Angela Reddock-Wright
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Ep. 40 – The granddaughter of a Civil Rights-era healthcare worker and union advocate grows up to become an employment mediator and arbitrator / Angela Reddock-Wright, Founder, Reddock Law Group. For labor lawyer Angela Reddock-Wright, geography was definitely destiny. Moving from Birmingham, Alabama to working-class Compton, California at age nine and then winning a scholarship to the Brentwood School in the exclusive westside of Los Angeles would prove to be the most transformational events of her life. Her dual existence commuting between her blue-color and privileged worlds reminded Reddock-Wright of the importance of honoring one’s roots while being open to new opportunities. As a young girl in Birmingham, Reddock-Wright watched her maternal grandmother, a home healthcare worker active in the Civil Rights movement, take to the picket lines for better wages and conditions. Not surprising then that Reddock-Wright went on to become an employment and workplace mediator, arbitrator and Title IX investigator. She certainly has her hands full with the unprecedented shutdown of the U.S. economy because of #coronavirus and historic layoffs of millions of American workers. Reddock-Wright’s days are consumed with advising employers and employees of their rights, responsibilities, and protections as they struggle with the stunning job losses triggered by #Covid19. Read the Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Joining me now is Angela Reddock-Wright, founder of the Reddock Law Group. Angela, welcome to the podcast. Angela Reddock-Wright: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Chitra Ragavan: So where did you grow up, and what was your childhood like before you moved to Compton, California? Angela Reddock-Wright: Well, my father was in the military, so I actually was born in Frankfurt area, Germany, but I don’t remember much about it, because we left there when I was one or two years old, and we went back to my parents’ hometown, which is Birmingham, Alabama. That’s where both my parents and their siblings grew up. Angela Reddock-Wright: So I lived in Birmingham, Alabama until I was nine years old, and from there, my parents divorced when I was young, and my mom, seeking a better life for us post-civil rights Birmingham, Alabama, moved to California as a part of the great migration of Southerners that either moved to the West or moved north, and so some of her siblings had moved west already to California, specifically Compton, California. So we moved there when I was nine years old. Chitra Ragavan: So growing up as a young girl in Birmingham in the black South, how did that initially begin to shape your views? Angela Reddock-Wright: Well, it had a great impact on me. I was born in 1969, and so I was young as the Civil Rights Movement was starting to close out and evolve into a different type of movement than the type that my parents and their parents and so forth experienced, one with Jim Crow and dogs and beatings and so forth. As a child, I was shielded from a lot of that, so I grew up in sort of an idyllic environment, with grandparents on both sides, where you would sit on the porch and you would say hello to people as they passed by. Everyone was referred to as kin folk, because we all knew each other. I remember Southern traditions like sitting with one of my grandmothers and drinking coffee with her, even as a young kid, out the bowl. Angela Reddock-Wright: So, on one level, it was idyllic. It had a lot of Southern traditions, but I do remember, obviously, even though I wasn’t in the heart of marching or anything like that, I have memories of those conversations and of people still being very active in the movement. My maternal grandmother in particular, Frida Gills, she was a home healthcare worker and was very active in the Civil Rights Movement and in her community and in the union that represented the workers. So I remember, as a child, going with her to her union meetings and hearing the discussions about better wages for workers and better conditions for workers, and I also remember being out on the picket lines with her at least two or three times as a child, not quite realizing what it was all about, but understanding that my grandmother and her colleagues and others were fighting for better conditions. Angela Reddock-Wright: So that experience, coupled with being surrounded by the remnants of and the conversations of post-civil rights Alabama, kind of really shaped my understanding and helped me to have a commitment to advocacy and looking out for others and being sensitive to social issues. It really shaped my experience, although I only grew up there until I was nine. But it was significant, even in that short amount of time. Chitra Ragavan: Then so what was your move to Compton like? Then you also had another kind of big change in the school that you began to attend. So tell us about kind of those shifts. Angela Reddock-Wright: Right. So we moved to the famous Compton, California. Many would use the word infamous, and I like to say famous, because I believe there are two Comptons. So we’ve all heard the movie Straight out of Compton and famous rappers, like Ice Cube and others, that are from Compton and made it famous, in a way. I actually grew up … When I watched the movie Straight out of Compton, I realized that I was growing up in Compton during the time that many of the things that we learned about in the movie, but I guess, again, I kind of grew up in an idyllic world and in a side of Compton that people don’t see, which is a working class community of individuals and families that are really just trying to make a better life for themselves. Angela Reddock-Wright: So that’s the part of Compton that I grew up in. So not that I wasn’t surrounded by gangs or knew about gang activity or