now it is my pleasure to introduce to you the mayor of our great city, baltimore. mr. brandon scott. good evening, everybody. okay, we got to let you may know where we are. we in baltimore. good evening, everybody. that's more like it. thank you, dr. brown. and it is my honor to join us all here in welcoming the incomparable jemele hill to the greatest city in america, the city of baltimore. ma'am, my personal. yeah. let's give a big round of applause. i just hope roland asks you those questions like he asked me on on tv sometime. i'll be jim. yes, sir. my appreciation for this woman dates back many, many years. as everyone in baltimore knows, i'm an avid sports fan, and i did not miss the episode of his and hers. and i haven't watched sports center since her and michael left the show. but it that combination of sports and hip hop and pop culture really spoke to my spirit. that's my spirit language. and i know that i'm not alone in saying that. and i think that's why so many people relate and respect you, man. you are someone whose innovation and talent aims to bridge what divides too many people in our world. and as i told you, i don't listen to podcasts, but i do listen to and bother as a fellow little brother and foreign exchange fan, of course. phonte and 91. this episode is on my favorite, but but most importantly i think the carriage rush and your willingness to step away from a table where you were no longer served or appreciate it when it was probably easier to stay and more lucrative to stay is another reason why so many of us own all of your black girl magic. lastly, i want to thank you for coming to the library. a true jewel of baltimore city. a thankful to all of our donors who helped to not only put on events like this, but for what our branches do and neighborhoods for young people and families. each and every day, especially through the pain they make with a pratt, was a partner in helping our young people learn. we know this week we found out that so many young people across our state fell back. but in many cases, baltimore bucked the trend. and that, we know is due in part to the great partnership here at the library and we know there will be more renovation. and there i say the new pratt library in my neighborhood in park heights to come. so thank you all for being here. thank you to mr. and mrs. brown for always being fabulous doers and supporters and the biggest cheerleaders of our great city of baltimore. and we look forward to a great conversation. thank you. thank you so much, mayor scott. it's now my time to introduce miss jemele hill to you, but i really am just going to piggyback on some of the things our mayor has already told us about. ms.. hill, as i understand it, her passion for writing really started a young age, and she probably showed her great potential and her passion for writing as early as in an secondary school. i'm currently mr. mal hill is a contributing writer to the atlanta ic magazine and she is, as mr. scott tells us, that she is the host of a podcast called jemele hill is unbothered. yes, she's received multiple awards. she was selected as journalist of the year by the national association of black journalists. and worth magazine, not a head. recognized her as one of the most powerful 21 women in there magazine in 2019. her memoir recently released, has already been getting a lot of attention and positive acclaim as an empowering and unabashedly bold book. tonight, she's in conversation with roland martin, our host and managing editor of roland martin unfiltered. so i'm going to turn the stage over to roland martin and to mr. mel hill. and again, thank you both for joining us tonight. all right. glad to be here. my song, ron, i'm black. i need some bass. way too much treble bass. all right. glad you could. y'all game in the back seat now. now you go. now they can hear me. and i still need some more bass. that's way too. as too much trouble for brothers. you got to hear us in. all right. glad to be here. glad that jamal here will address y'all. give it up. i just knew it was going to be ten issue jeans and a t shirt. how many t shirts you own? first of all, this is why you don't ask your friends to do events like this. because this is why you want to start roasting. like, i'm not going to roasting. i just ask cause i know you don't come here like this and like don't you have a line of t shirts? i do. i have a lot of t shirts i'm trying to help. i get paid. and she made i'm telling my t-shirt and about money is true. jamal stored that com i have t shirts support black journalists like obviously the mission of rolling. and i so yes but no i knew i had to you know dress up a little bit just trying to sales of do you know i believe in making money roland if there's one thing about you is you got at least five hustles going at all to have. oh, that's why you are my boy. that's right. look, i don't -- a lot of white people. i think we move to the next job. i ain't got. you know that. i know. like you experienced that. listen, one of the reasons why i was very excited that you agreed to this conversation and you like the busiest man in show business, number one, because you you're doing an incredible job with roland martin, unfiltered. i'm part of the bring the fun clue i donated. i'm in y'all need to donate to this man and before we get into the conversation that we'll have about this book, do understand that having a black press is essential to a democracy. see, it's essential to the state of the press. so please, you know, i hear us as black people. we talk about this all the time. nobody's covering our stories. nobody is hearing from us. nobody cares about our our perspective. roland is on this every single day. so please support them. so i want to start there because the thing for me, i've always understood the freedom of flexibility. i've also always believed in or not believing in white validation. and there were a lot of people who thought you were absolutely out of your mind. they thought you should have. you said you should have just shut up, sucked it up, stayed on espn. people tell you what's wrong with you. how dare you leave that good paying job? but the reality is, no matter how much they were paying you, you were actually pigeonholed and you learn through the experience what you could and could not do. how frustrating was that to make that money but to be in a box? roland you can relate to this story very well, but i came to what you got paid. no, i mean, i got to say to say, okay, i got you. but you can relate to when you're at a network that is the destination job for everybody else. so just to give you guys a little context and it's something that definitely right about is that espn was never on my vision board of jobs, my dream job was to actually work in sports illustrated