Oral History Interview with Akwanza Mangum

Title: Oral History Interview with Akwanza Mangum
Interviewee: Akwanza Mangum
Interviewer: Naeem Mangum
Description: Akwanza Mangum of Dunwoody, Georgia was interviewed by Naeem Mangum, a Sewanee student, on November 26th, 2023 in person. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included: discussing Mangum’s upbringing and being Black and Baha'i. 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 Naeem Mangum: This is Naeem Mangum from Sewanee, the University of the South. It is Sunday, November 26th, 2023 at 5:42 PM and I am with, if you could state your name and where you live.

0:20 Akwanza Mangum: Akwanza Mangum. I currently live in Dunwoody, Georgia.

0:24 Naeem Mangum: Alright, thank you Akwanza for being here.

0:27 Akwanza Mangum: Thanks for having me.

0:29 Naeem Mangum: Alright, these are just some, I'll ask you some introductory questions before we get into the main part. Where are you originally from?

0:44 Akwanza Mangum: I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. I lived in Detroit from birth through, I guess I was about 19.

1:03 Naeem Mangum: How is where you currently live different from where you were raised?

1:10 Akwanza Mangum: That's a good question. Where I live currently has some diversity, but there's still pockets of segregation. So I would say probably that it's not extremely different, but one of the biggest differences is where I grew up, there was literally one white person on my block and one a mixed couple next door to us, a gentleman who was a lifetime military gentleman and his wife who was Korean and they had two kids. Aside from that, down the entire block, the entire neighborhood was black. And here where I currently reside, there are probably two black families in my neighborhood, in my entire neighborhood. I think there's about 50, 55 houses, 55 homes in our neighborhood. So there's a number of apartment complexes surrounding the neighborhood that sort of add to the demographic closely associated with where I grew up. But so those are some of the biggest differences. It's a little bit more affluent where I am currently than as opposed to where I grew up. But where I grew up is a little bit dilapidated today. It's disheartening.

3:11 Naeem Mangum: Where did you find a community as a child?

3:18 Akwanza Mangum: Another very good question. It depends on what you mean by as a child. When I was younger, I had no idea. When I was born, we first lived in an apartment called the Jeffersonian, and I have no recollection of that. I mean, we moved into our first home in the city on the west side of the city. Excuse me, Jeffersonian was close to downtown Detroit. But we moved into a home when I was about three, and I really don't have many memories of the Jeffersonian. I just have pictures and I have plenty memories of the home that we grew up in, but we never left that until well after I moved out. So that was the home through my entire childhood. As far as community is concerned, we had a neighbor across the street, Ms. Linda, and she had her son and daughter and she also had her aunt, her mother, and her grandmother living with her. And she was always home. So whenever my parents who both were working, my father would work, usually he would do a mad schedule, midnights, afternoons and days, and my mother would typically work afternoons. So there were times when we got home from school and the parents weren't there and it was me, my brother, and my sister. Well, my sister didn't come around until six years after I was born, so basically me and my brother up until that point.
5:13 But as far as our community is concerned, I guess you would have to say that first we had neighbors that were definitely a strong support for us because everyone knew everyone and everyone talked to everyone. And later my father formed this nonprofit organization called Fathers Incorporated because he saw being a police officer, the ills that were headed our way that currently existed at that time, and also the worsening of society. And so he formed this nonprofit with a few other fathers. And I think that his biggest intention was to get a lot of the African-American males and females off the streets and help to organize a collective and collaborate with other fathers who had some of the same vision to aid in helping us understand and recognize our nobility. And so when you asked the question about community, to me, these are a couple of the things that I think contributed to who I am today.

6:54 Naeem Mangum: And that's a great segue into our next question. Where do you find community today?

7:02 Akwanza Mangum: Today I work in many different spaces. Being a Baha'i, we embrace the vision of Baha'u'llah, the prophet founder of the Baha'i Faith and Baha'u'llah talks a great deal about unity, of vision, about the equality of women and men, about having the opportunity to have equal education, removing such things as extremes of poverty and wealth in works, in hopes of balance and justice. And one of the obligatory prayers speaks highly of what God's intent is for us, which is to know and to worship God. And if we do that, then it helps us remove our focus from inward to outward, which in turn affords us an opportunity to envision others as being just as important as us. So I'm working similar, I guess to my father in different communities to try to help build community and try to help understand what learning can be shared and disseminated from and from a community to another community. And in light of Baha'u'llah's vision for humanity, my aim or my goal is to help everyone recognize their own nobility and help everyone understand the importance of playing a part in uplifting humanity.

9:05 Naeem Mangum: What is your current occupation?

