Oral History Interview with Marty Casey

Title

Oral History Interview with Marty Casey

Interviewee

Marty Casey

Interviewer

Matthew Kennedy

Description

Dr. Marty Casey grew up in towns across St. Louis, Missouri, mainly the Pinrose Park area and late Webster Groves. Later in her life Dr. Casey was influenced to start the Human Arts Foundation and later the UnGunn Institute as a result of her experiences in St. Louis. She was selected as one of the top 25 most influential business women in St. Louis in 2020. Dr. Casey also has co-created the global observance of Black SON Day. The inaugural event took place August 9, 2020 with more than 100 global networks, focused on uplifting the black community.

Transcript

Dr. Marty Casey (00:00):
With Un Gunn Institute, LLCI give my permission for Matthew Kennedy to record today and I am here and present for the interview.
Matthew Kennedy (00:12):
All right. Okay. This is Matthew Kennedy from Sewanee, the University of the South. It is February 13th, 2024, and I'm with Dr. Marty Casey. Okay, so start things off since to warm up. I was thinking about, so I heard, I think you grew up with my mom. Was that in Webster?
Dr. Marty Casey (00:41):
I did. I attended Webster for all of my high school years, so I grew up in Webster my last four years.
Matthew Kennedy (00:51):
Do you still live in Webster?
Dr. Marty Casey (00:53):
I do not.
Matthew Kennedy (00:54):
Oh, do you live in the St. Louis region, right?
Dr. Marty Casey (00:58):
I do. I live in Florissant Florist, Missouri. Maybe about 10 minutes from Ferguson.
Matthew Kennedy (01:06):
And if I'm, you were a part of the Brown protest, right?
Dr. Marty Casey (01:16):
Did Michael Brown protest? That's correct.
Matthew Kennedy (01:19):
Okay. So I was just wondering, so when it comes to BLM, are you still part of BLM or No?
Dr. Marty Casey (01:30):
So there's two different ways that you can look at things. Matthew one, black Lives Matter is a movement that became, as you know, very nationally and internationally known. Do I recognize the movement in terms of it being something that I would want to be a part of? The answer would be yes. Am I a part of a specific part of the organization that would be, no.
Matthew Kennedy (01:57):
Okay. So as I understand you are the CEO of the Gunn Institute?
Dr. Marty Casey (02:07):
That is correct.
Matthew Kennedy (02:09):
Could you explain what that is for me?
Dr. Marty Casey (02:12):
Well, first I'm going to let you see this picture. This is UNG Gunn where we help individuals disarm from trauma. If you see that U and the logo, that U is anyone that we are dealing with individually in that moment. Also inside of that U is a RT, the word art. So what we do, we basically take the gifts and talents that's inside of someone to help them recreate what is needed to feed their soul in order for them to overcome traumatic, traumatic events that have taken place in their lives. A lot of times we are dealing with individuals that have unresolved trauma from generational trauma to childhood trauma, complex trauma, meaning that you could be dealing with many different types of trauma at one time. And so we really help individuals to feel better, to live better, to do better.
Matthew Kennedy (03:14):
That's interesting. So sorry, that was my roommate. So as to where you grew up, do you think that had any influence to your beliefs? Now
Dr. Marty Casey (03:34):
Say that again please? You checked out a little bit.
Matthew Kennedy (03:37):
Considering where you grew up, do you think that had any influence to your beliefs? Now
Dr. Marty Casey (03:42):
My voice,
Matthew Kennedy (03:43):
Your beliefs.
Dr. Marty Casey (03:45):
Spell the
Matthew Kennedy (03:46):
Word. B-E-L-I-E-F-B-E. Belief I can.
Dr. Marty Casey (03:56):
So basically yes, did it make a difference as to where I grew up? I grew up all over the city of St. Louis. By the time I was in the ninth grade, I had attended 10 different schools, so I lived in many different places. There's one specific place that I always called Home Base and that's where my great grandmother owned a home and that was on the north side of St. Louis, the Pinrose Park area. To be specific, you may remember a song that Nelly did, the rapper Nelly, and he talked about going down Natural bridge. That's the area that I grew up in, like Natural Bridge, King's Highway area. That is the area that I still, I claim as being the place where I grew up as a child. When I think about the other areas that I lived in, those were temporary places. And then my last stop was Webster Groves. So very, very vastly different living in Webster Groves as it was living in all those other places.
