Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Bob Woodson, founder of The Woodson Center and 1776 Unites, to the newsmaker to discuss his recent announcement of retirement, why he left the Civil Rights movement behind, and what qualities he’s seeking in his successor.
Leahy: We are joined on the newsmaker line by our good friend, the great Civil Rights leader Bob Woodson. Bob, welcome to The Tenessee Star Report.
Woodson: I’m pleased to be here.
Leahy: First, congratulations on a fantastic career. You made news. Certainly, it’s well earned. But you made an announcement last week. You’re retiring after 40 years as head of the Woodson Center. What prompted you to make that decision?
Woodson: Well, age, first of all. And secondly, we want the organization to have a prosperous 40 more years. And therefore, succession is a key to that future. And so I want to prepare other young leaders to come in and take my place. We have a really deep bench, and we are excited about the future. I’m going to step aside. I feel like the adult kids, empty nesters. And you know, goodbye ain’t always gone.
Leahy: You’ve said something quite profound. I think maybe 30 years ago or perhaps even 40. You said, “I realized I was in the wrong struggle and the Civil Rights movement was beginning to morph into a race grievance industry.” When did that realization come to you, Bob Woodson?
Woodson: It came to me in the late 60s when we had picketed outside of a pharmaceutical company. When they desegregated, they hired nine Ph.D. chemists, and we asked them to join this movement. And they said they got their jobs because they were qualified, not because of the sacrifices of those on the picket line who were janitors, hairdressers, and ordinary folks.
I realized that, as Dr. King said, what good does it do to have the opportunity to participate if you don’t have the means and the where with all to do it? The Civil Rights movement never concerned itself with preparing poor people to take advantage of opportunities.
Instead, it concentrated on attracting resources to the middle class. And so I realized a bait switch game had been going on. We use the demographics of one segment of poor blacks as bait, and when the benefits arrive, it only helps those who are prepared.
And so I left the civil rights movement because it had morphed into a race grievance industry. And I began to work on behalf of low-income people of all races. The poverty programs came along and we spent $22 trillion, with 70 cents of that money didn’t go to the poor, it went to those who served the poor.
And so a lot of those Civil Rights leaders became Democratic officials running these cities. And they were the ones administering these poverty funds. So you have this huge classicism in the black community that no one talks about.
Leahy: That’s very interesting and quite a profound point. Last year, you started the 1776 Unites Project to push back against Critical Race Theory and the project – 1619 project in schools. Very divisive and very bad for America in my view. Tell us how that project has proceeded in the following year.
Woodson: Well, as I said, we pushed back. And since the radical left, I think, was using America’s birth defect of slavery and Jim Crow as a bludgeon against the country that got expressed in this 1619 Project.
Since they were using blacks as a messenger, we thought that the counter-voice should be black-led. And so I brought together a group of scholars and activists and journalists, and we produced a series of essays, about 28 of them with 1776 Unites.
And we were offering not a point-by-point debate, but a more inspirational and aspirational alternative narrative. In other words, the basic accusation is that many of the problems faced by low-income blacks in the crime areas and out-of-wedlock births are related to a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
That’s just a lie. And so in our essays, we talk about how, in the turn of the century, how blacks developed and built their own hotels and businesses and Wall Streets. They had $100 million dollars in real estate assets in 1929 in the city of Chicago and 731 businesses.
How schools were producing children who could read and write. And they closed the education gap between 1920 to 1940 within six months. We just were offering curriculum too so that school systems would have some counter-information and knowledge.
We have 15,000 downloads for our curriculum that celebrates America as really the country of opportunity, even for those who were enslaved.
Leahy: Now, let me ask you this, Bob. On what date will you officially be retired? Is it like, immediate?
Woodson: No, no, no. Nothing is going to happen tomorrow. We’re taking the rest of this year to search for my successor. In the meantime, the organization is prospering. We’re growing. I hope to name someone next year.
Leahy: Ah! So let me ask you this. In the search for your successor, what qualities are you looking for?
Woodson: I’m looking for someone of faith, someone who really loves and appreciates the richness of this country. We’re looking for people who are committed to looking at the strengths, the histories of resilience, people who understand. In other words, someone who is competent, loves this country, loves low-income people, and is forward-thinking, a visionary, and optimistic. Those are the qualities that we’re looking for.
