Transcript
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INTERVIEW WITH AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO
Interviewee: Afrique Kilimanjaro
Interviewer: Anna Freeman
Date of Interview: 10/11/2021
Location of Interview: Jackson Library on UNCG Campus, Zoom
List of Acronyms: AF- Anna Freeman, AK- Afrique Kilimanjaro
AFRIQUE KILIMAJARO:
Hey there, how are you doing?
INTERVIEWER:
I'm doing so well, how are you doing?
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Pretty good. Pretty good.
INTERVIEWER:
Excellent. Well, just first of all, thank you so much for finding the time for
us. I know you're very busy, but it-AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Oh, no worries.
INTERVIEWER:
means so much you're sitting down here. Are you having a good day so far?
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Pretty good. Pretty good. A lot of paperwork to fill out, but I'm doing pretty
good and my office mates, which I'm not at the office, but my four legged officemates, (repeated phrase) may start barking. But it'll be OK. It'll be okay.INTERVIEWER:
It's all good. It's all good. We're here in the library, so there's no telling
what will happen.AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Oh, okay, okay.
INTERVIEWER:
Sweet. Well, just for the record, would you mind stating your full name and
today's date for me?AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Yeah, sure. My name is Afrique Isabel Kilimanjaro. Today's date is October 11th, 2021.
INTERVIEWER:
Beautiful. And that's helping me because I can never remember the day of the
week or the number of the day.AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
It's okay.
INTERVIEWER:
Oh my gosh, well thank you yeah. So we, I actually, I had the privilege to look
through your mother's interview earlier with Unsung Heroes. And I saw when you kind of put your head in, could hear you say, "Oh, you said, Are you going to interview me later?" So I'm so happy-AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Oh yeah, that's no problem. It's no problem.
INTERVIEWER:
You're pretty familiar with the structure of Unsung Heroes and how things are
going to go? Yes. Sweet so-AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Of course.
INTERVIEWER:
Yeah well firstly, I want to take some time to see if you have any questions for
me or like anything you're curious about.AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Of course. Beautiful. I just have a couple of questions here, but they're mostly
a guideline. I really just want to sit and have a conversation.AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
OK.
INTERVIEWER:
Just sort of off the top like Oliver Twist. You tell me a little bit. Are you
from the town of Greensboro?AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Yes, I grew up here. I was born here in Greensboro, and I grew up here. I am the
youngest of the my generation of Kilimanjaro crew and I have nieces and nephews. But my father was a professor of English Speech and Theater Arts at North Carolina A&T State University. And my mother was a media specialist focusing on special education at McIver Education Center, well in fact back then it was the Greensboro Public Schools. Today it's the Guilford County Schools. But yeah, so I grew up here. I went to college at A&T. I finished at A&T. I've been all over the place. But because my father taught there, so it was kind of like a, you know, you can, my choices. I had choices, but he was like, "No, no, no". Yeah. So anyway, yeah. And when I went to college, I majored in the sciences because I thought, OK, well, I'm going to get as far away from English and journalism and---.I even I like the arts, but I said I'm going to get as far away from the fields
that my parents were in, but you see how that's turned out. I've been the editor at the at the Carolina Peacemaker for a quite a long time. But, as a kid, growing up in the in the newspaper business, it's kind of hard to get the ink out of your blood, so to speak. And I didn't intend on, it wasn't my intention of doing this, but I always had some sort of tie, not just familial, but I would spend most of my summers in grade school from perhaps like fourth grade on even earlier than that, were spent at the newspaper office. So I was like, if I was, I started out as the clean up girl, then they gave me copy to edit and then they gave me, you know, then it was, "why don't you be a cub reporter?" I did that for a little bit, but because my schoolwork and because I wanted to focus on something in the sciences and it interfered with me, rarely do doing that. But in junior high and high school, I really liked, I had a thing (repeated phrase) for magazines and the graphics that you see in magazines, and I like the color. So when, when USA Today came out, they had color in the newspaper, I said, "Why can't we do that? Let's do that. You know, that looks really good." But I did yearbooks. I started in junior high and I was like the first African-American editor in chief of my high school yearbook. So that kind of gave me a feel for it.And there was a gentleman at the office, his name was Cecil Young, and he's no
