Bucky Neal and Brenda Brown-Grooms

00:15 I'm Brenda brown-grooms. I'm 65 years old today is the 7th of October 2020. I'm in Charlottesville, Virginia on my partner is Bucking and we are in the one small step conversation process.

00:38 My name is Bucky. My name is Bucky Neal. I'm 65 years old. Today is Wednesday, October 7th, 2020 at home in Richmond, Virginia. Brenda is by one small step partner and my relationship to her has been briefed about 5 minutes ago online here for the conversation.

01:27 Yes.

01:30 Brenda why did you want to do this this interview today?

01:35 I'm doing this is you today because it is completely in line with the work that I do everyday of my life. I am I'm possessed by the idea that human beings in this epic of History need to learn how to have hard conversations with each other in this country. Particularly. We put off card conversation way too long. And the time is now we can't put it off anymore. So Bucky what did you want to have this into interview today?

02:10 For much the same reason brand up some years back and having hard conversations with people if they weren't the same color as me turns out those were fluff, but still I think I think we got to know each other and his people and not villainize each other so we can talk about these hard things particularly about

02:44 The particular racial issues

02:50 Yeah, yeah.

03:09 Bucky usual bio I grew up in Richmond, Virginia and have lived here all my life, but I have deep family route to North Carolina. I went to Collegiate Davidson College and I've worked in several different roles Banker Law Firm administrator insurance agent founding Headmaster Westminster Academy last year and economic development officer. I'm semi-retired and then I'm researching black history stories. They didn't teach little white boys like me, especially about the people enslaved by my ancestors. I'm intrigued by your wanting to know about the story. No white boys like you were not taught about the people enslaved by your ancestor.

03:57 Yeah, I am still.

04:01 She was going to learn that.

04:06 Also, there's some great stories that happened in Richmond of enslaved people and their Gabriel's Rebellion when I used to think of him as the murderer now, I realize he was just fighting for his freedom. Henry Box Brown that put himself in a crate and shipped himself to Philadelphia or something. I know that story for sometime. I didn't know he was in Richmond and did it from the port in Richmond where I have been many times and then there's a great story about it was a captain in the Union Army has been Escape Escape From Slavery.

04:49 And if I can join the Union Army and was reunited with his mother in Richmond after 20 years on the day that his regiment lead the procession in the Richmond after don't you just great human-interest stories.

05:07 And if they need to be told rocket speed to be sold to white people and

05:14 I've been trying to do that. It will just started about a year ago for me.

05:26 Some of the people that I believe were enslaved by my ancestors and trying to trace their family tree down and I would love I would love to find a lynx descendants. I meet someone to receive descended from someone enslaved by my ancestors.

05:47 If you ask me why I want to do that. I'm not sure but again, I think it's just making a personal connection. And for all I know they could be family.

06:01 I always say that everybody is specially in Virginia Charlottesville area real cousin. So it really doesn't make much sense why we're so against each other on my pastor and I have a basic definition of word churches and churches relationships.

06:20 That's all it is and relationships mean that we get to know each other that we put ourselves in each other's way so that we can learn. Oh, he wasn't a crook or Thief. He was fighting for his freedom. It's not what it appears to be. She was doing what all humans seek to do live free.

06:46 Right, right.

06:53 Brenda lumpy, I read your bio.

06:57 You said that I'm a Baptist preacher and performance artists a neighbor a native Charlottesville Ian graduate of the University of Virginia and Union Theological Seminary in New York City part of the Charlottesville clergy Collective who helps Charlottesville get through our 2017 Summer of hate.

07:21 I'm intrigued by the de performance artist.

07:25 Note that you made.

07:29 What kind of what kind of things have you done or do you do I write?

