Darron Patterson Interview

Darron Patterson Oral History Interview

Nathan Carpenter: This is Nathan Carpenter with Oberlin College and the Africatown Oral History Digital Archive. We're here in Mobile, Alabama on Wednesday, October 23, 2019. I'm here with Mr. Darron Patterson-

Darron Patterson: Yeah, here we are.

Carpenter: With the Clotilda Descendants Association, and we are joined by Santiago Roman, Isabel Tadmiri, Imani Badillo, and Havi Carrillo-Klein also with Oberlin College. I just want to say on the record that Mr. Patterson this interview is your property and you are free to choose to not answer any questions, to pause the interview at any time, or to just end the interview at any time and that's totally up to your discretion. I guess I would like to ask, Mr. Patterson, to begin by saying when and where you were born. 

Patterson: I was born here in Mobile in Plateau. Plateau is what Africatown used to be called before all the things started happening that made it Africatown. We 00:01:00only knew it as Plateau, and I was born there in 1952, right on the big bridge highway, the road that goes across that big bridge that you see. Yeah.

Carpenter: What do you know about how your family first came to Plateau or Africatown?

Patterson: Well, that's the interesting thing about it: they never told me anything. I had no clue who I was. Nobody ever told me that I was a Yoruban warrior. As a matter of fact, my family, my mother, vehemently denied that she was African. As things went on, I now understand that they were more interested in where we were going than where we came from. I think they might have been a little bit embarrassed. I have cousins whose relatives embraced it and told them 00:02:00everything. You heard of Momma Eva? Eva Jones?

Carpenter: I think so.

Patterson: Eva Jones was really cool, and Henry Williams was way cool, but they told us Henry Williams was crazy. "Oh, he's crazy, don't listen to Henry Williams." So, we didn't listen to him because they said he was crazy. And then, you did what your parents told you to do. I wish I had listened to Henry Williams because he knew a lot more than a lot of people did. And Henry tried to tell us who we were. So, like I said, I didn't pay attention to that, and I went on through my life not really knowing the history of how we got to where we were and who I was. That is disheartening for me now. It was okay then because what I didn't know I didn't know. But now I wish I had known because I could have, I 00:03:00could have done something, you know? I could've documented something, dug a little further, found out more about who I was but as it turns out it's okay, it's okay.

Carpenter: So did you grow up with any stories about the Clotilda of Benin?

Patterson: Not one, not one, not one. I didn't know anything about it at all, and like I said, Henry Williams was the closest thing that I knew. My mother, my aunts, my older sisters, not one. I didn't know anything about the history of that community. 

Carpenter: So when did you first begin to have an awareness of the history?

Patterson: When I was in Detroit.

Carpenter: Okay.

Patterson: I left Mobile in '66. I was in the ninth grade, my father worked at Brookley Air Force Base, and they closed the Air Force Base and moved all the 00:04:00persons that were there around the country. My father decided to Corpus Christi because it was the closest thing to Mobile that he found. And my mother was from Mobile and had never been out of Mobile, so he moved to the town that was the closest thing to Mobile he could find. The only thing that was different about Corpus Christi was that it had Chicanos, and I had never been around anything but Black people, and neither had my father or my mother. So, for me it was easy because I was able to read about the culture and know who they were and know what Mexicans were about and people of Spanish culture. My father was a little bit different: he, it took him a minute to embrace that culture. So, once we went to Texas, I graduated in Texas, went to school, went to college in Texas, and on the way here after I graduated, my father had moved back here, my mother 00:05:00had moved back here, and I told my father I was on my way to WTnH in New Haven, Connecticut because I was on television and my sister had a job set up for me there. So I stopped through Mobile on the way there to see my folks and told my Pop, I said, "Well I'll take you to the Superbowl next year," and he died that night, just suddenly. So, here I am, boom, in Mobile. So once here in Mobile, I started to hear things: Africatown this, Clotilda this and that. And then I started runnin' into relatives of mine who started telling me different things, but I was still into other things like sports as a sports writer and that type of thing. And then I left Mobile in '88 and went to Detroit and started working for the Detroit News. Once I got there, the interesting part was I met a guy who 00:06:00was a history buff. And when he found out I was from Mobile, he started saying, Oh you know Mobile's famous and slave ship and blah blah blah so I started readin'. And I was like wow, I'm a Yoruban warrior, you know? I wanted to run around and do things. I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I was gonna do things you know whatever Yoruban warriors do. So, I started reading more, reading more, and when I came back to Mobile in 2009, everything was Africatown, Africatown, Africatown. I'd run into my relatives and they're tellin' me this and that, so I started reading, and I'm like "wow, this is really really cool." And started runnin into people that were cousins and people I didn't know and people that I would've graduated with in that last class of 1970. And they started talkin' about all this Africatown stuff, and I just kind of embraced it. 00:07:00But I still wasn't very active in meetings and stuff like that because I had too much to do. I was pretty busy. And then they found the boat, and everything blew up, man. And once they found the boat, it was imperative that descendants organize themselves. Now, there had been an organization before us that was the, I can't think of the exact name, it was the, African Descendants from the Boat of the Clotilda, that type of thing. Well, those were older people who did that, it was Beatrice Ellis was the organizer of that group, and she passed away, she was a really good lady, my cousin. And the group was fairly dormant. Well, when 00:08:00they found the boat, everything started just blowin up and going crazy, so it was really important that the descendants organize ourselves. And I met Joycelyn Davis, and Joycleyn is really cool, she's a cool lady, but at this point we needed some whoop-ass, and so I have a lot of skills and I can do a lot of things, so whoop-ass has to be one of em. So me and Joycelyn joined forces, and we actually complement each other. She's my balance: when I'm in a tree, she talks me down out a tree. She never gets in a tree, so I never a chance to talk her down, so I just stay in trees all the time because I'm just, you know, that's just me. And we organized ourselves, a 501(c)3, a website, a intellectual 00:09:00property attorney, hired that lady. We did everything we needed to do to protect ourselves. We developed a logo if you've ever been to our website, we have a beautiful website: theclotildastory.com with the ship and the 110 as the sails on the ship, we copywrote that. We did everything we needed to do because now, and it's a good thing we did because now, we're runnin into a lot of charlatans, a lot of faith people, I heard there are people all the way in New York representin' themselves as spokespersons of the Clotilda. Have I gone off track?

Carpenter: Not at all.

