Comedian Roy Wood Jr. and fellow podcast host Michael Harriot join Panama Jackson for a special edition of Dear Culture filmed live in Birmingham, Alabama, at the National Association of Black Journalists annual conference. All three men have strong ties to Alabama, and they dig into the state’s complicated past and what it means to make it out of the South. They also highlight the good-natured Black folks who take care of each other. Ironically, that point was proven just days after the tapping when several Black people in Montgomery sprung into action to help a dock worker under attack in an incident that went viral.
Read full transcript below.
You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network. Black Culture Amplified.
Michael Harriot: Hello. I’m Michael Harriot. You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here today, but Panama has stuff to do sometimes, you know? And so I’m filling in. I’m kind of like that substitute teacher that comes in and lets the class watch a film all day. Which brings me to this point, right? So theGrio was recently in Birmingham, Alabama, for the National Association of Black Journalists Convention, and it just happens to be at the same time that, I don’t know you heard about this, but there was this big brawl in Montgomery, Alabama, which is just down the road from Birmingham. Maybe you heard about it the the Montgomery Melee, the Alabama Slammer, the I think it should be a national holiday, maybe Fistmas or Fadesgiving. Well, anyway, it just so happened that while we were in Alabama we had a conversation with me, Panama Jackson and a special guest. Mr. Roy Wood Jr. You probably know him from the White House Correspondents Dinner or The Daily Show. Well, I’m sure you guys know that Panama went to high school right outside of Huntsville, Alabama. And I have spent half of my adult life in Alabama. I went to college in Auburn. I lived in Birmingham until about a year ago. And Roy Wood Junior is from Birmingham. So we had this special conversation while they were laying white folks down by the river side. Roy, Panama and I had a conversation, coincidentally, about what it takes to make it out of Alabama. Do you necessarily need to make out of Alabama and what that entails? So I hope you enjoy this special substitute teacher edition of Dear Culture. And I want to get out of your way and let ya boy Panama take over.
Panama Jackson: My name is Panama Jackson. I am the host of the Dear Culture Podcast, which is a podcast for and by us here at theGrio Black Podcast Network. To my left is Michael Harriot, who needs no introduction. To my right is Roy Wood Jr., who also needs no introduction, which saves us some time so we can get right into it. Interestingly, I found out today and recently how many connections to the state of Alabama that theGrio seems to have. Like, I did not know Elise had any connections to Alabama until she was up here talking. Roy Wood Jr. is obviously from Birmingham, here. I went to high school in Madison, Alabama, right up 65. I went to Bob Jones High School, which is the most generic name for high school of all time. Uh. Michael spent more time in Alabama than I spent here. How long did you live here?
Michael Harriot: A total probably more than 20 years.
Panama Jackson: More than 20 years in Alabama. All right. So once I realized we had all these connections, I decided that since we’re here for NABJ here in Birmingham, I was like, you know what? Let’s do a panel about how to make it out of Alabama. And the reason I say that I don’t mean that as a shot, but, you know, every time somebody says Alabama, it’s always like this negative connotation to like, people really think that we’ve done something special, like you’re from Alabama, like, man, did you grow up with slavery in your backyard? Like, my wife is from Ghana. And the first time I brought her to Alabama a couple of years ago, she was deathly afraid of coming down here. She was like, I don’t want no parts of the South. We were like an hour from, I live in D.C, we’re like an hour from D.C. in Virginia and we stopped at a rest stop and she was afraid, like an hour outside of our home, by the way. She was afraid that we was going to get strung up left in a tree or something. I was like, What’s wrong with you? Like, it’s fine. We’re just going. We’re in America.
Michael Harriot: To be fair, though, like an hour outside of where we are now, that could still happen, right. It ain’t it ain’t crazy to think.
Panama Jackson: But the funny thing. But it’s funny.
Roy Wood Jr. Very true.
Panama Jackson: Yeah, so. But being from Alabama and for the sake of this conversation, I’m going to be from Alabama. I literally only with the high school here. But Im going to own it for the sake of this conversation. Like, I’m always surprised at just the negative when people say you from Mississippi like this, this kind of struggle that we well, when people tell me they’re from Mississippi, they do art. I expect that to be some amazing art. Jesmyn Ward. Kiese Laymon. I don’t know, some Mississippi just makes me believe that if you if you do art, it’s going to be amazing. But when you say Alabama, people don’t give it that same, they don’t give us that same love. I don’t know what’s about that.