07:38 Performance art and preaching on the flip side of the same corn coin my grandmother real good story. Tell her she could make you laugh till you cry. Then. I I got the Storyteller Gene and that's very little girl. You could fascinate me. All you had to do was put on a record or just started story and whatever I was doing that stop and I'll listen because that's the kind of connecting that's kind of native to me and I find the older I get the more important human ability to tell stories is to our survival performance is I is important to be because you know, when you're especially during an academic setting people are positing their arguments and they're setting poor this and they're bad, but there's a way

08:37 Wait to truncate to get around all the bed tell the stories just put the information out in a way that it bypasses your head hears it but if I want you to feel it into the Bissell Lea react I give you a performance. I give you a story because you can't defend against it. I can't defend against the truth that's being told by the story or the performance and then I used oriental woman almost interchangeable. When I tell Garland White story anybody I eat that takes me about five six eight minutes to set the stage for the climax of the story, which is when is Mother's talking to him in his ass all these questions. Where were you born? When did we even slave Force told you all that is asked about his background to escaping.

09:38 And the answers all the questions correctly and she says this is your mother speaking exactly. I'm getting chills. Just thinking about it has happened in Richmond at the ground that we walk on has holes out history the stories of people's lives here and it's important that you're in Richmond and you're telling me stories and people are getting you because the Echoes of their lives are still resonating back and forth. I was in Houston. The one time I was in Houston, I was sitting in the convention center Under the Sea huge gorgeous tree. If you visit Houston is hot as Purgatory everybody blast the air conditioning to your bones ache and I was sitting at

10:38 Play runs outside to sit in the sunshine so you can get warm enough to take until I'm sitting outside.

10:52 Not going to happen to me and I'm looking rather. There's nobody there and I'm going to what the heck and I finally catch somebody who's walking by who said say, oh you're that's the tree of when the convention center was being built. They were going to tear the tree down and it was like hundreds of years old, but people petition they made such a Ruckus that the convention center was a deck built around the tree and it's stood in the the the the

11:25 The parkway of the hotel and the history of the tree was that it was won the Hanging Tree and two it was the tree that slaves were sold under and it was telling me and I went. Oh my Lord and I just got you the African thing. I poured water libation and then there was peace and wanted me to know who it was and where I was and what that ground was and I think you experienced that same thing when you tell the stories of the enslaved in Richmond Burns all the details about Gabriel. It was in the part of Richmond. It was not right smack on the exact same spot. They don't really know it but it was where he was hanged for having LED that Rebellion to think of him just as a man.

12:23 And yes, I'm very proud of the fact that my 5th great-grandfather was a captain in the 1st North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Army under George Washington and free us from Great Britain.

12:44 It struck me that Gabriel was just doing the same thing and I'm proud of my great-great-grandfather. I should be proud. We should at least understand why Gabriel did what he did and is some

13:02 You going to be I'm getting chills thinking about it. Again. It was a very nice lady that African-American lady that was conducting this seminar that I did.

13:15 Basically, I was getting the credentials to be a tour guide in Richmond, and the she talks about the African slave trade and various things in in classroom, and then we went to specific places in downtown Richmond and

13:31 The way she spoke about it. I later learned. The phrase was non villainizing she did it in an envelope and izing way. She just was talking about people the slave owners did that the slave Traders did this is like people were March this way that whatever.

13:51 It was

13:53 She's just presenting fact. I'm talking about people and then what they did is how they did it and that helped me to see it didn't get all defensive about.

14:05 About that are out like I used to but how well that's okay. I'm not assuming that every African-American woman knows every other American woman in Virginia, but because Louisiana Edwards professor at VCU and is some Christmas spirit heading to the move to preserve and celebrate or by that's the right word the African burial ground here in Richmond BC. She was

14:44 Reclaimed wood steps is wonderful. I'll tell you what that prompted me to do was.

