(((My Fellow Americans))) #104: Dr. E Henderson Lawson

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i’ll be buried in my grave before i become [Music] way back in the day i’ll be buried in [Music] but it seems like since that day yeah we have solely changed [Music] before i become that is [Music] but it seems like since that day we have sorely changed [Music] from beautiful myrtle beach south carolina you’re watching my fellow americans with your host spike collins yes it’s me thank you thank you so much oh thank you keep clapping thank you thank you clap for the miracle how would we know that you wanted the miracle if you didn’t keep clapping welcome to my fellow americans i am literally spike cohen thank you so much for joining us this wednesday the what is it the 16th of june this year is almost halfway over i am not ready to process that at even remotely at all and i doubt you are either so thank you for joining us here this is a muddy waters media production check us out on all of the social media platforms check us out on all of the uh podcasting platforms check us out on 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another day in my life i instead want to drink oh you can’t read the top of the thing a coffee alternative that has nothing in it but masala chai cacao i don’t know what cacao is but cacao mushrooms turmeric sea salt cinnamon and literally nothing else well folks i have some fantastic news for you if you go to muddywatersmedia.com mud you yes you can go and get a tin that this person in this the hand model is holding of mud water and i do take mud water i do use mud water and it tastes i mean coffee doesn’t taste good either so this tastes about the same but it has 1 7 of the caffeine of coffee put that in perspective it is 8 p.m i’m still this wired off of one cup of mud water uh imagine what i would have been like on coffee so be sure to go get some mud water today um folks my guest tonight that’s the wrong thing uh and then of course jack casey author of the books the royal green and in silver in silver throne which is i don’t i’ve never read these books whatever they’re about i’m sure they’re great uh and i’m sure jack casey would love for you to buy them because that i mean that puts money in his pocket so be sure to go to theroyalgreen.com today to buy these books and of course uh coming summer of 2021 uh his third book crowned by gold is coming out i also don’t know what that one’s about i will i’m never going to read these books because if they are if i read them and they’re bad i’m going to feel bad for trying to get you to buy them and if they’re good i’m going to feel bad that i you know promoted them this way because this is terrible um and finally of course personal injury attorney chris reynolds attorney at law um if you are in the uh or if you are in florida which i just got back from if you are in florida and you find yourself personally injured you can contact chris reynolds and he will sue them for you giving and you could get money from that i don’t know that you’re going to get money from that but there’s a there’s at least a 50 50 chance probably i don’t know that you there’s at least even odds that you could end up getting money from suing someone because they did something to you if it’s not a frivolous case so go to chrisreynoldslaw.com well he wouldn’t take a case if it was frivolous so you have at least a 50 50 chance probably even better than that chrisreynoldslaw.com the intro and outro music to this and every single episode of my fellow americans comes from the amazing and talented mr joe davey j-o-d-a-v-i check him out on his facebook go to his soundcloud go to his band camp joe davimusic.bandcamp.com where you can listen and stream and buy his entire discography it’s like 25 bucks it’s all the it’s hours of music you’ll love all of it go there now well no don’t go there now go after this is over watch this entire thing in its entirety all the way to the very end then when it ends go to joe daveymusic.bandcamp thank you so much joe davi i’d like to thank libliu for this delicious purified drinking water that i’m drinking on this episode bulupinaka i just realized this is the first water i’ve drank since i got home the last time i drank water i was in florida shout out to tamron turks’s mom and him as always folks as you probably know this saturday is the 156th anniversary of juneteenth juneteenth is the day that the slaves that lived in texas were informed 156 years ago years after the civil war had ended they were finally informed that they were free from shadow slavery and pretty much as soon as that ended as soon as they were informed they went straight to work building up their communities and creating communities um building uh um free colonies across texas and really across the country but especially in texas but there are times that the people that went there and amassed great wealth and great property uh had people in positions of government come and steal their property from them my guest tonight is a descendant of one of these people that had their property stolen from them she is also the author of colored river and she is here to talk about uh her and her family’s fight for recognition of what happened and uh and for justice and and hopefully recompensation ladies and gentlemen my fellow americans please welcome to the show dr e henderson lawson dr lawson thank you so much for coming on thank you it’s a pleasure to be here well i’m happy to have you here and folks be sure to tune in with your thoughts and questions and dr lawson and i will tell you if you are right or wrong now dr lawson while we’re getting before we get started with the story if you can tell you know you don’t have to get too personal but tell us a little bit about yourself you’re you’re a a doctor of some kind you’ve you’ve gone through uh school tell us about what led to you even finding out about this story what what is the genesis story of how you even found out that something had happened well it’s like it started when i was a little girl um i heard uncles and older relatives mention that our land was stolen and i didn’t