(MUSIC) (MUSIC) - Hello, and welcome to "Minds That Matter," and I'm with the man himself, Mr.

Alvin Brooks.

How you doing Alvin?

- I'm doing great.

Kevin, doing great.

Good to be with you.

- Good to be with you, my friend.

You know, we're going to talk about your life some.

You've had a great life, a big life.

Long life.

What's it like to be 93 years old?

- Well, it is pretty much like to be 92 years old, (all laugh) but truly blessed.

God and I... 25 years ago, if you said I was gonna live this long... And I never thought I would outlive my wife who passed away 12 years ago.

But it's been an interesting ride, and enjoyed all of it.

Some ups and downs, some bumps in the road, but the smooth times outnumber the bumps, and that's what life is all about.

So I've love people, and love to work with people and have loved living and enjoyed every moment of it.

- You can really tell that when the documentary we made, where I think it really exemplifies that in so many ways.

And, you know, you've had so many different lives in your life, you know, you've achieved so many different things.

I wanna talk a bit about growing up in Arkansas and then later in Kansas City.

You had a kind of an amazing kind of discovery about your family, a real reversal in movie.

- Yes.

- Movie terms.

It's a real reversal, where you discovered your mother and father were not your mother and father.

Talk about that.

- Right.

Well, I am the son of a 14-year-old mother, Thomascine Gilder.

17-year-old father, Wilbur Herring.

But I didn't know either one of them.

When I was born, May 3rd, 1932, 4:30 AM in the home of the Brooks', Little Rock, Arkansas, Pulaski County.

My mother was pregnant, and had moved from Miami, Florida where she had gotten pregnant by my father.

She was living with a great aunt.

And so at that time, I know in Black communities, if a girl got pregnant outta wedlock, she was sent to live with a relative.

So my aunt sent my mother to live with her, with my mother's older sister in North Little Rock, Arkansas, right across the road from the Brooks'.

My mother's brother-in-law, had some problems with a 14-year-old, with the teenager being in his home pregnant.

- Sure.

- So my aunt, my mother's sister went across the road and asked the Brooks' if my mother could stay there until I was born.

So I was born in their home, And of course, I grew up as a Brooks, Alvin Lee Brooks.

- Yeah.

- And it wasn't until I was 22 years old in the police academy that I got the letter from, this lady was trying to reach me and this kind of thing.

And so I responded.

And we corresponded there by mail for, that was in, I think about August of 1954, in about October in one of her letters, she wanted to know a lot about my family.

How was my mom, all these kind of things.

And I went to talk to my dad and I said, "You know, this lady's writing me asked a lot of questions about, I don't know what she's talking about.

She asked about you and asked about mother, and asked about whether or not, what was I doing, all this kind of thing."

And he said, "What's her name?"

And when I said, "Thoma-" I didn't get out the “scine”, he turned a light shade of gray.

- Wow.

- Eyes watered up and he got choked up.

He composed himself, and he said, "You know, if I were you son, I wouldn't be responding to these kind of things.

You never know what their intentions are."

And I went home and I said to my wife, I said, "You know, it's kinda odd when I mentioned that letter that Ms.

Davis been writing me and dad looked awful funny when I said told him her name."

So I didn't say anything else.

Then in October it was, I got a letter because I began to correspond.

I told how many children I had, I was in college.

I was saying I'm on the police academy.

And in one of the letters, and she said, "I hope I'll know my grandkids better than I know my son."

So I said to my wife, Carol, I said, "Am I reading this right?

What is she talking about?"

And we began to correspond by phone.

She never mentioned my father, Wilbur Moore Herring.

And she said, "Would you able to be able to, can I come to visit you this Christmas, 1954?"

So I said, "Sure."

Christmas day 1954, I just gotten off.

I worked the dogwatch 12:00 to 8:00.

And the kids weren't supposed to come down, the two oldest, and then the baby, was being carried by my wife.

When I walked in the door, I was “Ho, ho ho, Santa Claus is here”.

And they come running down, you know.

I get dressed down except my T-shirt and house shoes.

And every time the phone would ring, I would say, "Merry Christmas, Brooks' residence.

Merry Christmas."

And just rang and rang.

And all of a sudden when I said, "Merry Christmas, Brooks' residence," I can hear in the background, "Braniff, TWA, Continental."

And the voice said, "Alvin?"

I said, "Yes."

She said, "This is your mother, I'm at the airport.

can you pick me up?"

And I said, "Yes."

'Cause I knew she was coming.

She said Christmas day.

So I just put on clothes.

It was cold that Christmas morning.

And the airport was right across the river, and thank God weren't too many Black folks traveling that Christmas (Kevin laughs) And there she was, red two-piece suit, fur, a white blouse and a red tie with a fur across her arm and her luggage.

And when I looked and I saw her 'cause I saw me, and we hugged and cried there in the terminal and went home.

And of course, it was... Because she had talked to Carol, my wife, on the phone, and even talked to the kids.

So it was glorious occasion that morning.

