Chris Jackson of Hamilton on Broadway for our 100th episode

Chris Jackson: 00:00:00

And then, the second part of your question.

Chris Jackson: 00:00:01

No, I had never given any thought ever to portraying George Washington.

Chris Jackson: 00:00:06

I had seen probably the few movies were made for TV movies that they had made.

Scott: 00:00:21

Welcome to talk with history.

Scott: 00:00:23

I am your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jenn.

Scott: 00:00:26

Hello.

Scott: 00:00:27

On this podcast, we give you insights to our history inspired, both travels,

Scott: 00:00:31

YouTube channel journey, and examine history through deeper conversations

Scott: 00:00:35

with the curious, the explorers, and the history lovers out there.

Scott: 00:00:39

Now, Jenn, this is our hundredth episode.

Scott: 00:00:41

We've been doing this for a couple of years now, and we have a very

Scott: 00:00:44

special guest joining us today.

Scott: 00:00:46

So we.

Scott: 00:00:47

Really have a guest who needs no introduction, but I'm

Scott: 00:00:49

going to give him one anyways.

Scott: 00:00:55

He originated the iconic role of George Washington in the groundbreaking

Scott: 00:01:00

musical phenomenon, Hamilton, his powerful vocals and nuanced performance

Scott: 00:01:04

captivated audiences worldwide.

Scott: 00:01:06

And his portrayal of the first president sparked important

Scott: 00:01:09

conversations about history.

Scott: 00:01:11

From there, he only picked up steam, continuing on his career on the

Scott: 00:01:14

silver screen of television and I'm making his career very, very

Scott: 00:01:17

short, but most importantly, the most important thing about our guest

Scott: 00:01:21

is he has a passion for history.

Scott: 00:01:23

So welcome, Mr.

Scott: 00:01:24

Christopher Jackson.

Scott: 00:01:25

Thank you so much for joining us on talk with history tonight.

Chris Jackson: 00:01:28

Thank you for having me.

Chris Jackson: 00:01:29

Happy 100th.

Scott: 00:01:30

Thank you so much.

Scott: 00:01:31

this

Chris Jackson: 00:01:31

What a, milestone.

Scott: 00:01:32

a, this is a great milestone for us.

Scott: 00:01:34

Especially kind of bootstrapping a podcast in our living room whenever we can.

Scott: 00:01:39

So thank you so much for joining us and, we're really happy to have you.

Scott: 00:01:46

just so people know kind of how we got connected with, with you we'll

Scott: 00:01:50

kind of tell our audience Hey, how the heck did you guys get connected

Scott: 00:01:53

with, with Christopher Jackson?

Scott: 00:01:54

Yeah,

Jenn: 00:01:55

it was honestly, Chris, it was amazing experience for me.

Jenn: 00:01:58

I am even wearing my history has its eyes on you t shirt.

Chris Jackson: 00:02:03

I love

Jenn: 00:02:03

was driving back from a friend's house in Uniontown, Pennsylvania,

Jenn: 00:02:06

and I was driving past Fort Necessity, which if you know the

Jenn: 00:02:10

song, history has its eyes on you.

Jenn: 00:02:12

George Washington is talking, I'm, I'm younger than you are

Jenn: 00:02:15

now given my first command.

Jenn: 00:02:17

So I stopped there and I just did those lines real quick.

Jenn: 00:02:21

And I talked about what George Washington is talking about learning

Jenn: 00:02:24

in that moment and how lucky he is to learn because he didn't get killed.

Jenn: 00:02:29

And he didn't lose his command, which were two things that

Jenn: 00:02:32

probably should have happened.

Jenn: 00:02:33

And so he, he's talking about how lucky he got in that moment and how he's

Jenn: 00:02:38

trying to teach that to Hamilton, that you don't always get to learn from your

Jenn: 00:02:43

mistakes, but if you do like really bring it, take it on and, and, and change,

Jenn: 00:02:49

people's lives for the, what you learn.

Jenn: 00:02:51

And you had reached out, you saw that reel and you said you never

Jenn: 00:02:56

got a chance to visit it before.

Jenn: 00:02:58

You.

Jenn: 00:02:58

Took the role, but then you and then you said you were a fan of

Jenn: 00:03:02

mine, and I almost lost my mind

Chris Jackson: 00:03:04

Sure.

Chris Jackson: 00:03:06

I mean, you guys, I mean, it's so cool.

Chris Jackson: 00:03:09

I grew up in Southern Illinois, so being, that's, I grew up

Chris Jackson: 00:03:13

in, I was born in Metropolis, Illinois, inside of Fort Massac.

Chris Jackson: 00:03:18

So, when I was, When I was young, they had they had two pair of Buffalo, like

Chris Jackson: 00:03:24

actual Buffalo that they had in a small pen that you could drive down and just

Chris Jackson: 00:03:30

park and watch the Buffalo sort of graze in a, in a, in a paddock, if you

Chris Jackson: 00:03:34

could call it, that was so small, but Fort Massach and in, and then later

Chris Jackson: 00:03:39

I moved to Cairo, which was, Which is at the southernmost point of Illinois.

Chris Jackson: 00:03:43

So there's a lot of history baked into and into that area,

Chris Jackson: 00:03:46

especially around the civil war.

Chris Jackson: 00:03:48

And so for, for me, it was just always so intriguing to know that, General

Chris Jackson: 00:03:51

Grant stated Magnolia manor, the cupola, because there was no other tall buildings,

Chris Jackson: 00:03:55

he could see the confluence of the rivers and blah, blah, like it was just

Chris Jackson: 00:03:58

always that's, that's where I learned.

Chris Jackson: 00:04:00

I got into the arts because I think of my interest and passion for history.

Chris Jackson: 00:04:05

It was just.

Chris Jackson: 00:04:05

Always.

Chris Jackson: 00:04:05

So the humanity of it was always the most

Chris Jackson: 00:04:08

Oh, of

Jenn: 00:04:08

course.

Chris Jackson: 00:04:09

And so, so watching you walk through Fort necessity and it looked

Chris Jackson: 00:04:13

very much like a Fort Massac or Fort Defiance, like all of these sort of, you

Chris Jackson: 00:04:18

could still see the, the, the, the dirt from the readouts, but it was, it was nice

Chris Jackson: 00:04:23

to know it was really cool to know that.

Chris Jackson: 00:04:26

Real people built those things and a hundred and some ideas later, they're

Chris Jackson: 00:04:29

still here and there was significant.

Chris Jackson: 00:04:31

And why were there significant?

Chris Jackson: 00:04:32

And then, then you dig and then it's, it's, you walk through

Chris Jackson: 00:04:34

just like what you're doing.

Chris Jackson: 00:04:35

And I think that's

Jenn: 00:04:36

Yeah That was like that's the whole importance of the channel is

Jenn: 00:04:39

to take you to the location Like walk you through history Like I wanted you

Jenn: 00:04:42

to see what it was like and to stand in the footsteps of those history

Jenn: 00:04:46

makers Like what were they seeing?

Jenn: 00:04:48

What were they thinking?

Jenn: 00:04:49

So when you were first approached to plage George, Washington

Jenn: 00:04:53

Washington what was your reaction?

Jenn: 00:04:54

What did you know about him?

Jenn: 00:04:56

And how did you feel about portraying that person in history?

Chris Jackson: 00:05:02

Honestly I found out.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:05

About the project that Lynn was doing.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:08

I, I want to say somewhere like in 2011 ish or 2010, excuse me, we were

Chris Jackson: 00:05:15

still doing in the Heights on Broadway.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:17

And so the first, the first, I've told the story the first time I heard

Chris Jackson: 00:05:19

anything about it, Lynn had come back for vacation and he had talked to Tommy

Chris Jackson: 00:05:23

and, and he bought this biography, which, there's a picture of him in a

Chris Jackson: 00:05:27

hammock or a floaty in a pool somewhere in the Caribbean where he was reading

Chris Jackson: 00:05:31

this book and he was really intrigued.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:32

And, when we started Heights Tommy and Lynn and I were all reading a

Chris Jackson: 00:05:37

team of rivals at the same time.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:39

It's just sort of, Tommy was like, read this.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:41

And I was like, Oh yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:42

And it was of course a page turner

Chris Jackson: 00:05:44

for those of you that have read it.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:46

and w it was fantastic.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:47

And we all just we love a good read.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:50

We're always intrigued.

