\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
\tRhea Boyd
\n\tPediatrician and public health scholar<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tclick to open the transcript\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tTranscript: Trauma Lives in the Body<\/strong>\t\t\t\t<\/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>\n[Solemn instrumental music begins playing softly.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> When Nannetta Forrest was growing up, a lot went unsaid in her family.\u00a0<\/p>\nNannetta Forrest: You know, people didn\u2019t do a lot of talking back then. And it was almost like trying to pull teeth out of a hen.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> She lived nearly her whole life in Indiana, but Nannetta\u2019s story \u2014 the secrets and <\/em>the silence \u2014 all started in Sikeston, Missouri.\u00a0<\/p>\nNannetta was born there in 1942. Several months earlier, while her mother was pregnant, Nannetta\u2019s father was lynched.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His name \u2026 was Cleo Wright.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nannetta Forrest:<\/strong> He was taken away before I got here!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Taken from a jail cell. Taken and dragged through the streets by a white mob. Taken to Sunset Addition, the center of Black life in Sikeston, and lynched. Taken from his family.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nNannetta\u2019s mother kept quiet. She never wanted her daughter to know what happened to her father.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But one day, Nannetta was with her grandfather. A game show that aired on CBS in the 1950s was on TV. It was called \u201cStrike it Rich.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Clip from \u201cStrike it Rich\u201d begins playing.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cStrike It Rich\u201d clip: Mr. \u201cStrike It Rich\u201d himself, Warren Hull. <\/strong>[Applause]<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nNannetta Forrest: Celebrities would go on, and they\u2019d try to win money for, like, underprivileged people.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cStrike It Rich\u201d clip: Thanks a lot!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nNannetta Forrest: And that\u2019s when Grandpa told me, he said, \u201cYou can go on there, Nan.\u201d And I said, \u201cGo on there with what?\u201d And that\u2019s when he went in his wallet and pulled out this yellow piece of paper.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n[Solemn instrumental music plays.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: <\/strong>It was a newspaper clipping about the lynching of her father.\u00a0<\/p>\nNannetta Forrest: And that was my first time ever becoming aware of it.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> It was around 1955. Nannetta was 13 or 14 at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\nNannetta Forrest: I <\/strong>did<\/em><\/strong> wanna know the story behind it, what happened, but nobody seemed to wanna talk about it.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Over the years, she pieced together bits of what happened. But there was always one nagging question that didn\u2019t have an answer:\u00a0<\/p>\nWhat would her life have been like if that mob hadn\u2019t lynched her dad?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nannetta Forrest: Now, I do often wonder that. Had he been alive when I was born and been in my life, what type of person would I have been? Would I have been the same person? Would I have been a different person? And this is something I\u2019ll never know.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> I\u2019m Cara Anthony. I\u2019m a health reporter.\u00a0<\/p>\nI\u2019ve traveled to Sikeston, Missouri, for years, asking people about the killing of Cleo Wright \u2014 and the silence that surrounds his death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nearly eight decades after the killing, that silence was still stifling. Like generations of stuffed-down fear and anger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At nearly every turn, locals refused to talk to me. In fact, many people felt they could no<\/em>t talk to me. Until I met \u2026 Mikela Jackson.\u00a0<\/p>\n[Solemn instrumental music fades out.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: It\u2019s \u2026 it\u2019s \u2026 it\u2019s no healing from grief. It\u2019s an everyday thing for me.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Mikela goes by Keke. She\u2019s in her mid-20s. But she\u2019s heard about the lynching back in 1942.\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: Talk to me a little bit about that. Have you ever heard of Cleo Wright?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: Denzel brung that up to me. Denzel brung it up to me because we used to live on Sunset Street, and he was telling me, like, they dragged him through Sunset.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> \u201cDenzel\u201d is Denzel Taylor, Keke\u2019s fianc\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>\nSikeston police shot him at least 18 times \u2014 and killed Denzel in April 2020. He was 23 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That year, everyone was talking about new research that found that a Black man had a 1-in-1,000 chance of being killed by police.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Denzel Taylor became that 1 in a thousand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Sparse, minor music plays quietly.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nRight in the middle of her grief, Keke refused to be quiet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mikela Jackson: The Bootheel knows what happened to him. The world, they have no idea who Denzel Taylor is.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> The Bootheel is where Sikeston sits \u2014 in the far southeast corner of Missouri.\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: So that\u2019s why I want his story \u2026 I wanna make him proud, actually. \u2019Cuz I want him to know, look, Babe, they going to hear this one way or another.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> I made a film about the deaths of Denzel and Cleo \u2014 two Black men killed decades apart \u2014 in the same community.\u00a0<\/p>\nFor the documentary, we explored questions about the impact of racial trauma and the persistent harm it causes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here, for the podcast, we\u2019re exploring another layer. <\/strong>How does systemic racial violence impact health? The health of Black people, in particular?\u00a0<\/p>\n[\u201cSilence in Sikeston\u201d theme begins playing.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nDenzel\u2019s story reminds me so much of Cleo\u2019s. So many things about their lives \u2014 and their deaths \u2014 are similar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They both left behind a daughter they never got to meet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They both were killed by a public health threat of their time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A threat to <\/em>Black men of their time.\u00a0<\/p>\nFor Cleo, that was lynching.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Denzel, it was police violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Neither of them got their day in court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this episode, we\u2019re looking at what happened to Denzel Taylor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re exploring police violence as a public health problem. One that\u2019s making us sick and cutting lives short.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From WORLD Channel and KFF Health News, and distributed by PRX, this is \u201cSilence in Sikeston,\u201d the podcast about finding the words to say the things that go unsaid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Episode 3: \u201cTrauma Lives in the Body.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
