#RolandMartinUnfiltered - TN Commissioner Harassed, HBCU Funds, SCOTUS & Affirmative Action; Libera's 200th, Eye Care Month

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

01.24.22 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: TN Commissioner Harassed, HBCU Funds, SCOTUS & Affirmative Action; Libera's 200th, Eye Care MonthA Tennessee county commissioner was harassed and threatened last year while a confederate statue was being removed. Today, those charges almost got dismissed. We'll have that commissioner here to explain despite clear evidence of harassment; the white man will get off scot-free.The US supreme court will hear challenges to affirmative action in college admission. The President and Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law will explain how much of a slippery slope this could end up being.Yesterday would have been the 24th birthday of Lauren Smith Fields; the young black Bridgeport, Connecticut woman found dead in her home after a date with a white man she met on a dating app. A Bridgeport city council member will be here to answer our questions about the family's allegations of how the police department is botching the investigation.Plus, Supermodel Beverly Johnson will drop in to tell us about her relationship with fashion icon Andre Leon Tally.We are a few weeks away from our trip to Liberia for its bicentennial celebration. Tonight, we start our special segments about the county with historian and author Claude Clegg.And it's National Eye Care Month. In our Fit, Live, Win segment, we'll talk to a correctional health optometrist who will give us some tips on how to keep our eyes healthy.#RolandMartinUnfiltered partner: Nissan | Check out the ALL NEW 2022 Nissan Frontier! As Efficient As It Is Powerful! 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3FqR7bPSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfilteredDownload the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com#RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Today is Monday, January 24th, 2022. Coming up on Roland Martin on the filter, streaming live on the Black Star Network. A Tennessee County Commissioner was harassed and threatened last year while a Confederate statue was being removed. Today, those charges almost got dismissed. We'll talk with her about all the drama in Tennessee. Also, folks, how hard is it for NBC News and The Root

to tell you exactly how much HBCUs have received from the federal government in the last couple of years, even under President Joe Biden? It's not that hard. I'm going to break down, show you the actual numbers. So no more drama about HBCUs not getting money. I'm going to show you exactly how much they've received. And you'll see for yourself. Also, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear challenges to affirmative action in college admissions.

We'll talk with the president, executive director of the Lawrence Community for Civil Rights Under Law about these important cases. Also, folks, yesterday would have been the 24th birthday of Lauren Smith Fields, the young black woman found dead in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Of course, in the presence of a white man, we'll talk with the Bridgeport County City Council member here to answer some questions about the family's allegations of how the police department is botching the investigation.

Also, Supermodel Beverly Johnson will talk to us about her long-time relationship with the great fashion icon, Andre Leon Talley. And we are a few weeks away from our trip to Liberia for 200 Bicentennial tonight. We'll start our special segment about the country, talking with historian and author Claude Clegg. It's also National Eye Care Month,

and our Fit, Live, Win segment will talk to a correctional health ophthalmologist, optometrist, I'm sorry, who will give us some tips on how to keep our eyes healthy. And it's time to bring the funk. Roland Martin unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got it.

Whatever the mess, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got it. He's rolling, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, In June, while a Tennessee Constitutional... While a Tennessee construction crew was removing the graves of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife, white supremacist Nathan Bedford Forrest, a white man was harassing Shelby County Commissioner Tammy Sawyer as she spoke to the media. That man, George K. Rack Johnson, was eventually charged with misdemeanor assault.

Today, those charges were scheduled to be dropped. Why? Joining me now is Tammy Sawyer, Shelby County Commissioner. Glad to have you here. So, Commissioner, what's the deal? They're dropping it for what reason? What, it didn't happen? Well, it definitely happened. But, you know tennessee shelby county is the blackest county in tennessee so they sent it to a white county a republican county

that had no interest in prosecuting it so they reached out and said they were going to put in a motion to dismiss um and move on and that was until until the actions happened this weekend. I'm confused. Why send it out? What, the prosecutors there can't prosecute? So our great Republican district attorney, Amy Weirich, here in Shelby County, recused herself.

She called me and said, I don't want to be accused of showing favoritism on either side. I've had run-ins with District Attorney Weirich just because I believe that she is one of those people who upholds over-policing and arresting Black people and keeping jails filled. So because of those run-ins and those disagreements, she didn't feel that she could be an advocate for me as a victim in a crime. Wow. So they're going to dismiss these charges, and he just goes scot-free?

So because he went on Facebook Live with a friend and offered out my address and actually emailed out my address to people telling them to send me cotton and other gifts and show me who was to face a reckoning. Because of those actions that came to light this weekend, the judge was forced to allow the case to continue. But the judge is also from Dyer County, and he did not want the case to continue. And he lectured Mr. Johnson and told him, you have a great lawyer. You know, why did you open your mouth?

You know, don't ruin a good thing. He told him, son, don't ruin a great lawyer. You know, why did you open your mouth? You know, don't ruin a good thing. He told him, son, don't ruin a good thing. And so I already see where this is going. Wow. That is incredible that that was what was discussed. And so, so what? Nothing left for you here? I was in court, and when I attempted to speak, the judge told me that I don't address him.

I could talk to the DA. This is the same DA that never called me, interviewed me. And actually today, when the case was continued to be set for trial in March, uh, said, I'll now have to look at this case. I have to be honest. I-I-I hadn't looked at it because I just knew it was going to be dismissed. I hadn't looked at it because I just knew it was going to be dismissed. So this is a six-month-old situation that went viral, that was

covered on your show and many others. And the DA is telling me he's never looked at the file, and now he's going to have to look at it. There's still a motion to dismiss from the defense. That'll be heard on March 31st. And I have to decide if I want to even participate in a court system that I know doesn't see value in the life of a black woman elected or not. Yeah, sounds to me like you've got some folks here who really don't want to even bother with this. And so they would rather give as much leeway to this white supremacist than confront what's going on here. Oh, absolutely. I mean, the judge invited him up. They talked about fly fishing. The D.A. walked in with George Johnson and his attorney and hadn't even spoken to me yet. And this is supposed to be the person elected to advocate on my behalf.

You know, after it came out that Johnson had, you know, been putting my address out, the judge did tell him not to speak about it on social media anymore. He would revoke his bond. But the way he stated it was, I'm mad that this is continuing the case, not I'm concerned for Ms. Sawyer's safety. He didn't want to hear from me at all. And it was very clear, like many things in Tennessee, that Black lives, my life, didn't matter at all. Commissioner Tammy Sawyer, we appreciate you coming on, explaining to us what's going on here. Hate that you have had to go through this, but let us know what happens there. We see how things go there in

Tennessee. Thanks. Thanks for your support. I appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Folks, this is, look, this is what it means to be Black in America. Also what it means to be Black in America, folks, is to have to deal with

people who really don't quite understand us, don't understand what people who really don't quite understand us, don't understand what we do, don't understand how important it is to get information right concerning us. I've worked in a lot of black media spaces, and I've always said that, you know what, I don't waste time dealing with mainstream media

on lots of stuff because for me it is about the ability for us to be able to tell our story and always say that they'll never be able to, as I put it, out black me. That's how I always put it. But what drives me crazy is when we have folks who do stories that impact African Americans and especially when we have black targeted or black owned media outlets, uh, who somehow screw it up, put information out there that black people hear about and see, and then, um, it's wrong. And then folks wonder, um, then people are running around with misinformation and then they say this, that, and the other, and what, uh, you know, what happens with us. And it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's nerve wracking. And so over the, and the other, and what happens with us. And it's just, it's nerve-wracking.

And so over the weekend, I came across this story that was on, that NBC News did. And I don't know what platform it ran on, whether it was there, NBC Now or whatever, but Issa Gutierrez was the reporter, and so she did this story. Now, I didn't actually see her story first. What I saw was a rewrite of her story by an Alexandria Payne, or Lane, I believe, on The Root, which is not black-owned., I believe, on The Root,

which is not black-owned. A white hedge fund owns The Root, but they're black-targeted, a very, you know, prominent black-targeted website. So what bothered me the most in reading this story that it literally was a rewrite of the piece that was done. Like, that was it. There was nothing, there was no original reporting. It was a rewrite.

So essentially, they just took the piece that was on NBC and just rewrote it, and there you go. So I'm looking at this story. I'm looking at this story, and they interviewed three HBCU students, and they're talking to them about, y'all can go to my computer, I'm showing the story. They're talking to them about funding. I'm trying to figure out how to get this closed caption off, but it's not working. And so I'm watching the story and they're talking about the housing conditions and the protests at Howard University.

And the whole story is about how Biden is not living up to his promises with the funds to HBCUs. Okay. They talked about how they promised some $60 million in funding and the things that they need. And then like right here, she talks to this Alabama A&M student. Go to this. Pull it up, please. Professors offer different classes or more classes. We need better funding. We reached out to Howard University, and they said, in part, that they advertised additional housing for juniors and seniors and work hard to ensure those...

So, the brother from Alabama A&M was saying they need more professors, they need better equipment, things along those lines. And so I'm listening to the story. I'm watching. And then, um... And then the reporter, she's asking them about, well, Biden said this is going to be a priority. And what are your thoughts about that? And,

and the student says this. And black people period in America have been given false promises on campaigns. I was more naive. I thought the promise would be kept. We all know how the game is played. It's so unfortunate to hear Austin say that's just how the game is played because this isn't a game. Do you have hope that the Biden administration will do right by HBCUs? I'll say yes. I will say yes. I'm going to say that the most hope that I have is in students. I have mixed feelings about it because I love all the optimism because we need people like that. Like, we're still going through a pandemic. I really don't expect them to look at college students,

especially just even put HBCU students on the focal point. I don't see it happening. Okay. Now, they say in their report they reached out to the White House and the White House did not respond back to them. Okay. See, this is what I can't stand. I can't stand lazy-ass reporting.

I can't stand trifling reporting. I can't stand when you do a story, and you're talking to three HBCU students. Now, God bless those students, but let's just be real honest. Those three students have absolutely no clue about what's happening in Washington, D.C. with funding. They don't. NBC News, Isabella Gutierrez, did she call the United Negro College Fund?

Nope. Did she call the Third Grade Marshall Fund? Nope. Did she call the Congressional Black Caucus? Nope. Did she call the Thurgood Marshall Fund? Nope. Did she call the Congressional Black Caucus? Nope. Did she call anybody? Did she call NAFEO? Leslie Baskerville? Nope. Who is the Thurgood Marshall Fund, the UNCF, and NAFEO? The three largest lobbyists for HBCUs in Washington, D.C. Who would know better about funding for HBCUs than NAFEO, Thurgood Marshall Fund, and United Negro College Fund? But then they don't even call the Congressional Black Caucus.

Okay, why should you call the Congressional Black Caucus? Well, could it be that CBC members on the House Education Committee? Should it be people like Congressman Jim Clyburn, who is in the Democrat House leadership? He's the whip. Kind of know what's going on, right? They call nobody. No facts, no details, no nothing. So black folks are out here retweeting this article, and they're saying, I saw it in the root.

That's a black website. But all the root did was rewrite the NBC story. See, y'all, I've been telling y'all for years, one of the biggest problems with black targeted media and black owned media, they don't call nobody. They rewrite some stuff in white media, slap their name on it, give it the veneer of blackness, and then we go, ooh, I saw it here, I saw it there, when all they're doing is ripping off somebody else's reporting and then making it seem like it's theirs.

It was a total rewrite. Yeah. So, on Twitter yesterday, I lit that ass up with 20 tweets, putting the root in NBC News and this reporter on blast for shoddy reporting. Why? Because we've been covering this stuff. We've been showing y'all the real data.

We've been having the experts on. Oh, if you click that root story, this is what comes up right now. Post not found. You know why? They took that shit down. And they took it down because I dragged that ass. Now, why did I drag him? This ain't about defending Biden and Harris.

