In Black America

On this episode of In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson speaks with Jeffery Lorenzo Williams, real estate broker, creator of the shoe and fashion brand JLORENZO, and author of My Feet Are Off The Ground: Turning Tragedy Into Triumph, the inspirational story of his journey from suffering permanent paralysis from an accidental shooting to acceptance, autonomy, forgiveness and awakening, and a new life as an example of possibilities for the disabled community.

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.

: From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio. This is in Black America.
Speaker 2: Growing up in the South Bronx and Harlem, you know, they had a code of the streets where you don’t snitch, you don’t tell. So we ended up catching a cab to the hospital and while we was in the cab, we corroborated a story to say that I was outside playing and somebody shot me and I got hit with a stray bullet.
When the detective questioned the three of us, I was in the OR at the time. And I stuck to the story, but my brother or my friend said that I was in the building. One of them said I was in the building that two of us were saying I was outside. So at that point, the detectives felt like the story didn’t, wasn’t really adding up.
And he told my mother, I think one of them shot him. And when he said that, because one of them, he was my friend and I was my brother, my mother immediately. Told him that, you know, that couldn’t be possible because that’s his friend and that’s his brother. And the cop explained to her that, you know, I’m almost sure one of them did it.
So my mother told my brother, she don’t care about that code of the streets where we not snitching. She want to know who shot. Me and my brother eventually told her that my friend did it.
John L. Hanson: Jeffrey L. Williams, real estate broker, creator of a shoe and fashion brand. Mentor model and author of my feet are off the ground, turning tragedy into triumph.
At the age of 13, William was accidentally shot and paralyzed. Williams had refused to let his disability hold him back. My feet are off the ground. Chronicle his journey. A road pain with pain, despair, uncertainty and rejection, leading to acceptance, autonomy, forgiveness, and awakening. The courage to continue and the boldness to defy the odds.
Williams is on a mission. His mission is to continue to promote the rights, dignity, and full inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of society, not just in local communities, but around the world. His refuses to sit still and the faith to take big steps, have shown others that the sky is the limit.
I’m John L. Hanson Jr. And welcome to another edition of In Black America on this week’s program. My feet are off the ground with Jeffrey L. Williams in black America.
Speaker 2: It was just one of the strangest days of my life because when I got outside, I had been confined in a hospital so long, his son kind of was burning my eyes, so I was.
Squinting trying to get to the car. But I was so happy to be outside and looking so forward to getting home. And when I got to my house, you know, I was so happy. And then around eight o’clock my mother told me to go get ready for bed ’cause they had taught me how to be pretty independent and you know, so I rolled my wheelchair to the bathroom door and when I got to the door, I realized the chair wouldn’t fit through the door.
And that was like the first time I was confronted with accessibility.
John L. Hanson: Years before the American with Disabilities Act or a DA came into existence. Jeffrey L. Williams found ways to navigate his new reality. It was the last day of school and William decided not to go straight home as instructed by his mother.
He chose to go to his friend’s house to check out his new bike. For some reason, his friend started playing with a 22 Calie revolver. Seconds later, William was shot and rushed to the emergency room. That was June 25th, 1982. The last day he would ever walk, but his story didn’t end there in his book, my Feet Are Off the ground.
William talks about the journey he has taken, graduating from high school and college, becoming a father, and taking a tougher and tougher physical challenges, especially those he was told he could not do. Also Williams become a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, not just in the disabled community, but in every community using its own experiences to inspire and empower others worldwide.
Recently in Black America, spoke with Jeffrey L. Williams. What was life like prior to June 25th, 1982?
Speaker 2: Originally, I grew up in a little town called the Huskie, North Carolina. That’s where my mother was born and you know, they was under the church tradition. So a lot of times, you know, on Sundays it was like mandatory to go to church.
So at a young age, maybe two months old, my mother moved to New York to Harlem on hundred 49th Street between seventh and eighth. So that’s really where I grew up at. Transition from North Carolina to Ahoskie, I mean to New York. You know, life was totally different. It was more people around, you know, I started to see people on drugs.
I started to really see the poverty in the city and you know, that was during. Growing up through that cracked era. Um, so the drugs was like rampant in my neighborhood that I grew up in.
John L. Hanson: Now obviously something transpired you, uh, last day of school, your mom had told you to come home and because you had what furniture coming to the crib, but you didn’t go straight home.
What happened?
Speaker 2: Like most teenagers, I didn’t really listen, you know, so I was 13 at the time and instead of coming straight home. One of my friends met me after school and he said that he had some bikes at his house. So I grabbed my brother and me and my brother walked down the block to his house. When we got to his apartment, he came out, um, and showed us a gun.
