♪♪ >> Phyllis Dickerson, the C.E.O.

of the African American Mayors Association, next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

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

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

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

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

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

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

Learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

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

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

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

♪♪ >> We're very pleased to welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles" the C.E.O.

of the African American Mayors Association.

Phyllis Dickerson, welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, Dr. Chavis.

>> So, Phyllis, tell us -- where do you come from?

What's your social setting?

>> So, I'm originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, born and raised, graduated from Little Rock Central High.

Actually went to undergrad at the University of Central Arkansas.

One of my classmates was Scottie Pippen.

>> Famous basketball player.

>> There you go.

I just talked to him the other day.

And my graduate degree is from Webster University in Saint Louis.

I did 20 years in fashion before I came to government.

And I came to government actually to do -- plan the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine, because I was a Central High graduate.

So it was my claim to fame, I love to say.

>> Well, for our audience, let's talk about the Little Rock Nine.

You're from Little Rock, Arkansas, but everybody knows how pivotal the Little Rock Nine was for school desegregation.

Talk to us about that.

>> So, one of the things that I wanted to do was, in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary, is kind of tell the story from the Nine's perspective, because we only see the Nine as a as kids, right?

So all the pictures, they're only 15, 16, 17 years old.

And so I wanted to do, like, a flashback of then and now.

And so one of the pieces that we left was a commemorative poster.

Central has a reflective pond in front of it.

And so in front of the reflective pond, we made it black and white so it reflected 1957 with people picketing behind them and them as teenagers.

And then I left a legacy behind them, which is the legacy they leave behind.

>> Right.

>> But that was a major, major move as it relates to education.

Most people don't know, the next year after integration, they actually closed high schools in Little Rock.

They voted to close high schools.

And they call it "The Lost Year."

So people had to send their kids away to graduate on time.

So they went to Aunt Mary's house in Cleveland or wherever just to graduate from high school on time.

And nobody even talks about The Lost Year.

>> Well, you know, we all should pay tribute to the Little Rock Nine, nine black students trying to go to Central High School, a moment the whole nation was watching, whether or not they would be able to enter the high school because of a segregated school system now becoming integrated.

>> Correct.

And most people don't know that, at first, Governor Faubus agreed to integrate schools, and when he got back to Little Rock, his constituents said, "You don't have to listen to the president."

And so he reneged on the deal with the president, and, of course, we all know you don't renege on a deal with the president, right?

And so that's when the 101st Airborne had to come down and help escort them into the schools.

>> Fashion to politics.

>> Correct.

>> Tell us how you make that transition.

>> So, I spent 20 years in fashion before coming to government, and after I left fashion, I was burnt out and all of those things.

But it's my first love still.

And there was a limited-services contract, which was what we call it in government, that they advertised to plan in the 50th anniversary of the Nine, And I applied for it with 100-and-something other people and I actually got the contract.

I came to government.

I didn't know what RFP and RFQ was, but I quickly figured it out.

And then, so, it took 18 -- It was an 18-month contract.

And at the end, the city manager said, "Phyllis, I heard you wanted to stay."

And I said, "Oh, somebody lied to you."

But I ended up staying and becoming Mayor Mark Stodola's chief of staff.

>> So, that's a great transition from fashion to government, but then you have this experience working in the government of Arkansas, municipal government, which enables you now to be the C.E.O.

of the African American Mayors Association.

>> Correct.

>> I'm so proud of black mayors, man.

Tell me, look, we have black mayors over the four largest cities in the United States.

>> Which is, like, historical.

This has never happened.

>> New York.

>> Yep.

L.A. >> Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago.

>> And Chicago.

>> Well, how does it feel having such impact on urban America?

>> Well, I tell people, black mayors matter, right?

Because we are at ground zero.

Most of us grew up -- Most of them grew up in, like, urban environments.

They get it.

In the wake of mass shootings and all the things that are going on on the ground, they actually know their constituents.

Like, they went to high school with them.

They grew up in the neighborhood with them.

I remember when Mayor Brown, in Buffalo, had his mass shooting and he got to the site.

It was -- The grocery store is in the neighborhood where he shops, right?

So he knew he was going to know, you know, many of the people that were killed, unfortunately, in that particular situation.

And so, you know, it's a different look when you're talking to a black mayor.

The expectation is even higher from their constituents.

>> As you say, black mayors matter.

Can you -- From your informed perspective, since you know all these mayors, you work with them, can you say that the quality of life of all these cities, particularly African-Americans, that the quality of life actually improves under black mayors?

