00:00:00:15 - 00:00:23:11 Rev. Brittany Sometimes God calls us to leave what is familiar. Often not moving across the country, but sometimes it leads us to confront histories and assumptions and truths that we've never considered before. In today's conversation, we'll explore what happens when we have the courage to answer that call. Join us as we look back on our Sankofa Pilgrimages. 00:00:23:13 - 00:00:37:10 Rev. Trudy Welcome to Perspectives, a podcast where the clergy women of the First United Methodist Church of San Diego share their musings on Scripture, theology, and what it has to do with us. 00:00:37:12 - 00:01:00:13 Rev. Brittany Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Perspectives. I'm Reverend Brittany, and I'm here in the studio with a special guest, Kay Gilbert. Today we are talking about Imago Dei 2.0, and this week we're talking about our celebration of the Sankofa Pilgrims. Kay is one of our pilgrims, so we will be having a discussion today. 00:01:00:13 - 00:01:25:01 Rev. Brittany And I'm really glad that she's with us. Our scripture reading for today comes from the book of Genesis, chapter 12, verses 1-3: “Now the Lord said to Abraham, ‘Go from your country and your kindred, and your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 00:01:25:03 - 00:01:47:17 Rev. Brittany I will bless those who bless you, and the ones who curse you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’” Kay Gilbert, you know something about going to different places and different lands and exploring. Tell me a little bit about you and where you're from. 00:01:47:18 - 00:01:56:09 Kay Well, as you said, my name is Kay Gilbert, and I've been a member of the church for quite a while. I grew up in Alabama. 00:01:56:11 - 00:01:57:04 Rev. Brittany Where? 00:01:57:07 - 00:02:16:18 Kay Talladega, Alabama. It's a small town about 60 miles east of Birmingham. My whole youth, until I decided to go across the state for college, was in the small town. 00:02:16:20 - 00:02:35:04 Rev. Brittany A little small town in Alabama. I never would have known—you don’t have an accent or anything! Just kidding. I love your accent. It reminds me of growing up in North Carolina. The Southern accent there is—yeah. So, Kay, growing up in Alabama. 00:02:35:06 - 00:02:39:01 Rev. Brittany What generation did you grow up in? 00:02:39:03 - 00:02:58:02 Kay Well, I was growing up there in the 50s and 60s. Everything was segregated. I mean, down to the last everything was separate. Yeah. Separate in the 50s and 60s. 00:02:58:02 - 00:03:02:14 Rev. Brittany So very Jim Crow. I mean, Jane Crow South. 00:03:02:16 - 00:03:06:16 Kay Absolutely. It was all Jim Crow. Yeah. And Jane. 00:03:06:18 - 00:03:19:14 Rev. Brittany Got to bring Jane in there, too. So, knowing that things were segregated—but you probably didn't realize that at the time—when did you first recognize racism, or were you aware of it? 00:03:19:16 - 00:03:44:18 Kay My first memory is when I was around 3 or 4 years old. I wanted water from a water fountain, and I was choosing the one to drink out of that was labeled “Colored Only.” My father said, “No, that one's not for you. You use this one,” and it's in white. He picked me up so I could drink from that water fountain. 00:03:44:20 - 00:03:50:08 Kay And that's my first conscious memory of knowing there's a difference here somehow. 00:03:50:10 - 00:03:55:19 Rev. Brittany Do you remember? Did they look any different to you at the time, or did they look exactly the same? 00:03:55:19 - 00:03:58:01 Kay They looked the same. Only the signs. 00:03:58:02 - 00:04:01:01 Rev. Brittany Only the signs were different. 00:04:01:03 - 00:04:02:08 Kay They just had to be separate. 00:04:02:10 - 00:04:06:17 Rev. Brittany Did your father ever have any other follow-up conversation with you about it? 00:04:06:20 - 00:04:30:23 Kay No, not about that. I remember both of my parents were very open relative to other people we knew, and especially relative to some of my uncles. There was not verbal trash talk of Black people. 00:04:31:01 - 00:04:31:23 Rev. Brittany Okay. 00:04:32:00 - 00:04:32:08 Kay Yeah. 00:04:32:08 - 00:04:55:22 Rev. Brittany So that must be—you know, I studied race and racism for a very long time, and I'm very much versed in history—but it must be pretty jarring for a little girl to recognize that there are these separate places: one place is a place that you go, and one place is not. 00:04:55:22 - 00:05:05:18 Rev. Brittany It reminds me of in The Lion King when Mufasa takes him up and says, “Don't you go to that shadowy place.” 