Black History Month Episode - Judge Yvette McGee Brown, Female Trailblazer in Law

BAB Podcast Black History Month Episode. Judge Yvette McGee Brown. Judge Brown was the first African American woman elected to the Franklin County Common Pleas Court in 1992, and in January 2011, she became the first African American woman to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Ohio. 

Judge Brown graduated from Columbus City Schools and attended Ohio University with a degree in Journalism/Public Relations, followed by her Juris Doctorate from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She has honorary degrees from Urbana University, Ohio Dominican University, and Wilberforce University.
Judge Brown has three children and two grandchildren. She is married to Tony Brown, a retired educator.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

Be a baller. Welcome to Be A Baller, where we discuss how to build a lifelong legacy. I'm your host, Coach Tim Brown. Today, I'll be talking with a very good friend, a college classmate from, we'll call it the Ohio University, about building a legacy as an African-American female trailblazer. Judge Yvette McGee Brown was the first African-American Ohio Supreme Court judge.

SPEAKER_01: 0:31

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SPEAKER_03: 1:14

Today on the show, Judge Brown will share the impact of her mother and grandmother in helping her to have a heart of service to the community and families. Judge Brown, welcome to Beer Baller Podcast. Thank

SPEAKER_04: 1:24

you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25

Thank you. Yeah, as I was... Looking forward to this interview. You know, I know we spent our days down on the yard at OU and all that. But really, I want to really focus in on this, these two episodes, a couple episodes about mothers. This will air during Mother's Day weekend. Oh, good. So I wanted to air this. And I thought about you. And I often heard you talk about the impact of your mother and grandmother. Can you talk about their impact in your life growing up in Columbus?

SPEAKER_04: 1:52

Yeah, you know, I was really fortunate. And I really saw that when I was on the juvenile court, because You know, kids don't get to choose who they're born to. And my grandmother was just this paragon of strength at a time where I used to say she loved America when America didn't love her back. You know, she was born in the Jim Crow South. She came to Columbus when she was 17 to be a domestic. And yet she still believed in the promise of America. She had eight children. She divorced my grandfather in the late 40s, early 50s. 50s because my grandfather had a problem with drinking. And she used to tell me that she'd have to meet him at the plant gate on Fridays to get the paycheck or be gone by the time he got home. And she decided that if she had to do that and struggle that hard with him, she could do it by herself. So it's unusual for a woman in that period to get divorced. But she raised her eight kids. All of them got through high school. She lost two adult sons who were murdered and the police never tried to find the killer. But despite the disappointments in life, she still pushed us and believed that if we worked hard, that we could be anything we wanted to be. And I just, I like to think some of her spirit is in me. I was fortunate that I had a grandmother and a mother who put us first. I never woke up at home afraid of who was in my house or worried that I would be beaten or sexually abused or any of that.

SPEAKER_03: 3:25

Can you share with us some some sayings you still remember your mother and grandmother saying. Oh, you know, it's so

SPEAKER_04: 3:33

funny because I often think like, what will my grandkids say about me? Like I won't have any of that wisdom. But one of the things I tell students, you and I've talked a lot about how it's amazing how lucky you get when you work hard. That's what you would always say to me. Right. And when I would come home from school, when I was younger, my grandmother lived with us for two years because my mother got very ill. And I remember coming home one day complaining about and this would have been in elementary school complaining about an elementary school teacher and I didn't think she was being fair. My grandma looked at me and she said, so? Who told you life was fair? Get up in your room and study harder.

SPEAKER_05: 4:10

You

SPEAKER_04: 4:10

know, my grandma did not suffer any excuses for poor performance, right? She would say things to me like, it doesn't matter where you start. It matters where you finish. And my favorite saying that I think pushed me all through school because I was not the pretty girl in school. So I was the girl with the thick glasses and the unibrow, which was probably good because it turned me into a very good student. I didn't have to worry about other stuff. But my grandmother would always say to me, she said, you know, you need to go to school and you need to learn everything those teachers have to teach you, because once they've taught it to you, they can never take it back. And that is so powerful. I say that to this day. You know, you have to be a lifelong learner. learner. You know, you have to learn from other people. I used to watch people as a young lawyer. I would watch lawyers that I admired. I'd watch how they dressed, how they spoke in court. I mean, what she said to me has stuck with me to this day.

