Hello everyone and welcome. Club for Good is a bi -weekly podcast that showcases personal and powerful conversations with prominent LGBTQ plus executives who are out in the workplace. The conversations are meant to create a supportive community and inspire LGBTQ plus people, their employers and allies to build equity and inclusion in the workplace. Today, I'm excited to welcome Terrence Franklin to the show.
Terry holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and practices trust in estate litigation in the law firm he co -founded, Sachs, Glazier, Franklin, and Lodi's. In addition to being an accomplished and recognized attorney, Terry is a passionate storyteller and activist. He discovered the 1846 legal documents that emancipated his family from slavery, which helped him understand his life's mission. which he defines as bending the arc of history towards justice.
Terry's legal expertise is the inspiration and basis for a novel and limited series he's working on called The Last Will of Lucy Sutton, the story of his ancestors' escape from slavery and exodus to freedom in Illinois. He recently completed a memoir, An Arcbender's Journal, which tells his story of how he found himself while looking for his ancestors.
Terry has served on the board of directors of Outfest, a Los Angeles based LGBTQ arts organization, and is a contributing opinion writer for advocate .com. Terry, welcome to Clout for Good. Thank you so much David, it's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, your intro, there's so many interesting things. And as a brand marketer and a storyteller myself, I'm really excited to hear a lot more from you today. So let's jump in.
So I start the conversation on Cloud4Good by first of all, asking everyone to discuss their identity and their path to authenticity. So Terry, tell us how do you identify and tell us maybe a little bit about your coming out experience. Okay, he, him, his are my adjectives. And my coming out experience, I think probably like a lot of people, has been a bit of in and out throughout a lifetime. But I spent probably the first 46 years of my life trying to not be what parts of me told me I was.
I grew up in Chicago. in a Christian household, African American family on the south side of Chicago, and really didn't have any role models or examples of black, gay, successful people. That just wasn't a concept that existed in my mind. And given my Christian background, there was no way to really look outside that frame to see any examples of people who I might be able to look to as examples.
So I spent... a lot of my life thinking, you know, there's no way for me to be this thing, even though I feel these feelings and I have these attractions. And through a series of events, I had an experience in college where I was sort of outed to my parents who confronted me in a bit of a... What's the word? What's the confrontation that you have with somebody? It's like when you have somebody who has alcohol issues or substance abuse issues.
It was... it was a bit of a, my gosh, I can't think of the word either. yeah, if we want to record that. But the bottom line is I got married to a wonderful woman, fell in love and loved her as much as you can love someone when you're not truly loving yourself. We had two wonderful daughters together, raised those children. And at some point, I think when I was 46, I look back and realize that half of my life had been spent. not truly being who I was.
And although I had told my wife when we first began dating that I was bisexual because that was the best term I could think of to describe my past experiences and really my hope for being able to have a life as a husband and father and all of that. And after 23 years, my... body and mind said, wait a minute, this is not who you are. And I cheated. She discovered the fact. And in 2010, I realized that I needed to come out and be who I was.
And that was a coming out both personally, and then I had to take that step and do it professionally as well. So in my office, I came in and told everyone. And so it's, you know, and that was 2010. So it's been 14 years now, which seems like just yesterday in some ways. On the other hand, it's been a lifetime. Wow, I certainly can understand. I also dated women until my mid -20s before I came out.
And I think there's this, at least from our generation, this idea of this is your path, this is what you do. And also growing up actually in Michigan, sort of next door to Illinois, didn't see a lot of representation. I mean, quite frankly, none, didn't see any. And today, fortunately, we do have. representation in media and other outlets that folks can get exposure to, but didn't have that. And so I sort of thought this is, I guess, the path and made that choice. It's a tough choice.
And especially after you committed to it for so long, how was the experience of, you know, were you at this time in 2010, had you already founded your firm with your partners and had you already had your own business and were you coming back to these? How was that experience? Yeah, I had founded the firm in 2001 and had been working with these people, my two main partners that I've been working with one way or another since 1991 or 1992.
