Work in Progress with Sophia BushJournalist Joy-Ann Reid went from a "nerdy" kid who stayed past her bedtime to watch broadcast news to now fronting her own show!
The MSNBC Host and New York Times Bestselling author joins Sophia to discuss finding her passion for journalism, why she majored in documentary filmmaking at Harvard, becoming cable TV's first black woman prime-time anchor, and what it's really like behind the scenes of a busy newsroom.
Plus, Joy shares what it's been like meeting her civil rights heroes and talks about her new book, "Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America."
Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome back to Work in Progress, my friends. This week we are joined by one of my journalism heroes. Today's guest is none other than Joy Anne Reid. She is an incredible journalist and television host, a national correspondent for MSNBC, and is best known for hosting her political commentary program to Read Out. Since July of twenty twenty, The New York Times has described Read as a heroine emerging from the political movements and protests against former President Trump. She's written three books that are absolutely astonishing, and her most recent, Medgar Evers on The Love Story That Wakened America, came out early this year. I can't wait to talk to Joy today about her book, her incredible mind, the way that she is looking at another election year, and how she stays so inspired to make sure to lead us, call us in and give us hope. Let's get to it, Hi, Joy, how are you? I just need to like take thirty seconds to fangirl you and then I'll be my professional self. But I mean, I know, you know, because all I do is comment on.
All of your posts all of the time.
But I have like the biggest journalism crush on you, and I am so excited you're here today.
I could just die.
Oh you're so sweet, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for having me.
It really means a lot, and you've been such a saint. And we were just saying, I was like, I don't know if I need to send this woman flowers or booths or both, but like between laryngitis and south By, you have allowed us to reschedule, and you're just you are a gem of a human.
Oh, no problem, how is south By Southwest?
It was great.
It was you know, it's it's like everything feels like Mayhem now with with travel and whatnot. But it was also just very cool. I love being in rooms full of inspiring women and just hearing what people are up to. It was really special cool.
Yeah, I was a little I can go. We were trying to figure out if we could get down there, but it just it's too much going on, too going on. Then you're just to stop having court cases and indictments and stuff.
Yeah, ninety one indictments must be a lot for.
You all to eight Now they've taken some of them off.
So oh wow.
Okay, Okay, well you are. You are doing the Lord and all that is Holy's work.
So thank you so much.
Thank you. I appreciate you. I appreciate Yeah.
We appreciate you so Joy.
I love to start with people because I do get to sit across from people whose brains and courage I have, you know, such intellectual crushes on. You have this incredible career in your incredible journalist and author, and we all know you as you know, Joy Anne Reid, who's taking us, you know, into the halls of learning about America every night on television. But I like to kind of rewind to before you became you know, this incredibly well known, wonderful woman, and see if from this vantage point you sit at today, when you look back over your life and you look at little nine or ten year old Joy, do you see the same kind of kernels of loving, truth and justice in her? Or was she interested in completely different things as you know, a little girl in the fifth grade.
No, you know, it's funny that you say that, because it was in the sixth grade that I really kind of fell in love with news and information and with knowing more about the world. I mean, I grew up very nerdy kid with even the I had the coke bottle glasses and everything legit, and so I was a legit nerdy kid. But I really always did didn't have like a hunger to learn. I always did love school. I loved learning. I loved you know, I was a weird kid that actually liked school and enjoyed it. And I enjoyed, you know, learning from my teachers and from my mom and just from we were a traveling family. We would do road trips with like a road trip family. So we've just raised as a family that was ever curious. But in sixth grade, and I'm going to age myself now, the Iran hostage crisis happened, and I can still remember asking my mom if I could sit up and watch this show on ABC at night where Ted Kopple, and it was just called Countdown three sixty five or whatever they called it, and it was just so fat. I just became consumed by it, and my mom let me sit up and watch it every night, and then they renamed the show Nightline. And I had just fallen in love with the idea of news and information. I mean, I watched the Sunday shows. I would watch the nightly news, and my mom would let me sit up and do it because she's like, at least it's educational, and she loved news too, so it was like a bonding thing with me and my mom. So I always loved this, but I just never I saw myself doing it for a career.
Yeah, that is so cool. I had a moment when I was in elementary school where I pitched my mom that I wanted her to pick me up fifteen minutes early from school because school ended at three, but Oprah Wimfrey started at three, and I was like, Mom, there is nothing happening in the last period, so if you get me at two forty five, yeah, I can be home like butt in Sea by the time Oprah starts. And I learned much more from watching Oprah. My mom was like, young, lady, this is not a trial. You do not get to make an argument here, Like, no, I'm not taking you out of school early. So I love that you convinced your parents, so let you stay it past your bedtime to watch Nightline.
That's amazing.
Yeah. I loved Oprah too. Oprah was great. She was like revolutionary because I had never really seen like, oh, my lady doing all these things, and so there weren't many black women, so she was like, I mean, she really was inspiring to me. And I was transfixed by that child watch her show and then Phil do he was like right after, So I would watch that duo that back to back Dueho. But other than when I full and Oprah, you really didn't see women looked like me doing anything that looked like news. So yeah, I'll go Oprah.
Yeah incredible.
So so the Iran hostage situation, you know, piqued your interest obviously, did you Did you stay interested in politics or was it really that every aspect of the news became fascinating to you when you were younger?
