Host: Dame Wilburn

Dame: [00:00:02] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host, Dame Wilburn. This week, we're celebrating Black History Month with two stories about doing the work to forge a brighter future. 

When I was little, my parents and I were driving to Georgia to see my family and we stopped in a restaurant in Tennessee. The waitress behind the counter took one look at us and said, "We don't serve your kind here." That wasn't that long ago. 

Black History Month can seem commercial at times, but the stories and the history that it connects us to is vital for who we are and where we're going. Because it's not just Black history, it's our collective history. 

So, today, first up, we have Devan Sandiford. Devan told this story at a StorySLAM in Manhattan, where the theme of the night was Fraud. Here's Devan, live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause]

Devan: [00:01:00] Hi, everyone. [chuckles] Two months ago, I'm walking along a river in France with my family. And my seven-year-old son looks up at me and asks me, "Dad, why didn't you report those cops?" I'm one of those people that tries to make the world a better place, and I sometimes do it in really annoying ways. So, the first thing I thought was to tell him, "You can't just say things out of the blue and expect people to know what you're talking about." [audience chuckle] But I actually did know what he was talking about, and I realized that there was probably a bigger lesson that I needed to teach him. And that was a lesson about being brown in the world.

I had been doing this with him since he was a very little kid, probably three or four years old, when I started telling him stories about all the discrimination in my life. I told him about the time where I was just running down the street and a cop stopped me to ask me what I'm running from. "No, I'm just jogging." I told him about the time where I'm in a store, and a store owner came up to me and told me that he has me on video stealing from his store and he makes me empty my pockets in the middle of the store to find I haven't stolen anything. My pockets are empty.

But his favorite story, and I don't know why he rates these horrible moments in my life, but [audience chuckle] his favorite story is actually when I was 21 years old and I was in a hotel parking lot where I had to stay when I was in electrical engineering school and I hadn't found an apartment yet. I was just standing next to my car getting ready to go into the hotel and a cop car pulls up. The next thing I know, there's four cop cars and six cops. They're all surrounding me with their bright lights. I'm thinking to myself, man, am I America's most wanted or what is this? But I actually hadn't committed any crime. I hadn't even gotten a ticket at this point, so I was pretty sure this was just another case of racial profiling.

The cop comes up to me and asks me to search my car. I know I can tell him no, but I decide I don't want to seem more suspicious, so I'll just let him search through the car. He searches through the car and through the trunk and everything. After 10-15 minutes of having me sit on the curb, he comes back and says, "You're good to go. I just had to respond to a call about a suspicious person. Since you backed your car into your parking spot, I thought you maybe were trying to get away from me," which seems perfectly a good way to get away from somebody by slowly backing in your car and getting out. [audience laughter] But I just brushed it off and went into the hotel.

All the workers in there knew me, because I had been staying there a few nights, and they were all shocked. And the first thing they asked me was, "Do you want to report this incident?" And I thought to myself, no, I've been having these incidents for most of my life. Why would I report it? Nothing I say is going to change what happened. Why would I say anything? So, on that day, when I'm walking on the river with my son, I had been telling him that same answer for the last three or four years and I told him the same answer again. Nothing's going to happen if I say it. 

Except on this day, I had a lot of extra time to talk to him, because we were walking along the river on vacation. I decided to tell him a full story about the history of our country, and slave trade, and slavery and segregation. I did the whole thing. I went through everything. It was a 45-minute discussion back and forth. He was asking me questions. He was really into it. After the conversation, I felt really good that I had done what I was supposed to do. I had prepared him to have brown skin. 

Two weeks later, I'm getting into a shuttle bus in the south of France to pick up a rental car at the airport. I'm not in a rush. I don't have any bags. We're just getting a rental car to get around down there. I decide I'm just going to start writing on my phone. So, I pull up my phone and I start writing. And then, I hear some people talking in English without an accent. And I'm like, "Oh, wow, I've been here for three weeks. I don't think I've heard anybody talking English without an accent other than the people in my family." 