give much thought to it um you know it just kind of went in one ear and out the other um but in 2016 uh some cousins we met at one of my cousin’s house and we were just sitting around going through obituaries and one of our family historians uh was there and she had a lot of pictures and she proceeded to tell stories about our family and it was just at that moment that those memories came back to me and i decided to start looking at my family’s genealogy and so i started there i went home and i googled my grandfather and um and i found some information about him and so i googled my great grandfather and i found a death certificate for him and then i ventured to google my great great grandfather and when i put his name in a court case came up and of course all of the thoughts came rushing back to me all the memories of when i was a little girl and so um i just couldn’t believe that i saw his name and so i called some cousins up and we went on down to the courthouse and after two times going down because i didn’t know anything about pulling those files um a doctor of education by the way and um i got the case and i came home and i read and i saw his name and wasn’t sure uh still but i mean it was the county that our people were from and so i went ahead and joined ancestry here’s a plug for ancestry.com joined ancestry.com and put in all of the names and saw that um it was five black men and two white attorneys and um they were um asking um there was another family that were heirs of that were heirs of a name that was on the map that said that the republic of texas had granted them the land and as i continued to look at this i realized i need to go back and do some studying about texas history so that led me to researching texas in a way that i’ve never looked at texas before in a way that had never been taught to me in public school or college at any time and um i was able to put together um based on that case which i thought at the time was the only case but there ended up being three other cases and seven conspirators from the beginning to the end of the cases that actually rob the family not just my family but many black families in the same county in texas and so um i decided that i would continue to research and as i continued to research family members started giving me more information and that information led me on a journey of writing and so i just kept writing and one day um a cousin i didn’t know it was a cousin reached out to me on ancestry so if you know anything about ancestry you’re able to communicate via ancestry and send messages and so a cousin reached out to me and said i didn’t know it was a cousin because his name wasn’t my last name it wasn’t henderson and he reached out and um said hey i see you have a picture of my grandmom on your family tree and i’d like to talk to you i’m writing a book and i said wow i’m writing too so we communicated in the first day we because i didn’t know how aware my writing was going i just knew that i was writing and we were writing the same story and so he said let’s collaborate with this because we’re right here together writing the same story we know you know all of our family knows and so we started writing together so um dr kennedy um is is my co-author and um so our story my colored river tells the story of our family and how um my great great grandfather his father was actually an irishman and um he actually fought in a battle of san jacinto so we were able to um get records showing this and um you know following the history of texas and putting in context what was happening in texas and following um the emancipation of the slaves as you stated um many black families were able to amass land because they they knew how to work the land right right um it was just an unfortunate um string of events that led to them losing their land um well let’s talk about that so jim henderson is your great great grandfather is that correct yes okay so jim henderson was a correct me if i’m wrong he was a freed slave who began a free uh a free colony um of other of other black people of other freed slaves and as you said and this is something we’ve actually talked about um on my other show we’ve talked about the fact that when you look at a lot of the the storytelling about or the the the things that have been written about slavery and the post-slavery era it understandably and justifiably so focuses on the uh the oppression it focuses on the the continued harm that happened in the sharecropper era and the the continuation of uh abuses that happen so that for many um for many black people in that time it was almost as though slavery either hadn’t ended or hadn’t really gotten that much better um what isn’t talked about a lot is that there were many black people who were able to because as you said because they had incredible skills because they had incredible work ethic because they uh had been treated like cattle and now we’re able to uh exert themselves and exert their own bodily autonomy and be able to build wealth for themselves they got they hit the ground running and accumulated vast amounts of property and and wealth sometimes becoming uh wealthier than some of the white inhabitants of the same counties um and so that led to the creation and the growing of of freestone county the the um the freedom colony there can you how much can what can you tell us about that colony and what that was like so first let me tell you something um when texas became a republic one of the first things that um that they made sure of is that no black would be free and um i mean that was the whole reason they fought right they wanted to keep their slaves right and so jim henderson was a slave on paper but his father was um his father was white and so with his father being in the position that he was in the story as it was told to me members and we have some written documents from family members um that that we were able to capture and put in our in the book um it was a he was a in in the state of texas he was considered a slave but he had gotten some land from his father and we can see his father’s land not far from his land um so there was a gentleman