Roy Wood Jr.: I would I would even argue that that you can replace Alabama with the South. And it’s similar. I mean granted that there’s other pockets in the South that a little bit more progressive and more opportunities depending on your field. But I know that Alabama, especially Birmingham and Huntsville, I can’t speak for Montgomery, I really can’t speak for Mobile. But Alabama, like Birmingham and Huntsville, suffer at the reputation of the rest of the state. The biggest stuff that comes out of the state is the stuff that people laugh at or the stuff that people criticize us for. So if it’s not a redistricting Supreme Court redrawing the district story than ya’ll on us about Karlie Russell. Like that’s the stuff that will drive it. Aye man, what y’all doing down there? And it’s like, we are also hey, hey, hey, also this. So I think that people forget that. I think that only people in in Alabama and from Alabama truly care about Alabama. So it really is a situation where, at least I know where I’m from, it’s other people that are from here that have helped me the most. It’s like it’s not because somebody out of town cared about me from Birmingham. It’s when I met someone that was from here as well, that looked out and pulled up. And I know you don’t want me to shout them out, but one of my OGs is in a room right now, Brother Mike Hill, who has been up and down the TV Dow doing innumerable sports journalism work. He’s from a suburb of Birmingham. I have to say Bessemer, I can’t say he from Birmingham. Bema. He from Bema.
Panama Jackson: Don’t pronounce the Ss all, huh?
Roy Wood Jr: We ain’t got time for the whole word in Alabama.
Michael Harriot: All them consonants.
Roy Wood Jr: But when I was in L.A. and I met Mike Hill and found out he was from then, boom, immediately it’s two people from the same spot trying to help one another because they know that you’ve had to fight to get out of that place. And I just think that a lot of the news that comes out of this state eclipses a lot of the opportunity and change that happens within the state. And I think that’s part of why people like sleep on it.
Michael Harriot: You know, I got to I have a theory why Alabama has that reputation, though. It’s because the Black people here will fight. Right. Like the things we hear about Alabama, the scary stuff we hear is cause like, they wouldn’t back down from the white people, right? Like, you think about like the Children’s Crusade, like the folks here was like, now we’re not going to stand for not only are we not going to stand for, we’ll send our children out there on the front lines. Right. And one of the interesting things so I moved I went to college in Auburn and I left I left home to go to college when I was 16, went to school there, then moved back here in 08 and lived here until 2022. So like most of my life was spent in this state. But one thing I realized about people in Alabama, like having lived a bunch of different places, like, first of all, people here know more about our history than like, almost any place I’ve ever been. Right. Like, most people know a little bit about Martin Luther King and all of that stuff. But like regular people here in Birmingham, like their grandma was was out there with Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King. Martin Luther the King.
Panama Jackson: The king.
Michael Harriot: The one thing I say, you know, fifth, fifth Black a city in the country. And so I think part of the reason that Alabama has the bad reputation is because Black people here, we said, like ya’ll aint gonna beat us. We’re going to keep fighting. And so a lot of the stuff that you hear about this state is because they’re still fighting. They filed the suit against the gerrymandering in the state. Right. You know, the Dobbs case that struck down abortion rights. It was a woman in Huntsville that brought that a medical provider, a Black woman in Huntsville that was targeted by the Supreme Court decision that struck down abortion. So it’s because the people here will fight that the state has their reputation.
Panama Jackson: Now, let me ask you a question. You jokingly said something about Alabama public schools in the Blackest Questions. I also went to Alabama public schools.
Roy Wood Jr.: It wasn’t bad.
