Courtney McSpadden and Zackery Keys

[00:02] ZACKERY KEYS: Good afternoon, Courtney. How are you?

[00:04] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: How you doing, Mister Zach?

[00:06] ZACKERY KEYS: I'm doing fairly fine. It's kind of interesting what we got to from the last time I've seen you. It's been an interesting day sharing these past couple hours with you on October 8, 2023. I see you've got a Courtney Creative chess club going on here and it's throughout the region. What is its intent?

[00:45] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Well, Courtney Creative Chess Club is a chess club for changing the academic trajectory of school age children in public schools. It's one of our missions and goals is get more kids reading at their reading level. We also do park tours, teaching chests, instructionals. We hold tournaments, we do bar tours, we do libraries, we do bookings of any kinds, parties, bar mitzvahs, weddings, any kind of event setting. And we have a lot of different faculties to us. We teach coding, we teach chess, we incorporate art, we have gardening and sustainable living. We have all kind of business and entrepreneur accelerators teach you how to build incubators, virtual mailing addresses, all kinds of business aspect things.

[01:43] ZACKERY KEYS: Where did you get your inspiration from, Courtney?

[01:46] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: A lot of my inspiration came from a lot of ways. Originally, the chess club was created for a bonding event for me and my son Courtney junior, at the age of six. He's 16 now, so he's been playing and learning for the last ten years. And he also teaches our teens in some of our lectures and instructionals and holding tournaments. He's a very integral part in the chess club himself.

[02:15] ZACKERY KEYS: Okay, so it's been instrumental in getting your son to. I look at chess in a metaphoric type of viewpoint. It's good for critical thinking, and I'm seeing where you pretty much based that in the african american community. How have the african american organizations in our community enhanced or harmed you, and what are the resistance that you're receiving?

[02:46] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Resistance has been a little to none. We were just waiting our way through this. We have a lot of organizations fostering, giving us pieces, donating boards, donating event space, donating guidance and intelligence that I might need to further my mission.

[03:06] ZACKERY KEYS: The reason I use the word resistance, it sounds as it's a seriously good tool to implement with the community, youth as well as the adult. It's a form of socializing, but at the same time mind stimulant, sort of like brain food. Again, I use the term critical thinking. I find chest to be a game, or I don't even like to look at it as a game, but it's for the critical thinker. Moves you make in life need to be weighed out, and a lot of things that go on in our community don't seem to, and I'm not saying everything. There's quite a bit that don't get weighed out properly. I believe that to be the case not just our community, but throughout the country, where critical thinking is not being applied to young people in our community.

[04:18] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: That's why we have plenty of programming going on, community partnerships. One of our developing things is cages. It's a community garden that we started last year, and cage stands for chess, art, gardening and education. So with chess, with the CN, cage is a chess. Of course, that's our specialty. We have instructionals there, lectures, demonstrations of small medium terminals there. They're certified by the chess leagues. We give almost bi weekly tournaments or free instruction there. We also have an art gallery aspect to it where we display chess art or mini arts from acrylics, pastels, clay making. We even have some dance and plays centered around chess that we feature what our gardening expects. The g in it sustainable living. We happen to live in food deserts and nutrition deserts. So we have an aspect of a health food store and a juice bar, and we're donating some of our food products back to homeless shelters or having neighborhood crock pot. Bring your potluck dinners right there in the neighborhood. And our education aspect, teachings, like I said, the business and entrepreneurial aspects, business plans, learning about virtual mailing, how to be an incubator, things of that nature.

[06:01] ZACKERY KEYS: I see that being your objective. But you're also speaking of disparities when you bring up the food deserts, you know, meaning accessibility to getting healthy foods throughout. I would, I guess the african american community, for the most part, all communities don't have those disparities, but they're more of a emphasis when it comes to our community. The african american community, yes. And that, that wouldn't be just with the food, that would be with a great many things, employment. So I can see your spin around entrepreneurial entrepreneurship behavior taking course, because we.

