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00:00Hey it's the all new morning or a lot with Alicia B and Clay and we do a lot of interviews we talk
00:04to a lot of people and for most of those it's usually the first time that we're meeting that
00:09person and so we're learning about them it's kind of cool to be able to talk to someone that you
00:13consider a friend somebody that's already been in and that's what we get to do today with Charles
00:17Charles man thank you for coming in the studio with us thanks for having me y'all the fact that
00:22typically we just talk to you over the phone like you've come in with your amazing daughter
00:27and when we were like when we were thinking of like the idea of bringing you in it wasn't like
00:36we had it already set right it was just a conversation that we had and we were like wait
00:41hold on Charles is much cooler than he is trying to tell us so can you tell us a little bit about
00:48your story okay um I guess first I should let you know I'm from Detroit I'm from Linwood and Davidson
00:54I'm 43 years old I graduated from high school in 1998 born and raised here um I was a street kid
01:02you know troubled childhood troubled neighborhoods or whatnot and I was in the street so to not get
01:09into a whole lot of detail a long story short I caught a lot of armed robbery and weapons charges
01:14and I did 20 years in prison wow so I just came home June of this year June 5th 2025 and um I'm happy
01:21to be here uh there's a lot about me that is different currently I'm an author and a motivational
01:26speaker and I'm a father and a husband and an uncle and I'm free um these are things that when we met
01:35Charles we we didn't realize we didn't know we we met you because we were talking on the air about
01:40some food and different combination and found out that that your daughter is an amazing chef by the way
01:45yeah um and brought in food and that's when we started talking about you and your story and just
01:50how the things that you've gone through in your life the decisions that you made bad or good
01:56have brought you to a point to where you are right now right and that point is helping people
02:01make better decisions when they have a chance before they make a bad decision so when I was young
02:07you know people would try to talk to you but they talk to you like you're a child right I was old
02:13enough at least mentally to understand what was going on around me and I was offended when people
02:18would talk to me like I had nobody to really give me the real so um that's maybe that's mostly my
02:22perspective when I talk to you I want you to understand that I'm not trying to feed you words
02:27or I don't want you to think that I'm trying to sell you a dream I'm going to tell you the reality of
02:31what it is to be shot four times when you're 21 years old and you have to learn how to walk again
02:35or 21 years later there are days when I can't get up and walk at all my knee swells I want you to
02:41understand what that comes with because when you're out here playing with these guns and these
02:44switches and you think it's a video game right prison's not a video game watching people die
02:50from prison watching people die in prison it's not a video game so I needed someone to kind of tell me
02:55those things in that manner right and I never had that so what was the turning point for you can you
03:01take us to the moment where you were like yeah this isn't it like I don't want to I don't want to
03:06live this life anymore and I want to help other people or at least at that moment help yourself
03:09so I've always tried to help people um you know even with the things that I was doing
03:15in some round obtuse way I thought that I was helping right you know but uh really what happened
03:20was I was sitting in the hole I did 18 months in the hole for a particular ticket I caught wow and
03:25I'm sitting in the hole and I started talking to myself and so I said come buy me a tv so I bought
03:29me a tv I'm sitting on board and I'm watching this guy speak on tv and I can't tell you his name
03:35but it's kind of like he was talking to me well if you have something that you can give to somebody
03:40why won't you give it to him so I always used to write I used to do that you know my poetry and my
03:46short stories and things of that nature but I never entered into anything um so I was sitting in the
03:51hole and this contest came along University of Michigan has a prisoner creative arts program
03:56it's an excellent program they do it throughout the state anyone who's incarcerated that can write or draw
04:00is eligible to be in this program wow that's amazing and so I wanted to participate but I was
04:06in the hole and I couldn't so you have to be six months ticket free so I end up transferring to
04:10another facility and um at the time I'm still in level four and I get here and the guy that's the
04:16clerk for the special activities department knows that I write and he's kind of badgering me to put a
04:22poem in Keith Porter he's still locked up free my man Keith but uh he made me put a poem in and it was
04:29called we were kings uh once and it won so it kind of tripped me out that my poem won they actually
04:34gave me a cash prize and then the staff member was encouraging me to submit it to PCAP so I did
04:40not so you you went through you you entered uh not against your own will but you didn't want to
04:48originally you win why does it stop there for you why why not enter it so everything I write is personal
04:55um whether it's a love poem uh political view um George Floyd died I wrote a poem called I can't
05:03breathe like it's always personal to me um so I didn't want to put my work in front of people that
