Black Family Table Talk
Black Family Table Talk
S6:E4 | Die Willie Die: Healing the Black Family from Multi-generational Trauma
The "Willie Lynch" letter purports to be an account of a speech given by a slave owner, in which he tells other slave masters that he has discovered the "secret" to controlling black slaves--setting them against one another. Join Tony and Toni as they sit down with filmmaker, Ron Elliott Jr to discuss his latest project Die Willie Die.
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So Die Willy Die is a film a documentary, and is geared towards healing the black family from multi generational trauma. So it takes a journey. It is pretty much my journey of examining myself and wanting to fix the things that I see in me with my children so that they can provide a better platform for their children and we continuously improve the lives that used to erase it thereafter.
Tony:Welcome to season six of Black Family Table Talk. We are your host, Tony and Toni. Listening weekly as we share unique stories that inspire, build and give voice to strengthen black families.
Toni X:This season is sponsored by Frans Body Care. These are handmade products made from organic ingredients. I personally recommend you try Free Me deodorant, it really works! And it's free of aluminum, taupe perfumes and other harmful core clogging substances. You can shop these and other black businesses on our website at Black FamilyTableTalk.com. Okay, welcome to the Black Family Table Talk. We got Ron Elliot, Jr. in the house today. Such a pleasure! I'm so excited about this interview and the work that you're doing. Tell us about the project. My pleasure. Tell us about this project Die Willie Die.
Ron:So die Willie die is a film a documentary is geared towards healing the black family from multi generational trauma. So it takes a journey. It is pretty much my journey of examining myself and wanting to fix the things that I see in me, with my children so that they can provide a better platform for their children. And we continuously improve the lives of each generation thereafter.
Toni Henson:Where did it stem from? Where did you get the inclination to do it.
Ron:So the Die Willie Die when I got the inclination to do this film, it kind of goes way back into my life. When I was young, high school age, my parents, they visited the great blacks and wax museum, and they bought this t shirt back for me. And instead now we lynch ourselves. And at the time, you know, I grew up during an era where the drug, it was the drill era. A lot of my friends and family were drug dealers. As a young person looking to do something different, or hoping to do something different, I realized that a lot of the problems we were having, we had a choice, and we were putting those things on ourselves. I fast forward, I got to college. In college you get more awake, I guess. I went to a predominantly white college, I went to Michigan State University. And at Michigan State University, I was one of the founding members of the Black Poets Society. And so in that space we created the Black Poet Society because we felt like we didn't have any outlets as African Americans on campus to do arts and things like that. So that opened me up to study more things. And I came across a song called Redefinition by Mos Def & Talib Kweli, also known as Blackstar. And in the song, Talib Kweli has a line where he says, I'll make a slave by Willie Lynch and still apply it. So when I heard that everyone around me back to high school, remember it now we Lynch ourselves, Willie Lynch, the two things came together for me. And I did some research started reading the book. Now at the time I read the book, I thought this was real. Like I thought Willie Lynch was an actual person. So I'm like, wow, like, this is a scientifically engineered way to stop black people from prospering. It touched my heart then. But I didn't know what to do with it. So I had this personal mission, from that day forward, that I'm going to figure out a way to fix this situation. The irony of it is you fast forward, I'm a father now, I have a daughter, and I'm really watching, what I say, what I do, how I do it. Me and my wife having these type of conversations because like, Yo, the kids, they're going to do what they see you do. And I got the light bulb, Aha, there, that you change. You can't change adults, but you could change children. So how do you change children? You changed yourself, right? Because they're gonna watch more than they listen. So once I had my first daughter and realized that that was the power of change. That kind of fuel the flame, so to say, to get to this point. The movie itself, at that time I had no idea I was gonna make a movie or was intent on making a movie or anything like that. What actually drove me to doing the movie is Coronavirus. COVID-19. The world shut down. At the beginning of it, I got really sick, I had the thing I thought I was dying. And my business, I had a lot of stuff lined up for business. Everything just went away. I was sitting at home and I was like, Okay, I gotta do something with my time because I can't do real estate right now. There's nothing for me to do and I felt charged. Like I had to do something, I said a prayer that night, I thought I was dying. A friend of mine passed away. I don't know if it's because of anxiety or whatever, but I felt like I couldn't breathe, I was having these attacks. And I just pray God, if I wake up tomorrow, I won't take another minute for granted. I just started trying to find a way, a new way, a new thing that I could be doing was purpose driven. So I set out initially to write a book. But as I'm sitting watching Netflix with everybody else, I realized nobody's reading books, maybe I should make a movie, and that was the idea to make the film Die Willie Die. That's how we got there. That's how we got to the movie.
Tony:Let me let me ask you a question, Ron, about your process of putting the movie together. You mentioned something about how to prevent the Willie Lynch syndrome from happening. We all know as Willie Lynch was not real, but what what are some of the things that you targeted within yourself that you thought you needed to change? Because to help us understand what we have to identify that we need to change. So what was some of the things that you identify within yourself, that you change course on, and dealing with your children.