Leahy: And how extensive will your search process be? And how many applications have you received so far to be your successor?
Woodson: We are not doing a national search as such. I mean, there are people who have been in this orbit walking with us over the past 30 years.
So we have a rich pool of people among those who we already know and had some experience with. The pool of people in this space are people already known to us.
Leahy: That makes sense.
Woodson: It’s just a matter of selecting which one will continue this message.
Leahy: When do you anticipate that process is likely to end? You’re staying in the gig full time until your successor is identified?
Woodson: Absolutely. I will be staying at the helm until my successor is named. I hope to when we identify someone who’ll work beside that person for a few months so we have an orderly transition.
But we will be making an announcement by the end of the year. We hope to be able to make an announcement and then perhaps a transition in the spring.
Leahy: Let’s say early January, your successor will be announced. You’ll work with that person for three months. And then April 1, when you officially retire, how’s your life going to be different?
Woodson: (Chuckles) Well, again, I’m going to step aside. I’ll be an ambassador. I hope to continue to lecture. I hope to teach and disciple my young leaders around the country as I do now. I hope to spend more time with my wife who has been very patient over these years.
I hope to just continue to offer a commentary. I want to continue to write a lecture and to disciple my young friends. But I want to step away from the daily administration. I want the organization to continue to move and to grow and allow new leadership to come in with new ideas as to how to expand our message.
So I’m looking forward to the next level of leadership and taking it to places that I never did. This organization is going to be around, and we’re going to be a fixture on the American scene, and we’re excited about the future. I’m just glad to be able to hand the baton to younger leadership.
Leahy: Bob Woodson, congratulations on a spectacular career and we look forward to having you back on the program. Thanks for joining us this morning.
Woodson: And thank you.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Robert Woodson” by Gage Skidmore CC By-SA 3.0.
Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist, Dr. Carol Swain, to the newsmakers line to talk about her experience at the Southern Baptist Convention where she and other minority messengers were prevented from speaking up on Critical Race Theory.
Leahy: We are joined on the newsmaker line right now by our good friend All-Star panelist, Carol Swain. Good morning, Carol.
Swain: Good morning, Michael. How are you? I’ve missed you.
Leahy: Well, you’ve been so busy on the national airwaves every time I turned Fox News, there she is. Carol Swain, articulately making the conservative case. Carol, you were at the Southern Baptist Convention. And I guess there was a bit of skullduggery afoot there. Fill us in, please.
Swain: Yes, it is my first time attending a Southern Baptist Convention. And I arranged my life to give two days to this convention because I wanted to participate. And I was most interested in the Critical Race Theory issue and a resolution that the Conservative Baptist Network crafted and put forward.
And I am on the steering committee of that network. Our resolution was killed by the resolutions committee. And they put forth a substitute that was vaguely worded and did not mention intersexuality or Critical Race Theory itself.
It did have scripture in it, but it was put forth and then they shut down any debate about how the issue was handled. And so Conservative Baptist Network, I never got to speak.
And I was there to try to explain to people how dangerous Critical Race Theory is and how it manifests itself and how it is destroying churches. I never got to speak during the time of the business meeting. And they used parliamentarian rules to control what it’s about, I guess, at meetings.
But two people were allowed to speak for their resolution. One person spoke briefly against it and then someone called for the vote. And this was after someone from the stage had given this impassioned plead that we don’t want to look bad to the world and all of this stuff like that.
And had really attacked and mocked the whole idea that Critical Race Theory was an issue. So it was ugly politics as far as I’m concerned. Not just on that issue but on numerous issues.
Leahy: Carol, are you telling me that the Southern Baptist Convention refused to allow a Black woman to speak about Critical Race Theory?
Swain: The process is they have microphones scattered. I spoke at a breakfast for the Conservative Baptist Network. So I did speak at that breakfast. But when it came to the business meeting, I was not able to speak.
And the process was they had a microphone set up so I was there at my microphone. I would have been the next speaker if someone had not called for the vote. And it was my understanding, and this is what I was told, was that some Black pastors and churches had threatened to leave the convention if the Critical Race Theory issue was addressed.
