Oral History Interview Transcript
people, sing, black, music, mother, gave, teachers, song, book, night, years, lived, day, speak, Harvard, father, Paul Robeson, class, perpetrators, community.
Laurel: - In our previous conversations, you've described yourself as a fighter. Can you talk about some of the times in your life that you feel have defined your fighting spirit?
Mr. Watson: Yes. Well, it started in middle school. When I went to middle school in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, which is considered to be - they call it “Do or die, Bedford Sty.” Bedford Stuyvesant. So, this is the area where Jay Z and all those people grew up, and I'm older than all of them. But I was in middle school, and - seventh grade - and we were told that NYU - New York University - was coming to do a film on the school. And we were all so excited because that meant that we might get into a good high school. Because as I said to you the last time, in middle school, I read one book during my whole three years of middle school and that was Robert Louis Stevenson's book Kidnapped. I read nothing else because we were in the hall playing, singing Motown songs and teachers didn't care. And, later on, I would find out that those teachers, predominantly white teachers - this was before community engagement, where there was a big battle for community control, uh, of these communities of color - the teachers had these big black law books, I said to you the other day, and I didn't know they were law, but these teachers were also enrolled in full time law school. So, I didn't know that until I was in college. But at the time, they said NYU was coming to do this exposé on the school and I was so excited. And NYU came in and did the exposé. That didn't come out until I was in the ninth grade, or so. And when it came out, it showed kids walking down the hall, singing, [singing and snapping] “can’t hurry love.” And it showed old black women, um, opening their doors, saying, “I haven't checked my mail in three years, I'm scared to open the door, because I'm scared somebody gonna rape me and kill me.” And I was watching this, and this was not my life, living in Bedford Stuyvesant. More significant, watching it, I became afraid of my community that I lived in! And I was like, “This is stupid, why am I - this is not the reality of what I experienced every day.” So, the next day I went to school - this is the fighting - burst into the principal's office - Mr. Swartz - and said, “I'm really offended and outraged that you all would have shown that film and had them to come in and violate us like that. And that you would show me and many of the other students and most of the students are trying to do the best they can. And why would you let them come in and do that?” And he told me, “Come in Larry, sit down.” And it was the first time someone tried to co-opt me. And he said, “Well, we have tickets tomorrow night for a premiere in Manhattan of the movie To Sir with Love." Now I don’t know if y’all are familiar with the movie To Sir with Love-,
Catarina: Oh, yeah- Sidney Poitier!
Mr. Watson: Sidney Poiter’s movie To Sir with Love, where he was a black teacher in England, dealing with wayward white kids in England. And that was going to train our teachers how to deal with us in the ghetto of Brooklyn. So, they took the whole school to this private screening of To Sir with Love. And that was - after the movie came out and people saw the movie around the country. They said, “Oh,” and they gave our black teachers [tickets] to go and see this movie To Sir with Love, like they were going to learn something about what was going on in the ghetto. So, I went to this event, and they had, uh, what I now know and they call hors d'oeuvres, but they're not spelt like that so I was pronouncing it the “stupid” way. How did you say I was pronouncing…carpet deuvo - whatever. Anyway, [laughs] I had never seen something called an hors d'oeuvre, all these little cheese things. And I was just eating these little cheese things and feeling, oh, this is heaven in this beautiful draped room with these big heavy velvet curtains and we saw the movie, To Sir with Love, and it was only about 100 people in the room. Oh my god - and then I thought [tsks], “He thinks some cheese hors d'oeuvres is gonna change my attitude?” I marched right back in his office the next day and cussed him out in my own way and said, “This is unacceptable. We're going to not get into good high schools because people will be afraid of us.” And so that was the first time I fought for something. I remember fighting, I mean, I remember being assertive and aggressive with the principal. I mean, you just didn't - this is sacred! And I really laid him out and said that he demonstrated no leadership by letting the people come to school and exploit us like that. Years later, this last year, someone found the movie. It’s called, Like It Is or The Way It Is from NYU School of Education. And they sent me a copy of it. Because the movie traumatized me all of my life in terms of that experience. So that was my first time I remember fighting [claps for emphasis]. Uh, uh, and then later on, the fight would be ongoing. Because I was constantly being told by teachers and others that I was stupid, I will never amount to anything. When my SAT scores came back, uh, uh, teachers started to talk to me [raises voice to imitate] this way, because they had decided I was mentally retarded, because I got a score that was - they gave me two hundred points to sign up for the exam. And I think I got two hundred over that. So, clearly the quantitative… quantitative tests prove that I was retarded. And so my guidance counselor told me that they were not gonna let me apply to a four-year college, because in this era of affirmative action, “They might just admit you.” And they forbid me to apply, and I snuck and applied, to the school that two weeks ago honored me and brought me back for a concert [SUNY Oswego]. That was a fight. So, I fought through. I was in a special program in high school. And they helped me to know how to fight. We were a high school within a high school. And all of these black and brown kids were in College Discovery. 99% of us graduated from high school.
Catarina: That’s great.
Mr. Watson: 95% of us graduated from college.
Catarina and Laurel: Wow!
Mr. Watson: Deborah Dowling, who was the girl I loved, is now a supreme court judge in New York City for the, uh, appellate division. And I've done the things I've done. So, we went on to be fighters and to fight.
Laurel: That's amazing. I remember last time, we talked, you mentioned there, are kind of like categories. And you said there's 'fighter,' 'change-maker'...Can you describe those one more time?
Mr. Watson: Yeah. Those came from work on diversity. Later on, I would study, and they talked about five categories that we all fall into. The first is 'perpetrators.' We sometimes don't recognize that about 10% - it used to be about 10% - of the population were perpetrators. I mean they were haters, they were racist, sexist, homophobes, ageist, they just were real. Now, when you look at 10% of the American population, that's a lot of damn people. I mean, when you look to your left or to your right, you may have somebody in your presence that falls into that category and is sexist, racist, homophobic, whatever. After the Tangerine Man-Agent Orange [Donald Trump] election, probably more like 20-25% because people came out of the woodworks as being horrible. It shocked many people who were naive enough to believe that those days are over. So, the first category are perpetrators. People need to be aware that there is an evil to be fought. And then after perpetrators, the next category are what we call 'avoiders.' Avoiders say, “Well you know, I don't talk about religion, and I don't talk about politics.” And that's a very irresponsible attitude to take but we accept that, and people to say, “That's off limits.” So, it’s the avoiders who avoid anything that is controversial, anything that challenges them to look at their core values. And then the third category is what we call 'naive offenders.' And this really pisses many people off. This is like, “Oh, uh, what are you? I'm looking at you and, and, uh, are you? Are you? Where are you from?”, “I'm from China.” … “Oh, I always wanted to go to Japan.” It’s that kind of bullshit. Or, “Can I touch your hair?” And all that kind of. And it goes on and on and on - naive offenders. And then after naive offenders becomes 'change agents.' And these are people who work within the system who do dutiful, wonderful things, who served in the Congress, who served in communities. And they really are challenging within the confines of appropriateness, maybe, many times, the way in which you work, within the system, by joining coalitions, doing community work, to make a fundamental change. And then there’s 'fighters.' And fighters will risk it all. Fighters is not about ego, it is about fundamental - we give up jobs, we put jobs on the line, not that we’re some kind of crazy martyrs, but that's who we are. And I think it's important for each of us to know who we are. So, it's the work of many diversity professionals. I can't give the name of an author. But, but, those five categories do kind of… now it doesn't mean you're static, and you're stuck in that category. And one of the powerful things is to be able to give your testimony and say, “I used to be a perpetrator… I was a stone cold, sexist or homophobe or racist. And then through the process of living and education and literacy, I moved from that to being a change agent or a fighter.” You know, or, “I used to, oh, when I look back at how I treated my roommate, who was from the country, and I constantly told country hick jokes and did all that stuff, and just really devalued their humanity.” So, you can move out of different categories - and you can move from being a fighter to being a perpetrator!
