- Hey, what's up everybody.
I'm back with Michael Ealy
as we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Today.
One of Dr. King's most memorable sermons
was called "Love Your Enemies."
He said, "Love has within it a redemptive power.
"And there is a power there
"that eventually transforms individuals."
Well, my next story is living proof
of what can happen when we show love
and compassion to those who see us as enemies.
It began when a white supremacist was assigned
a black probation officer, like what?
Now this unlikely pair share a beautiful friendship.
Let's welcome Michael and Tiffany, everybody.
(applause)
Okay, so wait,
before we get confused, I'm gonna, Michael K,
I'm gonna say you're Michael K and you're Michael Ealy,
'cause this, there's two Michaels now.
Like, who's on first?
So Michael K and Tiffany, let me introduce you.
This is Michael Ealy, you wanna say hey?
- Hey. - Of course.
(laughing) Hey!
- She said of course.
(laughs) Love you.
Well, Michael-- - Oh, and hi Michael K, too.
- No, no, I love it.
So Michael K, you were involved
in the white supremacy movement
from a very young age, right?
- Yes ma'am.
- How did that happen?
- When I was like three or four years old,
my family moved us to Pennsylvania.
We lived in the projects
and we were like the only white family there.
So we got bullied a lot, we got picked on a lot
because we didn't fit in with everybody.
You know, and just I had a few bad encounters
and stuff and that just started stemming my hatred
and my dislike and discontent.
And when I got about 12 years old,
I was locked up for, believe it or not, shoplifting condoms.
- Oh my gosh, I'm freaking out 'cause I have a little boy,
and oh my gosh, that is very young, Michael K.
- Yeah, it was.
So I ended up getting locked up,
and that's where I got introduced to people
that were like me.
That were white supremacists, we had Fourth Reichs,
you know, we had neo-Nazis in there.
And these are people I attached myself to
because they were people like me
that were in situations like me.
And at that time I was very, I had a lot of anger
and a lot of rage in me.
For one of the things, is for not understanding
why I wasn't liked and I wasn't accepted.
And then as time went on, I was about 15 years old.
I started getting involved more with the higher ups
in our organization, handing out path pamphlets,
doing protests at the state Capitol.
It was a...
very, very, very bad time for me
when my mind was really impressionable.
It still hurts and haunts me to this day.
I don't know why I was like that.
- Yeah.
Well, you said that you got caught up
in a lot of violence as well, right?
- Yeah, because anybody that wasn't white,
we were beating the heck out of them with baseball bats
or white women that were with African Americans,
we would say derogative words to them,
spit in their face and tell them they weren't worthy.
And it's like, I look at it now
because the way I bring my children up,
my children ain't like that,
and I don't want my kids to go through
the same things I did and experience that stuff.
- You know, children are impressionable.
Like, you know, and they will follow where you lead.
And if you get in a situation where you are surrounded
by people that are yelling at the top of their lungs
one thing and they seem to be
of some kind of brotherhood to you or family to you
and you haven't felt like you belong,
that's a recipe for that situation.
And I think what's even more important
and why I love this story, as unfortunate as it did start,
you know, I think it's the point of all of this.
It's the point of what we're experiencing now
in society is still is like, you are proof.
You are proof that hearts can change.
And I know that a lot of us are like,
oh, people will never change,
people say that all the time.
But you are walking proof that it's possible.
So Tiffany, you were aware of Michael's history
when you were assigned to him.
Were you not scared to death?
- I would say I was nervous.
Michael's, I assumed Michael's caseload
because the caseloads got switched
and I was assigned to him.
I don't get to pick and choose what cases
I accept and which cases I deny.
So when I reviewed his file and saw his tattoos,
his criminal history, it made me a little nervous,
but not to the point where I wasn't going
to make contact with him.
- Tiffany, I'm just curious,
what did you see when you showed up at Michael K's house?
Like he's laughing, like what happened?
I wanna know that conversation.
- Well, let me tell you.
So it was around dusk time,
and when I arrived, his pit bull was in the yard,
and I pulled up in the vehicle, the county work vehicle.
I honked the horn, I went up to the dog
and the dog licked my hand, it was friendly,
and I went inside the gate.
And I have to remind you, I was by myself.
A lot of times with my department that I worked with
as a probation officer Canal county,
we sometimes look like SWAT.
