 and navigating this journey. Today's journey is just a little bit different than what we'd usually do. But we're going down a road, really navigating the road, about the green book, the movie. And the way we feel about it, the way we see that whole thing of that time period when the green book is necessary. So before I go too far, I want you to meet my guests. And you know, of course, I only talk to best friends. So this is best friend Daphne Barbie Wooten. He is a well-known attorney in Hawaii. How long have you been here? 30 years? Over. Yeah, OK. All right. He is a graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle, University of Wisconsin-Madison, certified international law, peace palace at the Hague. All right. Worked as public defender for the state. Worked as EEOC trial attorney for the city of Honolulu, which means civil rights. Right. Actually, it's for the state of Hawaii, the state of Guam and Samoa. All the territory. All those territory places. Great. And a former civil rights commissioner. And then this is, and he is the author of Justice for All, Selective Writings of Lloyd A. Barbie. Is Lloyd A. Barbie your father? Yes, he's my father. What's my father? What? He is my father still. Yeah. And he was a civil rights attorney, as well as a state legislator in Wisconsin. He sponsored many civil rights bills, and he also had a green book. Great. Great. And oh, you were recipient of civil rights attorney of the year 2016. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. Congratulations. Well, today we are going to talk about the movie, The Green Book. And what is The Green Book? But not the movie, The Green Book. The actual Green Book, which was mentioned only a few times in the movie, was a book for African Americans and African and people of color who were going to be traveling down south, because during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and even through the 60s, and way before that, a lot of people of color, African Americans specifically, could not rent hotels, hotels, could not eat at restaurants, could not stop at rest stops. And so The Green Book was a book which wrote where a person would go, for example, in Mississippi, where they could go to get food, where they could go to get lodging. And so it basically let them know where they would be accepted if they needed a rest. Well, I have to tell you my experience. I didn't know it was called The Green Book. I was born in Brazil, Indiana, 1938. And my grandfather was the only doctor in the town of Brazil. And he had five houses on this one block. But of course, on those days, the property didn't cost much. But nonetheless, when the entertainers were coming from the south, they always stayed with us. Because that was part of everybody new. I didn't know it was called The Green Book. I just knew that they stayed. So I got to meet wonderful entertainers all of those years. And but they did. And I sort of wondered, as I got older, how they knew. And I thought, well, maybe it's just word of mouth, which also helped. And so that was growing up with this. That's what happened. And even if you go back to the eternities and sororities, which were created in 1900s, that was the whole idea, places, as they were moving around the country. And then I was taught, as a very little girl, if you go to the bathroom before you leave home, because there will be no place to go to the bathroom after you leave home. And watching this whole thing play out in the movie, really? Wouldn't it be wonderful if you went to look at the grandfather's items and you found The Green Book with his places listed in there? I believe that probably that can be done. Yeah. But it's like I said, I just never occurred to me that it was written down. I guess if I thought it through, of course it was. Of course it was, something that they passed on. And I did read that generation after generation that they think that the book was updated. Yeah. That's very important. Yeah. So let's talk about the movie. All right. And what did you think of the movie? I saw the movie after it won the Academy Award. What piqued my attention, I wanted to see how many times Green Book was mentioned in the movie. And I had a hint that it would not be that prominent, which it wasn't in the movie. It was about the relationship between a white chauffeur and an African-American musician, Mr. Curly. Dr. Curly. And I saw the Academy Awards and the writers of the Green Book get up and accept the award, and they were all white. And contrast that to The Black Plansmen, which was based on an African-American's book and directed by Spike Lee. But I actually liked the movie. I have to say I enjoyed it. It didn't mention Green Book too much, but it showed the awareness of the white chauffeur of the segregated South, where Dr. Shirley was traveling. The awareness that Dr. Shirley was quite a star, and he would play white audiences in the South in plantation homes, where they wouldn't even give him a dressing room. Or he couldn't even have food. He couldn't sit with the guests who were paying for him to play for them. So it showed, although African-Americans knew this or should know it from their history, it more was a coming of awareness for the