It was every aspect. But I really was intrigued by politics, you know, American politics, and I and you know, I was a Sunday show watcher and I was just intrigued by kind of the drama of it. You know. I kind of saw it as like its own version of a soap opera, you know, because it was this sort of constant clashing factions and like it was like a Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones. So I really got inted in politics, and by the time that I got to high school. You know, I'm again aging myself. Jesse Jackson had run the first time for president, and so now you had this this guy running for president, and we were just transfixed by my whole family, my mom as well, and just all of the kind of intrigue around him, around Gary Hart getting kicked doubt for Emuel, Lady said on his lap, like I thought this was like the highest drama ever. So I also had, you know, an interest in politics and was intrigued by it. And actually the second time Jesse Jackson ran was the first time I ever got to vote, because you know, we would go with my mom to the polls. Once she got her citizenship. She was a voter man. She voted in everything. She voted local, state, school board like she was a voter. And when she would vote, we the kids would go with her. So she really inculcated in us, you know, a sense of civic responsibility. I loved civics class. I thought it was interesting. So history, civics, politics, I loved all of it.
That's amazing.
So did that real focus and to your point that the lore of getting to you know, live in this country and vote and make your voice heard. I think I have because I helped my dad's study. He became a citizen when I was thirteen, and I remember what a big deal that was. Yeah, did all of that propel you into wanting to study at Harvard? What was that experience like for you?
Well, you know, as I do that. You know, the immigrants come to the country and they have pretty much three jobs they think that anyone should do. Doctor, lawyer, lawyer, architect, doctor school.
Architect is on your list.
Okay, people was on the list. And so my mom, you know, she was Caribbean, she came from Diana, and you know that's what was in her mind. And so we you know, we just were very mom pleasers, like we were mama's kids. You know, my father who's from Congo. We was pretty much in the Congo most of the time. We didn't care what he thought. We heard what she thought. And I made the mistake when I was about twelve of saying I would be the doctor. My sister said she'd be the lawyer, and my brother said he'd be the architect. So that was kind of what was folk that our minds were focused on. And I applied to Harvard and the other schools I applied to PREMET, so I got into all the schools I got into as a pre met. But unfortunately, you know, my mom, who was like literally sort of my biggest cheerleader, she died. She actually passed away, like about twenty two days before I started school. So some family friends, you know, took me to school and I got there and I was completely discombobulated. You know, for the first time, I failed class. I had never gotten anything lower than the only thing I ever did poorly. And I got to see in typing, you know, we used to stick typing in high school. I got to see and my mother was outraged. She's like, you're gonna ruin my daughter's DPA. She was grown one crazy. But so I had never gotten bad grades. I was, you know, I'm so depressed that I just I couldn't focus. I mean, I couldn't walk into a hospital without hyperventilating. And so I realized that this this being a doctor thing was not going to work out for me because I just I didn't have any interest in it anymore. I didn't have any passion for it, and it just didn't work out. So I actually took a year off to try to get myself together, went back lived with my auntie Dolly in back to Brooklyn, where we originally came from, and you know, had to figure out what I was going to do. And when I went back, I went back kind of different. I went back with a mission of not trying to pick up where I left off with pre men and to do something that maybe I would be passionate about, you know. And so I wound up actually majoring in what they call Visual and Environmental Studies, which is a fancy way of saying a documentary film major. They didn't I have like journalism, you know, Harvard doesn't have pragmatic degrees, so that was the closest thing to like a storytelling degree. And I love to write. I used to always write short stories as a kid. I used to entertain my sister and brother by like telling them stories. I was like a story person, and so I thought this was a cool kind of major where I could major in something that was about storytelling and about narrative. And I loved movies, so that was one of my other passions. So that's what I went back and did. And that's my weird, odd way of doing something similar to journalism but not exactly journalism.
That's so inspiring.
It's funny because I went, I went to school to get a BFA in theater and went, wait a second, this feels like too narrow a focus for me, right, And I transferred into the journalism school at USC because to me it sounds sort of like a kinship and that feeling you had about documentary. It was a way for me to shape real stories and understand how to apply narrative that would engage an audience to people's actual lives, which is my job as an actor. But I also realized my job, my self appointed job, as an advocate and an activist. And yeah, I just think journalism is the most magic thing in the world.
I do too. And you know, it's funny because when I transferred into you know, i'd lived with my aunt for a while, but you know, I grew up Methodist and she was an evangelical Christians. That's like four nights a week church, and that's a lot of church, a lot. So I moved out and I ended up actually moving where Spike Lee lived. I moved to Fort Green, which at the time was like very bohemian black. It was like black Bohemia and so I went back thinking I would major in not documentary but like narrative film, and so I was saying about it. Found out Harvard was a little bit poopooing that they just only let you do documentary, which I kind of resisted at first. But the major was fascinating because vies, as they call it, it gave you everything from history of architecture to history of photography to actual practical photography, practical filmmaking and editing. And it actually, you know, while I resisted the idea that they were trying to lock us into documentary, actually wound up falling in love with the idea of documentary film because we were learning. To your point, it was sort of a bigger, more unstructured way of learning about narrative and story. But it was everything from learning about Oscar Michau, you know, the black filmmaker from like the nineteen twenties or thirties, to learning about you know, Iranian film and sort of you know, sort of narrative sort of about liberation in the Middle East. And it was so broad that it actually was a great education. That was sort of my accidental sort of entry entree into what would later become my journalistic career.
Yeah.
Well, and then you fast forward and here you are, you become Cable's first black female primetime anchor. And I bet all of that knowledge you bring with you into that newsroom every single day.
