The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Changes of Heart

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

In this hour, stories of shifting perspectives, new outlooks, and realizations that shake our foundations. A mother receives unexpected news, a teen learns the true power of a word, and a prisoner gets a visit from his father. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Curatorial Producer, Suzanne Rust. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Andrea Collier finds out what happens when her life goes off-script. Damon Young questions his sense of self based on the power of a racial slur. Huwe Burton relies on his father's support while serving time for a crime he didn't commit.

I'm Tony Kornheiser, this is my show. My friends come on and you know them. We talk about the sports you care about, basketball now, golf and the metronome of your life, baseball. Whether it's opening day, the big tournament or one of the majors, we have the best to preview it and break down just what happened. And let's not forget the important stuff, the amount of daylight where I live, the importance of speedies and the rankings of beach style pizza.

Listen on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX and I'm Suzanne Rust, the curatorial producer at The Moth Radio Hour from PRX, and I'm Suzanne Rust, the curatorial producer at The Moth. This time we'll hear stories about changes of heart, those moments when something shifts and alters your perspective. We'll be hearing from a writer whose sense of self is changed in a flash, a story about a man who made it across the finish line despite the obstacles. And a mother who realized that sometimes it's more than okay when your life goes off script. Which is exactly what happened with our first storyteller, Andrea King Collier.

She shared her story at the West Virginia Culture Center in Charleston, West Virginia, where the theme of the night was a more perfect union. Here's Andrea live at the mall. I got married in 1982. And we were so cute, but we couldn't have been more different. I was a privileged little only child, a princess of quite a lot, and my husband was one of six.

When I first met his parents, I said, how do you remember six names? And that did not go over well. But we did have something in common. We were kids of the 60s. And we did civil rights marches. We helped register people to vote. We knew about segregation. And we knew that our folks expected a whole bunch out of us.

We were their legacy. And they had a script for us that we passed on to our two kids when we got married. Our whole family unit was the Huxtables before they were Huxtables. In fact, our motto was, I brought you into this world, and I will take you out. And the kids knew it. My daughter followed the script. She got her dream job

after going to her dream school, married her dream man and had her dream baby, and then quit her dream job to take care of the dream baby. My son, on the other hand, had a script of his own. What he did though was his script involved living in the basement and never coming out. And no matter how much we tried to get him out script involved living in the basement and never coming out. And no matter how much we tried to get him out of the basement,

it wasn't happening. We threw money at it, we threw exterminators at it, still in the basement. Except for one day, he just left. And he stayed gone for One day, he just left. And he stayed gone for a couple of weeks. Now a young man goes off and does his thing and you wouldn't think anything about it, but without any notice, no texts, no phone calls, I as his mother got worried because it's not a good thing for a black man to go disappearing.

It worried me. And just as when I was about to call the police, he calls me. And he says, Mom, I need to come over because I have something to tell you. Now, if you have a kid who's of a certain age and they say, I have something to tell you, what you know is nothing good is going to come out of that conversation. When these conversations come up, they do not say, Mom, I hit the lotto. And I have enough money to move out. Mom, I got a new job and I have enough money to move out. You see where I'm going with this move out there.

Mom, I have met Beyonce. She has fallen in love with me. She's leaving Jay-Z and I'm moving out. None of that is happening. I start thinking about all the things that it could be and I get really worried. I go tell my husband that he's on his way over. And he says, well, it won't be that long. I'm looking out the window and he's pacing up and down the driveway. He's rehearsing. It's going to be a doozy. So he comes upstairs and he says, mom, we're going to have a baby.

Who's going to have a baby? He has a girlfriend, but I have only seen her from the waist up in the car. Now, under ordinary circumstances, because this is not the script, got a simple script, go to college, get a good job, don't go to jail, don't get anybody pregnant, and they said, we're going to have a baby. So my head could have popped off my shoulders but something happened it was

either the God voice, the good voice or the crazy voice said ask him to say it And I say, will you say that again for me? And he says, we had a baby yesterday. You know that could have gone all kind of wrong. Instead because I'm in shock, this down, ask nice basic questions. Are mama and baby fine? Are they home from the hospital? And then the thing that I want to know for some reason is what's the baby's name because millennials can come up with some helluva names and black millennials can really come up with some names. You know they could be Jack Daniels, Wakanda, Apple. What's the baby's name? The baby's

name is Miles. Okay, that's good. That was the best thing out the whole damn thing. And as I was trying to explain to him that we have colds so we can't go that day to see the baby, he gets the hell up out of there before I figure out he's gone. He is gone. And so what do you do when you are a new grandmother, there's no baby to see, and you don't have a nine-month gestation period, I get in the car and I go to Target. Then let me tell you something about Target. You can work out a whole lot of shit in the hours on Target.

