WTW20: Kemper Proves Itself

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke, if that's still what this is called. I'm Thomas. That's Lydia. How are you doing?

0:00:49 Lydia: I'm pretty good as the co-host of what I believe to be Where There's Woke, but guess we'll find out what's going on.

0:00:54 Thomas: Well it's been a while. I don't t if anybody like eminent domain to our podcast or anything like squatters rights to our podcast. I'm not sure.

0:00:56 Lydia: I know. I've been in the closet the whole time, so just just waiting.

0:01:03 Thomas: I said we'd talk about that later. Anyway, so how's everybody doing? Yeah, it's been a minute. Where do I even begin? We're several different genres of podcast now. Let's recap how we got here, shall we?

0:01:20 Lydia: Let's do it.

0:01:22 Thomas: I did get a note that, someone had a hard time remembering or following like what was happening last episode. And it's like, oh, man, if we end up recapping everything every single time, we're never going to get anything done. At the same time, I totally get it because I already forget what's happened every time. But we, you know, we did the long series on renaming Jelloscope, well, scope space telescope, because of James, what I even had the initials I don't know, yeah I'm So woke, I've erased his name from my memory, ah, thank you for, and I, that was a test, you remember his name, so you're a racist, anyway. Anyway, or no, you're sorry. You're against gay people. James Webb and James Wellescope

0:01:35 Lydia: Me too. And I did it. Yeah. James Webb. His name is Jelloscope, it's fine, great.

0:02:03 Lydia: Right. Yes.

0:02:08 Thomas: From the famous Wellesco family of NASA people. And, you know, we did that whole thing, obviously. And we came across all the emails, the FOIA emails. And then we FOIAed our own emails, our own FOIA thing.

0:02:22 Lydia: No.

0:02:22 Thomas: And in that, we saw Space Karen, who is truly just the worst, mention sentence, which we agonized about, we're not going to do it again here, we're not going re-relitigate this or even if we do fight about it for another hour, we're definitely not keeping it in this episode, but Space Karen said, ah, the director's got to decide because you can't have equity, you you can't have Mission Equity and Stennis, and you and I both were like, like, what the hell? So we both went to researching whatever Stennis was. And you've already done your Stennis.

0:02:31 Lydia: We've been through it enough, yeah. Mission equity, yep.

0:02:55 Lydia: Yes.

0:02:56 Thomas: And we got to hear that was the previous episode, I think, as you're hearing this or no, was it? Yes. Okay. It was the previously episode as you were hearing this. There's a lot of good stuff there. We got to see his southern voice, which is weirdly pleasant. Why are all these racist old white Southerners something about their weird accent that it is nice to listen to?

0:03:00 Lydia: I know and Yes, it is Foghorn Leghorn-esque, but there's something about Foghorn Leghorn, then I guess, that's like, you know, it's, yeah.

0:03:20 Thomas: Yeah, was racist as well. Yeah, did he own slaves or was he? No. Anyway, I don't actually know anything about that.

0:03:27 Lydia: We can't go down that rabbit hole.

0:03:29 Thomas: Yeah. We're going to cancel Foghorn next. Next. So in my research, though, and I had you go first because mine just kept snowballing and snowballing, as it does, because I don't think you have ADHD. So Lydia will often be going first. But mine kept snowballing and snowballing. At first, I saw that Stennis was involved in a certain case because Stennis was a lawyer and then he was a judge. I'll go into it a little little more detail but before he was a senator so I saw that he was involved in a case and it was notable enough that it was in his wiki. And this case is called Brown v. Mississippi, it was a good case, uh, in that it was a decision, the decision is that a defendant's involuntary confession, uh, cannot be entered as evidence, which is pretty fucking significant.

0:03:38 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah

0:04:17 Thomas: So, like, that's a wow, I mean, that's right, that, like, we've heard of, you know, like, your average person would be like, "Hey, if you if you just kind of like make someone confess, is that cool?" I think the average person would like, "No, there's got to be some sort of case named something like Brown v. Mississippi about that," I would think is what your average man on the street would say, I believe. And so that's, that's interesting. And then I realized, oh, he's on the other fucking side of that.

0:04:18 Lydia: Yeah. Of course.

0:04:43 Thomas: It's Going to be fascinating to contrast Stennis's life with the life of, you know, non-white people from this time, because his life reads like someone making a like a parody of white privilege, like, for, I don't know how much you and your research went through this, basic stuff, he's born in 19 goddamn 01 and Uh, he's from Mississippi, blah blah, and here's a quote, quote: Stennis went on to the University of Virginia in 1924 and convinced the dean of the law school to accept him without ever filing an application.

0:04:43 Lydia: Yeah.

0:05:19 Thomas: It's full of stuff like that. Like, oh, he got into this. And then he's like, hey, buddy, you want to, you know, let me into law school? And I'm like, sure. Why not? You know, and it gets better.

0:05:27 Lydia: My God. Why did they say yes?

0:05:29 Thomas: I don't know.

0:05:30 Lydia: Weird.

0:05:30 Thomas: This isn't something I put time into researching or fact checking. This was just, yeah, Someone can do a debunk of me and figure that or something if some, if this spawns another podcast devoted to that. But and then it says, while in law school, he won a seat in the Mississippi House.

0:05:34 Lydia: Yeah, pause the show. We have more research to do. Yeah? Yeah. Jeez.

0:05:48 Thomas: So he's going to school and then his dad dies, his dad probably owns slaves or something. So, fuck it. I don't know. But who knows? But he said he left school then it said, here's this quote quote, during this interim period away from law school, Stennis's friends and neighbors urged him to seek an open seat in the Mississippi House of Representatives. Senators.

0:05:53 Lydia: Oh, my God.

0:06:10 Thomas: He was elected and took the oath of office in January, 1928 at the age of 27. So it's just like this comical fucking white privileged life. Like, oh, I'm going to go here. Hey, I did. I'm not going to apply to your law school, but let me in. Sure. Why not? Leaves law school. Doesn't finish yet. People are like, you know, you're so white that you should be in the government. And he's, like, you know what? I agree. And so do the great people of fucking Mississippi, apparently. And from there he was elected, um, district prosecuting attorney, uh, and that is the role that he was in, for this story

0:06:16 Lydia: Wow.

0:06:45 Lydia: Can assume he made it back to law school and finished. Or did he just say, you should just give me my

0:06:48 Thomas: I think he did I No, I think he did, he did make it, yeah, yeah.

0:06:52 Lydia: J.D. and admit me to the bar?

0:06:55 Thomas: It could have been just a series of people telling him, you know, you should be fucking this. And then someone's like, oh, you, you should be center. He's like, you know what? It's, it's probably not far from that. So this a content note, because, mean, if you couldn't guess, this involves racial violence and specifically, take care any, you non-white listeners we have. Like, it's, I cannot tell you how heartbreaking this stuff is to read and just know that, like, this is something that I know I just don't do because I can't handle, like, I'm too sensitive to handle this stuff. It's really hard, actually weighs on me a lot. And I'm gonna tell elements of the story, but I'm not fucking dwelling in gory details to the extent that I, I think other people do. You, often there's this, like, pornographic aspect of this stuff that I find really repulsive. And I'm just, rest assured that, like, that's nothing I would ever do.