I think so. And you know, we're in this moment now where like the Middle East is like a thing. I had this weird advantage. I've never been there, I've never landed in the region, but I was so fascinated by that region. That's what brought me into the whole love of news in the first place was the Iran hostage prices, which meant I was going in the encyclopedia sign I wanted to know everything about Iran, and then I wanted to know everything about Iraq. I wanted to know everything about the entire region. And so it's like I was fascinated by everything about that region's history. It's conflicts, it's stories, it's various religions, the sort of contexts of Christianity versus Islam versus Judaism. Like, I'm into all of that stuff. And I was lucky enough to have teachers at mont Bello Junior Senior High School who were like interesting people. You know, we had this teacher. We did like applied religion, and we were actually learning about like Hamarabi's code and all of this other stuff that you didn't normally get in school. I had teachers that, like, they actually stretched themselves to teach us, you know, in my little town and for interesting, outre things, and so I kind of went into By the time I was a journalist, I kind of knew a little about a lot, you know, and then it gave you this open door to learn a lot about a lot. So that's what I do love about my job is that whatever my curiosity is, I can take what I know that's a little and I can expand and expand and expand it and then find a way through narrative to share it with my audience.
That's so beautiful. We'll be back in just a minute. But here's a word from our sponsors. I can't help but think you know in the way that you were watching Walter Cronkite, and that you know we were all watching Oprah. Like now there's a lot of little girls who a generation ago wouldn't have seen themselves represented on TV, who get to watch you every night and who and who get to watch you as you say, showcase your expertise, your curiosity, you know, your ability to make sure you are doing right now by people in regions where they are subjected to as we're witnessing now, immense harm and you know, immense geopolitical forces are warring with each other, and you can you can sit in that anchor's chair and tell one person's story, you know, one one girl in the region, One one journalist you know who's out there fighting to tell the truth from the front lines. I mean, that's got to be a really incredible feeling when you get to slow down in the newsroom enough to have it.
Yeah, it's heavy, though, you know. I mean people will come up to me and sort of say kind of that or like they'll treat that. And I did that with Whenifel. You know, I actually met Gwhenifel in twenty fifteen. I sort of humiliated myself, Like I saw her across the street in Selma. It was like, you know, the annual Selma of commemoration and I saw her and I'm like, oh my god, I idolized this woman. So I like ran across the street, not looking to see if there were cars coming. So it was probably not wise. The way, I just threw myself like a muppet and flung myself at her. I said, Oh my god, quite ee feel you know, you were everything to be. I'm such a I'm such an admirer of views. Bl blah blah. She was so sweet. She gave me a huge hug, and she's like I And now when people come up to me, I kind of see what she must have felt, because it's odd to have a stranger come up to you and say that. But it also really makes you feel number one, a huge responsibility because you realize that you're not just like giving the news for some people. You're actually giving the news from a perspective that's them. They hear them, and you're asking the questions they would ask whether the person is you know, identifies with you racially or in terms of gender, or in terms of region where you're from. I'm from the West. Most of the people who do this are from New York and DC. You know, I'm from a part of the country people don't really talk about, you know, out West, we're kind of left out, or the Midwest if you're you know, and whatever it is about me, whether it's I'm the child of immigrants, you know, I've got some African background and some Caribbean background, all of those things that I'm bringing to the table. There's somebody out there that is identifying with that. Yeah, So if like someone comes up to me, it's very heavy. It makes me feel like a huge responsibility. It's a bit intimidating in a way. It makes me feel more responsible to do well. But it also makes you feel really good because you're like, you know what I'm representing somebody, like somebody feels seen because of me, and it makes you feel really good.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, I can tell you as a woman I obviously am, I'm an obsessive watcher of your show. And there are days because I spend all day reading the news like I can't help myself.
And there are days where.
I watch you do a piece and you will just tell the truth and you will beat back the ridiculousness of the quote unquote alternative facts coming from like the right wing, and you just lay things bare and you tell it like it is and you make sure people are getting the facts and the information, not ideas truth, and it is so.
Relieving to me. And then there's moments where I'm like I just.
Really hope when this segment wrap, somebody gives her a hug, like I want to make sure your people are holding you, because this has to be stressful and it has to be hard, But my god, it is so meaningful that not only do you do it, but that you do it the way you do it well.
I appreciate that. Thank you, And I definitely look, we have believe it or not as crazy as the new cycle in it as miserable. Our little crew on the set we are having the most fun. Like we are giggling and laughing through all the break I almost wish we could put the brakes on TV so that we are giving each other the hugs like we are literally a fun, happy crew. That like because we realize, like you can you can either let this stuff take you down or you can try to laugh and love your way through it. And look, I mean, the thing is I mean, even with with with the book that I wrote, I'm like, it's a love thing. I feel like we still are surviving. This society's sort of this sort of come apart in a way, right, But what's keeping it together is that there are enough of us who actually love the country enough to try to hold it together, and so it will hol see it together by thinner and thinner strands. But there are I still believe enough of us who have enough love for the place and who have enough belief that it can be what it says it is and what it you know, the idea is so good that even if those who tried to execute it were rotten, you know, and some of them are really you know, and some of the people who've attempted at it were bad people, but that doesn't mean the idea is bad. That you could be a terrible person with a great idea. And so the idea is so good that it brought my mother here, it brought my father here, it brought your dad here, it brought your family here. So there's something compelling about this idea. And I think if we hold on to that, it's less depressing, right because we realize that we're actually fighting for something good and that no one's ever done before. The multiracial democracy is super hard. Like almost everybody in Japan is Japanese, almost everyone in China is Chinese, almost everyone in Britain. I think Britain has like what six percent, No, it's like a tiny percentage of people in Britain are not white British Europeans, and so we have this huge task ahead of us to create this multi racial democracy that is very hard to do. So it's not like we're failing because we're failing at something easy, right, we're slowly succeeding and then failing a little bit, and then slowly succeeding and failing a little bit at something hard.