Chris Jackson: 00:05:51

But the fact that he found, this idea for a show he, we were actually on stage

Chris Jackson: 00:05:56

and performance when he told me about it, like it was in the middle of the

Chris Jackson: 00:05:59

show, in the first act of in the Heights.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:02

Well, so the inside of Broadway, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:06:05

You you have moments when you're upstage and there's at that time, there's a

Chris Jackson: 00:06:09

number that's going on in front of us, but we're sort of like in character,

Chris Jackson: 00:06:13

but we're up in, kind of in the dark and that's when we, would catch up on the

Chris Jackson: 00:06:16

day or whatever, tell a joke, whatever.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:18

But we had, we had three and a half minutes to just talk and

Chris Jackson: 00:06:20

it, it built into the show.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:22

nobody knew what we're talking about.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:24

And, the famous, the, the, the sort of the notable thing is he, he looks at me,

Chris Jackson: 00:06:28

we're Right before we're about to go out into the, like the big first act number.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:31

And he's I think I got my next thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:32

And I'm like, what?

Chris Jackson: 00:06:34

He's yeah, it's something about the treasury.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:36

Say it's a hip hop concept album about the treasury secretary.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:40

And then off we went I mean, it was literally that quick.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:43

I didn't think anything of it.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:44

I don't know how much time passed between that moment and the next conversation

Chris Jackson: 00:06:48

we had about it, but at some point Tommy Kail approaches me, I'm on stage

Chris Jackson: 00:06:52

doing my warm up before the show.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:54

And he's coming across the stage, Tommy Kail, our director, and

Chris Jackson: 00:06:56

he said, Hey, what's up G dubs.

Chris Jackson: 00:06:58

And I'm like, what?

Chris Jackson: 00:06:59

you just

Scott: 00:06:59

threw it out there.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:00

What?

Chris Jackson: 00:07:02

Well, yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:04

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:05

I mean, and they had

Chris Jackson: 00:07:06

the idea, these are my

Chris Jackson: 00:07:06

best

Jenn: 00:07:07

Sure.

Jenn: 00:07:08

So you

Chris Jackson: 00:07:08

the shorthand the shorthand is real, but he was like,

Chris Jackson: 00:07:11

Hey, I didn't audition for it.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:13

That was the purpose was to have me do.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:16

The role.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:17

So that's the first time that I kind of like it started to cook for me.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:22

And then, the second part of your question.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:23

No, I had never given any thought ever to portraying George Washington.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:28

I had seen probably the few movies were made for TV movies that they had made.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:32

And, and sort of, it's, it was always sort of a version of of these, these very lofty

Chris Jackson: 00:07:40

upstanding men who were just sort of like a, a step away from, from the statues.

Chris Jackson: 00:07:47

The marble busts or the portraits and the whole idea behind the casting of of

Chris Jackson: 00:07:52

Hamilton was to to change them enough that that folks would see them in a in a human

Chris Jackson: 00:07:57

way and that we as actors would be able to portray them in a very human way and

Chris Jackson: 00:08:03

and the given circumstances that we were.

Chris Jackson: 00:08:06

Given in the script and in the score would, would then

Chris Jackson: 00:08:09

motivate us to move through.

Chris Jackson: 00:08:11

And then everything that I based Washington on was really based on

Chris Jackson: 00:08:14

just the, what I knew and what I was able to research respectfully about

Chris Jackson: 00:08:20

what is it that stands a soldier up?

Chris Jackson: 00:08:22

What are the things that are important to, to a soldier?

Chris Jackson: 00:08:26

And, and, and then one step beyond that, an officer, Washington

Chris Jackson: 00:08:29

certainly did not come by.

Chris Jackson: 00:08:31

By merit in the way that we understand it, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:08:34

He came, but there were a lot of different things that contributed

Chris Jackson: 00:08:37

to him taking that, that command.

Chris Jackson: 00:08:40

But we were the same age when he assumed command of, of the army

Chris Jackson: 00:08:44

outside of Boston and our show opened and I became George Washington.

Chris Jackson: 00:08:48

So I, I, I tried to figure out the things that we, that we did have in common.

Chris Jackson: 00:08:54

He had a lot of, a lot, most of much of his life was defined

Chris Jackson: 00:08:57

by loss in his early life.

Chris Jackson: 00:09:00

His father was gone, his older brother died, and his best friend

Chris Jackson: 00:09:02

all died by the time he was 16.

Chris Jackson: 00:09:04

And that defined much of what, and the rest of it was aspirational.

Chris Jackson: 00:09:08

Who's more aspirational

Chris Jackson: 00:09:09

than an actor?

Jenn: 00:09:10

that's true.

Chris Jackson: 00:09:11

My father was not a, was not a presence in my life, but I

Chris Jackson: 00:09:13

was fortunate to have really strong and wonderful mentors that, that came

Chris Jackson: 00:09:18

through and kicked me when I needed it, and lifted me up when I needed it.

Chris Jackson: 00:09:22

Gave me guidance and the rest of it.

Chris Jackson: 00:09:24

I just kind of figured out on my own at, 18 in New York studying acting.

Chris Jackson: 00:09:28

So it was the confluence of, of, understanding what leadership meant,

Chris Jackson: 00:09:31

what and, and what appearances.

Chris Jackson: 00:09:34

Mean,

Chris Jackson: 00:09:34

right?

Chris Jackson: 00:09:35

And then incorporating

Jenn: 00:09:36

No, Chris, what I love about that is George Washington was a big risk

Jenn: 00:09:41

taker and he had a lot of aspirations for himself and you, you found that as

Jenn: 00:09:46

a commonality, one of the things I loved about Hamilton and I saw Hamilton 2018.

Jenn: 00:09:53

like third row.

Jenn: 00:09:54

It's a funny story behind it.

Jenn: 00:09:55

But Scott gave me like this Christmas present and he was like,

Jenn: 00:09:58

I'm going to get you to Hamilton.

Jenn: 00:09:59

I'm going to find a way to get you to Hamilton.

Jenn: 00:10:01

At the time we lived in Tennessee too.

Jenn: 00:10:03

So it was funny.

Jenn: 00:10:04

But when I went for the first showing George Washington was,

Jenn: 00:10:08

and you're a man of color.

Jenn: 00:10:09

George Washington was played by African American man.

Jenn: 00:10:11

You're African American.

Jenn: 00:10:12

I loved that and for me to see a man of color play Washington,

Jenn: 00:10:18

men of color built Washington.

Jenn: 00:10:21

George Washington is standing on the shoulders of men of color.

Jenn: 00:10:24

And so to see a man of color play him, I thought it was.

Jenn: 00:10:27

Perfect.

Jenn: 00:10:28

I really did.

Chris Jackson: 00:10:29

It's what I think about when I go there.

Jenn: 00:10:31

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:10:32

It's what I think about when I see the Washington Monument.

Chris Jackson: 00:10:34

I, I, I mean, I, I'm there and I'm in Washington eight to 10 times a year.

Chris Jackson: 00:10:39

I literally think about it every

Jenn: 00:10:41

That's amazing.

Scott: 00:10:47

One of the things that we like to ask, ask folks when we talk to them

Scott: 00:10:51

about history is, and you kind of actually already touched on it, was, How we

Scott: 00:10:56

all tend to learn history, even though it's the same, we learn it a little

Scott: 00:11:00

differently, we learn it through our own lens, we learn it depending on what part

Scott: 00:11:03

of the country we live in and we've, the more we've been online and kind of doing

Scott: 00:11:09

walks with history and talks with history and meeting other people from around the

Scott: 00:11:12

country talking about the same historical event, we'll all say oh, that's not what

Scott: 00:11:16

I learned when I was younger, that's not what I focused on when I was younger.

Scott: 00:11:20

So.

Scott: 00:11:20

When it came to that for you, you said you were from, from Illinois,

Scott: 00:11:24

when it, whether it came to, to

Chris Jackson: 00:11:26

Southern Illinois.

Chris Jackson: 00:11:27

Huge distinction.

Chris Jackson: 00:11:29

Huge distinction.

Scott: 00:11:30

For, for you kind of growing up in Southern Illinois, what do you remember?

Scott: 00:11:35

You kind of had a little bit of a passion, semi early on, what are some of the things

Scott: 00:11:40

you remember from, from your childhood?

Scott: 00:11:42

That was focused on in, in your neck of the woods where you

Scott: 00:11:45

were growing up in Illinois.

Chris Jackson: 00:11:51

So first I would say that.