plantation driver. And I understand it was his son who actually wrote the novel, the Green Book, or not. I don't know if it's a novel or not, but wrote about the Green Book and got the Academy Award. And I do know that after it won the Academy Award, and maybe a little bit before, that the actual relatives of Dr. Shirley, who had never been contacted by anyone, either for the book or for the movie, were quite upset. Well, I read that also, that they were upset. And I also read that Dr. Shirley did not leave memoir. And what the son wrote was based on the letters that his father sent to his mother. And she had, she kept all of the letters. And the son that his mother knew that his father did not write them, that they were too well felt, the grammar was too good, and it flowed, and it was lyrical. And so she kept all of the letters. And that is how the story is based on. Oh, I see, right. Well, it didn't mention that Dr. Shirley fired him. It didn't mention all the other shows that Dr. Shirley had. But I still like the movie, even though I really think they should have reached out to Dr. Shirley's family. And some of the movie was unbelievable. For example, in the movie, it shows the white shipper introducing Dr. Shirley to fried chicken. And I just, that's just not reality. Dr. Shirley knows what fried chicken is. Well, I think white people do not understand that blacks have class. And that was one of the things that showed that this man has class. Yes, he does. And they don't understand that. Today, if you talk to anybody and they'll say, what do you mean class? Because they have this image of us that does not speak to that. And I think that that was part of what was shown, is that this man is different than what they expected him to be. He didn't fit into the stereotype. Yeah, didn't fit the picture. And that was nice to see that the chauffeur became aware that there's a broad variety of people living differently from him who are African-Americans. Because most of what he learned from watching the movie was from TV, right? Or the stereotype. The stereotypes. It dawned on him that there's a big variety. To think that this man, Dr. Shirley, lived in an apartment over Carnegie Hall. Now, that was just way out of his image of what we're supposed to look like in an apartment above Carnegie Hall. Really? And I love this outfit. He sat on the throne. Dr. Shirley was sitting on the throne and had his African robes on when he interviewed him. That part I really enjoyed. But I really, with caution people who are going to do movies and books about African-Americans, reach out to the family first. Don't ignore them. They have something to say. They would add and bring more pieces to the puzzle. Yeah, they said that in the movie, as if he was estranged from the family. And they said he was not. Yeah, they said that he paid for his nieces to go to college and he was at all of their parties. And yeah, it portrayed the family different than what it really was. And had there simply been a phone call to the family that writers are supposed to do research. Yes. The Academy Award-winning writers would have, I think added more depth and more reality into Dr. Shirley's character. And he's living above Carnegie Hall. Right. At that point, during the Harlem Runner Zone, they were living really at the edge comb avenue with Dorman, these beautiful buildings, Amsterdam Avenue, beautiful buildings. Dorman, another dress just like the rest of New York. And I would have loved to have seen some of that because that's an image that we don't get to see. That's true. And now that you bring this up, I think it's very telling that he goes from this place, I would say privileged, whether you're white or black or yellow or green, it's privileged. And he's a very well-known musician. To go from that to the south, where he's not even allowed to use bathroom, where he's not allowed to eat with people, what a distinction. So it shows the south in the, I think it was in the 50s, wasn't it? Yeah. It shows what was really going on there. 1960s, Shirley went on a number of concert tours in the Deep South. Yeah. It just shows you how people, stereotype and view people, but yet they loved to listen to his music. I was amazed when listening to the music, as I told Jess, made up all night listening to his music. And I knew the music and didn't know him. And that's sad. That is really sad. And the fact that his family said he did not leave Memoir. So we don't know, except from somebody else's point of view, what happened. During that period, even the all of the nightclub that we think about, we hear in the movies, that was typical that the entertainers could entertain, but they could not eat, they couldn't stay. Even Duke Ellington with his big band, he leased a Pullman car. And when they would get to a certain town, they would take the car off the track and they would put it on a side track. So all of his band stayed on, that he didn't have to deal with going into restaurants and theaters and deal with the segregation. Right, right. So the Cotton Club. Everybody knows about the Cotton Club and Lena Horne and they couldn't stay. So it would have been nice, I think. It's just a sad bit of that. So that the