00:05:05:18 - 00:05:06:08 Kay There you go. 00:05:06:08 - 00:05:15:00 Rev. Brittany And that very distinctive, “You can't go there. But the rest of this is your land,” kind of thing. 00:05:15:05 - 00:05:28:12 Kay Well, there was some of that. I knew there was a neighborhood not far from us that was all Black, and we were not to go there. My parents didn't even drive through there. 00:05:28:12 - 00:05:29:09 Rev. Brittany Wow. 00:05:29:11 - 00:05:30:18 Kay They didn't even drive through there. 00:05:30:20 - 00:05:40:22 Rev. Brittany So it's very interesting. Alabama has a pretty—I will say—interesting history. 00:05:40:22 - 00:05:42:03 Kay You're being kind. 00:05:42:04 - 00:05:57:11 Rev. Brittany I am. I know it for a fact. Alabama does have a very interesting and marred history as it relates to racism, so that is very interesting. 00:05:57:15 - 00:06:32:11 Kay And I was there for all of the times when the sit-ins were happening and Black folks just wanted to be served at the soda fountain, and that was not permitted. “That's White people only.” I was there in Birmingham. I was in Birmingham in school when the dogs were after people, the hoses were blowing people down, and the dogs were biting folks for wanting to demonstrate and so forth. 00:06:32:13 - 00:06:49:23 Kay And I was there when it was just really painful. It was painful. And I was painfully aware of it when I was in my late teens, early 20s. 00:06:50:01 - 00:06:57:01 Rev. Brittany So when the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing happened in Birmingham, you were around? 00:06:57:01 - 00:07:19:09 Kay No. I was not in Birmingham at that point in time, but I remember when that happened and about the four little girls who died in that bombing. We went to that church on one of our pilgrimages. We did. Seeing it and talking about it—I had not been to the church before—was a real pleasure. 00:07:19:09 - 00:07:33:06 Kay And it was part of my growth to actually examine that and the history they had in their museum, kind of part of the church that they had there. 00:07:33:07 - 00:07:46:23 Rev. Brittany There's so much that we know, and there's so much that we don't know, and there's so much that I think we have forgotten. That's why Sankofa is so important to the ministry and the meaning. Right? Sankofa? 00:07:46:23 - 00:07:47:21 Kay Absolutely. 00:07:47:22 - 00:08:25:07 Rev. Brittany The West African Adinkra symbol means it is not foolish to go back and get that which you have forgotten. The bird that's on our shirt represents this bird that is looking back, but its feet are pressing forward. So it's looking back in order to move forward. And that's what our work together has been over the last four years, because you have been on all four of the pilgrimages that we have taken: starting in the South, which we'll talk about a little bit more; then going up to the Northeast and discovering that history together; then going to the Midwest last year in Chicago and talking about the Great Migration and Emmett Till and his family's history and legacy there in Chicago. 00:08:25:07 - 00:08:33:20 Rev. Brittany And then this year we explored California, which is a very different history, but not uncomplicated and certainly not unproblematic. 00:08:33:20 - 00:08:34:03 Kay Yes. 00:08:34:05 - 00:08:40:04 Rev. Brittany 00:08:40:08 - 00:08:41:03 Kay Right? Right. 00:08:41:03 - 00:08:42:19 Rev. Brittany Absolutely correct. 00:08:42:21 - 00:08:47:05 Kay It is. Racism is still alive and well. 00:08:47:05 - 00:08:49:14 Rev. Brittany And can you say that one a little louder? 00:08:49:16 - 00:09:31:10 Kay Racism is still alive and well and thriving in some directions, and it's still thriving even more in Alabama. I'd like to tell people, you can go there and you'll see that things are different and things are integrated and all of that. But the truth is, a lot is just hidden. It's just not said out loud. And when you talk to people—if you can get to a conversation about how Black people are in your community—it's, “Well, we just want to keep our way of life,” which is a euphemism for, “We want things separated.” 00:09:31:12 - 00:09:41:22 Rev. Brittany “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” George Wallace. Hello, George Wallace. See this? You know, I'm— 00:09:42:00 - 00:09:55:01 Kay A terrible man, but in the schoolhouse door of the University of Alabama at that. And that was the year just before I went there. And the next thing you know, I was there. 