by the name of e.a maher who actually came through after um the second reconstruction um he was able to come in and give titles to the blacks because at this time they could legally own land so the titles that jim henderson had were um giving him the rights all rights to his land and he continued to fight for his land but he just couldn’t beat the system so the community that um jim henderson founded the bethel community uh our cemetery is still there um it’s still sitting on the land we can get to the cemetery but we can’t get to the land we can only get to the cemetery and bethel is only one of many freedom colonies that are in freestone county it’s the one that just happens to be where jim henderson had amassed most of his land um but we see through the court cases it was uh it was about greed um so many blacks lost land we have record of that um it’s in the court records it’s open records and so um the research and to be able to do what jim henderson couldn’t do he couldn’t read he couldn’t write he had to rely on the system and the system did not um the system wasn’t in his favor right and so um this community um we can see the churches even some of them are we have pictures they’re dilapidated they’re still there um we can’t get to where his house is because it’s contained it’s still contained on this land so we can see it we can identify we have legal descriptions but that’s about all we can do so jim henderson’s father was an irishman and and maybe this might be a uh and i apologize if this is a crass question to ask was was jim henderson’s father also his previous um owner when when slaves okay yes okay he yes as a matter of fact because in texas um you had to go before congress um this was the first thing that they wanted to make sure of when texas became a republic is that no one black would be free in the state of texas and so his father was the one who on paper enslaved him but of course he didn’t treat him nor his mother zilli um harshly at all so it was basically a family but he used the legal the legal cover of being their owner to justify them being a family basically right and they were pretty much left alone until hugh henderson died um his father and ea my hair died who was the person who um was giving titles to the blacks in this community um when he died that is when the land theft conspiracy began okay okay so that’s when it all fell apart okay so then so up until this point jim henderson and other freed black uh families have are building colonies uh jim at this point jim has i if correct me for thousands of acres of land correct correct so like correct more lane than anyone watching this ever hopes to have that he had a fast swat this is this is you know you you talk about a you know rags to riches story you go from slavery to being such a hard worker and and such you know having such a great mind for enterprise that you now own you know the equivalent of a small county and so you know you so he has all this land he has all this property and he has built it up and this is supposed to be the american dream right not the slavery part but the part about you know you you start from you come with nothing or or in this case you you are you know freed with little to nothing and you build up and grow your legacy and you’re able to pass on that generational wealth to future generations so that they don’t have it as hard as you do so that they have a a legacy to build upon so that they can pass that generational wealth onto their future generations and so that you know there is this accumulation of wealth through the the institution of that family so that eventually you know those people are able to live in in you know essentially whatever level of luxury they want um but instead there were people who decided they were just going to steal it can you walk us through how that actually worked you know what what was the process of of taking this man this this ostensibly free man and robbing him of everything he had worked so hard for okay absolutely first of all we must remember that during this time blacks were not allowed to go to school so they were pretty much formally uneducated but i know that jim was highly intelligent um because he was able to um amass such amounts great amounts of lent and keep it so if you had to think of a timeline i would say okay so we know that the emancipation happened juneteenth 1865 everybody’s caught under that by now um 1870 is the first time we can see blacks on the census so we see jim and we see his children on the senses on the land for the first time in 1870 now if you’re looking at a timeline go all the way to 1896 in 1896 there was a man who was the inspector of lands who conspired with an attorney who remained a part of this land theft conspiracy until the end and basically they said to each other let’s go there were so many blacks on this um on this survey of land and um they wanted to know let’s see if we can figure out a way to get them out now the way i know this is because the attorney at the time that was conspiring with the inspector of lands wasn’t actually selected initi he was selected initially to work with the inspector of lands to um acquire the land find out who owned the land based on not the um based on the survey so this survey the jy aguilera survey we had to go back and do some research on this survey so basically um they said all of these blacks are on this land let’s find out who owned it before them right and so they go to mexico because i had to go back and understand that land grants were given between april 6 1830 and 1834 during that period of time the homesteading of mexico right during that period of time well there were seven land grants given in freestone county so on one of those land grants which is where we spend most of our time researching the j.y aguilera survey is where we find this land theft conspiracy beginning and so the when he um once once the attorney uh once the land inspector found um um had surveyed the land out in in and went to mexico to find out who had and who this land grant had gone to he came back but the attorney he didn’t select him he selected another attorney