Josh Rosales Speaks Out

Empowering African-American Descendants and the Future of Education in Tennessee

• Josh • Season 1 • Episode 2

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When Stephanie Johnson speaks about empowering the descendants of Tennessee, her words are more than just rhetoric; they're infused with the history of her own bloodline, harking back to the final known slave ship to America. Our latest episode is a profound exploration of Stephanie's mission through her organization, 95 Counties, as she strives to preserve African-American legacies and catalyze economic growth. Stephanie peels back the layers of history to reveal how descendants can reclaim their heritage and safeguard their ancestors' contributions, while facing the complexities of legal battles over inherited land.

Education takes the spotlight in our conversation as we scrutinize the pressing matter of school choice—a topic of heated debate around the nation. We discuss the intricacies of charter school funding, and the paradox of school choice opposition. The empowerment of descendant communities through tailored educational support is another critical thread, alongside the transformative potential of the 21st Century School model. Stephanie doesn't shy away from discussing the pivotal legislative action needed to enact these educational shifts, nor the socioeconomic leap from public housing to homeownership that upholds cultural values.

Todayś conversation is a poignant reminder of how historical awareness and active participation can enrich the narrative of African-American communities for generations to come.

Josh:

Welcome everybody to the Josh Rosales Speaks Out podcast. I am Josh Rosales, your host, and I am super excited to have with me Stephanie Johnson, the founder and CEO of 95 Counties. I am really eager to dive into what Stephanie has going on, because it is very intriguing. Before we get into the podcast, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, HeyRoofmancom. For all your roofing needs, from minor repairs to full roof replacements, HeyRoofmancom has you covered. Call today for your free estimate at 615-945-1492. That is 615-495-1492, HeyRoofMan. com. So, Stephanie, I want to thank you for accepting my invitation to come on the podcast and talk about 95 Counties, because we have done so much work and research for this and want our listeners to be able to understand it, to learn and to gain insight on this. So, Stephanie Johnson, thank you so much for being on the podcast and I'd love for you to introduce yourself.

Stephanie:

Yeah well, thank you so much for having me and for the introduction, and I'm happy to share about 95 Counties, which is my labor of love. It is an organization I recently launched, in December of 2023, but the work extends back to about four years when I found out that for my great uncle that his grandfather, who would be my great-great grandfather, came to America on the last slave ship to America, which was called the Kaleida slave ship. They recently found it because it was burned because at the time he was brought over here, it was actually illegal, and so they had to burn the evidence and hurry up and like sell the people off. In the story, my grandfather ran away there's different stories, but that's the one we like the most that he ran away and ended up in Mobile or Carlton, Alabama, and so that was about four years ago.

Stephanie:

I found that out, and so that opened up a window to me starting to dive into my family history, and so that story is actually told through a documentary on Amazon called Descendants, and so that word descendants is what's used to kind of name the people that are descendants of the enslaved here in America, and through data and research, you find out that a lot of the descendants that are class is kind of at the bottom, so we're becoming like a bottom cast group.

Stephanie:

And so through health, through economics and elite universities, all the research that they had done, they found out that we're not getting into those schools, we're not getting certain jobs, and you might have someone that's through the census, labeled as black, but they're not a descendant. And so what we do is empower descendants of Tennessee. We advocate for them, whether it's through policy or safeguarding their land and inheritance, because a lot of descendants have property and structures that were left to them after slavery. Their families got land, they built things for their own and then they left them to their children, and so we just want to make sure that descendants in Tennessee can preserve their history and continue to grow here in the state and in the country.

Josh:

That's incredible. So I'm just sitting here thinking about all of this and you connect with descendants, or how do descendants connect with you?

Stephanie:

So that is a great question.

Stephanie:

So right now we're working on getting a bill passed through the state that would help us categorize descendants out of the black population all together and so through census, so the state can pass a racial categorization bill that I actually want to name after my great-uncle. He kind of started this path and inspired it to happen and he recently passed away and so we call the Herman Davis Act. Must give us a name in a separate categorization where we can start to research and then create better policies that's targeted to the descendants and so through basically human resource forms, you will be able to check if you're a descendant, and so what we can do also is run our own census here in the state. I also do a descendants monthly networking event so we can meet every month, talk about what's going on with us throughout the state of Tennessee. Through marketing, word of mouth, we're kind of finding each other. We want to do an ancestry project where we start helping people find their lineage they're enslaved ancestor here in Tennessee and the plantations that they're on and they came from.

Josh:

So you were saying that the descendants, many of them were left property. Are you going back and helping them find the property that was left to them? And if you are, then what's the process on saying, hey, this is actually legally my property?