14:51 Chabot with write a letter to the editor of the Charlotte paper in the Richmond paper, which they published June 19th of 2019 and just said

15:04 On June 13th 2019. I got the memory of the enslaved people that worked in the fields and served in the houses of the Neal family in Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

15:22 That opened a lot of doors unlocked people reports me about

15:27 How to get coming to the table that old stuff you said something very important the reason we don't have hard conversations the hard conversation of race, which is the essential conversation in my view that in America we must have is because they're so much get of guilt and shame associated with it and I tell people when I have such conversations that I'm not interested in guilt guilt doesn't serve any purpose and in my experience guilty white people tend to be the most dangerous. I have no interest in your being guilty to buy interested that is into human beings being able to come together and talk about the facts and and what did

16:27 You feel the same and how we can get from Bad history and create new history, but we can't there can be no reconciliation without repentance. We're human. It's not a question of if we're going to make with Jake Jake's it's a question of of when one of my sister laughs talkin about us getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden know where that point. We have no choice. We were going to leave the guard didn't want it to or not in human history. You can talk about using the Adam. But the truth of the matter is given the choice for free will at one point somebody was going to get what they wanted to do rather than what God decreed. And so we are there for all guilty of the sin of doing and forgive. My language is active.

17:27 Descendant of our will taking dominance over what God wants us to do so, so let's do away with the guilt that doesn't serve any of us. The point is to talk about you very much want to talk about your family sister. You want to talk about the implications that history has for you today and for for me and for people like me, are you a little nervous about it, but I must tell you at this point, but I'm grateful for the openness. You have to engage in the conversation because it is that openness. I truly believe that's going to save us from total Destruction. And I don't know I didn't get the memo. Did you get a memo if there is any place else for us to be besides her?

18:27 We don't figure it out here. I don't know what we going to do.

18:36 I sent it to me or even the concept of original sin, which figured you probably learned is a Baptist preacher training. But yeah, that's the only way I can make sense of the world is to know that there is sin and Redemption do I got to do that too? And that's that's part of the reason why I'm so interested on in all this.

19:10 Realized recently and was watching a Finding Your Roots show on

19:21 I realized it one of the ways I am at the advantage. I have one of the weights on privilege does a white person is I know all the people back to Henry Horton Revolution and the lot of African Americans most African American people don't have that information and it's some

19:48 Maybe that's part of what it is if I can I don't know if I can help somebody discovers that movie was who his ancestors were enslaved by and about find out about those people. I don't know maybe that's helpful to them. It is what I do is a very much aware that I am.

20:15 Here because of my ancestors even though I don't know who they were. I know that part of my personality part of the things that mattered you are from them my family eat your siblings where there are six of us and they as well as my parents and my grandparents and great-grandparents have a very keen sense of justice will go to bat on issues of Justice. It's in our blood. So even if I don't know who my ancestors were by name, I got some of their legacy coursing through my veins. It's why I think in part why is why I what's important to me is important because somewhere in my lineage these things were important to the people from home by Spring.

21:12 Do you know anything about your great-grandparents parents?

21:16 I knew both my great great great great grandmother and grandfather grandfather on my mother's side Edward Edwards Anderson Walker and Morty caught a walker of North Garden Virginia and how he was a farmer. How about their parents?

21:34 I saw daroga types of them, but I didn't know the view. My people are long-lived Papa lived to be ninety-seven Grandma. I called my great-grandmother grandma because I called my grandmother Marty you live to be in her late eighties and my grandmother his daughter his second third daughter. She died at 97 as well. Tell her yes and hot pepper.

22:20 Were you looking for stories about let's you be her grandparents? I'm guessing her grandparents were enslaved at some point in their life. Just going back generational for tickle. They were any pennies.

22:38 My great-grandfather would talk about being a little bit right a little boy. He was called N word Edward cuz they were to Edwards on the farm the white Edward in the black and blue and even call in in Edward.

22:57 Yeah.

23:00 Unspeakable things went on. I'm amazed at the resilience of the human spirit and I have to say

23:11 For everything that my ancestors went through.

23:18 Your ancestors were affected by the fact that they did it.

23:24 You know what? I mean? Yes, we are a community. We're human beings are built to be pack animals. We are apart of each other. There is nothing that happens to me that doesn't affect you and there's nothing to happen to you. That doesn't affect me. That's how it goes. That's how it's meant to be. And so if there's Injustice in the lab and I might still be immediate effect of it but you and your Generations also feel it the but Whiplash may come a little later, but it's coming and

24:01 Part of why I feel so urgent about having such conversation disease is that this tsunami? It's not going to be survivable.