So a long time we'd have this relationship and I knew them, they knew me as a couple with my ex -wife, with my then wife and we were friends and so. In some ways, this was a bit of a shock to everyone. I think there were some people who came to me afterward and said, you know, I always kind of wondered. And there were others who said, my gosh, I had no idea. You know, you and your wife were so together and raising these children and seemed so happy.
And, you know, to the extent that people can find ways to make happiness in a situation where you're not truly living your full life. That's what I was. Intervention is the word we were both trying to think of earlier. So it was a workplace and whole life transformation to suddenly become a different person in some ways than I had been to my friends and colleagues, my professional colleagues.
Well, and you mentioned your family had, you know, whether it was based in their Midwest values or their Christian religion values, both of which I'm very familiar with having grown up in Michigan, like I mentioned, but also I'm curious, you know, you had a career in law before your own firm and had been with other firms and had other experiences. I'd be interested in your take, you know, you clearly hadn't come out yet, but.
What were some of the signals you received from being in that industry? Was that something you had gotten cues and had seen things in your experience that you thought this industry is accepting, this industry isn't accepting? What's your point of view of the legal industry, if you will, in the way that it accepts and includes its LGBTQ plus employees?
Right. Well, I think that certainly at the time that I first started practicing, there were so few people who, you know, I started off, I graduated from law school in 1989, went to a big firm and it was thought of as one of the more liberal firms. It was very, Morrison & Forster was the name of the firm and it had the reputation for having the mofo difference. It was based out of San Francisco and, wanted to express itself as a place that was more open and welcoming.
But we used to have a directory of law firms that we would look at to decide who we were going to apply for summer internships or jobs with. And they would have little statistics and charts about the numbers of African -Americans, the numbers of Latinos or Hispanics, the numbers of LGBTQ at the time we was gay or lesbian.
We didn't have LGBTQ as a... signifier and MoFo is one of the few firms at the time that had listed two or three out of the some probably over 200 or 300 attorneys at the firm at the time who were listed as actually gay and there was actually one partner who became the managing partner who was gay I think within the first couple of years that I was at the firm which was really extraordinary and a real statement.
Having said that, when I looked around at my class of fellow interning lawyers, there were probably five guys of our 35 who seemed like they might be gay, but nobody talked about it. Nobody acknowledged it. It was taboo enough that this wasn't a place where you were really going to put yourself out there. And that had been my experience in college. high school that amongst yourselves you might whisper or acknowledge.
But if you wanted to be successful, if you wanted to find a path to achievement, which is what all of us who went through the process of fighting to get into college and fighting to get into law school and fighting to get to the best law firms we're trying to do, there just weren't those examples there. And so why would you burden yourself with an additional Hmm. additional challenge to success by admitting this thing that really wasn't a cloud. So it's been a long process.
It's been wonderful to watch since 1989 to the present an evolution in our thinking, you know, a transformation really in our ways of living that, you know, the idea of marriage equality even, you know, two years before 2015 would have seemed at least to me, incomprehensible. And I had trouble understanding that concept or even getting used to the term husband to describe my husband. It took a long time for those words, for that word to make sense in this context.
But, you know, this is our experience. And I think young people entering the profession today find that it's a much more open and welcoming profession. There are lots of... organizations and entities that support LGBTQ attorneys. There's Lambda Legal that fights for the rights of LGBTQ people. There's Lavender Law, which is sort of a national network of lawyers that provide continuing education and opportunities and encourage one another.
The ABA, American Bar Association, has a... diversity, equity, and inclusion aspect. In fact, I was on a commission for the ABA commission on gay, I was on a commission that was advocating for LGBTQ rights among lawyers and pushing for changes and developments in the law. So, you know, I don't know where this will go because I think there's always resistance to change and we can see that happening. across the country and there's still so many places where the world can be better.