And later on, my dad was supposed to come over.

My dad was a drinker.

In fact, it took him away from here many years too early.

And I said now, "Mother, dads gonna come over here."

And I got to thinking now is Cluster Brooks my father?

It was not unusual for a older man to marry, or have a child by a young woman.

- Sure.

- And I wrestled with that, and my wife and I wrestled with that because my dad had never been, my biological father had never been mentioned.

My dad come over and he was “in his sin” he'd been drinking.

- Yeah.

- He was celebrating before he got there.

And so she said, "Don't introduce me except Ms Davis."

And so just as we got into the dessert, she said, "I'm Thomascine Gilder."

He jumped up from the table screaming and crying, went up.

We always had a room for him at the house.

- Yeah.

- He didn't live with us, but we had a room.

He went up there and closed the door, and he was just screaming and crying.

And so I started to go up.

She said, "Let me go up."

And 15, 20 minutes, the screaming and crying stopped.

They came back down.

And my dad said that, I was hopeful that, your mother and I was hopeful that we'd be gone before you found out we weren't your parents.

But I'm still wondering about, now who is my daddy?

Is it Cluster Brooks who was 30 years, 35 years older than my mother?

And eventually got around to it.

- Wow.

- And my mother, when she left, she said she was gonna make everything she could to find my father.

- Yeah.

- She was getting married, it was in Memphis, Tennessee, which is a home of all the Gilders.

Seven, two brothers and five sisters.

And so she found him nine years later.

- Wow.

You know, to change the subject here a little bit, you were one of the first Black policemen in Kansas City.

- Well, I've been introduced as the first Black police.

First Black police was in 1874 and I'm not quite that old.

(all laugh) I'm not quite there.

- Yeah.

- But one of the few.

- One of the first.

- When I came around June 1, 1954, it was about 18 or 20 Black officers.

- [Kevin] Okay.

- If that, if that.

- Sure.

And so what was it like to be a Black policeman in the 1950s?

- Well, I hit the streets in September of 1954, 16 weeks into the academy.

And we were segregated.

The Black officer could only ride a couple of districts.

You can make calls in those other districts, a white officer could ride our district or ride with us, but we couldn't ride with the white officers.

Now, a few years before I came on in '54, in mid 40s, a Black officer couldn't arrest a white person.

You could take 'em into custody and wait to the white officer come to take him in.

You could appear in court against him, those kind of thing.

- So you could detain a white person- - [Alvin] Detain, detain.

- But you couldn't arrest a white person.

- Well, physically you couldnt.

- Yes.

- You were under arrest, you know, you stay here and, you know.

But now, when I came on, it was different.

And I accredited Loyd Degraffenreid, who became the first Black detective sergeant, who was one of my mentors, when he was hired in early '40s.

At that time, there was a Board of Police Commissioners.

It may be known that Kansas City Missouri Police Force is the only city in the nation now, that's under state control.

It came in after the end of the Pendergast days sweeping house and then it went to the state and never has come back.

And so he was interviewed by the Board of Police Commissioners, as was I. And when they got through interviewing him, and they said, "Well, Loyd, anything you wanna ask?"

He said, "I wanna know if I can arrest anybody."

And Loyd said, they looked at each other kind of strange and said, "Well, excuse me, son, we need to talk about this."

Came back and said you can arrest anyone.

So when I came on, you arrest anyone, but you were still relegated to those two districts- - Oh, yeah.

- Majority Black districts.

And racism was at its highest.

I saw it, racism as at its worst on the police department.

What happened to Black men in particular, and what happened to Black ladies, being prostitutes, whose main source of income were white men.

And the white officers would catch them in the act someplace and let the white man go and then charge the Black woman for whatever, for prostitution and didn't need a witness because the officer had caught her in the act.

And a couple other black officers, William Bumpus and Gene Buie, they called us the three Bs.

We're all the same age, but except Bumpus born in '33 and Buie and I were born in '32.

Buie and I knew each other from school.

Segregated school.

Bumpus had just gotten outta the service, and came on.

I came on first, Bumpus and Buie, and we were just at the end of the Pendergast Mafia era.

And we saw a lot of that going on.

We said, we're gonna do something about this because they were using Black men and women as fronts to run the gambling and the fencing and the prostitution and the drugs.

And so we took it upon ourselves as young Black officers to make a difference.

And we made a lot of, we never mistreated anybody.

We never violated anybody's rights.

We've done a lot of things unethical (Kevin laughs) as relates to police work.

- [Kevin] Sure.

- And we gave those folks who were fronting for white folks, either city hall, the police department or the mafia, we gave 'em hell.

And they called us the three Bs.

And Loyd Degraffenreid, who was my mentor on the police department, one of my idols, and met with just Bumpus and myself.

- Sure.

- We were on duty and he came up and he said, we'd done something was very unique and we would've made good TV series at that time.

(Kevin laughs) And he said, what y'all did, the last thing was something else.

Everybody's talking about it.

- [Kevin] Wow.

