By Adam Drapcho and Julie Hart
Laconia Daily Sun
Listen to the full interview on The Granite Beat podcast and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Anthony Payton is a columnist and community activist whose work is informed by his experiences with the criminal justice system. He also writes about race relations, and how he finds that what people share in common often transcends their differences.
This content has been edited for length and clarity.
Adam Drapcho: One reason why I find myself so interested in your work is your focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and highlighting diversity within the Granite State. I wanted to ask whether you find any sort of resistance to discussing these topics, to focusing on these areas? What kind of response or feedback do you get from your work?
Anthony Payton: My first article actually springboarded my column because I had a cheesecake issue. I had to get away from cheesecakes, and I wanted to start eating healthier. My daughter and I were going to different supermarkets to find the sweetest and ripest of fruit to offset this cheesecake issue that I have. We wind up going out to the Walmart in Hooksett.
I open up with the story. I see a white guy in there, he's got a big beard, ripped up blue jeans, dirty t-shirt, and the first thing I say to myself is, that's a Proud Boy right there; he is Maga. I bet in a parking lot, he has a four by four truck with 19 American flags and Trump's picture on it. Not to mention that he had a legal firearm holstered on his side. Around that time, DMX had just passed away, and this guy kept staring at me, and I stared at him, and we nodded our heads at each other for acknowledgement.
Then he said, what happened to DMX was a terrible tragedy. I looked at it as this guy extending the olive branch. I'm the only black guy in there. I could have said, I have everything from the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin on my music, so don't just peg me to hiphop. I didn't say that. I nodded heads at him and I said, yeah, that's terrible. Then he started naming some underground stuff from DMX, so this guy knows what he's talking about. Anyway, we lose sight of each other. My daughter and I get out in the parking lot and I catch sight of him again.
It wasn't a truck and it didn't have American flags on it; it was a sedan, like a Camry or something like that. The person that was helping him with the groceries was a black woman, who was clearly his significant other. I said to myself, this has to be one of the biggest flips that I could imagine. That was my prejudice, pointing him out and assuming he was a proud boy Trump fan. When I wrote about that, and when I wrote about black patriotism, how the far right tends to hijack patriotism, that struck a chord with a lot of Granite Staters.
I got to say not only am I black, I'm what they consider ADOS, American Descendants of Slavery. My people actually have blood in this soil. I'm allowed to say that I love this country, but I have issues with it. My dad was a Vietnam veteran. I had brothers in the Navy, friends coming back with no limbs. We are patriotic as well, but our story is different. I think people have to recognize and realize that those are some of the bridges. There hasn't been any real pushback other than some suggestions here and there, but everything thus far has been pretty good.
Adam Drapcho: Your work seems to prove that the more specific you make your writing, the more relatable it becomes. For me, one of the most powerful moments in your column was when you wrote about seeing the ultrasound image of your daughter while you were beginning a year's long prison sentence. Not everyone has that specific experience, but I think most parents can relate to having their world rocked by one of those little grainy black and white images. Could you tell us how you came to the concept of your column? Why was it the right choice to make the column as personal as it is?
Anthony Payton: I knew that I would resonate with people if I told my story from an honest perspective. I was sentenced to 120 months in a federal prison. That's 10 years. Three days after my arrest, my fiance at the time told me, I miss my lady time. The next time I called her, she said she was pregnant. I said, this cannot be happening right now. That ultrasound picture of that little life in her stomach stayed on the wall in my cell, and that's what kept me out of prison politics. It was me having those fictional conversations with this fetus; that I was walking around a prison yard after lifting weights, and have fictional conversations with this little girl in my head. I don't think it can get much realer than that, you know?
My dad, in 2017, was dying from pancreatic cancer. I said my last words to him over the phone. The cycle of life was happening right in front of my eyes. My daughter was being born, my father was dying. In 1998, I was in New York State Prison, and my mother died. I gave both of my parents away to incarceration, was never able to say goodbye properly. My daughter was born while I was inside. When I walked out of those prison gates, she just turned six years old. Building that relationship with her and rebuilding a relationship with her brothers, there's a lot of people that can relate to parenthood. The road that it took for me to get this little girl to trust me was hell. She made me work for every bit of it.
I was up for the challenge. She will sleep over in this apartment and when she lays in bed and she's sleeping, I look at her and I start crying. I think a lot of parents can relate to looking in that room, or they can relate to the comeback story, you know? A lot of people love a good comeback story. Where I am in my life right now is unreal, that fatherhood aspect and being open and maybe being able to resonate with a parent whose child or friend is on the wrong path, and I can help them get back on and I can tell them actual horror stories about what I went through, all of the ancillary parts of the criminal justice system, and how you do not want to get caught in that web.
That's what I'm trying to give to the soccer moms, to the middle-aged dads, to my peers. We're building a non-profit organization called BOSS, which is Beating the Odds and Striving for Success. We're going to be helping men who are getting out of prison with everything from job development to job placement. That demographic I can speak to. My writing in the Common Ground initiative I want to speak to some of the soccer moms out there. I want to speak to some of the middle-aged guys out there who may have different political views.You may see my story as chaotic and just sad, but there's a lot of hope in my story. The bounce back, the comeback, is crazy right now. I'm living what I sat and thought about for seven years. I sat and planned and addressed my weaknesses while other guys were lifting weights or watching ESPN or watching Maury Povich and Who's the Dad all day. I stayed in the prison mess hall. I was in the prison law library.
Someone may have a relative who is in prison or going to prison. That literally just happened with me. A friend’s husband just went in; before he went in I sat with the both of them and I told him what to expect, and he sent word back that almost brought me to tears. He said, please tell Anthony thank you for every bit of information that he gave me because everything that he said came true. Everything from making sure you do some scaping, because you don't know the next time you'll get a good razor until you go to commissary. Clip your nails, your toe nails, because you don't know when the next time you're going to have one. Even though he is stepping into a darker abyss, I was able to provide a little bit of light and guidance. The guy’s a working class guy, he just made a mistake, a poor choice in judgment, and he wound up in the situation that he's in. I'm always looking for how I can help, how I can put money in a bank for whoever's upstairs, the higher power, I need to continue putting money in the bank. I believe this is how I do it.
Julie Hart: What advice might you have for other people interested in journalism who might not know where to start?
Anthony Payton: My youngest stepson, Tevon, just started writing for Carol at Manchester Ink Link. Tevon is 16, he's already my height. A year or two ago, his bedroom looked like someone was kidnapped in there. There's shirts everywhere, there's a chair in the middle of the floor. It's just crazy. My apartment doesn't look that great and I'm three times his age. Start locally, start with your local newspapers. Have a topic or something that really gets you going. It could be the NBA, it could be a football guy, you can be a hunter, you can be a woman who loves the bake, a woman who's in a corporate world. Find what moves you and what motivates you, and how you can tie that to public service and possibly even civic engagement. That's the route that I took, someone else's route might not go that way. They may be the next Stephen A. Smith or the next Skip Bayless, who knows? You still can affect change just by having a voice and being able to write. Start locally and start with something that motivates you, pushes you, and could potentially help other others.
This article is part of The Granite Beat, a project by The Laconia Daily Sun and The Granite State News Collaborative, of which Laconia is a partner. Each week Adam Drapcho and Julie Hart, will explore with local reporters how they got some of the most impactful stories in our state and why they matter. This project is being shared with partners in The Granite State News Collaborative.