Patterson: Okay and they were up there representin' themselves as the Clotilda society. So I had to get our attorney involved in that and she told us to stay the course, make sure your profile stays high, and once we go to court if they're out here confusing people, we have a great chance of winning whatever we 00:10:00take to court. So it's really sad for me that I have to go through that because we all should be on one accord And unfortunately it's just not, you know. I heard this great joke: there was these three people, and St. Peter said, the first person that tells Jesus something he can't answer goes straight to heaven. So, the white guy goes up and says somethin' to Jesus and Jesus is like "I know that,' ' so St. Peter said go to Hell. Mexican guy says to Jesus and Jesus is like "oh man I know that." So the Black guy says to Jesus and Jesus is like "wow I don't know if I can answer that," and St. Peter says "okay, you can go straight to heaven." He says "by the way, what did you ask Jesus?" He said "I asked him when are Black people gonna come together." Made a lot of sense to me because for some reason, we cannot seem to come together, and it bothers me a 00:11:00lot. We've got C.H.E.S.S. Joe Womack's group, we got A.C.D.C Cleon Jones' group, we have MCTSAA the alumni association with Anderson Flen, and then you have us, the descendants. That's four groups of people who should all come to the table and organize ourselves so that we're strong as a unit. We can't seem to get on the same foot, either three of us want to do it and one doesn't or, but we're workin on it. So that's good. All is not lost, we're workin on it. And we need to do that for the sake of bein' able to put up a unified front for this community and this administration downtown. We don't need to be runnin' around 00:12:00acting like we're individuals. So I might've got off track a little bit. 

Carpenter: Not at all.

Patterson: Sorry about that.

Carpenter: So it seems like even though you weren't taught this history when you were younger that you feel it is important to continue to teach and pass on to future generations?

Patterson: Oh, absolutely.

Carpenter: Can you speak about that?

Patterson: Absolutely, I mean it's our history. It's- right now we have an opportunity to do what wasn't done for us. And that is to make sure that my kids, my grandkids, their grandkids, know who they are. Know who you are and where you came from, that's all important. That's really important, and we're on a good road to doin that but it's really important that they stay that way and stay that course. So right now what the descendants charge is to make sure the 00:13:00story's told right and second make sure the museum represents us correctly and is laid out in a way that tells the story. If you go to museums, good museums are very well thought out most of the time in terms of how they're laid out and they tell the story. That's what the descendants are charged with right now: we have to make sure our story's told right, the museum correctly illustrates the story, and that the story never dies. We have some documentaries that we've done, one in particular is bein' done by Margaret Brown, she's a filmmaker, and more than likely her film is gonna end up at cons. When that happens, we are 00:14:00prepared--the descendants--to go all around the world if necessary for fulfilling speaking engagements to tell our story to be sure our story is there and never dies. That's our goal. 

Carpenter: So you talk about making sure that people know the history of the community and who they are. Can you talk about that, you know, when you--you were saying that later in life you discovered that you were a Yoruban warrior--what that realization was like and what it meant to you?

Patterson: Well I started readin' about Yorubans. I started reading about who they were and man I was proud, I was like "wow, these guys are some bad stuff, man," I was like "alright I'm a Yoruban warrior" you know what I mean? And farmers, which is part of the reason them coming here on the boat helped the 00:15:00Meaher family because they were farmers. I mean, among other things. And they helped them cultivate and grow their cotton crop, it helped them get rich, we'll get to that later. It helped them get rich; they actually showed them a lot of ways to make their crop better, get their crop to market faster, and they were pretty good people. If you look in the book you'll see the ladies had their specific tasks, the gentlemen had their specific tasks, and it was all very organized. I just hate that they were taking away from--I mean, I think about them sitting on the west coast of Africa and they were probably watchin' ESPN or 00:16:00something, nobody's botherin' them, and here comes the Dahomeys. The Dahomeys actually had a great plan: they could get rid of the competition by enslaving the rival tribe, us, and then sell us to the white man who had gotten wind of the discord goin on over in Africa, and get rich off of it. The ironic thing I tell people now is that when we can't come together today, that's the same way we got here. That's what bothers me. When we can't come together as one, I tell people "wait a minute! This how we got here in the first place."  Once they saw some discord in what we were doin, it made us easy prey. Does that make sense? Yeah, it made us easy prey. So, I really forgot what you asked me.

Carpenter: No, that was helpful. And you were speaking about the original people who were brought to Africatown were farmers and had this body of agricultural knowledge.

Patterson: Partly farmers, among other things. 

Carpenter: And you said- among other things.

Patterson: Yeah. 

Carpenter: And you were talking about how that helped not only the beginnings of Africatown but also the Meaher family get rich.

Patterson: Mhm. Now, I was talkin to- have you talked to Karlos Finley?

Carpenter: Mm-mm.

Patterson: Karlos Finley is a attorney here, and he is a judge, a municipal judge, part-time or something, I don't know how that works. And we were talking about statute of limitations. National Geographic, Captain Foster and Timothy 00:18:00Meaher were put on trial, you know that. And they were, I've heard they were acquitted, I've heard the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. If the case was dismissed for lack of evidence, National Geographic wants to swab the whole of the boat that was sunk down in the river, in the sand up the river, and they want to swab the descendants. And there's a possibility that if part of that, from what I understand, DNA is underneath the sand where it's not disturbed, once they start excavating, they actually can find DNA there. That's what I was told, I'm not an expert. And I was takin' to Mr. Finley, Judge Finley, and he said that there's actually possibly a case for if the case was dismissed for lack of evidence there actually might be a case to now have it reinstated if 00:19:00there is complete evidence of a crime. The boat would be the crime, the evidence of the crime. I thought that was fascinating. It's probably far fetched, but I don't put anything past legal people, man. I don't put anything past, I don't put anything past nothing, really. And if NatGeo is gonna swab the whole, I'm all for it, go do it man, swab me. Let's find out where we can go from here, because like I've said before when we were talkin' off camera, I don't want anything from the Meahers. As a matter of fact, I feel bad that the Meahers are being unfairly drawn and quartered for something that their relatives did. They didn't have anything to do with what their great-great-grandfathers did. Just 00:20:00like I didn't have anything to do with what mine did. And they're being unfairly treated now as the criminals for something that their relatives did. But where I have an issue with the Meahers--I put myself in their position and say if it was me what would I do?--I'd come forward and say "how you doin my name is Darron, our lives are forever intertwined, there's nothin' I can do about what my grandfather did, but do you want to go have a beer? Do you want to talk? And by the way we're filthy rich, is there anything that we can do to--what's pressing in this community right now that we can help with?" I mean, that's me, it's obviously not the Meahers. But that's the way that I would approach it. I would approach it that I can't make up for something that my relatives did, but you 00:21:00know we kind of got rich off the backs of your ancestors. I feel like I owe you something for that, so let me help in some way. That's what I'm lookin' for. That's what would make it right for me. Now believe me, we got people that are saying, "give me my money"--well how's that gonna work? How is that gonna work? Who gets what, and how much do you get, and what about the descendant in Bangkok, how much does he get? And in Yugoslavia, how much does he get? How much does she get? I don't see the reparations thing working, I think there's another way this could work. Brian Stevenson who has the museum and the thing we talked about in Montgomery, he has a documentary and in his documentary he said that nothing is going to be right and made right until there's truth and 00:22:00reconciliation. I thought that was outstanding. The truth is out, the reconciliation is acknowledged that it happened. It's really simple, it's really not that hard. It happened, and we acknowledge that it happened. Now go from there.

