Ep 1 ｜ Tim Ballard ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 24 minutes
Words per Minute
162.5674
Summary
Harriet Jacobs was a slave in Edenton, North Carolina, escaped slavery, but not only liberated herself, but her two children. She was hounded by the worst master you can imagine, but the way she escaped, the reason was love. She wanted to become free so she could help others.
Transcript
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Hey, welcome to the podcast. Today, you're going to hear an amazing story of somebody you've never heard of in history. Her name is Harriet Jacobs. Her story was really literally erased, but she is one of the most amazing characters in American history.
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And she made this courageous decision, one right after another, that seemed nuts, but she knew exactly what she was doing. And it's an amazing tale. Also, something that kind of spilled out about, I don't know, halfway through, it kind of flows into a very personal story that I hadn't planned on sharing.
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It happened over the summer of 2018 and was extraordinarily traumatic for my family. And it's taken me a while to be able to share it. And in this podcast, it just kind of came out. And the reason why is because of Tim Ballard.
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If you've ever listened to my show, you know who he is, but I don't think you've ever heard him like this. Tim was a government agent. He was in the CIA. Then he worked for Homeland Security, but he was an undercover guy. I didn't even know that he was an agent. I thought he was an author. He's a really good writer.
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It was about five years ago that he said to me, can I meet with you? And I did. And he pulls out a badge. And I'm like, am I under arrest? And he said, no, I have to tell you who I really am. And the reason why is he wanted to start Operation O-U-R.
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We are Operation Underground Railroad, a team of former CIA and military personnel created to rescue traffic children and dismantle these criminal networks.
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Now, a few years later, after he's really gotten O-U-R running and we play a big role in that, and we're grateful to be a part of it, he's also taken on the role of overseeing the Nazarene Fund, which is saving women and children in the Middle East from slavery and about to go global on that as well.
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I think you're really going to enjoy today's podcast with Tim Ballard.
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One, and I want to start here, I've learned so much history and seen stories that you don't see anywhere.
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And if you start to pull that thread, you start to say, oh my gosh, here it all is.
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Your book, Slave Stealers, tells the story of somebody I've never even heard of.
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And it's the most riveting emancipation story, slave story I've ever heard.
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She was one of the greatest, maybe the greatest abolitionists.
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Her story, she was a slave in Edenton, North Carolina, escaped slavery, but not only liberated herself, but her two children.
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She was hounded by, I mean, hounded by the worst master you can imagine.
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You just want to rip this guy's eyeballs out when you're reading her story.
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But the way she escaped, the way she outsmarted him, and the reason she did it, the motive was love, always love.
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She wanted to become free so she could help others, her own children.
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I want to start before she obviously escapes with her children, before she even has children.
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She's really young, and she's with, I mean, you describe the family as a good of a slave owner family as you can get.
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They still own slaves, but they treat them like people, they teach them how to read, right?
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And they promise them that they're going to be released, and they are.
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But it's at the time of the American Revolution, and so there's chaos everywhere.
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So the family, these are kind of the forebearers to Harriet.
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Harriet, their master liberates them, gives them money, and says, get out of here.
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And they're off to go find their lives, and they're stopped by, you know, again, the Revolutionary War is going, and they're stopping ships.
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They're black people, so we can say they're slaves, even though they have emancipation papers, and they sell them.
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They divide this family, and they parse them out to different people who purchased them.
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And Harriet's grandmother ends up in Edenton, North Carolina, owned by the Horniblo family, who is one of the purchasers of human beings.
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And her grandmother is put up for auction, right?
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But she's so loved by everybody that when her new slave master knows that the town's going to go, they know that she was supposed to be released.
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And so he says, we're not going to have a public auction, and she demands it.
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It's the white people in town, they stand up and say, no, she's not a slave.
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And nobody bids on her, except a white woman who bids on her, I think, what was it, $50?
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She buys her, takes her right to the courthouse, and fills out the Papers of Emancipation.
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Here's this town that they're there to buy slaves, buy humans, but they see this one slave, and they're like, no, we can't buy her because she's supposed to be free.
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It's the most complex, most bewildering concept, because it's so unnatural and so wrong, that it creates those kind of complexities.
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Right, and we live through those today, through modern-day slavery.
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I see those things every day throughout the world, where it's just this bizarre world.
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Okay, so the daughter or the granddaughter, Harriet, sold to this monster of a family.
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The guy is truly a monster, making children with all of the slave women.
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And Harriet, in a way, outsmarts him, but in a way also causes trouble, probably not as much trouble as she would have had, because he was raping everybody.
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I mean, that's my favorite part of the story, is how she...
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The first thing she says is, your husband is a predator.
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Of course, she sees the babies being born that look like her husband all over, but we don't talk about that.
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And she goes to the wife and says, he's preying on me, and I'm not going to let it happen.
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And Harriet talks about how slavery makes the wives wretched.
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Her husband's been called out about something you don't talk about.
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She becomes jealous at Harriet, but also so upset at her husband that she won't let her husband be close to Harriet.
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But now she's dealing with this jealous wife who...
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Is it the fact that he can't get his hands on her that drives him?
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You know, I'll make you the mistress of the house.
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And then she falls in love with a free black man.
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And she has another moment that slaves don't have.
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Where he's saying, the guy you love is a puppy.
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And she is outsmarting him every step of the way.
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She realizes that he's never going to let her go.
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She knows that that will mean that if they marry, they'll have children which will belong to the slave master.
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And she says to her fiancé, you got to go away and never look back.
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She says that was when the lights went out for her.
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He offers to build her a cabin out in the woods.
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And so living next to her grandmother in this same town is a lawyer, a white lawyer.
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And she says, you know, she says, look, I'm a moral person.
