An Army of Normal Folks - Robert Hill: Friends After 5pm (Pt 2)

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Robert was the beneficiary of older black men who assigned him to a church, placed him in a job, bought him $2,200 worth of professional clothing, and mentored him. They challenged him to do the same for the next generation and he's doing just that through his initiative called Friends After 5, which hosts happy hours to fix the sad reality that not enough black and white Americans are friends after the work day is done. By doing so, Robert believes that we can grow the middle class of both. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks and we continue now with part two of our conversation with Robert Hill right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. And guess what? So are we. Just in case you forgot, I'm Tori Deal. I'm a six-time finalist and a challenge champion.

And I'm Anissa Ferrer and I've been gracing your screens for the last two decades. I am a veteran challenger and challenge all-star. And speaking of all-stars, All Stars 4 is finally here. I'm gonna be honest, I literally thought this day was never going to come. Well, the Challenge Gods have answered our prayers and we're going to be right here along with you fans covering every episode on the podcast.

And this season takes it to a whole new level. Old school legends, modern power players, redemption seekers, and ex lovers are all competing in Cape Town, South Africa for the prize of $300,000. Anyone can win, relationships matter, and only one all-star will claim the title of challenge champion. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The big take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. happening, what it means and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the market, as fast as they could. I'm David Duret. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Emosen. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets.

Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. As someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC.

We dig into how money, politics politics and power shape government and the consequences for voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down in Washington right now to change their tune. I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election. These are unprecedented times.

With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts I kind of want to recap. I think it's important to collect thoughts here. Okay, I Have a lot but well one of the biggest things that I have learned is one of the more difficult situations for a black person entering the middle class and trying to enter into a world of entrepreneurism is access. Is access.

Tim Russell, did you ever meet Tim Russell, pastor in Memphis? He died from COVID. Anyway, he came from up in Philadelphia and started, was the first president of NCOTS, the Memphis Center for Urbanism Theological Seminary. I had a friend over there. He was an associate pastor at Second Presbyterian Church by church.

Just think James Earl Jones, that's him. Bald, black, proud, big as hell. I still miss him. He was my friend and my pastor. And there were a number of times I called on his counsel about a number of different things in my life. And he meant a lot to me. And I've had a lot of friends now at my age come and

go but I miss Tim Russell on a daily basis. He and I had a lot of racial conversations, candid, open, thoughtful, honest, sometimes painful, not only as my pastor, but as my friend. And one of the things he said to me early in our conversations, I'll never forget, is he looked at me and he said, have you ever been to a black dentist? You laugh, just the question is funny. Why would a white man go to a black dentist? Right? Have you ever been to a black dentist?

Maybe he didn't have insurance. Have you ever go to a black dentist? Right? Have you ever been to a black- Maybe he didn't have insurance. Have you ever been to a black doctor? Have you ever had a legal problem and gone to a black attorney? And he said, if you think about it, have you ever had a black accountant? And he said, now you've got dentists, you've got doctors, you've got accountants,

you got, and now one of them are black. And he said, and in fact, you could have in Memphis chose from over 200 at a minimum, dentists, doctors, accountants, and any professional service you need, and not one of them on the list that you were choosing from would have been black. Well, that's why you still had your teeth.

What? That's probably why you still had your teeth. Yeah. Then he said, then he said, a black man cannot say that. One, it's just about access. And two, when you think about the term privilege,

just take white privilege out of it because that seems to upset everybody. Let's just talk about privilege in general and let's call it social privilege or call it cultural privilege. Let's not call it white privilege. Let's just put a, he said, that's really bad not call it white privilege. He said that's really bad marketing, calling

it white privilege, because you immediately put white people on the defensive when you say white privilege. So forget it. Call it social privilege or whatever. He said it is absolutely the fact that it is a privilege that you can go to get any professional service you need in your whole life, and you never have to go outside your culture or your world. Black people can't say that. That in and of itself is a lack of privilege, but more importantly from a socioeconomic standpoint, it also points to a lack of access.

So when you talk about why black people got involved in the post office and all of those things, it's because it was access. It was access to a pension. It was access to a good job. It was access to an environment that allowed you or allowed black people an opportunity to middle class, which is great.

