Sandra: All right, so we're gonna start
with a couple of personal background information,
just to ease into the interview
and know more about who you are.
When and where were you born?
-: In Brooklyn, New York, January 29th, 1930.
Sandra: And what was it like-
-: Kings County Hospital.
Sandra: What was it-
Well firstly, who are your parents?
-: William and Martha Wilkins.
My mother's name, maiden name was Benson.
And my dad, I remember him studying every night
and he passed the test for gardener
for the botanical gardens in New York.
But he couldn't take the job
because he said the men that he worked with
would've dumped a load of sand on him
and killed him for being over them,
for being their supervisors.
So many times people do not configure in our experience,
our actual experience,
where we have had to cope with what is life-threatening,
what is certainly depressing.
And yet people continue to rise up.
It's amazing to me.
And I don't know how to shut this off or unplug it.
Sandra: Just fine we'll just.
-: All right, you just x it out.
Okay and I think one of the things
that oftentimes are not discussed with children
is what they're actually going through.
And I can remember experiences in school
where you're passed over or your hand is up
and nobody calls on you.
I don't know if anybody else had that experience
but I've had that experience.
Your standing there.
And it happened to a friend of mine.
We were the only two blacks in the entire building.
There were no people in the teaching staff,
none in the support staff, none in the custodial staff,
none in the kitchen, none whatsoever at all.
No other African Americans in the entire building.
And my first school experience I should say,
I was in a very upbeat school.
It was P.S 155 in Brooklyn, New York.
And it was-
Sandra: What does that designation mean, P.S 155?
-: Public school.
Sandra: Okay.
-: And it was equal.
It was egalitarian.
I mean, we were all called on.
We were all included, it was...
And then I went to P.S 44 because my parents moved.
My father bought a house in another district
and the district was changing.
Europeans were moving out and black people were moving in.
And my father bought this house,
it was 310 Monroe Street.
And I went to P.S 44.
I was about 11 years old.
It was so different.
It was so depressed.
We just didn't have the kind of upbeat influences
that we had had in the other school where it was integrated.
And the, I was I think maybe one
or two black children in the other school.
And when I went to P.S 44, it was all black.
There was one European American.
And I remember him, he stood out incredibly.
And it was so bizarre.
It was just strange.
And the teacher was a European American.
And I would say she was less than enthusiastic.
Our school situation was challenging
because we didn't have equipment,
we didn't have good school books, they weren't new.
The kinds of things that you hear people talk about
that in their school district they got the old books
or they got the leftover books.
And I can remember feeling very strange.
And there were some young people that didn't like me.
I don't know why they didn't like me
but they followed me home.
They said they were going to beat me up.
And I kept walking and walking, it was four blocks
from where I had to go to school to get home.
And finally they began to say, how far is she going?
How much further do we have to go?
Finally, they just got discouraged.
And they left.
So I was very glad about that
because they decided not to beat me up.
But it was poor, it was desperate,
it was different.
The children didn't feel excited about their experience.
They weren't enthusiastic.
The opportunities weren't there.
It was depressing.
I remember not telling my dad or my mom
and not saying anything about the threats
and the inferences.
And they were more than inferences
because an inference is just like a suggestion.
But these were hostile, outwardly hostile
based on the fact that I was fair in complexion.
And there was some children that were very brown skin
and they felt hostile towards me.
And they made it clear that they felt.
A little boy,
now mind you I'm 11 years old I remember this.
A little boy got behind me
and he said, you yellow bee.
And he used the whole word.
And I didn't know what it meant at that time
but I knew it wasn't a popular designation.
I knew it wasn't something affirming
because he sounded hostile and he whispered it to me.
And he was sitting in the back of me.
So there were issues even at 11 years old about color
and children felt badly about it.
And they talked about it openly
but the teachers never dealt with it.
So that was our early childhood.
Then I got a scholarship to a Catholic high school
from St. Peter Clavers, Roman Catholic Church.
It was a little black church
that was like a missionary church in Brooklyn.
And the staff at that time was all European Americans.
And they were very benevolent, very giving, very supportive.
They took us on trips
which no other church was really doing.
And it made it very attractive to me
because I liked going places.
I liked going to the botanical gardens.
My dad used to take us there.
But to museums and I wanted excursions.
And so that's what they were doing.
The nuns and priests took us on trips.
And so as a result
I became interested in participating more.
And they said, well
if you are going to be in the summer school program
you will have to take catechetical lessons.
You will have to study to be a Catholic.
So I said, I came home and I said to my grandmother, well
I'm gonna take catechetical lessons,
I'm gonna go to their affirmation
so that I can become a Catholic.
So my grandmother said to me
why would you wanna become Catholic, they molest children?
Now I remember this.
And I said, well nobody has bothered me
and nobody acted that way towards me
and I don't feel that I shouldn't become involved.
And so I did,
and I can remember completing the sessions.
And they said, well
we're not gonna allow you to be baptized
because there's nobody Catholic in your family
and you may not keep up.
So what we'll do,
you'll have to take another session
and we'll see if you continue to persevere,
then you can be baptized.
So that meant another six months or whatever it was
of studying and answering the lessons and everything.
Being on time for mass and so on.
And so then I was baptized.
I became Catholic.
I was 12, 12 years old.
I didn't know the history of the Catholic church.
I didn't know
the Catholic church was involved in enslavement.
Nobody said that.
The issue of reparations was never discussed at that time.
Reparations for our enslavement, nobody talked about that.
Nobody talked about
the experiences of any other group of people.
I mean, we didn't even know there were Mexican people.
They didn't even show Mexico on the map.
They, I don't recall ever having anybody say to me
that there were different indigenous tribes
or that they were all over the United States
or that the land had belonged to them
because they were the first people to immigrate there
and who was taking it over
and who was moving them off their land.
None of that was discussed in terms of our education.
But anyway, I got a scholarship
to Catherine McAuley High School in Flatbush.
I graduated with a regents diploma,
three years of Latin I think,
and two years of French.