audience, today's audience could understand that period. Right, I agree with you. And it's real interesting to see that contrast and to see, like you said, the Cotton Club, it was basically musicians and dancers, African-Americans, but African-Americans could not fit in the club in the 1940s and 50s and 60s. They were not allowed unless you were a musician or dancer. And that whole era of the Harlem Renaissance was full and exciting and full of all kinds of entertainers and poets and writers, names that we all know. And it would have been just a minute of that. Yeah, I know they did show a scene of him going when he was set out of the white plantation that he went with some people to an African-American joint, a will, a joint, and started playing the piano for them and everybody started clapping and we're very appreciative. Yes, well, we need to take a break and we'll be back in 60 seconds. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha and Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power, Hawaii. With Think Tech, Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich and lighten, educate, entertain and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, Mabuhay and Aloha. I'm Marsha and we're back with my dear friend, Daphne Barbie. And for everybody in Hawaii knows that. Not everybody. Well, Daphne wrote a book about her father and justice for all, is that right? That's correct, right. I have an issue with that. Not the book, the word justice. It's just us, not you, not me. Just us. When they wrote the Constitution, they did not include us in the Constitution. When they wrote that justice for all, they didn't include women. They didn't include Native Americans. They didn't include people of color. They didn't even include white men that were not landowners. So justice for all was just us, not you, me. But let's go back. Well, liberty too, remember liberty because the original Constitution did not abolish slavery. It took the 13th Amendment to do that. So justice for all means we have to fight. Constantly. Make sure it's a reality. Constantly. Yes, absolutely. So tell us about your father, about the book. I wanted to talk about a little bit, something you said triggered it, is you said that we need to write our own stories. Because if you don't write your own stories for Dr. Shirley's relatives don't write or preserve it, Dr. Shirley, he doesn't have to write his biography or autobiography, but someone close to him could. And that would be maybe a very different story than what we saw winning the Academy Award. But if you don't write the story and preserve history in your family, then somebody else may come along and do it for you, which is what happened in the Green Book. So being a lawyer, I realized that, that you have to document things and keep things for history-first purposes. If you want to write it, you got to do it. So what I did is I kept a lot of my father's writings and he's very well-known in Wisconsin. Not so much here in Hawaii, but in Wisconsin he was, and he filed desegregation lawsuits. And the first one, the desegregation of Milwaukee public schools, which although it was the North, it was still segregated. African-Americans went to one school and whites went to another school. And that's the North. So it was still following the pattern of segregation and separate and unequal. So he filed a lawsuit, he won the lawsuit. And then after that, he was also a Wisconsin State Legislature and he filed a lot of civil rights bills. He filed bill for abortion, filed bill to legalize marijuana. This was way back in the 60s. And many other things that he did, bill for fair housing, of course, civil rights, we go rights for women. So I just kept all of his letters and I knew somebody else may come along and do it. So I decided to do it before so that I could have it copyrighted and it'd be the family perspective and it'd be the bills that I knew he wanted and pushed very hard for. And it got published and it has been out for about a year and a half. And so I invite anybody who wants a copy, you can either contact me or you can order it on Amazon, but it's also Wisconsin Historical Press as well. So that's enough about my book. I also wrote another book about African-American lawyers in Hawaii, but 10 years old, I think you need to update it. Yes, yes. More and more people that show up from other places that are attorneys, yes. And then also I'll talk about you a little bit because you were one of the first hairdressers that I came to here in Waikiki and your husband had a shot and there you were, this is the first time I met you. One time ago. Well, that was an ancient history. An old history, yes. That was ancient history, but I told, it was for sale, there was a place for sale. And I said, you know that with us, the biggest issue is our hair. That's a huge issue. It's very big. And of course he had no idea what I was talking about. And I said, but if you buy this, then people will have a place to go. So for 27 years, we had two salons, one in the Edgewater and one was that one on Beachwalk. Oh, okay, okay, yeah. Well, I know, I met a lot of people through the. I did too. All of those years when Waikiki was magic, all of that's gone. I