism and white privilege and with every choice that we make regarding those whether it be I mean we were going to get into like real estate redlining and block busting and then you know John you would have some questions about that but we're running out of time so but you know in every institutional racism systemic racism the prison systems you know there's many prisoners there's many African-American prisoners in jail as there were slaves we're not naturally violent or criminal or aggressive people so there's a systemic issue with that almost seems natural like well that's how it is in the ghetto where that's how it is you know over there and it's not it's not it's a system that was created I've grown up in two different worlds and W.E.B. Du Bois talked about something called double consciousness where you know you act one way around white people and you act another way around black people and I've grown up in both of those worlds and I've seen white people get pulled over and I've seen black people get pulled over I've seen you know white people interact with cops and I've seen black people interact with cops and it's it's a very different experience so I think that when it comes to to any type of racism or any type of yeah it is important to stand up it's never okay but to understand with the choices that we make in that moment and at that time even if it's a choice that even if it's something that we have to be conscious of with 90% of the choices that we make in a day being conscious of it is the best way to combat it and to to work towards the progress that we're trying to work towards so yeah you just preached well black people all know if it's just white people having a conversation anyway they would go together and do that because it would be it's just not a common thing because it's not an investment if they're invested you would well I just want to say something real quickly on behalf of you your solar and your friend who you had that altercation with and didn't speak for a year or whatever and I feel very good I don't know who the friend was and I don't need to know but I feel very good I feel like you did something because she did come back even after that time and write you a long letter of apology so that's absolutely meaningful and I just wish everybody could be like that and you for your bravery and her for her apology so how many people know what redlining is wow that's impressive well loaded to stem you probably explain it better the only thing I can think of is a reason in the sun and that's John can explain it banker John banker John I hope this is not a practice at no just kidding Greenfield is awesome for the video it was a government program that encouraged banks to lend in certain neighborhoods and not others and it's kind of ironic because now we have programs that were established by the government to make sure we're not doing this but at the time we were doing it and they actually had standards they would say this neighborhood you can lend in this one you can't lend in and that combined with the GI bill and I'm not really an expert in this area actually my knowledge largely stems from a special on PBS that was done that I watched on this but when the GI bill was established I think only 2% were not white that got this money so after World War II all these people had the opportunity they come out of World War II and they had the opportunity to buy a house and get low interest rate financing to buy this house and that allowed the whites to develop so much more wealth following World War II than people of color it wasn't just blacks it was Hispanics it was basically I think the best way to say it is 98% of the money went to white families and so redlining then I think after fair housing right I saw on your timeline 68, somewhere around there they stopped doing this but it still stayed around because I remember in 87 when I started in the business I remember we I used to advise banks we go and we look at their loan portfolio and I remember going sitting with a couple of older people one time and one of them said yeah you remember the days when the application came in and they put the little red dot on there and the point of the little red dot was they weren't allowed to say that a person of color had applied but if they put the red dot on there it told them that it was a person of color and they looked at the loan differently so now they're actually really, really strict standards you cannot put any mark on your own application for a residential mortgage you can't have anything on there at all for that very reason and so thank goodness redlining now there are strict rules against it but it was not propagated by the banks it was created by the government and the banks were forced to enforce it that was steering I think they actually had maps with red lines yeah they had maps with red lines they just wouldn't make loans in those neighborhoods yeah because of the they were created by train tracks so the black neighborhoods were not desirable neighborhoods the white neighborhoods which were desirable neighborhoods black people couldn't get loans to buy houses in yeah and so there was this play called Erasing in the Sun which was written by Lorraine Hansbury she was what 26 years old when she wrote the play it was a very, very good play and there were many things that happened in this play so if you want to see it or see it I think there's even the latest version of it is with Puffy and someone's like a 2000 and something version but one aspect of it really looked at not redlining but steering so steering is like oh you don't want to buy in that neighborhood you don't want to buy in this neighborhood so really trying to influence and persuade people to not if you were white neighborhood and vice versa of course if you were black definitely don't buy in a white neighborhood we don't want them in our neighborhoods so they bought a house in the white neighborhood and her husband had died the matriarch of the family her husband had died and left some insurance money and her son wanted to open a liquor store with the money and everybody had their hopes and dreams the daughter wanted to go to medical school but ultimately she did go to she did go to medical school in this house in this white neighborhood so the neighborhood association the neighborhood association came to their house and tried to persuade them not to buy the