The History of Slavery

it's me. I'm sixteen and I'm playing the part of a slave name only Judge in a mini series called George Washington The Forging of a Nation. Yeah, I remember that. Where'd you get that from? Wow, Whitney, Yeah, I see, Well she was Martha Washington's personal slave, is what I know. At least that's what they told me. And you might add other duties, you know, like polishing Georgie Porgie's cherry tree.

But yeah, that was one of my first gigs. I was thrilled to get it too because I got to act alongside of the legendary Patty Duke and shop at the gift shop. You know, they filmed that at Mount Vernon Plantation. Well, you know Erica. I had a chance to watch this many series and it looked like in this that you and Martha were pretty tight. No, only and Martha were pretty tight, not me, don't get it. Let's let's be clear about this. And maybe I don't know.

You know my friend Gingeri who does the Uncivil podcast, that's the first place I heard on these real story Otherwise I wouldn't know much about it. But I mean, it's extraordinary how African American and their slave experience have mostly been authored by white people. I mean to a lot of black people. That's like Nazis writing Jewish Holocaust memoirs and think it's for roots. Because boom, that's when it changed things and we started taking the narrative back.

But up until that point, for the most part, it was from a white point of view. And just to be clear, George Washington, the Forge in nomination is supposed to be about his life, not hers. But if there's an industry that could need urgent care and redress of reparations inside of media and storytelling, yeah that's Hollywood. Because

the white gaze is single handedly deformed and destroyed blackness. Well, I would argue that the media has also deformed whiteness to Erica, not to destroy it, but to present it as something that it wasn't. Now, do you mind hearing from some more white people on slavery? Yes? I mind? Are you crazy? Did you just hear what I just said? I mean, we're like on different planets right now. But Erica, I think you're letting white people off the hark I let them off the hook. Okay, Yes, they should have

to tell the accurate story. There are some white people who are trying to do that. Will you give it just a chance? It's you're saying it's possible that they can. I mean, but see, I'm saying that they did it whether it was possible or not. And I'm sure, by the way, some people did a lot better than most. But you want to do it now here? Do the history of slavery from a white point of view? That's ballsy,

I can. Okay, black people, everybody, you know what. I'm gonna give this white man a chance to do his thing here. Do not send the letters to me. Okay, thank you, Erica, Good luck player. Okay, now let's get back to ony lovely, only lovely. I watch you like a hawk man. Then I practice in my room till I get it right. I'm beginning to think that you learn faster than I can teach you. Ma'am. I I've been wanting to say this for a long time. When

Mama died of the fever, he took us in. I just want you to know how thankful I was and always want me My dear only took us in thankful. Well, it's interesting phrasing for a slave. Well, what could I say? The whole truth would have distr Roy George Washington's hero mythology. So the writers created a story that preserves him and mangles only Yeah, the story is sanitize. The result is a made for TV Frankenstein movie, Miss thank You. It was one of my first I'm happy to be in

this Whitney. You're bringing this up and you're tearing it apart now rethinking everything If that's not my attention. But now, I don't know if you remember there's a big plot twist. One is missing. Oh I remember, then where could she be, George? Oh, I'm sure she just met a friend in the market and they went down to look at the ships. I have the most awful feeling something's happened Christopher. Mrs Washington is worried about Ony. She's been missing for several hours.

You know where she might be. I say she's been acting out the strange later, strange this for an all the time, Molly. Would you bring Molly to us? Please? Yes, sir. She hasn't been herself. She used to come to me with all her little concerns and questions. For days now she's kept herself, hasn't affected her work. She's too conscientious for that. But all I get is yes, ma'am. No, ma'am, I'm afraid for George. Molly. Do you know where only is? No, Sir, I think you do. No, Sir, Molly, you must tell

us the truth. She may be in trouble, need help. No, please, Molly. She run away with Gerald, the Frenchman. I wondered, ma'am vernon because he tried with me first. He's gonna do it wrong. I know, Oh, George, Molly, do you know where they went? They long gone, Newson, New England. Freedom free either he doesn't care about her freedom. He wants her. She'll be ruined and he'll abandoned her. I didn't want

her to go, ma'am. I swear I didn't. I know, it's all right, Why would she want to flee situation where she's treated so well, where she's loved. Wow, there's a lot to unpack in that scene, Erica, Yeah, that was riveting. No comment on the plot. Media and storytelling suffered then like it does now from a chronic white superiority. It's like a dry rod. It's just up in there, and um, only or any other black person is unrecognizable,