Catarina: And now, we also were thinking about, you know, that fighting spirit in the work you do. And so, what inspires you to keep fighting with your activist work and the work that you do?
Mr. Watson: I have no choice. The trauma I experienced as a child in public school, and in my community - I was just laying in the bed this morning… I'm writing this book coming up, I was dreaming about what I'm going to write. And the whole narrative was in my head. And I remember as a child, early trauma that - we lived on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, in Bedford Stuyvesant, and we lived in these tenements. And we had a landlord, a Jewish woman named Miss China, I believe was her name. And she dressed in a fur coat, and her face was horribly ugly, which - remind me to tell you about the coffee! Her, her, her, her, she was so quote, ugly and mean. She was the first 'witch,' in terms of that stereotype, that I had encountered in real life. And she would come to collect the rent every month. And I was a little boy, and my mother would hide in the closet - in the back closet - because she didn't have the rent. Because everything was done on assignment. Mr. Toro, the Puerto Rican man who owned the local store… my mother would go and buy food for us to eat, but she didn't have the money. And he had a ledger. And he'd write down what you owed. At the end of the month, my mother and my father put their coins together and go pay Mr. Toro. And he would let your credit, you know, he - nobody had money! And Miss China would come to the door, I must have been five. [makes 'knocking on door' motion] Boom, boom, boom, boom! And she'd knock on the door. And [whispering] my mother was saying, “go tell her I’m not home,” and my mother would whisper, “go tell her I’m not home.” And my mother would go hide in the closet. I must have been five. And I would go and say, “hi,” and I would open the door and I'd say, “I'm sorry, my mother's not here.” And Miss China would shove me out the way, push me as a kid, pushed me out the way, go in the house, go in the back closet, open the curtain, say, [raised voice] “Give me my rent!” And my mother, so embarrassed and humiliated would say, “We'll have to give it to you next week. We don't have it.” And she would leave speaking in Yiddish - I don't know what she was saying. But it was not flattering. And so those experiences led my response to be - Hell, no, I'm never going to have anybody treat me like Miss China treated my mother. I'm never going to have my mother to come up to the school. And it was not just a matter of racial - I had black teachers who had contempt for us as children in those schools. And you could tell they didn't want to be there, but they had no choice. And so I decided earlier on that I was not going to take it. And I was going to really struggle and challenge it. And I did. And then I got old enough. I was very smart as a young kid, that I would represent my mother and father- we’d go into a grocery store or something, somebody would treat them in a condescending, paternalistic way and I'd speak up as a little eight-year-old, nine-year-old kid, I would go to - oh, excuse me - I would go, “fuck off.” And my mother was like “You got to, you got to learn how to control that.” But I always was that person. But I never did it irresponsibly. I worked with groups, and I always was trying to do things and speak a truth to power that many of my relatives and classmates would say, “You can't do that. You can't say that.” But I never- and so, years later, someone will say to me, probably when I was in college, and it stuck with me. It's like, throughout my life God has worked in such a way - I have a strong sense of God and a strong sense of right and wrong and my ancestors and some voices talking to me. I'm not crazy, but voices speak to me every day. And someone said to me in those voices, or I heard it on TV, “Never take no from someone who never had the power to say yes.” And I've lived by that. And so far, rarely have I been permanently penalized. I may have had some setbacks.
But my sixth-grade teacher, who was my favorite teacher, Miss Dindy [sp.] - I'm telling the total truth to y’all - She was a black woman. She was my favorite teacher, but she abused me, uh, mentally, emotionally, for the whole time. Everybody wanted to be in her class, because she was strict and she would beat students and hit you with the ruler. But you wanted her acceptance - you wanted to meet her standard. And as I look back on it, it's mixed feeling because Miss Dindy was a damn good teacher and I loved Miss Dindy, but Miss Dindy was abusive. And so, Miss Dindy had us in classes. The blue group, the red group, the yellow group, and the green group. And I was always in the yellow group and the yellow group was the slower people who were stupid. And we knew we were stupid. [Getting choked up] We knew we were stupid, oh I'm getting…And uh, Miss Dindy would go around, giving you stickers in terms of what you did. And I had a personality. And so, Miss Dindy would tolerate me. But when she sent the report cards home, she said, “Larry is lazy, he's not doing his work, and I'm gonna leave him back.” And so one day, we were doing a report, and I've got to finely hone this down. She gave us a report to do on the Aztec or the Inca Indians. I don't know which one it was. But whichever one it was, let's say it was the Aztecs. I went home, she called my father at night on the phone. That's in the days when the teachers would call home. And she said, “You know, Larry’s… you know, I'm gonna leave him back to sixth grade,” she said, “because he’s just not performing right.”
And my father was moderately illiterate. He was a brilliant man. But he had no - he was working the plantation so much, and the crops, that he and my mother couldn't go to school and all people during that time, they couldn't go to school. They had to work the crops. And then when the crop season was over, they would go to school for two weeks out of the year, three weeks. So, my father couldn't write very well. He was very verbal, but he couldn't write. And I loved him so. He passed away a week before retirement at Dolly Land - we'll come to that later - and I was saying when he died in the middle of my grief, “What the hell were you negros doing down in Dolly Land?” I just couldn't understand it. You know Dolly Parton has this amusement park down in uh, Gatesville or something like that, uh, Tennessee, and I’m like, “What the fuck are y’all doing down in Dolly Land?” And my mother then said, “Well, you know, we want to go on a vacation, we want to go someplace where they still preserve the negro spirituals, where you're going to eat a good Southern grits and bacon meal. And so, we went to Dolly Land because that's the only place where they do that.” It’s very interesting.