9:10 Akwanza Mangum: That's a funny question. The short of it is I am a part owner in an electrical contracting company. Now my father-in-Law and Brother-in-Law actually run the company. I am working alongside them and collaborating in hopes of trying to show how you can run a business that could be both lucrative and spiritually just. And because you are incorporating people who may not have that same vision, it proves challenging from time to time to try to incorporate certain tenets. But with our understanding about just what you talked about earlier about building community, that if we utilize that as sort of the nucleus around trying to implement certain ideals, then it helps to encourage us and it also helps to allow for others to see that there is a way that's not always the same way that they've seen in society.

10:29 Naeem Mangum: What was your journey to the role of part owner in this electrical company?

10:40 Akwanza Mangum: My journey, I would have to say that that journey was a long and thorny road. There was school, there was education during work. I first, I jumped around from school to school, which proved challenging because I would basically have fits and starts, fits and starts. That's not really positive for anyone trying to accomplish something because if you continue to have fits and starts, what typically begins to happen is you create a habit. And when you form that habit of fits and starts, you either find a way to change that and navigate through it or you end it because it becomes frustrating and it doesn't show real fruits. And so what I did was I ended it and thought that I would begin to try my hand in the workforce. And one of the things that I did initially was I started to work in sales because that was natural for me.
12:08 I talk to people, it's easy to talk to people. I have this uncanny ability to just share the things that I've learned and actually seek learning. And so if you've ever been involved in sales or just communication with anyone, it's always easy to talk to someone when you're asking them questions about their expertise because it gives them an opportunity to shed light on some things for you. And so if you're able to take in that information and decipher what it is that's being shared and sift through some of the fat to get to the meat of things, you actually begin to learn a little bit more than what you may have bargained for after going into sales and then into management. I found love. And so that was your mom.
13:09 When she and I began to investigate each other's character, I was intent upon meeting her parents to see if this was something that, because as a Baha'i, when you investigate the character of a person with the intention of marrying and bringing forth fruits that would come to know and worship God, your strongest ally in that, allies in that would be the family, your family, and your potential spouse's family. And I felt really, really intent. I was just intent on making sure that I got to know her family. And so when I met her parents, we had many, many dinners, lunches, and the like and saw each other at different outings and I got to know them pretty well and they me, and after some time we thought it important to receive consent from both my parents and her parents. And at that time her father expressed interest in getting me involved in their company.
14:43 And so I began working for this electrical contracting company and I was learning quite a bit actually. I had never really been involved in learning about electrical work, but it helped me out a great deal. There were so many facets to the electrical side of things, being an electrical contractor. And actually it helps that I had some of a sales background because I helped with the company service department, and there are actually different points in my career with Universatech Electrical where I left and went to further my education through the workforce on a couple occasions, one of which was with another electrical contracting company, but a much larger one. At the time I was a purchasing manager for that company, but I began an estimating and then after purchasing went into project management. Following that, I left that company and began to work for Hyatt as a project manager for design and construction.
16:07 And I honed my skills and project management under the tutelage of a few vice presidents and a director of design and construction. And it was very helpful. And after Hyatt, I actually came back to Universat ech and utilized some of the skills that I had and began to work towards trying to help build a service department for the electrical company. And it proved quite challenging and it was slow to get off. And then during consultation, we figured that this wasn't going to be the point where we could start to grow in this way because the company was not at that that point yet. So I went out and ventured out a little bit more and went to another company and this other company actually, I loved it. It actually afforded me an opportunity to spend more time with my family because I would be working from home.
17:21 And this company also, there was little travel, but I would travel once every other week and it would be one and a half to two days tops typically. And at this company I used to work with medical devices. And the funny thing is my mother who struggled with cancer, almost died from lung cancer. She was a smoker and she began to receive treatment. So she had chemotherapy and radiation therapy and they were doing this basically simultaneously. So one after another, one after another. And so she didn't really have any reprieve because it was so advanced that there were so many complications. They had given her two months to live. And somehow miraculously she went into remission and less than a year later, they found that the cancer had metastasized to her brain. And at that moment, they had given her two weeks to live and they had two options.
18:33 One was to use this new invention called gamma knife, and the other was to fly one of the most renowned brain surgeons, neurosurgeons in the industry to operate. And so they, through prayer and consultation, determined that it was going to be wiser to have the brain surgery. They had the brain surgery and she became a cancer fighter, cancer survivor, and she was interviewed because they just couldn't understand how she survived this cancer. There was one time though where the scar tissue from that surgery actually put so much pressure on a few of her optical nerves that her peripheral vision was gone. And so that meant that she was unable to drive our vehicle and she couldn't go on. She became very depressed and her body began to break down. So little by little, I mean she continued to live, survived for quite some time, but little by little, her body deteriorated.
20:01 But really the point in all of that was when I decided to leave the electrical company once more, I only left for one reason, and that was this same machine that I talked about, gamma knife that she chose against this company was offering me a role as a project manager for implementation, and I would be working with the gamma knife. So to me that was a godsend. That was, hey, get over here and get to work on this unit. And so long story short, I was there for about six, seven years and then in family consultation was speaking with my brother-in-Law, and then they were ready because the company had begun to grow. And so I thought, okay, so this is important to come back to the family, bring my talents to the family business and see where we can go from there. So here we are. Long story short, I am still with Universatech. I'm sure that took quite some time.