When he showed me the gun, I was fascinated with it. Growing up in Harlem and, you know, watching gangster movies, I never really held a gun before. My brother immediately said, you know, don’t play with the gun. I was thinking to myself, you know, the gun wasn’t real, so I asked my friend to let me hold it.
When I felt the weight of the gun, I realized the gun was real, so I gave it back to my friend, but during that time, I was holding it. It just felt like I felt real powerful. I felt like one of the gangsters I saw in the movie, and I just wanted to keep playing with it. When I handed it back to my friend, he.
Started playing with the gun and pointed it at me. So my brother kept telling him, don’t point the gun at me. And next thing I know, I heard a loud explosion and I was looking down the barrel of the gun. So I grabbed my head ’cause I saw a ball of fire and a bullet. I went underneath my arm and landed on a nerve on my spine, and I’ve been paralyzed ever since.
John L. Hanson: Now, when you got to the hospital, obviously you all was trying to get your story together, but it didn’t work out that way, did it?
Speaker 2: Not at all. Growing up in, in the South Bronx, in Harlem, you know, they had a coat of the streets where you don’t snitch, you don’t tell. So. We ended up catching a cab to the hospital and while we was in the cab, we corroborated a story to say that I was outside playing and somebody shot me and I got hit with a stray bullet.
When the detective questioned the three of us, I was in the OR at the time. I stuck to the story, but my brother or my friend said that I was in the building. One of them said I was in the building and two of us were saying I was outside. So at that point, the detectives felt like the story didn’t, wasn’t really adding up and.
He told my mother, I think one of them shot him. And when he said that, because one of them, he was my friend and that was my brother, my mother immediately told him that, you know, that couldn’t be possible because that’s his friend and that’s his brother. And the cop explained to her that, you know, I’m almost sure one of them did it.
So my mother. So my brother, she don’t care about that code of the streets where we not snitching. She want to know who shot. Me and my brother eventually told her that my friend did it.
John L. Hanson: Now, while you were in the hospital, the, those initial couple of days, talk to us about that experience because nobody was telling you that at some point.
You weren’t gonna be able to walk again
Speaker 2: those first couple of days. Maybe two days later. I ended up in a newspaper, so my mother bought the daily news to the hospital and showed me the article that it was a real small article that this, um, news reporter Neil Hirschfield had wrote about me and. Making the newspaper growing up in poverty and you know, in bad neighborhoods, you know, it was something like heroic to be in the newspaper and I was in good spirits because I was under the impression, even though I couldn’t move my legs immediately, I was under the impression that once they took the bullet out, that I would be able to walk out that hospital.
And then I was feeling a little heroic with the fact that I got shot and I survived a bullet. So in my mind. You know, I, that reality of what, what I was really con you know, facing, hadn’t really hit me yet. So I, I was a little, I was in good spirits thinking, you know, I was just going through the steps of recovering.
John L. Hanson: Now you had lost your brother earlier, so how did this affect your mom and, and about you being shot and she may lose you?
Speaker 2: I lost my brother when he was six months old and that’s probably the first time I experienced trauma in my life. ’cause I was. Only maybe eight years old or something like that. And you know, watching my mother just being broken by losing my brother, you know, he had a rare blood disease and he died in a hospital at Harlem Hospital.
I. And, you know, seeing her crying for the first time and just being totally withdrawn from, you know, who she normally was. It it now to be faced with almost losing another child. At the time my mother really didn’t care. You know, they had, they told her that I wasn’t, you know, I was paralyzed, but my mother’s whole thing was, I just want to know is he gonna live?
And when the doctor confirmed that, you know, we stabilized him, he’s gonna live. Um, we just worried about him walking. I think at that point my mother was willing to take me home any way she could to avoid losing another son.
John L. Hanson: I understand. Talk to us about being in the hospital for nine months, being flat on your back.
Speaker 2: I mean, as the days went by and the hope started to disappear and you know, mental health started kicking in, I started losing confidence in what my future was looking like. I couldn’t even sit up. Both of my lungs had collapsed from internal bleeding, so I started to fall into a dark place. I started wondering like, how could I continue living like this?
You know, I lost total control of my body. I was laying there like it was, like I was buried alive, and I was just laying there watching life past me by, you know, wondering when would I ever get control of my body again? ’cause I’m laying there in feces, I’m using a bathroom on myself. Urinating on myself, you know, and being at the mercy of a nurse to come change my bed on their shifts when they made time to do so.