And when I graduated
the nun said, her name was sister Maryanne Ansiada,
God rest her she died of cancer.
She said well, there's a job opening at Catholic Charities,
you could apply for it.
They're about the only ones that would give you a job.
And I looked at her and I'm figuring to myself
why would she say that to me.
Here I am with a regents diploma,
all this background you know,
persevering, getting a high school diploma of regents
and she would say they're the only ones
probably to give me a job.
I didn't have that global view
that she was talking about
that I was gonna encounter so many obstacles everywhere
that I turn,
Well, I was going to go...
I was in nursing school.
I was accepted to nursing school.
It was a black school, Lincoln School of Nursing.
And it was historically black
because there were other schools
that would not accept black students, complexion.
So I went to Lincoln and I was, a year and a half,
I had finished all of my requirements
and I was doing mostly nursing care.
And I was going out with this young gentlemen
and his name was Clarence Robert Denver.
And one of my patients died and he was only 12 years old.
And they didn't give me any counseling around
the loss that you would experience when somebody dies.
And I was not prepared to handle that.
And I remember one of my fellow students got married
and between trying to work nights
and the other schedules that nurses had to work
it put a terrible strain on her marriage.
And I decided that I wasn't gonna do that.
I was gonna leave school which I did, I left school
and we got married.
My father was disappointed.
He wanted me to finish school
but he didn't argue with me.
He didn't say, I'm not gonna go along with it.
My mother didn't object.
And so I was married April 15th.
This was our wedding date.
And when my husband passed away in 2011
we had been married 60 years.
I had miscarriages, I had four miscarriages.
And I was going to every shrine I could find to pray
because I wanted children.
And I went to Canada even,
to Marian shrine up in Canada, I prayed.
And my son was born
and then I lost two after him.
So that was two before him then he was born,
then I lost two after him.
And so meanwhile I'm worrying,
God I'm running to all these shrines and everything
and we had five girls later.
So everybody finished high school
and I felt that was an achievement
considering the discrimination
that they encountered everywhere that they went.
And some of them have gone to college
and one is a movie producer.
So they're very interesting people.
I enjoy them.
And one of the things that I said to my husband
when they grew up...
Well first of all before they grew up,
we took them on camping trips.
I said I want them
out of our little tiny segregated community, where
if you went across Sunrise Highway in Copiague, Long Island
you were in a European district that was very hostile.
And so you didn't really go there
because you might be killed by the police
or anything else, beaten up or whatnot.
So I said, I want us to go camping.
I want us to take the children to the beautiful parks.
I want them to see the mountains.
I want them to breathe deeply
and feel strong and empowered.
And so we went to the Grand Canyon
and that's a very empowering experience
because you look down in tremendous depth
and the colors change all the way down into the valley.
Everybody should at least see a movie about it
if they can't go because it's a phenomenal site.
And I did all the cooking all the way there
and all the way back.
We had a small trailer
and we doubled up in the little bunks
and it was a phenomenal experience.
And one of my daughters, when she got married
she took her children and her husband to the grand canyon.
And then the second time they went
they asked me if I wanted to go.
And so I went on the second time with them
to see it again.
Very, very inspirational, amazing.
And the earth is phenomenal.
I mean, when you see the valleys
and the trees, the evergreens are so,
it's just a totally different environment.
So that was something that we thoroughly enjoyed
and that I think made an imprint on the children
in that it empowered them.
They weren't as marginalized or as set aside.
although European American campers would look at us,
oh you know, here comes the black invasion,
just the few of us.
'Cause we had a whole tribe.
And one of my, well my foster daughter,
I had said to my husband I don't want to go to work
and have my children be latchkey children.
So I want to see if we could take a child in
that would give me a little money for gas in the car.
And I would have a little extra
for shopping, food or whatnot for all these children.
And so we went to an agency St. Christopher's Home
in Nassau County and we applied
and I told my husband before we left home,
I said, now if there's a very brown child there,
I want to take that one
because that one I'm sure would have had experiences
of being rejected.
So sure enough, when we got there
there was a little rich in hue they told me to say.
Don't say dark, say rich in hue, little girl
and the nun brought her out.
And when I reached for her, she didn't want me,
she didn't like this.
Because she was accustomed to them, you know.
And she had been returned to the agency twice.
So I said, now she's had experiences
and she's experienced difficulties and challenges
and we have to be very patient.
So I told all my children, we have to be patient.
Well, she would bite the children.
They would come and cry, mommy she bit me you know.
I said well all right we're not gonna bite her back,
we're not gonna do anything hostile,
we're gonna be patient.
So this went on for a couple of months I think.
She was biting the children.
So finally I said to them well,
so you can invite her back now because we've told her time
and time again, this is not good, you don't do this.
The first time they bit her back that was it.
She never bit them anymore, she didn't like it.
So I told her I said, you're gonna be bitten back now.
So that was the end of that.
Well, she stayed with us eight years.
We took her camping with us, everything my children got,
she got the same thing.
I had heard the stories where foster children
are treated differently.
They're marginalized.
They don't get this or that.
And she expected that.
She expected us not to be fair.
And I told her one time you know, you get,
what are you talking about?
You get everything the other children get,
you can't say we're not being fair.
Now, she just looked at me.
Very smart little girl.
She grew up, she owns her own home today
and she passed the test to be a policeman
but they never called her.
So all the adult life she's been driving a bus
but she has managed to hold onto her children,
to her family and she has a solid background.
So I felt
that that was so very good interventional experience.
It was what I wanted to do
and my husband went along with it.
So that was part of what we did.
I remember when I first I would say
got very involved in community was because a young man,
Michael Stewart was killed by the police
on the corner of Great Neck road and Albany Avenue.
We didn't even have a shopping center
that was in North Amityville.
North Amityville was different than South Amityville.
North Amityville was where the black people lived.
And you better not cross over Sunrise Highway at that time
because it was so hostile, so prejudice.
And I can remember that we would look at the differences.
We had no sidewalks you know, we're paying taxes
the same as anybody else,
but we didn't have the same services.
