AREVA MARTIN - The Poor Man's Caviar

I don't know. You may be a superhero. You may be you may actually be a superhero. Moms are superheroes. You got your I like that. I like that. I'm so excited about having you here today. And I'm also like nervous and overwhelmed because your resume says a lot

and you've done so much. Well. I am just like you and every other mom that's dealing with raising kids, trying to figure out, you know, this crazy mixed up world we live in, how to keep our kids safe, how to make sure they grew up to be responsible, loving, caring, nurturing adults. So hey, relax, We're here to cook today. Cook and you came on eating while broke, which just

says a lot because I would have never Yeah. And then on top of it, you're cooking one of my favorite dishes and I had no idea how to make it. So what are you cooking? I am making my classic tuna melt. This is a dish that I perfected while I was into all school and I was very, very very broke. So I had to figure out Harvard. I was broken her. I was broke away before I got to Harvard, and I remained broke while I was at Harvard. So I can figure out how to cook because you

could go out, you know, every night. I had the kind of money, so I had to figure out how I can make food that I could put a refrigerator and eat, you know, on for a couple of days. And I grew up. I always left tuna. Tuna was like, you know, poor Man's caveat So I like that the poor Man's cavears. You get your canra tuna, you open it. You can make all kinds of things. So I started making too melts, and I got pretty popular. My tona melts were legendary and other people want to come over

and have I took melt with me. So I solved a lot of problems and did a lot of studying over tuna melts. Now, did you have to learn how to make a tuna melt or did you feel yourself through it? You know, I'm a kind of cook. I grew up with my godmother and my grandmother and several aunts, and they were all cooked. So I think I picked up a little bit from each of the women that

I grew up with. I'm not a recipe cook. I'm very much like kind a brain cook and how I feel, so it's a pinch of this, a pinch of that. So I don't have, you know, precise measurements for how I cook. So I taste and I just kind of wing it. Like you put a lot of love and a lot of hard into your cooking, it comes out

great sounds like what ingredients are we're using today? So today, for this legendary Harvard Law School cooking, while I'm broke tuna milk, we have some classic tuna, tuna and water, just two cans, just you know, at any local grower store tuna. We have some slices of cheddar cheese, you know, again, just whatever cheese you can find. I happen to like yellow cheese. You can use white cheese. We have pieces of celery chopped up. We have eggs, boiled eggs, really

important tuna to have eggs. I have pickle, relish mustard, some wheat. Read paprika, Oh my god, my favorite spice. I put paprica on everything. Don't ever sleep on. I'm gonna start using paprika and smoked paprika is the absolute best. Put it on everything. Some Gari seasoning salt. Couldn't cook without that, you know, black folks, miracle will right, So we has a miracle whil It could be mayonnaise, but we have miracle whippers salt and pepper and that's it.

So not you know, elaborate. And the reason you can make this while you're broke is because everything that all the condiments, you use them, you can buy them. This is probably fifteen Yeah, well actually a lot less, but you it was so funny because I do a lot of the shopping for the show and I had to shoot a lot today. But your dish was hands down the cheapest dish. Yeah. I mean, I don't count the condiments because like you said, you reuse them. You reuse them.

But the actual dish, I mean, you're talking a couple of dollars prepared. You know, a couple of dollars for tuna, cheese, celery is really cheap, and so this is like the gold to dish. And I was excited about it because I make tuna sandwiches all day and the only time I buy a tuna sandwich is if it's a tuna mel So I officially will learn how to make it to the melt today. And you notice with our tune on our eggs, lots of proteins. This is a really

high protein dish. So anybody that's worried, like you know, maybe they don't want to do the bread, you can obviously leave off the bridge. You can just put it on the grill without bread. You could put it in a little piece of lettuce if you wanted to. You leave the cheese off. That's the good part. But I'm just doing people now. A lot of people want to eat healthy, so they may be a little weary about the bread or the cheese, but hands down, this is

a really healthy meal. So okay, well I get started, okay, so obviously and take the tuna that was drained open the can drain the water off. You don't want it to be too you know, sloppy. You put the tune in a big bowl and then the cellery. Now again, I like crunchy food. A lot of people don't like the crunchy. So if you like crunchy, make your pieces

kind of nice and you know, crunchy. And we don't have onions today because you're not gonna be standing next to each other and and offensive or maybe made me cry. But if you like onions, put some onions in your tune. That's another thing, to be white onions red on this. Even green onions are great in tunas. So you can chop up some green onions, put the celery in here and then the other like really important part of this are the eggs. So we have three. I didn't know.

