Nuanced Conversations Podcast
Welcome to Nuanced Conversations Podcast, where we dive deep into the complex and often overlooked aspects of today's most pressing topics. Each week, we bring you thought-provoking discussions with experts, innovators, and everyday people who offer unique perspectives and insights. Whether we're exploring the intricacies of social issues, science, culture, or personal development, our goal is to move beyond the surface and engage in meaningful dialogue that challenges assumptions and expands understanding. Join us as we navigate the gray areas and uncover the richness that lies in nuanced conversations.
Nuanced Conversations Podcast
Paul Robeson’s Legacy and Modern Inspirations
How does one navigate the dual nature of America as a land of opportunity and complexity? Join us for a compelling episode of Nuance Conversation, where the multi-talented Stogie Kenyatta shares his incredible journey from Kingston, Jamaica to New York City. Known globally for his one-man stage performance on Paul Robeson, Stogie offers profound insights into the immigrant mindset, reflecting on the influence of colonial history and the ongoing quest to preserve one’s identity. Inspired by Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” this conversation is a heartfelt exploration of community, resilience, and the immigrant experience.
We delve into the historical impact of colonization and the rise of Pan-Africanism, using Ghana as a poignant case study. Stogie’s personal reflections and anecdotes from his youth reveal how talent, education, and identity intersect to shape one’s path. From enforced reading sessions by a librarian mother to balancing multiple commitments in high school, these experiences collectively paved the way for his career in performance and education. The narrative broadens to celebrate the multifaceted life of Paul Robeson—his extraordinary achievements, political activism, and his influential role in the Harlem Renaissance.
The episode concludes with a tribute to Robeson’s legacy and the moral duty of artists to uplift humanity. Stogie draws parallels between Robeson and modern icons like Kendrick Lamar, emphasizing the importance of humility, grace, and social responsibility. We explore the interconnectedness of our histories, the transformative power of grace and redemption, and the need for artists to use their platforms to address social issues. Join us for an enlightening conversation that honors the past while inspiring us to embrace our shared paths and blessings.
Greetings everyone. Welcome to another episode of Nuance Conversation, and we have special, special, special guests in the studio today. Nuance Conversation is a safe space to have intelligent, open and honest conversation. Here we talk anything from politics to religion, to social norms and pop culture. Certainly today we have the expertise in all of those and so much more. He is known all across the world literally for his one man stage. So of the late great civil rights hero and just hero in general, paul Robeson, we'll learn a little bit more about that. We'll learn about him on that today, but before we start we just do a little fun thing here. Dear Brother Stokey, we swear you in. His name is Stokey Kingata, for those that are listening. We'll get you, you'll get into knowing more about him. We just swear you in right hand. Do you swear? To be honest, to be open and transparent and nuanced conversation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. He's sworn in.
Speaker 1:ladies and gentlemen, Thank you so much for doing that. Appreciate you so much. How are you feeling?
Speaker 2:I'll be fine. Hopefully I won't be canceled in an hour. No sir, no sir.
Speaker 1:We are no counsel zone. This is the ideal nuanced conversations where life is not black and white.
Speaker 1:Life is in the gray most of the time. Certainly, there are things that are black and white and we acknowledge those things. But even getting to those things, it's often a journey, it's often a process, and so we created this space to be able to talk to people about those things in certain areas, and no better mind, no better person than to have you here and talk about that Tell us a little bit about where you're from and your upbringing.
Speaker 2:I was born in Kingston, jamaica. Wow, god's country, yeah, the third world nation, jamaica. I love it to death. At around eight and a half years old I came to the United States. My grandmother brought me, after my parents moved to America, to New York, to get housing and get situated and have one, two more children, and they were all girls. My mother had six girls and me, and so my grandmother brought us up and we came to big giant New York City.
Speaker 1:Talk to me about the mind of an immigrant coming from somewhere like Kingston, jamaica, and then migrating to New York, where seemingly it seems like there's a lot of crisis, a lot of issues, but the mind of an immigrant looks at even things that we look at as perplexities, as a land full of opportunity. Was that the same for you, even at that tender age?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and your parents, everybody tells you about it. Once you get to America, life will be better. Because, you know, as a boy I was told and I often heard we were third world countries and America was clearly the first world. America and Europe and you know where white people lived was the first world. And it perplexed me because I thought, after one comes two, and we're a Third World nation. Who's the Second World nation? The Second wasn't taken and they still wouldn't give it to us.
Speaker 2:But America was the land of opportunity for Third World nations because they had so much of everything and they laid the foundation Between the United Kingdom and the Royal Air Force and Navy. They colonized the globe literally. And so, coming here, you saw so much more in the whole thing and we saw a place where everybody—things could get better. It was bigger, it was brighter and darker. It was bigger. It was, you know, brighter and darker. It was the best of everything and the worst of everything as well. So you just had to keep your soul intact, you know, and like the great Nina Simone said, you know, you know, we are young, gifted and black. With our souls intact, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Talk about. You mentioned colonization as a term that's being used in mainstream media today and a lot of activists are using that terminology as well. When you speak about that for the Brits and literally colonizing the world, can you explain a little bit to our listeners what that means?
Speaker 2:is basically the theft of land and culture. And basically I performed in 2019 in Ghana, west Africa, ghana is known was called the Gold Coast because literally you could find gold on the ground as the beaches washed up the whole thing. So you had a rush there. When you go to the slave castles and different places and you saw the historic places there—I was shooting a movie there and I was there for 28 days and all over Nacra and you know the Tor Kumasi, you know and you would see it places. I'm saying why were the cannons pointed outwards? It was to keep the other nations England to keep them from coming to try to steal the gold, african gold.
Speaker 2:And so colonization has a bad taste for us because they stole our land and our resources and basically destroyed a culture.
Speaker 2:You know, and when I teach as a Pan-African teaching artist, which is what I've been doing for the last 25 years, along with the show, you know, because I use theater as a vehicle to uplift society and hopefully improve, you know society's change.
Speaker 2:You know, with the frame of mind, because you can't change hearts until you change minds. And so colonization is bad because it robs you of your dignity and not only your land, but it leaves nothing in return. And so, as a result, going across the globe, wherever you've seen, there's a reason why English is the second language in every nation because between France and the United Kingdom and America, we've colonized everything. You know the reason why there's a British West Indies, you know, and all of these places, you know that are still just getting independence, and so that's it, so it has to be, you know, which is quite similar to what is happening right now in Palestine, which is a degree of things that, as you look into it, you know, it has dangerous connotations, because there's a way to find an equitable way to treat human beings, as you know, some fairness in humanity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for sharing that. When you talk about Pan-Africanism, what does that mean to be a Pan-Africanist?
Speaker 2:Pan-Africanism, which is a very good question actually, because a lot of people hear the term and never take the time to ask. And in teaching the course, I would always ask do you know what that means? They say no, but I heard it before.
Speaker 2:but go ahead and I'm going like no, I explained to the students I would say listen those who know how will always have a job, but those who know why will always be their boss. And so Pan-African is a global intellectual movement to uplift, inspire and educate us about our African culture and our desire, because we've had a similar journey and somewhat degree of similar destiny, journey and somewhat degree of similar destiny. And, unlike other nations, people say, well, african people they're not together as a race of people, they're not. And I'm going like nothing could be further from the truth. You can't say that unless you look at the fact that, if I say Chinese are primarily one religion, for the most part, italians are primarily Catholic, okay, europeans primarily Catholic. Okay, europeans, either Catholic or Jews, you know Judeo-Christian society.
Speaker 2:Africans touch every nationality and every culture because we've been scattered all over the globe, and that's what diaspora means a scattered population. So Pan-Africanism is to join that, to try to unify Africa, to say that you know that in the beginning there was darkness and this darkness took place on the dark continent and that was Africa. That was what we later come to know and I believe Mesopotamia or you'd probably know better than myself, but the Garden of Eden was near where Ethiopia currently is. Right now, the Tigris, euphrates, gion River and the Nile intersect, and so this dark continent with all the riches in the world and the richest continent on the planet. Okay, and when God said let there be light, he called light out of darkness. We are the light that is coming out of that dark continent, and until you can undo all that has been done to the African globally, the Pan-African movement aims to do just that to uplift, inspire, educate and bring together and teach us not only to love others but, most importantly, to love ourselves.
Speaker 1:Wow, thank you for sharing that. You're absolutely right. That's a term that's often used, like many terms, but rarely truly understood. So you're growing up. You've migrated from Kingston. How was it growing up in New York City? What was roughly the time frame? What was your integration like into this new culture, new society, even as a young man?
