Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - How John Legend Learned to Forgive His Mother

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Multiple Grammy and Platinum Record winning artist John Legend takes us back to his roots in Springfield, Ohio, where he was an academic overachiever and a musical prodigy. John opens up about his early rocky relationship with his mother and how, over time, they came together to nurture one beautiful family. Plus, we learn how to make his mama's special mac & cheese. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My dad did all that he could, you know, while still working. Did he step into the kitchen then? No, I was cooking by then. I was like the cook for the house. All right, paint a picture of that for me. It's me roasting a chicken sometimes, sometimes making chili or spaghetti or hamburger helper or rice-a-roni. Yeah, whatever I needed to make.

So you really ran the kitchen? Yeah, I ran the kitchen. That's impressive. Starting at like, you know, 12 years old. Hello, hello, and welcome back to Your Mama's Kitchen. This is the place where we explore how we are shaped as adults by all the kitchens that we grew up in as kids. And if you're watching this, you see who I'm here with. If you're listening, I'm going to tell you a little bit about this guest and I'm going

to hope you can figure out who it is. This is someone who's had multiple platinum records, starting with Get Lifted, that was his debut album that forever changed the landscape of R&B and soul music. It is the album that gave us that Grammy award-winning hit Ordinary People, a song I love, a song that we all sing along with. He is also a 12-time Grammy award winner. He was the first black man to win an EGOT. That's an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. He's known for his political activism and also for his style, which you can quite clearly see if you're watching this.

I'm of course talking about John Legend. Michelle, it's so good to hang out with you. It's great to be here. Thank you for letting me into your home so I can see how you live and how you work. Something's cooking in the kitchen, so it's good to be talking about the kitchen. This home is, so we actually don't live here, but we bought a residential home as kind of like a creative hub for us.

So it's like our office, our production house. I record all of my albums upstairs in what used to be the master bedroom here. And then Chrissy uses the kitchen to develop recipes with her chef and photograph things for her cookbook and develop all the products that you see come out for cravings. I feel so lucky to be here. It's such a cozy space. There's pots and pans and big bowls of snacks. It's a creative space. SpongeBob is looking over us. Snacks everywhere. Chrissy loves snacks and the kids' school is right down the street. So

they'll usually come here after school. And it's just a really like, it's full of creative energy, full of life and love. So I don't know if they're baking cookies or banana bread, but something smells wonderful. So let's begin with the kitchen. Both. Okay, good. Snacks afterwards. Our show always begins with an origin story. And the theory is that we become who we are because of life lessons from the kitchen. So take me back to Springfield, Ohio.

What was the kitchen like that you grew up in? So I grew up in Springfield, Ohio. We grew up in a four bedroom house in a kind of middle-class, working-class neighborhood. My dad was a factory worker. And so every day he would go to build trucks for a living. He was- You worked at International Harvester? International Harvester, which eventually became Navistar International. And he was on the assembly

line and he would build trucks. He was a UAW union auto worker. Was your family a big, did they cook a lot? Did they cook big meals during the week or was it more fast food? It was food, frozen dinners? It was more kind of utilitarian cooking. My mom wasn't like, she didn't like glory in cooking. She didn't love it like I love it and like Christy loves it. And like some of my aunts and relatives loved it. She cooked, but she wasn't the person that was like, didn't wake up every day thinking, I'm excited to make this meal.

Oh, I have this new idea. She didn't love it like that. So four kids, they have to be fed. So what was dinner like on a Tuesday? So sometimes it would be, probably the most effort went into the meat, whatever that meat was going to be, whether it was salmon or whiting or...

Oh, very Midwestern fish. Yes, very Midwestern fish. And then a lot of times they would use kind of boxed kind of foods like rice-a-roni or hamburger helper or Kraft mac and cheese, Velveeta mac and cheese, all those kind of easy shortcuts. You know, when you got four kids, you're just trying to get it done.

And there were a lot of kind of boxed foods that helped you get it done. Describe the kitchen for me. If I were to walk to the front door of your house, make my way back into the kitchen, what did it look like? Go back there in your mind. We had a carpet in our kitchen, which was kind of weird.

