Its called the other wes moore and then his book the work came out in 2010 and his most recent book is about baltimore during the arrest and death of freddy gray. It just came out five days is what that is called. In your book the work, you write that the military saved your life. What do you mean by that . Well, i think the military plays an incredibly Important Role in my life where, you know, some of the most important times in my life have not been when i was wearing a suit. They happened when i was wearing a tshirt and jeans k but when i was wearing a uniform on this country. I was first introduced to the military system actually when i was about 13 years old. I was actually sent to military school. I had a mandatory year in military school. And it was i got into some issues, some challenges, and when i was younger, my mom threatened to send me away to military school when i was 8 years old. Every year she would say im going to send you away. I kept blowing her off. The first time i felt hand cuffed to my wrist was when i was 11 years old. My mother noticed i was intentionally hurting people that actually loved me so i could impress people that cared less about me. Finally one day she came up to me and said im going to send you to military school. Honestly i thought she was kidding or exaggerating, and then finally i realized that she wasnt, and she sent me to a mandatory year of military school. I hated every minute of it, when i first started. I remember that first, you know, those first days there, i ran away multiple times. I ran away five times in the first four days of military school. I also noticed that the longer i stayed, i began to fully understand what it was that they were trying to teach me and also what it was my mom was trying to teach me and the fact that we did live in an interconnected environment, and, you know, how everybody was doing in my unit mattered to how my unit as a whole was doing. And so when i actually finished high school and i had a chance then to, you know, go on, basketball scholarship offers and do a collection of other things, i decided that the thing that i actually wanted to do, the thing i wanted to spend my life on, it was i wanted to lead soldiers, and so thats why i made the decision that i wanted to join the army. So for me the decision to go into the army was both a continuation of the fact that, you know, i had this level of service, both the fact that they were going to help pay for college, and that was very helpful, but then it was also this idea that i felt a debt of gratitude, because i felt like it was the introduction of that at a really crucial time in my life that really helped make a lot of difference that ended up happening in the life i was living. What was your role in the 82nd airborne . I was i was a paratrooper with the 82nd airborne division, and i had a few different roles, but my final role in afghanistan was i was the director of Information Operations for the first brigade in the 82nd airborne division. Thats a long way of saying that everything that we had in terms of information ops, psychological operations that we had within our entire area of operations, which was what they call rc east which is regional command east, the entire Eastern Region of afghanistan, the entire eastern border of afghanistan, where pakistan and Afghanistan Border each other i was the informations director for that. At the time when i was you know, my last assignment when i was leaving afghanistan, we had about 1700 paratroopers that were under our command, that we were responsible for, so it was an amazing and an aweinspiring experience. Wes moore, how had you changed after that first year in military school . As a, what, a 12yearold . Yeah, 13 years old. I would say the big thing that changed for me was there fs there was this introduction of leadership, what it meant and the role it played in my life. I felt military school gave me a chance to in a way, it was a remake of identity that was important. There was a chance to rethink my role and my space within society, but also i think some of the other bigger things that happened was there was this very intentional introduction of leadership. That matters. Sometimes people say about military school or of the military, yeah, you know, we need to send them to the military because they need discipline, you know, they will do push ups and wake up early. The reality is you will do push ups and wake up early. All those things are real and true, but thats not what made the experience useful for me. The thing that immediate the experience useful for me was the introduction of leadership, and it was this idea that they are very much going to introduce you to leadership early and in a very deliberate way, where they are going to put you in charge of something. After you go through the initial basic training or the police system, whatever it is, they are going to put you in charge of something, relatively early and relatively small. And its not because thats where your cap is. It is because they want you to get a taste. They are going to put you in charge of a hallway. They will say okay, you are in charge of this hallway, or youre in charge of the dumpsters, youre in charge of whatever. If it is clean, we will congratulate you. If it is dirty, then we will help you. If we notice you are doing a good job with that, then you will be promoted and move on to the next thing. Now you may have a couple cadets or soldiers under your command. And then you move up. Theres this gradual sense of responsibility about the way they try to teach you leadership frameworks that i think are not only useful and important for me, but also it was something that really gave me a taste about what was actually important. So like i knew i knew going in that leading people was important to me. I knew going in that whether it was in the case of leading cadets or leading soldiers or i think about the work that we do now, being able to be part of that process, being able to be the person who can, you know, help shape the direction of organizations and execute on things, thats something that became really important to me when i thought of my development, and i think both the frameworks on what it meant and how to do it, but then also the introduction of its necessity in my life was something