longer with us, with the, you know, he's, he's passed on, but he gave me my first lesson in graphics. He helped me to know how to arrange things spatially how to, you know, back then it was it was paste ups. It wasn't. It wasn't all computerized like it is now saying you just hit a button and this has got a border on it. So I learned how to do it, the x-acto blade and all that, do all that kind of thing. And you know, that was that was to me that was not very stressful, the stressful part of doing newspaper or just any kind of media, publication where you where you're telling someone's story or you're telling the story of an event, you know, is, you know, you want to get that right. You want to get be as accurate as you can that you want to talk to the people involved in that sort of thing. I have a good time talking to people. That's the best part about this job I can think of is, is, and it's and it's and that's the fun part. But when, when the topic is something that is that is not necessary. Well, it can be controversial, but something that's sad or that really impacts people like, for example, wanting to reopen a landfill in someone's neighborhood that's been closed for a number of years, that type of thing that kind of stresses. Because to me that in the back of my mind, I'm thinking that that is a, that's a, that really impacts on someone's life or a very large portion of our population lives that it's very impactful. And it's not only impactful to the people that are living now, but for generations that can happen. I mention that because by my background, I have an undergraduate degree in professional biology and a master's degree in public health and environmental and occupational health. I have. I came back to Greensboro. I was, I was a medical student. And so I know a lot about health care. But I am not, I'm not a physician. I came back to help. My parents and my father was just in the in the beginnings of developing dementia, and he was very much aware that this is that this was happening.And so the guilt, you know, I had siblings who said, "Oh, you don't want to do
that, don't come back, don't do that. Don't do that. No, no, no". But you know the guilt that you feel when someone says that they who they never he never voiced it before. So when he when someone as fiercely independent as my father was and as fiercely opinionated as he was and as fiercely as he wanted me to be what I was trying to pursue at that time for him to say, "you know, I could really use your help" registered in my head, and so I came back to Greensboro. This is where I grew up, so I don't I don't really mind it. You know, the funny thing is, you know, as you grow up here and a couple of generations of people or you see people that you know, you didn't really think of back when you were like 10 or 11 or whatever and that they were really you don't think of them as, oh, they're really famous or they really had an impact on our community. You know, until later on. And it's like," Oh, yeah, I knew him, he used to come by the house and help". And would have, soft drinks and, you know, some snacks together. That's a type of thing you don't ever really think of it. Think of them as being. They were just people who were either friends or colleagues or folks in the community who wanted to better the lives of people in Greensboro and in Guilford County or even across the state, we had that type of (repeated phrase) an impact and a pull on this area.INTERVIEWER:
This is a completely tangential aside, but I love the fact that you just called
them soft drinks, because that's what my family calls them. We're all from North Carolina, too. And you never hear of that, but that's yeah. Thank you so much for telling me all that information. I can't imagine coming back, that the emotions of coming back after your father asked you for help, that sounds, that was an intensely charitable and incredible action you took.AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Well it took more than once. That was the problem. I thought, maybe if you ask
once you would go on to the next person or something and it really wasn't a next person because I'm the youngest. And then there's other people like that in when they say the paper. When the Carolina Peacemaker started in 1967, I was nowhere to be found. I was not around. But over the years, and especially in the beginning, I mean, I have a fleet of cousins who worked there while they were in school or during the summers they come to Greensboro when they work there. I have cousins who were at A&T who would sell advertising or they would serve as a manager or something. I've had UNCG, Elizabeth City, you know, they were they would just come, you know, and that help out. And we have never forgotten that in my eyes, you know, my two sisters and I have a brother, my brother has autism, so he's the oldest. But my two sisters worked at the Peacemaker, and when they were kids, they would be out in the snow trying to sell papers. That was it. And they would say, "Oh, no, we're never doing this again, this is too much", you know that sort of thing. So. I remember, I did everything from selling subscriptions to, you know, doing whatever it took to make it run. It's a family reach and I have a dog behind, in front of me who is whining to get up and in the chair. So just pardon this angle-INTERVIEWER:
You're fine. Yeah that sounds good.
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Cool. Cool.