because i was a writer by trade. that's what i do. and so sports illustrated was that job. it was it was the new york times of sports. it was. and so that's why i wanted to work. and so when espn came across my path, i was like, always cool. they're big. they're spending money, they're investing in journalism. that is what led me there, because at the time we're talking about 2006 and the story in newspapers and almost feels crazy to say this now, knowing where newspapers are now, but that the the end and the decline of newspapers was being strongly predicted in 2006. ad revenue was shrinking. the you can't have these two things happening at once. you have your ad revenues shrinking and your readers getting older, not younger. and so because of that, i said, you know, once i got an opportunity to interview at espn for a columnist job on espn.com, nothing to do with television. i said this has got to be the move to make for my future, to sustain my writing career. so it wasn't like i went there with some dreams of being along the pathway of robin roberts or stuart scott. that was not what i was thinking and eventually, you know, moving up the ranks, fighting for real estate, going through the mechanisms of espn. once i got to what should have been the opportunity of a century, that's why you see all the asterisks. no question. i made generational money at espn and for sure. but once we started having creative differences on our show which precede it, the whole donald trump controversy, i knew we were not seeing the show because he is in hers, his and hers are in fall. a lot more creative. look, roland, you served as my co-host, rock the last guy on espn. you did let him know he had the letter and you represented all the way and that's why his and hers was so special as as my former co-host, michael smith, used to say, we sell in tapes out the trunk. that was our mentality. like we messed up in this thing, like ice cream, man. that's what we doing, right? but then you get shifted to one of the flagship. and when flagship or network, that means moneymaker. it does. i mean, it's the legacy show. it's the baby of the network. and a lot of people wonder, why would you move twice as much viewership, three times as much money, brand new studio that's worth $100 million production staff that triples overnight, but then it comes at the expense of the say. so all of a sudden like they didn't really know how foolish we were being on his and hers is like they knew. but they did it. if they didn't watch it, they didn't. because you know what? they liked all the cool things that we did on ours, which were great. i mean, i drink a 40 on tv, a real 40, right. as i we did a coming to america skit. we did all kinds of foolish things like we we literally just broke every television rule. and that's what made the show special. and that's why i was a coke. it was a cult hit among the audience. yes. because we were doing that show for y'all. we were doing it for us. we were just being ourselves. we were like, listen, if don't nobody else mess with us, our people go mess with us. and y'all did strong. and so that's why we were able to bring in that role and martin to co-host, because if we tried to do it at all sports center, it'd be 2000 emails about it right? so we get to sports center. i'm real scary you to them, you would have been frightening. okay, so we get in the sports center and it's just a lot of cooks in the kitchen and don't know. nobody know how to make a meal. and it was a tough thing creatively to balance. and one thing that mike and i decided early on is that if we go down, we're going down our way straight up like they're not never going to be able to tell us who we are on television does not have. and so when we started having that infighting and everything was happening and then the donald trump thing blew up, you know, as much as this job changed my life and as big as the limelight was, i was like, i really hate doing this. like, i'm tired of coming in every day and fighting to be myself. like, i just i just can't get down like that. and so when i walked away, people have to understand that i walked away knowing that it was going to be better for me mentally, knowing that like i didn't have to engage in all that silliness all the time. i did it because i wanted to. because trust and believe, given what my contract said, they could not have ushered me out. right. and so i had the the equivalent of a no trade clause that an athlete has. and i had to waive that to get up off a sports center. and it was mutually beneficial because by this time the breitbart's. the fox news, they were all over me and espn and so it was a breakup where no one wants to be the first person to say, we don't go together no more. i was happy to say it's over. okay, we broke up and the thing that you talked about again that that culture shift, that was it the first time that happened on espn for all of the the laudatory comments that they have today about our late dear brother stuart scott storrs, scott court hale they hate it his lingo they could not stand his language now the audience changed their minds but the reality is they preferred and i never knew what the hell keith olbermann was talking about, but they preferred keith olbermann and dan patrick to stuart scott, and he had to battle that stuff. and that's what people don't understand. and behind the scenes, the stuff that i had to deal with for six years at cnn, people don't understand the battles that we have to deal with. and you just see us on the air. you have no idea what happened often. you know, that's that's what i tell people, especially during those times. and it will happen when the network you're working for, they come into some crosshairs. right. they've they've done something egregious. and people assume that black people, they are not fighting and they have no idea every day it's a fight. and i'm glad you said that about stuart scott, who was one of the biggest supporters of mike and i. he used to texas all the time and tell us like, don't let them change you. you know, give us really great advice. he was like big brother to us for sure. and in a way, while it was encouragement, it was also a warning. yep. and it was a term that we phrased about sports centered like once there was a enormous management shift while we was on there that changed how they wanted to do sportscenter, where the leader of espn resigned. now before that. so before the leader, john skipper, who is the former president, before he resigned, there was another mini leadership change in terms of who was going to be in charge of our show. and we knew this person. he was also someone, stuart scott dealt with as well, who was one of his main adversaries when he began to introduce booyah and new lingo and how we