Angela Davis sat down with Carbon Sound’s host Sanni where they talked about her esteemed journalism career spanning across TV and radio, her advice for women exploring careers in media, her conflicting thoughts on the song “I’m Every Woman,” and a whole lot more.

Sanni Brown 

This is The Message here on Carbon Sound Music for Life. This is so dope that this interview is happening this week. We've been talking about women in music all week, and we're going to pause we're going to talk about women in media. And in the studio with us today, I would like to call her — like if I was young, I would request in my Christmas book "Media Barbie." That's what I would call you. Her name is Angela Davis. She is the host of MPR News. She's a Gracie Award winner for her work in public media, as well as a 1,2,3,4,5-time Regional Emmy Award winner for her news coverage, and was recently selected into University of Maryland's Philip Merrill's College of Journalism 2024 Hall of Fame Class, Carbon Sound family, welcome Media Barbie Angela Davis.

Angela Davis 

That is quite an introduction. Thank you so much.

Sanni Brown 

I'm shocked you even got time to be in here for real.

Angela Davis 

Well, you know, you just saw me I was hiding in the bathroom (Sanni laughs). And I just confessed to one of your interns that of the things I fear in life — the things that make me uncomfortable, it's being interviewed. I don't enjoy being interviewed at all (laughs). I do not like being on the other side.

Sanni Brown 

This is what you do on your show. I like this part. Because I've read this many times. Explore the issues that keep many of us awake at night. I'm lucky I get to talk about fun stuff, and you know, and if I do talk about something that's sad it's music, so I get to use the music as the buffer. But how do you do that? Because it feels so comforting. But you're talking about stuff that keeps us up at night. So how do you balance?

Angela Davis 

Well, different things keep us up at night. I mean, some people are up at night because they're hungry. Some people are up at night because they don't have a safe place to sleep. Some people are up at night because they're worried or thinking about their adult children. Or maybe the children across the hall who are in their bedrooms, because they're kids. Some people are up at night because they are in physical pain, because they're dealing with some type of disease. Some people are up at night thinking because they're worried about money. Or they're lonely. You know, I think the conversations that we have are just about the human experience and how we connect and how we have many of the same concerns. We may not talk about them, but we carry those concerns.

Sanni Brown 

The first thing I want to jump into — I love this. This is the one that stuck out to me. One of your recent topics that you talked about was how your first job shaped the rest of your life. Looking at your resume, seeing where you are, what was your first job? And how do you feel it's shaped your life thus far?

Angela Davis 

That's a good question. So I was born in 1968. I was born in Southern Virginia. My mother was a college student at Virginia State College at the time. It's now Virginia State University in Petersburg, an HBCU. She was in her sophomore year of college when she became pregnant with me. She took me home to her parents, my grandparents, who owned a farm in Southern Virginia. My grandfather was a Baptist minister, and a farmer, and an army vet, and my grandmother and he had eight kids. So here we go. So I'm sort of like the ninth child, my mom was the oldest of eight. And so she came home with me. And so I live with my grandparents and with her until I was nine. And then when I was nine, she moved away to Baltimore and sort of started a new life. But I stayed on the farm with my grandparents. And so my first job I guess it was technically the farm. So this is a tobacco farm. So I spent my summers pulling tobacco leaves in the field pulling tobacco leaves off of the plant. And going through the process of curing tobacco. I mean, we sold tobacco to R.J. Reynolds to make cigarettes. That was a major industry, right, in Southern Virginia and North Carolina. But we also had a huge garden and we had cows and pigs and hogs and no chickens. But a lot of work on the farm required like you know, dealing with food and harvesting and bringing in you know, we grew potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, corn stalks, I mean, you name it. We had it. We had apple trees on the farm. So they're picking apples and like freezing food, canning food. I mean, we were poor. That's just rural poverty, but I was never hungry (laughs). I mean, we had red peppers, green bell peppers. And I remember going to the grocery store with my grandfather — the only thing we ever bought in the grocery store was like, maybe milk and like, I don't know, sugar. But you know, we were cooking like what we had and like, and freezing things. My husband, I always think about this. I grew up in rural poverty. And he grew up in urban poverty. He's from New York City. And so like the things we were exposed to — very different. So even though you know, he and his mom didn't have a lot of money, you know, he was exposed to like entertainment, the entertainment industry and just like culturally meeting people from all over the world and be able to go to museums. Even like, you know, his mother would take him to plays. But like, you know, things like, you know, other things were challenges. But you know, I had steaks and potatoes (laughs).

Sanni Brown 

It was a different kind of culture.

Angela Davis 

It was a different — yeah. But oh, and I forgot one of my big chores was chopping wood because we had wood burning stoves to heat the house.