I did not know eggs were part of the tuna milt. Yes, I love eggs and tuna. So we boiled our three eggs and then we're just gonna cut them up and again into pieces. Some people might want them in little tiny pieces. I just make mine, you know, just slice them. Uh, Because once you start to put it in the bowl and you start to mix it all, don't break up some more, so don't worry about it once you start moving the eggs around in the bowl. And I love

eggs period. I eat them always soft boiled, hard boiled. The egg girl. So it's funny because I love egg whites. I don't love egg yellows except in my tuna. So if I go to breakfast, I always eat egg whites. But in my tuna up, I put the yellows and the whites. And again, if you're like, you know, all healthy and say, oh I don't eat yellows away, we would have been great friends because I would eat all the yellows. I'm not a fan of the white. I'm like,

find your yeah, okay. So now I have my eggs, I have my celery and tune just kind of you know, take a big spoon, stir it up a little, get it all mixed in there, and thou comes your seasoning. So pickle relish really important because it's gonna make it a little sweet again crunchy because pickle relish is crunchy, and there's juice in the pickle relish. So it gives you again something to bind the big cooking word. You gotta bind the ingredients and depending on your taste, like

I like it's sweet, Like it's sweet. Add more if you're not a sweet this person, you know, add a little west. But I like my tuna nice and sweets, so that that put the pickle rolish in. Now Here comes your male, so you know, people are really funny about male. Some people like a lot, I'm not a big and some people like miracle whip or male. Can you switch out the two or just you can use yes, Uh, either one gives you the same taste. I didn't put a lot, I just put Maybe that's the equivalent of

two table spoons. Because with the pickle relish, you're gonna get the you know that that juice is binding the tuna and the other ingredients, so you don't have to have a whole lot of mayonnaise. That's why says it's a healthy dish too, because you could also buy like a low calorie male if you wanted to. So, okay, now look look how good that looks. It's really good. Already a little mustard, yellow mustard, So pickle relish makes it sweet. The yellow mustard gives it that little, you know,

that little kick. So again, not a whole lot, just enough to give it a little kick. So maybe that's one like a little spot a tea, let's use a teaspoon. And again, if you like your food less sweet and more kind of tart, you might even want to use more yellow mustard, but I don't want to. I don't want to dial down the sweetness from the pickle relish, which I love. Okay, So now you got all our ingredients gotta mixed together. Pepper important because we got eggs

in here. So right at breakfast, you put salt and peppers on your eggs. Right, so you put some pepper on your in your bowl. And again this is to taste. Remember I don't use measuring cups or spoons, but I like my food kind of hot, so I'm a little heavy on the pepper. Uh. Seasoning salt again, secret ingredient. Uh, go easy on it, because I don't know if you have somebody at home with diabetes or you know, got some kind of strict diet, you don't want to use

too much salt, but a little salt. And then my real secret weapon is are this is an organic ground paprika. Get white p preaka. You can get smoked grocery stores, farmers markets, and you notice I'm making this really red. Love the taste. It's Paprica. Now it's paprika spicy, it's not spicy, it's very subtle. The smoke paprika has like a smoky taste to it. The regular it has a distinctive taste, but it's not overpowering. So don't let the color of food. A lot of people get nervous because

it's red, Oh my god. And it's not hot. It's not like chilly powder or any kind of spice. But it just has a subtle taste that makes I think everything tastes a little better. So okay, now you have to taste it right. It's gonna be a good, clean cook. So I'm just gonna take a little and you have your own fork so you won't use my fork. You did it to have the best tunament well more. So okay, okay, let's go up. Now. I haven't had this in a long time time. I'm like you, I'm excited. Now do

you usually eat out or do you do cook? I know you you cook, but what do you do nowadays? M Well, I go to a lot of events and the food, unfortunately, is often pretty bad. So I try to eat something before I get there or while I'm there, if you know there's I don't eat meat. So if there's meat on the menu, I try to get a vegetarian. Yeah. I stop eating meat about seven years ago and I just never went back. Are you gonna be able to eat this today? Eat fish? You fish? Yes, eat fish?

So okay, now we're ready. Our tuna is all together. This will last in the fridge it least a couple of days. You can put some some ran wrap on and make sure it's tight, and put it in a tupperware bowl. Make sure the top is type. Hey, this is two three meals. So school, this was like lunch dinner, lunch dinner. This was the bomb. So all right, now your bread and you can we're using just regular slice bread here. Another thing I used to love in law

school is to use English muffins. I saw that English is going to do that. So again, you know, English muffin is great. They come and you slice it and you do it the same way you do the bread. So in this case, you just take your tuna, you spread it on the bread and again not too much but enough, make sure, you know, cover the whole surface. And then you put this is open face, open face face. Yeah, so you take. And then we didn't do the craft cheese. We didn't know if you wanted the craft or the

if you're specific on your cheese, is I know? And again this is you just needed slice so it could be yo, it could be white. You swish you could use cheddar, any kind of cheese that you like, American cheese or slices. Again, in law school, it's probably that big pack of American cheese that was nice and cheese. So there you have it. Now we're gonna we're gonna make two, so one for you, one for me. Perfect, move this over here and into our oven, which we

preheated our oven so it's nice and hot. And now how long do you usually heat this for? This is just about making sure your bread gets toasted, because you want it to be toasted and you want the cheese to actually mal start to melt and get gooley. So we're gonna turn this on like a three fifty oven. We're gonna bake it. Let's put this oven on ten minutes and see what happens. And we've already preheated it,

so the oven is pretty warm. So we're just gonna watch it and see what happens, and see as it gets. While we watch it, my favorite parts got to happen. I get to ask how you got to where you were. Did you always want to be a civil rights attorney? You know? No, I knew I wanted to do something that helped people. I knew I wanted to work in my community. I grew up in this housing project in St. Louis, and I always knew that there was something different about

where I lived. And I used to catch a bus to this private school, and I would see these big homes, and I met kids in this high school I went to whose parents were super rich. And I would go actually with my godmother. She was a janitor, and we would go into the wealthy parts of St. Louis, and she had to clean offices and I would help her.