This is about facts. This is about why I keep telling y'all stop listening to these other people who don't know shit about black people and trust people who are actual journalists. Because you know what I did? I text Congresswoman Alma Adams. Who is Alma Adams? because you know what I did? I text Congresswoman Alma Adams. Who is Alma Adams? She is only an HBCU graduate who's in the Congressional Black Caucus, who's the co-chair of the HBCU Caucus.

I text Congressman Jim Clyburn, who is only an HBCU graduate, South Carolina State, who is the highest ranking African-American in Congress. I hit up Michael Lomax, who leads the United Negro College Fund. I hit up Leslie Baskerville with NAFEO. I hit up my frat brother, Dr. Walter Kimbrough, president of Dillard University. Y'all, wasn't that hard. So, everybody out here and y'all watching the rest of these people and they talk about HBCU, what they not doing and what we ain't got.

Now, remember in the story, the young lady, and again, I'm not dissing her. She just don't know. She said, we in the middle of a pandemic and they don't care about HBCUs and what's going on. Remember what she said? That's what she said. Again, I'm not dissing her because y'all, she don't know. Please go to my computer. This, y'all, is a spreadsheet that Congressman Jim Clyburn sent me.

What does it say at the top? COVID relief to HBCUs. Left-hand column, the first university is Alabama A&M, the one that brother was in. The first column, it says Cap 5 forgiveness. That column shows you the loan forgiveness the federal government did, the Biden administration did for HBCUs. Look at the bottom right here. 603,382,977.29.

Y'all see the schools. Xavier, Winston-Salem State, Virginia State, Virginia Union, Tennessee State, Texas College, Spelman, on and on and on and on and on. Oh, let's now go to the CARES Act. This list, let me go ahead and zoom this in for y'all watching. This shows you right here, CARES Act,

how much all of the HBCUs receive. Alabama A&M, 9.1 million. Alabama State, 6.2 million. And going down, 4.3, 6.7, 6.5, 3.6, on and on and on. The CARES Act was passed under this administration. HBCUs received $352,770,880 as result of the CARES Act. Y'all ain't done. Scroll over here.

CARES Act II. Alabama A&M, $17 million. Alabama State, $12 million. Go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. CARES Act II, HBCUs received $578,925,495. Y'all ain't done. Scroll over to the CRRSAA Act. I don't even know what the hell that is.

Rodriguez, would UNCF bring him in, please? Rodriguez, what is that? What is that? You were just looking at, Roland, you talked about CARES Act. That was

actually for March 2020. Then the second thing, the CRRSA, we call it CRSA, that was the December 2020 stimulus. You remember the bill that on his way out, President Trump said he was going to sign it, and he said he wasn't going to sign it, and he ended up signing it? Right.

It was that bill. Okay. And so what you're finding... So that CRRSA, hold on. Hold on, hold on. I'm going to go down, y'all. In the CRSA-1, HBCUs got $583,873,621. Okay.

Now, let's pause right there. Go ahead. I'll tell you what that is. That's the pot of money that every college and university in the country got some of. But that's the part that just HBCUs got. Now, you're going to go into the part two of CERSA, and that is money set aside just for HBCUs. Now, out of that pot one, you remember hearing HBCUs were forgiving debt and forgiving student fees,

and they were doing things for students that nobody else was doing, even though bigger schools with bigger endowments and more resources have more money. Such as Mahari giving students $10,000 and such as that, okay. Exactly, so that's coming out of that first portion that you're mentioning.

And then separate from that, that second portion under the same name, SIRSA, that's the HBCU set aside. Okay, hold up, hold up. We going there. Y'all see, 19.8, 13.6, 17.7. That's gone down, that's gone down. So that HBCU set-aside money

comes out to $852,828,978. Yeah, darn near a billion dollars. And so that's money that we made the case to Congress. HBCU advocates, you mentioned Leslie Baxterville, Thurgood Marshall, United Negro College Fund, Michael Lomax. We made the case to Congress that if Black people are disproportionately impacted, you want to call us essential workers, but you're basically saying that we are more exposed, we have more pre-existing conditions, we're more impacted,

then we should therefore get more of the stimulus money because we are more impacted. That means that the students at our schools, their parents are still in harm's way. They're more likely to die. They're more likely to be infected. And so the schools where we are attending in disproportionate percentages should get more money. So that's the case we made. And you see that darn near billion dollars there. What is ARP Act?

A-R-P, what's that? That's the American Rescue Plan. Now, this is the first signature achievement of the Biden administration. And so what you find in the American Rescue Plan, ARP, is American Rescue Plan is roughly about the size of CARES Act from March 2020, plus the CERSA or the December 2020 stimulus that President Trump was going to sign and wasn't going to sign. Then he ended up signing it. You basically add those two packages together and you get what President Biden came out the gate with.

We gonna scroll down. So ARP at 25.3, 18, 20, 15. So going down, we gotta get to the bottom. $1,024,804,301. So the first... And you're just getting started. So the first major bill that President Biden signed, this is not the federal government budget,

this is a separate bill, was $1 billion for HBCUs. And that's just the first part of it, because that's out of the park where all colleges and universities each got a piece. So places like UNC Chapel Hill got a piece and places like Emory got a piece. But out of that piece that all colleges and universities got, that was the HBCU total. And then in addition to that, again, because the disproportionate impact that the pandemic has on black people, we made the case for the A2 that you're about to go into now,

above that $1 billion that you're... And the AP projected, was that bill back better? Was that BBB? No, you're still in the American Rescue Plan. Okay, so... We're talking about actual law. We're not talking about anything proposed yet. So, our app projected.

Y'all see, 34.6, 23. Going down, going down, going down, going down. It comes out to $1,487,453,737.63. So, Roland, I want to help put this in perspective. I've been doing this work for HBCU lobbying, advocacy, making a case for these schools to Congress for a good bit of time now.

And HBCUs, before the last four or five years in legislation, were never in the same sentence with the word doing. And if you look back at the stimulus that happened during President Obama's time, which gives you an apples-to-apples comparison on stimulus packages, you were not going to find that HBCUs had a particular set-aside. And so what you're seeing now is these schools are rising to the point where they are garnering more attention from public policy leaders and decision makers in Washington. And so that they're not fighting for scraps. Right.

They're starting to get real money and investment, the kind that they've deserved since their inception 200 years ago. Now, folks, I want y'all now to look at this here, this last column. Mm-hmm. It shows you all of those bills broken down by how much each one of the schools got. Alabama A&M got $207.4 million. Alabama State, $232.3 million. Let me just scroll on down.

You got this 108 right there. That's Clark Atlanta. Clark Atlanta got 108.3. Keep going. Y'all see that big number? 307. That's Florida A&M. Got 307.2 million.

184, 111, keep going. All these numbers, you see that y'all, I'm showing you actual numbers, okay? Actual numbers. Big number right there. Out of all of these bills, HBCUs got $6,484,039,989.92. Now, so let's...

Go ahead. So let's put everything in perspective because the question that everyone wants to ask, and it's really kind of unfair, and I'll tell you why, is which administration was better for HBCUs? That's what they all want to say. Now, by the numbers, if you're only going to look during coronavirus pandemic time, and you're only going to look at these major pieces of stimulus legislation, you saw what President Trump and that Congress did in March 2020 plus December 2020 basically equals just about

what President Biden did in his one bill, the American Rescue Plan, in March of 2021. It took those two bills, the first two, together under Trump to get what President Biden came out the gate swinging and achieved early in his administration. So all this talk about they haven't been successful and they haven't done anything meaningful is just really some inside the beltway chatter. Now, see, now I'm about to really mess y'all up. I'm about to really mess y'all up because I'm about to show you, really, in terms of y'all can understand apples to apples.

State HBCUs, HBCUs that are public institutions, they are largely funded by the state government. It is not the responsibility of the federal government to be funding state colleges. It's the state. Let me show y'all the deal. Go to my computer. Take Alabama A&M. Alabama A&M state appropriations fiscal year 20 was $46.7 million.

They got $1.1 million in state grants. So the total funding for Alabama A&M was $47.8 million in state funding. Listen to me closely, y'all. $47.8 million. That brother who was on an NBC story, he was saying, we need more professors, more buildings. Y'all, the state's supposed to fund that. Look how much Alabama A&M got in federal COVID relief. 207.5 million dollars.

That means that Alabama A&M got four times as much money from the federal government in COVID relief funding than they got from their own state. That means that out of the federal COVID relief money, it would take Alabama A&M four years to get $207.5 million. That's what they got in COVID relief. Go on down. Alabama A&M, Alabama State, $54.9 in total state funding.

How much from federal COVID relief? $232.3 million. Bishop State got total funding, $ 15.8 million from the state. COVID relief, 55 million. Gadsden State got 25.4 million in total state funding, 35 million in COVID funding. On and on. Go on down, University of Arkansas. Look at Delaware State. University of District of Columbia. Florida A&M. Florida A&M got one hundred and thirty six point nine million dollars from the state of Florida. They got three hundred and seven point two million in federal covid relief money. Keep going down. Y'all see Grambling got $18.9 million from the state of Louisiana.

They got $184.6 million in COVID relief money. Keep going. Southern University of New Orleans, Shreveport, Southern University in Baton Rouge, $29.3 million in state funding, $132 million in COVID funding. Alcorn State, keep going. Jackson State, $44 million from state, $120 million in COVID relief money. Y'all, what I'm trying to show y'all, look at the numbers. The numbers don't lie.

These are actual numbers. This is a spreadsheet that we got from Congressman Jim Clyburn's office that is detailing the exact numbers. Tennessee State, 63.2 million from the state, 115.5 million from the federal government. Now, the point I'm laying out here for folks, LaRigas, who don't, again, don't fully understand the data, don't understand the data, okay? These are public institutions. But now, explain to people who don't understand why they're not seeing private HBCUs on this list.

So private HBCUs are not supposed to be funded by the state. You mentioned Alabama State and all kinds of affiliated with the state and they don't get money from the state by and large. So the federal government helps all HBCUs, but the states, they are supposed to help those entities that they have procured. Those are institutions that they're supposed to caretake, just like the major teaching research intensive institutions that are the flagships of that state, the state takes care of them. And part of the problem over the years with HBCUs is that states have not taken care of their state-funded HBCUs the same way they've taken care of their, what they call, flagship. All of those institutions should be flagships, including those that are excellent at educating Black Americans.

What about federal government, okay? Is the federal government precluded from giving money to private HBCUs? No. The federal government is the number one funder in the country for all HBCUs, period. Okay, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up.

I need you to repeat that for the people who were not paying attention. The federal government is the number one funder of all HBCUs in the country, and without the federal government, there's not a single one of the 100-plus historically black colleges and universities that can survive at all.

So, when you see this NBC News story that The Root then rewrote, when you see the AP story, the Newsweek story saying, 45 billion was taken, no. Explain to people that the initial bill that President Biden and Vice President Harris put up was $11 trillion. It got whittled down to $1.75 trillion.

That means 90% of what they suggested get funded got taken out. What you find is a lot of naivete, and people don't want to go into the level of detail that they should. So you look at President Biden and Vice President Harris proposals. They had two. There was one for infrastructure and there was one for families. When you put together what they had in infrastructure, plus what they had in family's plan or the human infrastructure, when you put them together, you had a commitment to historically Black colleges and universities that no other

president had ever made. So, Roland, you look back at the history of presidents of the United States and you're going to find largely that in their budgets, they pretty much proposed for HBCUs whatever they got out of Congress last year. No president really has ever taken a proactive stance to say, I'm writing my budget the way I want to, and I'm going to add a plus up for HBCUs, and I dare you, Congress, not to pass it. It's never happened. None of the 45 people before him have ever done that.

