Ep 239 | The Gen Z ‘King’ Keeping Georgia Boys Off the Streets | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Summary

Summary of "Ep 239 | The Gen Z ‘King’ Keeping Georgia Boys Off the Streets | The Glenn Beck Podcast"

Introduction

In Episode 239 of The Glenn Beck Program, hosted by the Blaze Podcast Network, Glenn Beck engages in an in-depth conversation with King Randall, the 25-year-old founder of X for Boys and Life Preparatory School. The episode delves into Randall's efforts to combat violence and promote manhood among young boys in his predominantly Black community in Albany, Georgia. Randall shares his personal journey, the challenges faced by his community, and his vision for creating lasting change.

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Background and Motivation

King Randall begins by discussing the inception of his organization, X for Boys, established in January 2019 when he was just 19 years old. Observing alarming literacy rates and rising violent crime in his hometown, Randall felt compelled to take actionable steps beyond the usual "stop the violence" meetings that yielded little long-term impact.

King Randall [05:18]: "At 19, I was so self-absorbed and so stupid. At 19."

Community Engagement and Leadership

Randall emphasizes the importance of community involvement and the role of local leaders. He highlights the effective programs implemented by the Albany school system, including free healthcare, dental and vision clinics, and vocational training for parents through the "Level Up" program. Despite these initiatives, lack of proper marketing has led to low community morale and disengagement from city leadership.

King Randall [11:01]: "Our superintendent is a former accountant, so he has a lot of leftover money, etc."

He also serves on multiple local boards, including the Historic Preservation Committee and the Civilian Review Board for the Albany Police Department, bridging the gap between city officials and residents.

Philosophy on Manhood and Personal Development

Central to Randall's mission is redefining manhood within his community. Drawing inspiration from the biblical phrase "Let us make man," he interprets it as a divine mandate to actively assist in shaping young men through mentorship and practical skills training. Randall rejects victim culture and emphasizes personal responsibility and work ethic.

King Randall [16:30]: "If God said let us make man, I feel like I should be assisting God with helping to make men."

He advocates for instilling values such as resilience, self-defense, and disciplined work habits in young boys to prepare them for life's challenges.

Challenges and Reflections

Randall candidly discusses the difficulties in changing deeply ingrained behaviors and societal issues. He acknowledges that while his efforts have positively impacted a few individuals, broader systemic changes are necessary to address widespread issues like early exposure to substance abuse and lack of parental guidance.

King Randall [62:30]: "It is the job ethic and work ethic that's happening there."

He also reflects on his personal growth, moving from a mindset of blame to one of accountability, recognizing the importance of overcoming generational trauma and fostering self-improvement.

Vision for the Future

Looking ahead, Randall envisions expanding his organization's reach by acquiring a laundromat to generate revenue for sustaining and scaling his programs. His ultimate goal is to transform Albany, Georgia, by attracting businesses, creating livable wage jobs, and enhancing the overall quality of life for its residents.

King Randall [66:11]: "I hope to fix my hometown. I'm not one of those people that's like, oh, I want to change the world. No, I want to change Albany, Georgia."

He underscores the necessity of local leadership and community engagement in driving meaningful change, aiming to create a legacy that future generations can build upon.

Conclusion

The episode concludes with Randall sharing ways listeners can support his initiatives, including visiting his organization's website and following him on social media. Beck commends Randall for his dedication and leadership, highlighting the significance of such grassroots movements in addressing societal issues.

Glenn Beck [75:53]: "God bless you, man."

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Key Takeaways

1. Grassroots Impact: Randall's work exemplifies how individual initiative can address systemic community challenges.
2. Community Involvement: Effective change requires active participation from both leaders and residents at the local level.
3. Redefining Manhood: Empowering young men with skills and values is crucial for reducing violence and fostering personal growth.
4. Sustainable Solutions: Generating revenue through community-run businesses can support long-term philanthropic efforts.
5. Personal Accountability: Overcoming victim mentality and embracing responsibility are essential for societal improvement.

Notable Quotes

• King Randall [05:18]: "At 19, I was so self-absorbed and so stupid. At 19."
• King Randall [16:30]: "If God said let us make man, I feel like I should be assisting God with helping to make men."
• King Randall [66:11]: "I hope to fix my hometown. I'm not one of those people that's like, oh, I want to change the world. No, I want to change Albany, Georgia."
• Glenn Beck [75:53]: "God bless you, man."

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Support King Randall's Mission

Listeners interested in supporting Randall's efforts can visit theexforboys.org and follow him on social media under the handle "NewEmergentKing." Randall's commitment to his community serves as an inspiring example of youth-led initiatives driving positive change.

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This summary encapsulates the primary discussions and insights from Episode 239 of The Glenn Beck Program, providing a comprehensive overview for those who have not listened to the full episode.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

And now, Ablaze Media podcast.

[B]

All eyes have been on national politics. We probably know the name of our incoming cabinet members, our latest diplomats and agency leaders. But do you even know the names of your city council members? Do you know your neighbors names? National politics matter. But at the end of the day, it's our neighbors and our neighborhoods that make the biggest difference in our country and in our lives. I have rarely found myself at a loss of words. Um, but I found myself in today's interview at a loss for words several times. Joining me today is a member of Generation z. He is 25 years old. He's completely rejected victim culture and identity politics and he is helping the boys in his predominantly black community grow into godly men and curb the area's violent crime rate and raise men. When you hear why he how he first came about, that he has to make men, it's it may leave you speechless. We're going to discuss race, manhood, giving back God, just what it is to be a man, everything. Welcome the founder of the X for Boys and Life Preparatory School, King Randall. Before we get to King, I want to talk to you a little bit about a film from Angel Studios that's coming to theaters on December 20th. It is called Homestead and it's about what happens to us when Los Angeles is devastated in a nuclear attack. And the story that follows is a story of an ex Green Beret who joins a prepper compound. This movie is jam packed with heart pounding tension, moral dilemmas and a story that cuts to the core of what it means to actually survive. It explores the humanity behind the apocalypse and it's going to keep you on the edge of the seat from start to finish. I really loved this movie especially all I could hear is Donald Trump in my head saying over and over again. Nukes, nuclear war. It's the biggest thing I'm telling you. This is an action movie. It's a love story and it's a story about community, faith, family, how we lean on each other in times of ultimate crisis and chaos. I highly recommend that you see it pre order your tickets for a chance to win $300,000 in a giveaway which includes one Bitcoin, a fully furnished tiny home from Box House, a custom Polaris OHV by Sparks Motors and everything else you would need to start your own homestead. And you can pre order those [e-mail] beck that's angel.com beck we'll see you in the theaters this Christmas season. Deck your home with blinds.com DIY or.

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Shipping. Head to blinds.com now for up to 40% off site wide plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions may apply. King, I am thrilled to have you on the program.

[A]

I'm glad to be here, man. Yeah, good to see you.

[B]

Good to see you. I saw. I don't even remember when it was. I know you had some viral videos because of Elon Musk, but I saw a video of you teaching young kids how to repair a sink or plumbing or something and auto. And I was just so inspired by what you were doing because you're how old? 25.

[A]

Yeah, I'm 25.

[B]

Yep, 25 years old. First of all, let's just start at the beginning. What is X for boys?

[A]

Sure. So it's funny because Elon's named everything X now, but our organization was founded in 2019. January. I was 19 years old when I first started this work with the children. I started out taking them on different field trips, taking them to different history museums, et cetera. Because most of our kids, we have an issue in our hometown with reading. And I discovered that after I noticed when I did a summer camp at my house, maybe like 15 out of the 20 kids could not read. That was a huge issue for me.

[B]

And what age kids are you talking about?

[A]

11 to 17. Ages 11 to 17, these are kids that are all in different grades, et cetera. So I started this organization. I'm just like, okay, we need to help combat that. We keep talking about the crime, et cetera. We have all these stop the violence meetings every time something happens in our hometown. It's a small town, but every time something happens, everybody wants to go do these stop the violence meetings or whatever and then they leave and that's it. I'm just like, no, guys, we have to do something consistently to be able to affect these children and their parents. Because the way we're looking, we're going to keep going downhill. So I decided to actually do something about it instead of talking about it.

[B]

At 19, 19 years old, I was so self absorbed and so stupid. At 19. Tell me about your parents. Where does this Come from?

