Speaker 1: I walked on a compound I'd just gotten there, and
Speaker 1: this lady in this wheelchair looks at me. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm looking around loss And she said, what's your name?
Speaker 1: I told her and she said, Alice Bloom, where your planted?
Speaker 1: God knows where you are?
Speaker 2: A woman in prison in a wheelchair.
Speaker 1: Sir wheelchair said And she said, God knows where you are.
Speaker 1: And that stuck with me, and I just kept walking around.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, God, you do know where I am.
Speaker 2: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
Speaker 2: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 2: I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Speaker 2: Inner City Memphis. And the last part it accidentally won
Speaker 2: an Oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated.
Speaker 2: I believe our country's problems will never be solved by
Speaker 2: a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big
Speaker 2: words that nobody ever uses on CNN, and but rather
Speaker 2: an army of normal folks, US just you and me
Speaker 2: deciding hey, I can help. That's what Alice Marie Johnson,
Speaker 2: the voice we just heard, has done, and she did
Speaker 2: it while serving time in prison of all places. After
Speaker 2: receiving a pardon, her service of those in prison didn't stop.
Speaker 2: It's actually accelerated. I can't wait for you to meet
Speaker 2: Alice right after these brief messages from our Genneral sponsors. Today,
Speaker 2: Alice lives only thirty minutes from me in a place
Speaker 2: called Olive Branch, Mississippi. It's just across the Tennessee, Misssippi
Speaker 2: date line. And she grew up in Mississippi as well.
Speaker 2: Now here's something that is a dying breed, Candidly, you
Speaker 2: grew up the child of a sharecropper.
Speaker 1: Yes, my father was a sharecropper and my mother was
Speaker 1: the cook. And we were the ones who were in
Speaker 1: the fields picking cotton. We the children, the children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how old were.
Speaker 1: You from the time I could put a sack on
Speaker 1: my back? I think I had a pillowcase was my
Speaker 1: first cotton sack. I probably was about three four when
Speaker 1: they put me out there.
Speaker 2: I've seen so many paintings, candidly, and old photographs of
Speaker 2: as far as I could see a field of three
Speaker 2: to four foot tall, yes, cotton plants and all those
Speaker 2: white cotton buzzs, and then what you see scattered among
Speaker 2: that field and the foreground and the background as far
Speaker 2: as you can see. Our people bent over those bushes
Speaker 2: picking cotton, throwing it in a bag. What were ours?
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 1: Sign up to sundown? They'd awaken us and we load
Speaker 1: up in the back of the truck and or we'd
Speaker 1: walk to the fields, depending upon how close they were.
Speaker 1: We'd load up and we'd hit the fields. And one
Speaker 1: of the prettiest siice that you could see as a
Speaker 1: one who picked cotton was a pretty feel that had
Speaker 1: big bowls of cotton, not the little scraunchy ones that
Speaker 1: were easy. Yeah, those were easy, but the others would
Speaker 1: stick your hands, so we'd walked to come back home
Speaker 1: with cut hands.
Speaker 2: Really, yes, So what does a sharecropper do when the
Speaker 2: crops picked after the harvest is completed? What does a
Speaker 2: sharecropper do?
Speaker 1: Well? My father also he took care of the cows
Speaker 1: and all of the livestop, so his job was not
Speaker 1: only to be a sharecropper, but also for the people
Speaker 1: whose place we lived on. He took care of the farm,
Speaker 1: the barns, everything else. My mother she cook, so we
Speaker 1: would in the wintertime. Of course, during the summer we
Speaker 1: had big gardens. We had to put things up for winter.
Speaker 1: It was a different kind of life. So you're a
Speaker 1: farm hand, yes, a farm hand.
Speaker 2: But how did the pay work? People are so far
Speaker 2: removed from this reality that is only two generations apart.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people don't even understand how
Speaker 2: it worked. But my understanding is you provided a place
Speaker 2: to live on the property, but you're not paid much
Speaker 2: and candidly, most of what you make you end up
Speaker 2: spending at the company store. Absolutely well, tell us how
Speaker 2: that works.
Speaker 1: Okay, we would get credit at the store and whatever
Speaker 1: my parents made doing the sea of picking cotton, and
Speaker 1: it was very very little sense, and we really didn't
Speaker 1: see the money too much. We had a little stipend
Speaker 1: to get closed. My mother would make clothes, but we
Speaker 1: would run a bill up at the general store that
Speaker 1: the person who's placed, because that's what we called it,
Speaker 1: their place that we lived on, and they would pay
Speaker 1: the bill and whatever was left after the crop came in,
Speaker 1: which we didn't really ever just know how much was left.
Speaker 1: It was, Oh, they did, they did. That's why we
Speaker 1: had to see. Where this started was in Cockrum, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: when I was five years old. I hate to use
Speaker 1: this word escape, but We escaped from that lifestyle because
Speaker 1: every year we were told my father he had this
Speaker 1: dream to go up north, that was a promised land,
Speaker 1: that we were going to make enough and bring a
Speaker 1: big enough crop in this year, that we're going to
Speaker 1: go Indiana. We're going to move from down here were
Speaker 1: other relatives. Some had gone to Chicago, you know, Indiana,
Speaker 1: Gary and Anna and other places, and.
