(gentle music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Hello everyone and welcome to "Black Nouveau."

I'm Earl Arms, and this is our September edition.

This month's show will take us to Paris through the mind of Dr. Kweku Amoasi Smith.

We sat down with the licensed psychologist to talk about his experience working with Olympic athletes at this year's summer games in France.

Later in the program, we take you to the memorial service of Keyon Jackson-Malone, a well-respected radio DJ and organizer here in Milwaukee.

And the program will also offer a preview of Milwaukee PBS's "Table Talk," a co-production with 1036 and Marquette University's Civic Dialogues Program.

"Table Talk" is a series of individuals in a community conversation about issues of importance to voters.

But we start with the stories of three Black women we've recently lost but remain highly regarded in the community.

James Causey learns more about the life and legacies of Cecilia Gilbert, Jeanette Mitchell, and Deloris Sims.

(plaintive music) - [James] Milwaukee has lost three remarkable Black businesswomen, Deloris Sims, one of the founders and shareholders of Legacy Bank, Dr. Jeanette Mitchell, founder of the African American Leadership Alliance of Milwaukee, an early investor in Legacy Bank, where she was also a board member, and Cecilia Gilbert, a solution-driven strategist with the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works.

Margaret Henningsen, founder of Legacy Bank, the first commercial bank chartered by women in 1998, knew all three women and would share what made them special.

Thanks for joining us.

- You're welcome.

- [James] Let's talk about Deloris Sims.

How did you first meet?

- So Dee and I, when we were growing up, we went to the same church.

She sang in the chancel choir.

She was about to graduate from North Division when I started there.

And then they built Robert Fulton and moved all of us out of North Division.

But so that was how I knew her.

You know, as we began to evolve into adults and do the things we were doing, she did a lot of lending, small businesses and commercial loans, and I did a lot of lending for people who wanted to become homeowners.

So it was like the two of us had gravitated toward this and sort of took over the market for what was happening.

And there were lots of other lenders out there, but I think you're probably aware of the fact that there also was quite a bit of discrimination in lending.

And both of us fought that discrimination and made sure that our customers got those loans.

So we became, you know, friends and knew each other that way.

- [James] And how did you get to meet Dr. Mitchell?

- Oh my goodness, I think everybody knew Jeanette.

I can't even remember when I first saw her and went, "Oh, this woman is the bomb."

But before she started her own consulting, which everybody encouraged her to do, she worked at other places, Cardinal Stritch.

She worked at AT&T.

One of those places where she worked, we served on a committee together.

And that's how I got to see how intense, and what's the word I'm looking for here, how serious Jeanette was about creating this space you know, for people to become leaders in the city of Milwaukee and for other people not to say who should be our leaders, but that we should determine who should be our leaders.

And she filled the people up that got involved with her.

This is how you become a leader.

- [James] Yes, and Cecilia Gilbert, I understand that you were- - Oh my goodness.

- Very good friends with.

- Cecilia was a very good friend of my husband, and so you could ask Cecilia for anything.

And because I was very involved in the community and always doing something, one of the first people I would go to was Cecilia.

Plus she knew all the gossip too, (laughs) so that was a lot of fun.

But she was really a great person.

I was so shocked, you know, to find out that she had passed as well.

So I'm just feeling a little bit drained right now because these three women who I have learned to love and appreciate and respect are just all of a sudden gone.

- [James] Now when you formed Legacy Bank, was the thought always to have women in leadership positions?

- Yes, and I had arguments and disputes and conversations with people about, you know, why can't men?

I said, "They can invest.

You know, they can buy shares.

They can provide resources to us.

They can come work at the bank.

But this bank is gonna be founded by three African American women."

And that's kind of how I left it.

And so I would not back down from that.

I just wanted it to be women 'cause it had never been done before.

We were the first women in the history of the state of Wisconsin's Department of Financial Institutions to ever charter a commercial bank.

And it was 1999 when we did that, and we were the first women.

Just think about that, how old this state is compared to when we started Legacy Bank.

And then countrywide, we were only the second group of women to ever charter a commercial bank, and the first group didn't even last a year.

- [James] What does their loss mean for the business community here?

- Oh, I don't know if we have enough time to talk about what the loss means, but all of them, all of them, though, imparted their knowledge to people.

