\n\t\t\t\tRead Cara’s stories\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\tCara is an Edward R. Murrow and National Association of Black Journalists award-winning reporter from East St. Louis, Illinois. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time magazine, NPR, and other outlets nationwide. Her reporting trip to the Missouri Bootheel in August 2020 launched the \u201cSilence in Sikeston\u201d project. She is a producer on the documentary and the podcast\u2019s host.\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\tIn Conversation With \u2026\t<\/h3>\n
\tEddie R. Cole
\n\tProfessor of education and history, UCLA<\/p>\n
\tKeisha Bentley-Edwards
\n\tAssociate professor of medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine at Duke University<\/p>\n
\tCarol Anderson
\n\tProfessor of African American studies, Emory University<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tclick to open the transcript\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tTranscript: Racism Can Make You Sick\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cSilence in Sikeston,\u201d Episode 1: \u201cRacism Can Make You Sick\u201d Transcript<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nEditor\u2019s note<\/strong>: If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio of \u201cSilence in Sikeston,\u201d which includes emotion and emphasis not found in the transcript. This transcript, generated using transcription software, has been edited for style and clarity. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Sikeston sits in the Missouri Bootheel. That\u2019s the lower corner of the state, with the Mississippi River on one side, Arkansas on the other. Lots of people say it\u2019s where the South meets the Midwest.\u00a0<\/p>\nPicture cotton, soybeans, rice. It\u2019s hot, green, and flat. If you\u2019ve ever heard of Sikeston before, it\u2019s probably because of this:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ryan Skinner: Hot rolls!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Lambert\u2019s Caf\u00e9. Home of the \u201cThrowed Rolls.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nServer: Yeah, they\u2019ll say, uh, \u201cHot rolls!\u201d And people will hold their hands up and they\u2019ll toss it to you.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> The servers walk around with carts and throw these big dinner rolls at diners.\u00a0<\/p>\nRyan Skinner: Oh, it\u2019s fun. You get to nail people in the head and not get in trouble for it.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> There\u2019s the rodeo. The cotton carnival.\u00a0<\/p>\nBut I came to see Rhonda Council.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rhonda Council: My name is Rhonda Council. I was born and raised here in Sikeston.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Rhonda is the town\u2019s first Black city clerk.\u00a0<\/p>\nShe became my guide. I met her when I came here to make a film about the little-known history of racial violence in Sikeston.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m Cara Anthony. I\u2019m a health reporter. I cover the ways racism \u2014 including violence \u2014 affects health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rhonda grew up in the shadow of that violence \u2014 in a part of town where nearly everyone was Black. It\u2019s called Sunset.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rhonda Council: Sunset was a happy place. I remember just being, as a kid, we could walk down to the store, we could just go get candy.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: <\/strong>There were churches and a school there.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: We knew everybody in the community. If we did something wrong, you can best believe your parents was going to find out about it before you got home.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Back in the day, these were dirt roads.\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> OK, so we\u2019re getting ready to go on a tour of Sunset, which used to be known as the Sunset Addition, right?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: Mm-hmm, yes. Mm-hmm.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> We got into her car, along with Rhonda\u2019s mother and her grandmother, Mable Cook.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: This street was known as The Bottom. Everything Black-owned. They had clubs, they had stores, they even had houses that people stayed in. I think it was shotgun houses back then?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook:<\/strong> Uh-huh.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> <\/strong>That\u2019s Rhonda\u2019s grandmother, Ms. Mable, right there. She was a teenager here in the 1940s. Her memory of the place seems to get stronger with each uh-huh and mm-hmm.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: And this was just the place where people went on the weekend to, you know, have a good time and party. \u2026 And this area was kind of known as \u201cthe corner\u201d because they used to have a club here. And they would \u2026 they would gamble a lot down here. They would throw dice. Everything down here on the corner.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: That\u2019s right. Sure did. Mm-hmm.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: You remember this street, Grandma?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: Yeah, I\u2019m trying to see where the store used to be.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: OK.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: I think it was close to Smith Chapel.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: OK.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Rhonda\u2019s grandmother, Ms. Mable, was 97 then.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: She is a petite lady, to me, thin-framed. I describe her eyes as like a grayish-color eyes. And I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s because of old age, but I think they\u2019re so beautiful. And she just has a pretty smile, and she\u2019s just a fantastic lady.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Ms. Mable was born in Indianola, Mississippi. When she was 14, her father moved to Sikeston looking for work.