24:15 If we don't start talking to each other and see each other as human beings, we will not survive it as a species if we don't do this thing and that's simply talk to each other and get to see human beings as human beings. It's too easy to come out of five people in this Society done it to done it part 2 long doesn't work and it's covid-19 is told us nothing is up a pair of it is a commodifying everyone and everything but everything shuts down. What's the commodity am I going to do what I do to revive the economy or am I going to help human being survive the think about the economy later on cuz if I'm dead I don't care what they call me again. Will you get some?

25:08 I know it's

25:12 It's it's got to be about people and now my for my perspective as be honest, when you talk about the economy to me that is how people people I mean how people can afford to stay together.

25:31 That's so important important to me right now. I just thinking about

25:38 How much I agree with you?

25:40 That dumb

25:43 The fact that my ancestors the fact that my people owned people and it's some

25:55 I'm coming to terms with that that there's nothing I can do, but I can't change that.

26:00 When I can.

26:03 But the one thing I do using some of the using The Gift of Gab that I've got is to tell stories about those people and remember them, which I heard somebody wants a

26:17 If you remember someone you re member them they have if you're not in history, they've been dismembered you remember them.

26:30 You bring them back to back in the history you bring me their stories alive. There are part of things black lives matter when I talk about black lives matter. I'm not saying that Jordan doesn't matter. I'm saying that the experience in this country. Is that too often black lives don't matter until until my life matters. Did nobody else's will that's how it works. We have to figure out how to be

27:04 Together there's nowhere else to be there so many Wonder

27:09 Yeah, yeah and nn.

27:13 As much of a load as we have with history in this country, we don't have to add to the load. You're right. You can't do anything about the past but it is your job. It is my job to do what we can do about the present so that the future can be sustainable for as many people and and frankly, it's not just people I we haven't hold a whole or a guy of the earth ecosystem living all living creatures animal plant marine life everybody everything. We're all in this thing together and we got to figure out how to make it there together. I'm not the of an original sin person in the the the usual sense of the word cuz what else that's out since I was a little girl, I realized somebody told that story wrong in the garden.

28:13 You gets all the blame for eating that Apple, but I think I told you I was taking it myself. But where was come to find out that brother was standing right there beside her and she didn't say a word. So it's not that send into the world through it into the rule the world through both of them dagnabbit. Well as an atom did with far too many men have down if done all through the gauges shows the woman over God.

28:55 I always say that when I get to heaven there's some people I want to find Adam is one of them and I just want to slap him upside the face. What do you get when you went to the University of Virginia, you were one of the first females and one of the first African American was that hard

29:34 Yeah, we laughed my friends and I laughed we should singing what's code black voices the black gospel choir and we all sing apocalyptic sir.

29:52 Because that's where I learned how to break. I thought I could pray before I got to University. What is that? You don't know what's wrong with these people my first class my first day in the introduction to rhetoric class. I walked into the classroom and the professor out-of-the-blue. It appeared said there's no need for you to think that you're going to get an A in this class. The best of you will do is a b and a minus at that and everybody was done.

30:32 We're all looking at running now.

30:34 And it dawned on me that he was talking to me and I went and we all understood he was talking to me and I went okay God. I'm in a foreign land. I'm going to need a little help.

30:57 Should I Feel Like a Stranger in a Strange Land all the time?

31:09 I'll go home.

31:12 Yeah, and also you're you're going against the grain of received and I might be more used to it because I'm African-American and to be alive and the bee African-American just to stand up and say I am somebody that means that I've already gone against the grain of the received call Jared.

31:39 It's come to you. I would imagine and correct me if I'm wrong at a later stage and energy hits harder because those who look like you suppose that you think like them if they talk to you long enough. They realized you'd expect you to school every now and then to pardon my language.

32:12 But frankly, it's not that bad. There were some negative response or indifferent response to that letter to the end Dimension. I wrote it but my father also signed it along with me.

32:32 If he's the one that got more of it in just why would you want to do that kind of question and my response is that why would we not I mean, that's the

32:45 I do I do.

32:47 What is Huger net worth Eddie? I wouldn't be able to have this great conversation with you if I hadn't even longer. Maybe it's not gotten better about talking about it, but DM.