And it just humbled me in a way that I just really didn’t know which way to go. I, I just kept flashing back, you know, to my past and all the things in life that I didn’t get a chance to do. And because I was only 13, I wondered about things like having a family, you know, what would the future be like? I always wondered, you know, one day I’ll be a father, I’ll have a kid, and all of those dreams and everything that I thought that I was going to do in life, you know, was stripped away from me.
Months before that, I had just won a basketball championship at Sacred Heart Junior High School, so it was like five minutes ago. I was on this basketball court bragging about a trophy. I won, and now I’m laying here fighting for my life. So. I was totally like disappointed in the situation I was in.
John L. Hanson: Talk to us about your garden, angel, Melissa, how she brought you outta that dark place.
Speaker 2: Every morning, Melissa, she was a patient at the hospital. She was seven years old. She would roll into my room and talk to me and one morning she came in and I was crying and she said, Jeff, why are you crying? I, you know, I tried to explain to her ’cause I thought she was a little kid, that she really didn’t understand what being paralyzed really, you know, was.
Deal what I was dealing with. So she said, Jacqueline, you think you have a bad, somebody else has it worse, so stop crying. And she would roll out the room. And then the next morning she came in and every morning she would say that to me. So I start feeling like this little girl has so much energy and she’s so happy and.
She had cancer of brain cancer. So one morning she didn’t roll in that room and I asked the nurse where she was at and they told me that she had passed away in her surgery. And that night I cried all night. But thinking about her and what she said to me, I felt like she was that angel that gave me that spirit.
And she was like that light in the dark for me. So from that day on, I just decided I want to. You know, live for me and her and all the other kids that was on that ward that I saw going through these traumatic situations at such a young age.
John L. Hanson: Talk to us about that rehab process and some of the, the programs that New York had for disabled individuals.
Speaker 2: So at NYU. I ended up in that hospital, it was supposed to be one of the best hospitals for rehabilitation. So slowly every day my mother would raise my bed up so I could sit up and when she would raise the bed, I would pass out because everything, my balance, everything was totally off. And. But slowly but surely, I started getting better and then I was going to therapy, so they would exercise my legs.
They, you know, still was telling me, you know, that I had a chance to walk again. So I started fighting for that chance to walk, you know, and I remember my mother just motivating me and giving me that confidence and telling me like, Jeff, no matter what the situation is. Don’t ever let nobody tell you what you can’t do.
Just keep fighting. One day you’ll walk. And if you gotta use that wheelchair, treat it like a Rolls Royce and you know, be the best person you can be in this wheelchair.
John L. Hanson: I understand you’re listening to In Black America with Johnny O. Hanson Jr. We’ll be back in just a moment. If you’re just joining us, I’m Johnny O.
Hanson Jr. And you’re listening to In Black America from KUT Radio, and we speaking with Jeffrey L. Williams, motivational speaker, fashion designer, real estate, broken author of My Feet are Off the Ground, A Journey from Tragedy to Triumph. It’s a story about friendship, forgiveness, redemption. Adversity and tough love.
Mr. William, once you were out of the hospital and was able to go home, what was that feeling like and, and what were some of the things first thing that you did once you were able to see the sky again?
Speaker 2: It was, it was the one of the strangest days of my life because when I got outside, I had been confined in the hospital so long, the sun kind of was burning my eyes, so I was squinting, trying to get.
Could a car. But I was so happy to be outside and looking so forward to getting home. And when I got to my house, you know, I was so happy. And then around eight o’clock my mother told me to go get ready for bed because they had taught me how to be pretty independent and you know. Mm-hmm. So I rolled my wheelchair to the bathroom door and when I got to the door, I realized the chair wouldn’t fit through the door.
And that was like the first time I was confronted with accessibility. So. I rolled back to my room, sat on the bed, slid on the floor, and just crawled to the bathroom. And at the time I was really strong. I was in good spirits, but crawling to that bathroom. When I finally got in the bathroom and I climbed into the tub, I lift myself up on the toilet and kind of climbed into the.
When I cut the water on, the water started running, tears just started running out my eyes because I was thinking to myself, you know, look what I’ve been reduced to. You know, this used to be something that was just a simple task that, you know, even everyday people, this is something you do every day and you take for granted.
You know? And I had lost this opportunity for something that was so simple, became such a task for me, and it just kind of humiliated me that. See that I had to crawl to the bathroom. But you know, when I was crying, I started thinking about Melissa again, and I said, you know what? When you have a bath, somebody else has it worse.
