Ben Crump
The “Black Lives Matter” Interview
with Kam Williams
Through his legal prowess and advocacy in the Trayvon Martin case, the Martin Lee Anderson Boot Camp case, and the Robbie Tolan Supreme Court Case, attorney Benjamin Crump has already secured a significant legacy founded in Constitutional law. His considerable acumen as both a litigator and an advocate has ensured that those most frequently marginalized are protected by the nation’s contract with its constituency. His landmark civil rights legal battles will be taught in textbooks and referenced by both this and future generations interested in understanding the scope of our fundamental Constitutional protections.
Attorney Crump has been recognized as one of the National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100 Lawyers, Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 Most Influential African Americans, and bestowed the NAACP Thurgood Marshall Award and the SCLC Martin Luther King Servant Leader Award. In spite of his immense professional responsibilities, he still finds time to serve his local community.
Ben readily shares his professional and personal talents with local, statewide and national causes and charities. He was appointed the inaugural Board Chairman of Florida’s Big Bend Fair Housing Center, Inc., a Federal Grant organization dedicated to the eradication of housing discrimination. He also served as Chairman of the Legal Services of North Florida, and donated $1,000,000 to the organization’s Capital Campaign to ensure that poor people would continue to have quality legal representation as well as access to the courts.
Attorney Crump believes in fighting to preserve the advances in justice and equality that minorities achieved during the Civil Rights era. To that end, he has served as Vice President of the National Bar Association and General Counsel to the Tallahassee Chapter of the NAACP.
In addition, he’s been elected as the Chairman of the Tallahassee Boys Choir, and he is a past President of the National Florida State University Black Alumni Association. And he’s a Life Member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the NAACP.
Ben and his law partner Daryl Parks share their firm’s largesse with the community that has embraced them--most notably--they have endowed scholarships at Florida A&M University, Livingston College, Florida State University, and Bethune Cookman University for minority law students.
Here, he reacts to the “Black Lives Matter!” movement sweeping the nation in the wake of the failure of grand juries to indict police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
Kam Williams: Hi Ben, thanks for the interview. I’m honored to have this opportunity, brother.
Ben Crump: Thank you, Kam. I’m glad we’ve finally connected.
KW: I have a million questions for you from readers. Children’s book author Irene Smalls says: You have agreed to represent the family of Tamir Rice, the 12 year-old shot by a cop in Cleveland, despite the failure of the grand juries even to indict in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. What fuels your continuing passion and search for justice, in the face of a criminal justice system that seems broken to many of us?
BC: I was just talking to some folks who said, “Ben, you take these cases, and you make a big issue of holding police officers and the killers of our children accountable in the criminal courts, and of making them to go to jail, when you know the history is that police offers don’t get put in jail when they kill little black and brown boys. You win these multimillion dollar victories in the civil courts, but because the officers don’t go to jail, people think you lost the case. Why do you keep insisting on trying to have the police officers put behind bars?” The way I answered them was, “I just can’t bring myself to sell out as if it’s just about money. I know we’re going to win the civil suit in all these cases. But that’s not full justice. Why is everybody else entitled to full justice except our people and our children? Full justice means you discourage the police from ever doing this again because people will know that if you kill our children, you’ll have to do the perp walk and go to jail. It shouldn’t be that if you kill a black person, there’s a good chance you won’t, but if you kill a white person, everybody knows you’re going to prison. We say: our lives are just as valuable. So, the one thing I always know, Kam, is we can’t sell our community out. I don’t worry about whether everybody understands that. Sure, it would be easier to do like most lawyers and only talk about how much money I got for my clients in the civil courts, but to me, that’s not victory.
KW: Irene also asks: Do we need to increase the activism in the black community around voting, literacy, etcetera?
BC: Yes.
KW: Editor Lisa Loving says: Many people in black communities across this country feel that the legal system simply doesn’t work for them. In fact, we see that racial profiling takes place at every point—on the streets where officers patrol, in the jailhouse, in the courtroom, even in the parole system. On top of that, many people with an arrest record are legally barred from voting. Mr. Crump, what do you tell people when they say they feel like the system is weighted against them?
BC: What I tell them is that it’s still the best system in the world, and that we have to fight to make America be America for all of us. We have to fight to make the words in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence mean something. If they just apply the Constitution, that means we are getting due process under the law and in legal proceedings. It’s not right that we have to fight to make it fair, but we the people have the power to do so. That’s what I love about what’s going on in Ferguson and after the Eric Garner case, and about what I’m sure will now happen with the Tamir Rice case.
KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier asks: Why isn’t the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause applied uniformly? Is there a systemic flaw?
BC: I think there is a flaw in the system. The flaw in the system is that we continue to exonerate the police for killing little black and brown people while holding them accountable in other communities. I once wrote a paper titled, “Police Don’t Shoot White Men in the Back.” You just never heard about police accidentally shooting a white man who’s retreating. What that says is that a flaw in the system allows police officers to be immune for killing colored people. If you think about the grand jury system, that’s exactly what happens. You have local prosecutors who have a symbiotic relationship with the local police officers, and they have no relationship with and many times no regard for the black person dead on the ground. If we keep doing things the same way and expect a different result, that’s the definition of insanity. So, we need special prosecutors with no relationship to the police departments, if we really want to have independent investigations and trials.
KW: David Roth asks: Do you think the race of the police officer is relevant in these types of cases?
BC: Yes. You do see instances where black officers kill Caucasians. They go to jail. And where Caucasian officers kill Caucasians and go to jail. Race matters and the statistics bear that out.
KW: Attorney Bernadette Beekman asks: What do you think can bring peace to the nation in the wake of the failure of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand juries to indict?
BC: Swift action by the Federal Department of Justice. Other than that, the people are really feeling that the system isn’t fair and that folks in their community can’t get equal justice.
KW: Do you think the Department of Justice is really interested in pursuing civil rights cases in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases? Or do they just say that each time a cop gets off in order to calm people down and to give them a false sense of hope that justice will eventually be served?
BC: I want to believe that Attorney General Holder and the Justice Department are going to do everything in their power to follow through on their words and give some sense of justice to these families.
KW: Will the Department of Justice bring a civil rights case against George Zimmerman?
BC: I honestly don’t know.
KW: Patricia asks: What advice do you have for young African-American attorneys fresh out of law school?
BC: To be true to thyself, and to remember what Charles Hamilton Houston said: “Strive to be an engineer for social change and justice.” Otherwise, you’re just a parasite on society. Fame, notoriety and material things will come, but first, make it your job to represent your client in a zealous manner and to do good in the world.
KW: How would you assess the state of race relations in America? Are things getting better or worse?
BC: Well, with Ferguson decision and then the Eric Garner decision within seven days after that, I think things are tenuous, at best. This could be a defining point for the entire United States of America, because we all need to be better than we’ve been previously.
KW: John Hartmann asks: Have you been surprised by the die-ins and other mass demonstrations we’ve seen lately in cities all over the country?
BC: I think we have tough times because some of the frustration from Trayvon flowed over to Michael Brown. Now the Michael Brown frustration is flowing over to Eric Garner, and I think the Eric Garner frustration is going to flow over to Tamir Rice. People are still trying to come to grips with these decisions that don’t seem rational and are certainly not reflective of equal justice.
KW: Lisa also asks: What happened to the old legal maxim that a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich? Do you think people are outraged because the grand jury is shrouded in secrecy?
BC: Ferguson was all about transparency, because there was such a sense of community mistrust of the court and the government leaders. The worst thing you could do there was have a grand jury proceeding that was going to be secret. And cut off from the rest of the world. It just made no sense. But that’s what they did, and the result is that you come out not knowing what really happened in that room. Words on paper can’t convey the tone and whether a persuasive case was presented to get an indictment. Consequently, when people saw the result, they believed what we were saying from the very beginning, namely, that the system isn’t fair when you use a local prosecutor.
KW: I admire that your spirit hasn’t been broken by the legal system’s color coded dispensation of criminal justice.
BC: It is heartbreaking, but you just have to keep fighting the fight, and remember that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. Part of what keeps me going is when I see the enthusiasm of the young people. I was recently in Chicago working on the matter of Howard Morgan who was shot 28 times by four white police officers on his way home in one of the worst injustices I ever heard of. These students I met with at the University of Chicago Law School had so much passion, saying, “We’re going to make this world better than what it is today.” And they had so much faith that I could deliver, that it inspired me to go fight harder to reverse this miscarriage of justice that had occurred right before their eyes. After witnessing me making my argument in the courtroom, they said, “We want to do that one day. We want to get the law degree so that we have the power and authority to argue on behalf of the least of ye, and to make them see our humanity, and make them see us not as 3/5ths of a man, but as men with all the inalienable rights of any other American.”
KW: Alan Dershowitz in his book, “The Best Defense,” said that one of the things they never teach you in law school is that a policeman’s word is gospel in the courtroom. How do we fight that unwritten law?
