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May 16, 2021

Dr. Peggy Brooks-Bertram (Ep. 24, 2021)

By: John L. Hanson

On this week’s edition of In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. concludes his conversation with Dr. Peggy Brooks-Bertram, educator, social historian, community activist, and author Dear Kamala: Women Write to The New Vice President. She is also a co-founder of the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women, Inc.

The full transcript of this episode of In Black America is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.

Announcer From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch In my age bracket. Really? They don’t know what they’re missing. They may think they’re okay, but there’s a whole world out there that put out a call for letters for just a few letters. And I had no idea that the whole world would respond. 11 countries, five continents, all of the island canon Black women who were ex-patriots, who had left the United States forever. All over Europe, responded Women near the hometown of Kamala Harris’s mother. Fun. It was it was absolutely incredible. And I was like walking around every day saying, oh, no. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. And it was wonderful. It was wonderful. And then a group of Girl Scouts from California, they wrote letters. And oh, my goodness, the subject matter of the letters were breathtaking. The young girl, 15, you know, wanted to make sure she did something about the wildfires in California.

John L. Hanson Jr. Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch, an author, educator, social historian and community activist, president and co-founder of the uncrowned Queen’s Institute for Research and Education on Women Ink. And author of Dear Camilla Women Right to the New Vice President. Published by Read Lightning Books as the First Woman of Color, Elected as vice president of the United States. Kamala Harris broke down barriers and made history, energizing a lot of women who have something to say. Seeing a woman who look like them occupying the second most powerful office in the free world. Women from Africa to California, Canada to Florida began writing to the new vice president in a book, Birth and share generational thoughts, concerns and feelings written to Vice President Harris. The letters have also been described as a call to action for those who will be at the vice president’s side through the next four years. I’m generally John L. Hanson Jr. And welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week’s program, Dear Kamala, women Write to the new vice president with author Dr. Peggy book Bertram In Black America.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Well, it’s very interesting because if you look outside of the United States, like in Nepal or India, the women that wrote to me and talked to me personally and then became part of my Facebook group and got their families involved, it was stunning the way they did that, that these young people were wanted to know that this was so important to them. It was one of the most important things that ever happened to them in their lives. And they wanted to make sure that I knew that and that people in their in their communities knew that. At the same time, there was another group of people that I didn’t hear it from, and I thought that I’d hear a lot from young African-American women in particular. It turned out that there’s a there’s a large LGBT community, and I thought I would hear from.

John L. Hanson Jr. When Senator Kamala Harris was chosen by President Joe Biden on August 11, 2020, to be his running mate as vice president, another glass ceiling was broken. Harris will become the first African-American, the first Asian-American and the third woman to pick as the vice presidential nominee for a major party ticket. On that day, Dr. Peggy Brooks Burgeon began working on her latest project, Dear Kamala, Women write to the new vice President. The book is a dynamic compilation of 120 heartfelt and emotionally moving letters to America’s first African-American and woman vice president Birch and Bridges the Gap, bringing women of all ages, races and nations who are living at different points in their lives, having had very different experiences together in one book telling their stories letter by letter. Recently In Black America spoke with Dr. Peggy Brooks Beauchamp regarding this amazing collection of thoughts.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch I want to tell you that when we were trying to get the book together, I slept very, very, very little. I was really struck with the fact that because of social media, people do a lot less and they think it’s okay to send you a message if you’re a clerk and it’s somebody who would have taken the time to get dressed up, put on a full fledged makeup and their wig and whatever else, and they ready to rumble at 4:00. And I’m saying, like, what? And it made it made them. Then you go.

John L. Hanson Jr. So your first book was all Michelle Obama.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch So yeah, the Book of Letters. Yeah.

John L. Hanson Jr. So what led you to one take on that project? And then I want to talk to you about what you wrote in the introduction. But first of all, what led you to take on the first project with First Lady Michelle Obama?