SPEAKER_03: 5:12

Wow. Education is truly that passport to the future.

SPEAKER_04: 5:15

Oh, yeah, it is. It's the game changer, right? They can't take that away. No. And you can have everything else. And I said, I said, I say when I speak at high schools like this beauty, it goes away like it's At the end of the day, you can be the best looking chick in high school, the best athlete in high school. But at the end of the day, you got to have something to back that up. All of that fades. And then what are you left with? Your brain is the one thing you can always count

SPEAKER_03: 5:40

on. Always count on that. Wow. You know, you once shared about this nice allowance you used to get. Yeah, zero. Talk about that allowance.

SPEAKER_04: 5:52

You know, my mother had me when she was 18 And she had two children after me. We all had different fathers. She had to work two or three jobs raising us. And I always say my mom is a great person, had bad taste in men, but a great person. And so she was working to put food on the table. And I remember one time when I asked her for an allowance and she looked at me like I had just left my body. She said, allowance? She goes, I allow you to live in my house, to eat my food. To use my heat and my hot water. That's the allowance that you

SPEAKER_03: 6:33

have. You know, I know, speaking of education, I know that's always been important to you. Can you talk about some teachers that encourage you to be the student you are?

SPEAKER_04: 6:44

You know, it's funny because Judge Duncan. So I was the first black woman on the Supreme Court of Ohio. Judge Duncan was the first black person on the Ohio Supreme Court and then became the first black federal district court judge. And he decided the NAACP versus the Columbus City Schools desegregation decision. And over the years, he'd be I won't go through the whole story about how he became a mentor to me, literally cold call. But he is somebody who influenced my life. And I often asked him, like, I don't know that the desegregation decision was the best decision for us as black people or for the city schools, because it led to tremendous white flight. Right. And I remember saying to him when I was young. I was like 17. I was like, why can't you just make our schools better? Why do we have to leave? Because when I went to Mifflin High School and the Columbus City Schools were segregated and deemed so by Judge Duncan in 1976. But when I went to Mifflin, I went to middle school from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. And I went to high school in the same building from 7.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. Now imagine your 12-year-old daughter not getting on the school bus until 12 p.m. to go to school at one o'clock and coming home at six o'clock in the evening. And my mother wasn't home with us. Anything could have happened, but she had to work. Right. So I had the while that sounds horrible. The teachers at Mifflin, most of them look like us. Right. And they cared about our success. Miss Henderson, Miss Boyd, Miss Turner. You know, they were the teachers who Miss Henderson taught biology. Right. Miss Turner taught chemistry. Ms. Boyd taught, it was called typing then. It's now called keyboarding. But my grandmother told me that if I learned to type, I would never be without a job. Brilliant, right? When I hit OU's campus, that was my work-study job. I worked in an academic department typing for professors. I didn't want to take typing, but my grandmother was thinking, like for my grandmother and my mom, if I had got a job with the government, that would have been nirvana. They never imagined any of this, right? But she was preparing me to have skills so that I be able to support myself. And I think about the influence, not just of the academics of Ms. Turner, Ms. Henderson, Ms. Boyd. We had a Black guidance counselor and we had a Black assistant principal. Mr. Kata Henry was the principal. Seeing them and their interest in us, they refused to let us fail. And so what happened is, is like Ms. Turner, she taught chemistry and she would have a group of us to her house. She didn't live far from the school. On Saturday morning, to study formulas with hot dogs and potato chips. Now, if you did this now, people would accuse you of being improper with students. But she did that because she's from the South. She wanted us to do well. When I was in the hallway, my locker was right outside Ms. Henderson's classroom. And when I was being a typical 16-year-old girl being a little fresh with my football-playing boyfriend, it was Ms. Henderson who looked at me and said, what are you doing? Get to class. And then the guidance counselor came Right. Right. Right. Like our coaches had coaches from Central State, Wilberforce, West Virginia, Marshall. They invited them down to see our players. So what happened when this deseg order came out, I got to graduate from Mifflin. But both my brothers got bused to Beechcroft, which then was considered like a suburban school, right? Both my brothers played varsity football from freshman to senior year, great football players, but they never went to college. And I don't think Right.

