Pod Insights TED Radio Hour Retracing the steps of their ancestors About this episode To move forward, the United States must confront its history of racial inequality. This hour, three perspectives on looking to the past to build a better future for Black Americans. Guests include author Joseph McGill Jr., Code Switch co-host B. A. Parker and opinion columnist Charles Blow.
Original broadcast date: February 23, 2024.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:55 Speaker 06 Once you cross the exit road, it's one of the most magnificent oak trees on the property.
1:02 Manoush Zomorodi? This is Joseph McGill. He's a history and culture preservationist.
1:06 Speaker 06 To the right is the magnificent white bridge that's so commonly photographed here on the property.
1:17 Manoush Zomorodi? Today, he's giving us a tour of the Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina. It's a rice farm turned tourist attraction, known for its historic buildings, lush gardens, and as a wedding venue. But Joe has also helped make sure Magnolia is known for the preservation of its slave cabins, too.
1:38 Speaker 06 These are cabins for fieldhands, therefore they would not be near the house. Right outside this cabin is a fire pit. That's where the enslaved people would have done their communal cooking. I'm looking at, this is one of four that have been restored here on the property.
1:56 Manoush Zomorodi? Back in 2010, he decided to spend the night in one of these cabins.
2:02 Speaker 06 Mostly, people thought I was crazy. But I had, of course, built up the courage, and I couldn't back down.
2:11 Manoush Zomorodi? He brought just a pillow and sleeping bag.
2:14 Speaker 06 It was very uncomfortable.
2:16 Manoush Zomorodi? And as he lay next to the fire, and the night wore on, he listened to the sounds of the former plantation.
2:26 Speaker 06 There were peacocks on the property, and they were making noises that peacocks make. The wind was blowing that night. Eventually dozed off. But before all that could happen, those thoughts about the people, the families that were in those spaces historically. Were they thinking about the next day they had to do that repetitive work of which they could not benefit? Were they thinking about the fact that, you know, if you're a lady of the house, your peace and solace that might exist in that space
3:11 Speaker 06 could be interrupted by the desire of the enslaver, or the enslaver's son, or the overseer. Your children can be taken away from you at any time. You think about running and being chased by bloodhounds. You know, were your chances better running away? Or should you continue to be a part of this system that enslaves you? Those kinds of things certainly were running through my head that very first night I was there at Magnolia.
3:51 Manoush Zomorodi? That night became the start of a project that has taken Joe across the country.
3:56 Speaker 06 A very simple concept, to find slave dwellings wherever they are in the United States and ask the owners to spend a night for the purpose of bringing attention to these spaces. And through these buildings, we could honor the people whose labor was stolen for all of that magnificence to exist.
4:20 Manoush Zomorodi? It's still hard for many of us to talk about the history of race and inequity in America. But for others, it's become their life's passion, a way to honor their ancestors, to better know themselves, and help us all learn from the past. So today on the show, retracing their steps. Three people, each on their own unique quest to understand and shape the history and future of being Black in America. For Joseph McGill, the Slave Dwelling Project is now his life's focus. Anyone is welcome to join him. And over the last 14 years, he has covered a lot of ground.
5:03 Speaker 06 I've stayed at about 150 sites in about 25 states and the District of Columbia. So I've stayed in one, some with dirt floors, and one sold for $400,000, at least, if not more. Some of them are sometimes first and second homes for people. Some of them are museums. Some are used for man caves and pool houses and rental space.
5:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh, wow. So people may not even know that their backyard building was once occupied by enslaved people?
5:36 Speaker 06 Yeah, for the most part, because they don't want to know. Some folks know, and they just kind of shut it out. That's why they look at them as more as a place of recreation. And when they're told about the slavery, then they kind of, they get a little upset.
5:56 Manoush Zomorodi? Joe says inserting atrocities into the history of beautiful buildings is necessary, and the stories are plain to see for anyone who cares to look.
6:05 Speaker 06 Folks, this beautiful city of Charleston, South Carolina, tells two stories through its architecture.
6:12 Manoush Zomorodi? Here he is on the TED stage.
6:15 Speaker 06 One story is the obvious. It's the story of the magnificent dwellings, the big house, the mansion.