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Well, first of all, that was a historic occasion. I mean, she came with the package with, you know, Barack Obama. I mean, it was like killing two birds with one stone. Here was a Black man who was going to be the president of the United States and his Black wife. And the most thing that the women noted in that book was and she’s not light skinned. She’s Black like me. Mm hmm. And I said, Oh, excuse me. But, um, for sure, it was, uh, quite an undertaking. And, uh, but it was a historic occasion, and, uh, and that’s what really drove me. You know, and, uh, and a colleague of mine to, um, you know, press forward. And I remember now the social media platforms were unheard of at the time. Right. And so, um, I, I have little recollection of how we scrounged around and tried to get people, uh, women all across the country and Africa to send letters. And they did. And I know we were on the Internet day and night doing that, but nothing like the social media today.

John L. Hanson Jr. No. And the thing I found it interesting when I read your introduction and you talk about the power of writing letters. Yeah. As being the historical attribute of African-American women. Speak to us about that, because I’m quite sure a lot of people don’t understand that particular thought.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Well, you know, I think that for me, I could only see the I spoke to my own background and because my mother. Whose parents and grandparents had been slaves. She wrote letters and she wrote letters to me and my sisters all the time. And the way she wrote the letters that she would write a letter, sometimes it was in the form of a poem and stick it in the frame of a mirror so you couldn’t miss it cause everybody would stop at the mirror. And she would leave a letter there and say, Talk to us about various things. And that was my first experience with the, you know, with letter writing and the meaning of letter writing. And then as I did a lot of work and research on various areas of history, I came across so many women and they had left messages, you know, they had written letters to one another and to other people and to presidents of the United States. They had written letters in and they left them and they left them in their own handwriting. And I was taken at how special it was to, you know, to look at someone’s actual handwriting and to read what it was they have and then to have find those letters, some of them a hundred years old, you know. So that’s really what got me started with this notion of, you know, letter writing.

John L. Hanson Jr. What led you to obtain a degree in political science?

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Well, God, I mean, like, that feels like that takes me back to the Ice Age. J. Well, it was it was very interesting. Okay. And this is the truth of it. You know, one of my big problems these days is telling the truth. And the truth of the matter is that I had gotten accepted at an all girls women’s college in Baltimore, Maryland, got to go to college. And I’ve gotten accepted to the efforts of some political people that I had worked for. And also because of a white woman, a wonderful person, Jewish lady who hired me many years ago when I was maybe 20 and, uh, and hired me as an administrative assistant. And then one day she called me in and she said, Listen, thank you. I love you dearly, but I need to give you a job to took a relative of mine. And but I do think you should be in college. And I was in college, you know, like I had never planned to go to college. You know, What about you? Nobody else in my family had done it. I wasn’t thinking about it. And I said, Oh, my God, You know, both my mother say that I lost my job. She says, Well, don’t worry. She says, I think you should be in college anyhow. So she picked up the phone and she called it, uh, a dean at the college and said, Listen, I have a young lady in front of me and I have to take your job and give it to my, my relative. But, um, I think we should find a way to find a spot for her at the college. And, uh, she says, Okay, great. So Monday morning, you’ll go there and, uh, you’ll be admitted as a student there, and and then you can take it from there. So you ought to be in college anyhow. And I thought, Oh, okay, let me just, you know, this is no, I’m serious. And so the next and then Monday, you know, I went, you know, not knowing what I would have to go through and whatever. So when I got there, they had me signed up and ready to go for the next four years. And, um, it was really quite an experience and that’s where I graduated from. But when I was asked to choose a major, I didn’t know what to think cause I hadn’t thought about anything like that. And but I knew I had liked the theater. Mm. And, and I said, okay, so they had a huge theater department, and, uh, so I said, okay, you know, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll major in the theater, whatever that means. And, and it was a, um, um, interesting man who was in charge of the theater. And when he saw me, he says, Oh, God, a Black person. I have to tell you the truth, darling. You need to choose another department because I won’t be able to select any plays that you could possibly have. And I said, Well, okay, so what else? So I went to, uh, I was told to go and talk to somebody in political science because they might be interested in taking on someone like me. So I go over to the political science department and the guy said, You know, I’ll never forget his name, Dr. Gerard Cooperman. And he said, Well, what what kind of thing are you interested in? And I said, Well, I’m just interested in how is all of this work? How, how, how, how do you get to be president of the United States, for example? Oh, you’re right. Great. You want to be in political science. And that’s how I got in political science.