- But I want you to know, watch your back.

Inside the department as well as outside the department, 'cause you're on everybody's list.

And so we got together, we always went by Buie's house and told everybody, what we're gonna do?

Just keep on doing what we are doing.

- You know, that when you tell that story about that period of the '50s, and, you know, the '50s are such a nostalgic kind of period anyway but then you put you as a policeman in the middle of that and one of the few Black policemen.

And this is before the Civil Rights movement.

I mean, this is- - Oh yeah.

- This is the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement.

- But now Brown versus Board of Education, 17th of May, 1954.

- '54.

- I had finished my second year of the all Black junior college.

We couldn't go to the white junior college.

The Black junior college was the third floor of Lincoln High School.

But we had more PhDs and masters degrees in those two schools than they had in the other white schools.

And our teachers, they didn't teach for a living.

They taught for us to learn and tried to prepare us for the day, even these kind of days in the good old USA, the land of free, the home of the brave.

And it was kind of interesting how that whole thing... So I went and I got graduated in May from junior college with AA degree and then joined the police department in June.

Was supposed to start in January but I wanted to finish and get my AA degree.

And to go to school was one thing, to go and continue school, to get my undergraduate degree and eventually my masters, it was frowned upon in the police department.

I remember asking my lieutenant, I said, "Lieutenant, can I get a straight 4:00 to 12:00 shift, because I wanna go to school?"

He said, "Well, Brooks what do you wanna be?

You wanna be a cop or you wanna be an educator?"

I said, "Can't I do both?"

"Not around here," he said, but I fooled him.

- Wow.

- I did.

I did.

- And you know that when you talk about, you kind of used the term the best of times and the worst of times, you know.

- Right, yeah, Charles Dickens and his "Tale of Two Cities."

- And, you know, the fact that there were these PhDs, Black PhDs that were teaching in high school and were your teachers and were in the neighborhood.

- Yeah, living in the same neighborhood.

- And because of segregation.

- Yes.

- You know, talk about the virtues of segregation and the difficulties and disappointments of segregation.

- Well, it just started, if I wanna go back that far, before even when I was a kid.

And in the film preview that you saw where my white friends and we lived three blocks from Milton Memorial Elementary School.

I lived a little more than a mile.

And when they went to Central High School, which was just now about eight, nine blocks, eight blocks from where we lived, I had to catch the street car to either go to R.T.

Coles Vocational where I started the eighth grade, or go to Lincoln High School.

cause I had a car my sophomore year in high school.

And I think about the relationship that I had with police officers growing up, even till I was 16 years old.

And I often ask this question, and even my dad said, "Well, you got to be crazy, boy, going to police department, you know, the way they treat us."

And I had experienced that from seven or eight years old up until I was 16.

And an incident happened when I was 16 with my cousin and all that.

And so having the police officer that treated us wrong and misused us ended up on my shelf on the police department.

(Kevin laughs) And when they see the full film, it's when I confronted him, he said, "No, it wasn't me," and I said, "Yes, it was."

- Yeah.

- And I told him, I said, you still wear your hat cock to the left and you still wear the glove on your left hand, and you're the only one that use the baton and the ring on his belt.

And I said, "Well, don't worry, I got your back."

In the film- - Yeah.

- I imagine I said, "I got your back."

- Well, then, and that was the thing that I think your stories that you give about that time, and you know, how you're a kid in Kansas City and you're being really abused by the police.

- Oh, yes.

- And then you become a policeman, and then you see those same policemen that used to abuse you.

- [Alvin] Yeah.

- Now you're a member of the force with them.

- And they're expecting me to protect them and expect me to be... When I was a detective, I didn't have to carry a gun half the time.

- [Kevin] Wow.

- And the people didn't know it.

The police officers didn't wanna work with me because I didn't carry a gun.

But I knew everybody.

- Yeah.

- And I got along with everybody and sometimes I'd carry a gun and most of the time I wouldn't.

And one time my sergeant who made me take his colt 45 with a shoulder holster on Easter Sunday, I was looking for a rapist.

And he said, "Put this gun on."

And I get on there and I started the gang unit within the police department.

And the gang started fighting.

I'm separated.

My gun slipped out and went across the floor.

So it was Lionel Hampton was playing that day.

- Wow.

- And I knew the MC from Kansas City.

I went up to say, "Hey, man, tell Hampton to stop the band."

And I went around and they hired Black deputy sheriffs and Black police officers to work the dance and I had them on each of the doors.

And he got up and announced that Detective Brooks has lost his gun and everybody, ooh, hey, oh.

(Kevin laughs) And the last time I saw it was flying across the floor.

And I separated these two gang members.

And it was successful.

And after that, people started throwing stuff up on the stage and everything, so he said, "Brooks, I got to go."

I said, "Okay."

So a young lady came up to me, a teenager, 15 years old, and she was holding the gun like that.

Said- - (laughs) Oh wow.

- "Officer Brooks, is this your gun?"

I think I had $27 in my pocket.