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And she allowed herself, she made a romantic, you know, relationship with Sam Sawyer, who's
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Tries to suggest, tries to buy her to free her.
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And Norcom, James Norcom, he's the master, the town doctor.
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So she says, okay, I'm going to fall in love with him.
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And that was intentional because then she would be connected to a powerful person in
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And she'd also be, you know, it's a major slap in the master's face because that's all
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he wants is to be that, to be the father of her children.
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Whatever I need to do, I'm getting away from him.
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Well, and so she, she has two children by Sam Sawyer who takes care of the kids financially
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He won't sell the kids, but he doesn't know what to do.
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Now he's, now she's living with grandma who lives next door to Sam Sawyer because James
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Norcom's wife won't let her live in the house because she's so jealous of him.
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If people don't know what that is, what was that rebellion?
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Nat Turner, he, he was a slave in Virginia and he said, enough is enough.
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There's a great movie called Birth of a Nation that came out, I think two years ago, maybe
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No, no, no, no, no, not the turn of the century one.
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The one that came out two years ago and he, he rises up and he, he starts a rebellion and
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he starts, they, they, they literally go around and start murdering all the slave owners
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and taking their things and eventually it gets, he gets crushed.
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It started making people realize, well, maybe we can't, you know, we aren't slaves just because
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So it had this empowering kind of movement to it, but it also created negative externalities
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The slaves didn't want because it scared the heck out of everybody.
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Including the neighboring North Carolina where Harriet was living and they came in and they
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just, they decided they had to make a, make a, um, a show of this.
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And they created this, this, um, these rates, they create these, these raiders came in, the
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militia sanctioned by the state and they started beating and terrorizing and killing and imprisoning
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If they're planting evidence to, as if there were a rebellion, there wasn't one, but to
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But you, you put a spin on this that I have not heard before and, and it's not your spin.
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And I'm not sure I understand exactly how this worked, but the, the, the part that you brought
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out was that it, it wasn't the intelligent well to do that were on these raids.
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It was the, it was the, the downtrodden white guy who had been crushed his whole life, had
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Probably a lot like people who probably joined the Nazi party, you know, or these crazy parties
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today who they just feel like nobody's listening to me.
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Those are the guys that go in because they're living pretty much the, the same life as a
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slave, far as what they have and, and how they live.
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And this is the way for them to feel superior to somebody.
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So again, Harriet, because her, her grandmother's now free because you mentioned how she was
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And Harriet lives there and, and, and they're okay.
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They're, they're, they're, they're not wealthy, but they have nice things.
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They have, and these raiders come in and, and she knows they're coming because, you know,
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they're going to make a, this, this whole dog and pony show to scare everybody.
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She decorates the house to make it even look nicer than it usually is.
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And income, these lowlifes, these, these, these, these, you know, these white raiders
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who just signed up for the militia, just for this purpose, for this day of raid and, and,
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And they come in and they're, they're, they're sick because they walk in and they see this black
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I would think if I were with Aunt Molly and Harriet, I would say, no, do the opposite.
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She, in order for her to actually wage this psychological warfare on her master and on the
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bad people in the town, she had to have this defiant spirit and it, it manifested itself
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maybe even when, maybe she didn't really want it to sometimes, but she couldn't help herself.
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She knew she was a daughter of God and no one could tell her that her skin changed that.
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And, and she, uh, she would do these things and they walked into the house and she would
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fight with them and say, you find your, there's no evidence here.
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And then, and then she tried to kick them out of the house.
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She had, she had a couple of white powerful friends in town who, once things got to the
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And they walked in and stood in the, in the house and said, it's time for you, you boys
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And, um, and then there's this funny part in the, in the story where as they're walking
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out, they're, they're cussing and racial slurs.
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And I can't believe you bleepity bleeps have all this stuff.
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And grandma Molly, who has that same defiant spirit says, well, you can rest assured we
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didn't find them from, we didn't get them from your homes.
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And, and with that, they get booted out of the house, you know?
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So, um, I think that, that Harriet was righteously defiant, you know, and she, and she couldn't,
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So she's transferred to the plantation because she won't give in to her master's, uh, will.
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So, and he says, I'm going to, I'm going to break the family up.
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And, and she knows what that means and what he means by that.
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And he says, I'm going to first put you at the plantation.
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And he says, no, no, you need a week to think about that.
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And he leaves and she's like, no, I've got, I've got my answer.
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He comes back a week later and he says, so what have you been thinking?
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And she's like, I told you last week, I'm ready to go.
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No, I mean, cause he gave her the offer, the cottage again, go to the cottage.
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Are you seriously, did you hear what I told you?
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If you don't become my concubine, your kids are sold.
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And on the surface, you would think, Harriet, what are you doing?
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Like you, you are now creating the very thing you fear the most.
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Do you think she was, or was she, was she, was she, were her actions smarter than she even knew?
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Was she, was she always, I mean, cause that takes incredible courage to do what she did.
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You know, if you really believe you're being guided by God, which I think she did.
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You know, that gives you some extra, but you do still are a human being and you have to go, oh my gosh.
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She, she could lose her life, but she wanted to make sure her children never lived in slavery.
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Do you think sometimes she, she thought to herself, maybe I've gone too far this time.
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Cause I've read her, I've read her autobiography so many times and I am thinking, Harriet, what are you doing?
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You know, and, um, she doesn't reveal to you exactly in that moment, why she did things.
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Whatever it was though, she ended up figuring it out.
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From day one, she becomes the most subservient, the most obedient, working over hours, everything she can do.
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Oh, and the James Norcom, the master's son runs that plantation and they fall in love with her.
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They think, what's, what's my dad talking about?
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And, and she talks about, she's like, I knew what I was doing.
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I needed them to keep, to start loving me and start trusting me.
