Interview with Yohance Lacour

In this episode of Two Dancing Widows, Toni and Hettie sit down with Yohance Lacour—an artist, writer, and Chicago native whose life story is as compelling as it is inspiring.

Yohance opens up about his early love for storytelling, the path that led him into the streets, and the choices that ultimately resulted in a 10-year federal prison sentence. What follows is not just a story of hardship, but one of awakening where reading, writing, and reflection became the foundation for a new life.

Yohance brings a raw honesty to the mic, reminding us that growth is always possible and that our past does not have to define our future.

What is Two Dancing Widows?

Finding life after loss, Two Dancing Widows dives into the stories of resilience, hope, and transformation. Hosts Toni and Hettie welcome new guests each week, from widowers and life coaches to those battling severe illness, who share their journeys through struggle and their paths back to joy. This podcast is for anyone navigating grief or simply looking for inspiration to live and love deeply again. Tune in for heartfelt conversations that remind us all that healing, while challenging, is a dance worth stepping into.

Coming up on this episode of two dancing widows.

My asha pernorial spirit took a left and I wound up selling things that didn't end up

in a cell.

A lot of cell introids.

I was kind of one foot in, one foot out of three, so it kind of started in a silly, to

be honest with you.

I started smoking weed at 13, 14 years old just on occasion for fun.

As I got older, I would buy weed from the projects and I was from my high part.

A lot of my friends didn't want to go to the projects for weed.

And so they would thought me, they would ask me, if you're making any trips over to the

projects you want to get us some weed when you go.

I may have gone out very, and they would say, well you know what, if you go again, I'll

buy you a bag.

So, it became a business kind of naturally like that.

And it was like, oh, wow, I could smoke for free.

If I go collect everybody's money and go get mine, it was just kind of natural, opt for

merrily.

Inventing.

Yes.

Thanks, right?

Yes.

And before you know what I had a business going.

Welcome to Two Dancing Widows.

The podcast where hosts Tony and Heady explore life after loss and the strength we find in

each other's stories.

Before we begin, make sure you visit our website at twodancingwidows.transistor.fm where

you can catch every episode, find resources, and to act with us.

And don't forget, our Facebook community is just a click away from the site where the

conversation continues and the village keeps growing.

This week's episode introduces a powerful and deeply human story of transformation.

We sent down with Johann's Le Cor, a Chicago native, artist, writer, and truth seeker, whose

life journey spans creativity, struggle, incarceration, and ultimately redemption.

From early entrepreneurial instincts to time spent behind bars, Johann's shares how

storytelling, reading, and self-reflection became the tools that helped him rebuild his

life and redefine his purpose.

His voice is honest, unfiltered, and rooted in lived experience, offering insight into

resilience, identity, and what it truly means to start over.

This is a conversation about choices, consequences, and the power of reclaiming your narrative.

And now, here's Heady to begin this week's episode.

Well, here we are again.

We are the two dancing widows, and we're super excited today to have a very distinguished

guest, Mr. Johann's Le Cor.

And you know, in a way, I would like to call him a Renaissance man because he is a man

for all times and all things.

He's done a marvelous job of just reinventing himself.

He's done a marvelous job of just being an outstanding man and citizen and voice for the

people.

He is an artist.

He is, in fact, a social justice artist, which really heats me up and turns me on quite

a bit.

But he also is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and podcaster.

He is a man who knows how to track down the truth.

And we are so happy to happen today.

So of course, Tony's here too, and the two of us will dig in and ask him some questions.

But before we get started, we're going to just ask you, Johann, to introduce yourself

and tell us about your journey.

I really appreciate it.

I was a glowing introduction.

He kind of gave me already.

My name is Johann's Le Cor.

I was born and raised on the south side of Chicago.

Where do I start?

Born up.

I always had been creative.

I love to draw.

My father made sure I could read very early.

I fell in love with reading and reading books, which from that I developed a huge interest

in writing and telling stories.

I tell youngsters, man, I think that that's kind of what's missing is books.

You know, it's dope to try to do this in a bookstore or a beautiful bookstore.

That books are so important.

Storytelling is so important.

Us telling our own stories is so important.

Well, I've been also very entrepreneurial.

I always wanted to.

I was raking leaves and shoveling snow and walking dogs for money as a kid.

Fast forward.

My entrepreneurial spirit took a left and I wound up selling things that didn't end up

in a cell.

A lot of selling drugs.

I was kind of one foot in, one foot out of street.

So it kind of started in a family to be honest with you.

I started smoking weed at 13, 14 years old just on occasion for fun.

As I got older, I would buy weed from the projects.

I was from a high part.

A lot of my friends didn't want to go to the projects for weed.

And so they would call me.

They would ask me, if you're making any trips over to the world, I would ask you.