So I had all this exposure, So the big offices at night that I'm helping my godmother clean, the bus ride to my school, where I'm seeing these big, old houses, and then these very wealthy white kids that went to the school, this high school with me. So I would always like ask myself why the And I wasn't using the word disparity but that's what it is. Why are the such the huge disparity where I live, where these

kids live. You know, we're cleaning these offices where you know, white men mostly worked, and so I just thought there was something wrong with that, and I just wanted to do something in my career, my life where I could impact those people that I grew up with. So that's how I got to civil rights. Did you ever figure out the answer to that question? What was the answer? A lot of a systemic racism. It's plain and simple. I mean, it was just that it was redlining uh

D investment in neighborhoods and black and brown neighborhoods. It was discriminatory lending practices that prevented uh, people of color from buying homes, are predatory lending practices that even when they bought homes, they often lost the homes. Discrimination in workplace that prevented uh, you know, African Americans and people of color from getting jobs and then getting promotions in

those jobs. You know, our criminal justice system that had taken literally hundreds of thousands of black men out of our community and you know, put them in jails, mass incarceration. So yeah, I figured out a lot of it, And do you think that's what played a pivotal role? Like that answer and see you going into civil right, Well, I discovered that answer. So as a kid, I see the differences, right, I see the injustices. I don't have

a name for it, don't have words for it. And then as I get to law school and I started to study as I you know, and then get out into the real world, then I have a clear understanding of everything that I was witnessing as a kid that I couldn't put a label too, couldn't put words to. Ok oh, and the bottom is looking good and crunchy. So mid sentence, I was like, Okay, wait a minute, I gotta check on our tuna milt. Okay, so we uh, Now,

this is a choice. If you like your bread really crispy, we can leave it in or it literally is looking pretty good to me. So if it looks pretty good to you, that's because the oven was already hot. So we already had prepeated this oven, so we're gonna turn our oven off. Speaking of systematic racism, do you think that we are headed away from that or do you think we still deal with it? Oh? I think it's uh, in some ways worse than it has ever been. Okay, yes,

that would be safe. Don't touch a hot oven with your hands, thank you, Colleen. Look how easy that is. Okay, that's for you. Well, i'll just put it out on this quite then we can figure out how we're gonna plate it. Yeah no, unfortunately, Uh, in some ways we are going backwards in this country. Look at that? How cool that looks beautiful cameras. Look at that high school each I've never ever witnessed one being made, so this will probably be something I make at home every week. Okay,

so this is your point. You take that one? Quite? This up so good? Yes, and this we had This is where we add see when you bro ther side dish is a big old bag of lais. So get your chips, okay, perfect, get you some barbecue as I love barbecue chips. I know this would be my little side dish. A couple of chips here, as I've gotten older, though, Eileen swards. Just the plain potato chips. Yeah, okay, I like the sweet potato friese and potato chips. Actly. Here's

our water. Okay, so you take a bite. Okay, tell me what you think. I want your honest success month, the honest success. I want the real deal. Girl spot gooley, Wow, that's the real deal. It tastes really good. I'm going for another bite though, probably because it's really good. So if you had this English muffin, you could, you know, make two for yourself. You'd have to. The bread is pretty big with some people. Depending on how much you eat, this could be like a meal. Definitely your guy or

your big eater. You want to have two of these. But you and I are like, I feel like this is more fancy because it's open. Is that just me? Does anyone else feel like that? When it's an open sandwich, You're like, oh yeah, it's a little fancy here, I'm gonna taste it. This is manning. You see all the crunchy stuff too, the way the egg hits, the way the relish, it's the celery, the crunch on the bottom

of the bread. This is the best tunament ever. And when you put this in the fridge overnight mm hmm, it's just gonna get even more flavor for your tuna. That's the next day you have you another wonderful tuna milk. You can taste all the ingredients Yeah, nothing's overpowering, right, No, I mean that's the key. Now, a lot of people. You may want to put some olives in here. We can get real creative. You can put raises, you can put dried cranberries, you can put you know, some dried fruit, um,

even nuts if you like it. I mean tuna. That's what I love about tuna. I mean, you can make it however you want. You put some sprouts in there, if you can put some lettuce. After you finish this, you can do some slices of tomato. You're gonna have to add chef to your titles set, because you know what, it's every every grade you use really holds his own, like the celery, the way you can fight into and crunch into it, the egg like all these things I

never knew went with tuna. Clearly go with tuna. But it's like you thought about each element, like each bite, each from the textures to the flavors. That's what you gotta add steps to your title. Okay, well show I love cooking though. It's like therapeutic in some ways. I mean you're in the kitchen, you just kind of turn on your music at your glass of wine and cook uh, And I like making. I'm a big entertainer, so I

love having people over. I love entertaining and sometimes a big party make cater but I like always making something myself. I like, uh, putting my own personal touches on it. And when I was in college, I was in college in Chicago and my uncle was like a really really phenomenal caterer. So I got to work with him during college. So I learned some tricks from Uncle Floyd about how to you know, whip up certain dishes and hit this guy,

my uncle. Oh my god, he could go into a refrigerator and whatever is there he needs coming to my house. Where are you Atman? The most amazing meal? That's how you say that, because I would have never thought all these ingredients would have made such an amazing dish. Yeah, no, it's good, I mean, and that's a mad I jipped you on your onions. But when you make it at home, See, you can add those green onions. You can add some green pepper, some red peppers, some yellow peppers. I mean,

that's what's amazing about this. You can make this super healthy. Throw a ton of vegetables in there. Uh, some broccoli, you know, some asparagus, green beans, just make it a big old and you put us on a bed of letts and now you got your serious tuna salad and it's it's just delicious and affordable. So let's dive into you. Okay, Now we know you can cook, know you sell at all, that, we know all these things. But I want to know, like, how did you go from you said you're from St. Louis.

