♪♪ >> One of our nation's leading journalists, historian, activists, Professor Herb Boyd, next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, diverse representation and perspectives, equity, and inclusion is critical to meeting the needs of our colleagues, customers, and communities.

We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo, the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute.

Through API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry around the world.

Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

♪♪ >> Harlem would not be Harlem today without Herb Boyd.

Welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Oh, it's such a pleasure to be back with you again.

You know, we have a relationship.

People need to know that.

>> Yes.

That transcends five to six decades.

>> Yes.

>> You know, Frederick Douglass had it right.

Freedom is a constant struggle.

>> Yes.

>> You and I both have been blessed to be a couple of the long-distance runners.

>> Blessed, indeed.

>> Absolutely.

>> Marathoners, you know?

>> So, Herb, I want our audience to know first of your background.

You were born in Alabama, but you were raised in "The Big D," Detroit.

>> In Detroit.

>> So talk to me about how your social upbringing contributed to your journalistic genius today.

>> You know, one of the things about the First Migration and then the Second Migration, my mother was very much involved in the Second Migration.

It's a straight line from Alabama to Detroit.

>> Is that because of the auto industry?

>> Yeah, because of the automobile industry there, which is so prominent not only in Detroit or Michigan, but the nation's history in terms of the role it's played in terms of the economy.

So, she was a young woman, 20, 21 years of age, and pretty much frustrated in Alabama.

>> Birmingham?

>> Yeah.

Outside of Birmingham, really in Cotton Valley, near Tuskegee.

And my family is still centered there.

Many members of my family are still centered there.

And -- But she had this here really gypsy in her soul and she wanted to travel.

She wanted to break out.

She went to Detroit, and, fortunately, she hooked up with a woman who was looking for a housekeeper.

Brought her -- She gave her a ticket to come back, because my mother had to go back to Alabama, pull her things together in order to return.

And lo and behold, she ended up in a little city outside of Detroit, Ypsilanti, where Eastern Michigan University is.

And then she brought her back there, and the rest is history in terms of her connection to Detroit.

She got a succession of jobs after that, including working in the automobile -- Because the whole plant, you know, this was the fulcrum, you know, the whole drive for the war effort.

And here, you know, Detroit was synonymous in that.

And she got a job in one of the automobile plants working on electronic lines, you know, the assembly lines like that.

And so she was like a Rosie the Riveter, you know, a black Rosie the Riveter.

And so now she had this employment, she could go back and bring her sons up.

So she brought me and my brother up.

And, you know, I mean, that was 1943, Ben, you know, so the war is going on at that time.

And so this arsenal of democracy that Detroit was at that time gave her a number of employment opportunities.

And so that was how she centered herself.

>> Well, Detroit was one of the few places in the United States where blacks and white at least emerged some type of mutual respect because of the need to get things done.

>> Right.

They had this here kind of mutual-survival agenda.

So -- But, nonetheless, we had racial tension there because you're in 1943.

I arrived in Detroit two months -- just before, two months before the riot broke out.

In fact, my mother got caught up in all of that.

She and her girlfriends, you know, running around, and she actually saw the National Guard come in and shoot a man in half who was coming out of a pawnshop.

>> This is in the 1940s.

Everybody knows about the rioting in the 1960s.

Very few people know there was a riot in Detroit in the 1940s.

>> So it's almost like a continuation.

It's an unbroken tragedy we have here from 1943 to 1967, rebellion.

There's a difference there, because the '43 was like -- it was an out-and-out race riot.

You have photographs of that showing white people dragging black people off the streetcars there.

'67 was more or less like a class thing.

You know, we're against, like, what's going on with the city, with the police.

It's a systemic uprising as opposed to a racial discord.

So there's a little distinction there, but nonetheless, it was problematic for the city's growth, because anytime you have a riot, it takes years to recover.

I've seen this same thing happen in New York, where I live now.

You know, those rebellions, those uprisings, those riots tore the city.

The fabric of the city is torn apart.