Panama Jackson: It was fine. It was fine. Do you feel a need to defend the state of Alabama sometimes when people talk about it? Because I can’t lie, even though. Where I’m from is very up in the air. I’m a military brat, so. But I’m, again, I’m old enough. I feel this need to defend Alabama. Any time somebody has something negative to say, I jump in and I’m like, wait a minute, we’re not going to do that. Because you tell somebody went to public school in Alabama, they just assume like how you. I’m an affirmative action case, how I got to college. Like, man, it wasn’t just like slid you in there just to be on the safe side because there’s no way you were smart enough to do this on your own. And I’m not I’m only slightly joking about that. Like, I’m only slightly joking about that. But like and you you defend Alabama all the time. You even from here, like ask this man about the Magic City classic and whether whether it’s the biggest Black football classic. You know, like Michael Harriot is going to be is like the biggest champion for that. So.
Michael Harriot: They don’t know.
Panama Jackson: They don’t. It’s all right. They don’t they don’t feel that you feel the need to defend it whenever.
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, like a little slick thing I started doing later in my career. I said I stopped claiming Birmingham and I claimed Alabama, like the people know they know I’m from Birmingham. But I will say I’m from Alabama in an effort to try and skew the perception of the whole state. I can’t put the whole state on my back, but it’s important that people know, you know, that pride means something because everything that you think and perceive from It. Well, you don’t sound like you’re from Alabama. What does that mean? And then also, you need to give me a little little brown liquor. It’ll come out. But but yeah, I have to defend it because if I don’t, who will? If I don’t defend the south ain’t nobody else going to defend it. Y’all going to crack the jokes immediately.
Panama Jackson: They come back down here. Everybody keep moving. The fact that Huntsville, Alabama is now like the and they say this any way out of is like the largest city in the state. It’s surprising because when I was there, there was nothing there. I cried when we pulled up in Huntsville like this is where I have to live. Like, I was very sad about that.
Roy Wood Jr.: I think the projection is in the next ten years, Huntsville will pass Birmingham. And metro area it’s already past. And they have the highest job, blah, blah, blah blah blah. Like everything is growing there. I don’t know how much Biden flipping Space Force back to Colorado instead of committing to Trump’s obligations to build Space Force in Huntsville, will change any of that. But, you know, it’s it’s a it’s a progressive place surrounded by all of these pockets and drawn up in such a ways that you can’t just go to the polls and change everything because they’ve set the system up and rigged it in such a way. So most of the people that are quick to criticize the state, you’re not from here. You don’t understand the dynamics of how it works. And you’re riding on a couple of stereotypes and a couple of things you’ve seen in television. So it is very important that I try my best to represent the state in some sort of way that tells a different truth.
Michael Harriot: And I feel that way about the South. One of the things about, you know, Alabama public schools is like, I can’t criticize them because I’m originally from South Carolina. And so we always looking up at Alabama and Mississippi. So that’s, you know, of the size Mississippi, like that’s the only state that we could look down on in South Carolina. But the thing is, like, people have these perceptions about the South. And the truth is, with Alabama and the south in general is like what they’re really talking about is the place that white people live. Right. Because the places like Birmingham and Huntsville are the places where Black people are in control. They are the progressive areas. And then the rest of it where the Black people ain’t that’s the backwoods part that you don’t want to be in. Right. So if you find out where the Black people are, you straight. Right. And the only difference is between that and above the Mason-Dixon line is like, y’all really ain’t got no Black people anywhere. Right. Like the places you think are really Black above the Mason-Dixon line ain’t really that Black. Like when people talk about, like, how diverse California is and they say, well, you know, it’s only 4% Black. And people like what? This is where the Black people are. And this is one of the few places, the South, that has Black power. Right. You know, people are always shocked when I tell, you know, Black people in Alabama and Mississippi outvote white. Their voting participation rate is higher than white participation rate, like people in the South vote at higher rates than anywhere else in the country. People are always surprised by that because they have their perception of the South has been shaped by not Black people.
Panama Jackson: So how? Well, go ahead, Keep going.