So, at any rate, Miss Dindy called my father and somehow, when we went to do the report, I did the report on the Incas, rather than Aztecs, two different worlds. So, I came in the next day to class with the report, or the next week. And Miss Dindy was going around from the red group to the blue group to the yellow group and the yellow group was always last and she came over to the desk and she asked to see my, my report and I took it out. [Imitates quick breathing] And Miss Dindy started hyperventilating and, and trembling. [Raised voice] “What is this?” I said, “That's my report.” She said, “Are you stupid? Is your father stupid? I spoke to you last night on the phone. Why you do a report on the Incas when it was about to Aztecs, you’re stupid and your,” - in front of the whole class - “And your father's stupid.” And I said, “No, you're stupid. Cuz it would take a stupid teacher to, in front of a kid my age, speak about my father in this way, and speak about me in this way, so you’re the stupid one.” And she said, “No, I'm not stupid. You’re stupid.” I said “No, you're stupid.” And for five minutes me and Miss Dindy, a grown ass woman, went back and forth- “You’re stupid, no, you're stupid.” Well, anyway, I still love Miss Dindy. That's why I understand that battered [woman]…syndrome. And Miss Dindy told me when she was crying and says, you know, “You’re stupid, I’m stupid,” she was crying, and she says, “I swear to God, I swear on my mother's grave, I'm going to leave you back or put you in the dumbest class possible.” And I went home crying and told my mother and father about that. But they knew, if they confronted Miss Dindy I would absolutely get left back. And in those times, those days, getting left back was horrible because you had to open your report card in front of the whole class. So, if you got left back, everybody was jeering and laughing because you'd start breaking down and crying right there in the class because you had not been promoted. See y’all don’t have to deal with no shit like this. And so, my mother and father were like, “Okay, let's just be cool. Because if she leaves him back then we go up there and whoop her ass,” you know, that was like the attitude, that was, that was like their approach! [Laughs].
So, at the end of the year, when they were, they call you up, “Mary Johnson, Bob Roberts, Lawrence Watson,” and I got the envelope, and I opened it up. And I had been placed in 7-26. Now, you all don't know what I mean by that. The smartest class at junior high school, uh, junior high school, uh, thirty-three - That was my neighborhood school I had go to, was 7-1. 7-26, or… 23 I was put in to, was for people who were catatonic, and physically retarded, or mentally retarded, and couldn't even talk, were having, uh, saliva coming out of their mouth. And Miss Dindy had promoted me to 7-23. So, when I went to school, the first day of middle school, I looked around, and everybody was a zombie. And the teacher was a babysitter or a therapist. And the teacher was speaking very articulately to the class. And he mentioned the word, I wish I could remember the word. But he mentioned a word like “hostility” or “belligerence” or something and I said, “Oh, that means blah, blah, blah.” And the teacher [gasps] grabbed me, physically left, the class, took me down to the principal, and said, “He doesn't belong in this class.” So, they took me out of that class. And, and, they put me in 7-10, or something like that. Then we moved! And when you move, you get a new school and a new grade, a new, uh, stratification. And they gave me a reading test in the principal's office, assistant principal's office, and they said, “Oh!” So they put me in a new school in 7-4, I went from 7-23 at that school to 7-4. Then some smart-ass guidance counselor looked at my record, and said, “He shouldn't be at 7-4 - he is reading level is third grade" or some bullshit. And she took me out of 7-4 and put me in 7-9. And I had a nervous breakdown. I completely spazzed out. They had to call my mother from work. My mother came, I was crying, I was hyperventilating. And, and the principal looked at my record… and he put me in 7-7. And then after being in 7-7 for a few months, I was moved back to 7-4. By this point, I had lost a whole year of taking Spanish, you know, you do certain things. And I was disgusted. I gave up on school, all kind of… So I was promoted that year from that to 8-6. And then in the ninth grade, I, uh - seventh, eighth, ninth - I was moved back to 9-C - A-B-C. So they would individualize - you would take an A-algebra and a B-history, and a C-English, you know, they would individualize your schedule. And, uh, then, uh, Mr. Perfishell [sp.], I remember all these people, he was a guidance counselor, saw me in the hall and said, “Larry, come to my office. I've got a special program at Thomas Jefferson High School, I think you'd be good for.” And this was, the word had been put out that for black kids who were really smart, but were not excelling, there was an individualized program called College Discovery. And Mr. Perfishell, uh, recommended me for that program. And then I got out of this loop that I was in. And then I went to Thomas Jefferson High School…Thomas Jefferson, I just made that connection. And, uh, that's when I found myself. So, your original question- it was all of those traumatic experiences. Uh, and Miss Dindy, I wonder, I think she's dead now, but I'm curious as to how I loved her so much and still consider her to be one of my best teachers. She became friends with my parents and me. But she was a tyrant and a horrible woman. When I look back on what she did to you know, the kids.
Catarina: So, I'm, I'm definitely curious, you know, you were just talking about your book. And so, we wanted to talk about that because you're nearing your retirement from Berklee. You said you want to work on this book. So, can you talk about kind of your plans for the future?
Mr. Watson: I decided for the second “real” book I'm going to write, I tried it in many different ways; autobiography, a memoir. I'm going to call the book, now that I've lived long enough, Black Amnesia. And what I'm going to cover in that book is all of the undiscussables and the discussables. I'm going to cover how people seem to have forgotten many things that were pertinent to American history, pertinent to local history. Like I was saying at the event I was honored at, I spoke to one of the TV correspondents from NBC News, he is the anchor on the six o'clock news. And I was saying to him, “You know, black people used to own your station,” he was like, “What?” I said, “Yeah, the station was going bankrupt, Channel 7, regular local news. And these black millionaires and people that were really successful got together, like 15 of them, and they purchased W- whatever it’s called- channel seven. They purchased the TV station." And Henry Hampton, who did Eyes on the Prize if you've seen that piece on civil rights. And he had a group called “Black Side,” he was one of the principal people on that… So, this guy was working for the station as an anchor, he didn't have a goddamn clue that that was the case.
Then, I talked about a woman named Liz Walker, who was the leading news anchor in America almost out of Boston, out of that station. Liz Walker, WBZ TV, WBZ is still on. And Liz, who I love and I knew - I got, I've gotten to know all these people in Boston that I shouldn't as a little ghetto boy from Brooklyn have gotten to be friends with. But that's what singing can do. Because singing, you can sing to Republicans one night you don't know that their Republicans, sing for the Democrats the next night and then leave and go home and you don’t have to deal with any of the bullshit. Liz got pregnant in her 30s and she was not married and all the black ministers attacked her on the national and the local scene, said it was irresponsible of her to get pregnant. And what kind of role model is that to black girls? And I wrote an editorial saying, “When you a multi-millionare you can get pregnant any time you want to, so little black girls need to understand that if you a millionaire…!” Come to find out too, and I know that this is, uh, urban folk lore or whatever, urban legend. Her mother died in childbirth is what I was told, carrying her. So, when she got pregnant, she was going to have this child. But she was vilified. And I will find the guy from WBZ because he loves Liz Walker now because now, she is the pastor of the Roxbury Presbyterian Church. She went back to divinity school, she left the news, a multimillion-dollar job, and went into ministry. Now she's leading as one of the major female ministers in the city. And when she went to the divinity school, she elected to do her internship under the man who attacked her at one of the churches here - Morningstar Baptist Church. He was one of the people being honored last night, but, he… uh, attacked her. And then, a news writer that retired from the Boston Globe - I can’t think of his name... Barnacle, have you ever heard? Mike Barnacle. Mike Barnacle was a white news person. Oh, my memory is doing good. Mike Barnacle - wow, I can't believe I remember - Mike Barnacle wrote this article on Liz Walker's illegitimate, her pregnancy. And this minister that had attacked her, I'm not gonna say his name right now. He wrote about how people in the community were supporting the minister that attacked her. And then he had this old black man say, “I agree with Reverend such and such, she shouldn't have had that baby and she's not married.” And then that next sentence was a black woman saying, “I don't know what y’all are talking about. He got me pregnant in high school, and we live around the corner from the church, and he didn’t even speak to his son when he sees me and his son walking down the street.” Well, it was a scandal. And I went to church this Sunday, and everybody was weeping and crying and I was saying, “What's going on?” And the minister was in the church, he was crying, up in the pulpit speaking. And people said [hushed voice] “look at the Globe, look at the Globe, look at the Globe.” And people wink at me. [Whispers even more quietly] “look at the Globe.” And so anyway, he was dethroned. He was going to be the new president of the NAACP, Boston. He was dethroned. But last night, at this award, he finally, he’s done a lot of good. They brought him back after 30 years, into the spotlight. Uh, but, uh, it was that kind of stuff that makes me write the book, Black Amnesia, because this news person had no idea that… and not to be gossipy, but that's a pertinent part of the history. And there's so many examples of that; in my family, uh, and in the community.