that the military helped foster that. Wes moore, how did you become a road scholar . Truth is is that i actually think about that experience quite a bit buzz the first time i had because the first time i had a real conversation about the road scholarship was when i was interning with the mayor of baltimore. At the time he was a former road scholar. It was the last day of my internship. He called many e into his office. He called me into his office. In fact, i think i have a picture up there because it sits in my office. In that picture, hes standing there and hes pointing towards a picture on his wall. Understand, he was not the type of guy that had, you know, camera people following him around all the time. Thats not what he did, but on that day, on the final day of my internship, he called me in and he said, have you thought about the road scholarship . He knew about my grades and extracurriculars. I told him i had heard about it but havent thought about it. The picture that he took is now sitting in my office is him pointing to the wall at something. The thing hes pointing at is his roads class and where he was in the picture. Thats when he told me to consider it and gave me instructions on people i should talk to about it, and i did just that. I talked to certain people. I had certain people that helped me with my essays and helped me think about how do i express, you know, my lifes journey in a thousand words for the road Scholarship Application . And then i love that story, and it is really important because right there in my office is a picture of my roads class, and im very clear that that picture would have never happened if that picture didnt happen. And so it was an experience that i will never forget, one where, you know, literally i think our plane flew off less than two week after 9 11, where, you know, where the nation and the world had just changed immeasurably, at the same time, that i was having this experience, my entire experience was shaped very much so by 9 11, especially with the fact that at that point i was also a military officer. It was a chance to Study International relation in a place where i was one of only a few americans studying it. Youre getting a chance to truly Study International relations with people in your class who are from brazil and china and nigeria and argentina. You know, getting a chance to really understand and see how all these dynamics take place amongst some really remarkable people and people have become some of my best friends. It was a pretty special experience, and i give a lot of thanks to the mayor and many others who really helped light that path for me and helped me to realize that it actually could be real. Whats your view about taking money from the roads foundation, and what did you tell the overview board . Yeah. You know, one of the last questions in fact, the last question they asked in my interview was because i had spent time in south africa, im also africanamerican, i know our history in this country really well. And one of the last questions that i was asked, in fact, by the person who is a chairman of the board, he said listen, youve been to south africa. Youre africanamerican. How can you accept the money, knowing the history, knowing how he made it and knowing the lives that were lost in order for him to make that money . And i thought about it. I paused, and i said, you know, i know a few things for sure. One was that when cecil roads was creating this scholarship, he didnt have me in mind to be sitting here as a finalist for this scholarship money and hes probably turning in his grave knowing that im a finalist in this scholarship and that does show me what progress means and progress looks like. The fact that something that was not at all intended for me, that i actually have an opportunity to not only stand here and utilize it, but then also have a real obligation to make sure that youre doing something with it besides benefitting yourself. And the other thing that i do know is that it was my ancestors who fought and who bled and who built and who were able to build in a way that created a pathway for me to be in that seat at that moment, who were able to sacrifice and to dream for a world that they didnt see but to dream and fight for one that hopefully one day that i would see. And for me to have the opportunity then to be there in that seat, for me to have an opportunity to then take the privilege of that seat to then go out and as it says go out and fight the worlds fight, i felt it would be disrespectful to them not to, and so understanding that particularly when youre looking at the history of cecil roads, looking a t the history of it is not even just south africa, but the entire Southern African region and the damage that he did to the people there, for his own personal benefit, to the point that at that time he was the we wealth wealthiest man in world, it is not lost on me. So it is also not lost on me the obligation that i now have to use the benefit that were fought long and hard for me to be able to have to use that now to make sure that we can create a more just and a more fair world. Where did you grow up . I spent part of my childhood growing up in maryland, part of my childhood growing up in the bronx. I call really two places you know home. One is baltimore. Actually where i live now, even though i was actually born a little off from baltimore, actually closer to the d. C. Area, and then new york, where i spent a lot of my childhood after my dad died. And so my dad was a radio personality down in the baltimore and d. C. Area. And one day he was complaining about his throat and was saying how his throat was bothering him literally to the point where he couldnt sleep. He went to the hospital the next day. As he went to the hospital, he, you know, was wearing raggedy clothes and had an uneven beard and a lot of assumptions were made about my dad when he walked into that hospital day that looking for help. When my mom finally made to it the hospital to come join him, they asked her questions like is your husband prone to exaggeration . And they gave him instructions to go home and rest, and if it got worse, then to come back. And five hours after they released him, he died. And thats when we were living down in maryland. My mother had a really difficult time with