But President Biden is the first and only president in history. When he wrote his budget for fiscal year 2021, he plussed up the HBCU programs because he talked to the HBCU groups before he put his budget out. And he asked, what do you guys want? And he wrote plus ups for HBCU programs in his budget. Now, I'm not talking about the COVID patents. I'm talking about fiscal year 2021 annual appropriations. The president puts out the budget first. He plussed those programs up in his budget. And I'm here to tell you, Roe,

no president had ever plussed those programs up like that ever. No president, including the 44th. No president had ever plussed up those programs like that ever. They usually do what they call just taking the last fiscal year, copying and pasting that and putting that in the president's budget. This president, for the major program, we call it Title III, Title III of the Higher Education Act, which focuses in on

strengthening institutions that have a disproportionate number of underserved students like HBCUs. This president put in a plus-up of $100 million in one single fiscal year in that program. And, Roland, if they pass the appropriations bills as they're written, which they're still waiting for Congress to do, and they have a deadline of mid-next month to do it, if they pass it, that one program will be increased by over $85 million. And that is because you, for once in the history of America, had an American president willing to put the plus up in his budget. Now, then you also have to add, Roland, because you know people like Alma Adams,

and you know people like Barbara Lee, and people like Sanford Bishop. Those are the unsung heroes in this process... Now, see, I was... -...both in terms of... And I was about to get there... Jim Clyburn... Yeah, I was about to get there,

because I got some... See, I like calling out people. I got some fool named Reneeene Stephens on YouTube. Rolling state captain for them white folks. No, idiot. The president can propose one thing, but Congress can always remove it. It's the black folks in the House who ensure it stays in.

So when people... And not just them. So when folks say, oh, the black caucus ain't doing nothing, uh, guess what, folks? Greg Booker, Raphael Warnock, John Ossoff, you have to add all of these people together. And I'll really help break some news for you, Roland.

Go ahead. Is that HBCUs get a lot of bipartisan support, and Congress is quiet as it's... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And so because you look at them located in the American South, their House members are largely Republican. And so we have to bring them into the coalition and walk with them along with the Democrats,

like a Sanford Bishop that went to Morehouse and knows what that school means. We have to bring all of them together on both sides of the aisle and get these kinds of things accomplished because if we didn't bring them with us, they'd tell us that the money wasn't going to be there for us. But because our coalition has both Democrats and Republicans

in it, we're getting things done and we're finally starting to see increases that these schools have really deserved since the mid-1800s. Absolutely. Absolutely. Rodriguez, I appreciate it. I wanted to walk through this because I'm tired

of our people falling for bad reporting and not having actual data. And here's the piece, folks. Look, we challenged President Obama when it came to HBCU funding as well. This ain't about Biden, about Democrats.

This is about our institutions getting what we deserve, and that's what matters. We appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot. Take care. I want to bring up my panel, Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Dean, College of Ethnic Studies, California State University, L.A., Dr. Omokongo Dabinga, Proposal Lecturer, School of International Service, American University, along with Victoria Burke, writer with the NNPA and the Griot. Julian, I want to start with you, the president emeritus of Bennett College.

I mean, this is, I was so pissed watching that NBC News story and then watching that crap on the Griot, on the route, which I'm glad they took the story down, because all it takes is picking the damn phone up. Hell, they could have went to whitehouse.gov, typed in HBCU, and would have pulled up the sheet that they put out on January 20th and the one they put out in October.

And my problem is when black people see this, they go, see, see, they ain't doing shit for HBCUs. They promised us, and we ain't got no money. You know, Roland, I saw the same piece on NBC. I saw it a couple of times because they had it on Peacock and they had it on another platform.

It was, as you said, it was shoddy reporting. It was all over the place. If a journalism student sent me that piece, I would have given them an F minus if you could because one young person is talking about buildings. The other

young lady is talking about Howard University's dormitories. It was just all over the place. It seemed almost like a hit piece on the Biden administration from a perspective of saying they haven't done enough. The reporter needs, if not fired, they need to have the child start covering street crossings or something, because it was really a poorly done piece. But the fact is that we, President Biden has done a whole lot more than President Obama did. We, I was... Then Obama, then Trump, then Bush, then Clinton. I'm sorry, I mean, go ahead. Oh, you're absolutely right. And, but President done a lot more than any of his predecessors had done.

And I think that that's the influence of Kamala Harris, who, of course, is... And black voters! And the pressure black people said, you've got to do something. And Cedric Richmond, who I believe is an HBCU grad. And, of course, Jim Clyburn, Congressman Clyburn, has always been there in the cut.

And I must tell you, as you lift up Alma Adams, former Bennett professor for nearly 40 years. She and I retired from Bennett College at the same time. Got it. She is indefatigable around issues of HBCUs. Her caucus is bicameral and bipartisan. Yep. So she's a good member. That HBCU caucus, Lauren, Congressman Bobby Scott,

Virginia, huge, huge advocate as well. But this is the thing, Lauren, that we fight all the time. The NBC News can broadcast that story everywhere, and guess what? I'ma go ahead and say this. It's a whole bunch of blue check people who will quickly retweet an NBC news story and never retweet something we report here on Roller Martin Unfiltered. I saw all these folks retweeting the NBC news story on Lauren Smith

Fields. And I'm like, y'all know we talked to the family attorney on Friday in a 23-minute report. Y'all can also share that if y'all want to. But this is these type of stories. And then when the root, a black targeted website, rewrites some BS from NBC News, it just reinforces the misinformation. Yeah, there's very few media organizations that have the reporters that will do the original reporting on something and really call. Like you said, they're just doing rewrites. And unfortunately, we're in an era of clickbait in an age of misinformation. So it's really important that people actually go and do original reporting. And, you know, no offense to Alma Adams and Jim Clyburn and everybody else, but Rodriguez left out the most important person who you just mentioned, who is the chairman of education and workforce, Bobby Scott, because without Bobby Scott and his staff writing the line items in for you know, it was just mentioned, of course, Senator Richmond, the connection there.

But without Congress appropriating that type of money and agreeing to that appropriation, you know, I know a lot of pressure is on Joe Biden. Everybody keeps mentioning Joe Biden and wanting to criticize Joe Biden. Obviously, you need a president that's willing, but you need Congress to appropriate that cash. That's right. And by the way, there are billions and billions of dollars in Build Back Better. Obviously, you need a president that's willing, but you need Congress to appropriate that cash. That's right. And by the way, there are billions and billions of dollars in Build Back Better, okay? And those... Well, first of all, that's...

And look, our job now, Lauren, Build Back Better didn't get passed, okay? So which means our job now is to say, all right, bye to the Democrats. Y'all had all this HBCU stuff in Build Back Better. Come up with some other bill That means our job now is to say, all right, Biden and the Democrats, y'all had all this HBCU stuff in Build Back Better, come up with some other bill to put the money in there. Right. For HBCUs, though, Build Back Better, of course, is huge.

They're going to try to pass it in pieces. And once again, you're going to see Congressman Scott be the one who has to line item all of these billions and billions to get that through. Right. Your staff, that's the staff that is billions to get that through. Right. Your staff, that's the staff that is pushing all of that through. Right. So the most important player in this actually is Bobby Scott.

Yeah, I mean, but... So when people say HBCUs don't do it, I mean, I'm sorry that CBC members don't do anything. You have a CBC member... It's a lot. Bobby Scott is the quarterback of all of this money. So... I'm going to go... It's interesting. Go to my computer again, It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie. Bobby Scott is the quarterback of all of this money. So... I'm going to go...

It's interesting. Go to my computer again, y'all. $6.4 billion. $6,484,039,908.92. The president can propose. He can pontificate all day. The Constitution states any appropriations starts in the House, not the Senate. So for all the people who say CBC ain't shit, they ain't doing shit,

you do not get this $6.4 billion unless the CBC fights for it. Absolutely. Look, man, I taught three classes at American University today, and I just sat down for a half-hour class on this stuff. And I've been schooled, man, I taught three classes at American University today, and I just sat down for a half-hour class on this stuff. And I've been schooled, man, and it's amazing. People always want to come at the CBC first before they go to anybody else. And one of the things that really bothers me is that I've heard Biden speak about this. I've heard Vice President Harris.

But I feel like when we talk about some of the messaging issues that they have, I don't know if this sounds petty or something, but part of their communication seems, man, they need to actively go after these folks who are putting out this misinformation and I would say disinformation like you've just done. Because these pieces, NBC, this is a hit piece. People are looking at any opportunity to go at Biden and his black agenda. And look, you, like you said, you talk good. I mean, if you do good, I'm going to talk about you. If you do bad, I'm going to talk about you. You are as critical as Biden as you are praiseworthy when he does things worthy of praise. And this is one of them.

And all of the CBC leaders who have led this need to be commended, but the Biden administration needs to do a better job at hitting these types of organizations, the NBCs of the world, the roots of the world, putting out this disinformation because he can't come at it. Vice President Harris can't come at it. But that communications team got to do a better job

of checking this stuff on a daily basis. And before I go to break, to your particular point there, and I appreciate the White House sending me this, but this release that they sent me is a perfect example of what's a waste of paper. They sent me Biden-Harris investments in HBCUs yielding sweet fruit.

And they go on in here, and this is the biggest mistakes that these people make. They put in here more than $5.8 billion to HBCUs. The investments enable these colleges and universities to shift from classroom and laboratory-centered learning to virtual learning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you go on, and then you go on, and more verbiage, and more verbiage,

and more verbiage, and more verbiage, and more verbiage, and more verbiage. Then they get down to HBCUs, produce this, produce that, produce this, produce that. Then they got more verbiage, more verbiage, more verbiage, more verbiage. Now we got some quotes. We got more verbiage.

We see unprecedented $5.8 billion again and more verbiage. Okay, so here's my problem, okay? And I got it. I got it. And I'm not slamming Leslie and Sonia. They got their names at the bottom of this. But here's the problem. Here's the problem.

The White House sent me to this. Joe Madison says that you got to put it where the goats can get it. That's right. You got to say, you got to say, for example, Alabama A&M got $48 million from the state, $207 million from the federal government. You got to break that thing down.

This don't do it, y'all. I'm just letting y'all know. It's a historic investment in HBCUs. They don't mean nothing. They don't mean nothing. They don't mean nothing. You got to. That release didn't go to J school. No, no, nothing. They don't mean nothing. You got to... That release didn't go to J school. No, no, no.

It's a press release, and I get it. And again, I love Leslie, but Leslie, I'm going to call you when the show's over, but you got to make that thing plain so people understand. That's what I'm trying to get people to understand. So for everybody out here, I got to go to my next story, but I'm trying to explain to all these people out here.

This is not about, oh, man, you're trying to protect the Biden administration. No, I'm trying to protect facts. And so right now, y'all can go out with the real facts now. I put the spreadsheet. I'm going to put it on social media. So everybody out there, oh, no, man, oh, no. You got the actual hardcore numbers, so I'm not

playing this game again and I am going to pull up the data of what the Biden folks had in the Build Back Better plan. I have it right here, but I'm doing it another day, and I'm going to say now we have a target of what now to fight for. Because it didn't get passed. Because now you got to know what you're

fighting for. I got to go to a break. We'll come back. We're going to talk with the head of the Law Department for Civil Rights Under Law. The Supreme Court, oh Lord, they're going to take an affirmative action case. Y'all know Clarence Thomas, he is just salivating at the opportunity to end affirmative action. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network

where we know how to call people to get factual information. Norske Rundforskning ТРЕВОЖНАЯ МУЗЫКА I'm Angie Stone. All right, today, Supreme Court folks announced they're going to hear an affirmative action case dealing with Harvard University, University of North Carolina. You got to know these conservatives have been chomping at the bit to get rid of affirmative action. They've been dealing blows to a number of different cases. They took up the abortion case out of Mississippi. And so the question is, what is going to happen next?

