{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/iiif/qj77s7kw7c/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Rashid Nuri, interview, 2022"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/113/original/Elib_shield_hz_rv.png?1612182578","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Holding Repository"]},"value":{"en":["Emory University Archives"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Moving image"]}},{"label":{"en":["Genre"]},"value":{"en":["Oral history interviews"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Emory University Archives, Emory University"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2022 (interview)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Nuri, Rashid (interviewee)","Packard, Ezra (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e© Emory University. This online edition is made available for individual viewing and reference for educational purposes. It may be reproduced, distributed, publicly displayed, or reused for non-commercial purposes only. To request permission for commercial re-use, please contact the Rose Library.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Status"]},"value":{"en":["In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted"]}},{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eRashid Nuri oral history, 2022, Sustainability and Climate Change oral history project, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.\u003c/p\u003e"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u0026copy; Emory University. This online edition is made available for individual viewing and reference for educational purposes. It may be reproduced, distributed, publicly displayed, or reused for non-commercial purposes only. To request permission for commercial re-use, please contact the Rose Library.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Emory University Special Collections"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Emory University Special Collections"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/113/original/Elib_shield_hz_rv.png?1612182578","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/269/223/small/wcwnz.mp4_1743598946.jpg?1743598946","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - wcwnz.mp4"]},"duration":4779.32,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/269/223/small/wcwnz.mp4_1743598946.jpg?1743598946","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-emorymss.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/269/223/original/wcwnz.mp4?1743598943","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4779.32,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Nuri, Rashid_Sustainibility_March22 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eIsabel P.:\u003c/strong\u003e Hello, my name is Isabel Packard, and I am an Emory undergraduate student joined today by Mr. Rashid Nuri, an agriculturalist, author, CEO, and community leader based in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Nuri, in this session, I would really love to talk first about your early life history, then your career experiences working with both larger agricultural corporations and later the nonprofit Truly Living Well and The Nuri Group, and finally, some of your reflections on advocacy and community building through urban farming and some of your visions for the future. So, could you start by introducing yourself and tell me a little bit about where you're from?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=0.0,44.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRashid N.:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, my name is Rashid Nuri. And I've been around the sun seventy-four times. And it's been a wonderful ride, wonderful experience. So happy to wake up in the morning, happy to be here. And I'm having looked forward to this opportunity to sit and talk with you and go wherever you want. Now, you asked me a couple of questions just now. I started off in Boston, Massachusetts. My mother is from Lynn, a little town on the North Shore of Boston, north of Boston. My father's from New York. They met going to school. I was a Thanksgiving surprise back in 1948. I don't think either one of them had planned on me being around. But here I is.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=44.0,106.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e You mentioned your parents were from Boston, New York. So, you're born in Boston. And I know that you went to Harvard for your undergrad. What drew you to political science there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=106.0,119.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh, well, you got to understand I went to fourteen schools between before I graduated high school in San Diego. So, coming back to Harvard, that was probably an inspiration from my grandmother who lived in Lynn. And why I chose political science as an undergraduate is because I was interested in how government work, politics, you know, how the decisions are made and who makes the decisions, this kind of thing. And to be very honest, I never really considered any other school besides Harvard. As I said, I think my grandmother probably planted that seed. She wanted me to be the President of the United States. So those are the kind of aspirations that were implanted in me. And I was very, very fortunate. I was stupid and very fortunate that I only—that's not quite true. I only applied to two schools. You know, most young people apply to a whole bunch of—Harvard is where I wanted to go, and Stanford recruited me. So, I had a backup and didn't need to put any more time into applications for school. That was God's grace. And you may hear me say that several times during this interview, because I am a believer. Things that happen in our lives are come through the grace of God, and I'm happy about that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=119.0,216.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e You mentioned going to fourteen different schools before you went to Harvard. Living in so many different places, how do you conceptualize home?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=216.0,227.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e To be very honest, over the course of my life, I've seen crops grow all over the world, and it wasn't until I got here to Atlanta that I was actually able to see a tree grow, to come to a place where I could plant some roots. So, in a lot of ways, I've, and this is an understanding that I just come to recently, is I see how my life has been one of a great deal of isolation. And by isolation, I mean, been by myself with myself, and I've been all these places, but didn't have a lot of roots in these places. That makes sense to you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=227.0,280.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Definitely. I also moved around as a child.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=280.0,284.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Where’d you live?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=284.0,286.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e I was born in Arizona. I lived in Texas, Maryland, Georgia and Washington state.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=286.0,295.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, okay. Very good. I lived in Washington State. Actually, I lived in an island above Seattle, Whidbey Island. You ever heard of it? Where were you in Washington State?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=295.0,307.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e I was in Tacoma.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=307.0,309.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Tacoma, yeah, okay, on the east side.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=309.0,313.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e So, did you realize your interest in urban agriculture while you were in college, or was that after?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=313.0,321.