A full conversation with L. Douglas Wilder

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Jack Glagola: It’s no surprise that you’re a Virginia icon, a Black icon, a man of many historic firsts. First Black Virginia Senator, first Black lieutenant governor, first Black governor of Virginia since Reconstruction — would you consider yourself a trailblazer?

Doug Wilder: Well, I guess you would have to say that the things that I’ve accomplished as firsts are first, and to the extent that they opened doors for other people, I’d be included in that number.

G: Who are some people you looked up to, or you still look up to, or inspire you?

W: Well, my mother was my driving force. I was one of eight children, and I was next to the youngest. And I had six sisters, six older sisters. You can imagine what that was like. And I like things like music. My mother and father both insisted that I take piano lessons, and I didn’t want to do it. But then I liked it, and I got to the point that I didn’t like it. I played a lot of classical music and updated rhapsodies and things and I would ask my teacher and he was being paid to teach me, I think it was either 10 cents a lesson. That’s how tight things were at the time. And so I liked it, and I learned from that.

I liked reading, and my mother was very adept at reading and she liked crossword puzzles. She could solve the New York Times crossword puzzle in about a half hour. And she’d be upset if she didn’t get every word. So I got into that, and that’s how it broadened my vocabulary. And I had teachers who would not allow you to not “round” your D’s and speak with your T’s as you should, and so I guess what I was fortunate with was to have people who cared. For what our generation would be and could be, they knew what the deprivations were, and as you may know my grandfather was a slave, my grandmother was a slave, on my father’s side. On my mother’s side, her mother was free in Charles City. But she went to New York for a high school education and that’s why she was ahead of the game, so once she came back after her mother died, she insisted on the perfecting of the English, the reading of the book and not wasting time.

So I got to a point I liked to challenge people and what I knew, and I’d do that in the barbershop — and it got so that people started betting on me! “Hey, that kid, better listen to him, he’s right.” “I ain’t got time to listen to that old boy!” So then they started betting and they started losing. And I spent a lot of time in the bootblack parlor shining shoes, and involving in that discussion as well, and I got into pool, right? I still got a pretty good game. Oh, but you’re not supposed to be in the pool room at sixteen years old!

Yeah, that’s no place for a young man. 

Oh yes! So I got picked up. That right me up, doing it, and my mother didn’t like that. So I guess what I’m saying to you is, I was lucky to be surrounded with people who appreciated education. I’ve always prided my generation with carrying on and not being inventive to the extent that we did anything new. But the people in whose care we were entrusted knew we had a higher responsibility. That’s why I’ve always believed that education is still key to solutions to whatever problems you may have. It’s education.

Is that why you teach?

Yea. I teach now because I wanted to be certain that what I was doing — whatever it was I was doing — was such that it kept me abreast of what was taking place, the challenges I liked. I used to teach a class; I don’t do that now, I lecture in your class. And I lecture in someone else’s class, because I used to require two books — I’m sorry, two exams, a book and a term paper. And I never had an assistant.

Wow. 

I wanted to do it. And I run into some students now who obviously are in excellent positions in their own right, and but when I lecture in classes now at VCU, and I do it every year, even though I’m no longer teaching, the students come up afterwards every time I lecture and say “Why hadn’t we heard this before? Why haven’t we heard some of these things before?” Well, sometimes you haven’t listened to them, and sometimes you haven’t heard them. I specialize in focusing on what there was a quality historian who was following presidential elections, Theodore White, his name, and his book was “America in Search of Itself.”

Yeah, I’ve heard of that book.

Oh, it’s fantastic. You ought to read it. It’s showing that you never get there. And see, this is what I regard as success to be. You never get to be successful, you work at it. Once you say you’re successful and stop, that’s when the sand runs out.

On that topic of presidential elections, you obviously keep abreast of some developments— 

Yeah. [laughs]

What kind of developments do you think people should be paying attention to?