Yes, that's beautiful though, And I want to talk about your book because it felt like such a breath of fresh air for me as a person because of the love story, and it was so inspiring because it is a history lesson, but it's told through this personal narrative. It very similarly for me to the way that Ava Duverne adopted isabel Wilkerson's cast. You know, Origin as a film is Isabelle's story, her love story of about her, her husband, her family inside of her academic project. And you have given us the story of Medgar and Merley as surrounded by their love. And what it makes me see as your storytelling about your daily work is that in a way, that's what your newsroom is like. It's a family, and inside of it you're doing the news. But it's the family that fortifies you to be able to do the work, so can can I was going to ask you how you cover the news and manage to relax among the heavy, but I'm like, oh, now I know how, so I don't need to ask you that question.
Come hang out with us. We're so much fun.
I mean, oh my god, I can't wait. I'll come be your intern anytime.
So no, come on, just come on, you can come on. You can come on be a co host. Okay, Look, if invitation sent and accepted, I think that would be fun. I mean, like, the reality is is, like, you know, the thing that that happens when you actually meet civil rights leaders and civil rights heroes, is that one of the things is you go, oh my god, I just med a civil rights like heroes, right, But then you also go, oh my god, this is a regular person. You know, you're a human, They're a human. And I will never forget I the first time I ever met in person Revenul Sharpton, for instance. So when I'm you know, when my mom passed, I move, we moved back to Brooklyn, right, so I'm back living with my with my auntie. And then even when I moved out. So we're in this era where you know, Rev. Sharpton is very much involved in politics. He's very much involved in all the civic upheaval in New York. And then at one point, like he runs for office, like I think this is the first time he ran for mayor. And so I'm in Brooklyn and I go to this place called the Brooklyn Tennis Club and I'm walking in. I'm late, I'm running to get into this event. Reverend Sharpton is coming out and we bumped into each other. And this is when he wasn't skinny and slim like he is now. He was like a big dude, and he bumped me. And I was so embarrassed that I bumped into Reverend Sharpton, and he said, oh, I'm so sorry, young Lanne. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, young lady. And I was like, great, the one time I'm ever gonna meet now Sharton, who I like lionize, is because I'm a lesson. I ran into him like like a duke, you know. So I never would have imagined I'd ever actually then meet him again. And the next time I met him, I was working here. I was working for at the time Deegreo dot com in the NBC building and it's like, now he's like my friend, Like he's I call my big brother because he's like a big brother to me. And it's like it's so surreal. But what it's taught me is that Reverend NOWL. Sharpton this like hero to me as a young like a teenager in New York, as the person fighting for us is just a regular person. And so he has regular person things. He got kids, you know, and they're interested people. You know, he has normal stuff. He goes at the dinner like and so with even with the Mega and Merley piece. When I met Marley Evers, I realized this is an icon. She's a person. She had a love, she fell in love. She had a you know, a boyfriend. She didn't want to tell her auntie and her grandma about because he was too old for her. She he didn't want to like her, He didn't want to say he liked her. So she had this whole anxiety that does he really like me? Does he not like me? They got married. She moved like a dusty part of Mississippi. She didn't want to live there. She was annoyed because he was never home. They had fights about regular person stuff, the budget, did they have enough money? Is she making dinner? All the regular things, And that, to me was the most fascinating aspect of telling a story like this, because civil rights was just regular people doing this heroic thing, but they were still people.
So can you talk to us a little bit about what your goal was with writing this book in this way and tell the listeners at home a little bit about them, you know, both as these civil rights leaders and as a couple for the folks who don't have the expert view into them that you do, because they're going to go out and get your book and then they will, oh, I love that.
Well. I mean I partly wrote the book because of that, because, like MegaR Evers is the name of the airport when you land in Jackson, Mississippi. But a lot of people do not know who that it is, right, It's like there are a lot of airports where who knows what? You know? I didn't know Stapleton Airport was named after. You know, I think Stapleton was the governor of Colorado at some point. I think he was a plansman. They changed the name eventually. It's not called Stapleton anymore, but you don't know. I went to a school called McGlone Elementary. Growing up, I had no idea who McGlone was. I'm sorry for Ford. I went to McGlone Elementary, but before that, I went to Ford Elementary. Barney Ford. Barney Ford was like a civil rights hero in Denver, Colorado, who desegregated Denver schools. I didn't know, but I went to that school and we just knew it was called Barney four. We didn't knowho that was. I don't still don't know who Maglone is. You know, that was my other school. So we oftentimes live in places where we don't know the person behind the thing, and MegaR was one of those names people have kind of heard. You know, there's a there's a there's a famous folk song called Medgar Evers laid Down. You know his life. There's there's like songs about him, but people don't know it is. And once I knew Merley More, it kind of bothered me that people didn't know he is, because this guy is the person James Baldwin said is one of the three great civil rights leaders in history, Malcolm X, doctor Martin Luther King, Junior and MegaR Evers. That's what James Baldwin said. So I wrote the book number one so that people would know who MegaR Evers was and his sacrifices literally for our right to vote. I wrote in number two because I love Marley Evers Williams, and I think she's an awesome person, and I think people should know who she is and what she did, and that she's still here and still part of the overall mission of making America better. And I wrote it for the third reason because I actually just wanted to write something that I would enjoy. I wanted to not write a history book. I wanted to write a love story, and I had never read a civil rights love story, so I said, I'll just write one.
We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. The thing I can't quite get over, and then I want the listeners at home to really think about, is that you, in writing the book this way, you have reminded us of who these people were. And what I mean by that is that sometimes it just takes a person who looks at something wrong and says, well, if if they're not going to change it, then maybe I have to change it. When you think about the fact, these these men and their partners, you know, doctor King and Kreta, MegaR and Murley, these people who decided to pressurize America to actually begin to reach her ideals, to actually begin to be the nation where all people were treated equally, because my God, were far from it and were still certainly not there. That they weren't just people with historical fact behind them, and they weren't just folks who became experts on the constitution, and they weren't just you know, leaders. They were young people who were they were young, They were students who met on campuses and fell in love, and they were afraid.