We wear bulletproof vests,
you have your belt on with your gun.
So when I arrived to the house,
the dog was friendly and Michael walked out of his trailer
and he had a white t-shirt, a tank top.
And you could see his tattoos on all of his arms
and he had shorts on, I believe, and tattoos down his legs.
And he walked over to the vehicle,
and I was standing outside the vehicle at that point,
and he says to me, "Are you my PO?"
I said, "Yes, I'm your on your probation officer.
"There's been a change in caseloads
"and I'm gonna be working with you."
And he immediately asked, "Are you by yourself?"
And I took a step back.
We already had some distance between us,
and I put my hand on my gun.
And I said, "Yes, I'm by myself.
"Is there gonna be a problem?"
In a self-defense stance to prepare myself
in case he was gonna attack.
And instead what surprised me the most
was Michael stuck out his hand to shake my hand,
and he said, "I respect you."
And it threw me back.
I asked him, I said, "What's going on?
"Why do you say that?"
And he said, "You're the first person,
"a black woman, to come out to work with me by yourself."
No one had ever come to see him at his residence,
either on probation or parole by themselves.
I am a strong believer in listening to my gut,
and if I just didn't feel right going to this residence,
I would not have stopped and made contact with him.
But I chose to make that decision and I'm very glad I did.
I think it really set the precedent and the tone
for our relationship to work together and grow from there.
And that's what happened.
- My, that's crazy.
Well, Tiffany, you say after a while,
you saw a change in Michael, right?
So what happened?
- So during my course of supervision with Michael,
Michael had, wanna say, Hitler pictures
or stuff that was derogatory.
The stars and bars flags hanging up in his house,
inside his residence.
And I recall a time where I went to his house
and I said to him, and I said it in a joking matter,
"Michael, why don't you take these things down,
"all the negativity, and put up smiley faces?
"Maybe that will bring some happiness
"and smiles to your life."
And surprisingly, he did that.
I really was shocked when over the course of time,
I went back to his house one day
and I noticed everything was gone
and he had posters up of smiley faces in his house.
And he was like, "See, did you see what I did?
"I took the stuff down
"and I put up this poster like you said."
Or this poster of smiley faces.
And that just really threw me back,
like, okay, he's listening to me.
And Michael just continued to,
he was always respectful to me.
And we just continued to establish our relationship
as his probation officer, him as my client.
And we just progressed.
- I love that, very bold.
Michael, Michael Ealy-- - [Michael K] She was.
- Yeah, I was like, that's amazing.
Michael Ealy, would you have felt safe
on your own in that situation?
- Listen, I think, I think we owe a debt of gratitude
to Tiffany because, you know, not only your professionalism,
but, you know, what you do on a daily basis, you know,
in terms of trying to make the world a better place
for those who have served time
and for us who haven't in a lot of ways.
And I think, you know, I don't know what I would've done
in that situation to answer your question, Kelly,
but, you know, I think if it was my job,
then I think perhaps I would've had
the same amount of confidence, I don't know.
But I applaud you, Tiffany,
thank you so much for doing that
because the work that was done in this particular situation
is absolutely groundbreaking.
I mean, it's groundbreaking.
- [Kelly] I agree.
- Hi Kelly, I'm Carston Reed.
I'm 11 years old and I'm from Montgomery, Alabama.
I'm proud to be standing in front
of the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
the sight of some of the most famous marches
for civil rights.
This is where icons like Martin Luther King Jr.,
John Lewis, and everyday heroes
who fight for the justice on bloody Sunday
advanced the cause for equality in America.
The inspiration of Martin Luther King Jr.
reminds me that my generation must continue to stand up
for equality for everyone.
(soft music)
(applause)
- Thank you so much, Carston.
You did an amazing job.
I am back with Michael Ealy
along with reformed white supremacists, Michael K,
and probation officer, Tiffany.
We're all honoring the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Most people might assume a white supremacist
and black probation officer
would consider themselves true enemies,
but today they are great friends.
Their bond proves that Dr. King's message
to love our enemies can really bring about change.
So Michael and Tiffany, was there a moment when you realized
for sure that you were gonna be friends?
- I think it's when I was getting off
of probation and stuff,
she gave me her personal number.
And she goes, "Mike, I would like
"to stay in touch with you."