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Uh, and she knew the day would come as Norcom promised, the kids would come out and be what they said, broke, broke in, broken in as, as slaves.
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And eventually her daughter was going to be harassed sexually by this man.
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Um, and when that day came, she knew, I mean, she had it already figured out.
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And she had, she had taken her clothes weeks earlier, or maybe months earlier out of grandma Molly's, of her room from grandma Molly's house in town.
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The plantation is about six miles outside of town.
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So this, this, these were her private things that stayed in town.
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She took her everyday clothes to the plantation.
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But all of her stuff that she, if you were going to go someplace, you wanted those things.
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And she quietly, no one knew except grandma, I presume, took all of those things and hid them.
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And no one would know why she did that when she did it.
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But here's the day she's, she's been waiting for.
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Tomorrow, the kids come to the plantation to be broken in.
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Well, that's the night she slips out the window.
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And she heads into the woods and just disappears.
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So the next morning, the last thing, and she knows what she's doing because they're not
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going to bring the kids out to the plantation because they're only two years old and six.
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It's going to be a drain on the, the, the, the, the, the economy of the farm.
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So she knows they're not going to come out unless she's there to take care of them.
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So she keeps her kids safe in that, in that, in that instant.
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And he sends out the patrols and they go and raid grandma Molly's house and all her possessions
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So he concentrates all his efforts on searching for her in the North when in fact, she's a mile
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And now she's in trouble and, uh, she has got to get help.
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And the, doesn't she go to grandma Molly or aunt Molly and say, I can help, which
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And when you say, hang on, when you say both sides later, later, you will see that there
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was a slave that was trying to find Harriet because she then could be the master's favorite.
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So when you say both sides, the white person knew you're, I'm going to be destroyed.
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The black person knew, uh, if I, if this is a trap, I'm toast.
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And she's looking across the table, kind of like you and I are right now.
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And grandma Molly, and they're just looking at each other.
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Cause if either of us betrayed the secret, we're both dead.
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And Molly's out in the woods bitten by a snake.
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And she had these moments where I think it was like, I'll do all that I can do.
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And then I leave the rest up to God because she hit a point where this, where she's like,
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And so grandma says, very religious, very prayerful.
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You can trust her, even though she owns slaves.
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Let me, let me, this is the point of the story that Anne Frank came to mind.
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That it's, it's not just the slave trade where we've seen this kind of stuff.
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Somebody comes to the door and says, I can hide you.
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We have it now in the Middle East with ISIS and with Christians.
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You might take me right directly to an auction block or to somebody who wants, you know, to
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Solomon Northrup, you know, the 12 years of slave, that story.
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They took him and they said, they're going to, they're going to, I write about in the
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book where they're, they're, they're going to take him and make him a musician and a
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And the, the, the producers are slave owners and it was all a trap.
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And, and so this is the world you live in when slavery exists.
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And, and all you have in that moment, Molly and Martha is God to intervene.
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And you're both, you're hoping for a witness because that's all you've got.
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And you have, you haven't even the best intentioned people.
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If you look back at John Merrick, the elephant man, and you see, he went from one cage kind
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of to another, you know, where he was a showpiece in, in some regard.
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So Martha sends one of the jolliest old characters in the whole book.
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Old Betty is the one slave that Martha says I would give my life to.
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She, she trusts her and she tells her the secret, can't trust the other slaves in her
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You would think that if you're a slave, you would be the most trustworthy on hiding a slave.
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That's, this is, it's one of the surprising parts of the story that, that, that Harriet knew
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They would rat her out and be the, and be Norcom's hero, you know?
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Um, so it's greed and power on one side and it's survival and power on the other side.
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So old Betty goes, this is the, the, the, the cook for slave for, for, for Martha Blount
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goes and grandma, grandma Molly tells her where here it's hiding in the wood.
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They go get her, bring her back and they hide her in this closet room.
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That's, that's, uh, adjoining the master bedroom where Martha Blount resides.
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And she's the only one with the key and she locks her in there and says, you can't come
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Let's, let's figure out what's, what's going on.
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They, they, they, you know, they, they made her well.
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The part for me that, um, drew me more to this story than anything else.
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Uh, because I've, I obviously will eventually get into this, uh, my personal connection to
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why I am almost obsessed over this story and the personal application to me.
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Um, Norcom decides to up the ante and he takes the two children as is his right.
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He snatches them out of grandma Molly's house and he throws them in this tiny little gel
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And he takes these two years old and six years old and throws these little babies into jail
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and holds them as hostages and says, let's, let's the word out that until and unless Harriet
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She's up in the closet and she learns your kids are there.
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And this is the, I think maybe the hardest part for her.
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And God was telling her and her plan was telling her, let them stay in jail, stay in the closet,
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And she's right, by the way, but she's having to put faith in this now.
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When you say stay in the closet, it is truly a small little closet, right?
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And locked by either the cook or the mistress of the house.
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And she has to stay quiet because there's slaves all over the house who will rat her out.
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At one point, one of the slaves is trying all their keys because she's moved.
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They came to the house and she was, she was hiding under the floorboards in the kitchen.
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So, um, they kept coming and checking everyone's houses and, and every time word would get out,
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old Betty would come grab Harriet, throw her under the floorboard in the kitchen.
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And she'd sit under that thing for days if necessary.
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Um, Norcom was asking too many questions and they realized they need a more permanent,
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Um, and, but first I had to get her out of town, put her somewhere.
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And this is one of the most horrifying parts of the story.
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Uh, it's, it's just, Edenton's a little coastal town, um, hasn't changed much, much from,
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Um, and so you can go there and see this and smell this and you can, you feel your, the
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There's, there's her late father's friend, Peter.
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He puts her in a canoe and rows her out to snaky swamp.