21:19 Naeem Mangum: No, that's all good. I appreciate you sharing. How have you experienced international cultures in your life?

21:33 Akwanza Mangum: Well, I told you I was born and raised in Detroit. So I mean, first we can talk about Canada, we can talk about Mexico. So the quasi French Canadian culture, I had gone to Canada a few times. The Mexican culture, first of all, let me just explain being in Detroit, because I explained the fact of segregation. There were pockets of different cultural backgrounds, but we're all just really segregated. We're all into our own little pockets. You have majority African-American at the time that I was growing up. And then you also had Chaldeans, you had Mexicans, you had Puerto Ricans, you had a big number of Arab cultures, especially around the area of Dearborn. So my first exposure to different cultural backgrounds actually began at the Baha'i Center in Detroit where a number of Baha'i's who were from varied backgrounds were always in the Baha'i Center at least once every Sunday at Baha'i school. And then every 19 days when we would have a community feast, and when I say different varying backgrounds, one gentleman was Mexican-American, one gentleman was half white, half black. Then you have me, my father, my brother. Then you have I'd say about six to eight Persians. So people hailing from Iran, one person from Iraq.
23:49 I think that's it. So that was first even when it was time for prayer. And I would hear the Persian chanting as a child. I just found it funny because I didn't understand why they sounded like that, because it didn't sound like any music I used to listen to. So that was one of my first exposures to culture. And actually I think that it got me interested in linguistics. I was interested in language for some time and tried to learn a little bit of French. I was maybe a year of French class in the fifth grade because I was afforded that opportunity at a gift and talented school. Then I took two full years of Spanish in high school and actually a year of Spanish in college. And then just meeting with friends and asking 'em to teach me certain languages like Farsi for instance. But that was some of my introduction to different cultures. I can say that after I was married is when I really got exposed to some international, truly international meaning across water. And I would even consider, even though it's considered a part of the United States, going to Hawaii was really being able to see some of the culture there and to see the intermingling of different races was pretty inspiring. And also seeing some of the German culture, witnessing some culture from Spain and some of the people who were from Italy and did I say Germany? I'm not sure, but Germany, Italy, Spain, and then Israel. So

25:56:00 Naeem Mangum: All right, now we're going to start to segue into our Black Lives Matter questions.

26:03:00 Akwanza Mangum: Okay.

26:04:00 Naeem Mangum: So how do you receive the news?

26:08:00 Akwanza Mangum: Any news,

26:09:00 Naeem Mangum: Like just news?

26:12:00 Akwanza Mangum: Sometimes I'll watch on the tv, YouTube TV is my preference. So I don't know. I typically will watch CNN, but typically I'll get some news from the internet. Most of my news will come from the internet.

26:29:00 Naeem Mangum: Would you say that that is from you searching it or from it showing up on social media?

26:38:00 Akwanza Mangum: I mean, there are some feeds that come through, and then sometimes I'll search something if I hear of something or if I know something is going on I might be interested in, then I'll seek it out. But typically it's more passive, meaning I'll allow for the information to get to me.

26:57:00 Naeem Mangum: And what is your experience with social media?

27:06:00 Akwanza Mangum: I had say, if you're just asking what type of outlets I use, probably YouTube, shorts, TikTok, some Twitter. I've actually pulled away from Twitter. I have basically pulled away from Facebook. I still have a presence, but I don't really go on those platforms to get any news about anything. So I'll basically just view TikTok and YouTube shorts for the most part. And if I want to actively pursue some news, I'll typically go to CNN or BBC.

27:58:00 Naeem Mangum: But what's your experience with social media? It could be detached from the news, but just in your life, what have you experienced with social media?