[\u201cSilence in Sikeston\u201d theme ends.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n[Gentle, bright instrumental music plays.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Denzel was from Chicago. Growing up, he spent time in southeastern Missouri with his dad\u2019s family.\u00a0<\/p>\nDenzel and Keke met in Sikeston. And Keke says they fell in love immediately.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mikela Jackson: It was a butterfly feeling, like you could just tell it was love. It was the best energy ever.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> They started their family. De\u2019nia was born first. Denzel used to call her \u201cCupcake.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nDenzel Taylor: Hey, Cupcake. Say hey, y\u2019all. I love you, princess.<\/strong> [Baby babbles.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Aiyana came next. In 2020, Keke was pregnant with their third daughter, Brookelynn.\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: He said he wanted seven kids. I said, Denzel, what? He wanted seven kids. That\u2019s a basketball team. I can\u2019t handle that.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> They were planning to get married after Brookelynn was born.\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: I really wanted a big family with Denzel. I wanted to get married. I wanted to go to D- \u2026 We was planning on moving to Dallas and everything and it\u2019s just like, my whole world is just like, it just blew up on me.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Remember 2020? It felt like the news was full of stories about Black people getting killed by police.\u00a0<\/p>\nVideos from body cameras were all over social media. Around that same time, Keke remembers Denzel getting pulled over by police more and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And, Keke says, he started to become convinced that someday he might be killed by police too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mikela Jackson: He said if he was to ever get in any type of interaction with the police, he would let them kill him just to show how America is.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nHe would bring it up, like, outta nowhere. And he would say it, and I would wonder, like, why is you constantly saying it? And I kind of will get irritated because it\u2019s, like, that\u2019s not a way that I will want you to go out. Like, we\u2019re supposed to grow old together.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> On April 29 that year, Denzel\u2019s premonition came true.\u00a0<\/p>\nPolice body cameras captured what happened the night Denzel was killed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You\u2019re about to hear a retelling of what happened the night Denzel died \u2014 based on interviews with his family and audio pulled from those body cam videos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I first got the videos, I stared at the attachments in my email for a long time. I didn\u2019t want to look.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Soft droning music fades in.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nBut I think it\u2019s important that we do look<\/em> at what happened. It\u2019s part of what I have to do to examine police killings as a public health threat.\u00a0<\/p>\nDenzel was staying with his father and his stepmom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Rain sounds play.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nIt was raining that night. Denzel and his dad, Milton Taylor, were stuck in the house together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They got into an argument. Things escalated.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Denzel\u2019s mom, Jean Kelly, was asleep in Chicago some 400 miles away. In the early hours of the morning, Denzel\u2019s sister ran into her room yelling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jean Kelly: \u201cMom, wake up.\u201d I said, \u201cWhat happened?\u201d She said, \u201cDenzel just shot Daddy.\u201d I said, \u201cWhat? Denzel just shot Daddy? That doesn\u2019t make any sense at all.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nEMS audio: 49-year-old. Male. Gunshot wound. Two to three shots to the chest. Five officers on scene.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> By the time police arrived at Milton\u2019s home, Denzel had left. EMTs stabilized Milton and took him to the hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\nEMS audio:<\/strong> We\u2019re running hot. St. Francis. One patient.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Meanwhile, up in Chicago, Jean is trying to figure out what\u2019s going on. She calls Milton\u2019s wife, Denzel\u2019s stepmom.\u00a0<\/p>\nJean Kelly: She said she had a couple of family members out looking for Denzel, you know, because she was saying, \u201cI want them to find him before the police finds him.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Police are speaking with Denzel\u2019s stepmom when he appears.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe body-camera video shows the scene from an officer\u2019s perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Music fades out.]\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> By now, it\u2019s stopped raining. A streetlamp lights up the end of the block. Police had wrapped the area in yellow police tape. The camera shows Denzel standing in the near distance on the other side of the yellow tape. He\u2019s wearing a hoodie.\u00a0<\/p>\nOfficers: Show me your hands now! Take your hand out of your pocket!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nDenzel Taylor: Just kill me, bro.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nJean Kelly: They were saying, uh, \u201cPut your hands up\u201d or whatever the, the, they said to him, and there was some words exchanged. And, uh, it sounded like he said, \u201cWell, shoot me, bro. Just go ahead, shoot me.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> The officers fire their guns.\u00a0<\/p>\nJean Kelly: They hit my son one time, I believe, if not two, and my son fell. He went, he dropped to his knees and fell face down.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> There\u2019s a pause. It\u2019s just a moment or two, but as I watch it, it feels longer.