- Just ahead, we've got a special New Year's edition of American Black Journal for you.

We're taking a look back at some of our notable guests and thought-provoking discussions from last year.

We're gonna share our conversations on racial injustice African Americans in the arts and the Black church in Detroit.

So sit back, relax and enjoy this best of 2022 episode.

American Black Journal starts right now.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] From Delta Faucets to BEHR Paint.

Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of American Black Journal in covering African American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal partners in presenting African American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Happy New Year, and welcome to American Black Journal.

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

As we usher in 2023, we're looking forward to bringing you another year of interesting and important conversations about topics that have an impact on the African American community.

Today, we're taking a brief look back at some of the guests we had on the show last year.

Let's start with a series of discussions about racial injustice, the gun violence and the killings of unarmed African Americans by police officers.

Give us a sense of the way this feels, I guess in the African American community in Grand Rapids right now.

We are still waiting to know much more about the consequences of what happened, but what did happen, I think not only shocks that community, but also reminds of such a long narrative of tension between the police department there and African Americans.

- Yeah, well, again, thank you for having me today to discuss this very egregious situation and horrific situation for the Lyoya family here in West Michigan.

The community is of course, outraged, right?

The emotions are very high here, and they have been, and I should say we have been, I think patiently waiting for some answers.

As you said, this is a situation that we have been in America have been dealing with for years and years and years and years.

And it has to stop at some point, it really has to stop.

We have to stop automatically being criminalized by local law enforcement agents across this country.

We have to stop being demonized by White American and things have to change.

- You watched this video of this officer interacting with Patrick Lyoya, and you say over and over again why are they interacting in the first place and why does it turn so violent so quickly?

And the answer to both of those really ultimately is that the interaction itself is the problem.

And that not interacting is in so many cases now, it's just the way that African Americans can avoid what happened to Patrick Lyoya.

- I think what we saw with Patrick's murder, and I'm always gonna be clear about calling it a murder and not a death or a killing, right?

Because that was intentional homicide, was there were so many opportunities for deescalation.

There were so many opportunities for that situation to go differently.

And so, every time I hear somebody say, "Well, we just need to reform the police.

If we give them more training and deescalation then they'll be able to better handle situations like this," this is one clear example about how that training doesn't work, right?

And so, when we talked, one of the times that we spoke during the summer of 2020 we were seeing protests all across Detroit, all across the state, all across the country, one of the things that we talked about and that I hoped would happen and did to a large extent was that those protests created pressure on officials.

They allowed us to leverage that pressure into political engagement.

The problem is that there is such force and when I say force, I mean political will, but also money, dollars behind the opposition to those things.

- Talk about what the context was for this killing?

Who Budzyn and Nevers were, what department they were part of and what was going on between Detroit Police and Detroiters when they killed Malice Green?

- Well, it's interesting.

The context is very interesting, because as you will recall and most people will recall that this was right on the heels of the Rodney King verdict in California.

- Yes.

- And I always tell people that in that case, in our case anyway, there was no video.

We did it the old-fashioned way with witnesses that were there who testified, but as you know, it was right kind of at the precipice of all the unrest that they were having in LA.

And there was not only the acquittal of the officers that beat Rodney King, but also the riots were going on in LA and everywhere else.

And there was Reginald Denny, he was pulled out of a truck when he was working and he was beaten and it was just a terrible thing that was going on.

I was summoned to Mr. O'Hare's office, who was the prosecutor at the time, my boss, I was still an assistant back then, obviously, and he asked me to be one of the prosecutors trying this case.

And, but I'm on another case.

And so, kinda had to do it simultaneously.

So he put together a team of prosecutors to decide what the charges were gonna be.

I was a part of that team working on that by night and by day, trying my case.

And we made that charging decision.

And back then, that was not a popular decision for John O'Hare.

And as you know, he barely squeaked by a reelection his next election cycle, mainly because of this case, because he did just very, very quickly as he would want us to do, to do the right thing.

- Silence the violence.

- Silence the violence.

- Silence the violence.

- Silence the violence.

- Boots on the ground is where a lot of the money needs to go.

Meet the people who are here who are making this happen and doing this work every single day.

All the different groups that you see out here, you have the ability to sign petitions, you have the opportunity to join those groups see what they all about, intermingle, and see what fits.

I wanna eventually see gun violence eradicated.

Bringing all of these people together are the people who are boots on the ground are the people who are stakeholders.

We can eradicate this if we continue to work together.

Share resources, let people know what's going on and what's happening and make sure that funding go to right places, but give people an option where they can come in and work towards eradicating gun violence.

I believe we can do this.

- We know that there are four things directly impacting criminals and behavior which means the criminal mindset and behaviors are born out of four things.

One, fatherlessness, right?

Two, substance abuse, three, functional illiteracy and four, of course, mental health, unresolved trauma, undetermined trauma, right?