and so the attorney the initial attorney was upset and so he found a complaint and it’s on file and so when i got the paper of it being on file it it explained how um he was up so upset that they were going to find the original owners of this land and they were going to give half of the land to them and then they were going to split the other half and so this uh attorney was upset and said you’ve found another attorney and you’ve left me out and i am due one-fourth of whatever is not already encumbered by people that are already on the land right so the the attorney that um was to take his place didn’t care about that complaint he went ahead and filed a lawsuit against um the people that had inherited the land and that had gotten their titles from e.a maher so the lawsuit was against the descendants of e.a maher who at this time had died so his wife um was in court um it was so it was he the attorney was actually representing the the mexican family that was in mexico now he brought them back and said this is your land even though there was a power of attorney form on file which i have a copy of they gave the same man e.a maher the power to distribute the land he was the land agent for this family the massou family as well as he had power to give this land away because his name is the one that’s on the land grant right because of a succession of events that happened which we went and researched how did j.y aguilera end up not owning the land how did it end up in the hand of the masseu heirs we asked that question and so went back and there’s the information on the grant uh itself saying that j.y aguilera owed money and he gave him this 11 leagues of land which is about 48 748 acres okay and so um in between the time that uh texas became a republic this land of course things happened and then of course you know texas started giving out their own grants as a republic and then of course when it became a part of the united states it start giving out so you could see how you could say well it could kind of get confused and it could kind of get blurred but what i want you to remember is e.a maher um had gotten a land from his father jose maher because i don’t i don’t want to go so deep in the texas history but right right david burnett was the first interim president for texas so he had the um burnett’s colony and it encompassed the entire freestone column column of freestone county and so um here we have burnett’s colony which he couldn’t settle and so he ended up uh selling it to the texas galveston um land company and that land company the part that jose maher ended up um getting it was he and two other uh gentlemen was encompassed freestone county so jose maher was executed because of his role in the battle of um santa ana did not like him because he wasn’t four he was executed so but before he died he actually wheeled everything he owned to his son e.a maher so i don’t know if you’ve ever in texas you can ride through my hair the hares had all of this property and they it’s so much so they have a whole county named after them and my hair if you come to texas it’s still here so they get to court they get to court and so you have this attorney who’s saying the masseu heirs um illegally own this property and you have maher’s wife saying no we own a property so it was the attorney representing the masseuse and against the maharas so the judge said and this is in writing and this is in um um not only is this in writing this is in the minutes from the court and there’s also an affidavit stating that um ea maher’s wife attested to people that were already on this property which included jim henderson at the top and the the judge said the judge said he would give a part of the land to the masseu heirs a part of the land to the mahara heirs right but do not bother the pioneers who are already on the land that’s what our whole con this with this whole conspiracy this is where it came from we have in writing the judge saying do not bother the families that have already encumbered the land and so and we have the affidavit affidavit stating who’s on the land but then you have this attorney who disregarded what the judge said and went ahead and created fake vendor liens and forced these blacks to sign these vendor liens under duress and so that’s where the conspiracy started so they would go on the land and say i on this i own this land not you right um and um and then they would take them to court and say i own the land and so during that time the period of reconstruction was political reconstruction was pretty much over and jim crow had set in and there was a lot of fear going on uh some of the cases were happening at the same time the sloka massacre was happening in a neighboring county of anderson and so we realized that there was a lot of stress associated with this yeah it was a backdrop of threats of violence and real violence happening right next door and angry white people showing up saying sign this or there’s going to be problems so it wasn’t like they just decided to sign this yeah yes and so you know one of the most amazing things that i um that i was able to capture during the research for the final case which started in 1913 was there was an answer from jim henderson in the case and it was never read and we know it wasn’t read because again there are minutes court minutes that indicate that the three guys three white guys that were um his attorney his attorneys in the minutes it said we rescind jim’s answer and they called so then they called for jim and they said okay he defaulted but in his answer which we can see because it’s still on record and freestone he said i am an illiterate negro this is fraud he said they came upon the land and said to me that if i do not sign these papers that they would take all of my land and they know full well that this is my land and they did know full well because they’re the two people these same two attorneys that were fighting him for the land were the same two attorneys who had defended him in the case that i found online that you can google so these were the case so then the attorneys that threatened him and said either signed