[A]

Yeah, my mom, I was raised with my stepdad. My mom, her name is Tamika. She's raised me for most of my life. Her. My stepdad, he's the one who taught me how to do all the st. Like welding and taking care of animals. We. We ate out. We grew all of our own food at home. So we. Yeah, we. We grew our. All of our own food for years. We never didn't not grow food. We even seasonings. Like, we grew everything. We ate chickens, our chickens, eggs from outside, everything. And he taught me how to, like, you know, we used to shoot squirrels, whatever. A really, really country lifestyle. So he taught me all that, and I kind of pushed that onto a lot of the young men, many of the young men that were in my neighborhood. It was a community over there. Even though we weren't in the best neighborhood. You had the guy down the street from us and Mr. David, he taught us how to lay bricks. If you go in our neighborhood right now, you know, there are brick mailboxes. And we did that when we were younger. Cause he taught us how to do it. We bricked in garage doors, whatever, to close off garages. Then you had the guy behind us, his name is Deacon Bogan. He's a deacon at a church. And I met him when I was at a summer camp in my hometown at a church. And I used to get in trouble. He always put me in time out. But one day he had to take me home. And so he took me home, and he was like, son, I literally live in the house directly behind you. Like, so we became close after that. To this day, we're still super close. And that was about when I was like 9 or 10. But we were still super close. I always go see him. So he turned in like a granddad. So he taught us how to cut grass and weed, eat and do all that stuff. Because we had this running joke that Deacon Bogan would cut his grass every single day because he had nothing else to do. He had his big yard, and he would just be out there every single day doing something. So we had a real community in our neighborhood. The guy across the street from me, Mr. Silas, he drove trucks. So we used to see him sometime. My stepdad used to have Bible study with the kids in our neighborhood at the house. They would all come to the house on Wednesdays or whatever, and we would do Bible study in the house, like in the room on the floor. So those are things I saw growing up. So I'm assuming in my immaturity that Everywhere is like this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So when I start seeing kids doing other stuff as an adult and they don't know how to change oil or change brakes, I'm like, we did this for fun, right? You know, so I started teaching kids and I started doing it for free. I've never charged for anything that we've done in our program. I learned how to cut hair and fix cars like just to support what we were doing in the organization.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's what we started out from the beginning and before we had any donors, any social media publicity or whatever, like that's what we were doing. Like just at my house in the living room doing stuff from my dining room. I had bought this small dry erase board from Staples. We had got some donated tables and man, like. And I'll send you the pictures too. But this, I still have pictures of all this stuff, but I was never doing videos or posting or anything. So this is where we started and here we are now.

[B]

How did you. Was it hard to convince young men to come over and learn how to do stuff?

[A]

It's not hard when they don't have anything else to do. And then on top of that, when I first started, parents were looking for something for their kids to get into because in our hometown we don't have many livable wage jobs. So a lot of these parents are working two and three jobs and the kids just at home raising themselves and they trying to make ends meet. So one thing they could do is try to find after school, but after school usually charge it. So I'm one of the only after school programs that's just free and you can just send your kids, sign them up and you know, we'll make it happen, we'll feed them and everything. So yeah, so what we're trying to do now is get our program to a point where our after school is every single day from at least four, excuse me, 2:00 to 9:00 when they get out of school so their parents get off of work.

[B]

2:00 to 9.

[A]

We want it to be every single day because these kids are outside and they're raising themselves and social media is aiding, aiding their termination. In my opinion, these kids are out killing themselves and it's not just because they don't have well meaning parents or not fathers in the home. They're working all day in our hometown. It bears a witness to it.

[B]

And social media is poison anyway.

[A]

It's straight poison. I try to tell people about it.

[B]

Yeah. So again, let me go back to X. Why Is it called X?

[A]

X stands for unknown. It's like a math equation. We're solving for X. That's what we.

[B]

That's cool. Yeah. Okay. So your hometown, how many people in it?

[A]

Our population has went down, so we're about 67,000 people now.

[B]

67?

[A]

Yeah, we were about 80 something thousand. And over the last 10 years we've dropped every single year.

[B]

Bad crime.

[A]

So this is, this is what I have to say about crime in the city of Albany. They. People mask it and say it like it's just bad crime going on all the time in Albany. And it's not necessarily that way. Albany is a great place to live. However, when something bad does happen, it gets broadcasted and it's just. Yeah. Everywhere but for reality. Most people that live in Albany enjoy living in the town. It's just we don't have many things to do. We don't have any things to get into. No, no major factories or industry. Maybe like two factories and we have a marine base there too. But other than that, you know, people don't have anything to do. But for me living in Albany, yeah, we have crime, but we have a great police department. Our city leaders lack marketing ability. The reason city morale is down because you are incredible. Yeah.

[B]

They just love you.

[A]

Thank you. The city morale is down because leaders don't know how to market to the public. Because for a long time our local school system, we've always had this we hate the school system thing because of the kids can't read, et cetera. And we have a very forward thinking superintendent, his name is Kenneth Dyer. And me and him actually got into it a couple years ago because I didn't know these things that they are doing inside of our school system. So we're really close now. We talk and you know, there's water under the bridge. But I've been going to these different meetings around my hometown to see how things work in actuality versus just listening to what people saying online about Albany and these. Our school system has something so beautiful. Like I've told them before, I said, I don't understand, why aren't you guys marketing this? This is beautiful stuff. They do free healthcare for kids. They make sure the kids get dental and vision. They also make sure that kids are transported. They have the dental clinics and vision clinics inside the schools and they will transport the kids there. They also have a program called Level up where parents who don't have good paying jobs, they will pay for them to take classes in excavators, nursing, et cetera. And if those parents have kids, they will also put those kids in daycare and make sure the parents and kids have transportation so they can learn all these different trades, so that way they can actually have a job where they're able to spend time with their kids. They offer free food in the summertime for the kids. They also grow all of their own greens. They have a hydroponic greenhouse in our hometown where they grow all the food for the kids.

[B]

You didn't know any of those things.

[A]

I didn't know any of this. And I've had this conversation with them. I said, guys, like, people drag you guys out, and y'all never respond. And I'm just like, even though you may not feel like you need to, city morale is down here. People need to know you guys are doing your job. Same with our police department. I didn't know they had solved almost every homicide that's happened in our hometown. I didn't know they had all this new technology. They got this technology now where if a gunshot happens, nobody has to even call the police. They have these gunshot detection systems where it automatically sends the police a text to go ahead and go over there because there's a gunshot been detected in a certain neighborhood. Nobody has to call the police. Who knows about this? Nobody. You know? So I'm just like, how. How can we market better to our community that our. Our city leaders are trying to do their job? Now? There's a difference with our, like, local city commission and our county commission. Those are. That's a different field. I don't know exactly what's going on with them, but for the most part, our school system, our police department, they're doing fantastic. They're trying to do a fantastic job. And our school system is actually trying to catch up. From COVID They keep blaming our school system for the kids not being able to read them. He, like, guys, we. The kids are back four grades.

[B]

I know.

[A]

He's like, I'm. We trying, but if people aren't looking at the stats they put, and these kids, their levels are going up every year. It just takes time. You have to give them a moment. So we had this guy in our hometown today at the school board meeting. He actually went up there fussing about the low test scores that came out about a couple of the schools. And I'm just like, you have no clue what these people are really in here doing. You don't think they see that? You don't think they're trying to make this better for the kids, especially with taxpayers and on top of that, they've been actually dropping taxes every year on purpose because they want people to have their money and not have to be paying in a property tax because they're doing such a good job with the school system. Our superintendent is a former accountant, so he has a lot of leftover money, et cetera, or whatever. We have this political leadership class, and he came and talked to us about all this stuff. So it's all about getting the community engaged. I used to be one of those people when I first started my organization that, oh, we don't need politics. I'm not gonna worry about that. And we're just gonna do this work with these kids, and as they get older, we'll figure it out. But as I've been going to these different meetings and going to all the county commission meetings and the city commission meetings and checking out our mayor and the board or whatever, I've been at all of them. I'm on three boards now in my hometown. And every. And everything that they're doing right now, it all slowly starts to affect our kids, right? So I'm just like. And all these boards. I'm the youngest person, of course. Everybody up there has to be over 60 for the most part, you know, and they're all on these boards. I'm on the Historic Preservation Commission. Now. I'm on.

[B]

You're on the what?

[A]

Historic Preservation Committee. So in our hometown, we have these districts. For the historic district, we have to approve and, you know, deny different things happening to the historic buildings.

[B]

Right?

[A]

But that's important because everybody on those boards or whatever, they're older, they don't care about newness, and they don't hear any new opinions because nobody's at these meetings. They're public meetings. Ask me how many citizens come. None. Nobody's ever there. Even so, I've been the voice for the people, explaining like, hey, this is what's going on in the city right now. This is what's been happening in the school system. This is what's been happening in the police department. Even. I'm on the civilian review board now for our Albany Police Department. Everybody has all this trash to talk about our police department. But now I know everything that goes on in there, because every first Wednesday of every month, I'm at the police department, and they're debriefing us on everything that happens in regards to the police department. Like this little stuff I didn't have to pay for. I just had to sign up to be on the board. And the commission appoints you to be on the board. Simple stuff. But I just want to encourage people. So it's like a accountability thing between us as citizens and our leaders. Also because we have a part to play as well as our leadership. Now our city does deserve leadership that have time to spend on making sure Albany's in good standing because leaderships, their positions are part time. So they're doing other things during the day. But I don't have anything to do do during the day. I have time to spend on our hometown and that's what we're looking for.

[B]

I mean, you're a little overwhelming on what you're doing.

[A]

Just trying to stay busy.

[B]

So tell me about. You have this amazing interpretation of Genesis.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Tell me about this. Because I think this, everybody asks that. It just opens up so many doors.

[A]

It does. So this particular scripture, let us make man.

[B]

Let us make man in our image.