house and it was really powerful to watch they were going to pay them and she'll tell them the end or no oh don't tell them the end alright I'm going to leave it right there it was on PBS too but you can probably see it on net read the book that's very good you have a question and then Felice has a question Jennifer hi I'm steering or red mining but the whole result of the housing market then caused such chaos because when African Americans started buying in those predominantly white neighborhoods for all those years they've been the white homeowners were told that the property values will go down and so what ends up happening is a loss of you know decent roads because your public works department there's no taxes there as a result and your school system doesn't have the funding to get educated as well so like when you break that down into the systematic yeah process of that it really gives you a good defining or definition of how it wasn't it's not that people who are now in those circumstances can just pull themselves up exactly this is something that was basically done to them and to a degree where it was like you were told if you sold your house to a black family that the whole property value of the whole neighborhood neighborhood yeah and then so then the white family start moving out because now the property values are going down and I just like to also say that on that GI bill they literally write things like if color people are you know live here the property value I mean it was that driven by the government and explicit and you know Jennifer redlining doesn't exist now but gentrification does so it's like if you buy property here you know if it's too many black people in a neighborhood in 2020 the property value is going to go down and you know like I said I'm from DC and that leads into another point really quick police you know because this is supposed to be the mostly story and how it's unique right my dad bought tons of property in DC I'm actually mad because he sold it all I mean we'd be like multi-multi-millionaires but he had so much property in DC on Florida Avenue and on U Street and K Street I mean just the most and now these were black neighborhoods in DC not desirable DC proper I mean one of those houses now is probably worth $2 million even the house that we sold on Shepherd Street is where we sell it for $150,000 the house that my great grandmother and my aunt bought was sold for $150,000 and now it's probably worth $250,000 and it's worth millions now so all of the whites have moved in DC proper and I mean when I lived there southeast was like one of the most dangerous places like I didn't I actually don't even go haven't even gone to southeast that much throughout my life and now southeast looks like Northampton Massachusetts so you know gentrification still exists I have properties in Holyoke and the good part of Holyoke and the not so good part of Holyoke you know and I rent them out and there are certain types of renters for those neighborhoods that still though redlining and blockbusting and steering don't exist legally and on paper the the philosophies and the principles are still very much alive in 2020 police what were you going to say yes and we had a talk after we went to see it kind of like this thinking and I once had asked this question to your mom and your dad about just your role in the civil rights movement and having such prominent prominent role in it and alongside prominent figures is and this is something that I've wondered about growing up Jewish and inheriting some um what did you call this heritage of trauma right oppression generational trauma um and you know having myself in my life I grew up in a predominantly Jewish area yet then being out in the world I've been called a pike before I've been called a Jew bitch in my life right in the experience of my life and knowing where my my grandparents had come over they were forced out some of the Holocaust and I guess my question is is there do you find that there has been a certain um although it's extremely different right like the racism that you have experienced throughout life do you find that there's a certain type of shared experience or understanding of with other um cultures and peoples that have been oppressed like is there a certain kind of identification with which of does this make a question making sense yeah I just wonder about that yeah okay well first of all what I would say is that to answer your question yes I do find that there is a difference and that the difference to me has been generational and what I have learned and what I have seen and I've done a lot of things around young people I went to Smith College and got an MFA when I was 72 years old so I was like the grandmother in play writing so I was the grandmother in the class and I saw and I love young people that's the other thing I saw the way that the students interacted with one another and going backward before that and living in DC I um because it was again at that time it was the 60's everything was happening in the 60's and everything was happening in DC in the 60's so a lot of people civil rights activists lots of people were coming to DC and I had a lot of friends and I was very fortunate to meet okay that's okay I was fortunate to meet a lot of the people who came who had been in the student nonviolent coordinating committee and who had done a lot of work already in the south and so I got that um that uh uh I guess it was a blessing to meet them but there were I wasn't like oh here's this person meeting these people everybody was meeting people because what was happening in the 60's was that there for young people and I was still young at the time there was a uh an idea about first of all know your history you know you got to know where you came from before you're gonna know where you're going and that was big and people really lived by that and meant that and also the other thing was consciousness you've got if you don't have a conscious mind then what are you gonna have so there was this whole notion of consciousness and out of that notion of consciousness came the notion of black consciousness if you're black you know then you need to be conscious and you need to know what it means to be a black person so cut your little hair and go get an afro first of all and love yourself you know and it wasn't like somebody preaching to you it was just like this whole