Oral History Interview with Lyberti Bradley

Title: Oral History Interview with Lyberti Bradley
Interviewee
Interviewer: Selena Piercy
Description: Lyberti Bradley of Sewanee, Tennessee was interviewed by Selena Piercy, Sewanee student, on November 30, 2023 in person. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included discussing her experiences as a woman of color growing up in both Alabama and the Atlanta metro area. 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: 0:01 Selena: This is Selena Piercy from Sewanee: The University of the South. It is October 30th, 2023 at 12:20 PM and I am with

0:13 Lyberti: Lyberti Bradley from Sewanee.

0:16 Selena: Thank you Lyberti for being here. So Lyberti, where are you originally from?

0:26 Lyberti: I am from Alabama from a little small town called Brewton, but the closest city to me is mobile, and I actually grew up in Mobile. I went to high school there, went to boarding high school from, I want to say, yeah, 2017 to 2020. So I'm an A.S.S. graduate, go Dragons. But I have lived in multiple other places, including Atlanta, Cleveland, Tennessee, and for a time I was supposed to move to Florida, so I'd say I've been all over the South, so yeah.

1:10 Selena: Yeah, that sounds like a wide range of places to reside. What was that like for you?

1:19 Lyberti: I spent a lot of the early part of my life in Atlanta, actually. I used to live in Union City, which is right when you get in there. And I feel like I have a very mixed experience because I did get to grow up in a space where I'm black and I got to see other black people be successful for a long time when I was a child. But then as I moved back to my hometown, it's majority white, so it's very different. So I'd say I have a mixed bag of experiences and cultural understandings. I feel like I grew up in the country part of Atlanta, so I've always been very country and I had a little bit of city life, but not too much.

2:13 Selena: Yeah. Awesome. So it sounds to me like Atlanta and then Alabama are the primary places you lived. So where did you find community in those places growing up?

2:29 Lyberti: I actually have a really big family. My mom is one of 10 and I am one of four. I'm the oldest, so family is a big part of my community. I also like to dance, and so I danced a lot and I was a avid reader, so I spent a lot of time at the library and, of course, school. So I would say school, family, dance are my main places that I found community as a child. So I had a lot of people that influenced me, particularly my family. There's a lot of girls, so I had a lot of strong black women teaching me how to go.

3:08 Selena: Awesome. Well, that's awesome to hear. Do you still dance today?

3:14 Lyberti: Yes. I'm actually on the dance team here at Sewanee. I'm on Triple T, or Too Turnt Tigers. Awesome. We do majorette style dance, so it's rooted in African-American tradition and stuff like that. And then sometimes I dance in my room and stuff. I dance at parties. I like dance.

3:34 Selena: Amazing. Where do you all do performances?

3:40 Lyberti: We usually during football season, we'll perform during halftime, and then as we get closer to winter break and things like that, we dance for Perpetual Motion. And then sometimes people will ask us to come dance for certain events. Yeah,

3:58 Selena: Awesome. I might have to attend a performance then, so yeah, it sounds like you might find community on your dance team at Sewanee. Are there any other places where you find community today?

4:14 Lyberti: I would say that within my class we have a very big sense of community. We came in during Covid, so we spent a lot, lot of time together just actually getting to know each other. We couldn't really go anywhere else. And so I would say my classmates and then I've actually found a lot of classmates that are also from Alabama, so that's been really nice. And then I have a lot of friends that are on the pre-med track, and I'm a neuroscience major, so a lot of STEM folks.

4:52 Selena: Awesome. Okay. So you said that you've done a lot of traveling, moving around. Have you done any other traveling for recreation or,

5:10 Lyberti: So I've been to California once, actually. I have family from there. And then I also went to Costa Rica the summer of, I think, eighth grade. And that was really cool. I spent three weeks in the jungle at a forestry reserve, and I got to walk around and see kookaburras everywhere and learn about plant-based medicine and what that looks like, and ethnobotany, just like the study of ethical use of plants and botanicals and stuff.