So I get there and I don't go to the baby section. I'm everywhere else. But the God voice says to me, call Gussie. Now Gussie is my mother's oldest friend. And when my mother died, she and several of her other friends stood in the gap for me. And when I need to figure out something, I call. So I call, and I'm fine until I hear her voice. And I am hysterical. I am like having a fit in the store. He had a baby I didn't know I just saw it from the head up. This is awful. He didn't follow the script. I'm just going.

And people are watching by me and Target trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Lady, are you okay? My mother's friend says, let me get this straight. Christopher has a baby. Yes. Had it yesterday. Yes. You didn't know. Yes. Is the baby going to live with you? No. Okay, good. Let's start with that. Then she says, okay, this is what you're

going to do. You're going to stop crying. You're going to put on your big girl pants, and you are going to be the best damn grandma you know how to be because that is what you're gonna do. You're gonna stop crying, you're gonna put on your big girl pants, and you are gonna be the best damn grandma you know how to be because that's what you had. Okay. And then I had questions. But she hung up the phone. She had said everything she needed to say, so she was gone. She was out of there. So what do I do? I start buying up everything in the baby section.

I bought so much stuff that my husband had to go back and get the rest of the crap. But on the way home, I got really upset. So I come in and my husband is there and my daughter is visiting. And I said, why the hell did anybody not tell me? And my daughter says, well, you are really scary. What do you mean I'm scary? You are Oprah scary. And I'm thinking, Oprah, that's not bad.

She says, no, no, no, not you get a car, you get a car, you get a car, Oprah. You are Miss Sophia, Oprah. You told Hypo to beat me, Oprah. And I had a little problem with that, but she goes on to explain. She says, you know the whiz? Yeah. You know Evelyn, who says, don't bring me no bad news? Yeah.

You Evelyn. You are Claire Huxtable. From the day we were born, you got the Claire Huxtable side eye before she did. And one thing I can say about it, sometimes you just got to give it up. So I waited and waited a few days so we could actually see the baby.

We'd go to see the baby. And I had never met her folks before. In fact, I'd never had a conversation with her. So we'd get there, they bring the baby out, put the baby in my arms, and my heartbreak broke wide open. I'd never experienced anything like that, not even alone kids. This beautiful baby, and I looked at him and I saw my husband and I saw my daughter, I saw me, but I also saw my son, the baby's father, and I saw all the people in my life who had ever loved me in this baby's face. So I started looking at my purse,

and I started looking at the baby, and I looked at the purse again. How long do you think it would be before I put the baby in the purse and left? Then they would figure out he was gone. that they would figure out he was gone. So my daughter had been texting me the whole time to tell me not to do anything crazy. And just as I was about to try to bust that move, I heard the text noise. I said, okay, I can't do that.

But it was weird. So I'm looking at the baby and I'm thinking about Toni Morrison. When my kids were teenagers, I heard Toni Morrison say, when the child walks into the room, does your face light up? Okay, they were teenagers, nobody's face was lightening up for them. But with Miles, my face was all lit up and I remembered the rest of it which is when your child walks into the room, does your face light up? Because that's how they know how you feel about them. And I was determined at that moment for the rest of my life, whenever he walked into the room, my face was going to light up because I want him to know he is just that loved.

Thank you. That was Andrea Cain Collier, a journalist, photographer, and author based in Lansing, Michigan. Andrea and her husband, Arnay, have been married for over 40 years before he died sadly in 2023. In addition to Miles, Andrea's daughter has given her another grandson, Bryce. And when Andrea talks about her grandchildren, she says, I look at them and wonder. They take my breath away. Fun fact, Andrea's two grandsons call her Gogo. And once you get to know her, G-Go seems like a very appropriate title.