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Now I'm going to hold on just a second. And then when I get them up. Look, there
we go. I'm back. So, you know, it's. It has its challenges, but the main idea of doing a local publication for, you know it is primarily for the African-American community and to inform them about issues and things that are happening. And even, you know, everything from, you know, we do sports, arts, entertainment, community news, politics, you know, things that are that that affect us, you know, from the, we have people who write national news to people who write in our local stuff that's going on. You know, cotilions, which are like debutante balls, that kind of thing. Well, that's, you know, whatever is happening and we want to be able to chronicle it, you know, so that people know that there is a significant, and significant African-American population of color here in this area always has been, basically. We need to cover that, you know, chronicle that that information that what's happening?INTERVIEWER:
Yeah, well, it's an incredible undertaking and it seems like you've described
your growing up around, The Peacemaker and in Greensboro is really seminal for you, formative for your perspectives on a lot of things. And I'm actually curious how growing up in the midst of the Peacemaker, in the midst of Greensboro in this era, how that sort of informed your perspectives on the civil rights movement and your family's place in your family's place in Greensboro as it through the Peacemaker?AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Yeah. So I always describe myself as I am the direct beneficiary of what went on
before I came along, you know, for so I'm a direct beneficiary of what happened during the 1950s, 60s civil rights movement, and my parents were very active in that. It also, those activities also spurred the creation of the peacemaker in 67The problem is, is that Congress, our Congress needs to codify the Voting Rights Act and not just that, but the two bills that are in place that that should be passed on that issue so that it becomes constitutional, and it's not it's not something that can be just changed willy nilly. You know, one president comes in and says, "we're going to we're going to get this and I'm going to stack the court so that we can get this gutted". You know that that's not what a democracy is supposed to be all about. We can't, you know, if this happens we're not going to able to call ourselves a democracy, that's just, voting is essential to a functioning democracy to a functional society and government. And so that should be free, fair, and people should have access to it without someone saying, "Oh, it's rigged before you can cast a ballot". You know, it's just my theory, but that's just one issue. You've got you got all kinds of issues, got the, got with COVID having the pandemic and we're still in the midst of it. There's the issue of health inequities, and we have seen that that's been staring our society in the face. It's funny because people have been talking about health equity and the inequities that have gone on for years and years and years and years, decades, and now, you know, people are seeing it up close that the inequities that that that arise, the ability for some people to be able to access now that people can get a shot now a vaccine, you know, it's almost offered in every drugstore. You know, people, there are organizations that even have drive up vaccination places. And we would in the paper, we would report on those type of that types of places, you know, to go to let the public know or on our web page we would we would have that information. But, I guess the issue is also, if you get sick, can you access or if you get COVID, can you access the ability to get the monoclonal antibody? Would that be given to you? Who's the gatekeeper on that? Because at the beginning of the pandemic, it was only the, you know, the president of the United States and maybe the cabinet, you know, that sort of thing. Who's able to get it. But, is it offered across the board to two people, is it offered to people of color? I'm sure it probably, I'm hoping that it is, but I'm just saying that that those are the things that people that especially people, if you're a person of color you think about in the back of your mind, when you go and when you have to go to the hospital.I've had made, I've had my father, you know, when I would take him to the
hospital if he'd have an issue, it was nothing for him. He would he would throw his degree basically on the table in order to get them to pay him some attention so that they know that he's not just some regular guy, and even if he was a regular guy off the street or whatever, they should treat him with respect. And that was the whole, that's the whole idea, that there is an anxiety within the black community and with other communities out here that we are not going to be treated with respect in certain circles. And it, we keep demanding and sometimes it gets it, gets ignored or people, you know, because you're not, you're not the Superior Court judge or you're not the professor or whatever. There's an anxiety that you feel that people are not going to hear you. And so once again, I'm trying, what I try to do and what I do every day is to bring an awareness not just to African-American people, but to people across the board that there are issues out here that affect everybody to some degree, and that we have to live in a society that's everybody black, white, yellow, green, purple, I don't care who you are. We have to learn to live together and have a community that can sit down and have a conversation and listen to one another and not get caught up in the in the ah, the twenty word soundbite or the one minute explanation that's on the evening news. Some things take a little longer to explain, especially when oppression has been going on for 400 plus years, some things take a little longer to explain to people. So that's the good part about being in print and even being, you know, having a website, you can take the time to write out something you can give them, I call it the NPR version of it or an explanation of what's happening it because there's just, you know, you just can't, you just can't explain certain things. And, you know, I mean, in a minute span, it just doesn't work. So that's fine. Next question.INTERVIEWER:
I really appreciate that because I feel like you're sort of touching on how
working in print and being in this business with your family has really given you a perspective and an in on the really cyclical nature of a lot of these issues and how it's a Scythian where you're pushing the boulder up and you feel like you're doing it, making all these actions and then you're privy to all these actions at all levels of government, federal, state, local, especially here in Guilford County, Greensboro, where you're seeing these same problems and these issues pop up. And I was just curious how that sort of feels to be to be involved in this paper that is so central to your family and your family's story from having a perspective through your parents, how it sort of started in the 60s in the wake of these national movements for civil rights and sort of as a product of that and as a beneficiary of those and to see it sort of follow it through to the latter half of the 20th century and now being so integrally involved in its production, how does that how does it sort of feel to be a part of that and be a part of that legacy right now?AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
You know, I think about it, but I think about it, but I don't really think about