And I'm just going to tell things as necessary for the story and context, but it's not something that, like, is anything other than, like, heartbreaking to me and just disturbing. So, so that, that heavy content note aside, I see that Stennis is involved in this case and I see that he was the prosecutor, prosecutor. And I, I'm, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a, you know, I, I do have, uh, obviously some knowledge of the law, but like specifically also in Mississippi in fucking 1936,

0:07:00 Lydia: Yeah. Okay.

0:08:12 Thomas: I have, that's not a place in time that I've practiced law among the infinite places in times that I'd never practiced law. That's one of the most.

0:08:12 Lydia: You missed Yeah?

0:08:23 Thomas: And like, I did when I read that, like, Oh, he was the prosecutor. I didn't, I don't, I was like, okay, does that, I don't know necessarily, like how much does that mean this, fuck this guy? You be? 'Cause I already know the punchline that this case leads to a Supreme Court decision. That's like, hey, you can't fucking force confessions you by brutal means, so I already know it's fucking bad, but I'm thinking like, all right, how directly is Stennis implicated? So trying to answer that question of was kind of the origin of any of this research for me. And it just kept going and going. It just, forever.

I mean, mean, there's so many things by the time that was all said and done, and I originally was going to tell you all about like how I found what I found here and, and, you know, like why I'm doing this series and like how it relates to where there's Woke as a project and all that, but then I realized it would be like 45 minutes until I get started on the story I'm trying to do, so actually I've moved that to the end, don't worry, you'll, so later, after we do a bit of the story, I'm gonna tell you some of that stuff, but let it suffice to say.

0:08:31 Lydia: Sure.

0:09:29 Thomas: Just in trying to answer that question of like, oh, what actually happened here with Stennis, you know, with this trial and all that, it, here's what it led me to. And this will serve as kind of a preview for this entire series. Coming attractions include, you know, this entire trial. Some of the character's involved, the way, a few of whom are truly heroes that I can't wait to introduce you to, amazing people in history who should maybe have that stuff named after them rather than you Know certain other people also the kind of legal situation of the time, you know, 1930s, not just Mississippi, but the United States as a whole. So there's a lot on that. There's quite a lot on that, and then we take a bit of a detour, get time in a machine, and travel to the future from where we were. We were, sorry, we're already in the time time machine that was in Mississippi, except nevermind.

0:09:39 Lydia: Hmm. Yep. Yeah. That

0:10:25 Thomas: I would never do that. I take it back. Yeah. I, I would ever take a time machine to Mississippi in the thirties ever. Don't. So I just got in the time machine and went like, made some sounds and pretended we went there and then did this. And then while I was doing this This research on kind of the legal situation, that got me on something. I stumbled on a story I have to tell, and it's a bit of a long one, but worthwhile about some more recent jurisprudence along similar lines that might suggest we haven't come as far as we would have hoped. And as if that wasn't enough, there's a super top secret bonus thing that makes it sound too fun. But there's something I found that like, seriously, late after I thought we were finally, finally we're all done with everything.

0:10:26 Lydia: We have to go back to the back to the future. No.

0:11:18 Thomas: I found another thing that is mind-blowing that kind of connects back. And so that's kind of the top secret final part that I haven't told Lydia about yet.

0:11:26 Lydia: No, I just got a message that said OMFG. That was it.

0:11:30 Thomas: Yep, yep, 100%. That was about what it was. Was and so that's a little bit of the preview of this series and uh so buckle in, it's gonna, it's going to take a minute, but I I think it'll be really yeah, assuming it has a stereo you can play podcasts on, yeah, and then listen to us while you're time traveling, I assume you're killing Hitler, doing all the normal time travel stuff, and let's, get that's the coming series, so we'd better get into it, are so many ways to paint ain't the picture of, you know, how fucking racist and shitty the time period we're in, or that I pretended to time travel to, but I actually tricked you. I didn't want to do it. Chickened out. Uh, believe you mentioned the horrible racists he beat out in the primary.

0:11:41 Lydia: Hop in that DeLorean, folks yeah of course Yes.

0:12:12 Thomas: The person who essentially died and made made Stennis a senator. Theodore Bilbo, he, I'm bringing him up now because he fucking, he comes back later in the story in a, in a really interesting way, but he's the guy who died and made Stennis senator. And again, in 1937, after the story I'm going to tell, but, I'm flagging it here. That guy was such a colossal piece of shit racist that that's part of what made Stennes seem amazing by comparison.

0:12:38 Lydia: Yeah.

0:12:39 Thomas: Remember the trigger warning, like, just to give you an idea of how a senator, Theodore Bilbo, now this quote is from when he's a governor, but it's a fucking, a governor that's also pretty prominent. A governor. A senator, uh, this is somebody at very, very high levels in the United States at this time, just, this is so fucking horrible. Apologies, content note, this is the out and out racism. Stennis had the brilliance to decide to not like display, play. So, quote, during Bilbo's first term as governor, Eugene Green, a black man, was lynched at Belzoni, Mississippi in 1919. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People inquired of Bilbo as to the circumstances surrounding the lynching. And in response, playing upon the association's name, Bilbo said, Eugene was advanced all right from the end of a rope.

0:12:50 Lydia: Yeah. I Oh

0:13:35 Thomas: And in order to save burial expenses, his body was thrown into the Yazoo River.

0:13:35 Lydia: My God. Oh my god.

0:13:41 Thomas: Yeah, it's unbelievable that guy Was such a piece of shit, but like, was common, you... So that's the outward racism, I guess, gives Stennis a modicum of credit for not being that, I suppose. Just in case you weren't horrified enough, that there's a little bit more from from that. So I think this is from the book, actually. "An adamant opponent of federal anti-lynching legislation, Bilbo denounced a proposed anti- lynching bill on the Senate in the late 1930s, inquiring, quote, 'What senator will not understand that the underlying motive of the Ethiopian who has inspired this proposed legislation, the anti-linching bill, and desires its enactment into law with a zeal and frenzy equal, if not not paramount, to the lust and lasciviousness of the rape fiend in his diabolical

0:13:43 Lydia: That's so disgusting.

0:14:29 Thomas: Effort to despoil the womanhood of the Caucasian race, end quote. I don't even know that that sentence had a subject and an object and whatever. I actually lost track of what the fuck he was saying. But like, another thing that blew my mind during this is like, what happens after he says that on the Senate floor? And I'm like, all right, lunchtime, I guess I don't fuck what yeah like that we kind live of in different worlds, you know, and and this is not to absolve the North or anything at all, I but like this story is a lot about how these fucking asshole fuckers in the South were so so fucking horrible, the lynchings, the everything going on, and then the

0:14:35 Lydia: Oh my. God. Yeah. Yeah. Robert's rules of order. Yeah.

0:15:12 Lydia: Hmm.