00:09:55:01 - 00:10:05:11 Rev. Brittany What a time. I mean, really just walking history, truly. I have many things I could say about Governor Wallace, but I will move on. 00:10:05:13 - 00:10:07:08 Kay Okay. That's good. 00:10:07:08 - 00:10:14:04 Rev. Brittany So you talked about when you were aware of racism. When was the first time you recognized race? 00:10:14:06 - 00:10:14:18 Kay Let me— 00:10:14:18 - 00:10:15:19 Rev. Brittany Because they are different. 00:10:15:19 - 00:10:42:11 Kay They are different. And thank you for pointing that out to us in our pre-trip conversations before this last trip. The first time I really recognized race, I was around 9 or 10 years old. I lived in this small town, but it was the county seat, so the courthouse was right in the middle of town. 00:10:42:17 - 00:11:15:20 Kay And then there was a square of buildings with shops and so forth around it. On Saturdays, everybody went to town. That's when I saw all the Black people. They came to town, white people came to town. It was shopping day on Saturdays. And I remember this one particular time I was sitting in the car with my dad. I don't know why we were just sitting parked on the square, but my dad was behind the wheel, kids in the back seat, and Mama wasn't there, so maybe she was shopping. I don't know. 00:11:15:20 - 00:11:43:19 Kay But anyway, what I was doing was paying attention to people and just watching. I saw two little girls, two little Black girls approximately my age, coming down the street. Those girls were laughing and talking to each other and kind of poking at each other and doing what little girls do. And I just got to thinking about them and wondering: Who are those girls? Why—who are those girls? 00:11:43:19 - 00:12:05:18 Kay Where did they live? I didn't know where they lived. I didn't know where their neighborhoods were. Where did they go to school? I never saw a Black child in my school. It was all white. Where did they go to church? There were no Black people in my church. Where did they go to church? 00:12:05:20 - 00:12:32:15 Kay I had no clue. What I did know was that there was a separation, and I remember that being cemented. I probably was generally aware before, but that's when it got cemented in my mind that there's a separation. And as they continued to walk, my mind was just going on with my little thought experiment about who they were. 00:12:32:15 - 00:12:37:15 Kay What were they about? And it occurred to me. 00:12:37:17 - 00:13:04:10 Kay Painfully, I could have been born them, and they could have been born me. Oh my goodness. And with that realization, I knew. I did not have the language for it, but I knew then what I know now in my language: I had white privilege. I didn't have the language then. 00:13:04:12 - 00:13:30:18 Kay But in my mind, it's happenstance about where you get born, what body you grow up in. And so I could have been them. What would my life have been like if I were them—one of them? So that was my first real— 00:13:30:20 - 00:13:54:16 Kay Mental and emotional connection with the idea of race. The rest of it, I didn't understand. That's one of the biggest things. I had no idea why. Nobody ever told me why or how it got to be that way. I had to kind of figure it out as I was growing up. 00:13:54:16 - 00:14:20:06 Kay And it was—but racism and Blacks are not equal to Kay Gilbert. It was just all in the ether. I couldn't explain it, and I didn't know why. I don't know why those girls can't go to school with me. I don't know why they can't go to church with me. 00:14:20:06 - 00:14:27:20 Kay I don't know why they don't live next door. We could play together, right? So I think my race experience was so— 00:14:27:20 - 00:15:01:00 Rev. Brittany Interesting is that we're all created in God's image, each and every one of us, right? That's the whole point of the Genesis text when the author says that God created humanity in God's own image. And so when you think about the fact that you were the same age as these girls and probably had many of the same similar interests—you wanted to play, wanted to laugh, joke, you cared about your hair, you wanted the nice dress and ribbons. 00:15:01:00 - 00:15:21:02 Rev. Brittany But to know that their experience in life was going to be very different than your experience. Even thinking back to you being a three-year-old and having to use a different water fountain and those kinds of realizations being instilled in you, but no one's telling you why. 00:15:21:04 - 00:15:22:01 Kay Not a word. 00:15:22:01 - 00:15:26:03 Rev. Brittany It's like the loudest secret that there is. 00:15:26:03 - 00:15:31:15 Kay You know, that's a beautiful way of putting it. It's a screaming thing. Yeah. 00:15:31:17 - 00:15:32:14 Rev. Brittany Yeah. 00:15:32:16 - 00:15:40:09 Kay And calling out to me. And I never had an answer. And I didn't know how to formulate the questions about it. 00:15:40:11 - 00:15:57:11 Rev. Brittany Do you ever wonder why, thinking back now—not when you were a child, but thinking back now—do you have any thought as to why it's such a secret? Why is it such a hush-hush shame, even though it's so overt? 