this or were going to take all of it then turned around and represented him and said we’re rescinding his answer and then said he defaulted why were they his attorneys in the first place did were they appointed attorneys or how did that happen okay back up right quick okay remember when i said the first attorney came in and then the second attorney came in and they were kind of against each other yeah and then they start conspiring together so the land inspector died the one that was started this the land inspector he died and then we found out through genealogy and through ancestry that the reason why he picked the other attorney and not the first one was because he was married to his niece so i was like oh now i see by doing their family tree that there was a family connection however as soon as they started with the fake vendor liens the errors that popped up and said for the case you can google and i sent you a link to that case that you can google today in 2021 uh that case these same two attorneys who were fighting who were saying um the masseur people owned the land and were against them that happened in 1897 the case actually started in 1900 in 1901 out of the blue comes some people saying our ancestor owns one third of 11 leagues of land and these blacks were upon the land when we got here and it’s our land that was a true case so they had to hurry up and get over there to try to get that back into their hands so that they could steal it which is the only way you could think of it because they defended them both of these attorneys defended the blacks in this case five black men they defended them in this case and so then they absolutely knew that this was their land and turned right back around in the next case so while this case was going on let me just tell you a little bit about that case right quick during this case these um heirs of tobias dubronner if you look at a map of east texas you’ll see a part that says tobias du broner the heirs of tobias dubronner brought this court this case to court and said that when they came upon the land around 1895 or 1896 they saw these people here which verifies that they were there um right right and so we saw a black saying that means that they were there right yeah they’re there we saw them there they’re there and they even said they showed us some title from e.a maher stating that they own the land but we are saying that we own the land because the state of texas gave it to our ancestor so the judge in that case said you cannot say that just because you didn’t know that there was this um mexican land grant that you are owners of it so he allowed the blacks should have been victorious they should it was a victory hands down the heirs of tobias dubronner came back and said we want to appeal this we have all this and we have the cases um we want to appeal this and lost again so you would think oh yeah yeah yeah no not so fast while this case was going on because they were so busy defending the blacks in this case jim anderson at the top um while they were so busy defending them they had started that whole thing with the vendor liens that was rolling right so they couldn’t do anything they were tied into this case because they appealed so they have brought in this land capitalist so the land capitalist comes in and says i own 21 412 acres of land it was two white men on the in there and the rest were blacks the two white men go out and get an attorney they got an attorney in their attorney which i can see in the case questioned how are you filing a suit against these people and he was looking at the chile case he was looking at the case that they had just they were being appealed and going through all that he was looking at that and he even we have a letter where he wrote to freestone county and asked could you send me the information about the kachili case and then he made a statement and said it seems to me that this attorney is just trying to get everybody to default so they dismissed the two white land they dismissed their cases and defaulted on all of the blacks in one day they dismissed the case on the whites and they defaulted the blacks land over to the attorneys absolutely and guess who the attorney was for all the blacks you guessed it the same one of the attorneys that simultaneously in the courtroom defending them for one-third of 11 weeks and on the other side um with the land capitalists was the other person the other attorney being a witness for him they never got out of it so in the final case these two attorneys sued these blacks with their names on the cases and this was the last piece of land that my ancestor jim henderson owned and it had a lake on it and it had his homestead on it and it says it in his response and the answer that was never read right that i built my home here right and they know well that they never owned this land and then he said and my wife nancy never signed so she still should have interest in his property that’s how i know he was intelligent right and so you know what happened before that case was over nancy was dead i’ve gone down myself to freestone to look for her death certificate we can’t find her body we can’t find a death certificate nothing and we know that three of the sons were murdered one was beat senseless i mean it’s just it was just so very emotional writing the book because you know i’ve heard these stories i’m hearing these stories i’m researching i’m going to ancestry and seeing my ancestor in prison for 12 days and then seeing dead on the prison record you know i know they hung my great uncle jehu i mean my great uncle walter priest his descendants we’re we know where we are we know our family we’re still this has brought us so much closer together that we have located the eight of jim’s children that had children and we’ve come together and we talked about this and it’s very painful i can’t imagine yeah it’s very painful to just know that this was all done for greed you know um and so colored river tells this story um as much as we can tell um it goes through the cases it goes through um texas history and i put a little bit in there just so context would be