[06:54] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Also have additionally to that, we have a employment program as well, where we're partnering up with places like final Mile and Home Depot, where we're employing teenagers roughly around the age of about 18 or 19 to 25 for insurance purposes. 19 to 25. And they will be installers. So we're going to be training them how to install anything from washers and dryers, microwaves, apply. Any appliance that you might see or need to be delivered from Home Depot will be, will be training installers to put those in. We'll have a 26 foot box truck with a lift gate, making these routes early in the morning to late in the evening with their commitment on that. Yes, we have some contracts and some things in place with a finer mile and Home Depot. We'll be working with a lot of juveniles and recidivism systems in and around St. Louis, city and county. Got plenty of things going on in that aspect as well.

[08:02] ZACKERY KEYS: To get corporate sponsorship like that, that's very meaningful and especially in a community like ours where unemployment is high. I salute you in your attempts can only wish you the greater success. In the acronym Cage again, what does that stand for?

[08:26] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Cage, chess, art, gardening and education.

[08:31] ZACKERY KEYS: Chess for the art, gardening in education.

[08:36] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Cage.

[08:37] ZACKERY KEYS: Cage.

[08:39] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: The cage. The symbolism of Cage is from a few things know if it's a Mount Angelo, the caged birdhouse, it's just about being freedom and letting people be theirselves and letting them be expressive and having a safe place to do it in the community. We don't have to go four or 5 miles out of our community to have a safe learning environment. And it's right in an urban neighborhood.

[09:14] ZACKERY KEYS: When I the word cage, the first impression I get is someone who might be locked up or locked in. How do you open the gates of the cage and spread your wings?

[09:35] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Well, that's like I say, our main goal is to provide academic enrichment activities, tutoring and behavior support, health and social services, and family and community engagement. With this to be effective, we want to have these partners to lead social and emotional skills development, enhance student engagement, high attendance rates and lower chronic absentee, improve academic outcomes, high test scores and better grades, higher rates of on time grade promotion and higher graduation rates?

[10:11] ZACKERY KEYS: I've got to ask you a question now. In terms of the political landscape of the day, how do you feel about the agenda on keeping real history, real subjects out of the schools today? That political agenda that's been pushed.

[10:35] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: If it's real, it needs to be taught real. The education, much like the Courtney chess club motto, my motto, something I instilled in my son, it needs to be genuine, it needs to be honest, and it needs to be sincere.

[10:51] ZACKERY KEYS: So the history of America, when it pertains to black folk, it should be taught in the classroom.

[10:58] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: It should be taught in the classroom. It should be taught in normal, everyday conversations to open up that, as you call, resistance to that. Like I said, it should be genuine, honest and sincere. If it's meeting those three parameters, then.

[11:20] ZACKERY KEYS: It'S okay with me, no matter what the subject matter is, it should be.

[11:25] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Real, genuine, sincere, honest and sincere and.

[11:30] ZACKERY KEYS: Brought out in a delicate way to keep it in its appropriate perspectives, of course. Wow, that's a tall order.

[11:40] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Right?

[11:41] ZACKERY KEYS: So a lot of resistance out there for that.

[11:45] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: How long you been playing chess, Jack?

[11:48] ZACKERY KEYS: Oh, man, I just dibble and I dabble, but I've been playing all my life. I'm, you know, I got three scores plus ten I'm working on right now. Do you know what that means?

[12:01] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Yeah, I'm very familiar. My grandmother told me what a score score is. 20 years, I think.

[12:05] ZACKERY KEYS: Yes, sir.

[12:07] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Three score in ten.

[12:08] ZACKERY KEYS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[12:10] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: It's a lot of. It's a lot of precepts that you can teach out of the Bible, out of the Quran, out of any religion book. But I also have a complimentary book. It's too happy, it's the name of it. And it teaches 21 precepts of being happy. One of our first two precepts is take care of yourself. In taking care of yourself, you're taking care of the world because they don't have to come behind you and sweep behind your mess. We all make messes, but let's make it what I call the e and e, effective and efficient. And being effective and efficient, that. That just helps everybody be their best self. Oh, yeah.

[12:55] ZACKERY KEYS: Being self sufficient and sustain yourself is important because if you can't do that, how are you going to help someone else get to that point?

[13:07] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: True that. We're doing a lot of other things to sustain some academic trajectory. Estabilizing our home with. From addiction. Courtney, chess club. We deliver problem solving products such as condoms, narcan, gun locks, eye protection. We're a community access resource point for many things like housing. You spoke about employment and things like that. We also have emotional health and wellness aspect to us.

[13:43] ZACKERY KEYS: We have community service outreach.