it because you can't really think about it when you're in it, you just have to do it, type of thing. But I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the opportunity because it's, you know, not everybody gets to hear other people's stories and hear how certain things affect them or what they're going through, or whether it's a celebration or something positive or something that's not so positive. You know, (repeated phrase) it's a privilege to. Even because a lot of times I will hear news or I will hear information before anybody else hears it, you know? So by the time it either even though some people see it, you know, in the paper or whether they see it on TV, I've already heard it probably two or three times before it, you know, before some things break. And that's a privilege, you know that for it to have to have other folks out in the community trust me or entrust the paper the Peacemaker to tell their story or report on what's happening. That's, it takes a lot of time. And you don't want to blow that. You don't want to blow the trust you want to, you want people to trust you and to know that that you will tell their story as they tell it to you. You know, that's important because I see, a lot of big papers will take people's story and then it's like, "Well, that's not what I said", you know, so I don't I don't have any shame about if I if I'm, I'm quoting someone to call them up to say, if it's not, if I don't have it on tape, which usually I will tape a or record and interview so that I get the quote right. But it's nothing for me to say, "Hey, I just want to make sure I got your quote what you said accurate and that it means this and this", and people are appreciative that you take the time to do that instead of because, you know, some of us in the journalism world can be kind of, you know, "oh, I know what I'm doing". You know, if you're working with people, it's all about telling the story, and there's a really good story people who can report these stories here in Guilford County. Some of them, I see, you know, and in print and some of them are no longer with certain papers and they work at universities. And those are some, a lot of those folks are some of my favorite writers out there in this area, and, you know, they have tremendous talent.And but I guess to answer your question is it's just really, it's really, it's a
privilege to do to do what I do. It's also stressful because in the position and I mean, I'm not just the editor, I mean, I have to be concerned about advertising because that's what keeps the newspaper going to be concerned about circulation, I have to talk to other publishers because there's other things going on in the publishing world and in today's world of newspapers, a lot different from when it was 50 something years ago, it's now that you have you have like your local newspaper here that is owned by a conglomerate that owns 200 plus other newspapers across the country. So it's even though it's here, it is not, and the people, there are few people here that that work here on that paper as, OK, but it loses its local feel over time. And unfortunately, there are even smaller towns across this state that have lost their local papers, their local publication. And that's bad because then, it's just it's just like a food desert. Now you've got a newspaper desert, you've got an information void, that a void collecting information about that. And that's in the field that you're in your history. This is what this is. We become like a historiography, right? That that that historians rely on to depend on us to look back during a certain time period to see how things were or see how they were reported, and in the Peacemaker versus how it's reported in the news at record versus how it's reported in the Journal in Winston-Salem or the Wilmington Journal down in Wilmington, or the Carolinian in Raleigh or, you know, so it's we are we are the record or one of the records. You know, the big papers always get, they are considered the standard then. But as we you know, we're now we're entering the, we're in the digital age. I accept that we're in the digital age. I don't mind digital. But the same principles need to apply. So, so a lot of folks who think that they are reporting something don't actually go back and fact check what they put out there. They'll still put out information that is not accurate, not true, and they don't have and there's no accountability for doing that. That's the problem and that's where and that's dangerous.INTERVIEWER:
So you got to keep eye on it. Yeah, but I yeah, I totally I totally see what
you're saying and I appreciate the aspect and the importance of being sort of the record and sort of whose record is it? And you touched on one of these concepts that I'm really I'm really interested in its concept of trust that the Peacemaker has in the community. And I'm just curious what you think about sort of how in the early days of the paper, if you remember your parents memories over your own memories of it just starting in 67Well. The paper basically got started because African-Americans were not being covered in the daily. If we were being covered, it was because somebody got arrested for something or someone (repeated phrase) did, it was something negative. And the story was told and it wasn't really told in a, it wasn't fully vetted as far as getting all sides, and so it painted the members of the of our, of the black community as, not so upstanding, so to speak, or, you know, and that's not (repeated phrase) necessarily, the Peacemaker's goal is not to paint people as being upstanding, that's not it. It's to (repeated phrase) give us, tell the story and tell it straight. Because before that, before we existed, there was a paper called, what was that paper called? It was called the Future Outlook, and it was published here in Greensboro back during the 30s and 40s and up to probably the mid-60s. And the man who published it, we called him, his last name was Johnson, we called him Future Outlook Johnson. And he would come, and he would talk to my father because he I think he, you know, he was up in age. He was going to get out of the newspaper business, and he had heard that my father wanted to start a newspaper. And so, you know, they talked. But what, I mentioned him because one of his, one of the things he would say was, "If you do good, I'm gonna to put you in my paper, and if you do bad, I'm gonna put you in my paper". And so that's kind of the truth. And it's kind of talked about as a joke, but it's, you know, a lot of jokes are based on fact and that's a running thing at my office that has been there for forever that, you know, if you do good, if you do something that's positive, yeah, we know we can put that in, but if you do something that's crazy and you know, the people need know that, we're going to write on that, too. You know, it doesn't matter who you are, you know, people need to know that you are silly enough to do these things and it affects, you know a lot of folks, well, mainly, politicians get in trouble with this, you know, that type of thing.So, yeah, that's what we, that's what we do. So yeah, so that's really, you
know, it was out of necessity, founded out of necessity to tell stories that were pertinent to the African-American community, and that not only celebrated the community, but let people know that, hey, this is going on and you need to be aware of what's happening here, you know, it's the paper serves as kind of a cohesion for a community. You know, that way, you know, it's not you getting bits and pieces of information here, in bits and pieces here. You know, it's like it's, this is the house that you come to, you know to tell the, you know, we're that, we're like the, I don't wanna say, it's not a canary in the coal mine, but it's, we're the the beacon of, hopefully like a beacon of light that can. You know, spread the word, so to speak.INTERVIEWER:
Yeah, yeah, for sure, and I really appreciate the fact that it's just like,
you're sort of saying like, "Hey, the community wasn't, didn't have a voice", people weren't, well actually I'm not going to say they didn't have a voice. The people weren't covering what we were doing. And I'm really curious about, sort of the political actions and things that were covered. Why would say The News and Observer, The News and Record, all these other outlets that know, especially during movements for Civil Rights Movements, for black justice and activism. How are those actions maybe differently covered in The Peacemaker than they were in the News and Record?AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Okay.