And I get it. But the problem is, where's the access to then raise out of the middle class? Very limited, very difficult. And then, before we go to Friends After Five, that's one thing I would like our listeners keep their mind on. The second thing is something you said that I find just poignant. We have now shifted. No, I'm gonna say it's different way. We are now seeing a shift

away from this. And when I use the word conservative, I don't mean it politically, I more mean it socially and inside the family. This black conservative approach to family and advancement, largely that in the South was fostered by the church, as in your case, and that you said somehow that's getting reversed and it's to the detriment of the black community.

And so I did this on my own a couple of days ago, and I thought, what are the top 10 issues in Memphis? And if I went down the list, it sounds top 10 issues in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis. Pick one. And number one is crime. And two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 is crime. But then if you do crime, do subsets next to crime. So if one's crime, two is crime poverty. Poverty leading to crime.

And then three is crime, poverty, education. A poor education leading to poverty, leading to crime. And then you can do crime, poverty, education, access. And the point is, if crime seems to be the most prevalent problem we see in social media and everywhere else because it's in your face and it's easy to put on the news at six o'clock, what leads to it? And it's a poor education, a lack of access, poverty, all of the things that happen with kids that are too hungry to go to school and study and learn,

that get stuck in a cycle of poverty, generational poverty, all of it eventually leads to the disintegration of our culture, our society, crime, and all of the things that are freaking out urban cities. And then I ran into you and you're like, it's about the middle class. It's about access to the middle class. It's about what you just said, home ownership rather than what you say, clothes and hoes?

Clothes and hoes. Yeah. I mean, it's a mental change. And so now as we transition to what you're doing and what it's about, the reason I wanted to go through everything we've gone through for us, I want our listeners to have perspective that this is a black guy that came from a hardworking mom and dad who, who came up the black middle-class experience and understands that that's the

answer. And that's the strength of, of, of, of culture is that middle-class And you're not here trying to, there's no edge here. There's no sellout here. There's no uncle Tom. You are clearly a proud black man from a proud black upbringing. There's no, there's none of that sellout. This is you saying, this is the way we make us better.

Well, I want to unpack something you said. See, we don't have a crime problem and we don't have an education problem. We have a middle class problem. That's what I mean. Yeah and so when you look at the history of how blacks moved into middle class many of them came out of rural areas out of rural areas, out of, I call it, putting down cotton sacks and started driving Cadillacs. So, yeah. And so from the backwoods to Hollywood, from the outhouse to the white house. And so little girls with pigtails

now sporting French nails. I mean, the history of how we have come from this is very simple. So, historically, the black woman was the one who went to college. The black man ended up going off in the army. In most cases, he served in the Korean War or he served in Vietnam. So when he came home from the service, back then, they really valued veterans. So most veterans were hired at civil service jobs

like the post office, the VA, the police department, the fire department, because they had the backdrop of it or MLG and WMFs like gas and water because they were electricians in the Navy and stuff like that. So he would yield and then continue to send his woman to school. So they would go to HBCUs like Lane College

and the more and more and then Rust and MI or any Southern school. So they would go to HBC use like lane college and the more and more and then rust and am I, uh, or any Southern school valley, Tougaloo Jackson state. And she would be at home to where she worked a job to where she could teach, be home by three or four o'clock to raise the children. He would get off from the post office or the police department, wherever he had to work and then go work on a second job in order for them to move into the middle class and then stay there, which is why the black man most of the cases died when he was in his early sixties from heart disease and stress and

everything else because hell, he worked himself to death in order to provide for a family. And so it gave the black woman the opportunity to be at home to raise the children and help rear them and help with their homework. And we didn't really have the greatest quality of education back then. But at least you could learn how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. And then you could pick up the rest of it in the encyclopedias if the man came to your house to sell them to you. And before we had the internet, and that's what we had, the encyclopedias if the man came to your house to sell them to you. And before we had the internet,

and that's what we had, the encyclopedias. And then some of us would only get one or two books, and then we would share them on the street. So many of us said, hey, do you have A through Z? I mean, A through B. And we'd go and get the A through B to be able to find a new home. Are you saying in the neighborhood,

this family by A and B, this family by C and D, the neighborhood would have a encyclopedia, y'all run around sharing? We'd have a bargain. Is it's like a big dog running around a street. We have fog. Is that for real? Yes, on that whole street. That is hilarious. We didn't have any grass that went uncut. If you was old and sick and fell on hard times,

we would go cut your grass. We would spray it with MSMA, which they used to call the Anzard then. We'd spray it with Anzard and put some Triple 13 down on it and trim your shrubs. Your house didn't go unpainted. We'd go to Sears and by Sears, we was a beater. And we'd all pitch in and paint your house.