SPEAKER_03: 11:29

Wow. So how was that going from, you know, we were classmates together at Ohio University. So you go from this to the middle of nowhere, Athens, Ohio, you know, how was that transition?

SPEAKER_04: 11:42

It was interesting. I had never been around that many people that didn't look like me. And back then, I mean, now you go to college campuses, you can't believe how spoiled these kids are, right? Like, it's like there's carving stations in the cafeteria, right? Yeah, mine was the great house. best friend but and we had gang showers there were none of these like little individual showers right and I literally can remember being in the shower and having some of the white girls just staring at me like I'll be like what is wrong with right and so it was it was culture shock but I don't know I just I just kind of pushed through I mean I didn't I took me a while to feel like I belonged there I had a black roommate from East Cleveland. So she was a lot of fun. And then the day the day we went to move in our door, I was on the West Green, which is where all the athletes live. And so the day we went to move in, there was a black fraternity. Omega Psi Phi was there as to help us

SPEAKER_05: 12:44

move and carry our stuff up. They

SPEAKER_04: 12:49

were the greeters. So I spent my whole freshman year with the cues. So that made the adjustment a little easier. But no, it was an adjustment. But when you're driven, like my mother said, you got to make this work. You got to go there and get it because we don't have any room for failure here. And I was lucky that I like people. I get along with people. And somehow I made friends. And you have to sometimes reach beyond the comfort, like reach out to people that may not look like you and that you think may not share your life experience amazing how we look at people and assume they don't understand where we come from but just because they don't look like you doesn't mean they didn't come from circumstances similar or sometimes worse than what you came from and you've got to be open to reaching across the aisle and having those conversations

SPEAKER_03: 13:40

yeah I think those life lessons there led you to your success you know just being able to do that watch you at OU and how you can go you know you were I think you were over at Baker Center

SPEAKER_04: 13:50

yeah I was yeah

SPEAKER_03: 13:51

took my job I told my wife because I Did you apply for that job?

UNKNOWN: 13:57

Did you apply for that job?

SPEAKER_03: 13:58

Yeah, I applied for that job. Yeah, you was over the whole, over the whole deal. That's right. Black, white, you sat at that desk and everything went through you when they walked in there. That was my job. But

SPEAKER_04: 14:09

yeah. Yeah, make a student program.

SPEAKER_03: 14:11

That was it. That was it. That was it. But it was just a blessing. Through OU, how did that prepare you for law school? And I know you came to OU. Did you want to be a lawyer when you came to Ohio University? I didn't. I wanted to be a journalist.