notion of consciousness was very real to myself and to people growing up in the sixties so as well as meeting you know meeting people so so yes going backwards that's what happened to me going forward because I hope I came out with that kind of consciousness which I hope hasn't gone away I can look at young people and I can see the difference I can see the difference between how I was developing this consciousness and how people young people your soul and her friends and how they relate to one another and there is a difference and I am so thankful for it and it gives me hope so yes but the difference that I see is more in the generations than in anything else my mom's being modest she's pinching me she had very nice good friends who did a lot of work in the civil rights movement it's on there that you were married Mary at least was one of your friends Charles Hudson what did she do for this thing I'm not ashamed to mention it but there were lots so many people and so I don't want to just signal out people and say oh you know I knew so and so if you look and see who was in DC in the sixties Marion Barry was one of the people he was a very very very dear friend there were lots of people I mean Stokely Carmichael was another good friend Ed Brown you know these were people who had been in the south and who had done a lot of work and who ended up in DC and my best friend at the time was a person who had worked I didn't work in SNCC but she had done that and she you know I just and I met a lot of and that's how DC was people were coming to DC all the time you know I wrote a play on the March on Washington called Chris Crossing and you know and maybe you'll get reduced if that person standing there does it so you know but that's because that's the kind of awareness and consciousness that you know that people have stopped going into a whole lot of detail about it okay so Marion Barry first of all I met him at my friend's house who had been in the south and done work with the voting rights situation Elizabeth and she had a party and I met Marion Barry at her party and we became friends he was an incredibly nice gentleman very handsome at the time and everything and you know I went out with him a couple of times it didn't really didn't go anywhere too far in that respect but but the good thing about Marion Barry was that he was just such a good person and he was so before all this happened to him and I can say this and you can go and look it up on the internet he did so much for the city of DC he did so much in the very beginning for black people he loved black people and he came from the south he was born in either being in Mississippi or whatever like that and he came up he had been chairman of SNCC and he came up to DC and he started what they call was the bus boycott and at that time the capital transit system was only there were only white bus drivers on that system and you know but most of the people that rode on the buses were black and he started a boycott and the boycott was very successful and then his rise just went from there he did many things just one other many many things but he started an organization called Pride Incorporated and Pride Incorporated was something that got businesses to give jobs to the youth in DC so that they could not have to be on the street or whatever and they would have jobs and they and and and he got it funded that was an enormous effort he had a lot of people helping him but it was his creation and he did that so those were just a couple of the things that he did but he did one thing after another for the city of DC and for the people in DC and he was primarily interested in you know helping black people become better economically and and a lot of people hated him for that believe me a lot of people because they couldn't buy him and when he died he died with with no money you know he had a house nice little house out in southeast DC but he did not take anything from the government unfortunately he did have some health issues as I'm sure everybody is aware of but he didn't steal anything and he was always always amazing to the people and he loved the people and I think he was voted re-elected two times or maybe even three times that's how good he was and how sincere he was I didn't do I was his friend oh yeah oh yeah of course of course and I went over to the office and answered phones and you know did mail mailings and stuff like that so you know and and I always always but I was just like everybody else in DC everybody supported Mary and Mary every black person in the city supported him I was just one of many you know but we were good we were also very good friends and he was a wonderful wonderful person and DC will never be the same without him he was amazing I knew Stokely yes okay I did yeah but that's another story and that's more well that's kind of a personal story so so I've said enough I do want to ask you one other question though tell us about I think Felice this kind of touches on your question about being able to have solidarity between races and ethnicities and generations one thing my parents did for me was you know I started traveling with them at a very young age so the first time I left the country I was two years old we went to Paris my parents took me to Paris I don't remember it I just have pictures and you know I've traveled all over the world with my parents which has given me the confidence to be able to talk in front of a group of people without being incredibly nervous I have the confidence to sit down at Buckingham Palace and I have the confidence to sit down on somebody's you know front stoop Springfield and drink a beer with them I've been to so many different places and I can relate to so many different people and I have I feel like a genuine connection with people and I think that that you know being able to travel and travel the world and experience interactions you know form friendships form bonds form bonds with people on so many different levels from so many different places is a really it's a nice healing process for all the trauma that you know we're put through especially in America I mean America has its own little you know we have we have our definitely have our issues around race and economics and gender that are so backwards and like you know compared to the rest of the developed world are very you know not as forthcoming so I think that that's important being