Sounds like a black Amish village. Well, it was what the Jews have been doing for years and we did it. But that was the black middle-class experience. Well, because it was taught that in the rural areas. Because when you came out of Mississippi in these rural areas, everybody shared food. That's what you did for each other.

You shared food and we had hog killing day. You kill 15, 20 hogs and everybody had meat for the whole winter. No one went hungry. Uh, well, you know, you'd have four or five acres of purple peas. People would blanch them, go down from the city to the country and bring back bushel bags of them and give them to everybody on the street. You can blanch them in hot water and put them in freezer bags and freeze it. So no one went hungry.

We didn't have warfare and food stamps. We didn't do that. And so somewhere in our culture, we had a generation that was given too much too soon, like prodigal sons and prodigal children. When you give a child so much to live on, that child now has nothing to live for. It takes the hypoxic drive out of them,

it takes the hunger away from them. Say that again. That is profound. Well, I mean, that's too much too soon. If you give a child- No, you give, if you give, if they don't have what? If you give a child too much to live on, the child will have nothing to live for.

If you give a child too much to live on, he ain't got nothing to live for. That's right. I mean, you done bought him his first car, and you done keep wearing sporty clothes. You don't know nothing about no work. You live in a white haven, a modest middle-class income and house. I mean, he didn't understand how to cut grass. You didn't make him get off his butt and go cut no grass.

You was out there cutting grass at the working two jobs because you wanted your yard to look a certain way. Well hell, if you mess it up, he gotta learn. I mean, my boys cut it. If they scalped the yard, they scalped it. It'll grow back. You had to work around here. If not, I'll come near my belt. See, I believe in that.

So we have this weak generation because we thought our parents are too hard on us. And as a result, we became slack and lackadaisical with this generation that we see now. And it has ruined us. It has ruined us to take government subsidies because now you've been inoculated with welfare and food stamps and WIC instead of learning how to just sacrifice and work. We'll be right back. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. And guess what?

So are we. Just in case you forgot, I'm Tori Deal. I'm a six-time finalist and a Challenge champion. And I'm Anissa Ferrer and I've been gracing your screens for the last two decades. I am a veteran challenger and Challenge All-Star. And speaking of All-Stars, All-Stars 4 is finally here. I'm gonna be honest.

I literally thought this day was never going to come. Well the Challenge Gods have answered our prayers and we're going to be right here along with you fans covering every episode on the podcast. And this season takes it to a whole new level. Old-school legends, modern power players, redemption seekers, and ex-lovers are all competing in Cape Town South Africa for the prize of $300,000. Anyone can win, I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington.

So I started The Big Take DC. We dig into how money, politics and power shape government and the consequences for voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down in Washington right now to change their tune. I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election.

These are unprecedented times. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. Western nations like the U.S. and Europe. Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China.

And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Gorett. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Amosin.

We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. As someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. So I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chavis Daniels, who played football, me from Anassas, spent time in jail, came from Rough Up, Brian.

We were coming back from an event we did in Little Rock driving, and we got on this very conversation. And we got on this very conversation and I'll tell you this, this time was 20 years old. And we got on WIC and food stamps and conversation about it. And he looked at me and he said, I've eaten and existed on some of that stuff. And he said, I hate it. And that was near floored me because a lot of kids from an asses that's just the reality, you know, for whether it's whether it's right or wrong. That's how they grew up. And I said, really, you hate it. And he said, it's a crutch to my people. And first of all, the whole my people

conversation. I don't even like that. Because I, I yearn for a day where my people are your people and it's we people, but I got where it came from. I certainly understand it. I don't want to be over idealistic, but he's, and I said, what do you mean? And he said, man, coach, he said, if you got a crutch, you walk with a limp. And if they give you a crutch for the rest of your life, you always gonna limp. And he said, when you provide them with a crutch, you are building a limp into their existence. And he said, I hate this stuff.

