WTW26: The Final Stennisode

Transcript

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

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas Smith, and with me, as always, is Lydia. How are you doing?

0:00:48 Lydia: Hi, doing pretty well.

0:00:49 Thomas: How's closet?

0:00:50 Lydia: Cozy, getting a little crowded with Christmas and me trying to pack some stuff in here. So, you know, pretty

0:00:57 Thomas: Yeah, There's going to be just a tiny little place for you in in exactly the shape of your chair to like sit

0:01:05 Lydia: Much that's kind of where we're at right now. And good thing I'm not claustrophobic because this show would not work out very well, I don't think.

0:01:14 Thomas: Well, here we are for what I'm gonna go ahead and say is the final part of this Stennis series. There is one bonusy thing, I think, I think this has been such a departure though, for so long that uh, I'm going to set that aside. I'll, we'll come back to it at some point, maybe soon, maybe later, but this is the last part in terms of this storyline. I appreciate everyone going along with me, assuming you have. I don't know. Maybe there's, maybe I'll check and there's zero listens to this one, but there's just so much interesting stuff here.

And it really, you know, yeah, it branched off a lot, but I think there's so many implications for so much of the woke battles. You know, it's the, I really am interested in these historical, like, how do we judge the people in history? Oh, man of the times, all that stuff. I think that it really is a significant part of a a lot of just conservatism in general is this you idealization of yesteryear and but being wrong about it like almost every time, you know, they're, they're yearning for a time that never existed. So this will be the final part of that. And when we last left off, uh, where were we?

0:01:43 Lydia: Yeah. Right. It's We met our hero, our ultimate hero, Mr. Earl Brewer, and he successfully navigated his way through a system that was not going to let the Kemper trio to the Supreme Court. He battled his way that through red tape and through the barriers at that time, and, and then he won, and uh, that's where we were. Now, now what, you tell me, where are we gonna go from here?

0:02:39 Thomas: No, that was. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He basically utilized his privilege in the best way possible. He had not only white privilege and some amount of wealth privilege, but yeah, being ex-governor privilege and yeah, got all the way to Supreme Court and won. And so now it's like, yeah, you're free to go, big parade, yub yub from the end of Return of the Jedi, right? And it's all, everybody's happy.

0:02:44 Lydia: Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:03:06 Thomas: The end. Okay, thanks for joining us.

0:03:07 Lydia: It was a really good episode. Said, "Oh,

0:03:10 Thomas: Yeah, we'll see you next, no. Just quoting from the book here. Although he had maintained an official silence regarding the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, District Attorney John Stennis had indicated that he would seek a retrial of the case, much to the consternation of the NAACP, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Defense Council, and presumably Brown Shields and Ellington themselves.

0:03:25 Lydia: My god, wow."

0:03:35 Lydia: Yep.

0:03:35 Thomas: So, yeah, Stennis, our hero, hero who we've named a ship and a space center after and probably a million other things, all this, happens, they go all that, language that I've read you, I haven't even read you a tenth of it, like all the, like, "Oh, really, this medieval thing, like this is what we're doing now, this isn't justice, this is a joke, there's no other evidence except this," all that national press, major national press about this and so he saw all that, all that language, you, and he thought, "Well, guess I, I'll just do it again," just retry him even though there was nothing, like, like almost nothing.

0:03:49 Lydia: Didn't Insane. Right.

0:04:09 Thomas: Credit to Brewer. I really do appreciate this. He wasn't like, alright, well, did the Supreme Court. Good luck, everybody. That was like, he wasn't just in it for some sort of recognition in that way. There's very much a sense of like, alright, here's the next thing we need to do, we got to get these boys home, you know, we gotta, we, and so he's communicating with them and the NAACP and he's on it right away. You know, it's also like they're in that legal limbo, I remember the story I told about the Arizona guy, he was still in prison for a while after his sentence was vacated or whatever, um, and it's because, like, you know, court, it takes time, and you can stall it all. And you can say, oh, we need a minute to make a decision and all that stuff. Meanwhile, someone who should be free is like, okay, I'll just stay here in prison, the worst place ever. Like, yeah,

0:04:15 Lydia: Right. Right. Right.

0:04:58 Lydia: Have never been there in the first place, yeah.

0:05:00 Thomas: I'm just hang out. Should I hang out here while you do that? Which is nuts to me. And so what Brewer does is he motions the Supreme Court of Mississippi like, hey, let him go. You know, like, let's do this. There's some legal bullshit I don't want to get into, but it was basically they found some stupid way to say, nah, we're going to keep them here. And still take more time to figure out retrial the thing. And so after that happens, Brewer is writing the CAC talking about this and the funding. The Supreme Court of Mississippi overruled my motion to discharge these boys and remanded their cases back to Kemper County, Mississippi for retrial. I'm going to have some expenses in the retrial of this case. And since I am contributing a great part of my time and energy to this matter without cost and without price, I'm going to ask if it is possible for your society along with the NAACP to keep up with the expenses in this trial.