John L. Hanson Jr. Now, from political science, you went on to earn a doctorate and and matches and doctorate in hiding in public health. So how did that maturation take place?

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Well, I’ll tell you that the person while I was at the college, the political science, the politicians and. Marilyn would come to the college to seek young people to work in their offices to do various kind of work. And, um, and so I was selected to work in the office of Senator Paul Sarbanes before he was a senator. Mm hmm. And so I worked in all of his campaigns. And the whole time I went to college, and that made it gave me a job. And then when he became the congressman, he won on the Friday night and Saturday night, he came Saturday morning, he came to my house and said, I have a job for you. And in Washington working with my staff. But my colleague at Hopkins told me not to give you that job because he thought that it would stop you in your tracks academically. So he told me to tell you to come see him on Monday about coming to Johns Hopkins in public health. And I thought, Oh, God, I never thought about public health. Well, you know, think about their thing to do. And I think it was like urban affairs. Mm hmm. And so I went there and they said, okay, you know, he’s your scholarship. And for two years. And I did some very interesting things in health looking at you to add hypertension, adolescent sexual behavior. And I had a chance to look across the spectrum, and I lived down almost down the street from Hopkins. But, you know, in fact, I had always lived in the shadow of Hopkins in the East Baltimore area. And, uh, so I did a p h a mph there. And then, um, and one day I was walking down the street and the chair of the Department of Public Health said, Hey, somebody told me to contact you, that you did really well in public health. And so I got one more spot in the doctoral public health program and come talk to me on Monday morning. And that’s what I did and that’s how I wound up in the space program. I was screaming all the way, say, no, I don’t want to go to school anymore. Bad. And I’m sick of it. Oh, no, no, no. This will be perfect for you. So that’s how I got into the V.A. program.

John L. Hanson Jr. Now, obviously, you had time on your hand and one doctor, it wasn’t enough, so you had to have matching bookends.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Oh, no. Listen, nobody has ever said nursing Hopkins. But they do call me double Dutch.

John L. Hanson Jr. So what did the American studies cover up?

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Well, that’s when I got the buffalo. Okay. We had this problems in terms of dealing with African Americans, but I still love it. But, um, when I came, I couldn’t find a job.

John L. Hanson Jr. Really, you.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Know? And so I, I did various kinds of things. You do a lot of community work with public education on my own. I wrote some children’s theology books and fell in love with the life of a woman by the name of Drusilla Dungy Houston, who I accidentally ran into. Hmm. Her family and. And a man who knew about her. And so I actually spent the last 20 years researching, writing a biography of her, finding writings that she’d written and publishing them and talking about her everywhere. And, um, and I can, you know, continue to do that, you know, and I work with the school board and got involved in a whole bunch of things and did a lot of stuff that I wanted to do. So my background is really eclectic and full and I never cause nobody my family did. And we aren’t educated to think that way. Nobody said, Go out and prepare yourself for a career. MM So I, you know, I did what I like to do and what I could do best and um, I, and I did good standing in front of people talking about things and, and, you know, um, pulling programs together and doing research. And once I realized that if there was something to be found about something, I could find a way to find it. And so I absolutely, you know, loved doing that. And, uh, I wrote children’s books and did a number of things. And, and so this is just part and parcel of it. And I was I couldn’t once I felt that I wasn’t going to get an opportunity to fit into the heavily structured academic framework or what have you, I, I didn’t push it. I mean, even though I’ve taught at the School of Medicine here at UVA, but I was the person that would be called in to teach a special course. But I was never a tenure track kind of person. You know, I wasn’t going to be in a university for six years waiting for somebody to say that the research that I had was okay, that just never was going to suit me. So things just sorta kind of happened to me. Then I kind of rolled along with it and if somebody would say, Well, do you wish you had done it differently? I don’t know if I would have known how to do it differently. I wasn’t a person that could stay in lockstep. With. Um, you know, you gotta do this first. You gotta. I wasn’t the person that could do that, so I just did what I could do. And. And so it was just. Athletic career, you know? And I’d written did some writing cause I was very interested in the health of Black women, especially mental health. So I’ve written about, um, African-American women and depression and other kinds of illnesses and, um, you know, so that’s how come I, I look like a very strange character.