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, I got into it through health and nutrition. That's what I was interested in. When I ran for student body president back in 1965, I promised my cohorts to put in fresh fruit and juice machines go on next to the soda and the candy. That’s my earliest agricultural recollection. There is no agriculturalist in my family at all. How I got there, God gave me a message. I call it my burning bush experience. I was sitting in the library writing a paper on theory and practice comparing the work of Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya and Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, and I had a book that was written by the finance minister in Kenya, Tom Mboya. In it, he said with all the technology available in the world today, there's no reason we couldn't chemically synthesize enough food to feed everybody. And that just was shocking. Long time I’ve described it as a suit of clothes coming down from the heavens for me. But it was really, as I've gotten old, I realized that was actually God speaking to me in my ear. It was just so clear in the image. I could still remember that. I was told to learn everything about food from the seed to the table and to do it experientially, and that's what I set out to do. Not just books, but actually how to do it. That began my journey.\n\nI finished my undergraduate and Harvard couldn’t tell me anything about learning agriculture. So, I went down the road a couple of hours to the University of Massachusetts, and because I had studied math and science, I had a form of math and science every year, which is something I extol my children to do, I actually had a sufficient background to go to medical school, if I had chosen to. So, that's how I was able to earn a Master of Science degree in Plant and Soil Science at the University of Massachusetts. \n\nIt’s from there that I set out the first credential professional job, if that makes any sense. I'd come back to San Diego and I was an assistant extension agent, and that was really a diminution of me. They wouldn't give me a full job. They gave me a part job, and they said, “We really don't have any money. If you could find some money, then you can come work here.” And I did. I went out and got sponsored by one of the county commissioners. They had some money. So, I really paid myself to do my own job, and it's, again, ironic, the very first activities I engaged in were what I did at the end of my career. So, I had a huge span in between which I presume we're going to discuss. But, I worked with children in school, set up community gardens, community farms in San Diego as a start to my career.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=321.0,532.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Could you talk a little bit about your difference in experiences at Harvard versus the University of Massachusetts and the different types of education that you received from both of those schools?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=532.0,547.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e You know, they're all theory. Yeah, the thing that distinguishes Harvard is that it's got the second largest library in the world. You have so many distinguished professors who were teaching. But I was not enamored at all. In fact, I was dissing it, whatever the opposite of that is, disenamored of its reputation and the people there. I did not appreciate so many of the things that happened there. I've never gone to a reunion or that kind of stuff. I wasn't interested. Now, part of that may come because my mother and stepfather didn't tell me what I told my children is, Know who your classmates are, who their parents are, what they do, where they come from. I was able to teach that, but I didn't have anybody tell me that. I came from an upper lower-class background, and what it was... we were poor. My stepfather was a Navy man. So, if it wasn't for the benefits that the military provided to us, we would have been just another typical poor family. But, we had a commissary and medical care that the Navy provided and that kind of thing. So Harvard, the thing that was distinguishing, even the people who were socially unacceptable for me were intelligent. And that was a wonderful thing, and the depth of the information that one could get and explore there. If I had chosen to be more part of the community, I probably could have learned more because I actually went there twice. I was there for two years and they kicked me out because I wasn't really interested in school. I was in the streets, learning music, checking out clubs, nightclubs from New York to Boston. I was doing community organizing work, helped set up Roxbury Businessmen's Association and working at APAC. I was doing work in the community and all the things that happened socially in the street. That period in the late sixties, students were active all over the world and the issues that were being dealt with were significant. We were affected by the deaths of so many, the assassinations of so many leaders: Malcolm, Martin, Medgar Evers, the Kennedys. I mean, these are the things that we had to deal with, that were part of what American society was dealing with. My thought processes tended to be on the radical end of these things, and so I was out of school. I came back several years later. So, by the time I graduated college, I had three children, you know. University of Massachusetts, I didn't know anything about agriculture, nothing. I really didn't. So, I took classes that enabled me to know parts of a plant, different kinds of soils, what they did and how they acted, soil geography around the world. I mean, just really fundamental aspects of agriculture process. Since I knew going in that I was interested in organic agriculture, I had to unlearn all that stuff, what they taught, and make it more practical. Just today, yesterday evening, going through my emails, this man from the university wrote a paper saying that compost, which is the fundamental element of organic agriculture, building the soil, he said, You still need to put chemicals in there. That’s what's happened in the world. We've gotten so that we're poisoning ourselves through our food, and now we're coming up with the food shortage, and it's going to be interesting to see how this is all resolved. But I may be getting ahead of myself. Did I answer your question?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=547.0,827.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Absolutely, and that's a topic I would love to revisit later. For now, I want to talk about how did your experience in community organizing influence some of your goals for urban agriculture?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=827.0,840.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well no, you see, this is the beauty. That's why I always ask people how old they are. I always say how many times they've been around the sun. And it's not to disparage. I mean, you got some people who can be old and still ignorant, and you have young people who are bright and can understand these things. But the point is, what has been the experience? So, I did not fully connect those elements as you just mentioned, at that early age. It has evolved over time, that you continue to gain the knowledge and build upon that which you've come to understand. There was a passage in a book I'm reading now that I saw, had actually underlined it, that you're really building upon... memory is so important. Where you are now is a culmination of many experiences that you have learned from the mistakes that you make growing and developing your thought processes in the nows based upon where you've been, what you've been able to draw from the places that you have previously explored. So your question, I think if I remember correctly... ask me that question again.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=840.0,926.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Definitely. I was talking about your experience with community organizing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=926.0,932.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh, yeah, I got it. So, I had to first find out what community is. I didn't know what community was. I spent years in search of community. Because of my background, the isolation, all the travel, I didn't really have a community that was mine. I have associates, high school classmates who still are stuck in high school. Everything they reference is to those high school years, and these people are all seventy plus years old and they're stuck back there. So, what is community? Where is community? Part of that was the process that took place over years to identify me, who I am, and how I fit in, who I am connected to. The community organizing very practically was being opposed to the Vietnamese war, talking to folk about it, going out into the community. Like I said, the Roxbury Businessmen Association, he had all those mom and pop stores on the corner to go out and buy half a case of something to put on the shelves and cost them much more than if they bought a whole case or that the operators could buy together and then be able to distribute the food amongst them.