you know inside of that. That's not only by the way, that's her hologram, her balances visited and made it made for TV movie, that's not her. So yeah, but Erica, let's be honest here. Don't you think that was the goal? Right, Like the rewriting and presentation of history to support the idea of American exceptionalism and the inherent goodness of white Americans. Right? You know, the scene seems laughable now to us, but it's really not because the real story of Owny Judge

and George Washington was so bonkers. You know, George Washington place an ad in the Philadelphia Gazette on May seventy six after you know, his loving ony went missing, and this is what he said, absconded from the household of the President of the United States. Owny Judge, a lightning loottle girl, much freckled, with the very black eyes and bushy hair, just like you. She said, I just now I'm really happy I got the role because I don't know.

I don't look anything like who they're describing. But gone. She's a middle stature, slender and deliberate, Oh delicately delicately, about twenty years of age. She has many changes of good clothes of all sorts, but they are not sufficiently recollected to be described, which I think is really weird. Here's those person he loves. He doesn't even remember what she looks like, really saying that, you know, Well, no, he didn't know, he said, he knows what she looks like.

She he doesn't know where her clothes looked like. Trust me, that black, bushy eyed stuff. That's telling us a lot freckled. It's like, no, she knows, he knows, you know. Then he goes on with my favorite line. He says, there was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation to do so, no provocation, And then he goes on to offer ten dollars to anyone who will quote bring her home only ten Wow, damn as if that's her home? Right?

So right? No provocation apparently, Erica, owning someone who you know is supposed to provoke you. If if somebody owned you, would that provoke you? Please? I get provoked nowadays if you look at me wrong. So you know, what do you want? Look? I know I know that I provoke you at times two. But that's that's another story, Erica. When you play it roll, you said that you didn't

know owing his real story that you were here. You are yet a young black woman playing a young black woman who was a slaved by George Washington, the father of our country, and he was so concerned about escape because he quote loved her at the time. How did that hit your ears? It didn't, I know awareness of it. You know. By the way, being black is a state of minds. Certainly being negro is a state of minds.

Being a nigger is a state of mind. And she would have seen herself as maybe a very you know, she's in the big house, but she's still a nigger in their eyes. So the film is faithful to her status only didn't exist anymore to the filmmakers than she existed in seventeen seventy three, except as decoration to George Washington and his benevolence and all other stuff. And look at it was interesting when you say delicately formed. That's amazing that they described her that way. That's a mind ripper.

But it makes me think, you know, talking about not existing. You know, there's another famous George, George Floyd, who was killed in an eight minute, forty six second blockbuster. Everyone saw that one, but he did not exist to that white officer. And that's why if you look at media, representation matters, and we need reparations. If you want black lives to matter, well, let me try and do my part here, Erica, and re contextualize the story that we

just heard the story of Onie and George. Here's the real story that there was no Frenchman only found out that the loving Martha had decided to give her as a wedding present to her granddaughter. And she knew this granddaughter who was just awful, so she decided to leave. She just jumped on the ship called the Nancy that was headed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and she settled down there, married a free black man named Jack Stains and they

had three children. Now Washington never stopped pursuing her, of course, and when he discovered her whereabouts, he sent this man named Whipple to try and convince her to come back. What's amazing is she agreed, but she had one condition that if she came back, the Washington's would promise to free her after their death, not while they were she

was alive for coming back, but after they died. So she essentially was agreeing to serve as their slave for have her long we're gonna be alive for and well, that of course was not agreeable to George Washington, so he hatched another plan with his nephew, and he was gonna kidnap her, but luckily for her, the locals tipped her off and she got away. Grape Vine worked finally

for once. Yeah, but he never stopped trying to get her, and he wanted to come for her children too, because even though Stains her husband was a freeman, the children had with only legally belonged to the Washington So by getting her he could get her three children as well. He didn't become George Washington, the general that saved America from the British by giving up. He was always going to come for her. That's her, you know, he was his property to her. I mean, she was no one.