00:15:57:12 - 00:16:11:04 Kay That's a great question, and I really don't know. But when things are icky, there are euphemisms. And I don't know if you want me to tell you this, but I'm going to anyway. 00:16:11:06 - 00:16:14:06 Rev. Brittany We're here to tell the truth. Shame the devil. 00:16:14:08 - 00:16:45:16 Kay And there are euphemisms in the South. For example, we used to visit my dad's cousins, and in their yard they had chickens running all around. There was a pig in the fence back behind the house, and chickens in the yard and whatever. And anytime we went there, my mother insisted on holding my hand and walking with me as a little girl, and she kept saying, “Don't cut your foot. Don't cut your foot.” 00:16:45:18 - 00:17:09:19 Kay And I had no idea what that meant: don't cut your foot. And finally it dawned on me: don't step in the chicken poop in the yard. Don't step in the chicken poop. So that's the kind of euphemism people would speak in. And I kind of think if something is icky, you don't talk about it. 00:17:09:21 - 00:17:15:16 Kay And you find some way of just having a euphemism for it. 00:17:15:18 - 00:17:50:08 Rev. Brittany And that, my dear friend, is rooted in racism and white supremacy. Right? Because the idea is that if it were so overt in so many ways, people would question it. There would be people who would question it. But the way that racism works, at least now, today, in most instances, is it's so insidious, it's so hidden, but it's so a part of every fabric of our nation, in our society, in our churches and everything, that it's there. 00:17:50:13 - 00:17:59:22 Rev. Brittany But it's uncomfortable. So we're not going to really tell the truth about it. We're just going to gloss over it. 00:17:59:23 - 00:18:05:16 Kay I had never connected those two things before, like you just said. Yes, thank you for that. 00:18:05:16 - 00:18:23:05 Rev. Brittany That's exactly what it is. It's like you can put sugar on poop, but it's still going to be poop, right? And that's how racism works. It's like a sugary coating or the sweetness, like we're saying a thing but not saying it. 00:18:23:08 - 00:18:23:15 Kay In. 00:18:23:18 - 00:18:30:11 Rev. Brittany And in the not saying it is how it continues to thrive and live and give legs, because it's not that bad. 00:18:30:14 - 00:18:30:20 Kay Yeah. 00:18:30:20 - 00:18:36:02 Rev. Brittany It's not that bad. Oh no, no, it's fine. 00:18:36:04 - 00:18:37:16 Kay Oh, this is good. 00:18:37:18 - 00:18:40:18 Rev. Brittany So okay, you are trained as a nurse. 00:18:40:19 - 00:18:41:12 Kay Yes, I am. 00:18:41:13 - 00:19:05:14 Rev. Brittany And you have many years of experience in nursing. So I wanted to ask you about some of the disparities across health care, knowing your particular role in health care. Did you ever notice—especially since you were a midwife as well, and I know that the infant or Black mother mortality rate is very, very high— 00:19:05:16 - 00:19:19:13 Rev. Brittany after giving birth, did those things ever come up in conversations in any of your trainings, or did you ever realize some of the disparities that were happening between races? 00:19:19:15 - 00:19:45:18 Kay In growing up? Well, first of all, overall, let me just say, my experience has been as a nurse, as a nurse midwife, and as a professor of nursing. I've done legal consulting with those kinds of things, too. I can honestly say that disparities were not—oh, they always did statistics at the beginning of the lecture, you know? 00:19:45:18 - 00:20:04:12 Kay And so forth. I'm sure, and yes, always, Black folks had worse stats than white people did or any other ethnicity. But I didn't actually see 00:20:04:14 - 00:20:32:09 Kay that manifested directly. I can't remember an incident of it, except when I was in nursing school. I went home on weekends, and they would let me work at the hometown hospital that remained segregated for at least through the 60s, all the way through the 60s, even after the Civil Rights Act and so forth. 00:20:32:10 - 00:20:33:05 Rev. Brittany Shocking. 