Dee was so good at making sure that anybody who wanted to be a lender like her, be in banking, that they understood what that meant.

Jeanette, her whole reason for starting her own business around creating leaders is that she wanted us to have control of the leaders and how we shape them to make Milwaukee a better place, to make people a better place, to take what Jeanette had imparted to them and give it to the other men and women in our community.

Same thing with Cecilia.

Even after she said 100 times like, "Dee, I'm retired," she just kept right on giving and making sure that people had the answers to questions that nobody else wanted to give us.

(upbeat music) - So welcome to our "Vote 2024 Table Talk" on democracy.

I am Ana Cardenas Manrique, and I am a graduate of Marquette University.

I'll be your facilitator this evening.

So our goal is to model and elevate healthy civic discussion in an election year.

So this is a collaboration between Marquette's Civic Dialogues Program and Milwaukee PBS, where we're bringing together voters like you from a variety of different backgrounds and perspectives together in conversation.

So I invite you to share your thoughts about democracy and the ideas that you want political candidates and other voters to entertain.

So we aren't here necessarily to change minds but to highlight the importance of public discussion and deliberation on the topic of democracy.

According to Gallup, just 28% of Americans are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the country.

This is a new low down from the prior low of 35% measured shortly after the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

What about you?

Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in the country, and what specifically concerns you?

- I think a lot of that is individual and plural and communal.

You know, if I think about, you know, how my government is working for me, what connections I have, how I'm feeling, how are my rights being protected or represented, that's a whole different conversation than if I'm talking about the state of Wisconsin or the community at large or other communities that are out there.

So I'm always interested in polling questions like that when it comes to just how positive my democracy is based on my personal life and then linking it to my economics or my social wellbeing or other things.

And then do I care about the rights of others that are out there and about how they're experiencing America the same way that I am?

Maybe I do, maybe I don't, depending on the question that's raised that way.

- What concerns me is how we're reacting to our concerns about democracy 'cause I could be a person who says, "Oh, I'm really concerned about democracy," and I see it slipping, but I think the important thing is, you know, what are we doing about it?

- When I hear that percentage, I think that older generation numbers would've been higher, but right now the younger generations who are becoming more vocal are so fed up with the system.

So it may become a process of regression regarding having to almost tear down what has been here 'cause it's just not working anymore.

And I think everyone needs to... You're not gonna come to an agreement what democracy is, but you need to be able to come to an agreement on how it can grow and what it should represent and then build on that, right?

And I don't think right now we have a lot of people in power that can help do that.

And so that's where I think that percentage comes in.

The people with power, like, who's controlling our democracy?

- Your figure of 28% I find a little somewhat shocking.

I remember a recent figure not too long ago that the overall approval rate of Congress was around 11%, which, when you think about, is absolutely horrible.

And I don't know that people think about democracy so much as they do, is our government working?

And I don't think they think in the term of democracy per se, okay.

They're seeing the fact that Congress is at a stalemate.

They don't seem to get anything done.

They're always in a bottleneck.

They're always at each other's throats.

They can't pass a budget.

We haven't had budget in seems like decades.

They're always passing these resolutions, you know, and I think people are just disgusted with that.

And I think part of it's the fact that we've got...

Some of our representatives have, whether they be in Senate or the House, they've been there 30, 40, 50 years.

Our constitution wasn't set up, our country wasn't set up for these people to be professional politicians.

They were supposed to go there, get a job done, and come back and, you know, whatever.

So I think there's a lot of unhappiness with the way that the government's working, but I don't know that people think in the terms of democracy per se.

- I do think I agree with you that I do think people are really frustrated with there being a stalemate in Congress.

I also really think that people feel like there is no way they're being represented.

I think that's a big thing where they don't understand that, like, representatives don't really seem like someone who would actually represent your interests.

They seem like people who just are career politicians who've been doing that for a long period of time, who get money from people who have a lot of money, who might have way more access to them and way more, their interest might be represented way better than every day, everyone else in the country.

And I think that it becomes more and more tangible in a way where there feels like there's not much redistribution of power in the country overall.

It feels like very, very few people hold a lot of power.

At least I think that's what it feels like, and that doesn't feel very democratic.