BC: With the proposed Mike Brown legislation for video body cameras, because our lies aren’t lying to us.
KW: Do you think all the attacks on people of color by police are symptomatic of a racist society or of a class society where people of color have no value or voice?
BC: I think it’s a little of both. I think they devalue our lives. We have to turn the slogan “Black lives matter!” into a reality because our lives do matter.
KW: Film director Rel Dowdell asks: How are you holding up? It must be hard flying from city to city to city. We need you, brother.
BC: Thanks for asking that, Rel. This is my first time home in nine days. I’m so happy to be home, I don’t know what to do.
KW: How can I, as a lawyer/journalist, help the cause?
BC: First of all, I’m glad you’re a member of the bar, because we need our best and our brightest to be on the front lines fighting for us. You can help by staging clinics where you just teach people what the law is. Most of our people want to fight, but they don’t know how to fight. We need to teach them how to fight constructively.
KW: Well, thanks again for the time, Ben, I really appreciate it. Now go gets some rest. Like Rel says, we need you.
BC: Will do, brother, and I look forward to meeting you in person at the march in D.C. on Saturday. God bless.
Ben Crump
The “Black Lives Matter” Interview
with Kam Williams
From Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown to Tamir Rice
Through his legal prowess and advocacy in the Trayvon Martin case, the Martin Lee Anderson Boot Camp case, and the Robbie Tolan Supreme Court Case, attorney Benjamin Crump has already secured a significant legacy founded in Constitutional law. His considerable acumen as both a litigator and an advocate has ensured that those most frequently marginalized are protected by the nation’s contract with its constituency. His landmark civil rights legal battles will be taught in textbooks and referenced by both this and future generations interested in understanding the scope of our fundamental Constitutional protections.
Attorney Crump has been recognized as one of the National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100 Lawyers, Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 Most Influential African Americans, and bestowed the NAACP Thurgood Marshall Award and the SCLC Martin Luther King Servant Leader Award. In spite of his immense professional responsibilities, he still finds time to serve his local community.
Ben readily shares his professional and personal talents with local, statewide and national causes and charities. He was appointed the inaugural Board Chairman of Florida’s Big Bend Fair Housing Center, Inc., a Federal Grant organization dedicated to the eradication of housing discrimination. He also served as Chairman of the Legal Services of North Florida, and donated $1,000,000 to the organization’s Capital Campaign to ensure that poor people would continue to have quality legal representation as well as access to the courts.
Attorney Crump believes in fighting to preserve the advances in justice and equality that minorities achieved during the Civil Rights era. To that end, he has served as Vice President of the National Bar Association and General Counsel to the Tallahassee Chapter of the NAACP.
In addition, he’s been elected as the Chairman of the Tallahassee Boys Choir, and he is a past President of the National Florida State University Black Alumni Association. And he’s a Life Member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the NAACP.
Ben and his law partner Daryl Parks share their firm’s largesse with the community that has embraced them--most notably--they have endowed scholarships at Florida A&M University, Livingston College, Florida State University, and Bethune Cookman University for minority law students.
Here, he reacts to the “Black Lives Matter!” movement sweeping the nation in the wake of the failure of grand juries to indict police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
Kam Williams: Hi Ben, thanks for the interview. I’m honored to have this opportunity, brother.
Ben Crump: Thank you, Kam. I’m glad we’ve finally connected.
KW: I have a million questions for you from readers. Children’s book author Irene Smalls says: You have agreed to represent the family of Tamir Rice, the 12 year-old shot by a cop in Cleveland, despite the failure of the grand juries even to indict in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. What fuels your continuing passion and search for justice, in the face of a criminal justice system that seems broken to many of us?
BC: I was just talking to some folks who said, “Ben, you take these cases, and you make a big issue of holding police officers and the killers of our children accountable in the criminal courts, and of making them to go to jail, when you know the history is that police offers don’t get put in jail when they kill little black and brown boys. You win these multimillion dollar victories in the civil courts, but because the officers don’t go to jail, people think you lost the case. Why do you keep insisting on trying to have the police officers put behind bars?” The way I answered them was, “I just can’t bring myself to sell out as if it’s just about money. I know we’re going to win the civil suit in all these cases. But that’s not full justice. Why is everybody else entitled to full justice except our people and our children? Full justice means you discourage the police from ever doing this again because people will know that if you kill our children, you’ll have to do the perp walk and go to jail. It shouldn’t be that if you kill a black person, there’s a good chance you won’t, but if you kill a white person, everybody knows you’re going to prison. We say: our lives are just as valuable. So, the one thing I always know, Kam, is we can’t sell our community out. I don’t worry about whether everybody understands that. Sure, it would be easier to do like most lawyers and only talk about how much money I got for my clients in the civil courts, but to me, that’s not victory.