And our snow wouldn't get plowed you know,
the, just those things to let you know,
yeah you're here,
but you're not really part of the town, Town of Babylon.
Yeah, you're in Long Island, New York
and it's a suburb, but you're not equals.
So just don't, get over it.
You know don't think you are.
And however, like I said
all the children finished high school.
They went to Copiague High School.
I had scholarships
for them to go to St. Martin of Tours in Amityville.
Their experience was very prejudicial
and there was an incident that was so hostile,
although I had three scholarships,
I took all the children out.
I said, enough is enough.
I won't ask you to tolerate anymore.
And I put them all in public school.
And they indicated to me afterwards
that they were delighted to leave St. Martin School
because it was so hostile.
Sandra: What kind of experiences did they have?
Well, right before we do that
there's a thing I forgot to do in the beginning.
And that is, I just wanted to state on the camera
that today is the 23rd of June, 2016.
And that we're here with Mother Dember
and that the interviewees are Samantha Rodriguez
and Sandra Enriquez.
And this is part of the TCU Civil Rights in Black
and Brown Oral History Project.
And I just wanna ask you, mother Dember
if you agree on camera to be video recorded
and to have this information placed into a repository
and also uploaded onto a website.
-: Yes, I understand.
I read the material and I realized that it is an exposure.
I am not a person that's clandestine.
I walk the street and I carry the sign everyday.
I wrote a poem.
I take my sign to the alter rail.
My nana told me God can do anything but fail.
So that I utilize it as a confrontive tool.
And I know you've heard of music therapy and poetry therapy
and art therapy, well this is confrontive therapy.
See, I'm confronting the whiteout.
I'm coloring us in so people can have a non-violent response
to color and cultural difference.
When I came along as a young person they said,
black people didn't do anything.
And so all these people on this hat were involved,
were productive, were creative, were achieving
and they were whited out.
I knew nothing about them.
And so anybody that sees me knows something is going on.
People want to act like the police are not killing us.
Now, this is one of the few little signs
that I have ever seen
that has a range of everybody's complexion.
And I just got this, maybe a year ago.
It is from the Stop Mass Incarceration
and Stop Police Terrorism.
All this was on their little banner
and I cut pieces of it up
and put it on a poster
so that anybody that sees it will feel included.
And they are included.
And most of the time
people who have much melanin don't feel valued,
they don't feel respected.
I have looked at children and I can tell children in class
that they're like surprised
that I'm looking at them in the eyes
because the teacher will pass them over.
She won't call on them.
She won't acknowledge them.
I've seen it over and over.
So I remember going to the school
because my foster daughter was doing something they said.
So I went down to the school.
Sandra: This is in public school at this point?
-: Public school.
And when I went into the school room
I could see my foster daughter's face.
She said, oh they're gonna get it now.
She told them, my mother's not gonna let them run over me.
So she was in the middle of this room,
this is Copiague School District, all by herself.
All the other children were pushed away from her.
And she was in the center alone, like a raisin by herself.
And I looked at that and I said to the teacher,
what is she doing all by herself like that?
Well, she disrupts the other children.
I said, do you mean to tell me she's helping them?
Because she was very smart.
And I said, I know she's helping them
but you don't want to give her that credit.
You don't want her to feel that way.
And that was the last time that kind of experience happened.
But I could tell
she knew I wasn't gonna put up with that for her.
And that was very affirming for me
that she understood that I was on her side in other words
and that I knew the prejudice that she was encountering.
And these are professional people
who don't have the skills to be open, accepting, inclusive.
I remember years ago I visited a classroom
and there was a little rich in hue boy.
And when I looked at him in his eyes, his eyes opened up
as if to say, oh you see me, you're really looking at me?
You know it's, I don't know how people could say
they have the multiplicity of degrees that they have
and they have no more skills than a mop.
They're just so what's the word I wanna use,
so ill prepared.
And this is, look at this is 2016.
And people don't acknowledge
that the police are beating and killing and kicking people.
When I started carrying this sign
from Michael Stewart being killed,
there was nobody acknowledging
that the police were doing anything.
It was like, we were all Americans
and everything was really okay.
How could you be a counselor for a child
and you are not even prepared to acknowledge
the reality experience?
When my children came home, they came home
to a segregated situation and it was segregated
because the European Americans would burn your house down
if you moved in their neighborhood.
Now we had to factor that into our reality.
You couldn't just...
You know what, one story I'll tell you what they said.
There was a man he said he went to buy a house
in south Amityville.
Well they said, you can't buy over here
or we'll burn you out.
They told him.
So he said, I'm gonna build over here anyway.
Sure enough, they burnt the house down.
Next thing he said, I'm gonna build it again.
I'm gonna have it anyway, in this neighborhood.
He built it again, they burnt it again.
So then the insurance company said, if you build it again
we're not gonna replace it.
We're not gonna give you the money
because we've already replaced it twice.
And that's it, they burned it twice.
So in other words, the burden of the problem was his.
It wasn't their problem.
Nobody addressed the arson, which was criminal.
Now they said to him, you have to move
to the black neighborhood
because we're not gonna support you
if you move into the, where you wanna live,
where your money will take you.
We're not gonna support you to do that.
Sandra: So you mentioned a couple of instances
of police brutality that got you involved in this.
Can you talk a little bit more about maybe
the first couple of cases
that really called you to do this work?
-: Well as I told you, I only have one son, right?
And there was a young man his name was Michael Stewart
and he was killed by the police.
Sandra: This was in New York.
-: Yeah, and I was in such a state of shock.
I said, how could this be happening?
And that time it was the 50s.
And I thought well, we're so advanced now,
this is the 50s.
No, the people have a clan mentality.
They don't have a clan costume on
but they are psychotic.
They're color phobic.
I'm using words that's analytical
out of the mental health dictionary
that I never had anybody say that to me.
The people that are prejudice against you,
when you go on...
There were certain jobs I knew
I bet might as well not going to apply for.
I was qualified.
I had certificates.
