In Black America; Dear Kamala: Women Write To The New VP, with Peggy Brooks-Bertram, Part I

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. In my age bracket, really, they don't know what they're missing, they may think they're okay, but there's a whole world out there. So I put out a call for letters, but I feel letters, and I had no idea that the whole world wouldn't spawn. 11 countries, five continents, all of the islands, Canada, black women who were ex-patriots, who had left the United States forever, all over Europe responded. Women's near the hometown of Kamala Harris' mother responded. It was absolutely incredible, and I was like walking around every day saying, oh no, oh my goodness, oh my goodness! It was wonderful, it was wonderful, and then a group of girls got some California favorite letters, and oh my goodness, the subject matters of the letters were breathtaking.

The young girl, 15, you don't want to come to make sure she did something about the wildfires in California. Dr. Peggy Brooks, Bertram, author, educator, social historian, and community activist, president and co-founder of the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women Inc. An author of Dear Kamala, women right to the new vice president, published by Red Lightning Books. As the first woman of color elected as vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris broke down barriers and made history. Energizing a lot of women who have something to say. Seeing a woman who looked like them, I can find the second most powerful offers in the free world, women from Africa to California, Canada to Florida began writing to the new vice president. In a book, Bertram shares generational thoughts, concerns, and feelings written to vice president Harris.

The letters have also been described as a call to action, with those who will be at the vice president side through the next four years. I'm John L. Hanson Jr., and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Dear Kamala, women right to the new vice president, with author Dr. Peggy Brooks, Bertram, In Black America. Well, it's very interesting because if you look outside of the United States, like in Nepal or India, the women that wrote to me and talked to me personally, and then became part of my Facebook group and got their families involved, it was stunning the way they did that. These young people wanted me to know that this was so important to them. It was one of the most important things that ever happened to them in their lives, and they wanted to make sure that I knew that and that people in their communities knew that. At the same time, there was another group of people that I didn't hear from, and I thought that I'd hear a lot from young African American women in particular.

It turned out that there's a large LGBT community that I thought I would hear from. When Senator Kamala Harris was chosen by President Joe Biden on August 11, 2020, to be his running mate as vice president, another glass ceiling was broken. Harris will become the first African American, the first Asian American, and the third woman to epic as the vice presidential nominee for Major Party ticket. On that day, Dr. Peggy Brooks Burgeon began working on her latest project, Dear Kamala, Women Right to the New Vice President. The book is a dynamic compilation of 120 heartfelt and emotionally moving letters to America's first African American and woman vice president. Burgeon bridges the gap, bringing women of all ages, races, and nations who are living at different points in their lives, having had very different experiences together in one book telling their stories letter by letter. Recently in Black America, spoke with Dr. Peggy Brooks Burgeon regarding its amazing collection of thoughts.

I'm going to tell you that when we were trying to get the book together, I slept very, very, very little. I was really struck with the fact that because of social media, people do a lot less sleeping. They think it's okay to send you a message of four o'clock in the morning. And if somebody who would have taken the time to get dressed up, put on the full-fledged makeup and their wig and whatever else, and they're ready to rubble in four o'clock. And I'm saying like, what? And they had made a video. So, your first book was on Michelle Obama. So, what led you to one take on that project and then I want to talk to you about what you wrote in the introduction. But first of all, what led you to take on the first project with First Lady Michelle Obama?

First of all, that was a historic occasion. I mean, she came with the package with Barack Obama. I mean, it was like killing two birds with one stone. Here was a black man who was going to be the president of the United States and his black wife. And the most thing that the women noted in that book was, and she's not life-skinned. She's black like me. Oh, excuse me. But for sure, it was quite an undertaking. But it was a historic occasion. And that's what really drove me and a colleague of mine to press forward. And remember now the social media platforms were unheard of at the time. Right. Right. And so, I have little recollection of how we sprung the round and tried to get people women all across the country in Africa to send letters. And they did. And I know we were on the internet day and night doing that, but nothing like the social media today.