Speaker 2:It was beautiful. It was a beautiful disaster. It was a chapter in my book. It was a beautiful disaster Because you learn to love folks. You know you're surrounded by a lot of other. You don't know you're poor because everybody else is poor, and you learn to love each other really, really quickly. And there are a lot of other immigrants here from Puerto Rico, panama, cuba, you know, trinidad, barbados, everywhere else you know, and just African Americans and you realize, even though we're from different places, we all have more in common than we do in conflict.
Speaker 2:Okay, we also learned that, no matter where you come from, we're all a spiritual people. We all learned, you know, to love god. We all were primarily christian, some were muslim, but you know, but we all had this faith to where you can pray your way out of anything. And, um, I at times would use prayer wrong. I remember several times stealing stuff and hiding under the car and said god, if you get me out of this, I'm not gonna going to steal anymore. I swear to you, god, this time I really mean it. I know I said it last time God.
Speaker 2:And later on I would ask the pastor, I said why do you think God saved me? I said it's merciful. He says he saved you because he knew that, even though you were probably lying, he admired the fact that you turned to him in your hour of darkness to say you know what I mean. And so he admired your faith and he knew that someday, you know, he could turn. That you know, because one of the things we often heard is that you got to get past your vices to get to your virtue and that was one of the things that drove us. But it was violent. You got 9 million people living in New York in a small area relatively because of New York.
Speaker 1:What part of New York were you in? Brooklyn, brooklyn.
Speaker 2:And you know in Brooklyn, like Tupac said, is Brooklyn in the house.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, it would go crazy.
Speaker 2:And we were aggressive because, literally in New York City, you sit on a train. This is how a fight would start. What are you looking at? Okay, if you made eye contact longer than three seconds but the cat was like do you want some of me? You know you had to get used to that and so it was different, but it was healthy from the standpoint of that.
Speaker 2:It taught you that the strong survive and those same guys that were rough with you when you were in another area and you're up in the Bronx or Manhattan and the guys that were bullying you back in Brooklyn would see you in a jam uptown and they'd yell out their window the rough guy that used to your neighborhood bully would be yo, stowe, is that a problem that I could fix, you know? And he was like because my man here got a gat in his lap. You know, I need to know, did your man want any of this? Okay, and they would go oh, I didn't know. You was rolling like that, stowe, my bad. And now I got juice because my man there and me and him wasn't even people. It wasn't even people, yeah, but he understood. We may fight amongst each other, but, believers, we're brothers, brooklyn forever, and it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:What your self-actualization? Figuring out who you are, what? At what point is that happening? Were you getting into, maybe, sports arts? What are your passions? That sort of developing who you essentially will come to be.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was all sports.
Speaker 1:All sports.
Speaker 2:Initially it was all sports, because what happened was sports is big At the time, coming up like in the 70s, the best setter in the NBA was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. You had Connie Hawkins, you had Dr J at the forwards, abdul-jabbar, you had Connie Hawkins, you had Dr J at the forwards, you had Nate Archibald at point guard. You know tiny who did everything. All of these guys were products of the New York City school system, dr J, you know power memorial with Lew Alcindor at the time, power memorial with Lou Alcindor at the time. And, um, we had even our white boys were good, Um, uh, billy Cunningham, you know, uh, the whole thing.
Speaker 2:It was like, you know, lenny Wilkins, all these guys it was uh, there was so much talent there and so we got to see how, you know, sports could uplift your people, your culture, and it was the first thing we got to admire, because at that time then, of course, there was there was singing. You know the singing groups, temptations and all of that. So that's where the arts came in and I could sing a little bit, but they were guys that just you know, could wake up and blow like the album. You know, I remember I was arrested. We were in Brooklyn House of Detention and you know, and that-.
Speaker 2:You were arrested, oh God, several times.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Several times coming up.
Speaker 1:What were you arrested for?
Speaker 2:Usually stealing stuff and you know, just getting caught up with things. You know, because it wasn't so much that I was a bad kid, but you know, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king and you basically did what you were taught and so you stole everything. You know, if they saw you paying to get on the train your 25 cents they'd say like Stoke, did you just pay to get on the train? What are you stupid? What you hate? Money? Why would you pay? It's like, well, because it's there.
Speaker 1:Besides this, is the second time.
Speaker 2:Why'd you pay this time? Well, the cop was right there. So what? You just run by. You think he's going to chase you. He ain't going to catch you. Right, he got on black shoes. He going to take three steps and yell at you and then he's going to go right back. But what if he does catch me another cup? Then what's he going to do? Take you in and say like the judge, yeah, he's still on the train. It was like it's 35 cents. The judge is going to go like okay, does he have it? No, why? Because he's 11. He doesn't have it. No one has it, and so nobody paid to get on a train.
Speaker 2:If you walked by a fruit stand you know the thing is, if they're not listening or your man, you say like stand behind me, keep your head up. Okay, you'd go like you know those watermelons, here are they Boom, and you'd catch one and throw it back to your man. Your man is going to have it, or whatever. You did that because the mafia ran the city in construction. Half the police force were Irish, italians or Irish. They were all crooked, and so it became the culture, you know, and it was, it was so it got into that.
Speaker 1:So you know. So, yeah, you got caught up into that, so you're in there. At that time you were talking about being in there and in detention.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I was so. Yeah, so I was locked up and we were going to—and it gets late and it's always quiet at night, you know, and I'm just waiting out an arraignment. You know, so if you get locked up on Friday, depending on how many people get locked up, your arraignment might not be until Tuesday night Monday night, because you got to go through all those flows, you know, and you got to spend the weekend. So I spent the weekend at Brooklyn House of Detention, me and my man, and we had just seen Sparkle, you know, with Pretty Tony, who's a very good friend of mine now, tony King, who played in Sparkle.
Speaker 2:But and I remember it was like 3 o'clock in the morning and this guy started singing. Last night we had an argument and I'm like did I forget the radio? You got a radio up in here and his voice started singing with him from another cell. Oh, baby, we said some things I never meant and I'm going, oh, and I thought he was Smokey Robinson. I was like he could sing. His cats were like, you know, and so throughout the night different cats could blow I mean radio blow and I'm going to go like these cats were downright dangerous, but they had this gift, you know, and it's like Jodeci. Like if you met Jodeci on the streets back in the day, you got to go like, okay, these are criminals right here, okay.
Speaker 1:So okay, these are criminals right here. Okay, so they got the money and sung.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean Keith Sweat, you know Al B Shore, who had a football scholarship at the time and had a falsetto that was like ridiculous. You just had all this talent there, you know, from Mary J Blige, and you know Queen Latifah and all these angry girls that you know had surrounded by death and poverty and the whole thing, but had this gift that you know and so, yeah, it was always there. So you had this thing with sports and entertainment to where you got a rep to got to go, like you know, if a cat could do something special that you realize, you know. And I remember the first time I was around 12 and a half 13. He walked into a gym for a pickup game and I heard some of the older cats going.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, that's that kid Stogie. Yeah, he left, yeah, he's going to be nice. He's nice. And I'm going like, oh my God, they know my name because these are guys in and out of the pen. You know the whole thing, and so it was a lot of stuff like that. You know that it helps shape how you saw the world and, inevitably, how you saw yourself.
Speaker 1:You got a lot of circles that's being developed in these tender age. You got the athletics. You got the arts that's being blended in there. You got the street life that's kind of blended in there as well, and those experiences. Ultimately, you're now a professional performer and teacher and educator. That's how that's been fulfilled. What would you say, looking back on it? What's the most significant of those things of shaping you to ultimately do what you're doing now?
Speaker 2:I don't know at the time. Well, I mean, I ended up in the arts longer and and it's my career and my lifestyle, my life passion, but all of them were equally important. And it was an acting coach, al Phan, up in Harlem, who taught me that, who taught us that, taught me that because I, my mother, was a librarian, was one of her jobs. She kept you know, and so third row people would have a thing with running up the light bill, so you couldn't turn the TV on until like seven o'clock after dinner. You can come home from team and just turn the tv on. You have to read and so, like you know, going up in detroit, some days with snow days, some days or rain days, you just can go outside. So you have to read something. And same thing in the summertime okay. So if you got five, six kids here or five that can read, you gotta okay, everybody read, okay. And it's like, okay, well, no, how do I know you're reading if you're just on the book? You just could be faking it and looking at a comic book, whatever. Whatever you're reading, read it out loud. Okay, he's got a comic book, I don't care, read it out loud. So you would learn to read out loud and hearing your own voice, reading words you did not write, that were written by somebody smarter than you write, that were written by somebody smarter than you.