Roy Wood Jr.: So then to that point, when we talk about the perception of the South. I think if you’re in the South, you can also be. I’m going to put it like you, like your your perspective of where you are. You can if you’re not careful, you can mess around buy into the same ideology like an outsider’s view. And then you view the South as something less than you view the South as a place. Because I understand what you say, which you’re saying about making it out of Alabama as if to suggest that it can’t happen for you here. There isn’t anything here where you can do it. There is to an extent you can you can maximize your potential here and then go somewhere else. But to think that you can’t at least get the second or third base here, at least first or second base here. To me, that’s a fallacy. And I think the mistake that we make in the South is that and this without knowing, I don’t think is conscious, but you end up around people that don’t believe that they can pass the horizon. You get around people, you mess around and you you get around folks who don’t dream or they scared to dream or your family scared the dream sort the moment you mess around and tell them some dream of yours, they afraid. You going to do that? You ain’t scared? It’s that, I call it rollercoaster energy. When you get ready to get on a roller, you going to ride that? Yes. I’m going to go up there and take a chance. And so you have to believe in yourself, even when you’re in an ecosystem where you don’t necessarily always have that type of support. That’s why wherever you are, you have to find the people that are driven because that or at least get you to your next waypoint in your journey. It’s easy to go to the coast and find folks that motivate you, find your tribe in a heartbeat, right? But when you’re here, it is hard. It is hard to find people that want to hustle as much as you. But I promise you they exist. And I think that’s pivotal to getting out of the South or maximizing the resources within the South as it is actually just going to another city.
Michael Harriot: So do you think that’s because though so I think a lot of that is really just people staying where they are, right? Because a lot of us just stay in and our whole towns. You condemned to a life where your best friend is the dude you sat beside in third grade, in fourth grade, in fifth grade. And then that becomes your tribe, right? Because I moved here in Alabama, like I didn’t make it out of Alabama. I made it in Alabama, Right? Like, I was like the first time I was on The Daily Show, I was zooming from Alabama. Right. So the stuff that I have achieved, most of it has been in this state. But I think like when I moved here, I found a core group of writers and poets and artists to be around. And it wasn’t because I was not in Alabama or not in South Carolina or wherever I came from. It was because, like I got a chance to choose by leaving where I was from, the people who I got to associate with right in it, like whether it’s in Alabama or New York, you could go to New York and just hang out on the corner at Bodega and you’re still going to be the same that you was in Alabama or Detroit or like all of that is dependent on you. And I don’t even know if that’s geographically restricted.
Panama Jackson: Yeah. You know, I jokingly said how to make it out of Alabama for that reason. Right. I’ve noticed since I live in Washington, D.C. and I live in the city. In southeast. Anybody here from D.C.? Yeah. So I live in southeast and I know how many I live in Maryland, though? All right. So. Right. Well, you know, you got to you got to ask. But so I live.
Crowd Talking: *Crowd Chatter*
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah.
Panama Jackson: Yeah. I mean. Right. Facts. Now, I will say people. People do make that mistake of. Of removing the South from a lot of stuff. So the where I was about where I was about to go with that jokingly mentioning D.C. out of this is because as I’ve gotten older I’ve gained much more of an appreciation for here or for where my parents live in Huntsville. Like I actually like going back home now. I like sitting on the porch. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. And I start paying attention to things differently. So oddly, one of the when my wife came down here for the first time, her mother came down there first time in Alabama. So, you know, it was a big deal. Um, they wanted to see like, cotton fields. And now, to be fair again, my wife is from Ghana, like, actually from Ghana, like, moved here when she was like, you know, moved here when she was like 12 and they’d never seen it. They, you know, they read the stuff in books. They never seen any of this stuff. And the funny thing is, I couldn’t tell them where to find one. I was like, I didn’t know. But the truth is they literally been around me the whole time. I just never noticed them. I literally never noticed them. We’re driving. I went to go visit one of my best friends, his mother, and I’m like, Damn, there’s cotton fields everywhere. I don’t know how I’d never saw these a day in my life. But what it also did was give me a brand new perspective in a way to write about the fact that I lived there all this time. For the first time as an adult, I see cotton fields and how that like what that felt like. They wanted to go touch this stuff. I’m like, Fam, we’re past that phase. It is good. You don’t even have to. It’s cool, like we’re good.
