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Kat Johnson: Hello. I'm Audible Editor Kat Johnson, and I have the pleasure today of speaking with the acclaimed actress, writer, producer, and activist, Erika Alexander. Erika, I'd like to welcome you to Audible, in this virtual setting anyway, to talk about your Audible Original, Finding Tamika. Thank you so much for joining us.
Erika Alexander: Thank you, Kat.
KJ: And I want to thank you, not just for being here and bringing attention to the case of Tamika Huston, but for bringing your whole self to this project, because as you note in this project, there's a lot of power in telling someone else's story, and it was clear to me as a listener that you handled it with such great care. Can you tell us a little bit about Tamika and what drew you to her story?
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EA: Sure. Tamika Huston is a young woman from Spartanburg, South Carolina. And she's famous, unfortunately, for being murdered in 2004. It took months for the media to pay attention to it, although she had a very media savvy aunt named Rebecca Howard, who was a PR specialist. Because Tamika was a young Black woman, there were very few national outlets that would pay attention to her case.
So she became the poster child for raising awareness on the lack of sensitivity, and the resources, and the attention given to girls and women of color. And so, we started to ask, "Why does it take that long? What is it about women of color that makes them easy to ignore, or just allow them to disappear?" And that's unacceptable, so we talk about this. We talk about her murder. We talk about her life. We talk about what's known as Missing White Woman Syndrome, the tendency to look for certain white women as opposed to women of color, and poor women overall.
KJ: Right, and even from a crime perspective, it's a fascinating case. There are a lot of twists and turns. There are a lot of needle-in-a-haystack clues. Tamika herself was this really compelling victim who should have had her whole life ahead of her. We still have a long way to go. I'm interested in what you said about Missing White Woman Syndrome. What kind of harm do you think that causes on communities and real lives?
EA: It's a harm that people can't quantify because most people don't know that it exists. The problem is that if this group of people thinks that they can go missing, and that no one will look, it affects their self-esteem. It affects how they move in the world. It affects their choices. It makes you a sitting duck, so it's unacceptable in any society. It should be just not even possible. We should have statistics; we should have organizations and foundations. We should have all sorts of networks systemically.
KJ: Yeah. The true crime landscape in general has had a real problem with racial disparity, and with focusing on dead white girls. I think the genre has gotten more inclusive, but so often we see stories centered around people of color about police brutality or wrongful convictions. What I appreciated about this story was that it really focuses on a Black woman as a victim, and we're not seeing this sort of overrepresentation of people of color as perpetrators.
EA: You should be looking for her like Scarlett Johansson went missing. We should be looking for them as desperately. Tamika Huston also wasn't seen while she was alive. She was in abusive relationships, she was an abused teenager, she was attracted to abusive men and showy hustlers. It shows how we're not really paying attention to our girls, and that's just an overall problem. I don't just speak about it through the lens of race. It's class systems too. We have many girls who go around doing all sorts of things that they shouldn't be up to, 'cause we don't teach them their value, but more importantly, what they give up when they choose these paths. We need to teach them how to move around and succeed in a world of men as a woman.
"We're not really paying attention to our girls, and that's just an overall problem. I don't just speak about it through the lens of race. It's class systems, too."
KJ: I'm curious, in this project, you speak to so many people connected to this story. You talk to her family, law enforcement, you speak to some famous people like Tiffany Cross, and even the South Carolina representative Trey Gowdy. It sounds like a pretty wild experience. What was that like for you?
EA: It was surreal. The minute I landed in Spartanburg Airport, suddenly, I'm in their world. Zelda, her best friend, was ready to tell her side. No one had asked her. She'd been asked about Tamika when they were looking for her, but no one ever came back to see how Zelda was. Zelda is, to me, the princess of this story. I found her voice so compelling. She was so beautiful.
Obviously, with Terence, the ex-boyfriend, he was a hustler, and he was hustling us from the beginning. I loved Terence. He came in with his own camera crew, he was like, "You know, I've got to get something out of this too." And I was like, "I understand, brother." He was tired of being taken advantage of. And once I told him I would do his interview, he didn't ask for it anymore. He was crying in the interviews, but I saw that his tears come from years and years of systemic abuse. His story is compelling. What we forget about Terence and Tamika that we tried to bring out is that theirs was a love story. It's not a ghetto love story. It's a righteous love story that anyone could write about.
All that beautiful stuff is surrounded by violence, murder, and abuse. But in there is softness, and love, and dreaming. And that's why I love Terence, because they never put somebody like that in the center of the love story except with guns and drugs, but he said, "No. My family owned a store on the corner, and I had my motorcycle, and I was trying to impress her." Sweet.
KJ: Wow. Tamika is, of course, the one person you couldn't talk to for this story, but I don't know if that's exactly accurate because it seems that Tamika was able to communicate, and did some of her own advocacy in her own case. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
EA: Sure. I was actually frightened by the time I left Spartanburg. I was told very early by Zelda that Tamika started to show up in people's dreams. She was also talking while we were there. Terence, while we were talking to him, said, "Tamika won't leave until this all comes out. She won't be at peace.” Everyone talked as if Tamika was still there.
"What we forget about Terence and Tamika that we tried to bring out is that theirs was a love story. It's not a ghetto love story. It's a righteous love story that anyone could write about."