00:20:33:08 - 00:21:02:01 Kay Well, and it was at that annex where the Black folks were hospitalized. So all the nursing students who lived in town who wanted to work extra and do things, have experience and so forth, they'd say, “Come on down.” Things were much more loosey-goosey. If I just told them, “They taught me how to do this procedure 00:21:02:03 - 00:21:25:14 Kay at school,” they said, “Okay, sure, you can do that here.” That would never happen now. But they trusted me, and I can honestly say I didn't fib on any of it. I did get experience that was golden. And that particular unit was run by Nurse Beavers. 00:21:25:16 - 00:21:54:04 Kay She was not Mrs. Beavers. She was Nurse Beavers. And that was very specific for her because you didn't call them Mr. or Mrs. You said their job: Nurse Beavers. Nobody else was called Nurse so-and-so. Anyway, she was a sweetheart, and she was very generous with all of us who, when we were working extra, worked on that 00:21:54:04 - 00:22:24:16 Kay to get our time in, to earn a little money, and to get a little more experience. She was generous with us, and I remember being very pleased and proud to know her. I don't remember other kinds of things in my practice or in teaching where I saw overt or even suspicious racism or differences in care 00:22:24:18 - 00:22:53:18 Kay until I started doing legal nurse consulting. And the worst case I ever had was pretty darn blatant. This was a case in Louisiana where both the mother and the baby had very poor outcomes because people were just wretchedly bad at doing their jobs. These were the nurses; it was the doctors. 00:22:53:18 - 00:22:57:22 Kay It was everybody concerned with care. 00:22:57:23 - 00:22:58:07 Rev. Brittany Yeah. 00:22:58:12 - 00:23:29:06 Kay Of these two persons. And that child was very damaged mentally. And the mother—she had not been married, but she was living with the father of the baby. When the baby was born, the father bolted right away. He wasn't going to be part of it, but the mother was left to take care of this child, who would now be around 15, 18 years old. 00:23:29:08 - 00:23:38:23 Kay And the mother is still doubtless taking care of this child, who was permanently damaged and not going to be able to have a functional life. 00:23:39:01 - 00:23:40:21 Rev. Brittany And all because of the quality of care. 00:23:40:22 - 00:23:46:04 Kay Quality of care in that particular facility at that time. 00:23:46:06 - 00:24:05:01 Rev. Brittany It happens. It's still happening today. There was a story a few years ago of a woman who was an epidemiologist in Atlanta, had a child, went in and came back for her six-week checkup, and was complaining of just not feeling good and having some pain in her legs. And they were like, “You'll be fine.” 00:24:05:03 - 00:24:09:02 Rev. Brittany And then she went home that day and dropped dead in her living room. 00:24:09:02 - 00:24:09:20 Kay Blood clot. 00:24:09:20 - 00:24:10:06 Rev. Brittany Yep. 00:24:10:09 - 00:24:13:12 Kay Went to the heart. Her lungs rang exactly right. 00:24:13:16 - 00:24:22:03 Rev. Brittany And so, as quickly as I just described that, right, you would assume that another person who was trained as well as you were would— 00:24:22:03 - 00:24:22:12 Kay Say. 00:24:22:13 - 00:24:23:20 Rev. Brittany Yeah, we need to get that. 00:24:23:20 - 00:24:26:11 Kay We need that, too. And it's not hard to do. 00:24:26:12 - 00:24:26:22 Rev. Brittany Right. 00:24:27:01 - 00:24:29:08 Kay It's not hard to do. You just have to pay attention. 00:24:29:08 - 00:24:52:02 Rev. Brittany Exactly. But when racism is at play and there are these ideas and these ideologies that stem from many, many years that say that Black people have a higher pain tolerance or threshold or, you know, that they're just trying to get drugs of some kind, no matter your education status. That woman was an epidemiologist, right? And so what happens to lower-income folks who don't have that same level of education? 00:24:52:05 - 00:24:59:10 Rev. Brittany You're still not protected. And so, as I always say, racism takes no days off and it never will. 00:24:59:10 - 00:25:01:14 Kay And you're absolutely right about that. 00:25:01:17 - 00:25:02:09 Rev. Brittany You're absolutely. 00:25:02:09 - 00:25:03:02 Kay Right. 00:25:03:04 - 00:25:17:22 Rev. Brittany So okay, you coming from Talladega, Alabama and then moving here to San Diego, California. I had my first encounter with you in 2023 about the Sankofa pilgrimage. So, what made you want to participate in the pilgrimage? 