So it takes years of recovery.

Detroit had to go through that and I think is still going through the recovery process, yeah.

>> Well, America in general, if you look at the progress of our democracy, we're still going through it, Herb.

>> Oh, brother, unfinished business.

>> Yes.

So, you know, fast-forward.

Listen, man, you're in the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Black Journalists.

>> Yes.

>> I was there for that.

>> Were you there?

>> At that conference when they installed you.

>> Joy Reid, yeah.

Yeah, she brought me in.

>> So, tell us about your budding journalism and how you decide to make that your life's vocation.

>> I call myself a triple-A man.

Not the American Automobile Association, but Activist, an Academic, and an Author.

The line should be activist first, because that put me in the street.

It put me in contact with a number of other very, very vibrant activists out there.

I learned from them, more or less.

I was not exactly a Johnny-come-lately, but I was very attuned to some of the real thinkers, the real forerunners, trailblazers in that.

And I was fortunate enough to be hooked up with them in at least three or four communities, principally Detroit and Harlem.

My life been half my life -- I'm 84 now -- 42 years Detroit, 42 years Harlem.

>> So, your three A's -- so, the activism led you to be both an academic, as well as a journalist and author.

>> Exactly.

>> But it was the activism.

>> The activism is the stimulus.

That's the seed.

The germ of it all is my activism, because at some point, you're out there, you're in the midst of this struggle.

Then you start writing about it, covering it as a journalist.

>> And given all of your profound experience, I want you to help our audience reflect back over not only your journey as a journalist, what you have seen, but more importantly, what do you see today?

Is there a hope for Black America.

>> If you don't have the dream, if you don't have the desire and the hope, then it's all futile.

Nothing happens.

You know, you just give up?

We have never given up as a people.

Under the most trying circumstances, we've been right on the what you call the ramparts of the struggle.

We were right there.

We never took one step back.

You know, you look at slavery, the experience of slavery.

Nothing could be more horrendous than that.

If we survived that, it's what Dr. John Henrik Clarke used to instill in us, this notion of struggle.

And if you went through all of that rough period, hard times, you can survive anything.

You know, so speaking of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, he's one of my mentors, certainly one of my surrogate godfathers, you might say, along with Gordon Parks and Ossie Davis and Percy Sutton, you know, Bill Tatum at the Amsterdam News.

Those individuals -- they helped shape who I am and instilled in me this notion of struggle and you cannot give up.

So, Ben, you're absolutely right in terms of, like, hey, face these circumstances, we survive.

>> What you think is the future not just opportunities, but future responsibilities of an African-American journalist in America and in the world in which we live today?

>> Well, we have to cultivate the young people.

Obviously, the pool is not that deep or large for the aspiring journalists out there.

I mean, there's so many attractions.

And when I was coming along, the activism was powerful.

It was kind of a magnet that drew me there and a few others.

So you have to have a movement.

The movement is where you begin to develop a pool of activists.

And they can go off in a number of directions.

They can go academically.

They could go into the business.

And many of them did, and some of them did combine those activities, where they were both like, if a newspaper -- You can do all those things at a newspaper.

You could talk about, you know, the business element, because, institutionally, you're stabilized in that sense.

And you're also promoting information out there that is so absolutely indispensable to the African-American community.

So it's a combination of business, activism, and education.

All those things are combined within the concept of journalism.

I try to convince my students, don't give up on that.

You know, I know maybe the money is not like it is in corporate, some other enterprise, but we need your thinking there more than anything.

Same thing with young people who want to be teachers.

Don't lose sight of the significance of going into these classrooms.

So when you go into the classroom as a journalist, as an author, as a teacher, you're like a role model.

I really didn't have those kind of role models when I was coming along.

You were lucky to have an African-American teacher at all, you know, some of the places where I was in school.

But if you don't have it in this classroom, you can find it in the community, because we had community organizations, the NAACP, the Urban League, to say nothing of the grassroots organizations that we have, OAAU, what have you.