This was terrifying.
It is terrifying to organize sit ins and bus boycotts and protests for justice where you know, as you mentioned the anniversary of Selma, we can look back at those photographs. Every year we see people being beaten and assaulted and you know, having police dogs sicked on them, I mean, unspeakable violence simply for saying I deserve to be treated better than this, and to remind us of our humanity. I think inside of as you say, these people who've been lionized sometimes we think of them as being larger than life, and it's so special to remember that they were trying to figure out how to pursue justice in our country while also trying to figure out, like who's getting the groceries on Friday, if we're going to be home for the weekend, that's right, and that's that's such a it's such a detail that I think sometimes in our history books we miss.
Absolutely you know, one of the most profound interviews that we did because you know, my husband and I my husband's the documentary filmmakerr and so we actually went down to Jackson. We spent a good panet it. We actually ran in an airbnb that was across the street from the house where the person who used to run the White Citizens Council used to live. And so when people were coming for the interviews, they would all say, do you know what's across the street because it's now like an inn where you can do weddings and stuff, and it's like, oh wow. People would all whisper, they would almost whisper, like they like they want to be you know where you are across the street. We we're like, yeah, we know. It's like it's really we're in the mix, right, So we ranted this airbnb and we asked people to come and sit for the interviews because we knew, you know, the median age of who we were interviewing were all like eighty. You know, we were interviewing a lot of older people, and so we if we could, we went to them. But a lot of people wanted to come to and we also wanted to be kind of quiet. We didn't want to be in a hotel or bring in a whole MSNBC vibe. We just went down very low key. So we're in this airbnb and a lot of people came by, and again they're in their seventies, sixties, seventies, eighties, but some of the youngest people were children at the time. And one of the animals that really stayed with me were the Sweets. So the Sweets are a brother and sister who lived down the street from MegaR and Merley Evers, and they played with the Evers kids. They were their besties, and they the young the man who was a boy at the time, he said to me, what a lot of people don't think about is that when you assassinate a man in his driveway in front of his house. You've essentially assassinated the childhoods of every kid on that block. Because MegaR was the fun dad who used to throw the football with the boys. You took that away. MegaR was the dad who would put all the kids in his oldmobile Rocket eighty eight, which had a drop you could drop the top, and he would go out then drive them to the drive in movie so they could all watch Psycho, which Murley got really mad that they lived to go see Psycho. They really wanted to see it. So MegaR was the fund dead. It was like, come on, I'll take you all to go see Psycho. He's the guy who, you know, the other dads went fishing with right the sweet's father used to fish with him. Across the street neighbor was one of his best friends. The next door neighbor was his friend and a fellow NAACP guy. You literally killed all of their childhoods. And so it's like, these are real people who lived on a block, who had friends, who had girls' nights. They used to have a garden club that Murley was a member of. They all would get together in garden. They were trying their best as black people in Mississippi in the nineteen fifties and sixties to have a normal life. They just wanted to do normal stuff. They just wanted to go and shop in the store and try on the clothes to make sure they fit. They couldn't. They just wanted to take their kids to the library. They couldn't. They just wanted their kids to go to the zoo like all the white kids. They couldn't. And there came a point when Black Americans said, enough, we're paying taxes too. We just want our kids to go to a decent school that's not a shack, that's got modern textbooks. They can ride in a school bus like those other kids and not have to walk three miles. Why are we doing this, especially after World War Two? Because these men, one hundred thousand or more black men volunteered to go find a World War two, and when they came home, they said, absolutely not. We're not going to go back to second class citizenship. We also fought in this war and we're going to insist on our rights. And MegaR Evers was one of those men. He's a twenty five year old. He comes back and he's got a twenty five year old attitude and He's like, I am not sitting in the back of this bus, not another day.
It's profound, and I think to talk about the timing of it, you know, when you really think about the fact, as you said, that a lot of these people are still alive. Really, you know, you you sat down to interview her several times. You know, when we think about her, when we think about the famous photos of Ruby Bridgers, you know, being escorted into school by state troopers when they were integrating her school. She is still alive. She is in her sixties. Yeah, Like for you know, the people who watch this podcast who grew up with me on One Tree Hill, Like, y'all, I'm forty one. If she's in her sixties, like, we're not even talking a generation above me.
She's younger than my parents, right.
You know, So this this weird thing that we're seeing this especially on you know, you talk about it a lot that we see on the right, this backlash. You know, we can't possibly tell the truth, We can't let kids know about these things. We're going to change what you learn in school. It's not just our history, it's still our present. Yeah, and you know, I think it's incredibly important for us for anybody who feels fired up from this conversation, examine the ways in your own life, however you identify or would be identified, Examine the ways in which you have experienced oppression. Like Joy, I don't go through what you go through as a black woman, but I know what it is to be judged and oppressed because of my gender, and all it makes me think of is I go through enough bullshit every day. I'm enraged all the time, and if it's worse for you, it's my job to then say, well, what is my responsibility to help change? Because I'm tired. I can't imagine how tired you are. And I think we have to start looking at each other in those ways to say I know how hard it is, and if someone has it worse than me, it's my job to make sure I don't make it worse. And for the people who have it easier than us, well then it's their job to help us too. And I I really hope that this sort of aha moment that is sobering and then inspiring to action is to be reminded that all these people are still alive, and if they did this much fighting, and if they did this much standing, up for us like our generation certainly has to keep our foot on the gas.