Sanni Brown 

You was chopping wood as a child?

Angela Davis 

Yes! If I didn't want to be cold (laughs). We had literally wood burning stoves that heated the entire house. But that was just how I lived. I didn't even know if it was a job. It's like, that's just that's just what you do. So my first job really was when I left to go to college, and I had an internship at a newspaper. And that first job was I wrote obituaries. For my first working job where I got paid, was at a newspaper writing obituaries.

Sanni Brown 

So is this the school that you're the Hall of Fame?

Angela Davis 

University of Maryland.

Sanni Brown 

So you went there graduated and then you wrote obituaries for the first job.

Angela Davis 

Well, I was very fortunate. I had a four-year scholarship from The Baltimore Sun newspaper that paid for my tuition, books, fees, everything, room and board, and it included internships at the paper. So when I graduated from high school, before I even started my freshman year of college, I interned at The Sun. And so the very first thing you do as an intern is you answer phones, and over the phone, I would call people to get basic information from them about their loved one who passed away and I would write obits. So that was my first job.

Sanni Brown 

Obviously the working on the farm gave you like work ethic, I presume? Because it sounds like you already knew what you wanted to do soon as you left high school.

Angela Davis 

Yeah. And that's a story too. I don't know, maybe a lot of your listeners know who Bryant Gumbel is. They know him now from you know, his work in sports. But back when I was in elementary school, junior high, high school, he was the anchor of the Today Show on NBC with Jane Pauley. And so I was on the farm with my grandmother, and I'd be watching the Today Show while waiting for the bus to go to school. And I just, you know, I was just kind of excited about like, oh, he's a Black person, like he's doing this thing. Do you think I could do that? My grandma's like ‘of course, baby. You can do whatever you want to do.’ So I've known since I was 12 that I wanted to be a journalist. And very early on I was like, I want to do television, but I'd be open to do really anything. Because my grandfather was a minister. He would spend a lot of time during the week sort of fine tuning his sermon. So there's a process of writing it and practicing it. And so he would be going through his sermon on Saturday nights, and my grandmother would be kind of providing feedback. You know, like 'tighten that up Earl' (laughs). Earl and Edith are their names. 'Earl, you can get to that faster' (laughs). Thank my grandmother for that. I was also up at night watching like, you know, the late night talk shows. I was watching Nightline on ABC News. Hopefully this was during the summertime because I should have been in bed. But then watching them work on sermons and then going to church and then watching the presentation, like the build up, the flow, the feedback, I don't know. I think it was kind of all kind of percolating. So by the time I was 12, I was like, I'm going to be — I used to say, I'm going to be the next Barbara Walters, because I was also a huge Babara Walters fan. And she used to do these hour-long specials, these celebrity interviews. And I'm like, I can do that.

Angela Davis 

I also enjoy live audiences, and so in school, because it's a rural area, and I wasn't an athlete, and there weren't a lot of school activities, but one class that I really liked, was home economics. Because it was cooking, and it was sewing, and it was just like practical skills on how to run a home. So in middle school, or junior high, like seventh eighth grade, we had a club called Future Homemakers of America. And because I love to cook and I like to sew, I was a FHA officer. I was FHA president. So I was presiding over the chapter meetings of Future Homemakers of America in the little school auditorium and in front of the little podium with the mic talking to maybe 15 students, but with that club, there was a competition, like a speech competition. Not debate, but you could do like an oral presentation. And I did — my teacher, was like go to the state competition and do this project. And I did a presentation, like a speech competition on the dual career family. And I won on a state level of presenting — and back then when you had like a project, it wasn't, you know, when you created slides because there weren't — we didn't have computers. There was little like big pieces of white cardboard taped together. I remember it was like three pieces of cardboard, you taped it together, and you took magazines and you cut out pictures. And then you wrote and you did art. So I won a state competition in speech. And then like in the judging, there's an audience. I'm like, oh, I like this. I like talking in front of a mic and have an audience and then kind of, you know, adding the writing skills to it to kind of fit. But as I think about it now, and I mean, it's interesting people — I've been married for 28 years and since I was a little girl I always wanted to have my own family. And maybe that was because how I came into the world, like I always wanted to get married, always wanted to have children. In addition to, also I wanted to be like the next network television star. Like, I was all the things. Those two worlds seem maybe like they're in competition with each other, but they're not. I mean, I was able to get married and have children and have a home and I value all of those things.

Sanni Brown 

What are some things that you've learned on your path that you share with — you said you have two daughters?

Angela Davis 

I have a daughter and a son.

Sanni Brown 

Okay okay, so what do you share with them?