And I will never forget this 1920 old kid saying that to me. A flat damn near drove off the road in the ditch when I heard it. I couldn't believe I was hearing that out of a young black man's mouth from the hood who recognized what the systems did in terms of limping his community, but on the other side understood that many in his community had come to a point that they couldn't exist without it. So you get called in this horrible catch-22.

Linda Bang Johnson, he's the one who implemented it on his war on poverty. And we fell for the okie doke. And so my mother who grew up doing the Great Depression, they wouldn't take commodities. They raised their own food. My grandfather was born in 1895, he served in World War I when he came back. They allowed their own food. My grandfather was born in 1895 again, served in World War I.

When he came back, they allowed him some VA money. So he bought about 37 acres in them by Hager, Mississippi and he farmed. And so when men who died in the community, the widows, all of them were pitching in and they wouldn't take subsidies from USDA and they wouldn't take it. They said the grits that you could boil, wouldn't even fit for a dog to eat because they wouldn't take it. They said the grids that you could boil wouldn't even fit for a dog to eat because they wouldn't break down, it was a course. And so once you get inoculated with social services,

it takes away your hypoxic drive to thrive. And I've never have ever taken any subsidies ever. We never, we didn't allow it. taking any subsidies ever. We never, we didn't allow it. But what you're saying is that also destroys the ability to get to the middle class for the black folks. There's a lot of things that destroyed. I tell black women this all the time, you know,

I don't care about you emailing me and C emailing me, I don't read that stuff anyway. So I'm retired now, so I don't have to answer to nobody but me and the good Lord above. And I tell folks all the time, and I tell my sons this, be careful who you lay with, because sex is expensive. It's a luxury item. Don't lie with somebody that you know you can't be married to and have a family with.

So don't procreate and have babies all out of wedlock. And then you can't be married to them. And because it takes a man and a woman to effectively raise a child. No, don't don't fall for that. Say I can do it on my own. No, you really can't. It takes a man to raise a man. And had it would not have been for those older black men and Bishop Grays, Ben Hooks, I would have been a nothing, a loser. They taught me a lot about what it really meant to be a black man that was intelligent.

I remember I went to visit Mr. Tony and this girl across the street. She was cute and fine and they was tonguing. And Mr. Tony was mad as hell. He saw me out there talking to her. He said, you get your ass in this house right now. I said, what does it mean? I said, she cute, she fine.

She got three children out of wedlock. If you go out there and lay with her and she get her pregnant, then they gotta walk past all these baby daddies to get to her. You're young, you don't have any children. Go get you a woman that you can be married to and have your own set of babies

so you can raise your own family and have your own influence. And I didn't understand that as a 20 year old man. I understand it now. And that's the hardcore conversation that we're not having. I mean, it's- And you never gonna get to the middle class with all that-

Baggage. Yoke hanging around you. Yeah, it's baggage. Then you get it out of court. I mean, it's been programmed. The Asians don't do it. The Hispanics don't do it. It's just baby mama drama stuff at the juvenile court. It's a mockery.

And I really think if you change the laws to say, look, whoever the custodial parent, since you wanna get child support so bad, when your child cuts up in the street and runs the streets and he's not accounted for, lock the parent up with the child. Then all of a sudden, now you're no longer the custodial parent.

Now you want the father to be active in their life. And you will see a change in how children and this destructive youth can get better. So this is the mindset, this is where the man comes from, this is all of it. And you believe that my list of poverty with all its subsets, crime problems, leaves all its subsets, you disagree with me.

You say we don't have a crime problem. We have a middle class problem. And when you said that to me, that's when I thought this has got to be, we gotta talk about Friends After Five on our show. All of what we said sets up to give perspective for why I'm starting to agree with you that Friends After Five has a real opportunity to change so much of what ails us?

What is Friends After Five? Friends After Five, we have thousands of young black men and women who have done everything we've asked them to do. Is it in technical school or in college, meaning my HBCU schools? When they graduate from technical school or college, no one is there to embrace them, to give them mentorship. And no one is there to help them build relationships

within a job market. So many of them. That's the access piece. That's the access piece because we keep operating these segregated silos. And at the end of the day, most white Americans, you know, you got almost 330 million people in America, 48 million of which are black.