\n\nThe running people, helping people run their political campaigns. For one woman in particular, she was trying to become an assembly. Ostensibly, it was to be an assemblywoman out of San Diego, out back in California. But I found out after we worked so hard, every community, every neighborhood we went into, she wanted hands down. But I never could get her out there before one or two o'clock in the afternoon. We missed all the mornings and come to find out later on that she'd been paid to lose. They just needed her to draw some votes and somebody else could win. So community organizing is on so many levels. \n\nBuilding food cooperatives, which I did later on. People I knew, we got together and bought food in bulk and then distributed amongst ourselves. At one point I was selling herbs. We had cooperatively purchased herbs and they were always...  when I say herb, I'm not talking about marijuana, to be clear: peppermint, red clover and that kind of stuff. I ended up with a wall full of that stuff. I was able to help people through that process. I was into the music and discovering who they were and the music itself. And of course, being a child of the sixties, we did a lot of experience, stuff, medications that we did experience, which it was part of the process. I mean, everybody did. A lot of us lie about it. \n\nAs we get to the story, I worked for the President and he would talk about Clinton and he inhaled. I mean, he took a hit but didn't inhale the marijuana. But there were just so many different levels of experience, and eventually it got to the point where this man Naim Akbar wrote a book called The Community of Self. I just got so much clarity from that title, that the real community begins inside of me. That's why it was important to demonstrate positive values to my children. At one point, I was a single parent for six of my children. I married their momma twice. I have seven all together and they're doing very, very well today. I pined over how I was doing with them, but I've been told that two signs of success is if your children are doing better than you do, and mine are, so I thank God for that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=932.0,1206.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e I'm very glad to hear that. So, how did you transition from working in San Diego then to\n\nthe community station?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1206.0,1219.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e [Phone rings]. Turn this off. I make a distinction between the job and my work. I may be on someone's payroll, but it's always been doing my work. I left San Diego, what I was doing there, and made my first trip to the South. This is my third time living in Georgia. I was the member of the Nation of Islam. You know anything about that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1219.0,1254.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e No, I don't. Could you provide more context on that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1254.0,1260.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Just a little bit. The Nation of Islam was founded and led by Elijah Muhammad. You do know Malcolm X was the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam under the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? So, I was there. He dropped his body in 1975, and his son who took over the organization, he had a number of significant things. But I was the only person in the community who had a formal agricultural education. So, I was invited to come south and manage the farm.\n\n We had thirteen thousand acres. Here I was in my mid to late twenties, and responsible for thirteen thousand acres of land. That was huge. I literally learned to swim in the deep end of the pool, and here I was again. That farm is just such a magnificent opportunity. The one we lived on was in South Georgia in Turtle County. We had chickens and goats. No, no goats. Sheep, horses, beef cows. We had a dairy. The house I lived in was in two acres of pecan trees. This is where I started to learn about Big Ag. [Big Agriculture]. It was also the place that I didn't realize that this country still had slaves, until I got down there and see people who were working the same piece of land for generations only have a cinder block house with a single light bulb and have an outhouse out in the back pumping water. They may not have been chattel slavery at that point, but they were economic slaves. Some people call them sharecroppers. Just a lot of insidious behaviors that were demonstrated that I got to, you could read about them in books, but actually get out there and see how oppressed people have been and are was a very eye-opening experience. You want to talk about learning political science, there you get to see it. How the political infrastructure was designed to keep Black people poor and under the thumb and to support white supremacy in this country from a very root level, which is the food that everybody has to eat. So, if there's that kind of oppression in the food system, it goes all the way up through. Those are the lessons, and I perhaps had to evolve over time to be able to even express it in the way that I just gave you, but I saw it and did my best to endure under the circumstance.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1260.0,1435.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah. How did you grapple with that economic and racial injustice that you saw when you were managing some of the farms in Georgia?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1435.0,1449.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Day at a time, that's all I could do. Just a day at a time. I had to learn, which I did. One of the things that characterizes my being is the determination that I had to get something done, to do things. I would not allow any obstacles stop me. They may slow me down, but I've always been clear about where I was trying to get to. So, if I had to go off in another direction to get to where I originally was ... I was taught, as long as you're clear about where you're trying to get to, it doesn't make any difference what direction you go in. If you get an obstacle, you back up and go around and go to the other side, but you keep struggling to do what you want to do. \n\nNo, I didn't like it. I couldn't get money for the farms to run them. People tried to steal that land. In addition to the 4,200 acre farm, we had two farms over in Alabama. One was four thousand, the other was a five-thousand-acre farm. So, some of that land I leased out because I couldn't farm it. I remember there's a man named Sonny Spragans. He came over, he flew over from Alabama. He wanted to rent that farm, one of those farms, and I was like a young bull jumping up and down trying to get this deal done. He said, “Rashid, I don't know about you. One of the things that I have learned in my life is that these things take time. It all not gone happen right now. You have to do the work, put in the time, complete the process and see who you get to.” And that was what I was able to do. \n\nHunting is real big down here. You go down a place like Thomasville in South Georgia, which I had just been there a couple of years ago. It's very rich. What I found out is that this is where all these businessmen up here in Atlanta go down there and those plantations, to hunt doves and deer. I didn't realize how big that was. Back then, I didn't realize it, but our farm, we were able to lease it out, lease out the hunting rights, to Black hunters. That earned us a little income, but it was also a service that we provided to Black folk soso they could have the same kind of recreational, similar recreational opportunities as the white folk. As I got later in my life, I adopted a phrase that George Washington Carver, who was a distinguished agriculturalist and teacher at the Tuskegee University... do you know that name, George Washington Carver? People think that he invented peanut butter. He didn't do that, but he certainly had hundreds of other things you could do with peanuts that he brought, too. But he said, and I've adopted and incorporated into everything I do, is that “It's simply service that measures success.” You'll find that on my emails and on my business card. “It is simply service that measures success.” That's the credo that I have established for my life. That's what I want to do is make a constructive contribution to solving some of these problems that we have in this country and around the world. Now, I'm not about to say that I have a solution to everything because I don't. I don't. I didn't, but I did want to make positive, constructive contributions to this solution.