The projects here, we wanted to get us some weed when you go.

I may have gone already and they were like, well, you know what, if you go again, I'll

buy you a bag.

So it became a business kind of naturally like that.

And it was like, oh, wow, I could smoke for free.

If I go collect everybody's money and go get mine, it was just kind of natural, entrepreneurial

and sensibility.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Right.

Before you knew what I had a business going, that led down the road of other illegal and

still illegal substances.

So I was sentenced to 10 years of federal prison while I was there, you know, I really got

back into writing.

Now, my own two, long before prison, I'd had a theater company.

Me and my best friend, we started theater company, we were writing, directing, producing

and even acting and original scripts.

I had done some journalism writing stories, you know, about stuff that was happening on

the south side that I was interested in.

And all of that was really for fun.

But once I went to prison, I knew it.

I wanted to make that.

I needed the focus.

I didn't want to risk my freedom again.

I didn't want to come back to sell drugs again.

I also picked up leatherwork while I was in prison.

I had a hobby craft department at the facility.

I was locked up in Minnesota.

So I got out at the 10 years of developing leather craft skills and continuing on the right

and reading and thinking about telling stories.

Excuse me.

I knew that's what I wanted to do when I got out.

So when I came home, I was really blessed.

I mean, I kind of threw everything at the wall to see who was sick and a lot of it stuck.

And it was just a huge blessing.

I can't.

So a lot of this stuff I can't take quite a while.

I got to give it to God because opportunities presented themselves that I took them to

trevht up.

I wound up finding a newsroom on the south side in Woodlong called the Invisible Institute.

And there I was introduced to audio journalism.

And we created an investigative journalism audio podcast called You Didn't See Nothing

A Seven Episodes.

It was limited series podcast.

It went on the when a Pulitzer prize.

A Peabody Award.

It just gave me a lot of exposure.

It opened a lot of doors for me.

At the same time, I started I came home and I started making my leather goods and that

evolved into me designing and hand making sneakers, gym shoes and leather goods.

So now I kind of got these.

I'm kind of wearing these two big hats one as an audio journalist and one as a leather

craftsman.

Wow.

It's just amazing and Tony as a reading specialist.

I fascinating with this story.

I wanted to ask, were you a product of Chicago Public Schools?

I was.

I was set for grammar school.

Yes.

I went to a Catholic school where I part called Saint Thomas.

Yes.

I went there to the eighth grade and then I went to Kenwood for high school.

Yeah.

Another was a reading specialist.

My mother taught the CPS, my mother taught at Duke Ellington on the West Side.

So being a son of an English teacher that even did more than she was making sure I don't

only child.

So the characters in these books were my friends.

Yes.

I know.

I'm an only child too.

And he knows I lived inside of my books.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

How old were you when you went to prison?

I was 33.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was, I was 34.

I was 34 years old when I went to prison.

How did that impact your mother and your father?

Because I know both of them are very fine people.

I hear and maybe you'll get a chance to talk to us a little bit about that.

Your dad struggles right now with his health.

So for your mom, I mean, that must have really been a big meltdown for her.

Yeah.

My, I think, I think it was kind of heartbreaking for my mother.

I think I'm not that always, well for some time probably suspected that I had my hand

and some things that she wouldn't approve of.

But I don't, she had no idea that I had this whole life occurring on her.

Yeah.

My mother's college educated.

My mother comes from educators and people who value school and my mother's brother was,

it was a, um, esteem, um, highly revered civil rights attorney who was a father figure

for me at a, at a point in my own young life.

So, you know, my mother knew and did her best to, um, you know, provide examples and

expose me to, to, to help, you know, there was so far a bit of, um, the underwears that

I followed into.

So I think my mother was kind of heartbroken.

Um, it was an easy for her.

Uh, and said, but my mother, uh, oh my God, I mean, she was such a source of strength

for me.

Um, I can't, um, I can't even put in the words I thankful.

Um, I am from, from my mother, she, she got her little self up to the little Minnesota,

which is like a top of the mat.

And she got up there every, every holiday, every summer, every chance she could, um, she

was there.

It got to the point where, you know, she had started to, uh, befriend, um, other inmates,

family members.

So to make a car pull, she was going to make a way to see her son, baby, uh, yeah, baby,

baby, baby, she was going to make a way.

She was in that visit alone faithfully.

She would come to see me as much as, you know, um, the mothers of inmates who were, uh,

far from Minnesota, yeah, with them, you know, as so, um, yeah, I just, I, I am so appreciative

of my mother has supported me through thick and thin.

Um, that father, he was telling a heartbreak for him too.

He knew more about the life I was leading.

He hadn't known it, it, it got in the deep as it had.

Um, he was disappointed.

It was not something that he didn't think couldn't happen.

