This is my legacy. Welcome to our bonus episodes, dropping every Thursday Today. More from our interview with sports journalists and truth teller Jamil Hill and her husband Ian Wallace, featuring moments you didn't hear in the main episode.
Let's jump right in.
Even though she's the one who said I love it, I not say so. Here's the story, and I think it was just a bit of a disconnect. We were in Dallas and this was probably what maybe four months into like meeting each other, and she was leaving out and I said I love you jokingly, and she she thought, like I was really serious. She wanted me to be serious.
He totally said it because I called my girl and I was like, girl, he said he loved me or whatever.
So so you threw out a I love you as.
A joke, Like love you context is everything.
It was.
She was leaving for work and we were playing house that weekend because as we were in a long distance relationship, so it was just a kind of a funny thing.
Well, I thought he was serious, and so you know, it wasn't like him. I kind of had the same approach when we started to get to know each other. I wasn't looking for a relationship either. I wasn't looking to fall in love, which I guess again to some given our pro tips. Another thing, usually when you're not trying is when it happens right. And so neither one of us were in the space where we were looking
for something super serious. But as we spent more time together, we just were having so much fun with one another and the.
Connection was really seamless.
And you know, I probably I knew for sure that when I knew for sure that I loved you when we went to the SPCE together. I think that was right around the time where I was just like, Okay, this is a feeling that's not going to be going away, because you know, we were dating, but we didn't put any boundaries necessarily that we we didn't have that will
you go with me conversation quite yet. So we were dating for almost a year by the time we had that conversation, which I will I will openly admit I was the one who introduced this conversation.
It was me.
I told him, you know, he came to Connecticut to visit me. It was right around his birthday, and I said, like, listen, I.
Don't want to play around anymore.
I want you.
I was smooth. I was smooth with it.
I think Jamel is hard to read, so you know, while I knew she had feelings for me, it almost came out of nowhere. But I was happy.
I was happy. I told him.
I was like, hey, I'm ready to do this for real. So you know, if you if you got some little situations you need to take care of on the side, and you tell them their time is over.
Okay.
So I definitely was the one who broached and asked him about like, hey, I think we should try to do this for real and be in a relation and ship.
You've said Ian makes you laugh and makes your spirit lighter. What does he do to make you laugh?
Oh?
I get to snitch on him a little bit, okay, or brag on him. I should say he has a tremendous sense of humor, Like maybe you know you're really funny.
You're very joyful. I mean I could say like the smallest thing, and you're laughing, like you have a lot of joy I do, but you're funny.
So it's not just that I don't laugh at everybody's jokes like that.
It's it's you.
So Hell'm kind of fun.
Now.
But he has a great sense of humor, a real zest for life. I mean, like another one of our sort of common love languages is that we both like to travel, and so we spend a lot of our free time traveling to different places. He has an explorer and adventurous spirit, and it's really contagious and infectious, and you know, just in little things that he does every day.
He likes to roast me quite a bit, which.
You know, and so I always find this to be, you know, kind of funny and endearing.
My husband is also super playful.
I know women out there could identify with this, is that there is this thing that happens inside of a relationship where at some point your husband just wants to treat you like a younger sibling.
They want to wrestle you, they want to like I'm.
Like what, But here's the thing, Jimmell. You act like you don't like it, but you like it. It's one of those.
I'm like, okay.
So, I mean, you know, neither one of us grew up with We have siblings, but we didn't grow up with them necessarily like in our house and are not close in age, so I feel like you're getting all of that sort of older sibling energy out on me.
What you like it?
It is?
Well, I'll say this, and I think women can also relate to this. Is they do it, there's nothing you could do about it. But when they stop doing it, you're like, hey, what's wrong? Because you haven't you know, you haven't tried put me in a full Nelson today.
I don't know what's going on. So but yeah, his sense of humor, the lightness, those are all things that I love because, as you all know, especially when you're in the brand of media that I'm in, I talk about sports, of course, but I talk a lot about the intersection with sports with social justice, culture, gender, race. Those are heavy subjects, and I think because of what I talk about a lot of people think that I'm
a super serious person all the time. But he is able to tap into that lightness that I have and the fact that, yes, I am a joyful person and I do have a good sense of humor, and he has all of those qualities as well, and so it just adds a sort of a lightness to our relationship that is really endearing and important to me.
You know, people ask us a lot of times, all three of us, because, like you just said, Jamul, the work that we do, in particular in this time is so heavy. So it's very important to have the time and space to to laugh, to make sure every day that you're finding something to laugh about, which i'm I used to be more serious by nature, funnier, but it's it's and then i'm and i'm just when you have given tributes, you said that Martin is part of the reason you like Martin.