talk about rights. he was the dude standing in his way and suddenly he's in charge of our show. and i had the feeling this was not going to go well, but i was like, okay, we'll see what happens. and ultimately it played out just like i thought we were the mobile quarterback that got the coach who only wanted a drop back passer. that's what we were and it was very clear they did not want us. we weren't their first choice. they didn't want us and they tried to sort of make it work and a lot of things culturally started to happen with our show. we had a personality wall behind us on sportscenter that was supposed to be representative of all the things that, you know, mike and i liked that we thought were, you know, really culture shifting moments that were personal moments. you know, mike had a picture of him, his wife, his kids. we had a picture of when we were all at the white house, when obama was there drinking to see in the white house. that's a great, awesome story that i will i will always tell. we have pictures of biggie. we always. black. we want a hennessey story. well, i know you want their names. i don't know. but i don't drink. so i ain't got a hennessey story. he does. but you was in the white house fully like we are now. you go out and ask god. so we so we had all these moments on the on the wall, the personality that was created for our show. and one of the first things they did was they wanted to get rid of the personality wall, not because of the picture beginning, not because of the picture mike and his kids or me having the picture, the detroit skyline and where i'm from, it was the obama picture that they wanted to get rid of because at this point, espn was in the crosshairs of being considered too political and too liberal. and what is going on there and all of those chaos agents that brought that narrative about espn, which is never they've never been polarizing, but they were going this time and it was because the faces of the networks started to change. stephen oates smith is becoming the face of the network. mike and i have our own show. you have bomani jones, you have sarah spain, you have kate fagan. so what y'all were experiencing, which is my new book, white fear, how the browns and i randomly play mine. and that's that's what it is. it is change. oh, my god. what's going on? the world is ending. where all of our people go. they couldn't handle it. and, oh, that's. no, but it's real. like, what you're talking about is real. it's like they couldn't handle it, and even though it was very obvious that the people who are accusing espn of doing this were only doing that because the faces change. it wasn't. they acted like every night on the 6 p.m. sportscenter, we were talking about immigration reform. like we we were never doing that. it was a sports show. but you have you know, you know how it is. it's like if they could sell a narrative about our show not being about sports, about black people being too political. one thing i learned and i knew this beforehand, but i never really experienced this until i was doing the six p in sports center. people consider you just being black and showing up on tv as being a political act. that's oh, it is. it is to them. it's like a political act and oh yeah, like all i did was come to work and get in the employee. like forget i'm representing, you know, some state ment about america because as you said, it's the fear they see the shame and oh and they like he had processed hair. yeah. see, see that. throw that in too. so you know, you know we he was sitting here, you know. no, i would have him flat. no, i mean at all relax because there's still an intriguing part. but what i'm saying is that the reality is this even the idea of black women wearing natural hair or wearing braids is real new on television, like last two or three years. i mean, mike was wearing jordans on air is like wearing jordans, you know, we got pictures of biggie in the bag like we coming in there like this. the cookout, like, well, that's that's what we wanted our sports center to be. but but but this wasn't your first run in with a clueless white boss. mm. i've had many of them talk about the baby mama and how using those two words almost got you run out of orlando. it's true, but. well, i'll. i'll give the kicker at the end. so one of the stories i tell in orlando, i was a columnist for the orlando sentinel was my first columnist job. i got it when i was 28 years old and orlando is a force of all the way, the only black female sports columnist in the country? no, only female. only female. oh, no. and the only black female sports columnists, alice walker at a daily newspaper in north america, not just america now, but they clapping. but you were not happy? no. no, because that's embarrassing. like that's a big indictment of the profession i chose a part of. i was one out of four or five. and that's why one of the chapters is name that. so i get to the sentinel. i'm 28 years old. i have to figure out how to have a voice, how to, you know, structure, column things. because i hadn't been a columnist before. but anyway, when i was there, i created a series called writing with and in orlando, it was a different kind of sports town that that was accustomed to. when i was in detroit, they had all the major sports, you know, got the pistons, red wings, you know, tigers, lions. unfortunately, i said that from my heart. i knew she was gonna meet in lions last i just. i just said that her team is a 40 niners, by the way. that's right. but she rocked everything in detroit. but the lions, because i value my mental health. really. and that's why you got michigan. michigan state. you know, it's it's a robust college area. but i know from, you know, your michigan state, you know, look, look, look at them. you got to say i'm not hating, but i'm just saying i feel like all season this year been like mine. i know we we're in the same boat right now. the lions are winning. we're a little raggedy. we will. it's okay. we will come. you know, we. rag and we pay more. y'all paying male and oh yeah, i'm so you know being in orlando it was a one sport professional in terms of professionals town they only had their orlando magic that's it. so when the magic were done and with college football season was over because college football was very big there, because you have florida for saint miami, you know all of that. and when those seasons are done, you got to feel news. how and so i came up with the idea to do a series called writing with wear very simple concept. me, a videographer, photographer, we just get in the car with an athlete. i ask him questions, we tape it. i write up the q&a. we done, you know, and then do one every week in the summertime filling that news hole. so the first one i do is with a player named