0:15:12 Thomas: Fucking gloating over a lynching that a U.S. Senator did, and we just, like, coexist with that, know, you like the rest of the country, the other senators are like, okay, that's my colleague, let's talk about where we are, I, we're in Kemper County in Mississippi, finally decided late in the process to actually just look at fucking Google Maps like an idiot, I've been, I was doing this whole thing, there's books, the research, and I was like, why don't I just look physically at the place this was, and just doing that actually kind of helped put a lot of it, you know, into perspective, I don't just geographically, um, main locations for this story, in this case and the trial and all the stuff, are are a town called DeKalb, a town call Scuba, and and the slightly bigger, like, I don't think you could call it a city, but the bigger place called Meridian.

And that's the closest, like kind of more populated place that becomes a little bit important. You know, that's where the paper is, the newspaper that covers it. That's where the, you some of the jail facilities are. So Meridian becomes important.

0:15:35 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:26 Thomas: And if you look at a map, I mean, this is Mississippi. It's on the east border, like very close to the border of Alabama, right? When you think you can't any worse, it goes into Alabama. It's just these little towns along the highway, you know, and then, you DeKalb and Scuba are kind of a little bit parallel. And then Meridian is to the south. It's actually impressively far for 1930. You know, it is like 45 miles from Meridian to DeKalb. And I wonder, like, how long did that take in 1930s cars? I don't know.

0:16:57 Thomas: I have no concept of how fast they went. But here is something I also, neither of us realized this entire time. We actually know something about the little town called Scuba. Any guesses? Glasses.

0:17:10 Lydia: My Is it, uh, last chance, you yeah, so

0:17:10 Thomas: Oh my God. How did we not realize this?

0:17:15 Lydia: Okay, so hearing the name Scuba, I was like, I know that name, why do I know that name, and I could not figure it out, and then when you present it to me, like, we do know this. I was like, oh, okay, I'm, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure My favorite show ever, you mean, yeah

0:17:25 Thomas: Yeah. I did not remember that. That show is so good. It got Lydia to watch sports.

0:17:33 Lydia: Man.

0:17:33 Thomas: That's how good it is. Um, but this was the first two seasons is the first one East Mississippi community fucking college. So I cannot believe the racial horror we are about to talk about, all, like, a lot of it, it takes place in Scuba and around that area, and now if you go to Google Maps, this fucking place is so tiny, literally just put in Google Scuba Maps, the whole place is just the community college, like, that's all there is, there, like, it's so tiny, now these these are places, by the way, that are less populated now than in the time period we're talking about, they're

0:17:40 Lydia: Seasons oh oh wow, yeah, you're right

0:18:12 Thomas: Tiny this and actually I was going to talk about that, at the time we're talking in the 30s, this whole county, Kemper County, entire population, 21,000 roughly, entire population. And mind you, that's the whole county, and Meridian is like more of the population. The main, like, two little places we're taking about are thousand people, you know, it's nothing, thing, population peaked in, like, around, I, this time, because once stuff got more industrialized, like, this was all, it's mainly just farmland, and then, as you needed fewer and fewer people to work farms, like, they just moved, you know depressing I can't

0:18:44 Lydia: Yeah, I do remember some of those, like, town shots that they would do, and yeah and I do, you remember commenting on it, like, oh, my my god.

0:18:50 Thomas: I'm even more depressed about, just, look, it's just, why is that place even there

0:18:52 Lydia: Yeah. They have a Stennis Hall.

0:18:56 Thomas: Of course, they have a Stennis Hall because Stennis, I don't know that he was literally from Scuba. It actually doesn't say in his Wikipedia, but he's from Kemper County. Maybe he was from, I don't know. That's close enough. I'm sure they would have a Stanis Hall regardless. But speaking of the name Kemper county, cause I can't help while we're here, county's you named after Ruben Kemper. Who do you think that is?

0:19:05 Lydia: Yeah, wow. Okay. A racist.

0:19:18 Thomas: Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, funny. I only mention it because the Wikipedia is a little sparse. This wasn't part of any of my deep research. This is just kind of fun little tidbits that I don't go any further than Wikipedia for usually. Just wanted to bring it up because the first line is, the Wikipedia, Reuben Kemper, February 21st, 1771 to January 29th, 1827, was an American pioneer in filibuster. And I was like, what? I actually didn't know you could be a filibbuster. Like I was, in my mind, I'm like, did he invent the filibus? I don't think, I think he did.

0:19:20 Lydia: Yeah what? One. Who busts phyllas like yeah

0:19:54 Thomas: Yeah, like early in the filribuster period of the Senate, like they had him come in to like waste time. Like he actually was the, and no, it's nothing delightful like that. It's actually the fucking one of the worst things you've ever heard. It's, yeah, it's someone who, just click on that Wikipedia, someone who engages in an unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country or territory to foster or support a political revolution or secession. The term is usually applied to United States citizens who incited insurrections across Latin America, particularly in the mid-19th century, usually with the goal of establishing an American loyal regime that could later be annexed to the United States.

0:19:58 Lydia: Oh god oh my god oh gross

0:20:40 Thomas: So, that guy fucking sucks. By the way, Wikipedia editors, if you're listening, it It says, Kemper settled down peacefully as a planter in Mississippi. Nah, I bet that doesn't say that he owned slaves, but I bet he did. And if you own slaves, there's no such thing as owning them peacefully. Sorry, fuck you.

0:20:40 Lydia: What a guy, okay.

0:20:52 Lydia: No Just call it out. I mean, like, why are we hiding behind that kind of flowery language.

0:21:01 Thomas: Yeah. Settled down slaveholderly, racistly as a plantar, as a person who made other human beings do everything. And fortunately, he died in 1827. But I, it's so funny how quickly stuff goes to horrible. Like, you're like, oh, let me click on the name of anything in the South. Oh, what was that? Oh, filibuster? What? Oh, fucking God. Like, it's just within two clicks you're to the worst racism and, you know, imperialism and whatever else.

0:21:05 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:33 Thomas: It makes you feel any better. The The Kemper brothers were defeated in their whatever filibustering fucking crusade.

0:21:39 Lydia: Oh, good.

0:21:39 Thomas: Yeah. Then again, it's because the people there were satisfied with Spanish rule on account of Spain's support of slavery. So, I mean, I'm sure they all were going to support slavery, but the people There were already like, eh, yeah, we're got, yeah.

0:21:49 Lydia: Okay. Both sides. That is a both sides

0:21:55 Thomas: That is a both sides. It's, they're like, we already have slavery here. And like, you know, it's secured. We don't need any changes.

0:21:55 Lydia: Situation. Yeah.

0:22:03 Thomas: So yeah. Anyway, fuck every, literally everything about all of that. As if, you need any more things to horrify you about this place. Kemper County sucked. Don't, I'm sure it still sucks, but I'll just speak for the time period I've looked into. Not a horrible place for black people, um, majority of the county was black in 1890. I tried to find like closer info to 1930, but actually it wasn't showing up anywhere, so but I assume, uh, you know, it stayed stayed pretty stable. And I think that's one of the reasons why there's so much racial violence where it's like, you know, slavery is technically over, even though not really, but technically over, Reconstruction, and white people find themselves in a place where, oh, there's actually more black people than us in this place. Yeah.

0:22:47 Lydia: We're outnumbered. Yeah.

