Listen to Bronx native Ray Walker—the founding director of New York City’s first urban boarding school for young men in Brooklyn, New York—share about living and working during the pandemic. He talks about his ancestors who trace back to Jamaican, Irish, and Scottish descent. He describes the opportunity to become a first-time homeowner in the pandemic, transitioning to focusing full-time on the mission of The Stokes Foundation, and overcoming Covid-19 twice.

Time Stamps:

1:24 Ray talks about his ancestry, family lineage, and growing up in The Bronx

12:00 Ray talks about Prep 9 and matriculating to Deerfield Academy boarding school

14:45 Ray talks about what life was like before the pandemic

25:22 Ray talks about returning to New York City in September of 2019

30:29 Ray talks about having a cough in early 2020 and transitioning to working-from-home

39:12 Ray talks about his return to Stokes Foundation full-time and his mission

44:53 Rays talks about a young man named Oshane Davis who earns a 5-year scholarship at Northeastern University

48:31 Ray talks about what it was like to buy a home during the pandemic

51:51 Ray talks about attending the Santa Clarita film festival in California

54:10 Ray talks about a film titled “Vaccinate Watts” with Dr. Jerry P. Abraham

58:40 Ray shares the website for anyone who is interested in learning about The Stokes Foundation at stokesfoundation.org

1:06:08 Ray shares about his experience getting vaccinated and then catching Covid-19

1:11:51 Ray talks about having Covid fog/brain after battling Covid for 3 weeks

On catching Covid-19 twice:

“The whole household caught Covid, including the baby. The baby processed it the quickest, but it was the most painful for us to watch as parents because he was just devastated by what COVID did to his little body: the coughing, the inability to breathe, the fever. And all we wanted to do was comfort him even though Cindy and I were both sick. Cindy's body processed it within like three to four days. For me it was like lingering…cough and other things…like four to five days of the worst ailment that I've ever had in my life. So it just gave me this like healthy respect for people who had to be intubated…”

Listen to photographer Sean Waltrous whose family emigrated from The Caribbean—Trinidad, Barbados, and Jamaica—and who is from Brooklyn, New York share about his life at the beginning, middle, and (approaching the official) end of the pandemic. At the beginning of the 2020 lockdown Sean was tending to his sourdough starter and gardening and binge-watching television. Then, when the murder of George Floyd video came out, Sean documented the events of 2020 and 2021 and went outside… [The "Explicit" rating is for just a few cuss-words in this episode.]

While listening to Sean take us on a photographic journey of protests in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and D.C. click on his Instagram page @seanwaltrous and follow along as he talks about the events of the pandemic. Then click over to his website seanwaltous.com and experience the Insurrection of 2021 and the Inauguration of 2021 through his historical photographs as he describes documenting the events.

“I had for a long time always gone out to protest actions and photographed them, but I never really, you know I never really, you know, posted them. It's more just, you know, a thing I did for myself personally. The first protest that I photographed was actually when I was in college. It was in 1996 or 1997—around there—and it was a it was also a police brutality protest. So, when the protests started to happen, because of COVID I was a little reticent to go outside, you know. Still a lot wasn't known about how much transition could happen outside and I was, you know, trying to be cautious and I am also slightly older now than when I first started out going to these actions. So, I, you know, it was kind of my, the idea for me was like, ‘The kids got it.’ You know. It's gonna be okay…you know they seem to be out there and it’s in their hands, and then I just started seeing more and more reports of like you know vicious brutality with these protesters and then the curfews started to happen, and it felt more like an all-hands-on-deck situation. So, I got myself together and loaded up my backpack like a doomsday-prepper and had all of the Purell and the wipes and the extra masks and so on and so forth and I started to go out and photograph actions that were happening in New York City.”

"Cancel Rent. Defund NYPD." Housing Justice Is Racial Justice Rally and March. Crown Heights, Brooklyn. 7/2020. (Posted July 24, 2020 on Instagram).