33:05 When I do I'm thinking I don't care what they think about me. I care that I get to have this conversation with Brenda African Americans had befriended enrichment of the past year or so. I'll be back up just a second to go on record as saying you are somebody and you do matter. It's you and you do matter we have to affirm that for each other. I have a theory that each generation.

33:40 Has a particular battle to fight and so

33:46 I my parents.

33:49 But I better which is to say that I have their good qualities. I have the potential for their bad for you, but I have been good quality because I have to bring them in to the present in order to survive and hookah, and the my children and children's children army. They have my jeans but they're better because that's the way it works is each generation of individuals is position to fight the battles of their generation. So your children are you but they are better that they are different and more intense. And so you just reminded me of that when you said your father took more of the hits about why would you do that then grab you did your him, but you're better you're the Next Generation and see who comes after you. Will they will what you have to deal with Will resonate with

34:49 But they're better able to deal with because you've already fought that battle in church Carlos. We talk about generational curses are overcome when a generation decides. No not going to carry that anymore not going to keep that secret. I'm going to do the thing with overcome that particular and for you to be able to say wait a minute. Something's wrong with this template. Something's wrong with the Earth received information. Let me look for myself. Oh, he's not a curmudgeon. He's not a criminal. This man was fighting to be free. It's a little bit of inside which caters you from from one end of the spectrum of thinking about race in this country all the way to the other end.

35:50 If I wouldn't have in these conversations, I would have missed out on one. That was also foundational without getting to the story. I was talking to the African-American lady again. It's my age little older you ask her if she grew up in Richmond, and she said no I grew up in Birmingham Alabama. I said that wouldn't like a great place to have lived up.

36:22 And she's at the forearm and said I said she still has scars from the dogs.

36:31 And I cheered up it was that conversation was not long after I really had the epiphany of enslaved people walking around on this this brown. Squish when I was visiting a house that my fourth great-grandfather built or more accurately probably people that he had enslaved built, but I will talk to this lady and Lex it at told her about that cheered up after she said I'm talking about the dogs. I said she like this. I don't know what to say or do you just want I feel like I should apologize when she looked me Square in the eyes.

37:14 Is there a Bucky you didn't own those sleeves and you didn't turn those dogs on me you as a person don't have anything to apologize for?

37:23 And when it happened, I just sort of sat up straight. I was like really don't like a physical burden off my back and so

37:35 That help me. I didn't wouldn't have said said it at the time but now looking back on it looking what I've done since then is that took away the guilt or shame and I don't feel guilty about that fact in the longer. I just feel like I got responsibilities to do something about it and then end afraid of perspective which I hope will be helpful to you. Is that no you weren't alive then but the issue is what do you and I do with the perceived inequalities. We've inherited you're a banker, you know about buddy. I'm sure you have a completely different perspective on money that I do because apparently getting money only works if you have the concept of debt, and I really think we need to get rid of that. I really I think

38:35 Open the new world and the new world to come we can't use that we can't use it the way we've been using it.

38:45 What you and I have to understand is the history of the past is the past but their Echoes from the past. I'm a person of color my extreme lived experiences that I don't trust police officers to keep me alive and safe and and you may have a different perspective but it's for you to tell me how do you need to trust the police is like me telling you when you say my foot aches and I say well mine doesn't make it so you should know that's that's what I think happens a lot of times in my experience when White America says, what is the problem? We don't see the problem. No, you don't see if you don't because you don't because that's the problem is you don't see the problem is you don't feel it. But if you feel it, then you know it to be apart. We don't have we don't have this conversation.

39:45 When you feel it, but the butt butt and soul and I also say

39:51 There are some things I don't know anything about I have no idea what it is to be a white man in America. I've never been one until I don't presume to speak for all white men in America that is not a part of my cashier of information. I don't have that information. I know how to be a black woman in America. That's what I've been for 65 years. So nobody can tell me more about that than me. I already know that but I don't presume to tell people about stuff that I don't know anything about I had a hysterectomy when I was younger and the doctor said if I was a very painful thing and I remember the doctor said to me what in the world is wrong with you. It can't be back painful. I've done a million of these are wages. I had a drug-induced paranoia and I told him to shut up.