0:05:00 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:51 Lydia: All the printing costs.

0:05:52 Thomas: Yeah, so many printing costs. If these boys are compelled to go back to Kemper County for a trial, it is going to be necessary for me to get busy and use my influence with the executive department of the the state to send along military protection for them in that county. With a view of avoiding this, I'm going to be compelled to writ of habeas corpus for them at an early date and undertake to get them discharged. So obviously that's going to cost money. You got printing there. You've printing costs there.

0:06:06 Lydia: Wow.

0:06:19 Thomas: Yeah, you print your pamphlets talking about it. You got to print all this stuff. And then to make matters worse, he's anticipating like, yeah, And when I do that, I, it might go all the way again to the Supreme court, depending on how big a pain in the ass they want to be. We could be nowhere near the end of this, even though you would, it's traditionally the end the story and when it's a movie or something. Um, and so then he's also saying like, we're going to need to do an application for change of venue because you know it's too dangerous here.

0:06:18 Lydia: Printing here, printing there.

0:06:31 Lydia: Yeah. Mm Yeah. Long fight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:06:46 Thomas: Like there's no way you can find a jury that's going to be unbiased and kind of impartial.

0:06:50 Lydia: Impartial. Mm hm.

0:06:52 Thomas: So that's another cost. And so the CIC and the NAACP are still to fundraise. They're still struggling. The NAACC at a certain point just said like, hey, we tried to levy it, not a tax, but, you know, we try to tell our new Mississippi centers that I kind of told you about last time. We try to be like, Hey, everybody needs to pay a Certain amount. Yeah, to try to get, they're trying to get like 200 or 400, no, some amount of money, which I'm sure to them was unfathomable, but they're to get a few hundreds of dollars and at a certain point they're right and they're like, we're, we tapped out, like we did everything we could and we got $100, Like, that's the end of everything. The CIC matched that hundred and so they got $200 to Earl Brewer, and that's enough, certainly, for Brewer to at least print a few copies of something.

0:07:10 Lydia: Like dues. Mm Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:07:37 Thomas: That's enough to get going. You know, that's a lot of money back then. Meanwhile, nothing's kind of happening. It seems like everybody's just dragging their feet here and they waited in jail all summer, basically. And then finally Brewer's like, oh

0:07:44 Lydia: Jeez. That's a dangerous time to be in jail, too. Summer. Just the heat. You know, like that Mississippi heat.

0:07:54 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, don't, yeah. I guess. So that's a good sign. They might still be in jail, not prison. I know jail is, traditionally you think of it as like a less horrible place than like a prison, but I'm sure it's not great. I don't know. And so he finally Brewer files a habeas cause he just need, they need to do something. And he's like, all right, I'm going to force their hand and force them to do Something. I no. So in that habeas, he says, quote, the people of Kemper County have been misled and resent the fact that the Brown case was carried to the United States Supreme Court. And therefore, there seems to be a quiet determination among some of the people in Kemper County to mob the three Negroes. And so that's him saying like, hey, I need you need to let them go or they're in danger kind of thing.

It's interesting, I did pull up some, I found some issues of the Clarion Ledger from 1936 talking about this. It wasn't really interesting enough to read. It pretty much just echoes I already what said. But just so it's cool to see those newspapers old and what was going on

0:08:02 Lydia: Yeah

0:08:54 Thomas: And like the ridiculous headlines. This one just happened to be right next to another column saying, 20 acceptables for U.S. judgeship listed by Bilbo. And so it's like just about him listing attorneys that were going to be, acceptable for the for a vacancy in the court. Just totally random, like Theodore Bilbo. Yeah. And then there's some other stuff about, like, the Japanese fighting the Chinese, which is interesting, like maybe leading up to World War Two. It's just cool seeing the history like that. But pretty much it's just like, well, the headline is just "Kemper Trio Stay in Jail. Chief Justice Vetoes Longino's Order Freeing Negroes." And so that's that's some of that legal nuance. There's like another level of court involved that Brewer got them a favorable ruling ruling right away at some sort of lower court. And part of it might have been because it was like a judge who was extremely like biased or whatever, but was a good poll for Brewer. Like if somebody liked him or somebody worked with him before or something. And

0:08:54 Lydia: Weird yeah okay OK.

0:09:48 Thomas: Then like right away, the higher up, court is like, nah, never mind. Yeah, they stay it right away so that they didn't get out. So finally, once the matter is again before the court, Stennis and Brewer reveal that that they have a mutually agreed upon change of venue if the case were retried. So it sounds like he's doing some negotiation there behind the scenes. And once it comes up again, they kind of tell the judge that since there was clear danger of, a mob killing them.

0:09:48 Lydia: They intervened. Yeah.

0:10:08 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:10:16 Thomas: And at that hearing, whatever that was, they set the retrial. So they said, retrial the case scheduled for late November at the city of Columbus in a different county. Not Ohio, obviously, but Columbus, like Mississippi.

0:10:27 Lydia: Mississippi.