SPEAKER_04: 14:22

And I should, To be fair, I didn't know what I wanted to be, right? When they ask you to declare a major, I'd been on the school newspaper. So I said, oh, I want to be a journalist, right? And at that point, every black person in America wanted to be in D.C. So I was like, oh, I'm going to go work on the Hill. I'll be like a press secretary or something. But there were two pivotal things that influenced me at OU. One was Carol Harder. And I suspect she's not alive anymore. But Carol Harder was the dean of students at OU. And this would have been 1978, 1979. She went on to be the president of UNLV after she left. FOU, but Carol Harder was fierce. She was the only woman on President Ping's executive team, dean of students. And somehow as a sophomore, I was put on her dean of students advisory committee. So we would meet every month. And so I would watch her because she was fearless, man. I saw men quake in front of her. And remember I told you, I watched people. I was like, Ooh, I want to be like that. Like she was, she was just so strong. She didn't suffer fools. But if you needed her she was there for you right and she was a white woman that impressed me that she was at the top of this university when there were no other women like her and she was running things right and then she goes on to be the president of UNLV she was one somebody that really impressed upon me how to be a strong woman you could succeed and then Sandra Haggerty who was such a dear person she moved to Arizona after retiring Sandra was at my wedding she was I think pivotal in this life story for me because before her I had Hugh Culberton as my advisor and back then you had to go take your you had a piece of paper which kids don't know anything about piece of paper where you wrote down your schedule you took it to your advisor and they had to approve it and Hugh barely looked up when I walked in right so near the end of my sophomore year I go and I talk to Sandra it was just lucky for me that Sandra came to OU my sophomore year she had gotten divorced She had had her own syndicated column in the LA Times. She had three daughters, black woman, just beautiful, smart. And I got assigned as her advisee. And so when I meet with her, she says to me, what are we doing with this journalism degree? And I said, oh, you know, I think I'm going to go to DC. I want to, I want to work on a congressional staff, maybe be a press secretary. I think that'd be awesome. And she goes, you want to go to DC? And I said, yes. And she said, well, I think you should go to law school. I'm like, I said, I wanted to be a journalist. Why would I go to law school? And she said, well, she said, think about it. She said, everybody in D.C. is a lawyer. You've clearly got aptitude for it because I've taken a lot of political science classes. She said, it's three more years of your life. You'll be 25 years old. You'll have the world by a string. You should go to law school and then you can still go to D.C. And then, you know, I'm 20 years old. That sounded crazy because who goes to college for three more years? I was trying to get through four. And my grandma I came home that summer and my grandmother was sitting in this oversized chair. She used to smoke cigarettes and drink Pepsi and watch game shows and knit or crochet. And I told her that this professor wanted me to go to law school. And I said, Granny, this woman is crazy. I said, who goes to college till they're 25? You know, I'm just going on with all my 20 year old wisdom. And my grandmother doesn't even look up at me as she's crocheting. And she goes, well, if you're going to live to be 25 Wow. Why not be 25 and be a lawyer versus 25 and not? Is that simple, right? And then after that, she was on the phone all summer telling all her friends that her grandbaby was going to law school. So I was kind of

SPEAKER_05: 18:16

stuck.

SPEAKER_04: 18:17

But Sandra, she just became such a dear friend. I mean, I told her all the time before she moved, like she sent me, you know, as Miss Bronze 1980 at OU. So she sent me and she was cleaning out her desk when she retired and she found the program and she wrote on it. When were we this young and sent it to me? And I told her she was that pivotal difference in my life. I mean, who knows where I was going without her? But she made me believe it was possible.

SPEAKER_03: 18:47

It's something how God sends the right people at the right time. You know, say that he has a plan for us. Yes. He has not our plan. Your plan was to go to D.C. His plan. was for even greater things yes we look back on anything now you could have gone to dc been a press secretary but that's that but look at you now yeah when we follow his plan the people he's sending to i say

SPEAKER_04: 19:10

that to kids all the time you know no matter where you come from if you're just quiet for a moment there is somebody extending their hand to you you know when the teacher like even the guidance counselor in high school when she told me i was too smart not to go to college i could have been like get out my business you know and and just you know thinking i'm know everything. But I accepted that. There were so many people, to your point, along the path who extended themselves to me for no reason other than they just wanted to help me succeed. And you have to be smart enough in that moment to just take the hand. What have you got to lose?

SPEAKER_03: 19:46

Like your grandma, you'll just be 25. Hey there,

SPEAKER_02: 19:56

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SPEAKER_03: 20:33

Speaking of that, as we expound on that, can you talk about some other mentors when you first got into being a lawyer or whatnot? Can you talk about some of those mentors in your life?