I took it out and paid to give it to her.

Somebody called my sergeant, George White, who was white.

A person of a lighter hue.

- Sure.

- So when I get back, 'cause I decided it's all over.

I'm not gonna even look for the suspect, now.

And I get back and he starts cursing.

And you (blabbering) I said, well, I didn't wanna take the damn gun anyway.

You're the one who told me to take it.

(Kevin laughs) You're the one told me, (Alvin blabbering) and, you know, I got the gun back on here.

So by that time I said, "Well, I'm gone."

And I went around the corner to the office and put out and handed the gun.

And he was just cussing now because they had the gun and all the way to the elevator, he was cursing.

- You said you were Andy Griffith before Andy Griffith was Andy Griffith.

- Right, before Andy Griffith was Andy Griffith.

That's right, yes.

- The "Sheriff Without A Gun."

- That's right, yes.

- You know, it seems to me that that approach that you took to community service and policing really kind of set up Ad Hoc Committee Against Crime.

- But before that, when I was still a police officer, I started the officer friendly program.

- Okay.

- And my officer, fellow officers, both Black and white.

See, you're crazy.

You given that time.

But I was in, just before I made detective, I was in uniform and if I was working nights, I'd get up at midday before and go to one of the schools.

I knew all this 'cause it was still segregated and yeah, well, it was after '54, but it's still segregated- - Yeah.

- Like it is today.

You know.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- We didn't move for desegregation with all deliberate speed.

- [Kevin] Right.

- So, you know, but so I would go, and in uniform to various schools and sit on with the kids.

Make sure that my cartridge and bullets were in my car and I'd go and sit and talk to 'em, and kids knew me.

So when I, you know, went on later on, and then I did my practice teaching at the all Black school, Lincoln High School.

- Yeah.

- A teaching certificate.

So I was able to segue into this whole bit of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime.

And it was the spring of 1977 when 10 women of the evening, one white, nine Black were killed, prostitutes.

- [Kevin] Murdered.

- Either drugs and prostitution.

And at the same time, when New York and New Jersey, the Son of Sam who was killing prostitutes.

And the Black community here in Kansas City thought that it was either police officers or someone who was a serial killer.

And so Al Lomax, who was a sergeant assigned to work these cases, he and his squad, one of my protegees.

And so I said, "And what do you think?"

I said, "This is not a serial killer."

"I agree with you," Al said.

We found out that ones that were doing the killing were either pimps or dope dealers.

Someone would use his dope up, and didn't turn in money.

Same thing with the pimp.

And we called the meeting on the 3rd of November 1977.

I did.

I was assistant city manager now, back with the city right after the riot, it was was '68.

And what happened, one of the council people, I told about the city council person, and I gave her the letter that I sent out to 60 people with a broad cross section of the Black community.

And she gave it to the reporter that Monday evening.

Tuesday morning, it was in the paper, I'm sorry, that Tuesday evening.

At that time, we had two papers, the Times and the Star in Kansas City.

It appeared in Wednesday morning's paper, the 3rd of November, all hell broke was what we had.

We never got a chance to say anything.

Everybody was just twisting and turning in front of cameras.

You know, everybody liked to show off in front of cameras anyway.

- Yes.

- Did a cameo appearance on the camera.

And so finally, the next meeting, that was November 3rd, the next meeting, about two weeks later, now fewer people, the cameras weren't there.

Finally, in January when formed the Ad Hoc Against Crime.

We developed because of my relationship as a former cop, although I wasn't well liked within the white ranks of the police department, I did have some friends.

And so talking to the chief, who you saw in the film and all, and we became close.

And so we were able to have this meeting and formed, we made a presentation to the Board of Police Commissions in January of 1978, raised $30,000 for a reward fund, had a hotline and everything.

And we helped Lomax team solve five or six of those homicides and a number of other crimes.

And we all volunteers.

We got somebody later on.

He brought George H.W.

Bush, the president to Kansas City in January, I was appointed to a three year term by him to the President Drug Advisory Council.

And he came here and I had a luncheon where we were introduced and was sworn in.

And he was bragging about me in Kansas City Ad Hoc when he's here.

He said, "Oh, you got anything to say?"

I say, "Only one thing, Mr.

President, 'cause I know why you appointed me because you ran outta Black Republicans."

(Kevin laughs) He laughed at me.

He laughed at me.

An honorable man in spite of the one term, honorable man, I saw (indistinct).

So that's how the Ad Hoc started.

- And you know, the work you did with Ad Hoc, what's so amazing about that, you know, you went up to crack houses, to the door, knocked on them, talked to the folks the inside.

You know, that's dangerous kind of work.

- That's what you heard the police say, and they were trying to say that.

He advised me, he said, "Al, you can't do that.

These folks will kill you."

I said, "That's not all.

We don't want you to be there to protect us.

Just make sure we don't have to stop the stop sign and stop, there's gonna be 25 or 30 cars of us.