Most companies are ran by whites in America, just being realistic. And if you do not have an understanding on how to get out of your circle or where you've been programmed, then you cannot build relationships to be able to get quality employment and you should not have a, a B a, a BBA walking around working, uh, flipping burgers and frying chicken. But what's the whole purpose of going to school? Or you don't want to, you know, we are more technical school

and now you still working in the jutting come lucky shed in the backyard on cars when you should be working at Ford Motor or you should be working at GM or somewhere that's gonna pay you a pension or pay you a quality wage or pay you a quality job. And so we have thousands. And so this isn't something that I think will work,

this is something that worked for me. And it worked for so many of my friends who had the same pathway I've had. And so yes, it is a challenge. This can be duplicated in any urban city. And what I've learned, there are some cities that really need it. Memphis needs it. But then there are some cities who really want it. And there's a difference between being wanted and wanting and being needed.

And Memphis has been one of those cities who have been reactive instead of proactive. We wait until all the stuff to board out on the stove and then we got to clean been one of those cities who have been reactive instead of proactive. We went into the, all the stuff them bored out on the stove and then we got to clean up a mess. And some of our urban cities like Jackson, Mississippi, they want to be more proactive. You have six HBCUs in the state of Mississippi alone. And now the workforce has changed. And so I want to be very candid with it.

So if you send Hispanics, you bust them to Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, wherever you're going to bust them. And then you have young white kids who are going to college. I can tell you right now, young white kid is not trying to work at a blue oval or Ford anywhere in the warehouse. That's not why he went to school. He went to school to go to medical school, law school, you know it. And then so your only workforce that you really have now

are those black kids that are trying to go to somebody's school. And they need to have that interstitial relationship outside of their communities to make sure that they're properly placed. Now, I'm not Superman. I'm not walking around here with a shower cap folded up in the back of my pocket.

Every person I see, I pull it out and put it around my neck like I'm captain, save somebody. I'm being nice about it. That's not my intent. And yeah, I've caused some flak on it, but I really don't care. And so Friends After Five is born of an idea where you get these middle class young black folks up and coming that are trying to get it and you get white middle class and upper class folks in the same room. After five, you have a cocktail and you try to just create relationships, friends after five to create both access, really access to one another, which let's be honest, in social circles just doesn't happen very often. Access to one another, but it's also access for white business owners to find the next

level of talent they have to have to run their companies. That's great. We'll be right back. And guess what? So are we! Just in case you forgot, I'm Tori Deal. I'm a six-time finalist and a Challenge Champion. And I'm Anissa Ferrer and I've been gracing your screens for the last two decades. I'm a veteran challenger and Challenge All-Star. And speaking of All-Stars, All-Stars 4 is finally here. I'm gonna be honest. I literally thought this day was never going to come. Well, the Challenge Gods have answered our prayers and we're going to be right here along with you fans covering every episode on the podcast.

And this season takes it to a whole new level. Old school legends, modern power players, redemption seekers, and ex-lovers are all competing in Cape Town, South Africa for the prize of $300,000. Anyone can win, relationships matter, and only one all-star will claim the title of challenge champion. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The big take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. Western nations like the U.S. in Europe.

Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China. And help you understand what's happening, what it means and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Gurra. I'm Sarah Holder.

I'm Saleh Emosen. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. To someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States.

In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC. We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down

in Washington right now to change their tune. I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election. These are unprecedented times. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. Tell me about the first one. Well, the first one was actually at my house. I called 81 people and I had almost 90 people show up.

I only had one white friend to show up. That ain't what friends after five is supposed to look like. The first one, that's what it looked like. He showed up on my website where he's standing there at the fireplace in my living room with me. And so we had everyone introduce themselves. You had everything from firemen to aircraft mechanics of FedEx,

to nurse practitioners, to registered nurses, to school teachers. You're talking about the black folks. These are all the jobs. So his face turned red. Who turned red? My friend who was white, who was standing there at the fireplace with him.

Why did he turn red? Because the stigmata of what you see in the news, when you see young kids walking around, their pants hanging off their butt, and they're doing donuts in the middle of the inner city. He'd never been in a room full of 90 middle class black folks that were acting right, carrying themselves right, all that.