I think there's this like very emotional aspect to it where people might not be able to put a finger on it, but they know they're not happy with what is happening.

(gentle music) - It's good to see so many of us who've known each other, who've been in the work together.

It's good to see people from the neighborhood where Keyon came up and made an impact.

It's good to see some of his family here.

More of them are coming.

It's divine design that this was adjusted from last week to this week.

- [Attendee] Amen.

- It's a good thing when it rains.

Sometimes it purifies people's intentions.

- Absolutely.

- And so we're gonna get started first with a prayer from our Christian family.

Then we're gonna do the evening or sunset prayer that the Muslims do.

We do it in a special way at an appropriate time.

And so we wanna make sure both traditions are represented here.

Brother Keyon wouldn't put a label on nothing about what he was 'cause one week he might wear a kufi, and another week, you might see him eating something that we wouldn't.

(attendees laugh) But he used to joke with me.

He say, you know, "People say I practice Chrislam."

(attendees laugh) Classic Keyon.

And that's all good.

- We admit to you that we are in need of guidance.

We are in need of answers.

Sometimes events, sometimes occurrences, happen that are just too big for our understanding.

And we admit right now this is one of those times.

- [Attendee] Yes, sir.

- So when we don't understand, we gonna trust.

- So there's people out here who were inspired by him, who he brought along with him who tried to help him in his effort.

And so people thought that it was a one-man show, but it were other people that came to support.

But it wasn't a lot.

And so the people who really wanna help can help those of them who are still here who are in this neighborhood, who provide basketball camps and other types of programming for the youth in this park.

They can contribute to that.

They can facilitate public spaces like this.

Keyon had a great conversation with the folks at the Milwaukee Parks, Milwaukee County Parks and the Parks Foundation about what this park needed, about how smaller parks like this need attention because they become the hubs of neighborhoods and help stabilize the neighborhood.

- You know, a lot of people talk about wanting change in their neighborhood, especially during this civic time.

You know, it's not just about talking about something.

It's about doing something, so just being in a position where you showed up.

The village group was an organization that he was standing up.

And to be able to be in the community to feed folks, to be present, to be present when bad things were happening and to also be the cause of good things that were happening I think is a significant piece of his legacy that'll continue to live.

- His legacy is a beautiful one.

He was living it, you know?

Like, we would go fishing, and he would like literally bring fish back.

Like, he would fish for stress relief, but he would bring fish back just in case people needed some fish for the, you know, like in the community.

Like, that's the kind of person that he was, and that's the kind of person that the community is gonna miss.

- Keyon was just a giving, wonderful, loving, caring man.

We spent a lot of time together at 860 WNOV.

He cared about men.

He cared about Black men.

He cared about mental health and mental wellness, which was one of the reasons I was on his show "On the Couch," which was awesome.

And the community gravitated towards him.

He did so much for the Atkinson area where he grew up.

- Our children are struggling in a lot of ways.

Keyon was a catalyst for the children.

He was a advocate for the children, especially the ones that didn't think they had a voice.

He was always, always rescuing children any way he can, whether it was feeding them in the park, whether it was running down the street on the block because there was a misunderstanding.

And he had that kind of voice where people stopped and turned around and said, "There's Keyon.

Let's see what he has to say."

And he knew most of the children in his neighborhood by name.

- Yeah, that was his mission, I mean, just 53206, 'cause we was raised here.

- I feel it's deeply spiritual in nature.

Like, I felt like he was sent here on assignment, and you know, it was to reach as many people as he could.

And I know that his impact is going to be felt like just throughout the community.

Like, people are gonna start showing up better, like stronger, straightening they back out, like doing more.

We're gonna start seeing these impacts.

And I really want people to, like, give credit where credit is due, you know?

So like when you are changing your behavior, you know, make sure you're giving credit to Keyon and keeping his name alive and letting people know like this was the impact, that this is his legacy.

- Well, Keyon was a giver.

If you look at all of his photos on his Facebook page, I bet you everybody in this park has a photo of themselves with Keyon in there.

So you can tell just by that that he was a real giver, a real sharer.

And so to have a spirit that large in our community that was a giver, it just meant, it means everything to of us, you know?

And so he's just a wonderful guy.

It's gonna be a great loss and probably impossible to fill his shoes.