Those were opportunities for us to get that information.

Information is just so absolutely crucial in our understanding of where we are in the world and what can be done.

We've got to get that information out.

That's why the social platforms today -- I mean, there's a lot to be desired there in separating -- You got to winnow out, you know, where's the truth in all this stuff?

Because there's such a proliferation of disinformation that we have to kind of be very careful about what we're taking into our systems.

It's almost like looking at the DEI thing right now.

DEI -- so you have diversity, you have equity, and you talk about inclusion.

And it connects up with the whole critical race theory that we've been going through.

So it's a struggle on the educational front, something that is not unusual for us as activists or academicians or writers.

This is something that's age-old.

>> There's a sentiment, which I think is very interesting, arising in America to revise the horror and the genocide of enslavement and, you know, whether or not truth should be taught in the schools, whether or not the curriculum should be vivid or maybe a curriculum should not make people uncomfortable.

>> It's an interesting perspective on that, Ben.

I'd like to look at a holistic way, in a holistic sense, that, you know, we always have to say, "Where are we now?

And what's to be done?

And how do you do it?"

So you have to have some kind of -- See, the 1960s was a very vital period in American history.

We're still struggling to understand exactly what happened.

How do we begin to investigate, analyze, diagnose that situation and cull from it the lessons of value and toss aside some of the negative aspects that didn't mean anything, the kind of division among us ourselves.

That was a significant setback for us, arguing among the division.

Of course, now we recognize division is all over the place.

>> Yeah.

Ideological division.

>> Right.

Both within and without.

So we have to kind of patch up those things, and bring healing process has to come into effect.

And we do have people out there, particularly in the ministerial field.

We just went through a thing on Harlem Week and had all these ministers come together, and they used Scripture kind to kind of tie it together where past is prologue.

You can look at the work of Jesus walking on the water, raising the blind -- healing the blind, raising Lazarus from the dead, and then superimpose that on the times we live in, how you can carry on some of that healing process.

I found that very instructive, you know?

I actually put together -- put the article in the Amsterdam News.

I got five calls.

I don't usually get too many calls on my articles, but this one resonated in such a way, People feel like, "We need to have a lot more of these kind of sessions.

We can't wait till, like, one part of the year to have this discussion."

It's like Black History Month.

You know, a little bit more than just that one month to focus our attention on the past, reflect on where we are.

>> Focus on Black History should be more than just one month.

>> Yeah.

>> Let me ask you -- you've authored 30 books.

Of all the books that you've authored -- >> [ Laughs ] Don't you do that, Ben.

>> I'm not gonna ask you which one is your favorite.

But I'm going to ask you -- There seems to be an evolution of your consciousness of not only what you write, but how you write.

Can you just state, from your own perspective, the importance of reading, the importance of having literature in one's life?

Because, you know, there are some places where because of technology now, kids don't even have books.

>> Yes.

>> So everything is on the Internet.

And, you know, we used to -- when you and I -- we had a reading list.

You couldn't be in the movement if you hadn't read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" or Frantz Fanon, "The Wretched of the Earth."

You couldn't be in the movement.

>> Whoa!

>> But things have changed.

So can you just talk about the importance of reading?

>> I'm definitely concerned about what's happening now with certain individuals and organizations talking about banning books.

I mean, that could be the worst kind of experience we can have as an emerging, particularly for our young people coming along and trying to understand this world we live in.

My reading background started when my mother made sure -- Somebody knocked on our door one day.

We were living in Black Bottom, in Detroit, and somebody -- a traveling -- a salesman knocked on the door selling the Grolier Encyclopedia.

My mother grabbed so-called the 10 best big books of the world.

And I fell into those books.

I mean, the first thing that grabbed me, oddly enough, was Greek mythology.

I was interested in all these heroes and everything.

Of course, you know, with our situation, we're always looking for some way out of our desperation.

And I saw them.

I said, "Oh!"

My eyes opened up.