Speaker 2:So I developed this thing for language because I was constantly reading out loud and I had to then, when I would read a comic book, the whole thing to entertain my sisters. Like you know, um, I would you know, like if you're reading the cat in the hat, you know, um, uh, I would just to make them laugh, you know, like the cat in the hat, the cat. And he came in and he looked and he saw him stepping on the mat. And I would go like you know, and the cat in the hat. He looked and he saw him stepping on the mat. He looked and he saw him, the cat in the hat. So by then my mother or somebody else, read to me and said, no, you're not reading it right, it's like you know. So you read it. Show them how to read it, because they got used to it.
Speaker 1:And it's the same thing when I read the class, so all these things are working together. Did you go on to college? Finish high school? What was your education like? Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:I finished high school, I got a basketball scholarship. I also got a drama scholarship because I was part of the New York State Theater competition with John Hausman. I played alto saxophone. I played piano in church. Going to church was mandatory. We went to Bethany Methodist Church my mother was Episcopalian, coming out of Jamaica, and there was St Mark's Episcopal Church which we were all baptized at, and I went to Bethany Methodist Church and so you had to play piano at church and the whole thing and all of that. I played saxophone in the jazz band in school and I played on the basketball team, okay, and when I wasn't chasing girls I was stealing, because that's how we got stuff free. I was a kleptomaniac. I didn't know what that was and I said it sounded important and I said you know, I'm what she said in fourth grade and I remember Hannah Pickett said you're a kleptomaniac.
Speaker 2:And I was like thank you. I said no, you can't say it until fourth grade, but it sounded intelligent.
Speaker 1:It sounded like a kleptomaniac.
Speaker 2:I'm like, I'm a kleptomaniac.
Speaker 2:And it's like that's not a comment. I said what does it mean? It means you can't help yourself from stealing, and it's a disease. I'm going like, oh, no, no, no. I said, oh, I steal because I like getting nice stuff for free. This way it's affordable. And it was like she didn't understand it.
Speaker 2:But, from my fourth grade mind, if you got new sneakers, it's like why you got old sneakers on, you got new sneakers. It's like come meet me at Macy's. So my man would take me to Macy's and we go, I'm going to get me a new sneaker. Do what I do, okay. And so it's like yeah, what size do you wear? I wear a 10 and a half, okay. You, okay, axe for a 12. But I don't wear 12. Axe for a 12. So I'd axe for a 12. Try, okay. No, ma'am, these are too big. They're too big. I'll get you an 11. She comes up with the 11. She tries the 11 on. Okay, all right, take your time. Take your time, but you get busy Now.
Speaker 2:She's busy when she's busy and behind the counter, put your old sneakers back in the new box. Walk up to the counter when she's busy with other people, ma'am, yeah, could you hold these for me? My mom's going to come back. Okay, yeah, just put them right there on the counter. I put the new shoes right there on the counter and then we both turn and we walk out With the new shoes on. We're wearing the new shoes, my new shoes, in the box. No one's stopping us.
Speaker 1:I came in with what I came in with.
Speaker 2:I have nothing in my hand. I don't have anything, If they do catch you silly me.
Speaker 1:I forgot to take them all.
Speaker 2:That's not a whole city. Anybody got new sneakers that way, everybody. And if not, go to another store, okay, but you have to go when it's crowded. You got to go on a Saturday and you wait till it's crowded, okay, and it's like you know. Then you mull over it. Do I want black or do I want white? They only came. Do you have these in? It was like she already told you you have these in a little top. Eventually. They're not. So you know, and we had no conscience with it.
Speaker 2:But the thing that I would say why I say they were all equal is I was an Al fan. You know cause I had this, this memory? Cause I read so much, and the more you read, the more you read, the more you hear yourself speak. You develop this quest for language, and so I was in acting class and I was literally better than everybody. Just came really easy to me mm-hmm and.
Speaker 2:And so I showed up late, as usual, and I sat where near the end. I was like this, because this is how we lay down in the chair and al fan came. He said um, so he's like, okay, um, no, he was explained to the other student why they were going to have to work hard and study hard, unless you have an exceptional talent. Okay. And the guy said well, I have talent. He no, a talent is when you can do I can do the same thing he does. Why don't I have talent? He said a talent is when you can do easily, but others do hard.
Speaker 2:He said take Stogie, for instance. He has talent. He can walk up here right now and he'll be brilliant, even though he missed half the class. However, look at him. He's got no discipline. He's laying down in the chair, his feet are in the aisle. He's got M&Ms, which he probably stole from somewhere. I got to go on. M&ms didn't make a lot of noise when you grab the bag, so very easy to steal.
Speaker 2:And he said he's got tremendous talent, he's got a gift, but he's got no discipline. But if he doesn't work as hard on his discipline as you have to work on developing your talent, you're both going to fail. Wow, because nature is fair and whatever it gives you in one area, it takes away in the next. So I tolerate Stogie coming late and I tolerate the fact that he's not paying attention. Then, when it's his turn to get up here, he blows me away and he's brilliant and I see why I tolerate him, because I know nature didn't give him the discipline because it gave him talent. It didn't give him a father. He's clearly got an anger management problem and he's stealing because that watch he's wearing is probably he, probably didn't pay.
Speaker 2:He's breaking you all the way down to the core and I'm there like because he went first when I told me I handled this one, this best, the way he did it is different.
Speaker 1:so it's interesting because you have the economic aspect of it that's rooted in a stealing, because limited resources makes it more captivating to be able to get something without paying for it. Now, if you have the sufficient resources to pay for not just necessities but a reasonable sense of privileges, stealing is not on the table, and so that's being brought into it. But it also is developing you in this area of athletics and arts to sort of see which one's going to pull you here, which one's going to pull you there. Are you going to be this solely street guy or are you going to be this person that sort of uses that craftiness to develop this arts and this athletic gifts and talents, as the professor says, that God has given you? What's the next big move for you? Post-basketball, scholarship, post-school what's the next big move for you?
Speaker 2:I came to California I wanted to study drama but, being of Jamaican ancestry and third world intellect and ambition, family was like. Oh, that's not what we do in college. We don't study foolishness.
Speaker 2:We know you're brilliant, you don't need to go to school to become a better actor. So I'm going to study law and political science, Because then you could affect change and the whole thing, and I learned early on. They said in 90% of the elections you go back. I don't care which country, but primarily in America and England, the tallest, best-looking candidate always wins. Period, Period, End of story. The one time I thought it's not going to work. Now, Finally, it's going to get blown out of the water. It's not going to work". That was when John McCain, a short war hero with 30 years of politics, political experience, five years as a POW and beloved on both sides of the aisle, ran against a neophyte from Hawaii, which did not have a historical base nor a base in civil rights, named Barack Hussein Obama. And whether Jesse Jackson or Magic Johnson or Johnson from BET, everybody was like Hillary got this.
Speaker 1:Not only did he beat Hillary they said he won't win. Yeah, the first Hillary win in the primary. Yeah.
Speaker 2:He won't win in the general. Not against a war hero, not against a white man, not against this. Here he won by five million votes, wow. And I said, oh my God, the tallest, best looking candidate won again Again. Are we really that shallow? Yes, to some degree. Yes, but also, too, if they bring with them this ability to use language effectively.
Speaker 2:I had that conversation with my wife, you know. She said you said the same thing and I'd say give me the phone. I'm going to pretend I'm you and I'm going to ask for the same thing, except I'm going to be a little bit ruder, but I'm going to use the language more effectively than you do. In every conversation there's a winner, there's a loser. You're either buying something, everybody's selling something, they're selling you that we don't have it and you're not the right person for the job. And I'm selling that. Yes, I am, and I need you. You need to cut this check, okay, and it's like you may hang up thinking you didn't make a sale, but somebody bought something, okay, and so the thing is, is that what that did for me with Al was he made it all?
Speaker 2:After the class I spoke to him the acting coach, and I said why would you say I won't make it if I don't have any discipline? I don't do dope, I don't drink alcohol and I don't beat women Because I have all sisters and my father had an anger management problem and was kind of aggressive with my mother and you know we broke up at 12 and the whole thing, and that's when I started getting arrested, at 11, 12 and the whole thing, and so you know. But in New York they throw your juvenile record out when you turn 17. At that time and you get a fresh start. Oh wow, because you know you're juvenile, the whole thing.
Speaker 2:And New York knew that they were railroading black kids, like if you get picked up from a little league game. But you're the 12 year old neighbor and his 19 year old brother picks you up because it's starting to rain and he said get in the car. And he said my brother's here and he jumped in the backseat of his brother's electric deuce and a quarter okay. And five miles later he gets pulled over and it turns out his paperwork ain't right because the car is stolen. New York's will charge all of us with GTA, grand Theft Auto.
Speaker 1:Everybody in the car.