6:24 Speaker 06 Inside these architecturally significant buildings, you'll find the arched ceilings. You'll find the hardwood floors. You will find the antique furnishings. And you'll find in these places the grand staircase. The staircase that will give you access to the upper levels of these buildings. But also in these buildings is a second set of stairs. It's the set of stairs that'll give you access to the places of the enslaved. The places of my ancestors. My DNA has drawn me to these places. I've been spending nights on these hardwood floors, hard for a very different reason. Hard because they spread their palates on these floors,
7:09 Speaker 06 and that's where they slept. And when I went into this space for the very first time, I thought about the people in these spaces and who built America? Who built those nice, beautiful dwellings that the masters were living in? Whose labor provided the wealth for those houses to be built? Who cut down those logs to frame that house? Who made the bricks that's now that house? It was the people in these spaces. You can help preserve these places. Because of the places I preserve, it's very hard to deny the presence of the people who live there.
7:54 Manoush Zomorodi? You say it's hard to overlook the people who were enslaved if you see where they lived. But I recently went to Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia, and there was a real effort to make sure the enslaved people's lives were given just as much historical attention as the people who lived in Monticello's main house. Is that unusual or relatively recent?
8:18 Speaker 06 Well, there's a point where that was unusual. Well, they caught a lot of hell getting to where they are now. There were people complaining, saying that, you know, I didn't go there for that. The man is, in my mind, he's exalted. Now I'm coming here and you telling me that the man owned 600 people and he had this relationship with Sally Heming. And we had to bring people along kicking and screaming because there's always going to be pushback. And the story of our US history is interpreted as such. Twelve of our former presidents were slave owners, eight of whom owned slaves while they were in office. They did not make that a part of the history that I learned. But some places now are actually recreating these spaces.
9:03 Speaker 06 So now there's more of that effort to preserve them.
9:06 Manoush Zomorodi? What's your estimate? I mean, how many buildings do you think there are still standing in the United States that were used to house enslaved people?
9:13 Speaker 06 Well, you know, 13 years ago, I was asked that question. Couldn't answer it then. I still can't answer that question. Because you got to factor in northern slavery. I get most pushback when I talk about slavery in the north because they want to talk about the Underground Railroad, they want to talk about the Union Army coming down south to rid us of slavery. But when I talk about the period of which that state enslaved people, then they go cold on me.
9:44 Speaker 06 And when you think about slavery in northern states, sometimes enslaved people lived in the attics and in the basements. So a lot of times, these spaces are saved by default.
9:57 Manoush Zomorodi? So we just don't know. There's just so many places.
10:00 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. There are multitudes.
10:05 Manoush Zomorodi? What is it about sitting on a plantation at night around the campfire and knowing you are about to sleep in the homes of enslaved people or in the, I don't even know if you'd call them homes, in those dwellings? Tell me about what the physicality of being there, of having your body in that space, does for people.
10:28 Speaker 06 It disarms you. I very seldom sleep in these places alone anymore. You know, sleeping was the easy part. That was kind of the gimmick now.
10:37 Manoush Zomorodi? Hmm.
10:38 Speaker 06 The substance of what we were doing at that point and still are. You know, are the conversations that we have around the campfire. The ability to be at these historic sites when there's not an audience, as in visitors.
10:53 Manoush Zomorodi? Hmm.
10:54 Speaker 06 The ones that are more isolated, where you could have those kinds of moments. Those moments are, you know, are quite powerful. It gives you that, that green light to talk about racism and racist and white supremacy and white privilege and historical trauma and weddings on plantations and Confederate monuments, should they stay or should they go? And most of the times, most of the times, we walk away at least understanding better are those things that we understood less of pertaining to race prior to, you know, coming into the conversation.
11:36 Manoush Zomorodi? I read that there was one particular conversation that you had where a young black man wanted to know about the lives of those who had lived there. And he asked you what hope might have looked like for them.
11:51 Speaker 06 Yeah. It was a young man who asked that question. And it stunned everybody. And we came to a collective conclusion that that hope was us.
12:03 Manoush Zomorodi? So, so hope was knowing that they would have future generations to come, that they would survive?
12:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah. These people were still human. They still loved each other. They still prospered. And because they did all that, you know, I'm here to, to do what I do. And others who share my DNA, who look like me, are here because of their existence. And that story should be told. You know, a lot of people say that this is led by the ancestors. They're, they're calling the shots. That's what they tell me all the time. And I'm beginning to believe it, you know? It's, I'm beginning to believe it.
12:48 Manoush Zomorodi? That's Joseph McGill, the founder of The Slave Dwelling Project and author of Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery. You can see his full talk at ted.npr.org. On the show today, retracing their steps. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.
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14:15 Speaker 02 We will learn something on election night, but not everything. There's a lot we will not know, especially when it comes to close races. And we'll know much more the next morning and the morning after that. So save yourself a little time scrolling and listen to Up First. We'll be there when you wake up each and every morning this week with the latest midterm election news.
14:39 Manoush Zomorodi? It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zamirodi. Today on the show, retracing their steps. Stories of Black Americans looking to the past to shape their future.
14:53 Manoush Zomorodi? We just heard how one preservationist is drawing attention to the history of slavery across the country. But now, we want to share a very personal story. Do you mind introducing yourself?
15:06 Speaker 03 Sure. Hi, I'm BA Parker. I'm one of the co-hosts of Code Switch at NPR.
15:12 Manoush Zomorodi? At NPR, yay, my colleague. In 2023, BA Parker took a special trip to better understand her family's roots. She turned it into a two-part series called Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors. Your production quality, all that tape, it was such good stuff.
15:31 Speaker 03 That's great.
15:31 Manoush Zomorodi? Really beautiful.
15:32 Speaker 03 One thing I can do--
15:33 Manoush Zomorodi? And we wanted to hear more from her about her complicated relationship with a place that fills her with mixed emotions.
15:41 Speaker 03 My family are descendants of the original 13 enslaved people who were brought to a place called the Somerset Plantation. That's in Cresswell, North Carolina. My grandmother's grandmother was born there, but was freed. And so she just stayed within that region.
16:08 Manoush Zomorodi? As a kid, Parker visited her relatives in Cresswell every summer. And when she grew up and decided to become a journalist, the first person she interviewed? Her grandma in the kitchen.
16:20 Speaker 03 I needed someone to talk to. Like, I had just gotten a fellowship at This American Life. And I was like, Grams, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you sit here and just tell me your life story?
16:28 Manoush Zomorodi? Oh. I appreciate you helping me, Grams. I don't know what I did. You just spoke with me, that's all. Parker's grandma was more than happy to share her life story, and as much as she knew about the men and women who'd come before her. My great-grandmother and great-grandfather were slaves there. They had their children.
16:53 Speaker 03 They, some of their children, they, the Blunts, Richard Blunt,
17:00 Speaker 03 Patient Blunt.
17:03 Manoush Zomorodi? Parker passed on all these tidbits to her other family members.
17:07 Speaker 03 None of my cousins knew any of this stuff. And so I got all of these text messages from all of these cousins wanting to know just like our lineage.
17:15 Manoush Zomorodi? You've become the family historian.
17:17 Speaker 03 That's a lot of pressure, man.
17:20 Manoush Zomorodi? So, I mean, some people have no idea who their relatives are, but you, you know exactly who they are. So how did you know? Was this something that was always discussed with your parents? Or like, what was the, what was the passing down of the story?
17:36 Speaker 03 Well, during the eighties, there was a woman named Dorothy Spool Redford, who was an historian who lived in Washington County, where Crestwall is. And she was this historian that deep dived into all of the enslaved that were at Somerset. And she was very purposeful in passing along that information. So now I have all of these books and papers and census reports that Dorothy Spool Redford gave to my grandmother, that my grandmother saved so that when I grew up, I could have.
18:12 Manoush Zomorodi? In 1986, Redford organized a homecoming for all the descendants of the enslaved people who had lived at Somerset.
18:20 Speaker 03 It became like a big thing in the eighties, these plantation reunions.
18:26 Speaker 03 It was really inspired by the author Alex Haley and his book Roots and that big mini-series that came out in the seventies called Roots.
18:35 Speaker 02 The true story Alex Haley uncovered in his 12-year search across the seven generations of his ancestry.
18:40 Speaker 03 And that was like the first time that black families in America were allowed to take pride in their ancestors.