KW: Irene also asks: Do we need to increase the activism in the black community around voting, literacy, etcetera?
BC: Yes.
KW: Editor Lisa Loving says: Many people in black communities across this country feel that the legal system simply doesn’t work for them. In fact, we see that racial profiling takes place at every point—on the streets where officers patrol, in the jailhouse, in the courtroom, even in the parole system. On top of that, many people with an arrest record are legally barred from voting. Mr. Crump, what do you tell people when they say they feel like the system is weighted against them?
BC: What I tell them is that it’s still the best system in the world, and that we have to fight to make America be America for all of us. We have to fight to make the words in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence mean something. If they just apply the Constitution, that means we are getting due process under the law and in legal proceedings. It’s not right that we have to fight to make it fair, but we the people have the power to do so. That’s what I love about what’s going on in Ferguson and after the Eric Garner case, and about what I’m sure will now happen with the Tamir Rice case.
KW: Editor/Legist Patricia Turnier asks: Why isn’t the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause applied uniformly? Is there a systemic flaw?
BC: I think there is a flaw in the system. The flaw in the system is that we continue to exonerate the police for killing little black and brown people while holding them accountable in other communities. I once wrote a paper titled, “Police Don’t Shoot White Men in the Back.” You just never heard about police accidentally shooting a white man who’s retreating. What that says is that a flaw in the system allows police officers to be immune for killing colored people. If you think about the grand jury system, that’s exactly what happens. You have local prosecutors who have a symbiotic relationship with the local police officers, and they have no relationship with and many times no regard for the black person dead on the ground. If we keep doing things the same way and expect a different result, that’s the definition of insanity. So, we need special prosecutors with no relationship to the police departments, if we really want to have independent investigations and trials.
KW: David Roth asks: Do you think the race of the police officer is relevant in these types of cases?
BC: Yes. You do see instances where black officers kill Caucasians. They go to jail. And where Caucasian officers kill Caucasians and go to jail. Race matters and the statistics bear that out.
KW: Attorney Bernadette Beekman asks: What do you think can bring peace to the nation in the wake of the failure of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner grand juries to indict?
BC: Swift action by the Federal Department of Justice. Other than that, the people are really feeling that the system isn’t fair and that folks in their community can’t get equal justice.
KW: Do you think the Department of Justice is really interested in pursuing civil rights cases in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases? Or do they just say that each time a cop gets off in order to calm people down and to give them a false sense of hope that justice will eventually be served?
BC: I want to believe that Attorney General Holder and the Justice Department are going to do everything in their power to follow through on their words and give some sense of justice to these families.
KW: Will the Department of Justice bring a civil rights case against George Zimmerman?
BC: I honestly don’t know.
KW: Patricia asks: What advice do you have for young African-American attorneys fresh out of law school?
BC: To be true to thyself, and to remember what Charles Hamilton Houston said: “Strive to be an engineer for social change and justice.” Otherwise, you’re just a parasite on society. Fame, notoriety and material things will come, but first, make it your job to represent your client in a zealous manner and to do good in the world.
KW: How would you assess the state of race relations in America? Are things getting better or worse?
BC: Well, with Ferguson decision and then the Eric Garner decision within seven days after that, I think things are tenuous, at best. This could be a defining point for the entire United States of America, because we all need to be better than we’ve been previously.
KW: John Hartmann asks: Have you been surprised by the die-ins and other mass demonstrations we’ve seen lately in cities all over the country?
BC: I think we have tough times because some of the frustration from Trayvon flowed over to Michael Brown. Now the Michael Brown frustration is flowing over to Eric Garner, and I think the Eric Garner frustration is going to flow over to Tamir Rice. People are still trying to come to grips with these decisions that don’t seem rational and are certainly not reflective of equal justice.
KW: Lisa also asks: What happened to the old legal maxim that a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich? Do you think people are outraged because the grand jury is shrouded in secrecy?