And there's a group called Black Men with my grandson and the artist Damon Brooks, he's somewhere here in the audience.

He's the one that named the group Black Men Together.

And he was a teenager at time.

Now he's retired, old age and decrepit and all like that.

(Kevin laughs) But he's one that named it Black Men.

- Yeah.

- These was about 40, 50 Black men.

And on a Saturday, we worked undercover with one of the detectives who was a captain at the time and found out where the crack, and we had people calling in.

- Yeah.

- It's a crack car, gives the license number.

So they run the license number.

So we even do some, not buying, but going up, people coming out, brothers coming out.

What they got?

There's got crack in there, they got pot in there.

And we closed over 300 crack houses and made USA Today.

- [Kevin] Today.

- [Alvin] Today's report, cover, you saw it.

- And you know, the thing about the work that you guys did and shutting down those houses and turning neighborhoods around, and... and why do you think it's so hard to do that now?

What has changed when you were doing this in the '80s and '90s, what has changed from that time to now?

- Well, I think some of the actions of police officers around this nation.

Kansas City is just a microcosm of other urban areas that have large African American population, particularly the race of Black men and the millions of dollars that Kansas State Police Department has paid out for violation of civil rights of Black men, they could have hired another a hundred police officers or more.

And I think that that was around, and all around the country and, you know, Minneapolis with- - George Floyd.

- George Floyd, And the one was shot in bed and - Yes.

- There's a good chance that person gonna be, anyway.

- Yeah.

- I guess gets political and I don't wanna get into that now, later maybe but.

(Kevin laughs) and I think that has- - Yeah.

- Done two things, several things.

One in particular is shortage of Black police officers because of that.

They don't wanna be a part of that.

So it's hard to recruit Black officers, men and women.

Also the reputation in terms of the Black community.

That's why you have so many unsolved homicides.

Nobody talk because people don't know how to talk to people.

- You think that they don't know how to talk to people in the neighborhood to make them open up.

- No.

No, the relationship.

- And maybe give information.

- The riot in, it started in 9th of April 1968 at the foot of City Hall.

I was there and the police was a- - This is the riot after Dr.

King?

- The riot after Dr.

King.

And I was there when this tear gas started, when I ordered buses from Mr.

JD Williams, who had the busing contract with the Kansas School District.

And the first bus that I called, and they arrived.

Police officer threw tear gas, in the bus, and then went out to holy Catholic church.

And the kids were in there.

Reverend Timothy Gibbons, who was the priest, opened up on Friday, Saturday.

They had Teen Town and had bowling alley, had jukebox and Knick Knack bar and all like that.

And so they were kids.

One of the Black radio station KPRS, KPRT, Carter Broadcast Group.

John L. Frazier was a known DJ, air person out there and so I was the last speaker.

He got up and said that Father Gibbons had opened the church and so the bus is supposed to take them there.

Police went out there and the kids began to heckle the police.

They shot tear gas in the basement of the church.

The first Black elected councilman, Bruce Watkins, went out there to find a tear gas canister in the church.

Kids were just coughing, going to the hospital.

And then there were six Black men killed.

One killed on the ninth and then the other five killed on the 10th.

No grand jury was ever convened.

Nothing else.

And the report that came out in August 15th, 1968 was supposed to... cause and all that.

it gave good...the causes because based on the 1968 recurring report.

But the thing of it is that it was not real, all-out effort- - Right.

- To try to mend that... that gap between the Black communities.

- And you feel like that divide is still there.

- It's still there.

That's why you got probably a little over 50% of the homicides... The majority of the homicides in Kansas City are Black males.

60% of the homicides, you can predict.

And when I talk to Black audience, I tell 'em, I said, anytime somebody else can predict your behavior, you're no longer in control.

So if you can predict and you can predict and with the Black women, white women are safe, Hispanic women are safe.

Now with the large Hispanic population coming in, Hispanic men have now gotten on the chart but it still hasn't reduced the number of Black men.

And I am convinced that if that was happening to white men in a place, something would be done about it.

There would've been up an uproar.

But these are Black men and so what?

And all of them aren't criminals or drug dealers.

- Sure.

- Drive-by shootings, innocent people killed, those kind of things.

- Yeah, you know, the work that you've done has been kind of the biggest complicated kind of work that there is.

But, you know, quickly, can you kind of just say as a whole, when you look back on that time and all from being a policeman to the unique growing up in Kansas City and Ad Hoc and being a, you know, a community leader, what do you come away with now?

What's your big takeaway?

Could you quickly kind of tell us?

- Well, I've never seen myself as a community leader.

You know, it sounds good and if you believe that, fine.

You know, but whomever.

- [Kelvin] Sure.

- And it is believed and it sounds good when they tell me about it, but you don't do what you do for the sake of getting editorials on television or on paper, people talking about you.

You do it because sure thing, it's the right thing to do.

And the Brooks raised me that way.

And so I've tried to live that kind of a life.

But I think as I look back over time and I see where we're today, I don't believe we've come as far as we think we have and I think that's a tragedy.