5:52 Selena: That is so cool. I love that for you. Okay. What is your favorite type of food? I love this question. So hear me out. My favorite holiday of

6:04 Lyberti: So hear me out. My favorite holiday of all time: Thanksgiving. So whatever you can put on a Thanksgiving plate, I'm going to eat it.

6:10 Selena: Me too.

6:11 Lyberti: Love Thanksgiving. I would say I really like macaroni and cheese, but it's got to be baked. I can't do Kraft. Let's be serious. But yeah, I would say that type of food is my favorite type of food. I have a very rich church background, so yeah, been eating a lot of Thanksgiving plates and funeral food for a while.

6:42 Selena: Yum.

6:42 Lyberti: Yeah,

6:44 Selena: I'm a mac and cheese girl, too. I prefer the sides at Thanksgiving, I think.
6:49 And how have you experienced international cultures in your life?

6:57 Lyberti: I would say my experience with other international cultures is pretty unique. My mom also went to Sewanee and I was here for a little bit, so I met a lot of the exchange students that were here. So I had a variety of experiences like that. I still speak to some of them today. And then when I was in high school, we had a boarding program for French students and Spanish students, so they would come and stay for maybe a year, maybe a term or so. We had trimesters. And so a lot of French and Spanish folks I've met and it's been really great. And then of course here at Sewanee, I have a lot of friends that are part of the international community, and that's been really cool to meet them and talk about their culture and how that affects them going here.

7:51 Selena: That sounds really rich and awesome. Are there any cultures that intrigue you more than others?

8:03 Lyberti: That's a hard question. I really feel like I'm super into Latin culture. I think I got introduced through the language and I enjoy speaking Spanish when I can, if I can. I'm a better reader than a writer. And I, I've really been getting into Arabic culture recently given world events, and I really like perfume, and they do perfume the best. So obviously I want to know about what's going on there. I'm also really into history, so any type of history I can learn, it's cool. And I feel like to become a good global citizen is to always be interested in other people's cultures. Yeah,

8:52 Selena: Absolutely. Well, wonderful. Now we can move on to the meat of the interview. So how do you usually receive the news?

9:08 Lyberti: Somebody will send me a TikTok or I'll get little Apple News updates, but usually do social media a lot of the time, a lot of Twitter or somebody being like, did you see this or that type of stuff.

9:28 Selena: Awesome. And has it always been that way for you, or has that experience changed over time?

9:36 Lyberti: I think when I was younger I watched a lot of news, maybe too much, and so I used to spend a lot of time watching CNN, or I think even at one point my granddad had FOX on at the time, so I was watching it with him. But yeah, I would think I was more news-based when I was younger, but as I've gotten older, it's become a lot more social media-centered.

10:07 Selena: Awesome. So I guess moving on to how did you first encounter the Black Lives Matter movement?

10:20 Lyberti: I think it's a hard question. I really can't remember, but I want to say after I remember talking about it after Oscar Grant was killed, and then I think right when we got into the Covid years and right at 2020, that's when it became big on my radar, and I like to think that I was trying to participate in the movement. So right at the beginning of 2020 is when it got really big for me.

11:05 Selena: Okay, so building on what you said, you said you'd like to think that you've done your best to participate and be an active member. Would you care to elaborate on that?

11:16 Lyberti: So I think because as a black person in my majority white town that I mentioned before, I personally have seen and seen other people experience police brutality firsthand. And I think sometimes we forget that brutality doesn't always have to be physical. It could just be being harassed. So I saw it there first, and then obviously on a national level there was multiple people sensely dying at the hands of the police. And so I felt like as a black person and as a black woman, I felt like the more and more that I saw, the more and more I felt unsafe.
12:08 And I have a lot of male cousins, and so I think about them often and what that is like, and sometimes how lucky they are to be. Sometimes they're a little blissfully ignorant. They have family members that are held to high esteem in the community, and usually if they got in trouble with the police or had a run in, then they've been able to use that to help them get out of it. But other people in my community that don't have that network of support, I've seen some crazy stuff, just people being harassed. And then as for being an active member, we had a march in our town
12:59 And I was in Atlanta at the time, but I did not go to any of the protests because my mother was pregnant. So I had to be there and I was a lot younger, but I feel like if I was older and I had access to go to the city, I probably would've went.
13:18 So yeah, if that rounded out(?) answer.

