Death certificate

Knightsbridge.

Katisha, who is reading Certificate of Death.

Ha!

What's the matter?

you know what i mean being like yo the new album is dropping january 5th pick it up like yeah you just run into the store so like you said kelvin you kind of gotta go and i didn't know back then oh records drop on tuesday i didn't know i didn't know when the you know we didn't know all these rules that people know now i didn't at least didn't know back then you know what you're gonna say back

Just to say the same thing, I remember I was rocking Death Certificate, felt like I was listening to that shit for five years straight, even though it wasn't.

And I went and Sam Goody and walked past, and I'm seeing Ice Cube, The Predator, and I'm like, that's some fake shit.

Death Certificate just dropped last year.

I went to the counter, I was like, yo, is this real? They're like, yeah, he just dropped a new album.

nigga like the joy in me at that point oh well give me this new like just because i stumbled across it i was in there just like you said look look at music um but yeah you just didn't know you know what i'm saying so yeah yeah i feel you i'll tell you spence what you got up next bro

And from what I found on findagrave.com, people had been out to this cemetery and had done some preliminary research on who was buried there.

And just quickly kind of started taking notes on all of this and ultimately found 27 death certificates of boys who are buried on this plot of ground.

And people think that there's probably at least 50 boys actually buried there.

There could be even more.

So from my sort of quick research into this, the African-American population of Missouri has varied from about 5% in 1910 to then like 10, 11% in the late 80s, early 90s.

when Booneville closed.

And from what I've seen in the 27 death certificates that we have, about 40% of the boys buried that we have records of from those death certificates, at least, are African-American.

So that is a huge disparity, right, when we're thinking in terms of comparison to the general population and then also in historical research you know reading about what conditions were like at boonville throughout its history the african-american boys were segregated into a separate house a barrack it was a military style academy for most of its history There were reports throughout the history about how African American boys did not have the same access to vocational programs or educational services.

I, I don't know.

It's k- probably too grim to be like, it also feels like [laughs] a death certificate.

'Cause it's not really that, but, um, I feel like I also found it or came across it, like, tidying up some, like, old photo albums that I got from my mom at a time where I was really sort of thinking about what it means to be me in relation to my race and nationality.

Like, I was born in Korea.

[bright music]

I'm curious about something you said really early in this conversation, which is that this very adorable and, um, y- uh, Elliot, as you said, like, nicely created, this nice card stock.

It feels a bit like a death certificate to you.

Mm-hmm.

Here's the picture I want you to carry out of here.

The day you were born again, you were issued two documents at the same time, a death certificate and a new birth certificate.

Ooh, good.

Same day, same signature, signed by Jesus.

The old is passed away.

All things have become new.

We frame that one and hang it on the wall, but it seems like we forget about the, the, the death certificate.

It seems like we're like, "I'm not really sure that it's dead," and we're, we, we take it out.