Carpenter: And so, you were kind of, to return to the research that you said you started, did you after learning about the history of your family and the history of the community, you were talking about the agriculture and the very particular roles that different people would play in the community. Did you see in your research any way that those things were kind of pulled from the original African roots of the community?

Patterson: Oh yeah.

Carpenter: And how did you see that?

Patterson: Well just by the separation of things, the things that the women did: they cooked, they cleaned, they sewed, they did this. And then the men went and did this and, pretty much all like today. I mean, not all like that because that's not right. I didn't mean like women should clean, sorry. I didn't mean that. It's kind of like today, the man's role. My role is to make sure my family survives whether my wife works or not. Not that her job isn't important, but my role the way I was taught by my father is you make sure this family survives. And that's pretty much society I think; it's not a race thing, it's a society thing I think. But they took it to a different level because that's the way the tribe was: there was a hierarchy to the men, there was a hierarchy to the women. 00:24:00And when they got here they implemented the same, they implemented what they knew. Now the interesting part is, they were here for three years, five years, somebody told me, before, I think it was five years before slavery was abolished. So they had time to watch the white man, and say how he did things, and I don't know how much of that entered into the way they set up their community once they did, but for the most part, once they set up their community, it was still by the same structure that they had come from in Africa. I was readin' parts of Sylviane Diouf's book, Dreams of Africa in Alabama, and she talked about that. She talked about how they set it up this way, they did 00:25:00this, there were leaders. You always have to have a leader, my great-great-grandfather was one of the leaders. I think that's where--I don't go out to lead, I don't go out to say "I'm gonna take care of this, I got this." I don't go out there. But it just does, it comes naturally to me. I also follow very well, but I lead a whole lot better. And I really believe it has something to do with that guy, Pollee. I really believe it had somethin' to do with what's inside of me, and my DNA, and the way I approach things. I have no problem bein' the person you put out in front for people to shoot at because I'm gonna shoot back. I plan on being on target, and you have to have those people. And that's 00:26:00what I was sayin' about Joycelyn, me and Joycelyn talked about this. She is the face of our descendants organization, she's little and cute and everything and nobody want to hurt her or bother her, and then there's me, who I'm not gonna let anything happen to Joycelyn, okay? I think that's the way to go. Anderson Flen is the face of the Mobile County Training School Alumni Organization, Anderson Flen. He is the man. Joe Womack is the man, with C.H.E.S.S., okay? He is the man. Cleon Jones is the man with A.C.D.C. Joycelyn, she is the descendant to me. She is the face of what we should be. She's smart, she's go-get-it-ness, she has a go-get-it-ness about her, but she lacks somethin' that I have. Now, 00:27:00the other thing is I was raised by women too, so I got a lot of woman in me, you know? I told this guy in Detroit one time, he was an engineer for Ford, and I was a technical writer, and I told him, I said "here's your part on the car and here's how it works." He said, "That's not how my part works," he said, "you're stupid." And I started cryin, i was like "oh, he called me stupid," I said "now look, I was raised by women, I'll scratch your eyes out and keep movin like nothin ever happened." And he became my best friend 'cause I told him I have a lot of woman in me, and the good thing is, you need that woman thing in you sometimes. That woman thing is awesome. It's emotion, it's whoop-ass, it's a lot of stuff, and a lot of guys don't have that woman thing in them, they're all macho man. Yeah okay. I cry, and I will whoop your ass if I need to. My momma 00:28:00was like that, she was very, very sweet, but my daddy knew how far to go. When my daddy died, my mom had started doin' all these things that i didn't know she knew how to do: pay bills, la la la. And I asked her, I said "I didn't know you knew how to do all this stuff." She said "let me tell you something: a smart woman makes a man feels like he's in control, even if he's not." I have never forgotten that, ever. Never. Never! I thought that was awesome, I was like "my mom." i thought that was alright. So, a lot of these things you have to take from these old people man and what they gave you. I watch Joycelyn operate, I watch her a lot. And where she's weak, I'll talk to her about some things, and 00:29:00she'll talk to me too. I listen, and I pay attention, and for the most part I hear it, and if I feel like I need to implement it, I do. But I hear what she says, and we're good for each other. We complement each other, and it's gonna take where we're trying to go with these descendants a long way. They follow us, they tell us "we're followin' y'all." That's a good thing. We talk about that all the time, I say "man, they followin' us!" like, yeah I know! That's good, so I don't know if I got off track again. You know, I get off track a lot.

Carpenter: No, it's all good, it's all good.

Patterson: Alright.

Carpenter: So, I'm guessing, I'm curious about this experience after the Clotilda was found, assembling this group of descendants. What was that process like? Was there a sense of kind of like connection that was developed within the descendants?