He wasn't even aware they existed. He didn't. He wasn't even aware they existed. He didn't. He wasn't even aware of the neighborhood I live in, which is in a city, prominent upper black middle class community. Which is by the way, also insulting, but it's a reality. But he didn't. His first time he had been to Twinkle Town.

And so he's like, he says, this got to work. I said, there's thousands of us, thousands. So, you know, and I've had some nasty emails and phone calls. I don't pay that stuff no matter. I don't have, my interest isn't on the kids that's not doing what we've asked them to do. I can't solve that problem. So I'm being candid and honest.

That's not a problem I can solve. I think a lot of it has to do with the relationships of some of our failed inner city churches with not really practicing real ministry. But I can do something about those kids who are doing what we've asked them to do. Getting opportunity, giving them opportunity. And I did it with my own children.

My own two sons are well employed and they're young, 18 and 20 and they got grown men jobs. Just incomes that exceed 70,000 a year. And they're kids almost, really. Because of relationships, because people have seen that they've had something to emulate, to mimic, and they know the quality of the employee that they're gonna get and the opportunities that they get.

And I wanna do that for as many young black kids that's in school that I can. So this white dude in this first meeting who had an awakening. He did. What'd he do about that? Well, we had an event at his dealership. He owns a car dealership? He's a general manager for a Ford dealership

and he invited white friends. I said, oh good. So he had about 30 white friends there. And then we had- This is the next one. This was the next one. Yeah. And we had roughly about 85, 90 blacks,

middle class blacks and their kids to show up. Ever since then, we've had event, every month we have an event here in Memphis. Now we have one in Jackson, Mississippi. We get ready to start our Birmingham and Jackson, Tennessee at Lane College. People want it now. Because you have these HBCUs that do not have

the relationships with a business community. I'm dumbfounded with that. How do you have a school that operated for almost 150 years in a community and a white business community or business community at large have not went over to pick the best out the best out of these schools?

Once again, bro, access. Access even for an entire university. Yeah, it's something. And so it's gonna have to change. And you wanna talk about things that can break down racial problems in our culture? Let's work together, respect one another, support one another, and all of a sudden,

race just doesn't matter that much anymore. It doesn't matter. Once you reach a certain level in your mind, and especially once God has opened up some doors for you to have a sense of achievement, you realize it's not about black and white. It's just about God ordering your steps and then having a purpose for your life because life is short and you have to say to yourself what kind of fingerprint, what kind of mark will I leave on humanity when I'm dead? Did I do anything to make this better before I left here or did I just suck up all the resources and forget there was other

generations behind us that really needed it? It only takes so much to live. I think we missed that mark. We missed it. You know, at the end of the day we all dust. Would you agree with me? I've started having the argument that I think the segregation and prejudice of our day to day has morphed from black, white and morphed into societal and cultural. I think one of the things I did when I was directed Shelby County, I have been to probably more white churches than any black person. You could probably imagine I wouldn't any black person you could probably imagine.

I wasn't invited, I'd just pop up. When you set up Second Prez, I've been to Second Prez at least three times. Well come on down, sit with my family in the pew next time. Well one of them I went and it was a CK Reese, I don't know if you know CK, and she says, Mr. Hill, are you here? I said, yeah, I was just driving down the street

and I said, I want to stop. So all the cars, I want to see what was going on. And I sit in the middle of the audience. I was the only black person in there in the middle of that audience. Bevel your Baptists and stuff. So the reason why I say that is because King said to us, the most segregated hour in America is on Sunday morning.

Which is one of my favorite quotes of his because it is profoundly true. And if we are truly called by that faith, profoundly sinful, it is because at the end of the day, I can tell you right now, uh, heaven is not going to be segregated. Everybody's got to get along just fine. And, uh, and Jesus ain't got blonde hair and blue eyes either. He came from the middle East dog.

Well, we all had learned how to get along. And one of my pastors used to always tell me this. He says, we talk about when we get to heaven, hell, we got to first learn how to live down here. And Dr. Julius Elcipio, and he was admin about that. And so I've made it my business to get out of my comfort zones and visit people. And I've had opportunities

where I've been the only black person in the room. And a few black people that was there were waiting on tables and stuff. And they said, well, looking at me like, what are you doing here? I had one of them, I forget this. And he was just staring and me, staring at me. I pulled the chair back and said, sit down, man.