Leadership. I stay with that. Leadership is the key, and leadership is a tautology. It defines itself. What does leadership mean? To lead. And what do you mean to lead? To be in front. What do you mean by that? Be ahead. Today, we suffer from a lack of it. People lamenting, “Oh, Trump is elected again!” He was elected before! We survived, did we have the best campaigner against him before? And I’m not speaking about Harris—Hillary. What was her message, if you could tell me? “I hung out with Jay-Z last night.” Do you remember when she came up with the commercial? That was supposed to be attracting Black voters. “I hung out with Jay-Z last night.” Who gives a damn! What does that mean to me? I talked to a lady who’s now running for an elected office — I almost gave it away — I didn’t want to fully identify her. I said, “What are you in favor of?” “Education.” “What about it?”“I want a strong education system.” “Could you tell me what that is?” “I believe in safe communities.”

Define that for me, what is a safe community?

Does that mean more police, more resources, better schools?

Good, better, best. That’s what we used to learn when we were kids. Good, better, best. Never rest until your good is better and your better best. Now, what does that mean? Kids can’t read, can’t write, can’t add.

Can’t do math.

Know nothing of history, can’t do math, absolutely. So we’re spending more on education than ever in the history of the world and our results are less. Too much bureaucracy,.“Well, we gotta create a bureau for this.” And so, we knew for some while that Joe Biden was in decline, we also knew the candidacy of Kamala Harris, she ran before for President and didn’t even compete in the first primary. Withdrew. And so then now she’s picked as vice president, we’re going to put her there to take Joe Biden’s place — and they played right into Trump’s hands. So now it doesn’t make any sense to talk about how bad Trump is. Who’s good? What do you have to offer? What are you going to put on the table besides your elbow? [laughs]

That’s a good phrase, I got to use that. You mentioned leadership, seems like now the leader is money.

You’ve got your hand right on it.

Especially now you have all the kleptocrats.

It has always been money. That’s the name of the game. Where is it, who spends it, what is it being spent on, and for what? Derivative pleasure or derivative result is to be achieved. And I do this in class, ask the students, name me one thing in terms of lifestyle that doesn’t involve money. And I ask you to do it. You can think as long as you would like to stay. You can’t.

I mean, besides—

Can you? You can’t!

The only thing I could think of is whistling a tune, but that’s only momentary. If I want a hobby…

Well, whistling a tune is accomplishing what?

Nothing.

Thank you. [laughs] Well, to whistle that tune, someone had to write it. [laughs]

Precisely. And that person probably got some money for it.

Don’t say he didn’t do it. But in doing that, what I try to do is to show that you have to be involved, and I call it the polity. It doesn’t mean you have to run for office, but you want to be part of the decision making process — the polity. Who decides what goes on? That’s why I got into politics. I never wanted to run for office, to beg for votes, to hustle for money. My ego was vaunted.

Oh, I bet.

But — I found out that’s the only way you can get to it. That’s why I encourage people: go to your school board meetings! Go to your city council meetings. When I ran for office, for the state Senate, I had never, ever been to a committee hearing. I’d never seen the legislature in session, I’d never talked to too many legislators. I’d listened to lots of them asking for votes, and so that’s what I challenged a lot of people to do today. When you go out to the people, and I tell you this, the people are always ahead of the leaders. The issues they feel, they live. The cost of food. They’re writing about the cost of food. The people could’ve told them that two years ago!

Now they’re talking about egg prices, they’ve been high for years.

Right! And the amateurish way that we handled Covid. Masking working, and the way we deal with the workforce today. “Ah, we don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. Do your work at home.” I don’t have to tell you what you’re going to do, you know you’re going to do what you want to do at home. It’s not about partisan things at all, it’s a class thing. You touched on it earlier.

That’s what they always say: the root of all the problems is all class. It’s all money.

There you go. You can’t escape it! They try to come up with some way around it, and then they have to say: “You’re right!” But still don’t stop. Don’t stop trying to find it, because it makes you learn more. Now, that being the case, if you recognize it and get to that point, then I understood early on what it meant. I decided that I was not just interested in a fair slice of the civic pie or the political pie. I wanted my hand to be on the knife that cut the pie.