I understand. I found it interesting when I read your introduction and you talked about the power of writing letters. Yeah. As men of historical attribute of African American women, speak to us about that because I'm quite sure a lot of people don't understand that particular thought. Well, you know, I think that for me, I could only see me, I spoke for my own background because my mother whose parents and grandparents had been slaves. She wrote letters and she wrote letters to me and my sisters all the time. And the way she wrote the letter is that she would write a letter. Sometimes it was in the form of a poem and stick it in the frame of a mirror. So you couldn't miss it because everybody would stop at the mirror. And she'd leave a letter there and say, talk to us about various things. That was my first experience with, you know, was letter writing and the meaning of letter writing. And then as I did a lot of work and research on various areas of history, I came across so many women.

And they had left messages, you know, they've written letters to one another and to other people and to present to the United States. They had written letters and they left them and they left them in their own handwriting. And I was taken at how special it was to, you know, to look at someone's actual handwriting and to read what it was they have. And then they have find those letters, some of them 100 years old. You know, so that's really what got me started with this notion of, you know, letter writing. What led you to obtain a degree in political science? Well, God, I mean, like that feels like that takes me back to the ice age. Gee, well, it was, it was very interesting. Okay. And this is the truth of it, you know, one of my big problems these days is telling the truth. And the truth of the matter is that I had gotten accepted in an old girl's women's college in Baltimore, Maryland.

And I got accepted to the efforts of some political people that I had worked for. And also because of a white woman, a wonderful person, Jewish lady, who hired me many years ago when I was maybe 20. And, and I hired me as administrative assistant. And then one day she called me and she said, listen, say, yeah, I love you, dearly, but I need to give you a job to a relative of mine. And, but I do think you should be in college. And I was saying college, you know, like I had never planned to go to college. You know, nobody else in my family had done it. I wasn't thinking about it. And I said, oh, my God, you know, one of my mother said that I lost my job. She says, well, don't worry. She said, I think you should be in college anyhow. So she picked up the phone and she called a dean at the college and said, listen, I have a young lady in front of me. And I have to take your job and give it to my relative. But I think we should find a way to find a spot for her at the college. And she says, okay, great. So Monday morning, you'll go there and you'll be admitted as a student there.

And, and then you can take it from there because you ought to be in college anyhow. And I thought, oh, okay, let me just see what this is about. No, I'm serious. And so that Monday, you know, I went, you know, not knowing what I would have to go through and whatever. So when I got there, they had me signed up ready to go for the next four years. And it was really quite an experience. And that's where I graduated from. But when I was asked to choose a major, I didn't know what to think because I hadn't thought about anything like that. And, but I knew I had liked the theater. And, and I said, okay, so they had a huge theater department. And so I said, okay, you know, I'll major in the theater, whatever that means. And, and there was an interesting man who was in charge of the theater. And when he saw me, he says, oh, God, a black person. I have to tell you the truth, darling. You need to choose another department because I won't be able to select any place that you could possibly appear in. I said, okay.

What else? So I went to, I was told to go and talk to somebody in political science because they might be interested in taking on someone like me. So I go over to the political science department. And the guy said, you know, I'll never forget his name, Dr. Jared Cooperman. And he said, well, what, what, what kind of thing are you interested in? And I said, I'm just interested in how does all of this work? How do you get to be president of the United States, for example? Oh, you're right. Great. You want to be in political science. And that's all I got in political science. Now, from political science, you went on to earn a doctorate and, and matters in doctorate in hygiene and public health. So how did that maturation take place? Well, I tell you that the person, while I was at the college, the in political science, the politicians in Maryland would come to the college to seek young people to work in their offices to do various kind of work. And, and so I was selected to work in the office of Senator Paul Sardines before he was a senator. And so I worked in all of his campaigns and of the whole time I went to college and that made it gave me a job.

And then when he became the congressman, he won on a Friday night in Saturday night. He came Saturday morning. He came to my house and says, I have a job for you in in Washington working with my staff. But my colleague at Hopkins told me not to give you that job because he thought that it would stop you in your tracks academically. So he told me to tell you to come see him on Monday about coming to Johns Hopkins in public health. And I said, oh, God, I never thought about public health. Well, you know, think about their things to do. And I think it's like urban affairs. And so I went there and they said, okay, you know, he's your scholarship for two years. And I did some very interesting things in health, looking at hypertension, adolescent sexual behavior, and I had a chance to look across the spectrum. And I lived down almost down the street from Hopkins. You know, in fact, I had always lived in the shadow of Hopkins in the East Baltimore area. And so I did a pH MPH there. And then one day I was walking down the street in the chair of the Department of Public Health said, hey, somebody told me to contact you that you did really well in public health.