And so the next book, I'm gonna use the concept developed by Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot, Dr. Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot, who was the first black woman to receive tenure at Harvard. She was in the School of Education, and she became a good friend of mine. I'm just astounded. And she has this concept called "portraiture," where I look at your life and the experiences you've had; how you end up doing this piece at Northeastern… And then I look at the policies and… around women's rights, affirmative action, whatever, and how you fit into that, the part of the country you come from. And then I teach history and tell the story based on portraiture - on your portrait, my portrait. So this book, Black Amnesia is gonna be my portrait as I can talk about all of these various things that have transpired during my life. That's why I named my concert - did I send you all link to that concert that I did at Oswego? I named it "The swan," I named it: “American Fruit with African Roots: A Black Swan Song,” a “Black Swan”… I gotta look it up, “The Black Swan Song and An Affirmative Action Baby Tells His Story,” and people were traumatized. “Oh, you're not gonna die,” “We're gonna die one day.” But I called it the “The Swan Song.” Because it was. And so I'm going to put that in the title of this book, the title is going to be Black Amnesia: A Swan Song, an Affirmative Action Baby Sings His Song, to tell all of these pieces that we want to forget. But forgetting it's not healthy. We got to put it in context. So that's what the book's going to be about. It’s going to be a kind of memoir and autobiography. And I've been thinking about a lot of these stories, like the Miss China story I just told you about the landlord, and how she would humiliate my mother and my first exposure to that level of humiliation. Uh, walking down the street as a four-year-old little boy. And you know, you have characters in your head - of a little girl, a little boy, you know, you're playing with yourself, you’re creating these characters, characters, males, and females. And I was walking down the street and I was acting out the parts, and Miss Zep, who lived in the building with my relatives, pulled her window up - I must have been four or five, and says, “Stop prancing down the street like a little faggot.” What did that mean? What was I doing? What was that all about? So now I'm beginning, at seventy, to put all those pieces together; What is manhood? What is being masculine? What is being feminine? Why would she say that to me? What had I done at four or five years old to make her go there? What did that mean? What did it mean that I was a black boy who carried a book bag to school - and I was overweight - and I carried a book bag, and the kids would, would, laugh at me and ridicule me and say he's a sissy carrying a book bag? I was carrying my books to go to school. What was that all about? That you would be bullied and beat up? And the first words that will come out of people's mouth was nigger and faggot. Those were the words we used if you didn't meet a certain kind of prototype. So then, I think back to - I didn't, I wasn't a druggie, I wasn't a football player, and I was big. I wasn't a gang banger. I wasn't any of those things. So, there was a consider - when we talk about black amnesia, I didn’t forget that shit!
I'm gonna write about it and tell those stories for the purpose of trying to connect them in terms of the confusion that we sometimes in the inner-city experience with issues around gender, race, sexuality, uh, class, caste, middle class, underclass, what did it all mean? We were poor - dirt poor - but we were very middle class in our mentality. My mother, father were dignified people. They would take us out at night and put us in the car and just drive to Coney Island, had no money. And we did scrape up enough coins for us to have one ride. And then we come back into the ghetto, hot night, and go to bed, with the rats. Because in our apartment, were rats this big [holds up hands to show size]. And my mother, my aunt, would say “Thelma,” to my mother because my aunt lived downstairs because everybody lived in family buildings, “Well, what are you doing washing clothes last night at two o'clock in the morning?” Well my mother said, “Well, we was out at Coney Island.” The rats would get up on the washing machine and push the button. The only thing I'm afraid of - talking about fighter - I'm a total punk when it comes to a mouse. I will leave this house and to stay in a hotel. I have a phobia because when I was a little boy, I was - my mother's in the bathroom straightening her hair for work the next day. And I was about seven, [raises voice] “Mama, there’s a rat!” And she would say, “Boy, stop that.” And I would laugh, thought it was funny. She said to me, “you keep doing that, one day you’re gonna wake up in the bed, and a rat gonna be in the bed with you.” I remember she’d say that. I went to bed that night… we slept in a convertible couch that pulled out. The living room and became our bedroom at night and my parents slept in that room [motioning in the direction of a different room] with curtains that separated. I don't know how our parents ever had sex, or maybe we just blocked it out. So it was just like this was our bedroom and living room. And that was my parents’ bedroom. [Motioning again] And I'm asleep in the couch to convertible couch. You all know the couch to convertible couch? So you would pull those couches out and you’d sleep [acts out sleeping and itching at arm]… and a mouse fell out. I became Superman. I took one leap to my parents’ bed which was through my dining room where the doors are. Ahhhhhhhhh! I was literally flying in the air. And I remember going [makes wailing sound], “Oh my god, mama, how could you do that to me?” And my father jumped up and ran and closed the couch. And we were screaming, I was screaming and crying, my little brothers were like, “What the hell is going on?” And my father opened the couch back out and a little mouse or mice was dead or was so sick. I guess he crawled up for warmth. I have never gotten over it. I have never, ever gotten over it. Anyway, go ahead.
Laurel: Maybe you could just talk a little bit more about your musical career?
Mr. Watson: As I said, I do highly emotional music. My musical career, as I said I was known in, uh, I always wanted to sing but I was a closet singer. I had grown up in the Black Baptist Church and I listened to Mae Chambers, the minister's daughter sing and I was so intimidated because she was so fabulous. So I owe my whole musical career to Mae Chambers. She's still alive and I've written and said Mae Chambers did that for me. I just would sit in the church. I was eleven years old or ten and I would just weep like a baby listening to her sing. And so, but I never, I'd sing all around the house and people would say, “Would you shut up?” And my mother tells, I was a little boy, they had talent scouts that would come around, and I would have talent scout, they would bring to our house. And I said, “No I'm not singing for you, I only sing for my mother and father. I don’t sing for people.” And I said, “Goodbye.” And I would leave the room. So they never put me into piano lessons, because I was a jerk.