A carpet in the kitchen? Yeah, it was kind of weird and didn't stay clean. What color carpet? It was like yellow and brown. It was decorated in the 70s. It was probably polyester. I don't know. It was really thin. It wasn't like a lush carpet. It was very thin carpet. But we had a carpet in the kitchen and it wasn't a great idea. Like, you need tile there. Especially all the spills that are going to happen.

Again, I don't think my mom cared too much about cooking or the kitchen, so she didn't put a lot of energy into making the kitchen amazing. What about the kitchen table? Is that where you spend a lot of time with your series? Yes. So we spent a lot of time at the kitchen table and we were homeschooled by my mother. That's why I asked. And so actually, if you see my show, my solo show where I tell my songs,

I mean, I tell my stories and sing my songs, you'll see a picture of me sitting at the kitchen table with my mom teaching me, homeschooling me, because I had won the Springfield City Spelling Bee. And part of the kind of the headline of the story in the newspaper was, product of home teaching, Winsor and Springfield City Spelling Bee. And they came to my house and took a picture of me

sitting at the kitchen table with my mother. And so in a lot of ways that kitchen table shaped me because a lot of my education was happening there. So all of you were homeschooled? At least for a little bit, not really my younger siblings because by the time they were school age, my parents got divorced and we were going to public school. That's probably why your mom didn't have a lot of energy

for cooking. Yeah. She's like, you know, teaching mathematics and reading and you know, art projects while she's homeschooling and And then she has to pivot and try to get dinner together. That's a little bit difficult to do. Yeah, it was hard. And so she didn't spend a lot of time cooking. And also when she did cook, I was really into it.

So I wanted to learn from her when she was cooking. And so I was like, I'll do it, mom. I'll take over. And so by the time I was like 10 or 11, I started cooking in the house. For the whole family? Yes. What were your specialties? Some of that same box food,

but also I would sometimes we would roast the chicken in the oven or a grill a steak on the stove or something like that. But still a lot of those shortcut meals too. You sound like you're an old soul. I am an old soul. I got along really well with my grandmother, my maternal grandmother especially. She was the church organist at my church and my mom was the choir director.

My grandfather was the pastor. And so I grew up around them a lot and I enjoyed being around older people. And particularly my grandmother, she taught me how to play gospel music. And so when you hear me playing and singing, I'm still very influenced by her musical tutelage. And so yeah, I was definitely an old soul as a kid. Did you get involved in music with the idea that you were going to be part of the musical ministry at the church? Yes, at the time. Did you have pop stardom in mind? I think I was thinking about both. I definitely wanted to lead the music at my church as a young

person and be involved in the music at my church. But there's always that kind of sacred and secular divide for kids that grow up in the church with music. And you've seen a lot of our biggest R&B singers having started in the church. And sometimes there's some friction coming from the church and going into secular music. But I didn't feel that much friction. And I was always into the idea of,

I'm watching the Grammys and I wanted to be on that stage just like those Grammy performers were. And so I always had a feeling that I wanted to be on that big stage and I didn't want to limit myself and not do secular music. Why did your mom decide to homeschool you? And was it easier to nurture your dreams at a kitchen table than it would be, say, in a public or even a private school, or kids, because kids can douse your dreams. They can, you're not all that,

or try to get you to absorb their dreams, or what they think they wanna do in life. So it's interesting, because I think a lot of what they were hoping was that we would have a Christian education. And so actually before I was homeschooled, well, I was homeschooled a little bit and kind of like in the kindergarten years, so I never went to organized kindergarten. But when I first went to an organized school, it was a Christian school, private school.

And my parents, you know, were very religious and didn't really want me exposed to a public school education when they thought a Christian education would be better. But Christian education costs money. And so after a while they were like, you know, this is too expensive. We're going to bring you guys back home. But before I went to Christian school, I was already reading really well, doing math really well, and they tested me. And I was supposed to go into first grade, but they put me in second grade. So I was already a year younger than everyone. So home school and my mom's teaching and tutoring really helped me stay ahead of other kids.