But when they said 10 years, that was tough for him.

This was the first offense for you.

Uh, a fair, an adra offense, yeah, like I had really small, uh, Mr. Meanor type and

fraction and nothing.

I'd never been convicted of anything.

So it was a fair conviction for me.

Wow.

Um, which I'm out to the first time.

And my father and I, you know, been best friends in a really interesting way for a long

time.

So he lost his boy and his best friend for a while.

I think, and he was, you know, um, my stepmother was no longer with us.

Um, I remember, um, her telling me about how he'd been the person who was in the

place by it.

And, you know, that, that was, that was tough.

That was tough on me to an adra, you know, um, I, I had, I had disappointed my parents.

I had let them down and probably even embarrassed them to a certain degree.

And it was hard.

But, you know, through, through all of that, you never gave up.

You, in fact, found power and strength to resurrect yourself and power yourself and to

move forward.

And how did you do that?

Where did that juice come from, that energy?

Was it just that you couldn't hurt your parents again?

Or was there something in you that said, Hey, I know I could do better.

You know, um, I got it, I got a kind of point back to my fate, which I also thank my

mother for my mother introduced me, um, to the Bible and to the world.

And I, and to be honest with you, I tried, I rejected it for a long time and probably

rediscovered it's sitting in there.

But what I never rejected was the idea that like there is a bigger plan for us that, and

we might not understand that things may go long.

We might be upset that we missed this bus.

But, you know, I have faith that that reddened the bus I was supposed to be on.

So I always have faith that, you know, it wasn't over 10 years, a long time, but I knew

one day I would get out.

I'd never forget, um, you know, after being sentenced or after heading to be sentenced,

telling my father, look, I messed up and I don't know how the story is.

But one day we would be thankful that everything is gone.

How it went.

He looked at me like he was like, I was crazy, you know what I mean?

But it was just my faith.

And I know that, uh, that I just didn't want to lie, I'm not telling you broken.

I knew that I still had talents and gifts that would still be useful.

And I actually, interestingly enough was thankful that I would, I knew I was going to get

another chance.

I knew I had a release date.

And I was thankful for that because I knew that, you know, I was going to do everything

I could not to blow it and make the most of it.

And you knew that before you staggered your sentence.

I did.

I did.

I knew a little little Jeff for life.

Yes.

I also knew it was going to take a long time for 10 years to pass.

Uh, but I had faith that, you know, um, and I was confident that, you know, I was, I was

going to make sure to do my best to redeem myself and develop yourself.

Yes.

That's awesome.

Yes.

Maybe two or three things that happened while you were in prison that allowed you to survive

and keep your spirit intact because a lot of people, um, that do go to prison sometimes

are just defeated by not just the system, but by the, the prisoners themselves and they

create, uh, societies within the prison system or gangs within the system.

And they have drugs and everything that that is in the street is there too.

And they operate just like in a microcosm of, of, of crime that is really, the parents,

uh, or amitates the things that happen outside of prison except and you would think they

would have left that behind.

But instead, they have recreated it within the prison system.

Okay.

Well, you know, it's interesting because, um, one of the things I think that saved me

is kind of connected to that.

Your gangs were real in the prison system, but you know, the gangs were real before I got

to prison.

I've been involved in affiliated with gangs before I went to prison and it was actually, um,

the respect, um, you know, gangs are the bad thing to me, just internet themselves.

The gangs are, um, you know, organizations, uh, gangs are the social clubs of the young

black men, um, coming from certain neighborhoods just didn't have.

Right?

I was an Italian boy.

We were going to a podcast about this now as you know, I was an Italian boy, um, who came

here before the Great Migrations of Black folks to Chicago, pet gangs, but they called

them athletic clubs.

Exactly.

I always think of that when I see the athletic club down in Michigan Avenue because,

quite frankly, I've actually never met a gang member that I didn't like.

I kind of think gang membership is cool in a certain way, uh, not for the destruction

that they do, but I've known a lot of gang members who have been highly intelligent that

I've been very impressed with and the systems.

I always said that someone like Jeff Ford, if he had an education in the right connections,

he's like any other CEO that I have met, you know, dealing with top executives, lobbying,

Congress and all of that.

If he had been pushed in that direction, he would have been successful there too because

it is a structure.

It is a structure and, you know, just speaking of a man like Jeff Ford, he actually made

really little strides, real attempts to do something productive.

And it was when he made those type of, you know, steps that he got shut down.

The power that he was like, oh, you know, and so you think about it, you deny access

to politics and industry and resources that he's young man, these young men, but you give

them, you know, unfettered access to drugs, you know, and contraband.

And so, you know, they want you to get a lot of choices.

I don't, you know, I don't want to act like, you know, people have, I have no choice and

no free will, but there's a system set up bigger than that.