But we got to give a shout out to the underground Grapevine finally working for a sister. You know, they helped her escape. Again, She's being watched, she's being pursued, she's on the run. I mean, only's white folks keep popping up and saying we own you your hours, We're gonna pursue you and find ways to pursue you over yind you that we still own you Black folks. I promise you feel that today. I mean, we are just surveilled all the time, under surveillance, and it's astonishing and

it's manifested in just different ways. You heard that young black man in Texas, Rodney Reese, he's walking home from work, Whitney crazy story. Yeah, well he was arrested because he was walking in the street. Now this is during a massive climate catastrophe. The police had time to do that, to arrest a young man. He had his mask on. He's balking home from Walmart, minding his own business. But their business has always been to undermine our business, to

watch us, to pursue us. And you know, I have friends who right now say they feel surveilled through zoom and claim they have to justify their whereabouts even under quarantine, like oh where you ad you know, and they don't like doing that. I mean, everything is connected, you know, the will turns. It's interesting Erica. Also, what we see

with the storytelling. One of the things that white people have always done is they've been able to tell stories about themselves because they didn't have They could always deny the evidence. There was like plausible deniability. And what's happening with all these things like that, like you know, talking about Rodney Reaess and some of these other stories, is

that there's actually evidence now that can't there. With these bodycams on the police, with the cell phones people are carrying, they're now showing the story and white people are forced to watch this new story and reevaluate the context of how they're seeing things. And you know, this is what

we're learning. There's what we're talking about, right, is that the stories we tell ourselves about America, as you call it, America the Beautiful, is that things are always a little more complicated, a little darker than we'd like to admit, not just a little whitney. Come on, they're a lot darker and they're very complicated. You know, you're doing too much little stuff that's minimizing. It's not little, it's a very it's a lot complicated, Yes, a lot more complicated. Continue.

The other thing we've been talking about, how this strand of slavery, the sort of strand of horror that sort of permeates so many of these stories that's not called out. I think I think that reparations include a storytelling component, a component where we retell our stories and we people have to relearn history and learn the full story so

Americans have a true understanding of their history. So in the full story of Washington, you know, Mr I cannot tell a lie, and who was celebrated for freeing his slaves. After his death, he pursued a young black woman who's only crime what she wanted to seek, the same freedom that he had spent decades fighting for. You know, it's funny that guy Whipple who sent to actually try and convince her to come back. He wrote to Washington telling him quote, a thirst for freedom had been her only

motive for absconding. And this is how you know, the founder of our country, the father of our country, responded, which is pretty depressing. I regret that the attempt you made to restore the girl should have been attended with so little success to reward unfaithfulness. This was about her asking to be freed out of death with a premature preference, thereby connect beforehand the minds of all her fellow servants, who, by their steady achievements, are far more deserving than herself

of favor. So what he's saying is that only people who submit to bondage willingly are deserving your freedom. Anybody who has the temerity to try and take freedom for theirselves like he did, well they should forget about it. Yeah, well, you know, the father of our country is the father of our suffering, the father of our bondage, the father

of tremendous evil. And again, you know, And if you just flip the script a little bit and see it from the Africans point of view, he's he's worse than Hitler. He's setting up a country to be independent but self supportive of the biggest holocaust in world history. So let's

get that straight. Number one. But I think we should move on because holl is this is cute, and I like thinking about, you know, old jobs that I have and I really really do despite that, I still will chair us the time I had on there, and you know what it meant for me to be chosen to be on a series like that, because it was a big deal and moved me forward. But let's move on, because only just one slave story in a long history of slavey, and we got a hall ask if we're

going to get through it. So this woman, she's got a very interesting history and has been telling the truth and putting it out there. Her family was an owner of slaves, a white woman named Brown. My father would whisper when he was talking about black people, and there was just a message that came through that whisper that was we have to be very carefully and we can't

talk about this much. So it wasn't that he was saying anything overtly racist or anything like that, but just to sort of like tread lightly, kind of feeling that pervaded the low voice. My name is Katrina Brown, and my life revolves primarily around my discovery that my ancestors

were the largest slave trading family in US history. It was just complete cognitive dissonance the idea that they could have been slave traders, so the idea that I came from a family of ministers and academics, and like my grandfather was a philosophy professor, my other grandfather was a minister, So there was some pride around not being in money making occupations but being in more service the betterment of

mankind type occupations. So no one realized that the Dwolves were basically the largest slave trading family in US history. So statistically they brought more Africans on their ships than any other family north or south. So a huge fortune was amassed from all of this that was pretty much

squandered by a couple of generations later. We wouldn't be able to say we inherited my directly from the slave trade, but it's really obvious to me that we have been in the elite ever since, and it fits the pattern where once you're in the elite, you marry other elite families. So I'm like super aware of the class privilege that has remained even if we're not at like the uber rich level, and I'm super aware of how much social capital I have. So we've gone to a lot of