INTERVIEWER:
If you think they were.
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Yeah, I remember one example would be a case. It was a big case that happened
down in Wilmington that was called the Wilmington Ten, where, you had, there were ten people who were arrested and tried and convicted, or accused of firebombing a grocery store. And, The Peacemaker, and The Wilmington Journal, and The Carolinian, and the Carolina Times in Durham, and a bunch of other papers wrote stories about that incident, the trial and the convictions of those individuals, and it was, back then it was considered like a sham type of trial that they didn't have the right people at the bombing, and that the people who were arrested and convicted were convicted wrongly. And it was proven so 40, I guess years later that, that was the case, and Governor Bev Perdue pardoned, gave about, rendered, gave, provided, rendered a pardon of innocence to all of the members of the Wilmington Ten. Now at that point, maybe probably three, two or three were probably deceased (repeated phrase).. That pardon came about because of a, primarily a writer who was with, who still writes for a lot of our papers. His name is Cash Michaels. He and the NAACP, the state NAACP, worked on it investigating that this particular case found documents stored in the basement of the of the county courthouse, I don't know if it was the New Hanover County Courthouse, documents that revealed that the prosecutor in the case basically had committed prosecutorial misconduct and also had a bias against the people he was prosecuting. And he was also basically a racist because there was documentation found in those documents that revealed that he sought to place people on the jury. I believe that had either Klan sentiments or members of the Ku Klux Klan. And he also sought to prevent African-Americans first from serving on the juries. So all of those folks were found, were granted pardons of innocence by the governor of this state. And this is after having, you know, they've spent (repeated phrase) years in jail. Most of them were out at the time. But you know, once you've got a felony, you can't. It's very difficult, you know, during the 70s, 80s and 90s to get a job, you know, to go on with your life because you got that file with you. And so the black press was instrumental in achieving those pardons of innocence for those folks. Now the News and Record did stories on that, or on those cases back in, like the 70s 80s, but they, at the time they were not (repeated phrase) instrumental in the pardon, in obtaining those, the innocence pardon later on in history, so well that's one case that comes to mind immediately. But there are others, you know, there are still people sitting in jails right now, right here in North Carolina, who are innocent of the crimes that they have been convicted of committing. Have had DNA evidence to prove their innocence. And there's one gentleman right now, and I can't think of his name right now that they've been having vigils down in Raleigh. Trying to convince the governor, Governor Roy Cooper, to grant this individual a pardon of innocence. He's been in jail decades. He's now out of prison, but (repeated phrase) our state legislature has gone so far as to limit the monetary awards that are granted to people who have been wrongly convicted, and found to have been wrongly convicted. So, now they can. The state has capped the amount of awards. I'm hoping that somebody comes along and overturns that because you cannot give somebody back 20, 30, 40 years of their life. You just can't do it. So these are things that, these are these are subjects that we have reported on and we continue to report on.The NAACP legal defense, that's local. That's here in this state and other
community leaders and religious leaders have advocated for the release of people like this, who are in the criminal justice system, who are they convicted wrongly due to the actions of the powers that control those levers of justice doing unethical things. So, that's just one area that, you know, back in the day the News and Record wouldn't think of covering. They do now, you know, they have now. But when it first kicked off that it was, you know. The idea of black people are inherently this way, or they are inherently, you know, we know that's not true. But when you have an entity that is a publication or whatever, that doesn't necessarily say that outright, but uses that dog whistle Type of... That's how they convey the message. It's kind of, it's silent, but it's not silent. It's screaming at you. You know, it almost becomes this, it's a necessity to combat that because people, there are still people who are, a lot of people who've never met, never socialized with people who are not like them. And we've got to get away from that. We, you know, black people and brown people, we may be in the minority in the United States, but we are in the majority as a global community. If you look at it that way, so. So we have to, you know, we have to embrace, you know. And in this era of the internet and all that beautiful stuff we have to embrace, we need to embrace that. We are a part of a global community, you may be in a minority town in Asheboro, or wherever you want to live, but you are in a global majority of people from all stripes.INTERVIEWER:
Oh, for sure, I mean, I really do appreciate sort of the activist role that
people in the news industry, is in the newspaper industry can play in a corrective sense through investigation, and that's something I'm really curious about here locally in Greensboro, if you don't mind me asking. I would sort of go back and dissect these actions that happened here, some more positive and some were negative. Of course, we have the unimpeachable legacy of the sit-ins, and I understand that your father and mother were both sort of involved in their administration and activism. But I'm also sort of curious about some that were probably not reported correctly or more directly by other newspapers, such as like the Greensboro Massacre and sort of what memories of these actions like that?AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Yeah. You know, I don't know if I, OK, so. I hate being the, I don't want to be
a Monday quarterback because, especially for somebody else's publication. However you have to, if you put yourself back in 1979 and I was only nine at the time when this happened, I might have been going on 10. But, November 3rd, 1979, when all that happened, of course, you know, you have as a journalist, and there were a lot of journalists trying to cover that. I'm sure that they got the story that they got during that time. But I'm not quite sure that they actually they, if they talked to Reverend Johnson, he wasn't a reverend at that time, but Nelson Johnson and the other people who lived through that. You know, Joyce Johnson, if they talked, I'm not sure if they actually sat down and talked to them to get their perspective, because when it happened, I remember I was at home and my father says I got to go see Nelson. And I've got to go see Nelson, and he was in jail at the time, but, you know, he wanted to make sure that Reverend Johnson was OK and that his family was OK and that sort of thing first before even, you know, writing or reporting, having somebody report on it, and we report on that type of thing. But, the nooks and crannies or the, you know, the devil is in the detail. Doesn't really come out until you actually have a full picture. Or you hear the side of the folks who were with the Communist Workers Party, you know that the Klan and the Nazi people representing those groups had guns. You know that the CWP people didn't have any weapons, you know? But what we didn't know at that time, which was found out later, which is how Louis Pitts, who was an attorney here, won the case against the Klan. Which awarded damages to I think it was Marty Nathans, her husband, Dr. Nathan's estate.Anyway, it's kind of a hodgepodge, but what I'm trying to get at is later on we
find out that there was an FBI informant involved, who was, you know, giving information to, who was active with the Klan and the Nazi organization, who was providing information to the law enforcement officers here in Greensboro. So they knew, basically knew that the Klan was coming to this march and that, you know. And, then we later on find that police protection was not provided as adequately as it should have been provided because allegedly the law enforcement knew that these people were coming and it was basically left to C.W.P. sitting ducks. We find out all of this information through investigations, through writings of authors who've actually delved really deep into this topic and through, the truth and reconciliation process, which is the first one to happen in the United States, patterned after the truth and reconciliation process that Archbishop Desmond Tutu did down in South Africa in the fall of apartheid. Right so, we have a truth and reconciliation process here in Greensboro, where the people involved, the people who lived in the neighborhood, Morningside Homes and even I think, you know, one class. I think it may have been Virgil Griffin. I'm not sure, I can't remember, don't quote me on that, came to the, participated in the process in that process and gave a speech about where he grew up and how he grew up and what he thought. He talked about how he had the right stuff, about how he loved history. This is all videotaped. They all videotaped this stuff. But there still hasn't really been a, you know, there's people within the city government today that have apologized on behalf of the city and that sort of thing for what happened back here.But, what I'm interested in, what I would be interested in, is how, the people
