Wilson recalls Jim Crow childhood, frames public service as helping others

Wilson recounted being raised in a large family in Gilbert, Louisiana, where he and relatives worked in fields and attended school only intermittently: “We didn't get to school until, about two months out of a year,” he said. He described family subsistence on hunting and gardening and said he worked in the fields until his teenage years.

He connected those early hardships to his present-day philanthropic orientation: “My motive in life is helping other… I give away a 100%,” Wilson said, describing donations of food and other aid in neighborhoods and jails. He also reflected on the impact of the civil-rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on communities he knew.