So, I looked up to see what they look like, and I see a woman with brown hair and beautiful blue eyes and her husband, who's over 6 feet with blonde hair and brown eyes. And in his arms, he's carrying their son, who looks exactly like his mom with blue eyes, except he has blonde hair. And I'm thinking, oh, what a lovely family, not thinking too much of it. As I start to go look back at my phone, I see that the pocket of his backpack is wide open, and his passports are in there. So, I had a decision. I thought I could help, but I don't want to get in the middle of things. I just want to stay on the outside. 

But then, I thought I would want someone to tell me, like, I don't want to lose my passport. So, let me just tap him and I told him, "Your backpack pocket is open." He nodded a thank you. He's got his son in his arm, so he's trying to reach it, but he can't reach around the side. He switches the son to his other arm and he's trying to reach it. And finally, I'm like, "I'll just get that for you." I zip it shut for him and I go back to my writing, thinking it's over.

But the next thing I hear is his wife asking, "Honey, where's your wallet?" He taps his pocket and says, "It's here." And then, she leans in to whisper something in his ear, but tries to play it off like she's kissing him on the cheek. I don't know exactly what she said, but I know exactly what's coming. And sure enough, he puts his son down on their suitcase and he turns his backpack away from me and into the crowd of people on the other side of him. I don't know what to do and I just think to myself, just another moment. I try and laugh it off. 

But as I try to go back to my phone, I look down and I see the three or four-year-old boy looking up at me with his deep blue eyes. I can see he's wondering what about me made me a bad person or suspicious. I realized that even a small whisper can have a big impact in a person's life. I realized that I have been a fraud, that I've been telling my son that his words don't matter. I thought I was preparing him to live in his brown skin, but I had just been lying to myself this whole time. 

When I got into the rental car, I wanted to cry, but I knew I couldn't. I knew I needed to undo what I had done. So, as I drove to meet up with my family, I imagined the next time my seven-year-old son asked me, "Dad, why didn't you report those cops?" But this time, I wouldn't say my words didn't matter. I would kneel down next to him and tell him, "Son, I was wrong. I should have told somebody that what those cops did was wrong. I should have told somebody that it's not okay to surround somebody who hasn't done anything wrong and make them feel like a criminal. And I should have never told you that your words don't matter. And now, if you ever have a story, even if you think it's small, I need you to tell that story, because you never know when the smallest story is going to have a big impact in someone else' life." Thank you.

[cheers and applause] 

Dame: [00:08:05] That was Devan Sandiford. Devan is a writer, storyteller and public speaker living in Brooklyn, New York. He has been featured in The Washington Post, Speak Up Storytelling, The Womanity Project, Writing Class Radio and the Love Hurts Podcast. He is also the founder of Unreeling Storytelling, which provides a platform and workshops for hidden perspectives. 

After hearing this story, we wanted to learn more about Devan's background and about that conversation with his son. Here's Devan.

Devan: [00:08:36] As I was thinking about it, it occurred to me that I didn't speak up, because racial profiling and bias were a normal part of life. This really hit me hard as a father, because for three or four years, I knew I had been telling my son to expect people to treat you like less and that this is normal. 

When I was a child, we talked about race a lot in my house, because my uncle was actually shot and killed by the police when I was young. So, my mom always made sure that I knew and that my siblings knew that being Black meant people were looking at us differently and we had to do better just to have a chance, really, to be equal. 

After the bus incident, I knew I had to have the conversation with my son and I wanted to tell him the power our words have using the mom's whisper and how much it set in motion. To his original question, I did just tell him outright that I was wrong for not reporting the cops, and I certainly should have let the hotel workers file the incident. My son interjected and he thought I should be okay to challenge the police officers even directly to their face. Truthfully, I didn't know how to answer this, because I think he's right and that I should be able to. But the decision to speak up in that moment can be life or death for a person of color.