Panama Jackson: But so what I have started to do and since I made two decisions as a writer, uh, one, I don’t write about white people anymore because that was just too painful. It was just too much like I felt like that. When you write about white people, you got to write about pain and all that other stuff and struggle when I want to do that no more. And then I saw I write about celebrating like Black culture. That’s mainly what I do now at this point. So in doing so, that made me start taking a look at Alabama in the spaces that made me and raised me and who I became and how that affected the way that I create content, like the articles that I write about, where I’ve been and where I’m going and all this stuff. So how does being from the South or Alabama or being here impact the content that you create and how you interact with with when not? The world is too big of a question, but I just impact the content you create?
Roy Wood Jr.: I’ll let might go first because Mike, you handle my Michael handles way more dangerous stuff than we do at The Daily Show.
Michael Harriot: Well.
Panama Jackson: Looking for it, too.
Roy Wood Jr.: You came immediately for the when they would taken down the Confederate monument downtown. And things got a little out of hand that night. You was down there in the mix.
Panama Jackson: It’s a YouTube clip of you getting arrested.
Roy Wood Jr.: I called Trevor. I was like, Hey, I’m gonna go down and cover the cleanup. And that’s what we did. We did a story about a Black woman optometrist. Her shop got ruined, and that was The Daily Show version of the George Floyd stuff. Yo version same 24. We were both here within the same 24 hours. I want to talk about what you covered.
Michael Harriot: So, yeah, so I was arrested in Birmingham covering a protest and the Klan was supposed to be there and I was arrested. But I think part of that is being from the South, right? So I was raised I was homeschooled until I was 12. And of course, being in the segregated South, I was never really around white people. So I don’t have this, like, subconscious deference to white people. So like, when I covered Ferguson or when I went to Baltimore. Like, I ain’t scared of Black people. Like, I was around Black people all my life. So if something’s going on in Ferguson and something’s going on in Baltimore and there’s this perception that it’s like so much danger when it ain’t really nothing but Black people being Black people, right? Like, all Black people just want to be free. Right. And how we go about that is different. But I think that also gives me like, what he talks about is like the way people perceive, like you take it what, to white people’s faces. And in reality, I just talked to white people like I talked to Black people. But people think that it is aggressive because we have this subconscious deference to whiteness. I think that comes from being in the South and being raised in spaces. You know when I was writing my book, I interview my mom and I asked her why she homeschooled us and she said a sentence that always I’ll never forget. She says, “I do not think a Black child’s humanity can be fully realized in the presence of whiteness.” And so when you realize your humanity and you have that protective thing about being around Black people and being in Black spaces, I think. The rest of the world sees it as fearless, like even Roy. Like people will say, like he’s political and fearless like he just talks onstage, like he talks to people in real life. And I think that is somehow revolutionary because most of us don’t get that protective layer where we get to express ourselves in our full selves around people who recognize that thing inside us.
Roy Wood Jr.: I think what I’m burdened with is for anything that I cover, even in the state of Alabama, there has to be a joke. There has to be a through line. So if it’s about Black pain, there has to be time removed from it. So I can’t cover the night, the night you got arrested. What I can do is the day after. Call the producers. Hey, we’re going to go down. Longest Black woman optometrists in the state. They tore a shop. We’re going to do some cleanup. I think we should get a camera or two. And through that, find the humor in the sense of community of just people from all over the state come in to just clean up downtown Birmingham, just literally the next day. And to me, I went down this story never aired, but we went down to Mardi Gras, in Mobile, the original Mardi Gras where Mardi Gras started. No disrespect to New Orleans. But y’all got better drinking laws and better nightclubs. That’s why your Mardi Gras be poppin. And no one knows. He knows. No one knows about the Huntsville Mardi Gras. So we went down. We did a story with that. There’s a white man in the woods in Talladega who is fighting lumber companies that are stripping all of the trees for paper, and it’s ruining the Alabama forest. Now, the reason why he’s protecting the trees is because he believes it’s Bigfoot’s home. This is real. So that’s. But that’s the side of Alabama where if that story is told by someone outside the state, “ya’ll just down there in the woods, believing in Bigfoot.” We believe in Bigfoot because dot dot dot environment.
Panama Jackson: Leprechaun guy. Who was it? Leprechaun.
Michael Harriot: That’s South Carolina.
Roy Wood Jr.: No, that was Mobile. Who all seen the leprechaun, say “Yeah”.
Panama Jackson: Famous Alabama leprechaun.
