PATT GILLIARD GUNN: And I tell the barber, "Shave all of my hair off."

He said, "No, Sistah Patt."

I said, "Yes.

I don't have time for hair right now."

YESENIA VALENTIN: So I decided, "Who better to help him on his journey to freedom than his own child?"

But who will listen to me?

GEORGE GREENIDGE: And so, I decided to stand up and let them know right before we said grace, "I have the family secret.

I am ready to tell everybody."

THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "Legacy."

♪ ♪ We all know that we cannot change history.

What we can do is make meaningful reparations towards historic injustices.

Now, tonight's storytellers are going to be sharing their stories about the impact of injustice on their own life, the lives of their families and lives in their communities.

And part of what they're doing here is showing us that when we share stories about the truth of our collective histories, we are making change on a path towards a better future.

♪ ♪ GUNN: I am Patt Gilliard Gunn, and I am from the Gullah Geechee community on the coast of Georgia, and I am the founder of the Susie King Taylor Center for Jubilee and CEO of Underground Tours of Savannah.

What impact and role does your heritage as, um, a Gullah Geechee person have in your life?

Growing up, I, um, discovered the folkways of the Gullah Geechee community in our families.

The food ways, the spirituality, the, uh, environmental rights, the water rights, and last but especially important, was our burial rights.

We are so commemorative of that.

So, all of those pieces came together to have me appreciate the Gullah Geechee culture and the community.

And how do the Underground Tours contribute to a broader understanding of history and social justice?

Because our tour tells the story of the journey from slavery to freedom.

We want folks to come all times of the year and let them incorporate this into a holistic story of America.

And we share that it is now time to have these kinds of conversations about slavery and freedom for the purposes, though, of healing, not of finger-pointing.

♪ ♪ In 2017, after 20-plus years in Atlanta, I returned to my hometown of Savannah, Georgia.

You see, I am fourth-generation Gullah Geechee descendant of those enslaved Africans that came to the coast of Georgia in 1748 and dwell there.

I received some disheartening news.

There were no markers to depict the bondage and struggle of those that dwelled in Savannah for 116 years anywhere in downtown.

So I decided to take action.

I wanted to take on the Confederate monuments and the American Revolutionary monuments.

They were all named for men.

And so, I chose John C. Calhoun.

United States vice president, statesman from South Carolina, brilliant orator as an attorney, was the number-one pro-slavery advocate in the nation, and he was on top of my ancestors.

This place should now have a new name, and it should be a sacred place and space.

Now, I knew this was not going to be an easy task.

You see, the state of Georgia has a law that you cannot remove Confederate monuments or markers or statues throughout the entire state.

I want to share with you that the city of Savannah is a place that has sacred places and spaces, but not for the African American community.

So, as a paralegal, I'm sitting in the middle of the night, scrolling through the process for renaming public squares, and I come across parks, I come across streets, but I don't see squares.

I only see "other."

Hmm.

I'm going to apply under "other."

I got this.

The game is on.

(audience laughter) The application process calls for you to get 51% of all the neighbors who live around the square to consent to a petition signed and accepted by the city of Savannah in order to change the name of a square.

Mind you, this is multimillion-dollar homeowners, and they have stately homes.

And so, in my years of social justice and human rights, I knew that if you want to get a cup of justice, you got to go and get you some people.

I gathered people on a national level, from the national Truth Telling Project, where I was a policy fellow; and local retirees in education; students; artists that we call "artivists"; all of the students from the elementary schools did art canvassing.

Fabulous.

We gathered people so that we could change this name.

We knew that we were going to have opposition, for sure.

However, we knew that we needed to get brave neighbors from around the squares to take the task on of going door-by-door to get the 51% of signatures required by the city from the homeowners around the square.

It was absolutely too dangerous for people of color like me to go knock on those doors.

I want you to know we also got threats.

They would say to me downtown as I did my tours, "Don't you change that Calhoun Square.

He's one of my descendants, you hear?"

I was never, ever afraid.

And so, we met with the city officials and we began to gather people pushing towards that cup of justice.

It took three-and-a-half years of going back and forth, back and forth with the city officials.

And then, one day, we got a little bit of light.

We got some information.

Three brave city councilwomen, Alicia Blakely, Kesha Gibson-Carter and Bernetta Bryant Lanier said, "Sistah Patt, you don't have to worry "about the 51%.

"All you have to do is go downtown "and get four of your city council-folk to put your item on the agenda."