So until we are willing to address those things institutionally and systemically and legislatively we will continue to have an issue with Congress.

- No peace, no peace.

- So I wanna start with both of your reactions to this report and what it says about policing in our state.

And then we'll talk about kind of where we go from here.

But these are very stark conclusions drawn by this report and I think they demand a lot of our attention.

Colonel Gasper, it's your department that is the subject of this report.

Tell me what your reaction was to all of this?

- Yeah, I think that we're in a time in the country right now really where all police departments need to be looking internally and externally to making sure that we're evolving and that we're demonstrating best practices.

And sometimes when you engage in some self-reflection, you have a reminder that sometimes it's not what you want it to be.

And this would be one of those times where we saw some disparity that was concerning to us.

And so, we wanted to make sure that we understood it.

So we hired the Michigan State University and partnered with them, and they did the analysis on our traffic stop data.

And it was not where we want it to be.

So now we're in a time period here where we need to better understand it.

The goal of the report was to identify if there was disparity.

Clearly there's disparity, and now we've got an opportunity to understand why that's occurring.

- Our reaction was it was not one of surprise as you can imagine, as you've indicated.

We've worked on these issues for decades, getting with our role with the Detroit NACP and surrounding suburbs of Detroit, where we identified racial profiling going on in a number of areas and continues today.

So this is not a surprise.

I do however, must applaud Colonel Gasper for ordering commissioning this report, releasing the data of it and owning up to what it says, and then making some recommendations as to what he sees needs to be done in order to improve the conditions and going forward.

So we applaud him for that.

And our department stands ready to work with him in any way that we can, in order to actualize the recommendations that he's put forth already.

- You can't have a show about the African American experience without talking about our rich heritage and our culture.

Here at American Black Journal, we really enjoy shining a spotlight on the many talented visual artists musicians, athletes, singers, media personalities and performers in the African American community.

Take a look.

- I'm really happy to have Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, here in Detroit at the Detroit Opera House.

It's been a long time coming it's our Broadway tour.

We were supposed to be, Detroit was supposed to be one of the first stops when we were originally gonna do the tour in 2020, but we all know what happened in 2020.

And so, that delay has shifted things around.

And so, it feels like it's just been a long time coming to get here to Detroit to do this show.

And we were on Broadway and the COVID shut the show down on Broadway.

And so, now that we're doing this Broadway tour and we've been in all these cities it just feels like a new life to be here.

And it's more important.

I mean, being in Detroit, you could just ask the cast you could see it on their faces when they're performing.

It just feels, this feels more important than Broadway.

This is the most important performance you could be doing is the ones you're doing here in Detroit right now.

- Stephen A. Smith, welcome to American Black Journal.

Welcome to Detroit.

It seems to me when I watch you on ESPN or other places, I see you I think all the time about the kinds of opportunities that you've had as an African American man that I've had as an African American man in media, and I think about WGPR, which went on in the air here when I was about four years old and was the first place I could see people who looked like me on television doing their thing and being in control of the space, being the owners, being the operators, being the managers.

Talk about how stations like GPR influence your career.

- Well, to me it's never really been whether it's a station or it's a company, it's about the individuals, because as an individual, that's what you gravitate to.

We should think about it more expansively.

We should think about institutions that have really played the role as pioneers and spearheading movements that ultimately benefit the African American community and what have you.

But on far too many occasions, there's such a level of loftiness that gets attached to it that you don't view it that way.

It's the individuals that you attach yourself to.

Joe, I've come to know, because my boss is Mr. Dave Roberts, who is a Detroit native.

He's one of the elite executives in this game.

And the relationship that I have with him what he's done for me, what he's meant to my career, I just can't say enough.

- I'm a storyteller which is a title that comes out of Africa in most cultures who lived close to the land they had people who told stories.

The concept of being an artist is relatively new within the last maybe 500 years, proud that each culture had people that were there and their responsibility was to communicate through what that particular culture group call its symbols, their colors.

And now today, all of that is has been thrown into one big pot and referred to as art.

But that term is deceptive, because it's not art.

It's more material culture than it is art.

But when you're talk about material culture you're actually talking about the culture group the group, their self, what they have left behind.

- The rodeo that we do is a little bit more we focus on education.

You'll see a reenactment of a Bass Reeves, you'll see a Stage Coach Mary, you'll see a Bill Pickett.

So it's little subliminal messages that you're getting that you don't actually realize that we're educating you to, and then you see this competition and it's so fast-paced, people want to think that they're gonna leave, and Staci will do something and it's seconds, it's not a minute, you're not gonna leave out and come back in and catch your... No, if you blink it's done.

So we have the best athletes coming in and just to know that these people that look like us, you could do that.

- The event that I compete in is called barrel racing.

And three barrels are set up and you run in a cloverleaf pattern.

So you go around each barrel, fastest time wins.