And once I got to private school, I was there flourishing, doing really well, and also involved in music at school, music at church, music at home. And so I guess would my dreams of being a musician have happened the same way if I wasn't homeschooled? Probably because I think so much of the influence happened at church and we had a piano at home too. And I don't think me going to organized school would have dissuaded me in any way from loving

music and then also being around a lot of music. So we should just talk about your schooling for a minute, because you are like Doogie Howser. Yeah. You were really- Not that advanced, because he was a doctor by teenage years, but I was two years younger by the time I graduated high school. So I skipped one more grade in middle school when we finally went to public school.

So my parents got divorced, and my mom wasn't living with us anymore, so I finally enrolled in public school. But again, they tested me to see where they should place me, and they were like, we'll put him in eighth grade. And so I get to eighth grade when I'm 11, and I get to high school when I'm 12. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You were 11 in eighth grade.

Yeah, and high school 12. Okay. Yeah. Was that a little bit difficult? Yes, it was difficult. I wouldn't advise it really, because those differences in age are monumental at that point in your life. Two years difference now.

Even just in terms of size. Yeah. I'm 45 now. Two years doesn't matter. So, I went to my reunion, all my friends are 47. Not a big difference. But when you're in high school and one is 12 and one is 14, that's a big difference. Like I was a foot shorter than I am now.

I'm 5'10 now. I was like 4'11 then. Hadn't gone through puberty yet, you know? And so you're socially like at a disadvantage then. And if you care about sports, you're not going to be good at sports compared to the kids that are two years older and bigger and stronger. And so there's definitely some disadvantages to it. Luckily, I had music and books and that was what I focused on.

And music gave you confidence. Music gave me confidence and it gave me confidence to do everything else, honestly, because it made it so I felt comfortable introducing myself to people because they had just seen me on stage and music was like the icebreaker that I needed to connect to everybody else in other ways. So the kitchen is a place of learning,

a place of comfort, a place of discovery. There was a period in your life where your family went through a really rough patch. So that same grandmother that was the organist at my church, she worked with my mother a lot because my mother was the choir director. They were very close. She died at a really young age. She was only 58 years old.

And so, you know, right kind of in the heart of my childhood, and when she and my mother were getting really close because they were together a lot, she died and it really devastated our whole family. But my mom took it really badly. And she got depressed first, and then she started to kind of spiral and went into drug addiction and was estranged from us for a while. You know, depression is something that we talk about by name now. But there was a long time where we didn't know, we'd say, oh, somebody has the blues.

Yeah, we didn't talk about it like that then. And I didn't really process what was going on. I was more just kind of upset. And I didn't even necessarily understand that it was because her mother died. I was just upset that we didn't have her mom around and that she seemed to be failing, you know, like she was failing us, she was failing herself. And I was upset with her at the time. You haven't talked a lot about it. You're starting to open up. You and your mom are very close now. So, and at the show, we appreciate that when people tell these stories, because everything

in the kitchen is not always apple pie and cookies. That's right. That's right. You know, that's where we have our loudest laughter and sometimes our toughest tears. When your mom was going through that, was it rather sudden or was it sort of a slide? And were you able to, sometimes when you're the oldest. I'm the second oldest. And sometimes when you're the oldest. I'm the second oldest. And sometimes when you're, I mean, oldest meaning like top of the tier in the family.

You're a fixer. You're trying to like make everything right. So did you notice that this was happening? And were you and your siblings or in you in particular, as you say, you're the one who was cooking and you're the one who would always take on those roles. Were you trying to figure out how to navigate that itself? Well, I'm definitely one of those people that likes to fix things. And I think I kind of attribute it to being a middle child because I'm like, I had my

older brother, my younger brother, they would fight a lot and I'd be trying to like, break it up and be the peacemaker in the house. And my personality is a lot like my dad's. He's very mellow and peaceful and just calm under pressure. And so I have his personality in a lot of ways. And so, yeah, I would try to like, just try to fix things. But all of us kind of figured out how to help. So we all had chores around the house, whether it was doing dishes,