Angela Davis 

I can't tell them everything, they would never look at me the same (laughs).

Sanni Brown 

I meant like the life, the life hacks stuff mama (laughs).

Angela Davis 

Since they've been in school and away — they're both in college on the East Coast, our son is a senior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, so proud of him, he's graduating in May, just got a job offer, his first job offer from a company. So he's going to be working as a software engineer, beginning this summer — so proud of him. And then our daughters a junior at the University of Maryland, where I went in College Park, and she's an Information Science major. So also, you know, looking at tech jobs. But the main thing now, what I see and hear in them, because I try to look at them, I'm like, if I were them, what would I want? And I keep — I text this, I say this to them all the time. Like, I can't stop bad things from happening in the world or bad things from happening to you, but I can assure you, I can tell you that you will never go through anything alone. I'm always with you. You're always gonna have support. And so just know that. So move in a way that is confident and have courage because, you know, when surprises hit you, or unpleasant things happen to you, you've got help.

Sanni Brown 

Yeah, that's really big. Because I didn't have help when I was —

Angela Davis 

I didn't either. I did not have that. So I try to be the mother that I didn't have. That's what I would have wanted to hear.

Sanni Brown 

Yeah, I hear that. What tips, knowledge, wisdom could you give future young women coming into media?

Angela Davis 

Is there another major you could consider? (joking, laughs)

Sanni Brown 

Oh no!! (laughs)

Angela Davis 

No all industries are hard. I mean, like workplace environments are difficult. So I think the main thing is: A. make sure your skills are what they need to be. Focus on what you control. I don't want to hear your sob stories if you are not a strong writer, if you are not a strong editor, if you have not taken the time to do your research, if you have not been paying attention to the news, if you don't know your history, if you don't know your community, I don't want to hear your complaints about who was treating you bad at work, right? Focus on what you control. So get your skills together, whatever it is that you are studying, or pursuing, make sure you've got the basics covered. That you know how to do your job, and that you're not so reliant on other people to come behind you and clean your stuff up and fix it. Because that's where I start with people. I'm like, well, you know, when you emailed me, you had like about four misspelled words, so that tells me a little bit. Let's get real about what you're working with, like work on yourself. Right? Let's start with that. Yeah, so get yourself some mentors, or people who'll have honest conversations with you. Because a lot of times people are well meaning and they want you to be successful, but they're not telling you the thing that you need to know. Be able to take feedback and focus on what you can control. And also, don't be shy about asking for help, you know, reaching out to people asking for help. Or even if it's a classmate, like, 'well she over there getting A's maybe I should be studying with her.' Like, look who is doing the thing that you want to do and see what you can learn from them, and see if they will help you. Instead of like, pretending — I can think of classes I've been in like, I have no idea, I'm behind, I am lost.

Sanni Brown 

And you'll find out 70% of the other students don't know either (laughs).

Angela Davis 

Yeah. Or like, I think I know what that word — well, you'll hear me sometimes on the radio. I'm like, 'I'm sorry, what does that mean? What does that stand for? Hold on, hold up. What's that mean? Could you define that for me?' I will ask in a minute. Why? Because I want to make sure I'm keeping up, because then I'm gonna miss out. If I haven't, you know, if I don't get what you say the first time then I'm not gonna get the rest of the conversation. But even when I started here, I would take recordings of my show and send it to people who are public radio managers in other cities, like 'will you listen to a couple of my shows and tell me what you think?' Right? And got feedback, like, 'oh, you're saying this too fast' or 'slow this down' or, you know, I'm still a work in progress. I'm still working on it. And the goal is like just trying — I'm in competition with me.

Sanni Brown 

I just want to double down and so the young people don't miss that part. The Gracie Award winner, the five-time regional Emmy Award winner, the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill's College of Journalism 2024 Hall of Fame class, says you are humble enough to learn to be coachable to take in information even though you've had all of these successes. And that's important to me.

Angela Davis 

But that just tells me that there's more to come.

Sanni Brown 

It also tells me that the way you thinking worked, that what you're saying, how you're saying be coachable. You had to be coachable here to get this. So that's what that says to me. But I just want to reiterate that you're in this position, and you're still saying 'I'm still coachable. I'm still willing to learn,' and I just really want to highlight that.

Angela Davis 

Yeah, and I still have goals and ambitions. I just did another interview recently and I talked about, you know, what I want to do next they're like, 'don't you want to retire next?' I'm like, no! I still got gas in the tank, come on now! I'm very interested because I've been watching now a lot more, many more documentaries. And I'm like, oh, that would be fun to work on a documentary. To sort of marry the years of experience in working in local television with now doing interviews on public radio that are longer. Working on a documentary seems like that would be a marriage of these two loves in my life.