[A]

And in our likeness.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know, and again, you know, for my, for my, for the viewers out there, I took a different spin on this for my organization. That's our motto. Let us make man. Our idea. For me, when God said let us make man, I feel like I should be assisting God with helping to make men. I feel like a man, a boy can't be a man unless he sees a man. So that's, that's what I do. I assist God with making men because he can't. I'm not saying he can't do it by himself, but he's going to use people to be able to actually help these kids because he's not going to come down and help them himself. He's going to use people. And people don't realize who God set in place to be able to help their community. They don't realize the angels around them or the people around them to help their different communities, whether it be your chief of police, whether it be your city councilman, whatever. So it's all in getting those God fearing people in those positions to be able to help our community. So that's why I feel about let us make man. God's telling me to assist him with making men. So that's what we're doing.

[B]

I have to tell you, I, I've asked some of the best biblical scholars in the world. What does that mean, let us make men? And I've heard the craziest answers. I've heard good answers. That's the best answer. Don't know if it's right, but that is the best answer I've ever heard.

[A]

Because I can apply it even if it's not correct. It may be talking about the Trinity or not, whatever you believe in, but it allows me to take some accountability for the way my community looks. One thing that people do is try to. To not take any responsibility for how our communities look. I feel like if everybody, you know, just decided to figure out, how can I make somebody smile today, every single day? If everybody did that, I think our communities would be in a better place or what. Can I do just one thing today to make the community better? Even if it's just picking up the trash on the side of the road. What can I do to make our community better? Can I go feed that homeless person across the street? Or let me go make friends with that kid I always see walking home from school by themselves and let me go talk to their parents and say, hey, is it okay if we develop a relationship? And I can take. Take your son to school every day and, you know, help him out? Because those little things matter. Community is what's missing. And so what's taking us away from community is cell phones. I just made a video the other day about Thanksgiving dinner, and I noticed because things are different now. When you go to Thanksgiving dinner, everybody prays, everybody pray, and everybody splits up and go eat. You know, one person in the living room watching football, the other person's here, or whatever. Back in the day, when you sat down for dinner, you were able to notice things about your kids. You were able to notice things about your. Your grandma. You were able to notice things about why you look sad today, son, why your eyes red, like what you been doing today. You know, I can chastise my son now, or I can notice that my daughter may be feeling a little depression or something like that, because I see she's been looking sad the last three dinners. What's going on, so we can get her the right help. We don't even know what's going on with our family right now because we have family group chats, but we're not looking and spending time and absorbing what it is our family's going through.

[B]

We're also not. When I was growing up, man, if I heard one more story from my grandparents about the depression going to be like, okay, you know, you would hear the family stories over and over and over again.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Families don't sit around and tell stories anymore. They don't. You don't know who you are or where you came from. And history is so important.

[A]

It's so important. My sons are all, you know, they are named. My son is named after Me, of course. But my son William, he's named after my uncle that passed away. One of our favorite uncles. You know, his name is Willie. We named him William. And just teaching him about who he was, what did he do, et cetera, or my granddad's side of the family. We have about 10 men in our family named Floyd. They refuse to allow the history of the family to be lost. So every firstborn male from every child's name is Floyd.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Every last one. So we go to the family reunion. We got Big Floyd, Lil Floyd, this Floyd Dad Floyd. Now they all got different little nicknames, but that's because they don't want to lose our great, great, great grandfather's legacy. Because all of the grandfather's name were Floyd. Then I didn't realize I was the firstborn grandson of the last generation of kids. So I gotta have another son. Cause his name has to be Floyd. You know, they already been getting on to me about, like, hey, you had three sons already and you haven't named them Floyd. Like, what's the problem? But that's what needs to happen. Like, it wasn't like.

[B]

So what was it about the original Floyd that everybody wanted to remember?

[A]

He built the family. He built that side of the family. Like, just listening to them talk about him, you know, rebuilding what they had going on from back in slavery times, from him sharecropping, et cetera, and just listening to this. They always got stories about Grenadier Floyd. Like, I mean, they got stories for days. They got pictures of them when they were little out there on the. You know, in the field with their dad and stuff like that. And he was a big guy or whatever. So it was funny. Cause my grandfather was the shortest of the bunch. He was a big guy. But all my uncles are like, six, eight, you know, six. Six big dudes. And my granddad was like five, 11, six feet or whatever. But I think my first son, he's gonna take some of that from their family. Cause last year he was in my pocket, and now he's my second button on my suit. But yeah, like, just. We lost family, and I think we've forgotten where we come from. But on top of that, I will say some people hold on too much to where they come from, because it's like people feel like this blind loyalty to their neighborhood or to act in a certain way, et cetera. No, some of you need to forget where you came from. Because everybody has this little phrase of, make sure you don't forget where you came from. No, some people need to forget that.

[B]

Explain that.

[A]

Because. So we had this thing on the black community. Like, when you are getting popular or famous or playing football, everybody's like, all right, don't forget where you came from. Don't forget everybody else over here or whatever like that. No, some of that was hindering people. Some of that was holding people back and trying to hold on to that toxicity you guys had going on. They don't need that. They need to forget that. They need to loose themselves from the chains of you. Because we can have chains from our neighborhoods. We can't have chains from our family members. That meant us no good even just going through different traumas with our family members. Some of that stuff, you gotta let go.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you can move forward. Because if you hold on to it, we got people 30, 35, 36, 37, still holding on the stuff from the childhood. I'm just like, at this point, you're making your own decisions now. And if you allow this to continue being your crutch, then that's. This is your life. That's it.

[B]

So you are so refreshing because there doesn't seem to be a victim.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Here. I mean, we all have stuff, and some have really bad stuff. Some have. You know, everybody has something that they could whine about. But it's. My father taught me. It's not what happens to you, it's what you do with it. You're either going to let it destroy you or it's gonna. It will shape you one way or another. But you are the one in charge of what it's gonna do.

[A]

Right. So I'm gonna talk about this really quickly because there's a big conversation about crying lately.

[B]

Crying.

[A]

Crying for me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I haven't cried maybe in, like, eight or nine years. And it's not to a fault that I don't want to cry or I'm not capable of it. I haven't. I don't believe I've went through enough to be like, oh, I just need to cry today. Because people have said, oh, well, you just. Maybe you need to cry. I'm just like. But I don't feel like crying. Like, I don't want to. I don't need to. If tears, you know, swell up in my eyes or whatever and I need to cry, then I will. I'm like. But the last time I cried was I was in an argument with my grandma. Like, I was in 12th grade, I believe, my senior year, and I was arguing with my grandma. She was just getting on my nerves. And I just Ugh. You know, just angry. But other than that, I hadn't had a reason to cry because I'm big on a Serenity prayer. I got a Serenity Prayer tattooed on me, and I believe in that prayer on purpose. Like, on purpose, because. Wait, the Serenity Prayer, I know.

[B]

Why do you have. Are you an alcoholic? Or was somebody in your. Or you just found that prayer?

[A]

I can't remember when I first heard it, but it shapes me. It's who I am. Like, I don't believe. If I can't fix something, I am not going to sit and hold on to it. If I can't fix it, it's time for me to move on and just let it be. But if I can fix it, let's fix it. So I don't find a space in between where I need to cry. I'm like, or I can fix it, or I can just leave it be. And I believe in God, you know, so I'm just like, what am I crying about? I don't understand. You know, I don't think anything's wrong with crying. I would encourage kids. If you need to cry, cry, whatever. I have no issue with that. But for myself, you know, I don't. This is what I say. People have gotten mad. And we talked about this before our ancestors, you know, especially African Americans, they went through actual hell. True hell, from, you know, the Jim Crow era to slavery. They went through true hell. Yeah. And they were still successful. They still read better than us. I read the Booker T. Washington's book up from Slavery with the kids, and I'm like, imagine a former slave having a better vocabulary than you do. Like, it's insane. And he got up every day how to teach himself how to read. Etc. We got wi fi beds. Just. You ain't got to worry about waking up in the middle of the night because the Ku Klux Klan come to get your granddad or none of that. None of that crazy stuff. So I think it's a slap in the face to my ancestors to be walking around here with all this access to information, books, school, et cetera, and we running around here talking about we hurt. Something's going on. Ain't nothing going on. It's no work ethic that's. That's happening there. And people love to try and act like, you know, there's. We don't have to have work ethic or black people just being held, you know, by the white man. So even if we work hard, you know. No, no, no. We need to know what it Is that we need to be working hard on. Because you do got a lot of people with work ethic. Work ethic. But what are they working on? Because some people will go work 10 hours at Burger King doing the best job they can, but refuse to go spend that same 10 hours working on yourself at home. I'm just like, you can get yourself out of these situations. Like, if I always say there's like, oh, well, black people, you know, they don't have access to this and that. Okay, cool. If he can go work eight, nine hours at somebody's job, he has the ability to go home and work on his own stuff, period. This is what I've done with my organization. I literally, like, when I wanted the organization to happen, I made it happen. I got up every day, I would go cut hair and all in the middle of the night. I would go change starters and go change, you know, fuel pumps or whatever. I would go paint houses with my brother, et cetera. And we would make our money like that. And I would use that money to pay the bills at the house with my kids and then make sure everything was squared away. I was able to do this at 19 years old. You mean to tell me, like, we just dumb and stupid, huh? Like, that's what I tell people. They're like, oh, well, black people aren't able to. I'm like, you don't realize how much that's actual white supremacy because you have made yourself believe that we are incapable of doing anything better. We are incapable of trying to better ourselves. The only way we could do better is if white people help us do it. So in honesty, yeah, white people are supreme over you, but they're not supreme over me. That's not what I believe. I believe that I can go and do stuff. And they're like, oh, well, we can't be racist because black people aren't in positions. We got black mayors, black city councilmen, et cetera, et cetera. So can they be racist now? These stupid things we talk about all the time, they resonate in our community, and we truly believe some of the things that's going on. And I'm like, did you ever believe.