18:49 Speaker 05 What a hoax I felt had been pulled on me by many forces, that I had gotten to be a grown man and knew next to nothing about my own people.
19:01 Speaker 03 And so that was kind of the impetus for Dorothy Spool Redford to go on this mission. And what happened was she created like this big event and like my whole family went. My grandma was like interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning. Oh, yes. It was national news. It was all across North Carolina.
19:22 Speaker 02 Thousands of descendants of slaves gathered today at the North Carolina plantation. Their ancestors came here as slaves and then they farmed this land, generation after generation of them, as slaves.
19:35 Speaker 03 My mom, the biggest thing that she remembered about this big homecoming experience, where there are these massive cypress trees on the plantation. As we were driving up to Somerset, those trees that the slaves had planted. The cypress trees? Cypress trees.
19:58 Speaker 03 They were all adorned with yellow ribbons. Even the bus got kind of quiet as we saw the yellow ribbons because, you know, yellow ribbons are a symbol of welcome home.
20:14 Speaker 03 And so, seeing the yellow ribbons and we were like, oh, welcome home. And despite the circumstances of slavery, this is where our family began.
20:34 Speaker 03 That felt like such a beautiful sentiment that this was, I mean, home in regards to her ancestors, our ancestors, the people that she wanted to be connected to, that she is connected to, and not just the atrocities. And I think that that's the one thing Somerset taught me, the importance of knowing your ancestry. Because a lot of times, black families can't do that.
21:12 Speaker 03 Our greatest fear is that your generation, your generation doesn't want to be there. Uh huh. And I think that they need to come and see Somerset. I think that they need to stand on the same grounds that their ancestors did. You know what I'm saying? I got you. Yeah.
21:41 Manoush Zomorodi? After a couple of those reunions, Parker's family didn't really go back much to the plantation. Parker only went twice, once as a toddler. To her, Somerset wasn't home. Cresswell was.
21:54 Speaker 03 That town is so rooted in my family that we have a big farmhouse that my grandmother's father built in 1946. And so we spend all of our time there. So that community of family, I guess, felt like enough. But a few years ago, my grandmother passed away and I was trying to figure out the best way to honor her and my family. And so it all just somehow felt like going to Somerset felt like the logical conclusion to that process.
22:36 Manoush Zomorodi? So you and your mom decided you were going to go make a really special trip and you recorded it. But this trip must have felt very different than previous ones because now you were going not only back to the town, but back to the plantation as a grown woman who could appreciate the passage of time with your grandma dying and your mother now, the eldest generation, looking to you.
23:06 Speaker 03 A really helpful thing that I had experienced at the African American History Museum was there was a panel on how to process trauma at an enslaved site. And it was like, before visiting sites, gather information, practice self-care, prepare and give yourself permission and have emotional support. And then it was like, during a site visit, focus on your intentions and your experience. People have different intentions, interests, and levels of reverence.
23:47 Speaker 03 And practice self-care before leaving the site. So only focus on your experience. Don't focus on anyone else's. So I read this to my mom beforehand and she's like, we don't need that. And I'm like, I don't know.
23:59 Manoush Zomorodi? Why do you think she said that?
24:01 Speaker 03 Uh, I think because she'd done it before, I guess.
24:04 Manoush Zomorodi? She's like, I got this. Thanks.
24:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, not to be jaded about visiting the plantation of our ancestors. But it was the first time that I was able to use all of my senses to experience the land and what I was seeing.
24:26 Speaker 03 All I could hear were like all these birds tweeting the whole time I was there. It was so loud, like so sweet. And, uh, you could hear the lake. You could feel the wind.
24:42 Speaker 03 To process all that and, um, having that certain level of empathy that growing up informs and being like, oh, okay. So what was this like for, for Daphne, for Patience? To, um, experience this land, to, you know, feel this breeze,
25:02 Speaker 03 to walk these grounds. Being able to have that mindset now was really, really grounding and really humbling. So we're gonna, sorry, over here, we're gonna do about 10 minute morning. A nice young woman gave us a tour of, of the entire site. And we went into, you know, like the plantation owner's house. And so this next room here is the office. And so Josiah would have kept all of the records for the plantation in this room. There's an account of how many people died on the plantation, but just not where they were. And that was just really heartening and made, it made the place feel like hollow ground because you
25:46 Speaker 03 Just didn't want to disrespect it.