So I climbed back out the tub, slid back to my room, got on the bed, got dressed, and my mother came by the room, and so I was dressed. In my pajamas and she said, Jeff, I’m proud of you. You know, just keep going. And you know, from that day on, I just never looked back. I just stopped crying. And every from that day on, things was just starting to grow for me.
Things started getting positive for me.
John L. Hanson: Now, if anyone that knows anything about New York, they are tall building. Uh, most, most of the housing are in, in tall buildings. So what are some of the things that you had to relearn and navigate because you didn’t live on the first floor?
Speaker 2: Right. So one, one of the challenges was going up and down stairs, so I had to learn how to take myself, get out my wheelchair, sit on the steps, lean the wheelchair back, and push it down the steps, like a shopping cart.
And I would do that every morning to get outta my apartment and I would pull it back up. To come back in the house. And you know, people would always ask me like, you know why nobody help you? But one of the things my mother told me, Jeff, you gotta learn how to help yourself. Don’t let nobody do nothing for you that you can’t do for yourself.
And that tough love really was the start of that journey to me not letting nothing get in my way and me being able to overcome any obstacle that I was faced with.
John L. Hanson: What was it like going back to school?
Speaker 2: My first day back to school, the kids was really excited ’cause they used to come see me in the hospital and they saw how bad I was in the beginning.
So just seeing me return to school, it was super exciting for them. I mean, every school that I ever attended, I was the only student in a wheelchair. And you know where sometimes where most people would tease somebody like that. Everybody embraced me. Everybody, you know, was real supportive. So to this day, some of my childhood classmates, you know, we still in touch, we still friends and the kids even volunteered to carry me up to the up the steps to my classes.
And then when we went to lunch, they would carry me back down so I could go outside and play with the rest of them.
John L. Hanson: Now one weekend you out hanging with the fellas and an incident happened. And Bonnie did something real stupid. But that particular incident actually propelled you to what you’ve become besides all the other, other projects that you’ve been in involved with.
Talk to us about that.
Speaker 2: So Bonnie was pushing me home and he pushed me down. You know, we was, he jumped on the back of the chair. We rolling down the hill, so we flips down the hill. And you know, that was one of the crazy things he did. He, he was that type of kid that he would just do crazy things. Then we was going to the movies and we was in the back of a police car.
I mean, we was in the back of a car, right? The police pulled us over and Bonnie reached down to get a can of soda and the officer pulled their guns out. So, I mean, it was one of those other situations where. Once again, I’m looking down the barrel of a gun. That could have turned tragic for us because the cop didn’t know what he was reaching for.
John L. Hanson: Now, when you, when you look back at some of the experiences, obviously what you’ve gone through, there wasn’t a DH, so. How did that process of navigating and your mom saying, you know, you need to be self-sufficient, how did that help you be the person that you are today?
Speaker 2: Like you said, been that I got shot in 1982 and the 80 A wasn’t enacted.
American Disability Act wasn’t enacted in enacted until maybe the 1990s. My friends would have to carry me up and down the steps on these trains in New York. Everywhere I went, that wasn’t accessible. You know, either I would get out my wheelchair and go up and down the steps myself, or I would have one of my friends carry me up and down the steps.
But there was nowhere in New York City that I haven’t been. I mean, I would even go roller skating and put on a pair of skate, even though I couldn’t skate. I put the wheelchair on the floor and skate around. Mm-hmm. I think before people was even focused on inclusion. My friends, Barney, Lamar, Vince, you know, these friends of mines and Dave, they would make anywhere we went.
Accessible for me. They would carry me on the buses before the bus lifts was there. And you know, they, they really protected me and just let me know that I still was a normal person and anything they did, they wanted me to do it with them.
John L. Hanson: How were you able to forgive your friend that shot you?
Speaker 2: I think forgiveness is probably one of the hardest things that people can do in their life, but what gave me the strength, you know, growing up in a hoki and having that.
Faith and church background. Mm-hmm. You know, believing in God and every day we ask God to forgive us for something. So at that moment, I thought about the whole situation and I didn’t just look at the fact that he shot me. I thought about what if he didn’t carry me out that building and took me to the hospital.
He could have panicked, left me in the street and just act like he didn’t know what happened, and I would’ve died. I only had maybe 15 minutes to get to the hospital. So it was like. He caused me to be in his wheelchair, but at the same time, he gave me the strength and support, you know, to save my life. So I thought, you know, like my mother said to me, he’s a kid and you are a kid.
You know, you could have shot him. You was playing with the gun too. So I think that’s what really helped me forgive him. And I think also. You know, carrying a burden like that and being mad at somebody, it didn’t, it didn’t help me grow, it didn’t help me move forward. So I needed to let that part of me go so I could, you know, sort the higher height.