John L. Hanson Jr. He collected, he collected is an understatement. I mean, the things that you’ve accomplished thus far is sort of amazing. But I am I am truly impressed. Let’s talk about this current project. Did Camila women write to the new vice president? This was a no brainer. After Dear Michelle.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Hey, this is a no brainer. But even in between that, about 2012, I did another group of letters for the first Black woman who was the superintendent of the Buffalo Public Schools.

John L. Hanson Jr. Hmm.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch And it was, you know, writing to her and letting people who, um, students I interviewed students, and I had a really quite different experience because there were a group of young people who were basically incarcerated in juvenile holding center buffalo. I didn’t even know the place existed. Uh, and, um, but there was a project in Buffalo, which is across the country now called Say Yes to Education. Mm hmm. And, um, I made a proposal to them that since we now had this new superintendent, we needed to ask people in Buffalo, as well as your students, what they thought about it. So I said, Why don’t I do a book of letters for you? And that’s what I did. And, uh, I was fascinated with it because it was the first time in my life I had been in a juvenile facility where young children were camp and to look at how they lived under lock and key and under the watchful eye of guards in a huge building. Oh, you know, um, it’s maybe something I’ll return to later. But I was really dumbfounded to go and talk to children who were under lock and key and, um, and get them to write letters. I mean, some of them were so talented, you know, they, um, they had some kind of problem. One of the problems was that they were locked up. And, um, and, uh, so I would go in and deal with them, and they’d look at me kind of curiously, like, Who are you and what are you. What are you trying to do? Mm mm. It was really quite an experience. And, and just you’re raising that question again. Um, took me back to that space, which is really quite something. And then that was followed by this book, Dear Kamala, you know, And I was soon I said, Oh, another historic occasion. Let’s go back.

John L. Hanson Jr. So when you put out the call for four letters was the overwhelming.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch It was incredible because now, look, if you if you ever want to do something like this, you need a friend who is like.

John L. Hanson Jr. I bet you do.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch You need a friend who likes you. And there was a friend lurking out there in the bushes who liked me and who wanted to be a part of this journey and saw it as a wonderful opportunity. Her name was Jennifer Parker. Mm hmm. She owns, um. Um, you know, a mass media company called Jennifer Parker. Um, activities. Something like the Jay Parker. Mm hmm. And she is, um, you know, a, uh, a media expert. So she, uh, she taught me things that I don’t want to know. I’m telling you, I. She dragged me through social media, the bowels of social media, and I cried and protested all the way. And, um, but she introduced me to things I wasn’t using cause I came up in a different era. Right. I’m telling you, she introduced me to Facebook, Instagram, um, clubhouse use, you name it. It was just incredible. And you get to see that. And I think that women in my age bracket, really, they don’t know what they’re missing. They may think they’re okay, but there’s a whole world out there. So I put out a call for letters, for a few letters, and I had no idea that the whole world would respond. 11 countries, five continents, all of the islands, Canada, Black women who were ex-patriots, who had left the United States forever. All over Europe, responded Women near the hometown of Kamala Harris’s mother. Fun. It was it was absolutely incredible. And I was like walking around every day saying, Oh, no. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. And, um, it was wonderful. It was wonderful. And then a troop of Girl Scouts in California, they wrote letters. And oh, my goodness, the subject matters of the letters were breathtaking. The young girls, 15, you know, wanted to make sure she did something about the wildfires in California. And they they cried about the fact that the white polar bears were losing their ice floes and couldn’t feed that the this baby seals. And they asked Kamala Harris to go back to the Paris Accord so that we could get the climate fix. It was breathtaking.

