Oral History Interview with Shakeena Bradley

Title: Oral History Interview with Shakeena Bradley
Interviewee: Shakeena Bradley
Interviewer: Lyberti Bradley
Description: Shakeena Bradley of Brewton, Alabama was interviewed by Lyberti Bradley, Sewanee student, on November 30, 2023 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included discussing the role of social media and the news in the progression of the racial movement. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.
Transcript: 0:00 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay, now we're recording. So, hi, my name is Lyberti Bradley. The time is currently 6:03 PM Central Time. It is Thursday, November 30th, 2023, and I'm with

0:15 Shakeena Bradle...: Shakeena Bradley, and I'm from Bruton, Alabama.

0:21 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. So Ms. Bradley, where were you born?

0:26 Shakeena Bradle...: Brewton, Alabama.

0:28 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. And do you still currently reside there?

0:33 Shakeena Bradle...: Yes.

0:34 Lyberti Bradley...: All right. And how would you say Brewton has changed since you've been living there?

0:49 Shakeena Bradle...: Since I came back? After living away or just since growing up.

1:01 Lyberti Bradley...: I guess you could say from growing up to now, and then I can ask you further questions about your times away.

1:08 Shakeena Bradle...: Okay. I would say that in terms of changes, there's a lot more community-oriented activities that have started happening since they got a, I think it's called a program director. So she coordinates a lot of different musical talents to come and activities around the holidays and just a lot more community-oriented activities that are free to get involved in.

1:59 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. I would like to ask you about your educational background. Where did you go to school and how did you end up in your current job?

2:08 Shakeena Bradle...: Okay. I went to high school T.R. Miller High School in Brewton, and then I went to college at Duke University in Durham. And then I got my master's degree in counseling and psychology from the University of West Alabama. My current position is a social service case worker for the state of Alabama doing child protective services and foster care. And I have worked there before doing Child Protective Services investigations years ago. After my last contract ended and I was looking for work, I was contacted by them. They said that they needed help. Again, it's always a bit of a turnover, so I went back to work there probably for about almost four months ago now.

3:41 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. And what race or ethnicity do you identify with most?

3:49 Shakeena Bradle...: Black American.

3:52 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. And you mentioned that you spent some time away from Brewton. To what places did you go?

4:04 Shakeena Bradle...: After college? I stayed in Tennessee for a little while with my sister and then Atlanta, also with my sister. And then I moved to Montgomery, Alabama, which is not too far from here, and I stayed there for I think about a year and a half. And then I came back, that was, I want to say 2011. So I've been back in Brewton since 2011.

4:45 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. And have you had any fun travels either domestically or internationally?

4:56 Shakeena Bradle...: Yes, just at any time?
5:01 Okay. Yes. One of my favorite fun places that I enjoyed, I went to Toronto, Canada in 2016, 3 separate trips for a class that I was in, and that was really enjoyable. I really loved it up there, very clean and a lot of multicultural stuff happening there. Also, I would say probably my next favorite was going to New Orleans with my best friend and two of our other best friends on a recent trip. I always love going to New Orleans, and I do also enjoy going on cruises whenever I'm able to. And just being out on the water and wherever we go on the cruise, I'm cool with it.

6:12 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. And who would you say inspires you and why?

6:22 Shakeena Bradle...: I would say my dad inspires me because he always does his best to make time for us. And even though he's got a lot going on, but sill at his age of 75, he is getting around much better than people half his age and doing a lot more than people half his age and just he has this continual drive to be successful, so I admire that.

7:02 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. So now we're going to switch to more questions about Black Lives Matter and any connections you have to the Black Liberation Movement. So in your time at Duke, did you participate in any groups that were black-led or about black liberation?

7:26 Shakeena Bradle...: Yes. I was in the Black Student Alliance and I was in Dance Black, which was a black group that focused on just black freedom through dance or black expression through dance, let's say. And basically between those two groups that covered a lot of, if anything was happening in terms of protests or stuff like that, black Student Alliance would let us know and let us know how to participate. So that was the main black-led organization on campus that was an umbrella to some of the other black organizations, like the black Greek letter organizations and stuff like that.

8:39 Lyberti Bradley...: And a little bit of a pivot, but when did you first encounter social media

8:50 Shakeena Bradle...: First encounter social media? I think I had a MySpace page. I mean, I know I had a MySpace page. And then first with Facebook, oh, I was also on Black Planet, which was also a really old social media site for black people. And I was on Facebook, so when Facebook first came out, it was only for specific colleges. My school was one of the first to have Facebook, and so I think I signed up for Facebook in 2004.

9:38 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. I ask you that because my follow-up is how do you get your news?

9:48 Shakeena Bradle...: I get my news a lot of times I go to the Yahoo homepage to just get whatever, I don't know how or when it is been years, but I've been just kind of making it a daily habit to get on Yahoo every day to see what's going on in the world. They have just a wide variety of stuff that is reported on their page. And then sometimes I will follow up on CNN's website or I also have on my phone Google just I guess curates news articles for me on my feed, and I tell it I'm not interested in this or I'm interested in that and it'll show me news that I'm interested in. I do also, honestly, a lot of times I log onto Facebook and find out something newsworthy has happened.