0:10:28 Thomas: Mississippi, after having spent almost two years in jail, the Kemper Trio were transferred to that other jail in Columbus in late October. So two years they've been in there.

0:10:38 Lydia: And they're keeping them in jail in advance of the new trial, too. So, wow.

0:10:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So they've made a decision to retry them. Don't there's probably no bail because it's a murder case. So I would imagine, or they, if there was was bail, they weren't going to pay it anyway. I don't, I don'T any money.

0:10:54 Lydia: So do they have to, recharge like, them?

0:10:56 Thomas: No, I think, think you retry them because the charges there, I don't think there's anything that complex. It's just like murder for all they're all charged with murder they're

0:11:03 Lydia: I guess I'm just confused about how they got to keep them in in jail that whole time.

0:11:09 Thomas: Still yeah. They're still effectively charged, they're just saying like trial was improper, so Yes, they're still charged as murderers, but you need to redo the trial.

0:11:13 Lydia: Gotcha. Okay, okay. Mississippi decide what you want to Do, yeah, and then Mississippi decided they want to retry, so, okay, got it, it's

0:11:20 Thomas: Yeah. Or let them go, and you say Mississippi, it's Stennis, yeah. He's the one doing that, that's the important thing I want to emphasize in this one. He is doing it, and then as the date for the retrial approached, Stennis contacts Brewer and proposes a plea bargain.

0:11:27 Lydia: Just Stennis, you're right, yeah. Wow.

0:11:39 Thomas: Plea bargain is they all plead guilty and receive life in prison, and so Brewer's like, no, well,

0:11:46 Lydia: Huh, so We won't kill you, but you plead guilty to

0:11:49 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, you you laugh, but like, I, if they didn't have Brewer, I'm sure they would have taken that, like there's no way they wouldn't have because they're

0:11:49 Lydia: Yeah. Okay. I know. It's just like it's not much of a plea bargain, I guess, is my, why I'm laughing, it's so ridiculous, ridiculous.

0:11:56 Thomas: Right. Yeah. I Know, and it, and keep in mind how little they. Like, maybe you could make an argument they've got some evidence on Henry Shields. Like, that was where, if you're Stennis, I guess you're like, well, okay, we have found an axe and we found a jumper. But they have nothing on anyone else. They have nothing, especially Yank. They have absolutely nothing on Yank, and so, again, if Stennis is such a great, dignified guy, and we're going to see in this episode what people have said about him, if he's such a good guy, such an amazing character, character, wouldn't he be like, well, shoot, if all we had on these guys was a forced confession, even adjusting for like being a racist in 1936, you could still be like all right, can go, you know, Ed Brown, maybe like you'd still adjust it for like maybe they beat a confession out of Yank and he shouldn't even be there. But Henry Shields, we want to you know we want to charge him still. We want to try him.

0:12:16 Lydia: Yeah. Right Yeah.

0:12:44 Lydia: Or like plead guilty to a lower charge and released on time served or something like that, right, like to for Yank in particular

0:12:58 Thomas: Yeah, they yeah, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. I'm not sure how, if, how all that worked, but yeah, probably anything, but no, that he's just, he, Stennis wants them like dead still. I think he So as the time goes on and Brewer stays strong there, which I imagine, you know, it's not an easy decision. Then Stennis offers another bargain. He says, have them plead nolo contendere to a charge of manslaughter, with the result that Ed Brown would get 10 years, Henry Shields would get five years, and Yank Ellington would get three years. And with time, you know, time served, they've already spent that in jail, and their good behavior, I guess, uh, that would mean, so Brown would gets seven and a half, Shields would would get two and a half, and Ellington would get six months.

0:12:59 Lydia: Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

0:13:42 Lydia: So the only reason that Ed Brown is, number you one on that list is because he had a deeper relationship with him and and S.H.I.E.L.D. said Ed Brown made them do this during the forced confession.

0:13:46 Thomas: Yeah. I guess, you know, I have spent more hours than I care to admit, trying to figure out that question. Like it is so inconsistent in the record there's just not much about who did what the only actual evidence I can find is that stuff on Henry Shields. And then there's that interaction. I think I mentioned Where I think according to, you know, one of the torturers, they said that like, yeah, when Ed came and saw that Henry Shields had been beaten, Ed instantly said, oh, he did it. He's lying on me, you Know, kind of thing. And I think maybe, maybe that's leading them. Plus with the fact that like you said, the he lived closest. Um, and and

0:14:01 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, a

0:14:36 Thomas: Uh, you know, maybe Stennis thought that whole like having the key to the safe and that little whatever thing, like maybe they thought that was good evidence, but I I still, like, really, again, just for fun, my whodunit theory is I actually, I think Shields may have been involved and who knows, but like kind I of think he might have. And then it also seems plausible to me that Ed Brown found out and Shields told him not. That's actually what Ed Brown said. So once Ed Brown says, oh, he's lying on me, then his story was, no, I saw that Henry Shields was involved, but he told me he'd kill me if I told anybody, kind of thing.