05:08I don't know I don't know what they're going to be judging against what's the criteria because they
05:12don't say anything other than you have to be incarcerated right to participate yeah so what if
05:16what I think is great is really elementary you know and so uh I didn't want to submit it but they
05:22did it anyhow a few weeks later I get a letter from UM and they're saying hey we like this poem
05:27we're going to publish it they do these anthologies every year and I got a couple of them that I'm in
05:31here and my poems are in these books like I have a poem in this one I have seven poems in this book
05:38um it was eye-opening for me it was like wow I can do something different I don't have to go home uh go
05:45back to organizations or go back to any type of ties that I had previous so it allowed me to make
05:51friendships with people that I never would have been friends with I'm from Linwood and Davis ain't
05:54no white people where I live right so now my best friend is a white guy named Bob
05:58shout out to Bob that's my guy you know what I'm saying so it just allowed me to see things
06:04differently once I was able to see things differently I was able to make some different
06:08decisions and so really that's that was my turning point sitting in the hole 10 years 15 years ago
06:13wow I'm imagining you've you've had a lot of scary moments in your life I mean whether it be
06:19physically scared or anxiety type scared where does publishing something putting your personal
06:25work out there in front of the world like where's that rank in your my scariest moments in life moments
06:31so let's run down scary moments I've been shot on two different occasions wow I've survived other
06:37shootouts um I've been hit with various different objects I've been in car crashes I think number one
06:45two is publishing my work and get on a roller coasters anymore um yeah I think those are the
06:55scariest things it was probably scarier for me than prison going to prison I kind of knew my dad gave
07:01me prison game when I was a kid I didn't know that's what I was getting until I actually got
07:04locked up when I got locked up I'm like that I'm gelling like I already know this stuff you know
07:08um so when I got to prison it was more so if I'm gonna run into anybody if there's an issue
07:14you know how do you get to what you need to get to because you hear all the stories about prison
07:18right some of them are exaggerated but most of them are true right um so you know I wasn't really
07:22scared about that but putting my work out was scary because now you got a whole group of college
07:27kids or whomever else and you don't know who was going to say something and they might screenshot it
07:32and send it to someone else or whatever you know so I was I was yeah I was scared imagine just the
07:38perspective of hearing you say that you were more ready and set up for success in the prison
07:44than what it is to just be a black man in society it is such a it's such a interesting perspective to
07:54have and I think that a lot of people especially here in the city can also understand that because
07:59it's it's such a it's so unfortunate to like know how to handle yourself somewhere that unfortunately you
08:06you don't want to go to most of us know that like before we know our ABC right yeah and instead
08:12you would have wanted you know like you said that that blunt honesty of like how it is to live life so
08:18having that perspective is just a lot more eye-opening than I even realized because I know that a lot of my
08:24own family members probably know a lot more than than they should about how to handle themselves there but
08:29don't know how to handle themselves in the real world like where it's a lot different than what you
08:35experience in prison well I think more so than anything it kind of goes back now y'all bear with
08:40me I'm a granddad's kid so it's kind of an old line of thought but it goes back to the family structure
08:45if you look at the time when they started to allow black people to get welfare they started to say you
08:50could get it but you can't have a father or a male in the house so what you do is you tear down that
08:56structure there's no one to be the example and the examples that we get are guys kind of hanging
09:01around because there's nowhere for them to be right there used to be no help for able-bodied
09:06quote-unquote able-bodied 18 year old black man right you couldn't get any type of assistance so
09:10if you couldn't find a job or if mom got sick or whatever you just made a dumb choice it's over
09:16right you know I got a lot of felonies on my record I've been home since June I can't tell you how
09:21many applications I filled out where I get a denial less than 12 hours later on email um or just flat out
09:28yeah well which is crazy to me because and sorry to cut you off but you've got the University of
09:35Michigan I mean one of the top schools in the country seeking you out to come and speak to an
09:41audience yeah I'll be on the University of Michigan Detroit center October 23rd there there's managers
09:46at whatever business that look at you on a piece of paper and say no this isn't for us yeah you look at
09:51it you're looking at a 43 year old man but you're looking at the paperwork of a 21 year old kid
09:56and then you're not knowing the circumstances right you know arm robbery I'm not going to
10:01sugarcoat it or gloss it over it's a horrible thing to do um I never really thought about it at the time
10:06but what did the person feel on the other end of that gun right the way I looked at it at the time
10:11was I'm not going to shoot anybody I'm not going to hit anybody I don't want your money I'm robbing
10:18this business right be cool that's how I looked at it it's not a great perspective in retrospect