[B]

Any of that stuff?

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

You did?

[A]

I used to hate white people when I was like, you.

[B]

Wait, wait, wait. You hated white people?

[A]

Oh, yeah, I hated white people. Like my 16, 17. You gotta think, when I was in high school, Donald Trump became president when I was in high school. At the time, you gotta think I was on, you know, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. And of course, everybody's just posting all this bad stuff about, you know, Donald Trump or whatever like that. So I'm just like, oh, man, he racist. You know, blah, blah, blah. He's like, you're not doing any research. You're a kid or whatever.

[B]

Can I just tell you? You know, it's so funny. I know Donald Trump and all. Like, I've been listening to you for the last five minutes and all I keep thinking is, I have to introduce you to Donald Trump. He will love you.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I took a picture with him one time. I think we were in Tennessee.

[B]

Good. So you know each other.

[A]

No, we don't know each other. I think it was one of those things where we could take a picture with. Yeah, but we introduced. I introduced myself, but I don't remember. But where was I?

[B]

You were saying when you were 16, Donald Trump was a racist.

[A]

Donald Trump was the president. Right. I remember I was working at Chick Fil A. I remember the day he got elected. It felt like the world was about to end, like, because of how they made it seem, you know, in the media and on social media, whatever. Like, I mean, it was terrible. Like, it's like it was cloudy that day and everybody at work was just all meh. And like, we were, we were upset. We were so sad. I'll never forget when we went to Blexit, had an event at the White House with Donald Trump, and we brought some of our students in 2020, October 2020, because Donald Trump had Covid at the time, President Trump. And we went there and all the love that we received from Republicans and from people on that side, I'd never seen anything like it in my life. We were these kids. We had our all black extra boys outfits on or whatever. Everybody's wondering who we were. So I was telling them about the work I was doing and they was just like, man, this is amazing. People started giving to our organization, et cetera. And so ever since then, I've noticed that the most people that have given us the most hate and terror and the most pushback is people that look just like me because I don't necessarily think like the status quo. Black people have this thing where if you don't think like everybody else, then you must be an immigrant. There's no way you're a black American thinking like this, or you a coon, you know, all the names or whatever. And after we got invited to the White House, my tunes started to shift because I'm just like these people. I hadn't received any Hate the whole time. And I told them exactly what I do, because at that time, I was only working with black kids. And I was like, well, we work for black. You know, we got black kids. We teaching them how to do this. And that is like, we don't care. Like, this is amazing. Like, you're doing some great work. It was a shocker to me because I had been begging to get to other meetings, other Democrat senators. Like, I couldn't get no meetings. Nobody wanted to talk to us. Nobody wanted to help in a major way. These people didn't even know us, and they were pouring love. So we did this one video with this guy named Siaka Massaqua. I'm not sure if you know who he is, but he did a video with us at the White House, and it went mini viral online, and people found out who we were. And then I took this class with a friend of mine. His name is Brother Bennett. He taught me how to utilize social media to push what I was doing. He actually taught me, like, this is what you do. This is how you post. You need to post what you're doing, because people need to see this work all around the world. Never forget, as soon as I started posting on Twitter, whatever, we just started circulating immediately because people had never seen what we've been doing, you know, across the country on a consistent basis with these kids. And mind you, I started boarding them at one point during COVID These kids came to live with me in my living room on some bunk beds. Like, that's how. How truly passionate I was about trying to fix these kids. It's been a long journey.

[B]

Cause you have taken kids out of abusive homes.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. We've had so many stories from molestation to starvation to just physical abuse. The stories I've heard, man, it's like they're not shocking anymore. They're just like, man, this is hell. Because now I'm imagining when I finally do get a story, like, how many other kids out here are going through this? Like, and they moms at work. And the same thing I mentioned, you know, the reason. You know, one of the kids I was talking to, he got. He was getting molested by his. His aunt's son. And he was every bit of, like, 14, 15 years old. But I'm sure that happened to him also. But the mom was hysterical because she, like, I'm just trying to work. You know, I'm sending them over her house just to, you know, so I can work during the day or whatever, because I noticed the kid didn't want to go home. After a while, like, he's just like, can I stay with y'all during the break? I'm just like, nah, you gotta go home, spend 200 family. And I always was, you know, really suspicious of kids who didn't want to go home. Most kids want to go back home still. Like, even if it was fun, they still want to go home. He didn't want to go home. He came back to school with his jaw, like, swole or whatever like that. And he just, you know, told us the entire story of what happened. And it was. It was crazy. And of course, we, you know, told his mom. She was hysterical, but she's working. Like, she's just trying to work just to feed him, you know. And to be honest, our school at the time, it actually helped the parents because they didn't have to worry about feeding them and to worry about where they were. They were with me the whole time. You know, we were doing field trips, we were doing things. So that's where I had got the idea to want to even open a boarding school outside of our after school program.

[B]

You were 19?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That is an amazing amount of responsibility on your shoulders.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

How do you deal with that?

[A]

I think I'm. I mean, I don't think. It's not normal. Back in, you know, the Jim Crow era, everybody had had cool stuff going on at 19, 20 years old. Like, Dr. King had a doctorate at like 22. These guys were killing it, you know. But for our age group now, it's like, you gotta be like 30 something to be doing all this fantastic stuff. I'm just like, no, I'd rather work now and play later. Like, because I agree with you. One thing that happens now is like, everybody think, oh, you're supposed to live life and do all this stuff at this young age. And I'm just like, dude, right now, while my back isn't hurting, let me do all of this stuff. Let me go do all this work, set a foundation for my grandkids, et cetera. Because nobody works for their grandkids anymore. Like, nobody's thinking about that. My oldest son is about to turn six, and I'm already thinking about, good for you, King Raymond, third. Like, good for you. That's important because I'm like, okay, how can I instill values in my sons that they can pass out to their grand. Their sons and their grandsons? And how can I make sure that continues, you know, through generations?

[B]

So it's like, now I'm through generations. Your.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Your great grandchildren. There will be somebody named King.

[A]

King. Right. Yeah. So that's important. And not only that, but it's a charge to keep. We have this old hymn in the African American church called A Charge to Keep. And that's something we grew up singing and we never realized. It's a charge to keep that I have a God to glorify, to serve the present age and fulfill it for the sky. So, like, that was one of the hymns. And they would sing it very old school, sing it real slow. And I never really paid attention to those lyrics. I'm like, I have a charge to keep. Like, I have to. I have to do this. Like, I don't. I don't see why other people don't feel like they have a charge. Like some people, they call them NPCs, like from video games, where you just are just there in a simulation and not doing anything.

[B]

I think that's the way most people are.

[A]

They are. They just live the American pie life. They want to, you know, take the kids on vacation once a year, work nine to five, grill on the weekend sometime, do your holidays, and that's fine, but I feel like I just don't. That's just not my arena. I feel like I'm responsible for, you know, you know, fixing something. Our hometown, Albany, Georgia, was one of the cities that Dr. King failed in and failed. Yes, Albany, Georgia. If you have a chance, go look up the civil rights movement in Albany, Georgia. This was not one of his best places. And he said, you know, the reason they failed in Albany was because the mindset of the people the same way. To this day, we have a small civil rights museum, and you can go there and see everything that he did. Andrew Young was down. Everybody was there. Ralph Abernathy, everybody was trying to get the. To get stuff desegregated in Albany. And it wouldn't happen. When Dr. King came, they put him in jail, et cetera. Chief Pritchett.

[B]

Because the white. The whites attitude was too strong.

[A]

No, they outsmarted Dr. King in Albany. So what happened was when he would go to these other cities, they would beat them down. You know, they would beat him up, whatever. Chief Pritchett was like, okay, cool, we're gonna beat you at your own game. Because Dr. King was so smart. His idea was, let me make you guys look like animals to the entire world. He failed in Albany because Chief Pritchett, when he got there, he was like, don't touch him. Just take him to jail. Don't beat him. Don't touch him don't do nothing to him. He outsmarted Dr. King. And so nothing was able to happen in our hometown. In regard to the city of Albany, Georgia, trying to desegregate. Of course, eventually it did. But my name is King, and I'll never forget. I was going through the Martin Luther King Civil Rights Museum in Atlanta. There's this room with the carriage that carried his cast through. Through town, and there are newspaper headlines all over. You know, he's like one of the most famous people in the world. And one caught me. April 20th of 1968, the Pittsburgh Courier, it said, will a new king emerge? And that's where you see all of my handles say, new emerging king.

[B]

That's fantastic.