But there was no point in going to the wasting my...
And I said this to somebody,
I'm not gonna waste my coffee going down there
because they're not gonna hire me and I know that.
So facing that reality all the time
and not hating anybody, I don't hate anybody.
It takes a lot of emotion to hate somebody.
I don't hate them, but I will do all I can
in order to make sure
that they don't get over in an incorrect way.
It's unlawful.
Who says that, nobody.
Look at the indigenous people.
If you wanna look at a group
that has suffered for God's sake?
And they have alcoholism as a problem.
How is that?
They don't have alcohol factories in their you know,
in the reservation, but these people make sure you get it.
They make sure the drugs are in the black community.
They make sure guns are in the black community.
So if they don't kill us, we kill ourselves.
And the issues that we have to cope with are so phenomenal
and we do it with regularity.
It's pathological but we don't say that hey,
I'm shoveling up a mountain of crap.
And you know people would use the other word.
In fact, I went into a professional building, I was shocked.
They said, in this puzzles you're gonna see the F word.
I'm saying to myself, this is in a professional building.
You know what I mean?
And I opened it up and it says, F you,
the whole thing was there.
I said to myself, these are young people
coming to get an education.
This is the book that you have there for them, incredible.
I mean-
Sandra: Mother Dember, when did you come to Houston?
How old were you at that time?
-: About 25 years ago, my husband retired
and he said he didn't wanna shovel snow anymore.
And we have a daughter here in Houston
and there was a house available across the street
and he received his bonus, and he paid for the house.
And so I said okay you know,
and so that's how come we're here.
And I feel that I became a member
of the National Black United Front
at the founding convention 37 years ago
in Brooklyn, New York.
And they're getting ready to have their convention
in New York.
Sandra: Why did you join the National Black United Front?
And can you tell us what that organization is about?
-: Yeah, the National Black United Front
is about human rights and justice and reparations.
And many people don't even think about reparations.
240 plus years of enslavement, free work,
no pay, children sold, family disrupted, genocide actually.
And genocide has been affirmed
as a crime by the United Nations.
And we're endeavoring to see if we can get people
to sue under the genocide law
because of what has happened to Black people,
Latino people, Asian people,
indigenous people on the reservations marginalized
and whited out.
And when I first went to visit an Asian community
in New York,
there was an Asian woman who came to our meetings.
I was a member
of the New York State Multicultural Advisory Committee
to the Office of Mental Health.
And our chairperson was Dr. Phyllis Harrison Ross,
a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, a black woman.
And do you know they disbanded that committee
as sick as this country is
they just banded that committee in New York.
We had been meeting like two or three years
and we would go to different localities
and meet in different mental health facilities.
And they disbanded it.
I could not believe it.
We had Latino, Asian, Indigenous
and African American on our committee.
And when we went to the Asian community to visit I said,
I never knew Asians had problems with you know,
hostility and racism.
And this lady said oh yeah, we have problems.
You know, because other groups don't usually complain
across their cultural group
they just act like we're living a normal life.
We were accepted, we're Americans.
But she said oh no, we have problems.
We have problems with being accepted.
We have problems getting our story out.
We have...
So, and she was also a PhD, I think she was a psychologist.
But I did not have a degree at that time.
So some of the attitudes,
not from those individuals in particular
that I was meeting with, but others.
And that's why I went back to school.
I said, I'll get me some alphabets too.
But you and I know there's so much prejudice
it doesn't matter.
You can have all the degrees all the way down
and up and down it doesn't change the attitudes
that are so hostile.
And women focus a lot, European women focus a lot on sexism,
but they're so racist I have found
that I don't work on sexism
because they're too racist.
And I work on racism, white supremacy
and a violent response to color and cultural difference.
That's what I focus on.
Because very rarely is a European American woman
killed over sexism, very rarely.
When was the last time we read about
a policemen killing a European American woman
or man for that matter
or beating them up and giving them a massive concussion,
stomping them to death.
No you don't hear that.
So I focus on what is very traumatizing.
What is-
Sandra: Can you address women's issues
within the work that you do or not at all?
-: No, I don't.
Because I don't feel that
that's the kind of energy I wanna spend over there
because they don't deal with racism, white supremacy.
Most of them, not at all.
Sandra: I'm talking about black women at-
-: Well black women I don't feel are as organized
around racism, white supremacy and the issues of police.
They would like to believe that the society is good
and we're gonna, it's gonna all be okay.
I used to be there
until they killed that young man, 18 years old.
I said wait a minute, here we are in a segregated nugget.
We can't tolerate this.
It threatens every one of our,
it threatens your husband, it threatens your children.
This is what I have to focus on.
So if you realize the first fables,
the first like indigenous stories come out of black Africa.
And I never knew that.
I never saw...
What I saw was European images of fairies, Santa Claus,
the good tooth fairy, all these images were European women
that were supposed to be benevolent.
Then when I'm looking for these benevolent,
helpful, kind, good, gracious people, I couldn't find them.
All I found were these people
that were giving me a hard time for my marks.
They didn't wanna give me my equal, what I earned.
When you look at my papers
and I had believe me, I had my paperwork done, okay.
They didn't wanna give me the credit
for the work I had done.
I had to fight about it all the time.
And these are European educators.
So I think confrontive therapy is very important.
Sandra: Can you describe what that means,
confrontive therapy?
-: I am confronting the white out.
That little bottle, I'm coloring us in
so people could have a non-violent response
to color and the culture difference.
Their behavior is not appropriate.
In fact, it's less than not appropriate
because that's kind of innocuous.
That's kind of innocent.
Their behavior is what is so...
It's like amputated.
It's undeveloped.
It's sociologically...
I mean, I'm wordless, I'm speechless.
It's so damaging.
It's so incredibly daily that you encounter this mess
and people act like well,
what are you carrying a sign for?
Why are you wearing those buttons?
Why don't you chill out, back up?
No, because you lied to me.
And now you not the only wanna to lie to me
but you want an advantage.
You want white supremacy advantage.