>> Oh, definitely, because when you grow up in the inner city, you know, I tell people, you got to be more innovative, right?

You know, you got to do stuff like when you are in a food desert and you -- there's no Walgreens to buy food from, there's no grocery store, no anything -- I remember, in Little Rock, we have this almost mobile vegetable market.

And so one of the black farmers, we retrofitted an old school bus and made it, like, a vegetable market.

And literally, the black farmer filled it up with all the fruits and vegetables, allowed people to use their EBT cards.

After an hour, they had run out of everything.

So we had to take the bus back, fill it back up again.

But where else would you go in your neighborhood?

And that means you can park that bus anywhere in our inner city.

And so those are the kind of innovative things that black mayors do, because either -- In housing, they may be landlocked, and so they become more innovative.

Where we have a lot of school closing, why not use that property to buy affordable housing instead of letting an old school just sit there being closed?

>> So, with the browning of America, so goes the browning of urban America.

>> Correct.

>> And, to wit, the rise of African-American leaders, African-American mayors, city council, et cetera, but, also, I noticed that a lot of mayors are very young.

Can you talk to us about the pathway of some of these young mayors who are members of the African American Mayors Association?

>> Well, our youngest mayor is 19.

He just turned 19.

He ran and won at 18.

Mayor Jaylen Smith out of Earle, Arkansas.

He has about 1,900 constituents.

And I just remember talking to Jaylen.

I said, "What'd you tell your parents?"

And he said, "Well, I didn't tell them I was applying to be on the ballot."

>> So he's a teenage mayor.

>> So he was a teenage mayor.

And he's in his freshman year in college.

So, he said he talked to his college professors and told them that "My work might be a little bit late, because, you know, I'm trying to be the mayor and I have a part-time job and I'm going to school all at the same time."

But amazing, smart young man.

And, remember, you know, back in the day, when you ran for mayor, you ran because you were on city council for a few years and then you decided to run for mayor?

These young mayors are not -- They're not doing that trajectory.

They are literally grassroots, you know, civil-rights leaders.

>> So, Cleveland has a young mayor.

>> Yes.

>> Baltimore has a young mayor.

>> Yep.

>> Tell us about some of these other young mayors.

>> So, you got Jackson, Mississippi.

You got Little Rock.

Montgomery, Alabama.

In Phoenix, Mayor Corey Woods is there.

Newport News, Virginia.

The sister out of DeSoto, Rachel Proctor.

You got Quinton Lucas out of Kansas City.

We call them the Under 40 Group.

They're innovative and their approach.

They're technology-friendly because they grew up with a phone in their hand.

>> So, a lot of young people watch "The Chavis Chronicles," Millennials and Generation Z.

So you're suggesting there is a pathway for young people also to become involved in municipal politics, but also become the leader of these cities.

>> Right.

And we have to remember, you know, back in the day, when the Southern Conference of Black Mayors, Bennie Thompson, actually, congressman, ran and won in both Bolton, Mississippi, as mayor at 27 years old.

So it's not an anomaly that a lot of these black mayors are winning at a very young age.

>> Tell us something about some of these issues now.

There seems to be a rise in crime in too many of our cities, not just the ones who have black mayors, but across America.

From the African American Mayors Association, what is your position on how to stem the rise in crime in some of our communities?

>> So, one of our number-one issues, as we all know, is the mass shooting.

And so we have got to have some responsible gun legislation come out of Congress this year.

It's just -- It's imperative that we do so.

You know, I grew up in the South, as you know, and having a gun in the South is like having a golf club on the West Coast.

That's just what we do.

Everybody carries a gun.

But, you know, we have to be responsible gun owners.

We're not trying to control, you know, the responsible people, because we hunt and we do different things like that.

But you have to be responsible.

>> What's your position on assault weapons?

>> They have to be banned.

And I tell people -- And I know this sounds horrible, because I don't have children, but we have to have a Mamie Till moment, because people don't know what that assault weapon does in a mass shooting.

It literally shatters the body.

And so what happens in a mass shooting is that we see the child in the cute school picture, when they're 5, and then we see the Teddy bears and the flowers at the memorial, right?

But what we don't see is that that parent had to identify their child by the clothes they had on, by their DNA, or the shoes they had on.

Nobody talks about what happened.

And so, just like Mamie Till said with Emmett Till, the world needs to see, because we have become desensitized to what happens in a mass shooting.

And even with black folks, you know what question we ask?

"Was the shooter black?"

Which is irrelevant in this particular situation.