Ivy League schools, private schools, you know. So I've had just the best education, and that's a pattern in the family. So just extremely aware of how much we were set up to succeed basically, and to be able to go into the professions of our choosing, etcetera, etcetera. Embarrassing might sound like too small of a word, but it's just embarrassing to admit the ways in which the cover up manifested,

you know what I mean. It's so mortifying still, Like can I even say this that it was being trivialized? How could it have been trivialized, of all things to trivialize. But there was the kind of party line, shall we call it was about referring to them as pirates, scally wags, boys will be boys, you know. That was kind of the energy around it, like a dismissive like those back then, those you know, that's what people did back then, and

those wrapped scallions. You know, there's a way in which, despite working on this for twenty five years, it's still too shocking to even contemplate. There's still too much nous to it that operates within my psyche. I had a cousin who shared with me early on she said, I assumed that if it was the Dewolf's and it was the slave trade, it must have been a polite slave trade. And then she of course laughed at herself because she was like, of course, it wasn't a polite slave trade.

There's no such thing as a polite slave trade. But it was by way of saying, like, we're good. People were nice, people were polite, right, That's who we are. So if we did it, we must have done it in a polite manner. So you have caught me in the act of manifesting that tendency to minimize and to understate it, because to state it baldly as it is is just still to me so upsetting. So if I were doing it, do over, I would say, they purchased human beings who had been kidnapped by force, and we're

in a complete and utter state of terror. And it was the most horrific type of circumstance one could possibly imagine. And my ancestors did it over and over and over again. And as my cousin Tom said, they must have known it was evil. How could you not when you were hearing people screaming in the holds below and yet they somehow told themselves stories to justify that this was okay. And their blood runs in me rascals in scallywags, that's

another way to put it. Uh yeah, Or at least she's admitting that her family history had been sanitized, like George Washington. There's a pattern that develops very clearly. What a brutal system though, right? I mean, it makes me wonder just karma exists. I'm not mean spirited, Whitney, I don't want you to think that. But has this knowledge been brutal for Katrina Brown's family because they've prospered, they've done well. I mean, are the sins of the father

really visited upon the sun inside of the family? What do they feel? But she's certainly trying to bear the weight and atone for that evil legacy. But I don't know. Maybe white folks, you know, in in your DNA, it isn't encoded the same way that it is for the descendants of slaves. But I'll keep looking for signs of life. Maybe it's a cosmic curse, Whitney, that's cast upon your people that will always keep most whites at arm's length

with their reckoning of slavery. Yeah. I mean it may you may have that, but it's working for you now, but it will not stop nemesis. If we're talking about storytelling, Nemesis is on your ass, no doubt. I think the only way to stop at Erica's for wet Americans to fully acknowledge their legacy. They have to accept their history if they want to live as moral humans. That's kind of what I think. And I think that any sentient white person with the slightest bit of self reflection has

to grapple with us. You know, we white people have been the dominant storytellers for so long, and we could use tools to lie the necessary facts, or we'd use minimizing language to create a moral space for ourselves in a story. We know that in our hearts is immral. And I'm gonna get a little fan boy here when

I talk about Edward Baptist. He wrote a book called The Half Has Never Been Told that I think all white people should read, and I'm gonna paraphrase him here, and he says something like historians have for years to use minimizing language about the true nature of the slave system. They talk about discipline, quote, and punishment as if there were some logical basis for the system of slavery, rather than simply naming it for what it was, a super

profitable economic system. Who lowest gear was torture. A man named Henry Clay, named after the almost president, Secretary of