You want me to pay more taxes
to live in segregation, which I do.
We pay more than European American neighborhoods?
And we get less our curbs and whatnot.
Do you know what happened last week?
They put a fence around the park next to the SHAPE center.
That's incredible.
I heard Gene Locke talking, he's running for commissioner
and he said he has a budget and certain parts of his budget
he can utilize to improve certain elements in our community.
Well, when I saw some of the city money coming
and put up a fence next to SHAPE, that says something
because that never happens.
Our curbs don't get fixed.
Our side walks don't get fixed.
Sandra: So you lived in 3rd ward for 25 years?
-: Yes.
Sandra: Can you talk about the neighborhood at all
and talk about your experiences,
maybe some of the institutions?
-: Well, I had a very interesting experience in a way.
My first experience with SHAPE,
I first had a mental health conference at the library.
And when I came, my daughter introduced me to SHAPE,
that's Self Help for African People through Education,
I was blown away.
I said, this is phenomenal
because I was accustomed to the antipoverty movement.
And the antipoverty movement,
I was a representative, elected representative
of the poor from my community.
And it wasn't that I was poor
but that we were on a strict budget
because we had a large family.
So we knew what it was to you know,
wear secondhand clothes and shop at the thrift store
because we had to make money stretch as far as it could
because I never marginalized on food.
I believe in fruits and vegetables.
And I became a vegetarian 30 years ago.
So that's what my children mostly were exposed to.
We got away from the meat and so forth.
Well, my experience with making things work for us,
my neighbor died of diabetes.
That's another thing that shocked me, from neglect.
He had a doctor.
How could you die from diabetes?
And we went down to,
and I worked with a European American woman,
her name was Mary Cassidy,
we went down to the Suffolk County legislature to say,
we need a health center in our community.
We've got to have services.
Nobody should die of diabetes.
That's unheard of you know.
It's protracted but you don't die from it.
So it ended up, a very good and wonderful person.
So it ended up that we did get a community health clinic.
And then we asked for mental health services.
Well, because of the trauma that people are experiencing
because of the difficulties.
We didn't want them to bring in the drugs,
that's not what we were talking about.
We were talking about cultural counseling.
Sandra: What would cultural counseling look like?
-: In other words, I couldn't expect to speak to you
like you were a European American
and have that empower you.
Have that strengthen your skills
so that you could cope with the systems
that you have to manage, okay.
That you must know that my master's degree survey
was 100 letters went out
to every community service organization
in Suffolk County, Long Island.
And my question was,
do you provide multicultural counseling?
Out of 100 questionnaires I got back 18,
one agency provided multicultural counseling.
Now, how could you have two reservations,
several Latino communities encapsulated
just like the black community,
surrounded by hostile European Americans
that didn't speak Spanish
and didn't want them either,
marginalized Asians okay, nobody's getting served
according to their cultural dynamic
to empower to strengthen.
That's what it does.
When you know your history,
well you say I don't have to take this anymore.
It's not correct.
I know what's going on, see.
So this way, I feel like if I died tonight,
if I dropped dead right now,
I have created a reality context for myself
and everybody that encountered me.
Because I have said to them, we had history.
We made a contribution.
We paid our taxes and we have still not gotten our fair
and equal share in this American Republic.
So it is not an American Republic.
It is not a functional society for me
or the children that I was rearing.
Woman: How you doing?
-: We're on TV.
So you'll have to cut that snippet out.
But I think even some African Americans that see me,
don't look at me.
They pass by, she's a troublemaker.
If I talk to her, they're gonna include me with her
and that's gonna be a problem.
And so they'll walk past me
and they look straight ahead.
It's like I'm invisible.
It's too much to cope with.
And so they just don't look at me at all.
And that's okay because I'm not invisible.
And they will remember somebody was doing something.
And people who notice it they'll come up
and they'll talk to me like this,
I'm glad you're doing that.
Out of the side of their mouth.
And they tiptoe past me
and they don't wanna be seen talking to me
so they'll say, oh thanks for that.
You know, out of the corner of their mouth.
Because it is so hostile and pathological.
And they, I don't know whether they think
that there's a camera on me at all times
and that if they're seen talking to me
the FBI is gonna come up.
But you know what,
the FBI did come to our house one time.
Sandra: Here or in New York.
-: In New York.
And they went to every one of my neighbors
and asked what about that person down the street?
Can you imagine having the FBI in the street.
I lived in a dead end street.
It was only like four houses on the street.
They went to all those houses
and they asked about what we were doing.
Nothing outrageous, only reality.
I call it reality check.
Heck, it's our reality, we know it,
we live it every day
and we have to put up with it every day.
And other people think, don't mention it.
It's like, I remember there was a man who got on the bus
and he got, he was a European American man,
he got on the bus with two European American females
and he had urinated on himself.
His, the front of his pants was wet
but nobody said anything to him.
I said, look at that.
They have to see that the men's pants are wet.
They didn't say anything.
So it's like they know
that the police are marginalizing us.
They know that the...
Somebody said to me, well have you ever been pulled over?
I was in a little town driving through,
like it was America and we got pulled over.
So my sister was in the car with me.
she comes out of Brooklyn
and she said, why did you pull my sister over?
She stopped at every stop sign
and every light, every traffic light,
he just looked at her.
We were the only black people in sight.
And he felt, what are you doing in town?
You certainly coming to steal the mayor's house
or something.
I mean just inappropriate.
So he didn't do anything.
He didn't give us a ticket or anything
but it's just the experience.
Your blood pressure goes up.
They know what they're doing.
You're marginalized.
What I started to say was,
I had an experience with our neighbor dying
and I began to work closely with a European American woman,
her name is Mary Cassidy she lives,
she still lives in Suffolk County
and we formed a committee
to lobby the county legislature to get a health center.
And we worked together for years
to get that health center up and running.
And we wanted to name it after a black doctor.
And do you know, they wouldn't allow that.
That was Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.
They said no, you can't.
And they named it after the town or something like that.
And not to salute the first black doctor,
the first doctor period to do blood transfusions.