From St. Louis to seeing an analyst? Too? Like how how did you go from there to here? And we could start maybe at the Harvard level if you want. Yeah, So I when I left Harvard, I went and worked at a big corporate Wall Street offering I wanted, you know, big biggest law firms in the country. And I went there because I needed to earn some money because I had a lot of student loan depth. But I always

knew I wasn't gonna stay. I just needed to get out, earn some dough and figure out, you know, what I wanted to do with my life. But I stayed about a year and a half. I got real anty, real fast, and I started my own law firm at about a year and a half after working. And it was scary I had to call my family in St. Louis and tell them I was leaving this really high paying job.

I had an office like on the thirty third floor of this amazing building, and you're gonna step away to start your own Yeah, And I was moving into this tiny little office over a nightclub on Worlfship Boivarts. So I wanna tell this really funny story. When you graduate from Harvard, you have the blessing, I should say, an opportunity to pretty much work wherever. You get recruited from all the big law firms, the big companies, so you

have a lot of choices to make. And you know, if you take one of these jobs at these big law firms, you make a lot of money. Your first paycheck is more than some people will ever make, uh in their entire life. So you know, I'm growing up poor, you know. So here I am making more money than

I could have ever imagined. And all my friends are buying sports cars and you know, Mercedes and all these big fancy cars, and a lot of us had moved here from Boston and they were living here in l A. They're moving to the beach there, you know, uh, moving into these really expensive condos and expensive apartments, and my first car and never own a car. My first car

was a ten year old Jetta. My car note was a hundred dollars and my friends thought I was absolutely crazy because they're all driving these big Beamers and you know, Mercedes and all these sportions and fancy cars. And my first apartment was downtown l a off of McArthur Park, so one bedroom, sporting and seventy five Why were you living like that? Because I was wrote But I thought, oh, I thought you said that you after Harvard, they were

paying you, but you still broke. I had all the student owned debt, so I was making more money than you know, ungodly amount of money. But I had come out of law school. I didn't nobody paid for that, and I had to take out a lot of loans, which is the reality of a lot of students who graduated and lost. We have a lot of debt. So my friends who were living large, they're just adding more

debt to the debt we already had. So when you grow up in the Midwest, it's you know, you have these u values that we grew up with, and you're not gonna be out. We don't traditionally, you don't be flossing in a big car and you got a lot of debt. So my upbringing was like, yeah, you're making a lot of money, but you gotta pay down some of this debt. So my friends, they were pretty cruel.

You don't know in high school if you were the kid that didn't have a cool clothes, how the popular kids would mock you and you know, make fun of you. That what happened to me as an adult because my r was old and I can remember, just like you said, why were you living like that? My car broke down, and this lady said the same thing to me, like why are you driving that car with all this disdain on her face? Because it's my car and I chose

a body act. Do you do you think that some of your parents, their parents were paying it down or do you think that they were in the same boat where they were responsible for their dead It was a mixed bag. I had some who didn't have debt because they had wealthy parents, so they didn't even have the debt. And I had others who they just like, you know, a kid in the candy store, right it was their first big check and they just lost their minds, But I didn't do that. I saved as much of my

check as I could. I paid my little four seventy five rent, I paid my little hundred cardinal, paid my student loans. I was banking my money. Uh, and it made it easier. So when I had to make the decision to go out on my own and leave that cushy job, I didn't have the pressure of like all these bills, and I had cushion. I had savings. So if it didn't work out, I told myself, hey, you know what, I just go back to the firm and

get another job. So a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, people want to become entrepreneurs, they're fearful that they don't have that kind of financial cushion, Like what am I gonna do? How am I gonna pay my bills? So I always knew I wanted to start my own firm once I graduated, so I knew I needed to have that cushion. So but trying to explain this to some relatives, You're doing what leaving that job to go work like

in this tiny little office. So it was hard. And even my friends too, Again they're disdained because seems like you were an entrepreneur before you were attorney. You know, it's kind of funny thought process, because that's how entrepreneurs think, is like produced as much of our personal overload so we can take as much risk as possible. And it's funny that you say that because my husband grew up with a family of entrepreneurs. He's like been working for

himself since he was twelve. He's never had a quote unquote job. I didn't really grow up that way. My grandmother was a janitor, so she worked. She cleaned homes in the daytime offices at night. So I didn't really grow up in an entrepreneurial family. But I think it was always just kind of a free spirit and I was always a risk taker, so I wasn't afraid. And when I left that job, I was like, you know what, I got the first job, I'll get a second job.