Stephanie:

So a lot of the descendants already know what their property is. So we have a man that was recently on the news we have not connected with him personally, but this is stories we hear all the time out in Clarksville, where he has land but there's development happening around him. There's heirs involved. But then you have other people who have property and they have legal issues like boundary issues, or they have structures that are falling apart, and so it's a couple of different ways. We're actually recruiting a lawyer to come and work with us where we can handle all those legal issues.

Stephanie:

We are doing a project where we're doing preservation and restoration plans, where we come up with a plan to restore the properties and then come up with the economic plan where we can bring money not only into the family for legacy wealth, but also for the cities. If we look out through the country and we find projects that have specifically descendants attached to it, they are huge economic booms for cities and that's actually what's happening to the families that are descendants from the last slave ship to America. Now that they found it, the city is very interested in investing into that, and so our history is really lucrative. I mean, a lot of people are interested in the descendants and just the history, which I guess we should be proud of, that part.

Josh:

Oh yeah, of course, definitely so, the descendants that have property. They already owned the property, even currently. So there are descendants that maybe have had property and then maybe the property was taken away and it helped them regain that property through litigation.

Stephanie:

So we haven't stumbled upon that yet, but there are cases where there were some issues where property was taken and that's kind of like the history in this country where a lot of the enslaved were given property and through tricks and schemes and things like that, they lost it. You have a case in California where a family got a whole beach front back because the city took it illegally, and so if there are cases like that might be further down the line because that would take a lot more resources than we have right now.

Josh:

Okay, no, that's totally understandable. Yeah you know why you're talking about this. What goes through my mind is you were talking about descendants and about employment and opportunities but now are close to the bottom. So how do you help descendants or how are they discriminated against?

Stephanie:

So this is the issue, when we cannot disaggregate the data. So there is a book published called the Color of Law. They went in and did the research. They have graphs of our wealth. They did studies in elite universities, in schools, and they showed that descendants are not getting into the schools at the same rate. They showed that we're not getting those high-ranking jobs at the same rate, and so what we have to do is be very pacific and saying this is the data. Now, why is it happening? And you can't do that until there's the designation. Then you can go to corporations and they can start to disaggregate the data out and we can capture that and look at it and then start taking interviews and doing research, all those things.

Josh:

When it comes to descendants, the number one issue is it's not on the application for you to mark so you can say African-American or which. I guess if you're black, everyone falls under that right.

Stephanie:

Yes, no matter if you just immigrated to the country or you've been in the country for centuries.

Josh:

So then you would have another box for descendants. If you're a descendant, you have a box that you would check. Now, when it comes to advocating for descendants to get high paying jobs or they get these opportunities that oftentimes are missed, are you saying, because they're a descendant, we need to advocate for you to get into college and to get these jobs. Or are you saying you're a descendant, how can we help you be qualified for the position that you're looking to get?

Stephanie:

So in that research, the descendant was qualified. They had just as many qualifications as the person that wasn't a descendant. And so now we have to ask ourselves okay, why are people hiring first generation black Americans over black Americans that have been here for a longer period of time?

Josh:

So this is within the black demographic. This is incredible. So you're really working through this to identify black descendants and then advocating for legislation in Tennessee to where it descended would be on an application, where, when an employer is interviewing or looking at the application, they say, oh, this person is a descendant, which would set them apart from a black American. And then, when it comes to education, when they're filling out an application and entry for college, the more focus being paid to the descendants.

Stephanie:

So, first, asian Americans have actually gone through I can't remember what state it is, but they've gone through and disaggregated their data.

Stephanie:

So, even if you go on, like the care health care dot gov website, you'll see Asian Americans are disaggregated as, like Japanese, vietnamese, korean, and it's broken down like that instead of just saying they're all Asian, and so you can start to see Japanese have a higher wealth bracket than Koreans or Filipinos or something like that.

Stephanie:

And so when it comes to descendants, that's kind of how the data would be broken down. Also, if we look at the schools here in Metro and we've talked about this where the Title One schools, you see they're 97% black. But if we were to disaggregate the data and say, okay, you have a school that has 97% black kids, but in actuality those kids are descendants that are in the schools that have some of the highest poverty rates, but the kids that are getting into the charter schools or getting into Hume Fog, for some reason there's only 3% of descendants, but for some reason all the descendants are grouped here and then there's higher poverty. And so this helps us to look at it and then start creating targeted policies to figure out why it's happening and stop it from happening.

Josh:

And when you're saying grouping together in a particular school, is that grouping intentionally, or is it descendants just happen to be enrolled? Or maybe there's more descendants in a certain area of, say, davidson County and majority of those that are students in that school are descendants?

Stephanie:

Yes, so one of the biggest reasons why I would say most of the descendants are in particular areas in the city now because of their ancestors that migrated and then they ended up in East Nashville or North Nashville and so now they're primarily going to those certain schools.