25:51 Manoush Zomorodi? Their tour guide then showed Parker and her mom one of the massive canals that had been built by enslaved people at Somerset.
25:59 Speaker 03 It was the job of those 80 enslaved Native Africans to hand dig this canal. And this was a project that started in 1786. And so we see that this was a project that was proposed to take five years to complete. However, the overseers here worked these individuals so hard that it only took two and a half years.
26:22 Speaker 03 There's a story about the plantation owners, like Josiah Collins. He had two sons. And two sons and two enslaved children were on canoes in the canal.
26:39 Manoush Zomorodi? In 1843, in February, two of the boys, Edward and Hugh, were canoeing in the canal with their two enslaved claimants, Anderson and Zacharias. An accident occurred in which the canoe capsized and all four boys did drown.
26:59 Speaker 03 In the journal entry that someone wrote during that time, they said Dick Blunt was asked to take the children out of the canal. And Dick Blunt was my great-great-grandfather.
27:17 Speaker 03 That was the first time it clicked that I had family that was involved in this. Because we were standing on the canals, these huge, massive canals. They're empty now, but it used to be full of water, dug by the enslaved people. And just thinking about that community losing two children and having them being disregarded and processing that trauma. And my great-great-grandfather having to carry those bodies out and what that evening must have been like for him.
27:55 Speaker 03 And just having to go back to work the next morning as if there wasn't this great loss. I mean, it must have been devastating.
28:07 Speaker 03 And you think about, I don't know, I think of like epigenetics. Just like all of this trauma that passes down from one generation to another and, you know, inside. And just thinking about how, how that physically may have traveled on.
28:29 Manoush Zomorodi? Hmm. So I guess I'm wondering, you know, you had said that the goal was to figure out how to honor your, your grandma, your ancestors. You retraced your steps, you went back to this place. And did you leave thinking, okay, I've got the answer?
28:53 Speaker 03 I mean, honoring is all subjective. So Ma Bell, the, our enslaved great, great grandmother was buried in the family church. And the family, all of my grandmother's siblings had collected money to get a hit, a proper headstone for her to finally be buried with respect. And that was something I was also doing for my own grandmother. And the same afternoon, after we left the plantation, we drove down the road and went to check on my grandmother's grave. And immediately when we got there, I saw that it had been cemented in the span of that afternoon.
29:37 Manoush Zomorodi? Meaning like it had been a pile of dirt and that they had actually sealed the grave?
29:42 Speaker 03 It'd been a pile of dirt for almost a year with the blue flag sticking out of it that I had placed there that had her last name on it. And that was for them to know where to put her headstone when it showed up.
29:52 Manoush Zomorodi? Cause you felt like you wanted, this was what she would have wanted, a proper headstone.
29:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, the big part of my entire summers on the farm was usually in August, we have a big cookout in the third week of August with all of our family comes. And usually that morning. I go with I go with my grandmother and her sister, my great aunt Louise, and we clean off all of the graves of all of our family.
30:20 Speaker 03 And it's like a big, it was a big, it's a big deal, still is like we sweep them, we pull out all the weeds that are sticking out. If we see like bird poop, we get like the Windex. And we all have these flowers that we have for everyone. And it's like fifteen people like that are in this cemetery. So like, this is like the best way, like just this physical like adorning, like taking care of, this is the last thing you can do for your loved one is to clean these graves and honor them this way.
30:57 Speaker 03 And to go from the plantation where, who knows how many family members I have that are forever lost there. And to just like go ten minutes away to just check on my Grams and see if she's okay. And to know that in a way like she is kind of okay because this cement slab just appeared and like my grandmother's enshrined. I just had like a total breakdown in front of, in front of the grave. I just like being able to, it was a lot for that afternoon. But it was just like, it felt very full circle in that moment that at least this thing is okay.
31:41 Speaker 03 It's this tradition that started before I was born. And you know, because a lot of the people who created this tradition have passed away, I do feel that, that pull to maintain it and have it be this tradition that honors those who've gone.
32:04 Speaker 03 And especially my grandmother, this is like Crestwell, like it's home.