We were livid.

"What do you mean?

We've wasted three-and-a-half years when we could have just gone through that process?"

Well, we set the meeting up, and the morning of the meeting, in October 2022, I took a detour from city hall and I went to the barbershop.

I did not have an appointment.

There were five people there in line.

I asked every last one of them, "May I have your spot?

May I have your spot?"

They all said yes because I told them I was going downtown to have a meeting with the mayor about that square.

They said, "Go get them, Patt," and gave me their spots.

I get in the chair and I tell the barber, "Shave all of my hair off."

He said, "No, Sistah Patt."

I said, "Yes.

"I don't have time for hair right now.

(laughter) I am in warrior mode."

And so, we began to meet with the city officials.

I want to share that as we met with the city officials, we were getting restless.

We kept telling our coalition, "You have to have patience."

So it's real, you do get restless.

But I want to share with you that in that meeting-- October 2022, you know-- I said something there that changed, like a shift.

I said, "You know, we have until December 31 "to be with you downtown.

"We've been doing this for three-and-a-half years.

"We've got on the actual agenda.

"But I want to tell you that if we don't get some action "by the 31st of December, "we are going to turn this movement over "to a new generation of young people "who are getting ready to descend on your city "from across the nation and do civil disobedience in all 23 of your squares."

I also shared with them that I'm in the tourism business, so far be it for me to bite the hand that feeds you, but I'm going to join the movement to call for an economic boycott of tourism in Savannah until we do this project correctly.

You could hear a pin drop in the room.

Well, we received the vote, and it was nine-zero, unanimously, just before the election.

Wait, now.

There's a twist.

Our mayor and city manager decided to make it an unnamed square, and create a new process that opened the door for all citizens to apply names, so that they can decide who the square should be named in honor of.

I told my coalition to rename Calhoun Square to be patient.

We went through the process, and 309 applicants submitted.

Out of that, 18 were selected, and so was our Susie King Taylor.

Susie King Taylor, born in 1848, was one of America's sheroes.

She was the first African American woman to join the Union side as a nurse, and Susie King Taylor started schools in downtown Savannah, both in slavery and after slavery.

We went through that process and had to go to two more department meetings.

And both of them also unanimously choose... chose Susie King Taylor.

I want to share with you that we were able to get it done because the meeting showed that Susie King Taylor was the beloved choice.

We had won.

You see, I really do believe what Dr. King referenced as the moral arc of the universe, I really do believe it bends towards justice.

You just have to go out and get you some people, and when you gather them all, go on out there and make yourself some good trouble.

Thank you.

(cheering and applause) ♪ GREENIDGE: My name is George "Chip" Greenidge, and I'm a scholar, activist, and a nonprofit leader.

I was born in the Greater Boston area.

I understand that you are the founding executive director of Greatest MINDS.

Uh, can you tell us a bit more about your organization, what the mission is and how that mission, sort of, um, comes from your own personal values?

GREENIDGE: Oh, what a great question.

Greatest MINDS is a program that I started to help the next generation become the next generation of civic leaders.

Mmm.

GREENIDGE: And so, what we do is a series of pathways through career, college and community service, of showing young people that if I can do it, they can do it, too.

Is there a moment from your childhood that has shaped your approach towards activism and community organizing?

I think what has helped shaped that is watching my parents be involved.

Mmm.

Was it Proposition 2 1/2, I remember, in the '70s?

Was it a discussion about school committee budgets?

Another piece, as well, is that as a kid, I would watch both of my grandmothers work at the polls.

Mmm.

Counting the votes, being a part of that whole process.

So, when it's time for me to think about voting and voting rights, it reminds me that I have to be active.

♪ ♪ It's in the middle of pandemic.

I'm sitting on the couch, reading newspapers, watching stuff online, watching television, and I see this ad.

Anscestry.com, $69.99.

I was kind of intrigued.

"Learn about your history."

Hmm.

I thought learning about your history was something for rich people.

You know, that Henry Louis Gates guy?

You know.

That was stuff for Julia Roberts.

That was stuff for Oprah Winfrey.

But me?

My turn for me to learn about my history.

Looking back, when I was maybe seven or eight, I would look in the phone book just to see names, if they're related to me.

Many times, I would go to my mom and dad and say, "Hey, are these people related to me?"

Sometimes they'd go, "Yeah."

Sometimes they'd go, "No."

And sometimes they'll just change the whole other subject because they didn't really know.