But I would not have wanted to be the gay black man I am at any time in the past and I can only hope for a better and brighter future. I think that's, you know, and as you mentioned, I think certainly in the eighties and nineties, there was a lot of this sort of hide yourself. I've given the example of one of my managers and one of my first jobs had a, had a gay holiday party and a straight holiday party.
And it just sort of was a course of what you did was sort of kept your personal life private. If you, if you really didn't want people to know what that was and. As you said, you know, sort of just now having this sort of, I don't want all these things working against me. I've worked so hard to get here.
And I think the stat that's, that's out there now is still 49 % of employees who identify as LGBTQ still feel that showing up truly authentically can hinder their ability to be promoted and can hinder their opportunity to have a more successful career. So. It's, it certainly is, as you mentioned, I think it certainly is better. And I certainly see from my volunteer work and being out in the community, law firms are huge contributors to our efforts.
And so you do see a lot of participation and a lot of exposure out there, which is really, really positive. Terry switching gears a little, I, in preparation for our talk, after we were introduced to one another, I watched your Ted talk on. Bending the Arc of History Towards Justice. And I certainly encourage listeners to do the same so they can hear more of the details of this engagement that you delivered.
But for today, might you tell us what you even mean by bending the arc of history towards justice? And tell us how this is, you've even mentioned this has become your life's work. Tell us a little bit about it. Absolutely, it is my life's work and it's kind of amazing to find a mission in life and I think that's something that I now try to encourage other people to do is to try to figure out not what you want to be or who you want to be but how you might want to change the world for the better.
And if you use that as a guiding principle it can help you to find the things and the... the goals that you need to achieve that mission and as long as you're working towards that mission, you feel fulfilled. So the bottom line is that I had been doing this particular practice area, trust in estate litigation. So will contests, family disputes, that kind of work for 25 years when I discovered that there was a will contest in my family. The challenge to a document from 1846.
because it turns out that my great -great -great -great -grandfather was a white farmer in Florida, and he owned my great -great -great -great -grandmother, whom he described in his last Will and Testament as his, quote, mulatto slave Lucy, aged about 45.
But my fourth great -grandfather's will went on to set Lucy free, along with her eight children and gr - six grandchildren who were all listed by name and age in the document and with stipulation that they were to find their way to Illinois or Ohio or Indiana, free state, and claim their freedom. So I discovered this in 2014.
It had been a circuitous path to uncovering this document and looking back now I realize that Perhaps all my life I've been given clues that I believe were clues from my ancestors, from Lucy speaking to me across time and across ages, perhaps through my DNA, telling me that this is my destiny, is to find her story and to uncover her story and to reveal it to the world and to try to understand what her story means.
Because when I first went looking for this document, Do you want to ask a question? I don't want to stop you. no, go ahead. This is it's fascinating. No, keep going. I first began looking for this document in 2001. I'd gone to a family reunion, and part of the reunion materials included this little typed up transcript from this document that said, I, John Sutton, being of sound mind but infirm in body, own the following property. And I had seen this typed up in cursive font.
So those of you who are old enough, your listeners who are old enough to know what a cursive font means know that you can change the font in an old typewriter from the 80s to make it look like cursive. So what this was a clue to me was that someone, a relative, had gone and done research in the 80s and had found this document in Illinois and the public records in southern Illinois. And the description of it said that there was a copy of it that was there in southern Illinois.
There was also a copy of this will that had been recorded in Georgia. And the original was in Jacksonville, Florida, which is where John Sutton lived. And when I first saw it in 2001, I was fascinated. I thought, hey, I'm a trust and estates lawyer. Maybe I should try and find this. I called the clerk in Jacksonville and I said, I'm trying to find this will. Here's the page and line number. She said, yeah, we'll send it to you. Send me $2 for the cost of the copy. and I sent it to her.