0:22:48 Thomas: And they lash out fucking horribly. And so there's this really, I almost bought another book, god damn it, I almost, there's and it's from 1877, uh, and it's called the Chisholm Massacre, and I was wondering what fresh fucking hell this is, but it's actually kind of interesting because Chisholm, et al, who were the ones massacred, were actually white. And I did a little more reading for this one, couldn't help it. I almost, like I said, almost bought the book, but I read like 30 pages of the preview. I couldn't hope it. It says a mob of 300 Ku Klux Klan members stormed a jail and killed Chisholm. And I'm like, well, this has to be a black person. Like, there's no, you know, like that pattern, but actually not. It's kind of interesting. It's has lot a to do with Reconstruction. It says this, this is less than a month after Reconstruction era was brought to a close, which, fucking 1877, I have to admit, I thought Reconstruction lasted, it's slightly longer than that.

0:22:57 Lydia: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I'd be like, I don't think we're done yet.

0:23:43 Thomas: Yeah. Like one fucking term, undergrad, essentially, you know, it's, I guess that's maybe 10, 12 years or whatever, but boy, I did not think it was that short. Um, but yeah, that was these racist assholes, you saying, no, we're not going to be reconstructed. There's going to be no reconstruction. We're going to go back to just about as bad as slavery was.

0:23:46 Lydia: Yeah. Right.

0:24:03 Thomas: And that's part of the political situation with this massacre because this sheriff, former sheriff, William Chisholm, was a Republican, and if you remember, they they were the good guys back then, and the Democrats back then were the asshole awful racists, including KKK members at at least in Mississippi here, and um, so that was a big part. He it was this very bitter political rivalry. And so while it wasn't black people who were massacred, it's still ultimately, I think race is, and racism especially when you you, see the mob was KKK members, you got to figure racism is somewhere on the list, if not number one, always. Ways. This is something I stopped myself from doing a deep dive on, wanted to bring it up because it's a very consistent pattern that we're about to see of people being led to the jailhouse and then mobs intervening. But boy, there's a lot of examples of this. And in this Chisholm massacre, it was Chishom, his son, his daughter, and two of his friends all killed by these KKK members. And then like basically there were no consequences for it.

0:24:20 Lydia: Right. Gosh. Gosh. Wow.

0:25:07 Thomas: And so the book I was reading was actually written by someone at the the time, like shortly after. And the language is just so, it's so fascinating. Like it's a little bit propagandistic because it was someone who was like, you everyone needs to know about what happened. And they're, you Know, they're right. Like everyone does need to know about what happened, but it's written in this, you late 1800s propagandist language that I found really interesting.

Anyway, I stopped myself from doing a full deep dive, but I wanted to bring it up because 1877, you You know, that's within living memory of the time period we're in. And it involves a lot of these same dynamics. You know? You're in, oh, you're in protective custody in a jail. Well, not if enough people show up. So, that was 1877. 1906, there's actually quite a lot of racial violence. And again, this whole county is fucking two people. And yet there's so many significant racial events here, and it's always the same pattern where it's like some tiny nothing happens. For example, in this one, I guess there was like a fight between white people and black people on a train. And this was, I Guess it was maybe a white conductor and black passengers.

Maybe who knows what it was, if they were being unruly or who knows if they were doing nothing wrong or whatever, but whatever the case word gets out to this fucking County of murderers, know, and you then by, you know, a month later, There have been a total of something like, you know, 20, 25 black people killed by whites because of that, whatever that incident was, you knows, like this campaign of terror, I guess, you know? Like this is in America, this is the original terrorism. It is white people terrorizing black people.

0:25:56 Lydia: Yeah.

0:26:42 Thomas: And that is a huge, huge theme of, all of this story. It's horrifying to imagine, and I don't think that as white people have grappled with what that was like and what that, and yeah, we're in the 30s, that's a while ago, but like that campaign of terror continued for quite a while and into today in some ways, and not obviously, not as bad, but there also was a lynching so horrible, I don't know how much I want to talk about it, but it just, the worst thing. I mean, these are, it's so depressing that among the worst things humans have ever done to humans is this. It really is, is our fucking country. Not that long ago, angry white racists just publicly murdering in a crowd, innocent black people is just, the it's among the worse things that have ever happened.

It absolutely horrifies me and I can't believe it's fucking real, live in a world where. And I just don't think we've ever reconciled this. I don't think we've ever made this okay, ever, you know? And that's thing number 900 on the list of things we haven't made okay when it comes to systemic racism and racial violence. But like,

0:27:02 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Right.

0:27:44 Thomas: It's just so, so infuriating. But once again, that sort of double lynching a mob taking people from the Kemper County Jail. So two black men accused of whatever the fuck, nothing they probably didn't do, stolen from a jail. And the weird psychology of how the white mob always wants to get some sort of confession, even though they're killing him anyway. Way, I, I know it's neither here nor there, but that part, it just weirds me out, I don't get, because they killed one of them, never confessed, they killed him, and then the other, like, they said, oh, I think I heard a confession, they killed him, so, like, what is it, it's just this weird psychological component that just makes it, even fucking grosser and weirder in a way that I can't even grapple with, like, what, what is that?

It's just this like thing that they felt meant something to them. I don't understand. Like, anyway, that was only a few years before the story we're about to get to. So this stuff talk about living memory. This is fresh in the memory. And single black person we're going to kind of meet in this story, I'm sure knows of this or even is connected to it or knows someone who knows someone.

0:28:07 Lydia: Yeah him anyway. No.

0:28:42 Lydia: Okay, yeah, it's not a big place.

0:28:58 Thomas: No, not at all. It's a tiny place, and they have to somehow live and conduct their lives and have families and do all that in the midst of that absolute terrorism forever for their whole lives. It's, and so now, is dipping into true crime a little bit. Play the music, do the exploitation. No, we're not doing any of that, but the fit now you never, you never will, in that way. I can't understand that kind of like just complete, almost reveling in horrible things that have happened. That I don't get. But our purposes, we do need to discuss some of the true crimey stuff to tell the story. And as for the crime, let's go back to our consult our map, basically. So Scuba, as I mentioned, that is now entirely a community college with a great football team, um, near the Alabama border where this murder happens is six miles to the east of that.

So even closer to the Alabama border in a little place called either Giles or Giles. I'm not sure which, which is not even like a town technically. Um, maybe it was then, but the only thing I see on the map as a remnant of it is the Giles Neville cemetery. So maybe

0:29:21 Lydia: Yeah. Never thought I'd see this day. Yeah, yeah.

0:30:12 Lydia: Oh.

0:30:12 Thomas: That's where this guy's buried. Actually.

0:30:14 Lydia: Morbid.

0:30:14 Thomas: I don't know. Yeah. I Don't know it's like, there's not enough people to even have a town, but like, here's where the people used to be. And we also buried the town there.

0:30:18 Lydia: Yeah? Here's where the people used to be.

0:30:23 Thomas: Yeah. And so that, you know, somewhere in the farmland of this tiny place, emphasize the geography because what's about to happen kind of blows my mind. So Raymond Stewart, a white planter, again, fucking, I don't, I don't like that word because I don't know what that means. It kind of means slaveholder even in the thirties because of sharecropping and all that. But that aside. He was murdered probably sometime in the middle of the night, with an ax, hacked to death, gruesome crime, then sometime the next day, uh, neighbors were expecting him or something, uh, one way or the other, they go discover what happened. He's actually, still alive at that point, um, I don't know, he's kind of still barely breathing.