So, when I went to State University in Oswego, in my senior year, I decided to make my way over to the music department. And I made my way over to the music department as a senior, and they all said, "Well, clearly you can't be that good because if you were, we'd know about you." And I think I told you all the last time, in high school when I went to apply to, uh, college, I wanted to apply to music schools. And the guidance counselor, white and black, but the black one was bold. The white one said it in code, but the black one said “We got enough negros singing and dancing, you're not applying to music school. You’re going to become a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, blah, blah. And so, we forbid you to apply to music school.” So I didn’t. So in my fourth year of college at Oswego, I had sung in many talent shows. I had majored in secondary education and history because I was following that plan. And in my senior year, I went to the music department, which is august and credible and the fine art center. And they said, “Well, we don't know you, so you can't be that good.” And so, the night before, or the week before, when I had the audition to come and see them. There was a new black guy on campus in my sophomore year… junior year, because this happened my senior. His name was Ron Granger. And he was like, “Yo, what's up, blah blah blah,” but he played piano. Well Ron Granger, I got together with a white kid who was a good friend of mine who spoke Italian and could play the piano. And we took the book of Italian arias. And the white kid sat and read the music and played a song called Vittoria Mio Core, which is an Italian aria. And Ron was standing over his shoulder, and Ron said, “Yeah, I got it.” And Ron turned around and played the shit by memory after seeing him play it one time. So Ron was going over to the audition with me. So he went to the audition with me to do Vittoria Mio Core. And they were like, “Do you need, let us get you a page turner.” And he said, “Nah I don’t need no page turner. I'm good, I'm good.” And so all of the vocal department was there. And Ron started to play Vittoria Mio Core. He had a serious left hand, which is so inappropriate for European classical music. He was bumping that bass and playing Vittoria Mio and I started to sing, [singing] “Vittoria, Vittoria, Vittoria, vittoria mio cor-" and they was shocked. Because they had no training at all. So, they said, "Well it was too late, your senior year to cultivate your network, but we'll just, we got to let the school hear this." So, they gave me a non-traditional recital. All of the senior voice students had to perform two at a time. And they gave me my own. And I did negro spirituals. I did European classical arias to pay tribute to people like Josephine Baker, and Nina Simone, and Paul Robeson, who were expatriates who went to Europe and sang the European repertoire. I did R&B, I did country. And I had a major recital and Ron Granger played it all. And when the recital was over, the president of the institution came up to Ron and said, “You don't belong here. You need to be someplace where your talent can be cultivated." And they made arrangements for him to go to Howard University. And I got great praise. And I found out just this year that some of my counselors, who were shepherding me through Oswego, said to the music department, "He could be a great opera singer. But, you know, he's gonna do education stuff." And they dissuaded them from grabbing me and tell me to do an extra year, all that bullshit.
So to get to my music throughout undergrad, I didn't sing. When I went to [work at] Auburn prison, I was singing a bit with bands. And then after Auburn prison. I went to Cornell for my graduate work because the brothers say, “You don't know shit about history.” And they introduced me to WB Dubois and other people because I was all, [haughty voice] "Well, the authorities in history…” and I was naming all these white historians and they were like, “Fuck you, sit down.” When I got to Os- when I got to Cornell, Ivy League, all of that stuff. I started singing the Bemogeoni [sp.] choir, which was the black choir on campus. And that led to me taking voice lessons seriously with, a woman by the name of Mrs. Kharpadian [sp.]. And she was the principal soprano for Leonard Bernstein. And so I auditioned for her. She said, “I'm sorry, um, do you read?” “Yes, I read.” Liar, I didn't read shit. So, I got up and I sang a Vittoria Mio Core. The only one I knew, and she took me as a voice student. So the next week, she gave me another aria to sing. And I couldn’t read this shit. And then she said, “Okay now start.” And I start, I start, [sings] And then I would lose her, I couldn’t… And she said, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “I don’t read.” She said, “What!?” But she still kept me as a student. And that's when my music career started. And I was so dumb that when I was singing Vittoria Mio Core in her class with other voice students. There's a part in Vittoria Mio Core, where this patch goes, [sings cadenza]. You do one breath. So, I thought, “Oh, I'm a jazz and black singer. I'm gonna show this class something that they think they know. I'm gonna show ‘em what I can do." So the company started playing and I said, [sings extended cadenza]. And she said, [High-pitched yell] “Stop! What are you doing?” I thought ad lib improvisation - I was gonna take that line and do it twice as long. That's when I learned a very valuable lesson. And she was outraged.
So, anyway, from there I went on while at Cornell to even in Os-, no Cornell, no in my senior year at Oswego I had gotten a band. Uh, and, uh, then when I got in grad school at Cornell, I really got in bands and started to sing. And, and that's how it started. And I sang all over upstate New York. And then by the time I graduated from my graduate program at Cornell, I was a dean at Harvard- Cornell. And I sang throughout the town, and then when I went to, was recruited to Harvard, as a dean at Harvard, but that point I was a seasoned singer. And in my first year at Harvard, I was invited to Australia. Melbourne, Australia. Because Melbourne, Australia was a sister city to Boston. And Mayor Menino was the man. No, no Mayor Flynn, was the mayor at the time. I was invited to go to Melbourne, Australia to sing and represent Boston with a group of three or four other singers. So, then I was off to the races. And then I produced three albums under my company, Save Ourselves Productions. I've sung for President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Desmond Tutu, I sang for Nelson Mandela. I was invited to Africa to sing for him when he became president. I've opened for people like Al Green, I've done, I have bridged the gap. I'm as much of a singer and that's why that book was so significant. They didn't put me in there as an artist. They put me in there as a legend and trailblazer, because I've done education. I've taught at Boston College, Springfield College, Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Been at Cornell, at Harvard, at Berklee College of Music. I've lectured around the country, and I've done what I call "edu-tainment"; to where, whatever I'm doing I am entertaining but teaching at the same time. I've done three recordings, I have three CDs out. And, uh, my music is what I call high emotion music. And I've continued in the tradition, although I'm not him, of Paul Robeson. I don’t know if y’all are familiar with Paul Robeson was, who was one of the greatest bass - So, say I'm a tenor - that the country's ever known. He was at one point in the fifties, considered to be the most important human being, one of the most important human beings on earth, and the most popular American in the world. But he was a victim of the Kevin McCarthy period of, uh, un-American activities, and they took his passport. You have to read about him. And he died of a broken heart. He did [singing], “Ol' man river." That was his big thing he did. He sang opera, he spoke twelve languages. He was a lawyer and a five-star athlete at Rutgers. They wouldn't let him go to Princeton because he was black. And his father was a ex- his grandfather was a slave.