Chris Jackson: 00:11:52

Most of my historical education, both in, in school and, and just sort of in,

Chris Jackson: 00:11:58

in the local zeitgeist was kind of the, I'd like to say a holdover from the great

Chris Jackson: 00:12:03

sort of propaganda moment in history.

Chris Jackson: 00:12:06

We've got a, we've probably got a good 65, 70 year span where Our nationalist

Chris Jackson: 00:12:13

identity, especially I think leading up to the decades leading up to, and then

Chris Jackson: 00:12:16

when we finally arrived in 1975 and it's the centennial and it's just sort of

Chris Jackson: 00:12:21

like, so you're, I was born and it's it was like, I think at its greatest, the,

Chris Jackson: 00:12:25

at the Zenith of everybody kind of, dug in and that became the curriculum, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:12:30

It's we kind of codified.

Chris Jackson: 00:12:32

All of the things, all of the, like the blatant lies that historians

Chris Jackson: 00:12:35

knew, but didn't want to burn.

Chris Jackson: 00:12:37

It's almost as if they didn't want to burden children with the truth.

Chris Jackson: 00:12:41

If as if, as if that wasn't, if, as if the truth wasn't already interesting

Chris Jackson: 00:12:45

enough, I think that it was sort of a wash in slogan and I don't want to say

Chris Jackson: 00:12:51

propaganda as if, as if it's not, I don't want to be Pollyannish about it.

Chris Jackson: 00:12:54

Propaganda is a huge part of how governments.

Chris Jackson: 00:12:57

Support themselves and the public and, and, and make things easier for

Chris Jackson: 00:13:02

the, the greater amount of people to learn the population to learn and,

Chris Jackson: 00:13:06

and sort of hold on to I had the benefit of being raised very early on.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:10

My mom was still finishing her teaching degree.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:12

When I was, I think she, when I was like five or six, so the first six years of

Chris Jackson: 00:13:16

my life, the real formative years, we spent a lot of time with my grandparents

Chris Jackson: 00:13:21

who were both black entrepreneurs.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:23

They came out of sort of that the Booker T.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:26

Washington sort of like bootstrap, go to technical school, get a trade.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:30

They were, they own funeral funeral homes Jackson funeral homes.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:34

And they, they were.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:37

Self made.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:38

It's not even doesn't really begin to describe them.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:40

They were old enough that the old ways were still very much an everyday thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:44

So I remember my grandmother making her own, washing powder out of lye soap

Chris Jackson: 00:13:50

and our, our body soap was lye soap.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:52

And I used to cut the, get to cut the blocks of lye, soap like

Chris Jackson: 00:13:56

that was all a part of my life.

Chris Jackson: 00:13:57

And then on my mom's side of the family, they were all farmers.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:00

And so, I, I grew up, I spent half my time with my, with my father's

Chris Jackson: 00:14:05

parent, my father, some of my paternal grandparents, and then with my maternal

Chris Jackson: 00:14:08

grandparents, they were very much farmers.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:11

It was, they lived in and around and on the land.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:14

And so I got that education as well.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:17

I mention that because culturally and historically, both of my

Chris Jackson: 00:14:22

grandparents placed a great deal of importance on understanding what.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:26

I was a part of and where I came from.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:29

So I was ever aware of the importance of knowing who and how the civil, how exactly

Chris Jackson: 00:14:36

the civil rights movement not only came to be, but was sustained and how it was.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:43

Changing shape.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:44

I remember watching Jesse Jackson at the democratic convention.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:48

I remember his, I am somebody speech.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:50

I was watching it.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:51

I remember those moments and they were codified because my grandparents set me

Chris Jackson: 00:14:55

down and explained it to me in real time.

Chris Jackson: 00:14:58

I was four or five years old, you know what I mean?

Chris Jackson: 00:15:00

So those kinds of things, like I always had a sense of what was happening in the

Chris Jackson: 00:15:06

world and what I, not only what my place was in it, but what was expected of me.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:11

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:12

As a citizen, as a black man, as someone who was through, through my

Chris Jackson: 00:15:20

life circumstances, forced to move between both sides of my family.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:25

And it's still in, in, in a still very segregated.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:29

Emotionally and mentally part of the country.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:32

And so I learned how to code switch.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:34

I learned how to go along to get along.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:36

I learned how to push slightly and softly.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:39

I learned how to push loudly and, and not so not, not without with a lot of

Chris Jackson: 00:15:44

nuance and it was a great benefit to me.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:48

So as I moved through, my schooling.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:51

History made sense because I had already received an education of foundation in

Chris Jackson: 00:15:57

that and taught how important it was.

Chris Jackson: 00:15:59

I always took, I always took history very seriously, second only to music.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:05

That was, that's just how it had that and lunch, but that's how it kind

Chris Jackson: 00:16:09

of, that's how it kind of formed.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:11

That's how it kind of formed me.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:12

And I, and I I've, I've been ever grateful especially in this Hamilton

Chris Jackson: 00:16:16

experience, because I felt I was.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:17

Primed already to understand the context of it, and really play it with commitment.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:22

That was the,

Jenn: 00:16:23

It's the two things you love.

Jenn: 00:16:25

Now your paternal grandparents, your African American grandparents, were

Jenn: 00:16:28

they part of the great migration?

Jenn: 00:16:30

Did they?

Jenn: 00:16:31

Were there families from the South?

Chris Jackson: 00:16:38

So this is the funny story that I meant to tell you.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:40

I promise I'll give you the short, shorter answer than the last two.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:43

So my wife and I get on ancestry.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:45

com the other night.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:47

I have avoided it.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:48

I have avoided it.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:49

I have avoided it.

Chris Jackson: 00:16:50

My last name, there's not a lot of touch points that are, that are positive,

Chris Jackson: 00:16:56

but it turns out that we're in the same bloodline as, as, as old Andy.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:00

Which is crazy to me.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:02

He and his wife didn't have kids, but his his parents are, are in

Chris Jackson: 00:17:06

my family's bloodline is crazy.

Jenn: 00:17:12

you got to come to Tennessee then.

Jenn: 00:17:13

That means you got to come to the hermitage.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:15

But, but then go back even further because John Jackson, who was

Chris Jackson: 00:17:18

a captain in back in the colonies was a member of the, the Prince Phillips war.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:24

Who was also, I mean, that whole anti native American thing runs all the way.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:30

There's two genocidal maniacs in my family tree.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:33

And I'm like, yo, this is, this is nuts.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:35

But so we're, so cool.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:37

Yes, they were a part of the great migration.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:39

One of the reasons why they both went to mortuary school was from the Booker T.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:43

Washington sort of bootstraps, a talented 10th kind of ideal.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:49

And, on my, on my grandparents back parlor, there were four

Chris Jackson: 00:17:53

portraits hanging on the wall.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:55

There was, there was a black Jesus Christ.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:57

There was Martin Luther King jr.

Chris Jackson: 00:17:59

And there was Mary McLeod Bethune and there was Booker T.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:01

Washington.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:02

They were very much.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:03

I mean, that was, that was the back wall of their parlor.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:07

And so growing up and seeing and knowing that, My, My, every, it's

Chris Jackson: 00:18:12

every generation prior to mine, each, each couple had like at least

Chris Jackson: 00:18:17

nine kids, every single generation.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:21

it's it's insane.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:23

But they, they were mostly from the northeast northeast Arkansas area.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:29

I mean the, the, the northern east most corner right next to Memphis.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:34

So they weren't really that far from where they mostly settled,

Chris Jackson: 00:18:37

which was Metropolis and, and Cairo.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:40

But it was all close to the river, and I grew up going to Memphis.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:43

Going to mud Island.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:44

And, I was there, I was there when the, when the, the Memphis bell movie

Chris Jackson: 00:18:47

had come out and they had nine B 17s.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:50

I was

Chris Jackson: 00:18:50

Oh my gosh.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:51

Oh, no

Scott: 00:18:51

way.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:51

I got, I got sprayed in oil that yell.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:54

Yeah, it was amazing.

Chris Jackson: 00:18:55

I

Jenn: 00:18:55

We do a whole video on Mary McLeod Bethune.

Jenn: 00:18:58

We go to her house.

Jenn: 00:18:59

We talk about the 6888.

Jenn: 00:19:00

It's really cool.

Jenn: 00:19:01

She's very important.

Jenn: 00:19:02

An amazing story.

Jenn: 00:19:02

Amazing story.

Jenn: 00:19:03

Burger T.

Jenn: 00:19:04

Washington actually went to school here outside of Norfolk.