0:30:40 Lydia: No.

0:31:06 Thomas: But by the time they call, so they call doctors. But by the time the doctors get there, passed. He's But crazy that he survived that long. So this is a gruesome murder. And what The Book says is that very quickly, or at least I don't know how quickly, But sometime in that afternoon, 200 people had gathered you know, outside his house, essentially.

0:30:52 Lydia: My god. Mm-hmm. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's Like the, the whole town, holy cow, yeah,

0:31:26 Thomas: That's exactly, that's what I was doing some math. I'm thinking like, wait a minute, the whole county is 20,000 and more than half of that is black people. So if 200 people, and you can assume most of them are white, although I, you know, I guess maybe it could have been mixed at that point because, you know, it's not like a lynch mob yet. But could be 10, 20% of the entire white population of the county. And we're in a small ass part that's nowhere near the population centers. So I don't even know how that works. I guess just all the surrounding farmers, you know, they somehow were like, hey, you know how there's nothing to do because it's 1930? A guy died and they're like, yep, all right, there's my day. I'll go there. And what did they do? Well, they completely ruined any chance of catching anyone by stomping all over everything, you know, making it impossible for the dogs that the police brought to track anything down. And yeah, so that's what they all did.

0:31:39 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:07 Lydia: Ruining Any evidence Yeah. Wow. Maybe They should all be suspects now because their scent is there so

0:32:27 Thomas: So like instantly, these dumb fuck racists ruined any chance that they, yeah, like, obviously, this is my interpretation, take it with a grain of salt, but what I perceive to be being stuck without any fucking leads at all, white racist piece of shit police did what white racist pieces of shit beliefs pretty much always do in this situation, which is the nearest black person and decide that he did it. And I don't even think that's an exaggeration, actually. So the nearest unfortunate black guy was Ed Brown, who's a 30-year-old tenant on Stewart's farm. And Ed Brown had been living on that property and helping Stewart for almost three years. From everything I gather and from reading the testimony and stuff, Like who, who fucking knows, you know, it's almost a hundred years ago, but it

0:32:30 Lydia: Mob yeah, sure Oh.

0:33:11 Thomas: Feels like, like this guy had a pretty good relationship with, with the murder victim. Like Ed Brown, this black guy, you Know, three years, that's kind of a long time to be working with somebody. And there's examples of like, they they, kind of trusted each other. White The guy trusted him with like valuable stuff. And, you think he lent him his gun. He's like, here's my gun. Use this for something. I forget what, but like, that, that's an example of, like, that's heartbreaking. I don't, I don't think Ed Brown murdered this guy. You know, like, I don't fucking know. Find it hard to believe that would have killed he the guy. The alleged motive being that he owed him a little bit of money. It's like, well, he lives there, you know, like for three, anyway.

So the police find that guy, apparently they decide, well, even though you've been living on the property in a trusting working relationship with this guy for three years, you must have just decided to ax him to death one day and then go back to your house and not know about what had happened. That must have been the evil plan.

The diabolical plan of Ed Brown was murder the guy you've lived on property and worked with for three years and then just go back to your house and not know it happened. Happened that That's how they often do it, these diabolical murders.

0:33:30 Lydia: Wow. Oh,

0:34:17 Thomas: Don't, this is, this is the thing that I actually cannot suss out, and I've read over the transcript a million times, and they just don't bother saying it. Like I don't think they had to try that hard to prove their case, so like there's a lot missing from the trial, you know, like there's a lot of sequencing missing, there's, there's dates missing, there's like, I don't know the order of what happened, and I've, I've fucking tried so hard to figure this out and I can't, there's just not enough information that I have, but, or for some reason, police thought, this like can't be a one-person job, maybe, or what, or maybe they figured, like, why not just frame more black people if you're already doing it, I guess. Like, honestly, it could be that. So the next day they nab, literally, literally the next closest black guy.

0:34:57 Lydia: My god.

0:34:57 Thomas: And his name is Henry Shields. And he lived half a mile away. So we got Ed Brown who lived on the property. We got Henry Shield's lived half mile away I can't emphasize how much that this was probably the rationale. Like you often hear people say he said the quiet part out loud, but we're in Mississippi in the thirties. So scientists haven't even discovered the quiet. Part like the concept of a quiet part.

0:35:18 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:20 Thomas: They don't, that would be confusing to these racists. They would be like, why would you be quiet ever about my racism? Like, why would I ever not yell it? Just in one of the many hours of random research for this, this was an old newspaper clipping I found from the Chicago Tribune. And this was after the Supreme Court decision, but in it, they quoted one of the citizens of this town. And I have to, I've to read you this quote. Quote, in spite of the recent Supreme Court decision, the feeling in Kemper County toward the three, oh, and by the way, sorry, stepping aside, I meant to say this at the outset. You won't hear me using the N-word because I'm never going to use that on a show. It's not, see, serious inquiries only for scientific reasons why that's not a good idea. But the language of the time uses the word Negro a lot.

0:36:07 Thomas: That's just like the common word. It's a billion places that I'm going to read. And so I will be saying the the word Negro. Um, just wanted to note it, that's you a conscious decision. Um. Based on my understanding of scientifically what, the best thing to do is around that. So I will never be saying the N word in full, but I will use the word negro when it's a quote. And so back to the quote, feeling in Kemper County toward the three Negroes remains unchanged. It was Was expressed the other day by a leading resident of DeKalb. Is it DeKalb or De... Shit, I forget.

0:36:37 Lydia: A great question. I Don't know.

0:36:39 Thomas: Because there is a... Isn't there a DeKobb County? But I don't know if that's a different thing. Because I can't just read a fucking quote, because of course I can, um, I was about to go pronounce the county and I realized that in all the fucking month long of research, every time I read it I thought, oh, I should figure out how to pronounce that, and but I'm like, well, why, I'm not saying it, I'm just reading it, for now so I don't need to know how. To It's like how when I used to read Harry Potter, I was like, fucking Her my own, and God knows what else, but it's DeKalb County. I just have to share something funny that I saw when, when Googling how to pronounce it, I just have to share this because it's really funny. DeKalb is the trickiest of silent L words. If you're talking about DeKalb County, there's no L, it's pronounced DeKab after an American Revolutionary War hero. But if you're referring to DeKalb County, Illinois, named after the very same man, you do pronounce the L.

0:37:05 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

0:37:36 Lydia: Why

0:37:37 Thomas: Oh, so good. And then I'm realizing, as I say that, hon, that this isn't a County, I just looked up how to pronounce DeKalb and realized that it's, I was looking at DeKalb County, Georgia, because obviously there's a bunch of these. This is not a county. This is DeKalb, which is a little fucking town. And so I actually don't know now. I can't find, I keep Googling. How do I pronounce DeKalb, Mississippi? And it's not, I can't get a straight answer out of these people. So they won't tell me, but we'll say DeKalb, because I don't know, I figure if that's the more Southern way of saying it, if the county is that, that, so we'll say DeKalb.

