Glenn Grayson, Jr. Interview by Clay Everett, Robert Johnson & Donovan McKeever

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Play/Pause Glenn Grayson, Jr. Interview by Clay Everett, Robert Johnson & Donovan McKeever

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My name is Robert Johnson. I am 16 years old.

My name is Donovan McKeever. I am 14 years old.

My name is Clay Everett. I’m 14 years old.

We interviewed Glenn Grayson, Jr. on July 19th, 2018.

I was born February 28th, 1986. Actually, I was born in Winston-Salem, NC, and I grew up in a small town called Salisbury, NC. It was predominantly black. It was very small as a country town. I’ve never been in a city. Everybody kind of knew everybody. Education was really, really good. My best friend at that time was a white guy named Bubba and Bubba’s mom was the principal of the elementary school, so that had its perks too. I moved here. I didn’t know anybody. My family didn’t know anybody. That was a major change for me. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I didn’t know if people were going to accept me. North Carolina and Pittsburgh are completely different. The weather is different. The hospitality is different. I really missed the food. Honestly, there’s so many more black people down South. So you really get to see sometimes more people that look like ourselves doing great things, and coming to Pittsburgh and not having that balance was rough.

Here I went to Saint Benedict the Moor, which is in the Hill District. And then I graduated from there and went to Schenley high school the real Schenley down the street in the Hill District and, from there, went to college. School for me was never hard. It was more like… I had to put the effort into making it work. Whatever you do, no matter what it is, you have to be focused, you have to be determined, and you have to want it. I failed a couple of times on tests and things, but you gotta learn from that and grow. So I had a good time in high school. I went to Winston-Salem State University, which is a historically black university in Winston-Salem, NC. Go Rams. I studied business marketing. I did have a high school sweetheart, went to college. Sometimes it doesn’t work out like you think. First year of college, I had a baby with her and that was a struggle, right? Trying to decide, “Should I come back to Pittsburgh? Should I finish my degree?” That was one of the best times of my life and worst times of my life in the same kind of instance just because I wasn’t prepared to be a father at the time. That responsibility of really taking care of someone when you’re still a child comes at a cost. So I was always, you know, trying to figure out what the best and right thing to do, especially when you’re not with somebody, it makes it hard. I think there’s things that we have no choice over that happen to us and I think there’s things that we have choice over, and we either make bad or worse. Am I making the best decision that’s gonna impact my life the best, right? You know, my brother, he was a freshman at Hampton University. He came home for the first time. A guy couldn’t get in a party. He shot through the party. He killed my brother, right. That night, I took him to meet his friend. Do I wish I would have never took him? Yes. Do I wish I had my brother back? Yes. I can’t dwell on looking back to say if I could have did it different cause I can’t, right? I gotta try to move forward to what I know and what I can control and go from there.

After college, I came back to Pittsburgh. I had my daughter. I wanted to make sure I was around for her. So I actually started working at the YWCA in Homewood and then from the YWCA, I went to work for Bank of New York Mellon, and at the time, the company was merging, so I had to go to New York. So I spent some time in New York, and then I came back. And that’s when I landed my job that I’m currently doing as a community organizer, and that has fulfilled me on so many different levels. One of the reasons I stayed in Pittsburgh was not only for my daughter, but also I met my wife here. She went to Pitt, to me, where I’ve seen Pittsburgh change is that I think it has a lot of opportunity here. I mean you got Google, Uber, you have some of the major college and universities from Carnegie Mellon to Pitt. I feel that Pittsburgh is gonna be a place where you’re gonna blink 10 years from now and not even recognize it. My fear is that displacement of people being able to afford to still stay here. I just pray that everybody’s able to benefit from all the changes. Being from the Hill has so much history and so much black history that we don’t lose our culture. And that’s why I think it’s important for you guys to understand your history. Understand, like, this is a place where people want to be. And don’t give it up that easy and take care of it. There’s a lot of potential happening. I’m invested here. I was able to buy my first house at 25 here in Pittsburgh. I wanted to be here. I chose to be in the Hill. So I’m making a conscious decision. I have a say in my community and what it goes through, so I try to encourage other people to come here and stay here, especially in the Hill District. It’s all right to have fun and it’s alright to do whatever. But you definitely got to put the work in. If you’re confident about who you are and what you bring to the table, no matter what, you’re not trying to defeat yourself. I can’t do this. I can’t do that. No, I can do this. I might not get it right away, but I’m going to keep trying and keep trying and grow, right? So you might fail and it’s alright. It’s how you pick up from that failure. I knew when to pay attention and when not to. So I knew when to kind of separate myself from the crowd when I needed to and also knew who I needed to talk to. Cause there’s some smart people in this world. And if I ain’t know it, I was gonna make sure that I got with them. Like, teach it to me. My dad always has the saying “grinder’s game,” so like, you gotta grind, you gotta put the work in, and you gotta know yourself.

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