While in D.C. at the 2021 Insurrection:

“…The Trump supporters then turned around and started filming me and asking me if I was doxxing people and it became a little chaotic…because I was also on a livestream on Instagram too, and people were like, ‘Get out of there! Get out of there!”

Sean’s photography memorializes the lives of the many Black people murdered by the police, including, but not limited to Ahmaud Arbery, Brianna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Listen to Adjunct Professor and writer Kevaughn Hunter who was born in The Bronx and raised in Brooklyn, New York share about living in New Jersey during the pandemic. His family is from the island of Jamaica and he identifies as either Black or African American.

“I remember actually being in class teaching, and I think it must have been the beginning of spring semester, when the news was coming out. This is the earliest memory that I have, because I remember sitting on my desk in an English class and the students were talking about, I think, that the college was thinking about closing or postponing or something and we were like, ‘I don’t think that will happen,’ because it’ll only be maybe a week or two and then we’ll be back. And then we weren’t back for a couple years…”

“…In Jersey when the when the mask mandates were out and if we were to go to a store, pretty much everyone would be wearing something. Especially if we were near Asian areas...I studied Japanese. I went to Japan. This is part of why the mask stuff to me wasn't a bother, because when I was in Japan in high school for example, if someone was sick they wore a mask. It's not like a big deal. So, I never grew up thinking that was a big deal. But, and so, in that same vein people would wear masks and no one really would treat it very differently, because of the area I guess. But then the one or two times we did go to the city in my area in Canarsie in Brooklyn almost no one was wearing masks going into stores, and people were going to like beef patty stores, and like super crowded areas. If you've been to places like that and no one's wearing a mask and it's like okay, well, that's not, some things might spread worse that way…”

Listen to filmmaker, photographer, and writer Jahmani Perry of Brooklyn, New York—whose parents are from Jamaica, West Indies—share about living and working during the Covid-19 pandemic. He identifies as Black and Caribbean American. In early 2020 Jahmani was living on Long Island. When the coronavirus began spreading in March of 2020, he shared: “I was looking for a new place…to move into the city and…and then I was like, wait a second, ‘What's going on here?’ You know? They kept talking about shutting down the city…It was very disorienting, you know?”

On photographing New York City during the pandemic:

“I did take photographs. Yeah. Yeah. In the beginning it was like, ‘I gotta document this…as much as I can… This whole series project that I'm working on is about New York for the last...people about New York for the last 30 years. So…of course I have to document what I see, what I experience, you know? …That was surreal… There's a part of me that said, ‘Oh my God you gotta be careful. I was going on subways. I was going everywhere. I did go to many different places to try to document and to photograph as much as I can and to not be afraid.”

On including photographs of New York City during the pandemic in his upcoming exhibition, Asphalt Spirits NYC Part II: 1999-2022:

“…That would be part of the show yes. Yes…things that happened during the Black Lives Matter movement…It was amazing… At first, I was like, ‘Should I go out with all these people?’ Then I put on my mask… I had to be there… I went to a number of demonstrations… My photographs are about people…whether it’s Black Lives Matter, whether it’s a protest, or everyday life… I’ve been photographing since 1976. I’m very much about being in people’s faces…But, you know, my work is about, you know, seeing people with the fullness of who each each human being is and, and, you know, intimate way and, and, and, how do we begin just, you know, to see each other, you know, beyond the biases that, you know, can creep into our thought process, and even brain and see each other as, you know, as really fellow human beings.”

On meeting Gordon Parks:

“…I had met Gordon Parks and Gordon Parks actually saw my work. When I was in college a professor of mine knew him very well. She and Gordon were good friends. And she brought me to his house and we spent an afternoon with him and me showing him my work and him talking to me about my work and giving me advice and encouragement.”

Jahmani Perry is continuing Gordon Parks’ legacy of photographing New York.