think Tom Tower is right next to it. Well, that's where the Edgewater was. They tore it down and there he is. Well, anyways, I wanted to also talk about the other movie that won one Academy Award, which was Black Plansmen, but didn't win for writing. And I think Spike Lee won for director, but writing, I thought, was superb. And I did bring a copy of the book and it's written by an African-American. And talk about writing your own history. He wrote it about his experience of infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan. And I thought it was a very good film and I read the book and I just absolutely loved it. And I just want to bring this into his perspective since we're talking about films. Birth of the Nation is considered a paramount film by some. Not by African-Americans, because it glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. And you have people in blackface who eat watermelons and it's very negative towards African-Americans. It's an awful film. It's an awful film, but it keeps, people keep referring to it as best film made in America. It's not. It glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. So I bought this film. The Black Klansmen was an antidote to birth of a nation. And so I hope during Black History Month that the film is shown and if they're gonna show birth in the nation, they have to show Black Klansmen to find out what the Klan was really about, which was genocide and killing people who were not white males. And lynching them. And not enough is talked about that. People don't even know sometimes who the KKK is. Even 45 says, oh, you know, in Charlottesville when one of them rammed and killed a young woman who wasn't African-American, but they didn't seem to care because she was fighting for civil rights for various people. And again, that's the Klan mentality. We have to educate the public. And so that's why I brought the book as the contrast to the Green Book, which I like the Green Book too, but I just thought this was more deserving. As I started telling you, my grandfather, this is Brazil, Indiana, and the only doctor in this country town. And in those days, if you didn't have the money, you know, during the 30s, nobody had money. So they would bring him carrots and potatoes and chickens and whatever. Now these are, I'm at this, you know, that many non-whites in the town, everybody else. So he would take whatever you had and this one young man said, Dr. Oliver, what can I bring you? And he said, I want a membership in the Klan. So about two weeks later, the kid shows up with the membership. So the days go on and there is a quote parade. Now my mother tells me there's a parade. Mama wanted to see it. And of course, all, as you know, in little towns, his office was on Main Street, but all of the offices are on Main Street. So they all line up to watch the parade, the Klan, which was originated in Indiana. So the Klan is marching down Main Street and somebody looked under the sheet and said, oh, there's Dr. Oliver. Oh boy. My mother said her mother just fainted dead away and just, oh, gone. But what he did, then he got to know that it was the mayor, the governor, the chief of police, they were all members of the Klan. He infiltrated. So he got to see who was under there. So that's my Klan story. Oh my goodness, well, I remember in Mississippi, because my family, my father, his family came from Mississippi. Near Tupelo, Shannon, Mississippi. And we went to visit our relatives coming from North. And we remember 4th of July, sitting on the porch of Tupelo in Tupelo, Mississippi, where Elvis Prestige. And the big parade, 4th of July parade, who was in it, the Klan. And so, you know, I asked my great aunt, well, look, the Klan's in here, da, da, da, da. You know, I was getting indignant. And she said, we don't pay them any attention. She said, they're always in these markets. We don't pay them any mind, you know? But it's interesting if you look at the history of the Linton and the Tupelo Klan. And I think they're morphing into different organizations. I know one branched out to the John Birch Society and a white nationalist, and there's all sorts of- And the Trump administration. Yeah, there's all sorts of organizations that have, you know, learned from the Klan. And so infiltration is good. So you find out. So you get to know. And so, what do you think about the governor of Carolina, South Carolina, who wore the black face and used it in the yearbook? And he- Oh, that's Virginia. Oh, sorry, Virginia. I started to say Virginia. But I believe it's probably South Carolina too. But yeah, they had a picture of him in the yearbook with either a Klan outfit and black face. One was in the Klan and one was the black face. And it was on his page. What do you think of that? Oh dear, I just wonder how many more will show up? It's amazing what people put in their yearbook. I don't like my yearbook at all because I don't like the way I look, but there was nothing foolish that I said. But listen, sweetheart, we are out of time. Oh, I think, yeah. No, it's been a pleasure spending this time with you. You come back and do it again. We will. Yes, thank you. Aloha. Aloha. And thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.