Ron:So my, my primary driver, or there were two primary drivers that affected my process of change, and in terms as it relates to the Willie Lynch situation. So the first was, if anybody has not familiar with the Willie Lynch letter, one of the first tenets of programming African Americans for failure is to remove the black man from household. I grew up, my father, unfortunately, was a victim of narcotics in the 80s. And so we had a very choppy and dicey relationship, on and off, sometimes I've seen him, sometimes I don't. So the first thing that I wanted to make sure I did it myself was to be present. Because as a kid, I have periods of time where I don't recall my father. When I was with my father it was great times but when he was going through his things, I didn't see my father. So the first thing I wanted to make sure I did in myself was, no matter how hard marriage was, or things that we were going through, was to stick it out, and to be present. The second thing that prompted me personally, and I want to make sure that I instill in my children was something from my mother. My mother, most mothers want to want to keep her children safe. I was always entrepreneurial, all my life, I've been this way. But I grew up in an environment different than today's environment where I wasn't encouraged. It was always go to school, get a job, that was the safe thing to do. When I went to college, I didn't want to go to college, but I went to college because I didn't want to dissapoint my mother. And so with my children, what I didn't want to do was impose my beliefs on what they should do with their lives on them. So I took a different approach with my children. I watched my children for their gifts, and their talents. And then I encouraged them to try them. And I let how that process flows so they take hold to something after I encourage them to try it then I lean into them a little more to take it more serious, but I don't tell them you have to do this. I grew up, I'm the first generation college student, like myself and a couple of my cousins were like the first people in our family to go to college. So that was a big thing to my parents. For me, it is a big thing and my children fulfill their purpose. So those are two primary things that I can identify by myself. Other people in the movie have different things but for me it was the parenting, how I was raised and not want to make those same mistakes.
Tony:Excellent point.
Toni Henson:Wow, you brought up a great point and is college necessary. I think we need to do a separate podcast on that. I truly believe that it is, I think that's where you make your mistakes and you can grow but definitely purpose. Being purpose driven, is what you said that I'd like to underscore that when we raise our children, in order for us to all be free, we have to start out with mental freedom and a freeing of the mind. So I agree with you wholeheartedly when it comes to helping children and encouraging them to identify what their purpose is, what their gifts and natural gifts and talents are. And you also said something that brought to mind this phrase"more is caught than taught". When you say that the change begins with me, that is such a powerful statement. Because I remember and I'll share a short story, I always say, It's a long way up from the N word. And so we have to be kind with each other, we have to be gentle with each other. And people like you are the ones that are contributing to elevating the culture, elevating the generations to the next level up from the N word. It reminds me of when I was growing up and I remember we had my son, and my son was born out of love. He was wanted, we waited on purpose to have him and we didn't have a problem getting pregnant. He was wanted. And I remember taking them over to my dad's house and just loving on them and my dad was loving on him. Of course first great grandson and I was like, Oh, we're gonna get ready, we're gonna go have some dinner. And my father said, Well, I ain't babysitting. I stopped, my baby was in my arms and he probably wasn't even a month old. I said to my father, I said, Stop. Nobody asked you to babysit. My child is wanted. Don't ever want you to say that, again. I don't ever want you to use words in his presence, that make him feel like he's not wanted. And I think about what we say when you all that stuff you were talking about in the beginning, what we say lands into their spirit. And so moving away from intentional and so overused words today, but intentional parenting. That's my comment. Question is, I saw the promo for this film, it is very well done. Did you go to film school where did your training come from?
Ron:So fortunately for me, I have a very strong network. I made some mistakes. I've been doing business long enough to make some mistakes. Rather than try to do this myself, I employed people that I knew were professional. I'm fortunate to have a few friends that are Emmy Award winners. And so I hired an Emmy Award winning filmmaker producer by the name of Timashion Jones and also hired a Grammy nominated composer by the name of Valdez Brantley and a host of other professional people who do exceptional jobs at what they do. I just trusted the people that knew what they were doing and they and I bought my vision. I did what I did best, they do what they do best.
Toni Henson:I applaud you for that.
Tony:What can we expect now the project is complete? How are you going to get it out there? What message you want to send? How do we share this? Because it is much needed, much needed to psychologically shift our thinking, how we move forward and how we navigate this world and to take away those shackles on our mind from colonialism and slavery and things that just passed down from generations. We don't know how to get out of that so it is an overused word, but intentional is something that we have to do to take those shackles off.