It was 2001 and I never heard back. I forgot about it. 14 years later or 13 years later, I had a great aunt who was turning 100 and I wanted to do something to commemorate her birthday and I remembered, not that I had gone looking for the document, but I remembered those reunion materials. So I dug around in my papers, I found this thing and I pulled it out and by now, I'm still a trust and estate lawyer, but it's 13 years more of experience.
I had then become a fellow in the American College of Trust and Estate Council, which is a national organization of trust and estate lawyers who support each other in the development of the law. So I now had resource and access to people across the country. I could call up and ask for advice. So I called lawyers in Florida and I explained that I was trying to find this document from 1846 and. I heard back from them there was the great fire of Jacksonville in 1901 and everything was destroyed.
You're never gonna find this. But then I found this paralegal who listened to my story and heard me explain that my green aunt had been this special lady whose 100th birthday was coming. She'd been married to a Tuskegee Airman. She'd walked four miles each way to get her degree. And this paralegal got inspired. And she told me, you know, There was the great fire, but let me see what I could do. And she set about trying to find the document.
And ultimately she found it and sent me these images across time and the country and that this red wax seal on a document that you can't see on a podcast, but it just vibrated with a truth and a reality that made this document real to me in a way that it hadn't before. and really opened the door to my continued path to understand what that document meant and whether there were other documents that supported it.
And those documents have been a connection to the past and have helped me to see that my ancestors are at one end of an arc of history and I have descendants in the future and whether they're my direct descendants from my children or... people who will look back wondering what we did to try to make the world better. And so I understand that my place is between the past and between the future. And it's my role is to help to make the world better for the people who come out. I love it.
I love how it's so connected to your profession, your family sort of, you know, documentation and history. And also to, as you said, sort of exploring the truth. And as you had just come out several years before and you were, you were probably still figuring yourself out and figure out that journey. How, how do you think this work and this experience you had with this, did it change anything about your, your approach to your work and your profession?
It did in that I have a greater sense of perspective that the documents that were created in 1846 by this white man who, you know, I understood, owned my ancestor and therefore she had no real agency or control over her life. But I wanted to believe that Lucy, did have some agency even within the bounds of slavery in an antebellum period.
And that somehow she got John to see her humanity and to recognize that and to therefore take action in a time when a white man didn't need to do that to make sure that she and her children would be free. And that gives you a different sense of the value and the importance of the work that we do on a day -to -day basis so that a document that's drafted today, may have ramifications and repercussions way into the future.
And recognizing that importance has changed my perspective and my understanding on the work that I do. And frankly, because I think this story is a story that has lots of lessons for lots of people to hear, my mission, as I see it is to tell the story as widely as I can and so it's inspired me to find different ways. So I'm working on this novel, you know, I'm working on this limited series for TV and you know we're working on musical pieces.
We've been commissioned by the Oakland Symphony Chorus to create essentially a musical piece that has inspired additional thoughts. I've got this grand musical idea. We're going to tell this. Antebellum interracial, intergenerational, intersectional, fully sexual, unbelievably true tale of how the power of love will set you free. I mean, that's been become, you know, this empowering vision that these documents and connection to my history has has given me insights into.
So this is part of that mission to is sitting here talking to you and sharing the story. That's right. I think, you know, the power of for clout for good, you know, the, the power of being yourself and telling your truth and showing up and, and with all of this that you've experienced, how now you look back at the years you, you know, and certainly had a portion of your life that was, I'm sure for the most part, very happy and enjoyable, but now have made this decision.
You know, several years ago to, to take this different path and be out and, and proclaim your, you know, queer identity and how does sitting here now, so what, what advice, you know, this is not an uncommon story, even still today of having a challenge of being able to come up for a variety of reasons, family, religion, financial safety, other things. When you think about sort of where you are now in the path that you've taken.
What advice do you have to sort of younger folks or maybe even folks who are still contemplating and haven't had that moment of truth? What advice do you give to folks as they're trying to figure this out for themselves?