And so I got one more spot in the doctoral public health program and comes checked talking to me on Monday morning. And that's what I did. And that's how I went on the PhD program. I was screaming all the way saying, no, I don't want to go to school anymore. I've had it. I'm sick of it. Oh, no, no, this will be perfect for you. So that's all I got into the PhD program. Now obviously you had time on your hand and one doctor was enough. So you had to have matching bookends. No, listen, nobody has ever said matching bookends, but they do call me double doc. So what is the American studies come from? Well, that's when I got the Buffalo. Okay. Well, has this problem in terms of dealing with the African Americans, but I still love it. But my camera couldn't find a job. Really? Nope. And so I did various kinds of things here. A lot of community work with public education on my own.

I wrote some children's poetry books and fell in love with the life of a woman by the name of your civil dungeon Houston, who accidentally ran into her family and a man who knew about her. And so I actually spent the last 20 years researching, writing a biography of her, finding writings that she'd written and publishing them and talking about her everywhere. And I can continue to do that. And I worked with the school board and got involved in a whole bunch of things and did a lot of stuff that I wanted to do. So my background is really eclectic. And I never, because nobody in my family did and we weren't educated to think that way. Nobody said go out and prepare yourself for a career. So I, you know, I did what I like to do and what I could do best. And I did good standing in front of people talking about things and, you know, pulling programs together.

And doing research and once I realized that if there was something to be found about something, I could find a way to find it. And so I absolutely, you know, love doing that. And I wrote children's books and did a number of things. And so this is just part and parcel of it. And once I couldn't, once I felt that I wasn't going to get an opportunity to fit into the heavily structured academic frameworks and what have you, I didn't push it. I mean, even though I've taught at the school of medicine here at UV, but I was the person that would be called in to teach a special course. But I was never a tenure track kind of person. You know, I wasn't going to be in a university for six years waiting for somebody to say that some research that I had was okay. That just never was going to suit me. So things just sort of kind of happened to me and I kind of rolled along with it. And if somebody would say, well, do you wish you had done it differently?

I don't know if I would have known how to do it differently. I wasn't a person that could stay in lockstep with, you know, you got to do this first and you got to do this second. I wasn't a person that could do that. So I just did what I could do. And so it was this eclectic career, you know, and I written some writing because I was very interested in the health of black women, especially mental health. So I've written about African American women in depression and other kinds of illnesses. And, you know, so that's how come I, I look like a very strange character. He collected, he collected is an understatement. I mean, the things that you've accomplished thus far is it's short of amazing, but I am, I am truly impressed. Let's talk about this current project, dear Kamala, women right to the new vice president.

This was a no brainer after Dimash El. Hey, this is a no brainer. But even in between that, about 2012, I did another book of letters for the first black woman who was the superintendent in the Buffalo Public School. And it was, you know, writing to her and letting people who students, I interviewed students. And I had a really quite a different experience because there were a group of young people who were basically incarcerated in juvenile holding center. I didn't even know the place existed. But there was a project in Buffalo, which is across the country now called Say Yes to Education. And I made a proposal to them that since we now had this new superintendent, we needed to ask people in Buffalo, especially students, what they thought about it. So I said, why don't I do a book of letters for you? And that's what I did. And I was fascinated with it because it was the first time in my life I had been in a juvenile facility where young children were kept.

And to look at how they lived under lock and key and under the watch or eye of guards in a huge building, you know, it's maybe something I'll return to later. But I was really dumbfounded to go and talk to children who were under lock and key and get them to write letters. Some of them were so talented. They had some kind of problem. One of the problems was that they were locked up. And so I would go and deal with them and they'd look at me kind of curiously like, who are you and what are you? What are you trying to do with? It was really quite an experience. And just raising that question again took me back to that space, which was really quite something. And then that was followed by this book, Diacomalaw. You know, and I was still I said, oh, another historic occasion. Let's go take it.

So when you put out the car for for letters, was it overwhelmed me? It was incredible because now, look, if you if you ever want to do something like this, you need a friend who would like it. I bet you do. You need a friend who likes you and there was a friend lurking out there in the bushes who liked me and who wanted to be a part of this journey. And so there's a wonderful opportunity. Her name was Jennifer Parker. And she owns a mass media company called Jennifer Parker activity, something like the Jay Parker. And she is a media expert. So she taught me things that I don't want to know. I'm telling you I she dragged me through social media, the bowels of social media. And I cried and protested all the way.