[13:47] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: We have two young ladies like myself that's been victim of gun violence, opioid poison and domestic violence who are trained to be grief counselors to our kids from these situations. The numbers are high with that, right. We have some quality people behind us administering that, and we welcome people to reach out and get some health and wellness, some healing from trauma. It took me a while to catch up with the verbiage of what trauma was. Didn't know I was in trauma until it was explained to me. And it really made me realize that I need to get help. People in my family need to get help. The community needed help. And so I just feel all the things that I was in need of and I was shortcoming of. I just want to be resourceful to myself first and resourceful to the community as well.

[14:43] ZACKERY KEYS: I get that. There's no negative stigma on realizing that you might have to speak with someone about things that you're concerned about yourself with as well as others. Matter of fact, I commend anybody. Simone Biles, the olympian gymnast. She's recently came out and taught about the mental challenges she was even having. I can imagine when one would look at her, they wouldn't. Wouldn't think that. But it doesn't matter what the station is or what your background is.

[15:24] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: More money, more problems. It happens to the best of us. You're not above it.

[15:29] ZACKERY KEYS: You know, I agree. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this to be facetious or mean spirited, but I cannot get over the guy that was a billionaire and he wanted to take a submersible down there to see the Titanic. I could have gave him a billion reasons not to do that.

[15:52] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: A billion and one.

[15:54] ZACKERY KEYS: Wow. I'm just saying, you know, to each.

[15:58] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: His own, you know?

[15:59] ZACKERY KEYS: Yeah.

[15:59] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: My dream is, uh, I want to see. I always wanted to see, since I was younger, all the 8th wonders, world, Taj Mahal stuff. Even the Berlin Wall purrs. The chinese wall. Want to see that. I want to see the sphinx.

[16:18] ZACKERY KEYS: I've seen all of that.

[16:20] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: I know I want to see. I want to go to acre. I want to go to Ghana.

[16:24] ZACKERY KEYS: I can tell you how to get there.

[16:25] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: I want to go to Ethiopia.

[16:27] ZACKERY KEYS: I can tell you how to get there.

[16:28] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: How do you get there?

[16:29] ZACKERY KEYS: Get some good books, brother. That's the best form of traveling I found when I was coming up the magic square was the book, encyclopedias, beautiful pictorials, and be a comprehensive reader. And it's like you could just reach out there and touch. So when you do actually have an opportunity to travel abroad like that, you have a better sense of awareness. It's sort of like watching a movie and thinking, you know the movie, but never read the book. Two total different factors. Anyway, let me, um. You got a cough COPD. That's a bad thing for us, too. I'm on my oxygen right now, Courtney. You know, they're also talking about this abandonment of menthol. And I thought about the way menthol get marketed in our community, and I'm like, dang, boy, I wish they never had a Marlboro man or somebody that was blowing circles. Those were the things to influence me towards smoking. Boy, I wish I wasn't such a knucklehead. But here I am now, almost 70 years down the road. I can honestly say I put over half of those years anyway, in army myself. I probably need some deep psychological therapy myself. What's that one song? It makes me wonder sometime how I keep from going under. It's like a jungle sometimes. Courtney I'm really enjoying this. I'm looking at our host, Manuela. Manuela. I'm getting that right. Cutie pie. And I really thank you for bringing Courtney and I together and allowing us to share some of our viewpoints. I guess it's going to go in some form of a time capsule. You say this thing gonna make it to the Library of Congress and then what?

[18:54] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Yes. Yes.

[18:56] ZACKERY KEYS: I would love that. I love it.

[18:59] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: At the Smithsonian, roughly like three or four months after they opened and added the african american one. It's beautiful. I have seen it a lot of Oprah Winfrey and LeBron James. LeBron James and Winston Churchill and Paul McCartney. We all birthday mates. Shout out to the Capricorns, December 30.

[19:25] ZACKERY KEYS: Just a fact, now that you bring that up. You know what? My ex wife. You notice how ucms ex wife happens to have a birthday on the same day as dumb Donald? Now, I'm not gonna say any more about that, but then I've got a problem with that, too, because I happen to have a birthday synonymous with dumb Clarence. I'm not gonna say anything about the last names, but damn, what a difference a day makes. Anyway, I've enjoyed this moment, and we might have got off on a rough start, but the good thing is we hung on in there, brother. We didn't just say yada, yada. We hung on in whether we liked it, loved it, yada, yada. We got through it. That's what's important.