13:21 Selena: Yeah, that is wonderful. It sounds like you've had a very complex experience with the movement. So you mentioned that in your hometown they had a march for Black Lives Matter. Would you say that the majority of your community was there, or what do you think the community's general reaction to Black Lives Matter was?

13:58 Lyberti: In retrospect? I think that, well, first of all, the march was planned and coordinated with the police,
14:10 But I will say that we marched on mostly, we marched in a community that was mostly black. We did not march in the center of town, and we actually ended up walking all the way down this one back road, call it South Road, or that's where the majority of the black community lives, unless they live in the bottom, which is on the other side of tracks. But we marched all the way down South Road. We ended up at the courthouse. I think given the racial dynamics of our town, I feel like the police and the white people in that community were trying to placate people's unrest and them being upset. But I don't think that the march or any events subsequent to that have given us any real closure and or progress. So I would say that it was, like you said, it was good about creating awareness, but there was not a lot of talk of actual change on what that was going to look like. Okay.

15:32 Selena: So do you feel like for the white people in your community and the police, you said it was to kind of placate? So would you say that that was kind of performative activism on their part?

15:54 Lyberti: Yeah, I would definitely say that. I would say that, and don't get me wrong, there's great white people in my town, but I feel like a lot of them are removed from the situation.
16:11 I would also say that, I didn't mention this before, but my town is for retirement age people, so there's a lot of older people there. And so I think sometimes it's harder for people that are getting into the later stages of their lives to connect to current events, especially if it's not affecting them directly either, and they feel like they don't see it where they live. So I think yes, that they believe that Black Lives Matter, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty, I think it would be difficult for them to take action that would be helpful to the movement.

17:01 Selena: Yeah, I definitely agree with you. A lot of people are very far removed, don't really know what to do. Right. Do you think Black Lives Matter has affected how you talk with family and friends?

17:21 Lyberti: Yes. I think it's hard to, I think my experience is a little different because as a black person who has black family, of course, we're going to believe in and support a movement that's speaking about our lives and how we should be treated. I would say even within my community, friends that are non-black, all very supportive of the movement and want to see equity be created for people of color in United States. So I would say we're talking about it in more of a active way now. Then I would say a stagnant way,
18:14 and I think because I am younger and a lot of younger people participated in the movement or set up rallies and things like that, I think sometimes younger people can have a very revolutionary stance. They want to see change now. I know I think like that, but I know that change takes time and there has to be some type of shakeup within bureaucracy of the United States before we can actually see any real change.

18:49 Selena: I definitely agree with you on that. And this will be the last question I'm going to ask. What do you think is the future of the Black Lives Matter movement? Or what do you hope to see?

19:06 Lyberti: Okay. This is a hard one.

19:09 Selena: Yeah.

19:11 Lyberti: Well, my hope is that the movement is able to help foster change for the lives of black people in the United States. I think as we are in this time period of great division and all types of law changes and stuff like that, my hope would be that they take the NAACP route and try to move forward with legislation first and the law. I feel like most things in the United States are, it comes down to the legal ease of everything, and I think finding ways to create lasting impact within the movement would be really helpful. So my hope for the future is that things get better. Obviously, I wish it wouldn't take us long, but any type of social movement or revolution, it's going to take time. We're still in the thick of it, and we don't know the results yet. So yeah.

20:27 Selena: Very well said. Well, thank you for your time today, Lyberti.

20:31 Lyberti: Of course. Thank you.

20:33 Selena: My pleasure.

Part of Lyberti Bradley