She is a force of nature. I was lucky enough to spend some time with Andrea when we did our main stage show in New Orleans. We had a great time hanging out and buying way too many bottles of hot sauce. I caught up with Andrea again a few years ago and serious topics couldn't be avoided. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Aubry

had all become part of a battle cry, forcing America to confront the racism of its past and present. So I just want to ask you honestly, how are you doing, and what are your thoughts on this moment we're living in? It's crazy. So I was born in 1956. And so I lived through the first big wave of the civil rights movement. And this is different. This feels totally different. So I'm really interested to see what comes out of this. Yeah. That's just me sitting there waiting.

It does feel different though. I hope we're going to make progress here. I really do. I wanted to ask you something you mentioned in your story. You talk about being raised to be a positive reflection on your race and passing that along to your kids. You talk in your story about following a script. And like we all know that all parents have a script in mind for their kids, but as black people, the stakes are higher. I really think that it was probably a bigger burden for my kids than it was for me.

I don't know that I really had any choice. I followed the script. I was the first one in my family to get a college degree. And there was no, I mean, we never had any conversation about, hey, when you get out of high school, what are you gonna do? I already knew what I was going to do. And my friends sometimes when we're sitting around talking about how we were as kids, somebody said the

other day, oh no, nobody was going to get close to you and derail your folks script for you. Everybody that and I'm like, oh, okay. The most militant thing that I did that was off script was I did not go into politics. Oh, was that expected of you? I think so. Well, there's still time, my friend. I think the world is in total Andrea right now. And no, but...

You can make your announcement here for the month. Yeah, no, but I think that my grandparents would have loved that. That would have been the American dream for them. Yeah, but storytelling is pretty great. Yeah, they wouldn't have quite understood that. They're like, no, what is it? Because I know my grandfather used to say, no, what is it? Because I know my grandfather used to say, no, what is it that you do?

Yeah. Yeah. That was Andrea King-Collier, AKA GoGo. You can hear more of our conversation at themoth.org. Coming up, what's in a word? A writer from Pittsburgh reflects on a life-altering experience he had with one of the most toxic words in our history. That's when the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.

This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Suzanne Rust. In this show we're talking about changes of heart. Now we're going to hear from writer Damon Young. I want to give you all a heads up. This story contains multiple uses of an historically heavy, controversial word that stirs up a lot of pain and emotion. It always has and always will, but we'll let Damon speak for himself. And another heads up, Damon told the story at our Moth main stage at the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. An outdoor venue, obviously. The evening was filled with firefly light

and the sound of crickets. But also, and you'll hear this, the sound of jets flying overhead. Here's Damon Young live with the Moth. So before I begin, like I have to say that between the setting, the audience and the audience, this kind of feels like a deleted scene from Get Out. Like I don't know if I'm up here to tell a story or get auctioned off. So I'm, alright so I'm from Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. Born and raised and I still live there now. And for people who haven't been there, it's a city that is so spiritually, culturally, politically, atmospherically white

that Rick James once tried to snort it. Like it gets, it's a city that gets these, these national lots for being like the most livable city and the next Brooklyn or the new Seattle or the 21st century is Austin. But what it really is, is Wakanda for white people. And again, that, that provides necessary context for a very quick story about my parents who love to tell stories. Okay, so it's 1985. I'm six years old. I'm actually being babysat by my sister. And my mom and my grandmother, who I called Nana, they were post Sunday brunch browsing at this deli in Pittsburgh in this neighborhood called Squirrel Hill. So there's some sort of altercation or disagreement with the cashier who was a

white boy who was maybe about 18-19 years old. And it ends with him calling my mom and my nana black nigger bitches. Furious, my mom and my nana leave the store, go up the street to a supermarket, Cheyenne Eagle, to get my dad, and my dad is doing what dads do, you know, in produce probably, you know, tasting steak or doing what dads do in super probably, you know, tasting steak or doing what my dad's doing in supermarkets and get him. So they all go back to the store and my dad very calmly

