The Woman Who Refused to Let Her Children See Defeat
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, before Devon Westhill became the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he learned the meaning of perseverance from the woman who raised him. His mother faced poverty, long hours, and the weight of raising a family on her own in rural Florida. Yet through every setback, she refused to let her children see defeat.
Her story is one of grit and grace, a mother who built stability out of scarcity and taught her children that success isn’t handed down, it’s earned, day by day.
We’d like to thank our partners at Philanthropy Roundtable for sharing this story with us.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:13.9 | And we're back with our American stories. |
| 0:16.3 | Up next, a story from our true diversity series sponsored by the great folks at Philanthropy |
| 0:21.5 | Roundtable, America's leading advocate for you to support the causes you believe in. |
| 0:26.6 | Today we meet a partner of their campaign, Devin Westhill, the president and general |
| 0:30.8 | council at the Center for Equal Opportunity. |
| 0:33.9 | Today, he'll share with us a beautiful story about the person who impacted him the most, his mother. |
| 0:45.0 | For a long time, I've been a Steve Martin fan, right? |
| 0:48.5 | So as a kid that grew up in the 80s and 90s at the height of the Steve Martin mania, I suppose. |
| 0:56.3 | I like the quote from Steve Martin's film The Jerk, where he says, |
| 1:02.3 | It was never easy for me. |
| 1:06.6 | I was born a poor black child. |
| 1:11.9 | I like that because it's a funny line because Steve Martin's white. |
| 1:17.5 | But for me, I like the quote because it describes a little bit of my past. |
| 1:24.9 | I'm a very light-skinned or bright-skinned biracial black man, |
| 1:29.9 | so I've oftentimes in my life been asked, |
| 1:32.7 | what are you? |
| 1:33.6 | And I've used that line. |
| 1:35.1 | But at the same time, it does describe the way I think of myself |
| 1:38.5 | and my upbringing, you know, poor. |
| 1:43.0 | I was actually born inside of the easternmost edge of Appalachia, but we didn't stay there very long at all. |
... |
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