32:10 Speaker 03 The fact that she gets to be buried there and have all of these people to this day, you know,
32:20 Speaker 03 like honor her and love her, like that's, that's what I feel like my job is. I feel like to Celebrate my Grams. She was the best person I knew.
32:33 Manoush Zomorodi? That's BA Parker. She's the co-host of NPR's Code Switch. Be sure to listen to her two-part series called Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors and the show in general. It's great.
32:48 Manoush Zomorodi? On the show today, retracing their steps. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.
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34:17 Manoush Zomorodi? It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zamirodi. On the show today, retracing their steps. After George Floyd was killed in 2020, there were massive demonstrations. But did all that marching really achieve much for the Black Lives Matter movement? Charles Blow isn't so sure.
34:41 Speaker 05 We're in the middle of a massive backlash. It's manifesting itself in all ways.
34:46 Manoush Zomorodi? Charles is an opinion columnist at The New York Times and a political analyst on MSNBC.
34:53 Speaker 05 We've seen every form of voter suppression they could think of. We have seen attacks on protesting in general because those crowds of people protesting, most of them were white kids. And so everybody rushed into the schools and said, we have to figure out what indoctrination is happening in our schools and shut that down. And so they've been attacking the teaching of black history. So yes, we're in the middle of a massive backlash.
35:20 Manoush Zomorodi? That backlash, Charles says, is all too familiar.
35:24 Speaker 05 There are periods, every 50 years or so, where there's a surge in black progress and then the massive backlash against that progress. And it happens over and over and over again. There's a surge of black progress during Reconstruction and then the massive backlash of Jim Crow. There is the surge of black progress or the promise of it during the Great Migration. And then there's the massive backlash, which manifests itself in Red Summer and then in the construction of segregation throughout the country. If you look at Brown v. Board of Education, right after that, the White Citizen Council is born. In response to it, you keep going with the Civil Rights Movement. Nixon basically, you know, he's campaigning when MLK is killed. He does all the nice things.
36:09 Speaker 05 He shows up and talks to the committee. He goes to the funeral here in Atlanta and then set about establishing the war on drugs, which supercharges mass incarceration. So I just see over and over and over again how backlash quickly follows any progress or moment in which people feel like there could be some real racial reckoning and leveling of the playing field.
36:40 Speaker 05 I, for one, am sick of this dance.
36:46 Manoush Zomorodi? Here's Charles Blow on the TED stage.
36:49 Speaker 05 Of taking two steps forward and one step back. Sick of being told that now is not the moment for the most ambitious efforts towards actual justice.
37:02 Speaker 05 I want to sidestep all of that. I want a plan for equality now. One that does not require marching and pleading. One in which Black people can access true American equality by their own actions. One that cannot be so easily regressed or reneged upon. And I just so happen to have such a plan. Energizing reverse migration by encouraging even more Black people to leave cities in the North and West and return to the South. And I want them to do so primarily to concentrate and increase their political power to have
37:47 Speaker 05 greater influence over and access to state power.
37:52 Manoush Zomorodi? So your latest book is called "The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto." You also made a documentary called "South to Black Power." Lay out the thesis that you have.
38:08 Speaker 05 So I'm calling for Black people, as many as possible, to reverse the Great Migration, move back to the South. And I'm doing that because I believe that state power is essential to Black liberation in this country and that states control lion's shares of many of the issues that Black people say that they care most about. And that Black people used to have very large percentages, or majorities, in many of these Southern states, and they only lost it because of racial terror running them out, but also because of lack of economic and civic opportunity.
38:47 Manoush Zomorodi? The very idea of Black power. You start your documentary by saying that we need to define it because the phrase kind of gets a bad rap because it can remind some people of white power, which is incredibly dangerous. So how do you define Black power in your mind? And why do you think it's an important term right now?
39:07 Speaker 05 Right. So I do think it is important to define it relative to white power. When I read about what people have historically meant when they said the term's white power, it was that white people needed to control all the mechanisms around them, political, cultural, and otherwise, to the exclusion of other people.
39:28 Speaker 05 When I say black power, I am saying that black people need to have more of a say in the power that is exerted over them. And right now, on a state level, they have very little of that saying. They either live in liberal states that have relatively small percentages of black people and so are therefore dependent on white people in that state to agree with them, or they live in states that are hostile to them because, in fact, they are large percentages of those states.