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1449.0,1697.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e In your opinion, how are Black farmers disenfranchised by agricultural policy and is it something that you saw working at the Clinton administration?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1697.0,1708.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, it's part of my involvement. That was many years later that I worked at the Department of Agriculture. In 1910, Black people had almost twenty acres of land, twenty million acres of land. Today it's less than two. And that land was stolen. In many instances, they tried to steal the land that I was responsible for. They being the system, even the Department of Agriculture participated in that, not giving loans. Or if they did give a loan, give it late so that the farmers didn't make their crop. They had to put up their land for collateral. It's just so many insidious... the way the Department of Agriculture was organized is that every department… let me try that again. Every county has its own management system where the people locally made the decisions. So, the white county supervisors would not let Black people participate. It was only after we were there. Mike Espy was the Secretary of Agriculture. He was Black. He was the first appointee by Clinton. He started to make some change in the county committee system. But it had gone on. The migration of folk from the South to the North. Henry Ford was paying five dollars a day for people to work in his factories and make those cars. That was a lot more money than many of those sharecroppers from the South were able to get. People not able to get an education, be able to read books. The oppression of Black people in this country was systematic across the board, no matter how you look at it. If you did get up North and get out from underneath the Southern agricultural systems, and the South is very much where the agriculture was, that's part of what the Civil War was about. People still ended up in ghettos in the North. Communities were redlined, where money was lent for mortgages. It's just overriding systematic discrimination of Black people. You see behind me, I got a few books behind me and a whole bunch more around here, describing the atrocities that did exist and, in my opinion, still exist in this country. It's heart-wrenching for me. I see these systems, how it's been extended around the world through colonialism, imperialism, and in general just white supremacy that is suppressing people of color all over the world, has done that and is still doing it. So, I don't know how political you want to get in this conversation, but we'll go as deep as you want.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1708.0,1908.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e I definitely welcome that, as political as you want to get. So, how did you address some of these issues of racial injustice in your nonprofit, Truly Living Well?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1908.0,1923.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh, Truly Living Well [laughs]. Okay, now we're just jumping. Let me see, ‘75 was when I was down South, twenty-five and here we are, so that's almost fifty years ago, fourty-five years ago. But Truly Living Well, you know— trying to establish food self-sufficiency, sovereignty, and sufficiency for people. Truly Living Well now owns land in the city. I twice led the building of the largest farms in the metropolitan area. First time we were literally downtown and in the Old Fourth Ward, and you could see the farm from the freeway. Paid way too much for it, we got kicked out of there. But we were able to, by God's grace again, we got a larger farm over in the West End, southwest of Atlanta, that Truly Living Well now owns. So the seafood being grown, teaching technique, we had just a host of training programs that we would do. We work with children and mothers. \n\nAtlanta has the first Urban Ag. Director in the country. Now you got two cities down here that have Urban Ag Directors. Both of the men who are running them came through Truly Living Well. I get credit. I guess some of it is deserved, some of it is an overexpansion of my activity. But I've been involved in just so many different aspects of the development of urban agriculture in this region, and I guess I get some credit nationally and around the world too. Atlanta had the most progressive zoning ordinances that we put together. I describe my work as throwing a pebble in the pond. You know, you're standing right there, you'll know what the source of the pebble was, but by the time it gets to the banks of the pond, you had no idea where those ripples came from. I've learned that it's really amazing how much you can accomplish if you're not concerned with who gets the credit. That seeking credit for these things has not been part of what I've tried to do, but by God's grace, there's a certain substantial level of acknowledgement and recognition of my contribution. That makes me feel good because that's what I want to do is make a contribution. I don't have all the answers. I got a few, but I don't have them all. Does that make sense?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=1923.0,2108.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Absolutely. On the topic of innovative urban agriculture practices that you applied in Atlanta and in the United States, I wanted to back up a little bit to the time that you spent studying food systems abroad, and how this influenced some of your visions for urban agriculture?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=2108.0,2132.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e The experiences that I have gone through in the course of my life has brought me to where I am now. I've worked in thirty-six countries around the world and observing their food systems in local food economies is what I did. I lived overseas for a good number of years. I lived in Singapore, which enabled me to travel all over Southeast Asia, all the non-communist nations in Asia. I went to Nigeria and greenfield... opened that country up for Cargill, who was paying all these bills that took me around the world. Also, did work in Ghana. Those are the bases. From Singapore, I've traveled all Asia, and from Lagos, Nigeria, I was able to travel through much of West and East Africa. So, I got a chance to see these things and I forgot your question.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=2132.0,2200.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e I was asking how your time spent studying food systems abroad influenced your visions for urban agriculture in the United States?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=2200.0,2211.