Ron:Indeed. At the time of this interview, we are not dealing with the film, but we're almost done. I'm in the studio right now waiting for my engineer to finish mixing some music for the movie. But we're very close. Hopefully, by Monday, we'll be done. But the plan right now is we have a digital screening. This is like a Black History Month special type of screening. That'll be online, February 5th, where people can watch the movie for that day. And we'll probably have some type of discussion just online. We have requests coming in now from the website to do in person screenings in different places. So we'll we'll be lining up a lot of live events where we actually come out, show them to show the film. We may attach a concert to it, some music, make it an event for people to come out and just really built with each other. And in terms of getting the word out, sending people to DieWilliefilm.com. That's where people can learn more about the film, they can see the trailers, they can see who's in the movie, they'll give some some more insight as to why the movie is important. Because it does address, when people ask, Why Die Willie Die? Why do you call this Die Willie Die? That's first thing I get. The thing was, one, part of it just kind of popped in my head while I was in the shower. And it was like, What do I call this? Die Willie Die. What are you trying to do? Chill the goes to Willie Lynch. What does that mean? Well, that means that we break the slave mindset that we pass down. Okay, that makes sense. We could run with that. So the film in itself, to do your things that you spoke of breaking the colonialism, and all of those things. The film does do that. But primarily, the film is a seed. This is a actually the first film in a series of three. And so this first one is more about mindset and awakening your mind. The second one is more about putting together a plan. A plan for the community with actionable items in which people will be able to see that journey and what that looks like. And then the final film will be a film that's documenting the fruits of the labor from the first two movies. So this is for me a lifetime project. It's something that we'll be committed to until, until it's done. Till the mission is complete. So the goal is watch the movie, tell your kids what you learned about yourself, and make some changes in yourself and then let them follow those changes. That's the primary goal.
Toni Henson:Amazing, incredible. Thank you. Congratulations. I can't tell you how delighted I am and excited I am about this project, I am going to lend my my platform. I'm the executive producing director of the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival and that's another hat that I wear in addition to this podcast, I don't know if you knew that. But we would love, we would love to host a screening either virtually or live during the festival this year. We would absolutely love to get on your calendar. Because there's so many unsong heroes and sheroes out here doing things to better our community and we don't make the news. It doesn't make the six o'clock news. That's why we started Black Family Table Talk so that we could celebrate people like you. So this is right on point for our mission. And what we do, we must tell our stories. And I just absolutely love that. You include the good, bad, and the ugly, what we need to grow, what we need to do to be better, but at the same time celebrating those who are doing the work and are there with their families and shaping the minds of the next generation and I'm telling you, we can't be stopped. With people like you, we can not be stopped.
Ron:People like me don't exist without people like you. I appreciate people that have platforms that open a door to share these messages because you're right, it's very difficult to cover because some people are going to find a fence in intelligent conversation. If you can't accept it as just intelligent conversation. We've gotten to a place in the world we can't disagree. And if we disagree, we got to fight or I mean it's okay to disagree. Everybody doesn't live the same life. Everybody doesn't have the same views. Everybody doesn't share the same experiences. And one thing I would like for us as a people, people of African descent is to understand that we live on multiple levels. There are I mean, in every black person I know, has a cousin, that's ignorant. Every person person I know, has a cousin or brother that's uppity. And everybody got a cousin or brother or sister, they don't care, they're just there. But we have to learn to embrace all of them. You can't separate the the people that live in a certain condition from the people that live. We got to start recognizing ourselves. Because at the end of the day, when the police pulled us over, when we're getting beat up or when we getting denied credit for housing and all that, they're not looking at you and saying, Oh, you're this type of black person or you're that type. You're black, you're in America, and you're going to get discriminated against the same exact way. It's a song dating back to most depth. And I'm not gonna say the name of the song, because we have established that we're not using that word on the podcast, but Mr. N, in the song he talks about no matter how famous and successful he is, and no matter how well he does, society still treats him like N word. We as black people we got to learn to break the divisions, we can learn to be okay. You can be Muslim, I could be Christian, you can be whatever else you want to be and I can be whatever else I want to be but we still love each other. We don't have to agree, we love each other. That's what I think we need to hear.
Tony:Absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody has a role and a lane to ride in, and a purpose in life. And among us, people of African descent, Africans in the diaspora, we have to just love on each other regardless. In the divisions, we put people down for whatever reason, and we have to get away from that, and recognize that we are one people. We all have a role and a purpose in life but we can love on each other and tell our story. That will take us a long way.
Toni Henson:Amen
Ron:That's the answer. We say love is our superpower.
Toni Henson:Well, I am so happy that you joined us. We're going to end the podcast here. But I'm going to include the audio of your film promo. Again, thank you for being a part of the podcast today and God bless you and your work. We'll be in touch to to get that screening done virtually sometime this year. Virtually or, or live. Definitely.
Ron:I definitely will be coming to Atlanta. So that'll be work.*playing Trailer 1 of Die Willie Die* "Every person in the world has a problem to solve. My problem to solve was to give the next generation a better opportunity than I had. doing..,"
Tony:That concludes this week's talk. We hope you found some tools to add to your strong black family toolbox. And be sure to sign up for a free subscription at BlackFamilyTableTalk.com for special discounts and product offers reserved exclusively for you.
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