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: And so she came up here to, um, to be with her father. But she said when she came to Sikeston, she said it was an unusual experience because they were not allowed to go to stores. They were not allowed to, basically, be with the white people. And that\u2019s not what she knew down in Mississippi. And in her mind, she couldn\u2019t understand why Missouri, why Sikeston was like that in treating Black people that way.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd not too long after that, the lynching of Cleo Wright occurred.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n[BEAT]\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> It was 1942. While the United States was at war marching to stop fascism, a white mob here went unchecked and lynched a man named Cleo Wright.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe lynching of a Black man in America was not uncommon. And often barely documented.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But in the case of Cleo Wright \u2014 perhaps because the death challenged what the nation said<\/em> it was fighting for \u2014 the killing in this small town made national <\/em>news.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe case generated enough attention that the FBI conducted the first federal investigation into a lynching. That investigation ultimately amounted to nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile \u2014 here in Sikeston \u2014 the response to the brutal death was mostly silence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eight decades later, another Black man was killed in Sikeston. This time by police.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Local media outlets, like KFVS, covered it as a crime story:\u00a0<\/p>\n
KFVS report: The Missouri State Highway Patrol says troopers must piece together exactly what led to the shooting death of 22-year-old Denzel Marshall Taylor.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> I think the killings of Denzel Taylor and Cleo Wright are a public health story.\u00a0<\/p>\nOur film<\/em> \u201cSilence in Sikeston\u201d is grounded in my reporting about Cleo and Denzel. Part of the record of the community\u2019s trauma and silence is captured in the film. This podcast extends that conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\nWe\u2019re exploring what it means to live with that stress \u2014 of racism, of violence. And we\u2019re going to talk about the toll that it takes on our health as Black Americans, especially as we try to stay safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In each episode, we\u2019ll hear a story from my reporting. Then, a guest and I will talk about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The history \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carol Anderson: The power of lynching is to terrorize the Black community, and one of the ways the community deals with that terror is the silence of it. [\u2026] And when you don\u2019t deal with the wound, it creates all kinds of damage.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> And health \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\nAiesha Lee: It\u2019s almost like every time we\u2019re silent, it\u2019s like a little pinprick. [\u2026] And after so long, those little pinpricks turn up as heart disease, as cancer, as all these other ailments.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> <\/strong>I\u2019m hoping this journalism, and these stories, will spark a conversation that you\u2019ve <\/em>been meaning to have.\u00a0<\/p>\nThis is an invitation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From WORLD Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX, this is \u201cSilence in Sikeston,\u201d the podcast.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Episode 1: \u201cRacism Can Make You Sick\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
[BEAT]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Ms. Mable was a witness to the lynching of Cleo Wright. The 25-year-old was about to become a father.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda\u2019s uncle says Cleo was \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
Harry Howard: Young, handsome, an athlete, and very well known in the community.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> That\u2019s Harry Howard. He didn\u2019t know Cleo. Harry wasn\u2019t even born yet. But his uncle knew Cleo.\u00a0<\/p>\nHarry Howard: They were friends. They would shoot pool together and were known to be at the little corner store, the Scott\u2019s Grocery.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> <\/strong>Harry\u2019s family passed down the story of what happened.\u00a0<\/p>\nHarry Howard: So everything I\u2019m reporting is the way it was told by people I trust.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Black families mostly talked about it in whispers.\u00a0<\/p>\nEddie R. Cole: And that sounds like this is one of those situations where that community would rather just leave this alone and try to move on with the life that you do have instead of losing more life.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> That\u2019s my friend Eddie Cole. He\u2019s a professor of history and education at UCLA.\u00a0<\/p>\nWe were in college together at Tennessee State and worked on the school newspaper.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I called up Eddie because I wanted to get his take as a historian. What happens when we keep quiet about a story like Cleo\u2019s?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eddie R. Cole: Yeah, I\u2019m Eddie Cole. \u2026 So here we go.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: Thousands of Black people were lynched before Cleo Wright was. But this was the first time the feds said, \u201cHey, we should go to Sikeston and investigate lynching as a federal crime.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nThis story though, seriously, like it just disappeared off the face of the map. Like, it\u2019s, it\u2019s scary to me. So many of the witnesses that I interviewed, they\u2019ve passed away, Eddie, since we started this journey. And it\u2019s frightening to me to think that their stories \u2026 that these stories can literally just go away.