BC: Ferguson was all about transparency, because there was such a sense of community mistrust of the court and the government leaders. The worst thing you could do there was have a grand jury proceeding that was going to be secret. And cut off from the rest of the world. It just made no sense. But that’s what they did, and the result is that you come out not knowing what really happened in that room. Words on paper can’t convey the tone and whether a persuasive case was presented to get an indictment. Consequently, when people saw the result, they believed what we were saying from the very beginning, namely, that the system isn’t fair when you use a local prosecutor.
KW: I admire that your spirit hasn’t been broken by the legal system’s color coded dispensation of criminal justice.
BC: It is heartbreaking, but you just have to keep fighting the fight, and remember that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. Part of what keeps me going is when I see the enthusiasm of the young people. I was recently in Chicago working on the matter of Howard Morgan who was shot 28 times by four white police officers on his way home in one of the worst injustices I ever heard of. These students I met with at the University of Chicago Law School had so much passion, saying, “We’re going to make this world better than what it is today.” And they had so much faith that I could deliver, that it inspired me to go fight harder to reverse this miscarriage of justice that had occurred right before their eyes. After witnessing me making my argument in the courtroom, they said, “We want to do that one day. We want to get the law degree so that we have the power and authority to argue on behalf of the least of ye, and to make them see our humanity, and make them see us not as 3/5ths of a man, but as men with all the inalienable rights of any other American.”
KW: Alan Dershowitz in his book, “The Best Defense,” said that one of the things they never teach you in law school is that a policeman’s word is gospel in the courtroom. How do we fight that unwritten law?
BC: With the proposed Mike Brown legislation for video body cameras, because our lies aren’t lying to us.
KW: Do you think all the attacks on people of color by police are symptomatic of a racist society or of a class society where people of color have no value or voice?
BC: I think it’s a little of both. I think they devalue our lives. We have to turn the slogan “Black lives matter!” into a reality because our lives do matter.
KW: Film director Rel Dowdell asks: How are you holding up? It must be hard flying from city to city to city. We need you, brother.
BC: Thanks for asking that, Rel. This is my first time home in nine days. I’m so happy to be home, I don’t know what to do.
KW: How can I, as a lawyer/journalist, help the cause?
BC: First of all, I’m glad you’re a member of the bar, because we need our best and our brightest to be on the front lines fighting for us. You can help by staging clinics where you just teach people what the law is. Most of our people want to fight, but they don’t know how to fight. We need to teach them how to fight constructively.
KW: Well, thanks again for the time, Ben, I really appreciate it. Now go gets some rest. Like Rel says, we need you.
BC: Will do, brother, and I look forward to meeting you in person at the march in D.C. on Saturday. God bless.
Justice While Black:
Helping African-American Families Navigate
and Survive the Criminal Justice System
by Robbin Shipp, Esq. and Nick Chiles
Book Review by Kam Williams
Agate Bolden
Paperback, $9.99
160 pages
ISBN: 978-1-932841-90-9
“The August 9th fatal shooting of teenager Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri has focused global attention on the precarious safety of young African-American men... Brown is only the most recent addition to the tragic list of shootings of young, African-American men that have ignited media attention in recent years.
But the fact is that our young black men have always lived under threat from the armed guardians of the white social order. Black males and police forces have been at odds since the nation’s founding, when wealthy planters hired slave patrols to keep the white community safe from ‘dangerous’ escaped slaves.
The tactics have been modernized, and the impact--as we’ve seen at Ferguson--remains devastating… The criminal justice system is not so much a necessary service to society as it is a business that seeks to profit from the arrest and imprisonment of U.S. citizens.
Justice While Black is a handbook for African-American families that is full of practical, brass-tacks advice… on how to avoid being ensnared in the criminal justice system.”
Excerpted from a Note from the Publisher, Doug Seibold
Unless you’ve been living under a rock in recent months, you know that the incredibly antagonistic and too often deadly relationship between the police and black males is finally garnering the national attention it has so long deserved. Something’s gotta give, when it’s degenerated to the point where you have cops shooting to death a 12 year-old playing with a toy gun in a park and an unarmed 28 year-old merely escorting his girlfriend down the dark stairwell of his apartment building.
Yes, President Obama has weighed-in in the wake of the grand juries’ failures to indict the officers responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. He’s ostensibly attempting to quell racial unrest by hinting that Attorney General Holder might still file Federal civil rights charges against the cops.
But meanwhile, the question remains: how should the parent of a black boy prepare him for a possible encounter with police, since they’re prone to misread the most innocent of behaviors as somehow menacing? After all, it’s been said that if a cop sees a black man sitting, he’s shiftless; if he’s standing, he’s loitering; if he’s walking, he’s prowling; and if he’s running, he’s escaping.