00:25:18:00 - 00:26:00:03 Kay Well, thank you for asking that. The … my whole life I have worked on trying to overcome my beginnings where I came from. And I, at that point in time, had been doing a lot of reading and from reading list about racism. Yeah. And I was into that and I had taken, I had done some zoom classes here with books that were chosen and one that Kenton Hanley and Jason Tucker did together. 00:26:00:06 - 00:26:25:09 Kay And it was a book study is what I was doing. Yeah. Well, you know, you came along and all of a sudden I knew I was supposed to do this. I have a little bit of age on me. And as I reflect on my past, the more I reflect on it, the more meaning I get out of it. 00:26:25:09 - 00:26:47:12 Kay It's the good that I get to have and say, “oh, I learned that, I got that, I got it down in my in my toes even.” So, I want to keep having that meaning. And I knew there was more meaning for me to have. Yeah. And I needed to go on this, this pilgrimage with you, although I didn't. 00:26:47:13 - 00:27:12:02 Kay I knew where we were going. We're going all through the South. And I thought that would be easy. “I know that place.” No, I did not. And I have I still have discomfort with whatever unknown racism I still have. I don't know what I don't know, but I need to be more aware of that. 00:27:12:02 - 00:27:41:10 Kay And the biggest thing is what do you do with your discomfort? You don't want to cause more pain. You want to pull it up, air it out, get rid of the painful stuff, and not cause more. And so that's—I had to open my heart. In my life when I my little way of talking about God pushing me in a direction. 00:27:41:12 - 00:27:48:23 Kay And I recognize this, as I call it, my nudge. That God's pushing me in a direction and God was nudging me. 00:27:49:01 - 00:27:49:17 Rev. Brittany Yeah. 00:27:49:19 - 00:27:54:07 Kay “You're supposed to go on this trip.” Yeah. So that's why I went on the trip. 00:27:54:09 - 00:28:20:18 Rev. Brittany Well I'm so glad that you went on that one. And everyone since then, because I can see that you're constantly trying to learn and you've said many times that you are …. what are you? You were talking about racism. And you say that: “I am recovering racist,” right? Yeah. And I think that that's what we talk about when we have conversations about addiction. 00:28:20:18 - 00:28:23:04 Rev. Brittany Right? I'm saying “I'm a recovering alcoholic.” 00:28:23:04 - 00:28:24:18 Kay Because you're always an alcoholic. 00:28:24:18 - 00:28:25:11 Rev. Brittany Always. 00:28:25:11 - 00:28:32:06 Kay And I don't even know because it was in the ether. I don't even know what I break down exactly. 00:28:32:08 - 00:28:33:05 Rev. Brittany Exactly. 00:28:33:10 - 00:28:37:05 Kay But I'm trying to pull it all out. I'm trying to deal with it. 00:28:37:06 - 00:28:51:02 Rev. Brittany So. Okay. What would you say to people who are saying … who may be a little apprehensive about this conversation, or feel like I don't have anything to learn? “I'm not racist. I don't see race. I don't see color.” What would you, what word would you have for them? 00:28:51:05 - 00:29:27:09 Kay Liar, liar. Pants on fire. Because you just don't know until you start looking at it. And those trips, especially that trip to the south, that was the hardest one for me. I thought I would know so much, but let me tell you, with what you have prepared for us to see and get into it, I've said this before, it absolutely broke me. 00:29:27:09 - 00:29:59:15 Kay I could not believe what I didn't know, what I had not gotten down to the grit about. I had not gotten to the grit until what you prepared came in my face, and I chose to look at it. Yeah. And it's boom. And, probably the most wonderful part of it was going to Bryan Stevenson's, The Legacy Museum. 00:29:59:15 - 00:30:41:15 Kay The Lynching Museum sometimes referred to it. And I had not long before we went, I had read Just Mercy, written by Bryan Stevenson and I … It just tore my heart apart. He was so good in that book as he wrote it, and the situation he was trying to do as an attorney to get a poor black man out of out of trouble and jails, and people …. and about him to go and get him to go to jail just so they had a box checked off that we solved that crime and that's and it. It … how much he had to fight made me cry. 00:30:41:15 - 00:31:08:22 Kay I teared up very often in that book, but at the same time I was just amazed at his stamina to take it. Yeah. And hang in there to make it happen. And to deal with that, you know, to comfort all the family members of his client. Yeah. So, when we went to the Legacy Museum. 