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n[BEAT]<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nEddie R. Cole: Lynching stories disappear but don\u2019t disappear, right? So, the people who committed the crime, they committed it and went on with their day, which is twisted within itself, even to think about that.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nBut on the other side, when you think about Black Americans, there was no need to talk a lot about it, right? Because you talk too much about some things and that same sort of militia justice might come to your front door in the middle of the night, right?<\/strong> Stories like this are known but not recorded.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> The hush that surrounded Cleo\u2019s story back then was for Black people\u2019s safety. But I\u2019m conflicted. Should Cleo\u2019s story be off the table? Or \u2026 could we be missing an opportunity for healing?\u00a0<\/p>\nOn the phone with Eddie, I could feel this anxiety building up in me. I was almost afraid to bring it up, even though it was the reason why I called.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[BEAT]<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: And I will be honest with you, I think of you the same way I think of my brother, my father, like, I\u2019ve almost wanted to protect the Black men in my life from that story because I know how hard it is to hear.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> It was January 1942. Cleo was accused of assaulting a white woman. A police officer arrested him; there was a fight. Cleo was beaten and shot. Covered in blood, he was eventually taken to jail. White residents of Sikeston mobbed the jail to get to Cleo.\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: I do want to play a clip for you, just so you can hear a little bit, if you are up for that, because it\u2019s a lot. How are you feeling about that today?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nEddie R. Cole: No, I want to hear. I mean, I gotta know more now. You just told me there\u2019s a story that just disappeared, but now you\u2019re bringing it back to life. So let\u2019s play the clip.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: All right. Let\u2019s do it.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nHarry Howard: They took him out of the jail and drug him from downtown on Center Street through the Black area of Sunset.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nObviously, it was a big commotion, and they were saying, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d And the man driving the station wagon told them, \u201cGet out of the street,\u201d and, of course, used the N-word. \u201cThere\u2019s a lynching coming.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Historian Carol Anderson is a professor of African American studies at Emory University. She takes it from there.\u00a0<\/p>\nCarol Anderson: They hook him to the bumper of the car and decide to make an example of him in the Black community.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nThe mob douses his body with five gallons of gasoline and set it on fire. People are going, \u201cOh my God, they are burning a Black man. They are burning a Black man. They have lynched a Black man.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> I always need to take a deep breath after hearing that story. So, I check in with Eddie.\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: OK. How you doing? You OK?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nEddie R. Cole: Yeah, yeah, um, that was tough.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: I\u2019ve grappled a lot with the question of why, like, why now? Why this story? Am I crazy for doing this?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nEddie R. Cole: Yeah, I mean, this story is really an entry point to talk about society at large. Imagine the people who like the world that we\u2019re in.<\/strong> A world where Black people are oppressed. Right? And so not telling stories like what happens in Sikeston is an easier way to just keep the status quo. And what you\u2019re doing is pushing back on it and saying, ah, we must remember, because the remnants of this period still shape this town today.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n[BEAT]<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> On the tour of Sikeston with Rhonda, I see that.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: We\u2019re going to go in front of the church where Cleo Wright was burned.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nWhen we get down here to the right, you\u2019ll see Smith Chapel Church. And wasn\u2019t it over here in this way where he got burnt, Grandma?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: Uh-huh, yep.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: OK. From what I hear, it happened right along in this area right here.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> It\u2019s a small brick church with a steeple on top. The road is paved now, not gravel as before. It all looks so \u2026 normal.\u00a0<\/p>\nYou\u2019d think that kind of violence, so much hate, would leave a mark on the Earth. But on the day we visited, there was nothing to see. Just the church and the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms. Mable is quiet. I wonder what she\u2019s<\/em> thinking.\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: I just remember them dragging him. They drove him from, uh, the police station out to Sunset Addition. But they took him around all the streets so everybody could see.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Back at Rhonda\u2019s home, we talked more about what Ms. Mable remembered.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: Did that affect you in any way when you saw that happening?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: Yeah, it hurt because I never had seen anything like that. Mm-hmm. And it kind of got me. I was just surprised or something. I don\u2019t know. Mm-hmm.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Remember Ms. Mable had been a child in Mississippi in the \u201930s \u2014 and it wasn\u2019t until she moved north to Sikeston that she came face to face with a lynching.\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council:<\/strong> Did it stick in your mind after that for a long time?