And we, you know, it's, we, we generally lose sight of that.

And so, so I say that to say that, you know, because I was, I was, I had a lot of relationships

on the streets of Chicago when I got to prison, I met a lot of men who were better spec carried

over.

And so I, you know, I actually was able to influence in a positive way a lot of the

others who are from the streets in prison.

I also say, man, but one of my best friends, one man in prison, who I honestly regard as

a brother.

I take God for the brotherhood that I developed in prison.

And he was actually a brother, his name is Josh, man, JT, that's my man.

He, he, he kind of was, it was kind of through him that I kind of picked the Bible again,

right?

And so, you know, it was a bad place, but, you know, it was one of the bad places.

I mean, that's where the sea close.

I wonder that, you know, dark, big soil.

So being part of that dark, thick soil and understanding those systems that I really like

the fact that you've compared them to societies because they really are their groups of people

who get together for purpose, rightfully, wrongfully, whatever, who enjoy each other, but who

also learn from each other and who also create systems to survive.

Is that what allowed you to go into the underbelly when you became and realized, you know,

your skill and your craft as a journalist to go into the underbelly of society.

And in this one, especially the Pulitzer winning pieces that you did that you put together

with your team, Tony has a lot of information on that.

She was actually on the spot and right there during some of those times and she can talk

to you about that.

The, yeah, that's Clark.

The mother's car.

It's actually teaching in Bridgeport at that time.

And so it was very, very tense in the school because the school was very diverse because

it was a mad at school.

So it wasn't just neighborhood students, students from all over it while she was in colors.

And so it was quite tense and I never forget our school clerk at the time.

She said to me, well, he should have known better.

Did he think what's been to happen if he came over into our neighborhood?

He should have known better.

And I couldn't believe a woman who served a school full of children could just say that

in such a casual manner and feel no empathy at all, feel nothing.

Feel that the child was at cross.

And you knew some of the Italian families that operated within that system.

Yeah, really.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you saw something.

Well, that's just how much of the order of the day that type of activity was.

It was that routine.

I mean, hey, there were a lot of cultural projects who would know about it.

He was 13 years old, though.

He hadn't gotten the memo.

He hadn't learned it.

He didn't know.

And that's, that's, that is that's huge when you think about.

I could go to the door.

I heard the same, even though I was a grown woman.

And I knew from the time we brought here that that was the rule of the day, but to actually

work with, interact with, have coffee with someone.

And then I realized she's not alone in this building and her feelings.

And it's just, it's a little bit, it feels.

And she was never even touched by the fact that he was a kid.

And you know, it reminds me so much.

I mean, I grew up in the city of Chicago in high park as well.

In fact, Eric graduated from St. Thomas and Jimmy used to coach their apps.

Surprise, you don't know each other from there, but maybe she was ahead of you.

But it never, I remember grandparents and other people and uncle saying, don't go here.

Oh, yeah.

Don't go to Bridgeport.

Don't go to Cicero.

Yeah.

Don't go to Rainbow Beach.

Absolutely.

Don't go to South Shore.

You know, there were just places we didn't go to and we knew that and we're taught that

as a kid.

And you would think that by the time this young man had come around with the civil right movements

and other things going on, that some of that would have changed.

But honestly, I'm not even sure that that has changed today, but that knowledge and that

curiosity caused you to just crawl into the underbelly and dig for the facts.

Yeah.

So, so, so, um, so I had, I had investigated that story in 97 when it happened for a small

newspaper called the South Street Journal.

I uncovered a lot of stuff that no other newspapers had uncovered.

And that's when I realized just how, what type of monster we was up against because

you know, he'd always baffled me.

How am I discovering moral attackers?

How am I discovering sides of a cover up?

How am I discovering this type of corruption that's connected to the police?

I'm printing it and no major newspapers are grabbing orders that is nobody is listening.

And that's why I realized that you know, I would take this illusion with journalism.

You know, you tell the truth it don't matter because the powers at B are going to allow

parts of the story they want to surface.

Fortunately, you know, that is one thing that I'm thankful for with this whole internet

digital revolution, social media thing because it has opened up access in ways that we

didn't have back then.

It's come from a lot of other problems.

Yeah, because you don't know which ones are true, which ones are recruiting you.

What you never know when you hit that button, what you're really getting.

You don't, you know, you know, the guy who founded our news won't often ask a question.

I think it's father asked him this, you know, we're journalists and we're, you know,

we deal in and collecting and delivering narratives and researching them thoroughly.

And the question was, how do you know what you know?

And right now it is harder than ever to tell, but I think that again, that's why I have

one of a foundation in reading and literature is so important.

Because if you got a foundational intelligence that's strong enough and you got critical

baking skills that are strong enough, excuse me, you can start to make a lot, a lot better,

much better choices about what services you trust, what you information.