10:27but at the same time these were the monies that I was using to take care of my children right to help
10:33my sick dad my you know my mom they have their issues or whatever else that I was doing so it
10:38doesn't justify what I was doing it just states the fact that since I had got my first adult felony
10:44it's been hard to have employment you know so you have to figure it out so one of the in one of the
10:52last things that I really want to hit on is not not anyone makes it alone like you've got someone to
10:58help you out you've got and you know you talked about your guy Bob or even the people that submitted
11:01your work without you knowing what's it feel like to know that you could be that person for other
11:07people I mean the roles are completely reversed for you now with the position in the in the role that
11:13you're taking like right how what does that mean to you especially having your own kids who I'm going
11:19to assume you don't want them to follow in the same path so they better not so how is it like
11:25knowing like Clay said that you are now that example that you wanted as a kid
11:31and it hasn't even sank in yet it's humbling because I recognize I have a unique memory
11:39so I can kind of go back to remember exactly how I felt when I was 14 and this happened or when I was
11:4310 and this happened and uh I kind of I uh what's the word I have empathy for them you know I understand
11:51what the circumstances are and sometimes it's just two hard choices um you know are you going to eat
11:57today are you going to walk around this pair of pants with a hole in it today
12:00so for me it's a humbling thing to be able to go back but I had people in my past who in their own
12:07ways try to be there for me you know um I got two amazing wives I don't know why God blessed me that
12:15way but they're amazing like my children my mother my mother-in-law my father-in-law this core network
12:22of people like I'm not trying to sink I'm flying I'm a big fella but I'm up there
12:29right but they're right up under me I've never had that before and so if you can show somebody like
12:34yeah it might be really really horrible but look around you there is one or two people out here that
12:41were come and help you show you guide you lift you if possible it could be a life-changing thing
12:47you know it happened for me so no that's true so I know you you do a lot of speaking and that's
12:54something that's become you know a passion really important if people are looking to have you okay
13:01come speak to their crowd if even if they're just like hey I want to learn more about your story
13:05they're going through something similar they have a family member what what's the best way for people
13:08to get a hold of you so the best way to get a hold of me is probably email my email is cgbsenior
13:15the word at gmail.com so cgbsenior at gmail.com okay and the question that I have been wanting to ask
13:26for sure is if anyone is actively hearing watching this that was in the same position that you were at
13:3421 at 14 and now at 43 what do you want to say to them so that they don't follow in the same
13:41footsteps cry I never cried um I held a lot of different things in I cry all the damn time now
13:51I'm like a big punk but um it cleanses you and sometimes that's what you need to change your
13:59perspective your thought process so even the things that you're looking at what you want to
14:03eat today um it's a tool God gave it to us use it yeah that's true I and I'm speaking for Alicia here
14:13I mean like we started off the show new I think we're lucky to meet and become friends with people
14:20like yourself and your family and it's just you know what I mean it's bigger things at play
14:25you kind of get that feeling and and you know we're just grateful grateful for you to come in
14:30and call and y'all see I got them with me when I call in they're with me we here in the background
14:36it's like the whole family and so it makes me grateful too because like I said this is totally
14:42different from how I ever lived my life I never imagined to be able to live my life the way that
14:46I live my life um prison saved my life literally I probably would be dead period and then PCAP was the
14:55thing that gave me something to hinge on to make that turn so yeah I mean I'm grateful for y'all
15:01too because like I say I I couldn't call you six months ago I didn't know who Clay and Leigh should
15:05be were I was just flipping through the radio station one day and I said oh they playing that right there
15:09that's you know I got back in my mode I was in the early 2000s you know but uh yeah I appreciate it
15:16man I really do well we appreciate you and just everything that you have shared with us
15:23off and on camera everything that you share with the people who will hear you October 23rd I'll be
15:30at the University of Michigan Detroit Center in downtown Detroit come on out I get to read my
15:35poetry it'll be some other poets there some artwork there come show the support to the program to the
15:40guys like me who are really trying to make a change in our lives and in the lives of others
15:44I love that and just one last thing if you are scared about putting out your poetry are you ready
15:51to then voice it to people on October 23rd I can read my poetry all the time I was gonna say look
15:57at this what I do is I just look at them that's who I read to yeah so it makes it easy for me okay
16:04I was about to I was about to say I'll give you some some good juju okay I appreciate it I appreciate
16:10it Charles thanks so much man taking the time and family coming in we appreciate all you thanks for
16:15having us
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