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Now snaky swamp today is a, um, it's a historical site certified by the state of, of North Carolina
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This was, this was, yeah, this was before the underground railroad.
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This was before the underground railroad was up and going really.
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And so she goes out there and spends two horrifying nights fighting snakes, mosquitoes.
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Um, he rose her three miles deep into the, into snaky swamp, wanting to learn her story
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for more than just for this book, but for my own pursuits, which we'll talk about eventually.
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Um, I went out there, I rented a canoe and I went by myself one afternoon, um, into snaky
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And you know, the, the guy who rented me the canoe, he says, where are you going?
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He says, there's, they called that for a reason.
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I said, I, I, I've got to, I've got, I came all the way out here.
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Um, there's these waterways that take you miles deep.
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And he said, he's like, listen, sir, the snakes are in the trees.
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If they see something moving below, they jump out.
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And he saw my consternation and he said, you know, he kind of relented.
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And he said, well, most of them aren't poisonous.
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I need a, I need a heavier deposit on the canoe.
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And so I was, I was, I was just hell bent on getting out there.
00:35:22.060
So I went about a half a mile in and after my third confrontation with the snake, I, I'm done.
00:35:28.060
I, I, I turned that thing around and I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
00:35:40.480
She's all night just going, just blindly stabbing around to keep snakes away from her.
00:35:45.720
Kind of like, uh, when Indiana Jones jumped down into that, right?
00:35:53.040
Um, they eventually, after two days, they were creating another hiding place for her in grandma
00:35:59.020
Molly's house and it was an attic space, uh, about three, three feet by two feet high, seven
00:36:12.440
Peter got her out of the snakey swamp, put her up in grandma's house.
00:36:15.840
And she, and he said, you won't, this will be your last walk.
00:36:19.280
This is the, the one block from the water to the Molly's house.
00:36:33.160
Harriet does not come out of that little space for seven years.
00:36:44.820
Um, and that's where she, and that's where she stayed for, for seven years.
00:36:51.760
Tell me, cause I, I don't want to reveal all the story, but then tell me.
00:37:01.220
The happy ending is really the person that is Harriet Jacobs, her motive for doing all
00:37:08.340
of this, her, her, her love of God and her, her, her spirit of, of, of service that she
00:37:23.840
You know, it wasn't like, and all the people read the, the daring rescue, how she got her
00:37:28.360
kids out of jail, how she got out of, I mean, it's, it's a crazy story, but I want you're,
00:37:33.860
Um, but when she gets her freedom and this is the, this is the part that just is the
00:37:46.280
She gets you like Harriet Tubman before, you know, who's also a hero in this book.
00:37:56.320
And that's a whole nother story, how she's fighting in the North now, um, but she turns
00:38:04.000
She goes to the front lines of the civil war, um, because she wants to be there for the thousands
00:38:10.180
of fugitive children who have, who are being liberated by this war and running North and
00:38:15.180
coming destitute, coming orphaned, coming hungry.
00:38:23.220
She established the Lincoln school for these children.
00:38:25.960
And she, she helped these kids get adopted and which is also a personal thing that connects
00:38:32.100
Um, and so this, this, she lived to serve God and men and, and nothing could distract her.
00:38:40.460
All these distractions, all this people, their hate, their viciousness.
00:38:44.400
She was able just to put it aside and say, there's real things going on here.
00:38:57.160
That's why God allowed me to be liberated so that I could focus on these real things and
00:39:13.360
Somebody said, in the midst of the darkest of human suffering, that is where you'll find God.
00:39:38.880
And there's a, if I, if you don't mind, it is brought to mind something, you know, people
00:39:42.440
asked me often, um, they've asked me, how do you go nose to nose with traffickers and
00:39:52.280
Even though you're doing it undercover, how do you do that and not just become so darkened
00:39:56.760
yourself and just cynical and, and I couldn't answer that question for a long time because
00:40:01.880
the answer made me look crazy because the answer was, as I thought, I thought, those
00:40:09.120
Those are some of the most brilliant moments of my life.
00:40:11.760
And I was embarrassed to say it because again, I would, I would look foolish or crazy or immoral
00:40:18.540
And I couldn't figure out what it was until I heard, uh, someone once talk about angels
00:40:24.560
and, um, the doctrine of angels, you know, the, the reality.
00:40:31.060
And then I was relieved and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
00:40:37.420
When I'm close to the darkest things and those kids are right in that other room about to
00:40:51.980
It's, you know, some people lose their, their, their, their, um, belief, their faith in God.
00:40:57.640
I've watched people in my, in my industry, people who, who are undercover operators, they
00:41:01.940
turn from God because how could God let this happen?
00:41:05.480
How could God let these children be abused this way?
00:41:10.980
And my experience has been just the opposite because the closer I get to the darkest place,
00:41:16.360
especially where the kids are, I witness angels there and God is there and you, you can't
00:41:26.240
You and I went to, um, Thailand together and, uh, and I will never forget walking down the
00:41:34.560
street with you and, uh, talking to you about one of the worst guys that you had ever encountered
00:41:49.260
And you told me the conversations that you had to have to gain his trust.
00:42:02.600
It is, well, I'll, I'll tell you this at the end of those conversations, I'm running to
00:42:09.040
the bathroom and throwing up and literally vomiting.
00:42:12.120
Um, talking about children, like you're selling a computer piece or a car and they're, you
00:42:19.220
know, it gets so grotesque that I, I'll stop there.
00:42:22.040
So I asked you at that point, cause there's something, there's something to be said for
00:42:30.320
a parent, a father and a man that may or may not be unique, um, to our gender.
00:42:39.400
But I asked you, how do you not just pull a gun and kill these people?
00:42:50.880
I mean, I know you're, you're probably very handy with your hands.
