Q&A with Jeremy King

It’s a great time to highlight struggle and overcoming, but also a great time to share the message, more so than usual, of progression. This should be a time when extra attention is paid to some of the achievements that black people have made throughout American history that have gone unacknowledged. It’s important to highlight those achievements, not just specifically because they are African Americans, but because we weren’t afforded the same opportunities to achieve many of the things as non-black people in this country have historically. 

If you have an opportunity to make history, that’s the standard, but being below standard opportunity to then exceed the standard to achieve greatness is… It’s admirable. It needs to be highlighted to show what could happen when moving the needle from below-standard opportunity to standard across all communities.

Also, when we don’t look back to our past, it allows us to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors. 

My coach from Loyola always said, “You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” We’re starting to see more groups that are personally affected or afflicted. What I like to say is groups that feel that they’re not personally affected or afflicted by the struggles of other groups: jump in, speak up, and become a part of the movement. We need more of that. If we want to call ourselves a community or a society, how can we be a when everyone lives in their own silos or bubbles? It’s not just, oh, all black people, let’s get together and fight for what we want to progress in. We would’ve never made it this far if it had just been us the whole time. It’s going to take everyone who’s a part of this society chipping in. Now more people, who don’t think they’re afflicted by some of these injustices that we’ve experienced, are actually seeking ways to help correct the wrongs of their ancestors.

In elementary school, we had a Black History Month program. I was chosen to be a part of the program and recite a portion of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech at Washington. I still have these little mental images of me doing the speech, getting to the end, and doing the finger in the air saying, “I have a dream…” Remembering the audience’s reaction to seeing a young black boy up there, invoke these words of a vision for a better future that is still relevant today, is a reminder that people can be convinced that there are issues that need to be corrected; they need to believe it. They have to want to hear it. Sometimes it forces sticking them in an auditorium in front of someone to make a shift in their thinking.

I want to mention one last thing from attending my Grandfather’s funeral in 2012. As I said, my Grandfather was the Dean of the Law School. There were many congressmen and women that he had educated there. I simply knew him as my Grandfather, the most intelligent person I’ve ever known in my life when I was growing up, and just a lovely person to be around. I’d visit him all the time, but I didn’t learn about many things that I’m telling you about until his funeral, which was so crazy to me. 

I remember when I learned about some of the things he had done with Barbara Jordan, who was his debate team partner at TSU and their community and in their civil rights fights. It really inspired me at that moment to develop a mantra for my life. Obviously, that’s not something you can do overnight. Still, I actively started to think more about that and started developing what I wanted to be my mantra, what effect do I want to have on people going forward. I have come to this place where it’s like, how can I positively influence as many people that I encounter as possible and the largest group possible. I try to find a way to do that through work. I think that’s just my personal goal, but if some others of us can try to do that as well through promoting these stories of underrepresented groups, we’ll get to a better place again.