Roy Wood Jr.: I can’t defend that, brother.
Panama Jackson: I was going to ask you if you could, though, because I’m just you know, we we had.
Michael Harriot: What’s funny is like, you know, you get kind of jealous of people like Roy because Roy he could put all kinds of truth in as long as there’s a joke at the end. Right. You can say and tell America about itself. I’ve heard some of his jokes. It was like they don’t realize what he’s saying. Like the Clarence Thomas joke. Still, the Clarence Thomas as an NFT. That is one of the most brilliant jokes.
Roy Wood Jr.: Thank you.
Michael Harriot: Like I’ve ever heard. And I think really people still don’t like they still don’t get what he was saying in that joke. And that’s how brilliant it was. And we were like, Oh, how could you say that on TV. You can do that? Like, I could never say that. Like, Genetta never wouldn’t let me call Clarence Thomas a token.
Panama Jackson: Wait, would you? I feel like you probably would. I feel like I would feel that they would get right through editing just fine.
Roy Wood Jr.: But it’s just that it’s just that there’s a side of Alabama that I don’t think people understand. And I really could even equate this more to the South as a whole. When you look at film and television that used to exist in Wilmington, North Carolina, in the early aughts, South Carolina, I think at some point had film incentives and that went away. Atlanta reign supreme. Tennessee had them for a minute. Detroit had them for a minute. And all of these like liberal cities where states came in and cut stuff down. So in 2018, I had an opportunity to shoot a Comedy Central sitcom, and I pitched to Comedy Central that I wanted to shoot it in Birmingham. And so we start running the numbers on everything, and it was going to cost about $200,000 more to shoot it in Birmingham, like which for network for a pilot, for a dice roll, that’s a ridiculous amount of money. It was going to be 1.4 in Atlanta, 1.6 to shoot here. So I called Mayor Woodfin. Hey, man, what can we do? Tax this. Tax that. What can we do? Start talking with the county because it was going to be shot all it wasn’t going to just be shot in Birmingham proper. So you start having to talk to the mayors of the other districts within the suburbs. What I learned through that process was that most of the money within the suburbs, within the white suburbs in the city is controlled through Montgomery, through the state representatives. State representatives are controlled by corporations.
Roy Wood Jr.: So if you want to get the control of the state reps to get the permits, you need to lower the prices. You got to lean on Alabama Powers and the BBVA’s and all of these big corporations. So you start leaning on them, they start leaning on Montgomery, they start leaning on the local places, and then you get it down to 1.4. We had 90 people on staff for my sitcom pilot. 70 have Birmingham or Alabama driver’s licenses. Most of the crew that we hired is from Alabama, but they live in New Orleans or they work in Atlanta. They all sleep in four to a two bedroom apartment because that’s where the work is with what they want to do when the truth is that the work could have been created here. Ultimately, the sitcom didn’t go because of the Viacom merger and because of COVID, and then everything just got turned upside down. But we were literally that close to creating the training program within the state that could that could train crew, which is the ultimate hurdle to building film and television. And the thing that I think that a lot of people don’t pay attention to in this state and the opposition that I ran into in Montgomery in talking with officials, is that the other issue that Birmingham and Huntsville deal with is that if it ain’t good for the state, they gonna shit on it. They’re not going to let it happen.
Michael Harriot: Because Black people will benefit.
Roy Wood Jr.: The way I had to freak it in Montgomery was make it seem like it was good for the state. It’s jobs. Which it is, but I couldn’t dare step into that room and go, Yeah, this is for Birmingham because I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Mayor Woodfin tried to get the minimum wage raised to $15 and they passed a referendum the next day saying, knock that shit back down to ten.
Michael Harriot: Let’s just clarify that he did get the. The minimum wage was passed and they passed a law saying you can’t not raise your minimum wage. Like it was passed. Like it was a law.
Panama Jackson: Wow.