It was a black man.
And we couldn't name
the help center after a pioneering doctor.
That's Suffolk County, Long Island.
So I just am phenomenally in a state of shock all the time.
And by now at 86, you should say well,
and people have said this to me, get over it.
But how could you get over it
when so many people don't acknowledge
that anything is going on?
The inequity is there and it's there every day
and you don't want us to analyze it
so that it can be expunged?
You'd want it to be ignored?
How can we ignore you killing our people?
How are you raising your children
to perpetuate racism, white supremacy
and it's pathological response
to color and cultural difference?
How are you socializing them to be so impaired
in a multiethnic, multicultural context
that they have no coping skills
to quote the you know, sociology,
no healthy coping skills?
What's that about?
This is 2016.
When are they gonna get a grip?
Why don't they go get a colonic?
You know what I'm saying.
Start, get the crap out
and start acting like a human being.
Get some skills, talk to some people.
Don't keep perpetuating something that doesn't exist.
You are not better than anybody else.
You don't have four arms and six legs.
You only have two legs, two arms,
one head, two eyes, come on.
Sandra: So what kind of police brutality work
have you been engaged in here in Houston?
(laughing)
Well of course the sign,
but I know you've been involved in a lot of cases.
-: Well, we march, we demonstrate,
we go to the court buildings for the court cases
because the families come to the...
I should say I've been a member
of the National Black United Front for 37 years.
And we are getting ready to have our convention in New York.
It will be the 37th annual thereabouts.
And we're going back to where the front was,
the Black United Front was founded.
And the police cases that we've been involved in here,
there are so many.
Sandra: When is one of your most memorable?
-: The one where the young teenage boy was killed.
And you see it's beginning to damage my memory.
I don't know if it's my age
or if it's the repetitive pathology you know,
I'm overwhelmed that you would kill a teenager.
Sandra: Was this the Chad Holley case?
-: Yeah, we protested about that.
We went to court cases
and you know they just exonerated the policeman
in the Freddie Gray case.
The policeman got exonerated.
He's not going to be charged with the murder
of this young man.
Now, how does that make the family feel?
We were raised in America, we're saluting the flag.
I pledge allegiance, what?
One of my children came home she said mommy,
I got in trouble at school today.
I said how'd you get in trouble?
She said, I didn't salute the flag.
I was 38 years old I said, you didn't salute the flag.
She said no mommy,
that doesn't have anything to do with us.
I said, my child has more wisdom than I do.
I know it's not,
it doesn't protect our rights or anything
and I stopped saluting the flag from then.
I don't stand at the pledge.
I let it be known that it's not true.
So I don't acknowledge it.
But I'm 86 and people are still standing up,
they're pledging.
And they're teaching the children
to pledge to something that doesn't exist.
Liberty and justice for all, where at?
No where in America.
Liberty and justice for all.
If that's not a fantasy, I don't know what is.
Oh, so we're just inundated with what is genocidal.
And they're finally addressing genocide
because the UN passed a law to acknowledge genocide.
And so there are people that are gonna be suing
under the law that accuses.
And other groups, cultural groups that know
that their people are being genocided.
Genocide is defined,
if you kill members of a group, you cause them harm,
you take their children.
That's the international crime of genocide.
And this happened to people of color and cultural difference
on a regular basis.
The inequity is not only inequity
but it's coupled with violence, catastrophic violence,
psychotic, color phobic, brutal.
You wouldn't believe
that somebody would stump somebody to death
in their genitals.
What is that about?
You're going to kill them.
You're gonna beat their head, crush their brain
and violate their genitals.
Something is psychopathic there.
And I was just reading something recent
that it's still going on.
The European American man
is still not adjusted in a healthy way
to the black man's being alive and being a sexual person.
And the rapes, we, our history is not one
of raping European women,
but the history of Europeans is raping black
and brown or any woman they get a hold of.
What is going on that they're so vicious.
I think we've got to look closer at the harm that is done
by the institutionalization of lies.
When you lie and you institutionalize it
and you affirm it in every way possible.
Oh they're just gonna have a black woman
on one of the dollar bills.
I think the $20 bill.
-: Harriet Tubman- -: Harriet Tubman.
-: Is coming out on the $20 bill.
This is 2016.
There are people who speak about President Obama
like he was a creature from another planet
instead of a graduate of Harvard.
Whatever he is, he has been made in America.
And you mean to tell me
you're not satisfied with your product.
You can't respect him.
You can't affirm his title
and they will persistently say Obama, not President Obama.
(indistinct)
So I think we have some very basic, fundamental,
interventional work to do that is not being done.
Are we able to cope with the reality
of the criminality of European Americans
and their psyche and their pathological response
to color and cultural difference?
What is it?
I mean, this is, I still say 2016,
you're no better prepared.
I went into a store, this is about 10, 12 years ago
and the person wouldn't hand me the money in my hand,
they put it on the table.
I went into a store last week
or so they wouldn't hand me my change in my hand,
they put it on the counter.
What is that about?
You see what I'm saying?
That, what kind of progress is that?
What kind of maturity is that?
What human growth is that?
What are you saying?
You're so developmentally impaired
that you can't even hand somebody their change
that has patronized your business?
You can't even hand them their change in their hand?
And you notice I say this too, another strange thing.
We know that people who have more melanin
are treated even worse
but people who have less melanin
are still treated very badly.
-: You mean- -: If you had-
-: If it was African Americans?
-: No, I mean as far as Latinos or anybody else.
They have the same problems about color
and cultural difference.
The first time I ever saw a rich in hue Latino person,
I didn't know he wasn't black.
I was up in Harlem
and I got turned around and I saw a black man.
And I went up to him and I said, excuse me sir,
could you tell me how to get
to 125th Street and 7th Avenue?
And he said, (speaks Spanish).
I couldn't believe it.
The man was the color of coffee.
They never let a man that complexion
on the Multicultural Advisory Committee
to the Office of Mental Health.