Absolutely. And you know, when I would do like speeches back years ago, when I would give speeches in colleges, I would remind young people that, you know you talk about Medgar, Malcolm, and Martin, none of them were ever forty. Kobe Bryant died at forty one, so each of those men were at least two years younger. In the case of MegaR, he was thirty seven when he died, Malcolm X was thirty nine, and doctor King was thirty nine. They never were forty, so think about how young that is. So that means their wives, who were all younger than them, would have been right. And so the only one alive of the three widows is of course Merly. But she, to your point, she's younger than my mom would have been. Had my mom lived, my mom would have been older than Miss Murley. So these are people who are contemporaries. You think about John Lewis, the Great John Lewis. When Emmett Till was killed, he and John Lewis were the same age. So Emmett Till had lived, he would have been the age of John Lewis. So we're talking about a we're talking about contemporary history. And to your point about the empathy across these lines, one of the stories that I tell in the book that really infuriated me and drove me nuts is that after MegaR Evers died, Merley had to then figure out her whole life because remember she was his secretary for a while. She actually worked for him, so she was a literal part of his advocacy when he's working at the insurance company, and at first when he was with the NAACP, she was his secretary. Once she had her third child, she decided to stop working and be a stay at home mom. But that was not usual for black women. Most black women have always had to work. This whole fifties housewive sort of iconography, it never applied to black women. But she was a rare black housewife. So she actually was the mom who took all the other kids to school on the block. She would pick up all the other kids and pick them up from school because most of the other women were teachers. But when her husband died, Merley then had to She then ultimately decided to leave Mississippi and moved to California. When she went to the bank to try to open a bank account. They wouldn't open it for her. Why because women in this country, whether they were white, Black, Asian, American, Latino, doesn't matter as long as you were a woman. Even white women could not open a bank account without a man's signature. Until nineteen seventy four, women in this country got the right to abortion, a year before we got the right to open up bank account, meaning that Barbara Walters, the Great Barbara Walters, icon of Mine and icon, the late Great Barbara Walters, when she was doing her landmark interviews in the nineteen sixties, she couldn't open up bank account. That's how women are all connected, and we as women are all on the same side of one issue. That there are a certain amount of men who don't want us to be individuals with any rights at all, no rights at all. And we're pushing back not just on the rights of black folks to have our history told, to have access to elite universities, et cetera. Women are being told, regardless of our race, that we don't belong in the workplace, that we don't belong because affirmative action benefits white women more than a benefits black people. So we're being told no more access, no more individual rights, and soon no more birth control, no more control over your reproduction. That's where we're headed, and it's not a good place for any of us.
It's very scary, And to your point, it's not accidental. Women have more economic power than ever in history, that's right, And women who look like me and who vote on the right are more supportive than abortion and reproductive freedom than ever. So they're going, oh, we're losing all the women, and they are pushing back on us in every avenue that they can. But what is upsetting to me is knowing, to your point, when they do away with affirmative action, yes, it benefits more women who look like me than don't, but it will always hurt women that are black, Latina, Asian, American, et cetera, et cetera even more. And so when we think about the way that we have to activate for each other, the way that we should remember that we are fifty one percent of the population and vote like it, I really do believe it is reminders. It's women like you, it's women like Merly, it's so many of the women in my life, across generational lines, who I look at and go, You've all told us what's at stake. You've done the work. I mean, you enjoy You've written this beautiful book for us to really personalize this great, multuous time in our history. And these are the kinds of lessons I think that can remind us of our power. You know, to your point, Merley had to reinvent a life when her husband was assassinated, and the fact that she is still alive and able to tell these stories is I mean, what an inspiring woman can you? Can you like, give us a little bit of a behind the scenes kind of look in to what it felt like to sit with her? You know, what kind of a woman is she?
What is her?
Because I've read the book, but I'm like, what does her.
Voice sound like?
Like?
What was it like to sit and just kiki with her? I want to know everything.
Listen at first about her voice. Her voice is so rich, like of this so to speaks like this, and I wish I spoke like that, like if I so regal. Listen, she sounds like the queen of the world. She's fabulous And the first half a dozen interviews were by phone with with with great help from her Her daughter, Rina, the middle child, and she, you know, she put us on the phone with her because her mom is a senior, you know, she's a seasoned citizen. You can't just call her on the sale. You got her like calls. And then we got a chance to fly out to California, uh to Claremont, where she lives, and go and actually she came down to where her son lives, so she was she came to her son's house and her son goes and sees her like every day, three days a week or whatever, because he's on the West Coast with her. So she came to his house and we did this epic interview with her there. So I went, my husband went, because again we're like, we're gonna film this interview for posterity, because we just want to have it for the you know, for the future. Who knows what will happen to it, but maybe you know, the Ford Foundation. A while, we're like, we need to film this because it's she's so epic. We get there and her niece, who is the only person who does her makeup, did her makeup for her, because she's always gonna even though we're like, we're not filming a documentary. We're just literally just filming. We just but she was fully made up, darling. She looked fabulous. She's a Delta like myself, Delta sigma theta. So she had heautiful red. She had a fabulous red lip. And when I tell you, and my sister came with us, because my sister lives in La she's an actress. June, Carol shout out to June, and so she came with us, and we literally stayed all day. They almost had to evict us from that house. We had so much fun with Van, his wife, his kids, Miss Merley, and we had the most glorious day with her. She is funny, she is feisty, she is silly, she is goofy. She is in love with Medger Wiley everst to this day. We'll tell you that fifty five times, if you ask her fifty six questions. She is as intense about that love as she was the first time I spoke with her, as it was the fifth time I spoke with her. And she also is very centered in her mission. She still has this mission, carrying on his mission of changing this country for the better. She still engages with young people, writes op Eds she's still engaged with Pomona College, which is where she graduated finally from college. You'll note in the books she drops out of school to marry her man, but she finishes her education at Pomona. She's their most famous alum and most beloved alump. And she's still doing the work. And the thing I think that's the most important Sothia is she's still hopeful, she's still positive. She never let the negativity and the genuine anger because you know, as women, we're not supposed to access our age, right, We're never supposed to be anger. And you know, my favorite chapter in the book is how to be a Civil Rights Widow, because I talk about that this sort of you've just lost the love of your life. You're now a widow and a mother of three. But you're not supposed to protrude. You're not supposed to exude any anger. You're supposed to be demure and still be feminine and still and look perfect. And that was what she had to do. And she's the first civil rights widow on a national level. So Dan rather is in her face as soon as she walks out of her house in tears, and so but despite all of those pressures and having to tell her husband's story for six decades and not allow him to be misunderstood. She's still hopeful, she still loves this country, she still believed this country can be better, and she's still working for it.