[A]

That's where I get that from.

[B]

That's fantastic. You posted a video, very vulnerable, where you talked about an experience with a white guy who wanted to help you tell that story.

[A]

So back when I first started the organization, you know, I told you I was only working with black children because that's what I believed in at the time. I was like, well, black kids need, you know, better, and white people trying to hurt them, whatever. Like that. You know, I'll never forget, he. He helped me, you know, get a building for one of the events that I was doing or whatever. And he. He also tried to sponsor the field trip. He was just like, well, it's cool. You can do it for black kids, whatever. You know, there's no problem with that. He was like, I just want to. And so he asked could his son come. His son, we were the same age. I think he was a little younger than me. He was asking could he come chaperone. I told him no because his son was white. I was like, he can't come. I'm just like, this is a trip for black kids. And he, you know, he didn't really, like, get crazy upset about it. We just kind of, like, lost contact, maybe. I think five. Five years later, six years later. I had been thinking about that for a while, and I found his number again. And we recorded the phone call. Actually, we had the phone call. And he said he actually forgot about it. He's like, I don't even remember that. He was like, but I just. The thought for you to call and apologize is crazy, because I called and apologized to him, and of course people got mad at me. They were like, what you apologizing to the white man for? And blah, blah, blah. You know, just stupid stuff. Just like, that was on my conscience for a long time because all he was doing was Trying to help and to think of how immature the mind was at that time. It's grown adults that still think like that, you know, and it's insane. But I've grown so much to realize that we all are having some of the same issue with the government, man, once, you know, we realize that we're all having some of the same issues. Like kind of, for example, like the January 16th. Black people like to bring this up. They're like, oh, January 6th. If black people were there, we would have died and they would have dropped bombs on us and blah, blah, blah. I said, let me tell y'all something. I said, you guys have been crying about police brutality, et cetera. Grant, some bad things have happened and some haven't or whatever, but we've been crying about police brutality and all this stuff happening to black people so bad. Why weren't y'all out there with them? Don't y'all got issues with them, too? Y'all should be out there voicing y'all opinions about what was going on with your stuff. I think they. They believed in their cause enough to go die for it. I think that all of our rappers, all of our. We got the guns and we gonna go shoot your mama and this and that and whatever. Y'all full of cap. And cap means you. You're a liar. You know, in. In our generation. But y'all full of cap. The reason y'all full of cap is because y'all got all this smoke for your own community. You ain't got no smoke for the white man that you swear is out there hurting you so bad. Bad you mad at January 6th is for going to protest something they believed in. Where were you? Oh, my bad. Y'all was out destroying your own community. You was out there destroying black businesses use out there making sure black people didn't have day restaurants use out there burning down your own community. They were at the Capitol, where stuff actually happens at. Nothing happens in your hometown. Nothing. That's what a major legislation is going to pass. Why weren't y'all there? Y'all should have grouped up, everybody and came with the January 6th. No, we here, too, because we got issues, too. I don't. I don't get it. I'm just like, what's wrong with them? That's. That's how America was born. It was born off of protest revolution. Yes. So I'm not mad at them for going to talk about what they believed in. Go overtake the fine. Do it. That's what you guys should have Been doing die or not. If you believe in it enough, go die for it. Stop capping.

[B]

There's a lot to unpack there, and I'm not even gonna. I'm not gonna get into it because I know. So I agree with your sentiment.

[A]

That's gonna go viral there. Yeah, it is.

[B]

But, I mean, I don't like violence in any way, shape or form, but, you know, to be willing to do what King did. And, I mean, I know his niece Alvida, quite well.

[A]

Oh, everybody. We love her.

[B]

I love her. We love her.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

And, you know, she talks about how, you know, she was just helping. I think her sister or her cousin get up because she was being beaten down and her dad left her in jail. I mean, she did the right thing. Except King said, don't do that. Don't just let them do it. That's hard.

[A]

It is.

[B]

That's hard.

[A]

And for people who like to walk around calling Dr. King docile is crazy because he was so smart at what he was doing.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

He made America look like he was Gandhi. He was. He made America look like they were the most trash. You're supposed to be the superpower. The. The. The head. The head of the world. And y'all doing that to y'all low classes.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That was the idea.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm like, do you know how many. How much balls it takes for you for somebody to call you and be like, hey, y'all coming to my hometown tomorrow? Yeah. Well, we gonna be. We're gonna to kick your ass. Okay, cool. We'll be there. Yeah, we'll be there for our ass kicking every single day. I think that take more balls than going to fight.

[B]

Oh, yeah, it does.

[A]

And again, it was strategy that they had, and it was. It was intelligent. It was smart from when they would throw coffee on them. Whatever. Granted, now, I ain't got the. The. The. The gall for that. I just don't.

[B]

I.

[A]

If I think I vows back in the day, they probably would have hung me way sooner because I just don't have the attitude for that stuff. But. But they were intelligent. They knew what they were doing, and they got what they wanted to pass.

[B]

Granted, they say the Bible says, blessed are the peacemakers. That doesn't mean you're a wuss. It doesn't mean you don't stand up. It means you are standing and taking the beating or whatever it is so others can have peace. You may not get peace.

[A]

Was it Paul? I called Paul again. Was it Paul that was the gangster cutting people's Ears off and stuff. Yeah, Paul didn't play no games. You had anything to talk about. Some sideways to say he was ready to fight. Why though? Because he believed in Jesus that much or whatever. So at the end of the day, you know, we believe in, you know, peace and we believe in, you know, prosperity and all that stuff, but there comes a time where, you know, violence has to happen. There has never been a time in history where violence didn't have to happen. Even the scripture from real life, you.

[B]

Think we live in those times, that violence has to happen?

[A]

Unfortunately, I think now that even though violence is still happening, I think now they have our minds to the point where they can control whether we do the violence or not. I think nobody paid attention to the Twitter files. For real, The Twitter files Elon was showing you guys, this is how they controlled your minds the entire couple of years. And we looked at the Twitter files for a bit, but I'm like, no, let's. We should have done a really deep dive because they effectively controlled everyone's minds. What you believed in, what you thought, how to put stuff in your algorithm, et cetera, to make you wanna go protest all this to make you. It was crazy.

[B]

I read a book 20 years ago about these times and it was a futurist who said, you're not going to. There will be no freedom of choice or freedom of will anymore because you won't know.

[A]

You won't know whether that was your.

[B]

Idea or something implanted in you because the algorithms will be so slick. And we are there.

[A]

And again, the true white supremacy, again, is further believing that you're not able to accomplish anything more than white people are.

[B]

I think that's beyond white supremacy. I just think that's evil.

[A]

It is. But did you see this big paper they made about whiteness? And it was basically saying everything that was good was. It was basically because it was all white people. Like, showing up on time is a white culture thing. And. And taking care of your kids and the nuclear family is a white culture thing.

[B]

And I'm just like a good thing.

[A]

I'm just like, so you guys think that we're baboons or something like that? Like, well, we just not capable of doing anything right. Anything right. You're like, oh, it's whiteness, it's white culture. I'm just like, you don't realize what that's doing to your mind. It's cooking you. Because you're never going to feel like you're able to accomplish anything outside of white people or they're the only ones able to accomplish the most or the greatness. And I'm just like, I serve as an example, you know, that I didn't, you know, I didn't allow nothing to stop me to do. To do what I'm doing. It's not an easy task. I'm not just doing something simple. We know, something hard.

[B]

But those are the only things that really have reward, are the things that you struggle for and the things that are hard.

[A]

But nobody wants to work anymore. That's where we are now. No, everybody wants to get rich quick to make the money, but not actually do anything. And I'm just like, I'm sorry, but for a long time, you are going to have to bust your balls.

[B]

Yeah. When I work and I see even, you know, even my kids, you know, at one point have said, I want to be an influencer. What the hell is that?

[A]

Even that required work.

[B]

But, you know, a lot of influencers are like this and then gone. The brand doesn't come first. It's who you are and what you're producing that becomes the brand. It's not the other way around.

[A]

People don't realize that influencer lifestyle, it is busy. It is tiring. Like you're having to broadcast your whole life every single day. It can get annoying. Like, even just what we're doing with the kids, like, yeah, we have to record most stuff we do, or have my videographer with me. But it gets a little tiring sometime, man. You having to think of content all the time and what's going viral right now. And, like, you're almost like a journalist almost, you know, commenting on everything. And you gotta start your podcast now. And all this stuff with all this makes money, but nobody wants to start in a nitty gritty part of it. Nobody wants to start with 10 views today and 20 views a day. They don't want to work toward the success. I'm like, all these podcasts, all these influencers, all these streamers, they started off with nothing, and they decided to work for the rest of it.

[B]

What's amazing to me is that when you first came in, your videographer is here because you said, I don't know any of that stuff. And I'm kind of the same way. I do my gig and somebody else does that. This isn't. This is not about you getting famous or, you know, getting rid. You're the furthest thing from rich. Didn't. To raise money. Didn't you, like, walk?