Speaker 2: They were chasing good paying they.
Speaker 1: Were tracing factory jobs, and that was the promised land
Speaker 1: to us. But this particular year, the year I turned five,
Speaker 1: we were told we had one of the best crops.
Speaker 1: We were told that there was no money left over,
Speaker 1: and we thought we had my older siblings we had
Speaker 1: really worked hard, and so my mother, who was a
Speaker 1: great cook, she devised a plan to sell food out
Speaker 1: of the back of the trunk of their car at
Speaker 1: places where the property owner wouldn't know what we were doing.
Speaker 1: So she would go to the black baseball players games
Speaker 1: and she would sell all of this food. And they
Speaker 1: started saving money. And in Olive Branch they had seen
Speaker 1: a piece of land. It wasn't the two acres, and
Speaker 1: they bought that land. Out of the money. My mother
Speaker 1: was hustled and make it on the side, and they
Speaker 1: bought a gym Walter home which.
Speaker 2: Is which is a mobile home.
Speaker 1: It's yes, well it's it's a prefabricated but it's not mobile.
Speaker 1: It's not a mobile home. It's it's just pre Yes.
Speaker 1: So after we finished working, after my father would finish
Speaker 1: working in the barn at night, they would slip away
Speaker 1: and go and hang sheep rock and just prepared and
Speaker 1: was buying little pieces of furniture. So I can remember
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, I was awaken my cousins.
Speaker 1: The lights were off. When I saw the movie Roots.
Speaker 1: I said, they stole that from us, because in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night they covered my mouth because I
Speaker 1: talked a lot and they didn't want me to make
Speaker 1: any noise. And I was placed in the car and
Speaker 1: everybody else was quiet. We had the lights off, and
Speaker 1: they were pushing our car and the trucks everything down
Speaker 1: the road with the furniture in it. And as we
Speaker 1: got closer and closer and we got out of earshot,
Speaker 1: it was some hooping and hollering going on Bill because
Speaker 1: we had escaped. Okay, so we were in Olive Branch.
Speaker 2: Now this is nineteen sixty one, two three yes, uh huh,
Speaker 2: all right, which is the Jim Crow air of the South. Yes,
Speaker 2: but your parents. I don't even know how to say this,
Speaker 2: but just to say it, I mean that only almost
Speaker 2: feels like a slave escaping.
Speaker 1: It did, it did.
Speaker 2: But so share When you think of sharecropping, what's the
Speaker 2: difference in that and slavery?
Speaker 1: Really it's not that much of a difference. Really, it's
Speaker 1: not that far removed, because you really someone else is
Speaker 1: providing for you, supposedly, but you're working their crops, working
Speaker 1: their farm, You're doing everything.
Speaker 2: And you're never getting anything your own.
Speaker 1: No how the house is, the house is not ours.
Speaker 1: We were living on their place. The clothes on our
Speaker 1: back were ores, the little pieces of furniture were ours.
Speaker 1: We lived in a cinder block house and one time
Speaker 1: there was fourteen of us there and all in that
Speaker 1: little bitty house. So moving to Olive Branch, having our
Speaker 1: bedroom and it was like we were going to a mansion.
Speaker 1: It felt like that. And we were never to return
Speaker 1: to that. But we still had cousins who had cotton fields.
Speaker 1: We still worked, so we were still picking cotton. I
Speaker 1: will say they would loan us out, the children out
Speaker 1: to the cousins and we bring the crops in, but
Speaker 1: this time we're doing it for our family. So my mother,
Speaker 1: she was an excellent cook. She worked at the school
Speaker 1: at one time that I attended as a cook. She
Speaker 1: would work for the Lions Club, the Jayc's. Everyonebody knew
Speaker 1: that Sally Bowen had some of the best food anywhere.
Speaker 1: Her dream was to own a restaurant, which she eventually did.
Speaker 2: She have a coole.
Speaker 1: Oh, she cooked every lord adversity.
Speaker 2: For those who have never had oxtail prepared in the
Speaker 2: South properly with the messo greenes and corn bread, you're
Speaker 2: missing something.
Speaker 1: Oh and don't we get turkey nicks. Oh with the
Speaker 1: little graveyard.
Speaker 2: Delicious light gravy, not the dark graus.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, the light gravy. You can don't.
Speaker 2: Most people listen us don't know nothing about that.
Speaker 1: We need to pick some some real story.
Speaker 2: Do they need to come on down home, Come.
Speaker 1: On down some Southern hospitality.
Speaker 2: So I have to ask you something before we get
Speaker 2: to what happened after that in your life. Well, here's
Speaker 2: the spoiler alert. You will talk later about a thirty
Speaker 2: thousand foot view work that you do which is humanizing
Speaker 2: those who are current society doesn't always necessarily humanize. We're
Speaker 2: not even going to talk about that now, we're going
Speaker 2: to get to that. But when I hear that that's
Speaker 2: what your life's mission is now, and I hear just
Speaker 2: about what you saw and went through with your siblings
Speaker 2: and the life that your mother and father had to
Speaker 2: lead to literally escape, I'm just gonna I can't help it.