given to uh because i knew if i didn’t have it in my mind about what was happening in texas so clear that others probably wouldn’t either because you know school was such a joke for me when it came to the history of texas when i woke up this was all about slavery what yep this was all about keeping slaves and king cotton so this is and and this before i ask about i guess i’ll start by asking so the property now you said that the you can’t get to the land but the um but you can still see the the graveyard what is on that land well i guess it’s thousands of acres so it’s probably many things what’s on that land now um so one of the other conspirators in this case i call him the puppet master okay because from the beginning he was behind the scenes pulling strings right so when they came out with those vendor liens when that attorney came up with the vendor links don’t try to make logical sense of this right he and the county clerk came together and i don’t know they created they were the ones who um bought these vendor links so to speak that’s what they said they bought them we don’t find that out until the last case and they pop out of nowhere as interveners and say we own you guys you two attorneys are saying you own the land but we own half we own half and you guys own half the land so it was jim two of his sons and then there were other um um six other black families the attorneys this is the this is the case where nancy ended up dead before the case was over so the attorneys gave the other blacks some of their land back but not jim and his two sons and so one of our family members is a descendant and these families are so interconnected but one of our family members uh is also a family member to one of the other pers victims of this um alan davis and so alan davis was given back 14.5 acres from his 100 acres so they still own this 14.5 acres today that’s the only piece of land we know hey don’t say this didn’t happen because don’t say this didn’t happen because they’re fantastic still today on it there’s this one piece of black on ours we can’t get to it what did you say spike no i was just saying there’s this one piece of black owned land there and that’s what you can trace everything back to yes and it’s on the deed it’s still on the warranty deed as referred to in that case that started in 1913. so um there’s no question about the legitimacy and of course the most important thing is the cases are still on file in freestone and so i gosh so i’m assuming there is some kind of is there a statute of limitations on this or are you trying to to piece together the history so that you can try to get recompensation for this or what you know is there a a is this now is it past a point of trying to secure some kind of justice for this and just trying to tell the story or is there still an attempt to to actually get compensation for what happened okay so spike so when we started this story uh both my co-author and i it’s like we were being bothered in our spirits about writing this story because we know how many of our ancestors cried prayed died behind justice so our whole point in writing a book was to tell the story america needs to know we always hear about land um theft land loss black land laws um we know that um there was a tremendous amount of 98 um of the black land was lost after 1910 everything coincides with what was happening there um we’ve had other family members who attempted to speak out about this uh i would say that there was a period of time where our family members they had the story but they couldn’t quite articulate it in a way they couldn’t put it in writing it was just told it was just oral stories and then you have a population of people that could write but they didn’t know the story so now here is the perfect time and our book came out before all of the attention was put on writing the wrongs of of what has happened to blacks in america uh and it just it just coincided the time so the main point of our story was to tell the story we don’t know what time this will take we’re not expecting uh for um we’re not out on a man on a witch hunt to hunt people down but we do feel like we’ve been wrong we feel like our inheritance was stolen from us um we don’t know we know that laws have been set up as a system um you have 25 years or whatever to say something about it well within those 25 years we were still under the same system that didn’t want to hear from you they don’t want to hear from you so you’re talking about county officials that’s what sets this case apart um these people were working for free the county clerk i mean these people he opened up an abstract company in the courthouse where he’s responsible what is the county collector they’re responsible for keeping up with deeds and and um and all of these official records birth certificates death certificates we can’t find a death certificate for jim henderson we can’t find any information on hugh henderson besides his military records and the stories that have been left to us that we were able to now tell in a way that people can understand and put it in writing and so we don’t know which way the story will go uh i assume just like the people in tulsa they didn’t know which way their story would go they still don’t right um just like the people at on bruce’s beach they didn’t know which way the story would go but your responsibility is to tell the story and so we don’t know we know years later there was so much oil ignite coal all kinds of minerals on the land um i mean talk about uh the reason for an economic wealth gap land loss is at the top and and frankly uh there hasn’t been much that anyone could do about it i mean we we didn’t have a voice so how do you give 25 years when the 25 years that you’re talking about people are still struggling with illiteracy you know um and so i feel honored and i tell my family all the time this to me is a gift to my family to finally tell them what happened in writing so that even when i’m not here the story has been written it’s documented and i made sure to um put notes in the back of the book so that anyone who wanted to say well no that didn’t happen that