Well, you can sort through information.

I was listening last night to WTTW and they were doing a story, a 90 minute story,

I think on the Genesis of the MAGA movement.

And how that's not when it started, how they went all the way back to Nixon and even before.

And they found that the seed of discontent was easy to grow, to plant and to grow by simply

putting people in fear of certain other people.

And by doing this, if you could just say it enough times, because people don't read,

they don't think they don't have critical thinking skills sometimes.

And if you, but if you could say this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, the repetition of it all

begins to sink in.

For example, they had, when they did the Black Lives Matter march through St. Louis,

and they had this white woman and this white man out on their porch because Black people were

peaceful walking by him, waving their guns and threatening him.

And I had to laugh because I thought, now, you know what, I have never pointed a gun at a

person in my life, but I could shoot that one because she's then out there with a gun.

She didn't even know how to hold it.

That's dumb, sticking out, her husband walking around, not in position.

They don't even know, they don't even know that have to time when they shoot the bullet,

it's not going to go where they're pointing because even if they point, people are moving.

It's hard to hit a moving, a moving target, but yet and still they went on to have such fear,

but because they're money, they were able to, even though they were charged,

you get out of it and to go on and to speak at the Republican, you know, campaign,

when they were trying to a different campaign sites for Trump went on the campaign trail.

And so they become, they became advocates of, you know, arm yourself and get your gun and sort of like get

you gun, Annie, you know, and go out here and defend yourself without even the proper

stances or the proper information and not even understanding how they had been programmed.

But when W, BB, W, W, W, W, W, W, W, the channel, they were excellent, excellent.

They put together a really good piece where they took it throughout the years and the dogma that followed it

and how these people have been set up to hate other people and how politicians came in

and planted those seeds and then nourished it and how they began to do it and how these people today

continue to be fed all this misinformation.

And but beyond that is not the misinformation.

It's the profiting from it that they get on the other side of it.

So you say, why would they do it?

Because there's money attached to it.

Not for the people that go out and do the wars, they go out and do the battles, they go up and pick up the mantra.

It is they profit from it, the people that put the information out there, the Cory Lewandowski's, the, the trumps,

all of these people, the Fox knows the Roger Ails, who was a huge part of this old system.

They sat down and intellectually sat down and decided we are going to do this and there were people in a Republican party that said,

I don't think we should do this.

But when they saw that it was working, they got they got on board.

For example, when they had the March, once Trump was elected and they had the March and Charlottesville,

when the news reached the desk and the ears of the president at that time of Trump, his advisors advised him to come out

and to say, and no, you know, uncertain terms, we condemn violence.

We condemn racializing, you know, school systems and all of that and we don't support that.

And so his press man was sitting there waiting for him to come out and say that for them to give the official

report from the White House.

And he said, 30 minutes passed, an hour passed, two and a half hours passed, three hours passed, four hours passed.

And finally this man comes out and says, well, there were bad people on or there are good people on both sides.

And he thought, where did that come from?

And he knew instantly that Cory Lewandowski and, you know, other people had gotten to him and that they had changed the

the message in a way that would pull out the underbelly of all of these, these people and the guy who was once the leader of the

Oathkeepers has now stepped away from that organization and he is telling the truth about that, that organization, the money that they have and how they get out and tell their story.

And it's all designed to make minority people and black people look guilty of everything you could possibly think of.

And it all starts with a very simple survey that was done way back in the early 1900s, just as said by the middle of the next century, black people without

number minority black people, minority people without number white people.

So by intentionally planting fear into the hearts of these people and then little pushes, little pushes until you get to the big

shove, that's how we get there and that's how we get Maga.

And so you trying to uncover that have, I would think have found yourself in someone of a dangerous situation.

How do you deal with that?

Um, well, I just, I look, I, I, I survived life in the streets of Chicago as in the underwears of the streets.

I survived 10 years in prison with, you know, some criminal elements.

I'm just, I just don't really, I don't know, I don't, I don't really feel it, I don't really get along.

I'm not, I'm just not scared and it's, you know, I'm way more motivated by what's right and true.

Then I am scared of the threat of a, of folks trying to, you know, put, maintain the lie.

And I, you know, unfortunately, I suppose for now, my troops have not rough,

full feathers high enough to be a, or to feel like any type of real threat.

But I mean, the truth is always a threat.

Well, it is, but that's the issue.

Chicago starting with before daily even, I tell you what, if I, if I was prepared as I was to risk ultimately life and

land and freedom to set drugs in the streets, then I don't, I just don't have any problem risking more than that to,

to tell the world the truth about what's going on with my people and, and, and our pressure.

I, you know, I got uncles who were panthers.