able to travel and I want my mom to talk a little bit about when she lived in Paris and then Charles you can talk about when we traveled to Paris and South Africa and your experience is traveling the world well you know okay so so okay let me just start by saying I wasn't like the greatest student in high school I went to a Catholic school I was good in Latin and that's probably and biology that's probably about it you know I liked English I liked everything but those were the things you couldn't take French without having taken Latin first so I took Latin and then I took French and love love love French so as a result of loving French so much I just decided when it was time for me to graduate from high school I asked my father and my mother neither of whom were rich you know but if I promised to go for a year and do really well they would give each give me 75 dollars a month and I had researched it this was in 1964 I think and so it was not expensive and I had done all the research so so that's but I loved French and I love just love the language so I went to Paris because I love French and I ended up just going back and forth to Paris and really enjoying it and met a lot of very interesting people there and it was also a time it was in the 60s so there was a lot going on in Paris too and I ended up just meeting people who were more political than I had been and they were explaining a lot of stuff to me about politics and you know what was going on again this whole consciousness thing I didn't really know a lot of things and there were people who I met who were very you know like just all kinds of really really well-known people and I learned a lot and so that's I guess what Amity is talking about because that changed my life quite a bit but that's enough said about it and it was a great experience and we try to go back when we can so and I've got to take your soul so that she can study ballet because she's been taking ballet for the past 10 years and she's on point now so she deserves a trip to Paris once things get a little bit better. So I don't remember what age it was but when we went to Ghana I had an afro about twice the size and all these kids were following me around saying soul man soul man oh that was in South Africa okay it was in a Cape Town and they're saying soul man I felt so good saying oh these kids like my afro it's the first time I really felt glorified you know looking the way I look because I think we still lived in Athens we lived here but I've never been admired like that before I don't think and it was just so beautiful and it made me appreciate myself more and I love my afro I've never traveled to France but I went to Montreal um yeah I mean I can't really say much about it um I love Montreal it's just I didn't know French so my grandmother was like my translator cause I I mean they spoke English but they had like a French-ish Canadian French accent so I'm like what are they saying but yeah I haven't really traveled yes I will take a ballet class in Paris one day yes you will so um I think that concludes most of what we wanted to talk about you got a sense of our story our our family story do you want to say a story do you want to say a story too so I have to be honest I'm prejudiced the most people that have been down on me and most people that insulted me have been poor white and I have a bias against some poor white people my family has uh befriended and taken in a lot of poor white people but um I still have a bias those are the people that have called me names those are the people that I've fought and so I have a bias a prejudice or a bias a prejudice or a bias a prejudice I have a prejudice and uh I don't know if I'm ashamed it's the uh I don't think I am ashamed because it's the experiences that I went through in Ohio and uh in Ohio that I was in I don't like it and uh uh God forbid I ever go back it was um not a good experience and coming here it was just uh I actually made a little video it was a culture shock because I'd never been around so many uh different ethnicities and you know I didn't know you know really how to talk you know I didn't really I mean you know I listened to hip hop and so you know I kind of uh had to assimilate and uh but uh yeah so I Ohio was tough I'll say Ohio was traumatizing I mean like you heard two stories about living in Appalachia Ohio I could tell you the story about when I saw a KKK rally and my friends when I was overreacting I could tell you stories about when I was in track practice and people were talking about my black skin and calling me the N word I could tell you stories about when people said you guys shouldn't have a hot tub you guys shouldn't have a house this big you guys shouldn't have this you shouldn't have this but why because I'm black I shouldn't have this exactly what they were saying and it was so often it was like almost daily it's traumatizing and um you know for the most part I think because of the way that I was raised I have this sense of entitlement that most black people don't have a sense of entitlement I think it it comes across you know just like when I open my mouth which I'm okay with you know like I've learned to accept me that's who I am right but you know with this the sense of entitlement I kind of you know brush some issues that really do affect me I brush them off but my experience with racism in Ohio is that but then you know moving to Massachusetts and then just experiencing racism in other parts of the country in other parts of the world it's it's different in 2020 right it's like oh my gosh you're so articulate you talk like that are you black oh my gosh over the phone I did have one lady tell me she was like we were over talking over the phone and then we met in person she was like I thought you were and I'm like you thought I was what well I mean I talk blacker than you and I'm like please sit down you know so it's like I thought this way I'm not supposed to think this way I'm not supposed to act this way I'm kind of pretty you're like not a normal black girl but really because that's also not a compliment but a form of racism and it's I experienced that a lot as well and so then that's confusing that's confusing how do you navigate through that like am I supposed to say thank you so now my mom's going to say something and then you solo has a story okay well I just wanted to say we didn't intentionally do anything like she