the transition at that point and finally called up her parents, my grand parents who were living in the bronx, my grand father was a minister in the south bronx, and my grandmother was a schoolteacher in the south bronx, and their house was barely big enough for them but figured out a way to make it big enough for all of us, so we ended moouching up there. We ended up moving up there. At that point after moving up there, thats where i spent a good six, seven years of my childhood before i ended up going to a military school in pennsylvania, so a lot of my childhood was a lot of moving around. But the thing that i knew is that no matter where we moved around to, i had a remarkable loving family who i was blessed to be able to say, you know, that with what they had, they really tried to provide for us as best that they could, and thats something i always felt. From your first book the other wes moore my father was dead five hours after having been released from the hospital with the simple instructions to get some sleep. Same hospital was now preparing to send his body to the morgue. My father had entered the hospital seeking help, but his face was unshaven, his clothes dishevelled, his name unfamiliar, his address not in an affluent area. The hospital looked at him askance, insulted him with ridiculous questions and basically told him to fend for himself. Now my mother had to plan his funeral. Why do you think those assumptions were made . Race. I think its its really one of the heart breaking things, you know, and i think about it a lot, both with, you know, where we are now and also when people say well, you know, at what point in your life did you know or did you understand the impact of race in the world . the fact that had the specters and a friend that had been mentioned, there would have been the benefit of the doubt. I would have had the benefit of the doubt and had given we would not have had the same type of results and this is something that i know is not just, its not just anecdotal because there is data that continues and race as one of the most predictable indicators for outcomes across several areas, across education, across maternal mortality, cross mental and physical health and so the thing that made that real in my case, in the case of my father, in the case of making it about my Family History is this idea that i know its inescapable, its inescapable to not understand and embrace the impact of race at all. Host who is the other wes moore . Guest the other wes moore is a young man that i heard about actually the same time i was getting ready to head off and the Baltimore Sun which is my hometown paper was writing an article about this local kid who just received a scholarship and they were writing about my background in writing about my childhood that they were writing about the fact that 10 years ago i had cut my wrist and 10 years later i was getting a full scholarship and what a journey was like inapp period at around the same time there were also writing about a botched robbery were four guys get into a Jewelry Store in the first two guys went to the Jewelry Store and they had guns and they had everybody on the ground and the next two guys walked in and they pulled out a mallet and a guy with a gun. The ones with the mallet went to the right in the ones with the guns kept them on the ground while the ones with the mallets were smashing out cases in getting rings. They got about 40,000 worth of jewelry that day and all four ran out of the store and ran outside to the parking lot. Though other person in the store that day was an offduty police officer. He was a 13 year veteran of the Baltimore Police force. He he was a threetime recipient of and also a father of five who just had triplets and the reason he was working that day because it was his day off from the police force and he took on a second job to make extra money for his family. And when he ended up in the store he got up off the ground and drew his weapon and he ran outside to see the kids stop the guys from getting away and when he ran outside he started kneeling behind a car stick give him cover petionville as one of the cars he was next to is one of the vehicles the guys ran in the window rolled down and he was shot three times at pointblank range and he was killed. There ended up being a 12 day National Manhunt for those guys in all four guys were caught. One of them that they were looking for was captured and convicted and he was a guy from west point. The more i learned about this crime and the more learned about this tragedy oftentimes in newspaper articles the more i knew there were questions i want to ask. One day just decided to write them a note and the first note that i wrote him hey of my name is wes and i read about you. He was in the Correctional Department where he is today. Got a letter back address to wes moore in that wide and let her was fascinating to me all of his answers in in and everything he was alluding to in that one letter turned into dozens of letters and dozens more letters sent by now have known wes moore over the years and hes in year 20 of his life sentence he and his older brother and two other guys there the day of the crime. And so thats two he was and that initial letter really turned into something that change the way that i thought about reform because it did help to serve as an important reminder of how fin that line is. The chilling truth is that this story could have been mine and the tragedy is not my story and how thin those differences are and how thin that decisionmaking is and how sometimes you can make the small decisions that we make that we sometimes accidentally fall into and sometimes the decisions are made for us. Sometimes its a lack of options that we have for the decisions that we make but as a society we cannot be quick to castigate unless we are willing to dig into the story unless we are willing to understand the things that make our stories are rich and make them real and how to understand the neighborhood that we are growing up in and the fact that for far too many of our children we are screaming to them about what we want from them and what we expect from them and their number one west point we were talking about baltimore and we were living blocks away from each other in baltimore. He said to me and i asked