And but she introduced me to things I wasn't using because I came up in a different era. I'm telling you she introduced me to Facebook, Instagram, clubhouse, you name it was just incredible. And you get to see that. And I think that women in my age bracket really they don't know what they're missing. They may think they're okay, but there's a whole world out there. So I put out a call for letters for a few letters. And I had no idea that the whole world would respond 11 countries. Five continents, all of the islands, Canada, black women who were ex-patriots who had left the United States forever all over Europe responded. Women near the hometown of Kamala Harris's mother. It was fun. It was absolutely incredible.

And I was like walking around every day saying, oh no, oh my goodness, oh my goodness. And it was wonderful, it was wonderful. And then a group of girl scouts from California, they wrote letters. And oh my goodness, the subject matters of the letters were breathtaking. The young girl, 15, you know, wanted Kamala to make sure she did something about the wildfires in California. And they cried about the fact that the white polar bears were losing their ice flows and couldn't see the baby seals. And they asked Kamala Harris to go back to the Paris Accord so that we could get the climate fix. It was breathtaking. Now I knew it had to be an arduous task of, wouldn't it down? You got 100 of all of these letters from all these women from different backgrounds and different ethnicities of presenting what you thought was the best of the best. Well, the reality of it is that it actually was 120 letters. And very few, if any, were very few were rejected. But the people for the most part, the vast majority of people wrote.

And I, if I had a problem with any of them, I called them back. And I talked with people. I mean, it was quite thrilling to talk to a black woman in Sweden who had a black woman's democratic party for Kamala in Sweden. And it was just wonderful. So I could talk to people and say, did you mean to say this? I read your letter. I wasn't quite clear on what you were trying to point you were trying to make. Did you want to clear it up any, you know? And so people were just stunned at that. They were feeling like goodness. Oh, goodness. I can fix it. I said, yeah. But you got to fix it now. So we, it was a matter of days. And the Indiana University press said that they got this book out in two months. And it usually takes 18 months to give a book out. So in two months, you know, there was very little sleep. And there was a lot of talk. And there were a lot of people trying to explain themselves. But for the most part, people did wonderful. But it was almost like people had forgotten how to write a letter.

What should I say? People would say, I think you don't be kidding me. You don't be kidding me. You got something to say. What you've been worried about what you've been thinking about. Talk to this system about what we're talking about here. And so it meant that I got a chance to talk to all these people. And it was really breathtaking. Were there any clean next moments? All the time. All the time. I mean, it's like, oh, let me tell you a clean next moment for me. A wonderful woman by the name of Sandy White and Buffalo. Sandy said, well, I don't know what I'm talking about. I said, look, you guys worked that out. But there's an opportunity here, but you worked it out. So she decided to write about her father who had had Alzheimer's. And she said, well, I got to a certain point in the letter. And I'm not sure where I can go with this. She said, but I said, well, what did he used to do? She said, he used to be a musician, played a clarinet, I believe. I said, and so does he still do that? She said, no, he just stopped.

I said, well, why don't you write about the data music stop? And she said, oh, oh, my goodness. Talk about that. Tell people about how hard, how terrible Alzheimer's is. And give the example of the data music stopped. And that's when Sandy began to write. And so these things, their letters drew me in. And my daughter was blessed. So she's really quite a character. She's on the faculty university Massachusetts. And she's a writer and a poet and whatever. And she wrote a letter. And I said to her, why don't you write a letter? She said, mom, do I have to write a letter? And I said, yeah, I think you could write a letter. So she writes a letter and through the form, dear comma, my mother told me to write this. That's true to fall. Beautiful. I said, oh, my God. And the piece that was so brilliant about it was, I mean, she's just a brilliant young woman. And she just, she was just nominated by the New Yorker for the best book of poetry of the year. And, but she wrote to Kamala. She says, I'm asking that you focus on doing the least amount of harm. Dr. Peggy Brooks, Bertram, author of dear Kamala, women write to the new vice president, published by red lightning books.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions, ask your future in black America programs email us at in black America at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can get previous programs online at kut.org. Also, you can listen to a special collection of in black America programs at American archive of public broadcasting. That's American archive.org. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week.

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