What are we now facing with a 6-3 hardcore conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court? We're joined now by the President and Executive Director of the Lawrence Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Damon Hewitt, live from D.C. Damon, glad to have you here. Folks like you, folks like me and others have been saying warning for years. This is what Republicans want to do. They are trying to lock themselves in. They want to control the policy of America for the next 50 to 100 years as we're seeing the demographic shifts take place in this country. White fear is driving all of this. Now that they have Amy Coney Barrett,

uh, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court to go along with Roberts, Alito, and Thomas, they right now are in conservative heaven when it comes to these major, uh, legislative initiatives. Ruelo, you're right, and thanks for having me. We are in a crisis mode. Uh, every right that we have, every right that exists on paper that we fight to make real and tangible every day is under attack. And affirmative action is the latest front. We saw this coming, but it doesn't make it any less stunning that the Supreme Court would take

up these cases, especially the UNC Chapel Hill case, which hasn't even been argued in the Court of Appeals yet. We won that case representing student... students as defendant interveners in the trial court in North Carolina. Without even having the Court of Appeals have a chance to hear it, the Supreme Court has swooped down and snatched this case up,

trying to rush to make its ultra-conservative right-wing point. You know, and, uh, it's so interesting. Last week, I was sitting here debating with a variety of people, and they were telling me, oh, these black judges, uh, that, uh, Biden has appointed don't mean nothing for black people. And I'm going, do you understand

the power federal judges wield? Significant power. You know, I clerked for a black federal judge in the Sixth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. That's the nextth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. That's the next level below the U.S. Supreme Court. It matters a heck of a lot who is behind that bench. It matters a heck of a lot who the clerks are

who are crafting the draft opinions for those judges as well. Uh, it all matters, and pretending like it doesn't matter is a big critical and tactical mistake. So, okay, so what do we do? Because, look, the Supreme Court is the law of the land. If they decide to throw out the use of this, they could right now ban affirmative action. We've seen it being peeled back, peeled back, peeled back, peeled back.

This right here is a conservative's opportunity to absolutely throw it out. They are salivating at the opportunity to make Roe v. Wade to throw that out as well. So whenever you saw these hearings, they kept talking about, oh, you know, precedent, things along those lines. We all knew they were lying. We knew the moment they got on that court, they were going to vote to get rid of a lot of this stuff. Well, look, what we have to do is, you know, me being a lawyer, we have to do what lawyers do is to use the same legal principles that they've tried to use against us for so long and hold them up as a mirror in their face. You know, it's not only UNC and Harvard, but we also

represent students in Texas, at UT Austin, because they've tried yet again, Roland, after Fisher 1, after Fisher 2, they tried yet again to do the same thing in Texas, and there the trial court slapped it back and said, race judicata. That's the legal parlance for saying, been there, done that. We're not going to let you do it again, right? And so we have to hold up the fact that the Supreme Court has consistently defended the use of race

and found it constitutional time and time again throughout these years, and look at all the various examples, and also look at the damage that can and will be done. Because it is clear, you can read it even in mainstream media, New York Times, what have you, that we all know, and any admissions official at the colleges and universities know, that if these policies are struck down

at these two universities, it's going to have a ripple effect nationwide, and we're going to have fewer black and brown students able to access any of these institutions that they want to. So, um, obviously, they take the case up. Look, they get a final shot at it. What then? What must we be preparing for? We have to be prepared to call higher education itself to the map because diversity, admissions,

and affirmative action policies were necessary, but they were never sufficient. We know that the best of those policies even have to be paired with quality experiences for students on campus. You're not going to get the same experience at a PWI that you would at an HBCU, and I see you with your NCCU sweatshirt on, right? And that's important, but it doesn't mean that these universities can't still try to do right by Black and Brown students. They also have to take a critical look at being mission-driven. You know, part of the reason why some of these policies have such a tortuous time is that

so many of the universities hold on to these normative notions, these kind of mainstream notions of what it means to be elite, that you have to have a certain SAT score and what have you. But if you look at the experiences and the skill set and the knowledge that Black and Brown students bring to the table, that defies some of these normative measures. And so I think we have to start taking a deeper look at the meaning of merit in these institutions and open this whole thing wide open. All right, then.

Damian, look, we appreciate it, man. Y'all are definitely on the front lines making this thing happen. Keep fighting, keep swinging. And we've got to get people to understand elections indeed have consequences. It's connecting the dots. People might not think those judges matter. This is what happens. Whoever wins the presidency,

they get to appoint the judges. Whoever controls the United States Senate, they get to approve or reject those judges. That's right. It all matters, brother. We'll be fighting this fight, and it's going to take a while, but we've been in this for decades, and we'll keep at it. All right, then. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Folks, before's gonna take a while, but we've been in this for decades and we'll keep at it. All right then, appreciate it, thanks a lot. Folks, before we go to a break, again,

all HBCU students, you see I'm representing North Carolina Central today. I always wear different HBCU gear. I partnered with McDonald's for a $105,000 total in scholarships, that's right, in honor of the 115th anniversary of Alpha Phi Alpha. We're partnering, giving away seven scholarships, seven scholarships to HBCU students,

open to all HBCUs, UNCF schools, or third-grade Marshall schools, but they're only for juniors and seniors. Why? Because part of the problem is that people are able to go there freshman and sophomore years, don't have enough money to stay. Julianne Noah, I got one of them phone calls from her

saying, Roland, we're trying to raise $30,000 to keep some girls at Bennett. Can y'all give some money? Well, y'all, that's real. And so this scholarship, I specifically said I only want it for juniors and seniors as a way to keep them in school and to keep them on path to graduate. All you got to do is go to tmcf.org to apply. tmcf.org to apply. tmcf.org.

Everything is on there. The deadline is February 28th for you to apply. Now, why do I want as many folks to apply? Because even though we're giving away seven scholarships, I want to be able to have the data to show the need. So if all of a sudden four and five and six, 700, 800, 1,000 show up, then we can come back and say,

this is why we need to have more scholarships. And so go to TMCF.org to apply. Deadline is February 28th for one of these $15,000 scholarships, folks. And so please do so. Got to go to break. We'll be back on Roland Martin Unfiltered. We'll be talking with Beverly Johnson about her long time friend Andre Leon Talley.

We'll talk about the Lauren Smith Fields case. Lots more to cover right here on the Black Star Network. Johnson about her longtime friend, Andre Leon Talley. We'll talk about the Lawrence Smith Fields case. Lots more to cover right here on the Black Star Network. ТРЕВОЖНАЯ МУЗЫКА I'm sorry. It's time to be smart. Roland Martin's doing this every day. Oh, no punches! Thank you, Roland Martin, for always giving voice to the issues. Look what Roland Martin in the world went, to quote Marcus Garvey again. The video looks phenomenal, so I'm really excited to see it on my big screen.

Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. I got to defer to the brilliance of Dr. Carr and to the brilliance of the Black Star Network. I am rolling with Roland all the way. Honestly, on a show that you own, a Black man owns the show. Folks, Black Star Network is here.

I'm real revolutionary right now. Roland was amazing on that. Hey, Blake, I love y'all. I can't commend you enough about this platform that you've created for us to be able to share who we are, what we're doing in the world, and the impact that we're having. Let's be smart.

Bring your eyeballs home. You can't be black on media and be scared. You dig? All right, folks. Marissa Bridgewater has been missing since January 9th from Hayward, California. The 12-year-old is 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighs 175 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. If you have any information on Marissa's whereabouts,

please call the Alameda County California Sheriff's Office at 510-272-88... 6878, I'm sorry. 510-272-6878. 6878. So please do so. All right, folks. A couple of folks I want to shout out

who've gotten some big appointments are the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. They've named Nicole Austin Hillary as their new president and CEO. The announcement was made last week. Now, she previously worked with Human Rights Watch. You see here, let me come back here. This is a photo here of her. You've seen her on our show.

So, again, they brought her on to now be the president and CEO. So congratulations to Nicole Austin Hillary, who was executive director of the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch. Now she is going to be running the CBCF. And also I had to give a shout-out to Lurie Daniels Favors. Let me pull up her. Many of you may have seen Lurie Daniels Favors. Let me pull up her. Many of you may, you've seen Lurie on the show. We had her on when we had our salute to Lonnie Guineer. Well, she also has gotten a new appointment. She is the new executive director for the Center for Law and Social Justice at

Medgar Evers College. And so congratulations to her as well on that appointment there. And so we always gotta shout out Black Achievement when we can. I wanna go back to the panel because I wanna talk about those Supreme Court cases. You know what, you know what, Omicongo, it's amazing to me when people

think that we're being nuts when I get all these people say, man, why are you sitting here? You came before the Democrats and they ain't done nothing. I keep saying, you want them right-wing judges? I mean, I'm telling...

These folks can argue with me all they want to about Biden is this, Trump was this, McCain was this, Obama was this, Romney was this, Obama was this. This is very basic. And that is the Republican Party wants to have a hard right federal bench that does not support civil rights, that does not support LGBT, that does not support class action lawsuits,

that is pro-business, that is anti-environment. That's what they want. And when people don't understand that the right understands that, they truly are missing out on the real politics in America. Oh, absolutely. That last word you said, the real politics in America. I mean, look at what these guys are doing now to actually try to bring Trump again back into office, right?

With everything that he's done, from the insurrection and everything, in their mindset, it has always been about the courts, period, bottom line. That's why they can tolerate him even though they may not can't stand his personality. But all of the other things that he will bring to the table, they can deal with it as long as they can get the courts. And that was what it was about when they elected him in 2016. And that's the case now. And we many of us in our community have to develop a certain level of real understanding about what's going on here, because that's what it's always been about. Because really, at the end of the day, you see in Florida, everyone's talking about critical race theory.

They just put up another policy now where they're talking about you can't teach about, you know, the gay experience in the classrooms. And the list goes on and on. Everything that you said that about what the courts want, they are making it become a reality. And I'm seeing it, working on these campuses and being a professor, seeing Black students who are feeling like they've already been questioned about their ability to be successful there because of these affirmative action policies. And they're already seeing the stress of what could possibly be coming down the pike as they're being targeted. So really, at the end of the day, we need to get up. We need to wake up and understand that we gave Trump three

judges, man, three Supreme Court judges and all the hundreds that he got at the different levels, you know, below that. And so really at the end of the day, when we see what Biden and Harris are doing with some of the appointments of their judges now, we got to get behind that. We got to support that because they are going to do everything possible to make sure that every single right they can legally take away from us will be taken away. This is what this court is about, period, bottom line. And you saw it when they were showing up at rallies with Mitch McConnell, these three new justices, and you see it in everything that they're talking about now. We need to wake up. I just saw, Julian,

where the new attorney general in Virginia fired one of his deputies who was on loan to the January 6th committee. Again, elections have consequences. They want to install hard right folks to advance their agenda. Our folks better wake up to understand the power of the courts. You can pass all the bills you want,

but if the courts invalidate them, don't matter. Well, Roland, you're exactly right. What we've seen with the Supreme Court is we blink on too many things. Of course, we couldn't really have turned it around given the votes they had in the Senate, but we blinked on some things. So now we have these hard right Supreme Court justices

and Clarence Thomas, I mean, he's probably happier than a pig, and you know what, that he has this company, because he's so anti-affirmative action. He's written about it so many times in so many cases that have been so blatant. The challenge with this in terms of affirmative action in particular, it will have an absolutely chilling effect on black student college admissions. Already, you see here in California, Proposition 209 caused a number of black students going to the University of California's, the elite state colleges, state-supported colleges. We saw that number drop by two-thirds.