Speaker 2:And people got to go like, first of all, the short one can't reach the pedal, stokey 12 and a half, they're not driving Well, they're not driving. And they can't drive from the backseat Right. Why are you charging them with GTA? Well, because if you're in a stolen car, the whole thing, which is a terrible law. It doesn't hold up in court and it gets tossed, but it does criminalize the kid unnecessarily.
Speaker 1:And once that criminalization takes place you see what I'm saying, you're stagnant. Now your name is in there, the whole thing you know, and it's like You're in the system.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were charged with GTA, but it was no, your Honor. What year was that? What year was the defendant when that took place? Well, based on the age, okay, so it's 12 and a half. How many people were in the car when he got five? So five people can't sit in the front, so where was he? Probably? Sitting In the back? You charge a 12-year-old sitting in the back with a giant theft auto. There's a problem.
Speaker 2:So you grow up in a city that you know glorifies crime. The mafia did everything. John Gotti was a legend in that city, so you know, when he pointed out to me that character counts, this acting coach, and that I said so, did I say something that was wrong? Stogie? I said no, Al, you did not say anything that was wrong.
Speaker 2:I'm concerned with something you did say, though. You said what is that? Something you said concerns me deeply. You said that when nature gives you something, it takes something away. Gives you something, it takes something away in another area that's equal. So you'll have to work hard. He said that's exactly right. You're going to have to work twice as hard because God gave you this gift.
Speaker 2:You look at a script and in eight seconds you got to go like okay, and then you give half of it. Looking at the other actor, everybody else is like and yes, and so yeah, and pastor hurt. So when do you think you'll be back past the hurt? And they do that. You look at it and go like so when you think you'll be back past the hurt? It's that, yeah, you can emotionalize and cry on command and the whole thing. You can do all that stuff. Why? Because your emotions stick close to the core. That's the root of your anger management problem too. Because your emotions are close to the core. It sets you off quick. But as an artist, if you can use it effectively, you can move nations, you can move the crowd.
Speaker 1:Well, let's dig into your artistry. One of the most profound and wonderful things I've ever seen in human history, in my history, was your one-man show stage performance of the Life of Paul Robeson. It was a name that I was truly familiar with but did not know as much as I needed to know about him, and one day I decided to journey off and see this play. Couldn't talk anybody to go with me, I'm just going to go by myself. It was a Sunday at the Long Church, Eyes are heavy and I'm so captivated. Sleep demon just leaves me. I'm bent over in my seat. I'm amazed by your performance. I'm amazed by the life of Paul Robinson, of which I'm much more familiar with now because of you. Solely on that, that play alone. But just doing my own research and reading afterwards, what tell people about the performance, the show, and then what drew you to Paul Robeson to be the artistic expression, artistic expression of which you did that.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, but Paul Robeson is America's first black renaissance man, meaning he excelled in everything that made black folks rich and famous. He's one generation removed from slavery, born in 1898, april 9th 1898. His father was freed from slavery by Harriet Tubman herself, who brought him to Philadelphia. Wow, and so he was the last son. His father was a preacher in the First AME Church.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And his mother was a schoolteacher. The first AME church, yeah, and his mother was a schoolteacher. They were homeschooled at the time because of course they didn't have black schools for the kids. And he was the youngest born. They named him after the Apostle Paul. And he grew up and he was brilliant in school. He was an All-American football player. Basketball he ran track on the football, on the track team, he ran hurdles. Basketball he ran track on the track team, he ran hurdles and he played catch on a baseball team. He was an All-American in football and basketball and he did so well in school.
Speaker 2:He was valedictorian in 1919. Wow, that was significant, because not only was he the third African-American to ever get an academic scholarship in these United States in 1914, an academic scholarship and then he graduated magna cum laude, valedictorian. What school was this? Rutgers University. And here it was. It flew in the face of the fact that enslaved Africans were intellectually and culturally inferior, that they were not much dumber than animals, and so his journey there did that. And so, of course, when he graduated valedictorian, no one would still hire him because, still, the best job he was offered was a janitor. So his older brother suggested that he take the LSAT, go to law school admissions test. And he took that because at that time they didn't have a box where you check what your ethnicity was. And he got in Columbia University School of Law along with four other schools accepting him.
Speaker 2:But he chose to go to Columbia and he graduated in two years. When he got there they didn't believe it was him because they said no African-Americans could pass this test. How are you here? They thought you know, you're just overdressed with a janitorial job and the whole thing. Then they had to do some fact checking and rechecking drive out to Rutgers see the induction ceremony, check his transcripts.
Speaker 2:And he graduated two years later, became the first Negro attorney hired by a Manhattan law firm and they would never let him go to court because they said no judge in America will ever decide a case in favor of a Negro against a white counterpart. And so, as a result, you had all of this going on and his wife talked him into using his great bass baritone voice to sing and you know and get on stage. And one thing led to another use arts and culture as a way to uplift not only our race and society but to enlighten the world as to who they are and, like he told Harry Belafonte many years later, they won't listen to you until you get them to sing your song. And so it was important that once he did that and they saw that he could do easily what others couldn't do at all, that it helped change the game and he was part of the Renaissance.
Speaker 1:He's a Renaissance man because he excelled intellectually, he excelled in arts and he excelled in athletics. This is during the time of the Harlem Renaissance Renaissance and there's that movement taking place. Tell us a little bit about the Harlem Renaissance and how timing kind of birthed the acceleration of Paul Robeson during that time yeah, the Harlem Renaissance, where Harlem was the, the capital of everything in black America.
Speaker 2:And so you had all the musicians and the social intellectuals like James Baldwin, wb Du Bois and Douglasson, all these writers that you know it's like— by the way, wb Du Bois is a French name New Orleans, louisiana, the whole thing. The correct pronunciation is Dubois, but Du Bois insisted don't use the whole thing. The correct pronunciation is Dubois, but Du Bois insisted don't use the French pronunciation. It separates me from black people, like I'm trying to be French when we're Africans or we're nothing at all. And this embracing of our culture to where we were loved, like that, the Harlem Renaissance exposed the fact that 90, every single form of music on the planet Earth had its roots in African culture, from rock and roll to country to jazz, to which births all of blues and bluegrass and all that to R&B, to soul music, to hip hop, to everything had its roots there.
Speaker 2:And so, whether you're Nat King Cole or you know you're Cab Calloway or whatever it was, you know we just sat at a piano and we just did this beautiful work. And so the Renaissance, and why Robeson was a Renaissance is because you have left brain. You have right brain, left brain is the artistic, creative side and the right brain is the book side. The whole thing Robeson excelled at both the book side. You know an attorney in 1919 passing the bar. You know he didn't want to sing at first. They told him they said you should sing Paul and be a tier two career as a singer. He said I didn't go to law school and learn 10 languages so I could sing pretty songs for white people. He said that in the 1920s.
Speaker 1:Just threw that out. Robinson also knew 10 languages. Yes, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And he had linguistics, you know, and so he had this brilliance. You know, he helped founded the Organization of African Unity, the OAU, the Organization for African Unity, along with WB Du Bois, nnamdi Azikiwe, who later became the president of Nigeria, kwame Nkrumah, who became the president of Ghana, and Jomo Kenyatta, who later became the president of Kenya. Wow, those four men were all at the University of London at the same time, where the show went, and they named the thing after him when we were in London, and well, it was always the housing, his unit's named after Paul Robeson, there at the University of London, and he spoke these languages, he spoke Swahili and several other African tongues and all these things. And so it was Renaissance, because he had athletics, he had law, political, social justice and entertainment. These are the three fields to where African Americans blossomed and took everything, you know.
Speaker 2:And so he was Thurgood Marshall and Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis and Nat King Cole all rolled into one, you know, and so that was a tremendous feat. And so, you know, he married a beautiful black lady, eslanda, and you know, and they were together 44 years. It's a romantic romantic. The name of my show is the World is my Home. The Life of Paul Robeson, which, incidentally, we'll be playing in two weeks at the Santa Monica Playhouse on May 25th, saturday night, and Kenyon and the family here at D-Network Studios will be coming and chance and hopefully I'll be back to my best performance at any church ever was at the Mount Sinai Missionary.
Speaker 2:Baptist Church in 2019.
Speaker 2:And it was. It's just profound, it's a faith-based piece, yeah, and I've had some trouble with it because there's somebody say, like listen, we try to stay neutral with religion and so that's a luxury we, as Africans, cannot afford, because we know, okay, it was God that drives us, one of the things that helped us and why Robeson was so important. After the Harlem Renaissance, I was exposing all the brilliance after World War II. I was exposing all the brilliance after World War II. You know World War. I was so bad they called it the war to end all wars. So the leaders of the great white world, what do you think they did? Around 18 years later, they decided to have World War II.
Speaker 1:Between.
