Brigette Davis

You know, she was in no way reckless.

That was not my mom.

I have no complicated feelings around that because for me, it wasn't a crime.

This is a country that put a lot of laws in place to keep black people down.

Let's be clear and blunt about it.

It was very clear to me, intuitively and now literally, that there's a difference between a legitimate business and a criminal one.

It's criminal because, you know, laws were put in place to say it shouldn't happen.

But it was legitimate.

And that was proven because the state decided, all these states, almost every state in this country now has a lottery.

So obviously it was a legitimate business.

It just happened to be illegal.

Well, there are all kinds of laws that were put in place in this country that were not legitimate, that were not fair.

But they were laws, so technically you'd be breaking the law if you didn't do what you were supposed to.

So that to me is never a complicated sort of question.

What is the history of the lottery?

It was legal and then illegal and then legal again?

It turns out that the 13 colonies had lotteries.

And they used those lotteries because they were cash poor and they needed them for capital improvements.

Like a precursor to the stock market, in fact.

They proliferated these lotteries.