Speaker 2: I'm just unfiltered. I'm gonna say it. How do how
Speaker 2: does that reality affect the way you view the way
Speaker 2: you fit in society?
Speaker 1: For me, my family, my parents' life of survival, perseverance,
Speaker 1: their faith, the hope that they gave us, and I
Speaker 1: had a very unique family. We were a family of faith.
Speaker 1: But my mother didn't see color. She was an avocate.
Speaker 1: She was a woman ahead of her time. She would
Speaker 1: fight for the poor whites and the blacks in our town.
Speaker 1: She only had an eighth grade education, but often you
Speaker 1: would see my mother show up in court and she
Speaker 1: would convince the judge to basically give this person into
Speaker 1: her care, and she'd get them on the right track.
Speaker 2: I think it's fair. I think it's worth noting that
Speaker 2: I know white families whose grandparents were sharecroppers, so there
Speaker 2: were poor whites.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure. For sure. For shere my mother befriended everyone.
Speaker 1: One of the lessons I learned from her was she
Speaker 1: was such a gentle woman. When different candidates ran for office,
Speaker 1: she would write a note to the opposing party leader
Speaker 1: and wish them luck and give them blessings that she
Speaker 1: hoped they do well, and for them to remember who
Speaker 1: they are there for the community. All that come from
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm telling you this is a
Speaker 1: house I grew up in. We lived up on a
Speaker 1: hill a little bit. Everyone had to sing or play
Speaker 1: an instrument, so on Sundays you would hear my sister
Speaker 1: playing the piano, and people were drawn to our house
Speaker 1: to sing on Sundays. My mother always cooked more than
Speaker 1: enough food just in case a stranger dropped by who
Speaker 1: didn't have anything. So I grew up living watching this.
Speaker 1: She was a strong community leader. In fact, I became
Speaker 1: just so radicalized during the Civil rights movement because I
Speaker 1: used to eavedrop on the conversations when she would have
Speaker 1: them with her friends. They would talk about things that
Speaker 1: were going on in this day and at our dinner table.
Speaker 1: My mother knew that education was key, so My siblings
Speaker 1: are our college educated and I was the one that
Speaker 1: got married real, real young, but I still managed to
Speaker 1: take classes and graduate on time. But they really learned
Speaker 1: the value of education and making sure that their children
Speaker 1: had a good start in life. But I can say
Speaker 1: that they modeled the behavior for us. I think it's
Speaker 1: so important that my father was present in the house,
Speaker 1: in our home, and I've said this, and I knew
Speaker 1: the Lord's prayer before I knew my ABC's because he
Speaker 1: truly was a praying man. So I'm very thankful for
Speaker 1: the foundation that I had. Even though some things in
Speaker 1: my life took me in a different direction, that foundation
Speaker 1: was still there, and I had seen faith lived out.
Speaker 1: I've seen it walked out. I've seen it in cotton fields.
Speaker 1: I seen it when times were hard and we didn't
Speaker 1: have anything but a song, we break out into a
Speaker 1: song to lift ourselves up. I've lived through tragedy. I've
Speaker 1: lived through tragedy in the community of terrible things that
Speaker 1: happened while I was growing up. But through all of that,
Speaker 1: I still my mother told me, I know we're going
Speaker 1: to get to that, But she told me when I
Speaker 1: went to prison, don't ever forget who you are. Don't
Speaker 1: ever forget who you are, that even though you're going
Speaker 1: to that place, you don't have to be like everyone else.
Speaker 1: It was basically, don't conform or don't go along to
Speaker 1: get along. Remember your boglin.
Speaker 2: I wish I could have met your mama.
Speaker 1: I wish you could have too. She would have fed
Speaker 1: you so good.
Speaker 2: Oh I would have eaten so good to look at me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I would have liked it so Honestly, You've
Speaker 2: got a mother and father at home, you've got siblings
Speaker 2: going to college. Clearly a lot of love, clearly a
Speaker 2: lot of direction. Not wealthy by any means, for sure,
Speaker 2: but you're getting You're getting by You had the initiative,
Speaker 2: that your family had the initiative and gumption to get
Speaker 2: away from sharecropping and save up money and buy a home.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't sound like the track of a person
Speaker 2: that ends up in college, in prison. And so let's
Speaker 2: get to how that unfolded. I know, you got married
Speaker 2: at fifteen and had a child, but you managed to
Speaker 2: continue to get your education and you ended up going
Speaker 2: to work for this little bitty company now called Fedax.
Speaker 2: But for everybody, Olive Branch is literally a suburb of Memphis.
Speaker 2: It's one of the northernmost cities in Mississippi. And when
Speaker 2: you go from Olive Branch to Memphis, you really don't
Speaker 2: notice any difference.
Speaker 1: You don't know anything different. In fact, I lived I
Speaker 1: lived in Memphis almost twenty years. It was in Memphis
Speaker 1: from Memphis that I would go to prison.
Speaker 2: So there it is so Olive Branch Memphis very similar.
Speaker 2: And there's this new idea which is packages getting to somebody.
Speaker 2: If you remember the phrase absolutely positively overnight.