I got an uncle who was, like I say, a civilized attorney in Harlem who worked with some serious cases.

I, that's just, I would be, I was with you.

I would rather, you know, I mean, I want to live a long, peaceful life, that happily and health,

the, of, of, of old age or something, you know, that's always the dream.

But, you know, if, if, if I'm going to risk being harmed, I would much rather it be for revolutionary causes.

Then for the, for the life I, I, I, I want to lay it.

So tell us about your social justice art.

Um, so, find fascinating.

I, uh, say my, my leatherwork, I tried to have stories with my leatherwork.

Um, and I also try to use my leatherwork, I try to teach youngster that was sitting with, uh, I worked with a lot of guys who do violence prevention work.

And, um, I do those relationships.

Um, I try to introduce, uh, the shorties to what's possible.

You know, in a city like Chicago, big black city like Chicago on the south of West Side.

So many, I love black boys and girls.

Um, our end to fashion and gem shows and we're consumers and, and we're about, you know, and I told them, like, listen, these plans, you're wearing.

And y'all have made the biggest plans in the country.

They can't do it without you.

It's your style.

And it's the way you wear and this stuff and how you've decided to wear it that is making them who they are.

You can, you are the middle man between yourself and that type of success.

If you can figure out the best way to wear it is and make it look flat and make it look fresh, you can create something flyer and fresh.

So I'm just, you know, a lot of my, uh, the social justice work in my art is, is, is, is, is, is exemplary.

I'm probably being examples for them, um, as to what they can do.

Uh, I also, as you know, having an adjunctual brand, a snake brand, you know, you just notice like Nike and Adidas and drivers.

They are brand ad basses.

Nike's biggest brand ad bass and it was always Michael Jordan.

Exactly.

Then after that NBA players and, and tennis players and football players and professional players, these days, it's been a shit.

Well, you still have athletes being the biggest brand ambassadors, but because of the lack and hip hop is done globally, rappers have become brand ambassadors for a lot of these brands.

You will see rappers modeling and wearing and being the face of a lot of brands these days.

I love sports.

I love rap.

I grew up on it.

I grew up watching it, but my brand and basses are social justice workers.

Uh, I got violence prevention workers.

I got people who are fighting for reparations.

I got journalists.

I got black social entrepreneurs.

I got black civil white attorneys.

Um, these are my brand ambassadors.

And so that's another way I try to bring several justice work to my heart.

And then outside of that, I have started using after creating like non functional art pieces with leather, like not stuff you could wear, but pieces for your wall.

And I'm and then old on inspired by and speaking to, um, you know, the condition of black folks in America.

Do you have a website?

Yep.

Yep.

Uh, why JL those are my initials.

Johan Stelsof LeCour.

That's the brain.

Why JL shop dot com.

Okay.

Say it one more time.

Why JL shop dot com.

And I'm one all of the social media platforms, um, except for Twitter, Twitter got taken over by, uh, you know, all of the

mega people.

So I just dropped my account there.

But I'm everywhere else at Johan's LeCour.

Thank you.

And so if people would like to listen to your investigative reporting and podcasts and, uh, go back and listen to some of the other series.

Matter of fact, your group, they want they at the same time, you guys actually won two.

Who surprises?

Was it Sarah?

So, so, um, my, so my, the audio team, we won a Pulitzer and a P body for you didn't see nothing.

My podcast.

So if you want to see that you're wherever you listen to podcasts, Spotify, I told you to Google it.

Um, you didn't see nothing, uh, podcast that I know is warm as one.

Um, uh, Pulitzer's for a matter of fact, uh, uh, a woman.

Levin of pieces, Dana Bozostela, her, she was part of our audio team.

She recently left the invisible answer to, um, she's in DC now, but she actually won two Pulitzer.

She won, uh, she has a Pulitzer for our piece.

You didn't see nothing that she worked on with us.

And she has another Pulitzer for another piece she did, um, with the invisible, and the invisible answer to, uh, had another project, trainer Reynolds Tyler.

Yeah.

That's the trend.

Yes.

Um, uh,

young sister, uh, she's, she's from dry side.

She's from right, right, right by high part.

She went to can with it.

She's probably in our early values.

Really.

She also brought up random ambassadors.

She won a Pulitzer as well.

So yeah, we took two Pulitzer's home in 2024.

I knew it won't be it.

And, uh, I, I'm really, I feel real blessed and thankful to be in a newsroom where people are really dedicated to telling the

hard stories and putting the type of time in to be a really kind of research.

So I was really inspired and Tony, you were there too.

When we went to the, uh, sort of the, what was it that the, the, the art institution, well, that the art exhibition that they did down in, um,

on Chicago Southside with Brandy and, uh, another group of people put together this, this look, they took a look at journalism throughout time.