Matthew Kennedy (05:04):
Yeah. How would you say those areas then are different from now?
Dr. Marty Casey (05:17):
The areas back then, they were a lot safer. We could play outside. We never feared getting shot, we never feared anything really happening to us. If you mind your own business, then you should be all right and everyone pretty much knew everyone in the neighborhood. Even if you didn't know their name, you knew their faces. The way that things are associated now, and even in those same neighborhoods, not too many people are engaging in sitting out on the porch or being outside playing. You definitely wouldn't be as comfortable allowing your child to go up the street or just walk around neighborhood and think that everything is going to be okay because now anything can happen to your child or to individuals. There's just so many hands of violence that has been unleashed in our world. And so that's really how a lot of things have changed, the freedom that we had in our childhood and being able to trust others is long gone.
Matthew Kennedy (06:24):
So I want to focus mainly on I'd say the early two thousands, 2000 tens where like BLM first started. I know you weren't I guess a part or a leader in that time, but I just wanted to get to your point of view. So during that time, how would you say you received your news and how did you get your information?
Dr. Marty Casey (06:53):
So in earlier part of my life, news was definitely something that you turned on the television channel two, four, and five. And we received news that way. It would also, you could read it in the newspaper, there was even some news magazines and different things that the world was one of 'em, W-H-I-R-L. If you saw someone's face on the front of the world, you knew like, oh my gosh, they did something really, really bad. Murder robbed somebody, they escaped from somewhere. So you knew that that was a paper where you was going to find some really tragic things that possibly happened in your area. How I receive my news now, things are really pretty much social media driven. We hear and start to see a lot of things trending on social media then that may cause you to say, well, let me Google this and let me read more about it and let me find a source that I trust, maybe CNN or somewhere more trusted source of news and you read more about it.
(08:06):
And then also locally, there is a social media driven media source that's called the real STL news. And that is a community-based organization that started after the unrest of Ferguson. And when they hear about what's happening in our areas, they go to those areas and they report from what's happening on site. So we are seeing things happen a lot of times in real time. Whereas when you look at your regular news sources like Channel two, four and five, they're going to grab the story, go back to their news station, edit a little bit or kind of report it from how they choose to report it to kind of gather the attention of their viewers. But real STL news is giving it to you raw.
Matthew Kennedy (08:58):
So I'd assume it's probably a more trustworthy source than most
Dr. Marty Casey (09:04):
I would say. So just because they're not editing, they're not doing anything more to it other than reporting what they're seeing in hearing in that moment.
Matthew Kennedy (09:13):
Okay. Did this source, did they report on anything? I know then beyond was a newer movement. I would say it's probably less known then than it is now. And how did it affect your opinion when it came to BLM?
Dr. Marty Casey (09:38):
So again, when I think about Black Lives Matter, I think about a general statement. And I always put, of course, if you ask me do Black Lives Matter? I'm going to think of that. I'm going to think of Black Lives, right? I'm not necessarily thinking of the organization, but I think in the form of how you're asking questions, you're referring to the organization. I don't necessarily agree with all of the,
(10:11):
What's the word I'm looking for? I guess I'm not familiar with or I could honestly say I probably wouldn't be in agreement with everything that they put out there as being a part of their organization because I'm not a member. I can't specifically say we stand for this, this means that. But when I think about Black Lives Matter as a whole, do I feel that's a statement I can agree with? Absolutely. And if the Black Lives Matter organization, if something happened here in our city and they came to organize something, I probably would get behind it or what have you. But again, I would say I would do that in a manner Matthew, where I'm going to ask a lot of questions. I want to make sure that I am in agreement with how the organization itself is showing up.