And when I brought it up about the color issue
in the Latino community,
they wanted to put me off the community, but off the board.
These are professionals in mental health.
They said, you stop bringing that up.
You know what they did.
They canceled the conference on racism
because I said you're not dealing with the color issue
in the Latino community.
And they canceled the conference.
These are professionals in mental health.
They know that they have color problems in their community,
I didn't know it.
Here I am counseling people too.
Sandra: In doing your work that you do,
have you ever marched for or protested for Latinos
that are on death row or have been killed by cops?
-: I went to the protest for Jose Campos Torres.
Sandra: Can you talk to us about that?
-: His aunt and his cousin, I think and his niece
or sister had the anniversary of his death.
And I found out about it and I went.
And he had been dead almost 40 years
before they could cope with coming out to be seen
and confront the issue of what happened to him.
He was handcuffed and thrown in the Bayou.
So there was no way he could survive or help himself.
All I can think of is the pathology of that.
And interestingly,
he wasn't a brown skin Latino person either,
he was very European looking
but he didn't speak English I guess.
Or he spoke Spanish or he irritated these,
what shall I say, ethnophobes.
There's a word for you.
I just made it up.
They have no skills.
If you're different,
it throws their whole coping mechanism out of function.
They just can't get it going.
Now what is that?
I have seen people that look different, okay.
And I have been able to say wow,
that person really looks different.
And I, one man that I met recently had the most melanin
of anyone that I have encountered lately.
I only remember seeing one person that had more melanin
than this man and he was only passing.
So I didn't get to interact.
This man has written a book.
I invited him to one of our programs
so that he could present.
We didn't have a large turnout at the program.
I sent notice out to everyone.
This year we didn't have a large turnout.
It was at the Community Artists' Collective.
A black artist had her work on display.
And it was phenomenal work
because she had people of all range of complexion.
Most artists don't do that.
You only see one complexion.
If the person is more melanated than coco,
they're not in the picture.
Now, her pictures were more melanated than coco
and this gentlemen, exquisitely dressed
phenomenally you know, presentable,
you think he doesn't encounter challenging circumstances
of rejection.
Think that you have to cope with this every day.
So I think anybody that's in mental health, social services
I spoke to two students on the grounds of TSU today.
And they were looking at me
like I had dropped off the moon from Mars.
And I said to them you know, there's issues going on
and I never heard this in sociology,
I never heard it in psychology
I said what are they doing in class?
They've got to, what do they say, step it up.
You're not prepared.
What, do you think a race war is a better solution
than just having sophisticated dialogue for change.
My husband did not have much melanin.
His mother was out of Barbados
where they had been a lot of rape
by European Americans of indigenous people.
And his father was out of Selma, Alabama
where there had been a lot of rape.
And those people were very fair complected
and so my husband didn't have much melanin.
We were essentially not really attracted to each other
but nobody really wanted to relate to us
because I guess we had a aura
that was not attractive to them.
And we ended up going out together.
We both had different partners who knew each other
and we were double dating and the two of them dropped off
and we were left with each other.
So he was in a lot of pain around color
because either you're called black
or you're called high yellow.
Oh you yellow bees, so forth and so on.
So it still hurts, what are you gonna do?
You can't change your complexion.
And what are the defenses against people's pathology?
I don't carry a gun.
So what defense do I have against the Ku Klux Klan?
Let's face it, they are out here and they are organizing.
They're having meetings like it's a good idea.
So our institutions, do you know what happened?
Here's another, I mean things are happening all the time.
We have a black historical Catholic church
with a carving of Jesus Christ in ebony wood.
The pastor is from east India,
he's the color of cinnamon.
Now that means he had issues in India let's face it.
'Cause that's a very colorful, big country.
If you're a certain complexion, you don't go too far, okay.
You know what they call it, the Dalits.
The Dalits are marginalized.
If you're born a Dalit you're more melanated
and you do not get the opportunity for education.
You don't rise sociologically higher than your family.
Okay, so he's the pastor.
The co-pastor is from Ghana.
He's a pure African.
They brought in a picture
of the sacred heart of Jesus, a European image
two weeks ago.
I'm still in a state of shock.
You see, that's not-
Sandra: What does it mean
to have a creative energy look like you
or to believe in a spiritual path
that reflects your own culture?
-: Well, I study with an African priest.
I've been studying with an African priest
for the last, I guess 10 years.
Because all spirituality comes from black people
and it was stolen.
And the Catholic church went into Africa
and they saw the order, the beauty, the spirituality,
the behavior of the people, the respect
and they took everything.
Do you know what they said
the priest wears the Roman garment, the toga,
no, the priest wears the African garment
the n'toga, N'-T-O-G-A.
So if I want to claim it
I just drop the N and claim it's Roman.
Ceremonially, you can trace everything back to the Africans
that the Europeans went in, they saw it, they stole it
and they have incorporated it in the Roman Catholic church.
And father Lucas wrote a book, "Black Priest White Church".
He said to me
when my children were so exposed to the racism
at St. Martin's, I was gonna leave the church.
He said, why leave the church,
you're not leaving America?
Fight and make it right.
And I said oh, that sounds good.
And so that's what I do.
But the Europeanization is so entrenched.
And because of the hostile experiences
that I'm sure these two men of color have experienced
from their own ethnic group,
they are very Eurocentric and they affirm it.
And it's very traumatizing to me
because I think of the children.
And how many times do you have
to lift up these European images to the children?
This is to me, this is the worst thing that you can do.
Because you're not affirming reality
you're once again, marginalizing the truth.
And if we look at how people adjust with the drugs
and the alcohol
that we were socialized to drink every weekend
when we were enslaved,
so we wouldn't run away.
And with the presence of those addictive materials
and poverty and grinding police murders
and the horrific experiences in America
that you have to cope with every day, you have alcohol
and drug problems.
And that's why I focus on addiction.
And when you see the long sheet,
it talks about how can we have good mental health
without drugs?
Sandra: How do you get good mental health without drugs?
-: Colonics, you gotta clean out.