Check out Jahmani’s photographs on his website: https://www.jahmaniperry.com

Interview 074 with Norma W.

Listen to retired educator Norma Williams of Queens, New York—whose parents are from Guyana and their ancestors are from Barbados—share about living, working, and retiring during the Covid-19 pandemic: “I was born a negro and then I became Black…I identify as Black or…Afro-Caribbean…and I’m first generation American. So, my parents came here in 1950. They got married here. They were both the first of their siblings to come here [the U.S.]… I’m American… I’m Black… I’m a New Yorker… which is a whole different thing in and of itself…”

“My intention was to retire in 2023 and in January of 2021 I decided, ‘Nope, I'm not going to make it till 2023, I'll go to 2022,’ and in May of 2020 I was like, ‘Nope, I'm good. I'm done. As soon as I can go, I'm going.’ So I retired August 1st 2021… and it was just overwhelming, because I was actually doing more work from home than I would actually be doing in the office… So, it was a hard adjustment for all of us…”

On transitioning to working-from-home:

“So, I was managing a team of people. So, everybody had to check in and all… I felt like we had we had a team where, you know, people were gonna do what they were supposed to do. But…throughout the city, you know, they put things in place. So it's like, well: ‘How are we going to know they're working? They have to check in. We have to have these meetings.’ So. I felt like there was a lot of meetings going on for the sake of having meetings and it just was like…I don't enjoy that type of work so you know it was it was hard to adjust…”

On early signs of Covid before the outbreak:

“…I remember being on a train and, you know, the train was fairly empty. It was on the Long Island Railroad, actually, and there was a woman on the on the train that was sitting not far from me and she was coughing and coughing and she was on her phone saying. ‘I don't know what this is, they have to figure out what this is, I feel like I'm going to die.’ And I'm like, ‘Oh my God, let me hold my breath for the rest of the ride or whatever,’ and I think, eventually…a month later we started getting Covid reports…”

Listen to Caribbean-American Lauren W. of Queens, New York—whose parents are from the island of Jamaica—share about going to school in Washington D.C. during the Covid-19 pandemic. She talks about moving back home in the spring of 2020 during her sophomore year of university. She did her junior year online from her home in New York and she returned to D.C. for her senior year in 2022.

On distance-learning during the pandemic:

“I think I learned more in person. I think the interesting part was like, I guess was the will to learn, because I feel like for me like I could pass my classes and do well in my classes. But, then am I retaining any of the information past the end of the class? So, I feel like that was harder in zoom-era, because it was just like, okay, I have to do this. I'm taking this class from my bed. So let me just finish this. Where, like in school…everyone around you is, is working towards the same goal as you. So, it's kind of like a—it's kind of like a community push, like ‘Oh, we're all learning,’ I guess…Yeah. I think in school it was definitely—not definitely—but it was more so, learning the goal was ‘Oh, I'm interested in this, so I want to learn more about this.’ Where in zoom-school it was more ‘I want my degree now’…”

“I had a couple of friends who did, like, really hands on work, like, labs and stuff. So they got sent lab kits with, like… I know there was a dissection lab and people were sent, like, vacuum sealed animals…”

On returning to in-person classes at college:

“Senior year was interesting…We had a lot of like Covid outbreaks all the time…Because I think like a lot of people didn’t wear masks and then the classrooms were still very much regular classrooms and it was still elbow-to-elbow still, which was interesting…”

“So Covid happened a lot. I think I caught it once. I know a couple of people that had it twice. Or even three times.”

On studying abroad during the pandemic:

“I was supposed to study abroad summer of 2020…or…yes… Summer of my sophomore year. Either summer of my sophomore year or my junior year and I was supposed to go to London for the summer and do, like, an internship program. Um, but then they had the restrictions where if we went we would have to be under lockdown for like a while and, yeah, I think I realized that I wasn’t gonna go after I had paid $400 to get my passport expedited…Because I think it was like a crazy number to go to London and be in isolation, and so I said that I was not gonna go, and then for some reason they said that because I said I’m not gonna go too late, I guess, I’m still gonna have to pay back the entire amount of the trip…So I’m still paying for a trip to London that I never went on.”