Patterson: It was crazy, man. People were crazy. They were out of their mind. So, and this is what we've got goin on now: the older group that was formed 00:30:00before. So, Theodore Arthur is my cousin, he along with Miss Beatrice Ellis formed the older group that was, you know, back then and dormant. So, I knew that we had to get this group goin so I called Theodore, I said "Theodore," I said "now Theodore, we gotta get this group going man," and Theodore was like maybe in his seventies, and "we've got to get this group going" and Theodore was like "look man," he played saxophone, and he's a very loaded local musician, and he says "man I don't have time," he says, "look, you take it, and you run with it." I'm like okay, I got this. So, I started getting this group together and we had the descendants and then some of them said "well I'm part of Theodore Arthur's group." I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. We're all in the same group. We shortened the name, Clotilda Descendants Association, from Africatown 00:31:00People from Mars and Jupiter that were on the Clotilda, whatever it was man. It was too long. We whittled it down to somethin' that rolled off the tongue. We have a great website, I love our website. A good guy put it together, Alan Bozeman, for me, he did my personal website, and he's done others. So, you know, these folks didn't understand that now we don't pass out flyers, you know? We have a Twitter, Facebook, you know, Instagram, and have a Cashapp on there, have a big Donate button on the website. And I'm fairly technologically savvy because I had to reinvent myself over the years from sports writer to project manager to whatever man, I got to do a lot of stuff, and I'm blessed to do that because God 00:32:00has given me the skills and talent to do that, and the know how to understand the need to understand that I have to do this to stay relevant. So, here I am at 67 year old, and people tellin' me how I look 57-years-old, which I will take that, and move on, and I'm still technologically relevant to still make sense in this world. That was the problem I was having to convey to the older people. Me and Joycelyn have legs, you know what I mean? Legs. We can do things. We don't print flyers and say, we don't pick up the phone and say, we text and we Instagram, we Facebook, and we, you know, FaceTime. So, I had a problem with the older folks thinking we were trying to do things differently and we had two 00:33:00different organizations. I'm still goin through that with them. It's getting better. We're going to have election of offices and the board of directors and it is what it is, you know? And I'm trying my best not to make them feel like we're cutting them out. We're all descendants. I'm also not gonna baby 'em. We can't afford to baby them. We got people out there tryin' to imitate this and tryin' to get money from Clotilda this and Africatown that. And we got to be vigilant. I tell the descendants all the time that if you see something, say something. I got a guy in Montgomery, my cousin, he did an interview with a 00:34:00local TV station, and he changed Pollee's name to Pogue-lee because his last name is Pogue. And I was upset with the interviewer in Montgomery because she didn't call to verify any of this. You know, we'll pick up where I left off. We don't want those people who started this journey to feel like we're cuttin' them out. But what my cousin did, well he said "oh Darron, you take it and you run with it, you go." You know, I don't know if he knew the extent that I would do that. We didn't have time to check in with him and say "Theodore, I'm doin this now" and "Theodore we're doin that." Well, around Labor Day, I was watching the morning news and Theodore comes on the TV and says "I am the president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, and I am having a benefit concert, blah blah 00:35:00blah." That didn't set real well with me because the last thing we need to show is a crack in the armor, especially in this administration that's doing nothing for us. Especially to the people like Doug Jones' office, Senator Jones, who is gonna appropriate some money and who has done that for us. We have to be a unified group, and that's what I'm tryin to get people to understand now: we have to be a unified group. It's comin' but it's slow, but I see it coming. I see it coming. So, with that in mind, it hasn't been easy. We have a steering committee of six people who meet every Wednesday at five o'clock. Two of them are out of town, one's in Dallas, one's in Philly, and they dial in and we talk. 00:36:00And the steering committee is the one who is guiding and building this ship, and we're about to have our first all descendants meeting. We're trying to identify everybody. I have a portal on the website that takes a password to get into that only information that descendants need to know is there. You'll fill out a form and send it in and my webmaster will send you a password to get in, and on that site I've put different things for the descendants. And I include everybody so they see what's happenin, they understand what's happenin, and they have access to what's happening. These are the kind of things that we're tryin to say in 2019: this is how we're gonna do this. We can't print out a flyer and go put it up on a bulletin board for somebody to see it, we can't pick up the phone and 00:37:00call everybody, so hopefully, hopefully they see what we're doin and just jump on it. Some of them are doing it, some of them are, most of them are, there's just a couple out there stragglin'. We're gettin' there. 

Carpenter: I have one more question about the Clotila specifically? I'm curious to just, you as, you know, Darron Patterson, what that moment when it was found was like? 

Patterson: I wish I could show you the interview when I met up with Ben Raines. Have you met Ben Raines? You need to meet Ben Raines. Ben Raines is actually the guy who found the ship. I know that Jim delGado and Search Incorporated was said they found the ship, but Ben Raines is actually the guy who found the ship. He's a local journalist working at the press registry, he's an environmental guy. But Ben Raines showed me where the site was, and I was mentionin' this at the table 00:38:00out there about how I felt when I saw the site, I'm like "wow, this is the site man where they brought the boat and says 'okay, get your asses off' you know, 'because we gotta burn this boat!'" And they told them just to get off: no shoes, some women were probably carrying babies, the men were tryin to keep up with their families through a swamp with alligators, snakes, and bears. When I saw that, I saw myself on camera and I didn't even know that I had become, that I was overcome like that. I'm overcome knowing that that is the site where they were at. Now, I could feel it from my toes to my head, and we were also talkin' on camera about, thinkin about a two month journey, sixty days, in the whole of 00:39:00a ship, stacked like lumber, having to eat where you slept, and sleep where you defecated, and only be able to go up on the deck of the ship one day, one hour a day. No, one day a week for however long. That was only so your muscles wouldn't atrophy, and you would become less valuable cargo. Think about that. I do. My oldest son says, "Papa, I just wouldn't stand for that," and I said, "What would you have done?" It makes you just want to, I don't know. That's less than human. 00:40:00That's less than human to treat somebody like that. You know what I mean? So, that's the way I feel. And I was talkin' to somebody and they said, "It's easy for somebody to treat you like that if they classify you as less than human." So it's eas: once they classified us as less than human, then we could be treated like dogs. Anyway, I'm sorry. 

Carpenter: No.

Patterson: Right.

Carpenter: And we already talked about this a little, or you touched on this a little already, but moving forward, when it comes to the Africatown community 00:41:00and the Descendants Association, what do you think that repair looks like for what has been done?

Patterson: The repair?

Carpenter: The repair of what's been, so of the Clotilda itself and then anything that has happened to the Africatown community since then. 

Patterson: I'm a little confused. Say it again?

Carpenter: I'm curious what you think in, you know, what you shared and then other things that have happened to the Africatown community throughout time

Patterson: Mm-hmm.

Carpenter: What does repairing that look like?