SPEAKER_04: 20:43

Yeah, Judge Duncan was one. I'll talk about him a little later. But really, there were a couple. And surprisingly, Greg Leshetka, who was the city attorney in Columbus, Republican mayor and city attorney. When I was in law school, first year law student, I applied to work in his office. And he didn't know me. I interviewed with him. He never asked me my party affiliation. I'm a Democrat, but he hired me. And Greg ran a nonpartisan office. I mean, it was a fun office. Congresswoman Debbie Price was my supervisor. Bruce Johnson, who went on to be lieutenant governor with Taft, was my office mate. Probably, I'd say probably 80% of the office went on to be judges. I mean, it was just a great time of learning. We worked And what I loved about Greg, which again, I took from him when I was in his position, is he always took the time to write you a note. If he heard a compliment, he would always send a note to say, hey, so and so told me what a great job you did this morning. And those kinds of things, they're little things, but they mean so much when you're starting out. Janet Jackson, who was the Columbus City Attorney, first black woman on the bench in Franklin County. She was a mentor. She interviewed me when I was in law school. law school she we had such a good time that she almost made me late she not almost she made me late for my interview with the attorney general um but janet janet was a mentor in many respects one is i love the way she dressed she was fierce i was like we don't have to wear black and gray she's like no you do i don't she's like she said when you get to be where i am you don't have to wear black and gray and you know whenever i would i remember when i was waiting on bar results to come out because you know you take the bar at the end of july but the results don't come out to October. So you have all these nightmares about, oh my God, I didn't pass. What's going to happen? And I remember being in her office one day, I was having anxiety and I was like, oh my God, I know I didn't pass. And she was a section chief. Like I'm a first year, I'm a three month lawyer, not even a first year. And she's like, I'm like, I know I didn't pass. Are they going to fire me? She's like, she looked and she goes, you pass, get out of my office and go to work. And I was like, so, and she's the one who told me you have to get involved in community. She said, it's not okay for you to just go to work and go home. You've got to pay it for You got to get out in your community and do something. So that's what started my community service. Cindy Lazarus was a political mentor. I mean, there were just a lot of people along the

SPEAKER_03: 23:12

way. You were being a trailblazer, being elected to the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, domestic relations, juvenile divisions, first African-American woman, also being the first African-American female justice on Ohio Supreme Court. But what I want you to talk about some of those innovative programs. Oh, yeah. I mean, you created some programs. to help families. It wasn't just about them sitting in front of you and you hitting the gavel. Talk about some of those programs that you implemented.