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: Yeah, it did. It did stick because I just wondered why they wanted to do that to him. You know, they could have just taken him and put him in jail or something and not do all that to him.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nI just never had seen anything like it. I had heard people talking about it, but I had never seen anything like that.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> When it happened, a lot of Black families in Sikeston scattered, fled town to places that felt safer. Mable\u2019s family returned to Mississippi for a week.\u00a0<\/p>\nBut when they got back, she says, Sikeston went on like nothing had ever happened.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Rhonda with Ms. Mable again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rhonda Council: After you all saw the lynching that happened, did you and your friends talk about that?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: No, we didn\u2019t have none \u2026 we didn\u2019t talk about it. My daddy told us not to have nothing be said about it, uh-uh.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: Oh, because your dad said that.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: That\u2019s right. He told us not to worry about it, not talk about it. Uh-huh. And he said it\u2019ll go away if you not talk about it, you know, uh-huh.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: So over the years, did you ever want to get it out? Did you ever want to talk about it?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: Yeah, I did want to. Uh-huh. I wanted to. Uh-huh.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council: But you just couldn\u2019t do it.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMable Cook: No. No. Uh-uh. No, he didn\u2019t want us talking about it. He told us to forget it.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Forget it. Don\u2019t talk about it. It\u2019ll go away.\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd, in a way, it did.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No one was charged. No one went to prison. Cleo\u2019s name faded from the news.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[BEAT]\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> But decades later, Ms. Mable, the witness; Rhonda, her granddaughter; and me, the journalist, we talked about it a lot.\u00a0<\/p>\nWe turned the story over and over, and as I listened to Ms. Mable, there was a distance between the almost matter-of-fact way she described the lynching and what I<\/em> expected her feelings would be.\u00a0<\/p>\nI asked her if she was ever depressed \u2026 or if she had sleepless nights, anxiety. As a health reporter, I was on the lookout for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Ms. Mable said no.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That surprised me. And Rhonda, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cara Anthony: If we were to roll back the clock, go in a time machine, it\u2019s 1942. All of a sudden, you see Cleo Wright\u2019s body on the back of a car. How do you, can you even imagine that?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nRhonda Council:<\/strong> I could not imagine. And even when talking to her about it, and she had such a vivid memory of it. And you ask her, did it haunt her, and she said no, she, it didn\u2019t bother her, but I know deep down inside it had to because there\u2019s no way that you could see something like that \u2014 someone dragged through the streets, basically naked going over rocks and the body just being dragged.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nI, I don\u2019t know how I could have handled it because that\u2019s just very, you just can\u2019t treat a human being like that.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> That\u2019s what\u2019s so hard about these stories. And the research shows that seeing that kind of brutal, racial violence has health effects. But how do we recognize them? And what happens if we don\u2019t?\u00a0<\/p>\nThose are some of the questions I asked Keisha Bentley-Edwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Keisha Bentley-Edwards: Oftentimes, people who experience racial trauma are forced to not acknowledge it as such, or they\u2019re forced to question whether or not it happened in the first place.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Keisha is an associate professor in medicine at Duke University. She studies structural racism and chronic health conditions and knows a lot about what happens after a lynching.\u00a0<\/p>\nKeisha Bentley-Edwards: It\u2019s difficult to talk about racism. And part of it is that you\u2019re talking about power, who has it, who doesn\u2019t have it.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nIt\u2019s not fun to talk about constantly being in a state where someone else can control your life with little recourse.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> That\u2019s even more complicated in a place like Sikeston.\u00a0<\/p>\nKeisha Bentley-Edwards: When you\u2019re in a smaller city, there is no way to turn away from the people who were the perpetrators of a race-based crime. And that, in and of itself, is a trauma. To know that someone has victimized your family member and you still have to say hello, you still have to say, \u201cGood morning, ma\u2019am.\u201d And you have to just swallow your trauma in order to make the person who committed that trauma comfortable so that you don\u2019t put your own family members at risk.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Keisha says part <\/em>of the stress comes from being Black and always being aware \u2014 alert \u2014 that the everyday ways you move through the world can be perceived as a threat to other people.\u00a0<\/p>\nKeisha Bentley-Edwards: Your life as a Black person is precarious. And I think that is what\u2019s so hard about lynchings and these types of racist incidents is that so much of it is about, \u201cI turned left when I could have turned right.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nYou know, \u201cIf I had just turned right or if I had stayed at home for another 10 minutes, this wouldn\u2019t have happened.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n