Patterson: I'm really not sure. I know that buildings are not it totally. A sense of pride in the community. Man, I remember growin' up, and it was a great, 00:42:00fun place to be, you know, as a kid. Everybody knew everybody. E'rybody looked out for e'rybody, everybody cared about everybody. It was a fun place to be. Mobile County Training School, Whitley Elementary School, and Mobile County Training School was a fun place to go. And now, as I look back on it, I think about all the people that were there, and I'm gonna get back to your question, but I'm just thinkin about it, there was a sense of something, and we didn't talk about it among ourselves as kids, so I'm sure that a lot of people didn't talk to them about who they were. It'd be great to get that back, but you know, 00:43:00you can't get that back anywhere in the country. This place, this world has moved on. I don't know if repair is the right word, or reinvent. We believe if we can- there's a housing project over there, Josephine Allen. We're lookin' at that site and tryin' to acquire that site to put a replica of the ship and a man made lake with a walkway where you can circle the ship and walk down. And the bottom of the boat is glass so you can actually see into the cargo hold with the 00:44:00slaves in the cargo hold. If that is an anchor and a centerpiece to the community that we can put housing around, businesses around. I'm saying those are the kind of things that help rebuild a city, a community. I lived in Detroit for twenty years, and Detroit now is really on the way back. Cleveland, Cleveland man. I am really impressed with what's happening in Cleveland. Everybody says Lebron did it, and he probably did have a lot to do with it. But, the river on fire jokes are gone now, you know? Oh, the river's on fire in Cleveland, you know? The river really was on fire. But those things are gone now. Cleveland has come back, Baltimore has come back. And they've done it in 00:45:00different ways through different mechanisms. Mobile has an opportunity to have a destination. There's a building downtown called Gulfquest. Have you seen it? It looks like a ship. It's a maritime museum. I don't know what jackass signed off on this, but you have to be a destination city to have something like that for people to come to see. Mobile is not a destination city. New Orleans is a destination city, New York, Cleveland to a degree, Detroit to a degree, LA. Those are destination cities, those are places where people go for a reason, and it's a beautiful museum made just like a ship right by the cruise tunnel. But nobody goes there. Nobody goes there, there's nothing to go and see, and this 00:46:00community can't support that, you know? Africatown. Africatown could be something special if this city decided it wanted it to be special. But again, slavery ain't sexy man, and it ain't cool. But the right forward thinking person could get it done. I'm fortunate to have the mayor's cell phone number, and be able to talk to him when I want to. I don't talk to him a lot. I will tomorrow because I have to go to lunch with some crap he's got goin on. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean that. Something he has going on. And I pull him aside every once in 00:47:00a while and go, "Hey, what's up," you know? And he gives me the, you know, the regular, you know stuff and mumbo jumbo. And I know that he is, I know that he wants to do things, but the Mayor does not run this town, the old Mobile money runs this town. Yeah, old Mobile money runs this town. As a matter of fact, my uncle used to work for Augustine Meaher's father who would have been Timothy Meaher's grandson at the dog track he was a chef. My uncle was the best chef in town, he worked for Admiral Sam's hotel, he worked for Raddison, and he was the chef at the dog track. And at that time, Gus Meaher had an interest in the Dog 00:48:00Track. Oh, well I'd hear my uncle come home and go "Gus Meaher, Gus Meaher, Gus Meaher." I didn't know what the hell was goin' on. My uncle actually worked for Timothy Meaher's grandson. Now I wonder if, that's why I want to talk to Augustine, 'cause Augustine would've been like that like I was, and I want to know if his father really knew that my uncle was a descendant. 'Cause I don't know if my uncle knew, I don't. He was just, he would do private parties for Gus Meaher, Augustine Meaher, short. Gus is short for Augustine. Augustine the second, or the third, is the guy who has the, he was the attorney, now he's my age, close to my age, he's seventy-somethin'. So, I mean that's just ironic when I thought about it, I'm like "wow, my uncle probably never even knew that, who Gus Meaher was." And he might have, but I never. If he did, there was never any 00:49:00dialogue in the house about any of this, you know? If there had been, I might have picked up on somethin' and ran with it and decided to do somethin, but there was never any dialogue. There was never any dialogue man about the Clotilda. Never even heard the word Clotilda. Never heard of it. So I don't know, I think reinvention of the community would be great. It would be great to have a museum and housing and parks, theme parks and that kind of stuff to make that community whole again.

Carpenter: If it's alright, I'd love to ask some questions that are less about the descendents association and more about kind of your life and what-

Patterson: Here we go!

Carpenter: -brought you here

Patterson: I don't know those people anymore. They're in jail, I dunno. 

Carpenter: (laughs) So if I - well actually before I jump into that, are there questions that any of you have about what we've talked about so far?

Patterson: Yes, there are other people in the room

Carpenter: that you wanted to-- add

Santiago Roman: I had just a quick question, I was really fascinated by what you were saying in regards to the possibility of some kind of case being brought up against the Meahers if they found evidence and my first thought was how does that make you feel that there's not enough- there's like, not enough quote unquote not enough evidence already to be a case of a crime that happened like it seems, it feels like the evidence is all around us but they want this, like, one thing that is scientific, empirical, like DNA, and I know that you also said you don't think a case or a lawsuit is exactly what is, like, needed or 00:51:00necessary but still, that's just such a-- the need for more evidence like, what does that- how does that make you feel?

Patterson: Well, you know, I believe in doing the right thing. Like I said, if the roles were reversed, and if I were a Meaher, which I did- I have heard there is discussion in the family among the grandchildren that, you know, we need to get out in front of this thing and get out there and say somethin' about it and there, I have heard-- only a rumor, that there is an edict within the family from those higher up: don't say nothin' about this, if you do there will be no money in your future. I've heard that, I cannot attest to that, but I've heard that in more than one place. And I've said that I feel bad that this family is being skewered by what somebody did. I'm not looking- I don't want it to come to 00:52:00that. I believe in doin' the right thing. Truth and reconciliation. I would love for us and the maaehers just to be able to talk. You can't take back what happened. Can't do it. So let's figure out a way forward that's best for everybody. You know, it's no secret that this country is completely divided down racial lines. There's  no doubt about it. I was watchin' a thing before I came here about the stabbing in Portland few years ago with this guy who was on the subway and stabbed these people because he was- he didn't like the two black ladies that was in the front of him sittin' on the subway. It's crazy! The guy who runs over the people in Charlottesville- was that it, Charlottesville?

Carpenter: mmhmm. 