doing the laundry, cleaning the bathroom. Even before my mother was gone, they were teaching us to do all these things around the house. And they taught us that that was our part of our role as being raised in this home. Like you have to do chores. And so we were all learning to do things around the house that we need to do to take care of ourselves. Now, we were doing as kids, as contributors to the home. So part of our allowance was based on, whether or not you did the chores, and we had a checklist on the wall. And so everybody was involved. It wasn't just me, but I particularly gravitated towards cooking and I enjoyed cooking and I liked the idea of creating something that everybody could love and enjoy together.

And so I've always enjoyed that. You said your mom was gone for a while. Did she leave? She was gone. So my parents got divorced and my mom was living across town and we barely saw her for about like a decade. A decade is a long time. Were you in touch at all during that period?

A little bit, but let me tell you, it was hard to see her, honestly, because she was addicted to drugs and she was kind of wasting away and her behavior was like erratic and, you know, as like a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old, like I don't know what to do with that. Like I didn't know what I was supposed to do to fix it. And so part of me was like, I just want to stay away. And so I just threw myself into school and church and music and everything else. And I didn't go out of my way to like witness all the turmoil she was going through, because it was really hard to witness.

Did you channel any of that into your art? I believe so, yeah. I mean, I think it's all in there. And I think when I sing about relationships, one of the songs that directly I think references it was Ordinary People, because by that point my parents had gotten back together and gotten remarried to each other after my dad had been married to someone else in between.

And that's actually beautiful. And then they were actually about to get divorced again when I was writing the song. And so I'm like, yeah, we're just ordinary people. Sometimes it's hard. Just trying to make it work. Tell me a little bit about your mom. Yeah, she's so brilliant and gorgeous and she's just a light. If you ever see her, spend time around her. She has such positive energy. She loves teaching us. time around her. She has such positive energy. She loves teaching us. She just leaned into being a homeschool teacher. She loved it. She wasn't formally trained to be a teacher, but she was really good at it and enjoyed it. And she loved music. She loved teaching. She loved reading.

And she loved Jesus. So she was at church all the time, directing the choir, and she grew up in, she was a preacher's kid, and she grew up in a household that was pretty strict. And my grandfather had five girls and one boy. And if you know anything about the church, specifically the Pentecostal church, during that time is pretty traditional and fundamentalist and had a lot of rules around what women could do,

what they couldn't do. They were expected to get married at a pretty young age. So my mother met my father as a late teenager and got married when she was 18 years old. And so she went straight from her dad to my dad. And I think part of what happened with her was the grief of her mother dying and then also just never having a chance to be her own person.

And going straight from her dad to my dad and to being a mother, I think like she just needed like to release somehow and it happened unhealthily, but I think that was kind of part of the cause for it. You know, when you have an estranged parental relationship, it's odd, I have a similar story in my family. When my parents got divorced, my mom moved out, lived down the street, eight blocks down the street. And we wound up becoming very, very close. That's not promised

to you when you have that kind of break. I too grew up like Gidget with my dad when they broke. But in order for you to come back, both sides have to be open. The heart has to be open on both sides. And it's sometimes hard because you're still processing, where were you? You're still processing like I needed you when you weren't around and you have to put that away. And sometimes you have to just do enough living so you understand causes for these things. I think we have a hard time accepting that our parents are human and that they're flawed and that they're weak sometimes and like just, you know, that when life happens, like, yeah, they might get depressed

or they might do some things that are harmful to themselves or to others, but they're human. And when we start out, we just see them as, they're everything, they're our parents and they can do no wrong. But eventually as you get older, you just realize they're actually human and they're susceptible to all the human frailties and flaws that humans have.

And I think it makes it easier to forgive them too. Tell me about your dad also. Because he stepped in, kept everybody together. He's working at International Harvester and now he's coming home and dealing with the hamburger helper and the rice roni and everything else. So how did he manage to keep the family together and keep you all on track? Well, we needed help. He needed help.