The conversation needs to be, "This is what my child ended up looking like when I dropped him off at school at 8:00 a.m. and then had to identify their body an hour later."

>> So, this debate about gun control and banning assault weapons, the influence of a prestigious organization like the African American Mayors Association, how do you weigh in?

How does the African American Mayors Association work with the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of Congress to get more reasonable, common-sense gun control?

>> It's a constant conversation.

The CBC already has stepped up.

They know what we want.

The administration, the Biden administration, they know what we want.

It's that other side.

I said, "If we all could play well in the sandbox..." And, like I said, I think that once you show people what that body looks like, it's like a videotape.

It never gets out of your mind.

And it's just such a scary situation to think that, you know, our children could be suffering from PTSD because they can't go to school and feel safe.

They can't go to church to feel safe.

They can't go to the mall to feel safe.

Where do our kids feel safe?

>> Another issue is the issue of immigration, border control.

A lot of our cities now, when people come to emigrate to the United States, whether it is legal or illegal, they wind up in these big cities.

And now we have African-American males over the largest cities in America.

What is the position of the African American Males Association on immigration and border control?

>> So, the issue is this.

They don't just end up in big cities.

They're being transported to our cities specifically.

We are being, you know, put out there to say, "Send them to D.C.

Send them to New York.

Send them to L.A.

Send them to Denver."

Like, they have -- We are on the hit list of transporting them only to our cities.

>> Why do you think that happens?

>> Because it puts pressure on our budget.

We're not going to be able -- Nobody has an indispensable budget where you could just spend money on whatever constantly.

It's straining our city budgets.

We don't have shelter and homeless set up like that.

We can -- We have a point-in-time counts in city government, so we know how many homeless people we have every year between January and March.

It doesn't fluctuate that much that you think that you can ship in a whole nother 30,000 people.

We don't have the capacity to do that, either because we're landlocked, the budget, a whole lot of things, right?

The sweat equity that takes to process them, all of the stuff that goes along with it.

And so federal government is literally going to have to help us out.

Like, there is no way around it.

And everybody else is going to have to take their fair share.

Like, we have got to come up with some kind of formula or something that says, "Okay, New York, you can hold this many.

The rest you send to whatever -- the neighboring states."

Everybody's got to take their fair share if we're -- And we're going to have to come up with some type of really -- immigration reform.

Like, it has to happen now, just like... >> So, the African American Mayors Association is on record supporting immigration reform.

>> Right.

I mean, but we have to have some type of real reform.

Like, we have to sit down at the table and, like I said, play well in the sandbox together and come up with something that we're all agreeable on.

>> Non-partisan.

>> Yes.

>> You know, during COVID, this whole term about pre-existing conditions came up.

But health conditions, environmental conditions.

But another condition is homelessness.

So tell us how the African American Mayors Association is dealing with the issue of homelessness in Los Angeles, in some of our major cities.

>> So, Mayor Bass has probably been the most innovative.

You know, in her first 100 days, she put together a plan.

But the issue that we don't talk about with homelessness is that it's a neighborhood by itself.

So what has happened is, they have created their own community.

And so if we're homeless together on this block, when you house them, they want to stay together.

They don't want to be separated.

And so she has had to become more innovative in -- When she puts them in hotels, put the whole block in the same hotel.

And so it would be like us moving out of our neighborhood, where we're comfortable and know our neighbors, right?

So they want that same type of environment.

And we look at homelessness as chronic homelessness and we -- You know, when we define it, sometimes, we look at drug addict, drug addiction, and all that kind of stuff.

But there are just people that go to work every day.

Like, I remember one time in Little Rock when I was the chief of staff, we had this situation, and we were going to disassemble this camp, this homeless camp.

And they came as a community and they had elected their own mayor, and the mayor spoke on their behalf.

So they're very organized.

And so Mayor Bass is using, like, old hotels that have closed to to create temporary housing and that kind of thing.

>> So, African-American mayors, if I listen to you, are addressing the issue of homelessness, but from a more compassionate, more neighborhood base to find not only homes for people, but to make sure that they're incorporated in a larger neighborhood formula.

>> Correct.

You know, their kids go to school.

They're a neighborhood just like any other neighborhood.

Some of them even have stores within their tents where you come and buy your little, you know, nonperishable items.

>> So, you're an African-American woman leader.

Talk to us -- the importance about the role that black women need to play in getting out the vote.

>> You know, I just watched the documentary on Harold Washington.

It was called "Punch 9."

Great documentary.