willis mcgehee, who was a star in miami. i willis was a second or third round pick. he suffered a very gruesome knee injury. and then my miami, ohio state game national champion. sure top ten pick. oh, he was before then. and then that injury happened and he slid a little bit, but still had a productive nfl career. willis is the first person on the slate to interview. i go down there, have a good interview and me, i'm, you know, despite the fact that people like to perceive me as being very serious all the time, i'm silly. so i'm in the car with willis. he's got a brand new bmw and i know he's got a couple kids, but a couple of different women and i ask him jokingly, what's worse? will is a baby mama or ex-wife, right? and i hear about like watching the video, like. excellent question, jamal. exactly. i felt like i was getting to the truth of something, women's thighs going and on his baby mommas, he's like, oh, they won't too much time money. like he is going in and it's going to everybody black watch it like yeah like willis they can relate so he says all this it runs it goes viral what was viral for 2006 is like all these blogs pick it up and i'm thinking this is great traffic for the site. but then you get a call from karen and then there was. there was one person who was a very unhappy about this and her name was charlotte hall. she was executive editor of the orlando sentinel at the time, and she could not believe that we put the word baby mama in print in charlotte. she looked like us. no, i'm just i'm just i have to ask these questions. that's true. no, she didn't look like she could be a cousin of clarence thomas. well, go right ahead. i'm sorry. so that's true, but but that's a fair point, though. that's a fair bow. i can be real petty. that's a fair boy. so she did not look like us. she got to look like her husband. might have been a founding father, but that's okay. but charlotte was insane. she had never heard of the term baby mama. that is the midwife karen. this is the mid 2000. so it's very much in the lexicon of how we talk and is everywhere. and i said okay. and she was like, i'm going to put a letter in your file. she suspended i think she suspended my editor for like a day, which was crazy. just over baby mama. a baby mama. she wasn't having it. so karen's one of my bosses on the sports staff told me he was like, listen, just make this go away. like, i know she's overreacting and just apologize. i did not want to apologize, but i also like to eat. so i said, i will do this, but you know, as soon as i did it, i just didn't feel good. i didn't feel right about it. and i was thinking to myself at the time, i will never again apologize for something. i know i'm right about, but and here's the kicker the kicker is there was a black executive at espn in who saw the story because it went viral. and that same black executive who happened to know a friend of mine set up a meeting for me, as you know. yes, our mutual friend, which, you know, i didn't even know we had. he asked to set up a dinner meeting in orlando because he was like, i want to meet the young woman who wrote that, because then i was young. and so he set up the meeting. he was like, you know, we have a sports columnist opening at espn.com because there's a guy named skip bayless who's leaving his column writing responsibilities, and he's going to be television just full time. that's it. and i'd love to bring in your voice so what is the lesson in this? is that one karen's objection can lead to a come up saying, so i got the job and baby mommas how i moved up to espn so we so how did you leave so it was funny because i mean, i know how they say rolling. you would have been i would have been like you probably have been like, i can't let you. oh, it'll be i'll let him in. i know, i know. maybe mom was in austin. it would have her. oh yeah. oh, you don't listen. i was eye rolling. i know how you stand. i would have been stepping outside this house resigned a job on juneteenth and left on july 4th. yes, i did. i was. i freed on. why? why are you like this? if i could say why is it land a perfect land to perfectly. no, i didn't leave quite like that. but once here's the funny thing. another story that i tell in there. so i go off to interview and you know, i believe in keeping it 100. so i told my bosses, i was like, hey, just so y'all know, i'm going off to interview espn. so i go off to bristol while i'm there, the news breaks and this is how i knew espn was a totally different world than what i was accustomed to. the news breaks on a sports media blog that i'm interviewing. oh, no, that i had agreed to go to espn and i was making $200,000 a year. i was like, that's news to me. but i wouldn't oh. while i was interviewing, that literally happened and my manager at the time is calling me like, what is this story? and i was like, i have no idea. i don't know. i'm so dumb. obviously the story, but it is what it is. but you know, long story short, i did not make 200,000. i senior, by the way, much less than that. but my bosses, they understood that espn was the current and the future. nobody expected me to stay at the set. no, i don't even think i received a counter offer because they already knew that. like you get a chance to go to someplace like that, you have to take that opportunity of course. of course. i had to get over it. i'm sure karen does not sweated a day over this, but she might not actually what i love. but what i love about the book. i love you name names. you even use all last names like what homegrown name was canceling you? charlotte i didn't you put a whole government name in the book, but some other fault you just use first name, correct? like veto and really got f himself added in. and so young guys doing okay typically when you see these interviews, they people literally sit there and just recite the whole book. i don't do that because you do better than book. okay, so you ain't going get no freebie to give all the good stuff away that you don't by the book. not angle happen. y'all got to read it. so when she said it, henry can go f himself. first of all, harlot laugh. and when i got to the lab, i had to go back and read it two more times and make sure. but again, you didn't hold back on naming names. at least my next question, walter mosley. i interviewed him. he came to the studio in chicago and i don't read fiction. and i was like, well, don't read your book. he's like, what? i said, i don't read fiction now. and he said, well, well, love out of fiction. you can actually tell the truth more with fiction than you came with nonfiction. and and he said, because you could just say is made up when you're really not really really true if it doesn't. so when you were writing this, how did you. because you're very open about a whole bunch of