Matthew Kennedy (11:16):
I know you have that opinion. For those who surrounding your community, family members, friends, would you say they share the same opinion or are they more against Black Lives Matter or more for,
Dr. Marty Casey (11:32):
I live in a neighborhood right now where the neighborhood is mixed blacks and whites and Asian people in my neighborhood and I can drive down my street and find two or three neighbors with a Black Lives Matter sign in their yard. And then across the street there's a mixed couple where she's white, her husband's black and they have a Black Lives Matter sign in their yard, but they crossed out the word black and put all a LL. All lives matter. And then I don't have a sign in my yard, but yet I unapologetically I'm going to be a black woman everywhere I go. So I don't think a sign or some of the things that the organization stands for, I don't necessarily feel like that is going to make the difference in culturally how we're interacting with one another in the world. I happen to be a global peace ambassador. I do a lot of speaking engagements all around the world old and I am sharing that with you just so that you know that for me, the most important part of the work that we're attempting to do is the action we put behind it. It's not just a statement, it has to be a bigger cause.
Matthew Kennedy (12:47):
And that would pervy in my next question. Do you think that the separate movement beyond, do you think they have taken proper action or do you think they could be doing something different?
Dr. Marty Casey (13:02):
I definitely feel like some things can be added. I think for the most part,
(13:09):
They started off doing something that had a very good cause behind it. I totally understood the purpose and I think that it started a movement and started us really thinking about are we leaving out part of the world and making them feel as if there's a race of people that don't mean as much. And we could clearly understand history showed that yeah, we pretty much have been on the bottom of the totem pole that we have not always been treated fairly. Now, at the end of the day, do I feel like the organization itself held strong to representing all of the black race? No, they did not because for one, they let money get in the way. There was a lot of talks and different things shared that a lot of money was taken in and what they said they were going to do with it, they didn't quite do those things. And I mean, when you began to not be able to stand strong on your principles, then you almost have to question what is your intent?
Matthew Kennedy (14:21):
And when speaking of money, or I guess you could say greed, do you think that's affected its success and failures throughout these past 20 years?
Dr. Marty Casey (14:36):
Of course, anytime that, I mean, that's what we're dealing with in America today because of the power and the greed and the money or what have you. We are failing at a lot of things and we're also succeeding at a lot of things. I think that just rains true no matter what it is.
Matthew Kennedy (14:56):
So you have your own institute on gun control and with just a combination of these associations and institutes, do you think compared to the beginning of them to now, do you think race relations are better off or for worse right now?
Dr. Marty Casey (15:22):
Ask the question one more
Matthew Kennedy (15:23):
Time. Do you think race essentially, do you think, say 20 years ago compared to now, do you think race relations are better or worse?
Dr. Marty Casey (15:32):
No. Well, two things. The first thing is Gunn Institute has nothing to do with gun control. It has everything to do with disarming trauma. I could care less if you own a gun or not, but what I care about is what you do with that gun.
(15:49):
You have the right to own a gun or not own a gun. But I do believe that if you own a gun, I pray that you know how to handle that gun and you are practicing gun safety. I pray that you don't just turn to that gun to solve your problems when there have been emotional issues between you and someone else, and you turn to that as a way to handle conflict, right? And if in fact things have gotten out of control and you've used the gun and to hurt or harm someone else, my goal is to help them to heal from the inside out. So that trauma that associated with that gun and the incident doesn't keep showing up on them and allowing them to then be angry with every person that they meet thereafter. So that's what Gunn Institute is all about. To answer your specific question, do I think race relations are better or worse?
(16:47):
I'm going to take it back to Webster Groves. I graduated from Webster Groves in 1989 and I ended up at Webster Groves because I was at a pretty much black, a more predominantly black school prior to. And I got into it with a teacher. And to the point that I fought the teacher and I got expelled at another school in order for me to graduate on time in 1989, I then had to go from that school to a predominantly white school, which is Webster Groves. I wasn't there 30 days before I had another fight. So what I realized in that moment, Matthew, is that something was going on on the inside of me. What was causing me to just get so, I mean just angry and blowing up every time anything happened, right? I was clearly reacting to my own hurt and pain by striking out at others.
(17:42):
It was nothing for me to physically fight back. But what I learned is that at Webster Groves, I was exposed to some things there that I did not see anywhere else. This was a school that was just privileged and it had everything that you needed to succeed. And if you in fact did not succeed is simply because you didn't take advantage of all of those things that it offered. Some of my best relationships were cultivated there with blacks and whites and boys and girls and all of those things. I had an opportunity to see those things that we read about and heard about often with Dr. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement that one day he was in hopes that little black girls and black boys could hold hands with little white girls and little white boys. That's exactly what we were doing at Webster Groves in 1989.