And now for our sponsors, I mean, six decades of carrying that torch, keeping that fire alive. We also are having, it seems as of late, these very real conversations about why so often the wives who are really the partners of these civil rights leaders get left out of the stories. You know, you hear Bernice King talk so much about Karta Scott King, about the fact that she was the first person that doctor King would go to, would bounce ideas off of, would write with, would would dream and ide eight for a better America with. And we know as you talk about the activism of Merley, that they must have had such a similar dynamic, They had such a similar dynas. Why do you think the women have been left out of these stories when they've had such an impact on the civil rights movement? And why do you think it's now that they're being acknowledged in the way that perhaps well that they don't perhaps acknowledged, I should say that now they are perhaps being acknowledged in the way they always should have.
I think, unfortunately, it's misogyny. You know, it's this story. It's a train that's never late. Even during the movement. You know, there's a story about the Big six at the March on Washington, including no women. And in fact, Murley was the only woman even invited to make a presentation on the big stage because she was Meger's widow. They actually invited and Is Murley to present, but they didn't invite any other women. And this is something that Kretascott King writes about in her memoir, and she was arranged about it because in her mind, the women were doing so much of the work, you know, not only the women who were helping to you know, sort of create you know, snick was in partly it was mentored and created by women. You know, women were working so hard behind the scenes and the movement. If they weren't a frontline activist, they were the people typing up all the memos, They were the people typing up all the flyers, They were the people distributing out the flyers. Many of the activists, many of the people getting fire hosed, were women, and the women got pushed to the back, even within the movement, but also in the narrative, because again, much of this was taking place in the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, when the idea of women's leadership just wasn't a thing in America. People didn't acknowledge the presence of women, and it was just something that women weren't. By the way, all the reporters were men, All the reports were white men. There were no women reporters. You know, Barbara Walks comes along much later in the late nineteen sixties early seventies. So everyone confronting you for the story is a man. All the cameramen are men, all the editors are men, All the executives and the media companies are men. And so white men are making the narrative, and they make the narrative around other men, and so they just don't see the women. They become invisible. But what happens is that when these three men die, Malcolm Medgar Martin, the only people left to tell the full story are the women that they were married to. Because the closest person to them, to your point, their chief advisor, the sounding board for their speeches, the person they rehearsed the speeches with. The people who type the speech were their wives, and so the person who knew them best were their wives. And so the one who is the most epic at having created a whole camelot because actually that also fell to Jackie Onassis when Kennedy died, When President Kennedy died, she did the same thing. But the first creator of a camelot was really, in many minds, Coretta. Coretta Scott King dove into this task of creating the legacy of doctor King. But the person who did that first was Merley. She began to write the Legacy of Medger, but unfortunately it got sort of run over by everything from the March on Washington to the assassination of JFK. But she did it first, and she did it brilliantly well.
And it's it's such a full circle moment, even in our conversation, because at the core of.
That is the love.
You love someone enough to keep their light alive. And that's what your whole book is framed in, is that it is a love story. And I even think of activism, I think of leaders of movements. You have to love your country enough to demand that it.
Love everyone back.
Yes, you have to love a country enough to be willing to lay down your life for its highest ideals. And you know it is. It is a tragedy and a robbery to have lost these men and there, and the love that their wives had for them kept their legacies alive and continues to to this day.
It's pretty profound, it is.
And to me, it's a love. It's a multiple love story. It's a love story between two people. It's a love of family, it's a love of your people, it's a love of your country. But there's also the girlfriend love. You know, once Meger is gone, that girlfriend love between Coretta and Betty Shabbaz and Met and Merley, that is another kind of love. They were like the group chat before there were group chats. They were together, they stuck together, They loved each other. It's the love of Merley for her children and all that she did to sacrifice in order to make sure that they were okay. And so it's the love of your block. You know, if you grew up on that kind of block, you understand that kind of love. And so I wanted to tell all of those different layers of love that existed even for black people at the worst times, some of the worst times to be black in this country, people still loved, They still had all of those layers, all of those things. And I think it humanizes the black experience when you understand it's just the experience. It's the experience anybody would have. And then each of these groups of us in this country that are sort of thrown together in this salad bowl, because we're not yet a Melton power, more of a salad bowl, but salad two. We all have in our communities, in our individual lives, these same experiences, and if we were placed in the position that Meker and Murley were placed in, we would all do it. I do believe we would all fight for our dignity and fight for our humanity. And that's all they were doing.
It's beautiful.
Why did this here or this time feel like the right time for you to tell this story?
Why did you think America needed a love story?