And I think it's because we... You know, in one of the great books, two of the great books, it says in the beginning that God created heaven and earth and everything therein.

The fish in the sea, the fowl in the air, the creature that crawl.

Now it's interesting that the creator made those things first and then made humankind.

How?

In the likeness and image of the creator.

That means all, not only 330 million of us in America, but six billion of us across planet earth are connected to each other if we believe that we are the descendants of that one creator.

I've tried live that and whatever I have done, Kevin, has been with that in mind.

And you see one of my daughters said in there, that's how I see people and that's why I see people just as people.

Now I will not lie to you and tell you I don't see color.

Any time people say, I don't see color, they just lied.

- Yes.

- You got to see color.

- Or you're blind.

- Yeah, you're blind but I told you you're blind.

- And you can hear their voice sometime and tell what they are.

But that should not, if we are people of faith, then it shouldn't make any difference how we speak, what our gender is, the color of our skin.

You know, it should not matter.

But we've not learned yet.

And I suspect that most of the nation would see itself as being Christian, most of the nation.

Now, to me, that means something me than just going and say I'm Catholic most of the time.

And my late wife and I, there are about 80 descendants of ours.

In fact, this year we just had one great grand, got five more expecting.

These folks are just like rabbits.

But about 40 plus have been going since my wife's been gone 12 years.

But every child, we have our own, six, one boy who's been gone 23 years and our five, we tried to teach just what I'm saying here to you.

And even the grandkids.

But after that, we lost 'em.

Something happened.

And because the grandkids didn't teach their kids what we taught them.

- Sure.

- And then of course, all this other, social media and all that has had an effect on 'em.

- Yeah.

So Alvin, we're gonna take questions from the audience about the great Alvin Brooks.

- Alvin, you can leave the great off.

My mother named me Alvin Brooks but that's okay.

Alright.

Thank you.

- I think we're ready.

- [Kevin] I think we're ready for our first question.

- Yes, my name is Carl Frazier, executive director of Topeka Center for Peace and Justice.

I've been in Topeka since '06, but before then, I knew a lot about Mr.

Alvin Brooks.

And some sermons or speeches you never forget.

I remember when you did a speech called A Dream Deferred- - Many years ago.

That stayed on my mind many years.

So do you have any dreams that still deferred or God has blessed you so all your dreams have come to reality?

- Reverend Frazier, thank you for the questions.

I'm a dreamer, I'm a realist.

And the question becomes, how do you put those dreams into reality?

Normally can't do it but I'm still a dreamer.

- Okay.

- I've lived long enough to see the worst and I can't say I've lived long enough to see the best, but I've seen some progress.

But it's gonna take not only those of us who are descendants of enslaved people or descendants of the indigenous people to bring about the change, which means there's got to be some self-examination.

Who am I in relationship to others?

How do I feel about this group and this group and that and that?

And if there's some negative, then that means I got to work on self.

- [Frazier] Yeah.

- And one of the scriptures said love thy neighbor as thyself, but that means you love yourself first.

You learn about yourself first, and then you can love your neighbor.

And your neighbor is not just a person of the same color, the same faith, or the same gender as you.

Your neighbor is who you meet.

And I think that's what the prophet meant when he said that.

And so I wish I could say a lot better things about who we are and how we progressed but the truth shall set you free.

- Amen.

- You have to tell the truth.

- Amen.

- And I think we are far from what we could be, but it's gonna take all of us to get there.

- Okay.

Got one more question.

Several months ago, I was driving to Arkansas and I heard this song by Michael Jackson that said about the man in the mirror.

So when you look in the mirror, who do you see?

- Well, when I got up this morning, I looked in the mirror, I said, mirror, mirror on the wall, am I the most beautiful one of them all?

(audience laughing) And the mirror didn't say anything, so I know it's true.

(audience laughing) - Thank you, sir.

- You know, you mentioned that that thing, Alvin about, you know, about how things have progressed, but things aren't perfect.

And so oftentimes when people talk about the state of things, and if you don't say how great things have gotten, people feel disappointed.

- Yes.

- Should they feel disappointed?

- I think so.

You know, as I said, we made progress, but we are far from what we really could be.

And I think that those of us of faith have to realize that and still ask the question, who is our brother, who is our sister?

And if your brother and your sister, you don't see them as equals, then something's wrong with you, not your brother and your sister.

So I'm disappointed.

I wish I could say, God, we have arrived.

We're still on the highway.

- Do you think we're ever going to arrive?

- I'm an optimist, but I'm a realist.

And unless we become conscious of where we are, with the divisiveness based on race and religion and politics, I'm afraid we'll still be kicking that can down the road when you're 110.

- I think we have our next question.

- Hey, thank you for doing this.

My name is Spencer Duncan.

You could have just become a police officer, done the job, retired, lived the life after that but at some point you made a conscious decision to be more than that to the community.

And I'm curious if you can talk about what that journey was when you decided you could give more to the community than just work the job and retire.