So he had folks from the church come by and help out. We were kind of latchkey kids at that point because my older brother and I, we were old enough to, we could be left at the house to make sure everything didn't go awry. And you know, during that era, you know, parents weren't as helicopter-y as they are now. Oh no, we were feral. Yeah, we were feral, you know, and we could roam the streets and play with our cousins around the corner and just be home by dark. But also neighbors watched out. Yeah, neighbors watched out. And there was a sense of neighborhood in my community. Our next door neighbors we all knew.

The ones on the left side went to church with us. And my grandfather actually raised my mother in the house that we were living in. So not only were they our neighbors, but they had known my family and my mother's family since my mom was a kid. And so there were all these people around us that helped take care of us, helped look out for us.

I had a black male high school counselor that really looked out for me and helped me apply to colleges and just had my back at school. And we had aunts and uncles that came through when we needed them, choir directors, just different people around the community that just stepped in and helped out.

And then my dad did all that he could while still working every day. Did he step into the kitchen then? No, I was cooking by then. You were cooking by then? I was like the cook for the house. Okay, you were the cook. Yeah.

All right, paint a picture of that for me. It's me roasting a chicken sometimes, I was cooking by then. You were cooking by then? I was like the cook for the house. Okay, you were the cook. Yeah. All right, paint a picture of that for me. It's me roasting a chicken sometimes, sometimes making chili or spaghetti or hamburger helper or rice-a-roni. Yeah, whatever I needed to make. So you really ran the kitchen? Yeah, I ran the kitchen. That's impressive.

Starting at like, you know, 12 years old. And was that in part because you liked it or was it? It was a necessity and I liked it. Okay. Well, the necessity part was my mom was gone, but I had already started learning from her when she was there and cooking because I enjoyed it. Was it a way to kind of get in touch with her also? Yes, but also I think I liked the project. I liked creating something and sharing it with people. Like I still enjoy it a lot. Also, sometimes when you're going through something, it's a world that you can control.

Yes. It's control. It's creativity. It's something to occupy your mind and your energy. Then the result is something that you can share with people and make them happy. I loved all of that. Hi, it's Michelle Norris. I want to tell you about another podcast I was a guest on recently on Dinner SOS. Chris Morocco and a guest from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen solve your toughest cooking questions.

Chris and I had a wonderful discussion about food memories and we answered some listener questions together. It was so much fun. I even confessed to one of my biggest kitchen fails from the first time I cooked from my husband's mother. Some people consider cooking to be torture, but with Dinner SOS, cooking becomes the ultimate labor of love, making it the perfect podcast for chefs of all skill levels looking for inspiration.

Get your weekly dose of Bon Appetit's Dinner SOS available now wherever you get your podcast. John, you're known for your political activism. We saw that most recently in the election. You have done a lot to raise money for certain causes that you care a lot about. And you've done work in particular for people who are formerly incarcerated and people who are in prison. Is that in part because of your life's journey and what happened to your mother? Is there a connection between those two things?

Yes, but my mother was only briefly in jail and she wasn't, I wouldn't think of her as someone that was incarcerated for any significant period of time. But I've had other relatives and close friends I grew up with who are like, who did a bid, like they were in prison for years and I've had to come back to society. And that's really hard, hard to find jobs, hard to find housing, hard to find just people to give you a second chance. And so I've definitely been influenced by that.

But also I take it back to my homeschooling and my parents taking me to the library and the things that I was interested in and reading about. I really liked reading about Dr. King and other civil rights activists. I really found meaning in what they did and it set a standard for me for what a real purposeful life is. And so I was always attracted to historical figures

that stood up for justice, stood up for my people, and in the face of death threats and so much backlash and resistance, they fought for something that was bigger than themselves. And so I was always attracted to people like that. And that was my kind of first understanding of what politics was, was through the lens of looking at civil rights activists. And so I've always thought about politics in the sense of how can we get closer to equity and freedom and justice for everybody? And how do we use the levers of the political system to get us closer to that?