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, very much, because it enabled me to see how food is being produced, what a local food economy looks like. Mankind, humankind used to live within walking distance of where their food was produced. That world doesn't exist anymore. But the creation of the local food economy, and I don't call it a movement anymore. The paradigm has actually shifted. The Big Ag. system has broken down in this country. So, for me to be able to see how people were able to do business with each other, the local food economy, where we were able to trade with one another, all the food not coming from huge plantations, and there's individual local farmers who produce the food and bring it to community farmers markets, and they would sell to people. That's how it's done all over the world. People grow food where they live, okay? It's been the imposition of American production regimes that has destroyed so many communities around the world. Argentina, for example, they turn that into a Big Ag. We’re doing it in Brazil. So, you have a man who has small organic farm—organic meaning complete, he was able to produce his grains, his vegetables, raises animals, the animal fertilizer goes into the compost, which goes back into the soil, able to feed his family—get that land taken from him, he gets the place, then he end up going to the city to some slum in the city. \n\nYou've seen the growth of the metropolitan areas around the world, we got just tens of millions of people living in metropolitan areas. All over the world. I think I saw figures over thirty million people, Tokyo. You look at these bigger urban centers... New York City actually goes up into Connecticut. People are driving from Connecticut into Manhattan to work. That means you're part of that metropolitan area and that's tens of millions of people. You see this all over the world—Vegas was that way. \n\nSo, seeing how those systems worked overseas was in me. When I came back to the United States to start Truly Living Well, I had seen that. Now I didn't run out there trying to convince everybody that we needed to build a local food economy. My work generated that. I just did the work. I started on a small farm, a small backyard down in Riverdale. Then we just expanded, got new sites until we were able to build it up to have those big sites that we had here in town. The way some people organize is call folks together and have a big meeting and decide to do things. But my modality was to do the work, show up every day, do the work, and then I can say, Come see what I have done. If you would care to join me, I would be appreciative. I don't like to sugar on people, You should do this and you should do that. I much prefer to say, This is what I am doing, alright? This is what I'm doing. Back around ten years ago, I guess it is, I need to have something on paper that I can share with folk, and I was stuck. I had suffered from blank page syndrome, which is a problem, until I was riding the train from San Diego to Los Angeles, which was beautiful because it was right on the water. I was out there on a visit. I just realized, rather than telling people what they should do, let me just tell them what I've been doing. So, the title of the paper was Doing the Work. This is what we're doing. We started four food co-ops. We had training programs, lots of programs on the farm. This is what we were doing, and to continue to expand it, to take it to another level, I needed money. So, here's what we're doing, and here's where I'd like to see it go. Give me some money. I did a pretty good job of raising cash.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=2211.0,2520.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Could you talk more about those education and training programs that you had as part of the structure of Truly Living Well?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=2520.0,2529.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e You know, you skipped a lot of years, but yes, ma'am, I can do that. We got some grant from the government, one of the largest ones, close to a million dollars over several years, where we put people out in the fields and train them at a six-month training program where they were able to experience all aspects—growing the food, processing the food, marketing the food. They provided part of the workforce for us. They had classroom training. We had boot camps, which were weekend classes. Saturday programs, we came in several hours on Saturday morning to learn this. I was in the schools. I would go to lecture or talk with community folks, just trying to spread the knowledge. The food co-op, we started four of them, primarily in the Boulevard neighborhood, which I learned was one of the poorest parts of the city. So many poor people lived over there. We get them to come together and form a food co-op where they bought food collectively or gathered it and distributed amongst themselves and ran the co-ops themselves. We had as many as seven sessions of summer camp for the children, ages six to twelve, fourteen, where we got them out in the garden and had activities. Had a wonderful woman, [unclear], who was their teacher, and get them out in the garden so they can get some experience, get close to nature. \n\nI mean, it's a really wonderful thing to have children come out into the garden. I mean, children are the future. Children are now, but they're the ones that are going to run the future. Young people like yourself, I mean, you're just getting started with your life, but another twenty, thirty years, you're going to be running this country. That's a wonderful thing. So, we can get you as a child and come and teach you some fundamentals. To see a child come and bring his parent out to the garden and say, Hey, mommy, daddy, look, we grew this carrots right here. Pull one up and they can eat it. Children who had not been accustomed to eating fresh vegetables when they grow it themselves, they like it. They'll do it and they'll share with their parents. I love seeing it. Then they would bring their grandparents out, and the grandparents, so many times they would stand and say, Wow, and they start recounting their childhoods and their youth on the farm that they had gotten so far away from and come to the city and not necessarily thrive, but the gardens bring back positive memories and help to reconnect. All life, all health, all wealth begins and ends with the soil. Acid, ash, dust, dust, what the Christian scriptures talk about. The soil is the most important thing out there. When we talk to people, build the soil. I would feed the soil. I would build the soil and let God grow the food. That was the approach. That was a bunch of stuff I just ran my mouth about. Did that make sense to you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=2529.0,2749.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e That was perfect. I didn't want to cut you off earlier, but what were those years that I missed between your time living abroad and then starting Truly Living Well?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=2749.0,2985.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e [Laughs]. I ran a rose garden. We had thirty thousand rose bushes. I built a farm down in Louisiana and worked with Black co-ops throughout the South. I went to work for Cargill, the largest ag. company, Private Hill, where I ran a soybean processing plant, worked in economic research. Then I was in Asia, so I got to Asia as a regional investment manager looking for opportunities. What did I do after that? A greenfield operation in Nigeria. Cargill was not doing business over there, so I opened that up. Then I came back to the United States, this is in the early nineties, and went to work for the US government at the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce. Sanctioned a couple of very important studies on the disparate treatment the Black farmers were receiving. They were a precursor to the Pigford suit and demonstrated that the farmers were being discriminated against, and because of that, they buried that report and fired me. That's how I got over to commerce. I went to Ghana to buy the Ghana Cotton Company. That didn't work out, but it gave me a chance to see another country, another part of the world, and how it works. From Ghana is when I came to Atlanta. That was in 2006, when I began the development of Truly Living Well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=2985.0,6478.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Could you expand a little bit on that study of the disparate treatment of Black farmers in the United States and the report?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=6478.0,6488.