Because the presence of the drugs
is through your whole physiology.
So you have to wash that out of your colon,
wash the memory out of your colon
and you begin to assess your physiology,
what is the damage?
What are your cells craving?
And your cells are craving sugar.
Your cells want to feel good.
They wanna feel inebriated,
they wanna feel energized.
And it's the sugar.
So sugar is a very addictive, harmful substance actually.
So I don't use sugar.
I don't even use, I was using agave,
I don't even use agave now.
I just drink my tea straight.
I don't have any sugar in the house at all.
I don't drink sodas or anything like that.
And the juice that I do have,
I have a juice that's made with water, pomegranate
and cranberry.
That's one of the juices that I use.
And even with that, I use half water.
So I feel my goal is optimal health for now, right now.
And so I take care of today.
And my projection is to preserve what I have
and to preserve what I have, I have to eat what is correct.
I go to Sunshine's.
Sunshine will scope your organs.
And do iridology, tell you what herbs to take,
help you clean out
and help you stabilize the cravings that you have.
Because this society wants you addicted
because you're distracted.
You're distracted from sociology
and they use the psychology of addictive substances
the alcohol, the sugar and the drugs
it's to keep you totally distracted, inebriated.
So would you come in march and protest with us?
No, I'm not doing that you know what I mean.
Some people don't see that as therapeutic.
It's very empowering, very therapeutic.
I see young people, young people, they don't wanna march.
They don't wanna protest.
They're not gonna do it.
They figured well, you're really a nutcase.
But see, I'm not drinking, I'm not drugging.
I had one man my entire life
I believe in the sanctity of sex.
That come from Africa too.
You had to be a virgin in order to be the queen.
So you couldn't be like
from what I can understand the British Queens,
whoa, whoa, whoa, mamma mia.
Okay, but they didn't act like oh no,
but they were something else.
If you read their history, it made you wanna say ooh,
these people are something else you know.
Ooh, it was about sex.
It was about rape.
Oh my goodness.
In the declarations of innocence before the 10 commandments
it says I will not commit sodomy.
As clear as a bell, isn't it?
I mean, you understand that is, don't you?
It's clear as a bell.
I will not commit sodomy.
I will not take food from children, clear as bell.
That's one, that's another one.
I will not pollute water.
There is no pure water on earth.
One of the admonitions was I will not pollute water.
So there's like 40 of them that are still in existence.
But all I ever knew with my miseducation
was the 10 that they wanted me to know.
Thou shalt not, in other words,
I'm not taking personal responsibility.
Somebody else is telling me what I shouldn't do, see.
So that's totally different than I will not.
And I think the piece that I wanna give you
has a timeline on the back
and it shows you the beginning
of the beginning, African people.
And to know that this is the facts
and that we're still lied to.
We're still mistreated based on a lack of civility,
just ordinary civility.
And then you don't even get to the part
of the pathology, of the color phobia,
the genocide, the difficulties that we have to cope with
day in and day out.
So this way when I look, somebody says to me
do you take that sign to bed?
I said, no I don't.
I don't have to sleep with it.
I take it with me all day that's enough,
I don't have to sleep with it
cause I don't meet any Europeans in my apartment house.
I don't live in an apartment house.
In fact, we only this past I would say three years maybe,
we have European Americans moving in the neighborhood
because it was a black neighborhood
up until maybe three years ago.
3rd Ward you know, people are moving in.
The houses are old.
They're very attractive.
They're very staunch.
And people are moving in.
And places that have been derelict, they're renovating
and taking over, so.
And one thing about it, we don't burn them out.
What about that.
Is that incredible.
Sandra: One of the things I wanted to ask you
is what do you think civil rights means to you?
-: See, there's a discussion even among African activists
that we now have moved to human rights.
Yeah because, and I spell it H-U-E-M-A-N.
Equality is not what we, we don't have equality.
I hear people even today fighting
for their employment situation.
I recently, I would say recently
in the last five years I was talking to someone in my family
that has been passed over for promotion.
Brilliant person, just keep passing over her.
Promoting somebody else.
It's happening all the time.
Well when they tried that with me,
I remember protesting.
I didn't let them get away with it.
And I haven't worked for anybody else in decades.
But when I was working for somebody else.
I took a civil service test to get a job.
I passed the civil service test.
I had a button on.
The button says, it's one of my oldest buttons,
racism is a illness, so are you sick?
So my job was at the court
and I had to intake people's fines and money
and put the money aside and give them a receipt.
So the supervisor calls me over she said,
well you can see, everybody's very nice to you now,
you have a job you know, you're working here,
you're treated fairly and everything.
You don't have to wear your button.
I said to her, you know what,
I got this job with this button on
and I'm gonna wear this button with this job.
And I did.
And that was in, must've been the late 70s.
So, and of course they fired me as quickly as they could.
But they, I was there every day,
they couldn't fire me right away.
But there was, when a young man was killed,
there was a protest.
I went to the protest
and I didn't have money to call into the job.
And they fired me.
I was tired anyway.
Sandra: Is there anything else
you'd like to talk about mother Dember?
-: Well I write poetry which is...
And I used to paint.
But I was recognized as a gifted child.
And I was painting all the up
until the time I married and everything.
But when they began to kill people, I couldn't draw anymore.
I said, I have to address what's going on.
But I write poetry.
I'll give you one.
Jesus was a black man.
How could that be true?
Because they lied when they said he wasn't rich in hue.
The Bible says hair like lamb's wool,
feet like burnt brass.
Hiding in Africa where he didn't have to pass.
Mama and daddy they was black too.
What you color phobic people gonna do,
I got a website just for you, www.racismtest.org.
If you say color doesn't matter
and that's a fact,
why don't you tell the world Jesus was black.
So that's very gratifying for me
because somebody said, well color doesn't matter.
What?
If you're in a wedding
and the bride tells you we're gonna have blue
and yellow for the maids.
And that's the colors and you show up in purple
and green, color matters, right?
Okay, so that's it all right.
Samantha: All right, thank you.
-: You're welcome.