Did you always know you're going to go into work for yourself as an attorney? When I graduated, I pretty much had made up my mind that I wanted to have control over the kinds of cases that I took. I wanted to have control over my work schedule. But I'll tell you, people think working for yourself is you know Cake Wall. In those early days, I would leave my apartment at nine. I didn't get back till midnight because what I had to do. I had to do the case work, the legal work in the daytime. Then

that nine I had to go hustle. I was new to LN and know anyone, so I had to go meet people. Had to go to clubs and parties and gagas and wherever abody was having something where there would be people. I had to be there because I had to meet you to convince you to make me your lawyer. So I had to hustle business at night. A lot of times I would go back to the office at nine, ten o'clock at night after having been out you know, networking, uh, and then do some more work. So some nights I

got I'm like one o'clock in the morning. So it was a grueling schedule. But I loved it. I love the independence. I didn't mind. You know, I'm a hard work I'm from saying Louis, you cannot outwork me, and I did. I was just happy. Now was the money there as an entrepreneur in the beginning or no, no, no, I was easing that and but it didn't matter to me because I didn't have that pressure. So it's one

thing to be broken. You do owe anybody, but you know when you owe everybody and your phone is blowing up from bill collectors, that's a level of stress. And I did not want that stress. So that's why I saved that money. And it okay, I could go without a paycheck. Youah, no, I took a huge pay cut. I mean it was what did your family say this entire time while you're taking these pay cuts and hustling? They thought I was crazy. You didn't go to Harvard

to do that. You could have gone to any school if you wanted to go hang out your shingo, what are you doing? There was a lot of a lot of shaming. I would call you know now we say everything is shaming, A lot of shaming. It wasn't a lot of support, and even my colleagues, a lot of my friends were very Ariva Stone was left that job. It was a lot of whispering. Uh, it was were you scared at all? While all that was going on.

I probably would have been more afraid, but I was dating my uh now husband than boyfriend, and he had always worked for himself. So he was like, go out there, but you could do it. They're gonna be laughing, they're gonna be crying when you, you you know, walk into the bank with all this money you're gonna make eventually. So he kept me encouraged. And he had been through the process, so he had already uh, you know, he had been there. So having someone on that journey with you definitely makes

a big difference. And he made a big difference. And then eventually, as I started meeting people in the last, started meeting other entrepreneurs, started to meeting other women in particular who had their own businesses, and that was very much. So, you know, I had to leave my Harvard friends alone

for a minute. I just had to put them over here because our lives were going in such divergent past, and that negativity can get in your brain and start making you doubt yourself, and so I had to shelter my brain from that. So I really left my classmates for a minute, and you know, I had to meet new friends. Was there ever point during that chapter where you were like, I don't know if I can stick

this through. I never thought about getting a job. There were hard times though, Man, being self employed, I had some rough rough years years because my firm started to grow, I started to hire people. You know, at one point I had the largest African American owned law firm in Los Angeles. So my firm got to be really big and we start hiring people. Talk about nightmares. People. You know you can control and manage you, right, But the minute you know there's a second person to that equation,

everything changed. And I was so nice. I'm young, I'm like seven years old. I'm young, and I thought everybody it was like me, that you've come to work and you give, and you just grind it out and you work hard. I didn't know a lot of people just came to work to piss off and get a check and do nothing. I didn't know that. See, so I would and I spent a lot of time. I've made a lot of mistakes as a young entrepreneur, as a woman.

Let's talk about that as a black woman in a white male dominated profession, because that's what the legal profession is. Getting people to respect you. People used to always asked me if I was a court reporter. They'd asked me if I was secretary. Uh, I had a male partner they always thought, you know, you're hitting that. They thought, you know, we were sleeping together, and this guy was my husband's best friend, and we were like family, like brother and sister, and we would be out at night,

going to events and going to see clients. But I mean, nothing ever remotely romantic between us. But everybody just assume. Do you think it was also hard because you're attractive or do you think that helps you or hurt you? Well, thank you for the compliment. So I don't know. Here's what I do dressing. So I've always like my mom was just a major fashionista, So I always grew up wearing bright colors, big earrings. I was always gonna fashion. And you grew up in saying, Lucian, your clothes always

super clean, iron press, you know, your your appearances. Everything didn't have the cost a lot, but it had to be clean and just neat. So I didn't dress like your traditional lawyer. I don't have any blue suits and i'm gray suit, so I'm you know, I'm rolling red and yellow and bright colors. So people would say to me things like, well, you don't look like your typical lawyer. So I got a lot of that. So I think my style more so than quote unquote my looks bothered people.

And again, now you know, women shouldn't wear anything. We can show up any way that we wanted to, any way that we want to in most environments. But there was a time when if you were a professional woman, you were supposed to look a certain way, and that look was in some ways very close to how men dressed. So women are supposed to were very conservative. Blue suits, gray suits, white brows, the pearls. That was the uniform for a lawyer. And so I didn't that was never

that was not gonna be me. Just it's never gonna be my uniform. So people had a problem with how I would roll into court, uh, and how I just you know, presented myself overall. But you over time, you feel your confidence and you don't let other people define your worth. And you know, I wasn't gonna change who I was. So so you you're how did you transition to the CNN? So media good questions? So I started asked again early stages, grinding trial, lawyer in cord working

crazy hours. I was representing some families in Las Vegas, five families of kids who have been physically abused by their teacher in the classroom, and the Dr Phil Show was interested in the story of my clients, so his produced production team reached out to me to get to my clients. They wanted my clients to come on and tell the story of what it happened. The case made national news because it was the first time in the state of Nevada where a teacher was actually criminally prosecuted