And what they did is they, it was called Black news stand and they went back and they looked at how Black people, uh, reported stories, the very same stories that white, uh,

journalists reported and they compared to two.

And what they found is that there would be little truth or little, really realism in what the, the white journalists were reporting as compared to finding the truth after doing some digging of what the black journalists were reporting.

And that we, in fact, told our story not only with more harp but more truth, but just more integrity.

And I think that, uh, that's something that you continue to do today.

Yeah, you know, uh, the, the, the black, the black future's news stand was huge.

That was something so radical, so revolutionary to not only to think about was possible for the future of black news and black media by, by examining.

Well, we've already done it just hadn't, you know, been widely understood and recognized.

I mean, it was genius. Um, you know, um, yeah, yeah.

Brandy was ahead of her time and, and Brandy, you know, um, Brandy got, you know, she, she just did so much.

Um, for, to push the idea and get the ball rolling on, on how black media can look.

Um, and so yeah, I, I would like to say that, you know, one of the components of you didn't see nothing is us also, uh, kind of taking a real look at,

where traditional legacy media, white media dropped the ball and just brutally story.

Um, interestingly enough, the same year we won that Pulitzer, the guy named Jonathan, I

want to pull it sir for the latest biography Omar Lutteke.

He got that idea from reading, uh, or hearing your podcast, right?

Oh, looking at that, because I saw something where he, I read an article by him where he said he was inspired by you.

Oh, wow, he, uh, that's a huge honor. I don't know that he was inspired to write that book by me.

Um, I kind of might do believe that, you know, I would appreciate the fact that he was inspired by me in any kind of way.

Uh, the Pulitzer Ball wound up doing a podcast at all where they put Pulitzer winners together in conversation.

And then because of the belt from Chicago, um, they put us, they don't reckon Chicago, they put us together because he also

wrote one of the key articles for I think Chicago magazine when this happened in 97 and he admittedly did a horrible job.

He basically, because this is what happens, right? Um, as we have discovered then,

John Liss news folks will go to, uh, police, uh, press, uh, hearings, um, and, and take the notes.

And then that's just what it makes the notes. Basically, John Liss are just writing in,

in the specific case, the Italians who were, you know, the family out of the lead,

the tactical, the knock-off in Bridgeport, they were like, like, you know, hand in hand,

the public police men, including the man who lived in Bridgeport. Exactly.

So, and will he, first, yeah, so he just, the, the, the, the, Caruso say, this is what happened and he published it.

And so it was, you know, and I remember, you know, telling them like, oh, what do, you know, it was interesting to have a conversation.

He admitted and realized he was a young journalist and dropped a ball by not trying to talk to black folks the same way.

Not doing the investigation. Not getting the investigation. Yeah. So that's what you said that after

doing at the gallery. And I thought I went home and that was really something I

worked over it by mine. The fact that this is often weren't interviewed, that they didn't dig deeper.

They just took almost like the police blotter, if you will, and wrote the stories from that without any investigation.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it tells them a lot of things. I think one white people, you know, at their heart,

by and large, I still scared of black people. And so you have black folks in the projects. I never forget

when I first went to interview, um, the, the witnesses and the family, the large

after he's been beaten back in 1997, and he was in the projects and I talked to the these people. I'm like,

did the news come out? Did y'all tell this? I'm in the living rooms talking to them about what happened.

They like when they showed it with the police. I mean, with the news pad and the camera and they talked for five minutes

in the box. Oh, I didn't got out of there. They're like, yeah. Yeah. So, so, no, you know, I was, and I also feel like

black folks at the bottom, black folks in general, but especially black folks at the bottom, you would think people

up high at the high lungs with a lot of, you know, the society of society would have a buzzive

you as everything going on in society. When the fact is to reverse, we've seen all their stories.

We've watched all their TV shows. They told us what goes on in their living rooms. They've changed

their nurse their babies. Right. We've found out they have the homes. They don't come out naked. They don't know

what was going on around home. They don't know what was going on. They have big, odd blocks. But we shot where they are.

We developed it so we know our lives and their lives. And they, they don't pay attention to us. They all

look us. We're like the cab driver, the elevator operator, operated to us. They can see us every day. It never really

care who we are. We have to know that God in that sense of that. Exactly. So we actually have a much better

advantage point of what America really looks like to me. But we, you know, it's so funny because I found myself when

I was looking at WGTW last night thinking I know Brandy would say to me all the time, mom, black people suffer from, you know,

generational trauma. And I sat there last night thinking, what folks suffer for more generational trauma than what we

do because the fact of what they did by enslaving our people, the laws and different things they've done, the police

brutality, the voting that they've done, the killings that they've done of us, the hanging that they've done, their children suffer

by believing that we're going, that the tide is going to turn and we're going to do to them what they did to us. And that is

why there's so afraid all the time. These people have not experienced that they themselves have not been hung by us. They

themselves have not been beat by us. They themselves have not been locked out of the opportunity to vote the opportunity to

participate in society by us. So their fear is irrational unless you can tie it back to something. And I just tie it back to

the fact that they believe that that tide is going to turn and we're going to do to them what they've done to us. They really don't

know us because if we wanted to kill them, we would have killed autumn damn babies right then and there. You know, there were so many chances to do

different things. They still continue to incarcerate us at un, you know, unseen numbers. They continue to profit from that.