And he was waiting tables. So I said, I can't sit down. I said, yes, you can. And I said, they fire you, I'm gonna find you a job at the county. How about that? And so the manager came and he looked. I said, I asked him to sit down,

no food with him, leave him alone. Sometimes you have to take somebody out of your comfort zone in order for them to grow. Sure, my understanding is now some politicians have started to see the potential in Friends After Five and they're starting to support you a little bit. Governor Haley Barb, we had a kickoff last week at Jackson State University.

Dr. Marcus Thompson is the president. Uh, they have over a thousand kids to graduate this year. Well, I'm JSU from JSU, but many of them have not been placed. So we had a kickoff. We had almost 240 people of police captains to commissioners of safety. Cause you know, you have kids that's majoring in criminal justice, computer science, and so we tried to have a plethora of those who were hiring to try to retain them. Why when Memphis needs 500 officers, they're short,

and we got kids graduating from Jackson State with criminal justice degrees, why ain't Memphis down there recruiting those kids? Because they're lazy. They're lazy. And believe it or not, 50% of the students that's at the HBCUs in North Mississippi throughout Mississippi are from Memphis.

And will have the degree to get a job. I mean, we could fill up the police department tomorrow. Police department, school system, you name it. Fired. But because Memphis has this mindset, you know, we're lazy as some of the people we elect are not competent to run a city. And it's just not Memphis.

We see it in Chicago, we see it in Detroit, we see it in all urban cities. And if you do not attach to this young generation, then they won't come back. And right now once Blue Oval and some of these other places open up, it's gonna suck 50,000 jobs out the atmosphere. What's gonna be left for the other people that's here? And not just in Memphis, but in these urban cities.

What happens to your tax base? Well, the rate we're going now, you know, 60%, 65% of the home ownership now in Memphis is rental property owned by outside rental company. Are you kidding? 65% of all the inner city homes in 240 loop are not owned by people, they're owned by companies and corporations.

And so like with some of the stuff we see in the news of possible tax increases and poor services and potholes, you have not done anything to re-insure the middle class growth and base. But that's to your point. If you have a robust middle class, 65% of the homes ain't owned by rental properties, they're owned by homeowners who are paying into their own community. But even though the investors are paying into it from tax, you know, property taxes,

what happens is if you allow so many people to have this sense of hopelessness of not having home ownership, then all you're doing now is have a mayor and a government that's running a city. That's now one large housing project, which we're the voice down to. And so then you will have nothing but a plethora and a vacuum of crime and poverty. Uh, it will be a Sodom and Gomorrah. Which speaks to the power of friends after five and your belief we don't have a

crime problem. Education probably have a middle-class problem. You build the middle class and it fixes all this. It does. And banks the same way. We had some banks that tried to merge. They had no CRA credits because they didn't have enough participation in urban cities. Memphis, when you look at the poorest zip code, was the poorest zip code in America was three one oh six, three one two six. That's South Memphis, right? Aren't you proud of me for knowing that? Well, yeah, you should know about BTW. They're the warriors. And, uh, but they are down to just one bank

in that community, one bank. How many grocery stores? Two. When you got two grocery stores and one bank, it's back to my buzzword, access. It's access to nothing. But in a lot of it has to play into when you hire people,

you need to hire people from a community to be managers of these stores, to be managers of these banks, because it's all about relationships. And so when you hire people that have graduated from JSU or Tougaloo, wherever, with a BBA or a bachelor's degree in business or finance, hire them to be the manager at a dollar general or family dollar, then you wouldn't see all this stuff. You wouldn't see all that because nobody wants to say, hey, Robert, no, look, Johnny, Johnny, you better stay out here and see there's a relationship. And when you have a relationship with people, then it builds this sense of community.