Speaker 1: Federal social service profit yep.
Speaker 2: And this guy named Fred Smith had this Kakamamy idea
Speaker 2: that you could build a hub and bring all the
Speaker 2: packages into one hub, distribute them and ship them out
Speaker 2: the next day and get any package anywhere absolutely positively
Speaker 2: overnight and founded in Memphis. Still world headquarters are still
Speaker 2: here in Memphis. Are probably most important employer in Memphis.
Speaker 2: And you were employee number one hundred and sixty six
Speaker 2: at this fledgling company called FedEx. Tell me how that
Speaker 2: went well.
Speaker 1: As I was getting my education, I married it as
Speaker 1: we discussed at fifteen, but I knew that my husband
Speaker 1: was not going to allow me to go to college.
Speaker 1: So my senior year I went to saw your secretary
Speaker 1: of college unbeknownst to him, and I could type really
Speaker 1: really fast, and I was a good writer.
Speaker 2: You must had to type fist so he didn't know.
Speaker 2: He didn't get out, thank you.
Speaker 1: I could type. Let me tell you something. I could
Speaker 1: type ninety five words a minute with no errors.
Speaker 2: Lord have mer that's fast.
Speaker 1: Yes. So that would lead me into many good jobs.
Speaker 1: And plus I had very good work ethics, so I
Speaker 1: would quickly be recognized as a good employee. So when
Speaker 1: I got the job at FedEx, it was because I
Speaker 1: was working at the Memphis Urban League. By this time,
Speaker 1: I have five children. Me and my husband I married,
Speaker 1: is going crazy because he still thinks he's single. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a whole nother thy Yeah, we won't get it.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that. We're won't get into that. He's
Speaker 1: now brother in Christ even though we're divorced. But I
Speaker 1: got the job at the Urban League. And Jim Perkins,
Speaker 1: who was the senior VP over personnel at FedEx.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: He was one of the first few at fed X,
Speaker 1: and he was on the board of directors for the
Speaker 1: Urban League and his mentee was killed in a car
Speaker 1: accident Greg, and when I came in. Because the way
Speaker 1: that I deal with pain and anything else is I write.
Speaker 1: I love to write poetry. So I wrote a poem
Speaker 1: about how it felt walking into the office that morning
Speaker 1: and Greg is gone, and someone showed it, took it
Speaker 1: to the board meeting. Jim Perkins saw it and asked
Speaker 1: who wrote this? And I came in. He had tears
Speaker 1: in his eyes because this was his was like a
Speaker 1: son to him, and he asked me if he could
Speaker 1: send it to his mother. And he said, you work,
Speaker 1: you you work? You like working here? Yes, I love it?
Speaker 1: He said, what you like to work for fed X?
Speaker 1: It was Federal Express at time. And I talked to
Speaker 1: them about my skills, and I went to personnel and
Speaker 1: I set that type right on fire, and they hired men.
Speaker 1: This secretary of pool, I wasn't in there six months.
Speaker 1: I was recognized for my I'd always had these this
Speaker 1: idea that if I wasn't at least thirty minutes early
Speaker 1: for work, I'm late. And so I always showed up early,
Speaker 1: and I'm the first one and last one to leave
Speaker 1: if they need someone. And so my work ethics were recognized,
Speaker 1: and in no time I was a manager. I was
Speaker 1: a manager first in computer ops. That was a miracle
Speaker 1: in itself because I didn't know anything about computers. But
Speaker 1: I was a great motivator and people person, and between
Speaker 1: all of the technical people, they were missing a people person.
Speaker 1: But it didn't take me long to learn about computers
Speaker 1: and how to recognize problems because my mind was like
Speaker 1: a sponge, and because things my children were my life
Speaker 1: and my job, and they were my family, you know,
Speaker 1: plus my faith. So I learned everything that I could,
Speaker 1: and then I promoted again, and then I started training
Speaker 1: people for management, and then I got a divorce after
Speaker 1: nighteen years of my life kind of fell apart.
Speaker 2: And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But
Speaker 2: first I hope you'll subscribe to the podcast so that
Speaker 2: you get the newest episodes in your library every week.
Speaker 2: And please consider signing up to join the Army at
Speaker 2: Normalfolks dot us because together we can change the country.
Speaker 2: And you'll also receive weekly email updates about the Army.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. So you were at faed Ax
Speaker 2: how long them?
Speaker 1: Ten years?
Speaker 2: Ten years? And you go from the secretary pool up
Speaker 2: to flying around the country training folks at different places
Speaker 2: and some fat Acts, which is phenomenal. You're the daughter
Speaker 2: of a sharecropper and you end up a mid level
Speaker 2: manager at fat Axe.
Speaker 1: Yes, you had arrived. I had arrived, so I thought.
Speaker 2: And you get a divorce and now you're a divorce
Speaker 2: mom of five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my husband disappears, no help, and for the first
Speaker 1: time in my life, I'm seeing life differently. Casinos come,
Speaker 1: dog track is here, excitement and otherwise dull life. I
Speaker 1: got in over my head bill and before I knew it,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a job, my house was about to
Speaker 1: be fore closed. I'm about to file bankruptcy, and life
Speaker 1: is going crazy.