40:51 State thing is having it. And he looked at me he was astounded that was I was drinking out of my mind. But like I said exactly what I thought because that is what how we get into trouble with human beings. When we assume we know things about them in the situation that we don't know anything about I tried to be open to hear people and their situation and I tried to put on their situation recognizing that I'm not them that I'm not feeling that but I try to approximate just as possible because it really makes no sense for me to tell you that your foot doesn't 8 because mine doesn't ruin our room dance for me to presume to tell

41:43 Black Richmond that they shouldn't be offended by the statues on Monument Avenue, and that was a big eye opener.

41:55 This is 20/20 this they don't belong there any longer and I was a big switch for me from having conversations about it and realizing they do it then and frightened in some cases and that's not what

42:49 Yo Bucky what?

42:55 What?

42:58 What's playing?

43:01 Do you want to do or accomplish in your work with racial reconciliation that you have not yet gotten to

43:11 I would love to set up a program.

43:15 On the bank of the James River where the invite Urban used which enrichment are mostly black.

43:26 A picture of how to build a boat

43:30 And just work together towards a Pacific particular end and I choose building a boat because that's something I want to learn how to do get some with the I just thought there's a program like that in the Bronx and it struck be when I saw the documentary about that one of the one of the boys said

43:57 I'm 18 years old. I didn't know there was a river right down the street.

44:03 Anyway, that's a that's a specific thing. I don't know if that's the kind of thing you were talking about with your with your question my Approach my

44:17 They talked about some politics is wholesale politics, but in Iowa and New Hampshire is retail politics Free People 101. That's kind of how I see myself doing.

44:30 Doing this work is talking to people in mourning telling stories that I have learned and interact with people.

44:45 I didn't know I was a counselor summer camp one week.

44:54 Do this would have been when I was 23 years old 24 Maybe.

44:59 And we take some kids from Richmond to this camp and there were some kids from Cleveland or Cincinnati some place in Ohio and they were all African American.

45:10 What is NSI for 2nd DUI?

45:15 There was a bug a sailboat tied up with this long for the doctor on Saranac Lake for this Camp was and there were some lines of some of the wires on wrong. The sales weren't on it. I seen them in a thing in The Boathouse and I asked Camp staff lady who

45:39 He was running with the rain Waterfront. You say if I can read this yearbook. Can I take kids out sailing?

45:46 And she said sure I was very surprised by the black kids from Ohio to take me and my buddies.

45:56 And I said sure look good. Love to the funny thing was these guys are walking around with lot of swagger dominated the basketball court, but these tough guys before they got on sailboat.

46:10 They were they wanted those big ugly orange life jackets around the neck and buckle and tighten itself. And I realized what a life jacket saved just stayed complain about it and everything else but one of them.

46:34 Looking back on it. Now. I was giving them an opportunity to do something they'd never done and I realize now that it was kind of a leap of faith on their party was it was a courageous thing that they do?

46:53 And I'll be honest. I like to think that every now and then those guys run into each other and see.

47:05 Whether they do or not, I hope they do. But anyway.

47:14 I traded ideas.

47:19 I tried to help people change their hearts. I can't change a heart but I can try to put people direction to do things that might in fact end up opening changing hearts.

47:38 Brenda one question

47:42 System that I have for you.

47:47 And I'm not asking you to speak for other African Americans put for yourself if you were approached by someone who was descended from

47:58 People that work that has enslaved your ancestors.

48:05 Would you think how would you think you would respond to that?

48:09 I have been and I respond to them the way I responded all human being hello. Tell me your story.

48:20 Hi.

48:23 Who said earlier we are somebody we're all somebody we all matter and I can't I can't hold that out for myself. If I don't also hold it up.

48:37 Great. Thank you.

48:56 Thank you for this time lucky. I had high expectations for this conversation and it's been busy spectations were met and passed long ago in the conversation just in this little amount of time and I thank you for

49:25 Blessings