Which then builds the middle class, which then builds tax base, which then more people crawl out of poverty into the middle class, which then reduces crime, which then means more parents involved in schools, which builds PTAs, which makes the school a better educational system. I mean, I buy what you're selling, man. It's a lot of hard work, and I've been, you know, I've had some disenchantment a little bit here in the city

sometimes. It's hard to raise money. All of our students between 18 and 26, they come for free and we don't turn anyone away, but it is. It's very costly. But you know, I'm all right with it. I put my own personal money into it, but it's working. And at the end of the day, I think we can make an investment in a future or we can make an investment in

building prisons and institutions because we didn't make an investment in generations. Kind of a choice, isn't it? It's, it's, it shouldn't be a choice. Someone made a comment to me and I know you're probably out of time. Getting close to time. Yeah, I want to say this. So I had a young man, he was doing some tree work for me. And he said to me, he said, he looked at my sons,

my sons are doing welding. If you pull up on Facebook, they were 14 and 15 year old kids. And I have this closet hut in my backyard and had to get out a rewired 220 wires and made it into a welding shop. And I probably invested maybe about 20 grand, my savings into all this welding equipment that they wanted and needed.

And so this man who working on my trees, who was black, he says, Mr. Hill, I want to ask you a question. I said, what is it? Name was Roy. He says, if they weren't your children, would you do this for other young black boys, black women? I chuckled and laughed, he walked into it. Bill, he did.

I said, I've adopted a total of five children. I have three that's adopted, legally adopted. Only two of them are biological. I said, I took in children that weren't my children because they needed somewhere to stay. I sent them to school, sent them to private school. I gave them a hair cover they needed and they asked what they needed and sent them to college out of my own money.

And I said, I'd rather spend $20,000 in a closet hut for high-end welding equipment, or spend $20,000 keeping them out of juvenile court. The choice is yours. And what most black men and women are doing is choosing to buy Corvettes, buying Cadillac Escalades, and going on vacation, and trying to look the park to impress

people. They don't know what things they don't have instead of making the investment back and does their own children. And that's a problem. So yes, I've done it for everybody. I've sent hip kids go to school, I've taken, that's what it's about. Friends after five building the middle class, cause we can either build the middle class or we can build more jails. It's your choice. It's a choice. Robert, do you have yet,

because friends after five is fairly new concept. Do you have yet any stories of, uh, some connections made at the Friends After Five that has helped some folks? Oh, there's a lot of them. I put them on the website at www.friendsafterinthenumberfive.com. Haley Barber also gave a testimonial. Next event is gonna be April 25th, Butler Snow.

We have a standing invitation every Thursday. The month will now be at Jackson State University building that community. We'll be heading to Lane College. Lane College now is certainly wanted, which is in Jackson, Tennessee. And I'm trying to pull together Ole Miss and Northwest Community Colleges for North Mississippi, because you have so many middle class blacks moving across that state line. But we can go anywhere in the country.

If we got an invitation, if we have the resources, I can go into any urban city with this. Somebody wants to get in touch with you? Phone number's real simple, 901-643-1578. I'm not hiding from nobody. Leave me a message, I'm not hiding from no bill collectors. You can find me. And that is, if you want to attend

a Friends After Five event, if you want to host one, or you want to support it financially, get Dutch Robert. Friends After Five, everybody. We are talking to a man who you heard the way came up and his belief is you build the black middle class you fix all the problems in front of it and behind it and if you listen to his argument it makes a lot of sense and this is is just another great example of a normal dude

working hard, coming up, seeing a place of need, and working his ass off to fill that place of need. And from both a social, a cultural, and a pragmatic sense, Friends After Five feels like it has an opportunity to fix a lot of What else is, Robert? Well, pray for us. Consider, if you want some help in some of the urban cities, please contact me. I have capacity.

I burn up a Toyota truck and Toyota tires on it. But, you know, this is a lot of work and I need as much help as I can. It's awesome. Thank you. Robert Hill, Friends After Five. I can't wait to see where this goes. Thanks for joining us. Of course, thank you.

And thank you for joining us this week. If Robert Hill or other guests have inspired you in general, or better yet, inspired you to take action by joining a Friends After Five gathering, by donating to them, by helping bring their model to your community or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love to hear about it.

You can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks.us and I will respond. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and on social, subscribe to the podcast, rate and review it. Become a premium member at normalfolks.us. All these things that can help us grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week. here. And this season takes it to a whole new level. Old school legends, modern power players and ex lovers are all competing in Cape Town, South Africa for the prize of $300,000. And we're going to be right here along with you fans covering every episode on the podcast.

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