they have a way to go back for themselves and go and do their own research yeah so this is a story and i mean you want to talk about a wealth gap this is a story of why there’s a wealth gap basically as told through a single family you have someone yes multiple families there the descendants of generations of people who were brought from their homeland uh treated like cattle robbed of their identity of their heritage treated basically one step above animals if you can even call it that robbed of literally generations of labor it’s hard to calculate what that would be worth now once you compound the interest and everything else it’s in it’s in the trillions and this is a a group of families who were allowed to now not be slaves immediately start amassing wealth immediately start building wealth and going you know not looking back at any of the stuff that was robbed of them in previous generations not feeling bad for themselves not just immediately start their building wealth right uh pulling themselves up by their bootstraps as we say and the response to that is that you had a handful of people who use the power of government and their connections to systematically rob them of all or almost all of their property and to as far as we can tell kill anyone or or at least potentially the possibility that they were also killing but certainly intimidating anyone and if they were also killing people uh that would be quite a way to intimidate other people to make sure that the robbery happened and they are doing this to people who by law again power of government are not allowed to have an education and yet they were still smart enough they were still intelligent enough to know something was wrong here they they were not allowed to learn how to read now and again this is this is i i’m trying not to get on too much of a soapbox here but a system that tells someone you are not allowed to learn what words say is a system that is codifying your victimization because what they’re saying is everyone else is allowed to know how to read and write and be able to participate in this legal system you are not you have to rely on someone else or just show up without any paperwork and hope for the best and so this is a story of the logical conclusion of what happens when that’s allowed to happen and your fight now to seek that justice to like you said bruce’s beach uh the greenwood community rose what all of these different communities to tell that that story of what happened with the idea that of course we’ve seen what’s happened in other cases when that story comes out and people see what really what this really is that this is not some abstract thing this isn’t roots this is an actual per this is a human being this is not an act of fiction these are actual human beings that this happened to and people who now are suffering from the fact that they were not allowed the what would probably now be worth hundreds of millions or billion who knows in in in amassed wealth what happens when that happens and so i hope that you are able to get the justice that you can um i’m not sure that you can fully get recompensated what was taken um simply because it would be impossible at this point you know one of one of the conversations about reparations is well you know how are we going to pay for what is due that’s impossible there is no way to pay the tens of trillions of dollars worth of labor and wealth that was stolen so now what we’re looking at is what can be given back so whatever can be given back i hope that you were able to get it and i hope that you’re able to find that justice tell people about where they can find this book we’ve been putting the the link to the book uh in it is there anyone it’s on amazon is there anywhere else they can get it you also have a website as well right yeah coloredriver.com they can get it there or it’s on amazon um the kindle version is on amazon as well okay and we’ve just put the the book the the link to coloredriver.com in the in the no in the comments as well um i usually go through the uh the questions in the comments but literally all of the comments have just been people that are just expressing shock at every bit of this story you know 40 000 acres you know i i can’t believe that this happened this is swindling this is theft by fraud uh one person said that they really like your eyebrows other than that every everything here uh they think your eyeballs are beautiful but everyone her family is definitely do this compensation this is literally just a bunch of people saying how dismayed and and flabbergasted they are by this story so um colored river.com and the uh and the amazon uh link is on there as well i i have i’m not even sure if this is a question or a comment so i’m gonna start talking we’ll figure out we’ll find out together um juneteenth coming up on saturday as you know that’s the that is the anniversary of the freedom that was delayed to slaves that were in texas in a similar fashion there is a justice delayed that is happening here and hopefully it is not a justice denied um and i i guess i just want to get your your thoughts on that and honestly any final thoughts that you have um this is a has been an amazing episode um and and thank you for sharing this with us and i there is nothing i can say other than i’m sorry that this has happened and i hope that this episode and i hope that people hearing about this and reading it and telling others about it will help to spark that catalyst of getting the justice that you deserve um so dr lawson i i give you this chance to give your final words to give anything you feel like we didn’t get a chance to talk about to plug any other uh events or uh or you know books or anything else that you want to be able to share uh dr e henderson lawson the floor is yours for inviting me um this is my first time doing an interview um and one thing i wanted to say is we do hear a lot about reparations but i like to use the word reclamations um how about let’s get back to what you took that we can identify that’s ours and so yeah you can be pretty ambiguous when you’re talking about reparations and i get it how do you pay