John L. Hanson Jr. Now, I knew it had to be an arduous task of winning it down. You got 100 of of all of these letters from all these women, from different backgrounds and different ethnicities of presenting what you thought was the best of the best.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Well, the reality of it is, is that it actually was 120 letters. Okay. And very few, if any, were very few were rejected. But the people, for the most part, the vast majority of people wrote. And I if I had a problem with any of them, I call them back. Mm. And I so I talked with people. I mean, it was quite thrilling to talk to a Black woman in Sweden who headed the Black woman? Democratic Party for Kamala in Sweden. Mm hmm. And it was just wonderful. So I could talk with people and say, Did you mean to say this? I read your letter. I wasn’t quite clear on what you were trying to point you were trying to make. Did you want to clear it up any, you know? And so people were just stunned that they would say, oh, my goodness, oh goodness, I can fix it. I said, Yeah, but you got to fix it now. So we you know, it was a matter of days. And the, uh, Indiana University Press said that they got this book out in two months, and it usually takes 18 months. Okay. So in two months, you know, there was very little sleep and there was a lot of talk and there were a lot of people trying to explain themselves. But for the most part, people did wonderful. But it was almost like people had forgotten how to write a letter. What should I say? People would say, I think, you know me kidding me. You got to give me you got something to say? What’s your been worried about? What are you even thinking about? Talk of this. Just about what we’re talking about here. No, no. And so it meant that I got a chance to talk to all these people, and it was really breathtaking.

John L. Hanson Jr. Were there any Kleenex moments?

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch Oh, the time. I think all the time. I mean, it’s like, oh, let me tell you, a Kleenex moment for me. A wonderful woman by the name of Sandy White in Buffalo. Sandy said, well, I don’t know what I would talk about. I said, look, you got to work that out. But there’s an opportunity here, but you work it out. So she decided to write about her father who had had Alzheimer’s, and she said, Um, well, uh, I got to a certain point in the letter and I’m not sure where I can go with this, she said. But I said, Well, what did he used to do? She said he used to be a musician. Play the clarinet, I believe, I said. And so does he still do that? She said, No, he just stopped. I said, Well, why don’t you write about the day the music stopped? And she said, Oh, oh my goodness. Talk about that. Tell people about how hard, how terrible Alzheimer’s is and give the example of the day. The music stopped and that’s when Sandy began to write. And so these things, these little letters drew me in. And my daughter was blessed. So she’s really quite a character. She’s on the faculty. She’s on the faculty, University of Massachusetts. And she’s a writer and a poet and whatever. And she wrote a letter. And I, I said to her, why don’t you write a letter? And she said, My dear, I have to write a letter. I said, Yeah, I think you could write a letter. So she writes a letter. And through the form, Dear Carmela, my mother told me to write a book.

John L. Hanson Jr. That’s true to.

Dr. Peggy Brooks Birch A beautiful lives. Oh, my God. And the piece that was so brilliant about it was. I mean, she’s just a brilliant young woman, and she just. She was just nominated by The New Yorker for the best book of Poetry of the Year. And when she wrote to Carmela, she says, I’m asking that you focus on doing the least amount of harm.

John L. Hanson Jr. Dr. Peggy Brooks, Belgium, author of Dear Carmelo Women write to the new vice president, Paul Roche, by Read Lightning Books. If you have questions, comments or suggestions about your future In Black America programs, email us at In Black America at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard is over. Don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Also, you can listen to a special collection of In Black America programs at American Archive of Public Broadcasting. That’s American Archived at Ohaji. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of the station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for a technical producer David Alvarez. I’m John L. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week.

Announcer CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by Writing In Black America CDs, KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keeton St, Austin, Texas 78712. This has been a production of KUT radio.

This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.


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