stuff dealing with you, a lot of stuff with your mama and your grandmother. yeah. so how did you not self-censor or or was there or were there something that you said? yeah, i don't put a lot i can't put this. i pulled a couple punches. and the reason i did is because the thing about when you write a memoir and you're naming real people, though, in this case, like you mentioned, henry, and then when i talked about my abortion, i purposely did not name i just i gave him a different name because the one thing i wanted to be very careful and intentional about is like, i'm not going to tell someone else's story, especially if i don't know if they've actually told this story. right. and so you know, henry, just so you all know, and i don't want to give away too much, as roland said, because by the book and read the book. but henry was a married man, that my mother was having a relationship with. and i don't know if he's still married or whatever. you know, i'm not i'm not snitch. and, like, i don't know i don't know what his situation is. all i know is, is that she said it was henry who owned a bunch of buildings, a professional football. and i was like, is it like some builders like you on mass? like, oh, you never know, right? he had that taking credit for me. you like, oh, hell no. well, the one thing i did tell about how awkward it was is when one of his relatives reached out to me on facebook and i was like, your dad clearly has not all day. i said it was a great year. they clearly have not said how they know me. but okay. anyway, it's the story for bravo, right? i say this to say, is that the difference with a memoir is that you're writing about real people and you have to think about what do these relationships look like after this book? is that right? and so the one i was most or the two i was most sensitive to were my mother, obviously, and to my husband. right. and because i certainly wanted to make sure that there was nothing in there that he didn't know, nothing in there, that he was surprised by, because certainly you could tell about your past in stories, but you may not go into the same detail that you would in a book. i pull a couple of punches. well, or you just might not think about do these details matter? and you're just giving them the gist of it. so i wanted to be very cognizant of of that part, but i also know and thinking as someone who's a reader, thinking of somebody who's a journalist and you know, how much transparency is really the foundation of our profession, what would i look like considering the type of journalism i try to be being inauthentic with the audience. so i was just going to lay it all out there and let everybody make their own decisions and let the material do what it was supposed to do, what i wasn't going to do is cheat people out of understand. knowing the full scope of who i was. how many celebrity memoirs do you read? if you want to put me in that category, where you have the sense that they're not telling you everything? i didn't want people to leave with that when they read this book. absolutely. absolutely. which i think is important, because that your authenticity i mean, that's actually what makes the artist actually wants today, crave today. and unfortunately, a lot of folks who don't actually do that. looking at the things that you did talk about and growing up, how you grew up, you know, moving different places is what your mother experienced as well. you really deal with that, that trauma and that pain and how it still is present today and how a lot of folk don't take the time to really sit down and go through. okay, what did i actually go through and how that having an impact on me today to talk about why that is so critical to understand your peers have a better understanding of who you are in the present and how you could be a better person in the future. i mean, it's just like history, right? is that the way you don't repeat it is if you actually know what happened and you understand why it happened. and a lot of us in this room are dealing with generational trauma. the only way it can be broken, i believe, is if you're very open about what that trauma is, what's happened in your family, in your relationship, those dynamics you have to be honest about what's going on. and once you are honest about it, you can actually address it. and we know as in our community, was one of the cardinal rules that we heard growing up. roland, it was what happens in this house stays in the house right sometimes actually, not even sometimes. a lot of times it's not good for it to stay in the house and considering the amount of sexual abuse trauma that my mother suffered, the issues, my grandmother had, and other people in my family, i about if they had just been able to surface this in a way that they could deal with it, it would have impacted generations in our family. they didn't do that. and because of that, there was a scar and a through line that went from my grandmother to my mother, right to me, because of the inability to address these horrors that happened. like i met a woman one day and she her mother was on her deathbed and her mother told her that she had dealt with depression her whole life. and i was like, what in the hell? didn't you say anything? she says, here i am in my fifties and i've been dealing with this -- my entire life, and you never said a word and she said, well, i just kept it to myself. and she said, all of these years i've been trying to figure out what is wrong with me. and and she was angry, just like we've had look that in lot of our families, folks who have had illnesses don't say anything. and then it so it shows up later. in fact in fact, i was deion sanders when he when he had had his leg surgery. correct. deion was checked out because of blood clots. he it was when his his mama said, oh, you know, your uncle and so on. so he was like, how the hell all the people in the family got blood clots and nobody said anything. i know. he said, don't you remember the plot? what i say, your family history, your family, when you go to the doctor, they do your book, your family history, correct? for many of us, we leave it empty. oh, no. because a lot of times some of the older people that we know, our elders, they have been through such pain. they don't like to speak to it. and that's why one of the things i want you all to take away from reading this book is while your people are here, ask them about their lives, even if it makes them wildly uncomfortable. all and as i was this of the many thoughts that i had, one of them was how much i really miss my grandmother. my grandmother was born in 1929. i don't think i ever asked her what it was like to grow up in segregation. nothing i ever asked her about. she told me some stories about what it was like to grow up in