(0:53:00) Patterson: Just take a car and run into a bunch of people. And then you have this imbecile, 45- I'm sorry- we have this man who has pulled off the ultimate con. He's a con-man who has pulled off the ultimate con on America. To be elected president of the United States, who has no desire at all to unify. He only cares about the people around him, his brand, his family. He is the president of the United States. You are supposed to be the unifier in chief. I would love to be able to help with unity if the Meahers could just find their way to say, "Okay, we didn't have a damn thing to do with that. But we gon' sit down and talk to these folks. Because their lives and ours are intertwined. We're going to see how we can do some things to help this community reinvent 00:54:00itself. We gonna talk to the administration and let them know we're on board with tryin' to help develop this community. Now errybody else get on board." That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for truth and reconciliation. The truth, it happened. The reconciliation is- no, the truth was the act, the reconciliation was, we're sorry. I dunno if I sa- I dunno if I said anything, really. I just start ramblin' man, you know. Ugh, Jesus. You cut that out too. Okay.

Carpenter: Um, so to turn to- oh, sorry

Isabel Tadmiri: I have a question that's still kind of about Clotilda. So you mentioned how you're- the Clotilda Descendants association is working with the older descendents and older community members, and you did mention like, your 00:55:00kids and your grandkids as well but I was wondering if you had any more thoughts about how the association and how the descendants should be or are interacting with kids in the community, either in the schools or otherwise. 

Patterson: Education. Yeah, education is one of our things, we wanna educate people on the story. On our website, it has a line that says "Never forget". That was a line that, I didn't tell the guy to put on there but he put on there, he attributed to my name, I'm like, "Okay! Whateva." Never forget. You should not forget certain things. You know, you should not forget certain things. I remember things right now, at this age, that my mother told me. That my father told me. That helped to get to where I am. Now don' get me wrong, I went down some wrong tracks. But because of those things that I heard I was able to come 00:56:00back and go down the other fork in the road. I know some people who have not been able to- to come back. Mmkay? Um, education. And our mission statement I think Joycelyn, Joycelyn wrote our mission statement. And it talks about education. It talks about educating the young people, something that they didn't do to us. Educating young people on who you are, man when I found out I was Yoruba, I looked up Yoruba and there was this dude standin' there and he was like cut and buff, I'm like man, I'm goin' to the gym! You know, cause I wan' be like him! He's a Yoruban warrior. Runnin' around, doin' things strong, you know, leadin' his family. Um, so education yeah, is big for what the descendants are tryna make sure that we do. Did I answer? 

Tadmiri: Yeah!

Havi Carillo-Klein: You talked a lot about, um, the role of direct descendants in-

Patterson: The older'ns? 

Carillo-Klein: Um, yeah the ones in your organization about their role in kind of reparations, and especially after the disc- uh, when they found the boat, I was wondering how you saw the role of community members that aren't necessarily direct descendants in, how they're playing a role?

Patterson: I'm glad you talked about that because there are people that still live there who have that community's best interest at heart. So it's really important that the alumni association- see, Joe Womack still lives there and has a direct link- C.H.E.S.S, Joe Womack is the watchdog to be sure no more International Paper Companies come there. No more Scott Paper Companies come there. You know if you go to any Black- any city in America, there's always the bottom, or across the track, or, you know, some'n like that. If you watch the, 00:58:00in the heat of the night they always say let's go to the bottom. Well that's where the Black people live. That's where industry was always put, you know. It's important that we recognize the residents that live there and their wishes and, one interesting thing about that- we had a blueway celebration a few weeks ago, wish y'all coulda been there, it was kinda cool, um, and I want the- the Finleys, Karlos Finley who I mentioned, well his cousin Eric Finley has a tour that he does called the Dora Finley Trail it's a trail of markers that denote 00:59:00the slave trade and stops for the underground railroad and that type thing that his family was directly involved in. I get calls all the time now because of my number, that number on the website actually rings to this phone, about people wanting tours of Africatown. There's really nothing to see, really. There are sites that only we know what they are, and who lived there and what they did and what used to be over there but, um, we don't have tour- it's coming, but we don't have markers or locations. Eric Finley has helped by incorporating some Africatown things in his Dora Finley tour. I overheard someone say, actually my 01:00:00sister, overheard one of the residents say, "The Finleys shouldn't be here, here they are makin' money off of Africatown". The Finleys are a fairly well-to-do family, they're very light skinned and they have some whites in their heritage. But they're good people, love Eric Finley, he's a good friend of mine. And Eric has modified his tour to go to some points in Africatown 'cause we don't have a tour bus, he does. So whenever I get anybody who calls to say "Hey we need a tour of Africatown" I call Eric. And say Eric, here's the number some people comin' to town they want a tour, blah blah blah. And he modifies his tour, and he knows enough about Africatown because his grandfather taught the midwife, 01:01:00Mama Thelma Shamburger - have y'all heard about her?- they taught Mama Thelma, his grandfather Doctor Franklin, how to be a midwife. Mama Thelma delivered everybody in Plateau- Africatown. I have two legal first names, Darron and Darrell, because Mama Thelma used to hit the sauce hard man, I mean Mama Thelma be drunk. And she's, there's a lotta people out there who Mama Thelma just totally screwed up their name! She was a great midwife, but Mama Thelma was hittin' it hard and, so, the Finleys do have- you see what I mean, the Finleys do have some interest in that community. But when I heard, my sister told me that she overheard these people saying, well, the Finleys don't have nothin' to do with this, I immediately called a meeting with the descendants and said hey 01:02:00now look, I'm thinkin' about gettin' Eric Finley to do this but I heard one of the descendants- one a' the residents not all that keen on the Finleys doin' this. Whaddo y'all think? And I got an overwhelming, resounding "We don' have a tour bus". That lil one cuts the Finleys out because if one resident got their way, how many more did? And we don't have- we, we're just- and I say this kinda tongue-in-cheek- we're just the descendants. We don't live there. Who are we to say what should happen in that community. Make sense? So, I have to get the pulse of descendants and everybody, it was kinda like 75-25 go ahead and do it. But I thought no, let's just let that go and let's find a van ourself and we 01:03:00don't have a lotta money. We just found out yesterday we may be getting access to half a million dollars from Doug Jones's a bill that Doug Jones has appropriated in the senate that we will have access to apply for grants to, but we don't have a lotta money. I paid for things outta my pocket, descendants we pay for things outta our pocket. It's coming and we know that and as soon as we do that and I get my money back, I can put my black rims on my truck. Gonna have black rims on my tundra, you know that, you know that yes you do. So, it was easier for me to say okay, don't do it. Don't upset the balance. Just let it go. That good? Okay.

Imani Badillo: What has it been like to share this history with your family and to be learning this history, and especially with the finding of the Clotilda, what has it been like to discuss this with your family?