Josh:

So let me ask you this right now. I hear a lot from one side and the other. You know those that are for school choice and I hear those that are saying that you know charter schools or voucher programs are bad and then it's actually taken away from the public school system. But would you say that public education with voucher systems or school choice is actually a benefit for a, say, descendants, to where those families that want to take their kids to a private school or charter school or magnet school can use those resources to take their kids out of a family school and put their kids into a school?

Josh:

where their future will be a different outcome than if they were staying the same school.

Stephanie:

Yes. So this is where it gets really interesting, joshua. So something that we want to launch as well as call the Rosenwald School Initiative. And so, since our group has been in the country so long, we have a lot of data to tell us where we've excelled and where we haven't excelled, maybe why we're not excelling. And so actually, the numbers for literacy were higher before schools started desegregating, and it was that way because we had our own schools, we were teaching our own kids.

Stephanie:

But if we just go back to that portion of the story where we have schools and our kids are excelling in literacy and we're doing amazing, then we can say now, okay, clearly descendant kids have a rip across to do better when someone else like them is teaching them, and so why aren't more descendants involved in building charter schools or their own schools that are catered to our Pacific needs as far as what we want to do or what is kind of like into our culture, or something like that? I have two board members. One's a principal, another owns two daycares and they function as schools, and so how can we support more descendants getting involved in building schools or running schools for descendant children?

Josh:

So you are advocating on the hill for choice and education to benefit descendants. I think that's really taken back in history and I think that's just a really great idea. However, how do you navigate the challenges? With this conversation also comes conversation. If it's just for descendants, then is it discriminating against

Josh:

other black kids that would want to come to the school. I think it's phenomenal. I mean, I think it would be awesome if there was a school in the United States that was just for descendants, or are there schools just for descendants in the United States? But I how do you navigate all that because we we talk about this topic, I think people get uneasy or uncomfortable because the lack of information and I think if people just start to understand and listen, I mean this is awesome what you're doing.

Stephanie:

Yeah, I could say if you want to put it that way, you could say that people can take it that way and I would say that there's schools right now that are specifically for Muslim kids. You know, private school created for Muslim kids. I mean, the school choice is the fact that we have choices in creating schools, that that fit our, beliefs and our value system. Yeah, and it's not necessarily that we're creating school just for descendants. We're creating schools that empowers a group of kids that we see that are sinking in the current state that they're in. Why is the public school system so

Josh:

bent on keeping our kids. I see it across the United States. The education system is bent on keeping your kid in that family school or in that school, in that seat, because of the money that they get either from the federal government or from the state, and so this is needs to be broken.

Stephanie:

Yeah, and what I find so fascinating in this conversation is that there was a new article that just came out. I don't know if she was in Detroit, but a woman who was one of the leaders advocating for stopping charter schools had her kids in charter schools. And we find this all across the country. The very people that are advocating to stop school choice are using it.

Josh:

I know, yeah, that's crazy. No, it's crazy because you saw the Davidson earlier, County Mayor earlier what's the name, who was all about public education, but he had his kids in private school.

Stephanie:

They're in the charter schools. So they go to a very nice charter school. He's not going to the school that's next door to him, which, in return, is pulling money from that school. And so I told them. I said well, if you're so concerned about the state of that school, why are you not in that school? Because the biggest issue is that they don't really have PTOs right.

Stephanie:

And so with 95 counties since I am specifically advocating for descendants. I can go to the Senate communities, build PTOs, build the support systems, say we're not going to build our own schools, we're just going to build support systems in the schools where our students have the highest rates. So we have more kids at this school. We're going to ensure to build the support system for our descendant kids because we understand them, we know what they need and then maybe figure out how we can create better schools. I'm for the 21st Century School model where it breaks down all schools to a choice model and kids can kind of pick where they want to go and you get out of this rigid 20th Century model which is old and needs to be updated, and for some reason we're stuck on that. But people are making money off of kids stuck in these schools. I don't want to say it that way, but what else could it be, you know, in the public school system?

Josh:

With the governor's initiative, I think the public schools get like what? 7,000, 7,500 per kid. That's in there. And then sometimes the budget for county is like 60%, Even with the state. I want to stay anywhere from 46% of the state budget is going to education and what's the money being spent on? And what are the biggest communities that have descendants living in them? You said North Nashville and East Nashville.

Stephanie:

Yeah, the projects, so a lot of the major projects. There's a lot of descendants that are living in there. If you go out to Williamson County, the Natchez Trace community it was actually where the formerly enslaved settled in their descendants are literally still there, but it's like public housing, and so how can we also break up them being in public housing and get these people into single family homes, which is also under attack? That's something that descendants find an honorable thing to do within our culture, to have a home, to have a community. So we have to be able to sit at the table and look at what's happening in our culture and around us that is counterintuitive to what we have come to know in our culture, and say how can we begin to stand up for ourselves and continue moving forward instead of regressing backwards, which the data is showing? We are regressing.