00:31:09:00 - 00:31:43:05 Kay There are pictures of all kinds of children and adults being lynched. And you may remember, they had gallon jugs of soil from under the lynching trees from many, many places. And it was all different colors of soil. The people somebody had gone there under those trees and dug up what it was, what the soil was, where death happened to people who should never have been taken from us like that. 00:31:43:06 - 00:31:44:18 Rev. Brittany Yeah, absolutely. 00:31:44:18 - 00:31:50:09 Kay I came out of there crying. I remember bent, bent over crying. 00:31:50:11 - 00:31:51:12 Rev. Brittany It was hard. 00:31:51:14 - 00:31:52:04 Kay It was hard. 00:31:52:04 - 00:31:54:18 Rev. Brittany It was hard. But it was a beautiful moment. 00:31:54:20 - 00:31:56:04 Kay And I wouldn't take anything for. 00:31:56:04 - 00:32:30:17 Rev. Brittany It. Yeah. To see the ways and the ways in which people's eyes were open in their hearts were opened to the reality. And to say that, okay, to know that the Legacy Museum exists because of those lynchings, and to now see an uptick in black people found hanging from trees today. Yes, in 2026. And in the government or the police ruling it a suicide shows again the insidious nature of racism and how it will gaslight you to say, “oh, those people committed suicide.” 00:32:30:19 - 00:32:50:19 Rev. Brittany No, they did not. That's just … that's … they would never publicly hang themselves. And I said this in our classes, and I think I've said it even from the pulpit, Black people are not exempt from mental illness or, you know, feeling the despair of what it means to live on this planet. And Black people commit suicide in the same ways that other people do. 00:32:50:21 - 00:32:56:12 Rev. Brittany But the public lynching from a tree is just not something that would happen. 00:32:56:16 - 00:33:09:05 Kay And the stories around that people came with, “Oh, let's dress up. Let's go see this happen. Let's, take some food, and let's have our pictures taken with the bodies.” 00:33:09:05 - 00:33:10:09 Rev. Brittany And bringing your children. 00:33:10:09 - 00:33:17:15 Kay Bring your children to it. And the photographs were all there for you to see. Yeah, I think that kind of thing. 00:33:17:15 - 00:33:44:04 Rev. Brittany We often talk about how racism impacts Black folks systemically, but I don't I didn't think that we talk about what it does to the souls of White folks. And W.E.B. Dubois has a short excerpt, called The Souls of White Folks, that is very interesting. I will just end with a few more questions. Okay. How has this trip informed your faith? 00:33:44:06 - 00:34:25:18 Kay Informed my faith … it's reinforced my faith. God nudged me to go, I went, I learned what he needed, what he wanted me to know, I think. And I'm still learning what he wants me to know. My faith is based on—Well I grew up Southern Baptist, and as much as I might disagree with that church format and so forth, I learned my Bible. 00:34:25:20 - 00:35:03:05 Kay And I became a Christian in that situation and it's never left me. I know that God is in my life and the teachings that I learned early and still are to love one another. I think it's in 1 John. Where, we think it's the apostle John who wrote according to, apparently was the apostle John who wrote 1 John. And 1 John, 00:35:03:05 - 00:35:28:16 Kay he said: “People who do not love, do not know God because God is love,” right? And Jesus made a very clear, right, very clear that our job is to love one another as we love ourselves. Yeah, but God first and each other — everybody. Correct. It is not anything but everybody. 00:35:28:16 - 00:35:29:16 Rev. Brittany Yeah. 00:35:29:18 - 00:35:36:10 Kay And that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who. And so, I, you, I'm working into it more. 00:35:36:15 - 00:35:53:11 Rev. Brittany Yeah. And thank God for that. And I also want to say, you know, okay, you grew up in a generation that's very different than the generation that I grew up in. And so, I commend you for the work that you're doing to learn and unlearn, for the fact that you're saying, “I'm a recovering racist.” That means I have to work through this every day. 00:35:53:15 - 00:36:15:05 Rev. Brittany And to me, that gives me hope that maybe the generations that have come — that are before me, might be willing to open their eyes and to see things that they've never seen before, because we're always learning and we always need an opportunity to learn and grow. None of us will ever leave this earth completely knowing everything. We are not God. 00:36:15:09 - 00:36:42:01 Rev. Brittany And so, I think that learning is a lifelong journey. And so, I just want to commend you and thank you for your willingness to go there, because so many people are not and they're pretty stuck in who they are, where they've been. And the idea that you know, when God tells Abraham to leave, folks do not. They will hold on, you know, dig their hands in the sand before they, you know, decide that they want to think about moving or doing something different. 