State senator from Kentucky. Henry Clay, who had been born in North Carolina and then as a young adult sold to Louisiana, talks about the enslavery who had he was owned by, who had a whipping machine, and so when somebody didn't do their work at the speed in the pace that the slave owner thought was appropriate, they'd be tied down on the whipping machine and somebody would crank a handle and that would turn a wheel which had a bunch of whips attached to it, and it would

whip the person who was tied down on the bench that was part of the machine. I read this story and I said, you know, this is working on a couple of different levels here, right, So it's working on a level for Henry Clay and that he may or may not have actually seen this thing, right, But it's also working on a level that I think he probably intended as a metaphor. Right, This is a metaphor for the system of labor. En slavery itself didn't do the

amount of labor that you were supposed to do. Right, If you refuse to to consent to the extraction of your labor, you were going to be tortured in a predictable fashion, which of course inspires people to do whatever they can to try to avoid that torture. So I thought about that, and I said, you know, this also is a a metaphor for the system on a couple of levels as well, because there are a number of different forces that are acting to push even en slavers

are getting pushed right to extract even more labor. Right, the more cotton that gets produced relative to supply, the lower the price is going to be. And so to increase revenue, they are going to push. They're going to turn the whipping machine, if you will. They are going

to push enslave people to work harder. And so the whipping machine, if you think about it as a metaphor for the system of measurement and torture with the intent of increasing the amount of labor extracted, that whipping machine, right, is geared into the other machines, the other relationships which might call the political economy of the Atlantic world, of the Anglo European world in the first half of the nineteenth century all the way up until the Civil War, right,

Because if cotton prices go up, that's going to inspire more people to buy more slaves increase their amount of production. If cotton prices go down in many cases, will inspire them to increase production as well, so they can increase the total amount of revenue. So, no matter what happened, the whipping machine was going to keep turning faster and faster because it's tied into these other movements of supply

and demand. In the industrializing West, the whipping machine used to inspire fear, used to improve productivity from other slaves who want to avoid a similar fate. It reminds me of stopping frisk It reminds me of three strikes, you're out. I mean, it's all ways to keep a nigger in line. Really, it's insidious. Well, you wanted to have white people talk

about slavery, how's your team doing? Well, that's not really for me to answer, right, I think it's for you, And I think that if we're gonna talk about slavery, who better we created it, we perpetuated it, we benefited from it. Don't you think we should also contribute to explaining it accurately for a change, you know, as well as work to help clean up the mess. And that's you know. I think a lot about this Baldwin quote about not being able to change anything you don't face.

So I think it's our obligation it is. I mean, look, white people always rely on black people to lead the racial conversations, and it gives them permission to lay in the cut. But if you ignore it, it's self sabotage. We see what happens racist a white construct fixed to black people. Black people cannot save you all from destruction.

You know, how can you save a destroyer? White people have to get it there, tearing up their own village by denying that they're not only the source of the boogeyman, they are the boogeyman. Boom whin, Sorry, Whitney. I know I tried. I tried to let you use all white voices to tell the story of the history of slavery, but it just didn't feel right. So it's time for me Errikey to disrupt the disruptor. I gotta figure out how though you actually think that there should be a

hotline for black people. When we need to talk to white people about difficult topics that have to do with black people, we call the hotline and it would immediately patch us through to somebody that can help the rest of us sort this stuff out. I know Mega Marcot where she had that hotline with. She was hanging out with those royals and Buckingham Palace. I'm lucky because I have friends who have friends who have friends who can help me. So let's do this. Like who wants to

be a millionaire? I'm gonna call a friend. Who am I gonna call? Oh? I know, I know, I know who to call. This be all he's perfect, he's perfect. Let me do this. Come on, come on, please be in. He's an o G, raised by o G, was born a print of the movement and raised by black kings. And this man is in the struggle. He's our equivalent of American royalty. Yeah, I know he can figure this out. Reverend Owl, thank you so much for this. I know you are very busy man, and I admire you so much.

I really appreciate your time. Asked to be with you, Erica, No problem, and I have a lot of respect for you down through the years. Oh thank you, sir. I appreciate that. I don't need to tell you that everywhere we go there are white voices who author black stories, and they've done it throughout the years, whether it's slave

narratives and those types of things. Why do you think that white people feel compelled to take the lead and sometimes take over telling stories and narratives about black folks. What it comes down to is white supremacy. They take ownership and some of the the cucriminal, but it's there that they are more qualified to tell us our story

and others our story than we are ourselves. I was reading this book on Frederick Douglas and how when Frederick Douglas was the runaway slave workers way from New York to New England, and there was buzz around the abolitionists world about this well built slave that was bright, could read, and that we could use him to go out there

and push our cars. And the white New Englanders who were being abolitionist movement brought him in and they started bringing them around the various allemages, and then he started speaking, and they were like no, no, no, no, we don't need you to talk. We just need you to be there, be the slave. We'll do the talking. It's like we are really not saying you're equal. We sympathize with y'all, but let us do the talking. Let let us write out the screenplay. Let us tell the black experience, Oh no,