for her treatment of kids in the classroom. And these were a combination of kids uh gon verbal artistic kids and kids with special needs and horrible allegations of like putting is in a trash can and just horrible. And so this teacher actually got criminally prosecuted, so it made the national news. The families found me. I ended up representing them in a civil case against the school, and so the Doctor Field team read the story wanted to bring the families on to talk about this case, and

so I went on. You know, I was there on the show with my families and the taping a taping a show went so well. The producer came over to me and says, Heyrie, but you know, will you you want to stick around for the B show. We're doing a show on dog the Bounty Hunter using the in word. And we have this male panel including Bishop TV, Jake's and some activists, but they're all men. We don't have a female voice on this panel. You want to stick around and join this panel? And in my mind, I'm like,

at first, I don't even know the story. I like, don't watch reality team? Who was Dog the Bounty Hunever, I'm like, yes, and I'm scared to death because I literally I don't know anything about this. Is this your first time in front of the camera at this point, Uh, pretty much. I mean maybe an occasional appearance here and there, but this is the first time, you know, national syndicated, you know, show like Dr Phields between A and B show, maybe there's an hour and a half maybe two. So

I've got to learn and i gotta develop. Because the question was gonna be what should happen to him for using the inn word? Should you think maybe a show had been taken off the air, So that was gonna be the question should he be punished in that way? And then all the things that go with the N word, right, you know, rappers use it, black people use it. So I had to have an opinion wasn't just gonna be there as I had have a point of view on this.

So in this hour hour and a half period, I have to like read the whole like what did he say, who did he say it to, what was the context? I gotta think about what I'm gonna say. And TV Jake's is like, god, yeah, people, so I never met him, and I'm like, oh my god, I might be sitting next to D D Jase. He's so smart. I don't know what nervous. I mean. I wasn't nervous with my clients because I was talking about something I knew about, Like,

ask me anything about this case. I'm you know, I'm there, but this in word, you know, it's so violato, so explosive. People have so many different opinions about it. So here I am sitting there four men, T D Jake's and these other three guys, and you know, I held my own, Okay,

I held my own. You know, I didn't represent the I didn't embarrass my family or anything, and apparently to these producers I did more than you know, just okay, because after that taping, the producer said to me, you know, we'd love to have you back if you have any other cases like the cases you know we're in a show. Let us know. We'll have your clients on and we may have shows where we'd love to have your expertise. And that began my relationship with the Doctor Phil show.

And they started calling me and they had me come on and talk about, you know, stories that Dr Phil was doing. I had some other really interesting cases. I would pitch stories to them, and I started going on, you know, Dr Phil has been and at the time probably was the number one rated time talk show. And it just started from there. And from Dr Phil, I started doing other shows, including cable News, and one day I got a call from the talent director at CNN

and she said I had been guesting. So as an expert, typically you will start off some people, not everyone, but the typical pathway is they'll say, hey, you're a great cook. We're doing a segment on cooking. Will you come on and talk about cooking. You don't get paid. A lot of people do it for promoting, right, be promoting a cookbook. He may be promoting your restaurant, so there's a reason

to do it. Uh. So I was guesting what they called guesting, So I would go on and give my legal opinions, get in and miss NBC even at that time Fox, so you know, whatever station would call me because I was trying to get my name, I was trying to get exposure. And then I got the call from the talent director CNN offering me a paid position as a contributor. Huhh. And he was like, yeah, let's do it. So that was that was going on through your mind when that happened. You know, I was so shocked,

and it was kind of similar. So I was I coasted a couple of our daytime talk shows, uh, some produced by Dr Phil, and something very similar happened one of the shows that I was on with Dr Phil that I was a co hosting. I was at home and I just got a call and it was Dr Phil saying, hey, he wanted to meet with me. So most of my blessed scenes or my my TV westerns have come where I'm just at home, chilling and looking up the phone and that CNN, it's Dr Phield someone

offering me a job. So it was surreal in some ways because I knew I wanted to help people. I never and you grow up in the Midwest, you're not thinking Hollywood is like way over there. For me, it's not even something that most people think about. So TV was not in the uh you know, the blueprint in the plan. But I realized very early on that once I started, that it was a way to have a voice, and it was a way to talk about issues that

are important to people. And I my proudest moment and being on television was during Team with Michael Brown was shot and killed by the Ferguson Police because a part of where I grew up and saying, oh, it's this

next door to Ferguson. And I was on Don Women other CNN shows throughout that whole period, and all the stuff that happened after Michael Brown was shot, the issues with the prosecutor and some of the protests were happening, and I was so angry by what I would often see other people, how they talked about that saint was community and how they were villainizing and and just uh, you know, really painting those families in a negative life.

Because at some point, you know, buildings started to burn and cars were burning, so the stuff was happening, uh, and I was so angry, and I felt so proud to be able to go on. I would call my family and friends at home. I'd get there like real, like what's going on on the ground, not what people are repeating on television. And so I was able to represent that community and help I think in some ways

people better understand. Put some faces to those people, help people understand that these were not quote unquote thugs, that this was a community of homeowners and you know, educated people with hard working people and families and mothers and fathers. So that was probably the thing that made me feel the best, like, thank you Jesus for allowing me this at for him to paint my community a community that I love, because I love saying was I go there

all the time. I'm so connected to my hometown. To get to paint it in a different light and and really bringing out that humanity that was so missing and a lot of the reporting. Wow, I have some questions, like personal questions that I go into debate with my friends. But since I have you here, why not right? So I I started to learn about like systematic racism and redlining. I don't want to say it was a long time ago.

