← The Girlfriends: Trust Me Babe
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Guaranteed Human support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It's IT screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.
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What makes you You. Hey, it's Khadijah. This episode will tell the story of how one incredibly dark moment in our country's history sparked a 70 year movement that we're still feeling the benefits of today. But in order to tell that story, we're going to be discussing racially motivated violence and murder. If you or someone you love has been affected by any of the themes that come up in this episode, we left some links in the description that offer resources and support. Take care of yourself. Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy when he took a trip to visit his family in Money, Mississippi. It was 1955. Much of the US was still in the era of Jim Crow segregation. It was a time when violent racism was the norm and where one small bad encounter could ruin your life. Which is what happened to Emmett. After being accused of offending a white woman in a grocery store, he was abducted and lynched in a horrific case that shocked America. You've probably heard his story before in high school lessons or Hollywood movies. You might have seen black and white photos of him and assumed it happened a long time ago. But the past is not as distant as it seems.
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I am Marivelle McCain Parker and I am the wife of Reverend Wheeler Parker, who is the last surviving eyewitness of the kidnapping of Emmett Till. Not only was he an eyewitness to the kidnapping, but he and Emmett, from the age of seven, they grew up together.
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They were cousins and best friends.
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Emmett actually traveled to Mississippi with Wheeler and Wheeler came home alone.
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Dr. Parker's husband lost his childhood friend to a racist lynching. But Emmett's murder sparked a movement. A movement that continues to inspire me and Nikki in our activism and justice work.
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The open casket funeral of Emmett Till at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ is said to have been the catalyst that sparked the Civil Rights movement. Rosa Parks said when she refused to give her seat up on the bus that September of 1955, that hot day, she refused to give up her seat. She thought about Emmett Till and she stayed in her seat. And we know that that one act was the birth of the Montgomery bus boycott that brought Dr. King of town. That gave birth to the Civil Rights movement. Emmett's death was the spark.
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The Civil Rights movement started with a few ordinary but deeply passionate organizers determined to fight against the status quo. Regular people like you and me. In this episode, I'll be talking to Dr. Parker about her remarkable life fighting for social change. And she'll share some of her top tips for how to rally your own community around the causes that you care about the most.
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I got you. I got you. I got you.
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I'm Kadidra Hardaway from the teams at Novel and I Heart podcast. This is the Girlfriends Untouchable. Bonus episode five Sparking a Movement.
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I got you. I got you. I got you.
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Doctor Parker, it is so lovely to see you and talk to you as always.
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Good morning, Khadijah. It's so nice to see you this Monday morning and to have this opportunity to share with you.
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Dr. Parker has a long and storied career. She's the executive director of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley Institute. She graduated with a doctorate from seminary school, wrote a book about the impact of HIV and AIDS on African American women, and spent her life mentoring activists like me. But if you ask her what shaped her commitment to social justice work, she'll tell you it was the teal story and the pivotal role it played in the civil rights movement. In 1955, her husband, Wheeler Parker, daughter, then a teenager, and his friend Emmett Till traveled from Chicago to Mississippi visiting relatives for a summer vacation. The two boys were asleep when a group of men broke into the house they were staying in. During the middle of the night, they came in with a gun and a flashlight, pulled Emmett out of the bed and dragged him away. It was the last time Wheeler saw him alive. The aftermath of the lynching traumatized Wheeler.
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For all of these years, he's had survivor's guilt, but he didn't want to talk about the story. It was such an unpleasant story to him. And living with the guilt that he came home and Emmett didn't. It was not something that he felt he wanted to visit every day or every week publicly. He didn't want any fame or any claim. He said, I'm not a hero. I'm a survivor. He sat back. He let Mamie tell the story, Mamie.
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Being Emmett Till's mother. But eventually, Wheeler decided to share his perspective.
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He was convinced that he needed to write his book, tell the authentic story. Wheeler having been asked by Mamie before her death to ensure that the legacy of Emmett Till was told in perpetuity.