That’s an interesting way to put it.

It’s simple. Not interested in whether this is right or this is wrong — let me decide. Let me be challenged.

Let you be a leader.

When I ran for lieutenant governor, of course in Virginia that wasn’t supposed to happen. Black, in Virginia? Are you crazy? Well, they said, “It’s not going to work.” And it never entered my mind whether it would or would not. But I decided what I was going to do is travel the state of Virginia, go to every independent city, every county. That I would not stay in hotels or motels, but I would stay only in the homes of people in those areas. And they said, “Well, that’s the end of that fool. He’s gone. Never see him anymore, when he goes with those people out there.” And they were referring obviously to the southwest part of the state.

Like Wise County.

Yeah, Wise, Lee.

Grayson.

Grayson, yeah, you’re getting them. The finest treatment that I had received in that campaign is from those very people. Because we were being prejudiced. A friend of mine who was from Christiansburg — a Senator whose name was Madison Marye — he said, “Doug, I like your idea, and I think it’s great. But when you go out there campaigning, you go to a barbershop, you have to go to every one. And every hand, you got to shake it. Every grocery store, you got to do it. You can’t leave anybody out.” So I’d experienced a little bit of it in Northern Virginia once, when I was going down the street I had a couple of people with my campaign passing out literature, saying things like, “here’s Doug Wilder, he wants you to vote for him.” And one of them said, “Get out the way, I want to see him, I want to talk to him! You get out the way.”

I went to this one store in Christiansburg, a grocery store, pretty big size. And I shook everybody’s hands, talked to everybody, getting ready to leave. And somebody said, “There’s a man sitting back there, you haven’t spoken to him, said anything to him.” I looked over there and there was a man sitting on top of a barrel. Had a straw hat on, red bandana around his neck, tobacco creases on his jaws coming down like that. And I came up to him and said, “Hello, sir, I’m Doug Wilder, I’m running for lieutenant governor, I want your support.” He said, “Something I want to ask you, thought you were going to pass me by.” I said, “Well, I’m here. What do you want to ask me?” “I want to talk to you about that abortion thing.” Oh my God. I could have gotten out of here.

He got you.

I was preparing to give my most perfected Jeffersonian spiel: “The government has no right to interfere in the rights of the—” I got to perhaps one half of the sentence when the guy said, “It ain’t no man’s business no ways.” [laughs] “You’re absolutely right, sir.” Now, I was prejudiced by believing he thought a certain way. And that thing stuck with me wherever I went. One thing Madison told me was “Go to these stores, the reason you gotta shake everybody’s hand in the area, because the bread man has already told that store where he is that you’re down there where the Coca-Cola man is making a delivery. So that store is expecting you to come up. I think it’s been wrong for people to classify individuals by where they live, southwest or north or the color of their skin or their religion. But that unfortunately is still a problem that we have to deal with. And it will always be. We’re never going to get away from that.

It’s human nature.

Precisely.

You’ve lived a long time. Do you think things are better in that regard now?

Of course. But as I said to you earlier: good, better, best. Never rest until your good is better and your better best. And my mother would say that to me. See, I was born eight blocks from St. John’s Church, the church where Patrick Henry made his famous speech. And the sacristan at the church, an older colored man, as they would call them, had a pocket full of change all the time because he was getting his tips, because he would be the guy that the church telling people that they’re going to Hell. And he would come by my house. My mother said, “Douglas, you’re out there begging Mr. Rollins.” “No, I haven’t asked him for anything.” But I knew, that if I sat out there, he was going to give me a nickel. Well, a nickel at that time was some money. It was two of us that did that, one guy who lived two blocks up the street. But in going to the church and hearing the extolling of Patrick Henry and “Give me liberty or give me death,” I would say things to my father about it and it would rankle my father because his parents were slaves. He said, “Well, what did Patrick Henry do? Did he go and fight anywhere? Did he join any army? No, he went on up into Ashland and still worked his slaves.” So when you hear a slave owner speak of liberty and death, it’s a sham to begin with. But I always believed, and I believe now, that the fact that those words were there gave emphasis to what could be and that’s why I said Theodore White’s book America in Search of Itself, we will never be the perfect union in search of a more perfect union. We can get there if we don’t become lazy and believe we’ve got it. When you say you’re the leader of the free world it means you got more money. That’s all. [laughs]

That’s about right.