approaches the cashier. My wife and my mother-in-law said that you insulted them and I would like for you to apologize to them. Cashier refuses. So then my dad says, okay, well, I'm gonna count to 10. And by the time I reach 10, if you don't apologize, I'm gonna come behind that counter and kick your ass with this baseball bat. I forgot to mention that, that my dad had a baseball bat with him

because my dad is apparently black, beaten at John Wick. And so my dad counts, literally starts counting. Cashier doesn't apologize. My dad swings the bat at him. Cashier picks up a knife, swings it at my dad. So they're knife fighting and bat fighting and this is happening over to over the register. In the meantime, my mom and my Nana, and again my mom, big fan of Pat Metheny, Steely Dan, Tina Turner, she

was a bank teller at this time, my grandmother, my grandmother, my Nana wasn't just white gloves on Sunday. She was white gloves like a Burger King on Wednesday. Like white gloves, you know, to, I don't know, to wash her hair. Like this was who she was. And they're, and again, they're in the store throwing jars of M&Ms and bigoted pickles

and racist, you know, Reese Cubs and just making this huge mess in the store. After about four or five minutes, it spills out into the sidewalk and the police come and my parents and my nan are arrested. And then they're taken to the police station or whatever and they're approached by some black woman with some sort of authority, a sergeant or lieutenant or something like that,

who takes one look at them and it's like, okay, you brunch attending, Bonneville Drive, and black people are not supposed to be here, so tell me what happened. So they say what happens and the sergeant says, okay, well, you're free to go. What? You were racially harassed. You're you're free to go. So what about the store that if you black people won't get the **** out of here before these white people figure out I'm letting you go. So again, my parents love to tell stories and they repeat this story at barbecues, at

funerals, carpool, taking me to AAU basketball games, while sitting in the living room during commercial breaks and while this happened I realized that being called a nigger was like this terrible awful thing but a part of me kind of wanted to be called one by a white person just so I could fight them and beat them up and then have a cool story like my parents had. Even my sister who's nine years older than me you know had this cool I'll call it a fight story about a time when she was in high school choir practice and this white girl in the band called her nigger and then my sister kicked her ass and

then got suspended from school and she she was terrified, you know, that once my parents found out she got suspended, she would get in trouble. But once my parents found out why she got suspended, she didn't get grounded. She got butter pecan ice cream. And I wanted, I wanted my own, you know, post-nigger fight story

ice cream party with Polaroids you know clowns a pinata the whole shebang but I didn't get it so I moved through adolescence nine years old ten years old eleven years old twelve years old still doesn't happen I'm a teenager now, 13, 14, 15, 16, still doesn't happen. And this induced this really deep anxiety and self-consciousness. And even like in Roses and me, where I started to doubt my own environment. Like, why hadn't I been called this before

in a city that is so white, you know, am I not black enough for a white person to call me a nigga? Like, what the fuck is wrong with me? You know, was I, like, when white people are called on to racism and then they say, you know, I have the one black friend, you know, Bob, who I carpool with and I fight over to watch NBA games. Was I Bob? Was I like that was I Bob was that like that one black was I like that you know that

one black friend like basically the character Rashida Jones plays in every movie was that was that me and again I I realized how absurd it was to have this anxiety, to have this neurosis about something that is so violent, but it was my reality. And then when I'm 17 it finally happens. I'm waiting for a bus. I'm in, let me see, it's nighttime, like seven o'clock, it's September, so it's dark, I'm waiting for a bus by myself. I was gonna go downtown to go play basketball for the rest of the night.

And as I'm waiting there, this Ford F-150 comes speeding past, and a person driving a car leans off the passenger side window screams nigger keep speeding away and so when it happens I even kind of do a double take like I guess he's talking to me I I'm the only person standing here. And adding to the, I guess, this is real nature of the whole experience is that he looked exactly like Ricky Schroeder. If you remember him from Silver Spoons and NYPD Blue. Like I am not convinced it wasn't Ricky Schroeder even 25 years later.