So, I've admired him and tried to, very outspoken, a fighter. And so even though some people be like, “Oh, yeah.” I really tried to be the Paul Robeson in my little place… You know. And then Motown saved my life in high school, when I said, I wasn't I got, carried back to school. Uh, when Motown Records came into existence, I got together with some of my other friends, and we traded albums rather than reefer. And then I sang for Berry Gordy, many years ago here in Ithaca, at Cornell. No, at Harvard, and Martha's Vineyard, because I became the resident. After Harvard got rid of me, they said, “Oh no, we didn't, we had to downsize.” You [Harvard] got rid of me. Charles Ogletree, who was the brilliant legal mind, who defended Anita Hill back in the day, was her lawyer. And he made me a resident artist at the Harvard Law School. And at the Harvard Law School, I sang for three Supreme Court justices, Desmond Tutu, and every major figure in this country, and Berry Gordy on Martha's Vineyard for one of the conferences. And Berry Gordy, who's the founder of Motown Records, which is the most popular record company in the history of American music, founded Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Diana Ross and The Supremes, The Jackson Five, The Temptations, the Four Tops, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and the list goes on. The most successful record company in the history of recorded music. There I was singing for Berry Gordy with my Berklee students backing me up as the band. And when Berry Gordy got up to speak - this is Berry Gordy- this is like, he doesn't do interviews. He's like the black Howard Hughes. He doesn't compliment anybody. He started to talk about me and my students. I'm sorry, but my students walk offstage and I’m saying “lalalalalalala” off stage, and they say, “Professor Watson, listen to what he’s sayin.” “Lalalalalala,” because I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle the compliments he was playing, paying me. And they're online. That stuff is online where he said, “Had we had Larry Watson, at Motown, we would have been even more famous and popular than we are now." I just couldn't believe it. So I don't need another goddamn quote. I don't need nobody to critique my music. Because Berry Gordy critiqued it.
So, musically, I've done songs like, uh, songs that deal with, “How can You Call Yourself a Brother?” When, Anita Hill, the whole thing happened with her and the Supreme Court, I wrote a song called “How Can You Call Yourself a Brother?” which castigated Clarence Thomas. So, I've always tried to write music that really speaks to the rep- my song "Reparations," which I wrote 25 years ago, which has never taken off. I have great promise for that song. I want y’all to help me with that because I want to get it around the country because now it's prime. I've written children's songs that, that were supposed to be the theme song for the, um, for the Marian Wright Edelman, who started the Children's Defense Fund. But then they changed administrations and my song got lost and dropped. This has always happened to me. Um, my song, “Secrets.” When I wrote that song and put it out I had, I think I told you but maybe I didn't. Um, singing at Scullers Nightclub. I just found an old recording of me at Scullers Nightclub. I'm going to put it out. Of the band, it was great recording. And I'm singing this song, “Secrets.” And this woman gets, a black woman in the audience. - Do y'all know Scullers? Scullers was a very popular nightclub at the top of the hotel Doubletree in Cambridge. - And she's holding her hand up in the audience. - It was like the number one room for jazz in Boston, along with, uh, the one in the Charles hotel is the other one. That's uh, I’m not thinking of the name now. - Anyways, she's holding her hand up. I go, “What is that woman doing?” So when we got through singing, we went off stage, she came backstage. And she said, “Mr. Watson, I want to meet you.” - Regatta Bar, that’s the other one, Regatta Bar and Scullers are the two legitimate rooms in Boston, I’ve played both of them. - She said, “I was holding my hand up and walking through the audience. I'm 70 years old. Because this is the first time in my life, I've publicly acknowledged that I was molested by my father from the time I was 11 to the time I was 30. And your song, thank you, helped me to be public with that tonight.” That's the kind of experiences I've had with my music. I don't have any Grammys and that kind of stuff. And I never signed a record deal. But my Grammy, [choking up] I'm gonna get through this… my Grammy was, when my brother was, uh, sentenced to six to twelve years in prison - I was a dean at Harvard - by a black judge. He was in the supreme court in New York, and he looked at my parents. When brother came to court that day, he said to my brother, “You're an embarrassment to the black middle-class community. You come in this courtroom with these letters from your minister and letters from your employer. But you've embarrassed the black community you use everybody. If you admit,” this at sentencing, “If you admit that you did this crime, me and you can work something out.” He was going to try to have my brother to perjure himself or acknowledge perjury at sentencing, which would have given him free rein to put him in jail for 30 years. My brother said, “But I didn't do it.” My brother was a drug addict. [Heavy sigh] And he said, “You're an embarrassment." And he gave my brother six to twelve years to serve time. My mother for years couldn't say the number six, she couldn't even say it. And so, I flew back to Boston, and I was a dean at Harvard. In retrospect, I think I probably got on the bad side of Harvard because they don't understand family and people going home for a trial. You got a job, you’re at Harvard, that kind of thing. Anyway, that night, I went to a nightclub in Cambridge where I had to sing. And I was singing in the middle of the set, I said, “I have to say something to you all as an audience.” I said, “All of us have worth, all of our lives have meaning, and don't you ever let anybody put you down because of your particular circumstances.” I said, “My brother's a drug addict. And he was sentenced to six to twelve years this year, uh, today, because he had letters that affirmed that he was a good person, but he had a medical condition. He was a drug addict. And instead, he was seen as an embarrassment to the black community.” And in the middle of telling the story and saying, “I'm gonna sing this song for you now called, 'There's a Winner in You,' that no matter who-," This woman got up, knocked all the chairs down, disrupted the whole club and stormed out. And I remembered that. So I kept, I sang the song. Six months later, I was rebooked to the club. And I came back to the club. And this man was in the audience and he came to me at the end of the concert, and said, “Mr. Watson, can I speak you? Please? After.” I said, “Just give me a moment. I got to help the musicians get the equipment out to their cars.” So I was talking to people and getting the equipment out to their cars and he was still standing there humbly. And I said, “Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot about you,” I said, “You wanted to speak to me?” And he says, “Yes. I wanted to tell you that I came to see you six months ago. And you sang this song, you introduced it and said your brother had been incarcerated had been sentenced to six to twelve years, that day." He said, "You remember that a woman got up and broke her way out of the hall?” I said, “Yeah, that was something. What was that about? He said, “That woman, the next day, put her children… in child custody. And she went into rehab and she got clean. And I want to thank you because now we are married. We are a family…and your comments that night gave her the courage to do that.” That happened twenty-something years ago, I can never tell that story without getting like this [tearing up] because you then recognize you saved a life with your music. You being a nobody, not having the Grammys, or not having the exposure. And I don't know that man's name, I don't know where he is today. But those have been some of the joyous times I've had, uh, doing the music at the Harvard Law School. When I sang for the first young man killed in Florida, oh what was his name? By that fool, who, he had, uh, candy in his pocket. What is the young black boys name that was gunned down by, uh, and the man got off and didn't serve any time in prison. Anyway, I sung for his mother and dedicated songs of mine to, to him. And she said, “You don't know what this has done for me, thank you.” Several years ago, I have a song called “Half Empty Glass,” on my CD. And I did it with a very famous singer named Táta Vega, who was the voice in the movie for