On January 6th 2021:

“GW dorms are on the same…block as The White House. If you just walk down you’re in front of The White House…I think GW sent out a message saying, like, ‘lock your doors, stay inside.’

…I remember being home…I know that people were on campus, because I remember getting the GW, like, broadcast text message telling people to like barricade themselves inside… I was in New York.”

Listen to Sabine Gedeon—who resides in San Diego, California, grew up in Connecticut, was born in Haiti, and migrated to the East Coast when she was 4-years-old—share about working in California during the Covid-19 pandemic. She identifies as Haitian: “Being born in Haiti and growing up in Haitian culture I’ve always identified or been very aware that I was Haitian…” She moved to Los Angeles in December of 2019 and worked in-person until the week before the shut-down in March of 2022 when she transitioned to working from home.

On the virus, our mortality, and the murder of George Floyd:

“…so I think the first few months for me it was more of a trauma response of ‘It's go time,’ Right? And so I was in it. Things weren't affecting me as much. Then George Floyd murder happens, right? And so it's another opportunity to take a pause and to reassess like, Who am I? Right? Like, what am I doing? Like, where am I that I could live in a place where someone could maliciously treat another human being like that? Right? So, you know, we go from grappling with our own mortality, right, with this unknown virus to you know grappling with our own mortality just because of the color of our skin…

On creating her podcast:

“…the pandemic happened and [my podcast] became really a saving grace for me during that time frame, because it was a creative outlet, it was a way for me to…not have to worry about, you know, what was happening in the world. I guess that was my moment of privilege… I could just focus on creating something that, you know, could uplift, could empower, could help other people who might have been in the valley moment to see, okay, you know what, I'm here now, but at some point I’m going to reach…on top because if she could do it, then I could do it…That was The Journey to Becoming…[which I literally launched on January 6th 2021]…Then I launched She Leads Now…”

Check out Sabine's Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-journey-to-becoming/id1546108390

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/she-leads-now/id1598455202

Motivational Quote:

“How you do one thing is how you do everything.” –Sabine Gedeon

Listen to medical assistant and Black American Chanel L.— raised in New York and resided in Queens during the Covid-19 pandemic—share about working in-person as an essential worker during the pandemic.

On working-from-home during the pandemic:

“…At the beginning of the pandemic I was working at an urgent care and we were kind of at the center of the testing… We were swabbing people and really putting ourselves at risk… I worked the entire time. We never transitioned to working from home. So, at the beginning of 2020 when we got the stay-at-home order the urgent care was definitely at the epicenter of swabbing people, and we really got to see the best of people and also the worst of people… They were calling people that worked in our field superheroes and we had people who really believed that and they were super grateful… During this time the urgent care that I worked at was only testing essential workers and there were people who really weren’t fond of that stipulation. So, we got to see the worst of people too. So, a lot of our centers had to have security or police on standby, because people were getting cursed out or assaulted or spit on…”

Listen to playwright, professor, and Black American Daaimah Mubashshir, MFA from Columbia University — born in Alabama, raised in Texas, resided in New York during the Covid-19 pandemic — share about working from home during the pandemic, participating in a survey of Black people’s experiences working in theater, and experiencing racism when waiting in the very long lines to grocery shop in New York City.

On working-from-home during the pandemic:

“…It was beautiful. I got to work at home… I did a lot of walking. I took up hiking. I did a lot of resting. Um, I did a lot of reading and a lot of meditating. And it was really, really beautiful… I think that this is political… Black bodies resting.. and I found it… it was a really abundant time for me to collect my thoughts… Without all the death, I wish we could schedule that like once every couple years…”