He will say that because of him, but and but it also reminds listeners and even during the civil rights movement, I think people are surprised to find out that, first of.
All, that your father actually had a sense of humor and bought a sense of laughter and lightness to to the house. And then even you know, amongst you know, people on the road with them, and like they would find ways to laugh.
And you know, Dad is seen as extraordinarily serious. But as a minister, I guess you're always bringing humor to the two life experiences. So while the public didn't necessarily see that, all of his colleagues, including you know, others who happen to be around, would see that. And I guess it's I mean, some of the things they joke about would make one think are you joking about this? But if they didn't, I'm not sure how they would have made.
It through it.
It's interesting because I think it was last year I was asked to be in a documentary about your father that focused on his relationship with basketball and about how he used basketball to connect with people, and I thought it was a great perspective and a great entry point into talking about his legacy because you know, it's sort of hard for people to imagine, you know, doctor Martin
Luther King junior playing basketball. And I think I made the joke during the interview, like, I mean, was he out there hooping in church?
Who's like? What did his joper look? Like? I need to know this, you know, but it is.
You know, just what you said is that you have to have some levity even in the seriousness stuff. And we see this from black people like all the time, you know, you see it on social media. It will be the most serious situation, and the jokes that our community will have is a way of us trying to balance out something that might be terrifying with also saying like, hey, we can't stay in a constant state of being paralyzed in fear.
So let's just get these jokes off right.
Now and try to diffuse the situation a little bit.
And one thing I would like to add as well, because just like you, Jamel, I love all of our conversations on this podcast. I think we're incredibly blessed to have such phenomenal guests. One of the things that I the most about this conversation is the celebration and the look into black love. I think that a few years ago in Boston there was a monument that was dedicated to Martin's parents that here you had on the oldest public.
Park, the Boston Comments.
And you had this monument to black love, and that conversation was missed, and so it's it's wonderful to have this conversation and to celebrate you all and to celebrate black love.
Yeah.
I would even take it a step further and say I think that part of the story of doctor Martin Luther King Junior, the love that he shared with Curtas Scott King, is like a major component that I think often gets overlooked. And having done extensive reading, I read credit Scott King's the biography. She wrote, I read it a like maybe like five or six years ago, and it was It was very eye opening, and I think generally the appreciation for the woman that she was gets often overlooked.
But yeah, their story is a love story.
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I think in today's world, where athletes have a direct connection with their fans through social media, that they have the power to be able to engage them, especially in this moment. The problem is that for as active and aware as athletes were in twenty twenty.
To ask I was going to ask this question, Yeah, is like they were engaged in a different way. Now.
There were some factors that were unique that were helping this engagement. Number one, you had in the NBA and the WNBA. They were both in a bubble. So when the WNBA players when they organized against Kelly Leffler, they were all together in one place, the former Senator of Georgia, and they got Rael Reverend Rafael Warnock elected. They collectively
came together. It helped that they were all in the same place and they single handedly, you know, change things in Georgia and more so, it is because we had a you know, the tie in Senate that Kamala Harris was you know, able to break with her deciding vote. That's how we got Kantanji Brown Jackson as a Supreme Court justice. Is because of that, because those athletes decided to put their voice and their power behind Reverend Rafael Warnot.
That's how we got Kantanji Brown Jackson. So I say that to use that example so that athletes understand that they are sitting on an incredible amount of power, especially in this moment, and while in many ways it is often unfair to ask them to sacrifice for what they have or at least put on the line what they have worked for their whole careers.
You know, because I bring up.
The Atlanta Dream, who were the ones that created that protest that went widespread throughout the WNBA.
Kelly Lefer was the owner of the Atlanta Dream.
They were effectively turning a campaign against their boss, Okay, the person writing their checks.
That could have turned out all bad for them.
And we're talking about women who, as we have seen with their WNA based salaries, they don't they're nowhere close to what men in the NBA make so they were putting a lot on the line and they can now look back and.
See that they changed history by doing that.
And so my concern is that athletes now, especially because we're in such a challenging moment, they're thinking more about the loss and not about the opportunity to really do something that could change the course of history.
Now Here we are in twenty twenty five, and it seems, you know, because for any type of person see progress, there's always an inevitable backlash. Right so even now, whereas in you know, five years ago, you saw more engagement with athletes, you know, it was more it was safe, safer if you will to do so, it was more, you know, on trend, we're in a different era now. So what would you say to athletes that are madebe pondering how to use their voice in their power in now twenty twenty five.
Well, I would say, again, I think it's always unfair to sort of ask them, just because I know the work that goes into it. But let's just look at what's happening on college campuses where you have a number of them. Most recently, University of Michigan eliminated all their DEI.
You know, programs, and.