But this time, you know what?

I'm gonna take it on myself to be able to find out who I am.

So, what I decided to do is put that $69.99 on my credit card and find out who I really am today.

I called my mother, and I said, "Mom, I'm gonna take this DNA test."

You know what she said to me?

"Son, do you know "what the government can do with that and your DNA?

"You know what they do to people, especially Black people?

They use it."

And I go, "Mom, you're actually right."

Think about it.

Henrietta Lacks in the 1950s and John Hopkins University.

(chuckles) Also think about Tuskegee and the Tuskegee experiment in the 1930s.

These are true things that have happened to African Americans while they're using their DNA.

But my mom saw the curiosity in my face and my voice, and she said, "All right, send me a kit."

Next up was my dad.

He said, "You know what, son," in a joking way, "you should let sleeping dogs lie."

Really.

"Confusion and trust are things that you're gonna have to let go."

And he said, "I'm not gonna be outdone by your mother.

I'm gonna take that test as well."

(laughter) Four weeks later, I get the kit, and what I do is I open it up, and I look at it, and I see a little cup.

And guess what?

I spit in it.

(scoffs) So, what I have to do next is, the next thing, is bring it back into the post office, seal it up, and send it back to the Ancestry.com laboratory.

So, I seal it up and send it, and I wait.

And I wait.

And I wait.

Nine weeks later, I get a result inside of my email.

So, I open the app, and I see names that I do know and names that I don't know.

So I call my dad on the phone and say, "Dad, do you know this name?"

He said, "Oh, that's aunt so and so.

Oh, that's uncle so and so."

But you know what?

From finding out from my dad's DNA, I found out some really cool things about my family.

My cousin, he was a Lindy Hop dancer in the 1940s in Harlem.

Can you believe that?

Another thing I found out is that my great-grandfather, he was a poet in 1921, and he was in the first book of Negro poetry.

And also, I also found out my great-great-uncle was the founder of Saint James African Orthodox Church in Boston, and he was a proud Marcus Garvey follower of that Black nationalist.

Whoa.

I was very proud of that.

So, what I decided to do was scurry on to my mom's side, and I look, and I just saw my grandfather's name.

No great-grandfather, all these other things.

It was just there.

So, I asked my mom again, what's the deal?

And I just remember the stories growing up.

You know, I always heard that my great-grandfather was a traveling salesman.

And also, I also heard that my great-grandmother died while giving birth to him.

And he was actually raised by my Aunt Lucy, who lived in Virginia.

That was a story that I heard.

But you know what?

I had to go on a treasure hunt, and I had to find out this information who my great-grandfather was.

So what I decided to do is I got on the internet, and I scurried, and then I found the missing ingredient.

I found him.

He was a block away.

His records from Atlanta, where I was living, his birth certificate was in the Fulton County records office.

And you know what else I found out, is that he was born on the Heard plantation in Georgia.

Can you believe it?

My mom's maiden name was "Heard."

With this information, I was kind of aghast.

And so, three weeks later, I was going to Thanksgiving, with all my family members there.

And so, I decided to stand up and let them know, right before we said grace, I have the family secret.

I'm ready to tell everybody.

You know, my uncle stood to me and looked at me and said, "I don't want to know.

"What do you mean, you don't want to know?

I did all this research."

"I don't want to know."

So, my mother whispers over to me and says, "Chip, you're going to have to respect his wishes."

(sighs) But, after some good old cake and good old apple pie and ice cream and a little bit of rum, the family kind of corralled around uncle and said, "Come on, we all want to know," and he gave a nod of approvement and said, "Okay."

We always thought our family is from Virginia.

No, no, no.

We are from a plantation in Georgia, mixed with slavery.

Wow.

We were taken aback by that.

So, today, I now sit on the city of Boston's Reparation Task Force, and my job is to connect community members with the stories of the past.

And I have learned discovering your past is the way to heal the future.

Thank you.

(cheering and applause) VALENTIN: My name is Yesenia Valentin.

I was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.

I now live in Springfield, Massachusetts, and I've been a community advocate and a housing advocate for the last ten years.

Can you tell us a bit more about your work in community advocacy and what that entails?

I've worked with people in the community from all different spectrums, dealing with homelessness and wherever they are within that system... Mm-hmm.

...whether it's an immigrant family, if it's an adolescent, a homeless family or family about to get evicted or currently living in their vehicles, and kind of just guiding them through that process and ensuring that they get the help and assistance they need to obtain sustainable housing.