And the people that did speak for the resolution committee’s substitute amendment, the ones that spoke for it made it seem like Critical Race Theory was not an issue. And that there was this controversy over nothing.
And they really distorted what was going on. The real crime was there were people from all over the country and all over the world that had come because of that issue. People were there. They had 16,000 messengers to vote on the issue, but they never got to vote on the important Critical Race Theory issue.
And you may recall, in 2019, the Southern Baptist Convention approved Resolution Nine that says that Critical Race Theory and intersectionality could be used as analytical tools to understand race.
Leahy: Well, what’s the bottom line here, Carol? If your church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, how should you respond to this?
Swain: Pretty much proponents of critical theory, they are controlling the agenda of the Southern Baptist Convention. And it’s very top-down. A lot of elitism.
And I think average people from the churches don’t have influence because the leadership structure is controlled by people that are able because of that power to control what comes to the floor, who gets to speak, and they can shut down debate.
And in our case, a resolution was not presented. It was 1,500 people.
Leahy: Not only is it unfair, but it seems very un-Christian to me, Carol.
Swain: Well, I was very troubling, and I know that there were other racial and ethnic minorities. We had people at six microphones lined up to speak, not just me. And some of them were racial and ethnic minorities.
No minority got to speak on that issue. One White man spoke against that resolution and pointed out that it was discrimination. And he got blasted by someone from the stage by the chair of the resolutions committee.
And then another person in the audience immediately called for the vote. And at that point, no one could speak against it. And so I was standing there. I’ve been there for a while, and no one on our side got to speak.
No one from the Conservative Baptist Network was there to address the issue put forth by the resolution. We were not allowed to speak. And so I was very disheartened. My immediate reaction was that I was ready to go home.
I am a messenger, meaning that I’m representing my church to participate. And I will be back there today.
Leahy: Well, look, go get ’em, Carol. And thanks so much for joining us today.
Listen to the full second hour:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Bob Woodson founder of The Woodson Center and 1776 Unites to the newsmakers line to discuss the success of his program and his optimism for race relations in America.
Leahy: On our newsmaker line, Bob Woodson, civil rights leader, founder of the Woodson Center, and the head of 1776 Unites Project. Good morning, Bob.
Woodson: Good morning to you.
Leahy: First, congratulations. Last month you received the Freedom Leadership Award from Hillsdale College. You delivered a lecture on campus conservatism and race a positive path forward. Boy, do we need positive paths forward, Bob.
Woodson: Yes. As conservatives, I think we’ve got to on offense in the cultural wars and not just defense. And by offense I mean, reaching out into those communities, particularly the Black community that are suffering most because of this assault on our values as a nation. For instance, 60 percent of Black Americans do not support defunding the police.
60 percent do not believe racial discrimination is a principal barrier to their future. But you would never know this if you listen to mainstream media when they bring on to these race hustlers and they are purporting to be the legitimate representative of so-called marginalized people. But when you give the people suffering the problem an opportunity to speak for themselves, you hear a different message.
I think the conservative movement has to do and what we’re trying to do is seek allies and be supportive of people in these communities that share the values of self-determination, family, and of faith. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. Our goal is to de-racialize race and de-segregate poverty.
Leahy: That sounds very worthy. You are also heading up the 1776 units project.
Woodson: Yes.
Leahy: I think that project focuses on education mostly. Tell us a little bit about what’s happened on that project since the last we spoke.
Woodson: Since last we spoke, we have gotten inquiries every day from school boards. Some teachers. But not teachers so much but some parent associations were upset that Critical Race Theory is beginning to be required teaching in their systems. And they’re looking for alternative content. And so we, through our scholars, develop an alternative curriculum that it’s just an accurate description of our past.
And we had a press release about four weeks ago. We have 10,000 downloads. The 1619 Project only had 4,000 in a year. We had 10,000 in a few weeks. So we are issuing every month more curriculum. We testified before the Ohio School Board and as a result, they scrapped the 1619 program and instead inserted 1776.