[A]

Yes, I walked 200 miles to the city of Atlanta from Albany, yes. And he was the videographer, was there with me the entire time. It was just me and him. So when I would walk, he would drive the truck maybe up a mile or two. He would get out the truck, he would record me walking all the way to where I was going. I had a mic on. He'd record me all the way where I was going. I'd, you know, do a spot where I was. He'd get in the truck, edit videos, post videos, then he'd drive down further. So he was putting his life on the line as well. Cause we walking on the highway, like they said. We not walking on no back streets. We're walking on a major highway. To raise his money for these kids, like, we just have to do something, you know, crazy, because this is how much it means to us. Like, yeah, we have to do something to get publicity. We have to do something.

[B]

What were you paying for at the time? What were you trying to raise money?

[A]

We were trying to raise money just in general for our general fund. We do a big fundraiser once a year, just in general, like, not for anything specific, but just to raise the money for our next year. So that's what we were trying to do. It was around my birthday. We did our gala on my birthday also, July 26th. So I turned 25 and we were raising that money. And that walk was strenuous. The first day was probably the worst because it was about 30 something miles. I had to walk down our first street to even get to the highway. My toes were purple. My toes like took a while to recover too. Like it, it took a couple months for my toes to get back to normal color.

[B]

It's crazy when you think about how people walked across the country.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You're like, and we have it hard. We get in the car and having to drive, having to drive across the mountains, you're like, oh my gosh, it's been forever.

[A]

People have to walk.

[B]

Walk it.

[A]

People have to walk. Yeah.

[B]

Crazy.

[A]

Yeah. So again, I don't allow that whole, you know, I'm going through so much stuff. I'm like, if somebody's got it way worse than you do. I just got back from Africa in August and when I was in Africa, I'd never been there before. And the trip that we took, it was maybe.

[B]

Where'd you go in Africa?

[A]

Went to Al Saba, Nigeria. And when we went there, it was like a culture shock. But we went there on a three day notice. I remember the group hit me a week prior and was like, can you come can you speak on our panel virtually, you know, for our kids in Asaba, Nigeria? But something kept saying, you got to go. Like go. I never wanted to go to Africa, never wanted to be there. Never, never had any thoughts to go. But something kept saying, you gotta go. And I'm just like, I don't even got time to go. I don't got time to get shots. I don't got time to do all this stuff. Go. Some just kept saying, go, go, go. So I called them, they reached out to me because they didn't believe it was true that I was going to try to come. And I was like, no, this is me, you know, I'm going to try and make it. So we ended up, my videographer didn't have a passport. We had to fly to Buffalo, New York to get over to the same day passport for him. We had to fly to Buffalo, then we flew back to at and then we had to get all these different visas to even go within 24 hours. So, so, so what I said was, I said, listen, if something happens here and if we're not able to do anything, then we're not meant to go. If something happens, if the visas don't get passed and the passport stuff messed. Everything went flawlessly. We got the visas, we got the password. I'm like, oh God. I was hoping something went wrong and I was like, I do not want to go. Like, I don't want to go. I was scared. Like, I was like, I want to go there. Like it's a do not travel advisory like this. It's crazy, crazy, you know, so it's dangerous. It's dangerous. So we went and I just got videos on my phone. I'm like, I'm 23 year old kids like out trying to sell like literally two and three years. I couldn't even imagine my son trying to sell something on the side of the road. Like, I couldn't even fathom that. I'm like, their brain ain't even ready for that. You know, they out here trying to sell stuff to make money. They haven't seen their parents in a week or two because their parents are working and they, they don't see their parents at all. Like they, they may come back, they just outfitting for themselves. I'm like, where they shower? They're like, where are they bathe? It's like if they bathe, they bathe wherever they are, you know, I'm just like, that is insane. No food. I mean the rolls are, are to be frank. I mean it was Crazy. And I was it. It. I hate to say it removed some empathy for me from. From coming back home, but I'm just like, bro, we got everything.

[B]

Oh, we are spoiled brats.

[A]

I was grateful to just go get some water, like from the refrigerator because it wasn't any of that. Or to go get something different to eat because we had to eat the same thing almost every single day. Like, I'm. I'm just. Yeah, it took me a second to even be home because I'm just like, man, like, that was crazy. And they lived that. And all their dreams were to do what? To get to America. Every last one. All them, like, what are your dreams? We just want to go to America. We want to. We trying to work hard and be smart and all this stuff to come to America. They so well read, so intelligent, so articulate, and I'm just like, our kids got it all. And we trying to convince our kids that somebody else is the reason that they are failing. No, it's not. It's our fault. It's our fault.

[B]

You sound very much like Booker T. Washington.

[A]

Love him.

[B]

I do too.

[A]

Yep. Not a fan of what his school has become now, but.

[B]

Yeah, but he would. I mean, if, if. If he would have lived a little bit longer, I think things would have been different. He was a remarkable man.

[A]

I can't beat up from slavery, man.

[B]

Yeah, no, it's best. It's the best.

[A]

Just reading his. His work is. Is crazy because I'm just like, man, this is a former.

[B]

Do you know that they're now saying because next door we have a museum of all kinds of stuff?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

We have his original up from slavery, but we also have the new edition that now says this is a work of fiction. They're claiming that none of that's true.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Trying to erase him. And I think he's one of the most important black. Certainly one of the most important black people of the 20th century.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

I mean, he was remarkable.

[A]

Yeah, I agree, agree.

[B]

So Generation Z is. I'm not familiar. I don't know if you're familiar with the Fourth Turning. Have you heard of that?

[A]

No.

[B]

It's a long story short. It's just about generational patterns that go all the way back. And it's a 80, 90 year pattern. And I think Generation Z is what is called in that theory the hero generation. That it just. The hero generation. The last one was during World War I. They came back, they pampered their children because they didn't want their children to see the Horrors that they had already seen. So they got everything and then they got spoiled. And that was the 60s hippies generation. And then they didn't really pay attention to their kids. And that gave you the latchkey generation. And now, now that generation is supposed to turn for the Generation Z. Now that's coming up and you again are going to be the ones that everybody dismisses. Everybody says, well, they don't know their butt from their elbow. They're never going to be able to do it. Just like the people said before they went into war and won World War II, nobody had confidence in them. Yeah, that's Generation Z. And you start a new chapter and are the new heroes for the next hundred years.

[A]

It's the Joshua generation, right after Moses. Yes, that's what I believe in. I think where we mess up especially is again with the whole thing, not wanting our kids to experience hardship. It is my responsibility to create hardship for my sons.

[B]

I think one of the worst things we did was with like the banks. Why would we bail them out? Why would we bail them out? There's no learning curve. If you bail people out, there's zero learning curve.

[A]

I refuse to create an easy life for my sons. People have chastised me, got mad at me, et cetera. Not saying I'm overly hard on them, not at all. But they don't like sometimes he may not want to do something. They're like, oh, he don't want to do it. I don't care if he doesn't want to do it, he has to do it.

[B]

Good for you.

[A]

And I tell him all the time. And we have this little thing. I'm like, when do we work? He's like, when we don't feel like it. I'm like, exactly. That's when we work. That's the best time to work, is when you're gonna do your best work when you don't feel like it. Or even right now. I got him on baseball pause. My son is fantastic at baseball, bro. He's the truth at his age. But that's because I spent a lot of time with him. But sometimes he doesn't like to practice. So right now we're on a two month hiatus from baseball because I want him to see how much he sucks when he starts back. So this month we're starting back practicing in the gym or whatever. I built a little gym in the garage. And we're gonna start back hitting the balls and doing ground balls. And I want him to see how much he sucks because that's your Lesson. You suck because you don't care to practice. You have to do what people can't see. Everybody sees you at the game. You love being good, you love winning all the games and getting all the trophies and everybody's like, oh, you're so good and blah, blah, blah. You love all that. But you don't like the practice part, so I'm gonna allow you. Okay, cool, fine. I won't even say nothing about it. I'm gonna wait till you ask me to go practice. You never asked. I said, okay, cool. So I'm just gonna sit there with them and when it's time to go practice again, I'm like, do you see how much you suck now? Why? Because you have to do the work. Same thing with school. He likes to draw basketball, whatever he does. Boxing also, you will begin to suck when you stop practicing. You have to do those things that you don't want to do. And you know, for most parents, I tell them, I'm like, you know, my sons, the only thing they don't have a choice with is self defense, jiu jitsu and boxing. They have to do it regardless. I don't care if they don't want to do it, if they don't feel like doing it, that's what you're going to do. You're going to learn how to defend yourself and learn how to control your mind because it's controlled. Control the anger and control aggression. They need to learn early, but you only gonna get that from your daddy or whatever. So, you know, again, teaching him those things early, it's, it's important even. We flew to Iowa when was this? And back in June, we went to Dubuque, Iowa. We went to Drew Richards hit training with my son. And Drew was telling my son, he's like, man, you're the best five year old hitter I've ever seen in my life. He's just like you, just fantastic. He's like, I've never seen nothing like it or whatever. And he hears that and he loves, loves it. But then I'm just like, son, the reason you get that is because we practice. We. You have forgotten about more baseball than more kids have played in their life at this age. Same thing with boxing. Most kids aren't starting at 4 years old. 5 years old bro is, he's really good. He, he sparred a 10 year old not too long ago. Grant, the 10 year old one, of course, but the shots he was able to get off at 5. It's insane, especially with the height difference. I mean, the kid's fantastic. But I spend time with my son, done on purpose, building the work ethic, building that stuff up. Because work ethic has to be given and taught. If you don't teach him that by the time he turned 12, 13, you're never going to get it. Don't care what you say, you're never going to get that true work ethic out of them. Because you're always going to look at your child like, man, I just know he could be so much better if he put 110% in. And I don't want to be that dad. Looking at my sons like, man, I just wish they would have. I see, you know, guys all the time, celebrities, whatever, and they just got this, oh, I wish I would have with my son.