11:11 Lyberti Bradley...: So obviously those questions are linked. I find that a lot of people get their news either through social media or search engines. I also wanted to ask, how old are you and what generation are you a part of?

11:31 Shakeena Bradle...: I'm 41 years old, so I'm I guess an elder millennial. I really don't know because we've been called a Zillenial in between Gen X and millennial or something like that. But I guess kind of it was settled on an elder millennial since, so anyway, I'm just going to say millennial.

12:04 Lyberti Bradley...: I believe you're an elder millennial. And I'm what's considered a zillennial, because I'm right there in between 1999 and 2003.

12:15 Shakeena Bradle...: Mhmm.

12:16 Lyberti Bradley...: Kind of right there at the cusp.

12:18 Shakeena Bradle...: Okay.

12:21 Lyberti Bradley...: Usually I started off asking those questions in this interview because a lot of Black Lives Matter and its movement started online and online. I don't know if you know how we end up with the hashtag Black Lives Matter, but I tell you,

12:48 Shakeena Bradle...: Oh was it before Trayvon Martin?

12:50 Lyberti Bradley...: It was connected to Trayvon Martin. So after the acquittal, George Zimmerman in around 2014, an activist known as Alicia Garza posted on a social media website and she posted, I believe it was either X aka Twitter or Facebook, but she made a post and it was called "A Love Letter to Black People". And in this letter she says, black people, I love you. I love us. Our Lives matter. From that statement, Patrice Cullors starts the hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, and that really takes off around 2014. So I wanted to give you a little bit of history about how the movement started and how interconnected it is to social media and how important social media has been for the movement. A lot of the ways that people have been able to connect to protests or do outreach or connect through the organization, was through social media. So I will ask you how or what is your opinion of the Black Lives Matter movement?

14:14 Shakeena Bradle...: So I think it's desperately still needed, and unfortunately, I feel like some of the kind of financial, well, whatever the financial issues that were going on where people were saying that the organization, the Black Lives Matter organization or national organization wasn't taking financial accountability, kind of put a big damper on it, but I don't have any hard feelings against the organization itself. I do believe that they started something that still needs to be front and center because after George Floyd in 2020 and everybody jumped on the bandwagon and then after that dissipated is like things are worse than ever before or things are still just back to the same old stuff, hardly any justice for black lives. So my opinion of the movement as a whole, I think that it was needed and it's still needed. And I think that people that are taken apart, the financials of the movement or of the organization are not looking at the heart or the essence of the movement in my opinion.

16:28 Lyberti Bradley...: So I would like to reach back to one of the points you made about how the movement itself has died off. In what ways do you feel like it was successful at the time?

16:51 Shakeena Bradle...: There was just a lot of awareness. I think a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon even though deep down they may not have followed through with it, but a lot of people, black people, white people, people of all races or ethnicities and all that, it just brought more awareness. And I started seeing a lot more on my algorithm education about the history of black people in this country and the things that actually happened and stuff that they don't teach us about in school. Even I minored in African and African-American Studies in college. And so I learned a lot about that on social media that I did not learned in school. And I do think teaching of it should be age appropriate, but it's just, I think a lot of it help to eliminate the erasure that we see a lot of times about the black history in this country. So it's like you can't really continue to deny that these atrocities didn't happen or continue to happen just because you haven't printed it or you refuse to print it in the history books. That's fine. We could learn elsewhere. So I think at that time, there's a lot more people that have come out to educate us and primarily through those social media channels because we're not getting it in the formal education channels.

19:13 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. And do you remember where you were and how you felt when you first heard about the movement?

19:31 Shakeena Bradle...: When I first heard about it, I was like in those early days with the Trayvon Martin and stuff like that, that's when I kind first heard about it. But I was more passive, not really trying to be active with it myself, just it was kind of like, okay, agreeing with the sentiment, but at the same time I was not really actively posting online about it or things like that. But at the time, I did agree with the sentiment, but I didn't make it a priority to be active online about it.

20:36 Lyberti Bradley...: And what generation would you say is most affected by the movement?

20:50 Shakeena Bradle...: Most affected by or most active with it?

21:01 Lyberti Bradley...: I'll leave it up to you how you want to interpret that.

21:05 Shakeena Bradle...: Okay. I would say to an extent, I would say younger generations, I feel like, or at least around here, a lot of the more elder generations, senior generations are more likely to just kind of continue the way that they've been doing unless they were actively involved in civil rights previously. But I think the younger generations, I would say my generation and younger are more likely to be involved with it both directly or indirectly.

22:04 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. And why do you think that is?