>> Former mayor of Chicago.

>> Yes.

And, so, one of the things he did that was so powerful was that galvanizing the vote, like, pushing people.

They registered over another 50,000 people in Chicago during his election alone.

And so, really, we have to engage this next generation.

Like, we have got to excite the base, because that is that group that we're on the edge of.

They won't vote at all or they're just right on the line, right?

Like, we grew up -- I grew up -- At 4 years old, my mom used to take me to the polls with her at Archview Baptist Church.

And everybody would walk in, they'd be like, "Hey, Doris."

It was a neighborhood thing, right?

This is what we did.

This generation does not necessarily have that.

And so we have to figure out a way to excite them.

And so we're going to do a partnership with Civic Nation, which is Michelle Obama's When We All Vote, and the CBC and kind of do a tour -- >> Congressional Black Caucus.

>> Mm-hmm.

And kind of do a tour in select cities to kind of get that vote out and ignite that base.

>> Right.

Because, you know, the right to vote in Arkansas or my home state of North Carolina, across the country, the right to vote has been challenged, particularly by a lot of the state legislatures.

How does the African American Mayors Association view ways and means to counter voter suppression?

>> So, I think Chris Hollins, when he was city clerk in Houston, probably did the best job I have ever seen in a city clerk.

He extended hours to vote.

He did third shift -- What I call third-shift voting, where you could drive through and vote at midnight.

You know, some of the things that -- There are, like, a litany list of things that people are doing to suppress our vote.

And so we have got to just continue to fight.

You know, we thought we were done in the '60s, but the fight is still real.

You know, what's happening on the ground in city government?

A lot of the state legislators are voting to take over regulatory areas where municipal government usually has supervision, i.e.

police department in Jackson, Mississippi.

Now the state is taking over that.

The water, ports.

In Little Rock, they tried to almost take over an airport, which means that Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to say, after a certain time, if Mayor Scott hadn't appointed a new commissioner from a vacant seat in Little Rock, that she was going to be able to make the appointment.

Like, we've never seen these kind of -- You know, everybody has always had their lines.

They're federal government, we don't step over into their lane, state government, and municipal government.

But where we have the highest budgets most of the time are our airports, our ports, our water, those areas, and state government is starting to take over in those areas.

>> Well, before we close, I just want to talk about the impact of the infrastructure bill that's passed, bipartisan, by Congress.

And one of the aspects was to remove lead pipes so that people can have fresh water, water without being contaminated.

From the African American Mayors perspective, how are we meeting the demand to have -- to ensure that people have clean water, water without contamination across the nation, but particularly in cities where we have black mayors?

>> And we have seen this.

We just saw it in Jackson before.

We saw it in Flint, right?

And, so, what we have done is said, "That infrastructure money is imperative, but sometimes, it's not enough."

In Jackson, that was a multi-- That was billion-dollar deal -- right?

-- just to get them clean water.

Can we imagine what it's like to not live with water for weeks on end?

And, so, what we're doing from a legislative standpoint, we're helping them get technical assistance, because a lot of our cities, our infrastructure is crumbling.

But what we don't have the capacity to do, we may not have a grant manager.

Their mayor might need a grant manager and a mayor, right?

Or, you know, you don't have these full-fledged grant departments.

And I don't know if you've ever filled out a federal grant, but it's not easy.

And so we've put pressure on the federal government to say, "Listen --" I remember one department in particular.

They said, "Phyllis, we're going to give away billions of dollars."

I said, "How long is the application?"

He said, "130 pages."

Who has time to fill out 130 pages?

Takes two months to fill out.

But at the time -- You know, a small city, they're not going to do that.

It's too cumbersome.

And so we pushed and pushed back on federal government to say, "Listen, look at your grant application.

Look to see if you can provide technical assistance and help these cities get the needed and necessary money that's out there."

>> So, Phyllis Dickerson, what gives you your greatest hope for the future as you look toward -- from your perspective as the C.E.O.

of the African-American Mayors Association?

What gives you your greatest hope?

>> That these young mayors under 40 are still engaged.

They believe that that American dream is possible.

And, like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, "We are the hopes and dreams of our ancestors."

And I was on the lawn when she said it, and the tear rolled down my eye because, yes, that's who we are.

>> So we are making progress.

>> We are making progress.

>> Phyllis Dickerson, C.E.O.

of the African American Mayors Association, thank you so much for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guest, please visit our website at... Also, follow us on Facebook, X, formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

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

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

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

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

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

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

Learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

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

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

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

♪♪