And you've always, that's always been a compass for you. Yeah, I think so. And I think I was influenced by all those activists that I talked about, but also by seeing musicians and seeing the musicians that use their platform to actually make a difference. Because at that same time that Dr. King was marching, people like Mahalia Jackson were there, and Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin was there, but also giving money. Harry Belafonte was there, but also giving money. Yes.

A lot of these artists- He took care of the King kids. Yes, they knew that they were in a very fortunate place to have come from our community and made it big. You know, Harry Belafonte was one of the biggest recording artists in the world at the time. Aretha Franklin, one of the biggest recording artists in the world. And they knew where they came from and they used the platform that they had to actually give back and support the movement. And so again, these were my examples, and these are the people that I thought of as

role models of what an artist is supposed to be. And all of my activism has been fueled and motivated and kind of the foundational information that came into my head that made me aspire to that was through artists like that and activists like that. Do you cook now in the way that you did as a child? I cook in a much more sophisticated way now. Like we don't use the boxes, we're not using rice oroni. Yeah, I don't think Chrissy would dig that.

Only boxes we use are Chrissy's. Which are all over here. Her cookies, her banana bread, etc. But when it comes to like savory food for dinner, we're usually going with a recipe that we've developed ourselves for Chrissy's book, or we'll look online. We'll go to like New York Times Cooking or we'll just search what's the best blah, blah, blah. And just look at a few and see what the reviews are, see what the ingredients are and just make it. And I love making recipes. I just find that whole process fun. I like ordering the groceries. I love like trying to nail it and get it just right, doing whatever

zhuzhing I need to do to deviate from the recipe, and then coming out with a finished product that everybody loves. It's just a great feeling for me. So you both cook? We both cook all the time. Do you cook together? Yeah, we cook together. And sometimes I'll just take over and do a whole dinner. Sometimes she'll do the same.

And the kids are adventurous. You have four kids. Sometimes. They're not always. Sometimes there's separate, you know, things happening for them. Simpler meals for them. OK, so you cook on two tracks. Yes. And they eat earlier than us, so we can like do a 6 things happening for them, simpler meals for them. Okay, so you cook on two tracks. Yes. And they eat earlier than us, so we can do a 630 meal for them or a six o'clock meal

for them and then an 830 meal for us. Your dad was a factory worker and oftentimes when people are shift workers, they eat at the same time all the time. Was that your household? Well, my dad had different shifts. So a lot of times he worked in the day, but there were times when he worked at night. And so he would go in at four o'clock and stay till midnight.

Or sometimes he would go in at seven and stay till four. So that's another reason you were cooking. Yeah. Because he was. My dad's not a great cook. So really. So we basically went from mom to me. And there was really not much of a chance that dad was going to be cooking. Okay.

Yeah. But my brothers can cook. My sister's a really good cook now. But we all figured it out. I was the first one to figure it out. But all of my family, all of my siblings cook pretty well. And my sister's like really, really good. So I want to get back to that mac and cheese that you talked about.

Your mom's famous mac and cheese that you said was more like a casserole. We always gift our listeners with a recipe and we're going to get the recipe for your mom's. Your mama's mac and cheese. I'm going to try to get the exact one because I make a version of mac and cheese that doesn't include all the veggies and stuff, but includes some of her influence. And we've put it in Chrissy's on Chrissy's website. And that's the one I make every Thanksgiving and Christmas. People will fight at Christmas over mac and cheese.

There's this viral video that went on. I'm sure you've seen it. The woman who said, why are you messing with mac and cheese on Thanksgiving? Experiment in July. Don't experiment right now. So my mom, they actually, my family was like into her mac and cheese, but she did mess with the mac and cheese. Like she...

So it was non-traditional. She'd describe it. What did she do? like into her mac and cheese, but she did mess with the mac and cheese. Like she threw the green peppers in there, garlic, and she would do like a roux. Some people like to do a roux. Some people just like to put it in and bake it. So a little slurry with milk and butter. Yeah, on the stove first before she put it in the oven. I don't do a roux. I just do put everything in and just let it melt in the oven. I don't do a roux. I just do put everything in and just let it melt in the oven. But where do the green peppers come in? I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out.