00:43:06.560
If I, if I mess this up, if I were to do that and, and the sting operation, there would
00:43:21.900
Um, he would probably be free and I'd be in jail.
00:43:26.460
It's the, it's the children that I think of in those moments.
00:43:32.140
And that smile on my face, though it's looking at evil stays.
00:43:41.560
But you've had days where you've come home and looked at your kids and thought, I can't
00:43:52.180
When I first talked to you, you were kind of going through that.
00:44:08.020
When I come home and I see them, um, you know, I've, I've done operations where the kids we
00:44:14.640
just rescued were miles away from, from where I live and going from that scene to this scene
00:44:29.740
And, and, and, and that child is not, why do my kids have two parents and a family system?
00:44:34.940
Well, they have a trafficker as the only adult in their life who's raping them and selling them.
00:44:42.500
I mean, I've, it's, I've, I've, I've passed out.
00:44:47.100
Um, it's, it's, it's a really, really hard thing to, to, to confront.
00:45:17.100
And I didn't plan on this advance, but we prayed before we went on.
00:45:24.640
So I feel, um, compelled to share something that you know about that nobody else knows about.
00:45:35.000
You say you feel guilty, you know, why are my kids?
00:45:45.420
And you've, and you've been to my house, I have 24, seven armed security.
00:45:52.860
I have thousands of dollars worth of equipment at my house.
00:46:01.860
The police actually call my, my house, the compound.
00:46:06.960
Um, and one night at one o'clock in the morning, because we happen to have phones in our house
00:46:19.200
My wife happened to be awake and she saw the, the phone rang, just half a ring.
00:46:27.780
And then she looked at the phone and she saw that the light went on.
00:46:39.460
She woke me up and she said, somebody answered the phone.
00:47:01.700
Let's just, let's talk about this for a minute.
00:47:05.360
And then about 20 minutes later, that light went on again.
00:47:10.020
And we could see that the, the call that had come in was from California.
00:47:20.040
So now I grabbed my gun and my dogs and I, uh, go out in the house and I'm looking for
00:47:28.460
somebody in our house and I say, I hear something and I say, if you're one of the kids, announce
00:47:45.460
I have a gun and I have a dog and I feel under threat and I will shoot you.
00:47:59.400
If there is someone in this house, I will shoot you.
00:48:08.540
My son had been playing on PlayStation and, uh, had been contacted by a guy in California
00:48:28.020
and they were quote, just talking about the games at one o'clock in the morning.
00:48:44.420
And my wife and I said, no, that's not normal, honey.
00:48:48.480
You, you, he called at night and then you picked up on half a ring and said, I'll call
00:48:56.480
You know, at that time it was two o'clock in the morning.
00:49:01.220
I am so blessed to have my security and to know you.
00:49:06.800
I think at five o'clock in the morning when I thought people might start to be getting
00:49:14.000
I contacted, um, security and said, here's the guy's name.
00:49:22.960
And I called you and you had the child services come over to our house right away.
00:49:29.240
You want to talk about that at all and what it's, you know, that could happen to you of
00:49:37.860
all people, uh, not only because your cause is our cause you, you know, this, you're, you're
00:49:44.040
one of the few who's so open and supportive of the cause of protecting children and, you
00:49:54.060
And yet one of these creeps got into your house and my son was defending him at first.
00:50:04.560
My son said, dad, you're always paranoid about everything.
00:50:17.000
And of course we figured out that you were right about that person.
00:50:23.860
And he is, um, is, you know, his, his days are numbered.
00:50:29.340
Um, and he's a predator and he got into your house and, and it's an, it's, it's such an
00:50:35.600
important story for all parents and all people that that's how many predators there are.
00:50:42.460
There are 2 million children are in the commercial sex trade, 2 million children.
00:50:49.660
That's how many predators are looking for our kids.
00:50:56.800
They're finding them on, I, I, when, when, you know, the children's, um, sex crimes, uh,
00:51:17.960
He looked at me and he said, do I have your permission to transcribe all of your son's
00:51:30.780
And I said, oh, you have my permission, which led them to a lot of discovery.
00:51:36.720
Um, but what they did was they took my PlayStation and they just had done this a few weeks before
00:51:46.880
with somebody else whose, whose son was in exactly the same situation and had been taken
00:51:58.320
He had already been abused, but they caught the person.
00:52:08.960
She was 40 and she was, uh, bonding on the game and then molesting.
00:52:16.900
And, uh, and so what they do is they take these playstations when they find them and they
00:52:26.400
And, um, this particular person, uh, the, the last I have on this is, or last I care to share
00:52:36.460
is that there were 12 children that he was grooming.
00:52:42.560
And because of this, what happened, that's why he'll be stopped.
00:52:47.020
If he hasn't already, we can't really talk about it.
00:52:49.200
I, um, I, um, I don't think people, I think people think this is a far off problem.
00:53:05.600
It's horrifying to look at and they don't want to look at it, but we've got to, we've
00:53:10.620
got to look at it for the, for the kids at home, for the kids abroad.
00:53:13.840
We have to stand up and be the parents to all these kids who don't have anybody.
00:53:18.980
No, it makes me so, it makes me so, I want to say angry, but it doesn't cause I, I understand
00:53:27.740
And it just turns into frustration for me of trying to do, we're repeating history.
00:53:34.260
All these people who say, Oh, our founders were so bad.
00:53:38.800
Now, how come that white community knew that was going on with Harriet and they did nothing?
00:53:45.980
That one woman bought Molly, but the town people, they knew that woman, how come they didn't
00:54:11.860
And Tim, every time you come on, every time we talk about Nazarene Fund, OUR, Saving Kids,
00:54:19.320
every time you come on, I can see my ratings go right to the floor.