Sanni Brown 

This is a music show. And I don't feel like we talked about music (laughs).

Angela Davis 

Oh, music! How did we not talk about music? I love music, music kept me company during the pandemic, when we were all sheltering in place, I would lose sleep just to listen to music.

Sanni Brown 

What are you listening to right now?

Angela Davis 

I have a bunch of playlists for my workouts. So usually during workouts, I'm listening to R&B from the '90s. I have a couple of different playlists that include house music, because when I was a student at the University of Maryland, Chicago house like, deep house mixes. For hours, I just remember being on the dance floor for hours. So I love house music. And that takes me back to when I could move like that.

Sanni Brown 

Yeah, I don’t know if I can move like that — (laughs)

Angela Davis 

Like I remember — 'yeah, yeah just 10 more minutes.' So, I like that. I like gospel music. Oh I just got back from Cuba, so now I'm really getting into Afro-Cuban jazz. Because that sounds amazing live. So I like jazz, I lived in Atlanta for a year, I worked behind the scenes at CNN. That was my first job out of college. And so when I was in Atlanta, dating, a lot of the people I dated took me to jazz clubs. And so to see live jazz compared to when you are just listening to it I was like, 'oh, this is cool.' So I do listen to some jazz. I don't know the newer stuff I kind of get from what my daughter listens to.

Sanni Brown 

Is there anything that she listens to that you like? Like specifically that pops up in your head?

Angela Davis 

Oh, gosh, who am I gonna -- is it sweetie? Is that her name?

Sanni Brown 

Saweetie, yeah! (laughs)

Angela Davis 

Tap in.

Sanni Brown 

That's Saweetie.

Angela Davis 

Yeah (laughs). I don't know, I love Chaka Khan. And Phyllis Hyman. Do you know about Phyllis Hyman?

Sanni Brown 

I know Phyllis.

Angela Davis 

My husband hates it when I listen to Phyllis Hyman.

Sanni Brown 

Why??

Angela Davis 

Because all the saggy draggy sad — I love me a saggy draggy love song. I love Phyllis Hyman.

Sanni Brown 

Yeah, I grew up — my mom and my aunt grew up listening to Phyllis Hyman. I know of her by her vocals. I know the power of her vocals. That's what I know her by.

Angela Davis 

And Earth Wind and Fire, Isley Brothers. So that's kind of my go-to.

Sanni Brown 

I play all that on Carbon Sound baby (laughs).

Angela Davis 

I saw Jeffrey Osborne live a couple years ago.

Sanni Brown 

We could use some more Jeffrey Osborne —

Angela Davis 

What was funny, you know, he's in his 70s now and he said it I'm like, why you have to tell us he's 70? (laughs) Then I started looking around, like, there's a whole bunch of 70-year-olds out here. Oh my gosh! I've become this person (laughs). But we had a good time, I was like they still here kicking it. I'm fine. I do need some new music in my life.

Sanni Brown 

Alright well, I think that's it, I done ran out of questions.

Angela Davis 

But what I want people to know, you know, how you come into the world does not have to define how you leave this world. Like I grew up in rural poverty, I have had over the years in my lifetime so many people outside — in my family and outside of my family who stepped in and stood in the gap and got me to the next place I needed to be. And I'm just so grateful for that. And so I try to do that for other people. There's always an opportunity to help somebody get to the next place, but as individuals we have to be open to receiving help as well.

Sanni Brown 

That's it that's a really big part, yeah. So thank you for — oh my goodness for taking time out and coming and spending time and I wish I could jump into your like your story. It just sounds like — the farmer part, and then you like transitioning into this like this big city, like I love your story. It's dope. I really do feel like you could be a Media Barbie. I do. I really do. I really do appreciate you coming in and taking time and sharing your story and leaving gems of wisdom for the next generation of young people and just thank you for being who you are.

Angela Davis 

Thank you for not making me nervous.

Sanni Brown 

Well, I'm glad you're not nervous!

Angela Davis 

You helped me get through that hurdle. I won't be so nervous next time.

Sanni Brown 

I'm glad and that makes me feel good because I wanted to make sure I was on my A game with you in the room, so —

Angela Davis 

You were. You get a A.

Sanni Brown 

Did y'all hear it?? Mark it down! Ladies and gentlemen, Angela Davis in the Carbon Sound studios thank you again so much. Alright y'all, we gonna get back to — I think I got some time. I think I have some time for like one song.

Angela Davis 

You could play my song!

Sanni Brown 

What song — oh by Saweetie?? (laughs)

Angela Davis 

Yes!

Sanni Brown 

(Laughing) I will put on some Saweetie for you, okay?