I mean, literally, I think at some point they were talking about students and one and two students at places like at some of the were talking about students and one and two students at places like at some of the law schools because there is no affirmative action because of Prop 209. And Prop 209 is probably model legislation for the devils in Florida, Texas and other places who don't want our people to be educated. The biggest challenge I would say is that when we lose voting rights, we're going back to states' rights. We know what states' rights are. Those are rights to put black folks back in

our place or back into subservience. And we see it with wage law. We see it with other economic law. And we're going to see it, our rights even more erode, as Omicongo has said, even more erode if we don't get busy. I mean, they're already eroding. And that will continue unless we get busy. And look, what they're putting in place, Lauren, for 2022, the midterm elections, then we go to 2024 for the presidential election, they want complete control.

Donald Trump wanted 25% of the federal judiciary. They want to appoint more than half of these judges. And we're seeing more and more of these judges who are retiring or passing away. That's why they're salivating at taking over the United States Senate next year to stop Biden from appointing any more federal judges, especially black judges.

He's already appointed 24 black judges this year, eight of them women. Yeah, and he's also gotten 40 judges in total, which I think is the most since JFK. He's got some record number of judges he has gotten. He's tied with Ronald Reagan for the most judges appointed in their first year. I'm sure

that, I think for the lower courts, he's got some record since JFK. He's got some ridiculous number that goes all the way back to John F. Kennedy. And for that, I'm sure the Republicans and Mitch McConnell have noticed that. When they did the power-sharing agreement, Schumer and McConnell, that was part of it. I was actually very surprised that Mitch McConnell agreed to that, because Mitch McConnell is very obsessed with judges, because he knows what power and control is, and the Democratic Party is slow to figure that out. But Biden has done a very good job with judges and really hasn't

gotten that much credit for that. But there's a major messaging problem, quite frankly, with the Democratic Party on the highest levels. That's part of the problem. And then it's just a lot of whining. And the Democratic Party is a big tent party that has to please a lot of people. It's just very difficult, frankly. All right, folks, let's talk about a difficult story and what would have been her 24th birthday. Lauren Smithfield's family took to the streets demanding Bridgeport, Connecticut police give them information on her murder investigation. This took place on yesterday. Dozens of family and friends marched from the Bridgeport Police Department and ended at the city government center for the Justice for Lauren rally. Lauren's mother, Chantel Fields, she refuses to give up on

her daughter. No one is going to discard my daughter like she's rubbish. She's not rubbish. She had a life. She had a business. She was in college. And she had a family and friends that love her. No one is gonna discard Lauren Smithfield, my daughter, as she's rubbish. They're gonna answer everything or people are gonna lose their jobs. I want that bastard Tony's badge. I want his badge.

Lauren was found dead in her apartment on December 12th, I want his badge. I want his badge. Lauren was found dead in her apartment on December 12th, reportedly after a date with a white man identified as Matthew LaFountain, whom she met on the dating app Bumble. LaFountain told officers that he woke up next to Lauren to find blood was coming out of her right nostril, and she was not breathing. According to the Fields family attorney, Darnell Crossland, who we had on the show Friday, the state laboratory never received

any physical evidence from the scene, including a pill used as a sedative, a condom, and a blood stain in the middle of the bed. Crossland filed a motion notice of claim on behalf of Fields family Friday against Bridgeport and its police department. Joining me now is the Bridgeport president pro tem Marcus A. Brown. Glad to have you

here. You're a member of the city council here. What do you say to the allegations from the family's attorney Darnell Crossland that this has been not even a real investigation, that the Bridgeport Connecticut Police Department is not taking this case seriously?

Well, first of all, Roland, I just want to say thank you for having me. And I think the family has legitimate concerns. We know the facts of the case are that, unexpectedly, a 23-year-old Black woman was found dead. And the problem for the family is that they weren't notified in a timely manner, which is a disgrace. We have an obligation as a city and as a country And the problem for the family is that they weren't notified in a timely manner, which is a disgrace. We have an obligation as a city and as a country to notify families and to be sensitive to those families when they're grieving, to provide them with timely information in the passing of their child.

There should be no excuse as to why any police department detective should be delaying the notification to let a family know that their daughter has passed. It's just unacceptable. But it's not just that their daughter has passed. How in the world is a man who calls 911 admits to being in the bed with her, he's not even taken, according to Darnell Carlson, he's not even taken, according to Darnell Crossland, he's not even taken down for interview. They didn't

even take his DNA. According to Crossland, the family found the condom in a trash can. They claim there wasn't even a real search for evidence at the scene.

Yeah, and that's just not acceptable. We know when a situation like this occurs, you need to do everything you can to determine what the cause of this was. You need to interview every suspect. And we know in any type of situation where someone is found dead, it's usually someone close to them

that we interview and we deem them as a suspect. And I don't know how any police department can determine that he's not a suspect when he was the last one to see her alive. That's unacceptable. So what questions are you and the city council

asking of the police chief? Answers. We still, first, a month is out. There still is no autopsy report. The family is making allegations that the police department just, you know, again, has failed to properly searched the scene. And as a result, uh, whatever... whatever potential evidence the family has discovered will be inadmissible because you have no chain of custody because the police didn't collect it.

Yeah. And-and the timing of the autopsy being over a month long without any preliminary reports seems suspicious on its... on its front face. And if I were the family, I'd be definitely asking for this case to be turned over to the state police to be investigating this. I would, at this point, have no faith

that this investigation can be conducted fairly. But you said turn over to the state police. You're on the city council there. Are you and other city council members asking the state to take it over, to come in? Absolutely. Absolutely. What we want to see is we want to see a fair investigation. Right now, the family does

not have the faith that this can be done impartially regardless. So what we want is we're asking the state police to take over this case. And when you say we're asking, is that an actual resolution approved by the city council? Is that a vote, or is it just a press release? So it's a letter from the leadership of the city council

that we want this to be taken over. Our next meeting wouldn't be for another two weeks, so we don't want to wait that long. So that letter's already been submitted, or you're going to submit it? We're submitting this, should be on Thursday. We're submitting this to the state police to ask them to take over this case. And what is the

protocol there? So, for instance, y'all asking, but who actually grants the authority? Who gives the state police the authority? Does the police chief have to cede authority? Must the district attorney cede authority? How does that

actually work? Yeah. So what we've been told is that this needs to be something that the state police need to, number one, also believe that this can't be conducted impartially. And the police chief needs to be willing to allow this to happen as well. So what we want is to make sure that everyone is in agreement that this needs to happen, and it's the only way that it can happen in a fair way. So our first step would be to write this letter to the state police to ask them to take it over. They will meet with the chief of police, our acting chief of police, Rebecca Garcia,

to determine whether or not this is something that they want to accept. And I think it should be, and the family, I believe, would appreciate this being conducted by an impartial police department. You said that the police chief has to agree. Has he agreed? Has

he been asked? I'm sorry, she. I'm sorry. Sorry, she. No worries. She has not been asked yet. Once that letter is submitted to the state police, they will then reach out to acting chief Rebecca Garcia to either turn over the evidence and information or to not do so. But the power, I believe, the state can remove this case from the hands of the Bridgeport

Police Department and take it over without the permission of our acting chief of police. That's what it takes to get this done. That's what we will be asking and be seeking on behalf of this family. All right, President Pro Tem Marcus Brown, we certainly appreciate you joining us. We're gonna keep following this case

because certainly it deserves some answers. Yes, thank you for having me, Roland. Thanks a bunch. You know, Lauren, it's always unfortunate when, frankly, we have to press, prod, push, demand for there to be action. And I tell you, the story has now picked up steam. More people are reporting on it, now asking questions. And it's just so much about the story that just makes no sense.

23 years old, found dead, and police don't even bring the guy down to the police station to question him. Right. And the passage of time, obviously, the breaking of the chain of custody. Obviously, I suspect that Bridgeport is not a premier location for homicide detectives, but at the same time, if in fact this was a homicide, but at the same time, they've got to do better than this. And it looks like there's a situation where this is going to have to be taken out of their hands. kind of reminds me of the Ahmed Aubrey scenario, where if it hadn't been for outside pressure and a video and all sorts of other things

that happened to come up, then we would have never known what actually had happened to him. And this is the same sort of situation. And it's sad to see. But it is picking up a lot of steam. It is getting into the media. And I think it's going to go even bigger

as time goes on. Um, you know, Julianne, um, when we had the attorney on Friday, I mean, I was just, just dumbfounded listening to just the things that he was saying and how utterly ridiculous this case has been handled, uh, by this police department, just callous disregard for the life of this woman. Well, not only disregard for her life, but also disregard for her family,

that they weren't notified immediately. One of the things that we, I have to wonder, and I just have to go there, if this white boy had not been the one to report this, I mean, why did they just let him go? He should have at least been questioned. And I'm wondering what race has to do with it.

He was actually, he was... They let him go, they said, because... nice-looking guy did... You know, he was a nice-looking dude. It looked like... Oh, he was nice... So only ugly people commit murder? It was the weirdest... He're like, are you serious? The whole thing, he woke up, she had blood coming out of her nose,

there was bloodstain in the bed. I am not a detective. I am not a police officer. But there's something very smelly going on there, and somebody needs to get that boy back and question him vigorously. Now, as Lauren said, the chain of custody has probably been

extremely compromised. The whole issue of the coroner's report has probably been extremely compromised. I'm not sure that they'll ever get to the bottom of this, but that mama is fierce, and she's going to make sure that the truth comes out about her daughter, or at least that something is done. And I think that they're just shilly-shallying here. Even our brother who was just with us, this city council has the ability to demand, to put the police chief on the carpet and say, what are you doing about this? They have the ability to have hearings. They have the ability to do a number of things. And apparently, again, we say Black Lives Matter because these kind of cases remind us that for too many people, they don't. It is just crazy. I'm a Congo. And again, I hope it gets more attention. In fact, that was a Darnell tweet. I'm going to pull up in a second. He sent a tweet out with regards to the site Bumble

because when he was on, he told us that they had not even, the police department had not even reached out to Bumble to get the communications that went back and forth between the two of them. They hadn't even reached out to them. And that was just crazy to me that a month

later, they hadn't even grabbed that information. I mean, it was just like, are you serious? I mean, just, I mean, like, like that, isn't that, that's kind of, to me, it's kind of basic. One of the first things that you do is get the communications. What was actually said between them? What was actually communicated? What were their conversations like? And I'm looking for the tweet he posted because he sent it to me and he said that this is

what Darnell tweeted. Roland S. Martin, y'all want the 411 on this story as it unfolds. Stay tuned. Roland S. Martin as we have been in touch with Bumble and we'll be revealing all we'll be revealing on Roland S. Martin everything that's

turned over to us by Bumble. The family wants transparency and justice. Hashtag Lauren Smithfields. Man, I'm telling you, as a parent, I'm fuming inside with this story. And when you sent us this story earlier to let us know what's going to be the topic, that story you sent also mentioned a 53-year-old woman, Brenda Lee Rawls, in the same Bridgeport area who, you know, when her sisters went to go look for her, they were just like, oh, she's dead.

And they didn't find out for two or three days. And Lauren brought up a robbery, but I'm also going to take it back to Trayvon Martin. You know, and Zimmerman was allowed to just go home. And we had to have national protests just to get an arrest. And yes, I'm glad this is getting traction. Let's also be mindful of the fact that this is happening in the quote-unquote civilized north of the United States. Everybody wants to talk about Georgia and all of these other places. The fact of the matter is this is nationwide. This is systemic as it relates to the throwing away of Black lives. And whether it takes more rallies, more protests, just like we did with Trayvon, just like we did with Ahmaud Arbery.

We're going to make sure that she gets justice because this is ridiculous. And I want them to go... I wish they could just go forget the states and go straight to federal, man, because this is ridiculous. And it's... I mean, we see so much of this,

but particularly with just certain ones, as we all know, certain ones just become harder to stomach than others. And for me, this is just one of them, certain ones just become harder to stomach than others. And for me, this is just one of them, man. It is. All right, folks. We're just getting started. Yep, it is.