Roy Wood Jr.: So there are a lot of people within this state. At the state level that are working against a lot of the progressiveness that we know is here, that we know could happen, that we know could bring about change. And the trick is often figuring out a way to trick those people, for lack of a better phrase, into seeing how the poor whites can benefit from this, too. And that’s a true statement, like, Hey, we got to put this film and crew training underneath AIDT with welding and HVAC and plumbing and electrical work so that you can justify it to your people and make it seem like it’s not something for. Because what I know we can’t do, we can’t vote you out of office because ya’ll done grew the districts up in such a way. So how do you grow and better something when you still have these overlords in Montgomery policing and pushing against you. And I think that’s what people outside the state don’t understand is also happening.
Michael Harriot: And the trick in that is like they’ve convinced the poor white people who would benefit to be against you, like just because you’re Black. Right. Like, that is the hurdle to. Right. Like, cause this stuff, like the minimum wage being raised, like that would help everybody. Right.
Roy Wood Jr.: So when we when we were getting the sitcom to get like, and I spent a year coming to Birmingham researching and understanding the ecosystem to figure out where could we cut corners and save $200,000? One way was to do the training for the crew at the campus of Lawson State Community College. Lost the State Community College in Birmingham was a predominantly Black colleges on the Black side of town that benefits Black folks. I find out that you can’t do anything to benefit Lawson if you don’t do something to benefit, which one is is it Shelby State?
Michael Harriot: Yeah.
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. So if you do something for Lawson, you got to do something over here for this school too. And if you’re doing things for two community colleges, you’ve got to figure out a way to do something for all the community colleges in the state. So you can’t even have the little classes over here because they not getting those students over here. More students going over there to the Black school. And we not. And our numbers. Our enrollment. That was the word they used was enrollment to justify the bullshit. So it’s it’s tricky. It’s very tricky in figuring out ways to create a progressive ecosystem for yourself. When you’re in a state that does not want to see you advance.
Michael Harriot: Right. And that is the. But I think that in the South, getting back to, in the South that ecosystem is really bifurcated, but it exists everywhere. Like it’s not unique to the South. The contrast is more stark in the South. But they do the same thing in Missouri and New York. Outside of the city of New York. Like once you get past Westchester, you in Alabama. Right. Right.
Panama Jackson: Is that right?
Roy Wood Jr.: But I think. I think the difference between Alabama and Georgia in that sense is that white Georgia politicians are cool enough with Black people advancing because they’re getting a piece of the pie, whereas here they would rather not get richer if it means that you get to advance.
Michael Harriot: And the other thing about Georgia is that like the difference in like the Black population in Alabama, there’s a Black belt, but the Black population is really in the cities. Huntsville, Birmingham, Mobile, Montgomery, right. In Georgia. Like I live in rural Georgia, I you know, a story that is relevant for this podcast is I moved here and I was planning to move to New York right before the pandemic and doing a pandemic, I was like, oh, no, I’m never leaving the South. But I did want, you know, some land. I realized I was a country dude. And so I bought like. It was a plantation.
Panama Jackson: Tell the story.
Michael Harriot: In rural Georgia. Like, it’s literally the plantation that is the reason Georgia is called the Peach State. But it’s an 80% Black town that’s surrounded by 80% Black towns. So Georgia’s rural population, there’s a lot of Black rural population. So they can’t really designate something as urban or rural or like, you know, you can’t really bifurcate politics like you do in Alabama, like you do in Mississippi. You know, Mississippi’s population is very, very, you know, urban centered. Right. And so I think that’s the thing. Like in Alabama, a good I mean, that was not a joke. If there are places a hour outside of here, like you might go in, like I’ve been places and stop going away to Atlanta and like, oh, I should get back in my car right now, bro.
Panama Jackson: We used to joke about Cullman. You go to Cullman, Alabama is like our fame, our famous. Didn’t Oprah come down there one time and call it one of the most racist cities in America? Something like that. Maybe that’s an urban legend.
Michael Harriot: Yeah, it is. It is.
Panama Jackson: But we don’t stop there. I would never stop in Cullman, Alabama for nothing.
Michael Harriot: Trump’s last rally in Alabama was in Cullman. It is a well known sundown town.
Panama Jackson: Channing Tatum is also from there. I don’t mean to say that in any for for any, but I just wanted to point out that oddly Channing Tatum happens to be from Cullman, Alabama.
Roy Wood Jr.: And he don’t mention that shit at all.