40:02 Manoush Zomorodi? You actually cite a couple of examples, historical examples, where people have tried this. And one was extremely successful. It happened in 1970, 1971, Vermont.
40:15 Speaker 05 What happened in Vermont is fascinating. This is, you know, the Vietnam War is raging, college kids are protesting everywhere, and two Yale Law students write a paper in the Yale Law Review saying, you know, you're not going to get anywhere with this, doing what you're doing, but you can have real power because you can simply move to a state and take it over, what they call radical federalism. And a writer who's writing for Playboy picks this up and writes a story, an article for Playboy, saying, you know, basically, take over Vermont. You don't need a number that is more than the people who live there. It's a much smaller number.
40:57 Speaker 05 And many of these young white hippies do just that. You know, some had already been moving to Vermont as part of the Back to the Land movement, but some moved after this article. And they eventually, after decades, transformed Vermont from one of the most conservative states in the North to one of the most liberal states in the country. And I thought, if these young white hippies can do it, why can't young black people do it? Now, in an ideal world, we wouldn't need to concentrate black voting power to achieve equality.
41:42 Speaker 05 Any composition of voters should provide equality for all people. But we don't live in that ideal world. In the world that we occupy, anti-black racism is still openly manifest in policy and power. And candidates who support those policies continue to win and continue to block progress. Reverse migration is already happening. Reporters have been chronicling this for at least a decade. I myself am part of the reverse migration, moving from Brooklyn to Atlanta in 2020. In fact, Georgia is a nexus of the reverse migration.
42:25 Speaker 05 In 2020, Georgia flipped from red to blue for the first time since Bill Clinton won the state. The success of the Democratic Party's gains in Georgia can in part be attributed to a rise in the black population in this state. In the early 1990s, when Bill Clinton won, black people were about a quarter of the state's population. In 2020, they were about a third of the state's population. Now, in theory, my proposal isn't partisan. The point is freedom, not party loyalties or party punishments. But in 2020, the candidates chosen by the vast majority of black people won,
43:08 Speaker 05 making Georgia a model for resurgent black power in the South and for me and the plan that I advanced, making Georgia proof of concept.
43:20 Manoush Zomorodi? So talk to me about the numbers. What would you need to reach and which states?
43:25 Speaker 05 Well, you know, there are states. Mississippi, I think, is 38% black. Georgia is maybe 33. I think Maryland is 31. So you'd need hundreds of thousands of people. In each place, I've identified a very specific subset of southern states, stretching from Louisiana over to the Carolinas and up to Delaware. So that mean that's not every southern state, that's not Texas or Tennessee or Arkansas. Then there's the calculation about where are the places with the greatest opportunities? You know, there's a lot of economic activity in North Carolina, a lot of economic activity
44:07 Speaker 05 in places like Georgia, and I think that will be true in the long run. You know, since 1970, 73, I guess, Atlanta has had an African American mayor consistently, everyone. And so people looked at this, the city of Atlanta and the area surrounding it, as a safe place where black power and black prosperity existed, and that became a magnet. But the true hurdle for state power is that you capture a governor's seat. You capture a governor's seat, you have the power to veto. That is your first step to real power.
44:49 Manoush Zomorodi? Do people not say to you, you know, we worked so hard to leave the South, why on earth would we go back?
44:55 Speaker 05 People say that, and I also say, if you feel like you're being successful, you feel safe, you feel nurtured, you feel like your culture is celebrated, not just tolerated, you feel like you've found your place in the world, please stay where you are. If, however, you have been subjected to all of the ills of these northern western cities, a militarized policing and aggressive criminalization of black and brown people, then maybe you could understand that there is another reality for you. There is no stop and frisk here in Atlanta.
45:36 Manoush Zomorodi? Yeah, there's a fascinating scene in your documentary where you go visit a friend who did make the move to Atlanta.
45:43 Speaker 05 So you are originally from a big city, Oakland, this is where a lot of people went during the Great Migration. You get into banking. You're incredibly successful at it. You could be anywhere. Why do you never go back to one of these big cities outside of the South?
46:02 Speaker 03 I just felt safe here. I didn't feel that when I was in California. Even in DC, I struggled being in DC. And I was a full grown woman. I was 48 years old. I didn't feel safe again to win when I came home. The South makes me feel safe, even with the history.