Dame: [00:10:00] That was Devan Sandiford. To see a photo of Devan and his son, head to our website, themoth.org. 

Up next, a story from Reverend Al Sharpton. Just so that everybody knows, I never thought in my life I'd be introducing Al Sharpton. Reverend Sharpton told this story at a Moth Mainstage years ago in the New York Public Library, where the theme of the night was OMG: Stories of the Sacred. Here's Reverend Al Sharpton, live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause] 

Rev. Al Sharpton: [00:10:42] I was born and raised in Brooklyn and started-

[applause] 

-preaching very young. My mother took me to a Pentecostal church called Washington Temple Church of God in Christ. When I was three years old, I was baptized, having no idea what it meant, but knowing that my mother said, "That's what we do." And for some reason, I became enamored with the bishop. I would come home every Sunday, and line up my sister's dolls, and put on my mother's bathrobe [audience chuckle] and preach to my sister's dolls [audience laughter], whatever the bishop had preached. Many years later now, I realized they were my best audience. [audience laughter] 

I eventually convinced a bishop to let me preach in church. I grew up in my young boy years, a boy preacher, to the point that when I was nine, I preached at the World's Fair here near LaGuardia Airport. You can see the grounds. I met a singer that night and the singer told me, "The day will come, young man, that you will be able to really know what you believe, not just what you preach. You're preaching now out of talent, but you will one day really find conviction." I had no idea at nine years old what she was talking about. But as time went on and I got into my teen years, I decided that I did not want to be a pastor of a congregation or church. I wanted to be committed to social justice. 

It was the end of the 1960s and everyone in my school, Tilden High School at that time in Brooklyn, was either in the anti-war movement or a Panther or some kind of activist. And because I was a minister, I was enamored with, at that point, Martin Luther King Jr., who had just been killed and I wanted to do social justice. So, I grew up in the aftermath of the King movement, always remembering the admonition of this gospel singer. So, I felt I had my conviction, I knew what my calling was. Years went by, and I became known for social justice work. 

We're in January now, 1991, I'm in my mid-30s. A young man had been killed in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn in a racial murder. His name, Yusuf Hawkins. Killed because at that time, some felt that if you had a certain skin color, you shouldn't be in their neighborhood. His father called me, I responded. We went for weeks and marched through the streets of Bensonhurst, Blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos demanding justice for Yusuf Hawkins. It brought a lot of national attention, and it brought a lot of response. It also brought some hate. People would stand on the side and call us names and throw watermelons. But that was the idea, to show, to bring out, as King had done in the 1960s, this ugliness that we needed to heal. 

It was a Saturday morning in January of 1991, and I was riding to the march. As we pulled up to get out of the car, police around us. About 500 protesters lining up, police barricading those that were going to taunt us. I got out of the car. I was a little heavier then, and I had on a jogging suit and a medallion. I got out of the car and walked to the front of the line, and I felt something brush past me. I felt like I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw a man whose face was contorted with hate and I said, “He punched me.” I looked down, and before I realized it, there was a knife sticking out of my chest. 

Instinctively, I grabbed the knife. When I grabbed the knife, the cold air hit the wound, and I went down to my knees and people started screaming. With all of that police presence, there was no ambulance. They put me in the front seat of a car. They told one of the policemen, "Drive him to the hospital. We'll put a police car in front of you and one behind you. We don't have time to wait on the ambulance." So, we got in the car. I'm sitting on the front seat bleeding, and there was a police car in front, one behind. The police officer said, "Are you all right?" I said, "I think I am." He says, "Well, hold on, because I'm really not good at driving." So, I said-- [audience laughter] I said, "That's very encouraging." [audience laughter]

So, as we held on to Coney Island Hospital, I went rushed into surgery. I spent the night saying, "Now, I know what conviction is. Now, I know what it really means to answer a call." Because I had no doubt, even though I had two young daughters, one is with me tonight, that I was not going to stop in social justice. And no matter what happened, if they told me my lungs were punctured or whatever, I was going to keep fighting. Now, I knew what this gospel singer was saying to me when I was nine years old. 