Speaker 2: So you were gambling at it?
Speaker 1: I was gambling. I't really it was. I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize I was a gambling attic until the money started
Speaker 1: going to casinos and dog tracks and not to pay bills.
Speaker 1: It was exciting. That's why I don't. It's very few
Speaker 1: games I even play now.
Speaker 2: So when I read that, and I'm gonna tell you something,
Speaker 2: I love to play poker. I love to sit down
Speaker 2: and play poker, play poker friends. I used to. I
Speaker 2: played poker in Vegas sometimes. If I could ever get
Speaker 2: two weeks of my life where I didn't have everything
Speaker 2: to go. I would love to go play in the world.
Speaker 2: She there's a poker because I really enjoy playing and
Speaker 2: in poker terms and poker, I love it. And you know,
Speaker 2: like anything like drinking or alcohol or whatever, gambling and
Speaker 2: playing poker is no different. You know, you've got to
Speaker 2: have a limit, you got to keep it and then
Speaker 2: you can't let it overcome you. But as I was
Speaker 2: reading your story, I wondered, and I couldn't help, but wonder,
Speaker 2: did you like maybe a little financial literacy at that time?
Speaker 1: But sure, well my circumstance, I will say, before then,
Speaker 1: I had good credit, I paid my bills. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of money left over because by this
Speaker 1: time I have a daughter that's in college, yourself and
Speaker 1: some more in the pipeline. It's going to be going soon.
Speaker 1: But I had no financial help from their father, so
Speaker 1: I'm really footing everything by myself. But the the gambling
Speaker 1: gave me an out. It put me into another whole
Speaker 1: world that I'd never seen before. But now you know,
Speaker 1: I look back on it, and I was going further
Speaker 1: in deeper down. You know, once you start losing, you
Speaker 1: try to win a jackpot while you losing a jackpot.
Speaker 2: I was winning the very thing that I was called chasing.
Speaker 1: Yes. So then once I was in so deep, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find my way out, and my finances are going
Speaker 1: absolutely crazy, I have nobody to turn to. And plus
Speaker 1: it was a matter of pride to because my siblings
Speaker 1: are all extremely successful, my parents are upstanding, and I
Speaker 1: just didn't want to be seen as a failure. That
Speaker 1: was pride. I think if I had talked to somebody
Speaker 1: about what I was really going through, and at times
Speaker 1: I wonder if I even had a breakdown, because I
Speaker 1: was no longer thinking I was spiraling. I was spiraling there.
Speaker 1: The more I looked at the whole listening to some
Speaker 1: of my situation, the more I was going further in.
Speaker 1: And so when an offer came to me to be
Speaker 1: what it's called a telephone mule, I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about drugs. This offer came. Do you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone. The person who I was seeing
Speaker 1: said what did you tell him? As I told him no,
Speaker 1: and he says to me, I said you know someone?
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, you're looking at him and it's someone
Speaker 1: that I started dating. And I don't blame him because
Speaker 1: I made that bad decision.
Speaker 2: Most people don't know. Unfortunately, I do know what a
Speaker 2: telephone mule is because I've been around some folks who
Speaker 2: have lived that life. Let's let's explain to our listeners
Speaker 2: before we go any further, exactly what a telephone.
Speaker 1: You tell us a telephone mule means. I was the
Speaker 1: perfect person. I never thought of criminal ideas before in
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 2: Clean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm the perfect person. If someone comes to town,
Speaker 1: they're given my number, they don't tell me who they are.
Speaker 1: They just tell me this is the number with the
Speaker 1: cold to tell them to call. And I passed the
Speaker 1: number and I go back to bed. They don't know me,
Speaker 1: and somehow in my own head, and I'm not even
Speaker 1: trying to pretend to be innocent, I knew what I
Speaker 1: did was wrong, but I helped my conscience by saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not a drug seller. That's not who I am.
Speaker 2: So what would happen is somebody comes to Memphis or
Speaker 2: any city, any country, because a telephone mule is.
Speaker 1: The operator for this, it's operation, it's the operator for them.
Speaker 2: They don't know they're sent by a cartel or someone
Speaker 2: above them to take these drugs somewhere. That's all they're told.
Speaker 2: And they're given the amount of money because they're a mule.
Speaker 1: They're mule too, all right.
Speaker 2: And so when they load up and bring drugs and
Speaker 2: they get to wherever they're supposed to do, they're told
Speaker 2: call this number. And when they call that number, they
Speaker 2: don't know who they're talking to. It's you on their line.
Speaker 2: You don't know who you're talking.
Speaker 1: To, which keeps everyone safe. Who's really the leader, who's
Speaker 1: really doing it?
Speaker 2: They're breaking chain of customs.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 2: So you have a number that you know this person's
Speaker 2: gonna call me when they call.
Speaker 1: Give them another correct not even give them a number.
Speaker 1: Another number just passed at one time. I didn't pass
Speaker 1: two numbers. It's just the initial contact and then I
Speaker 1: guess they go to and follow out and that's it.
Speaker 2: Now they getting contact with whoever they're delivering.