Got to go to a quick break, 60-second break. We come right back. We'll talk to Beverly Johnson, share her thoughts about the passing of her friend, fashion icon, Andre Leon Talley. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Blackstar Network. ДИНАМИЧНАЯ МУЗЫКА Субтитры подогнал «Симон» Teksting av Nicolai Winther We lost fashion icon, journalist Andre Leon Talley. He passed away at the age of 73.

We did a great tribute to him last week. Others wanted to share their thoughts and reflections. People still are posting photos and talking about his impact not only on fashion journalism, but also on black models and designers and so many folks. And one of those who knew him well is the iconic fashion model herself, my golfing buddy, Beverly Johnson. Beverly, how you doing? I'm fine. How are you, Roland? Doing great, doing great. Just simple. Just share with us how long y'all knew each other, what was that relationship like, and just something we may not know about Andre Leon Talley. Oh my goodness, where do I start? Well, our careers were somewhat parallel.

I started a little later than he with Vogue. And as I say, and we've spoken to each other often, he was the only black person up at Vogue as an editor. And I was the only black prominent model that were gracing the cover of Vogue magazine. So we had that in common. And then once our careers started to slow down a bit, we were able to really connect. He wrote the ford for my book. And he is just a giant of a man in every sense of the word, but he is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to fashion. And when he joined Vogue magazine, he lifted up the magazine with his breath of knowledge about the fashion industry. And he was so very, very, very creative. I always say he can tell you about fashion from its inception up to this date, and he can do it all in French.

I mean, he was something else. He opinionated, outspoken, but also kind, and he nurtured so many Black designers and models like myself, Iman and Naomi, and he was just always there pulling us up. Uh, his southern roots and his grandmother taught him to do that, and he did just that in the industry. You know, a lot of people don't quite understand, uh,

the importance of having, um, black journalists in key places, to have someone like him in the fashion industry, in the positions that he was in, whether it was Vogue and the previous publications before that, for the time he was at Ebony as well. That's important because, frankly, these are white worlds. And to have someone who looks like us in the room, you've got to have someone who's at the table,

who frankly brings us to the table. Exactly right. And I'm saying that the passing of Andre Leon Talley left a huge space in the industry. And I know, and we often spoke

about having a seat at the table, meaning the board of directors of these ginormous conglomerates in the fashion industry. We are now an outward facing industry where you see our faces and inside the magazine and on the covers, but now we want to participate in the economics of that huge industry. And we need to have a seat at the table and that table is the board

of directors of these conglomerates. The opening doors for a new generation of voice is obviously important. You talked about his fashion knowledge, but he had a wicked sense of humor. Yes.

And so speak to that if you can. Well, I could, you know, walk into a room and Andre would tell me everything I'm wearing within 10 seconds. And I'm not a real big label wearing person, but he would even go down to, you know, you got those shoes at DWS. I mean, he would just, you get busted with him.

You better come prepared when you're getting ready to meet the king. We bowed down to him. He was quick-witted. He was funny. He was irreverent. He's just really just a... So we had this little discussion about tokenism, and we were on a panel together for the city, the Museum of the City of New York together. I said, so you were the token at Vogue, and I was

a token at Vogue. He said, I wasn't a token. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I was not a token. I said, well, were you the only black person up there? He said, yes. I said, then you were a token. But anyways, he was just, you know, one of those persons that you love to have around. I always wanted to be around him. He was just a very gracious and compassionate. And he has so much passion for fashion. You just needed to be around him.

Last point, you mentioned this earlier, him being from North Carolina, even though he could speak French with ease, even though he knew these top designers from Italy, from France, from all these different countries, he was still a homeboy from North Carolina. Yes, he was. Yes, he was.

I mean, and he speaks that way. I noticed one thing he put in my forward of my book. He said, and Beverly has gold rim guts. I was like, oh, I never heard anybody say that before. Gold rim guts. He's like that kind of person. He just keeps it real and he keeps it large and big. And he's really fills up the space. And that's what he did at Vogue. He filled up that space and then reached down and brought others along. It's a big loss. All right. Well, Beverly, it's always good to see you.

And last time, of course, we played, we lost the great Lee Elder, and we had a chance to be in the same group with him at the OTC Golf Classic. And so it's always good to see you. So I'm sure I'll see you somewhere soon on the golf course. Thank you so much, Roland, for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

All right, folks, gotta go to a break. We come back. We're gonna talk about the 200th anniversary of Liberia, First African Republic founded by freed slaves. It's quite an interesting history. We'll talk with the historian next on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. ТРЕВОЧНАЯ МУЗЫКА I'm sorry. I dare say more of us probably know more about Ghana and Senegal and South Africa than we do about Liberia. Now, many folks may not realize that Liberia was founded by former enslaved folks here in the United States. Let's now talk with Claude Clegg. He is the chair of the Department of African and African American

Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has written a book on Liberia. That book, folks, go ahead and pull it up right there. You see it right there. And so, and I have that book, I'm reading it right now. Claude, glad to have you here. The book is called The Price of Liberty,

African Americans and the Making of Liberia. To that point I opened with, it is interesting when we talk about, when African Americans talk about African nations, very few people bring Liberia up. That's exactly right, because as you were saying, Roland, so few have ever heard of it. We're a country that prides ourselves on being a nation of immigrants, that is, people coming to the United States for opportunity and freedom and liberties they can't enjoy in their homelands.

And we're, I think, less comfortable in regard to our national mythologies of thinking of the United States as a place where people flee from. And there's a whole history, a whole genealogy of African-Americans who leave the United States during the 19th century, the 1800s, and go to this little colony that becomes a nation on the West African coast because they weren't allowed to enjoy the benefits of the freedoms and the liberties and the rights that other Americans enjoy because they were Americans. So I think within our way of thinking about the United States, if you leave the United States, you sort of fall out of American history. We're not so concerned with

you or whatever happens and wherever you go. And that narrative doesn't fit well with our own sort of conception of this being a place everybody wants to come to. But Claude, that was this weird, but I'm reading and I'm looking at all of this history and that was this weird thing that came together that created this. So you had these white folks who believed in abolition. Then you had these white folks who feared black folk were going to kill them. And then you had the freed slaves and they all created this colonization society to ship some 88 folks away, bought the land in Liberia.

So take us, take people through that. How this even happened. How we got to this point of these 80 first 88 leaving the United States and going back to Africa. Great question. It's a kind of perfect storm in which you have abolitionists, people against slavery. You have slaveholders. You have people who couldn't stand free black folks. That is, if black people are going to be in this part of the world, they need to be in chains. And if by some method, whether they are freed by their masters or whoever, we need to get rid of them, because we don't want them increasing the free black population. So it's kind of a perfect storm. And then, thus, there were different motives. The abolitionists who were involved thought, many of were involved thought that slavery was wrong,

and if black people couldn't be free in this country, we'd send them elsewhere where they could be free there. Then the slaveholders who were in this organization thought that if we can reduce the number of free blacks in this country, it makes slavery more secure. That is, slaves don't see these free blacks and thus aspire to be free themselves. And then there were the ex-slaves who we have the least amount of information about, although there's some letters and things that have been restored or preserved. But we have

the least amount in regard to their opinions about why they would want to go to this part of the world in West Africa, when the vast majority of black people by the early 1800s were born in this country. They weren't born in Africa. Africa was a secondhand memory or something grandpa talked about, you know, because he was from Africa. But most African-Americans by the early 1800s are not born in Africa. So it is literally an experiment. And it's an experiment with different parties, with different interests and different views and all the contradictory.

So, this group of white folks, they sail to Africa, they roll up to West Africa, and then it's, we're gonna acquire this land, buy it, drop them off, here you go, your country, name it Liberiaia but it was people who were already living there so now you have these freed folks of African descent returning

back to Africa but they didn't have any ties to Africa and so now you got your indigenous folk who are like, who the hell are these people taking over our country? So freed slaves became colonizers. Right. That is the irony of the whole Liberian experiment.

That is, you have people in this country who are being sent to Africa, black people being sent to Africa to establish this colony in Liberia and so forth, and they take all that cultural baggage with them that they had acquired here in the United States. They take color prejudices. They take their Christianity and the readiness to label anybody not a Christian that they ran into in Africa as a heathen or a savage. They take the clothes, the foodways.

They take the language. The dollar is the official currency of Liberia. They take the hierarchy. They take that. They take that as well. So they are reinventing a kind of America that they were familiar with in this country, the hierarchy, the colorism, the arrogance, the cultural arrogance. And they are reinventing it to

a certain extent on the shores of West Africa with the same sort of hierarchies and exclusionary policies directed towards indigenous people. So it is a kind of black colonialism that's going on in which you have a very small privileged class of black migrants from the United States ruling over a much larger population of indigenous people. See, I know we're right on this because I'm looking at all of these people in the chat rooms who are like, yo, I ain't never heard any of this stuff.

I'm going to go to my panel with questions. I'm going to start with Omokongo, you're first. Omokongo Omecongo First of all, Professor Clegg, it's an honor to talk to you. And the work that you've been doing is just really, really amazing in terms of documenting this history. I would like to know what is the status today of American Liberians with the greater Liberian population?

Professor Clegg That's a great question. of American Liberians with the greater Liberian population? That's a great question. Of course, as some of your listeners may know, there was a civil war in Liberia that was started in 1980, and it lasted on and off for about two decades. And more or less, it was the whole conflict between indigenous people and the descendants of the settlers coming to a head. And you have the government there in Liberia that was the descendants of the settlers from the United States being overthrown in 1980 and it becoming a military dictatorship under indigenous military officers.

And then sort of a back and forth of civil war for the next two decades. So Claude, hold on, I want to put a pin in that. So to explain to people, to Omokongo's question, so from that point of 1822 all the way through,

it was the people who were running the country, the elite of Liberia were the descendants of these freed slaves in America. And I was reading, so some of them were called Americo-Liberians. Also, the phrase, they called them the Congo.

It was an interesting phrase as well. So explain that as well, because people don't understand that the Black folks who came from here were running the country all those years. So when they had the war, they were trying to break that Black American colonization. Yes, that's exactly right. This experiment lasted much longer

than a lot of people would have thought it was going to last. And from 1822, when the first ships were going over by under the American Colonization Society, that group of abolitionists and slaveholders and others put this together up to who originally got there in the 1800s, all the way up to 1980, ran the place. And mostly it was excluding the African population there from civic life, from holding office, from the economic affairs, and so forth. And as we know, you know, if we study any history, this sort of thing in which you have a minority ruling over a much larger majority can't go on forever. And it explodes in 1980 and to very deadly consequences for a lot of folks who have a Liberian diaspora leaving that country. There's a brain drain to a certain degree as well. You have people going into other countries and a good number of people who come here who can afford it. And actually,

there's a sort of reverse migration. So the descendants of a lot of the folks who had first gone there in the 1800s, their descendants are now fleeing from Liberia to come back or come to America in the wake of that civil war in the 1980s. So some of that remnant of the descendants of the black settlers who went there in the 1800s, they got in a foothold in government and some never lost it. But I think that Liberia is probably, in terms of social integration, further along in that, that is, integrating the settler elites' children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, with a larger African majority. They're probably more along the path of that, but still, you can still find some of those old settler names and positions of power, which, you know, again, these elites often reproduce themselves as best they can, even in the worst of circumstances. So we'll have to see. Liberia is an ongoing puzzle.

It's an ongoing project. While you don't see African-Americans going there to settle or anything like that, you still see those linkages of Liberians who are embracing this country as, you know, the great-grandfather or the father of Liberian society. And when something bad happens, there's an awful Ebola outbreak there in 2014. And, of course, you have twin things happening. This idea of America is going to step up when there's problems in its grandchild, of course, you have twin things happening. This idea of America is going to step up when there's problems in its grandchild, Liberia, on the coast, and then you have a black president in Barack Obama. So not only does America owe us because they sent us here and sent our ancestors here and so forth as settlers, but you have the black president who also owes as well. So, again, I've looked at Liberia for the last couple of decades with much interest.