SPEAKER_04: 23:40

Yeah. You know, being on the juvenile court, you see... You just see kids where you're like, if you had just been given a little bit of chance, right? Just an opportunity. And so a couple of programs that we started, one is the SMART program. It was our truancy intervention program. And boy, this is what I mean about somehow you have to be willing to say, I could have got on the bench and done what everybody else was doing, right? You know, this is how we do it. They kept telling me, like when I got elected, I remember the administrative judge saying, I said, I'm going to do half juvenile and I'm going to do two days of juvenile and three days a domestic. And they're like, no, we only do one day of juvenile here. And I said, well, you only do one day of juvenile. I'm doing two days of juvenile, sometimes three. And he was like, well, you can't do that. I'm like, yes, I can. I'm an elected judge. I can do what I want with my docket. And I would always review when there were decisions made to hold kids in detention. I required that those be brought to my courtroom at the end of every day and I would sign off on them or not. And they're like, well, you're holding up the process. I don't care because you're not going to be holding kids. And I don't agree And so I went in and this was advice I got from Cindy, understanding that I was an elected official. You're not my boss. This may be the way you guys do it, but I'm going to do it different. And the one thing that I learned by looking at all of my holds and releases, and I did slow down the process. I did that intentionally because I wanted to see who are we holding and why and making sure there's fairness in those decisions. And two, I never tried a case, a serious felony case with a kid who went to school every day. Never. And so as I started to look at that and I started to talk to our protective services people, you started to see a pattern emerging, right? You start seeing kids who are not going to school in elementary school. Those kids then by middle school are barely showing up at all and they're hanging out on the streets with gangs. The one thing you know for certain is an elementary school kid is not making a decision not to go to school. That's a parent decision. And the one thing that would frustrate me is that the social services would get involved too late. So we started this program and oh my God, people, the prosecutor was mad at me, my colleagues, but I said, look, I'll do the extra work. I'm not asking for you to decrease my docket. I will do it. So we started this program. Ohio has compulsory school attendance. It's a law. You know, from first grade on, you have to go to school. I knew this principal at Burroughs Elementary on the west side. Her name was Jill. She was a force of nature. So I got with her and I got with the head of our protective services department and we created this program called the smart program so jill notified me of any student who had five unexcused absences those parents the parents of those students got a letter signed by me on court stationery saying ohio has compulsory school attendance failure to send your child to school is a first degree misdemeanor punishable by six months in jail and or a thousand dollar fine you are required to meet with the court social worker at the school at the And for 85% of the cases that resolved the problem because they knew somebody was paying attention for those 15% that didn't resolve the problem. That's when I got social services involved early. These kids are second and third grade. There were parents there who need help. We found one family that was literally living in a motel six motel room. We were able to help that family. We found a mom who was working as a stripper at night and didn't get home till four in the morning and was able to help that family. just oversleeping. So we were able to get her some services and help her find employment that would allow her to get her kids up for work or for school in the morning. We found parents who were drug addicted. So what we did is we got children services involved when there was an opportunity to change the trajectory for this family, not waiting until this kid was committing felonies to say, oh, now we're going to take custody of you. So that program, it was very successful. By the time I left the bench, we were in 38 elementary schools and Columbus City Schools, because I think you just people somehow we had a mother who couldn't read. And so she didn't understand when she got the notices, she would ask her kid to read them to her. So she didn't even realize. So it was those kinds of let's use our power for good and stop what we see is this pathway to just assuming these kids are going to end up being dropouts in the criminal justice system. Did the same thing with drug addicted moms. I could never understand how a mom could allow her kids she could choose the pipe over her kids the crack epidemic was big when I was on the bench and it was actually I was at this judges conference and this doctor from Mary Haven was talking about the crack addiction Bob and I went up to him afterwards and I said I'm not buying it and he goes what do you mean and I said I have women I said I'm a mother if somebody told me I'm taking your kids I would move heaven and earth to get them back and he said you've never been a He said, let me introduce you to some women who have walked this path. And so Grant Schroeder was his name, Dr. Grant Schroeder. He set up a meeting for me in my chambers with three black women who were formerly addicted. One had gone to prison for like 12 years. Another had gone to prison for a couple years and another one hadn't gone at all. But these three women changed my approach to drug addiction. It's what caused me to start the Family Drug Court. I mean, each of them had been through extraordinary trauma. I'll never forget this one woman telling me that at the age of five, she started being sexually abused by the men in her family, like she would come home from school. And so she started drinking to self-medicate at age nine. And it just went from there. Each of them had a horrific story. But the thing that struck me the most is that I said to them, I said, but how do I help? And this one woman said to me, she said, you know, I can remember being pregnant, smoking crack, sitting on the stoop. And I would say, God, God, please make my baby be okay. But I'd still keep smoking. She said, and I could watch a lady like you go by. And yeah, you're black like me. She said, but the distance between me and you is so far that I could never figure out how to get from where I am to where you are. So I would just keep smoking. And she said, you talk about your attraction to your attachment to your children. She said, but we never had that. She said, I couldn't wait for them to get this baby out so I could go and get high she said so you're looking at it from where you sit but not from where we sit right so that was a fundamental change for me so we started the family drug court and every Friday the women and their lawyers would have to agree to participate because if they tested dirty then they were going to face the possibility of being incarcerated but it was for me life changing because there were so many times and there was a woman named Teresa I still have her card at home I never forget this woman she had been with her high school boyfriend since she was 15 they had two kids together and children services kept wanting to take custody of them I kept saying no she's trying because we they went in her house and she had no food in her refrigerator children services stacked the food the refrigerator with food and they go in two weeks later it's completely empty not ketchup not mustard not anything well she had sold it for drugs so I said we're going to put her in treatment but we're not going to take permanent custody of her kids and Because I believe if we can get her well, she can parent these kids. And the one thing I know for certain, the state is not a good parent. No matter how much we say we're taking these kids to give them a bed. We never do. The state is not a good parent. And so Teresa finally got it together. I think about her often and wonder where she is, because when I announced I was leaving the bench. She sent me a card that thanked me for sticking through it with her because she finally got it together. She got her kids. And she wrote on this card, she said, I never knew a woman like you could care about a woman like me. That's what it's about, right? That is what, if you do it right, that is public service.

SPEAKER_03: 32:01

That's powerful. That's a great story. It's a great program. I've heard about them, but now really, really hearing about them, really learning. And what you initiated there, how powerful that is, the impact, the influence that

SPEAKER_04: 32:16

you can have, you know, in that position. The purpose driven life, that first sentence on the first page, it is not about you. Right. And so if you if you're going to make my when I was growing up in the Brittany Hills area, I always wanted to have a life that mattered. I didn't know what it would look like, but I wanted to have a life that I felt made a difference. Right. And so in every position that I've had, I've tried to make a difference. And we all have power. A professor at OU told me this. We all have a sphere of influence. You can have an impact in your sphere of influence. Some people's sphere of influence is small. Some people's are great. But you can have influence right where you are.