What does it mean for you to be taking the stage tonight?

It means that the unheard children of innocent men and women who are incarcerated finally get a voice.

Whenever anything happens in life, no one asks the children.

So for me, this is going to be my first time being able to speak and tell my story.

♪ ♪ It was the Fourth of July.

I had worked 16 hours straight, I was exhausted.

I came and plopped myself on my mother's couch, and my seven-year-old son walked in with a basketball in his hand.

He sat across from me with a sad look on his face.

I asked, "What's wrong?"

He mumbled, "Nothing," and was avoiding eye contact with me.

I asked, "Why aren't you outside playing basketball with your friends?"

And he said, "Because I can't tell the difference between the firecrackers and the gunshots."

This broke me, mentally and emotionally.

How could I let this happen?

I was failing my son.

I failed as a mother.

And I was robbing my son of his childhood, just as I had been robbed of mine.

You see, 11 years old, I came home and I sat on the front stoop waiting for my mother.

As the afternoon turned into the evening, the neighborhood kids made fun of me and they said, "That's why the police took your mama."

And, "Yeah, she ain't coming back."

While I yelled, "Shut up and stop lying," they replied, "We're not lying, but you can "sit on that stoop all night looking stupid.

That's why you ain't got no mama no more."

That day, my mother went to jail for five years for selling drugs to support her family.

My father had been wrongly incarcerated for a crime he did not commit.

And for the next five years, I was homeless, couch-surfing from family members, friends, strangers, and park benches.

And even when my mother came home, at 15 years old, I thought everything was going to be great.

But her homecoming came with its own set of complications.

In and out of family shelters, still couch-surfing with family members and friends, cleaning bathrooms to pay rent in a boarding room.

And then my mother was diagnosed with lupus.

A single mother with a record who couldn't work for the complicated life.

But she worked very hard to make sure she regained her rights to take us to go see my dad.

All my life, everyone told me he was innocent.

Every Saturday, we would go visit this innocent, caring man that I knew didn't belong there.

Yet everyone kept going on about life as if it was not a priority because they were too busy.

So I decided, who better to help him on his journey to freedom than his own child?

But who will listen to me?

I'm a 17-year-old kid who doesn't even have the rights to vote.

So...

I wrote a letter to the president of the United States requesting clemency.

I wrote celebrities, I wrote talk show hosts.

No one responded.

Just like I know the judicial system will never admit that they robbed my father of his innocent life.

But I had to keep going.

I couldn't stop.

A year after my mother went to prison, I was 12 years old.

I was on a park bench all alone with nowhere to go.

I felt completely alone.

My heart ached, and I felt like the most unloved child in the world.

I laid on the bench and stared at the stars.

And in that moment, I decided that this wasn't going to be my life.

That one day, I was going to become a homeowner, no matter what it took.

And I wasn't going to do it by selling drugs or joining a gang.

Because all the drug dealers were in jail with their family suffering and the drug dealers were slowly killing each other off.

I knew that I had the power to change this.

Five years later, remembering the promise that I made, I started looking for resources to help me with my credit score.

All the employers, I started looking at to see what they had to offer me.

First time home buyer courses for free, 401ks that I can borrow money from myself.

I became fiercely disciplined with my finances and I sacrificed time with my son.

I assured him that I was doing this so that we can one day become homeowners.

And we talked about our dream house and him having his own room.

A year into my house-hunting journey, I slowly felt that dream slipping away once again.

Covid hit and shut everything down.

Mortgage rates more than tripled, my car was totaled, and my father's case became increasingly complicated, and I fell into a great depression that I could not mask.

But with my depression on full display, I showed up to every open house looking crazy, sleeping in parking lots in between house... open houses.

My best friend decided that she wasn't going to watch by and see me give up on my dreams.

She worked my house hunting into her work schedule and lent me her car.

And just as I was about to give up, I saw a listing.

"Open house, closed in ten minutes."

I put it in my GPS.

I made it in nine.

(laughter) And as I'm walking around this house, I'm standing in the kitchen, I'm able to envision my family cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

I thanked the agent, walked to my friend's car, called my agent, made an offer.

In November of 2022, I closed on my house.

(applause) Eight months later, my father was granted parole with the home plan to be released to my house.

(applause) I'm a blessed homeowner who lives with her father and her son, and my greatest accomplishment is being able to watch my son enjoy his room and play basketball safely.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