But anyway, okay, back to whatever the fuck I was talking about. Okay, this quote, I'm going to reset the quote because that was two interruptions and that's too many. Quote, in spite of the recent Supreme Court decision, the feeling in Kemper County toward the three Negroes remains unchanged. It was expressed the other day by a leading resident of DeKalb. Quote, we believe they are guilty, he said. When asked why the prisoners were suspected, he answered, quote, well, they worked for Stewart, they were the only Negroes on his plantation.

0:37:38 Lydia: Weird. Yeah.

0:37:56 Lydia: Yeah. So

0:38:43 Thomas: The end of the quote. There's no more. They asked a guy yeah they were the only, why are they guilty, they were the nearest black people, like, literally I was making a joke, and then I found a quote that was like, oh no, no, that's, that's it, they were the nearest black people. Now so the way the rest of it goes, I want to tell it through this piece of shit, racist newspaper run by a fucking piece of shit racist. Uh, first off, first thing to know that I gathered from those, from like kind of how it was reported at the time, because you figure gruesome murder in, you know, it's big news, and this was in the newspaper like every day because of, so it, first, I don't think there was any evidence whatsoever at Ed Brown's house or on him or anything. And that fits because, like, again, just to recap, Ed Brown lives on the property. They literally were like, who's the closest black guy? It's that guy. They go to his house and he's

0:38:44 Lydia: It's just because they're black people What Yeah.

0:39:34 Thomas: Just there. He's just like, hi, what's up? You know, and they're like, well, you you probably killed this guy that you live on this property and work with. And you're just doing a real good job pretending you didn't know he was dead. And also there's no evidence or anything, but you probably did it. So no I will say they suspect he was murdered in the night and they didn't discover his body. No one discovered his body till around noon the next day. So, you know, conceivably time to like dispose of evidence. But like, I don't fucking think this guy did it. I just don't. As I said, nothing really on Ed Brown, that didn't stop them from still, just you know, arresting him and suspecting him, but then I mentioned they had to arrest another guy, maybe, maybe because of that, I don't know, maybe they felt like they needed to find someone else because there wasn't really much evidence at Ed Brown's house. So they found, uh, Henry Shields, I, at Henry Shield place, they found what might be evidence, bloodstained jumper, arguably, more on that later.

0:39:47 Lydia: I was gonna say hacked somebody to death and there's like no physical evidence, yeah.

0:40:37 Thomas: And overalls that had strands of hair that allegedly was the same color as the murdered white, probably racist. Here's how the newspaper reported it, here's, here's what a racist paper run by some of your grandparents, if you live in Mississippi, said. When Shields was confronted with this evidence that they found at his place, quote, the Negro Shields was said to have broken down and made a statement that implicated Ed Brown, end quote.

So now they got in Ed Brown, okay, and then the newspaper reports so then that because of that Ed Brown confessed as well. So so he's confessed, but then they also arrest someone named Arthur Ellington, who went by Yank Ellingdon, wouldn't you know it, he also confessed and corroborated the other confessions. So according to the newspaper, that's like fucking awesome, they nailed it, these are the best white fucking racist cops. Naturally, there's already a lot of fear of a lynch mob, like just the minute this kind of thing happens, the sheriff fears that there's going to be a lynch mob, and so moves them to like a different county jail. Um, the sheriff is doing everything he can to prevent a lynching, and seriously, tons of people are guarding the prison, and he's even like inquiring about the National Guard, like we might need the National Guard, because is something that, like, I'm not an expert in, but lynchings the are a weird thing, just, just from the perspective of the like sheriffs and the police, like they didn't, didn't you know, it's like, it's their job to like, kill innocent black people. It's not,

0:42:08 Thomas: It's not the citizen's job. So like in their racist minds, they're like, no, we, we can do it. Don't worry. We'll, we'll get there. All you white fucking racists, you need to wait like a day, that's you what it essentially is about. But for the time being, that means that the sheriff is like trying to protect these black people. I guess it's it's so fucking he doesn't want them to be lynched. Whatever reason, the sheriff was like, don't do that.

And so this creates this weird dynamic that I can't help but talk about, where like the the newspaper is kind of trying to help the sheriff prevent this lynching in a way, because that's what all this coverage is written like, it's like, hey, check out, it's like they're a PR firm for how great a job the sheriff and the police department is already, already doing it executing these innocent people. Like, you don't need to come do a lynching, like we promise we're gonna like execute them right away just like so fast. And it works, like that, like gets the mob to not do a lynching, which, or how are these people just part of the country anyway. So that holds them off. They do a ridiculously fast grand jury indictment. And then the trial is about five fucking minutes long, and they're found guilty, and they're scheduled to hang fucking immediately. Check out this quote, only one week after, after the recovery of a dying Raymond Stewart, therefore Ed Brown, Henry Shields, and Yank Ellington had been arrested, indicted, tried for murder, and sentenced to be hanged.

0:42:08 Lydia: Yeah God.

0:43:41 Thomas: One week. And then the fucking newspaper that I just was telling you about is like patting the county on the back for this. This is unreal. Listen to this. In an editorial titled Kemper proves itself, published after the trial, the Meridian Star praised the manner in which Raymond Stewart's murder had been solved and punishment meted out to those guilty of the crime. Quote, three Negroes to die in Kemper County in the early part of May. The case had been, quote, handled expeditiously with due justice to the accused and with due Consideration for the social order, end quote. Like, see, we don't need to do lynchings by having a mob break into a jail and then like gruesomely murder the black people themselves. We do it properly, using a five-minute sham trial, and then we killed it. Like, it's fucking, I don't even know, yeah, it's like I

0:44:14 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:44:31 Lydia: Was crazy, the wheels of justice do not tend to move that quickly.

0:44:35 Thomas: Know, all so that was the local racist fucking newspaper version of what happened, but only way we could really debunk that is if we had access to the trial transcript. Well, fortunately, I was eventually able to find that. And then now is where I want to talk a little bit about that stuff I teased at the beginning, how this kind came up, how this research journey went. I've just got, some odds and ends and, why I think this is so fascinating. Lots of stuff. So this was sort of the unfolding of how I kind of discovered information. I always start of kind at Wikipedia. We all do.

And then, you go for the mail, you click on the sources and I've got other, I've gotten new and improved research methods that I'm excited to share. I used some of them for this, including, you ancestry.com, which I never thought would be something I would need or care about. Cause I don't care about my family really. And Then I was like, like Ancestry.com. It's funny aside on that, I used Ancestry.com, which is also tied to these newspapers.com which is very cool and very key in some of this research, you now, looking through historical newspaper articles and that has just really, that has grabbed me so much.

0:44:49 Lydia: Yeah.

0:45:48 Thomas: You always fucking hated and sucked at history in school, and I was thinking about this as I was reflecting on doing this episode, and even this show, because a lot of the show is like, fucking, I love looking into this history, you know, and I'm trying to think of like why I hated history as a kid, and I realized, like, A, it's because of ADHD, so I couldn't focus on what anyone was saying. So for me, history class was like, all right, how do I try to pass a test about something? And it ended up being like, you know, all right, memorize the fucking four things that were in this. And who Yeah, who are the people?