So that’s a minor victory. What we’re doing with 1776 is offering an exciting, alternative, pro-American, pro-founders values curriculum. It’s really just an accurate curriculum.
Leahy: 1776unites.com is the website. You can go there and download the curriculum now. Very important, Bob you mentioned that you’ve had 10,000 downloads, mostly parents. What success have you had getting this curriculum adopted and taught in public schools so far?
Woodson: You might have heard about the Texas victory or two parents who challenged and now they’re on the school board. And as a consequence of this victory, we think this is a watershed moment and that other parents are running for the school board and celebrating the success. So I think that in Ohio, they are adopting it, and other school systems see a lot of parents when they hear Critical Race Theory is really intended to teach racial sensitivity. It is not that. It’s teaching racial hatred. Anti-White bigotry is as bad as the old bigotry. The new bigotry is as bad as the old bigotry. (Chuckles)
Leahy: Are you suggesting that there must be political victories in school boards all around the country?
Woodson: Yes.
Leahy: And from that will come to the adoption of the curriculum?
Woodson: Absolutely. We need to push back. Our military is now being polluted with this Critical Race Theory. How can you have a military imbued with the notion that they are representing a racist country? And then how can you expect people to want to fight and give their lives to defend something you’re teaching them as racist? This is a national security issue, too.
It isn’t just some abstract cultural war that is being fought on talk radio. The left has really insinuated itself into almost every aspect of our culture. And we really have to push back. But the principal way to resist it. And the people who are suffering most are low-income Blacks. By this assault on police, it means that homicide rates are soaring in these communities because the police are engaged in what they call the Ferguson effect.
They’re not going to be as aggressive in obeying and enforcing the laws in these communities for fear of being accused of racism. What we’re trying to do is bring together a multi-racial coalition, both across race and class lines, to really push back against this assault on our nation’s values and principles.
Carmichael: Bob, I have a quick question for you in regard to the military. This is Crom Carmichael. I actually think it’s even more sinister than what you have said. And what you said is pretty bad. But I think they’re actually trying to turn the military into a quasi-wing of the government to be used against the American people and not to defend the American people.
Woodson: I agree. We had a situation where one of our constituents, her daughter was confronted by eight girls who came to her house to assault her. And the mother had to come outside with a gun. And the only thing that saved her was that she was armed. And told them that she is not going to stand by and see her daughter assaulted. If the progressive left had their way, they would have removed the mother’s gun and they would remove the police.
Carmichael: Yes. The only people, according to the Democrats, who deserve police protection and military protection, are Democrat members of Congress.
Woodson: Yeah, that’s true. And also the head of Black Lives Matter. She lives in a $1.3 million dollar mansion in a secure White community guarded by police.
Leahy: A little bit of hypocrisy there. Bob, you are an icon of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and here we are in 2021. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of race relations in America?
Woodson: I am optimistic primarily because of the response that we’re getting throughout the country. We had a session with J.D. Vance in Middletown, Ohio, and Cincinnati, Ohio, with Clarence Page, who was a Liberal journalist but a sensible, patriotic American. And we had a powerful webinar attended by maybe 1,400 people where we were talking about how the elites in the country are trying to divide low-income Blacks and low-income Whites.
And so we are building bridges so that we can stop this division that people are weaponizing race. And the way you push back against it is to empower those in whose name the left say they are speaking low-income people and let them speak for themselves. And so we have some major plans to expand that multiracial coalition.
And we have 2,500 low-income leaders that we have relationships within 39 States. They’re Black, they’re White, Hispanic, and Native American. In the 40 years that the Woodson Center has been around, we have had many forums and retreats. Racial division has never come up in not a single one of those meetings.
And that’s because these low-income people are seeking upward mobility. And when they come together, they share strategies for overcoming brokenness in their lives. Some of them were drug addicts. Some of them were predators. To God’s grace, they have been delivered from that. So we really think that the elites purport to be speaking for them, but when you give them an opportunity to speak for themselves, you hear a different message.
And that’s why I’m hopeful. We really need a kind of reformation and a moral bushfire. And brushfire’s burn from the bottom up. And that’s what we’re igniting, a push back against this onslaught and assault on our values and our constitutional principles.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