- He was just always wanting to bring everybody together.

That was Keyon, just wanted to show love.

He's used to be big in taking pictures, so he's always capturing moments that now when somebody gone, that's all you got, is those great moments that you really, you know what I'm saying?

Like, I really wanna go break in his house and go get all them pictures I know he got.

So, you know, Keyon was always somebody that just tried to bring people together.

- But what we can do is continue the legacy of healing, the legacy of speaking up, the legacy of running down the street, the legacy of getting to know all of the children by name.

That African proverb that says, "When a child does not feel the warmth of the village, it will burn it down, the village warmth."

We need to become the firefighters for the children so that they don't have to burn down the village.

They can dwell in the village.

- [Keyon] Well, we got them, so I'm gonna say rise up, start fresh.

See the bright opportunity in each new day.

Don't be pushed by your problems.

Be led by your dreams.

Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it.

My dear people, my dear people, my beautiful people, righteous by nature and working through circumstances, chin up, be kind.

Say hi.

Be good.

Be careful.

And bye-bye.

Love you.

(upbeat music) - 2024 Summer Olympic Games just wrapped up in Paris last month, and we have one of Milwaukee's very own who was there, not as an athlete, but as a licensed psychologist.

Dr. Kweku Amoasi Smith joins us now.

Thank you so much for being here, doctor.

Man- - Hey, it's great to be home.

- (laughs) How long were you over there?

- Just a little one to three weeks, from July 20th to August 8th.

I left just a little bit before the closing ceremonies.

- Okay, so what exactly was your role there while you were there from the opening ceremonies to when you left?

- Yeah, so my official role was mental health officer for the USOPC.

I worked there part-time as a psychological provider, where we provide individual/group counseling, team counseling, things with the staff, things of that nature.

So we just were brought over to work in a dual capacity, either to help the athletes from a performance standpoint or if there was some other issues from a clinical standpoint that they needed major attention immediately.

- Man, that's gotta be an incredible experience.

What'd you take from it?

- Yeah, you know what, it was experience of a lifetime.

You know, when you first get the call that you're gonna go, you're excited, but you don't really know what to expect.

And I've had a chance to work in some kind of cool places and whatnot like that, but nothing I've ever done had me ready to be able to work on this international level.

- So yeah, you've worked with athletes.

You just mentioned that.

So what made this experience unique being on that international level?

- Yeah, that was just it because not only were we working with the athletes as mental health officers.

We also were working with other mental health officers from different parts of the world.

So you're learning in these cohorts in these groups with the experts from Germany, from from Sweden, from Ghana.

All of the places that you see on the map, these people are there, and you're learning their best secrets.

We all have houses in the village.

So you have a Team USA.

You have Turkey.

You have Ghana.

You have all these places.

And you see in the inside sometimes there's special places, you know, for the athletes to go, whether it's for recovery or things of that nature.

But we had a special place specifically for mental health in our athlete resource center, and we got to see how other countries did that.

So being able to get that knowledge helps me better, not only for during the Olympics, but even post-Olympics.

- So talk about the challenges that you saw from the athletes.

What were they facing over there?

I mean, it's gotta be an astounding amount of pressure doing it for your country, doing it in front of the world.

- Yeah, it's like nothing... What you said, it's the three.

I gotta do it for myself.

I gotta do it for my family.

And then I gotta do it for my country.

And it's one thing, you said, "Well, you've been doing this your whole life," but you walk out.

It's 80,000 people in the stadium.

You walk out.

It's 40,000, numbers that you've never seen before.

And because it's like, you know, the old Eminem, you only got one shot, so everything you've been doing is based on this one time.

One little hiccup can prevent a whole lifetime of dreams.

So you talk about the pressures that the athletes have.

It's that pressure to perform, but it's also that pressure to be able to enjoy the moment while they're in the moment before it's gone, and that's not always the easiest.

- And then you add the element with all the Black athletes that were over there too from the United States and even maybe those outside of the US too.

I'm not sure how much you work- - No, no, it's a dual capacity with that because this is one of the things we say.

Sometimes we complain about the USA as African Americans, and it is some things to complain about.

But when we look at the resources that we have compared to some of the other athletes, you also realize, man, it's some blessings in some of the things that we have here.