I’m not sure whether there’s been a more timely tome than “Justice While Black,” a how-to book written by a concerned sister who is both a lawyer and a mother. With 20+ years experience as a criminal defense attorney under her belt, Robbin Shipp (with the help of Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Chiles) shares a wealth of advice for young brothers about not only dealing with police on the street, but with navigating one’s way through the court and correctional systems, should you unfortunately be arrested and/or convicted.
Not one to mince words, the author from Chapter One, “Officer Friendly Isn’t Your Friend,” makes it clear that any black man’s encounter with a police officer could easily lead to a close brush with death. Therefore, she relates step-by-step instructions about what to do in situations ranging from being stopped while driving (“If the officer asks for your license and registration, get his permission to reach for them.”) to being placed under arrest (“Resist the urge to explain to them everything that happened.”), and so forth.
A mandatory, must-read that just might save the life or liberty of someone you love.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The “Finding Your Roots: Season Two” Interview
with Kam Williams
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored 17 books and created 14 documentary films, including Finding Your Roots, season two, now airing on PBS.
His 6-part PBS documentary series, The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (2013), which he wrote, executive produced, and hosted, earned the Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program—Long Form, as well as the Peabody and NAACP Image Awards. Having written for such leading publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time, Dr. Gates now serves as editor-in-chief of TheRoot.com, while overseeing the Oxford African-American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field.
Professor Gates’s latest book is Finding Your Roots: The Official Companion to the PBS Series, released by the University of North Carolina Press in 2014. Here, he talks about Finding Your Roots: Season Two, now available on DVD.
Kam Williams: Hi, Dr. Gates, how are you?
Henry Louis Gates: Everything’s a little crazy around here, because I’m trying to get out of town. But otherwise, I’m doing very well, Kam. How are you?
KW: Great, thanks. So, where are you headed?
HLG: We’re going to South Africa for a couple weeks where I’ll be getting an honorary degree from the University of Cape Town.
KW: Congratulations!
HLG: Thank you!
KW: And congrats on another fascinating season of Finding Your Roots. How did you pick which luminaries to invite to participate in the project? Did you already have an idea that they might have an interesting genealogy?
HLG: No, we picked them cold. I have a wonderful team of producers. To tell you the truth, first, we just fantasize. Then, we sit down in my house with a big peg board with the names of all the people who said “Yes.” So, we never know whom we are going to get in advance.
KW: How do you settle on the theme of each episode? For instance, you did the one on athletes with Derek Jeter, Billie Jean King and Rebecca Lobo, and the one on chefs with Tom Colicchio, Aaron Sanchez and Ming Tsai.
HLG: Usually, we first do the research and film everybody, and then organize the episodes internally. For instance, Episode One was called, “In Search of Our Fathers.” You might wonder, what does Stephen King have in common with Courtney B. Vance? Well, Stephen King’s father left when he was 2, and Courtney never knew his father. He was put up for adoption. And frankly, that’s my favorite kind of story, when it’s counter-intuitive. That’s why we’ve organized the episodes around those two principles.
KW: Environmental activist Grace Sinden says: The subject of our roots is fascinating, as shown in your television program on PBS. I'm wondering what you found to be the singularly, most-interesting discovery in your research for Finding Your Roots 2?
HLG: That’s tough to say, because each story has something dramatic and interesting. Take when Ming Tsai’s grandfather fled China after the revolution, all he took besides the clothes on his back was one book, the book containing his family’s genealogy. Isn’t that amazing? He was willing to flee to a whole new world, learn a new language, and start over in a new culture only if he had his family tree with him. That’s heavy, man! It’s like he was saying, “I can do anything, as long as I have my ancestors with me.” I really admire that. And consequently, we were able to trace Ming’s ancestry back to his 116th great-grandfather.
KW: Whose roots were you able to trace back the farthest?
HLG: Ming Tsai’s, without a doubt. We’ve traced several people back to Charlemagne, but Ming’s goes back to B.C., because of the Chinese penchant for keeping fantastic genealogical records.
KW: Sangeetha Subramanian says: It seems that your guests have a variety of reactions as each story and new fact is revealed. Whose reaction to an uncovered story surprised you the most?