- Thank you for your question.

And I think it has some real meaning to each one of us.

That question could be raised to anyone in this audience, regardless of their status in life, whether they're retired or whatever, whether this is a business person or someone... I don't say just this, just that because there's an equal there.

But I think that I never forget where I came from.

I never forget who I am.

That makes me recognize the fact that there's some ways to go and maybe I could help get there.

I'm a person of faith and I don't say it just to be saying it.

I try to live it.

And I try to do what I know is right.

I usually say I'm sorry or apologize or, you know, I didn't mean it.

And all those... And I think the older you get and you reflect back over your life.

Just today, I was listening to... My late wife and I got married as teenagers.

We were married for 63 years and we'd have been 73 this past August 30th, 2024.

And I was reminiscing as I often do, and I was thinking about a couple of songs.

Our theme song was Nat King Cole's "Too Young."

You all can look at that.

And it says at the end, because we were young, people were wondering, why do you wanna get married and this and that.

We didn't know.

We just wanted to get married.

But we made the sacrifice of being husband and wife and children.

But the last part of that King Cole song says they found that we were not too young at all.

We made it.

And I think that I've seen life as I reflect back over the years and I thank God that I lived long enough to see and reflect some of my own shortcomings and be able to maybe help other folk to reach the pinnacle of what they want to be.

And so these years, as I look back and I separate the good from the bad, and theres more good than bad but the bad lingers on.

They'll scar you up.

You have to learn how to move on beyond that and only your faith will get you there and good friends of faith.

So I hope I've answered your question, but I think that we all need to do some self-examination.

Who am I in relationship to myself and my family and others who I really don't know?

And I think the older I've gotten, the more and more I reflect back some things that I think that I could have done better.

Sometimes I shouldn't have said what I said, but it was right, at least I thought so at the time.

But I like your question.

I hope I've answered it somewhat.

- Yeah.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Hi, my name is Karen Hiller.

A lot of times people talk about going into the community to see what we can do to build and make that lasting change.

I'm interested in the Ad Hoc program that you did.

You know, sometimes cities start it, sometimes it's police, sometimes it's community.

Could you describe that program and then talk a little bit about whether you think that program itself would still be valuable to continue today or what you think might work better?

- Well, thank you for your question.

My master's thesis was social organization and social change, the role of intermediary groups.

And one of my advisors who was chair of the sociology department didn't think it was literary enough.

I didn't write it to be literary, you know.

But my other two members of my three members, he didn't want to even sign off on it.

We became very close friends after that.

And he asked me a lot of stuff about what I had written.

So when I took my master's and normally, if there are those in the audience here who had do thesis for undergraduate degree or graduate degree or whatever the case might be, normally you write just to get out of there.

But I wrote it because I thought one day I'd get a chance to put into practice what I had researched and written with regard to the role of intermediary groups.

So when this came with these 10 women who were murdered and I said to my wife, I said, "You know, I'm gonna work.

I think I can do something here."

And I put it into practice.

So we became the intermediary group between the police, the courts, probation and parole, the community most important and all the FBI, the ATF, people were calling us because we, "Could you do this, could you do that?"

And that's how it got started.

Now, I've been gone for 12 years and a young man has exceeded me, has taken it another direction.

That's what he wants to do.

But at the time, it came on right at the right time, to the extent, as I said, it brought George H.W.

Bush to Kansas City in January of 2009 and Bill Bennett, who was the drug czar under his administration in October of '89.

And I think we became a national model.

I think there's still, in urban areas, I think there's still room for an Ad Hoc Group Against Crime.

You may not wanna call it that, but the work is what's important.

So is there a group in that community that can be respected enough and respect itself of others that you can be with the police.

And oftentimes personally, I mean I've had one person with one of the leadership said that because I was a former cop, that I couldn't be fair when it came to calling it like it was but I always did and even if it didn't go well with that.

So I think that's how it got started and that's the success it had.

And I think in 2025 and on, if large urban communities that have a relationship that's not good with police, whether it's in the Hispanic community or the African American community, any community, I think if there's a group that can come and be that bridge, if you will.

You know the name of my book is "Binding Us Together."

That will bind us together.

Did I just throw that out there?

- You just happened to.

Thank you.

- I just happen to remember the title of that book.

Thank you.

Thank you.

- I think here's our next question, Alvin.

- Okay.

- Thank you very much for coming and my name is Kathy Woods.

I have a question for you regarding the young men and women who are police officers today.

And I really am picturing a person that I know and love who has gone from Topeka and is working in Kansas City now, who is a minority and I am concerned about him every day.

So what would you say to all of them and maybe also specifically to the members of the force who are a minority?

- Well, it's a lot different in the last few years than when I was on.

We've had a Black police chief, we had Black deputy chiefs, Black officers, men and women over division and that kind of thing.

So things have changed to the good.

I think that if you're really interested in dealing with people, as Charles Dickens says in the worst of times and the best of time, and I say this respectfully and the worst of people and the best of people.