Was definitely more recent than a long time ago, But I when everything happened during the pandemic with George Floyd and everything. I kept telling all my friends, We're gonna have reparations. They'd be like, no, you're crazy, it's not gonna happen. I'm like, mm hmm, Now it's gonna happen. This was before the bailouse. By the way, what's the

bailouse happened? I said, Oh, reparations coming, It's coming, right, I kept telling my friends, and I have good relationships with banks because of some of the work I do on the side. Um, but I hold the banks responsible for most of our issues, mainly because of generational wealth and just the roller coaster of effect that happens with it. How do you feel about that, Well, I feel strongly that when you're talking about generational wealth. I'm writing a book.

My fifth book is on h it's called the working

title right now, it's called Where's Black Wealth? And it really delves into this issue of how black wealth has been, you know, ripped away from the black community and some of the policies, banking policies, housing policies, transportation policies, the role that they have played in reducing black wealth and what we need to do in this country because the wealth gap between blacks and whites is growing exponentially and there you know, like a twenty year period, so black

wealth will be at zero if we don't make some systemic changes to some of these UH institutions and some of these policy changes that lots of folks have talked about. So I'm so glad we started having those conversations because a lot of people didn't even know about Tulsa. They didn't know about Black Wall Street until after George Floyd, after the worldwide protests that we saw UH, and you know, we started to hear that history has been hidden from

so many generations, from you know, students. And I have a web based show where I interviewed about a thousand people since the pandemic, and I've interviewed some descendants of those business owners in Tulsa, and they said their ancestors, their parents, and grandparents were so traumatized by that they

didn't even talk about it. That many of them didn't learn about it until either they got to school or you know, they started being more prevalent in the news because there's still so much trauma associated with it by the black families who were impacted so I feel like, yeah, banks play a big role in this huge wealth gap, and there's a lot that we could do in this country to address it. What can we do to address it, though, well,

we've seen some things already. Remember just recently, there was the Child Tax Credit, So if you were a parent, uh, and depending on how much you earned, it was up to a hundred fifty thou dollars you could earn, you would receive literally a check up to three hundred dollars per child. And that tax credit played a huge role

in pulling like millions of kids out of poverty. So one way we reduced the wealth gap is by creating even more income earning opportunities for African Americans and just by having more income, right, you know, there were some others who were getting dollars. Yeah, five kids, you'd get fifteen hundred dollars, and that was on top of you know it, But it wasn't on own you have to

do anything to get it. But it recognized that a mother of three, four or five kids is likely to be impacted in her earnings because she may not be able to work full time because of childcare. How expensive child care is, so she may not be able to take a promotion that would maybe have her travel or do something else because of childcare. And so that three that tax credit played a huge role in helping a lot of parents be able to afford childcare. Uh maybe

you know, pay for after school activities for their kids. Again, if you a kid gets out of school at three o'clock, jobs, most jobs on into five or six o'clock, right, so you gotta figure out what are you gonna do with your kid for those two or three hours. So there are things like that those you know, our countries failure to provide um paid family lead. All those things negatively impact go income people. Women in particular to or usually

because we're the care give her. So if the child is sick and she was gonna be the mom that's gonna take off if grandma grandpa six, usually gonna be the woman that's gonna take off to care for the you know, the sick relative. So all of that depresses our earning potential if we can't be free to earn like men are. No one expects a man to quit their job to stay home, you know, with a sick child, or to quit their job to go take care of a sick mother and father. But that's always the burden

that falls on women. And we saw that during the pandemic. Literally, women, you know, bore the brunt of the economic downfall that happened during the pandemic. Do you think the black community we'll see separations. Absolutely, And you know why we should all be encouraged. Bruce's Beach in California. Bruce's Beach you're

talking about the Manhattan Beach. I was going to next we are twin flames Ruce's Beach, hundred million dollars property restored to this black the descendants of Willow Bruce and her husband who owned this property on the beachfront property they could have been the Hilton's, could have been the and the government comes in uses imminent domain, takes the property away from them under the guys who're gonna build

a park park never got built. Uh And for years that property was illegally in the hands of the state of California, the County of Los Angeles, and that city, Manhattan Beach. And so that property, now I'm proud my friend George Fatherley did there. He's a real estate lawyer, did pro bono charge the family nothing very instrumental. Steve Bradford is a state senator here in California. He was also instrumental in moving the legislation that made it possible

for the property to be returned. So I think the deal now is they're gonna reach the property back to the county for about I think like four hundred thousand a month or something, and then they're gonna decide after three years if they sell it to the county, because now it's like a public beach, but even beyond Bruce's Beach.