Patterson: Absolutely outstanding. I am absolutely just walkin' on air. I got friends that's callin' me from Philly, "Man we read about this in the Inquirer" I'm like, "Yeah, man, got this goin' on!" yeah. I have friends in Detroit, "Man!"- my ex-wife called, she's like "Man, you know, this is really cool you know" I said "Yeah it is"- we have a really good relationship, me and my ex-wife, I said "Yeah it is" and I'm like, alright. You know, we got this goin' on and we got people from Japan call and that's exciting stuff, you know! And I'm, I just wanna be able to give them the right information now they're all 01:05:00pulling for us. I call0 I'm a writer, a journalist- so I don't have problems writing stories, I call delGado I'm like "delGado! Give me somethin' man! You know, since the ship has been found tell me somethin' now because now we need to keep people up on things" I have a blog on the website, I written a couple blogs there, how would you like it if you were a slave, what would you feel like? And I go into things about the 60 day journey and stuff like that and delGado gave me a good story, really not what I want cause you know scientists and engineers they speak scientific and engineering. As a technical writer, I speak engineering and science but I also speak English. And you have to take what an engineer says, I develop information from drawings. Engineers only know how to do drawings. So delGado was givin' me all a' this technical stuff, "Yeah we got 01:06:00the sonar we can read and go through this and map" I'm like "oh, shit." (silently apologizes for cursing) Oh shit, delGado"- damn, did it again! "I'm like, delGado tell me something I can tell some people that is interesting, 'kay?" And he couldn't so I had to get it out of him. He said "Well we're going to now make sure that we're gonna try to lift the thing wholly" I'm like "Really, not in pieces?" "No" And it's cool how they do it, they go down and put this thing down to pump all this water out and then me and you can be walkin' down in this hole in this water just walkin' around and diggin' out sand, diggin' this thing out, excavate it. It's pretty cool. Um, so, it's really way 01:07:00cool. I am proud to be who I am. I'm proud to be a descendant, I'm proud to be a leader, and I don' like to use the word leader, I'm more a facilitator of the group, because people "I'm in charge" I'm not in charge, I'm just a guy. I am, I'm just a guy. I'm a badass guy that can do stuff and I thank the Lord for that and I know I have far to go, I have an ego but it doesn't overwhelm and overtake what I do so I can- talkin' about the descendants. I had to call these people and say, "hey, what do you think about this tour, gettin' the Finleys to do it, the residents might be upset" you know, somebody else mighta said screw the residents. You know? I was talkin' to Anderson Flen, and he was talkin' bout "We 01:08:00need an administrator to administer all the groups and kinda oversee all the groups- Descendants, C.H.E.S.S., MEJAC"- have you met Ramsey? Ramsey's way cool. That is my man. See we got people who think Ramsey shouldn't be involved, well Ramsey is a zoning guru. Okay? That boy knows how to zone- and you know, he keeps watch on stuff like that. We need Ramsey! You know, but we have people who don't understand we need different folks in the wheel to keep this wheel stronger. We make it stronger, Ramsey makes it stronger, Joe Womack is a badass. Anderson is a badass in his own right. We got all these different spokes in the wheel and they all have to fit. 

Patterson: We all have different stuff that we bring to this wheel! And we all 01:09:00bring good stuff, man! We just can't seem to, you know, make it fit. I am like superglue. That's how I see myself. I see myself as a tube of superglue. I believe in bringin' everybody to the table and everybo- well, I did. I did think I could do it but now I'm realizin' that some a' these people, the superglue is just not takin' and not holding. It should be really easy for everyone to sit around the table and say, okay, whatchu got, whatchu gonna do, whatchu got. But we got some people sayin "I was the first here!" and we got some people say "Oh you shouldn't do this!" and we got Anderson Flen over there like he's the puppet master, the guy behind the curtain or Wizard of Oz and I'm like, okay. Alright, you ever seen, uh, Predator 2? In town with just a few days to kill in LA, it's 01:10:00Danny Glover- you seen Predator 1 with Arnold? You never seen Predator? Predator baddest monster ever. Fix itself. Anyway, Predator 2 Danny Glover, I mean he's, he can make himself invisible, um, he's in town in LA just a few days to kill and he is killin' all these Jamaicans, the Predator's a hunter and they're hunters from the future, anyway, Danny Glover chase this things all the way through the movie. Killed Danny Glover's friends, his work- coworkers, killed a bunch a' people, at the end Danny Glover finally kills this thing and after he kills 'im, he's just- and then all a sudden, all these other predators just start appearing outta nowhere. And he thinks that they're about to kill him and he goes, "Okay. Who's next?" Now sometimes I feel like that with the things that 01:11:00I have to go through. Because this is too big! This is huge! This is huge, man! And they still actin' like we're makin' kool-aid when we're mixing the most exotic drink here that you can find. And get on board with it. There is no option, get on board with it. Did anyone ask me anything? Did you even ask me anything?

Interviewers: Yes!

Patterson: Nobody even ask me anything, oh god! Okay. No? Okay. Alright.

Carpenter: Um, okay. I'm, so I'm curious, my impression is you spent all or most of your career as a journalist? I'm curious what drew you to that field and what you like about it.