I was also looking at something on TV where they were talking about how the prison system is owned by these multi-millionaire billionaires.

And recently they got really upset because all of the money that had been given to ICE, they still weren't holding people long enough. So when they capture

these people and they put them in the facility, even though they know that they're going to ship them out and they're going to take them back

supposedly to where they came from or to some other desolate place, they actually keep them a long time because they're paid every day

to the person is there by the government and this therefore creates profit for the owners of those prison systems. So they continued to profit off of black flesh.

Well, yeah, they I was the other time in a private prison. They privatized prisons for a long time, you know, um, yeah, that's what you know, in probably 2025, they talked about

privatizing TSA. Yes, exactly. And then we're seeing the beginnings of that right now, I put ice in the airport. You put ice in the airport, ice is getting paid TSA ages are not right.

Teet and now now lines and weights are now forever. So it wants America, the American public gets used to these lines and weights being forever. Once they come along, we can privatize this and make it move faster.

America is well, well, what that right? And so it's so it but it goes back to what you're saying. It's a money grab. It's a really privateized everything. And you look at people who are learning the privatization, you get the money.

Condition us to think we want this. Well, we don't want this. We actually want the average person wants the government and their business more than what they're willing to admit because the government runs the biggest machines that operate our lives, whether they are airports industry, manufacturing, they make the rules and the things that keep order the things that don't the stuff lights, the federal government, the prisons, whatever.

You know, they regulate commerce, the government does all of these things that people don't have to wake up and wonder about every day that that who's in charge, the government is in charge, you know, that that the person and nobody sees, but the government.

And so therefore we depend on these services. And when you start privatizing them, a lot of people get the get the get the short end of the stick and that's just the way life is.

Yeah, well, you know, white folks won't government bigger than they want admit. They just don't want it to also benefit us. Exactly.

Exactly.

Once once a link and with and food stamps started, you know, getting glad and white folks were losing the losing their minds.

While claiming that you know, it's black folks just living off of the system and they call this welfare queens and all that black women on welfare, welfare queens.

When they are by far the largest larger per capita recipient of public services.

So they never make these systems for black women or minority people. These are systems that black people minority people sometimes benefit from, but they're not created for our benefit.

They're created to benefit those people that are in the majority.

And I have debates with you know, I got I got buddies man who you know, unfortunately have been affected by what has become a former educational system.

Um, and and these people with the paper full part of the mega train right and so they're like, you know, the anti D I like D. I would have made for D. I was made for you know, big and really upset about, you know, gay folks and they get real.

And they just gave us made for white women and gay people and other and that would be true. Your right D. A lot of D. I policy was not created specifically for black people.

But when it was dismantled, it hurt us disproportionately because we benefit these people will cut their nose, you know, despite the fact that they sell a major wheat only exactly exactly.

It has been such a joy to have you today. I mean, I'm hesitant to let you go. I know it's story is fantastic. Oh, he had I thought that's what I said, you know, just tell us your story because it isn't and you are so close to a Renaissance man.

I only hold that back because I'm not sure if you can build your own house. Dic your own water trenches. Well, you can get that look like you might get through that.

We were with Renaissance man. One.

I went out of the vent. She was the number one Renaissance man. He did everything. You know, he was.

Renaissance man out there. You.

Thanks.

Right.

Oh, Bob.

I'm on the mountain.

The moniker.

Bob. I can't build the house or fix it.

But the terms of thinking I'll give him a miss props really.

Okay. But thank you for joining us today.

He and thank you for having us put on our thinking caps as well as our dancing shoes.

Definitely.

You can have to create some some some mother dancing shoes for us because after every podcast we actually take off our shoes and put on our dancing shoes.

And we dance our way out of this podcast.

Well, I'm up for that.

I appreciate that.

It's on my day.

Thank you.

Until next time.

Until next time.

Oh, they share the stories yet.

I'm told.

To dancing with us.

In the dance of life.

And brings finding rhythm after 70 in time and space.

With every step a new story unfolds in that journey.

The beauty of aging is told.

To dancing with us.

In the dance of life.

And brings finding rhythm after all.

In time and space.

Time and space.

With every step a new story unfolds.

In that journey.

The beauty of life is told.

It's told.