Panama Jackson: Right. He does not I didn’t know he’s from Alabama, actually. I randomly saw that. I was like, he’s from Cullman? How?
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah, but that’s a great point, Michael. That and that’s I think that’s also part of why Georgia is always able to kind of be on the cusp of being a purple state. Whereas for Alabama to flip for that one time for Doug Jones when Roy Moore had a sex scandal and you also had to drive Black people 2 hours to the polls because it was closed. Like it took all of that to flip Alabama one time, whereas Georgia does have more of a a bigger voting base across in the rural areas. That’s Black.
Michael Harriot: Yeah.
Panama Jackson: Well, all right. Well, as we kind of wind down this first part of the panel we’ve been talking about. So you like I said, it was more deep in education. I’m over here learning stuff and, you know, there’s not as many jokes as you might think, but that’s good because we’re actually learning something by Alabama, because I don’t think there’s a ton of panels about Alabama. I’ve never been to one before, and I think it’s great to have that. But I want to end this on more of a positive note. So what’s what’s something you think people need to know about Alabama in a good way? Like if you if you if you had to I don’t know, not sell the state to somebody. But so like, what’s the what’s the fun outside of the leprechaun and Carlee and, you know, the shenanigans like.
Roy Wood Jr.: Even even with the Carlee thing though I said on Twitter late last week, like, all right, whether the girl was lying or not, the whole damn city stopped and walked through the forest for somebody.
Panama Jackson: Yeah.
Roy Wood Jr.: That’s what Birmingham is. Birmingham is a lot of different things, but we are also still a big, small town, you know? Ain’t no dirt roads here. So y’all take pictures and spread the word. I know the Uber driver take 20 minutes. Well, you working on that?
Panama Jackson: That’s a good question. How many of ya’ll have never been to Alabama before? Jesus.
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. You pull out the Uber app, he’d be like, he is 20 minutes away. He pulled up with two other people in the car.
Panama Jackson: That is true.
Roy Wood Jr.: So it’s big, but it’s country. But it’s love. It’s still love. So, you know, that’s what I would say to Birmingham is and Alabama as a whole is definitely still a loving and caring place for people.
Michael Harriot : Yeah. Like the thing again, how much people know about their history. Fun fact about Alabama is like so Alabama has the highest percentage of Black people with college degrees that were educated at HBCUs. So more than likely, if you find somebody with a high school degree or a high school diploma, they went to an all Black high school. More than likely if you find somebody with a college degree, they went to an HBCU at Alabama. Higher percentage than any other place. The other thing about Alabama, that first of all, like I have lived all over the South so I can differentiate accents, Southern accents, like all Southern accents aren’t the same. So the thing I love about Alabama is they don’t bother with consonants, right? Like, like, you know, you’ll have to take all of your consonants and bring all of your consonants with you. And and the best thing about Alabama, though, to me is that, like, they’ve all feel like they are connected. Everybody say that joke about like the Black man nod when you in a space. But in Alabama, like it is almost like. I mean, I went to school in Auburn, which is right outside of Tuskegee, and it was like everybody knew each other at both schools. And no matter where you go in the state, like even when you in the whitest spaces, you see that see the Black person and they feel like, oh, we together, we in it together. And I love that about Alabama and the South, but Alabama in particular.
Panama Jackson: All right, Well, if we could put our hands together for Roy Wood Jr. here. Sharing a little bit about his Alabama story. We appreciate you being here. Sharing some time with us at theGrio, my brother. On a serious panel about the state of Alabama.
Roy Wood Jr.: Yeah. Man, I appreciate it.
Panama Jackson: All these people who’ve never been here before have an opportunity to learn something new about a state they have.
Roy Wood Jr.: And I’m really thrilled that people, you know, came because I know NABJ. I’ve seen the previous cities, you know, it’s Vegas and Miami and there’s a lot of partying and stuff going on. So I’m really thankful that the conference is here and I’m thankful that people came.
Panama Jackson: And thank you to everybody for listening to their culture, which is an original podcast, is the Real Black Podcast Network. It is produced by Sasha Armstrong, edited by Geoff Trudeau. And Regina Griffin is our director of podcast. Again, my name is Panama Jackson. Thank you for listening. Have a Black one.