I love that picture.
Why do you wanna stay in touch?
She goes, "Michael, you've came a long ways.
"I wanna be there for you."
And she did and it's funny,
I end up getting married like a year later.
She was the only African American person at my wedding.
And that threw everybody through a loop.
They're like, "What the heck is going on here?"
That's how much of an impact,
I'm shaking right now, it's not even funny.
That's how much of an impact she had.
She became family to me.
- What about her really led you to go,
all right, I'll take the posters down, I'll try that on?
Like and put up smiling faces?
What made you do that?
- Honestly, nobody liked me, nobody wanted to be around me.
If you would've seen me with shaved heads,
swastikas, and everything on my body, nobody approached me.
Nobody would approach me.
It's fueling hate with hate.
People looked at me with hatred because what I was,
and then I looked at them even more hateful
because the way they looked at me,
and I wasn't supposed to like them.
And when she made that remark,
she came up to my house that first day,
it totally stumped me because I didn't even have people
of my peer come to my house by themselves.
Everybody came in twos or if there was one,
they came with a sheriff.
I thought for sure, no joke, she'll tell you,
I thought either they're trying to get rid of her
out of the probation office because they didn't like her
or they were trying to set me up.
(laughing)
That was the first thing that came to my mind
because honestly, I don't know why the hell
I listened to her.
I don't, because she's just to me another person.
But she was one person that treated me like a man.
Treated me like a human being instead of a number.
I didn't have anybody treated me like that
for a very, very, very long time.
It's like this woman that I'm supposed to fricking hate,
why is she doing this?
Why is she there?
And we still talk to this,
we've been friends now for a very long time.
We still don't know why we're in each other's lives.
- Like where do you think you'd be, Michael K?
Do you think you would've gone back?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
Or been dead.
I just, with her encounter, and I'm saying this now,
I'm realizing it now,
it takes so much time and energy to hate, you know?
When hate consumes you, it's everything.
And she opened my heart, she found that love was possible.
- This is just a, I guess a personal question
off the cuff, but is it a scary thing as well?
Like, you know, you're a part of this big thing
and then you decide to walk away and say, it's not okay.
Is that a little fearful for you
of like people that you knew?
- It was for a while,
and it was really bad because I moved out of state.
I couldn't change my life from where I was living.
Don't get me wrong, it came with a really big sacrifice.
I've gone years without seeing my kids.
I went years without actually doing it.
Anytime I came into town, I would have to sneak out,
sneak in on a plane late at night or early in the morning.
I wasn't so much worried about me,
but what could happen to my kids
because that's one of the things that we did
is we don't necessarily attack you,
we'll go after the ones you love.
As far as me, because I was one of those peoples of,
that we went after our own
for walking away from our lifestyle.
We were branded.
So I know how rough that was,
and I know the consequences that came with this.
So it was a big sacrifice I did to find myself
and get this hate out of my heart.
- But what a beautiful step it was, my man.
That's an amazing story and so powerful.
Michael Ealy, I've been seeing you.
He's been, I can feel that you're dying to say something.
You've just been moving so much on this screen.
Have you ever heard anything like this?
- Yeah, you know, this is an incredible, incredible story.
Mike, what you, that kind of hate that you describe
that you feel when people look at you
because they see the tattoos and everything,
just for the record,
this is what a lot of black people feel everyday.
And so that, I understand what you're talking about.
Two, Tiffany, I think you are living proof,
you're kind of an angel, to be honest with you.
And you're living proof that if you can lead with humanity,
respect, and love, then the barrier,
the barrier of hate can be broken.
But it takes two, I think that's the key
that I'm taking away from this is that,
both of you had have some sort of mutual respect
for the other, and that foundation
has led to this friendship.
Kelly, this is a story.
This, you know, how you do your year wrap up episode
with all the great stories?
I don't know how you beat this one.
My God, this is fantastic, fantastic.
- No it's, I was so moved by it.
And I just, and I think what you said is
it does take two people.
That desire, you know, has to come from both sides,
you know, of the story.
And so I really hope that this story affects people
on the level that it did in my heart.
Like, 'cause I'll tell you what,
I'm with you Michael Ealy, I was like,
when it comes to not only the year end,
but however long I do this show for,
this will be one of my favorite moments of any season.
Thank you so much, y'all, for joining us today.