kentucky as she went from kentucky to west virginia and eventually the family moved to detroit and settled in a city just outside of detroit called ecorse, but i never asked her about that pathway. i you know, a grandmother who, by the way, you write was brilliant, brilliant. she was a dj. you know, she was a big mama, you know. and so the thing was, is that it was so much i didn't know. i mean, her mother, who's who's middle name, whose first name i have is a middle name. this made me so curious going in this journal that i had gone through this journey with writing this book that of course, i went to ancestry. i'm looking up document. i did not know my great grandmother was married in 58. i had no idea i had that made me understand why when my mother when my grandmother lost her mother when she was a teenager, some of the emotional trauma she was carrying because she was still grieving and she didn't know it or she knew it. but there was just no time for it. look, resilience, seem, resolve, all those things are great qualities. i know when people say especially about black women, you a strong black woman, they mean it as a compliment. the thing is, it's also debilitating. yep. there are some things we are just not meant to handle. right? you what? i mean, it's just some things that we. we shouldn't have to absorb. but we're told this time and time again, we're lauded for our strength right? of getting through things. sometimes we need to sit in things. i actually heal from it. i see on my show a lot. i'm sick and tired of having and i've had this conversation within the context of hbcu's, of our black organizations. i said, i'm tired of having surviving. i said, i want to be having a thriving conversation. and it's just like any time you see these conversations where single mothers come happens and somebody brings it up and then somebody in beverly stands up, now wait a minute. my mama was a single mother and blah, blah, blah. and the impulse get defensive then like, well, no, i don't really mean that. and it happened even once. i was like, no, i'm not willing to stay right here. first of all, ask your mama if she actually wanted to be a single mom. exactly. i said, you can stay here. talk to me. all how's my mom was strong. i said, i met the few people who will make a proactive decision. i want to raise a child. i love this. like i said, you can about how strong she was. i guarantee you that sometimes she was in that -- room crying and in pain. i said, so i say, we got to stop sitting here and letting that become the norm. right. and deal with the reality of that. that ain't easy. yeah, i'm glad you said that, roland, because i do think that for black women, especially being resilient, fighting through taking whatever punishment people decide to give us has become the norm, that we're not defined by what we achieve were defined by what we withstand. and there's a difference in that. and i, i just realized that, you know, with all the resiliency, the women in my family have had, there was so much pain there. and i wanted to be an active part in just stopping that. like, we got to turn the page on this. we have to be different with how we handle these things so that was, you know, to go back to something you asked me a couple questions ago, that was a big driving force behind writing this. one of the things that i want to get into is the notion of fun. there are people out there who have this assumption that when you are a journalist and you're covering these major issues, that you know, you have to do this here. and i remember we were at i guess this was in a b.j. may have been in miami. you and i were talking on stage. no, wait. time out. time time. i was at this. how rumors get started rolling. we were dancing on. stage were dancing. we were talking. you know why i worth what. i feel i start talking. well, i just said you were start. i mean they are levels to talking there's bad twerking good twerking, great twerking. i'm no i didn't want to sign one. i just say to which i said i'm literally whitney houston. i'm the black girl with no rhythm that is me. okay. so we see the dance and folks were sitting there tripping on social media and i was like, yo, you do understand is call a hashtag and live life. love it. and people act as if you have to. you have to be just locked in this persona that you can't not have. i can tell a lot. yeah, you got one life. you got to live this thing. yeah, it ain't our word now. well, actually, i thought what you going to say is. is 2018 nabj? when i was journalists of the year, by the way, an award rolling one before and was he's one of the ogs of nabj. and so i remember us being on stage in detroit as well. really. you always onstage. that was the common denominator. hey, hey, look, anybody got swagger? some folk got to be onstage. some people got to be down there a roland is on the stage. i nabj, you know, the party is really jumping. and so we had it. we had a blast. but i know i've told people this before is that i know people have seen me in a very serious light. they are looking at, you know, oh, the donald trump thing and all that other kind of stuff. but i'm like, i may not like that fine line up. i like to start up like i do a lot of the same things that a lot of other people do. but it's an important part of a release for professional where we're constantly bombarded with sometimes the most terrifying information we have to put in the context for people. so us. so we're all just on your podcast and you asked me this question, so i want you to speak to this and that is when in fact that was one of the questions too that came here. when young journalists come up to you and i want you to answer, you are i know my answer was on your podcast. i don't know when it's going to air, but i just went in when when a young folks young just what do you say jamila i want to do what you do you're what do you how do you respond to that? oh, really? you had an amazing answer. and when i say when they asked me that, i said, well, there's already one me you need to be the best. you you don't need and say and and sometimes what happens too is that young journalists understandably so, they're impressed by the platform you have, by the spotlight. you've been able to get. and that's, you know, part of the journey. but i also tell them that, you know, i love this job. now, just as much as i did when i was working for the last two state journal and making $30, sustaining it like that's what it is. it's like if you are only in journalism, especially for the things is it can give you, you're going to be broke. oh yeah you yeah you ain't going. that's not going. that's not going to work. that was a kobe bryant video that was posted recently. i reposted where he talked about love. he said, you got he said it's the