Like Ricky Schroeder, if you're out there listening, I remember what you did that fall, I'm waiting for you. And so this thing that I've been building up, you know, this experience I've been wanting to have, you know, is finally here. And this guy's in a car and he's speeding away and I almost, I was tempted to scream at him to come back because this is this is it this is this is this is what I've been waiting for this is like the black bar mess with this is him you know this is him calling me this I get a chance to fight him I

finally have a story you know when it's time to share the story but he's he's passed the least past like two lights two intersections he's gone so it's not gonna happen and then something happened to me it felt like something broke inside of me but not something bad. It was, I started laughing. And not even like a chuckle or like a nervous laugh, but like, oh my God, like tears, snot, the ugly face, like the ugly, like the Steve Bannon face of laughs. Like that's how ugly this laugh was. And I just realized in that moment how ridiculous it had been for me to want this to happen.

To want this terrible, awful thing to happen. And to assign any level of my racial identity, or my blackness, to how white people treated me. And that's the last time I did it. Thank you. —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo!

—Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo!

—Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! —Woo! a memoir in essays. He's also the founder of the culture blog Very Smart Brothers. Damon was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post magazine and the creator and host of the Crooked Media podcast Stuck with Damon Young. Currently he's a writer in residence at the University of Pittsburgh. Several years ago I was moved by Damon's writing so I reached out to him to tell a story.

Now when he came back to me with the idea of this story, I'm not gonna lie. As an African-American woman who has a deep problem with the word, I was shaken up. I love the story, but should we do this? Several discussions took place in the office and feelings were mixed among black and white staffers alike. But Damon's story speaks truth about race, identity, and power in this country. It felt right. So what does it say about us as a country

that an intelligent young man places the value and definition of his identity on this word? I look at it as one of the many complicated pieces of the uncomfortable conversations that Americans need to be having in order to grow and move forward. That night of the show, as I sat in a primarily white audience,

I could sense that many people weren't sure how to react. There was some awkward laughter, people shifting in their seats, and I wished that in the crowd, there had been more people who could have related to Damon's story, lifted him up and made him feel seen. He was so exposed. I was very grateful that CJ Hunt was our host that night

and was able to give Damon's story the loving and supportive landing that it deserved. Here's what CJ said after Damon's story. David's story. I can also tell by the applause who is a person of color also because my clap, it was hard for me not to clap for you while you were telling the story of just I feel so seen by that story. I've waited my whole life to be called the same. I just loved your story because the way you capture the absurdity of having violence be part of your identity and a rite of passage, I think is resonant to anyone who is black and I imagine partly resonant to any of those who have an oppressed identity, this like wild way where you need a confrontation to see yourself.

And I also love the story because it makes me think about a theme that has been running through the stories tonight about what it means to know who you are without depending on seeing a reflection of yourself and other people. So I just want to say thank you again. That was wonderful. That was Moth host CJ Hunt. For more on Damon Young, check out my interview with him on our blog. And to see a picture of a young Damon, go to themoth.org. Coming up, a man finds a path to freedom. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.

This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Suzanne Rust. We're hearing stories about changes of heart. Our next story is from Hugh Burton. We first met Hugh in our annual workshop with the Innocence Network Conference back in 2018. He told the story at our first virtual main stage, which we produced over Zoom right as the pandemic took hold.

And while the COVID-19 lockdown wouldn't allow us to have our usual live shows, there was something raw and intimate about having tellers like Hugh sharing their stories from their homes directly to our screens. The audio isn't perfect, but the emotions come through all the same.

We call the show All Together Now, the moth in your living room. Here's Hugh Burton live from his home. How are you? In 1989, at the age of 16, I was wrongfully arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Ostracized by many, believed by a few, I still had one person who had an unwavering belief in my innocence and would dedicate everything to prove that he was innocent, and that was my father.

We fought a great fight, but we lost trial and I was sentenced to 15 years to life. As I was shuttled from facility to facility, my father was there every visit, every week. The visits would fill with us strategizing how we were going to reverse what had happened. We would also talk a lot about him playing the saxophone and me playing piano and how great it would be when one day I would be free and we could sit down and we could play together. As time would go on, the visits were less and less. His health started to become an issue and the normal seven and eight hour journeys that it took him to come upstate New York and visit me were becoming a little bit harder to do.