Jenn: 00:19:06

He went to Hampton University right here out of Norfolk.

Jenn: 00:19:09

So a lot of, we're, we're crisscrossing the history here.

Jenn: 00:19:12

It's pretty cool.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:13

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:14

And we're talking about huge schools

Chris Jackson: 00:19:16

of thought too.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:16

Like I'm more of a Dubois I, I, I relate more to what.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:20

W B Dubois, his, his sort

Chris Jackson: 00:19:22

of philosophy, but I, I've read Booker T and I understand both.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:26

I understand that how, how those, how they both collided diverged

Chris Jackson: 00:19:30

and then came back together.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:31

There's a lot of ideas in those moments in those, in that period

Chris Jackson: 00:19:34

of time that still influences us today, though, you've had, you had to

Chris Jackson: 00:19:38

have read it in order to really

Chris Jackson: 00:19:40

understand it.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:41

But

Jenn: 00:19:42

it's a lot.

Jenn: 00:19:42

Have you

Chris Jackson: 00:19:42

It is a lot,

Jenn: 00:19:44

like a thousand pages.

Jenn: 00:19:46

I told my

Chris Jackson: 00:19:47

I've got the first and I have the first and the second edition.

Jenn: 00:19:50

like, I took a radical African American class.

Jenn: 00:19:53

I said, that's what's radical.

Jenn: 00:19:54

The length of this book.

Jenn: 00:19:55

He started laughing.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:57

Oh my God.

Chris Jackson: 00:19:58

Yeah, I tried to get through his, his Philadelphia not experiment the, the,

Chris Jackson: 00:20:02

the, the treaties he wrote on, on black folks in Philadelphia, which was

Chris Jackson: 00:20:05

like, it was almost like Deuteronomy.

Chris Jackson: 00:20:07

I was like, I'm, I'm doing my best,

Jenn: 00:20:13

so, when you found out you were playing George Washington, what,

Jenn: 00:20:16

did you go to any historic places?

Jenn: 00:20:18

Did you read any books?

Jenn: 00:20:20

What movies did you watch?

Jenn: 00:20:21

Or were you just I'm just going to make it my own.

Jenn: 00:20:25

I'm going to find my own way here.

Chris Jackson: 00:20:29

The day that Tommy walked up to me and explained to me

Chris Jackson: 00:20:31

why he called me G dubs, which was like, I think it was later that day.

Chris Jackson: 00:20:35

Actually, I went to the borders after the show.

Chris Jackson: 00:20:37

I went down to Madison Square Garden.

Chris Jackson: 00:20:40

There was a borders there on 34th street and I bought Ron

Chris Jackson: 00:20:43

Chernow's biography on Washington.

Chris Jackson: 00:20:47

And from that moment till the time that I left Hamilton, I think I made

Chris Jackson: 00:20:52

it through that book seven times.

Chris Jackson: 00:20:55

So that was my Bible pretty much for the first time.

Chris Jackson: 00:20:58

It was the first time in my career that I had been given an opportunity to truly

Chris Jackson: 00:21:01

research And the, the important part that I found really early on was that, it's not

Chris Jackson: 00:21:10

called Washington, it's called Hamilton.

Chris Jackson: 00:21:12

So we only really see Washington when his movements intersect with Hamilton's.

Chris Jackson: 00:21:20

So what became super important was knowing exactly what, what was happening with

Chris Jackson: 00:21:26

Washington the moment before he sees.

Chris Jackson: 00:21:29

Hamilton, the moment before he comes into a scene and knowing what he

Chris Jackson: 00:21:35

was going into was really important.

Chris Jackson: 00:21:37

So, if you're watching the movie or have you seen the show, like when Washington

Chris Jackson: 00:21:40

makes his first appearance, it's during my shot, it's during the end of my shot.

Chris Jackson: 00:21:44

Now, those moments didn't exactly line up, but then, but they intersect

Chris Jackson: 00:21:48

in that Washington does go into.

Chris Jackson: 00:21:52

New York.

Chris Jackson: 00:21:53

And he does see these, these rabble rousers down in the town square.

Chris Jackson: 00:21:58

He sees all of that right before he almost loses his entire

Chris Jackson: 00:22:01

army in battle of Brooklyn.

Chris Jackson: 00:22:03

So like in a series of retreats, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:22:05

So, but it was really important for me to know what he went

Chris Jackson: 00:22:08

through in Boston, Mm hmm.

Chris Jackson: 00:22:11

how everyone was calling it a victory.

Chris Jackson: 00:22:12

And he was consumed with the fact that it.

Chris Jackson: 00:22:16

It wasn't a, it wasn't a sound victory that, that he almost, again, at every

Chris Jackson: 00:22:22

turn, especially in the first, like two and a half years, three years

Chris Jackson: 00:22:24

of the, of the, the, the war, he was close to losing his army, like Mm hmm.

Chris Jackson: 00:22:30

And I think not only was he, from his papers and writings, like I get

Chris Jackson: 00:22:34

the sense that he was as equally concerned about the welfare of the

Chris Jackson: 00:22:37

army and his reputation, because.

Chris Jackson: 00:22:41

Posterity was so important.

Chris Jackson: 00:22:43

So it's like I even and even in the telling of this story, it's important

Chris Jackson: 00:22:47

to me to know that, even though we don't really discuss any specific things

Chris Jackson: 00:22:53

like he's not just worried about losing the battle, he's worried about losing

Chris Jackson: 00:22:57

his livelihood and his reputation too.

Chris Jackson: 00:22:59

And those are at times equally motivating

Chris Jackson: 00:23:02

Absolutely.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:02

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:03

And I think that, so to ask the question or to answer the question,

Chris Jackson: 00:23:07

like those humanizing moments.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:09

Because it's not, that's not a glorious, honorable thing to be

Chris Jackson: 00:23:12

worried about your reputation.

Scott: 00:23:14

Yeah.

Scott: 00:23:14

Yes.

Scott: 00:23:16

It's a very human thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:17

But, and for the guy who has to play him, it's really

Chris Jackson: 00:23:20

important to know that that's a part of, that's a part of it.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:24

You know what I mean?

Chris Jackson: 00:23:25

And so all of those moments, the way that they intersect, become

Chris Jackson: 00:23:29

really, really, really important.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:31

I did get to go to I got to go to Mount Vernon.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:35

The folks at Mount Vernon were incredibly gracious.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:38

We were filming a doc as we were preparing for the, the, the show.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:42

And so I got to go, we got to Mount Vernon about three o'clock in the afternoon.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:46

It was a coldest November day.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:47

I think I've ever experienced in my life.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:49

I think it was November, but it was, it was bone rattling cold, but we

Chris Jackson: 00:23:53

were there until nine 30 that night.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:55

Oh,

Jenn: 00:23:55

cool.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:56

the place down.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:58

We got a private tour.

Chris Jackson: 00:23:59

We got access to some things that the public generally don't get to see,

Chris Jackson: 00:24:03

but that they still show that house without a fireplace going is, is wow.

Jenn: 00:24:09

Freezing.

Jenn: 00:24:10

Mm hmm.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:11

it's

Chris Jackson: 00:24:11

terrible.

Jenn: 00:24:12

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:12

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:13

And I got to go to Valley

Chris Jackson: 00:24:14

Forge.

Jenn: 00:24:15

Yay.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:15

Mm I had never been there after being on the East Coast

Chris Jackson: 00:24:19

for, 30 years, I'd never been there.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:21

I had no idea that the grounds were the size that they were.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:24

In Illinois, we celebrate Pulaski Day.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:26

My family lives in Alexander and Pulaski County.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:30

So I but to be able to, to see his quarters.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:35

The vastness of, of, of that space and the, the, just the stories

Chris Jackson: 00:24:41

that the ground will tell you.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:43

And the proximity to Gettysburg was striking to me, this last this last

Chris Jackson: 00:24:48

summer I gave an appearance at Dickinson college and then had, had another

Chris Jackson: 00:24:52

gig with with the U S army orchestra.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:54

And so I drove from Dickinson and PA to DC, and I'd never made that drive before.

Chris Jackson: 00:24:59

And we drove, I drove, Within 10 miles of the Gettysburg grounds.

Chris Jackson: 00:25:02

And I was like, wow,

Chris Jackson: 00:25:05

It's just the way that it was just very striking.

Chris Jackson: 00:25:07

And because you guys spent a lot of time on the road, obviously the fact

Chris Jackson: 00:25:11

that those pivotal moments were to our country were so close together is both

Chris Jackson: 00:25:16

like heartbreaking and just ironic.