That's a really good question and I think my advice to those people is that you know it's a very personal and really an intimate decision that you have to come to in the right time for you to decide when you want to live your life fully and authentically and to reject the shame and to... get the other people out of your head who are telling you that you're supposed to live your life in a certain way.
But the feeling of liberation and... comfort despite the fact that there are people who reject or who don't believe that it's okay to be gay or lesbian or that trans people don't exist even though those people are out there and and they want to try to inhibit our ability to express ourselves whether you're out or not those people are going to be there and you're going to feel pressures and burdens, this is the nature of what life is about.
But if you can take those obstacles, that pressure, and recognize it and say, it's more important for me to love who I am, to know that I am valid as a human being, that I have a purpose for being here, that I'm as essential to this universe as anybody else. And to be able to proclaim that, in your full self, with your full identity is so empowering and it sends such a message to other people and they give it back.
I have found that just being myself and being true to who I am has given me so much benefit in my life. So I would encourage other people to push and lean into your own authenticity. You're here for a reason, you're here for a purpose. And if you don't fulfill that purpose, no one will do it.
I think that was a quote from Dr. Benjamin Mays who was a colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King and really a mentor to him that we all have a purpose and I don't think you can get to your purpose unless you are true to yourself. I love it. And, and as you were going through this, Terry was who did you lean on? What resources were out there for you? How did you, you know, you had said over the years, maybe there, maybe I have some truth I need to figure out and explore.
And were there any resources or would you offer up any resources that, that, that you use through your journey? That's a good question. I think part of this is being aware of the possibilities out there, like really sort of looking at things. I think back to the people who were, you know, Bayard Rustin, who helped Martin Luther King, who really organized the March on Washington. I didn't know who he was.
He didn't exist for me that there was this queer person who was involved in the organization. Lorraine Hansberry who wrote Raisin in the Sun, who knew she was a lesbian? We weren't told those things. And today there are so many resources. You can hop on the internet and look for gay lawyers, gay writers, gay doctors, whatever it is in the area that you're interested in pursuing. And you can find resources, people who are examples. who live their lives openly and honestly.
And I think if you can look for those and try to use those, you know, people talk about the word role model and I always feel uncomfortable with that term in some ways because it both assumes that there has to be a certain role and that there's a certain model for what makes, you know, the best person. I...
I've won awards for mentorship, but I think what we want to try to be is examples, because what you want to do is to be someone who has lived their life in their way that someone else can look at and can see that, and then take from that what might be useful to them and combine that with their own spirit, with their own determination, with their own goals and mission, and make something new.
And I think that's... what we're here for is to help encourage other people to find ways to be their best selves. And so I think that's far from the question, but I think that's what I want people to know. think it's so true. And I think you're so right about seeking and exploring and you know, your Bayard Rustin example after watching Coleman Domingo last year in that film and leaving and saying, there are so many stories. There are so many people that their stories have not been told.
And I think it's just amazing for us to be in this time now. for to your recommendation to the listeners, you know, when we were contemplating these things in the eighties and nineties, it was very difficult to find a lot of this information. And now I think there is such an opportunity to watch a Rustin film and be able to understand the struggles and being able to also, I think, to your point, inspire and show possibility and show that there is a path.
So I think it's really, really good advice. And I think, you know, I know your your work with LGBTQ plus films and storytelling that you do of your own. They're all great ways. And here, like you said, being here today on clout for good and telling your story, I think is really important for folks to connect to these, these experiences. So as you know, the, on the show, we talk a lot about using your clout for good. So in other words, using your outness to make a difference.
So thinking back on your career, tell us when you've used your clout for good. to make a difference for the queer community in the workplace. What I've tried to do is to be who I am, authentically as possible. As I mentioned when I came out in 2010, I was trying to find ways to identify community, people who would be supportive.
And so I was sort of casting about, and so I sort of found out about Lambda Legal, found out because I was also trying to figure out how to... tell stories in a better way, in a broader way, about Outfest and got involved and got on the board of Outfest. And through that created community through contacts, relationships that have also become professional relationships as well through the law.