More money to do what? Improve healthcare. Want to do a better job providing school and education.

More money to buy defense or security or whatever they talk about.

Right. But what does it really mean?

War.

Exactly. And we’re talking about it now. Just look at the thing in Gaza, which is not going to be resolved.

My optimism went out the window for that when I was a kid. I’m Lebanese, so I got taught about all that stuff, it was pounded into me.

I had a good buddy at a restaurant here, he was Lebanese. And he was talking about the beauty of Beirut and how so many people wanted it because it’s the Paris, as they call it, of the Orient. And but there again, what are talking about? Money.

Lot of money there. So much money there that they stole it all. What do you make of your time serving Virginia, serving Richmond, serving VCU, the community as a distinguished man? 

Well, those things come and go. I’ve always considered it serving the people and doing what I thought could be done within the limitations of human accomplishment, and I found that in this capacity I’m able to share. But see, that’s why a lot of what I’m doing now is trying to advance the causes of historical Black colleges and universities. And I think it’s catching on, it’s doing better. But it’s not where it ought to be. Luckily, the current Attorney General wrote an opinion that showed that Virginia could provide monies in certain instances to HBCUs. But see, they would say “they’re private schools.” Well, private because they were forced to be. When you ask for your charter to open a university or college, you had to state and put in writing that you were private. Other than that, the state would have to take care of it. It wasn’t private like private.

Not like U of R.

Exactly. And the last white minister that the church that I’ve been talking about downtown, the First African Baptist Church, was a slaveowner and a preacher. Just think of that! Is that a dichotomy?

I’d say.

Of course. Leapfrogging back, the question is, you’re going to have the Trumps, you’re going to have the Clintons, you’re going to have the Reagans, you’re going to have the people that used it for money. I’ve met with so many people around the world and I’ve come to. Wendell Wilkie was a man who ran for president, he wrote a book called One World. I read it then, and I’ve always thought of it as being so applicable. We are one world, but we need to act like it. It’s not a question of identity. You’ve also heard this: there’s no new thing under the sun.

Especially my time as a philosophy student, that gets more and more—

It draws you.

It draws you to look back. I know the Aymara in Peru and Bolivia, they see the future as behind them and the past in front of them.

Yeah. Yeah. The other thing in leadership, if you are really interested in the tenets of responsibility, you can’t put on a lens. It’s not black or white, it’s human. Who measures it? What’s the measuring rod in terms of success? I remember when I met Reagan, once. He had been shot. But he told me that he liked horseback riding. He said he was riding and one day he came to a stop and his horse just right up threw him, and the spot he threw him in was loaded with stones. He said his head landed in the only spot in that area that wasn’t within two or three inches of a stone. He had always said just how lucky he was. I told him in a moment of brashness — I didn’t mean to be that way — I said to him, because of course they had predicted that Reagan was a movie star, he was a pretender, he didn’t have the qualities of leadership, et cetera. So I said all that. Not in those terms, but I said, “They didn’t have the greatest prognosis for your success, how you’re doing. You were consigned to a position of not being able to lead.” Well, he said, “I could say the same thing about you.” [laughs]

Oh my God. 

So we became, obviously, bonded. Just in that I didn’t care whether he was a Republican. And I don’t measure people by that.

Like you said earlier, it’s prejudice.

Exactly. And I don’t see you as white.

Thank you.