It's an ongoing story. You know, it has many of the same problems as many other African countries in terms of poverty and social divisions and hierarchies of all sorts and exclusion and so forth. So I'm wishing Liberian people the best, all of them. But again, you can still sort of see those lines of privilege and those genealogy, those names still thread through the various institutions there. Julian Mavo.

Professor, thank you for your work. I'm looking forward to getting your book. Years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who at that time had just been elected president. And the one thing she asked, a bunch of us sisters asked her, what can we do? And she talked about girls' education, about the education system being crumbling, but that girls were having a much more difficult time. Has that changed? Has the educational system improved? And are women and girls getting equal access to education?

I wish I had a better story to report in terms of education more generally in Liberia and women's education as well. But my sense is that there hasn't been anything in terms of transformative changes. I think it mattered that Liberia had a female president for a number of years who did an incredible job in the position. It was the first

in the history of that country, and I think it was first on the continent. Yeah, she was the first female head of state of any African nation. Yes, yes. So I think she did an incredible job. I had the pleasure of meeting her

a number of years ago, and she directed that same question to me. Actually, her question was, what can you do, Professor Clegg, for Liberia? And it caught me off guard, but I think it was the exact right question for her to ask. I think that Liberia is still recovering from those decades of civil war, largely on its own. There's been on and off American assistance and so forth. But you can't have two decades of neglect and a civil war that goes on for a couple of decades and then more neglect on top of that and catastrophes. It reminds me much of what happened in Haiti and the French, the sort of neglect that the French imposed upon that country. It's the same sort of, you know, if ever people deserve the break,

the Haitian people deserve it, and I would say right behind them, the Liberian people. So, yeah, unfortunately, I don't have a good report in regard to the status of women in Liberia. I don't think it's appreciably better in terms of education and opportunity than it was 20 years ago. Lauren. Yes, doctor. If there was one thing that you'd want people to know about Liberia, what would it be? I would want people to know. Wow, that's a great question.

I'd want them to know a lot of things about it. I'd want them to know how the society, why it was created. It was created by, of course, there are indigenous people always there. And it wasn't the case, you the case that Liberia was simply discovered. There was always people there, and they had communities, and they had government structures, and they had economies, and they had trade networks and so forth. But the thing that drove the folks here in the United States there, their national slogan, the love of liberty brought us here. And what people are prepared to do to get themselves out of a bad situation.

Again, it wasn't the case that these black Americans in this country were returning to Liberia. Most of them had not been born there. They were Americans. They were born here. They just couldn't enjoy the fruits of American citizenship. So they were stepping out on faith. That is, black folks in the 19th century knew the Atlantic Ocean as a graveyard for black folks. You know, there are many, many, many, many more times the number of black people who crossed the Atlantic Ocean westward into slavery than there were those few trickle eastward into liberty

in a place like Liberia. So the step out into the Atlantic Ocean into that world more or less putting your faith in in white people and their ships and things and hoping they will land you in free Liberia just goes to show what people are prepared to do in the name of trying to live in this world and some dignified existence for themselves and their children. So I'm sympathetic for those settlers. I'm not sympathetic for the kind of society that they, so a settler colony, settler colonialism that they imposed there.

But in regard to the aspiration to be something more than American slaves, I'm sympathetic to, again, I think it was a failure of imagination on the part of those settlers who would go there and reinvent what they had known in America with all the oppression and the exclusion and so forth, a failure of imagination that reaches this, you know, conclusion in that coup that takes place in 1980. But Liberia, I think, is a reminder of what people are prepared to do to improve their situation, even if it means stepping a world away

across an ocean to do so. Last point I want to make here before we go. This is their flag. You want to talk about those American roots? It literally is based upon the United States flag. That's the Liberian flag right there. Also, there was a long period where Liberia was the envy of many African nations in terms of when William Tupman

was president, the economy, roads, things along those lines. And so what's unfortunate is that this was a country that was further along economically than many other African nations. Many of those African nations started getting their independence. Obviously Ghana was the first one.

Um, uh, and then of course 1959, 1960, it began to spread all across the continent. But it was that war in 1980 that actually destroyed, in many ways all of those decades of economic progress and set the nation back. Imagine where, and look, obviously they had to deal with that whole American descendant ruling class,

but where would Liberia be if they did not have that two-decade civil war that went on? That's a great question. You know, we historians, sometimes we have trouble with those kind of what-if counterfactual scenarios

that what would have happened if our crystal balls tend not to be any better than others. But I think that there were a number of things broken with Liberia, even in its sort of heyday under Tubman, its former president, right before Tolbert, the one that got overthrown and actually killed in the coup in 1980. You had a settler elite that was based on a house of cards. So you have 5%, 7% of the population ruling the other 90-plus percent.

That's just a recipe for something going wrong, especially if you're trying to control and run those 90% on your own terms and excluding them from the levers of power, political representation, roles in the economy, and imposing your own sort of cultural vision on what they should be. So I think that, you know, during this period that you're mentioning, Roland, yeah, Liberia, many of us looked at this stable model of democracy and constitutional government and so forth. But if you sort of peel back, you know, the layers, and you don't have to peel back many, you'll see this much larger Black African population that it's excluded, and that the power of the ruling elite, the settler elite there and their children, is based on the exploitation and

sort of sitting on the necks of those indigenous people. Even as you're showing the world how civilized and how advanced you are, by more or less mimicking, to a certain degree, the United States and its constitution, its flag, its dollar, and so forth. Will you be going there this year for the bicentennial? I will not. I will not. I would love to. It's an important date, 1822, as you're mentioning it. But I will not be able to make it to that occasion. Well, we'll be there. We'll be leaving here February 11th. We'll be there for a week.

Our plan is to arrive. It's about a 25-hour flight. Arrive February 12th, February 13th, leave on February 20th. There goes a huge celebration on February 14th. We're going to be live streaming events all week from Liberia. We've been communicating with the Liberian government, working with the ministers there about this. And, you know, one of the things that I said to them,

I said, let's just be clear, ABC, NBC, CBS, they ain't going to be caring about what happens in Liberia. But I do think it's important for us to be able to tell that story of what's going on, talking with folks there as well, because there still are opportunities. You know, one of the things after the Ella Johnson Sir Leaf became president, Bob Johnson actually opened a luxury hotel there.

You do have African Americans who are looking at investments in Liberia, just like you're seeing the same thing happen in other African countries like Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa. And so it's important for us to be able to tell that story of what's going on. Folks, Dr.

Claude Clegg is the author of The Price of Liberty, African Americans and the Making of Liberia. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. A pleasure. Alright, folks. Real quick break. We come back. Our Fit Live Wins segment. Normally we talk about working out and fitness,

but your eye health is just as important as your physical health. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Thank you. All right, folks, let's talk about Fit and Live Win, but really for your eyes. You know, we often, we talk about health. Rarely do we talk about eyes. Rarely do we talk about dental. Rarely do we talk about dental. Well, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be doing that. In today's segment, we want to focus on our eye health.

Joining us right now is Dr. Essence Johnson, Chief Visionary Officer of Black Eye Care out of Dallas. Glad to have you here. To that point, y'all often get overlooked when we're talking about the health of African Americans because people don't think about our sight until we're talking about glaucoma or things along those lines. Oh, no, thank you for having us.

That is very true. Eye health is up there with just your overall regular health. It should be also part of your self-care routine. And so I am a doctor of optometry or an optometrist or an eye care provider. And our goal is to not only help you see clearly, but to also make sure that overall your body is doing what it should. January happens to be Glaucoma Awareness Month, and that is a condition that affects the African-American community. It affects the back of the eye.

It's also known as kind of one of those silent killers or stealers of sight. So that's one particular condition that many people may not even know about until they go see a doctor of optometry. Another condition that we're very much familiar with is diabetes. And that is one of the leading cause of visual loss among working age adults. And a lot of times optometrists are one of the first providers that are able to diagnose people with something systemic like diabetes. So it is very important for us to prioritize our eye health with or without insurance. It's very important to also find yourself an eye care provider that's in an area near you.

So, you know, we always hear people talk about, oh, how you can lose weight and improve your health and you can change, do more with fitness. How do you improve your eye health? Step one, by getting your eyes examined. That is probably your number one way that you can improve your eye health first. Just like you're tuning up or checking up your body, making sure that you find an eye care provider. Your next step is making sure that we protect our eyes from the sunlight. It's a common misnomer that people of color, especially African Americans, that they don't need to wear sunglass protection.

We hear it even when it comes to the skin, like, oh, we can't get skin cancer. That is not true. If you have skin, you need to protect it. And the way that you protect your eyes from the sun is making sure that you have sunglasses, transition lenses, lenses that when you go outside, they get darker, so that you're able to provide that UV protection to the eyes. Every time? Every time. Really?

Yes, even when... I hate... I don't... You know what? First of all, my dad been wearing shades for the longest. I mean, he got shades everywhere. And it's... To be honest, the only reason I really started wearing shades, because I play in all these golf tournaments, the only reason I really started wearing shades, because I play in all these golf tournaments,

and there's always some damn shades in the gift bag. And I was like, all right, I got about 30 pairs of these shades. I guess I ought to wear some of these. But it just doesn't, it does not occur to me ever that when I leave the house, grab some shades. Yeah, it should be second nature. So that brings up a very important point. Some people may say, I don't need glasses. I see fine.

But the reality is everybody needs some sort of eyewear, whether it be a fashion statement or a functional piece. But everyone needs eye protection. So depending on the types of jobs that you have, you should be wearing safety glasses. But everyone... Oh, that's safety glasses. Like, I can... Like, I can see.

I got some blind people who work for me. I ain't gonna... I ain't gonna name no names, but, whoo! I'm just saying. Um, but, uh... And so... So, you're saying... Um, so, when do you know you need... you need... you need some glasses?

Like, what is it? What's the warning signs you need some glasses? I mean, when it comes to just the sun shining over your head, you need glasses. So step one, everyone needs about a pair or two or three of just good quality sunglasses. And that next step would be if you're having problems to see. I'm sure, Roland, you can relate.

If you're doing this with your arms, you feel like your arms aren't long enough just yet, you're getting into that range of presbyopia or where you need help seeing up close. That's probably the next... Hold on. Do that again. What are we looking for? What's that again? What is that? Say it again. Your trombone in those arms.

You feel like you don't have go-go gadget arms anymore and it's hard for you to see or you need your reading material plastered on the wall. That means that you're getting into that time where you need help with your reading vision. And that's a lot of the reason why there's those over-the-counter reading glasses. But those over-the-counter reading glasses is not sufficient for every single person. So

that is another sign of when you need to come on in and get your eyes examined so that you can get a pair of glasses that are made specifically for you. And then of course, there's those of us who've been wearing glasses since we're younger. And so we always need ongoing care from our eye care provider. All right. Well, I'm going to go to the panel. I know some people in the control room thinking about graduals and some other, you know, I get a kick out of those things. So we're going to go ahead and start with Julianne since she's wearing her little red glasses with the first question for you. Well, you know, I've been wearing glasses since I was three, literally. I have got more behind whippings because I broke my glasses because I was trying to be

cute and put them in the bag and then went to try to hit somebody with the bag and then the glasses broke. So I have a history with glasses. I think I have about eight pairs in rotation right now. But what's the difference between a lot of my friends are now getting glasses because they've gotten older. How much of a vision deterioration has to do with age. Some of us are just born with it. that's our presbyopia. So normally, sometimes once we get into our 40s or a little bit earlier or a little bit later, that's that part I was telling you guys about

that you just feel like your arms aren't long enough. So that part is the natural aging process of the eye. It's going to affect all of us sooner or later, whether we've been wearing glasses since we were three or in the fourth grade, or if we just start getting it there. Then there are people who naturally, like myself, or if we just start getting it there. Then there are people who naturally, like myself, were born that were nearsighted. So we need glasses to see far away.