I got out of the hospital. They arrested the young man. He was charged with attempted murder and assault. They scheduled his trial. I remember as it rolled on a few months toward the trial, I was talking with my mother, who had then moved to Alabama. And she said, "What happened to the young man that stabbed you?" I said, "It's funny you asked me that. He's going to trial about two weeks." She says, "Oh, are you going to forgive him?" I said, "Forgive him? He tried to kill me." She said, "But I thought you were convicted, that you wanted to be like Dr. King." I said, "Well, I was." She said, "Well, what do you think he would do?" I said, "I don't know." And she says, "I was just asking." [audience laughter] 

So, I began researching, and I found out in 1958, 1959, Dr. King had been stabbed by a Black woman in Harlem who was deranged, and he forgave her. I knew then that the real calling was not the drama of being stabbed and surviving, the real drama is what you do when the drama is over and the reactions are all settled. I got up early that morning, and went to the courthouse and asked the judge to pardon my attempted killer. I wanted to forgive him, because I had come to that same courthouse on behalf of so many that was my color and my kind that also were guilty of crimes, and I asked for leniency for them and I wanted leniency for him.

The judge said it was very noble of me, but he had to pay for his deeds and he sentenced him to jail for nine years. I felt content that I had done my duty and was closer to where I should be. I went on about my business and some other cases, some other causes. But one day, to my surprise, I got a letter from the young man. His name was Michael Riccardi. And he said that he wanted to write me to thank me, not only because I asked for leniency, I guess because he didn't get it, he couldn't really thank me, he wanted to thank me because he said that he came from a troubled home, his father was an alcoholic, he was drunk, he says, but "I'm not making excuses." 

He says “but it occurred to me, sitting here in jail, that no one ever stood up and spoke for me in my life until you walked in court and spoke for me. And I wanted to thank you for being the first person to speak for me in life and to encourage you to always speak up for people that no one would speak up for.” I read the letter, put it away, took it out a couple of days later, read it again and I wrote back to him. We began exchanging several letters. 

After a couple of months, I decided that I would go and visit him in jail. I think the most difficult thing I ever did was to go to the jail, to sit and cross the table from a man that tried to take my life. Even with all of the bombast and all of the flamboyance that me and my brother are known for, [audience laughter] I trembled a little walking in that day to the visitors lounge in upstate New York. When they brought him down, and we sat there and talked and I tried to adjust to it. He finally, when our visit was over, said to me, "I thank you because I needed this to pick up when I get out of here with life that you came and forgave me." I told him, "I really didn't come for you. I came for me. I had to find whether I was convicted or just talented."

You never will know until you're faced with something that you don't control and that is not scripted. I told him, "I learned the lesson because of you. You can't pass a test you never take. And sometimes those that bring you to the point of death will help you discover the point of life." I shook his hand. I walked away convicted. He was the last person that it mattered to me what he thought of me. I knew now what I thought of myself. 

In the remaining days, I've tried to know that conviction. And speaking for those that had no one to speak for, even if it's those that try to harm you, is the reason I was here. And I wanted to help others find out the reason they were here. And that is my embracing the sacred, what is sacred to me. The pursuit of justice by first being just with myself and just with others. And now, I want to share that with you, something I've never shared before, even with my brother. [audience laughter] Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

Dame: [00:22:46] That was Reverend Al Sharpton. Reverend Sharpton is a Baptist minister, civil rights activist, author, radio host and president of the National Action Network, a not-for-profit civil rights organization based in Harlem, New York. 

That's all for us this week. Until next time, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week.

Julia: [00:23:08] Dame Wilburn is a longtime storyteller and host at The Moth. She's also the Chief Marketing Director for Twisted Willow Soap Company and host of the podcast, Dame's Eclectic Brain.

Dame: [00:23:18] Podcast production by Julia Purcell, with help from Rowan Niemisto at WDET. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.