Two years ago this university won the national championship in football. I if you are an athlete they can about, especially a black athlete thinking about going to University of Michigan. They have sent you the signal that they are more than fine for you to make money for them when championships for them entertain them. They are not fine with you actually being a full participant at this university or other people that look like you that don't have the talent,
the football talent that you have. And that's never been a problem for America. I mean you open. You know, throughout our history, Americas have always been comfortable with black people entertaining them like they've never even through times of slavery, they have never not been comfortable with us in that position.
So the question I would ask some of these athletes is, you know, if that's the only value that you have to them, then how do you think that they're looking at the people who cannot provide the same value that
you can. And I think it's a real moment for a lot of athletes to assess their relationships with these colleges and universities who are making it quite clear that they only have room for black people in a specific way because when they talk about DEI, even though we're not the main ones who benefit, and I realize that that's a fraud relationship. They use us as the poster
child forward to get people to turn against it. And so I would love for these athletes to ask the question of like, oh, well, if I'm not good enough to be at your university, I'm not a player, then I'm not good enough to perform this service for you.
Right.
You don't bring up DEI when it comes to football, that's for sure, nor college basketball. These are billion dollar industries, and with what's happening at the funding and a more pressure being put on universities to capitulate to this administration, they need football and they need college basketball, so there's
an automatic point of leverage. So all I know is that a few years ago there was a running back at Ole Miss who is their best running back, and he told the school, I Am not going to play unless you do something about that Confederate flag. And what do you think they did? They did something about the flag because they're not trying to lose any money through sports. They certainly aren't, you know, donors. They put up these pretty buildings on campus because they love the sports themes.
So there's an automatic leverage that these athletes have that they have to use.
Do you find yourself studying activism as well? Because you talked a lot earlier about a lot of your inspirations and mentorships as it relates to journalism, your teachers, and since you've had such a very strong activist whether it's intentional or not. And I'm curious, like, do you have you studied activism, activism and sports or it throughout your your career?
Yeah, it was.
It was organic, you know really because the the sports world often drags you into these things. It's like, uh, you know, I didn't know, oh, Colin Kaepernick was gonna happen, and it happened, and so then as these things, you know, and he wasn't the first person to do it, but as these things happen, it's like you have to be able to build the institutional knowledge like of course, like anybody I was certainly aware of, you know, the legacy of Muhammad.
Ali and Arthur ash and ALTHEA.
Gibson and will Well Rudolph and Jesse Owens and Jack Johnson, like I was aware of those things. But your job as a journalist is to be able to connect those things between what happened then to what's happening now. Because as much as we like to believe that these things are new under the sun, we're just don't repeat.
These things are not new under the sun.
And as you all mentioned a moment ago, is that every point in American history where there has been tremendous progress, there has all the backlash has been has far outweighed the progress that was made. I mean, reconstruction is probably the greatest example you know of this reconstruction got is Jim Crow, right, And so it's like there was a time.
Every time we reach these inflection points where we can literally change America into something that is closer to the vision that we all want to see, we go the opposite direction. So as journalists, we have to make people understand that and also make them understand why does that keep happening? You know, our job is to provide context and so that when somebody looks back on this time, they can understand what this time was like and what
it meant. Because certainly I go back and read I to be welles or and if not for her, you know, the godmother, the godmother of journalism, we would never have understood not just lynching, but I think the all out assault in what was intended to essentially eliminate, subjugate, denigrate black men in particular, right, we would not have understood so much of the psychology of how this country not just felt about black people, but about black men in particular.
And so that's how I see my role.
As a journalist, and not that I'll ever be out to be wells, but that's what we're supposed to do. Like you need people who are willing to willing to do this difficult work in wartime. It's really easy to do it in peacetime. It is so much harder to do it in wartime. But it's more significant when you do it now because there is so much right now that's coming out us on a daily basis, and.
It feels like people are.
People are feeling like they want to lay down because of the barrage of the volume of it. And I understand why people still have not gotten over what happened in the election, and we've been dealing with this onslaught since this administration took hold. But this is actually the time where we to do the very opposite of what we want to do.
And I get it.
Everybody's tired, but you know, hey, I mean Harriet didn't get tired.
That's all I can say.
In January, because you're talking about talking points, I talked about how I had seen all the means about black women saying, look, we're tired. You know, we did our pardon less but we don't have the luxury to do that.
We don't as much as if sometimes it feels I can get We had to get that out of our system.
We had to vent that because we were so frustrated.
But the reality is, like none of our ancestors laid out on us, like we can't do that.
As much as this country deserves us.
To check out, we can't actually do that. It would be disrespectful to certainly your five days legacy and like the legacy of all these terrific ancestors who have gotten us to this point.
Thank you for joining us. If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us at my Legacy Movement on social media. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday until next time. May you find inspiration to live your legacy,