love of basketball. he said, when you love basketball, he said, that's the driving piece and that's it. signing up. people come up to me and say, man, i see you. you pack in gear. and i'm like, yeah, because we've got to get the hell out of here. if help pack, move faster. but also i own it. yeah, but the thing is that when you love your craft, you're you want that shot, you want that like you you want to write that lead a certain way. that's the love is it ain't the money. it's not being recognized in airport really. you know this as well as i do when you think about it, when you were first getting into journalism, what did you hear about the salaries that journalists made? oh, they say a point blank. you're going to be making 12,014. it was 19,000 when i graduated. where i graduated. when you graduate in 97, i agreed. so i said, okay, you graduate in 97 it was 19,000. i. graduated 1991. they asked american states, statesmen offered me 20,000, 100. i told him no, you've got to pay me at least two grand more to i did it and to like and in fact the interesting thing is so knight-ridder, of course, one of the big chains, vice president bill was a great guy. he's i really think got to work for a paper and break in in florida. and i was like, well, so circulation and i knew the money used to circulate. and that was right there about 14, 15. i said, say, bill paper. i said, bill, that paper too small. and he was like, i'm sorry, we're we're we're too small. i was like, as a year on my skill set, that's somebody who ain't got my skills. i'm a no no, no. because when, when, you know, because that can lead to my next question, which is understanding your value, correct. so and when i got promoted three times the first 18 months and went from 20,000, 34,000 as a bill, i tried to tell you that was too -- small. but you said respect. you know what i was i a similar story that that i discussed obviously in the book is when so the news and it was our rally was my last internship and i went there because they had this track record of hiring interns and it was another writer on a staff who was in sports. he was like, yeah, they kept me as an intern for 11 months. i was like, 11 months. i was like, oh, hell no. i was. i am not about the beat is 11 month entire because they can keep you at an intern salary which i believe was for 19 a week. and i was like, i can't do that. and but you say it. you couldn't do it because. you knew what your skill set was, correct. all the work you put in. yes, it wasn't like you were just saying that and you were scrolling. no, and out. and i wasn't going to have the. i'm just happy to be in a building mentality. i say, okay, what will force their hands? so they extended my internship as i expected and they extended it. i said, cool, i know i'm a be here another three months. i'm going to find another job. so i started sending my clips out to everywhere else. the savannah morning news. they had an opening at their paper and it was paying more than what i was making at that point. i went down there, i interviewed really like the people there. i was like, oh yeah, i could live here because if i'm gonna go chase it down on the chase one that if it all goes to hell and negotiation, i'm going to take the job. they sent in the offer. i came back to raleigh and i said, hey, they offering me this job still that is $21,000 a year raised and you're like, oh, oh. they were totally shocked that i did that. and so then they came back. then the savannah morning news came back and next thing you know, much like you i did all you like what you got. what you got oh, you got you got it much like that you did all that for an additional 30 $500 my salary. hey, 30 $500 heading but the whole point was it was about setting a tone. right right. to let them know that you just can't do me any kind of way. i know my i know my worth. i have a different kind of skill set, and i'm sure you know, i thank the dude that told me did he had 11 months. i was like, man, you changed my whole perspective. and the other thing that happened that was very critical in that time. speaking of negotiating power, but not just knowing your worth, you also have to know your development as well. as i mentioned it, your sports illustrated was my dream job. so after i gotten the job and i'm a few months into this, sports illustrated comes calling because there was a friend, an established while i was on the road in terms like covering women's basketball, the stuff she she saw my clip packet because what happens is when is the ncaa tournament all the pr people for the schools and the tournament they put out a huge clip packet because if you go to a tournament, it might be two or three teams there that you've never seen play. so they put out this anonymous clip packet for journalists so they can read the stories that have been written about the team all season. some of my stories were in there that were written about a team that was, you know, really ascending. it was the north carolina women's basketball team. she took that. she saw those clips. love them, and sent them to the editor at sports illustrated because she worked for sports illustrated and she was covering women's college basketball. sports illustrated called me. they had a opening to be a writer reporter in new york working for sports illustrated. now, i know this job sounds very glamorous, but here with the details of this job is that essentially, you fact check the articles that are in sports illustrated. and if you are, you know, if you are motivated enough, if you are driven enough and you pitch them stories and they decide to run it and, you know, you can report on it, maybe that could happen. so i'm looking you know, i've been reading sports illustrated for years, and i know all none of those writers came from the writer reporter track. and i'm like, hey, okay, well, i'll go to new york. i had never been to new york city. they put me up is great. and i get the job. they offered me the job at the end of the interview and the interview i think the job was paying $42,000 a year to live in new york city. so basically i would have been sleeping on the subway car unless i wanted a apartment with 12 roommates. right. i was like, what? that math method. but it was sports illustrated. this is my dream job and, you know, i thought about it. i would said, okay, let me think about it. you know, let me figure out what i want to do. and i'm like, let me get this straight. i'm writing basically every day at the news and observer. i've already won the state press association award for best sports feature for a story i did on the citadel's first female athlete. i am able to pretty much write what i want and whenever i want and i have to go to sports illustrate to get the sports illustrated. i have to fact check