Speaker 1: That's correct, So and you're out sounds nothing. The first
Speaker 1: time I got one thousand dollars, I literally kept my
Speaker 1: life so that we bought food, and after that I
Speaker 1: felt terrible about it. Then my son got killed in
Speaker 1: a car in a scooter accident, and that's when everything
Speaker 1: in my life completely went crazy.
Speaker 2: You were already hanging over about them.
Speaker 1: I was hanging on by a thread. Here I am
Speaker 1: with my youngest son, he's twelve. His brother's driving a scooter.
Speaker 1: They get hit a by another teenager, and I'm in
Speaker 1: the crazy I'm in the twilight zone for real. I
Speaker 1: don't even have money to bury my son. It's whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a dark house most of the time
Speaker 1: in grief. This goes on, and in the course of time,
Speaker 1: the person who was coming in got busted and he
Speaker 1: had my phone number, and that's when the house of
Speaker 1: cars fell down. There's so many different things involved in
Speaker 1: this whole thing. I didn't really know about conspiracy. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking my family. I don't have any money. In fact,
Speaker 1: when I was arrested there was nothing to be seized,
Speaker 1: but the people who testified against me had cars, seeds,
Speaker 1: home seised money, seeds. I've got five hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: the It goes through. But you know, to get past
Speaker 1: all of that, I learned about conspiracy. I was found
Speaker 1: guilty of attempted possession because I didn't have drugs, and
Speaker 1: I was offered three years, went to tryal and.
Speaker 2: When you were offered three years, probably that's is that
Speaker 2: federal time.
Speaker 1: Federal.
Speaker 2: So you're offered three years and your life's in a tornado.
Speaker 2: You spent ten years in Federacs, got this great job,
Speaker 2: a gambling addiction later, a divorce, later, hooked up with
Speaker 2: a pretty bad dude. That sounds like later, the death
Speaker 2: of a son. Later. Now you're faced with do I
Speaker 2: say okay and go to prison for three years and
Speaker 2: you don't even have money for I guess you're getting
Speaker 2: a quarter point and an attorney. No.
Speaker 1: My family, they gathered, they had a meeting. My mother
Speaker 1: was just tore up. She had no idea that I
Speaker 1: was involved in something like this. No one in my
Speaker 1: family knew. I mean no one in my family had
Speaker 1: You didn't I didn't grow up in Plus, none of
Speaker 1: my siblings have ever had a run in with the law.
Speaker 1: And from all appearances, I've never had not just appearances,
Speaker 1: the truth, I've never had been criminally minded. My children,
Speaker 1: you better not steal nothing. I came to Memphis. I
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to be on welfare and everything, but
Speaker 1: I didn't want my children to see that as an example.
Speaker 1: So I took that little low paying job because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to take money from the government. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to get a check in the mail. I don't
Speaker 1: want free stuff. I want to work for what I get.
Speaker 1: So I'm used to working and working hard, and this
Speaker 1: is totally I don't even know what I'm doing. Ignorance
Speaker 1: of the law is no excuse for breaking the law.
Speaker 1: So I put myself in a position to even come
Speaker 1: in contact with the law because if I had not
Speaker 1: did something that was wrong, I wouldn't have had to
Speaker 1: worry about that.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. I said this to John Ponder,
Speaker 2: who I know, you know, and he now uses it.
Speaker 2: There's a vernacular related to the judicial system that people
Speaker 2: will say, I caught a charge.
Speaker 1: I caught a charge, all right.
Speaker 2: Well, John was talking in an interview I did with
Speaker 2: him months ago, and he was talking about catching a
Speaker 2: charge or this guy caught a charge. He may have
Speaker 2: been speaking of himself catching charge, and I interrupted. I said, John,
Speaker 2: I got to talk to you about something. He said,
Speaker 2: all right, and I said, I'd never heard the phrase
Speaker 2: I caught a charge before. I was in my early thirties.
Speaker 2: I was at an asses and a kid was talking
Speaker 2: about house cousin got busted and caught a charge. And
Speaker 2: I said, he what he said? He caught a charge?
Speaker 2: I said, dude, you catch a colt, you catch the flu.
Speaker 2: That's something that happens to you earn a charge. And
Speaker 2: John started laughing. And now John no longer uses the
Speaker 2: terminology or caught a charge, You earn a charge. But
Speaker 2: the reason I'm saying this is because it's refreshing. You
Speaker 2: want to tell your story, because you need to tell
Speaker 2: your story to explain everything about your life and what
Speaker 2: you're doing now. But you don't tell your story. And
Speaker 2: I've never heard you or seen you write and tell
Speaker 2: your story and then somehow allow yourself to be a
Speaker 2: victim of it or use it as an excuse. You
Speaker 2: freely admit that you earned this problem with the law
Speaker 2: because of your own actions, and instead of trying to
Speaker 2: point and blame somebody else and everything else. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think that gives what you're doing now even more validity. Bill.
Speaker 1: I just don't want anyone to look at me as
Speaker 1: a victim. The sentence was too long, I will say that,
Speaker 1: but that's a broken judicial system. It was way too
Speaker 1: much for what I did, and never having been in
Speaker 1: trouble when I looked at people who were getting the
Speaker 1: same sentence as I received. There were murderers, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so from that standpoint, but I really exposed myself to
Speaker 1: get any sentence by the thing that I myself did.