who were the people who were actually in city government back then, the mayor, Jim Melvin. And what his thoughts are, you know, or you know, what the thoughts are of the people who were in management at the textile mills, the local textile mills, and their thought on how the textile mills dealt with all this. The CWP, they were trying to establish unions or promote the establishment of unions in the textile mills. And people missed that whole thing when they get caught up in, Oh, it was a shoot out and it was this and that. Well, it wasn't a shoot out, it was a one sided shooting, you know, so they get caught up in that, but they missed it. You know, it was all about the establishment of unions. And had they been successful at establishing unions, would we still have textile mills here in North Carolina or would it be over in Malaysia or Honduras or China or somewhere like they are right now? If we had a strong, we had strong unionization because what they were trying to do was bring together poor rural African-American people with poor rural white people. Something that textile management doesn't really want to see happen. So, that story needs to be, you know, that's the story that it has been told now. But in the beginning of all that, we really didn't know and even The News and Record didn't really have a full grasp of it. It was just, it was sensational. I don't even know if they realized it was sensational at that time. So, I don't want to harp on them and say, Oh, they did it because that's not, I would be that Monday morning quarterback. And it's easy to look back and say, Oh, this is, this is a thing. But I did cover it myself, the truth and reconciliation process part of that. Which I did with a couple of our news writers that took place here in Greensboro. People say that the coverage was kind of night and day between what The Peacemaker did and what The News and Record did. But I don't want you to look at it like that as, oh, they did this because if you look at the video recordings of it. Well, what we did and what The News and Record did, you put them together, and you would get a full picture, of much more full picture of what happened and what the conclusions were during that process. You shouldn't look at them as, Oh, this is individual here. Put it all together because all of that, all that The News and Record did all that we did would be in the videotapes. I knew I was sitting there when Nelson Johnson, Reverend Johnson, said that he gets upset. The quote was something like "it makes his blood boil when he hears that--" I can't. I can't get the quote right. I'm sorry. But the part of it was. it makes his blood boil. And I knew that the News and Record was going to run with that, run with that quote. So, I didn't focus on the quote because I thought that it would, even though it would sound nice, it would make a nice story. The backstory behind why he felt the way, was because he had been vilified all these years, just because this happened. It's hard, it's hard. It was, and I know it had to be hard for him because those were his friends that were killed and he wasn't trying to put his friends at risk or anything. He and the people that participated with the Communist Workers Party, and even if you take away the word communist, just to eliminate that. The whole goal of this whole thing was to establish worker protections.Now, I got a master's degree in environmental occupational health, so I've seen
what happens in mills, and in textile mills, and how people are exposed to, they develop brown lung and all kinds of things. So, they're trying to establish some sort of workplace safety, workplace wage, a guarantee that sort of thing in these mills. So, it could have been called the Ringling Brothers Workers Party, but I don't care what you call it. They had a purpose. But, the people, it's almost like even today, people, you say communists. And people in government go nuts, and they don't even really know what that is. You say socialist. They go nuts. But folks over in Norway, Holland and others, you know, where people want to take cruise ships, you know, go down rivers in Europe, you know, live and perhaps have a have a type of a socialist government, but they are provided (repeated phrase) with free healthcare, and education, and higher education, and we don't think about that. We kind of think about it, and they don't want you (repeated phrase) to get all caught up in the sensational. What I consider to be the sensational. Now, you got to look deeper in this and you got to put what we write and what they write on certain issues together. And maybe you get a fuller picture, don't look at it. (Repeated Phrase) Like anything, you don't want to look at just because somebody writes on biochemistry, don't want to look at what they write in isolation. You want to take what somebody else did on a similar subject and then you get a more fuller, richer perspective on what went on.INTERVIEWER:
And I truly, I (repeated phrase) appreciate your expertise and perspective on
this topic. I mean, this isn't about me, but my grandparents and my extended family toiled in Franklinton and Durham at Burlington Textile Processing Plant for generations. So, you're preaching to the choir there. Just learning that new texture to that story here in Greensboro is intensely valuable. I don't want to take up your whole, your whole afternoon, but I have a question or two more for you.AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
No worries. It's OK.
INTERVIEWER:
Yeah, but I so appreciate you telling us about that. And I'm just sort of lastly
here, this is a little bit of an open-ended thing, but I just, I'm curious, if you, in a perfect world, right? If everything was great (repeated phrase), what is the dream for the legacy of the peacemaker here in Guilford County? For you?AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Oh gosh, what is the legacy?