I don’t! Nor do I see you [the photographer] as Black. I see a human being who happens to be. And that’s what drives me up the wall, when people identify humans by color. I got a thing from a buddy of mine, two guys. One man is a former president of a university, another is my former Secretary of Education who happens to be Black, and the third one is a man who is very valued — it’s a blurry picture. So something came out the other day which was wrong, about these people saying what they were saying. It was racial. This man, I described earlier, he made a joke of something. He said, “What made you think us white guys do boom-boom-boom-boom?” I was really shocked that he referenced himself, now this is a three-person group, who sends out stuff. And this guy, the white former president of a college. And I responded to it by saying, “Whoever said that us white guys couldn’t do something-something-something.” And my response was, “Whoever said they did?” I mean, it’s not a subject! So why would you inject race? And he injected it because he couldn’t help it? Race was in him! I don’t have to tell you, you see it.

I know it. It’s a mental thing.

When I was in Korea, President Truman had just integrated the armed forces. And we were sent there, I was in the infantry, the colonel addressed it. He said, “President Truman has integrated the armed services across the board. And that’s going to be implemented here. I want to make certain that if any of you have any problem at any time, don’t try to resolve it. Bring it to me, that’s my job.” His name was MacDuff. I said alright, so we went back to our responsibilities. Going on enemy patrol, that means you go out. And I was always picked to go on the patrol and be the point man, I’m in front.

A leader.

No, to be sacrificed. I’m the first person the Chinese would hit. The Black soldiers were always put in those positions more than the others. There was a sergeant there, and I was a private, and he said, “Let’s have a meeting,” so we met the night before because we were getting ready to go back from the lines to take a shower. We did so every month or so. I said, “Okay, let’s hear what you have to say, what your problem is.” And everybody started sharing the difficulties they were having as it related to race. The sergeant said, “Well, why don’t we see Colonel MacDuff, because he told us that if we had any problem to bring it to him.” I said, “Good, we’ll do that.” I couldn’t keep the guys quiet. The next morning, we were supposed to be on the trucks and go down. We could hardly find anybody, we had to go and round them up. Damn near rivaled the airport. We got there and decided, his idea was to put on two bandoliers of ammunition, A1 rifle, steel-pot helmet and two grenades in the belt. So we marched down. Everyone in the group said, “What the Hell? Where is he going?” So I told Colonel MacDuff “I want you to know what you told us, and the men have some complaints, and I’ll let them say what they’ve got to say and I’ll say what I’ve got to say.” And he said, “I did tell you that. Let me hear from you.” I said, “Okay guys, Colonel says he wants to hear from you. Go ahead, tell him what happened. Would you tell the major what happened? Tell him what you said last night.” Nobody was saying a damn thing. Then I started saying, “This is what I was told last night, this is what I can experience that happened to me.” Once I did that, everybody and his brother had something to say. Major MacDuff said, “Well, I congratulate you on something. You did exactly what I told you to do. I told you soldiers that the army has been integrated, and we will enforce that to the extent that we’ve told you. Go back to your units, do your jobs as you’re supposed to, and let me do my job.” Within a month, things changed. People started being put on the list of promotions. Black people were not any more subjected to go on patrols as the others. So that was the thing that said to me, it can work. That the system can work. He kept his word and he followed the law. Now, I was a chemistry major in school and I thought I wanted to go be a doctor or dentist — I settled on dentistry in the end — but I was always attracted to the social side of what’s going on. That was the impetus for me going to law school. But it also showed me that the system can work.

It only takes one person.

To convince another. And another. And another. Pardon me, I’ve been running my mouth.

It’s no secret that Richmond has changed a lot since you were Mayor. What do you think of Richmond’s future?

I know the current mayor, he was in the administration in health. This is his first venture as it relates to public office, holding a public office. I think he’s got a grasp on understanding the money problem. It’s not an issue on race anymore. For instance: The state is occupying so many of the buildings and land that it’s been taken off the tax rolls because if the state owns it, the city can’t tax it. The state now wants the Altria building. You take that off the books, then what do we have? What are you going to tax? Will you be causing homeowners to flee and go into the surrounding areas, Henrico, Chesterfield? Some of it has already taken place. Can you reduce crime, yes, can you accent the reduction of crime, yes. I’ll put it this way: the future can be more secure with leadership. I met the mayor before he ran, and I’ve talked with him briefly. But he’s going to have to take a step up as far as leadership is concerned, and show what he wants to do in terms of safe streets, safe city, safe neighbohoods, better schools. What does that mean? Richmond spends more money of the state allocation for people. The three areas that are at the bottom in terms of accomplishment get the money: Richmond, Petersburg and Portsmouth.