\u00a0<\/p>\nAnd then, the police fire again, sending bullets into his body on the ground. They keep shooting. You can hear dozens of shots.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police body cam video:<\/strong> We got shots fired. We need EMS. We got one subject down, shots fired! Hands now! Hands! Hands!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> One officer walks up \u2014 and uses his foot to roll Denzel the rest of the way onto his stomach. Denzel groans as the officer pins his arms behind his back and handcuffs him.\u00a0<\/p>\n[Handcuffs click]\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: They search his body.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police body cam video:<\/strong> Goddamn it.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Police don\u2019t find a gun. Or any weapon. Just a piece of wood in his hoodie pocket.\u00a0<\/p>\nPolice body cam video:<\/strong> Are you [expletive] serious? He had a [expletive] stick of wood.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: <\/strong>Police call for an ambulance.\u00a0<\/p>\nEMS audio: \u2026 EMS respond to one subject shot. Time of page, 02 36.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> On the body camera video, one officer points a flashlight in Denzel\u2019s face.\u00a0<\/p>\nPolice body cam video: Why didn\u2019t you just take your hand out of your pocket, man?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Minutes tick by. Red and blue police lights flash off the wet pavement. Denzel is still in the street, motionless.\u00a0<\/p>\n[Ambulance sirens]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> EMS arrive, but it\u2019s too late. Denzel is dead.\u00a0<\/p>\nOver the radio, the dispatcher calls for the coroner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
EMS audio: That\u2019s yes, ma\u2019am. Contact coroner.<\/strong> Ten-four.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n[Somber instrumental music plays softly.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Keke had been out of town. She got the call as she was driving back to Sikeston. The police had killed Denzel.\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: And I said, \u201cNo, they did not. No, they did not.\u201d I couldn\u2019t believe it. It was heartbreaking.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> A special prosecutor declined to file charges against the police officers who killed Denzel. The officers did not comment for this project. Sikeston Chief of Public Safety James McMillen says the officers believed Denzel was armed and that they were in fear for their life.\u00a0<\/p>\nDenzel\u2019s family sued the city of Sikeston. The city and the family reached a wrongful death settlement for $2 million. Close to half of it went to legal fees. Most of the rest of it will go to Denzel\u2019s daughters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Keke thinks a lot about how life goes on for the officers who killed Denzel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mikela Jackson: They still get to see their family every single day of their life. They still get to call their daughters. They still get to go home and tuck their kids into bed. Denzel can never do that ever, ever again<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\nI\u2019m a forced single parent. I have to push through every single day.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nKeke watched the body cam video over and over. But Denzel\u2019s death just wouldn\u2019t sink in. And she\u2019s worried about their daughters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mikela Jackson: I hope they never see the video \u2019cause that\u2019s traumatizing. \u2019Cause that\u2019s their dad.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Eventually, Keke left Sikeston. She says there are too many memories of Denzel and what happened to him there.\u00a0<\/p>\nOn the day I visited her new home, it was just over a year after Denzel\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Cara and Keke laugh together in the background.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nTwo-year-old Aiyana is napping in the next room. Keke has the youngest, Brookelynn, on her lap. And the oldest, De\u2019nia, is \u2026 everywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Right now, she\u2019s zooming through the dining room on a scooter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cara Anthony: She just did, like, a trick, like a BMX. She\u2019s BMXing in this apartment right now. Is she a daredevil?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: She do that all the time. [<\/strong>Laughter]<\/em><\/strong> Too much. No. No bike.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> Eventually, De\u2019nia parked her wheels and talked to me.\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: Let\u2019s just get this started. Tell me your name again and how old you are.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nDe\u2019nia: Four.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: And what is your name?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nDe\u2019nia: De\u2019nia.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> In my time as a health reporter, I\u2019ve written a lot about the impact gun violence has on kids. I\u2019ve gotten some training in how to talk to them about it on their level \u2014 without retraumatizing them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: Your mommy\u2019s sitting here, and she said I have permission to ask you about your daddy.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nDe\u2019nia: Daddy?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: Do you miss your daddy?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nDe\u2019nia: Yes.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: Yeah? Where\u2019s your daddy?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nDe\u2019nia: I don\u2019t know.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: Yeah.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nDe\u2019nia: He\u2019s sleeping.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: Hmm?\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nDe\u2019nia: He\u2019s sleeping.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony: You said he\u2019s sleeping?<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nDe\u2019nia: Yes.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: That\u2019s what she say. She said, \u201cMy daddy\u2019s sleeping.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> De\u2019nia is trying to make sense of why her dad isn\u2019t with them anymore. And Keke doesn\u2019t know what to tell her.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nMikela Jackson: Like last night she actually woke up out of her sleep and she was crying and she was like, Mama, my daddy. And I didn\u2019t know what to tell her because it\u2019s, like, what do you tell a 4-year-old that they\u2019re never ever going to see their dad again?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n[Subtle instrumental music plays.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\nCara Anthony:<\/strong> I called a pediatrician, Rhea Boyd, to talk about what losing a parent to police violence could mean for kids like De\u2019nia, Aiyana,\u200a and Brookelynn.\u00a0<\/p>\n