Chris Jackson: 00:25:18

You know what I mean?

Chris Jackson: 00:25:19

It was, it

Chris Jackson: 00:25:19

was really

Jenn: 00:25:20

It really was.

Jenn: 00:25:21

And I, I just went to Valley Forge myself.

Jenn: 00:25:23

I went to Washington's headquarters.

Jenn: 00:25:25

You went on a cold day in um, to Mount Vernon.

Jenn: 00:25:27

I went on a freezing cold day in December to Valley Forge.

Jenn: 00:25:30

And I, it kind of reminiscent of the army freezing.

Jenn: 00:25:34

there in December anyway, and I got to be alone in Washington's headquarters

Jenn: 00:25:38

because no one was there that day.

Jenn: 00:25:40

And they told me all the stories about Washington being there and being with

Jenn: 00:25:44

all of his aides, including Hamilton.

Chris Jackson: 00:25:46

With Hamilton downstairs in the park, in that

Chris Jackson: 00:25:48

little room, that little tiny room piled with papers and close Yeah.

Jenn: 00:25:52

they were like, Washington touched bannister in Washington.

Jenn: 00:25:54

So, and then they told me Martha came and moved and stayed with them.

Jenn: 00:25:58

And I said, did they share a wall with his aides?

Jenn: 00:26:02

And they're like, yeah, I'm like, if I was a Martha, the first thing I

Jenn: 00:26:05

would be is like, push this bed away

Chris Jackson: 00:26:07

from the Yep.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:08

Yep.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:10

Yep.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:10

Aren't the aren't the Rangers.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:11

They're amazing

Chris Jackson: 00:26:12

though.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:13

Like it was, they are so engaged and, and, and know so much.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:17

It's, it's really, it's a really cool.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:19

It makes it so much, so much just more awesome to get that

Chris Jackson: 00:26:23

kind

Chris Jackson: 00:26:23

of, you

Chris Jackson: 00:26:23

know,

Jenn: 00:26:23

And you can feel it.

Jenn: 00:26:24

I always say you can feel the history.

Jenn: 00:26:26

Like I could.

Jenn: 00:26:27

I, to be in the space of where it happened, it was just

Jenn: 00:26:31

really amazing to be there.

Jenn: 00:26:33

So it's great that you got to go to, to the, both of those um, but you

Jenn: 00:26:36

still haven't been to Fort necessity.

Jenn: 00:26:38

So we, you have to

Chris Jackson: 00:26:39

no, no.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:40

But I'm going to, I'm going to starred on my map.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:42

And now that I know that, that it's not quite as far West as I thought it was.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:48

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:26:49

I don't do a lot of cross country traveling, driving anymore, but yeah,

Chris Jackson: 00:26:52

I'll, I know I'll, I'll find my, I'll make

Chris Jackson: 00:26:53

my way out there

Chris Jackson: 00:26:54

for

Jenn: 00:26:54

Yeah, like a Pittsburgh trip.

Jenn: 00:26:55

When you go to Pittsburgh, it's a

Jenn: 00:26:57

good.

Jenn: 00:26:58

And if you want to visit uh, the United flight 93, it's kind of close

Jenn: 00:27:02

to that memorial is where so it's, it's

Jenn: 00:27:04

kind of, yes, exactly in Shanksville.

Scott: 00:27:07

Yeah.

Scott: 00:27:07

So, so I, I love to kind of you know, away from, from the shows.

Scott: 00:27:12

I love the personal stories when I get to talk to people on the One of the things

Scott: 00:27:21

that I've enjoyed, I joke all the time.

Scott: 00:27:24

Um, And and for folks who are who are new to the podcast is I'm

Scott: 00:27:27

actually not the history buff, right?

Scott: 00:27:29

Jenn's the history nerd.

Scott: 00:27:30

I kind of married into this and I have, I have learned a

Scott: 00:27:33

lot since we started walk with

Chris Jackson: 00:27:35

I bet.

Chris Jackson: 00:27:37

I bet.

Scott: 00:27:37

so much.

Scott: 00:27:38

I can, I, I sound so much smarter than I used to.

Scott: 00:27:41

, But one of the things that, that, that we love to ask on talk with history,

Scott: 00:27:45

again, different people, different perspectives , is what's the, kind

Scott: 00:27:48

of the first major historical event that you remember from your childhood.

Scott: 00:27:53

That kind of first moment where that that that bubble was really kind of broken

Scott: 00:27:58

because when you're young, you're kind of, for lack of a better word, it's all you.

Scott: 00:28:03

You're the center of your own universe.

Scott: 00:28:04

And then there's that one event That everybody remembers and all of

Scott: 00:28:08

a sudden they're like, Oh my gosh, the world is, is a bigger place.

Scott: 00:28:11

Something happened.

Scott: 00:28:12

That's major.

Scott: 00:28:13

It's that flagpole moment in your life.

Scott: 00:28:15

For some people, it's personal.

Scott: 00:28:17

For me, it was, I'm from California, so it was a major earthquake, right?

Scott: 00:28:20

When the A's and the giants had that, that um, during the

Chris Jackson: 00:28:23

I was watching.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:24

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:24

I was watching the

Scott: 00:28:25

so, so what's something like that for, for you,

Chris Jackson: 00:28:33

probably

Chris Jackson: 00:28:34

probably the challenger

Chris Jackson: 00:28:35

because Krista McAuliffe was from

Chris Jackson: 00:28:37

Kentucky

Scott: 00:28:38

yeah.

Scott: 00:28:38

Oh,

Chris Jackson: 00:28:38

and where in Kentucky she was from.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:40

I don't quite remember, but like where I was growing up, Kentucky

Chris Jackson: 00:28:43

was right across the river.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:45

So she may as may, may as well have just been living on the

Chris Jackson: 00:28:47

other side of the bridge there.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:49

And we were all watching it.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:50

They had wheeled the wheel, the TVs into, the cafeteria, the classroom.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:55

We were in a classroom.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:56

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:28:57

Yeah, that was, I think, the first, probably, yeah, that first moment where

Chris Jackson: 00:29:03

the world changed a little bit for,

Jenn: 00:29:05

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:29:06

So, so I didn't answer

Jenn: 00:29:07

because you and I are close to the same age, Chris.

Jenn: 00:29:10

I was born in 77.

Jenn: 00:29:11

I'm older than Scott.

Jenn: 00:29:13

I call myself a Puma.

Jenn: 00:29:14

I'm not a full cougar.

Jenn: 00:29:15

I'm only five years older, but so I didn't want to

Chris Jackson: 00:29:18

You're, you're, you're only

Chris Jackson: 00:29:19

bragging on Scott's taste.

Chris Jackson: 00:29:20

It's all good.

Chris Jackson: 00:29:21

It's all good.

Chris Jackson: 00:29:22

Your life does not suck, Scott.

Chris Jackson: 00:29:24

Yes.

Chris Jackson: 00:29:25

This we can

Jenn: 00:29:26

I didn't want to like taint it because that's the

Jenn: 00:29:27

first thing I remember too.

Jenn: 00:29:29

Same thing.

Jenn: 00:29:30

I remember them willing in the televisions.

Jenn: 00:29:32

I remember it exploding, but they're not, didn't say that's what happened.

Jenn: 00:29:37

I remember my

Chris Jackson: 00:29:38

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:29:38

The confusion of it.

Chris Jackson: 00:29:39

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:29:40

and then just going back to the classrooms and we were so

Jenn: 00:29:43

excited, but now we're not excited.

Jenn: 00:29:45

So I didn't quite understand what had happened right in that moment,

Jenn: 00:29:49

but I knew later that night when watching the news with Reagan and my

Jenn: 00:29:53

parents, I kind of put it all together.

Jenn: 00:29:55

But in that moment it wasn't, One of the things I loved about Valley Forge

Jenn: 00:30:03

and one of the great stories they tell is there's like 200 men of color that fight

Jenn: 00:30:08

for Washington during the Revolutionary War, and most of them are free.

Jenn: 00:30:12

There's a lot of there's enslaved and there's free.

Jenn: 00:30:15

So here's Washington leading men of all different backgrounds.

Jenn: 00:30:20

And You know, people always wonder about him as an enslaver, but here

Jenn: 00:30:24

he is leading free men of color and then after death, uh, Martha sets his

Jenn: 00:30:29

enslaved free and people always wonder, well, how do you wrestle with these two

Jenn: 00:30:34

things to, like, look at somebody and be inspired by them, but also look at.