Speaker 1: Nor do I want any child or my children to
Speaker 1: make excuses for wrong actions.
Speaker 2: It's so refreshing, and I commend you so much for that,
Speaker 2: because somebody who had been through what you've been through,
Speaker 2: you could almost justify and understand. While they would not
Speaker 2: accept total responsibility for their actions, but you do. It's
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why I think you're so inspiring.
Speaker 2: So you're offered three years and you're giving advice not
Speaker 2: to take it to me.
Speaker 1: Attorney tells me, don't do it. Don't take it. He said,
Speaker 1: they have nothing on you. He said that they gave
Speaker 1: me a ten thousand dollars bond, that others a bond,
Speaker 1: a very low bond. The ones who testified against me couldn't.
Speaker 2: Get a bond. They were held without bail.
Speaker 1: That they couldn't get a buck.
Speaker 2: Because they were really the ones doing the stuff.
Speaker 1: The cops knew it, and they had long histories to Oh,
Speaker 1: they had sheets, they had rap sheets. I had nothing.
Speaker 1: He said, we can beat this. He said, where's the beef,
Speaker 1: Where is the beef, where's the drugs? Where's the money?
Speaker 2: But you had no money and no drugs. So I
Speaker 2: go to try which again you earned that you did that.
Speaker 1: That was wrong, that was absolutely wrong because I was
Speaker 1: a part of it. I was a part of this
Speaker 1: whole thing.
Speaker 2: But you weren't running any cartels.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, for sure, absolutely not. So we go
Speaker 1: to trial and it looks like we're winning.
Speaker 2: Honestly, six you're feeling good about it.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling pretty good. He's feeling good about it. Then
Speaker 1: we get the note that the jury is hung and
Speaker 1: they're crying and they're arguing, and then they send a
Speaker 1: note out asking what is Can they explain conspiracy? I
Speaker 1: didn't have conspiracy explained to me either, So that was explained.
Speaker 2: Explain it to us.
Speaker 1: A conspiracy means that you have responsible for every action
Speaker 1: that's committed doing the furtherance.
Speaker 2: Of the crime, every action, not even your.
Speaker 1: Every action, everything you helped show the.
Speaker 2: Mule, the cartels, the folks selling her on the street,
Speaker 2: the guy delivering her to the dude on the corner.
Speaker 1: The candle, especially if you go to trial, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get what's called the trial penalty.
Speaker 2: So as a conspirator, you're associated with every everything. If
Speaker 2: I drop a buddy of mine off at a convenience
Speaker 2: store and he goes in and robs and shoots somebody
Speaker 2: and kills them because he rode with me, could I
Speaker 2: be brought up on the spirits and watch it. I
Speaker 2: could serve time for murder.
Speaker 1: You would, you? She would?
Speaker 2: And so that's the place you found yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're involved in a conspiracy. You're going to be
Speaker 1: called the getaway driver, and you're going to receive the
Speaker 1: same charge.
Speaker 2: What if I don't even know that guy's got a
Speaker 2: gun and he's going to.
Speaker 1: Steal charge your cold conspiratory real.
Speaker 2: Somebody rides with me, I have no idea he's got
Speaker 2: a gun, and he says, let me go in here
Speaker 2: and get a cold beer. And while he's in there,
Speaker 2: he tries to rob the place, shoot somebody. Get to
Speaker 2: my or because I delivered him, I could be brought
Speaker 2: up on conspiracy.
Speaker 1: They're not going to believe that you didn't know. Prove it,
Speaker 1: prove it, prove that you didn't know.
Speaker 2: So they looked at you and said prove that all
Speaker 2: you did was answer numbers.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, prove it. These people say, how can you how can.
Speaker 2: You prove a false negative? How can you disprove a
Speaker 2: false negative?
Speaker 1: I'm in it. They have my number, so and I guess.
Speaker 2: Somebody called you to give you numbers. So you had
Speaker 2: two sets of numbers.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I'm tired.
Speaker 2: I'm so you're dead in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm dead on a rival that I
Speaker 1: should have been fighting. But that was part of my
Speaker 1: journey that I now know that I had to take.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you this, looking you in your eyes,
Speaker 1: that God did not put me in prison. He used
Speaker 1: me in prison.
Speaker 2: So you turned down. Three years, you go to trial,
Speaker 2: You're feeling good about it. The note comes back about conspiracy.
Speaker 2: They find you guilty.
Speaker 1: In your sentence to life plus twenty five years without parole.
Speaker 2: And federal times so people know they're inding parole. Right.
Speaker 1: That's why it was without parole because there is no parole,
Speaker 1: and a life sentence in the federal system is called
Speaker 1: an unexecuted sentence of death because it is executed when
Speaker 1: you die.
Speaker 2: Was this at the time of mandatory sentencing und charges?
Speaker 2: So the judge sentenced you to what was mandated by law.
Speaker 2: The judge had no The judge couldn't have said, they
Speaker 2: find you guilty. I do too, but I believe you
Speaker 2: were really lightly involved. I'm going to give you three years.