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Sure. It was called the Miller Report. We got in a Farm Bill from 1993 that the USDA had needed to, Congress required... Here's how politics works, let me back up just a hair. John Blackley, who was the Chief of Staff to Secretary Mike Espy, got included in the Farm Bill a section, a clause that says that we had to conduct a disparate treatment study. I was in charge of contracts, so I found a group to do the study that proved the disparate treatment of farmers by the Department of Agriculture. There had been a number of attempts over the years that they talked about it and wanted to work on it, that nothing positive came out of it. But this study was so definitive. Subsequently, the Pigford suit came up, Pigford versus Glickman, who succeeded Mike Espy. \n\nMike Espy came with his problem, they accused him of all kinds of stuff. He had to resign as the Secretary of Agriculture and spent years in court. He got exonerated. He spent millions of dollars prosecuting that man, but he wasn't guilty. He had done some things that he thought he could do as the Secretary, what he had seen other Secretaries and other congressmen do, but he couldn't because he was Black, and that's not how this world works. So it turns out, and this was years before I figured this part out, they went after him, because in his first, second days in office, he stood up and said, We're going to shut down the old boy network, resolve these problems for these Black farmers. They, the powers that be said, Oh, no, you're not. They began immediately to build a case to get him out of there because he had, as it turned out, there was a report, the Dillinger Report that we had in our hands that says that the Secretary of Agriculture could settle all the discrimination suits, all the equity issues could be resolved, and he had unlimited access to the Treasury to resolve it. They, who have defined, weren't having that. As it turns out, Pigford suit was the largest civil suit the government has ever settled, and that was over a couple billion dollars, so if Mike Espy actually had exercised the authority he had, he didn't really know about it, could’ve been many more billions. \n\nSo, all this discussion we've had for generations about reparations, the disparate treatment there, that have gone nowhere. Clinton almost apologized for slavery, but they said, No, you don't, because if you had done that, that would have cost the United States a whole lot of money, and they weren't having that. But their Miller Report, which had all the statistical and anecdotal information, was hidden, so that never even got to court for the discrimination suit, the Pigford suit. The lawyers in Pigford, Pigford I and Pigford II, Pigford I the lawyers got more money than the farmers there, and neither one of those two reports, which, you know, I had a nickel in, became public. People still don't know about it, and that could have resolved all those issues. But they weren't. Ask me the question again. Ask me the question again.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=6488.0,6730.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e I wanted to hear more about just the Miller Report, and—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=6730.0,6736.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e The Miller Report was about that big [holds up fingers a few inches away from each other], you know, several inches, and they buried it. They buried it and got rid of me [laughs], because I saw to it, that it got done. That's politics. That’s politics. That level of politics is not what you learn in school. I got a degree in government, political science, but Tony, when you get deep, deep, deep into it, you'll find out about what the actual machinations are that have taken place. With the experience, begin to understand, and I have a great deal of cynicism around it, but bringing it even to today, to see what's going on and how the situation in Ukraine has evolved, how that came out. The story that most Americans understand and believe is nowhere near what is actually going on. You only get one side of it. The rules are made, the people and the oligarchy that's in charge are the ones that makes the rules and defines the parameters for what's going to go on. Most of us don't know any better unless we do the homework and then we can fight against it.\n\nI mean, so what does that mean? That's a lot of words. What does that mean on a practical level? I got a book over here called Seeds of Destruction that shows how chemical agriculture began, how it evolved, and the use of GMOs came out of agriculture, and they're connected. You can't separate them two. You know, the US has developed a corn seed that has a spermicide in it. People don't want to hear it, but it's true. Who are the people that eat corn? It's the Hispanics and Africans. So, you put a spermicide in the food. Those are the kind of things that we call the people who want to.... oh, I just lost the word. The woman that started planning parenthood back in the twenties and trying to control the gene pool. All that stuff that Hitler was doing wasn't invented in Germany. It came from the US. That's the side of the history that doesn't get told.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=6736.0,6918.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e So, how do your models for community work in Truly Living Well and The Nuri Group sort of combat this systemic inequality and dishonesty and ineffectiveness that you experienced?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=6918.0,6937.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e How do we contribute to a solution? By creating and exercising, demonstrating systems that are not that way. The college town farm is across the street from M. Magnus Jones Elementary School, bringing those children out there. Teachers have to do the continuing education requirements—having them come out there. Doing festivals and a harvest fest, working with the children on that. Setting up farmers markets and participating in farmers markets. I'm on the board of the Community Farmers Market Organization, which has thirteen farmers markets that administers around the city, and promoting and bringing folks in to sell their food and providing a venue. \n\nI think this confinement, this pandemic has helped people understand better and with more significance the importance of the local food. Because when they shut down all of them stores back in, was it 2020? You go in the store, there's no food there. But the farmers have long lines at the community farmers markets. The community farmers, local farmers have done better in the last two years than they ever have in their lives now. America has been [unclear] the richest country in the entire history of the world. And that’s so hard, that's huge to comprehend. The richest country in the entire history of the world, yet we still have people that don't have health care, that are homeless, don't have education, yet we rich. So, you go into the grocery stores in the last couple years and the shelves are empty. But you go out to the farmers markets, they're full. \n\nSo, how we build it is by just doing the work, showing up every day, bringing the values that are important, putting them out there, just doing the work. Don't need to preach. Now, what we're doing here today is somewhat of what I'd call preachments. We're talking about it. But in this case, I'm not telling people what you should do. I'm telling you what we did. I think that's what we were doing. That is the significance. So, I appreciate this opportunity to share some of this and the questions that you're asking, because it is important. But you go out there and try to preach stuff to people that they don't understand, they're gonna beat you up. There’s a history of that in this country—folk don't wanna hear different. So, the best approach is to demonstrate it different. Down in South Georgia we were on both sides of the freeway. The Nation of Islam had 4,200 acres and new communities had six thousand acres. Both of these were very large farms in the area, number one. And number two, they had that ten thousand acres that Black people owned and controlled. It was very upsetting to the local community. So, they did everything they could to destabilize it, not support it and get that land back, which they were successful in doing at the end of the day. It's insidious. We can go on. I can talk about this stuff for days.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=6937.0,7160.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, there's definitely a lot here to talk about. I wanted to sort of touch on, we've talked a little bit about Truly Living Well, and your experience with that organization. So, why then did you decide to move on from Truly Living Well and start The Nuri Group—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7160.0,7181.