46:22 Speaker 05 The other thing is that we talk about people who did incredibly well in northern and western cities. We talk less about the staggering level of poverty that still exists there. And much of it is concentrated poverty because people, you know, you're not spread out. People are packed into small spaces with their poverty, which creates a whole other cascade of problems. So if I look at the black poverty rate in New York City, it is similar to the black poverty rate in Mississippi. But we don't talk about those people. And when you look at where the black middle class is doing best, that list is filled with southern cities, not cities in the northeast,
47:07 Speaker 05 not cities out west. It is hard for me to even hear people say things are much better if you're in the north if you've ever been through the poorest parts of Chicago. If you've ever been through the poorest parts of New York City. It's hard to even make that argument.
47:24 Manoush Zomorodi? There is a woman, though, that you interview who is thinking about moving south and then decides not to.
47:32 Speaker 05 And she's in Chicago. She decides that she wants to better her own community in Chicago.
47:38 Speaker 03 So this is the strip I'm trying to turn to, Black Ball Street. It's, to me, as bad as it looks, still opportunity. Because this is still a bus route and still a corridor. It just has no life to it. This is one of the six schools that was closed due to population loss and...
47:58 Speaker 05 And what do you plan to do with this school?
47:59 Speaker 03 It'll be housing for individuals who typically are out of...
48:04 Speaker 03 Opportunities for them to have their families in the space as well. Some community.
48:09 Speaker 05 You've got the whole community in there.
48:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be an institution. We're gonna breathe life back into this institution. It's huge. I'm gonna show you a little bit of it back.
48:19 Speaker 05 I don't blame anybody for wanting to stay somewhere. If you were born and raised somewhere, that's home. I applaud people who get engaged to try to make their communities better. I just believe ultimately, for the greater community, you need to consolidate enough power that you can access state power without it running through other people's sympathies.
48:44 Manoush Zomorodi? Can I ask, I was looking through some of the criticism of your book, and there was actually one in the New York Times, who wrote that "The weakness in Blow's plan is that it requires faith in a political system that has consistently failed Black Americans at nearly every turn." Is that missing the point of what you're saying?
49:02 Speaker 05 Completely.
49:03 Manoush Zomorodi? Yeah.
49:04 Speaker 05 Because you're in the political system regardless of where you are. And that same political system punishes you even more severely when you do not have enough power on your own to stand up against it. It is not that I believe that anybody has ever surrendered power willingly. It is rather that I find the argument that one is afraid of the fight to be insufficient.
49:34 Manoush Zomorodi? So let's say this catches fire 10, 20, maybe a generation from now. Help us envision what life would be like in the United States. Because you say very clearly, don't put the idea of utopia in your own mind.
49:49 Speaker 05 Right. No one else has to operate under the assumption that their racial majorities create utopia. So you can't put it on Black people either. That said, I do believe in the idea of just changing the power dynamic. If, first of all, if you get states where Black people could actually deliver a state, like they delivered Georgia, you then change politicians' relationship to you. When you're voting 80, 90% for one party.
50:20 Speaker 05 Because you can't vote for the other party because you believe that that other party really does mean you wrong. But the party that you vote for doesn't have to work very hard for your vote either, because you are what sociologists call a captured constituency. So you're getting the least amount of bang for the power that you wield. You want to change that dynamic so that no party can win the United States without one or more of the states that you control. That changes their relationship and how they deal with you. That changes how they appeal to you, how accountable they feel to you, all of that. You can change that dynamic.
51:02 Manoush Zomorodi? That's Charles Blow. His book is called The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto. His documentary is called South to Black Power. You can see his full talk at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week, retracing their steps. This episode was produced by Rachel Faulkner White, Katie Monteleone, and Harsha Nahada. It was edited by Sanaa Zemshkinpour and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes James Delahoussaye, Matthew Cloutier, and Fiona Guerin. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. A special thank you to Kayla Hoey at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens for her field recording support,
51:43 Manoush Zomorodi? and also to our friends and colleagues at NPR's Code Switch. Our audio engineer was Valentina Rodriguez Sanchez. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar, and Daniela Balarezzo. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
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