So it's sort of trying to take a 360 degree approach, look at yourself where you are, and then sort of looking around at who's around you. And... how you might make a little difference here or there. And so I think just trying to be authentic whenever I can and using that to try to leverage it into opportunities to tell other people that you can be who you are and find the place you need to be to live a healthy life. That's not. closed and stuck in a closet where you can't be who you are.
And sometimes that might mean changing where you live, changing your profession, changing your outlook, and changing the people who are around you so that the people who are around you are people who are supportive and who can help you become your best you. Yeah, I, I, it's such good advice to, I think your examples of seeking out lamb to legal or outfest or other types of organizations, you know, myself, I was a athlete in college and I got involved with LGBT sports.
And so I met, met one of my first friends I met said, do you want to come and play gay volleyball? And I thought, what's gay volleyball? I don't understand what that is. I just come out at 24 in Atlanta and, Similarly, those experiences created some of the best experiences I've had still today playing in gay athletics, in tennis and otherwise. And to your point, you not only have a great, I always say you're going out and saying, I'm going to try something that's good for me. It's healthy.
I'm going to be around a group of folks who have similar views that I do. So I know that I can find acceptance. And we're all here for the same thing. We want to enjoy ourselves and have a good time and enrich our lives. And I think all those organizations or any type of organizations, actually one of my guests that actually introduced me to you, Valerie Madden had said, just get out there. And I know you two met with your participation in OutFest.
I think really good advice to I think be out there and be as authentic as you can. And relationships and experiences lead to things that are unexpected. I think that folks sometimes. Sometimes you have that feeling on your way to your event or thing. You're like, I don't know if I really want to go to this. And I think a lot of times really try to make yourself go and see what it's all about. So, so one final question, Terry, I ask everyone this, it's a really popular question.
People like to see what all, all of my guests say about this. But the final question is we want to know who's inspired you along the way. So for a moment, imagine you're hosting a clout for good dinner party. What two or three queer icons, have inspired you or do you respect that you'd like to have at the table?
You know, and I probably already sort of tipped my hat a little bit, but I think somebody like Bayard Rustin and Lorraine Hansberry, you know, they're those people whose work I was aware of as a young person or even Langston Hughes, the great poet who I'm not sure if he's even today totally acknowledged as having been queer. But these are people when I was a kid, you know, I loved their... I loved the effects of what they were doing. I was aware of the March on Washington.
I was only a year old when it happened, but historically it was one of those things. Raisin in the Sun, and then there was a musical called Raisin, and I knew that Lorraine Hansberry was from Chicago, where I was from, and as a lawyer I knew that her father had been a plaintiff in a lawsuit that involved racially restrictive covenants, and that was part of the inspiration for that story. had I known that she was also a queer person?
My level of understanding of that story and what her experience was as somebody who had to remain closeted and so forth. Nikki Giovanni, these artists whose storytelling, now we can see how it was inspired and infused with. who they were as people trying to live their lives and express themselves as artists that we couldn't know those little secrets behind the doors back then.
I would love to get their insights today to be able to say, hey, how did it feel to have to keep yourself closeted and tell me those places where you found a way to show who you truly were? And think of the change in the feeling they would have being, being welcomed to a dinner table to say, be who you are and say what it is. They would be shocked that this is where we. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, Terry, thank you so much for all you do for community.
And thank you for joining me today. I will be sure to share, the, the Ted talk and other, other ways to get in touch with you as we, as we promote the episode. I'm out there, but thank you. Thanks for the time today. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much, it's been a pleasure, David. And to my listeners, happy pride and thanks so much for joining us today. Please tune in every other Wednesday for a new episode of Cloud for Good. Follow us on social and visit cloudforgood
.com to subscribe to our newsletter. I hope this episode motivates you to use your cloud for good to make a difference in your workplace.