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Most things are catapulted by storytelling. In the case of Emmett Till, the story has been told in many different versions. I identify very much so with storytelling. When it comes to the work I've done in Wyandotte county, it's pretty much what moves the needle. But I've also found that people have very strong desires, and the desires center around their ego and them wanting to tell their version of A story that may not even be true or are even helpful toward moving the needle for the entire project. Can you talk about that a little bit and how you navigated that?
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Our goal was to make sure that the story was told truthfully because the people that were being featured on CNN and other news outlets, some of them weren't even born when the story happened and they told a distorted story. So we were just, I guess we were just forced to tell the true story because there were so many mouths out there painting the picture, and it was false.
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So alongside other friends, family, and supporters of The Till family, Dr. Parker made it a part of her mission to ensure the true version of that story stayed alive.
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In 2021, we created what is called the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley Institute. And it was created to ensure that the story of Emmett Till is told correctly and truthfully and that the resources that would be made available in order to erect or dedicate national sites to the memory of he and his mom were brought to fruition. So as executive director of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley Institute, we were successful in getting the sites dedicated as a national monument. President Joe Biden signed a proclamation creating the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley National Monument. With three sites, it is the first non contiguous national monument in the United States. The three sites are one, Roberts Temple, Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where Emmett's funeral was held. It is said that over 100,000 people passed by and viewed the mutilated body of the slain 14 year old boy. And the courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where the infamous trial was held and his confessed murderers were found not guilty by a jury of their peers. And the third site is Graybaugh Landing, where Emmett's body was retrieved. So we are working now to restore the church to its 1955 facade. We've received $2.918 million grant to begin that work and that's ongoing. We've been able to acquire property, the property where Emmett's childhood home stood. And we have memorialized that site and we continue to advocate for the poor. So busy, busy, busy, busy.
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But they didn't achieve that by just making the right calls and waiting for change to happen. Dr. Parker and those she worked alongside spent years building up a community of people to join their cause. A feat that would inspire me and the other women of Kansas City when it came to the challenge of trying to take Detective Roger Gillewski down. And after the break, we'll look at ways you can spark that kind of change in your community.
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Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member finra SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comdisclosures I'm here with Spinquest where you can play and win from the comfort of your own home with hundreds of slot games and all of the table games you love with real cash prizes. Right now $30 coin packs are on sale for $10. For new users, it's all@spinquest.com that's s p I n q u e s t.com Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. The New Year means new health goals not just for your body, but for your finances too. But did you know financial health is directly related to identity protection? You need Lifelock because your personal info is in endless places that are outside of your control. It only takes one mistake and not even your mistake to expose you to identity theft and lost funds. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points per second and alerts you to threats you could miss on your own. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock's US based restoration specialist will fix it, backed by the million dollar protection package. In fact, restoration is guaranteed or your subscription money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or other financial losses from identity theft alone. Resolve to make identity, health and wealth of your new year's goals with LifeLock. Visit lifelock.com iheart and save up to 40% your first year. That's 40% off@lifelock.com iheart terms apply.
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When you see activists who have achieved incredible things like changing laws or sparking nationwide campaigns, it can be easy to think that you need to have it all figured out to make a meaningful difference. But you don't. You just got to start with what you've got.
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We don't need money to accomplish the things that we're trying to accomplish. I tell people when they come to me to ask me about how do we get funding? We want to do abcd. I said, you get funding by doing ABCD and then people will fund what you're doing. My husband and I, we financed the organization for many, many years. We provided the office space in our building, all of the office equipment. I did all of the legal work. Somebody's got to in kind their skills to help you accomplish your goal.
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You remind me so much of the Rosa Parks story and how the NAACP got its footing, which in a lot of ways didn't have any income. But again, they knew that they needed to make a change and they organized and used their human capital to make that happen. How do you pick a good team that supplies the in kind donations or the in kind service that we're talking about that gives up their elbow grease and the sacrifice of what they actually want to see come out of it?
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You look for key stakeholders, and for me, key stakeholders were people who lived in the community, worked in the community. They were stakeholders because their survival was dependent on the community surviving. A lot of times we try to bring in people who are not stakeholders, which means that they're not tied or linked to the issue or to the need. And so their human capital or their contribution could be fleeting. They're here today and gone tomorrow. But key stakeholders are people that are going to benefit.