By the end of the day, after I had visited her aunts, I started to feel a different feeling. Not only heavy sadness, but the expectation of it all. And I got on the plane, and I cried my eyes out. And I went to Brooklyn and bought a bunch of crystals to hang around my neck. I am not that type of person. I said, “I need energy protection. I don't think it's bad energy, I just need space from it.” Elaine spoke of it really well.
KJ: Elaine is the psychic, right?
EA: The psychic, yes. She spoke of what's called dying grace. She said, "I don't feel like I belong in this world." She was talking about herself; she didn't know why she got this gift. She was comfortable with it, but it was something that she carried very tentatively. And I was fascinated with her because she feels very strongly that she knows what's on the other side, whereas most people are afraid of it. Tamika somehow, whether I believed it or not, which I did, was still in that space.
KJ: Wow. So, I was gonna ask you about your wellness, and how you kept yourself protected getting close to all this darkness. I mean, I'm star struck because you're Maxine Shaw of Living Single, so I was really curious about you doing this production because I thought, “She's such a legendary comedic actress. Is she gonna bring any of that sense of humor to this?” And I found that you did. Like, I found that you were, just as I said, bringing your whole self. I felt like you had these little digressions that were interesting, and you could be emotional but you could be funny. So I wondered about the tone. How was that for you? Were you intentional about that, or did it come naturally to you?
EA: I could say all of the above. We knew this was a very intense subject, and that it didn't need us to add any intensity to it. We had a responsibility to the people who had come on this journey. We were talking to them.
I got the really good luck of co-writing and producing this with James T. Green. He runs a whole sound design collective called Molten Heart. He was outstanding. We had really great contributors. They were all fantastic, and we all did our part to lift it where we could, but also add interesting things so you were listening to a sonic landscape.
So writing the script, I was writing my point of view in all the time. I had to also put in the facts. It was a real heavy lift for me. It's the first time I've ever done anything this intense. I was thrilled with the result. To be respected by people like James T. Green is amazing. It was an instant chemistry. He's a preacher's son, I'm a preacher's daughter. There were things we could say without talking. He said sometimes he felt Tamika's hands on his shoulders.
KJ: You think you'll do more audio projects?
EA: Well, the good news is that at the earlier part of the year, I did something called Reparations: The Big Payback with a partner of mine. That was 12 episodes, and we had to get it done. In a way, it prepared me for this, but nothing could prepare me for the resilience and the focus I had to have, and I just drilled down and we did it.
KJ: Wow. I was actually looking at your Twitter bio before we talked, and it says, "Damn, am I busy being me." And that couldn’t be more true. You're the co-founder of Color Farm Media, and you collaborated on this project with executive producers Kevin Hart and Charlamagne tha God of SBH Productions, and Molten Heart, as you mentioned. So how does this fit into what drives your work in general, and what can we expect next, if there's anything you can share with us?
EA: What drives me is my mother. I love her so much. Both my parents were orphans, and she was adopted by a woman who was, unfortunately, very abusive. She was married by 19, and was on the road with my father, who was an evangelist, a boy preacher. And I just think of her a lot. How hard she worked. She's 80 now. She's delightful, she's whimsical, she's smart. Everything excites her. She was an educator. She taught children who had disabilities. I look back and think that how she carried herself in a world that was unkind to her was amazing.
Being a preacher's daughter, they did a lot of service for others. I'm not particularly religious, but I do believe in the golden rule. I also was a huge Hillary Clinton activist, and she sent me all around the world as an advocate for women and girls. And I learned from everybody, from Maya Angelou, to John Lewis, Stacey Abrams, we all met on the road. I'm just grateful for the examples, and I'm glad that they thought I could do it, so that's why I'm committed to this work. I did a ton of theater and grew up in a space that was very dramatic, so finding these stories and talking about it gives me a chance to get filled up. Things can leave you cold, so I'm glad for that. And I'm also doing new things with new people that I would have never met. The space is filled with talented people.
I said, "We need to give it the love and respect it deserves. Some of the most amazing stories are told through sound. Some of the most amazing worlds are enacted through audio and sonic contributions. All these talents from different places, Black, white, the whole world is up in there. We needed all that to come together to tell the story of one girl. I'm grateful to be a part of that story.
KJ: Erika, that's so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, and I'm sure your mom is so proud of you. Congratulations, and I'm so excited for people to hear it.
EA: Thank you. I couldn't be more grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation, and this kind of programming on Audible. They took a chance in letting us steer this and create it. And that's amazing, to have that type of support creatively. So to all our supporters, and all the people that we worked with there, we're over the moon. It's been an amazing experience.
KJ: I'm so glad to hear it. We're lucky to have a program like this on Audible because it's so important to hear, and I think having you put your whole self into this project is a wonderful gift to Tamika's family.
EA: Yes. thank you. Everyone in Spartanburg, everyone who spoke to us, thank you. Thank you for letting us into your homes, telling us your story, creating this narrative, and good luck to you.
KJ: Erika, thank you again for being with us today, and bringing this story into the light.
EA: Thank you for having me.
KJ: And Finding Tamika is available on Audible now.
Erika Alexander's list: 5 stories that she can’t live without. Save this list to your library.