In 2000, my father had to sell a house and he moved back to his native Jamaica. Although we kept in contact through writing and we still did our strategizing about proving my innocence, we weren't on the visit, we weren't in a visit room. It wasn't like the visit room. Nothing could replace those visits. One day I'd gotten a letter and it said that my father was coming back to the country. I was excited. The guy who had been in every visit room with me, had been in every courtroom, was finally coming back. The day came. That Saturday morning I was up early and the cell door opens and you can hear the metal on metal. But I heard this one thing that I had longed to hear. Burton, you have a visit. I made my way out of the cell and out into the hallway.

The hallways normally have this gray battleship kind of color that's very depressing. But today, they didn't feel. They didn't look the same. They looked like they had a lot of life. I had an extra bop in my step. I knew what it was. I was going to see my guy. I finally get to the visit room where I get frisked and there are two doors. And I went through the first door and then there was like a vacuum before you got to the second door because once the second door opens, it's just a flush of noise.

There are wives talking to husbands, mothers talking to sons, and children running around. It was all great. It was a sound that I hadn't heard in a while. Finally, I saw my father and I made a beeline to him. As I'm drawing closer to him, I notice, wow, he has aged considerably since I'd last seen him. Wow, and his hair is completely white now, and he's a bit hunched over and he uses the assistance of a cane. But none of that mattered.

I know what time does. My guy was here to see me. He traveled all of this way, and his first stop was here to see me. He traveled all of this way and his first stop was here to see me. I embraced him. And when I held him, he felt much more frail than I remember, but it was okay. I embraced my cousin who came with him. And we spoke and I thanked her for bringing him up. So we all sat down. As the visit started, my mind was racing.

There were so many things I wanted to ask him. How was the transition? How was everything going when he was down there? Did he get a chance to do any practicing while he was dead? And I wanted to tell him how good I had gotten playing the piano. I kind of felt I was a little bit better than him, but you know. So I was a little bit better than him, but you know, so I was excited. So as we're talking, or I'm doing most of the talking, I'm noticing that he's not really

as engaging as I remember our visits to be in the past. I'm thinking maybe he's just overwhelmed with being here. So you know, it doesn't matter. So I said, well, let me ask something that is that he has to give me a more definitive answer, a more explained answer. So we began to talk about music. And I know with music that could usually take us maybe two or three hours on a visit. When I asked him about music, his responses were still yes, no.

And I turned to my cousin and I asked her, I said, is everything okay? What's going on with him? And she said, well, you know, as of late, his memory has been beginning to slip and fade. I knew he had dementia before he left, but this was a bit different. This felt different.

But I didn't want to let the day be dampened. I continued to keep talking and talking. And I noticed he asked me for a cigarette. But at first I didn't really pay it any mind because I thought maybe he just wanted a smoke. And we continued to visit and he asked again. But I knew, I said, my father knows the policy And we continued to visit and he asked again. But I knew, I said, my father knows the policy with cigarettes, if you leave, you cannot come back in

because the visit is terminated. He knows this, I know this. He has been in these visit rooms for 13 years back and forth. But still I said, okay, well, we'll just continue with the visit. And then everything kind of came full circle is when we're still talking and he referred to me as Wayne. Wayne is my brother's name. And I knew in that moment that the guy who was championing my cause from the age of 16, who was in every courtroom and every visit room, didn't know who I was. Crushed because this is the only

one that I knew who was believing in me and would never stop. So as we went on, when he asked for the cigarette again, I told my cousin, I said, you know, allow him to have the cigarette. And she said, are you sure? And I said, yes, I'm sure. I said, with all of the service, I said to myself, with all that he has done, with all that he has sacrificed, just allow him to have the cigarette is not much. I couldn't be so selfish as to just wanna keep him here in the visit room or though that's what I wanted to do. I told him allow him to have his cigarette.