00:54:27.340
I've tried a million different ways to package it.
00:54:34.360
And yet, I said on the air, if you're looking for God, you're going to find him at the point
00:55:11.160
I don't find any of those things on talk radio, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC in Washington, D.C.
00:55:25.980
You talked me into, well, you didn't do a lot of talking into, but you talked me into
00:55:36.560
this cause, not just because of the children, but because this is the way to heal.
00:56:11.560
And that's exactly why the NFL coach, Mike Tomlin, came to me.
00:56:18.200
In fact, when he was talking to me, I thought, I saw your face.
00:56:20.760
You're just talking the same language that Glenn was talking about, what this cause is.
00:56:26.340
See, I was so myopic, just let's save the kids, let's save the kids.
00:56:28.960
And you started talking about healing, how this could heal the nation.
00:56:32.280
And then Mike Tomlin, out of the blue, calls me last year.
00:56:43.540
And I can't believe the Steelers are calling me to come.
00:56:52.060
And at the first day, he says, meet me for lunch.
00:56:56.720
And he says this, he says, I have a dirty little secret I have to tell you.
00:57:15.360
So we sit down and he says, look, before I say this to you, um, I want you to know that
00:57:28.100
But I do have an ulterior motive for having you here.
00:57:32.180
And he says to me, he says, why did you call your foundation the Underground Railroad?
00:57:41.380
You know, we can talk later about what, I mean, I was, you know, I, I,
00:57:46.220
in the beginning, when I was in the early 2000s, I didn't know who to turn to, to teach
00:57:49.700
me about slavery because no one was talking about it.
00:57:52.780
The word trafficking, human trafficking, that wasn't even a thing.
00:57:56.180
Um, and I, I turned in quiet desperation to history.
00:57:58.980
That's why people like Harry Jacobs are my heroes.
00:58:02.360
And he says, but the Underground Railroad, and he opened my eyes.
00:58:07.740
He said, the Underground Railroad, Tim, that was a time.
00:58:12.100
People were killing each other because of the color of their skin.
00:58:17.580
He said, yet there were people of all colors and all creeds who dropped the hate and they
00:58:28.900
Politics, you know, everything else, states rights versus this and everything else.
00:58:33.780
But they all agreed that people shouldn't be abused.
00:58:38.480
They came together, black, white, and every other color and creed.
00:58:41.460
And they joined hands and they went into the dark together and they healed.
00:58:52.160
He says, I'm getting hit up all over the place.
00:58:57.860
I hate, how can we be so distracted by all this stuff and, and whether we should take
00:59:06.340
And yes, it's so important to some people, but children are being raped by the millions
00:59:14.900
And he said, can we, what if we followed the example of the original Underground Railroad?
00:59:20.120
And he says, what if we got everybody to focus on something that's, that we can all agree,
00:59:25.880
even if it's the only thing we can agree that's wrong, children shouldn't be sold and raped
00:59:33.480
And then we learn to serve alongside each other.
00:59:35.900
We learn to serve one another and we start seeing each other as people.
00:59:43.360
And I thought, as he's talking, I said, Glenn Beck told me that a year ago, this very same
00:59:48.840
And this is why Mike Tomlin wrote the forward to this book, because he wants that message
00:59:54.380
And that's, in the end, what this book, Slave Stealers, is about.
00:59:57.660
It's these exciting stories of rescue then and now.
01:00:04.880
There's things that are real and there's things that aren't so real.
01:00:13.340
When you go to those things, he'll receive you.
01:00:18.700
You got to take some of your, you're going to lose some innocence by going into this dark
01:00:23.020
But God is there and he'll wrap you up and he'll love you for coming there.
01:00:29.460
And if we can spread it to the world, to the nation.
01:00:46.160
And I was surrounded by, you are so, you are so Christlike with children.
01:00:57.380
I was, I was an awkward kid and I'm an awkward man.
01:01:06.960
Um, and you brought me to this place that OUR has supported and it's for all these kids that
01:01:24.200
Um, and you said, the, um, the sex crimes division is coming out and they're going to show you
01:02:02.120
Did interviews with these kids and I couldn't, I couldn't even talk.
01:02:29.440
The founders were progressives when it comes to slavery.
01:02:38.480
Let's just start dismantling it one piece at a time.
01:02:41.620
Let's first stop the slave trade in a few years.
01:02:47.420
It didn't work that way, but that's what they were trying to do because they knew they couldn't
01:02:54.340
The slave trade, the abolitionist, Ben Franklin was called insane at the end of his life.
01:03:02.760
They mocked him and ridiculed him because of slavery and him standing up and being an abolitionist.
01:03:10.480
The Liberty Bell is only known to be the Liberty Bell.
01:03:17.000
It was just a broken old bell until the abolitionists found it.
01:03:27.500
And they took it on tour to proclaim liberty throughout the land.
01:03:34.500
It wasn't a founding fathers, hey, let's all come together and build a country.
01:03:40.580
That Liberty Bell, we know it because of the abolitionists.
01:03:51.180
You know, the wedgewood plates that they made, anything to get people to see it and to talk
01:04:01.560
And they tried bringing you down to the slave ship so you could see it and smell it.
01:04:08.020
What is the message, Tim, that can get people to really, I mean, I believe this will come
01:04:25.860
This is, this is, I told you, September 11th made me a better man.
01:04:43.060
That strife makes us better because it pushes us up against the wall.
01:04:48.880
And if you're pushed hard enough, you'll finally figure out who you are, either somebody who's
01:04:54.000
living up to their highest potential or a coward.
01:04:58.800
How, as a nation that is already pushed to the absolute limit and is focused on, on all
01:05:12.960
of the wrong things, how do we get them to look at an even bigger problem that nobody wants
01:05:26.580
You know, it's, I don't know the answer, except I do know our job is to just continue telling
01:05:33.600
the story because we do make converts every time we tell the story.