Speaker 2:World War I and World War II 97 million dead. Of the 97 million, 70 million of those were civilians. Wow, we were a brutal, brutal world at the time. On or about July 21st or 23rd, united States of America, somewhere in the desert in New Mexico, tested the atom bomb for the very first time. By August 6th, they used it. It's like a new shirt you couldn't wait to wear it. They used it. They didn't have it two weeks, right, they dropped it on Hiroshima. Yeah, atomic bomb and it just did the movie on it.
Speaker 1:What was the movie? Yeah it just came out. It had a bunch of Oscars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and really the premise of the movie was sort of liberating the decision to drop the atomic bomb, sort of the creator of it, liberating the creator of it and more getting into the nuances of dropping that atomic bomb. It certainly was new to them but it was a lot of complications taking place in the world. They never uh, hopefully should have never been done. But also, you know, truman is celebrated, um now for making that difficult decision and that's a that's an expansive conversation with in there, um, about that. You talk about something so critical that I want you to lean on a little bit more is because we're a product of our times, right, you know, you talk about, well, who's the best president of all time, and most historians would have a short list of who would qualify for that. And the reason why those individuals will qualify is because they led during a unique time. Is because they led during a unique time Abraham Lincoln, civil War, george Washington, the Revolution, fdr, world War II.
Speaker 1:Robeson is being birthed in a time where African-Americans are separating themselves artistically and intellectually in the country and in the real sense, when you study Robeson's life, he's the leader of all that. Can you talk a little bit about, a little bit more about Robeson's self-actualization. We asked you about that and I kind of want to see the mirror of that, of making that transition into the arts, but doing it in a way where there is still this intellectual consciousness of it. You think of a Kendrick Lamar, you think of a. You know other artists, modern day artists, who are not just good performers but they also make you think. They also are on performers but they also make you think. Right, they also, uh, are on. They have their hand and their ear to the street of what the social and intellectual issues are of the day, and robeson was that. Can you talk a little bit about robeson's, which ultimately will get him banished from america? Not just someone on the stage singing, um, but someone on the stage singing with meaning and purpose.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, he used the arts as I'm trying to pattern him One of the lines in the play. I never heard him say it, but it was always been my motto that it is the mission of the artist to try to save the soul of humanity. And this thing to where you can reach out and touch people. You know the success of my show the last 20 years and when I do, mass people say how's your show? So I say, how do people keep buying it? Why do they keep buying it? Why do they keep calling the camera? I said, listen, you make them laugh, you entertain them. They'll stand up and give you a standing ovation. Okay, you educate them, you touch their soul, you touch their heart, you move them to tears. Not only will they come back again but they'll cut you a check. But I say that to say because we have a social responsibility to our shared humanity. Say that again, we have a social collective responsibility to our shared humanity. And this thing to where?
Speaker 2:When Robeson was going out, where he fought for the Jews, because he realized they were the second most despised race on the planet Earth the Jews, because you realize they were the second most despised race on the planet Earth and the two most despised race, africans and Jews, created almost 99% of the music, except for opera, which was created by the Italians. Everything else classical. Everything else belongs to Africans, and you know, and some classical to the Jews, but everything else is us, you know, and some classical to the Jews, but everything else is us. So how is it that the most despised race has the most joy and made the largest cultural artistic contribution to humanity? Please tell us. Because we serve a mighty mighty God, and because God is generous in his application, because he's trying to teach us something. So when things don't go right, I often say that God's trying to teach me something. Because I know I'm blessed to be here. I've been next to guys to where the bullet swift by me and hits him and I'm going like it's like hey, who's shooting? It was like you know, oh my God, what happened, and it was like some call it luck. But I know it's like hey, who's shooting? They shooting. It was like you know, oh my god, what, and it was like some call it luck. But I know it's grace, because my grandmother would tell me that, my mother would tell me that, oh, you won't believe what happened today. I, you won't believe my luck, my luck, I got so lucky. I got so lucky. It's not luck, it's your grandma and mama's silent prayers. You ain't out there alone. You are not out there alone and this thing is, this gift. We don't understand it. There's so much we don't know.
Speaker 2:When I won the NAACP award, a young actor came up to tell me how fantastic it was in the show and everything and how. You know how I carried myself with such dignity and I dressed and I spoke and I'm like what is your name, young man? And he just played Jackie Robinson in a thing, and then Thurgood Marshall and he later played Black Panther and I'm like what a phenomenal career. And this kid is exceedingly bright and so polite. When he walked away from me I was like you know, that is quality parenting. Whoever raised that kid? No, I wasn't. He had no sense of ego or nothing. But Chadwick Boseman was like humility personified. I mean his track record. He played James Brown, thurgood Marshall and Jackie Robinson. Where'd he do that at? How could those three guys even be in the same room together? Played them all. Then the Black Panther. Then he's at $25 million a picture and I've heard many actors say, man, I wish I had a career, I wish I had this, I wish I was him, I wish I had this career, I wish I had a career, I wish I had this, I wish I was him, I wish I had this career, I wish I had this.
Speaker 2:And I said no. The ghetto taught me a long time ago Never curse your luck. We all have to run our own race, and so we don't get to decide where you cross the finish line or who pulls up, or who grabs your ankle or whose knees goes out on them. The whole thing because you got to run your own race. And that's why you pray, because there's so much you don't understand. But if you had said and God granted you, which said, you get to be Chadwick Boseman.
Speaker 2:Then, before your marriage, after you gave that beautiful commencement speech at Harvard University which touched my heart, it was so beautiful and you never got to have marry a queen and have babies with her, and even though you were making $25 million a movie and you had maybe $70 million in the bank, the bell tolls for you and he called you home. Now are you ready to go If you want his sunshine? You got to take his rain, and so you have this thing to where, and people say to me man, but your talent, you should be so much, you should be so much you should be this or I should be dead, because there are a lot of cats that you know. It's like you know, there was a rap song back in the day. My boy wrote it and it was like he said he had the heart of a lion and the courage of three, and the mind of a man much wiser than me is a soul of a brother who won't come back, who died in my arms on a railroad track. That's poetry, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm going like the heart of a lion, the courage of three, in the mind of a man much wiser than me, is a soul of a brother who won't come back, who died in my arms on a railroad track. Who's this? That was Melly Mel and Grand Mass in them. Yeah, wrote it back in the day in the early formation of rap. Yeah, okay, and I'm going like, oh, my God, right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And this thing, to where you got to go, like how did that come out of you? And it was like, but you lived it. Did that come out of you? What it is like? But you lived it. You lived a story and everybody's went to war, says, like you know, I went to the funeral today of a better guy than me. Yeah, I should have it, should have been me, he didn't deserve to die away.
Speaker 2:And so this is the thing, and this is why we pray, because it's grace. And people say, like you know, they, you know, and people have told me, stogie, you're not rich enough, black enough, jewish enough, gay enough or lucky enough to have been famous. And I'm going like that may be so, but the thing I'm saying, I'm not trying for luck, I'm not asking none of that why. I'm just waiting to be touched by grace and when the time comes it'll come. God gave me a queen, the whole thing, and, like I said, I knew I came up rough and in the streets and sometimes, like Khalil Gibran said in the prophet, that sometimes us former sinners have to knock our knocks at the door of paradise will be unheeded for a while, because this is our journey.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean and so, yeah, so it is that beautiful thing, but there is that correlation between art and humanity and I don't make a separation because it was the arts that brought me to you the whole time I'm doing that show. When you were there, you had your hat on, it was tilted to the side and because I'm on stage with the lights in my eyes, I could only see a silhouette of you. But and because I'm on stage with the lights in my eyes, I can only see a silhouette of you. But it was so gangster because your hat was tilted and you had this hat on and you had the coat on and you were leaning forward like this, you know, and everybody else was leaning in black. You know, and I'm going, like you know, was that gangster, because you know it's like I've done shows and it was like you know, and I thought like one of my Detroit players, because you know that Brooklyn, detroit thing, like Biggie used to say there was always that strong connection.
Speaker 2:And I was near the Tallahoochee River, down on the border of Georgia and Alabama, and performing for a corporate gig sold out a Black History Month gig down there, and I didn't really know, know, but three or two people in the audience who drove down from atlanta and, um, uh, one of the guys cleaning up the place, uh, saw the program and he works as a janitor and he saw the program. He said yo, homie, what I know you man, he's like uh, so we grew up together. I said no, you didn't, I ain't from down here. He said no, I'm from Brooklyn, and he was like you know.
Speaker 2:I said what's your name? And it was like, and I was like, and as he was talking, I was like Supreme, because that was a street name, and I'm like, oh man, I seen you in over 20 years, around 20, 20 years, 20 years. So now it's been around 27 and I ain't been that long. He says it's been around 28 years since I've seen you. It ain't been that long, come on. He said yeah, because I did 27 years in the pen and I've been out for around a year now wow and I said what happened.