Jenn: 00:30:39

They, the biggest, probably the biggest sin of American history is enslavement.

Jenn: 00:30:43

And so to have someone who's done both is hard for people to wrestle with.

Jenn: 00:30:48

And as a historian, I always try to tell people, you don't have to judge them.

Jenn: 00:30:52

You don't have to wrestle with them.

Jenn: 00:30:54

You don't have to try to come to terms with that.

Jenn: 00:30:56

All you need to do is know the truth.

Jenn: 00:30:59

That's it.

Jenn: 00:31:00

And then from there, you can decide.

Jenn: 00:31:02

You can look at some things and go, I'll learn from that.

Jenn: 00:31:05

I'll learn to do it this way, or I'm going to learn from

Jenn: 00:31:06

this and do it better this way.

Jenn: 00:31:08

But you don't have to judge them.

Jenn: 00:31:10

I mean, like that really isn't your job, but how do you wrestle with that?

Jenn: 00:31:14

Do you ever have people say things to you or you know, ask you questions like that?

Jenn: 00:31:19

you know, how do you respond to that?

Chris Jackson: 00:31:22

I think there's room for all of the, all of the thoughts.

Chris Jackson: 00:31:26

Cause I've had all of them.

Chris Jackson: 00:31:27

I had them all before anybody knew that Hamilton was ever gonna be a thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:31:30

So they only freed slaves because they didn't want to place the burden of the

Chris Jackson: 00:31:36

tax and the upkeep of those living persons on whomever would be inheriting them.

Chris Jackson: 00:31:42

If the person that was going to be inheriting the slaves could not afford

Chris Jackson: 00:31:47

to do that, that was the main impetus.

Scott: 00:31:52

Interesting.

Scott: 00:31:52

Of

Chris Jackson: 00:31:53

And since I've learned that fact or that idea,

Chris Jackson: 00:31:58

I found it very important to include that into the conversation.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:01

course.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:02

Because I'm not prepared to venerate Washington or any of his contemporaries

Chris Jackson: 00:32:07

or any that followed him with any sort of virtue because, well, at

Chris Jackson: 00:32:12

least when they died, Oh yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:13

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:14

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:14

you're right you know what?

Chris Jackson: 00:32:16

I've also learned that there's a.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:18

There's a process by which we, the history gets, the history is living, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:32:23

And then as eras move on, then the story is told, it's codified

Chris Jackson: 00:32:28

somehow, generally, by sitting out in the sun and drying for a bit.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:32

And then we just kind of like, assume that role, and then we start Promoting it.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:37

And we're still not past that.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:39

We're really not past the sort of post civil war slash reconstruction,

Chris Jackson: 00:32:43

construction of the American narrative.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:45

We're still just sort of like the general public is still sort of learning why

Chris Jackson: 00:32:49

all these statues just got taken down.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:51

And why would you want to take down a statue?

Chris Jackson: 00:32:53

Because it was based on lies.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:56

So we don't, and we don't want to live in that space.

Chris Jackson: 00:32:58

So, social change takes a long time to, to actually evolve and, and to happen.

Chris Jackson: 00:33:04

With that, I, when I went to see, when I went to visit Mount Vernon,

Chris Jackson: 00:33:09

the first time I was 11 years

Chris Jackson: 00:33:11

old.

Chris Jackson: 00:33:12

So everything is just sort of like in a postcard, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:33:15

Then the next time that I actually went there was in preparation for this role.

Chris Jackson: 00:33:21

And the first place that I went, As a kid was to see all of the stuff that

Chris Jackson: 00:33:26

was old, the antiques, the real things.

Chris Jackson: 00:33:29

What did Washington touch?

Chris Jackson: 00:33:30

When I came back the second time, I came back.

Chris Jackson: 00:33:34

And the first place that I had to go to before I would go into that

Chris Jackson: 00:33:38

house were the slave quarters, Yes, because I had a different

Chris Jackson: 00:33:42

awareness and there were different things that were important to me.

Chris Jackson: 00:33:46

And instead of thinking about what did Washington touch?

Chris Jackson: 00:33:49

I'm thinking about, well, which slave planted that tree?

Chris Jackson: 00:33:54

And that fence row, that, that stone row that goes on for three

Chris Jackson: 00:33:58

quarters of a mile, who did that?

Chris Jackson: 00:34:01

And Washington's teeth weren't wooden.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:03

They were ripped out of another human being's mouth and sent

Chris Jackson: 00:34:07

to a dentist in Philadelphia.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:09

Like these are different concerns.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:11

These are, it's a different awareness, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:34:13

So, and I, and I make that point because our understanding evolves over time if

Chris Jackson: 00:34:17

we allow it to, and if we pursue it.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:20

You can't just sort of like, let it fall on you.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:21

You got to chase after it much in the work that you do.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:24

People can't know something different unless you show them something different.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:28

And if you are in a position as a history, historian to share that, then

Chris Jackson: 00:34:33

God bless, because that's the only way to sort of reverse, not undo the

Chris Jackson: 00:34:37

narrative, but just bring it to the sun.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:38

Let it be the real thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:41

And let it be all of those things.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:43

And there's nothing that I could have ever done or said as an actor or an

Chris Jackson: 00:34:46

artist portraying this guy's life that would have changed the facts.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:50

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:50

So you can humanize.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:52

I mean, it's not to distract.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:53

It is not Lin's.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:54

Lin's intention was not to distract anyone, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:34:58

It just wasn't.

Chris Jackson: 00:34:59

It wasn't my intention to portray that.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:00

If someone received that or, or, or took away, that away, I have to live with that,

Chris Jackson: 00:35:06

but that was not, the artist's intention is to paint a picture and the, the

Chris Jackson: 00:35:11

consumer or the, the, the person who comes to experience the art should be provoked

Chris Jackson: 00:35:17

and And then have a thought and whatever that thought happens to be as an artist,

Chris Jackson: 00:35:21

I'm open to that because that's my job.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:24

My job isn't to tell you how to think or what to think.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:27

It's to show you something that might.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:29

inspire thought that might inspire the next great idea that might inspire

Chris Jackson: 00:35:33

the next great movement or the next great act of kindness or civil service.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:37

All of that, all of that.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:38

That's, that's my, that's my job.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:40

I know what my job is.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:41

It's, it's, it's as narrowly defined as possible, as it can be.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:45

But Washington Jefferson, Madison, Madison was the biggest slave holder in

Chris Jackson: 00:35:49

the, in the United States at the time.

Chris Jackson: 00:35:52

What I just learned from this, Michael Harriot's wonderful book,

Chris Jackson: 00:35:56

Black AF History, was that the number of slaves from, from the English

Chris Jackson: 00:36:03

perspective, the number of slaves that you owned, you've got 50 acres of

Chris Jackson: 00:36:08

land for every slave that you owned.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:12

Which incentivized the practice of shadow slavery from the Africans.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:17

So, and I've been, I've been studying this stuff for a while.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:20

I know a lot, but I never knew

Chris Jackson: 00:36:22

that one fact, right?

Chris Jackson: 00:36:23

So, it, it, you're all, there's

Chris Jackson: 00:36:25

always more, you're right, there's always more to learn.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:27

And that's why history provides a really amazing picture because even in

Chris Jackson: 00:36:31

our research, there's so many people doing it and now you just have to

Chris Jackson: 00:36:34

get to the information, but I never

Chris Jackson: 00:36:36

knew that.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:37

And as that translates then to the first thing I thought about was, well, of course

Chris Jackson: 00:36:41

they owned as many slaves as they could.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:43

Of course they were incentivized to do it in spite of, England banning the practice.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:48

Of course all of this stuff happened and it doesn't, it doesn't it

Chris Jackson: 00:36:51

doesn't take away from the fact.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:54

The facts, the timelines, the actions.

Chris Jackson: 00:36:58

I look at these men and I say, they never lived up to the ideals, but my God,

Chris Jackson: 00:37:06

they, whether they intended to or not created a platform on a piece of paper.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:12

They wrote things down that had never been written before.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:14

And from that, we were able to aspire to all of these very natural

Chris Jackson: 00:37:20

rights and then, and, and continue the tradition of the enlightenment.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:24

We are lucky that they wrote better than they were.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:27

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:28

That's what I always say.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:29

we're lucky, we're lucky.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:31

And it's not that there weren't people in the, in the Continental

Chris Jackson: 00:37:33

Congress that weren't already beating the drum, but there were just so few

Chris Jackson: 00:37:39

that it didn't permeate through, that at the, at the moment at the time,

Chris Jackson: 00:37:43

but so many of the things that we're fighting for now are, are, are based

Chris Jackson: 00:37:47

around the ideas that these men.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:49

We're able to get down in spite of themselves.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:52

And that's it.