INTERVIEWER:
Your dream for the legacy
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Of my dream? For the legacy? I hope that (repeated phrase) places like UNCG and
places of higher learning continue to produce good journalists, good historians who don't, you know, don't necessarily need to have to teach or, you know, but want to be out there chronicling what goes on. Be on that front line, and be the first person to chronicle what over time is considered is history because we need more, more people and we need more of a diverse bunch of journalists. It's blooming, and it's much better than what it has been. But the more voices you have at the table, the more stories get told. So people know, you know, we hear about, you know, the folks at the top, you always hear about the president, like a Barack Obama, former president or you hear about Kamala Harris lesser. I want to know about the guy who's been driving the garbage truck for the city for the past 30 years. And what's that been like for him? I want to know about the young girl who is multilingual in public school and what it meant for her parents to make that journey from wherever they came from, whether it's the continent of Africa or Central South America or even Eastern Europe. I want to know what that's like and I want to know, what they're feeling and if it was scary or, you know, to tell that story, that's, you know, that's the intriguing part. So, it's not always people that people are, "oh yeah, I want to go interview, you know, this famous singer." Yeah, but what about the people who were, you know, the Little League Baseball team that never gets in the daily paper or never gets in The Peacemaker? I always tell my reporters I don't care about the college team, because they're going to be OK. I want to know about the Junior High JV squad. That's, you know, three and seven, I don't care what their record is, it's the heart, you know, and it's the desire to do these things. And that's what makes people human. People think, Oh, because you're on TV, that you're not, or you're doing something. It's all about success is success. Well, you know, you got to have some failure in there and you got to have, or there's always a struggle in everything if it's worth doing or worth having. So, I guess my future, my thoughts for the future of the paper is that even though a lot of this is, you know, I know that digital is is one day going to be the thing right now where it's it's there is almost it's a digital war going on in the sense that we have to have some kind of regulations on digital, just like print media and broadcast media have regulations. I can't print certain things that you see online because there would be a libel suit to follow, you know? And that's OK, because that means what they got online is not true. If it's not vetted. But unfortunately, there are. There are large swaths of our population who believe certain things are true and are about it because they're reading it from somebody's website who is neither a journalist, who is neither vetted anything, who wouldn't know how to bet anything. But they've got a million followers because whatever they're doing is so sensational and so outrageous. And so, you know, whatever that they get these followers and they are poisoning the well. So we have to, I want some good writers who like to tell the story. Who like to tell other people's story. Good writers. Some advertising almost, you know, all the way to pay the bills. And as you know, some younger people who really have that interest and that passion because entities like Facebook, Instagram and all that, they're OK, but there's no accountability and there should be accountability. They don't consider themselves as publications, they don't consider themselves as media, but they are because they have a platform, just like I have a platform, which is the newspaper and my website and the website. That's the Carolina Peacemaker. That's a platform. But, I am still responsible for what goes on that platform, and it can't be something that is not true because it's not true. And if it hasn't been, I mean, if you want to give your opinion or, I want to give my opinion, (repeated phrase) that's what an editorial page is for. It's not more just, you know, I'm going to spout this off and give you my opinion for 30 minutes. That's not what this is about. That's not what journalism is about.. So we hope that it, you know, it continues. I didn't think I was going to be doing this. This is not, but I'm having a nice time. I like the people that I work with. I like the community. I like the fact that I have roots in the community and that I have sort of a street cred that's fifty five, fifty six years old that was established by my predecessors. And it's just, you know, it's nice, but I, you know. It has a purpose. I hope I have a purpose, so that's. Everybody needs a purpose. You need a reason to get up out of bed.INTERVIEWER:
Yeah, I think I would say you certainly do. You absolutely do. Well, again,
thank you so much for your time. Just lastly, I mean, you are the expert here. So, I just want to ask you, is there anything that we didn't cover that you feel like you really, you really want to tell or is really important?AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Oh, no, not off the top. But, you know, if there's something that comes up,
Y'all feel free to call me. I'm here, I'm around. I'll be glad to talk some more if you got a topic you want to talk about. For sure. I love history. I would. I would love to just hang out at the history department over there.INTERVIEWER:
We'd be happy to have you. Come on down.
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Yeah, one of my favorite people there. Her name is Dr. Colleen Krieger--
AFWho?
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
She teaches, you know, Dr. Krieger. She teaches--
INTERVIEWER:
I've heard good things.
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
African history. She teaches African history, so she doesn't really teach
African American history. Although she does that, she goes into the depths of what's on the continent and what has happened on the continent. It's really, I'm fascinated with her because how int the world do you cover 51, 52 countries depending on who's at war with someone or what? What's going on? But she does textiles, the history of textiles and the history of rice, that sort of thing on the continent and the development of it and indigo and all that stuff. Yeah. In addition to the political stuff. But it's just about like just all kinds of history. So yeah, I mean, some want to come over. Yeah.INTERVIEWER:
So please yeah, come by. We'll grab a coffee. It'll be great. It'll be lovely. Okay.
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Okay.
INTERVIEWER:
Thank you. Thank you.
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
You're quite welcome.
INTERVIEWER:
Yeah. And we will definitely be in touch with a transcript for this. The next
steps. But again, I just, I hope you have a wonderful day. Wonderful week again. Thank you for your time and your efforts. It was such a privilege to sit here and talk with you.AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
You're quite welcome. Anytime.
INTERVIEWER:
Alright, beautiful. So, thank you so much..
AFRIQUE KILIMANJARO:
Okay, take care.
INTERVIEWER:
You too.