And then the opposite of that is people who may be farsighted. So they need some magnification to see better, usually at reading, but sometimes at distance too. So which you're referring to, that age-related change, that's what we call presbyopia. That's when you start needing the reading glasses or you start needing that bottom part in your glasses known as a bifocal or trifocal, a progressive lens, a multifocal. Yeah, I mean, I had somebody who was working a camera,

had glasses on, and they did this move right here that, you know... You know... And I'm like, the hell are you looking at? You got glasses on. Go get some new ones. All right, Lauren, your question. Um, so at what age can you get... Like, is LASIK surgery an age thing?

Is it an option when you get older? Is there a certain point, uh, where you cannot do LASIK anymore? Can you talk about that a little bit? I just got my eyes checked last Thursday and went into Warby Parker and got four pairs of glasses, which I was glad to do because I remember the days of

I've been wearing glasses since I was 14. I just don't wear them on the show because I can see everything just fine. I'm nearsighted. But anyway, Warby Parker is the best thing that ever happened. Because remember the days we had to pay $400 or $500 for a pair of glasses? So I love that company. But anyway, with LASIK, where is the LASIK cutoff?

Can you talk about LASIK surgery a little bit? Yeah, LASIK, it's going to be dependent on each person and in each cause. A lot of times they like for your vision to be more steady and stable. So that's why sometimes it isn't done in younger individuals. So maybe you'll see people in their late teens or 20s or even 30s getting it done. LASIK is a procedure where they use some forms of laser to reshape the front of your eye, which is known as the cornea, so that you're able to see clearer and better. Typically, people with a little bit of astigmatism or that are more near-sighted,

they're better with that type of condition. But it's definitely something that it's case by case, but you also got to keep in mind that if the older you are when you wait to get it, that still will not stop that aging process of the eye that we were talking about earlier. So you may still need, um, your reading glasses and things like that as you get into your 40s or 50s,

um, if you've had LASIK surgery done before. And what are progressives? And how long... Like, when... Like, what's after progressives? Binoculars? No, no, no. That's not... That is not how it works. So, you're going to start with a single-vision lens. A single-vision lens means that you just need to see up close or far away.

Then we move into our multifocal lenses. So, a progressive is a type of multifocal lens, and that means that people just need help seeing at different distances. So you get a little bit more magnification to help you with your computer vision, and then oftentimes there's a little bit more magnification at the very bottom

to help you with that reading vision. And progressive lens means that it's a no-line type of design versus the kinds that would have either one line like a bifocal or two lines like a trifocal. Yeah, well, look, I might have to invest in that, you know, because, you know, it's not just here looking at computers, some folks looking at, you know, the camera, make sure it's in focus. Woo, sometimes that's a little rough. All right, Omokongo, MC, Omokongo, your turn.

Yes, Doc, thank you for all of the incredible work that you're doing and information that you've been sharing. My question relates to diet. Are there dietary things people can be doing to help their eyesight? I grew up with that whole thing about eat a lot of carrots, it's gonna be good for your eyes.

I was making sure I was getting those in. I don't know if that's like urban myth or something. That's an urban damn myth. Dietary thing? Every one of my brothers and sisters been wearing glasses since they were in elementary school. sure I was getting those in. I don't know if that's like urban myth or something. That's an urban damn myth. One of my brothers and sisters been wearing glasses since they were in elementary school. They ass eat carrots all day long. I hate carrots and I can see.

Doc, go ahead. Nutrition and eyes are also very very important. It won't negate things that are just genetically inherent because there are just some things when it comes to eye conditions that we inherited from our mother and father. But there is a very big subset, even with the eyes, where we're looking at what is the role of nutrition. So if you have dry eyes, so that may be that itching, burning, tearing sensation. You definitely want to drink more water.

There are studies out there talking about should you have more, you know, omega-3s, those fish oils. Should you increase your intake of vitamin A, C, and E as well? We also, yes, those green leafy vegetables, those bright colors, fruits and veggies, they do play a big role. They have those carotenoids in there. They have those other nutritious factors in there that helps decrease free radicals. And those are things that are related to other types of eye conditions in the eye. So definitely eat your carrots, eat your greens, drink your water. All of those things do play a role in your eye health, or especially if

you're a person with diabetes. Having good nutrition helps lower that blood sugar, which helps prevent leaking or bleeding in the back of the eye, which is known as diabetic retinopathy, when there's leaking or bleeding in the eyes related to diabetes. And one of the main ways to treat that initially is through good health, bringing down your blood sugar and lowering your weight through diet and exercise. All right, last question, last question for you. I've had, my eyes have been red my whole life. I went to the eye doctor when I was a kid.

I grew up in Clinton Park, right next to the Port of Houston, the Ship Channel, and all them chemical plants and everything like that. Once the doctor, the doctor was like, hey, best thing y'all do is move. And so a lot, so how often should one put eye drops in?

What is safe? Is there a safer eye drop than another one? Just your thoughts on that. Yeah. So what you're referring to is what we kind of group together and that subset of dry eye. And there's definitely different levels of dry eye, different causes of dry eye. Some dry eye is environmental, like you mentioned. Some of it is related to conditions like thyroid condition, especially autoimmune conditions like lupus or Sjogren's or rheumatoid arthritis.

Those are things that could also cause more dry eye. Some of the best tips that you can do can be summed up in just these simple steps. You want to make sure that you apply heat to the eyes. So you can do that with a warm compress or a towel, microwave, hot water. They make prepared kind of eye compresses that you can put in the microwave with little beads in it. That helps gives concentrated heat because along each of your eyelids and your glands, there's oils in it. And tears are made up of an oily substance,

a fatty substance, and a watery substance. And so you want to use that heat to help get those oils moving and moving out through those glands in your eyelids so that they can mix in with the tears to prevent them from evaporating. The next thing you want to do is clean your eyelids and lashes. We have good bacteria. We have bad bacteria. And a lot of times, those are the things that are causing that burning sensation or that redness or that irritation so cleaning your eyelids and lashes with baby shampoo they make over-the-counter prepared solutions in the forms of scrubs or pads or special eye soaps

so you want to do that to help clean up that debris, keep those eyelids and lashes as clean as possible from the bad type of bacteria that causes further irritation. And then lubricating drops. And yes, not all lubricating drops are created equal. A lot of those ones that say they want to get the red out are doing so with a medication that can make the blood vessels smaller and over time that can irritate the eyes. So you want a good lubricating drop. There are quite a few on the market, some popular ones that you may have seen on TV are like Refresh or Cystain or TheraTier. So you want something that doesn't say get the red out or get the itch out.

A lot of times you want a good old fashioned lubricating drop, artificial tear. And the key with those tears is to use them frequently. One drop is not going to be enough, especially if you're already having those symptoms of burning, itching, or tearing. That means that your eyes have been dry for quite some time. So a lot of those things that I'm saying to do is it's a habit. It's a lifestyle. It's a routine. So you need to do them morning and night and lubricate the eyes throughout the day. So one time is not enough. Four, five, six, seven, a thousand times if you can

to keep those eyes nice and wet and lubricated. Got it, all right, multiple times. All right, cool. Henry, you got any questions? Henry, Carol, Brittany, all y'all glasses-wearing people, y'all got any questions? Atlanta, she ain't here. All my blind staffers, y'all got any questions? Okay, all right, okay.

All right, cool, I'm just checking. Henry keep talking about it. Nigga, Henry, you shouldn't be talking, Henry. You know, Doc, I was trying to avoid telling this story. Doc, it's absolutely hilarious, absolutely hilarious. And Ashley combines eyes and ears, this story I'm about to tell you, Doc. So we were at the Democratic National Convention in 2016,

and Hillary Clinton had just finished speaking. And so we were trying to do a standup, a live shot with the balloons on the floor and everything. And so Henry, you know, he Henry's in production. He was behind the camera and I'm like, yo man, come on. We got to get, we got to shoot this thing. And it was taking so long with it. All of a sudden, you know, he's behind the camera.

He looked forward and he did this here. You know that? The look down. And then he kept, he would look. So then he said, hey, at least can you check and make sure this camera is focused? And I was like, what? You can't tell the camera is focused? What the hell?

See, he didn't want to go get his eye. He didn't want to go get them next glass. What'd you say? You didn't want to go get them progressives? Is that what it was? He didn't want to get them bifocals. That's what I told him. And so he was trying to, like, skirt with them bad eyeglasses he had. And I told him, man, you can't even have my stuff out of focus

because you can't see. So I'm glad you walked us through that. See, so now I know what to look for as we keep shooting stuff. When I, when, when somebody get one of those looks like, you know, let me drop the glass. Cause you know, it just, it's rough. Now he can tell me I'm gonna need them eventually, you know, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't think my daddy had to get in his reading glass until he was almost 70, so I think I got a few years left on that. Doc, record people,

they got some questions. Where can they reach you? Oh, the best place to be is go to Black Eye Care Perspective. That is our baby, our website, www.blackeyecareperspective.com. We are redefining the color of the eye care industry 1% at a time by creating a pipeline for black students into optometry, but also fostering these relationships between the black eye doctor in your area, you can go to our page and use our doctor locator to see if there is a doctor near you. And if you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out with us through that platform at blackeyecareperspective.com.

Well, Doc, I am sending Henry y'all away as soon as this show is over. Thanks so much, Doc. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Look, see, y'all, we're a full-service show. I'm trying to help style. You know, got folk on here halfway blind, so you know we're trying to have them. So we handled that.

Next week, we're going to have a doctor on talking about dental care. And so we're trying to help as many of our people out as possible. It's not just physical, it's not just eating, but also it's a holistic approach. So that's why we do what we do. That's why we want y'all to support what we do. So please

download our Black Star Network app. You can see all of our programming, our Andre Leon Talley tribute, our segments on the show, of course, full shows. Just go to, you can download all the platforms, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Xbox, Samsung.

If you got three, four, five of those, download them on all the platforms because we want y'all to be fully aware of what we're doing. Also, please join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you give goes to support this show, allows us to be able to cover what we do. Look, it's going to cost us thousands of dollars to go to Liberia for a week. We are assembling a crew of five folks to travel there. And so I got a former CBS News producer, freelancer, who's going to be rolling with me. Camera folks, a couple of camera folks, audio guys as well. We got people in Liberia we've already connected with.

And so we got some great things lined up. Your dollars will make it possible to us to do what we do. Cash App, Dollar Sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RMartin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Fantastic show today.

Great interviews, great guests, great panelists. I'm a Congo, Julianne, Lauren, thank you so very much. Yes, folks, I will be posting that HBCU spreadsheet so you are fully aware of what's going on. And you have the facts. And I keep telling y'all, stop listening to a whole bunch of people out here who's saying all kind of stuff.

There are a lot of people out here who's saying all kind of stuff. There are a lot of people. They just say stuff. A lot of people out here, they just talk. And they ain't dealing with no information, no facts. That's why we do what we do right here. Roland Martin, Unfiltered, Black Star Network. And we got some great stuff coming up. Folks, January 31st, we launching first of all four new

shows. I cannot wait to show you the promos for each. Yo, we about to go to the next level with this thing. And so, we appreciate all of y'all supporting North Carolina Central. Number up for y'all as well. Alright, I'm going to see y'all tomorrow right here. Roland Martin, Unfiltered.

I'll be talking with Senator Cory Booker tomorrow. Y'all don't want to miss that conversation. I'll see you then. Hau! Cory Booker tomorrow. Y'all don't want to miss that conversation. I'll see you then.