[B]

I.

[A]

And I wish I would. I am not going to have any. I wish I would haves with my kids. My kids come first before everything, before the organization, before the city. I do everything with them first. And so my big thing for them is like, okay, how can I raise you all the best? How can I make sure you're going to do the same thing for your kids? Because I tell them now about their grandkids and they like, three or four. I'm just like, you're going to have grandkids one day, son. And they're going to remember all that. He may not like being with me all the time because I'm a little hard on him sometime, or he just might just want to ice cream today or whatever like that. But when he turns 17, 18 years old and getting scholarships or whatever, and successful in whatever he's doing, being a doctor, whatever, he's going to remember. My dad made sure that I was great. He made sure that he spent time. He made sure they're going to remember all of that. And they're making core memories now. I remember stuff when I was three, four years old. So I look at them and I see myself from when I was younger. And I'm purposely creating memories with them that are going to stick, whether they are crying or whatever. I know some of those moments where he's crying or upset or the ball hit him in the face or whatever like that. As long as he's not about to die. Let's go. Keep going. It's okay. You're gonna get hit. Sometime it hurts. Cause I had to practice with him sparring for the first time because he boxed for maybe like a year before he first sparred. And I got in the gym with him and I sparred him. You Know, on my knees because he'd never been hit in the face before. So I had to. He had to see what it felt like. Because I knew if he got hit in that face, in that ring, he was gonna lose it. And just. I don't wanna do this. So I popped him, you know, he had his headgear on, his eye hit him and he. You're hitting too fast. He starts crying, and I'm just like, okay, it's okay. You can cry. Put your hands back up, though, and still remember everything Coach Dino has taught you the whole time. Move your head, throw your punches, et cetera. Then he started getting excited and loving it. So the next day, when it's time to spar, he was fine. He was ready to throw punches, ready to take punches, ready to move out the way. But that's because I spent time preparing him for war. That's what a dad's supposed to do. That's what I'm supposed to. People might not have liked it. Why? Why did you tap your son like that? I'm like, bro, he's not hurt. I'm spending time with my son so he doesn't end up like yours.

[B]

I don't. I. It's like, I don't even know what to say to you. I hope I can live to be 100 and with it so I can see you at my age. You're one of the wisest 25 year olds, man, I've ever met.

[A]

Granddads, and uncles, man. I still consult with them to this day. You know, my age shows in a lot of different ways. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely 25. Yeah, I still play video games and all that jazz, you know, I still do stupid stuff, you know, my mom gotta fuss at me or whatever like that. For the most part, I'm always remembering what uncles and granddads said. My granddad came to live with us when I was about, like 12 or 13 or so. And I remember all the stuff that he was teaching at the time over there. And he was saying stuff to me, and I didn't really recognize what he was saying at the time, but I remember it all. So it's just like, you know, remembering all the stuff he taught and my uncles and my grandma. My grandma. I grew up in the church. I played the drums my whole life. So all I know is church stuff for the most part. And I just want to see kids do better. I believe our civil rights leaders made a mistake and didn't train any replacements. And that's why we were in the condition that we're in. Nobody trained replacements. Nobody was trying to train that next gen. So I believe that's important for us.

[B]

I think we, all of us, not just black, but white as well, we lost the work ethic. We lost the desire to educate. I mean, if you read up from slavery, you know, he's praising, you know, the education. We have an opportunity to have something better than the president, his child had at that. Think of what we have available to us now. You know, it's like the scriptures. People died to be able to translate the scriptures in our language. We have them on our phone, and we don't even read them pairs for.

[A]

A lack of knowledge. We don't know what we don't know. And that's. And that's important.

[B]

So what. What difference are you seeing in the lives of the kids that you are? Because we haven't even really talked about this. You're bringing these kids along, you're teaching them skills, teaching them how to fix an engine, do household stuff. You're out building fences, whatever you can do with your hands. Right. So you are now, if I'm not mistaken, you just bought a laundromat or you're trying to buy a laundromat.

[A]

Yeah. We have a building that was gifted to. To us from a donor in our hometown. We want to turn into a laundromat. That's what we're trying to do so we can generate revenue for our students.

[B]

And when you say we want to run it, it'll be the kids that.

[A]

Have run it, us and their parents.

[B]

Yeah, it's fantastic.

[A]

Yeah. But to your question, you're asking about the impact that I've seen. I'm glad to answer this question now. I've been working with kids going on six years now. I can only point to maybe three or four kids that truly embody everything that the exoboys is all about. The reason I say that is because when I first started, I had this idea that there was no child that couldn't be fixed or no child that couldn't be worked with or no child that couldn't be, you know, pushed forward. I spent five years working with some kids, and I only can point to, again, two or three kids that truly embody everything that we taught. The reason I say that is because I started too late with a lot of them. We're in a generation now where maybe at your generation, kids were losing themselves at age 11 to 17. We got kids losing themselves now at like 6 and 7 years old, like losing themselves, I mean, and I mean smoking at school, having sex already, etc. Oh yeah.

[B]

How old?

[A]

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. At these ages, this is what's happening. And so these kids are already lost at 11, 12 years old when they first get to me. So I'm trying to undo what's already been done. It's already start. I can't. Tell me how hard it is to tell a 12 year old to stop having sex. You can't. It's not happening. And so they end up with kids. You tell them to stop smoking weed. You can. No matter how cool I make this life seem, no matter how many times I teach them how to do something or Bible study, it's not happening.

[B]

Because that's the saddest thing I've ever heard.

[A]

It is. But I'm one of the only people that'll be honest about it. Because other people, they do have organizations that do the same thing that we do or different ages, but they don't care about, about the actual change of the kids. They just wanted to look cool and keep getting donors. I'm probably one of the only people who be like, look, I've been working with kids for six years and I probably could tell you two or three that actually represent what we're doing. But why did those two or three represent what we're doing? Those kids were blessed in our program by their big brothers. I only allow kids under age 11 to come if they had a big brother in the program. And so, Bryson, so you didn't get.

[B]

The big brother per se, but you.

[A]

Got the kids got the little brother because they, they were younger. I didn't even realize in my not directly working with them, they were paying attention to everything that I was saying from standing up straight to making sure you tie your tie right, to make sure you got a haircut, cutting your fingernails, et cetera. So one of my students, Bryson and Jeremiah, et cetera, these kids, like I said, it's only a couple of them. And Kendarius, it's a couple of them. They are fantastic. They are magnificent. And I never truly just worked directly with them all the way I was working with their brother brothers. But they were paying attention to everything that I was teaching. So this is why I started working younger. I had a 9 year old starting the program. He gets to the program, he loves it. He like, I love Mr. King, I love the program. But mama, those kids are bad. And I don't know if I can deal with it. And so I used to have this thing Where I used to try to force kids to do the program. Like, no, you're going to sit here, you're going to pay attention, you're going to do. I don't do that anymore. If you don't want to be here, I will send you home. Because I have lost so many kids that when I thought about it, I've lost so many great, fantastic kids who truly needed our teaching, trying to force the kids who didn't want to be there. We've wasted so many donations, etc, taking kids on field trips, making sure they doing what they trying to go to their schools, whatever. And we've wasted so much time and so much energy and so much money on those kids who didn't want it, who didn't want to be there. And we lost those kids who needed it. So this is where I took the pivot and saying, okay, I got to work with kids way younger, younger, because right now I had an 8 year old smoking at school and stuff like that. Teachers called me and like, hey, can you work with this kid? Like, what's going on? He's smoking. What? Whoa, bro. In third grade, like, yeah, he's smoking in the bathroom. What?

[B]

Boy, if third grade, when I was growing up in third grade was smoking, the whole society would have written that kid off as like, there's no way.

[A]

Man, this is what we're looking at. So I'm one of the people, to be honest about what I've done in the past couple years, I'm just like, okay, now I pivot because now I, I know what I need to do and I have maturity now also, while I'm being civic, you know, civically engaged now, you know, I'm on these different boards and spending time, you know, going to our commission meetings and stuff. And because it's because most of our kids are being affected by these things that are happening at these meetings, at these board meetings, at the school board meeting, etc, these kids are being affected by it. Before I was just like, oh, politics, we don't need to worry about that, whatever, Politics worry about you. So you need to go worry about politics and see who you're voting in. And most people, people, I told them all the time, we were so hung up on voting for president. Who's your mayor? You don't even know. Who's your city council member. You don't even know what war do you live in, what district do you live in? You don't even know. You don't even know who to call or something's wrong or if A light's busted or whatever. You don't even know who to call. But we were so caught up on, you know, voting for president. President Trump ain't gonna come come change your street lights, nor is he gonna come pave your street, nor is he gonna make sure your kids got an after school reading program at the local gym.