somebody stories that aren't mine. and maybe if i'm lucky, if the leprechaun is shining on me in the right, i might get a byline in sports illustrated at some point. and i said, can't do it right. cannot do it. and so i told the. so you weren't all focused on what sports show? because a lot of you mentioned about younger journalists, a lot of younger journalism. and i was just a young people and period, regardless of industry you are think bigger is always better though if they're not going to develop you if what want to do there if you look and see who does those same things and none of them are in the position they're trying to bring you in on maybe you need to rethink something else because at espn, for example, there was a lot of production assistants that were really unhappy because they wanted to be on air, go somewhere, making $10,000 to be on air every day because guess what? nobody on the air right. was a production assistant. they all came from somebody else. hello. right. they all came from someplace else. so like you're just setting yourself up to fail. so i was not going to be the person about sports illustrated not writing, fact checking just to say i was at sports illustrated, so i turned them down and i told of that and i'll never forget the the editor in charge of these positions told me, he said, i actually think that was a good decision. he said, we can afford you now. i have a feeling we will not be of be able to afford you later. and they had to bounce. and i was like, not so i stayed in raleigh. and then my next job at the free press, i got a $25,000 pay raise. it was every day to live in lansing, michigan, and it's like, oh, cost of living was in there. and i was all i do. i do love being penny oh, no, no, no, no. because i love when somebody in your past who who said you were not accomplished certain things you wouldn't you wouldn't go so so many places, you know and i have no problem remaining finding those folks of that. i mean, i did hit a couple of people when i got into the nabj hall of fame in december and then saturday, when i go into the saturn fisher journalists hall of fame, i've hit some folk like remember when, you know, i've been real petty so for you. but in but it's a driving thing if you want it if you want to understand the king of pity, watch michael jordan's hall of fame. oh, yeah. people were mad. i was like, that's the kind of speech my given. so for you is that wanted to folk in your life where when you look at the stuff you do now with your podcast of the atlantic and produce and the stuff you doing with lebron, all of four things you sitting there going i told joel, i told you so. i mean, here's the thing there. there's going to be people like that littered throughout your career, but there is i mean, there are a couple of people that, you know, i know that, especially when i got my columnist job in orlando, that they really hated on me and hated on me, that my boss, on top of that, they didn't even work at the orlando sentinel. but i'm a deeper level than petty, because then the extra petty part of me can't even give you the acknowledgment that you did that, because i know it would be it would be oxygen to them and i can't do it. so i won't. i want them breathing. yeah, i want you like i want to breathe in the hey i want them breathe. and i was like, i can't do it though along like i my spirit will never let me allow my spirit to never let me platform somebody who just ain't important to me. it just i just they just not important. oh no, they're not important. yeah. you know, i'm gonna tell you off air when i tell you how it is. so you see you all follow the nice c nice and not name sorry i just every time you said my career i want jeff braun watch it. yeah he. name the first and the last. roland, do you know what middle name i mean? jeff brown was a news director at kb tex and bryan college station, texas. and they had i was an intern and they had a sports weekend sports anchor job open up in vermont with the communications high schools. i'm already far above straight up one. his friends came to me, said he is not going to heart he will not hire black men in came to me and told me that i mean i was like, you know, hell, i'm staying here. and i met fred when i was on the team cover, the republican national convention. the austin american-statesman is only out of college seven months. i ran into him like, what up, jeff? what are you doing here? come republican national convention, just graduate it. so every time something happens. jeff, bryan, we are union and then give this relic no field work. oh, no, no. but i'll do notice the first names when rolling writing his memoir. i'm putting middle names, last names. this the address. this way you can find it. but here's the thing. you know, i'm definitely one of those keep that same energy right? so trust me when i tell you, if i saw this person in public rolling, keep your location all because i might be bail money. oh, i just know that if i see them in person a no problem is oh oh. like i'm waiting for the confrontation to text me. i'm a text. i'm like roland is about to go down. have you told him hello to mail? oh, i knew it. special from jail for roland martin until ten oh oh absolutely. don't worry about i know enough attorney general's in virginia in no time in jail. your people get to how you. but that's it unfortunately are all they gave us was an hour. time is up. you should get jamal hill's book uphill. it's absolutely a fascinating book. it is an easy read. and let me say right now some of my easy means in our business writing is about rhythm. and when you read, you should be thinking the same way with music. and so you're reading a book, it's just flow. and so you can just go from one page to the next, you could knock it out in two or three days because in flows like that and so other books likes to coddle you like this is get me a headache. i read a peggy noonan book. it took me about three years to finish that book and by the way, i would say the same about roland's book wife here, because when i had you on the podcast, i mean, i probably read that in maybe two and a half days like it was it was a very good read, very to the point. and most importantly now, as we are thinking about pretty much our democracy dying right in front of us is a very important, a crucial. absolutely. and so they give you a book that i'm so saying, you know, pretty young color called brother back and come back, eddie. i mean, you got a little pool. i'm just sam. eddie, is your lecture series. you gave the money, eddie? oh, i go to hang out problems go here and put it out to the audiences because we think that souls are real. that is it. put your hands together for jemele hill. thank my name is spencer canadian and. i'm the director of programs