Yeah, that was, and so it's it's, again, it's hard to know because all of that is in the midst of being beaten, so I don't, you don't know, like, is any of that anything, was that just, okay, this is Ed Brown's first attempt, maybe he made it up and it's his first attempt to get them to stop beating him but also not admit to the murder, you know, and then it's like, well, they're not gonna be okay with that, so then he admits to it because they're just beating him forever. I don't know, you know, but like, there's plausible story that Henry Shields might've done it, which would explain of things the about, like, if Ed Brown did it, it wouldn't have been that sloppy. He knew everything. He, you know what I mean? Like he, he, he had his gun.

0:15:12 Lydia: Interesting. Yeah yeah.

0:15:29 Lydia: Hmm yeah. Yeah

0:15:48 Thomas: He had like, I feel like that in my mind best explains everything may be based on the very, again, very limited information. All this could be nothing, like 100%, all this could be nothing. And this is only the little bits of information we do have. Whereas there's some other person we have no idea about.

0:15:48 Lydia: Exactly. Exactly, a

0:16:05 Thomas: Yeah, random white guy who had a motive we never heard anything about, who may have had evidence on him that we never knew anything about because no one gave a shit about investigating beyond, hey, here's the closest black guy.

0:16:05 Lydia: Random white guy. Yeah, yeah

0:16:17 Thomas: So with all that 100%, you know, in mind from the information we do have, like, I can't see it being Henry Shields. Ed Brown actually did know about it or witnessed, but like, you know, he wasn't going to tattle on him. And then, you that kind of explains all of it. Who knows? Anyway, beyond that, I Can't, there's no evidence linking Ed Brown or Yankee Ellington that I can find at, presented a trial. They did say, they had a fingerprint of Ed Brown, but the reason I didn't care about it is all because Ed Brown, there might have been any number of reasons for Ed Brown's fingerprints to be there.

0:16:17 Lydia: Yeah that's crazy right right right He He worked on the property, and and the fingerprint expert guy had said that it could be fresh or it could be old unless

0:16:48 Thomas: Yeah not yeah it's like, cool, man, man. But

0:16:59 Lydia: He meant from an old person, but like, then That also wouldn't be Ed Brown. So yeah.

0:17:01 Thomas: I think in Stennis's racist mind, I think he just thinks they did it because they're black and they did it. And I bet you these fucking racists also think that like literally beating them was a way to get the truth. Like I actually think that's what they think. And in his racist mind he's like, all right, we got the fingerprint. So he a hundred percent did it and then, you know, Henry Shields, he's, he he's got that evidence. So he definitely also was involved, but even he is like, well, Yank, I don't know.

0:17:15 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:17:32 Thomas: And So back to what was happening here, Brown and Shields felt like, all right, there's no way we're not going to be convicted by another Mississippi jury. If we don't take this, we're going to get convicted and then we'll be killed again. And they're like, yeah, I'm, I mean, we're accepting this, but Brewer told Yank, don't accept this. They have nothing on you. Absolutely nothing. Ellington though, he was like, nah, I don't just going to take it because remember they've already served two years or whatever. So it It would just be six months. And Ellington, this stuck with me. Ellington says, I'd rather. I need that time to arrange to leave the state safely. So it's like, fuck it.

0:17:35 Lydia: Yep. Yeah Yeah word to his wife and his kids and stuff

0:18:12 Thomas: Yeah, I'll take the six months, stop fighting it and just figure out like, all right, how are we going to move somewhere else, basically, if we can? And so on November 28th, 1936, the Kemper trio all accept the plea bargain and that battle now is comes to an end, and there's, you newspaper coverage that's like, "Hey, what?" No, one, like, some of it is like a lot of people may be confused. Either they did it, in which case they should be killed, or they, you know, should be hanged, or they didn't do it, in each case I can't believe leave there even doing any time. Yeah. Which is, it's kind of what we see today. Like, this is still something I think non-lawyers struggle with, which is like, well, if they're not guilty, why do they plead guilty? Because they would be killed.

0:18:13 Lydia: Yeah yeah geez the system sucks yeah

0:18:56 Thomas: Yeah, they know that a racist ass jury would definitely convict them. It is such a risk, Prosecutors have so much power In that situation of like, "Oh, you do not want to accept my deal? Okay, go risk" dying, you whereas like the prosecutor has no skin in the game. They don't give a... I mean, I guess they have the like electoral consequences possibly, but it's like they have, they can play poker and go and be like, "Yeah, cool, you want to call, you want to call my bluff? Fine, have fun." I, if I lose, nothing fucking happens to me. If you lose, you die. So it's just this total power imbalance. So with that, I, um, wanted to do the Breakfast Club clothes sort of on this on everybody on involved there so yeah yeah, and I think that's not the right thing, right? Isn't it a different one? Did they change it on gam to the different clothes because it's, they were doing the wrong way anyway? It's Animal House, right? I think they do the Animal House ending.

0:18:57 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah.

