By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
Bill Cosby said his widely criticized admonition that young Black men should “pull their pants up” was less about fashion and more about a system that profits from negative images of African Americans.
“But what was it they used to say? They not only did that, but what got a lot of attention was the shoes, the untied laces, and then the pants down around the crack. And if this is the attention, then it’s something put towards you like they would put drugs into the neighborhood. They would lace the marijuana. They are putting us under siege,” Cosby said during a candid interview on Black Press USA’s “Let It Be Known.” He tied those images directly to incarceration. “No prisoners had or were allowed to have their pants around the crack. No prisoners were allowed at Phoenix to go around with untied shoelaces,” he said. “So, I just felt this was a move by people who didn’t want to be tied up to have a picture. They would rather have a picture of a youth doing nothing, not studying, and having his pants lowered.” The remarks came in Cosby’s first wide-ranging interview about his prison experience, the long-standing NBC rumor, the media’s portrayal of his life, and the erasure of Black history.
Refusing to Sign Away Innocence
Cosby, famously known as “America’s Dad,” served nearly three years at Pennsylvania’s SCI Phoenix following a 2018 conviction on an aggravated indecent assault charge. In June 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that his trial and conviction were illegal, ordered his release, and barred any retrial. He said prosecutors offered him a way out — if he admitted guilt. “My lawyer came to me and said, the district attorney is offering you to sign a paper saying you did it, and that you would be, you wouldn’t have to do prison time,” Cosby stated. “And I told my lawyer to continue with the trial, don’t stop the trial. I wasn’t signing any papers or anything.” Even in prison, Cosby said, the same deal was dangled before him. “Sign the paper and go to these classes, and then we will let you go,” he said. “Well, my signature would be in a sealed envelope, and nobody could open it. So anyway, it was all set up from way in the beginning.”
Life at Phoenix
Cosby recalled his first hours inside. “When I entered Phoenix for the first time, I could not see,” he said. “And there were regulations such as taking off your clothes and switching to other things, and then the search for some things that you might have.” He said he was kept alone at first. “I was by myself except for a guard or two around the area,” he said. Later, he was moved onto a unit with “convicts who really and truly had done some things like murder, rape, and et cetera, et cetera.” He described the food as barely edible. “It was just that the food was so salty, and it was just that the food appeared from, if you fixed it or it could be written how it’s fixed, it wouldn’t be healthy for human consumption,” he said. Inside, Cosby also became a speaker at peer programs like “Mann Up” and “Men of Valor.” Because the men talked so much about their faith and reverence of Jesus Christ, Cosby said, “As you leave this prison, whatever you go out and become… make Jesus smile.”
The Release
Cosby described being asleep in his cell when word came. “A resident… said, Mr. Cosby, Mr. Cosby, you have to wake up. You can go home. You can go home,” he said. A white female officer with the rank of major came to push his wheelchair out. “I said, This is not like driving Miss Daisy. And she said, Who’s Miss Daisy?” Cosby recalled. He said as he was wheeled down the corridor, he heard applause from two levels of cells. “It was enough to have all of these fellows clapping,” he said.
The NBC Rumor
Cosby addressed the decades-old claim that his downfall stemmed from an attempt to buy NBC. “I have no evidence to that effect, and nothing comes up to it,” he said. He recounted a Wall Street meeting with financiers that ended in rejection. “The reason for rejecting us for the loan was that they, the people loaning the money, didn’t know anything about television,” he said. Still, he said, the rumor consumed media attention. “Media was the most egregious because I have never been hassled so much in are you going to buy NBC?” Cosby said. He pointed to an article suggesting he would “hire his friends” if successful. “That gave me an idea of how these people were protecting things from, and I think it was a wink that this fellow was writing about… well, he’s going to bring all his Black friends,” he said.
Media Erasure and “The Cosby Show”
Cosby said there was a deliberate effort to erase his achievements. “I heard from a source that a person went on TV and said, let nothing good be said about Bill Cosby,” he said. “From that point on, every source that I know of in the media only printed negative things.” He defended the cultural impact of “The Cosby Show.” “Media didn’t like the fact that the Huxtables were that,” he said. “They said they were rich, which they’re not. That’s middle income. He’s a doctor, she’s a lawyer. And they don’t have a maid or a butler or anything like that.” He recalled a moment when executives considered removing a small set detail. “It just said, abolish Apartheid,” he said of the sign on Theo’s door. “And somebody said to me, well, they want to take that sign down. I said, if you do, you can take the show with it.”
Wealth, Family, and Health
Cosby recalled a conversation with his daughter Erin when she was nine. “She said, Dad, are we wealthy? I said, no, we are rich, but we’re not wealthy,” he said. “Wealthy people can afford maintenance. Rich people can afford to buy things, but there’s still a bill, and when can you pay if you’re rich?”
He credited his wife, Camille, for preserving his life and health. “She has continuously said it’s what you put in your mouth, and if you eat clean, then your brain will be clean, and your body, and your blood,” Cosby stated. “She makes sure that we eat like that, and that’s why, at age 88, I’m cancer-free, and I don’t have any ailments of forgetting things.” When Cosby would call his wife from prison, she remained very protective of her husband of more than 60 years. Camille Cosby understood that every phone call at SCI-Phoenix was recorded, and she refused to allow officials to see any vulnerability. “Whenever I called her, I just badly wanted to tell her how I felt,” Cosby recounted. “And, she would say, ‘just be quiet.’ She didn’t want me to say anything.”
The Fight Over Black History
Cosby warned against efforts to remove Black history from classrooms and museums. “If you remove those things, you remove the spirit of our achievements,” Cosby said. “It’s not going to be Wilma Rudolph winning any races there, but Wilma Rudolph, who was born obviously, it was polio that attacked her, and she still was an Olympic champion.” He continued, “The spirit of success and the continuation of being told that you are dumb, to be told that you cannot compete on any level with people, with white people. What story are they going to tell? I think they never wanted to pay the slaves, and they never forgave us for that.” He also cited Ralph Bunche and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. among stories that cannot be erased.
A Message to the Black Community
Cosby closed the interview with a direct message. “We are not losers yet,” he asserted. “Tulsa lost because it was the only city in the United States of America that was bombed from the air.”