So we ended the visit and as we got up, I embraced him and I just held him. And it was so much I just wanted to convey that words just couldn't express how much I just thanked him and appreciated for him just being a rock for me. I hugged my cousin and I told her, take care of him and watch over him. And I'm watching him leave. And I'm supposed to leave the visit room first, but today I didn't want to leave first. I needed to watch him leave

because it was something in me saying that when he leaves this visit room, you may not see him again. And I could hear the officers in the background calling to me, Burton, Burton. But I just needed to see him leave. So as he left and I went through the other doors and I made my way back down the hallway,

the hallways returned back to their normal drab color. And I got back to the cell and the door closed. And in that moment, when it shut, I knew I was alone. I knew I was by myself. But I knew I had to do something because we started out in a fight together. And it was it was yet to be finished. It was yet to be completed. I laid there that whole evening, just numb, just kind of quiet. My dad died 16 months later. I got paroled four years after. But when I got home, I knew again that only half of this fight was done. Yes, we wanted me

home but it remained. We needed to prove my innocence. I went about trying everything that I could to prove my innocence and finally one day a little over a year ago I'd gotten a phone call about 9 30 at night and it was my attorneys and they told me that the Bronx courts have decided to overturn the conviction. You've been exonerated. The truth had finally come out. I was happy. I was relieved. I'm sad. Happy because I had finally won.

Relieved because I could take a burden off that was not mine to bear. But sad because my guy wasn't here to see through to the end. Finally, in 2019, January 24th, I was exonerated at Brown Bronx courts. And the first thing they asked me, what is it that I wanted to do, I said I wanted to run the New York City Marathon. And I wanted to run it for a few reasons.

One, because the marathon always represented for me a staying of the course. And two, because I wanted to take a victory lap around the city that had taken everything from me. And finally the day the marathon came. And I ran. And when I got about 17, maybe 18 miles in, I was looking across the Willis Avenue bridge, and I saw the Bronx courts,

the same building that had taken everything, my freedoms and everything. I ran past it in a victory lap lap and then back down through Central Park. And as I crossed the finish line, I knew, I said, I didn't just cross this myself. I crossed this with me and my father and for my father. Thank you.

That was Hubertin. Thank you. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] That was Hugh Burton. At the end of his story, Hugh stood looking at the camera on his computer while thousands were watching from their homes. Hugh Burton is an exoneree, marathon runner, writer, producer, public speaker, and advocate for the innocent. Hugh was actually falsely accused and convicted of killing his mother.

This happened when he was only 16 years old. The Moths' Jodi Powell, who directed Hugh's story, sat down to talk with him. I think especially for those who listen to your story or will listen to your story, I think maybe we should just address it. It's about what happened to your story or will listen to your story, I think maybe we should just address it about what happened to your mother. Right, well you know, my dad was in Jamaica visiting his mom, so I left for school that morning and I ended up coming back early that afternoon and I noticed that the master bedroom was ajar and when I went in is when I made the discovery there. That's when everything kind of started to snowball. I was numb from that point. They questioned me and maybe two days later, after they had taken me to my godmother's

house, they picked me up again and said they wanted to ask me the same questions again. I hadn't eaten, I hadn't really slept, because I can only keep seeing in my head what I came in the room to discover. They were saying that they had evidence that I committed the crime. And I mean, this goes on for hours until they finally convinced me that this was the best option for me would be to say that I did this. If not, it was going to be much worse. Knowing nothing about law, never being in any type of police interrogation or

custody or anything like that. I didn't know. And they got me to sign a confession and that set off everything. I tried to speak to people who are around the age that I was when this happened to me. Because I know what those officers did. I know what they played on. And I never want to see anyone have to go through that again. So I speak to let people try to let people know who may not know

what their rights are, what they don't have to do, what they should ask for. The other reason I speak wherever I get a chance to is to let people know what the adults, what the responsible adults did to a 16-year-old child and that they still need to be held accountable for what they did. Holding people accountable is me giving my parents what they deserve. So that's why I speak. And I remember times when I would be hollering at the top of my lungs that I didn't commit this when no one was listening. That was Hubertin.

We at the Moth wish you all strength and resilience during challenging times. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth wish you all strength and resilience during challenging times. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour. Your host this hour was the Moth's senior curatorial producer, Suzanne Rust. The stories were directed by Catherine Burns, Sarah Austin-Giness, and Jodie Powell. The rest of The Moth's directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg

Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Land They See, Christian McBride, and Sonny Rollins. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. We get support from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX.

For more about our podcast, for information on pitching as your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. you