0:46:23 Thomas: And what year was the thing? And I fucking hated it. And I couldn't do it that well, because that's a kind of a memorization that is not logic based. You know, there's, you have to just know a lot about, you have to just fucking, there's no shortcutting it unless you're someone who's good at memorizing random shit, and I'm not good at memorising random shit. I'm good at summarising stuff when there's a logic to it or whatever, you know, and they have that like framework. And so I hated history. I didn't really get it, but I've always, you know, I've obviously always enjoyed learning. I've also always enjoyed like documentaries and stuff. And then as I'm doing this research and I've just searching and searching, I'm going through old newspapers and reading, reading articles, it's just the most fucking fascinating thing to me, that, just, just seeing like these people in the thirties, the, you know, they led these complete lives.

0:46:20 Lydia: Dates. Yeah

0:47:08 Thomas: They had so much going on, you know, like I, I think I have this stupid idea in my brain for some reason that like now, when there's all this fucking technology, is when things got like interesting thing or something, or like, you know, things got complex because we were connected across the world, you know, before you weren't, you didn't have the internet, you weren't connected across it, but you didn't have TV much at the, you know, really.

And so I guess my brain was like, well, things were simpler or something. But like, not really, you know, like there's, there's so much, and it blows my mind how much these people, everybody throughout history, I mean, people have always been people. They've always been smart, especially art around politics and human relationships and stuff, and like all that stuff is just so fucking fascinating to read, from that perspective back then, people seeing some of these people and what they did. And yeah, they didn't have the internet, they didn't have TikTok and all that shit, but what they did have was like magazine articles, and they would write letters, and that, like, a lot of this story, the more positive components of it, are people reading about something somewhere randomly, uh, getting picked up by a newspaper, and then that gets picked up a magazine, someone reads about it, sends a letter to somebody, donates something, like, just all this stuff that I'm like, god, it's just so interesting, you know, it's all, not the internet, it's not email, it's not all that, but it's still the same thing in a way, and it's still serve

0:48:34 Thomas: The Same function.

0:48:34 Lydia: That network. Yeah.

0:48:35 Thomas: Yeah. And it's, just so fucking interesting. And then also to darken it again, to see the legal system. Some of it is just, some OF this is just a joke. It's just a fucking joke. We're going to go through it, but like to call it a sham trial is an insult to sham trial, you know, like to called a kangaroo court. I don't want to insult kangaroos or whatever the fuck that's based on.

0:48:54 Lydia: Right.

0:48:54 Thomas: That's probably some racist thing too. Let's face said. For one, I don't know how much of this is, well, small, rural area, 1936. I don'T know what the norm was. Well, the first trial was in 1934. I DON'T know what the Norm was back then, but I've now read the entire transcript of this 1934 trial, like literally the whole thing. And there's a lot of it that I'm like, is this fucking really how we did it. And so simultaneously I'm reflecting on the fact that like, you know, people say, you know, slavery was legal. The Holocaust was legal, all these things were legal. There's, there's a way in which the legal system, you look at the terminology they're using and that objection, the, overrule, all that stuff is there. All that same, you you know, hearsay, all that same stuff is in this transcript it feels really sophisticated. At the same time sophisticated and yet it's just being used for evil. Like it's literally, yeah.

0:49:23 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:49:46 Thomas: Like, it's not this dichotomy of, well, is it evil racism or did the legal system come and save us or whatever? Like, it's not that. It's one and the same, specifically in Mississippi. And that dichotomy is something to keep in mind as a theme because ultimately, you already know, the Supreme Court did rule well. They did a good thing here, which is not always the case. But looking at that relationship, you know, of like Like when the law is just, yeah, it's sure it's this sophisticated thing. Aren't we so smart? Aren't We So Great? Yeah, except it's being used to ensure a racial fucking hierarchy, to ensure white people's ability, white Southerners specifically in this case, his ability to do the most horrible things to black people and treat them like not people.

But you have all these law words, so then it's sophisticated and fine. Here's another thing that's tough. Don't, I how do you find anything from 1936, you know, like not the, yes, we have the internet, but like not everything's on the internet. Gotten to the level, we haven't gotten the budget yet to be able to travel to universities where they have paper. Like

0:49:44 Lydia: In the service of, yeah, eventually.

0:50:48 Lydia: Yeah.

0:50:48 Thomas: I've, I actually have tried to locate some of these things and just, if like there's an online version of it, you know, and it'll be like, oh, Stennis is, library, you whatever the, you know, they'll have like, It'll be at a university and it will be like they have all of Stennis's, he donated, you know, all his effects and papers and all that. And it's like, it would be so cool to be able to search that.

0:51:05 Lydia: Yeah, you're like, let me click a button then.

0:51:07 Thomas: I know I'm like, okay, why hasn't everybody instantly uploaded everything to the internet ever? That should be mandated because I would love to see it. But no, they haven't. I mean, some of this stuff I couldn't find. So did a good half days worth of research coming to the conclusion of like, well, I guess I'm not really going to know. Like I was just like, I just won't know because yes, I can find the fucking Supreme Court decision. Sure. That's easy. Uh, and I did, and I read that and fucking a, but it references stuff like in the transcript or it references stuff in the, you know, in the evidence and the whatever. And I'm like, where is that? I don't know. I'm still learning this stuff where often I'll find a decision, but, the decision will reference, even if it's not Supreme court is whatever level of court, it'll reference evidence. It'll reference, know? Um, exhibits, it will reference other stuff. And I'm like, where is that? Is that somewhere? Like, how do you find that shit? I don't know. Do they, do they keep all that?

0:51:11 Lydia: Yeah! Yeah.

0:51:57 Thomas: You know, do the keep the, photos or, or description of it? I don'T know. And so saw this one sentence though, in the wiki that said the transcript of the trial indicated Stennis was fully aware that et cetera, et cetera. I thought, well, that's bad, obviously, but that's all I had. Like I couldn't find anything else. That didn't have a source to it in the wiki. Was like, I couldn'T find the fucking transcript anywhere until first I found like a really good write-up about it. And I'm like, all right, I'll do the episode just using this write- up and the Supreme Court decision. Decision. And that was like the first time when I was like, all right, I'm ready. I'm going to do this, you know, fucking month ago. And then I just happened to somehow find the transcript. It's like on this university website. I don't know why. It'S on like some, the URL I'm on is like a university, like users dot something edu. Like, I don'T even know if I'm supposed to be on. I DON'T know what this is.

0:52:50 Thomas: I HAVE NO IDEA HOW I FOUND IT. Yeah. Like I some student's fucking thing. Um, but it's the whole transcript. And so I found that and I was like, Jesus, I cannot stop reading this. Let it suffice to say I I've done fucking hours on this I've just got hooked on researching the story and the people involved in the case, the legal component. Give you guys an indication, time to reveal this this bombshell, I read a fucking book. I read and I read it like, okay. All right. Confession. I only read most of it.

0:52:47 Lydia: Oh, weird. You accidentally hacked into.