(18:39):
And so it gave me hope to see a world that it was possible for us to just love people and not keep dividing us up according to how we were raised or what we believed in and what we was exposed to versus someone else. When your mom reached out to me and was like, I know this is a long shot, but Marty, my son has to do this report, do you mind if he interviews you, Matthew? I didn't say yes because I care about your interview at your university. I said, yes, because the relationship I have with your mom, you understand there's absolutely no way my friend is going to reach out to me, ask me to do something, and if it's in my power to do that, I'm not going to try to do it. Why? Because I remember her and I remember how she made me feel, and she did not treat me any different from anyone else just because I was her black friend. So when I think about it, it was so much better back then than what it is now. The fact that we have to have these conversations still tells me that what we did, we temporarily swept a lot of things under the rug and we wasn't dealing with it. We wasn't really talking about how we felt. We really didn't go deep in our relationships. Things were on the surface.
Matthew Kennedy (19:54):
That's a great response. So you said that we've swept things under the rug, per se, and do you think that's had basically it's built up over time and now, do you think there kind of needs to be a turning point potentially where the future is now? The future is going to be determined by now here. Lemme reword that more time. Just made that up in my head. So thinking about the fact that you would say racial relations are maybe worse now, do you think they will get better in the future?
Dr. Marty Casey (20:42):
I think they can because this is what happened. If you can imagine, if you can imagine from the time Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, as a matter of fact, let me show you this because I keep this near me, right? He was saying he was assassinated from the time that that happened
(21:11):
And things turned really bad racially. And then we all decided, well, you know what? They're right. Let's try to be fair here. Let's take away the signs of only whites and only blacks. Let's just not have signs. If you want to get water out of this water fountain, you're more than welcome to do so. You want to go to this restroom when I'm in the restroom, you more than welcome to do so. You want to sit down and eat in this restaurant? You can. So we fix those things. But imagine in that moment, Matthew, not everybody was in Rie just because the signs came down just because now we get to do these things. There still were some people that was angry. So every time they secretly got angry, some dirt went under that rug. Every time there was a situation they wasn't willing to talk about or they were made uncomfortable, blacks and whites, some stuff went under that rug. So we're still interacting with one another and we know the laws and we're trying to get along and all of those things, but anytime something happens, it dirt gets under that rug. Well, when Black Lives Matter developed and became a thing, they pulled the rug back. Well, let's see what's all under here so we can deal with this stuff. And it was like, oh,
Speaker 3 (22:36):
How
Dr. Marty Casey (22:36):
Did all this get? We was treating everybody so nice, but everybody wasn't really in their heart feeling what was actually happening. Not everybody wants to have a roommate that doesn't look like them. Not everybody wants to kumbaya at church. So when the rug got pulled back, all this dirt is underneath there. And what does that leave us? Now? There's only one or two things to do. Either we put the rug back down and act like it's not there or we clean the shit up.
Matthew Kennedy (23:14):
So somewhat of a summary, would you say it's really not going to be fixed until pretty much everyone just figures it out in a way? No,
Dr. Marty Casey (23:30):
No. I disagree with that. I think that are, there's more good people in the world than there are bad. I just think that we have to find where those people are located. You would probably just using this as an example, if we were walking down the street, Matthew, you probably wouldn't speak to me. You might smile or you may just look away or just whatever you just, I, because it looks like you don't need me,
(24:06):
But today you need me, Matthew, to do what you need to do moving forward. If you see me on the streets, you'll be like, oh my God, it's Dr. Marty. Hey Dr. Marty, I'm Matthew. Because we now have been exposed to one another and we are building some common ground in a relationship, so we get to choose who we want to do that with. And so the more that we do that, the more we're cleaning some of that stuff under the rug. We're fixing that stuff. So I'm proud of you that you are writing about this and you're digging into this, and it took you to have to interview somebody black that can speak about it because it brought you a little bit closer in relationship. And when we have opportunities to do that, Matthew, that's where the changes happen in our world. So we just got to create more moments like this one.
Matthew Kennedy (25:01):
I agree. And so this is kind of veering backwards as just more like a word for word of your account of what happened. So we pretty much checked every box of what I need, and I was just thinking, I just wanted to hear about your experience whenever the Michael Brown event did happen.