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It's something Dr. Parker also saw when she tried to create change in her town, Summit, Illinois.
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The target was to make my community aware of the resources that they were entitled to that they weren't being able to access and in challenging the elected officials to be fair, in distributing the resources in the black community. The church is the anchor institution in the black community. So we began our first meeting with the pastors, Made them aware of the problems and the issues we were facing and the need for us to come together as a community. Our first community meeting, the meeting room could not hold all of the people that attended. We listened to the residents, and we had created an agenda of issues that the community wanted to be heard about and that wanted to be answered. Then after we created the form of agenda items, then we asked them to prioritize, you know, everything. We can't do everything at once. So now tell us, you know, let's prioritize our needs, and then let's begin to systematically address them with the powers that be. So you might start off with a very small nucleus of people as key stakeholders, but as you begin to move forward and people become proactive in wanting to be involved, you, will bring on people.
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And a small group of people deeply invested in their community can be pretty powerful.
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Community mobilization, Usually it begins with an issue that there's something that needs to be addressed in order to mobilize a community. We found that as long as everything was going smooth, you, know, people don't have time to attend meetings. But you let something happen, and everybody is ready to fight. Really, mobilization helps you to be able to address the issue as a community, which will bring your elected officials to the table. Because we know that every four years, every two years, there's an election. So mobilizing is important as it relates to politics. That's how community mobilization paid off for my neighborhood. We now have senior housing. We got all of our new streets, new alleys. All of these resources were there, but they weren't being channeled to my neighborhood, which was the poorest neighborhood in the community, and, of course, entitled to the resources. But they were going other places. So community mobilization, where there's unity, there's strength, and if you organize without anger and without animosity, you, can become a mover and shaker. And that's what happened in my town.
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But what do you do when you're trying to organize in the midst of a tense political climate like the one we're living through right now, how do you form alliances with the people you don't see eye to eye with In a time when it feels more important than ever to fight for our civil liberties? That's after the brick.
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Support for the show comes from public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously on public. You can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on Spinquest and there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love with hundreds of slot games and and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.com S P I N Q U E-S-T.com Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
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I got you. I got you. I got you.
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I have always been told when it comes to making change, fundamentally, it literally only takes two to three people. But when it comes to actually moving that forward, it takes the vote. It takes we the people. If I can't get the people to come out and vote and stand and measure for that, then we have nothing. I know in my community, I think only 30% of the population votes, and a very small percentage of that is black. How do we move the needle of voter registration and raise those percentages up across the country? That's what I asked Dr. Parker.
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Our whole system of government is being challenged. I see no respect for the Constitution. I see no respect for the Supreme Court. I see absolutely no respect for the separation of powers. And it's frightening to me when you talk about voter registration and people getting out to vote. That is the biggest challenge to anybody that has ever run for office because people will not go out and vote. They say their vote doesn't matter, or I don't understand why it's not important, especially for black people who, of course, 100 years ago, I think women couldn't vote. And you know, how long it took for our people to be able to vote in Mississippi and in the south and the things that they had to go through in order to be able to vote. And how many people lost their lives? I mean, my grandmother's church was burned down in the 60s because the civil rights workers were having meetings there trying to teach people how to register to vote. We got this right to vote through blood, sweat and tears.
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Me, Nikki and other activists I know often talk about what it takes to pull people out of apathy and inspire them to action. For some people, it takes a personal connection or crisis. It's a multitude of things for Dr. Parker, like her past experience and personal connections, but one of the constants that keeps her fighting is her faith.