0:19:27 Lydia: And yeah. Movie you've never seen.

0:19:44 Lydia: Oh, Animal House Close. Yeah, yeah, yeah?

0:19:46 Thomas: Yeah. So John Clark, remember him?

0:19:49 Lydia: The good lawyer who really trying to fight for them and then collapsed and led to us getting Brewer because of Mrs. Clark and her connections, yes.

0:19:58 Thomas: I already mentioned he lost the election in 1935. his wife blames it on this issue. By 1938, he wasn't able to practice law anymore. So his health is just continuing to fail.

0:20:07 Lydia: Yikes. Great.

0:20:08 Thomas: But his wife, who I didn't even say what her name was until now, Now, Matilda Floyd Tan Clark, yeah, she won a seat in the Mississippi House in 1940, 1939, and John Clark traveled with her for the 1940 session, but trip, they were doing that session, I guess, he dies at the age of 56.

0:20:15 Lydia: Name. Oh. Oh.

0:20:29 Lydia: Gosh.

0:20:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:29 Lydia: That's young.

0:20:30 Thomas: So, He died 1940, age of 56. She went on to have a pretty interesting career, uh, she was actually like a supporter of civil rights and didn't support the Dixiecrats who like rebelled against

0:20:30 Lydia: Oh.

0:20:41 Lydia: You mean you could have that position as a person of that time? You know, oh,

0:20:46 Thomas: Well, you, yes, with a caveat that once she held that position, she was no longer able to continue in Mississippi politics, like, she, she kind of just like wasn't able to win re-election.

0:20:48 Lydia: God, Oh, she had a moral backbone and then everyone's like, get out of here, yeah.

0:20:57 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And she died in 1956 at the age of 71.

0:20:59 Lydia: Okay. Bad.

0:21:03 Thomas: Yeah. Great obituary on her. Here's little bit from it. Quote, "many Mississippi women, in addition to her many personal friends, regret and have good reason to regret Mrs. John A. Clark's death at the the age of 71." I wish they just used Matilda, but whatever.

0:21:03 Lydia: Yes.

0:21:17 Lydia: Thank you, I, I was thinking that right now in my head. She has a name.

0:21:18 Thomas: Uh, The guy's been dead for like 16 years and this, she can't even have a name. That's right. Whatever, the this is from the Jackpson Daily Clarion, uh, Ledger, had been an outstanding woman leader and advocate and worker for women's advancement in politics, business, and and professions. I like that. At that time, it was like, she did a lot for women in professions.

0:21:22 Lydia: Yeah. 16 years. Unbelievable.

0:21:43 Lydia: Yes.

0:21:43 Thomas: It was that.

0:21:44 Lydia: Women professions.

0:21:47 Thomas: And her career, standing, and services inspired and encouraged many other Mississippi women to seek public offices and to venture into business and professional careers. That's a pretty, yeah, I know. That's pretty good obituary for 1956.

0:21:57 Lydia: Girl power. Yeah. She was an original boss babe.

0:22:02 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Lean in. The two dissenting judges we talked about, they lived out their judge days. But they were already super old. Like, they were already in their late 80s when they died. They died within 10 years. Yeah, so those judges were born in the friggin' 1860s. I just think that's crazy. But, yeah, so they...

0:22:03 Lydia: Yeah.

0:22:14 Lydia: Virgil? Oh, We're lucky they were alive at all during this.

0:22:22 Thomas: I know, apparently. Apparently, yeah, and they both had a similar thing where they like judged a little longer and then they retired and then practiced law for like five minutes and then died. Brewer. Okay, the hero, Earl Brewer, he continued to practice law until his health failed and he died in 1942. A little bit from his obituary, he died at the age of 74 after a long and useful career career, and in his death, Mississippi loses another distinguished and useful citizen who gave his talents to his state. Uh, they didn't mention the Kemper trio. So I felt like that was, yeah, like, um, what the fuck, man? He literally, Mr. Smith goes to Washington that saved them, got a significant Supreme court decision.

0:22:28 Lydia: Sure. Yeah. Yep. Yes. Ooh.

0:22:56 Lydia: Interesting. Yeah, save three people from dying. Mm-hmm.

0:23:07 Thomas: And the, but the, you you know, Mississippi newspaper is like, eh, I'm not going to mention that.

0:23:11 Lydia: Yeah well race is gonna be

0:23:12 Thomas: It's still a positive obit, but like, you Whatever. And so, then I want to get to something that was one of the first things I had done in this, which is the Kemper Trio. So, I first started reading about this trial, one of I first versions of what became this fucking seven part PBS series, I just wanted to contrast like Stennis's long life, his record breaking career in public service and all the glory and, you know, tributes and all that that he got.

0:23:13 Lydia: Racist. Yeah yeah.

0:23:29 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:23:42 Thomas: I wanted to contract that with what happened to these men? You know, like that was just that was my first thought is like we always hear about cases like this in history. And then like what happened to these guys? We never know, so I was like searching everywhere. And that's when I stumbled on the ancestry.com thing and signed up for it. Like a professional account there, like the highest package over on ancestry. Com. I really wonder who they think I am because I've looked, this guy's related to three different black families in Mississippi.