00:36:42:01 - 00:36:47:08 Rev. Brittany And so, I just want to commend you for your willingness to explore and learn and go deeper. 00:36:47:09 - 00:37:11:21 Kay Thank you. One of the amazing things is that I'm always surprised at my growth capacity, but there's still more to learn. There's the … I can still get it. It's a matter of intention. What is my intention? How can I make that happen? I have a history in my in my life of having some kind of vision and making it happen. 00:37:11:22 - 00:37:35:19 Kay I know how to walk into a situation or a life setting that I've created in my head. And so, that's what I'm doing is, you know, it's intention. Now, whether or not my impact will match my intention is a matter for God, in my opinion. Right? You know, I just put it there. Put it out there. 00:37:35:20 - 00:37:54:21 Kay I do what I can, I try to minimize pain, promote love and appreciate the suffering that's gone on. And after that, God will use it to facilitate and liberate like he chooses. 00:37:54:23 - 00:38:11:09 Rev. Brittany Amen to that, sister. And so, my last question — you've kind of answered it though— is how will you use the information that you've learned and gathered both personally introspectively and the information that you've gathered from other folks who've been on the pilgrimage? What will you do with your social capital now, these days? 00:38:11:10 - 00:38:48:12 Kay My social capital is to live that life publicly. And this podcast is part of that. Yeah. I tend to … I want to demonstrate this comfort that I have gained with people of other ethnicities that I didn't have before. I want to demonstrate it, I want to live with it. I've learned going on the trip with everybody. 00:38:48:14 - 00:38:55:20 Kay But especially Black folks I didn't know before who go to a different church. Yeah. And I have enjoyed every bit of it. 00:38:56:02 - 00:39:29:10 Rev. Brittany Yeah. And you have two grandchildren that I think is really … I think them seeing you continue to learn and grow gives them the opportunity to learn and grow. And I've had the pleasure of talking with your granddaughter before about some of the things that she's learned from you. And I can tell that growing up in an environment where you were willing to learn and be wrong and to sit in the discomfort, being uncomfortable with being comfortable with being uncomfortable, I think gives them eyes to see the world around them, and to want to do something with their lives and their privilege that they have as well. 00:39:29:11 - 00:39:31:10 Rev. Brittany So, thank you. 00:39:31:12 - 00:39:33:06 Kay You're welcome. Thank you. You're so welcome. 00:39:33:07 - 00:39:43:19 Rev. Brittany And thank you for our time together. It is always a joy to spend some quality time and to have some conversations with you. You are a light to me, and I really appreciate your will. 00:39:43:19 - 00:39:44:18 Kay —And I love you dearly— 00:39:44:18 - 00:39:46:16 Rev. Brittany To go there. So, thank you. 00:39:46:16 - 00:39:48:06 Kay You're welcome. 00:39:48:08 - 00:40:06:18 Rev. Brittany We have a couple of reflection questions. Actually, a few, not a couple. That we'd like for you to ponder. If you have some time, you can talk about them in a group, or you can talk about them with yourself. Our first question is: What is something familiar that you've had to leave behind? 00:40:06:18 - 00:40:37:07 Rev. Brittany And how did that experience shape who you are today? Our second question is: What beliefs, assumptions, or perspectives have you had to reconsider in order to grow in your understanding of race and racism? And thirdly: What might God be inviting you to learn, unlearn, or discover in this season of your life? We hope you'll take some time to ponder these questions, and to think very deeply about all of God's creation, because we are all created in the image of God. 00:40:37:09 - 00:40:38:20 Rev. Brittany Until next time. 00:40:38:22 - 00:40:41:13 Kay Bye bye. 00:40:41:15 - 00:40:57:13 Rev. Trudy This is a production of First United Methodist Church of San Diego. 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