I have not had mac and cheese with green peppers. I am intrigued. Yeah, it was always there when I was growing up. And so it was how I knew that my mother made it. But nobody else at the church made it that way. It was her way. And- So she must've been very confident in her- Yeah, and it worked because people loved it. Okay, because to roll up with mac and cheese- Oh, she would put the little crackers on top too. I forgot about that, the Ritz crackers.

So she really made it like a casserole. Like a gratin of Ritz crackers on the top at the end? Just finish it with that? Yes. Okay, do you do that too? No, I don't. I'm more straight like, or old school, like if you go to like a soul food restaurant,

mine is more similar to that. In a moment, we're kind of divided in a country right now. Yeah. Is there an opportunity for maybe us to find a better version of ourselves as individuals and maybe even as a nation? I hope so, you know, and we talk about it. And one of the things that disappointed me about Kamala Harris not winning the election

was I really loved the message that she was giving to the American people at the time. Like there's more that we have in common and that divides us. And we shouldn't have leaders that try to exacerbate and inflame our differences and divisions. We should have people trying to find ways to bring us together, to solve problems together and help each other.

And regardless of who's the president, I hope that we're able to do that with each other in our communities. And a lot of my activism even isn't on the national level, it's on the local level in communities where people just have to figure out how to live together. And I think sometimes denationalizing politics makes it easier for people to see what they have in common. Because when you denationalize politics, you realize, oh, we all need roads where there aren't potholes. We all wanna be safe in our homes. And we're all gonna get old and vulnerable.

Yeah, in our communities. We all want our kids to go to good schools. We all want to live the American dream, be able to afford a home that we can, you know, build a family in. You know, there's so many things that we have in common and a lot of those things play out more on the local level. And when you kind of take the national political scene out of it, it makes it easier to have those kinds of conversations. And I'm from Springfield and we were in the news. Yes, you were.

We were in the news on a national level because of people kind of nationalizing what was going on in my hometown. And- If you're listening, you don't remember, this is a place where- Haitian- It was alleged.

It was alleged that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs, which of course was not happening. But what was happening is that the city had grown tremendously in opportunities for work after declining for years. We were like a post-industrial Midwestern city that was just hemorrhaging jobs and people were leaving. We had peaked at 80,000 people in the 70s and we were down to 58,000. And so we needed an infusion of opportunity and energy into the community and investment

into the community. And the city leaders were able to attract more businesses and manufacturing to the community and the city leaders were able to attract more businesses and manufacturing to the community and it meant that we were attractive place for people to come. And so these Haitian migrants were able to get immigration status to come here legally during some turmoil domestically. An important point that they actually arrived legally. And they had, you know, there was turmoil going on in Haiti as there tends to be, and they needed a place to go.

They needed a refuge. And America has been that refuge for so many people all around the world. And that's part of what makes America amazing. And when people come here, they get the opportunity to live the American dream and they get the opportunity to provide for their families and build their families here. And that's what was happening with these Haitian migrants.

And we have a Republican mayor, a Republican governor in Ohio, and they were being welcoming. They weren't playing up the visions. They were being what local leaders have to do, which is getting stuff done, figuring out how to make it work, and not using these big national issues to divide people,

but figuring out how, as a community, are we going to come together and solve whatever problems we have. And the problems were, oh, they speak a different language. It's harder for them to communicate with doctors and with service providers. So we need to figure out how we can get more

bilingual service providers into the town. But everyone in the community was like, okay, we gotta like work together. We're gonna figure this out. We might need some additional resources. But what they didn't need was somebody on the national level coming in, spreading hate and fear and division. And as soon as they did that, that's when the bomb threats came. That's

when the KKK started marching. And the city's like, just leave us alone. But that's also when people stepped up and started eating at Haitian restaurants and standing up. And so that's what I did. That's what I did. I went, I have a song that's, by the time this podcast comes out, it will have just come out, with a Haitian artist named Michael Brun. And we had recorded the song last year, but he was so grateful for me for stepping up and saying something about the situation in my hometown with the Haitian migrants. He's like, man, we got gotta put this song out and show like,