0:23:55 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say that. Like, who is this user? He thinks he's related to these people and he's not. Very clearly.

0:24:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. But I wanted to find, I just want to find anything about them. And it's so disappointing. So the book, the best the book does is to say they served out their sentences and released. They were there's a footnote, again, not only did I read a book, I read the fucking footnotes. There's a keynote that was kind of weird that I just wanted to read you. Quote, in his book, The Petitioners, Lauren Miller states that after the decision of the the U.S. Supreme Court in the Brown case, the Kemper trio were never retried. They later made what amounted to a farcical escape and were never apprehended. This is, of course, incorrect since the prison records demonstrate that the trio served their prison sentences.

0:24:55 Lydia: Yeah.

0:24:57 Thomas: I just thought that was weird. Like somebody wrote a book in 1966 and was like, ah, let's just do this fucking folk ending to it. Like, and they were never seen again. They escaped and, you know, it's kind of of like made it up. So this author who was amazing was just like, nah, check the prison records. They served their sentences and were released. And that's pretty much it. So on Ancestry.com, I was able to find the right people, I believe, which wasn't like super easy because it's interesting back in, super poor Mississippi in the 30s. It's like birth dates are unclear. But I went through the court transcript and I got what they said all their their ages were. I got what they said, where they were born, you know,

0:24:58 Lydia: Yeah. Lied. Weird. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

0:25:34 Thomas: Roughly. And I located like, it had like entries for these people. So they're in people's family trees, which is interesting. Beyond that, fucking nothing. Yeah, nothing. I was able to locate like, okay, this is pretty much for sure the right person. Not even obituaries. I don't know when any of them died. All ancestry.com has with their database is like, yeah, there's a a few censuses, where they were marked as living during that time. And also they have some way of coalescing all that data. And so they're in people's family trees who have kind of confirmed them, but very little else.

Like there is for sure, it actually caused me to look back over it and find something really weird in the trial transcript that I completely missed. Remember how I said Ed Brown, you had three kids, I think, um, and he says their ages, like, oh, five, nine and three, something like that, and then I went to his, his wife, and I go to her testimony and asks her, like, you got any kids? And she's like, nope. And So yeah, I was like, what the fuck, I was trying to figure out, like, did they mix up names, did they whatever. But I actually think Ed Brown just has kids from a previous

0:25:35 Lydia: Yeah, okay. Oh, wow. Wow, right.

0:26:32 Lydia: What?

0:26:40 Thomas: Person and she's just like, I don't have any kids. Yeah. It's I, that's all I could figure. I totally missed it the first 20 times of reading it.

0:26:40 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Boy, that's interesting.

0:26:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. It'S funny.

0:26:51 Lydia: Nope.

0:26:51 Thomas: Yeah, not really, but yeah, no

0:26:53 Lydia: No, I know. I'm just like picturing that like source Of tension. Attention, yeah.

0:26:55 Thomas: Kids here. Yeah. Yeah. The, the Step kids are in the, in the courthouse like fucking Jesus, things are already bad enough right now, yeah.

0:27:02 Lydia: Poor five-year-old Geez. Oh.

0:27:05 Thomas: Who knows if there's a bitter x situation there, who knows, um, but yeah, so for Ed Brown, like it, it doesn't even list the kids that we know he had, because he lists them all off in the trial in Ancestry.com, so it's like, it's nothing, can't find anything. The only funny thing I want to mention is, for Yank Ellington, first off, this is weird, his mother Callie was 14 when he was born and his father, Burgess, was 29.

0:27:08 Lydia: Yeah. Oh. God. Oh. No.

0:27:30 Thomas: But his father...

0:27:30 Lydia: How?

0:27:31 Thomas: Somehow we know this. I don't... I must be an obituary or something. His father died in 1986 at the age of 100 exactly.

0:27:38 Lydia: How? Wow.

0:27:41 Thomas: Isn't that crazy? So somehow the system knows when his dad died, but doesn't know when he died.

0:27:41 Lydia: Man. That's crazy.

0:27:47 Thomas: Yeah, so weird. And... Or when his mother died. When I saw that, I was like, well, if his mother was 14, so 15 years... So like, you know, she could have lived longer. Who knows? But uh, nope, not listed. So that was just one of the things that really grabbed me initially, was as like important as this was, as obvious a miscarriage of justice as this was, to the point where it's Supreme Court precedent, you, is like, well, we know what happened to the white people involved, what happened to the victims of this injustice, no fucking clue, nobody cares. It's just crazy to me, yeah.

0:27:47 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:28:19 Lydia: It's Really sad. Oh.