Dr. Marty Casey (25:35):
So the day, August 9th, 2014,
(25:43):
I received a call from my daughter around like three 30 in the afternoon. And she asked me where was I? And I said, I'm over in Illinois. I go over there often and I shop and she says, well, when you come back home, make sure you don't come down west. I was like, why? She was like, I don't know. Something's happening. There's cops everywhere. There's fire trucks everywhere, helicopters, ambulance. And I'm like, Ooh. I said, well, what? Turn on the news that channel 2, 4, 5, this is before the real STL turn on the news and tell me what you're seeing. I said, because if it's something that big, it should say breaking news underneath and they should be talking about something. And she turned it on. She said, oh. I said, what? She says, A black boy just been shot by a cop. I said, what else does it say? She says, well, that's it. I said, no, no, no. Keep reading. What else does it say? Because black boys get shot by cops every day. That's not news. She says, oh my gosh, mommy, he's still lying in the streets. And he got shot at 12 this afternoon. It's three 30. He's still in the streets.
(27:06):
They literally allowed this young man at 18 years old just graduated from high school, Matthew, to bleed out in the streets, like I could say a dead dog, but we treat animals better than how they treated him that day In that very moment. I didn't care if it was a cop that shot him, if it was his mama that shot him, if it was his friend that shot him, that didn't matter to me. Why is he still lying in the streets? And that's when it became inhumane. And in that moment I said, oh no, not on my watch. I had to see what's going on here. If they think they are just going to be shooting and killing kids and leaving them lying in the streets and their parents are watching them bleed out. Oh no, this is not a third world country. We're not doing that. And that's when I went to the streets and I began to go out every day to be in the streets. It was so hot that summer. Oh my God, it was so hot. And I had a big cutout of President Obama, one of those cardboard, cardboard cutouts, and I took my cardboard cutout and I made a sign that says, get to Ferguson now out.
(28:35):
And I had President Obama holding the sign and I stuck the sign out of the rooftop of my car and I would drive through the crowd every day with that. And they're like, they thought it was President Obama. No, it's not. It's just a cardboard cutout. But the point is, I got so much attention from it. It even went all the way to making the paper in the New York Times. So I did what I could do to bring attention to what was happening in this small town Ferguson. And what I realized quickly, Matthew, is that Ferguson is everywhere. It's not just in the place that we come to know it. It's anywhere. There is anger, hate and prejudice, racism, all those things built up and we pour it out wherever we pour it. There's Ferguson.
(29:39):
And so I to do the work, and when I realized that even what we were trying to do good was there were some nights things turned bad. I didn't want to be a part of anything bad. Hurt people. Hurt people, healed people, healed people. I wanted to be on the side of healing. I wanted to be on the right side of history. So I said, I need to do something that's going to mean something in a positive way. So that's when I created, I funded, founded my organization, show me Arts Academy. So show me Arts Foundation. It's the 5 0 1 C3. It's the nonprofit show me Arts Academy is the classes that we would teach from and go inside the school with the curriculum. And we expose children to all different forms of the art to all disciplines, from music to theater, to dance to dj, engineering, poetry.
(30:34):
And that's what we would present to the schools at the community centers, at the churches and afterschool programs. And I was able to freely give to over 3000 children in our city exposing them to this. I raised money and I took a group of children, black, white, from 17 different zip codes from around the St. Louis metropolitan area. I have one of my students, he lived in Kirkwood and he was a freshman, I believe at the time in Kirkwood. And Alex is now I think a sophomore or a junior in college. But his life was changed because he was a part of that group. And I raised money and I took that group, I took that group all over Washington, dc, New Jersey and New York to actually perform. This is Alex.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
I did the plays, musicals at the time, just because I thought I was also in drama classes. So it was kind of a requirement, kind of just I liked doing them, but I got cast as like a shrub on there and that really set me off. I didn't like that. I think I was an ensemble member.