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e I was tired. I started chasing money, getting money to meet payroll. I started chasing people to do the work that needed to be done. I was very fortunate that before I came to Atlanta, I had been—when I got here, I was fifty-seven, fifty-eight years old, starting these enterprises, and I was fortunate that before I came here when I was in Ghana, I was able to work out every day. I got to exercise every day that helped me to be fit enough to begin this work, because farming is strenuous, it's hard work, and something that young people are supposed to do. But in order to build Truly Living Well, I had to demonstrate the things that need to be done. So, again, by God's grace, I was in sufficient physical condition that I could go and do that. If you asked me to start a Truly Living Well today, I’d say, No, I can't do it. My body won't take it. It's been very strenuous.\n\nAnd I was tired. A lot of people burn the candle at both ends, and I burned mine in the middle too. 24/7, I was available. If you send me an email today, you'd have an answer by tomorrow. Now, sometimes it drags on a little bit. I don't have to get up quite as early, and I don't have the level of responsibility that I had building that organization, because one of the things that I stand for, and it's very important, I don't know if you can read that, [points to a Black bracelet on his left wrist that says EXCELLENCE] but it's the most revolutionary thing Black people can bring to any situation. Can you see it? Yeah, excellence. That's what I've always tried to bring to every situation in which I've been engaged is excellence, high standards, that were not externally imposed, it was self-imposed. Then I demand challenges and demand it from all the folks that work with me. So sometimes, people get upset because they didn't want to do it the way I thought it should be done, but I was in the leadership position. But it's still nice they come back years later and thank me for what they learned, the discipline that they learned in that process.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7181.0,7333.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e How do you conceptualize the Atlanta urban farming community, and—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7333.0,7340.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, it's dynamic. It's dynamic. You ride down the streets, you see gardens, people's front yards. That wasn't here when we started. We put in quite a few. But I think a lot of what we have done is just to inspire people, encourage people, as well as the demonstration. And it's not just Truly Living Well, Captain Planet, putting gardens in school. A number of the people who worked with Captain Planet to help them build them came through our training programs and provided maintenance, summer jobs, because the gardens that go to school, who's going to take care of it over the summer? So many of our people that have been associated with True Living Well have been involved in that. \n\nGeorgia Organics, which is the premier organic supporting organization in this state. I was on the board. I was the first Black person on the board there. Their conferences used to be lily white, and no Black, no people of color attended. Now you go to the conference, and it's very much BIPOC. It's so diverse now, and it's just wonderful to see. Even their current strategic plan is built around creating equity and diversity in the agricultural system and helping as many people as they can. That is wonderful for me. Again, that pebble in the pond analogy. So many people, they don't know what my role was, but being there at the beginning and insisting that we need to give scholarships to these Black farmers, because the impetus for a lot of the urban ag. in the metropolitan Atlanta started over in southwest Atlanta. So, we insisted that we bring Black people to these conferences, so they can get in there and learn and study. It's nice to see that they carried that on. Alice Rose has done a great job. But they can go across the whole spectrum. One of the things that I want to be careful of, insist is, it's not about me. I do not like talking about me. We can talk about the work that we've been a part of, but not about me. So, as long as I know that I've been able to make a contribution, have been of service and make a contribution, that's satisfying for me.\n\nBut your question a couple back was why I left it. I was tired. I had to, before I stepped down, I had to ask, God told me what to do, gave me my burning bush experience, and tell me what he wanted me to do. So the question was, how have I accomplished that? Have I met that goal? And with reluctance, I acknowledged that the answer is yes. So, I still need to ask the question, did I quit too soon? Is there more that I should be doing? The answer that comes back is, I'm satisfied, almost, that I've done what I was supposed to do.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7340.0,7566.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e So how does The Nuri Group approach diverse community building in Atlanta, and what have been some of its greatest challenges and successes?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7566.0,7579.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e The challenges are all the things we've been talking about. All those challenges. The Nuri Group is just the umbrella for all the activities I'm engaged in. If I get a specific project, I can bring people in. Darren, Farmer D, Greg Ramsey, and I, they submitted a proposal to do some development on the Old Fourth Ward that would include urban ag., the real estate development group. We came in number two. What they said was, number one had all the resources that we were bringing to the situation were housed in one organization, and they appreciated that. And that's why they chose to do business with them. In the practical sense, that's what I can do with The Nuri Group. I can get lawyers and economists and all these folks under that umbrella. So we presented, these are the resources that we bring and it's not all individual. So that's why I did that. Did it that way. A lot of my work these days is consultation, talking to people and about Bermuda, Bahamas.  Just this weekend this woman wanted me to come to Somalia to work [phone rings, he pauses]. And other parts of the country. Tomorrow evening I'm sitting on a Zoom meeting. I don't know how many people they anticipate talking about some of the issues. Education is still an important part of what I do. Last two years during this confinement, I've been Zooming so much. That's why I was tickled when you gave me the technical advice on how to Zoom. This is what I've been doing, this is how I’ve been earning my living, so. It's all good. [He coughs].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7579.0,7736.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, I guess pivoting a little bit to the pandemic and COVID-19—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7736.0,7743.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e My cough induce that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7743.0,7745.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e [Laughs]. No, just you're talking about Zoom and how we've all been experiencing working and studying from home. How do you think the pandemic impacted urban agriculture in Atlanta and some of the strategies that farms use to produce and distribute food?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7745.0,7765.