0:28:19 Thomas: And it's like, I see what's, what's really wild about this day and age, is like, I can look at these family trees. Now it's like, it's kind of, they're listed as like private sort of, some of them, it'S kind of weird. One of them was, some OF them aren't. And part of me is just like, that's so, I wish I could just like track down what happened to them, you know, like it'd be kind of creepy, but I want to like cyber stalk, like, okay, who's, yeah, whose family tree is this? Do they know anything? And speaking of wanting to do that, Cliff Dial. I was so, so curious what the fuck happened to this guy, so again, we've got our victims who we don't know anything about, like fucking nothing, know nothing about, it the worst, awful torture

0:28:27 Lydia: Yeah. I was gonna ask if there was any way Yeah. Just like reach out, yeah, yeah.

0:28:58 Lydia: Yeah.

0:28:58 Thomas: In this whole story, uh, he also, doesn't have much about him, but I did find one thing that was funny, he was married to Annie Lavender. I saw that name, I was like, oh shit, he was married to Henry Lavender's, so that's like just a lot of the kind of the involvement there, that's why he and Henry Lavender were always, you palling around in their fucking exploits. No significant obituary that I could find, but this is part of why I'm pretty sure he was just deputized and wasn't like a full-time, know, sheriff's deputy. Cause when he died, it just says, planter dies, Meridian, Mississippi, funeral services were held today for Cliff Dial, 72, planter and cattleman of the Binsville community near Scuba. I mean, maybe that's just cause that's what he retired to do, but I

0:29:00 Lydia: Okay. No.

0:29:42 Thomas: Feel like it would have mentioned it I don't

0:29:42 Lydia: I don't think so. Yeah. I think if you were in law enforcement, especially in an area that really like reveres law enforcement, that's going to be, be mentioned in your obit, if, yeah, exactly.

0:29:44 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. They would have bragged about how many black people he killed, yeah, probably, yeah.

0:29:56 Lydia: Horrible.

0:29:56 Thomas: But like 1959, so, so Cliff Dial got to live to the ripe old age of 72-ish though. And that one, I see his family trees, and I'm just like, fucking, I want to contact all these people, I know it's not their fault, I just want to tell them, like, I want to know, here's what I wish I could do, I won't do obviously, but like, if I could, could get a hold of a grandchild or something, and just be like, what were you, what do you know about your grandpa? You know, that's that'S what blew my mind thinking about this. Somewhere there's somebody in Mississippi or wherever they ended up with, who's got Cliff Dial was their grandpa. I remember old grandpa Cliff, you know, and he's just this fucking grandpa. And they're like, yeah, what a guy. Yeah. And like, no, oh actually he just literally tortured innocent black people to make them confess.

0:30:13 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah pa-pa.

0:30:38 Lydia: Mm-hmm.

0:30:38 Thomas: Like, how weird is it that that's, that's just the history that a lot of white people have and we don't even know it. Like he could just live his, like, totally normal life, non-remarkable, you know, I died. He was a planter. You know, it's not even noted that he perpetrated this horrible fucking crime. He's never punished for it. That's the other thing.

That was the main, the first thing that you would think as a person, I guess, if you were just kind of naive, you'd be like, oh well the Supreme Court ruled this was horrible, you beat them into confessing, so what, what you would get next in the movie is the black men go free, and then Cliff Dial's got the handcuffs and he's going in I would have gotten away with it if hadn't been for Earl Brewer, you know, or whatever, no, nothing, not a single punishment for anybody involved, nothing isn't that weird there isn't even, it's not even mentioned, that's all me being like, did anyone suffer any, it's not even mentioned, like the idea that anyone would be punished for what was obviously a felony committed against these men, not even a mention in anything of, oh, they, nobody bothered charging, like, it's not even, doesn't even raise to the level of someone saying something about it. That's how wild this injustice is.

0:31:15 Lydia: Yeah, Yeah. That's so crazy. Mm hmm.

0:31:37 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Wow.

0:31:52 Thomas: And so that's, part of what really hooked me initially early on was like that, that just happened. That just happened, Cliff Dial got to live, just be totally well-regarded grandpa, never punished, no one cared.

0:32:01 Lydia: All the bad guys got to live for a long time.

0:32:03 Thomas: Yeah. No one cared. Well, you know, some of them were, were old, but, uh, but yeah, Stennis, so Stennis is where we can get back to this back to how we originally got here. So do you remember the judge for the trial, Sturdivant or whatever, in another kind of small town, Mississippi politics, whatever. He retired shortly after that. And then he died in 1939. But after he retired, he was replaced by some other guy who then up and died. I should have been saying up and die because I feel like back then you up and dived. Another guy who up and died in 1937. And then guess who got appointed into his spot?

0:32:19 Lydia: Okay. Uh huh.

0:32:41 Lydia: Well, his friend said, you know, hey, John, you'd make a really good judge. You should probably take this open seat.