the movie, you ever saw the movie Color Purple. She was one singing, “Oh, sister, you’re doing me wrong.” My voice is gone. But this woman who I knew who worked down at the African Meeting House, have y’all visited there? She was one of the security guards, one of the policemen and they, they come out of a special unit the people in arms who they take care of. And she, I heard that her son was murdered, shot down by a random person, her only child. And she asked me to sing at the funeral, but I couldn't because I had some other, I was out of town or something. So, uh, six months later, I sang for a man named Horace Selden who has since passed away. And Horace runs an organization called Community Change, which is founded by whites who really are anti-racist advocates. And Howard Selden worked with Dr. King, a white guy, and he was very close to me. And so I was singing at Horace Shelton's retirement I think it was, or maybe it was his memorial service, I don't know. And I sang, the song, “Half Empty Glass,” that I would have sung at her son's funeral. And she came up to me and said, “Now I can rest, and now I can grieve, after you've sung that song, I've been holding it in for the whole year, but you gave me release, thank you.” So, I have those stories. Um, excuse me. But, uh, I hope I'm gonna be around a long time because this last two weeks, uh month, it's been all of this stuff that people have been asking me about my life and award ceremony the other night, so it's been heavy duty. [Laughs] And then the Oswego concert, and going back to State University College of Oswego, little small town in upstate New York and seeing, I think I said to you all, my picture in every place around the town. It's just been a lot. So anyway, that, that is my music, and I hope you'll listen I have three CDs out. And they're important songs not because their mine, but because they speak to… I wrote a song for Professor Charles overturning the definitive Anita Hill, called “The Tree.” He now has full Alzheimer’s. And that song is brought joy to so many people. I've written a song called “Kings and Queens,” about my parents and your parents and all of our parents. And the lyric says, “all my life, I've maintained my integrity and it's cost me a job, some friends and scars you'll never see. But the sacrifice was worth it, I've got the victory. Each of us must really believe we're a part of a legacy. We come from a line of kings and queens. Nothing," uh, "can," uh, "No one can," uh, "our dignity" – Nope - "No one can fuck with our dignity." I don’t know what the word is, some songwriters forget their own lyrics. "We come from a powerful breed, people died so we'd be free. How can you buck dance and cheese? The saints are looking at you, stop playing the buffoon. There's a generation with, with incentive, looking at you for direction. We're all a part of this great legacy. We come from a lot of kings and queens. Nothing is worth your dignity.” So, I've done these songs and these major events. And these are all original songs. People that just praised me for these songs. So, it's very frustrating for me as an artist, not to have them to have greater exposure. It's not an ego thing. It's like-,
Catarina: It's a message.
Mr. Watson: It's a message and the music is a balm, b-a-l-m, and that's been the tradition of black music from its very inception...So this a wrap up. I have my own TV show on WGBH, that’s a public broadcasting station, you know WGBH. And it was a show that you could see online, it was called Sing that Thing, it was a take-off on American Idol but only for choral singers. And so, we would judge these choirs and the reason I was chosen is because I produced a show at Cornell for the honorary doctorate concert for Mr. Harry Belafonte. A white guy was an executive producer at GBH saw that show I did, which is an incredible show, that I did. Berklee considers it to be one of the best concerts in the last 30 years at, at Berklee. The president and everybody were crying, and we honored Harry Belafonte and gave him an honorary doctorate. And I, was, uh, the facilitator to give to President Roger Brown. If it wasn’t for President Roger Brown at Harvard, uh at Berklee I would have never gotten a full time professorship at Berklee because I was a fighter. And Roger Brown came, this new president, and pushed him through. And so I give him credit for that. And so, I got this, this job, Sing that Thing. And I was a judge on the show and I was, this is, once again, when you get older, you just tell the truth - I was excellent. And the public was writing in fan letters, but some public were pissed because when I had a group of old white ladies get up and sing, uh, decide that they were going to do a negro spiritual, uh, um, and they were doing it like this [smiling and high pitched] with sequin gowns on. I said, “Well, you know, that’s a very interesting interpretation but you need to do a little more research on the content of that song," uh, when it was uh, [singing, imitating] “I’m gonna lay down my burdens, down by the riverside.” They were like this. [Cheery and smiling] and I said, “You may want to look at what that lyric is saying, what burdens mean to the people who were the ones that offered the song.” And they were older white women, they understood, they were like “Oh.” Well, many people, black and others, felt that I shouldn’t have done that. Why not? I was saying to them, “You need to consider your interpretation of the song.”
Anyway, I was bringing my mother up here to be, uh, tested for Alzheimer’s and I had been out all day at the doctor, and I noticed that I had not heard from GBH and the next season of taping. And you know they tape the whole season in one day, or two days, so you have to bring your clothes, and you change clothes, or you wear the same clothes. And they tape the whole twelve episodes, twelve weeks, or eight weeks or whatever, right, so you tape the whole week in periods so they give you the dates well in advance because there can be no mess ups. So I didn’t hear from them about the dates for the next season, I did two seasons, and I knew that I was, the show was going, so the producer calls me and she says, “Oh, hi, Larry,” my mother’s sitting in the room, I got it on voice, speaker phone and I say, “Hey, I haven’t heard from you all about the dates of when we’re going to tape" and she says, “Yeah,” uh, she said, “Yeah, I have to talk to you about that,” and I say, “Yeah, I’m here with my mom, we just came for the doctor, uh, she had to be tested by the psychologist for dementia/Alzheimer’s.” And she said, “Yeah, my mother died from Alzheimer’s,” she said, “So, yeah, that’s a rough thing.” My mother’s sitting right here hearing this and it’s on speaker. So, she says, “Well, uh, we’ve got some major cutbacks for the show. And they now want me to count pencils and dah, dah, dah, so we going to have to cut back so we’ve decided that we are going to cut out the master of ceremony, we don’t need him,” he was black, “we don’t need him to do that, and we are going to be shooting with one camera rather than three. So that means we’re not going to invite you back because we are going to give him your job. We’re going to take the master of ceremony and make him one of the judges and cut his job up, but we can’t have…” she said, “Besides,” this is the line, this is the, this is the closing of whatever you call it, “we couldn’t have two black men on the show at the same time anyway.” This is what the producer says to me. I said, “Okay, well I’ll get back to you.” And I’m shuddered, I’m, I’m, I’m overwhelmed, I’m just overwhelmed. So, I write her a letter that night, after I’ve composed myself and I say, “I was completely dumbfounded at what you said to me. You could have just left it like 'We have budget cuts so we can’t have you back.' What prompted you to have to say to me, 'and besides, comma, we couldn’t have two black men on the show at the same time anyway.'” I said, “I watch TV all the time, I see all kinds of doubled up white men on the show at the same time. And plus, you don’t have that many black people working at GBH anyway.” So, and so I wrote. So she called me and said, “Oh, you misunderstood what I meant to say." I said, “Misunderstood? That’s what you said. You said, 'Besides, comma, uh, uh, we can’t have two black men on the show at the same time anyway.'” So I said, in another letter, I said, “I want to meet with the CEO of the company and have him to tell me that.” She said, “Well we’ll have you meet with the vice president for community affairs,” and I said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not meeting with the vice president of community affairs, I’m meeting with the CEO of the company, I want him to articulate that to me.” So, she starts crying, she gets all bent out of shape, and I, I