01:05:46.120
For hundreds of years, no one did anything about slavery, nothing.
01:05:49.900
So when was there a movement in the 19th century?
01:05:52.560
A movement begins and you start getting recruits.
01:06:02.780
As much as I love Abe, he didn't just rise up one day and say, hark, I'm liberating everybody.
01:06:10.080
What happened was a people Frederick Douglass spoke up, Harriet Tubman spoke up, Harriet
01:06:18.500
Beecher Stowe writes her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
01:06:28.440
Harriet Beecher Stowe, her story is so amazing.
01:06:31.160
She was one of the ignorant in the North that didn't believe or know or had heard of it,
01:06:46.100
And she crossed, she was in Cincinnati and she crossed the river into the slave territory
01:06:53.900
Kind of sees it like a lot of people stumble upon our website or stumble upon your show
01:06:57.720
one day and hear this podcast or hear us talking.
01:07:04.480
She was one of those that didn't cower, but she said, who am I?
01:07:15.140
You had a similar experience when you were introduced to this.
01:07:20.020
And she wrote a letter to her sister and said, what do I do?
01:07:24.200
And she was more embarrassed from a Northern perspective because we're complicit in this.
01:07:34.040
And her sister wrote her back and says, well, what can you do?
01:07:38.620
You're not a government official, but you can write.
01:07:44.360
She takes her, her sister, her sister's letter in her hands and crumples it up in her hand.
01:07:52.620
And she sat down, she researched out what slavery was.
01:07:58.960
Within a year, two years, millions are reading it.
01:08:06.780
And then those people ask the question, what can I do?
01:08:11.000
I'm, I happen to be an operator, a former Navy SEAL.
01:08:13.700
Well, I can go now and everyone does what they can.
01:08:16.520
And then all of a sudden that was the movement that ended slavery.
01:08:23.080
It shook the foundation so much that the government had to respond.
01:08:26.720
And when Abraham Lincoln meets Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time during the war,
01:08:32.260
according to her son, he bends down and grabs her little hand.
01:08:35.480
And he says, so you're the woman who wrote the book that started this war.
01:08:45.260
And, you know, it's, I come home from operations when I'm focused in it and I've seen these
01:08:51.020
kids and I'm weeping and I can't even look at my kids yet.
01:08:55.680
And I go to my newsfeed as the airplane's landing and I'm reading this crap that everyone's
01:09:05.040
You're just so worried about what this person did or who they paid and what they said.
01:09:08.080
And I just saw 12 kids being raped for money and we just barely got them out.
01:09:14.800
And all you guys are caring about everywhere is, is how outraged you can be because it feels
01:09:23.600
I went to Mexico City with you and your team and I met three people that had been rescued.
01:09:31.280
These amazing women, literal, one of them, the sex slave that is, is Harriet's story.
01:09:45.640
I mean, it's Harriet's story where her children are being used against her in the horrible story.
01:09:54.420
Another woman who's a literal labor slave who had a chain around her neck.
01:10:06.720
And I sat there and I, I talked to them about their story and we captured them all on tape
01:10:12.820
and they were, I've never met bigger, stronger women.
01:10:19.120
And one of the women, the women, the one, one woman with this chain around her neck, I said,
01:10:25.380
I said, could you just hold up a blank piece of paper?
01:10:29.860
Because we're going to, we're going to put this at the, at the end.
01:10:33.240
And could you just hold up a blank piece of paper and say, my name is, and I was a slave.
01:10:42.320
And then hold up the paper and say, but I am the only author of my story.
01:10:52.080
Meaning that that slavery doesn't mean anything.
01:11:21.740
And I had to change the language for her to say, some would say I was a slave.
01:11:40.800
And we had, that weekend was the weekend we were pulling down statues.
01:11:48.100
And I saw college kids saying that they were being oppressed by this statue.
01:12:00.180
I was, I wanted to run to the bathroom to vomit.
01:12:24.680
If your party says one thing, you'll turn on a dime because it will help our side beat that side.
01:12:33.440
And at the same time, the littlest things we are fighting to the death over.
01:12:40.140
On Twitter and Facebook and in our own personal lives, we are willing to fight to the death.
01:12:46.620
We're on the edge of civil war over meaningless stuff.
01:13:34.120
It took me three, four years, I think, to tell this story.
01:13:44.640
It's so weird because every other chapter, you know, alternates between Harriet's story and mine.
01:13:52.600
I say, I'm here to learn at her feet because she did something I need to do.
01:14:02.960
You're the most humble, decent man, honorable man, God-fearing man I think I've ever met.
01:14:09.440
And if you die before I do, I will do my best to raise money to build a statue, which I know you would hate.
01:14:17.360
But you will go down in history as, in the league, I think, of a Bonhoeffer.
01:14:30.440
So, you know, in the early 2000s, I got pulled into the child crimes unit and I was doing different criminal, you know, investigations.
01:14:53.540
Human slavery, modern day slavery, children, child slavery, sex slavery.
01:14:58.680
I mean, you could Google, like I said, you could Google human trafficking and probably the Department of Transportation would come up, you know, trafficking trends or something.
01:15:21.820
When you get into the underbelly, like you've seen it in places like Thailand and Mexico with me and Haiti, it's in the underbelly.
01:15:35.560
And they say, we're going to teach you to be an undercover operator, to infiltrate child trafficking rings.
01:15:48.260
And I'm going toe to toe with probably the top undercover operator in the U.S. government.
01:15:56.640
Get him to talk about the kids he knows are being sold.
01:16:22.740
And I'm sitting there on a stage kind of like this, like all alone.
01:16:29.080
And this other instructor comes up and puts his arm around me.
