 Thank you again for tuning in to will mega TV Please subscribe click like drop your thoughts in the comments area And if you really want to see us continue to push out great content supporters Cash app will mega that's dollar sign will mega dollar sign will mega. Thank you Good afternoon everybody It's an honor to be here Oh Thank you. Thank you. This is like home now And the other library branch is beautiful and to come in here today and see This be these beautiful pictures of the wall these beautiful books on the shelves and see all you beautiful people here It's really something special to open up a library at a time But they're trying to close libraries trying to shut down schools. They're trying to hide books from us They're trying to erase our curricula and instead here in Wilmington. We do in the opposite That doesn't have my accident It takes struggle everything we've ever gotten as a people's come from struggle Every curriculum we've opened up every school we've built all of it comes from struggle and the struggle right here Wilmington a big part of business brother right here. Do you want please get him around? I have a career in media to career in academia And before I would do any of that I was at the kitchen table I was about three years old And uh, my mom came home. She was a school teacher in Philly and she would borrow books from school We still got them books you borrow I thought all books started with property and fill up his school district But I opened up the book And I read and some of y'all hold up to remember Dick Jane and spot See spot run go spot go dick. It was this whole Family of just deliriously happy white people But I learned how to read But what I didn't learn was that we had families That we had imaginations that we had stories that could be in those books that we were eligible to be written into history But it wasn't because we didn't do it We got long history of writing You go anywhere around this country and find a philis weekly ymc or usually ywca philis weekly was the first african-american To publish a book first Public but also the first person to publish a book man or woman And when she tried to write poems on various subjects religious and moral the first thing they did was say she couldn't write this book This black woman 16 years old Sin of the leaves of one officer. She couldn't have wrote this so they had a trial for philis weekly They said did this black girl write this stuff. Did she really write that letter to general George Washington? Did she really write that Elegy for a fallen soldier. Did she really write that poem on being brought from africa to america? He said it ain't possible for her to know greek. It ain't possible for her to know latin And so all these people from thomas jefferson to the wells leads to the open all these people whose names is now these fancy white colleges That also don't let us in They put her on trial, but it wasn't just her on trial. It was black people's intelligence on trial It was black people's literacy on trial They didn't believe we had the ability to do this stuff But what did we do? We did it anyway The world knows who you are The world knows what you're capable of they said y'all can't read and write but they made laws so that we wouldn't learn how to read and write They know who you are They said you're lazy for major slaves. They said you were dirty for how to clean their houses. They said you are uncentralizing. We raise their children They know who you are But now but now We have to remind ourselves of who we are That's what's in those books and once again Those same children they say are violent those same children of ours our babies that they say aren't capable of doing anything in the world They do with everything they can to make sure we don't go in those libraries They do everything they can to make sure those history books stay closed or if they open them that they got the wrong things in them So now just like when we were running From plantations just like when we were fighting In hush harbors to read our bibles and our karans just like when we were building schools Just like when we were doing everything we could to get into those School districts not because we thought our IQs would go up when other people were there But because we knew books would be there Just like in those moments. This is another moment where we have to fight for the soul of our community We have to fight for the spirit of our community. We have to avenge our ancestors by reading every single thing We can So you can get jayden spot. That's cool. We should read about white people. We should read about black people We should read about everybody. I learned a lot from dick jayden spot I did I learned a lot from Are you there god? It's me mark or judy bloom Do you mean imagine being this six-year-old boy reading ahead of his grade level in north philly? I must I must I must increase my bus But I learned some things from these books But then I found my own people I found my own tradition I'm so happy to be talking to my dear sister eliasa because I opened up the autobiography of malcomax And I ain't been the same since It transformed my life It transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world Not just the book itself But the lesson inside the book which taught us that books had the capacity to transform your life that reading and love Had the capacity to transform your life So what we're doing here in earth woman to today is not just opening a library. Although that's important We are standing on the sturdy shoulders of our ancestors Who opened the door for us to read these books to write ourselves into history and to fight another leg for freedom So I want to thank y'all for coming I hope y'all come upstairs and building us And again, I want to thank the number one in the library for this historic achievement