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh, yeah, I think the pandemic has improved the income. These farmers have made more money these last couple years than they ever did. And what is up with the online sales? There are always lines at the farmer's markets, but then there are still people who don't want to come out there because they would get closer than six feet. They were fearing the interaction with folks that were there. So many of the farmers began online businesses where people order online or CSAs being organized through the computer rather than in person. That's, again, why it's the young people. Those old folks don't have the same computer facilities young people do. \n\nMy attitude, part of stepping down, yes, I was tired, but I also know it's time to turn over this work to young people. Now, the young people are not going to do everything I would have done the way I would. They have their own ideas. You've got to see if they're going to work because they're the ones that are going to be around for the next thirty, forty years trying to implement the stuff. But if you see people going in a direction and the direction makes sense, you've got to get out of the way. Allow the innovation to come in there because there's so much things that are being done today that I don’t, I didn’t have the ability to do. I didn't understand it. Didn't have the technological background that some of these folks had, but I did know how to get out there and get in the ground and produce stuff. We did pretty good teaching people the importance of showing. \n\nPeople ask me, what's the secret to your success? To what do I attribute my successes is showing up every day. I'd always show up. There were several times in the past—January, we would have a market. My market ran fifty-two weeks a year. One of the nice things about growing down here is you can grow all year round. I can remember taking collard greens out the field and putting them in the tub to wash them, and literally, literally, the water would run out across the leaf of a collard green and freeze, turn into snowballs coming down. It was cold. But I have a market, I've got to have the food ready to do it. Sometimes people say, Well, it's raining, let's shut down. I tell them, No. I got to the point where it's not raining unless I tell you it is, okay? Because if you had left to come to our market, you driving halfway to the market, it started raining, what are you going to do? You're going to turn around and go back home? No. You're gonna go see if anybody is there with the food, and we had to be there. I insisted we had to be there. Isabel was on her way. She turns that corner and we're not there, and she might not come back. So, we got to make sure that we can provide that service. That was my attitude about everything. You just do the work. You can't complain. Just stay at it. Just stay at it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7765.0,7990.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Was that idea of showing up every day, always being there in person, disrupted by the pandemic?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=7990.0,8000.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e By the time the pandemic, I was already sitting down. Yeah, yes, and the young people innovated. Initially, the farmers markets thought they had to shut down. I was so happy to see them saying, Oh, no, hell no, we ain't shutting down. One, we got to sell food, and two, people need food. They came up with innovative ways of getting the food into people's mouths, which is what we are discussing. You know, they putting it online. You do a pre-order and the basket will be ready when you come to pick it up. You know, headlines out there. You got to wear a mask and wear gloves and all kind of thing. They did it and got it done, successful. So, the pandemic has improved, has increased the significance of small farms and urban agriculture.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=8000.0,8066.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e What do you think the future of urban agriculture and farming in Atlanta looks like?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=8066.0,11663.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh, it's going to continue to grow. You know, Atlanta is unique. It's the greenest city in America by virtue of trees and open space. When I say Atlanta, I'm talking about not the half a million people that live in city limits, but the five million people in the metropolitan area. 80% of the state's population is there. Just as we got an urban ag. ordinance, we got a resolution from Fulton County commissioners, it took three years to get it done, that supports small farms and urban agricultures and says all fifteen of the municipalities within the county, promote urban agriculture, remove all the obstacles with urban agriculture. We see that happen in the city of Atlanta. You know, there are still some restrictions on where you can sell the food, and that has been changed. That's been done. The ordinance, which I told you was the most progressive in the country at the time, it allowed you to grow food just about anywhere. The only restrictions, that significant restriction, if you wanted to grow food on a former industrial complex, you had to test that soil and make sure it wasn't poisoned. But outside of that, you can grow it anywhere. They had restrictions on where you can sell it. Now, whatever neighborhood you're in, if you're growing food in your area, you can put a vegetable stand right out there in front of your house and sell that food. So, progress continues. \n\nWork within the schools. Paideia, there’s a wonderful woman who ran that program over there, did a grand job teaching all those children, getting the children of Paideia involved with the agriculture in the city. Unfortunately, she getting ready to leave town. This work is strenuous. This is hard work.\n\nJoe Reynolds has done great work. One time, he was addressing the graduates of our training program. He told them, Your body gonna hurt. And that's a young man. He was young and he's telling how your body gonna hurt, your hands are gonna hurt, and all the physical challenges you're going to have doing this work. He loves it. He continues to expand and grow in what he's doing. But he told our graduates the truth. He was just honest about it. This work is no joke. It's hard. And if you want to be successful at it, you got to do the work. We had a lot of, I call them trust fund children, who got involved with urban agriculture, small farms, urban agriculture, but when their money ran out from the trust fund, they dropped out. One, they found out it's hard work. It's no joke. It's no joke. So, the people are still involved are serious about it. I'm proud to be associated with so many of them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=11663.0,11870.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e And as we begin to wrap up, are there any stories about your work in urban agriculture that stand out to you or is there anything you wanted to cover that we haven't gotten the chance to talk about yet?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=11870.0,11883.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh no, Miss Isabel, as I told you, wherever you want to lead, I'm going to follow. And I think that you, the questions are often more important than the answers. I think you have asked very relevant questions that were important. If anybody wants to get more details about what I'm doing, I wrote a book called Growing Out Loud. Each stage of my life, it's just been a wonderful ride. They've been ups and downs, of course, and it's not one specific thing. Every juncture, every step in my evolution, there are stories associated with it. I got well over fifty years in this business, and it would take some time to break down all those fifty years. So, I think we've gotten a good number of the highlights and I'm very happy and proud to have had this opportunity to meet and you ask me what I think are good questions.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=11883.0,11958.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, thank you so much. I don't want to take up too much of your time today, so I think this is a great place to stop. This has been such a rich conversation and it's been so wonderful to hear your story. So, thank you for dedicating your time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=11958.0,11971.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eRN:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh, it's my pleasure. Your professor’s going to see this?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=11971.0,11976.0"},{"id":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223/transcript/80738/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eEP:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, let me pause the recording really quickly.\n\n[TRANSCRIPTION END]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://aviary.libraries.emory.edu/collections/3252/collection_resources/146049/file/269223#t=11976.0,11981.5"}]}]}]}