SPEAKER_03: 33:17

Speaking of that, what word of wisdom would you give to... I wanted to ask the question about young ladies' interest in serving the community, but I think you kind of hit on that. What encouragement would you give to mothers who are struggling with young men in particular? You've seen them. You've seen them in front of you. What words of encouragement would you give them?

SPEAKER_04: 33:35

My My mother and I had this talk because my mother said to me, she said, I always thought the boys would be okay. And my brothers are okay. They're fine. We live different lives, but they're fine. They have families. They have jobs. I think the one thing I would say to young mothers is this. When you decide to have that child, your life becomes second. It's about them. My mom put us first. We never woke up to strange men walking out of her bedroom. We never just had random people stopping by. She put us first. And that's That means some self-sacrifice. I don't know when my mom slept. She had three kids, two jobs, no husband. And yet she showed up at every football game, every dance recital, every band concert. And so even when you're young, you have this child that's looking to you. You have to put them first. Your needs become secondary to theirs. That's first. Secondly, if you are raising a male child, you have to expose him to good men. Good men. Both my brothers had big brothers through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. You have to surround them with people that give them also a future of who they can be. had never seen Black couples who were married to each other. To each other. That's real. Right? Raising children. That's real. And so he wanted for them to see that, yes, this happens. Right? And we talked about everything with these young men, right? But you have to expose your children because when I was growing up, even though we were in a low-income area, there were fathers in the homes not in our home but in our neighborhood right we saw men that went to work every day and my mother made sure we had uncles and people that were positive in our lives and so you have to show kids a picture of what the future can be because everybody thinks that everybody else lives like them unless you see what's possible right

SPEAKER_03: 36:26

can't be what you don't see absolutely yes that's no getting around and

SPEAKER_04: 36:30

the only the only difference between those of us who stay married and you and karma have been married longer than me and tony but i always joke about this is you just decide not to leave right marriage is hard right you're bringing two imperfect people together and once you decide that you're going to have children what did I just say you become secondary like unless there's abuse or something like that you gotta stick and stay like we used to everybody goes how have y'all been married 30 years I'm like I'm stubborn and he won't leave so it's

SPEAKER_03: 37:01

like you

SPEAKER_05: 37:02

have to figure

SPEAKER_03: 37:03

out how you're going to make it work that'll do it that'll do it you know and you career, you left the bench to found the Center for Children and Family Advocacy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Can you share about the vision of that center? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 37:16