you're not ghetto enough. Come on, that's moneyed up, rather than allowing us as equals to say, wait, manute, this is our journey and we know our journey better than anybody. And that is a form of white supremacy. I run into it even in my civil rights political work, where progressives feel that they can tell blacks how we deal without suffering. Lady, we get you all ourselves. And I'm not saying we shouldn't have allies. I'm not saying we can't work with people, but you can't take ownership of

me and you. A person that was like a father figure to be James Brown, and part of the problem that I saw a first hand that he had is that you actually had musical producers and presidents of record companies that wanted to tell him how to do black music. Well, you know, Mr Brown, that's a little too raw, that's a little too why don't we kind of modify that a little. And Jay was saying, maybe that's where I got it from. You're gonna tell me how to be black.

You're gonna tell me what I'm doing. And that was his fight, and he did not get some of the things that other more quote mainstream black artists got till later in light because they considered him to get up and I'll never get Erica. In the last year of his life, he said to me, he said, you know what raver I said. What he said, The difference between me and some artists is they wanted to go mainstream

for commercial and financial success. He says, I wanted to make mainstream come black because I was not gonna be me in order to make a few doubts. And that's how I grew up an activism and what I do immediate and a lot of people they will play whatever role, not only on the screen on the set, they play that role in the office and let other people write their story to them, like we don't have enough sense to know our own stories, to write our own story.

And we thank them for interpreting to us a journey that we went through and know that they only are guessing about that's I think where the rubber meets the road is the exact storytelling that we tell ourselves. I have a theory about Mr George Floyd. I believe that he was killed because of the narrative in the white officer's mind who told him that he was not only able to do it, he would do it with impunity,

and he could do it in broad daylight. And that's still were not better because as a white man, as you say, white superiority, that narrative runs deep. What do you say to that type of thinking and how it's placed in the white of mind. I think that you hit it right on the head. It's a bond sense of entitlement, that of costs. I can put my knee on the neck and uh, it might not be nice to the family, but nothing's going to happen to because

I'm white and they are blacks. That's just the assumption, which is why of walking to the pulpit to preach the funeral of George Floyd. But halfway through the sermon, Erica, it hit me why George Floyd resonated with so many of us, Because we've gone through a lot of police fatality before but the outporn was global, and it was because the knee on his neck symbolized what all of us have gone through. And that's what I preached about.

We would have been better in Hollywood and Halem if y'all didn't put your knee on our neck, that knee on our neck, that you would hold us down and as because why we weren't rising, we were a rose if you didn't have your knee on our net. And when we saw that cops knee on George's neck, we thought about what happened to our career, as our professions, our families, because we've been fighting the knee on our neck all of our lives, all of our existence since

we got here. And that is what George Floyd represented, and that's why it resonated inside of us even so consciously when we didn't understand why, well, we've been told a version of ourselves that is stereotypical. I don't even know if we know what a real black person looks like half the time because it's been distorted, and we've also accepted that distortion. What do we need to do to return ourselves to some sort of narrative that starts to not only tell our story, but tell our story

not through the Negro that was created beforehand. I think we've gotta go back and discover who and what we are, and that is manifested in different ways. We owe different tribes, but that all of those were real. We've got to claim who we are unapologetically, and then we must stand and own that space and say that's non negotiable. And anyone else from the outside that wants to interfere and in many ways modify our story. We must tell our

community we are not patronize them or support them. We can no longer allow ourselves to be interpreted by those that do not understand us. And that's why I think that we've got to start with our authenticity. If I've got to be somebody else for you to accept me, then I'm bowing the white supremacy. God made me. You don't have to remake me. I will find the way He made me. Just get out of my way, get your need on my neck. That's the best hotline you

could ever have, straight to Reverend Shopton. But I need to get back to Whitney. See what he's got in store for me. Whin There's one more thing I want to talk about when it comes to storytelling, Erica and that's protagonists. You know, protagonists have names Adam Ishmael Lowman. Yes, I know, they're all white men. Our names means something and tell us something about the role of the hero in the story. And you're My name's Erica. Alexander and

Doo mean very very different things. When I was growing up, we had a book in our house called the Book of Doo. This book cataloged various branches of our family, going back to nine when a guy named Henry Dow sailed here from England. You know, I was never that

interested in the book. It was big, had a lot of charts and stuff, but it did have some value to me in the sense that I kind of knew where I came from in a very specific sense, like who my ancestors were and how their stories flowed through the history of our country. And I bring this up because I thought about this the other day when you were we were talking to our producer and you complimented her on her name and she replied, that's my slave name.