Really?

But what is the outcome. Look at the salary we pay our superintendent.

He gets a lot of money.

For what. Tell me for what? You tell me. For what? Another bureau. I have a piece called Wilder Visions, I haven’t done it this month, but I really stress is to be as impartial as I possibly can and to speak to issues. I went to a thing last night to speak at what is called a black and white extravaganza. Black tie, it was very nice. The governor came and he knew I was asked to speak, thank goodness. Richmond’s future depends a great deal on the state recognizing that it is the capital. The leadership, again, is going to be that which determines Richmond’s future.

So you mean higher standards? In New York, the hubbub around the election for mayor is even more important than the governor’s election.

Exactly. It’s that which is closest to the people. That’s where the subway is.

It’s where everybody works.

It’s where the food is. It’s where the hospitals are, when you go into healthcare and transportation. When people ask me, “I want to run for office,” I ask, “How do you know that? What have you tried to do, what have you listened to? What do you want to do?” We have more Black elected officials in this country now than anyone could have imagined. In Virginia, you name it. So many of those problems are being addressed — or are they? Or are they? And I think you got it, what I mean by that.

“I want to run for this.” Why? What I usually ask is, “What have you done?” “What I want to do—” No, no, no. What have you done? “Well, I haven’t been in elected office.” You don’t have to be elected to leadership. A leader is a leader, it defines itself.

Tautology.

Tautology, you got it.

P equals P.

P equals P. And it isn’t going to stop. So, Richmond’s future depends on leadership. It depends on not measuring individuals, but measuring the progress. Every day at the school we have a VCU Alert crying about. Every day, a crime, theft. Somebody was assaulted, this, that and the other.

What is the most important quality for people to look for when they’re doing anything, whether it’s leadership or just living their life?

First, determine what you think is most important to you. Without someone else telling you. This is what you need to do. Think: I listen to that, I listen to what you say. Know who you are. You know that quote, “Know thyself, then proceed?” It’s as old as the hills. Very few people take the time to want to really examine themselves. For instance, you know what your weaknesses are. You know where your strengths are. Deal with them. If you don’t, no one else will. So in terms of leadership, if you feel you want to be a part of that, then do it, but be certain it’s what you want to do. Then it’s like quicksand. Once you get in it, it’s going to draw you in deeper. Being in elected office doesn’t constitute leadership, it’s a part of it. You can never hold an office at all and be a hell of a leader. You want to be a part of the polity, you want to listen, you want to hear and you want to be heard.

And money talks.

It does. And you know what walks, I don’t have to tell you that.

I don’t think I’ve heard that part before.

[expletive] walks.

I’m going to keep that one.

Think about how true that is.

It is true. It can run, it can run an Olympic marathon. 

You can try to work it out in the classroom. Not just in classrooms, but I talk to people. I listen. Last night, for instance, I met so many people who would come up, whose father had served with me. At my age, obviously, as you can imagine, I’ve served with a lot of people’s fathers and grandfathers. And what amazes some of the people when we talk, they say, “You said you remembered but then you just gave us the answers why you did!” I said, “Well, if I didn’t remember it, I wouldn’t have told you.” That’s the quality of life, the things worth remembering and the things worth discarding. Look at some of the stuff you just said. It’s old, it’s like a bad relationship. You can’t live with it. It’ll eat you alive, but it’s over. Move on. Well, what’s your last question? [laughs] I’m giving you a hard time. I enjoyed it.

Thank you for sitting down with me, Governor. It was a pleasure to speak with you.