Police is where you can do it, but you've got to... And being an officer of color in an American police department is difficult sometimes and there's an old guard.

The old guard... “we used to do things like this”.

And sometimes doing things like we used to do it isn't the right thing to do .

to But I think that sometimes you have to be a good listener.

And I was saying this to someone just the other day, what did you really hear?

How do you digest that and it comes out in the right way?

But I think I would say to that, that officer that you have referenced to, I don't know how long they've been on the force, but always do the right thing and don't be a follower.

And I know there's a blue line that you don't tell on each other, but when it comes right and wrong, I'd much rather, and it happened to me because I didn't kill a man one time, and the two white officers that had emptied their guns on him, and I had the shotgun.

And they were hollering, "Kill the bastard, kill the bastard," and I didn't shoot him And I was talked about because I didn't kill the man who happened to have been Black.

So I think that you have to be one of a consciousness rooted in your faith.

So I think that's now, overall, I think the officers, majority of the police departments are white men.

And I think what has to happen is that to be in a work of social service where you're dealing with different personalities and races, whatever, you ought to learn something about that particular culture.

Learn something about that particular culture because if you don't, you get caught out there.

You'd be saying things, doing things, you know.

And I'm not saying anything that y'all have to be able to act Black or you act Hispanic.

Just be who you are.

But understand as best you can as to one who's African American, one with Hispanic origin.

And that's what concerns me when we don't want to tell the story.

You can't rewrite the Bible, the Torah or the Quran.

And you can't rewrite history.

It is what it is.

And sometimes it's good to know it.

and because there was some faltering, some mistakes made in the history and you ought to know what they are so that you won't repeat them and be a part of one who does repeat.

Have I answered your question?

- I think, yes.

Thank you so much.

- Yes.

You said you think that I have?

- I know you have.

(audience laughing) - Thank you so much.

Thank you.

- So Alvin, I think that when you were talking about policing and you know, after George Floyd and the history of policing and the Black community's difficulty with the police and how when you started right after Dr.

King's assassination and all the way to today, we've seen improvement and then we've seen atrocities like George Floyd.

We've seen, you know, things go up, things go down.

Maybe tell us if you can, what you think the future of policing and the Black community's involvement with the police and really kind of where you see this all ending in the bigger scope of America itself.

- There's got to be an honest initiative to understand first of all what the problem is and know the history of the problem.

Like I've shared with you from the time that I was six or seven years old, I had a relationship with the police up until I was 16.

And then even after I got on the police department, for 10 years.

And then after that, some things have happened and, you know, and I think there has to be a consciousness of first of all, that there is a problem.

Now the question again, how do we solve that problem?

It's not gonna be overnight because it didn't get that way overnight.

But I think some real emphasis on listening, not being defensive and police are very defensive.

You start talking about it, they'll defend everything.

It seems like it's their nature and it shouldn't be.

That you're at good listening and trying to realize what... When you attend meetings in the African American community and you have six or seven police officers there, that represent the police department.

And one of the tragedies, in many cases you don't have Hispanics or African American police officers there and they're not enough to go around.

So that means that the other folks have got to be conscious also about what's going on.

I think the future's in each one of us.

I plan to be around.

On my 93rd birthday, 4:30, I've been doing this for years.

I set the clock to go off at 4:30.

And this year I said to go off at 4:30.

When my wife was living, she'd always say, please don't wake me up.

And I go in the other room and sleep in other room and wake up and then... so this time, I got on my knees and I prayed and I thank God for all these things and I called up upon Jesus.

And I said, Jesus, is everything all right?

And Jesus said yes.

I said, well, would you talk to the Father so we'll all be on the same page?

And I mean that, that our lives have to be based on some faith.

And I think that's what will move us beyond this.

I'm not saying that everybody needs to go to church or the synagogue or to the mosque.

But there is some humanity here even if you don't go to either one of those places.

There's something 'cause we are human.

There's something special about being human.

But if I feel that that's special about being human is me, then I have to see it in you, my relationship.

And so I think to answer your question, there has to be a conscience of that some wrong has been done and what do we do together to correct it.

And I say, and be good listeners, don't be defensive.

And how do we make it better?

That's what we tried to do in the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime and we did it.

We did.

We had the best of times in that relationship that was going on, that people knew each other.

We would call police officers to come in and... they weren't harassed or booed, you know, because we set the stage in such a way.

And I think that there are great possibilities in this nation for inclusion and DEI, diversity, inclusion.

(Kevin laughs) - That's right.

- I think there's a lot of... - Yes.

- [Alvin] We didn't get this far without it.

- That's right.

That's right.

- We didn't get this far without it and I think that it should be a part of who we are.

I'm not talking about preferential treatment.

I'm not talking about those who are beneficiaries of that.

Of people not as qualified?

And I think we need to see each other differently, that there are great minds in every group.

I mean, great minds.

Look at me.

- There you have it.

There you have it.

Let's give a big hand for Mr.

Alvin Brooks.

(audience clapping) (music)