this unity between Americans and Haitians, black Americans and Haitians. And so we released this song and part of what we did to kind of celebrate releasing it was, we went to a Haitian restaurant in my hometown and the food was amazing. I know the food was amazing. I know the food was amazing. And I think food, I think what the conceit of this whole experience is, you know that

food really brings people together and allows people to talk in a certain way. It's what they call a comfort food. Exactly. And so I loved the act of just going to a Haitian restaurant in my hometown and feeling that connection. And my mom came, my sister came, it was their first time eating there too. And so we were able to like bridge that gap and have a conversation right there in my hometown at a new Haitian restaurant that was delicious. And I feel like if more of us are

willing to have those kinds of meals and conversations on those small levels, those local levels, I think we'll all treat each other better. And hopefully it'll elevate to our national political discussion, being more empathetic and more understanding as well. Hope so. I have loved talking to you. My pleasure. I have one talking to you. My pleasure. One last quick question. For people listening to this conversation and hearing you and hearing particularly about your relationship with your mom, they may be estranged from someone in their family

right now. A little bit of advice for them or a word for someone who is maybe wants to make their way back to somebody. Well I think part of the breakthrough for me was just growing up and seeing life and understanding that life happens to everybody and that our parents are not immune from that. They're not perfect. They're not going to do everything right. They have frailties and weaknesses.

And some people are dealing with histories of abuse and things that are much, much harder to recover from. So I can't tell everyone, you know, you have to forgive, you have to show grace to these people because sometimes it might be too hard to come back from whatever they've experienced with that person. But if you see a way to do it, if you see a way to understand

why they did the things that they did, to empathize with them, to understand that nobody's perfect and that we all have human frailties, if you allow yourself to see that from their point of view, I think it will help you forgive them and find a way to reconcile. And I love having my mother in our lives,

not just my life, not just my siblings' lives, but our kids. Them having a grandmother that they can hug on and love on and learn from is so key, and it's something that I had growing up, and I would never want my kids to not have that. And so just for your kids' sake, do it, you know, because it's so like extended family is so valuable to kids.

I really think it means so much. Like it's cool for them to have their friends at school and your friends in your neighborhood and all that stuff. But there's something about that blood connection that is really nice. and my kids feel it. Every time their cousins come to town, every time we go see them in Ohio, there's something special about it. And whenever you can find a way to reconcile, to create that village of family members around

them, I think it's great. I have loved this conversation. Thank you for inviting us into your home. Thank you. Thank you for looking back over your shoulder and letting us learn about John Legend and also Johnny Stevens. Thanks so much.

Thank you. I just love this conversation. And I look forward to listening to the re-release of Get Lifted by the time this episode comes out. That new release will be out in the world and I probably will have already listened several times. I look forward for you to listen too. Now, before we let you go,

we want to remind you that we want to hear your stories too. We want to hear about your memories, your recipes, your thoughts on some of the previous episodes. So you can record yourself on a voice memo and send that to us at ymk at highergroundproductions.com. And if you do, your voice might be featured in a future episode. And if you want a chance to make John Legend's Mama's Recipe for that mac and cheese with the green peppers and the Ritz crackers on top, you can find that recipe on my Instagram page

at michelle__norris. And you can, of course, find it and all the recipes from all the other episodes at yourmamaskitchen.com. Thanks so much for listening. I'm so glad you're here. I hope you'll come back soon because you know us, at Your Mama's Kitchen. We are always serving up something wonderful. Until then, be bountiful. -♪ Hmm!

-♪ Your Mama's Kitchen is a production of Higher Ground, It's bountiful. Mohan, Dan Fearman, and me, Michelle Norris. The show's closing song is 504 by the Soul Rebels. Editorial and web support from Melissa Bear and Say What Media, talent booker Angela Peluso. And that's it, everybody. Goodbye, take care, see you soon. Copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. Sound recording copyright 2025 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. ["Higher Ground Audio"]