Josh:

And what kind of response are you getting from the legislature?

Stephanie:

So people that I've told are excited about it. I do have a particular senator that said come back in August and it'll be something that I can work on and we can get it written up. It's in people's hands Now. It's just a matter of motivating people to ensure it gets passed in the next session.

Josh:

Wow, and I think it's just consistency of just staying in front of their faces and advocating this is incredible. For those of you that are listening to the podcast, I want to take a brief moment and thank our sponsor, HeyRoofmancom, for all your roofing needs, from minor repairs to full roof replacements. HeyRoofmancom has you covered. Call today for your free estimate at 615-945-1492. That's 615-495-1492 or go to HeyRoofmancom. We are talking with Stephanie Johnson. She is the CEO and founder of 95 counties doing some incredible work here in Tennessee. And, stephanie, do you see other organizations like yourself that are outside of Tennessee and that you're networking with?

Stephanie:

So, as far as our preservation project, we've reached out to organizations who focus on preserving African-American history that are interested when we do our preservation project across the counties, finding descendant properties and helping to preserve them, and we're trying to just continuously build partnerships. I have a board member, our board chair, that's doing phenomenal and has been working to connect with other organizations and people who are interested in advocating for descendants. There's an organization in Louisiana that I'm super inspired by, and she is like environmental preservation as well, because a lot of the land that they're on is in danger of being polluted and so they're just working to preserve the land and the ecosystems that are there, and so it's almost like we have an opportunity to stand up in many different forms when we go preserve history and the land that's out there and then create things in those communities that can help everyone really.

Josh:

So how does somebody contact you if they want to start to process to see if they are a descendant and to get involved in the great work that you're doing?

Stephanie:

So we have a website. Well, the website's being built, but we have a landing page right now called 95countiescom and we're under fiscal sponsorship, so people can donate right now.

Josh:

Fiscal sponsorship.

Stephanie:

Yeah, it means we're under the umbrella of another nonprofit, so we're using their 501c3 right now until we're fully ready to launch and be a fully functioning nonprofit on our own because we are so new. And then, through our unveiling roots project, which we want to be documenting as descendants find their roots here in Tennessee, we want to do a mini series like the finding your roots with Henry Lewis Gates. We want to do that for descendants here in Tennessee and hopefully build a partnership there, because the state library and archives has been an awesome resource for finding family history and lineage and so there's definitely a place where the state can assist in helping descendants find their lineage and connect back to their roots here in Tennessee.

Josh:

Do you know a good friend of mine's named Lucas Johnson?

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Josh:

Do you know him?

Stephanie:

I don't know him.

Josh:

Okay, so he wrote a book. he used to work for the Associated Press. He wrote a book called Finding the Good and Praise it, and the book was based on Alex Haley and I'm going to connect you and Lucas Johnson together and so, stephanie, I just want to thank you again for taking this opportunity to come on. Josh was always peace out podcast and just sharing the great work that you're doing. Can people find you on social media Instagram, facebook, linkedin? What platforms are you on?

Stephanie:

Yeah, so Instagram is 95 counties TN and then Facebook is just 95 counties.

Josh:

Okay, awesome. So if you're out there listening and you want to connect with Stephanie Johnson, feel free to reach out to Stephanie. Stephanie is a CEO and founder of 95 counties. Stephanie, it was such an incredible experience. I know we've talked about 95 counties, but to really dig in more and understand the importance of the work that you're doing, I think, not just in Tennessee, but across the United States, and it's very important, and so thank you again. As we close, are there any closing thoughts that you want to say to the listeners?

Stephanie:

Well, I just want to thank you for having me and giving me a platform to speak about 95 counties, because I believe it is important work and people waking up and asking questions and wanting to get involved and wanting to meet their legislators and say, hey, I see things in my community that I think should be talking about and we should be really passing this bill because I could see how I could change and affect my life. So, yeah, thank you.

Josh:

That is awesome. I'm really excited. I value our relationship and the work that you're doing and I'm the better for being connected to you, so for that I say thank you. For those of you that are tuning in, I was speaking with Stephanie Johnson. She's the founder and CEO of 95 counties here in middle Tennessee. Also want to thank our sponsor, HeyRoofmancom. For all your roofing needs, from my repairs, the full work, replacements. Heyroofmancom has you covered. Call him today for a free estimate at 615-945-1492. That's 615-945-1492. Or go to HeyRoofMancom. And we really thank Mark Flores for sponsoring our podcast and with If you. have any questions, those of you that are listening, reach out. So thank you, Stephanie. So much for everything you do and for coming on the podcast.

Stephanie:

Absolutely, thank you.

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