28:11:00 Akwanza Mangum: You mean are there positive and negative forces that are a part of it? If that's

28:16:00 Naeem Mangum: whatever your experience is, it could be how you view it or how

28:22:00 Akwanza Mangum: I think that there is a positivity to these things, but I think that extremes always present a challenge and a barrier to growth. I think that while there are positive things about social media and being able to get information very quickly, there's also a negative piece to it. And one of those things is just the way that people perceive others and themselves and judge themselves based off of how they perceive others, when in all actuality it may not even be their real lives. So that really presents a challenge, I think. But it also presents an opportunity because it affords us an opportunity to actually have meaningful conversations, to learn a little bit about understanding what it is that you're viewing and understand why it is that you're viewing it. And with that as an opportunity for growth and understanding around when my kids were in middle school and were asking for cell phones and the like, I was talking to them quite a bit about this term that I pinned, I guess is this microwave, what did I call it?
29:58:00 Microwave syndrome or microwave, you don't remember. Anyway, so it was about kids wanting things now and not being able to have any patience at all to get what it is that they wanted. And so it reminded me of just this microwave madness. And so when you have a microwave, you don't cook anything anymore, you just use that microwave. You hit one minute or two minutes and then you got your food instantly, almost instantly. And that's what I equate this thing, this internet too. It's like such a great tool, but at the same time there's so much misuse. And then capitalism to me is really at an all time high and it's based wholly off of materialism, and there's an imbalance in anything. When you have growth in materialism and sort of a decay in spiritual, then you have a true imbalance. And when you have material and spiritual both growing at the same velocity, that's when things become more in balance and then you more in balance and then you have an opportunity for true justice. So I think that there's a positive and a negative to it, but I think that moderation could help us better wield what the more positive effects of social media.

31:48:00 Naeem Mangum: How did you first encounter with the Black Lives Matter movement

31:54:00 Akwanza Mangum: Encounter? If you mean, how did I first hear of it? I would say around the Trayvon Martin case, when George Zimmerman was found, I guess sort of found not guilty, that was basically the start of it. So that's when I encountered it right after the George Zimmerman murder or the Trayvon Martin murder.

32:29:00 Naeem Mangum: And what's your opinion on the Black Lives Matter movement?

32:36:00 Akwanza Mangum: I think that like anything that, anything with a positive intent, I think that it starts out with purity of motive and it starts out very strong and it works itself through a series of ebbs and flows. And it's all actually, in my opinion, it's all good because there's learning that's disseminated through this action. The only thing that I think needs to happen, there was actually a couple things that I need to happen. One is I think that it needs to be removed from any political type of theory or thought, because this is not, in my opinion, black Lives Matter is not a theory, and it's definitely not a political thing. This is Black Lives Matter should be, at least in my opinion, should be a human rights effort. And that's actually what it is. So I think that there's a piece missing in the Black Lives Matter movement, and that is the reflection piece and the consultation piece.
34:19:00 So in the Baha'i Faith, we heavily weigh the activities that we're engaged in consultation, in action, in reflection, and then in planning. And the reflection piece is not some mere regurgitation of what happened, but a true reflection where we sit back and consider what has gone on, what the action was, why the action was, what the reaction was to the action, how we can better adjust the action so that there's more positive effect to the action and the reaction. And so I think that those couple things could do to help propel the Black Lives Matter movement into a space where it actually has a loftier position.

35:30:00 Naeem Mangum: Which generation do you think has been the most affected by the Black Lives Matter movement?

35:49:00 Akwanza Mangum: I don't know how to answer that. I really don't. I think that all generations have been affected by it. Every single generation has been affected by it. But I think that there are struggles that either mask what is going on or that really affect us in such a negative way that there are people who, there are forces that are trying to eliminate the fact that a black life does matter and trying to minimize it so much so that I think that generations are more affected by the ills of racism than the intention of acting against the ills of racism, if that makes sense.

36:44:00 Naeem Mangum: It makes sense to me. How has the Black Lives Matter movement changed how you interact with people of other races?

36:58:00 Akwanza Mangum: It hasn't.
37:02:00 The way that I interact with people of other races has its roots. And you've heard me, I've interacted with people of different races through the entirety of my life. Being a part of the Baha'i faith affords me an opportunity to interact with different races and for me to make a blanket judgment about a group of people when I have met other people who are like them, but more like minded with me, then that sort of changes. It changes what my thought process might be if I had not met these people because then I would be making a prejudice, a prejudice thought towards someone that I really haven't taken my energy to even get to know them or get a chance to change both my heart and theirs. So in effect, I'm doing the opposite of what I believe we were created for.

38:29:00 Naeem Mangum: How do you think the Black Lives Matter movement succeeded?