22:18 Shakeena Bradle...: I feel like as you get older, you kind of just have a lot more worries that are, or concerns that are central to you, yourself, your health, making sure you have a financial legacy to leave for your children or whoever you're leaving to and stuff like that. And I think also to an extent, it's a bit stressful to just be worried all the time about waking up black. So I just feel like some older people kind of cocoon in their bubble trying to make sure they stay alive as long as they can. And I think younger people tend to have more bandwidth to take up social justice causes, but that's just my perception. I mean, I totally could be wrong about that, but I just know around here it's not too many older people that take up social justice causes except for Reverend Matthews, but now he's getting older, he can't do too much either.

23:44 Lyberti Bradley...: So we've talked about in class, and I decided that I wanted to tackle my interviews from a generational perspective. And because part of Gen Z and I've had access to internet and social media and those types of things for a lot longer, I feel like that's part of the reason why younger people are more likely to be active in terms of civil rights and civil liberties. Another reason that I feel like we don't discuss often is that I really feel like from my generation on that we've seen a lot of injustice upfront in our face majority of the time, and especially in America, we've lived in a very constant state of fight or flight. And America's attitudes about itself and the type of country it wants to be is always shifting. And we've witnessed a lot of national tragedies in that time, and people like to say that we're a lot bolder than previous generations. I guess they think that we have just a bold spirit. But I would argue that when you live in a country and in a state where you've already been predicted to be behind people, be behind the previous generation. So not being able to own a house or potentially not being able to pay off your student loans ever, or who knows, you could get shot tomorrow at Walmart, you're less likely to care about oh yeah, protection.
25:59:00 But you're more likely to be willing to say what you want about the government and your opinion when you really have nothing to lose. That's true point, and I would argue that you can see a little bit of that in millennials, especially when you get to the tail end. But I also feel like that generation had just started to see the deterioration that we're witnessing. And it's a lot different when you're in the eye of it instead of when you're at the start. So I guess that would be my explanation as to why there's this trend towards younger people being more likely to stand up for civil liberties. But we've seen that over and over again in history in students and younger people are usually the people that are going to try to continue to carry the movement actively, whereas older people are more likely to work to create change legislatively, or they're looking more towards the long-term role, whereas younger people are trying to have revolution more in the short term. So I wanted to ask you what your opinion of race relations in the United States is currently and where you live now?

27:49:00 Shakeena Bradle...: I just don't have any hope that it'll get better. I kind of gave up on trying to convince people of the worth of black lives just because it just seems like a futile attempt because you're never going to convince somebody of your worthiness if they don't inherently see you as worthy of same things that they are. I think that this is just my personal opinion, that because of the legacy of slavery in the United States and then Jim Crow and all of that, I feel like a lot of white people, not all, but a lot of 'em, have this generational superiority complex that they're going to say, all lives matter or not, I care about everybody, but it still treat you differently. Or you see the black people that they don't know, they treat them differently. So I feel like that is just the state of the United States is that in my opinion, I just got frustrated when I was sharing things online during 2020 and 2021, and people that I was associated with in previous iterations of my life would come on there with different comments and all that kind of stuff and saying, we're all God's children and blah, blah, blah.
30:04:00 Why do we have to focus on black people? Well, I just started deleting and blocking people, white people that said that I started just deleting and blocking people that I don't want that kind of energy around me. And just more aligning myself with more black people and black people that specifically care about black lives, because some black people don't either. So some black people are in the choke code of white supremacy as well. So I think where I live in Brewton, we still see it a lot, especially with my nieces and nephews at the school, in the school system where the teachers pick on some of them treat them, especially the darker skinned ones, especially the ones that just refuse to allow them to try to beat them down and stuff like that. They tend to label them as problem children, but that's a lot of where we see it in this town is like the teachers, a lot of them are really horrible to the black kids. And then they'll be the main ones to say, oh my gosh, I just love all these children and blah, blah, blah, but yet are treating the black kids very obviously differently. And so I just, it's a institutionalized racism and that really just, it takes leaders that are going to make it a priority to dismantle the institutionalized racism, and we're not there yet.

32:20:00 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay. Well, that kind of answers my next question, but I'll still ask you. Do you have hope for the future of the movement and for race relations in the United States?

32:39:00 Shakeena Bradle...: It's such incremental change. I don't know. I think we need different politicians and legislators that, as we can see with all the laws being passed in Florida that are so inherently discriminatory and racist, I think it just really is going to take an overhaul of the entire governmental system to put leaders in place that really, truly care about everybody, that they serve all their constituents. And I don't know that that's going to happen in my lifetime. Your lifetime, I don't know. So I just try to do, live my life to my fullest potential, not be afraid to express my blackness and align myself with people that are promoting the cause. So hope, I dunno.

34:12:00 Lyberti Bradley...: Okay.

34:13:00 Shakeena Bradle...: I have to regather that hope.

34:17:00 Lyberti Bradley...: Alright, well, I really want to thank you for taking some time out of your day to speak to me, and I'm really glad to have your opinion and perspective and thanks for helping me make some history.

34:31:00 Shakeena Bradle...: Thank you, Lyberti. Thank you for interviewing me and I hope your project finishes well.

34:37:00 Lyberti Bradley...: Thank you.

Part of Shakeena Bradley