[B]

Exactly right.

[A]

Your local mayor, your local city councilman, they have to listen to you. They work for you. And it's crazy how they work for you. You pay them and you don't give them a job evaluation. So that's. That's what I have to talk to people about now. It's like, no, you got to get involved locally. But that sounds like work, so they don't want to go do it. It's easy to say, oh, our city's terrible. We need new leadership, instead of going to see what's wrong.

[B]

So what is your ultimate goal? Where do you see yourself in 25 years?

[A]

I hope to fix my hometown. I'm not one of those people that's like, oh, oh, I want to change the world. No, I don't. I want to change Albany, Georgia.

[B]

That's how you'll change the world.

[A]

Exactly. Because some of those kids, even if they may not live in Albany or stay in Albany, I would have affected that child going to move to Louisiana and to go fix that community over there, or I would affect that child as moving to Chicago when he gets his degree or whatever. After spending so many years with me, he goes to Chicago and changes the landscape up there. All of them were touched by our program and what we were doing for these kids. So my goal is to change my hometown. That's my dream. That's my goal. If I change my hometown in 20, 25 years, maybe I'll run for something or whatever, but my goal is to fix my hometown of Albany, Georgia. At one point, we were the fourth poorest city in the whole country. You know, and if you come visit our city, it's so much potential. It is not a small city in size at all. We have, I think we're like the 8th biggest city in the state or whatever in surface area. But in regards to population, it keeps going down because city morale is low and nobody knows how to show people that our city's worth believing in. And that's what I believe I'm there to do. We deserve leadership that spends time making sure the city's okay. And that's what I intend to do.

[B]

So I'm gonna go back to Generation Z. What are you Seeing different in this generation, in your generation. I think the boys. This might sound strange. I think the boys are strangely more connected than the girls are. I think the boys maybe have been so dismissed for so long that they've got to find something bigger than them and bigger than what they're being told. And the girls. I mean, when a society. When your girls go bad, your society is flushing down the toilet because the guys have no reason to have any standards.

[A]

No standards. I think our generation has lost themselves because their grandparents and parents are too busy working to be able to raise them. So again, back in the day, grandma and granddad and mom were mostly home because dad used to work or whatever like that. And they can make ends meet now that you can't make ends meet. Especially in our hometown, you're working two or three jobs. You're not able to teach your children truth. You're not able to teach them your values. So you're just hoping your child is paying attention at school. You're hoping your child is at home doing the right thing. And then mama, she's so hurt because she's just like, I'm just trying my hardest. I'm trying to send you to these programs. I'm trying to send you to football practice and whatever, and you just keep falling by the wayside. Well, for one, their phones, I think that's the biggest destructive tool to our kids. My son does not have one. I don't do YouTube and none of that stuff. They don't do tablets, any of that jazz. But the kids, they lost themselves on these devices, and it's been done purposely. Then on top of the devices, not having to try and raise your. And that's what kids are doing, or your siblings having to raise you, because now you got older siblings in the house, and, hey, I need you to watch your brother. I need you to watch your sister. Now they become effectively the parent of the children, and they doing what their siblings do. And if their siblings are up to no good, they up to no good too, you know? So this is. This is the story of many of our kids in this generation. So now for my hometown, like, okay, what can I do in leadership to help bring working good jobs to our hometown where people can actually afford to live? And not only live, but that'll attract more businesses to come to our hometown because people can afford it. Nobody's gonna bring business to our hometown if people can't even afford the basic stuff that's there. If they can't afford to even go out to eat, why Would we bring major business here? People look at our downtown like, oh, you can have so many cool stores here. Yeah, but people can't afford that stuff. They can't buy it. Right? So my idea was, okay, our school system has a program where they actually take parents and they teach them, you know, how to do these different skill trades and they get them certificates and they go work and they make good money and they able to spend time with their kids. They told us many of these stories, but I'm just like, why hasn't our city done that? Our city has many people that would love to go and work and make the money. If the school system can do it, what's stopping city government funds from trying to train those people up? Yes, it's an investment right now. But spend that money on those people, have them learn the trades, have them learn those skills for one on one fold. You got people making money now, which means the household median income goes up. Then on top of that, you got parents able to be home with their kids now, meaning they can discipline now. Then on top of that, we bring an industry here because now, hey, Mr. Big Factory man, we just trained a thousand people on how to do excavators and do nursing or whatever. We got a thousand people ready to work in your factory right now. We got plenty of land. Can we give you some land to come bring this factory so that way we could have the money for people to spend on bringing new business here? Like, it's, it's, it's, it's foolproof stuff that I would think, but it's not being done because nobody's going to fuss about it. But like I said before, you know, our cities looking for hope and leadership. Our city, like I said, we had about 67,000 people. Previously, it was about 71,000. We only had about 7,000 people vote for mayor in our local election. 7,000 out of 67,000. 7,000 out of that many people. They didn't even know the mayor relation was going on. But because that's because they don't care. And it's not the people to a point. It's also the, the leaders. Because why aren't you making sure that people know what's going on? They just go to the same people that vote every year and just make sure they, they vote them in. Nobody else cares because nobody else even knows. I can guarantee you, like if I go talk to 50 people in our hometown, 49 of them don't know who the mayor is. And that's not all the way Fault to the people. That's fault of the mayor because where are you? Where are you?

[B]

How can people help you?

[A]

You can support our organization at the x4boys.org that's T-H-E x f o r b o y s dot org. You could go there to see everything in regards to the X4 boys. Our photos, our videos, field trips, whatever stuff I didn't talk about today. You can follow me on social media at New Emergent King. On all platforms, you'll be able to see some of the videos we've done. As of late, I've been doing my own little personal videos, you know, in regards to different subject matters. But for the most part, once we kick back off in the spring semester, you'll see more of these videos of us helping the kids. But it's Ewemerging King on all social media and theexforboys.org so I have a.

[B]

Charity called Mercury One and we teach. We do these family things where we bring families and kids in for three days. So we teach them American history. The good, the bad and the ugly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we also do a two week program that pretty much strips you down so you like. I realize at 17 or 18 years old, I really don't know anything. You know what I mean? And that's a really intensive program and we would love to host some of your kids and families and we'd cover that. But I also. So we'd like to make a $10,000 donation to you.

[A]

Thank you. We appreciate it.

[B]

Yeah, I think what you're doing is amazing.

[A]

I appreciate it. And we definitely look forward to bringing the kids here. We love to try and have them travel. Some of our donors have been able to take our kids all across the country. They've been to Utah, private jets, everything. Yeah. Because people have seen what we're doing online. They're just like, we want to be a part. And that's something that I believe in. People believe in us and I love that. And it's cool for the kids to see that from the city of Albany, you know, this small town, people know about what we're doing all over the world because of what we've done in this program. We've put Albany on the map in so many different places. People don't even know Albany exists. Until we talk about Extra Boys program or people hear about the city of Albany, the first thing they think about is the Extra Boys program. So I'm just grateful guys have been able to use us as a catalyst to speak about our hometown and showcase what we're doing, because we have talent there. We just got to showcase it. And I think, again, if we train those replacements, we'll be able to make something happen.

[B]

I will tell you, you're one of the very few that I have met that are this young, this talented, this smart, that I haven't felt compelled to say, stay close to the Lord because you have temptation coming your way. Like, nobody's. Like, you can't imagine. Because fame and fortune destroys. It's battery acid for the soul.

[A]

Yep. The rapper say mo money, mo problems.

[B]

I know, but I have to say it to you anyway. I just feel you're so rock solid. But don't get arrogant in your relationship with God, because amazing.

[A]

One thing I noticed with my life is every time something extremely great happens, something extremely bad happens to go with it. So usually, like, people always wonder, like, when I have bad things happen to me, like, why I don't, like, just get so flustered and frustrated. I'm just like, this extremely bad thing just happened. So God's got something. I don't know what he's doing.

[B]

That's exactly right.

[A]

Something's about to happen. So I usually get almost excited when something really bad happens. I'm like, God's got something on the way or whatever. And. Same thing that happened with the Elon thing. I'm just like, okay. Before that happened, I was like, something's about to happen because I just had some really bad stuff going on in my personal life. And then I wake up in the middle of the night, and Elon shared our video, and we got all this support coming from everywhere. So then again, you know, when something great happens, something bad happens. So I think that's God keeping me balanced, like. Yeah. So I. I love that. But, yeah, it's. You know, it's easy to get, you know, the big head, but I get. I only have the big head at home. You know, I go in the mirror like, yeah, these guys can't. Yeah, they can't deal with me. I'm the best, you know?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At home, of course. You know, but when it's time to, you know, show my face and represent God, that's what I do. But of course, everybody's at home, you know, gonna go look in the mirror and say, yeah, I'm the guy. You know, Mr. Glenn's doing his hair in the morning.

[B]

Like, yeah, yeah, I'm Glenn.

[A]

Everybody wish they were Glenn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

God bless you, man.

[A]

God bless you. Thank you so much for having me.

[B]

Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so.

[A]

It can be discovered by other people.