John L. Hanson: Talk to us about being a paralegal and, and some of the things that you’re doing right now.
Speaker 2: So right now I currently work for Colgate Palm. I’ve been there 30 years.
John L. Hanson: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: And I started in the mail room. I eventually was pro, I worked in the mail room for two years and I was promoted to their legal department.
And I’ve been in the legal department 28 years. And, um, working there has really changed my life in a lot of ways because. The company believes in me, they support me. Um, they send me on business trips, which shows me that they have confidence that I’m able to travel on my own. Them not feeling like, well, we can’t send ’em on a trip.
Something might happen to ’em. You know, they give me the same opportunities that other employees get. I was able to get promoted. They didn’t just put me in a mail room and say, you know, we gave them a job. So things like that changed the way I look at the company and I, you know, suggest that. Anybody that has a disability that wants to work for a company, you know, pick a company that supports people with disabilities that you know, make a reasonable accommodation for you to do your job.
And they have given me all those things. They even built private bathroom for me so it would have more space for me. Mm-hmm. They put power doors in so I could get in and out the office with no problem. So a lot of the things that they gave me and supported me with. You know, I didn’t have to worry about accessibility.
I was able to focus on my job and, you know, get the work done. So that meant a lot to me.
John L. Hanson: I understand. I forgot to ask you this now, you’re still in high school. You, you turned 18 and, and mom said that, you know, you need to get out on your own. So what was it like getting your own apartment or condo?
Speaker 2: When I was 17, turning 18, my mother, um, apartment became available in the building and.
That was my first introduction to real estate. My mother said, you know, I want you to be on your own, you know, and my brothers and sisters, we all had a role with my mother where we move out at 18. Mm-hmm. So they all figured, well, you in a wheelchair, so that role ain’t gonna apply to you. But like I said, my mother raised me different, like the tough love was serious.
So, um, when the time came, she gave me the down payment to buy my first condo and. I was getting a check at the time, so I was able to pay the maintenance fees, the HOA fees, and the apartment had like a couple of steps to it. So when a real estate agent came, she said, oh, I didn’t know your son was in a wheelchair.
I would’ve got him an apartment that was more accessible. So my mother said, well, you know, don’t worry about it. Let me see the apartment. So she walked up the steps and with the real estate agent, and the real estate agent looked back at my mother like, well. You know why you left him down there, how he gonna get a step?
So I hopped out the chair, went up the steps, pulled the chair, hopped back in it, and it probably was something that was amazing to the real estate agent, but that’s really how I bought my first apartment, and me having those steps was something my mother wanted. So it would challenge me every day, and it made me who I am today.
John L. Hanson: Talk to us about your Jay Lorenz 1 49 sneakers.
Speaker 2: So the Jay Lorenzo, the name originated ’cause my name is chapter, my middle name is Lorenzo and I grew up on hundred 49th Street. Mm-hmm. I wanted to create sneakers because it was associated with walking, and I wanted something that was associated with walking because each one of my sneakers have a motivational quote in them.
And in that particular sneaker, I have a quote that says, be somebody nobody thought you could be. And I put these quotes in there because I feel like everybody needs inspiration. Everybody needs guidance. People need something that in the morning, you know, when they wake up, you know when you start out with a positive mindset.
It just kind of channels how you go through your day. So I figured if I make some sneakers and put this quote in them and nobody’s around you when you read it, it’ll put you in the right place mentally and help you through your day.
John L. Hanson: Mr. William, why is it important for you to live by no excuses?
Speaker 2: I think it’s super important because fear is what holds us back from our dreams and when we want something in life.
You know, we all have the opportunity to be whoever we want to be. I think between
: fear
Speaker 2: and, you know, making excuses of why you can’t do something is really what stops you from doing it. But what I’ve learned on this journey, losing everything that I had control of is that. I don’t even think about what I can’t do anymore.
I think about how I can do it, and that’s what propels me in life.
John L. Hanson: What would you tell gone owners that have children?
Speaker 2: I think, you know, from me being a motivational speaker and speaking to different people who lost their kids, you know, by guns that, you know, even police officers who have the most protected gun, you know, they usually have ’em locked up.
They usually keep them in safe places. Um, but what happens is the more comfortable they get with the gun and they sit down and explain to their kids, look, don’t play with the gun. Don’t use the gun.
John L. Hanson: Jeffrey L. Williams real estate broker, creator of a shoe and fashion brand model, mentor, and author of my feet off the ground, turning tragedy into triumph.
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This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.