back all of this and who gets it and who doesn’t get it it’s impossible when you have a family that knows about what’s theirs and we can see it and we can follow the people who are enjoying it that’s pretty painful and we know that our family members were murdered behind it and we saw our family members cry and we know that they pray and we have several of them that are depending on our voices and so this is an opportunity for our voice to be shared with america and i have family that’s behind me they pray for me they support me they’re researching with me and i appreciate them some of them are here listening um we are very sensitive about how we’re moving forward with this and it’s not for greed it’s not even for self-gain it’s for justice and so um i’m just thankful that we’ve had this opportunity to come on and be able to share the story of what happened to our family something else i want to say is we’re not against white people so sometimes it can be misconstrued that because a group of people did the wrong thing that we’re upset with white people but we have sense enough to know how whites have helped blacks in from slavery on up all through the civil rights act and so i’m thankful for people that can see this through another lens besides it being something about hatred uh for a race of people even though that’s what happened to us so i would like to thank each and every one of you who’ve come on and i would encourage you to grab the book and read about our family um and what happened to our family and my co-author he’s been under the weather or he would have been on here with me as well but he wishes us well um during this interview so thank you so much spike for having me and i really appreciate it thank you dr lawson and yes this is not about scapegoating all white people or any race this is specific people did a specific bad thing to hurt people to murder people to take their land uh and and uh this is definitely not greed if someone comes and kills my family and takes my property and i say i’d like my property back uh and i wish you hadn’t killed my family i’m not the one being greedy so i i no this is this is about justice this is about telling first of all it’s number one it’s about acknowledging what even happened um and then second of all from that acknowledgement having a conversation like you said reclamation okay great this isn’t some abstract discussion about how the system enslaved array specific people did a specific thing to specific people and there’s a way to trace that and and and reclaim and repair from that specific thing that happened but anyway colored river.com and we also have the link on amazon and i believe on your website it has the amazon and the kindle link and all of that stuff dr lawson thank you so much for coming on i greatly appreciate it uh stick around i’d like to talk to you briefly during the um outro so if you can just stick around i’d really appreciate it um folks thank you so much for uh this for watching this incredible um i i guess bittersweet episode of of my fellow americans you know this is um to talk to someone who is the descendant of someone who had this kind of harm inflicted upon him and upon them um i only hope that we i hope that you were touched by this uh watching at home or listening at home and are inspired to get this book to tell this story and to and to help spread this message because this is this is a perfect example we’ve talked about bruce’s beach on my on my social media um and as as um as terrible as that was um this that pales in comparison to this in in my opinion anyway um and so i i hope that you get the book i hope that you share this story with others and let’s let’s let’s get some justice for this family for the descendants of jim henderson and those who were harmed by this um as i said before uh this is uh juneteenth is uh is coming up um uh tomorrow on thursday uh the writer’s block uh my co-host matt uh on his show um i do not remember who his guest is i do this every time uh his guest uh is travis bull johnson he is running for congress in western minnesota uh as a libertarian so be sure to watch that tomorrow at eight uh then on friday the 18th i will be in greensboro north carolina for the start of the libertarian party of uh north carolina’s convention and also um the um the juneteenth event that we are doing as part of that convention that is going to be on friday and saturday the 18th and 19th uh if you go to spikecommand.com you can find all the information there uh on sunday we are going to be taking part in something called pound the pavement those who watch the show you know what what that means we’re going to be going out into the community in greensboro and talking with folks there about our ideas about our vision to set people free from wars and from cages and from undue criminal records and what we stand for as libertarians um and if you live anywhere near greensboro uh and or if you’ve if any of you who have been a part of any of our pound the pavement events you know how incredible and successful they’ve been uh we hope to do the same in greensboro if you live anywhere near there come on out and meet us we’d love to do it um and then if you join us right back here uh next week uh uh for the muddy waters of freedom where matt right and i parse through the week’s events uh you can join us here uh next tuesday at eight uh and then join me right back here uh next uh wednesday the 23rd my guest will be michael bolden of the 10th amendment center um so folks again thank you much for thank you so much for tuning in i’m spike cohen and you are the power god bless guys [Music] away [Music] so [Music] [Applause] i can’t make a change [Music] [Music] [Music] brings light to kindness all you need is a sign put a cease to the crimes put an ease of the minds like mine sometimes darkness is all i find you know what they say about an hour for a night in a time when the bloody the blood who am i to deny would grow when a loved one dies i recognize that body outside but the holes in the body that was alive out loud [Music] tell me what make a change [Music] we will make [Music] [Music] you