So then, beyond then, you read all the Aristotle, the Socrates, and Plato, and what have you, read all the Greeks and what have you.

Then you kind of extend that, because the books then go off into a number of directions.

You want to go a scientific way.

You can go into the astrology, astronomy, the cosmology, and stuff like that.

So the reading thing was there.

Now it's just a matter of what you read, the choice, because you only have so much time.

The eyes can only do so much.

They wear out at some point.

So you have to discipline yourself to read something that's very critical in terms of your educational development.

That's the way it kicks in.

For me, the beginning was literature.

I read all the novels.

And then, after reading the novels, I wanted to write one myself.

But after a while, the activism came along, and I wanted to read books then -- African-American history and culture.

That's where the John Hope Franklins and the Lerone Bennetts and the James Baldwins and the Dr. John Henrik Clarkes, that's where they came into my life.

So then, as I absorbed that and moving in as a teacher -- So, when I started teaching, in 1967, the first book I used in my classroom was "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."

So, again, you have this connection, the whole literary desire and concern hooked up with what was happening otherwise.

I could have kept reading, you know, the literature, "The Invisible Man," you know, James Baldwin's stuff, but now I was pulled off in another direction.

I wanted to get the information that I could use that would kind of, like, fortify my activism.

And that was gathering this historical background, particularly for the classroom, because the students started asking you about W.E.B.

Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, and Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth.

So you've got to do your research on that.

You just can't off the top of your head.

It was not there.

So that puts you into the study of our history and culture, the whole slavery experience, understanding the dynamics of that, and the uprisings, the rebellions, the Nat Turners, the Denmark Veseys, all of those things.

So you read that and you -- It's the culmination of, like, bringing this stuff together, because a strategy, some kind of strategy for your life has to be devised out of the cumulative process of the readings you do.

>> Exactly.

What would you say to public policymakers about ensuring that all children, not just black children, all children, get a chance to get the fundamentals of reading and writing at an early age?

>> So, I think something has to be done about that situation.

What is the problem?

What's going on?

Sometimes, they say -- Well, they point to the charter schools, the comparison between public schools and charter schools.

Well, you can -- That's an ongoing argument.

You know, the jury -- As far as I'm concerned, the jury is out.

You know, we don't know exactly the benefits of one against the other.

We need both.

>> Actually, charter schools are public schools.

It's a special kind of public school, because they get public funding, even though it may be privately owned.

>> Yes.

Thing about it is that, you know, where is the money in all of this?

>> Exactly.

>> In terms of development.

I'm glad to see that, in New York, we're beginning to make some steps, some solid steps, in that direction to make sure we begin to put the focus and cultivate this learning process no matter where it is.

You know, if it's in charter schools, fine.

We're not going to, like, throw the baby out with the bathwater.

You know, if there's some very, very positive developments there, let's look at it and see how we can inculcate that into the public schools.

Is it a matter of strategies and tactics?

Is it books that you're using, the syllabus that you're designing?

You know, my many years at City College taught me that each student that comes into that classroom comes in with a particular kind of background and understanding.

You have to find a way to nourish that.

Find out where it's inadequate and work on that inadequacy and build it up.

And you go -- Maybe you need a different kind of variety of books in order to stimulate that whole process.

Don't -- Okay, they say comic books, I believe in comic books.

I believe in anything you read.

But at some point, you have to evolve.

And so the comic books becomes a large -- It can be the encyclopedia that I talked about earlier.

You can get to the point.

Then it's a broad world, a big spectrum of information out there that you can pluck, pick and choose, and put together your own reading lists, your own understanding.

>> Well, I feel like we've just had class.

Professor Herb Boyd, thank you, for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Ben, you've always been one of my champions.

I love you.

Thank you.

>> God bless you.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, visit our website, at thechavischronicles.com.

Also, follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, diverse representation and perspectives, equity, and inclusion is critical to meeting the needs of our colleagues, customers, and communities.

We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo, the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute.

Through API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry around the world.

Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

♪♪