Speaker 2: The judge has a set of mandatory sentencing guidelines that
Speaker 2: he has to give, and they have to give it
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 1: The only time that I had a choice was to
Speaker 1: take a plea.
Speaker 2: Before the started, and when you decided not take the
Speaker 2: plea and not take the three years, and you go to.
Speaker 1: Trial even while the jury was deliberating. I was offered
Speaker 1: eight years, and I'm like.
Speaker 2: You offered me three two months ago.
Speaker 1: Right, Maybe I could have negotiated at that point.
Speaker 2: Did your attorney not tell you, never, you don't take
Speaker 2: this three years, you could be looking at life.
Speaker 1: Never. I never even knew that a life sentence was
Speaker 1: on the table.
Speaker 2: So the second form of a literacy that I think
Speaker 2: plagues people mis financial literacy, but I think judicial and
Speaker 2: absolutely judicial and civic illiteracy is the reason many of
Speaker 2: our jails are full. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1: I would, even with some of the work that I'm
Speaker 1: doing now with talking to young people and really educating them, too,
Speaker 1: not just the education part, but really a change of
Speaker 1: mindset when you do things. I'm not saying I was
Speaker 1: a child, but I had the same knowledge as a
Speaker 1: young person doing something absolutely idiotic. They are doing things
Speaker 1: now not realizing that this is going to cost them
Speaker 1: their life, and I.
Speaker 2: Want people to hear me. I wish this was video.
Speaker 2: I am sitting across the table from a beautiful woman
Speaker 2: who is dressed beautifully, has a beautiful smile, has a
Speaker 2: bright eyes, fingernails are done, has a heart lock it
Speaker 2: around her neck. Don't sensationalize or stereotype people have been
Speaker 2: to prison because I promise you, somebody came across you.
Speaker 2: They'd never see that. And I got to imagine that
Speaker 2: the woman at FedEx that grew up the daughter of
Speaker 2: sharecroppers never envisioned that there was trauma in your life.
Speaker 2: You fell in a hole, you made a mistake, and
Speaker 2: a screwed up mandatory sentencing based on drugs because of
Speaker 2: the War on drugs and really poor advice from attorney.
Speaker 2: You're going to jail for the rest of your life,
Speaker 2: and after you die, I guess you get to serve
Speaker 2: another twenty five years because that's a sentence you're gone,
Speaker 2: your family's gone, your life's gone. It's over. You're going
Speaker 2: to jail and you will never see that outside of
Speaker 2: the walls.
Speaker 1: Right, that's what they say it. And you were how
Speaker 1: old forty one?
Speaker 2: I I just can't imagine at that moment, just that
Speaker 2: moment despair that you must have felt.
Speaker 1: It was unbelievable, especially when they took me back to
Speaker 1: my jail cell and I heard that door slam. It's real,
Speaker 1: it was real. And honestly, it was my foundation of
Speaker 1: faith really that caused me when I fell on my knees,
Speaker 1: when I fell down, because I know in who I believe,
Speaker 1: and I prayed and I asked God to show me
Speaker 1: my purpose in this because I didn't. I couldn't. There
Speaker 1: was nothing else.
Speaker 2: Could you find a purpose?
Speaker 1: Show me something, show me something, show me something. This
Speaker 1: has to count for something. And so right then I
Speaker 1: just made a viow that I'm never going to give
Speaker 1: up my faith or my hope and and I've got
Speaker 1: to live life. I'm not going to allow anyone to
Speaker 1: take my life. I'm in this situation. I'm not dead,
Speaker 1: I'm still healthy, and it's got to be something in here.
Speaker 1: But I guess when I hit federal ground in saw
Speaker 1: where were you in prison?
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 1: In California, I was sitting fifteen.
Speaker 2: I sent you all the way to California, fifteen.
Speaker 1: Hundred miles away from my kids. Well that was very
Speaker 1: nice something, Yeah, that was extremely nice, lovely. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was Dublin FCI Doublin. It was in Pleasanton, California, up
Speaker 1: in the mountains. And I walked on that compound, ID
Speaker 1: just gotten there in this lady in this wheelchair looks
Speaker 1: at me. I guess I'm looking around lost And she said,
Speaker 1: what's your name? I told her and she said, Alice Bloom,
Speaker 1: where you're planted? God knows where you are.
Speaker 2: A woman in prison in a wheelchair and a.
Speaker 1: Wheelchair said that. She said, God knows where you are.
Speaker 1: And that stuck with me and I just kept walking around.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, God, you do know where I am.
Speaker 1: And when I said that, you might think I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: I did a skip?
Speaker 2: You did a what a skip? Did you really?
Speaker 1: I did a skip? I did a skip because they said, God,
Speaker 1: you know where I am.
Speaker 2: And that concludes part one of my conversations with Alice
Speaker 2: Marie Johnson, and you do not want to miss part two.
Speaker 2: That's now available, as we dive into how Alice actually
Speaker 2: did bloom in prison. Frankly, I expect you'll be as
Speaker 2: shocked as I was hearing about all the extraordinary things
Speaker 2: that she did in prison. I'll see in Part ten.