said but you know and it's okay but as I said with the whole notion of consciousness I mean you grew up in a very black household first of all with the you saw my husband yourself with the experiences and everything so it was it was something that I saw too I dealt with it a different way because for one thing I'm older and a little bit more you know just savvy about how to deal with that but as a young person she's absolutely right you know in what she was saying and for a long time I don't think Al or I realized the kind of situation that by living in Athens, Ohio and working at Ohio University that we put Amelia and Charles in because they had to go to school there you know I had a really good job and he was a professor you know we could go and live in a whole other world and we didn't really realize it and the time went by very quickly and they grew up very fast and I know that you know they were trying to absorb and do whatever they could and they had really nice friends I mean they were really nice but it was that other side and that other culture and so that was the thing and that was what we have to be sorry about and own and well actually well no it's not but no they did it but we you know we didn't see it you know and we have to acknowledge that and we do we do so wait what was my story oh so I have a story from when I was when I was in first grade first the third it's not long sort of so I was in first grade and there was this troubled kid well not troubled kid but he was like bad he was mean like he was bad and I have I remember we were in mrs. class who was our music teacher and I can't believe I remember her name we were in music class and the kid I was sitting next to a boy I think I was sitting next to one of my friends and he goes I don't want to sit next to a person who's black and I'm like I'm 7 so I don't know how to react so I'm like shocked but I I didn't know what to say so my teacher threw him out of the class and she goes go to miss panic right now she like screams out of that and I'm like um what just happened because I'm like in shock of what happened because I'm like I don't know how to react what do I do and so he got thrown out of the class he got in school suspension for like a day and then we're fine and then second grade he did this something similar and same thing happened but he got a longer suspension I don't know how long it was and then in third grade we have the biography fair and he goes we were reading it was k-bar and it was morning meeting and he goes um you should be Martin Luther King Jr for the biography fair and I go what and he said you should be MLK Jr you know because of your skin tone and I'm like that makes no sense at all just because I'm black doesn't mean I have to be someone else who's black I mean I was but it was my choice like he didn't decide for me who I needed to be and who I wanted to be and who I should be because that's my choice it's my project and um a kid in my class goes well he is in my class but we were morning meetings so he goes so look you know that's racist right and I go you know and he goes you should tell the teacher and I go okay so I go up and tell the teacher and then my mom she told my mom she was like well handle it and my mom's like okay I don't know what she did she was like she was mad she was very mad I know that but she's like she was mad but they did handle the situation he did get another in school suspension for I want to say like four days five days roughly that he got in trouble a lot like a lot because he was mean he like he was racist he was nice now we're chill he um he apologized he like apologized back then six years ago what grade am I? 8th grade like five years ago um but he apologized and we still go to the same school he's fine now but like I tried to avoid him kindergarten through fifth grade because I did not want to get teased oh my god I'm shaking so much um um I just avoided him and then like sixth grade um we started and he started talking to me more and I'm like hi and he's like hi and I'm like okay bye but that's my that's the story I wanted to share that's like another side of something that happened I don't know I talked about it in the car I performed all this in the car I'm glad that we were able to share these stories and I think you know it's my goal at least for this family you know every family every person every individual we all have ups and downs we all have triumphs we all have successes we all have failures we all have setbacks um it's a part of life but I think for this family it's important for us I mean I know my parents well let's start with my great-grandparents right so my great-grandmother college educated I hope that diploma is still in the room is it still here okay um you know college educated and she wanted to provide a certain type of life for her children right and then her children came along and my grandmother wanted to provide a certain type of life for my mother and then my mother wanted to provide a certain type of life for me and now I want to provide a certain type of life for my daughter and with each generation our goal is you know I just want my daughter to have a better life than I did and my life was great so growing up in Ohio like it was traumatizing because of the outside influences but at home everything was like gravy you know and we can't control the things that other people do but we can have conversations like these and help people develop conscious minds so yeah family moment thanks honey see the love we also have love we have love in this family and that's what we yeah we'll talk afterwards because then I'll actually have a real cocktail and we'll talk and we'll mix and mingle and we'll make it informal but that's the goal right we just want our next generation to be more successful and to have less heart aches and to have a better life than we did so I hope that our story impacted you today I hope that you learn something about the Mosley's and you learn something about race relations and you learn something about not every black story is the same and we're all even within this family we have our own stories and thank you Jakes thanks Chris and Alex for allowing us to use this place thank you Cinda for organizing this thank you all for coming thank you for videoing me and I hope the skinny lens is on skinny lens skinny lens or some photo shop going on everybody have a great night