And that phrase always brings me up short. It's so direct into the point, and it's a hard reminder of how different our histories are and how visible those histories are in the most direct and gratidian ways. So thinking about that, maybe want to ask you Eric about your name Alexander. I wondered if you do it's origin and how you felt connected to it. You know, I know you know genealogy, but your name reflects a very different history, and I wondered how you thought about it well with me.

First of all, I want to say that I think it's really cool that you know who you are. It's even some heavy stuff. It's a rare gift for anybody to have a book like that, and I recommend you spend more time appreciating that mighty Book of dow And I'd like to see it too. Did y'all put any of your bad deeds in it? You rascals and scaliwags or worse? It's just just the good stuff. But listen, You're yesterday contained seeds to your tomorrow, So it's no

shade to you. By the way, I can bet you that what your family accomplished with all those centuries, and I'm not saying they didn't work hard and sweat and toil all that stuff in the Book of Down but I know I accomplished in half a lifetime and on a Google doc with the help of a series TV in network you know presents. But the people who write these things down and appreciate it and move it on, they're seeking immortality. And I think I have already a

little piece of that. And it wasn't easy to get because both my parents were orphans. And yes, DNA tells the real story of who I am. I know I have this blood from the Congo and from Ghana on a few other places, but my real self is manifested in real time. I I'm who I am right now, And like many black people, I created myself from the

mud that was laid at my feet. But whatever parts and pieces I could get, So no, if you want to know, I don't care or know what white man or woman gave my family its name, because it was not meant to identify me, certainly not anybody who had gotten that name. It was meant to disappear us a brand. It's an ugly brand as far as I'm concerned, and it's meant to lay claim to our family's destiny, and it hasn't invested in our welfare or our human potential.

I can't quantify the weight of my enslaver's inherited name. It's impossible. I just feel that the loss of having to carry it while I accomplish the impossible. That's why so many Black people change or alter and dispose of their names. If you're talking about people like Muhammad Ali, my friend Queen Latifa, L. L. Coo, J quest Love, Malcolm X, Harry Tubman, my Angelou Stevie, wonder they they gave themselves those names. We implant our intention inside of

them and and a rebirth happens. It creates space from it. You know, in America, black people need an alter ego to vanquish the evil that is around us. Now, after having said all that, my name is Erica Rose Alexander, and Alexander means protector of the people, and I shall continue to endeavor in that pursuit. I was renamed princess by the way twice in Africa by two different queen mothers in two different countries, thirty years apart. That was

a powerful thing to go back and experience that. So you should know that I am African royalty. But to keep things casual, I give you permission Whitney Dow of the Book of Doos to simply call me your highness for the great it's your choice, and you're welcome next time on reparations. The big payback. Slavery was eliminated in eighteen sixty five around the passage of the thirteenth Amendment. So people think that's history, that's a long time adult,

and why are we still talking about it. The attitude is get over it, And so I think it's important to restate some of those very pointed facts of brutality in the inhumanity of slavery. Most of our education we were deprived of really in depth understanding of slavery. It wasn't in our schools. We were basically trying to overcome. And I remember the slave narratives. I've read them here and there in the recent years. And I remember the writing of a slave woman to her husband he had

been sent to another plantation. She said, come quickly, because I and your daughter are going to be sold tomorrow, and your son will be sold on the block in another day. Who could live like this? Is that not worthy of a commission to study and to determine how we can do better and how we can make amends. How we can make the healing not only reflect on African Americans, but all of America. This podcast is produced by Eric Alexander ben Arnon in Whitney Down. The executive

producers are Charlemagne the God and Dolly s. Bishop. The supervising producers Nicole Childers, and the lead producer is Devin Mavock Robins. The producer writer Serres Castle, and the Associate producer is Kevin Famm. With additional research and writing support provided by Nile Blast. Original music by d J d t P Reparations. The Big Payback as a production of Color Farm Media, I Heart Radio and The Black Effect

Podcast Network in association with Best Case Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.