So I've been on the bench for nine years. So when I ran the first time, I ran against an incumbent judge and was fortunate to beat him. God had a plan. I didn't think I was going to win. The second time I ran, they didn't run anybody against me. So I ran unopposed. And again, everybody kept saying to me, why are you leaving the bench? You can be a judge forever. Like I still had three more years on my second term. But the reality is I don't want to be a judge anymore. I knew when I would watch the news on Sunday night and think, oh my God, they're going to be in my courtroom tomorrow. And I'd get on the judge, I'd park my car and get on the judge's elevator and I'd just pray and be like, okay, God, it's me and you today. That heaviness, that's not a space I can live in. I like to be happy, right? And so I just started looking for what my next opportunity was. And I had a friend at Children's Hospital who said, we're trying to build this center you would be perfect and it was it was the vision was simply this I had been on the bench long enough where I'd started seeing some of my kids who came through as abused and neglected now coming through as perpetrators right and I felt like there has to be a way to stop this the system remember I said the state's not a good parent so the system was taking custody of these kids and then churning them out right just eating them up so the vision of the center was to take all All of the services that serve children who have been sexually abused or seriously physically abused and put them in one place. And so that these kids, instead of being chewed up by the system, could be supported by the system. So we would have children who were sexually abused spending hours in the children's hospital emergency room where there's trauma treatment going on, gunshot victims, noise. And a lot of these kids were younger than 10. So what we did through the philanthropy of some very generous people and companies here in this community is we built a 42,000 square feet facility freestanding where we put our children's hospital trauma treatment physicians, nurse practitioners, trauma-informed therapists. We took the Columbus Police Department's sexual abuse detective squad, first and second shift, worked out of our building. We were their headquarters. And then across the hall from them, we had children's services, sexual abuse investigators. They were there. We had prosecutors that rotated in and out. We had domestic violence counselors. The theory being quite simple. So a child, we would see when I was there, 1,400 children a year. 40% of those children were seven or younger. So the goal was that when those children were reported as being sexually abused or seriously physically abused, we put a supportive system around them. You know, instead of having them examined by the physician and then taking them down to the police department, then taking them down to children's services, right? We had a interview room. We had several at the center. So when that child, after they'd had their physical exam, they would be interviewed by the police, prosecutor and children's services all at once. So you'd have one person do the interview to be a trauma trained therapist who would interview these children. But you'd have the police and children's services watching the interview from a closed circuit room that could ask questions, get the child recorded. That settled so many cases because when the perpetrator would say, why didn't do that? We'd say, we're just going to play this tape for the jury. And there's this six-year-old kid talking about what happened. It's settled cases. And oftentimes, while that child was still being interviewed, the police could go out and arrest the perpetrator before that child got home. So what we did is we brought the services to the kid, took the trauma of them repeating their story out of it. And then that child, and sometimes their siblings and mother, came back to the center for therapy. Because we had trauma-informed therapists at the center and nobody had to pay. We provided that service for them for as long as they needed. And what I would say to the kids and to the parents is we don't want your child growing up in a victim state. Something very terrible happened to them, but it's like cancer. It's like being in a serious car accident. They can get through this and we're going to be there to support them all the way. We are not going to treat them as victims. We're going to treat them as survivors so that they can then go forward and have a healthy life.

SPEAKER_03: 41:36

Wow. Boy, this has been rich. This has been rich. As we wrap up and kind of come around the corner, this is about building a legacy, and you truly have built a lifelong legacy. So what is the legacy of Judge Yvette McGee-Burnham?

SPEAKER_04: 41:53

Oh, wow. Well, I think the center will be my legacy. It still exists as an ongoing concern. And being on the court, I think, you know, I was the first black woman on the court, but now we have Justice Melody Stewart. She's the second. When I look At the Common Pleas Court, I was the first black woman on the Common Pleas Court, and now we have six or seven. So for me, the legacy is having the courage to step out and do it, but then creating a path for other people to follow. And then at the law school, I have the Yvette McGee Brown Leadership Scholarship at the Ohio State University Law School. I have my fourth student who is being funded by that. That's part of my legacy, too, because when I came to Ohio State, I wanted to go to Georgetown. again trying to get to Washington Ohio State gave me a full ride and Georgetown was giving me nothing I remember Barbara Rich used to call me every week and say well we're ready for your acceptance I'd be like you're so nice Mrs. Rich I'm going to Georgetown and she's like okay I'll call you next week and so Ohio State made it possible for me to go to law school without incurring substantial debt and so I'm paying it forward in that way and I hope by the time I'm done I should be able to fund 10 young women over the course of the next 10 years and I hope through that that that will be my legacy and I've said I get them all together every year we had one graduating in May so we had a graduation party for her with the three others and I said you know my dream is that when you get to be near my age you pay this forward for the next one so that's the legacy I hope

SPEAKER_03: 43:26

yeah well this brings us to the end of this episode and I want to thank our special guests and classmates well you come a mighty long way we both have right proud of you and all the great things you've done in service to the community and being a true trailblazer. So Judge Brown, thanks for sharing your wisdom and encouragement for the next generation. And thank you all for joining us during this enlightening and informed discussion on building a lifelong legacy of service. Hope this episode was beneficial to you. And as always, thanks for listening to Be A Baller

SPEAKER_00: 43:57

Podcast. If you enjoy our show, please share this podcast with your family and friends. Be A Baller Podcast is available on all major podcast stations. Be sure to come back next week as we continue to discuss on how to build a lifelong legacy. Until then, don't forget to be a baller. This podcast was created by Coach Tim Brown. It was edited by Teron Howell and produced and recorded by the video production class of Worthington Christian High School.