basically hang up. I get a call and she says, "Well they’re not going to meet with you, that’s not going to happen.” I said, “Okay, well then I’ll just go to the New York Times and the Globe, and some others." And I get a call back a half an hour later, going, “He’ll meet with you this week.” So, they call a meeting, and they have all kind of people in the meeting, and my friends saying, “Did you get her on tape saying that?” I said, “No she said it!” “Then she’s going to lie, she’s never going to say she said that, and you can just forget it.” So, I go into the meeting, she’s sitting there and there are like 15-20 people, and I start to tell the story and I say, “I’m disappointed, I’m shamed that you would, uh, say that to me in this setting, uh, particularly looking at WGBH track record and the people you’ve hired.” So, uh, I turned to her, and I said, “So now I’ll hear your explanation.” And she says, “I said it. I didn’t mean it in that way.” So, people were shocked that she, but I give her credit for saying it. She told the truth. So, I’m paraphrasing here, quickly, and so I said to them, “This is shameful, this is GBH, you’re same station that did Eyes on the Prize on Civil Rights, I was so happy to be in the audience for opening night when I sang for the opening, and here I had to have somebody to tell me, uh, that you couldn’t have two black men on the show at the same time." Anyway, so the CEO apologizes, said it was short-sighted, said it wasn’t meant in that way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they talked it through and so I say, “Well I want redress. You need to do something to make me whole again.” He says, “Uh, I don’t know what you mean.” I said, “Well, since I’ve come forward, I will be punished if I’m leaving this show with no alternatives. You have guest spots all the time, you have guest appearances, you need to do something to show that this is a win-win situation, and I don’t have to just go off and have to bear this burden and think about this.” “Well, you know, Larry, we plan five years in advance or so,” I said, “Well, you have guest spots all the time, I’m sure you can work it out. And so I’m going to leave the meeting now and give you a chance to talk amongst yourselves and then you get back to me and I’ll get back in touch with you in two weeks." Okay, I leave. I get nothing. So, I write them. I said, “People are asking me, ‘why was I let go?’ And I’m not sure what to say. So could you send me a script of what I should say when people ask me ‘why did I leave the show?’” So, he writes back and says, “I’m sure you will figure out what to say, I’m deeply sorry about this, we cherished you while you were here, blah, blah, blah” and it ends then. So, I say to my students in class because I’m constantly teaching, and I say to you too - what would you have done if that had happened to you? [Pauses]. And they do just what you’re doing right now, they pause for a moment. And I ask you both, what would you have done, what would be your course of action? So, some students said, “I can’t even imagine that happening to me.” The other students say, “Uh, it wouldn’t happen to me because I’m white.” And other students say, “I would have said, ‘fuck off you fuckin' bitch” and they go that route. And then other students say, “I just would have cried,” others say, “I would have hired a lawyer” and other students say, “I would have written letters to all of the…” and I say, “Do you know how much a lawyer costs? It's $350 an hour and this would take many hours and plus I don’t have a necessary smoking gun. Yeah, she said it but so what?" Like they said, “Yeah she said it,” and she said, “Yeah I said it.” I said, “So I am going to use it as a teachable moment.” That’s why I’m asking you all, what would you have done. So you can begin to think what I experience every day of my life. For you at the crossroads. I said, the reason I wouldn’t file with a discriminatory group because now we have Tangerine Man Agent Orange in the White House and civil rights, uh, started under Trump, no, under Bush to be cut, so now the most you can receive in an award is $350,000, something like that, and by the time you pay doctor bills and all the other shit you did, and then your life is fucked up, you have $70,000, or 50 after six years have been taken out of your life and you run around, walk around, like a fool with a satchel case of memos and shit. No, I’m going to live the quality of my life and walk away but I want you all to tell me what you would have done. And it is that moment.
So, I used it at GBH as a teachable moment. At the awards ceremony the other night, I said, if they let me get up and speak, because I’m waiting for that public moment with the press - because GBH is liberal city. But it didn’t happen. But what did happen, is the head African American news correspondent producer form the show was there. “Larry, how are you, so good to see you.” “Oh, it’s good to see you too,” I said, “I haven’t seen you since I left GBH.” He said, “Yeah, we haven’t talked.” I said, “Oh one day I gotta tell you a story about that,” he said, “Really what?” And I tell him. And he says, “Oh. huh,” and he left and his smile changes and he walks away. Because nobody wants, they have amnesia. He knew what happened. But that takes away from his status of being celebrated, of being at this event. To know that that went on, that went on under your umbrella. So, the culmination is the fight continues and we have to make a decision in our lives of whether we’re going to be, as the first graduate from Harvard law, uh, school said, and his name, uh, I’ll tell you in a minute. He said, “You’re either going to be a parasite in this life, or a social engineer.” And I chose to be a social engineer and not a parasite. And so, you choose your battles. Charles Hamilton Houston said, “In this life, you decide whether you’re going to be a parasite or a social engineer.” And everybody has to make their own choice. I made my choice that in this process, this life, I’m going to be the consummate teacher, going back to the scene of the crime, to correct what Miss Dindy did to me, and what those teachers that were full time in law school did to me in junior high school. And what I have experienced along the way, I’m not going to be bitter. And that’s the concluding. I still, when my neighbor next door, a white boy - I said white boy too quickly, I wanted to tell you - told me, as a veteran, that he was an alcoholic at one point in his life and he got into a altercation leaving a club with some policeman and they grabbed him and just treated him like they treat black men most of the time. He said, “You don’t need to treat me like that, you don’t need to.” And they then accused him of hitting one of them, of attacking them. He went through trials and the other day he saw me and he came out and knocked on my window, and said, “Larry, I’ve lost all of my appeals. I have to report to jail." And I couldn’t move, because this usually happens to black boys. But it happens to white boys too. "So if they come for me tonight and you say nothing and you do nothing, they gon’ come for your ass in the morning." So now he had to leave his wife, he said, “Please watch out for my wife.” I think about you [Catarina], you and your husband, I think about it while I tell the story. And she’s a wonderful young woman with two dogs, three dogs. And he’s gone to jail in Virginia. Virginia. The same state that when the Lovings got married - a black woman and a white man and had three kids - they put them in prison because they said they had violated the bestiality laws. Do you all know this story? And there’s a movie on them called The Lovings and it took Robert Kennedy who took it all to the Supreme Court. There are good white folks and people who worked on behalf of all disgruntled, uh, disenfranchised people. And so when I say to you all as I sit and talk and I said to you the other week when you came here. I was shocked you were white women, I thought, they so freely came out to Dorchester and there was no drama on the phone. And I thought, “Oh my goodness,” but I was open because I have not let this stuff make me bitter and make me angry and so I think that that is the closing piece. And I, for two days, I couldn’t talk, thinking about oh my god he’s got to go to jail for six months. But, my brother went to jail for six years, because he was a drug addict. So, anyway, does that help?
Laurel: Yes!
Catarina: Yeah, it’s all been very enlightening.
Laurel: Yeah.
Catarina: Yeah, and we appreciate your willingness to share with us.
Mr. Watson: Well, you know, when you get this age, you gotta tell the truth because the truth will set you free. And I’m trying to be as free as I can be and hope that I have many more years on this earth to do some of the things I want to get done.