The State of California, then assembly Woman Shirley Webber, she's now our Secretary of State in California, she put forth a piece of legislation for California to create a committee to study reparations. And that committee has now made some findings, some recommendations, and they when they get to the final recommendations about who should get what what form should this reparations come in, UH, and what time period of some

other things, they have to decide. They're gonna make those recommendations to the state legislature in California and then they get to vote. And we have a Democratic legislature here in California, so it's very likely that those recommendations California. That's California. But you know, as California goes, so does the rest of the nation. So imagine California then one of the biggest state in the country, you know, with

a thirty three million people live here. If black folks in California get reparations, that's gonna put pressure on New York and Illinois and you know other states. And there's some cities like h Evans in Illinois, will suburb outside of Chicago. They have started reparations. They're giving forty thousand, i think in some kind of home loan, home grant

program to black residents. So it's starting to happen. Remember it used to be such a like your friends who laughed at you, and you know, because reparations was thought to be a French concept and nobody ever thought we'd be gonna happen. It's gonna happen. I'm gonna happen. It's gonna now we don't know. Like a friend of mine works for the city of l A and they have

their own reparations committee. She said that their committee is recommending giving mental health counseling as a form of reparations. To address the trauma. And I see your face, and I gave her to say, I gave her the same face she told me that, like all right, okay, right, But so the point is it's gonna come a different form some you know, it might be a cash, maybe a check. Some people are talking about free college tuition. Uh, paying off STO loan debt is a form maybe homeown assistance.

So I mean, you can think of all these ways because the name of the game with reparations is to try to even the playing field, is to reduce that huge wealth gap that exists in this country because the systemic racism, because of very intentional policies by the US

government that have stripped African Americans of wealth. So you know, home ownership is I'm going to tell you right now, that's that's all I want to see as homeownership because I feel like, you know, even living in Los Angeles, if you walk behind my house, because I don't live on the block with a million dollar homes, I live in the condos in front of them. And if you walk that block, most of the houses on that million dollar block were inherited, and I'm like, wow, must be nice.

And that's why white folks is so far ahead of us is because of inheritances and homeownership being one of them. If you live in one of those million dollar houses now and say these the parents bought it in the sixties, they may have paid seventy five dollars. Uh. So, my husband's parents, they lived in South l A around sixty seven, and western bought their house for under forty thousand dollars. When they sold it in the like late two thousand,

mid two thousand, houses like six hundred thousand dollars. So literally there could be millions of dollars in equity that then gets passed down to those kids. And that's when we've been robbed of that opportunity to create that well, to pass it down to you, our children and our grandchildren. So now the last thing I want to mention, are you familiar with birthright? I'm pretty sure you are. Are

you It's birthright? Is I'm Jewish and Jamaican. So in Jewish culture they have this this thing called birthright where I believe, up to the age of twenty seven, you can fly fly to Israel for I think it's two weeks for free, fully paid. They you know, they teach you everything about your Jewish culture and what the Jews went through. I feel like the black community desperately needs that because, you know, we don't fully know our last names,

Like we don't really know who we are. And I feel like, boy, what it would do for blacks to be able to have their own version of a birthright? You know, So where would you have them go? You would have to leave the US and go to certain countries in Africa or what I would say? Yeah, I would lean towards that because I also feel like some black people, you know, if you say African American or African, I feel like maybe because of the American culture, there's

like a weird negative of like disassociation with it. And if you talk to people that visit Africa, they're like, oh my gosh, we're kings and queens and we're living a life. Are you kidding me? And it's like portrayed so differently in America. And I think that experience, I think that experience of reminding like how powerful our melanin is. Also when it's utilized and it has its full potential, well,

that could be a form of reparations. Right, So you need to write into that committee I help you do. That's that's not her, but I mean that's that's what they're grappling with, like what is going to be the most substant what's going to have the most impact. Uh. And that's why my friend at the city said mental health. I don't have a lot of money either, she said this, Their options were limited by their resources. But I like that.

I like the idea of us being able to go, whether it's to Africa or some other, you know country and just see how you know, regal and royal uh people that we come from. Because I think that would help to a lot of younger black folks who kind of you know, have lost touch with their ancestors and don't know that they are from such noble people. Maybe it helped build their confidence. You know, young men you see who have been so beaten down, feel like you

know that they have no hope. We see these really high rates of suicide amongst African American men and young women, you know, those growing races, and you often ask the do they know that they are descendants of kings and queens? And if they knew that, you know, would that make a difference. So I like it. Thank you I'm glad you like my little idea. I like it. I like it. I can't always go up with the race. I'm there

for you. Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to eat Barbara, and I am going to eat all of this because it is absolutely delicious. I encourage my production crew to enjoy the meal. Um and uh yeah, thank you. And then where can people catch you? I know you have some books that are coming out, so just let us all know how you can follow me on all social media add a Reva Martin, Twitter at Spacebook, It's Instagram, LinkedIn. I have

a website, Martin dot com. And I have a show that I produced every Tuesday, Wednesday Thursdays on YouTube. It's on Facebook, uh, and it's unfiltered. We you know, it's news of the day, but it's the story behind the story. It's everyday people. It's experts. Uh, it's you know, thought makers and you know opinion makers. And then I at a radio show on Saturday's kb L A talk fight.

I do uh again, an opinionated current events, current affairs the show I should call it on kb L A. So I'm a talker and I like to talk to people, and I like to help people understand stuff because you know a lot of stuff. We get a lot of stuff thrown at us on the social media and the media, and people often don't know you know, how to decipher it. What's real, what's not real? What should I you know? Follow?

What you know shouldn't I follow? And I like to help people make some of those choices and be informed because we know you know, knowledge is power, So knowledge is power. Thank you. PE's out y'all for more eating while broke from I Heart Radio and The Black Effect, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.