Speaker 2:He said well, me and my mans, we were making a move to. You know, we'd broken into some drugs before we did this robbery and the police came and we got busted. So it was a regular B&E. You know, you only get three years, you'd be home in 18 months. So we had a strap.
Speaker 2:But, you know, my man came out. He said we're coming out, coming out one at a time. And so my man came out with his hands up like the whole thing, because we surrendered, because we talked about it, we're going to three, you know, be home in the year and a half or whatever come out and the cop shot him. Wow, and he was unarmed, the whole thing. So I figured, oh, we're going to hold court in the streets. So I came out blasting and shot him. So he caught a 30 plus 35 year bid. He did 27. Wow, and so he just came home. Wow, and he was like so I said to God, so he talked, and you know, and he said so. I said God, so he talked, and you know, and he said so we reacclaimed ourselves. So at the end of the day, I said so how you been man. And he looked me in my eyes and he said, hey, life is fair life is fair.
Speaker 2:I ain't done no time. I don't think life is fair. He said Stoke, not everybody go behind that wall. I ain't done, no time, I don't think life is fair. He said Stoke, not everybody that go behind that wall, come out from behind that wall. Baby, I'm here and I got to see you do this show and I'm keeping this program and I don't tell everybody. I know you, man.
Speaker 1:It did something to me Life is fair.
Speaker 2:And did something to me. Life is fair and it's all perspective.
Speaker 1:It's all perspective. It's a beautiful journey, but it's like it's all perspective.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so this thing, you know, the whole thing, you know, it's the journey, my brother, let's dig into Robeson a little bit deeper, because he became a, in the eyes of American government, a treason and things of that nature. How did that happen? How did this just stage performer let's talk about his highs. And then how did this stage performer become international stage performer, now become one of the people that's being excuse me that has to testify before the Congress House of American?
Speaker 2:Activities Committee, because he had traveled abroad Germany, berlin, the whole thing traveled abroad singing, performing he spoke some Russian, germany, berlin, the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Trevor Broad singing performing.
Speaker 2:He spoke some Russian. He lived in Russia for four years. He spoke fluent Russian actually, and there were quite a few Jamaicans there because—and he embraced socialism. Now people say, well, why would he embrace communism? I'm saying well, you have to take into consideration the social criteria we're living under. And if you're living to where the black man is three-fifths of a man and you can kill him, spit on him, do whatever, and you're not considered a murderer because he's not considered a man, this was the government. This was the government no-transcript.
Speaker 2:The Christians, the American Christians said we agree that the black man is not a man. And black Christians said all men are created equal, it says on your constitution, with certain inalienable rights life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Why does that not apply to the black man? It says because the church and the pastors said the white pastors said the pursuit of happiness. Why does that not apply to the black man? It says because the church and the pastors said the white pastor said the black man is not a man because it's written in the Bible that God made man in his own image. And God is white and the black man is not.
Speaker 1:Therefore, the black man is not an image of God.
Speaker 2:So therefore the black man is not a man" and overlooked all the historical stuff that would refute that. So socialism said.
Speaker 1:Robeson's picking up Go ahead yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so socialism said we're going to share equally amongst the people the whole thing. Socialism said we're going to share equally amongst the people the whole thing in taxation, the whole thing, so that there's an equal foundation for society, and government will do so, so that we will not have civil wars and you won't be better than the next man. Because this, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And so and that's what at that time and socialism is interchangeable with communism, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know. And so, just like capitalism and democracy tend to be, you know. Now, of course, socialism did end up getting corrupt later on, but at that point in time, for the African in America, socialism would have been like yeah, we can all eat, because separate wasn't equal Mm-hmm, separate wasn't equal at all. You see the white water fountain. You can drink the same water fountain.
Speaker 1:FBI legalizes, legitimizes their investigation of Robeson because he's embracing communism, because of the notions of the Cold War and China being a communist country and other places that were labeled as enemies, which King also was labeled as the same thing and legitimized his FBI investigation.
Speaker 2:And all of this was fraudulently done in the whole thing, and the fact that he spent time in Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, in the whole thing. But he said but over there they treat me with grace and dignity and they don't call me—they acknowledge my intellect and my talent, whereas in America my skin speaks before I do. All you see is a black man. Over there, at least, they see a man. So it was a no-brainer, okay. And then, along with it all the Jews were socialists, because Soviet Jewry was a big thing, because it was like they too were, you know. And so the thing is, it got to be so politically dangerous to be black under this social criteria that you had to really, really, you know, dig into something to say, wow, we got to, you know. And so that was part of it. So you know. So it was a big thing.
Speaker 2:And then when the Peak School, new York concert, the result in a race ride, the whole thing was called the Testified Forced House in America and refused to sign a loyalty oath to an America which said I would protect American ideology, the whole thing. And he said why would I possibly do that? America needs to sign a loyalty oath to me after all they've done so. You know so it was, but we know now that was all it was just a smokescreen for what is basically your standard racism no more than Trump and them are doing right now. It's pretty much.
Speaker 1:How would you say that African-Americans during the time embraced Robeson?
Speaker 2:They did not as much, because there's a part in the play to where Langston Hughes comes by and he tells him you know, paul, it's not that I wrote it, it's not that Negro people don't love you, they just don't have the intellect to understand you. So you're a valedictorian with a law degree. They're lucky if they got a year of high school you done traveled the world half a dozen times, over the whole world. You speak 10, 12 languages fluently, they struggling to learn one. Who they know like you, paul, who they know like you, he's like you know. He said I know it's a dark, dangerous, dark, lonely place to be A stranger in your own land amongst your own people. But who they know like you, paul, you're too smart for the room. You're too smart for the room. You're too smart for the room.
Speaker 2:And what he's saying is similar to the same problem that Dr King had when Adam Clayton Powell heard in Harlem, new York, a 26-year-old Southern preacher say I will bring down—together we will bring down the entire public transportation system of Montgomery, alabama and the entire South, without ever firing a shot or lifting a finger Like they did in biblical times. The walls of Jericho will come tumbling down and Adam Clayton. Wow, that's all. That's good rhetoric. I tell you about that young boy. I don't know what he's talking about. How are you going to do it? He's like what are they going to do? What are they going to sing it down? They're going to go.
Speaker 2:And they had laughs, you know, and it was like, yeah, yeah, let me help that girl with her blouse, okay. And it was like, you know, that was Adam Clayton Powell, and and I understood that because you can, the things you don't understand, you know with your spirit, with your regular eye, you have to understand what your spiritual eye, okay, and the things that you don't see in your mind, you feel in your heart. So what Dr King was saying, he was too smart for the room. So he trusted that system and he said in God's words that the walls of Jericho will come, the trumpets will blare, they'll march around it for a certain amount of days, and he said we will walk, we will boycott the buses, we will take their, we will not drive their buses, we'll have carpools, we'll do this, we'll do whatever it needs, but we'll never sit on their bus, we won't do it". And the economic system fell out and inside of 10 months they desegregated all of public transportation in the entire South Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so.
Speaker 2:Dr King won. That would have been a good time for Adam Clayton Powell to come out and say I didn't have the foresight nor the insight to see what this young brother was saying, but he was right and I was wrong. And like the walls of Jericho, it did come tumbling down. And not that I don't serve the same God, but this Dr King. He serves me in a mightier way and clearly he believes what I did not. Because you know, like he said, you know the doubting Thomas, you know you have felt, so now you believe.
Speaker 2:but blessed are they that believe and have not seen and so you know, and it was, but so it's a beautiful thing. It's the same thing with Robeson, yeah, when, you know, it was like he was so light years ahead of this time with that, you know, and yet still he understood their faults and he understood why, he understood the why, and he know that. It's not that you don't love me, you just have not yet been taught how and you know, and so it's yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, robeson, unique background intellectually, background intellectually, and then what started as music turned into arts selling out across the world, ultimately being outlawed and banished by the American governmental system. And you do see that pattern and much of that mimic in the life of King with Robeson. But there's another parallel that you make in your Q&A time, in your play with Robeson with another figure, that is Barack Obama. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, I say that without Paul Robeson there would not have been a Barack Obama, because which seems peculiar since they never met but in his time Robeson was the most influential artist of his time and he did what I try to do I'm trying to do currently is to influence other artists, you know, and he did so. His number one mentee was none other than the great Jamaican Harry Belafonte and his best friend at the time and lifelong best friend, sidney Poitier. And when Bill Bojangles Robinson took Paul Rolson with him because he was a Negro League millionaire, bill Bojangles Robinson he said listen, branch Rickey needs to, you know. So I'm going to take Big Paul with me, because Big Paul got that voice and Big Paul will intellectually break down whatever it is that I can, bill Paul. So he went there and he said listen, you need to get a black kid in the major league because you know we got guys that are way better than the guys you got right now playing, you know. So we can't bring them all in. We can't bring five, bring ten, bring three, bring two, we'll bring one".