01:16:45.960
And again, not to knock the agency I worked for, because they were leading the way in
01:16:52.080
There were no things like the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force was just getting
01:17:02.040
They were making child porn, and we weren't catching up to them.
01:17:09.580
And in quiet desperation, I did the best I could.
01:17:13.200
And I bought every book I could on the transatlantic slave trade, because I recognize it as slavery.
01:17:22.680
And it's, I suppose we used to see it as prostitution.
01:17:29.040
We would see it as, oh, that, you know, that 16-year-old girl.
01:17:33.320
Well, that 16-year-old girl may have been an eight-year-old runaway.
01:17:41.620
And that's what we were seeing, criminalizing all prostitutes and not understanding the
01:17:45.620
And so I started reading everything I can on slavery desperately.
01:17:49.880
And I started reading things and learning things.
01:17:56.400
William Still, the father of the Underground Railroad.
01:18:06.180
He would pose as a slave hunter and become best friends with the slave hunters, with the bounty
01:18:12.320
hunters, you know, and then push them off their track, give them false intelligence.
01:18:19.100
I mean, these guys inspired just the tactical side of it.
01:18:22.480
Harriet Tubman, running missions, going undercover, using code words.
01:18:27.140
I mean, people don't know that Harriet Tubman was the first woman to lead a raid during the
01:18:36.820
I mean, these were, I mean, I'm reading these stories and they're inspiring me.
01:18:40.500
Um, and then I come across this name, Harriet Jacobs.
01:18:47.580
And something happened to my heart, you know, who is she?
01:18:51.540
She, she wrote the most important book on slavery published in 1861, but she had to use
01:18:56.800
false names because the people who helped her escape were still alive and they had broken
01:19:02.600
Um, and so by the next generation, that's why it was buried.
01:19:08.600
By the next generation, it was cast aside as a copycat of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
01:19:16.800
And that's how she called herself in her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,
01:19:26.620
It was a fake book cast aside until, um, this, this one professor, uh, Jean Yellen Fagan, an
01:19:35.240
English professor, started putting the pieces together and, and verified the whole story.
01:19:48.100
I've read all her stuff, but still her story has not been out publicly.
01:19:55.920
I, you know, me, I, I'm pretty good with history.
01:20:02.940
I've read all the stories and to me, it is the most compelling.
01:20:10.740
It's she, her story is just, just unbelievable.
01:20:15.480
Now this is where it became so personal to me because as you know, um, I was looking for
01:20:23.100
two kids, uh, that traffickers had held and it's so personal to me because they became
01:20:29.780
my children, uh, that I've adopted, uh, and they just came home a couple of months ago,
01:20:34.560
you know, and I love them as much as I love any of my children, you know, and, and, but
01:20:38.940
during the time I couldn't get to them, I couldn't reach them.
01:20:42.280
And, um, this might sound over the top, but I would took trips.
01:20:45.880
I don't live close to North Carolina, as you know, I live on the West.
01:20:48.480
Uh, and I would take trips to North Carolina just to go to Edenton.
01:20:55.720
Uh, Edenton's a town that hasn't changed from the 19th century.
01:20:59.920
I mean, the, the roads are paved and the cars are modern, modern, but everything is the
01:21:03.620
So you look at a map from 19th century, it still looks like that.
01:21:07.580
And I would go there and just walk the streets.
01:21:10.180
I took my daughter at one point, she took the pictures for the book.
01:21:14.660
I was going to learn how to rescue these two kids because I didn't know where else to turn
01:21:23.740
I went to the cemetery where she, she makes this covenant at one point in the book.
01:21:28.620
She goes and makes this right before she does the most daring part of her rescue, which I'll
01:21:36.140
Which had been desecrated because of the Nat Turner thing.
01:21:46.440
So all these things were happening as I was starting my career.
01:21:48.800
Like these things were being brought forth out of the dust, you know?
01:21:54.600
So it's still, people don't even in the town, don't even know it's there.
01:22:03.120
Um, it was the most spiritual experience of my life.
01:22:08.580
When I went to the Providence cemetery, this tiny little slave cemetery where Harriet
01:22:14.540
Um, and where she dropped her knees and said, God, I'm going to do this.
01:22:19.940
It might take my life, but I'm going to do this.
01:22:24.220
You can, I want people to read what it is that she went and did, um, which led to the
01:22:34.500
I'm telling you, I was on my knees and I I've taken people, I've taken tours back to
01:22:40.160
Edenton this last summer to, so people could experience this.
01:22:43.220
Uh, and so her story becomes what I'm trying to achieve, what I'm trying to emulate.
01:22:53.500
And as you know, you've been with us, you know, that the aftercare is the most important
01:22:59.660
I mean, she would take these children, fugitive orphans, fugitive slave kids, and find homes
01:23:06.800
And so everything she did, I just wanted to be, and I still want to do, uh, she is,
01:23:12.880
that's why I said at the beginning of this interview, she is my hero.
01:23:16.540
And, and this book tells this story of how every other chapter you go from her story to
01:23:21.920
mine and the things I'm, I'm extrapolating from history, what she's teaching me and not
01:23:26.740
just her, but the other, the other founders of the underground railroad and that, and that
01:23:31.880
Um, and you see these parallel stories kind of make their way across until she finds her
01:23:39.340
And, and then it kind of, you know, it goes from there, but it's full of these rescue
01:23:44.220
stories and triumphs and tragedies and miracles and, and, and, and God and light and service
01:23:51.440
That's the key to not only finding kids, but to healing ourselves and our communities and
01:24:01.300
And I thank you for, uh, safety of my son and, uh, and for some of the worst experiences
01:24:13.140
of my life that have made me a much better man.
01:24:21.440
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01:24:25.960
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