But with that being stated, athletes go through more than just athletic competition.

We understand how social media can be a double-edged sword.

It can be your best friend as a brand, but also you have those anonymous bullies.

So now people are being bullied.

Now people are given death threats for performing well or not performing well that they have to sit with.

But from other countries, from African countries, from other small Caribbean countries, they might not have the mental health officer numbers that the US has.

So you say, "How do they deal with all of those things?"

- So go back again.

Talk about some of those things that you've learned from your experiences in dealing with these athletes, getting experience from other countries, seeing how they deal with mental health.

What do you take from that, and how can you bring that here?

- Yeah, from the International Olympic Committee, they bring all the people together, something kind of called like a Safe Sport and where you just go about what are the best practices, so dealing with trauma, dealing with anxiety, dealing with depression, dealing with suicide.

So we look and see what other people are doing across the country.

It's just like if you're a researcher, and you're looking at journals.

Instead of just looking at America, you go over to the British Journal.

You go over to this journal from Japan.

You go over from this journal, whatever country.

So just being able to have that kind of brain power in one room to be able to ask questions at one time.

And the pretty cool part about it, it was sort of like the UN.

You had this little ear pieces in, so if they weren't speaking in your language, you had a natural translator automatically.

- Nice, nice, nice.

And were there any specific challenges with specific sports?

Are there any more challenges with one as opposed to another, like volleyball, basketball, swimming, anything like that?

Or is it kind of just all the ones- - No, no, no, that's a great question because what people will see is they see the Olympics, and that's the USOPC.

But under that USOPC, it's an umbrella, what we call NGBs.

Those are national governing bodies.

So tennis is its own governing body, swimming, track, bowling, all of these things.

And so now all NGBs aren't built the same.

So you know gymnastics.

You know swimming.

You know track.

They get the money.

Now for some of those smaller NGBs, maybe like a archery, maybe like artistic gymnastic, they don't always have the money and the funding that some of these other people are doing.

So that can become an issue for some of the athletes, just making sure they have all of the resources that they need.

- We got a couple minutes left.

I want you to talk a little bit about the fun you had.

I see these pins you have here.

Just talk about your quest in getting all of those.

- No, and that's what we talk about, the international experience.

Sometimes you say, "Well, how do I approach a person?

How do I talk about a person?"

So each country gives you these pins from your own, and this is where you also recognize how much America is respected and loved across the world.

These things became like currency.

And so what you do is they say, "Ooh, we want a pin," and when you would trade a pin, you would trade a story.

You would trade, you know, some kind of greeting.

And it was about what I think the Olympic spirit was about.

How do we bring everybody together in competition, so instead of being in the art of war, we had the art of sport, where you could do a prowess, but it was in a beautiful and a safe environment?

And those pins just represents all of the different beautiful people and countries that we met.

- [Earl] If there's one thing that you took from this experience, what is that?

- You know what, it's not one thing, and that's the one thing.

It felt like one day.

We always say like, you know when time doesn't make sense to you, you say, "Man, this was so good.

I can't believe it went this quick."

We were there all those days, but it felt like one big day, and that's when I knew I was in the moment.

You know how you drive in Milwaukee.

You see Allen-Bradley clocking.

You're like, "Wow."

Well, when we would drive back and forth, I'd see the Eiffel Tower.

And I think that was the thing, is just like seeing some of these things as a little child that you always saw wondering if I could ever get to it, having those dreams come true.

So the thing that I got was, hey, keep dreaming because you never know what's out there.

The things that you think are not available to you, they're more than available to you.

If I can do it from 53206, everybody can do it.

- Amen to that.

Anything else you wanna share?

- No, you know what, it's a pleasure to be back home, and like I said, I am grateful to be an American citizen, but I'm even more so committed to making sure America becomes the person who she said she was on the paper of our Founding Fathers.

- All right, Dr. Smith, thank you so much for being here.

- Hey, it's a pleasure, Earl.

(upbeat music) - That's our show for this month.

next week, remember Milwaukee PBS presents "Table talk," a 1036 special in partnership with Marquette University.

Also make sure you're following us on all our social media platforms.

Find those and much more on our website at milwaukeepbs.org.

On behalf of the "Black Nouveau" team, I'm Earl Arms.

Have a great evening.