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My husband and I are both third generation members of the Church of God in Christ. So we were raised in a Pentecostal family. We were taught to live by the gospels. But for him, he says that, you know, it was his faith in God that allowed him to survive the ordeal that he went through. Because on that night when Emmett was kidnapped, he prayed to God to spare his life and to allow him to live and that he would serve him. And he has kept that vow. He has kept that vow and that commitment to God. I embrace his role in preserving the legacy of Emmett, our Faith in God helps us to endure the things that we've had to endure. The theme of our work with Emmett Till story is love, forgiveness and reconciliation. So, you know, the Bible tells us. And I'm on my soapbox right now, the Bible tells us that we have to love our enemy. And I say to my students, if we have to love our enemy, who's left to hate? Nobody. Because we definitely love our brother and our sister and our mother and our father and our friends. He told us to love our neighbor as ourself. Then he tells us to love our enemy. I'm like, my God, who can I hate? He says, nobody. So hate is not even on the table. Now. It's a challenge to love your enemy. But doesn't mean I want to go to dinner with him or take a vacation with him. But I can't hate him. So hate is not an option. And because hate is not an option and love is commanded of us, we have to dig deep within our soul and ask God to give us what he has told us we can do. He said we can love our enemy. So if we. If he said we can do it, by golly, we can do it. We can do it. In the closing of my interrogation or my speeches to visitors to the monument, I say that my husband and I are in the twilight of our life. And you know, we've got to work the work of him that sent us wild as day because the night coming when no man can work. And what I'm trying to do now is train younger women to carry on what I do and what I've done.
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I often wonder what the future of Kansas City, Kansas will look like. Most of the victims and survivors never got justice for what happened to them. And even the ideal of justice itself feels flawed. What does justice even look like when a woman has been killed or a family has been destroyed by the actions of one man who's not alive to face the consequences? Dr. Parker doesn't know, but in the case of Emmett Till, it's his legacy that remains.
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This year we celebrate 70 years since his death, his murder in Money, Mississippi, his kidnapping in Money and his subsequent murder. We don't celebrate it because it's pleasant. It's an unpleasant event. But we celebrate his life because of what his life has contributed to all of America. I have a picture of Wheeler holding the hand of Emmett. The statue of Emmett in Greenwood, Mississippi, which is about 18ft. And he's holding his hand. And he said, you're bigger in death than you would have been. In life.
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I just hope that the women of Kansas City, whose lives were cut short are looked back on in the same way that the stories of their murders are used to shine a light on Gillespie's crimes and that their ongoing investigation exposes corruption. I hope that by continuing to tell these stories, we'll inspire the people of Kansas City and beyond to fight back against the forces that seek to support, press and prey upon us. Thank you Dr. Parker, for all your work that you've done. It is truly amazing to see a lot of it come to fruition. I greatly appreciate not just hearing the words, but being able to watch you grow and expand knowledge and education around Emmett Till. To learn more about Dr. Parker's work and activism, visit www.doctrormarvelparker.net. What an inspiring conversation. I really admire Dr. Parker's lifelong commitment to fighting against social injustice and preserving the part of our country's history that can be difficult to hear. It's more important than ever to fight back. So rally your community, mobilize them around the issues you care about and get to work. Because no person, system or form of oppression is ever truly untouchable. When regular people like you and me come together to make a change. In the next and final episode of the Girlfriends Untouchable, I'll be having a conversation with the journalist Tamara Cherry about how survivors, families and activists can use the media to put a spotlight on the injustice in their communities. Here's a sneak peek.
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You cannot adequately take care of yourself.
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Unless you take care of that person.
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Who'S sharing their traumatic story.
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Because you can be traumatized by the traumatic stories of others and the best way to protect yourself from that is to support them in an ethical, trauma informed way.
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The Girlfriends Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart podcast. For more from Novel, visit Novel Audio this episode was hosted by me, Khadijah Hardaway. It was produced by Mohamed Ahmed and Rufaro Mazaroora. The editor is Joe Wheeler. The researcher is Zayana Youssef. Production management from Cherie Houston and Joe Savage. The fact checker is Fendal Fulton. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kimpson with additional engineering by Nicholas Alexander. Music supervision by Rafa Mazura, Nicholas Alexander and Joe Wheeler. Original music by Amanda Jones. The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemke, Novel's director of development and Selena Mehta. Willard Foxton is Novel's creative director of development. Max o' Brien and Craig Strachan are executive producers for Novel. Katrina Novo and Nikki Etor are the executive producers for iHeart podcast and the marketing lead is Allison Cantor. And a special thanks to Karlie Frankel and the whole team at wme.
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