Speaker 2:They decided they would bring Jackie Robinson. So Bill sent Paul to go talk to Jackie and he came out here to Pasadena, california, to get the son of Texas Louisiana slaves, their grandson, to come join them. So Jackie Robinson became a mentee of Robeson as well, and he taught them several things. Among them, you know that education was the number one way to advance in the society, that educated societies do less damage to their fellow men and have a greater understanding and their place in our shared humanity. He also taught them that the continental African and the African American were one people, and there's a reason why half of Ghana looks like you. Okay, reverend, because you know you're from the Ashanti tribe.
Speaker 1:Probably, I don't know if you know, have you done that? I have not. I have not.
Speaker 2:But you're from the Ashanti tribe, so your head is rounded the whole thing and you have a joyful personality that is instantaneously quick. I have some of that, but I'm a bit more deviant. I'm Kenyan ancestry, my face is a little bit more in that regard, and we're a little taller and leaner. Okay, you will muscle up fast enough, but they're things you know. It's like if I was a Maasai you would see me really tall and the whole thing. The neck is a little bit longer Somali, the whole thing Ethiopian. So there are traits Nevertheless.
Speaker 2:So Robeson told him that the African and the continental African were one people. The third thing he taught him was that every successful African American has a cultural and moral obligation to try to make life better for somebody else, particularly someone who looks like them on the African continent, to uplift our race. So in 1959, his three mentees, sidney Poitier, belafonte and Jack Robinson, started a foundation to pay for college education for well-deserving kids on the African continent, but first they had to find a university that would host them. All of them said no, they couldn't. But our newest state was Hawaii, and Hawaii said, hey, we haven't been part of America long enough to learn to hate anybody. We're the 50th state. They're kind of brown, we're kind of brown. Hey, you can send them here. So they decided we'll send them to Hawaii. So we had to find a student.
Speaker 2:So the three of them took off. They started in West Africa, went through West Africa, central Africa, all the way to East Africa. The requirements were you got to speak fluent English, pass the college entrance examination and be a high school graduate. They found 77 students in 18 African nations and they brought them all to University of Hawaii to study. Among them was a brilliant kid from the mountainsides of Kenya, a Muslim kid by the name of Barack Hussein Obama. He was brilliant in math and science. He studied global economics. And Barack Hussein Obama. That's how he got to University of Hawaii. His second year there he started dating a white student by the name of Anne Dunnell and they had a baby. They fell in love and people say if I ain't any black, right, he's from Africa, it's like, because it's 1959. It's Hawaii, ain't no black girls here?
Speaker 2:So leave him alone, leave him alone and they had a baby and he named his firstborn son. They got married right at first trimester and he named his firstborn son after him, Barack Hussein Obama. And here he was born, in Africa, I mean in Hawaii, In Hawaii, Okay, and that's how he got there. Now, that unique set of circumstances, God was going to take him. Alaska has more black people than Hawaii does, Because Alaska had military connection as well and they just it's not as expensive to live there. Hawaii is very expensive, Nevertheless, that's where our first black president ended up, coming from the state with the least amount of black folks To this day.
Speaker 2:Right now and I performed in Hawaii several times it's one and a half percent of black folks in Hawaii. And so that was the connection. And so, had Robeson not told his mentees that and suggested they start this foundation to go all the way there, he wouldn't have bought Obama's daddy to meet his mom in Hawaii to make love, get married and have a baby to create him. And those unique set of circumstances is what did it? You know and God just does not make any junk the unique, the turns that it takes. You know what I mean. It's just like you know, we follow it.
Speaker 1:That's such a profound story. It shows you how we are interdependent and none of our stories are our stories. We are dependent on other people, other circumstances, other mentors and mentees and so on and so on. And so it's just amazing, probably one of the most kept secrets, well-kept secrets in modern American history, just not to say on top of that modern African-American history, just not on top of modern African-American history. You mentioned 1948. You mentioned the migration of back to Israel. One of the hot topics today is the Palestinian-Israelite-Israelian conflict that is taking place, I believe even on today. There were some bodies found of possible hostages, some bodies found of possible hostages. Start with that history of how this conflict even started, with World War II and the more Caucasian Israelites being brought back to Israel this is your land, palestine being there at that point For a while, those Israelites having the same military backing of those who won World War II. Just go into those nuances and maybe give us your commentary on what's taking place in the Middle East today.
Speaker 2:Well, humbly, in my opinion, and I understand it's—and I have not spent—I'm not a scholar on that issue, the whole thing but I do know in 1948 that the state was created by the United Kingdom and America after World War II to place Jews there and open it up to them, that anyone can come there and create statehood.
Speaker 2:But since Palestine was already there—and I'm not saying the Jews don't have a right to be there, but it has to be a two-state solution and it has to be treated with some degree of equity.
Speaker 2:And when it comes in, and they have so much help from abroad America and England and so much money, like the $100 billion that we're giving them and their two people, and the amount of foreign aid that they get every single year $15 billion, $30 billion, and it's 2 billion people it creates an inequity and a sense of entitlement that tends to rob you of your character over a period of time. And so the thing is is this? Is that I don't spend a lot of time on that because, as an African in America, we have our own issues and I'm more concerned with our issues than someone else's. However, the thing is is this I do know for a fact 38,000 children have been died since this conflict started seven months ago. 38,000? Yes, wow. That is ethnic cleansing and removing a generation, because when they got there they were the minority and they're trying to fix that.
Speaker 1:When they got there, Israel was the minority.
Speaker 2:Right, the minority, and they're trying to balance that out. It becomes very hard to have a two-state solution and to get forgiveness from a people once you've killed so many of their children, giving them more bombs against someone that nowthey're fighting Hamas. They say Israel created Hamas because they did not want to deal with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Army. They had an army, the PLA, the Palestinian Liberation Army, and a leader in Yasser Arafat. Israel helped through different mechanisms, creating Hamas, which was scattered and you don't know who the leader is for a reason, and now it's gone bad. At the end of the day, god will step in and try to help things out. My only concern is this that America, the West as well as Jews, don't weaponize a European Holocaust in 1945 to justify a Palestinian Holocaust today, because the world certainly doesn't need any more hate in it. They are not natural enemies. They can live together. They're the only people that want that stretch of land, it's dusty.
Speaker 2:It's not attractive. I don't know anyone who says let's go there for our honeymoon or to hang out, unless you're from there. It's not Bahamas, it's not you know. But I'm just saying. And in Iraq and all over the Middle East, muslims and Jews live together. They have the same dietary constraints and similar religious practices. They are not natural enemies To say they're anti-Semitic. They're both Semitic people. So when you say a Semitic person is being anti-Semitic against another Semitic tribe while you're stealing their land, it's a delicate— what does it mean to be Semitic?
Speaker 2:From the Middle East and from that area of the country to where only Arabs and Muslims live. These are all the descendants of Abraham, as are all nations to some degree, and so to some degree, all of the religions have a right to be there. Christians, muslims and Jews, all have sacred places there. They should try to, but you can't indiscriminately kill. There's a school of thought that says this was set up so that they can make this move and, for once and for all, wipe them out. And if you say well, why would they say that? You say well? Because it wasn't their Sabbath, october 7th, it was a Sunday, their day off, everybody's home, their early to rise group. Normally on a day if five Palestinians get by that gate guard gate from Gaza into Israel, that's considered a breach. That five got through On October 7th, on a Sunday morning. Over 300 apparently got through, went to a concert, killed a bunch of people, went into people's homes and the kibbutz and all those killed over a thousand people, then videotaped it and kidnapped over 200 people and got all of them got back safely.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile I still can't get out of a Walmart with a loaf of bread. I'm going like God's name. Did this happen? Well, neither US nor Israel intelligence saw this coming. Well, maybe you should stop calling it intelligence. Then I'm just saying, right, let's not call it that, okay. Okay, because I'm like they didn't get over 1,200 people that got murdered. So I don't know if they sacrificed them so they can kill 50,000 and destroy all of their places and push them back, but I'm just saying that all of their places and push them back. But I'm just saying that?
Speaker 1:That's what you're saying. That attack was allowed to happen to legitimize the war thereafter, and the reason why we're doing this is because we're retaliating from something that they allowed to happen. Just cause, just cause. How do these 200 individuals come in and do all that without any repercussion or recourse?