Dr. Marty Casey (32:02):
So I'm just letting you just see Alex. But Alex to this day, he calls me his aunt. I'm like his aunt and he's the whitest white guy you'll ever meet from Kirkwood, which I shouldn't be hanging out with him anyway, from Kirkwood. We grew up in Webster. We don't do that. So I crossed all barriers, racial barriers, demographic barriers and age barriers, all of that to love on Alex, and Alex loves on me. And that's how we make change. That's how we evoke change. So I was able to do that after the unrest of Ferguson because I didn't fight for just black children to not get shot and lay out and bleed out in the streets. I fought for no child to be treated that way.
Matthew Kennedy (32:57):
Pretty cool. I mean, I expected a simple story that was So that was the beginning of your foundation? Yes. So did the arts academy that turned into what you're doing now?
Dr. Marty Casey (33:18):
So they're two separate things. I still have human arts at the foundation, and then my new company is Gunn Institute. And so with Gunn Institute, I get a lot of contracts to go and speak or to do, do programming inside of schools. And so that's what we do now. We're actually excited because we start a new district next week, which is Riverview district in Riverview. They've had a lot of unfortunate issues this year with fighting in their schools. And so that's when the superintendent reached out to me and was like, Hey, we heard about what you do and we want to bring you in to work with us. And so we are going to be doing that. But Riverview is also the school that I told you about that I got expelled from. I get a chance full circle to go back and make my wrong.
Matthew Kennedy (34:15):
What areas have you impacted with this? Have you gone all across the country?
Dr. Marty Casey (34:23):
Well, pretty much. I mean, I've done, oh, I've done a lot with if from a speaking engagement to performance to exposing show me Arts academy. I also do a one-woman show. I'm an actress. So I mean, yeah, I've been all around the country several times around the country doing stuff.
Matthew Kennedy (34:47):
That sounds pretty fun.
Dr. Marty Casey (34:49):
Yeah, it is. And it's about exposure. You have to get out of your own backyard because if all you know is your own backyard, then you only know how green your grass is. You won't have any appreciation for anybody else or even know the worth of what your grass is worth. If you don't go and see that somebody across the street has no grass at all, then you know, oh, you know what? We're pretty good over here. So sometimes you got to get outside of your own backyard. Go see some other yards.
Matthew Kennedy (35:18):
That's part of why I went all the way to Tennessee.
Dr. Marty Casey (35:22):
Yeah. How old are you
Matthew Kennedy (35:24):
Freshman? 18 right now.
Dr. Marty Casey (35:27):
Okay.
Matthew Kennedy (35:29):
That's all the questions I have. Do you have any other comments or just anything you want to add on?
Dr. Marty Casey (35:38):
No, I think that if there's anything that I want to say to you, Matthew is always lead with your heart. And there's absolutely no way that I know who your mother is, and I know that what she's instilled in you. So no matter what you hear, no matter what others may say, no matter what their experiences are, you leave with your heart. I know you were raised, right? And I know that sometimes we get exposed to, or we're around and we hear things coming from other people, then they try to evoke those things on us. But I want you to be a standup guy and I want you to say, Hey, let's not say that. Or let's not show up like that until we really know the full story of people. Let's not just look at people and think a certain way. And I would say the same thing if I was on the other end right now, talking to a black kid, you leave with your heart. You don't just assume that everybody's going to mistreat you or what have you. Give people a fair chance. I want to say that to you today because sometimes the essence, the energy of what's happening in our world right now, we are coming up on 10 years of Ferguson. The 10th year anniversary is August 14th, August 9th, 2024, 10 years. That happened 10 years ago. And it feels like it happened yesterday.
Matthew Kennedy (37:10):
It does,
Dr. Marty Casey (37:12):
Yeah. Why? Because we haven't fixed it. That's why we're also in a presidential election.
(37:22):
We also know what happened after the presidential election the first time where everybody kind of spad out and we had an insurrection to come after that. There is no telling what's going to come down the pipeline, Matthew. So it's going to take people like me and you to make the difference and to keep a level head and to make sure other people are doing the right thing. So if there's anything that I wanted to say to you, I just want to say, Matthew, you remember I just showed you one of my favorite people is Alex. Alex is my heart. He does not come home. He lives in Florida. He does not come home and not come and see Ms. Marty. That's who he is and what he does. And I love him for that. And I just want to say to you that I expect the same thing out of you and ever you need me for anything more than an interview. It might just be like, Hey, this one thing happened and I want to call Ms. Marty and see what she thinks. I'm available to you.