And that is definitely what everybody strives for is to set the pace so that you can essentially earn money doing it.

What I enjoy most about it would be it's such an adrenaline rush, and like we said you have to have a lot of confidence.

You have to definitely have a positive mindset, stay confident in everything that you're doing, because the littlest of things can knock you off your game.

(jazz music) - 2022 was the second year for our groundbreaking initiative that focuses on a Black church in Detroit.

Each month we dedicate an episode to topics involving our city's African American faith leaders, congregations and residents.

The series is produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

Here are some highlights from last year - Healing, healing your soul, hallelujah.

We are always called to minister to the least of these.

We are always called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are always called to care for and extend the love of God to people, but we have to find new ways of doing that.

And so, we have to adapt with each passing moment.

COVID has helped us in some ways, because it forced many churches to adapt technologically.

- [Reporter] What is this space gonna look like when you reopen?

- I am very excited about our reopening and we are anticipating, since we already have people who've registered, even though it's only a couple of weeks away.

We're gonna have a wonderful worship experience.

I'm really excited about seeing members that I have not seen in months.

- Tell us how things are going at Greater Grace as we move into this I guess, third or fourth stage of the pandemic and more things are possible than they were before.

- I guess, the thing that I'm most proud of Stephen, thank you for having me, is that we've been able to continue ministry and that's the most important thing.

How do you face crisis?

How do you go through a pandemic which we have never experienced and still continue ministry?

And of course, maybe we were shut down for maybe April and May, Father's Day 2020, we started outdoor services and we just went indoors last November, the first Sunday and we've continued, and things seem to be pretty safe and people are getting along well.

So I'm thankful that we've been able to continue ministry in the midst of the pandemic.

And probably the biggest thing we're doing now is making sure that we have options, not just for television or tape delayed, but live options for a live service.

- So Bishop Sheard, I wanna start with you.

You are the leader of Americas of the world's largest African American denomination.

- Wow.

- The Church of God in Christ, right?

How does a J.

Drew from Sorento on the west side of Detroit rise to be the presiding bishop of the COGIC church?

- Well, I had great parents.

I mean, they instilled in me this godliness form of godliness.

And I've always, from the time I was in the fifth grade always aspired for leadership.

And I worked at it to be a effective leader in my school while I was going through school.

And had an encounter with God as a very young child, and I was always very sincere about God and the church.

I love church.

I'm the kid that would gather everybody when we didn't have nothing to do and make everybody have church.

And I would preach.

- You would play church?

- Yeah, oh yeah, oh man.

Yeah, I love church.

And so, just to be involved in church was my heart's desire.

- It was a great journey.

Even during our moments of when I got sick he still was there.

He was a pastor then, but he still honored me as his wife.

He didn't step away from being a pastor, but the human side came in and he was there for me when the doctors gave up on me and gave me 2% chance.

And we got closer.

Even after I was, after I had, I went through my coma and when I was in my coma, I came out.

And when I found out all of what he began to explain to me what had actually happened, and I'm like, "I took you through all of that," and it is just the human side of him being a great leader, but yet, step out of that and become a great husband.

- To be your husband.

- Oh my goodness.

It just took our relationship, made it stronger and it took our relationship to a whole nother level.

I'm sorry.

- The blues is about people expressing pain and sadness through music.

And gospel is usually about healing and hope.

Those two things would seem to be at odds in some ways.

I've always felt like though there is a connection between the messages as well as the music itself.

- Definitely, something happens with the spiritual which is the music that came outta slavery, which was heavy, which was about getting heaven when you die or suffering or being resilient and enduring.

And then the blues was kind of about the idea of not suffering on the plantation, but hop on a train and getting away from all of that stuff.

And then around 1930, they melded into this music called gospel.

You had these sort of blues musicians who were looking at how the vitality was slipping out of sacred music and they combined the blues with the sacred and that produced gospel which you rightly identified as being joyous music, right?

It's the good news, but there is no joy without some pain, right?

Weeping endures for night, but joy comes in the morning.

So you have both of those elements mixed in and I think the sacred and the secular really grew up right next to each other.

- If you think about jazz and blues and certainly Black gospel music songs like "Precious Lord" written by the father of gospel music, Thomas Dorsey, were written to express the despair and the tragedy of having lost not only his wife and his child in a car accident, but it certainly expressed the hope of a savior that would lead him through those troubling times.

♪ Precious Lord ♪ ♪ Take my hand ♪ ♪ Lead me on ♪ ♪ Let me stand ♪ ♪ I am ♪ - And look for the Black Church in Detroit series to continue in this year, 2023.

So that's gonna do it for us today.

We are so thankful for you being loyal viewers.

You can check out our past episodes at americanblackjournal.org.

And as always, you can connect with us anytime on Facebook and on Twitter.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] From Delta Faucets to BEHR Paint Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of American Black Journal in covering African American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal Partners in presenting African American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle piano music)