HLG: Anderson Cooper, without a doubt. I told him that his 3rd great-grandfather, Burwelll Boykin, was a slave owner. First of all, Anderson was very saddened and disappointed that he descended from a slave owner. But his ancestors were from Alabama, so I told him that was very common. I don’t think you inherit the guilt of your ancestors. We merely reveal whatever we find, without making any sort of judgment. What your ancestors did is what they did. That’s not on you. Anyway, Burwell Boykin had a dozen slaves, according to the 1860 Census. And one of them kept running away. To punish him, he locked him in a hot and humid cotton house. Can you imagine? When Burwell let Sandy “Sham” Boykin out the next morning, the slave grabbed a hoe out of his master’s hands before beating him to death. We found the story in a diary kept by one of Anderson’s ancestors, and then we verified it in the court records which showed that, sure enough, a slave named Sandy Boykin had been hanged in 1860.
KW: Marcia Evans says please let Dr. Gates know that this show is awesome and well appreciated. I don't want this series to ever end. There are soooooooo many stories that I want to learn about. This discovery is not just about DNA and history. It's about family, family secrets, and the mindset of folks and their choices. For all of these reasons, I am a dedicated fan. I appreciate Professor Gates and his passion for teaching undocumented history, especially African and African-American studies. I'm a history buff which is why I've been following his work for years. Ask Professor Gates if he is aware of the research work of Professor/Researcher Roberta Estes and her research into accurate testing for Native American genetics?
HLG: No, I’m not, Marcia. But thank you very much for the kind words and the information. I would love to learn about what she’s doing. We’re always fascinated with Native American ancestry, and we’ve found two surprising things about our guests. First, that very few have any significant amount of Native American ancestry, black or white, although Valerie Jarrett did have 5%, and we found her 6th great-grandmother, by name, and the Native American tribe that she was part of. But rarely do we find an African-American with even 1% Native American ancestry.
KW: Has anybody ever tried to disagree with their DNA analysis?
HLG: No, but some people were shocked, particularly African-Americans who believed they had Native American ancestry. They’re always disappointed. [Chuckles]
KW: When I was growing up, it seemed like every other kid at school used to say he was part Cherokee.
HLG: The poor Cherokees. Everybody, white Americans and black Americans claimed to be part Cherokee.[LOL]
KW: Did any of your subjects ask you not to reveal something you found out about their family?
HLG: No, although I’m sure a few people would like to do so, if they could. But we’re PBS. We’re independent.
KW: Editor Bobbie Dore Foster asks: Dr Gates, do you ever answer queries from everyday people who need help with genealogical puzzles and other obstacles to fleshing out their family trees?
HLG: Yes I do, Bobbie, in two forms. At TheRoot.com, we answer a question a week for African-Americans who have a genealogical quandary. That’s co-written with the New England Genealogical Society. And at Ancestry.com, the genealogist there and I write a weekly column that’s on the Huffington Post.
KW: Editor Lisa Loving says: We all just love your show. My family tree efforts have literally thrilled my entire family and made them look at themselves and each other differently – as if to appreciate all that our ancestors survived down through the ages. Did you and your family have the same experience when you started looking at your genealogy?
HLG: Oh my God, yes! In fact, CeCe Moore, our genetic genealogist, noticed that I had a whole lot of matches with people named Mayle. We pursued it and, as it turns out, those people and I, on one side of my family, are descended from a white man named Wilmore Mayle who was born in England. He freed his slave Nancy in 1826, and they had children together. We convened all of his mixed-raced descendants for a family reunion in September, and we filmed that for the last episode of the series. And that was done purely through DNA. We don’t even know how Mayle fits in my family tree, but he’s definitely one of my ancestors.
KW: Chandra McQueen asks: What would you say carved out this path for you?
HLG: The fact that when I was 9 years-old, on the day that we buried my grandfather, Edward St. Lawrence Gates, my father showed my brother and me a picture of Jane Gates, the oldest Gates we’ve ever traced, then or now. It blew my mind! She was born in 1819 and she died in 1888. I’m looking at her picture right now. She was a slave and a midwife. I was just so amazed. Between looking at my grandfather in the casket, which was very traumatic, and seeing my father cry for the first time, which was also very traumatic, and trying to figure out how in the world someone who looked like me could have descended from someone who could have passed for white, and then finding out that my great-great grandmother was a slave, intrigued me. So, the next day I interviewed my parents about my family tree. And I’ve been hooked ever since. [Laughs] And that’s a true story.
KW: Chan is also curious about what surprised you the most about your own genealogy?
HLG: The fact that I was 50.1% white and 48.6% black.
KW: Chan’s last question is: Do you go about gathering genealogical information about African-Americans very differently from the way you do for other ethnicities? How do you get past the obstacle of slavery?