0:53:20 Lydia: It

0:53:20 Thomas: Then I figured out I could make my phone, read it to me. But I like physically read a book for a lot of it, which it was, it's a short book, but for me, that's a lot. Like I can't physically read. It's hard. II tried to even order it. It was like, you can't order. There's nothing. And it's like, fuck. But I found the, like, Ooh, there's a little bit of a peak inside the book. And I started reading that and that was giving me things that were like this. I have to, I have To find out more. It's so interesting. I Have to find out more. And so I was like, wait a minute, I can get this on Kindle. I don't have a Kindle, but I can get it on Kindl until I did that. And then I've got it on the Kindle app. And then, I realized I could have the phone yell it at me in a monotone really fast.

And this person I want to shout out this book because it's so good it is so goddamn good And so this book is called A Scottsboro Case in Mississippi, colon the Supreme Court and Brown v. Mississippi by someone named Richard C. Kortner. And this is so obscure that I can't tell if this person's alive or dead. You know, I Richard Kortner was born in 1935. So I

0:53:44 Lydia: Yeah, Yeah.

0:54:19 Thomas: DON'T know, there's no Wikipedia on him. I see when I search him, I see stuff that says was this, but it also like other places it speaks in the present tense. And it says nothing says he's anyway, point is this book was amazing. And this this was published in 1986, this book, the year I was born. And he unlike me, he didn't have the internet I that don't think, but he did have like the old fashioned way of getting a hold of, for one, he was, I think from in Mississippi, I Think he probably was somewhere where this made more sense got a hold of, like, all the documents involved, like the personal letters, the, this, the, that there's, he's, detailed stuff about finances. That's going to be so interesting to to talk about. I just want to shout this book out. Was it so cool to read. But in his case, you're out there, Richard C. Kortner is fucking what? 88 or something. What would he be? Yeah. If you're listening, you're amazing. Cause this book fucking ruled. So I got got to do a big shout out there.

0:54:50 Lydia: If he listens and he's like, there's a little too much swearing from my taste.

0:55:19 Thomas: Yeah Apologies about the swearing. Also, hopefully he's not one who's like, yeah, sorry, the woke went too far, I'm the anti-woke now. Fuck. God damn it. Your mission of this show, in you brief has always been debunking these fake anti-woke stories. But it's a little bit more than that as well, because also kind of the reason why I, at least I'll speak for myself, consider myself progressive. And I guess of the side that people would call woke, although I like even before that word was ruined by anti-woke people, I know I would have never like self-identified as that because it's just a weird thing to say. But like, well, fuck it, like whatever. I guess I'm quote unquote woke or whatever. And but like there's really good reason for that. And I've also always seen that as a mission of the show, too, because

0:55:27 Lydia: Yeah. Can't win them all.

0:55:55 Lydia: Mm hmm.

0:56:08 Thomas: Because just debunking stuff without providing like the reasons why I proactively am on this side and see this as a valuable project. Doesn't, you know, that doesn't tell the complete picture. Overarching reason why the anti-woke side is always fucking wrong and why the woke side is largely correct. Even if, if, you know, obviously you can find individual people everywhere, they're going to be wrong about something, but like largely the mission of quote unquote wokeness, I find to be incredibly important. One major component of that is reading anything about history whatsoever. Like actually learning real history, not taught in like a whitewashing America friendly way, um, and really grappling with things that happen, is it's just pure horror. Like it's just for most of all time. And I truly believe that most people don't grapple with that.

But I, reading, just like stumbling upon this, this weird ass fucking chain of custody we've got, you know, of just like one thing leading to another to another, and it all, all inevitably, like everything we research, if you go back enough, you find this horrible shit in history and telling the real story of historical figures is a part of wokeness. Now, Stennis is, you not like a household name anymore, probably, at least, except for in fucking Mississippi. Yeah, exactly. But he's an important, actually quite important figure in the Senate historically. Historically. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. Everybody loves those people for some reason, like every single Dixie Krat who was a racist but then lived long enough to die in the 90s or 2000s, somehow everyone worshipped them after.

They It's the weirdest thing, and that's part of this actually. But that accurate grappling with the just reality the of of the horror that has been inflicted on about black people in this country, again, as someone who, I mean, I know this stuff, like I know, I'm not like naive about this stuff at all.

0:56:08 Lydia: Yeah hmm.

0:58:07 Thomas: I'm not saying I know a bunch of history, cause I sucked at history. I don't know a bunch of industry, but I'm, someone who's like, yeah. And then we're always the good guys. And it's great. Right. It's like I'm not that guy at all. And yet still, I'm just like repeatedly shocked and shocked and shock over and over, and it's not, gory details, or it's more just all the stuff around it. Like this awful shit happens and the way it's dealt with or not dealt with, the way life goes on, the way nobody fucking cares after, like all that stuff too is particularly shocking to me, and reading what I've read now and going through all this research. And it, not only for all those reasons do I want to talk about, but also it's just so fucking fascinating. You've heard me two or three times today just be like, this is the most interesting thing.

0:58:53 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:58:53 Thomas: And much as I doubt myself every five seconds because I'm so fucking fascinated by this story, I have to trust that the listener will be as well. And so even though this isn't a anti-woke debunking, but it is history, and it is about telling accurate history, and it's about how do we judge historical figures, of what's fair in that. And then also making sure we have the accurate information when we do that. Because I think there's two levels of it. There's a level of, oh, you know, man of his time, people didn't know anybody. But there's also a level of denial about like what the details of these things actually are. I think we're going to leave it there for now, but don't worry, very soon I'll give you part two. People that, patrons, I especially, I, I will try to make you wait as little as possible. Also for patrons, I've got a special message kind of update that I will be putting out right away, so look forward to that as well. Or maybe pledge at patreon.com/wherethereswoke to hear that. That.

0:59:51 Thomas: And by the way, if you're a patron, um, what can, uh, you know, you find on patreon.com slash where there's work, huh?

0:59:57 Lydia: Some really awesome bonus stuff that we did recently. Rob Schneider's comedy special pretty recently. And then we have a very, very cool patron for the top two few tiers of patrons. We'll be hanging out, chatting. Thomas and I will answer any questions that folks have. Maybe talk.

1:00:15 Thomas: Now we're just playing fucking code names and you're going down. I need revenge.

1:00:19 Lydia: You're mad because I beat you last time.

1:00:20 Thomas: Oh yeah. Soundly. But like, I think the board was rigged. I was looking at the code on the back end of horse paste and I think you

1:00:23 Lydia: I don't know about that. I don't about them. So are we just going to play Codenames until you beat me?

1:00:29 Thomas: Yes no we're gonna play Codenames until the proper victor is crowned. That could be you, I don't know.

1:00:37 Lydia: Okay. Yes, Yes, it's me. Yeah. So if you're not already signed up on patreon.com/wherethereswoke, get signed up, get into those top two tiers and come hang out with us. It's a whole lot of fun. We had a blast last month and really looking forward to doing it again on November 30th.

1:00:53 Thomas: So much fun yeah So next time on Where There's Woke, did they really just like confess? Like Like, "Phew, I'm so relieved to just confess all of what happened right now." And you know what? He was involved, and he was involved. Is that how it happened, you think? No, you already know that's not how it happen. But next time, the actual transcript. God, there's so, fuck it, there's so much interesting stuff about this. I cannot wait to tell you all. We'll see you then.