Chris Jackson: 00:37:54

If you're a spiritual person, I will say that is, that is nothing short of

Chris Jackson: 00:37:57

a miracle or an act of God, because men will always find a way to get in their

Chris Jackson: 00:38:01

own way,

Chris Jackson: 00:38:01

And always find a way to let their, their most base selves be the thing that they

Chris Jackson: 00:38:07

lead with but like to, to, to come, to, come into all of this enlightened and

Chris Jackson: 00:38:11

aspirational thought in spite of the things that they were doing on the side

Chris Jackson: 00:38:16

or, kind of leading with is kind of a

Chris Jackson: 00:38:18

miracle.

Chris Jackson: 00:38:19

So it's kind of hard to not buy into the whole America or being sort of,

Chris Jackson: 00:38:24

or ordained and especially anointed or appointed to create a space

Chris Jackson: 00:38:29

where as many people can be free as

Chris Jackson: 00:38:31

possible.

Jenn: 00:38:32

That's what I always say.

Jenn: 00:38:33

I always say we were, we are reaching towards an ideal.

Jenn: 00:38:37

that we've never quite gotten to.

Jenn: 00:38:40

We have never gotten to yet, but we keep reaching for it.

Jenn: 00:38:44

And we keep trying to be better and we keep trying to learn.

Jenn: 00:38:47

And like you said, like you hope to inspire the, what I do with history

Jenn: 00:38:51

is I try to, I don't tell people what to think either, but I try

Jenn: 00:38:55

to teach, teach them how, how to historians show you the information.

Jenn: 00:39:00

what's a primary source, what's a secondary source, right?

Jenn: 00:39:03

Who is saying what?

Jenn: 00:39:04

And like you said, even with how the story changes at Mount Vernon, how the

Jenn: 00:39:10

focus of the story changes at Mount Vernon, I always tell people, reach back.

Jenn: 00:39:14

History is always there.

Jenn: 00:39:15

You know, The people who made Washington are there.

Jenn: 00:39:19

They're still there.

Jenn: 00:39:20

You reach back and you can find them.

Jenn: 00:39:22

Right now, we're still trying to find their names.

Jenn: 00:39:25

I wrote a whole paper in grad school called Say My Name, Say My

Jenn: 00:39:27

Name because the names get lost sometimes and even trying to find

Jenn: 00:39:31

the name is hard, but they're there.

Jenn: 00:39:34

Those people are there and to remember them, to remember what they did, like

Jenn: 00:39:38

you said, who planted that tree, who made, who put that, we're remembering

Jenn: 00:39:42

their part in building the country.

Jenn: 00:39:45

And it's just as important as George Washington.

Jenn: 00:39:48

And that's what I think is so great about a person of color playing

Jenn: 00:39:51

George Washington is like you're showing that they're just as

Jenn: 00:39:55

important at building the country.

Jenn: 00:39:57

I always say every other person's a woman.

Jenn: 00:39:58

They were just as important and is building this country as the

Jenn: 00:40:02

men, even though they don't write

Chris Jackson: 00:40:03

question.

Jenn: 00:40:04

so.

Jenn: 00:40:05

They're there.

Jenn: 00:40:06

They're just, they're doing their job.

Jenn: 00:40:08

It might not be a formal power, but their informal power is still there.

Jenn: 00:40:13

And I love that, Chris.

Jenn: 00:40:14

I love that.

Jenn: 00:40:15

Yeah.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:16

And you see their, their fingerprints on all of it.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:19

Do you know what I mean?

Chris Jackson: 00:40:20

I just feel like now when we tell the story, we get to tell it without

Chris Jackson: 00:40:23

the cynicism, without the, the, the patronizing tone and the, that, that.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:27

Often.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:28

And in spite of having eight children, she also, what do you mean

Chris Jackson: 00:40:31

in spite of having eight children?

Chris Jackson: 00:40:33

A woman would bear eight children in, in, in a fairly, really fairly

Chris Jackson: 00:40:37

primitive setting and yet have a thought and yet teach herself how to read.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:43

I was doing a reading a couple of weeks ago of this play.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:46

And we were the character.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:47

One of the characters I was portraying was a man by the name of Alan Allensworth.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:50

And he was a Colonel in the, in the U S army and around the.

Chris Jackson: 00:40:54

Turn of the 19th century founded a town out in California, but one of the things

Chris Jackson: 00:40:58

that he, this character was constantly saying that the playwright didn't

Chris Jackson: 00:41:01

know is that, I taught myself to read.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:03

I taught myself to read.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:05

Well, 92 percent of black folks in America couldn't read at the end, the day after

Chris Jackson: 00:41:09

slavery ended and within 20 years, over 60 percent could, and no time in the

Chris Jackson: 00:41:15

history of, of, of modern man kind of has.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:18

That kind of change ever happened.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:20

amazing.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:21

Do you know what I mean?

Chris Jackson: 00:41:22

Like it's, it's knowing these things that will shape your, even

Chris Jackson: 00:41:26

just the, I'm an actor doing a reading that, a hundred people saw

Chris Jackson: 00:41:30

cause they're developing something.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:31

But as an actor, knowing Mm hmm.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:34

put me in a position to educate the people that actually wrote the thing Yes.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:38

Yes, know what I'm saying?

Chris Jackson: 00:41:40

So like the importance of just sharing information, especially historically based

Chris Jackson: 00:41:46

information is such a profound thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:48

It's such a profound thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:41:50

It's such a powerful and empowering kind

Chris Jackson: 00:41:51

of thing to

Chris Jackson: 00:41:52

do.

Jenn: 00:41:52

absolutely.

Jenn: 00:41:53

I, I completely agree with you.

Jenn: 00:41:54

And you know, Chris, I really thank you for having this conversation with You

Jenn: 00:41:58

know, I find it important to tell the stories that don't want to be told Right.

Jenn: 00:42:02

And like getting deep into the South and I'm, I uncover stuff and I tell

Jenn: 00:42:06

these and, you know, sometimes people don't want to hear it from, from this.

Jenn: 00:42:10

But I always try to tell them, listen to the history, not me,

Jenn: 00:42:14

listen to the history, listen to what I'm trying to tell you.

Jenn: 00:42:16

And even if you just want to read it, it needs to be And like Ida B.

Jenn: 00:42:20

Wells was always like, turn the light of truth on it, right?

Jenn: 00:42:23

The truth needs to be told.

Jenn: 00:42:24

It's there.

Jenn: 00:42:25

Just someone's got to shine the light on it,

Chris Jackson: 00:42:28

I love that quote too.

Chris Jackson: 00:42:30

Turn a lot of

Chris Jackson: 00:42:30

truth on it.

Chris Jackson: 00:42:32

I do.

Chris Jackson: 00:42:32

I've

Chris Jackson: 00:42:32

always loved that

Chris Jackson: 00:42:33

quote.

Chris Jackson: 00:42:33

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:42:38

And I will say, Chris, Hamilton inspired so many people to learn history.

Chris Jackson: 00:42:42

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:42:43

I mean, I left school to go to Hamilton.

Jenn: 00:42:46

I left the class.

Jenn: 00:42:47

My professor was like, go.

Jenn: 00:42:49

I was like, I'm going to miss

Chris Jackson: 00:42:50

Dig.

Jenn: 00:42:51

I'm going to go how much She's like, go.

Jenn: 00:42:52

She's like, Jennifer, go see

Chris Jackson: 00:42:54

Tell us about it.

Jenn: 00:42:55

Tell us about it.

Jenn: 00:42:56

And then I brought her

Jenn: 00:42:57

back like stuff from the gift shop.

Jenn: 00:42:59

And

Chris Jackson: 00:42:59

Yeah, you did.

Chris Jackson: 00:43:00

Yeah, you did.

Chris Jackson: 00:43:01

I love

Chris Jackson: 00:43:02

it.

Jenn: 00:43:02

like.

Jenn: 00:43:02

And we stayed staged door and they signed her.

Jenn: 00:43:04

It was amazing.

Jenn: 00:43:05

uh, But she, you know, getting a master's degree of history.