38:37:00 Akwanza Mangum: The success of the Black Lives Matter movement was, like I said earlier, I said that it showed in action, it showed in resolve, it showed in planning, it was effective in that way. It was effective in even the name of that mantra itself. It's beautifully thought of like black lives do matter and any life matters. And so if any life matters, then that includes black lives, but it's not what we're seeing. So it's effective in bringing forward the truth. And so now, if you look at it, and if you ask the question again about which generation it affected most, I might have to say your generation, because your generation to me has grown up with the understanding that you are not to be tricked. You have this understanding and it's almost innate that you are going to question everything to make sure that it aligns with what your beliefs are.
40:08:00 And so to me it's, it's really apropos or timely for the BLM movement and your generation to coexist. Like I said though before, also without proper reflection, you're going to run into challenges and the issue becomes the lack of reflection and then the association with politics. I don't think that there's going to be real life change, true change, true, effective, and lasting change without that reflection piece and without removing it from a political, because this is a human rights thing. And so politics has no place in that. Politics is divisive anyway. It stands to separate. It stands to promote this us and them thing. And with respect to having a unity of vision, how can you separate people when you want to have unity of vision, not unity of thought, where you're controlling someone's thought but having a unity of vision. When you say Black Lives matter, what is that vision?
41:28:00 What do you envision? So these are some of the things that I think could do to help support what Black Lives Matter could truly stand for. Now, this is of course, my own understanding of what I think Black Lives Matter should stand for, but I didn't create it. And so I can't take true ownership of it, but I can take true ownership of the fact that black lives do matter. And so what do I do in my stance for it is not to present myself as a BLM representative because then I'm associating myself with a political movement and I can't do that. What I need to associate myself with is eliminating the ills of racism, and I feel like I'm doing that daily.

42:23:00 Naeem Mangum: That's a great segue into our next question. How do you think the BLM movement failed?

42:39:00 Akwanza Mangum: I don't want to answer that question, and I'll tell you why. When you say or to imply that the BLM movement failed also implies that it's no longer important or it was standing on the wrong tenants. And I don't want to answer that question because I don't want to make that statement. What the statement that I will make though is you've heard me on more than one occasion talk about the importance of reflection. And if you don't reflect, it's very difficult to grow and grow in understanding and grow in maturity and grow in action. And so if you act on something and you don't study and you don't reflect and you don't plan, and then you don't act again, then you're basically back to where I began with my fits and starts with school. And so that then leaves you in a place where you're, you have this sort of ambiguous role.
43:56:00 And so again, I don't believe that the Black Lives Matter movement failed because failure is heavily weighed in having a negative connotation. Now, if we use the term failure and say that failure is an opportunity for learning and growth on our way to change, then we're talking about progress. And so if we're talking about progress, failure not looked at as having such a negative connotation. So do I think that there are things that could be changed? Yes. Do I think that there are things that I would remove? Yes. One is affiliation with the politics. This is not a political issue. It is a human rights issue and should be treated as such.

44:59:00 Naeem Mangum: And what do you think is the future of the Black Lives Matter movement?

45:07:00 Akwanza Mangum: I don't know, but I'll tell you what I do know. I do know that what we are doing in the Baha faith is going to contribute to adjusting the way that we view black lives. It's going to contribute to adjusting the way that we treat black lives, is going to contribute in black lives, beginning to understand and embrace their nobility. So the things that we are doing in community where we are providing children with spiritual education, we are utilizing opportunities to accompany junior youth and help them along and navigate along the road of understanding the importance of spiritual empowerment. And we are helping youth understand their roles in helping spiritually educate children and helping junior youth navigate through their lives and their spiritual prowess. So there's also opportunities where we are working with like-minded individuals to establish uplifting the devotional character of a community. And we're engaged in different neighborhoods trying to help uplift these neighborhoods and help them see that there is hope somewhere.
46:41:00 There is hope in your area. There's hope in your home if you let it. And it always exists. So these are some of the things that we are doing. And it doesn't have to be a Black Lives Matter movement. It can start though with Black lives. And that's what we're doing. We are trying to affect change and trying to help us all see the importance of understanding that we all have a character and our moral compass can just be shifted a little bit so that we remove such emphasis placed on this material world and begin to uplift ourselves spiritually so that we can just balance everything and so that people can begin to see that not only am I a noble being, but the person standing in front of me as just as noble as I am and deserves all of the things that I get and all the things that I deserve. So that's it in a nutshell. What was that like? Three minutes

48:00:00 Naeem Mangum: Solid three minutes, yeah. All right. Well that's all I have for you. Thank you so much for your time.

48:06:00 Akwanza Mangum: Thank you very much for having me.

Part of Akwanza Mangum