[20:27] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: And you need to have people around you that inspire you and upkeep you and, you know, keep your foot in your back. Like Paul from the Bible, he kept a thorn in his side, and that was to aid him and let him know that you have more work to do. And Courtney, Chet's Club, along with Mister Zach and all my other sympathizers and well wishers and supporters, that's what we're here for, is 2023. By next year, we want to have our community garden up and going. We got some housing situations. We want to get going, our up and coming learning center. We want to be in every ward and neighborhood, north, southwest, and east St. Louis as well. We have some connections and some things we're doing right on the other side of the water in east St. Louis. East of St. Louis.

[21:17] ZACKERY KEYS: Of course, I could only suggest that those that get to hear this in whatever capacity is to reach out and touch people like yourself.

[21:26] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Yeah. Courtney Chess Club, Facebook, Instagram. Courtney Chess Clubmail. Well, taking donations, volunteers, ideas, and whatever you can get through here in St. Louis, in the region, throughout. We soon to be having a podcast, a lot of media avenues and things like that. We premiering on Story corps. Thank you very much for inviting us and we very much appreciate it.

[21:57] ZACKERY KEYS: Yes, yes. It's been productive in my point of view. Again, Manuela, thank you, thank you, thank you. And hopefully this goes well and somebody will piggyback off of this and get something out of it.

[22:18] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Oh, of course.

[22:19] ZACKERY KEYS: Somebody will weigh in and enhance your dispositions as well.

[22:23] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: All the time. All the time. Yeah. And once again, before we leave, before we have to leave, we can stay all day talking about chess and the enrichment that it brings to the community, to our lives. And it's the stability that we're looking forward with these grades in schools.

[22:42] ZACKERY KEYS: Right. Critical thinking.

[22:44] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Critical thinking. And it's just my last thing that caught my eye. It's a Facebook post about our schools that I'm trying to change that 83% of our kids can't read at academic level in the St. Louis public schools. 83%.

[23:03] ZACKERY KEYS: Yeah, the.

[23:06] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Deafening.

[23:07] ZACKERY KEYS: But you know what? I'm gonna share this thought with you. They've taken the textbooks out of the school. They've replaced them with the Chromebook. Parents can't sit at the table with little Johnny and little Susie anymore and say, read with them. Make sure that they're comprehending what it is that they need to comprehend. So when we talk about a low test score or a not able to comprehend or read on what level, think about what they've been stripped of. When I was coming up, my mother, she set me at the table. She showed me how to write Cursive yada yada, and she had a textbook to go with. We knew what the beginning, the middle, and the end was going to be like, and she got to do that journey with me. Most parents today, I'm not gonna suggest that we aren't tech savvy, but that the children are so desensitized, that's all they are, is tech savvy.

[24:07] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: Well, and that's why we are pushing for these community partnerships. The problem is well stated, overstated. You expounded on it beautifully. Just that fact. We all deal with numbers and facts. 83%. That number has to and will go down with the information of Courtney Creative Chess Club in these schools, in these libraries, these recreation places, and us being an advocate and ambassador for more community wellness. And this is just one of those, one of those building blocks that we want to implement and hold support and get committed support from everyone. There's no color lines, there's no age lines. This is intergenerational. Poverty is a factor for somebody that's not in poverty as well. You have to live among these people. You have to go to the grocery store, you enjoy the arts, the movies with mixed crowds of people. And so we just trying to uplift humanity through the Courtney Creators Chess Club in St. Louis. And I thank you.

[25:26] ZACKERY KEYS: I heard this one guy say recently, if all the leaders of the world have this issue about the boundaries, if they could actually take a space bus outside in space and see how small the earth is, that it will minimize this thing about whose boundaries, what, the planet is that small that, I mean, if you sneeze in the wrong direction, look what happens. Maui wildfires and God knows what's next. Again, you know, God knows we're going.

[26:09] COURTNEY MCSPADDEN: To end on a good note, and a high note is that Courtney chess club is here to stay. We're here for the community. We're here for everybody. And please come out and support our events, our tournaments and our journey and keep God first and have fun with it. We thank you, St. Louis. We salute.