Speaker 2:And so that you could overreact. It's the old in the ghetto, you know, when he walks by, push him into me. There's like you're just going to hit me like this. And then you start fighting the guy because your buddy pushed him into you. So he said he hit me first. So now I have a reason to defend myself. So now, and you beat him to death, Now he's in a hospital, in the emergency room, and you're like well, he did hit him first. Yeah, that's what everyone says.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the case, that's, that's, that's Well they've been because, listen, you're bombing hospitals, you're bombing places, they're the whole thing. Okay, here's the other thing is this Then you're denying them food. You killed the aid workers that were coming in. They're from another country, they're third-party humanitarian workers. You killed seven of them. They're saying, like we were clearly marked and we told you we were coming. You knew we weren't soldiers. We have food, yet you blew us up. Now here's my thing If they have, do you have 200 of my hostages? I know that if I don't give you food, you're not going to be while you're hungry, say I'm starving, but here you eat my hostage. There's so many things that just I'm going like bombs don't happen If you indiscriminately bomb. If you knew where your hostages were, then go get them. But if you indiscriminately bomb, how do you know you're not bombing where the hostages are?
Speaker 1:Yeah, bullets don't have a name. Certainly bombs don't have any names.
Speaker 2:There's just so many things that are there, but my thing is this I don't think that I'm going to solve a 60-year dispute.
Speaker 1:I don't think that I'm going to solve a 60-year dispute.
Speaker 2:Okay, a 70-year dispute, whatever. But here's my thing is this You're not going to go away. They're not going away and they were there first or whatever, but it doesn't matter. You both have a right to be there. You both have a right to exist. Why can't you figure that part of it out? Because somehow you accepted that Germany didn't want you and you let them have their way. You accepted that Hungary and Russia and those people didn't want you. You allowed them to have their way. Then you impose yourself upon a weaker group of people who were not paying attention at all and go like what just happened. And now you turn this year and you move them to the work, and so there's so much going on that I think that you know that along the way, someone has and should have been done in the seventies, when Clinton or whoever it was, had them shake hands, the SRR fight and say at some point, you have to you know it needs that region needs a Nelson Mandela, it needs a Mahana Gandhi, it needs that, that.
Speaker 1:That region needs a nelson mandela, needs a mahana gandhi, it needs a marlon king jr. Exactly, but at some point.
Speaker 2:you have to be less arrogant and know that I'm not going to be getting 100 billion dollars the second that war starts from the, from my great big brother america. They're going to cut me this blank check 100 billion dollars and then provide me airspace and thing to protect me, because then you don't have a reason to negotiate. There was a time when two Christian religions Catholics and Protestants in Belfast, ireland and England, clashed and I'm going like they're the same damn religion. They were blowing up each other's churches and I'm going like how is that possible? You read from the same book. It went on for 40 years. They were killing each other's children. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, even though there's distinctions between Catholic and Protestants, that battle wasn't about those distinctions. It wasn't about we're justification by faith alone and you're by. You know works and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:I didn't think they even went to church. And you know that migration as well we don't have time to get into it also led to Irish Americans and Italian Americans coming to America and Jewish Americans coming to America being second-class citizens like African Americans. However, at some point them uniting America, being second-class citizens like African-Americans. However, at some point them uniting with what we would call British Americans over here. And when they became united with them after their time of persecution, they didn't remember African-Americans who helped them, let freedom ring. These were the people that you see.
Speaker 1:You didn't just see white people marching with King.
Speaker 1:There was a certain sect of white people Catholics, irish, jewish people because they were also being villainized and outcast and once they got their liberation, they became part of some of them and there's outliers to every group, but the majority of them became part of the system themselves and persecutors themselves, and I think that's a part of the tension that you see, with a lot of African-American people having empathy.
Speaker 1:Sometimes that empathy is blind empathy, but empathy nonetheless for Palestinians, because they understand how that works as it relates to being in power and not having that same political and military power as others, and how that could equate to even though ideology wise, most African-Americans, even though our skin is darker, most African-Americans, even though our skin is darker, is like their skin is dark, like ours Not as dark but darker, and you see white people vitalizing darker people. Ideology wise Palestinians are totally a big gap between African-Americans and many of the university students who are protesting for Palestine on this issue would probably differ with them as it relates to LGBTQIA+ and so on and so on, religiously and so on. So those factors are interesting as well and makes it more nuanced Right are interesting as well and makes it more nuanced.
Speaker 2:Right, you know, and, but like I say, I embrace everyone's entitled to their space, but the thing is this those distinctions don't lead to a loss of life.
Speaker 1:No, no, that's the problem, and the thing is over there is that I'm going like?
Speaker 2:why are you starving their children while your children eat?
Speaker 2:Yeah, peace is the issue? I think that biblical times that at some point there's going to be retribution for your evil and that you're over. You know you're sledgehammering. You know it's like it was like the baby kept crying so I stabbed it because it wouldn't shut up. I'm going like now, what do you think this baby's going to do? Now it's bleeding.
Speaker 2:So my whole thing is that, as things go on, it's yeah, it is, it's tremendously unfortunate and you have to. But just like the Protestant and the Catholic figured it out, now and now they look back on it with shame and go back, just like South Africa right now, okay, uh, f mandela and all the years old thing that at the end of the day, they still have nothing and it didn't gain anything by it. Just like you know, um, uh, when we were five percent of the population outside of some, you know, and they're, you know, like I said, outliers and idiots that you know still come with it's kanye west, different things that turn on the thing. You look and you say, um, how can you? You know, because, uh, dr king said something, you know, which was similar to what the acting coach said to me. He said, uh, every evil brings with it the seed of its own destruction.
Speaker 2:every evil brings the seed of its own destruction, and it was so profound because when I went back to go back to the conversation with the acting coach, al Phan, he told me about my discipline and when God gives something to you, I take something else away that you have to work equally as hard as it. No one's getting a free pass that you still have to put into work, ok, and every time you gain something. Because at that time the watch thing was a big thing in New York, the whole thing, the fake Rolexes and the whole thing, right and so. And I remembered one time, you know, and he said why do you always talk about my watch?
Speaker 2:And he's like because you wear watches that if you could, you can't afford those. And I'm like, so they're stealing your neighborhood? Of course they do. And I'm like why? Because I want you to be better, because you're better, I want you to lose sight of your gift. Wow, and he's like you know, and so the watch, he's like you know. But he said anytime you steal something, whether you know it or not, you lose something of equal or greater value.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a great place to end. Sadly, we're out of time and we have to bring you back to continue this conversation. We thank you so much for blessing us with your presence and allowing us to dive into these issues with you. Learn more about yourself, more about the one man stage show. You're more than that. You have your book, that's out as well.
Speaker 1:We want to promote that. Promote where people can find you, how they can reach you. You need to bring this man to your church, to your university, to your school wherever, to your church, to your university, to your school, wherever there is community gathering civil gathering.
Speaker 2:Stoke of King Island needs to be there. One man show and also the book. This is the book the God Stops Smiling. It's a novel, yes, it's a novel. It's a story of love and friendship and you know, and about how, as you, a couple of kids that went pro early and they thought all their dreams came true because they had the money, and you know the hypocrisy of wealth and fame in a world where you know. Basically, you know, you think you have everything it's a beautiful story of and it's going to someday be on one of the streamers.
Speaker 2:And so I have an autographed copy here for a mentor, the legendary Dr George Hurt. The foreword is by my mentor and great friend who recently passed away. I'll be speaking at his funeral in a couple of weeks. His memorial, Louis Gossett Jr, who grew up in Brooklyn, new York, as I did, and, in addition to being on Broadway early, played college basketball and was Lou Gossett played well enough to where the Knicks invited him to camp the trial for the Knicks when he got out of college. But he had so many Broadway things going on. But he's been wonderful to me. When he was in I was in Ghana. He had the ambassador send a car for me to pick me up and he looked out for me all over the place and he took the time to write the forward to that book there for me, and so it's-.
Speaker 1:Can't wait to dive into this. That's a menacing, you know it's Please support Profane.
Speaker 2:It's available on Amazon and all your thing. The God Stopped Smiling. Stogie, kenyatta and I'm at the Santa Monica Playhouse on the 25th. I'm on all your social media platforms Stogie, s-t-o-g-i-e, kenyatta, k-e-n-y-a-t-t-a and, god willing, hopefully sometime, maybe hopefully Juneteenth I would love to be back at the legendary Mount Sinai. We have to set that up. If not this year, next year we're going to make it a staple.
Speaker 1:That's a good staple program to have. Thank you so much for tuning in to Nuance Conversation. Please look out for upcoming episodes. Please support us. Find out more information on our platform, how you can partner with this podcast, nuance Conversations, where we try to be honest, open and transparent. Hot conversations, honest, open and transparent as we talk about religion, politics, social norms and pop culture. God bless you.