Patterson: 'Member I told you my daddy died? I was on my way to Wt&H, I used to do the stuff that you see, the picture changes there's somebody sitting behind the class switchin', I used to do that out in El Paso, my degree's in mass 01:12:00communications. And I was a Dj, started I was a Dj then I went to tv and I stayed in El Paso for a couple years after I graduated then my sister called, she's an assistant superintendent for schools in New Haven and she had a hook up with WT&H and said you need to come on up here, I came up here until my daddy died. Well my daddy died, I couldn't just leave my momma, she's a housewife. So I stayed, helped her fill out all these government papers and stuff like that. And I've just been blessed with the ability to communicate. I can write, I can do television, I can stand in front of ten million people and talk just like I'm talkin to y'all, I don't care. My wife thinks that's just amazing that I can do that because she's extremely introverted, you know? So, I got a job as the weekly newspaper- well, I went to all the TV stations with my experience as a 01:13:00switcher--director--nobody would hire me, I was the wrong color. Old South, 1978, yeah. So, I got a job with the weekly newspaper called Inner City News, and I started writing sports. Now, listen, when I say these things, I'm not braggin by any means, I'm just telling you the truth. I have the ability when I write to make you feel like you were right there. I've been told that many times, and I've won awards for my writing. So I got a job writing sports with Inner City News, and the press register saw some of my stuff, and they hired me. My first piece was a little town called Bayou LaBatre, it's about 30 miles from here, it's a little seaside community. And I went down there, a bunch of rednecks down there, and you know, I just did what I could. As a matter of fact 01:14:00I was covering a city council one night, and the mayor was Gussie Wentzell. You've eaten at Wentzel's Oyster House since you've been here? On Dauphin Street, when it was a famous seafood joint here. Anyway, well Gus E. Wentzel was gonna take the council out and have a meeting in his office, and I'm like "no, no. That's against the Open Meetings Law, man. You can't do that." So, he said, "Yeah, we're gonna go in the back because we have a bunch of negras in here that we don't want to hear what we're sayin." Negras? What are those? Oh, you talkin about me? Negras. Negros. But he said negras, and I never even heard of negras. I wanted to see what one looked like. But there was none behind me, and I was the only Black person in there. So, I told him, "You cannot do this as it's against the Open Meetings Law." So I came back and wrote a story the next day that the city council of Bayou LaBatre had violated the Open Meetings Law. It 01:15:00got to the solicitor general or whoever it was in Montgomery, and those people hit the ceiling because they had never been called out like that. This is the Old South, they do what they want to do. So from that I got some respect down there for that. So there was a shrimp boat that had got busted out in the Gulf of Mexico with a bunch of weed on it, and my boss told me, get the captain of record from the Coast Guard and write a story. So, this is my first front page story, man. Yeah, shrimp boat busted, blah blah blah blah. I'm sittin there like "yeah, front page story, I'm good." So the phone rang and he says, "Hey, Darron Patterson?" I'm like "yeah." I thought it was one of my fans, you know? He said, "Yeah, I'm the guy who you put in the story as the captain of record, and I'm gonna come down there and kill your Black ass." I'm like, "Alrighty, thank you, goodbye." (Interviewers laughing) And I hung up and I went to my editor and said, I really need to go to sports. (all laughing) He said, "Oh, Darron, you're 01:16:00doin a great job and I value you," and I said, "Did you hear what I said? I want to go to sports." So I went to sports, and the rest was history for twenty years. I wrote sports, I covered the Pistons when they hit back-to-backs in Detroit, covered Barry Sanders, covered the Tigers. I covered hockey man. I covered the Red Wings. I had never seen a hockey game before, but. You want me to wait?

Carpenter: The audio's still going.

Patterson: Okay. I had never covered a hockey game before but what a lot of people don't understand is that the story tells itself, you just have to interpret it the next day. And a lot of people, you know, put themselves in the story, a lot of writers. But you really don't have to do that. So, I did that and then when I got to Detroit, and I started coverin Nascar, I was fascinated 01:17:00because each time by, the car could talk to the pits. It has a mother computer in the pits. If you see the people sittin up on the high stand, they're monitorin everything about that car: rear end, tires, this and that. And the car is sayin "I'm doin this I'm doin that, oh you need to bring me in for a service, maintenance, pit stop." So I thought that was fascinating, so I kinda did technical writing. Have you seen the trucks, Penske? Yellow trucks, Penske? That's Roger Penske, he's a real guy. He lives in Detroit ad he's a billionaire, he owns Penske racing, and he has teams on the Nascar circuit and the Indy circuit. So I told Roger, you know I said, "You know man, I really like this, I'm gonna get into technical writing." So he put me with his chief engineer, a guy named John Dick. And John taught me technical writing. I thought it would be 01:18:00easy because I'm a writer. How hard can it be? And technical writing is nothin but research. So I got into technical writing and then I went to work for Roush Racing, they have a Nascar team. And then I went to work for Sun Technicom, who were contractors for Ford Motor Company. Those little books in your car in the glove compartment? I used to write those little books, and I also wrote the procedures for how long it should take a technician to fix your car when you take it to the dealership. It's called Labor Time Standards. I'll have a guy come in, and Ford would give me a prototype and I'd have him break it down, and I'd write down what he did and time it, and if it took him .5, .75 hours to take 01:19:00a radiator out, that's how much you get billed when you pay, and that's how those things get to the dealership to tell you how much you pay for a procedure on your car. That was fun. And from there, I morphed into project management. And then from there, morphed into project management with a steel company. And from there, went into project management and technical writing with airbus because it doesn't matter to me if it rolls or flies, same thing. Same procedure. Still got to write the procedure so when the guy fixes it, it's fixed right. And you better make sure this airplane thing is right because, you know, you don't have no place to pull over and park. So, I still write sports; as a 01:20:00matter of fact, one of my high school games that I was supposed to cover Friday night, they just switched it to tomorrow night because weather is coming. Bad weather. So, that's pretty much it, and I'm not sure. Pretty much. I'm not gonna elaborate, but that's pretty much it in a nutshell on how I got to sittin on this couch. Yeah.

Carpenter: And why'd you come back to Mobile?

Patterson: I came back working for the United States Sports Academy. I was a Director of Communications 'cause I was tired of snow, man. I had had enough, I'm a southern boy at heart. I had enough of the snow in Detroit. And this job popped up in Daphne as the United States Sports Academy Director of Communications, and I applied for it, and they hired me and flew me down here, and on the way back to the airport I got the call in the car that I had the job. 01:21:00So I went back and my wife and I were already thinkin' about divorce because we just were goin' in different directions. So I moved down here and went to work for the sports academy. That job lasted three months because he was a difficult asshole, and I left and started doing something else and went into aerospace and stuff like that 'cause I wasn't going back up to the Midwest. I had enough of snow.

Carpenter: I guess my last kind of career-related question is you said you were the first African-American writer to cover Nascar?

Patterson: To cover Nascar. In the country, for a major metropolitan newspaper. There were other guys doin' freelance work, but I was the first one to cover it for a major metropolitan newspaper. I knew Dale Earnhardt Jr. when he was like 01:22:00that. His father and I were good friends. Dale Earnhardt Sr. We were good friends, he was a good guy. When he died, I really cried. He's a good man. It was fun coverin' Nascar because I was a novelty: a Black man on the Nascar circuit. Everybody wanted to be my friend, it was kind of cool. Yeah. Then I got in Indy car, and those guys, they're the wine glass. They're the rich, that's the rich set, formula one? Oh, man. F1 is where it's at. If you get to go to the F1 race, that's like goin' to the red carpet in Hollywood because those guys are rich. Their fans are rich, and you know, you just get to see those assholes up front. Yeah. 

Carpenter: Anybody have any questions?

Patterson: No. Okay.

Carpenter: Well, Mr. Patterson, thank you so much for

Patterson: Call me Darron.

Carpenter: Darron. Thank you for your time.

Patterson: Yeah. I'm good.