Jenn: 00:43:08

I tell people all the time, everyone's a historian, right?

Jenn: 00:43:11

Everybody, it's hard.

Jenn: 00:43:12

Like, why would I have a master's degree in this?

Jenn: 00:43:14

But I tell people, so I can learn what makes something historically accurate.

Jenn: 00:43:20

How are historians measuring the truth?

Jenn: 00:43:23

Like how there are secondary sources that can get very.

Jenn: 00:43:27

tied into primary sources and they can, you can believe that actually what

Jenn: 00:43:31

happened, but if you can't find it, like I really had to dig deep because you

Jenn: 00:43:35

hear some of the same stuff over and over, but what really happened, right?

Jenn: 00:43:40

What was really happening that day?

Jenn: 00:43:41

What was, who really said what?

Jenn: 00:43:44

and so those are the kinds of things that are kind of harder

Jenn: 00:43:46

for historians to do and harder to pull uh, but I really thank you.

Jenn: 00:43:52

You know, Hamilton meant a lot to me.

Jenn: 00:43:54

I have the shirt.

Jenn: 00:43:54

I have the book.

Jenn: 00:43:56

And as a historian, I felt like you really validated my work.

Jenn: 00:44:00

And so I thank, I thank you guys for what you did.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:03

I appreciate that.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:04

That's, that's kind of a common thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:06

Response from true historians.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:09

Cause it's I mean, the majority of the things that as a historian, the majority

Chris Jackson: 00:44:12

of the things that you do are completely.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:15

by yourself, you're in the stacks reading micro what used to be micro

Chris Jackson: 00:44:19

fish, but now you're like digging, like you're, you're driving two hours to,

Chris Jackson: 00:44:23

to go, stand next to a pile of weeds.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:26

There has no marker, but you know that this is a place where something

Chris Jackson: 00:44:29

happened, and the only reason why any of this ground has any value at all.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:33

In our memory is knowing what has happened in certain places.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:37

It's why we venerate battlegrounds.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:38

It's why we commemorate or memorialize places that, you know where things

Chris Jackson: 00:44:44

that are significant happened so that you don't repeat if they were

Chris Jackson: 00:44:48

bad, that you don't repeat them.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:50

There was, there was a tremendous amount of, of a racially based

Chris Jackson: 00:44:54

unrest in, in my hometown.

Chris Jackson: 00:44:56

And, my, my hometown is, is South, well, South of the Mason Dixon line.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:01

But it was a pit of vipers for a hundred years.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:06

There was a lynching in my, in my town of a young man who, is

Chris Jackson: 00:45:11

believed that he was mentally impaired and yet didn't stop them.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:17

And I was, God, I was.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:19

I didn't really, I'd heard ramp rumblings about it growing up there, but I never

Chris Jackson: 00:45:24

knew the facts of it until, several years ago when I was doing some research and

Chris Jackson: 00:45:28

came across it, John Lewis marched in our, in our, in our, my hometown I saw

Chris Jackson: 00:45:33

not six months ago, I discovered pictures.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:37

That John Lewis marched at the, at the public swimming

Chris Jackson: 00:45:40

pool because it was segregated.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:41

And when a young black boy got in the water, they drained the pool

Chris Jackson: 00:45:45

and closed it down, filled it with dirt the next, like next week.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:48

But these are things that I never knew.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:50

Thurgood Marshall came to my, came to my town right after he had joined the

Chris Jackson: 00:45:53

NAACP to bail out one of the workers who had been arrested in my hometown.

Chris Jackson: 00:45:58

At the local customs house, which is, which held the courthouse.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:00

And I didn't find that out until, several years ago when I was

Chris Jackson: 00:46:03

researching a project that I'm writing.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:04

So like all of these things, like I come from a town of 1500 people, it's

Chris Jackson: 00:46:08

not that hard to know what happened, someone's always willing, to talk,

Chris Jackson: 00:46:11

but I was 17, when I left there, so 18 years old, I didn't know to ask

Chris Jackson: 00:46:16

those things and believe it or not.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:18

My history teacher lived there when all was all happening and he still

Chris Jackson: 00:46:21

didn't bring it up, and I was curious.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:24

I asked questions.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:25

So my point is, is that, once you get a taste of how powerful

Chris Jackson: 00:46:29

knowledge is, it is absolutely

Chris Jackson: 00:46:34

infectious.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:35

and if you give into that, from my perspective as an artist, the quote I

Chris Jackson: 00:46:40

live by is that my job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:45

And historians have a very, a very similar path.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:51

If you're doing it right.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:52

If you're doing it right.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:53

If you're telling stories that didn't happen,

Chris Jackson: 00:46:56

that's something else.

Chris Jackson: 00:46:57

But if you're doing it like you are it's just enough to put it there and

Chris Jackson: 00:47:01

think what you will, say what you will, change how you will, or not.

Chris Jackson: 00:47:07

But you can't ignore it because the burden of knowledge rests upon the bearer of it.

Chris Jackson: 00:47:11

Once you know something, you can't pretend

Chris Jackson: 00:47:13

to not know it.

Chris Jackson: 00:47:15

Now you have your own conscience to wrestle with.

Chris Jackson: 00:47:18

That's what it is, but that's what historians do.

Jenn: 00:47:20

Oh, I love it.

Jenn: 00:47:22

Thank you, Chris.

Jenn: 00:47:23

Thank you for giving us this time today.

Jenn: 00:47:25

Thank you for liking that video.

Chris Jackson: 00:47:29

Happy to talk to you guys.

Chris Jackson: 00:47:31

I'm telling you you're living a life of artists You're doing stuff that you

Chris Jackson: 00:47:34

that is interesting to you and that you know is important and it reaches

Chris Jackson: 00:47:37

people It's just nice to know it.

Chris Jackson: 00:47:39

Sometimes it's nice to hear back from the world because you, you make the

Chris Jackson: 00:47:42

thing and then you put it out in the world and it's making, it's making TV,

Chris Jackson: 00:47:46

theater is a different thing, but making television, it's like you shoot something

Chris Jackson: 00:47:50

two months ago and then it comes out five, five months later, hope people like it,

Chris Jackson: 00:47:55

you forgot you did it, or you're still living in it, but no one else is there.

Chris Jackson: 00:47:58

There's no audience, so it's, it's in the immediate, it's,

Chris Jackson: 00:48:01

it's great to talk to you guys.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:02

I really enjoy, I do really enjoy what you guys are doing.

Scott: 00:48:05

Thank, thank you again so Chris.

Scott: 00:48:06

Um, I mean, for our audience, I mean, do you have any kind of things coming

Scott: 00:48:10

out places to you want people to look you up or anything like that?

Scott: 00:48:14

I mean, we're See next?

Chris Jackson: 00:48:15

Oh, I am I am, you just, you can see I'm in my

Chris Jackson: 00:48:19

studio right now.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:20

I'm, I'm working on a record.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:21

I'm writing a musical.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:23

I've got three TV shows that are.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:27

In various stages of development.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:29

And one of them is a historical

Chris Jackson: 00:48:31

drama that is based on the Pullman porters, from George Pullman from of

Chris Jackson: 00:48:37

railway fame starts four days after the end of the civil war.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:41

And we, it's an anthology which is, which has been a really, it's a fun

Chris Jackson: 00:48:47

Americana kind of story, which is going to be a lot of fun to, if we can.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:51

ever finish the damn thing.

Chris Jackson: 00:48:53

But there's, like I, I have always tried my best and worked really hard at

Chris Jackson: 00:48:58

doing as many things well as I could.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:00

And it's kind of, cause it kind of fills up sort of the curiosity in, in my life.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:05

And it challenges me to try to do things that I'm not good at at all.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:08

But this is what we're doing.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:10

So, Sex and the City doesn't really, we don't pick back up until May

Chris Jackson: 00:49:13

and it's probably going to be next calendar year before that comes out.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:16

Of course, next year is the big 10 year anniversary for Ham.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:20

So I'm sure there'll be some, things floating around around that too.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:23

But right now I'm, I'm, I'm burning macaroni and cheese in my oven.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:27

And torturing my kids as they watch me eat it, just because I have to.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:32

being a good dad.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:33

And, that's it.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:34

That's it.

Chris Jackson: 00:49:34

And and, and trying to trying to learn as much as I can about as

Chris Jackson: 00:49:37

much as I can and, and talk to good

Chris Jackson: 00:49:39

folks like you

Chris Jackson: 00:49:40

guys.