HLG: Yes, we do, because African-Americans generally weren’t identified by name in the census prior to the abolition of slavery. So, we start with the 1870 census, which is the first in which blacks appear with two names. Then you go back to 1860, and see whether there were any slave owners with the same surname, since, more often than not, most emancipated slaves kept the surname of their former owners. Ironically, the key to finding one’s black ancestry during slavery often involves finding the identity of the white man or woman who owned your ancestors. That’s quite a fascinating paradox.
KW: Beatryce Nivens says: I have been tracing my genealogy for several years, and other members of my family have been doing it for a couple decades. My great-grandmother was a slave on the Thomas H. Watts farm in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. Her slave owner was her father. In 1977, the white side of my great-grandmother's family gave a second-cousin of mine slave papers listing the slaves on their ancestors’ plantation, as well as their dates of birth and deaths. Unfortunately, that cousin is now deceased and his children can't find the papers. What is the best way to recreate that list? We have used the 1870 Census. Are there any other resources you would recommend for South Carolina? Chesterfield is a County whose courthouse and documents were burned to the ground by Sherman during his historic march across the South towards the end of the Civil War.
HLG: Beatrice, go to Ancestry.com, and type in the name of your ancestor, and it will automatically connect you to any record regarding that particular family member that’s been digitized.
KW: Why do you think tracing one’s ancestry is so emotional and transformational, even for celebrities?
HLG: It’s funny, I filmed Donna Brazile yesterday, and Jimmy Kimmel a week ago, and both of them cried during the reveal. It is very, very emotional. I think people are deeply moved because, ultimately, it’s about ourselves. It’s about you. You are literally the sum total of your ancestors. You are a living testament to your family tree. On Thanksgiving, in the lobby of William Junius Wilson’s apartment building, I met a man who thought that people are so fascinated by the series because of the sense of rootlessness that comes with post-modernity. And one way people gain a sense of solidity is by laying a foundation. And that foundation for anyone is your family tree. Who am I? Where do I come from? You know what? I used to think only black people had what I call “genealogical amnesia.” But I found out that nobody knows more than past their great-grandparents.
KW: Thanks again for the time, brother, and have fun in South Africa.
HLG: Any time, Kam. You know I love talking to you.
To see a trailer for Finding Your Roots: Season Two, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPyoYWnMDxc
Wild
Film Review by Kam Williams
Cheryl Strayed’s (Reese Witherspoon) life went into a tailspin right after the untimely death of her mother (Laura Dern). The grief-stricken 22 year-old subsequently became emotionally estranged from the people closest to her, including her husband, Paul (Thomas Sadowski), and her brother, Leif (Keene McRae).
And by the time she had finally bottomed out several years later, she was all alone and addicted to heroin. Yet she somehow summoned up the strength to set out on a transformational, solo trek along the Pacific Coast Trail that would take her from the Mojave Desert in California all the way north to the border of Washington and Oregon.
The perilous, 1,100 mile journey would prove to be Cheryl’s salvation, as it afforded her an opportunity to purge her demons while conquering the elements. That magical metamorphosis would also become the subject of her best-selling memoir, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Trail,” an Oprah Book Club selection.
The story has now been adapted to the screen by Academy Award-nominated scriptwriter Nick Hornby (for An Education) as a touching tale of female empowerment featuring Reese Witherspoon as the intrepid heroine. The picture was directed by another Oscar nominee, Jean-Marc Vallee, whose Dallas Buyers Club netted Oscars for both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto.
Unfortunately, this flashback flick fails to generate the same sort of sobering gravitas which made Dallas so effectively gripping. Consequently, it unfolds less like the similarly-themed Into the Wild (2007), a riveting survival saga, than Eat Pray Love (2010), another relatively-lighthearted romp about a woman finding herself.
Wild is an uneven endeavor which undercuts its own cause by including intermittent interludes of comic relief, such as when Cheryl’s overstuffed backpack repeatedly causes her to topple over. Hence, rather than ratcheting up the tension of a harrowing ordeal, the film merely recounts the assorted highs and lows of a poorly-planned camping trip run amuck.
Reese Witherspoon nevertheless delivers a decent enough performance to singlehandedly elevate an otherwise mediocre adventure to an entertaining one worth recommending.
Very Good (3 stars)
Rated R for sexuality, nudity, profanity and drug use
Running time: 115 minutes
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures
To see a trailer for Wild, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOPl8gKdmYE