You know what I have to tell you, It's been a very weird, weird five years. I kind of felt like it's a great question because I didn't want to write another trump Book, to be honest, I just didn't want did really well, very happy with it, but I felt like I dove into the negative aspects of the human personality to do that book. But I feel like we're at a point where number one, our history is being ripped away from us piece by piece and being challenged. It's legitimacy is being challenged. They hit the idea of telling our history is being challenged, and I love history and wanted to defend it. I wanted to defend it. And I've been wanting to do a follow up to my first book, which was called Fracture, which talked about the sort of way that the Democratic Party sort of morph from being the party of the Klan and a white supremacy into a party that could produce Barack Obama. And it's interesting that I'd had a conversation after that book came out with Reverend Sharpton where he said, I love this book, and you should one day tell the story of even further back, like how the civil rights movement kind of moved in that era and then after And so I kind of had that in my head, and I thought that this is a time when we actually need something bigger than just civics, because civics ain't saving us, right, now, you know, and we need something bigger than just history and just knowledge. We actually kind of need a little love, Like we need some inspiration. And there's nothing more inspiring. You know, you're in Hollywood, my dalling, so you know that there's nothing more inspiring than love. So I'm like, I want to do something that will make people see that regular people can do big things. The ordinary people did big things, and that the people who did the big things were regular people who fell in love, and that love drove them to do the things they did, and that if we can get that, we can access that. You know, we may not be able to access the great heroism of a Medica average and put our life on the line. But you love something, and if you love something, you'll do something. You'll do a little something, whatever is in your capacity to do, you'll do it because you have that love driving you.
Yeah, that's beautiful. Do you see that?
Having written the book and applying love as the lens, does it make you look at, you know, the pinwheel of your own life and career differently as a writer and anchor, know, a journalist, a podcast host, a mother, wife, like all of these pieces of your identity. It does it create a sort of different way of looking at them or spinning all the plates.
I guess that's a great question. No one's ever asked me that before. That's a good question, you know what. I kind of think it does, because I'll be honest with you, I am a person that I'm a little bit of a daffy I'm a daffy apple, you know. I'm kind of a goofball where. But also I can't bring myself to do something that I don't love. Like it's very hard for me to do a job I don't like or love. And I've my poor husband. I have quit more jobs left. I been like I'm laving, you know, and he's had to deal with that our whole lives together. We've been together since we were both twenty one, so we've been through a whole journey. But one of the times that I actually left left my job was I left the news business, like I exited in two thousand and four because I was just deeply against the Iraq war and I didn't like the way the media was sort of jingoistically promoting war, and I'm very anti war, so I just felt like this wasn't a place for me. But what I did in doing that was I actually gave myself opportunity to figure out what I do care about. I did talk radio where I could just really talk to people, which I loved talk radio. I was able to talk to people where they would call me in. We had a four hour morning show, so I just loved being able to call in and talk to vocal and radio and go back and forth. And it was during a rough time in Florida where there was a lot of police shootings and a lot of It's how I met Ben Kromp, you know, dealing with a police shooting or a police killing of a young fourteen year old, and it was sort of it was an opportunity. And then I jumped on a couple campaigns, including the second being, of course, the Obama campaign, and I love that and I loved politics. So yes, I feel like I've had a full circle life. And then I started out as a sixth grader who loved politics and news to somebody who got to work in news, then fell out of love with news, then worked in politics, and then went back to news. So I do feel like I've had a full SERVI like the thing I love the most when I was in the sixth grade is the stuff I do now, you know. It's a wild journey from being a sixth grader who had committed to becoming a doctor to actually being a grown up version of the original sixth grader.
That's so cool, that's really special.
It is. I feel very lucky, and I think my mom would find it hilarious because while she was committed to the idea of me being a doctor, she once said to me, girl, if you could just get paid for how much you talk, if you could just literally get paid to talk, that would be amazing because I just never shut up. And she was like, you should just somehow figure out how to get paid to talk, and I did.
I can picture my dad listening to this episode nodding, being like I said the.
Same thing to my kid. Yeah, Oh, I love it.
Okay, I'm checking the clock because I want to be respectful of your time, and I know you've got a million things to do. So I'm going to ask you my last and favorite question that I ask all of my guests, which is from this vantage point today, as you look around and all of the things you do and all of the things you're passionate about, and all of the passion you pour out into the world.
What's next?
What feels like your work in progress right now?
Oh, that's such a great question, you don't you have some good questions.
You know what.
I feel like, I just love telling stories like that is my favorite thing. And so what drives me and keeps me interested and intrigued is figuring out what's my next story that I'm going to tell, whether it's on the redown, on the show, or whether it's a documentary. And we my husband and I are actually working on a documentary about the assassination of banker Ever, so I'm really passionate about that because there's so much more to that story that I couldn't get into the book. My poor editor, I would have turned in a book like it's a phone book, an old phone book from the eighties, and he was like, you know what, I'm gonna cut a whole lot of that we're not gonna have on that. You're gonna have to make that little storder. And so there's so much more material that I have that really delves into that, and so I'm passionate about getting that documentary done and then just about finding more stories that can intrigue us, unite us, make us outraged, but then bring us back to a place where we can do something about it. And I feel like that's what the mission I was put on this earth for. You know, we all kind of look for the meaning of why we're in the universe, why we're why the universe wanted us here, Like why the universe wanted me here is that I do love to tell stories, and I do love people, and I'm interested in people. I find people interesting, and so if I can find more people's stories to tell, I'm always going to be happy. And if you're happy and joyful and you love what you're doing, you're never working a day in your life.
I love it, happy and joyful and educational. Like, yes, I would love.
For sign me up. I'm telling you I'm coming to work for you. I can't.
We're hanging out, like I think we have committed. We're going to You're going to co anchor with me. We're going to do an episode. It's gonna be let's go. Yes.
Thank you so much, Joy, Thank you for everything you pour into what you do and into these books that you write, and just into who you are. You really, you're such a north Star for so many of us, and we're very grateful that you joined us on the show today.
Thank you, Sophia. It was so much fun.