0:32:44 Thomas: Yeah. Say, I love the cut of your jib and how you relentlessly tried to prosecute innocent Black men even after the Supreme Court said you didn't have any reason to. It's not far from truth, the because how about I read you this? Stennis Guinness had been his choice for the judgeship, Governor White said, that was whoever the governor was back then, because of his, quote, wonderful record as district attorney. So not really far off from that. He did a few more years as district attorney and then Sturdivant retired. The guy who replaced Sturdvant died and then he got appointed in by the governor to that position. And he was a circuit court for judge like something like 10 years or whatever until until he, uh, ran for Senate. Yeah.

0:32:54 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, Until Bilbo was. Yeah

0:33:27 Thomas: Until Bilbo up and died. He definitely up and died for sure. Um, and then this is just so funny to read this in the book, quote, "and Stennis went on to become one of the most powerful members of the Senate where he still serves," because it's written in 1985 or '86 or whatever. It's kind of funny, that's kind of the Animal House ending. How do you feel about Stennis now?

0:33:27 Lydia: God. Yeah horrible. I feel horrible about him from the beginning through the end. I think he's racist and wish I never knew him.

0:33:56 Thomas: Yeah, but but the key was he didn't talk about it much, you know. I I mentioned that before, but but I had little more on that. It's just comical how well this works, this idea of stop saying outwardly racist things but just be exactly entirely as racist as you were, as as Bilbo was, pretty much, and Stennis, by doing that. That one thing, that one fucking thing. That's all he did was he just didn't talk about it, but he still had all the same positions. He is looked at as a fucking hero by everyone. And the amount of praise this guy got, it starts to get funny. Like you see all these people bending over backwards, like just praising and praising and praising him there. I think there must have been qualities about him that made him subject to that. I think he was, in terms of the institution of the Senate, he was one of those institutionalists that was like, yeah,

0:34:01 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Right. Gentlemanly. Like,

0:34:49 Thomas: And was involved in some key like ethics investigations. And the others, yeah. Watergate, the Red Scare one, There was some of that. And I guess his colleagues just thought he was like super fair, and whatever, but But And so sure, but also he was a fucking racist, and all he did was not talk about- here's the New York Times article I found from November 6, 1947, when he was first elected. And as a quote, "Judge Dennis had strong support from Mississippi liberals of all stripes, and the consensus of opinion was that he would give the state representation that was decent and dignified." Although, only this sentence got me, "although only a handful of negroes voted." Quoted in yesterday's elections, "Negro leaders of the state were wholeheartedly in support of Judge Stennis, whom they labeled, quote, the best gentleman in the campaign. Negro leaders regard Judge Stennis as, quote, an old fashioned Southern gentleman who brings patience and understanding to racial problems. And on occasions they have gone to him for help and support."

0:34:50 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, Watergate. Yeah Uh-huh. Yeah I

0:35:48 Thomas: Part of me wonders, is that pure made up? Like who fucking knows back then?

0:35:52 Lydia: Mean the best gentleman in the campaign strikes me as true.

0:35:55 Thomas: Yeah, that's true. That's actually true. Yeah. Yeah. The other two, because you remember the other two or three in the, in the primary, they, they thought like, I'm going to be Bilbo. Yeah. They're like, I'm just going to do what that guy did or they're just that shitty. And so that's true. But like, I wish I could talk to the fucking Michael Powell of New York Times, 1936, who wrote this and be like, who's your source on this?

0:35:56 Lydia: Yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. Like literally KKK members. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

0:36:16 Thomas: Cause I love that it even, I love it. That even like notes that like, well, although almost no black people can even vote because of fucking, you know, racism, the one that I found, I guess, maybe that said he voted for Stennis loves him or something. It's just weird, you know? Who knows what any of this is. This is entirely me speculating, but I, I don't know know how, how intrepid reporters were back then at actually talking to black people? Like who knows if I'm just imagining like, what if that was something that someone else told the reporter they heard

0:36:17 Lydia: Three feminist law professors. Yeah.

0:36:42 Lydia: And even Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:48 Thomas: Or something? You know what I mean? Like, oh yeah, Stennis is great. I even, I have a black friend. Definitely for sure have a black front. His name is, uh, make up a black name. Uh, and he said that Stennis the best gentleman of all. And then they're like, yeah, that's good enough. Print that. That's fine. Who's going to check? Oh, I am going to go talk to all the black people in Mississippi and make sure you actually spoke. Nobody cared enough. But that was all entirely me speculating, not to impugn the journalism of whoever the fuck wrote that in 1936 for the New York Times. But I just think it's so interesting how much that worked. There was actually a decent amount, you know, a little bit of controversy around Biden actually with Dennis.

0:36:48 Lydia: Yeah. For sure. Yeah, yeah.

0:37:25 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, I came across that too with my stuff.

0:37:28 Thomas: And also I remember this, basically every Democrat from the nineties to now, because they all liked those, you know, Robert Byrd or, you Know, Strom Thurmond do whatever they there's all times where they've said something nice about them at their funeral or whatever the hell it is. And then, progressive people are like, "Hey, why, why were you so friendly with these people who were segregationists," you and then maybe sure they maybe got better or something. Speaking of being ridiculously highly praised all the time for whatever the fuck quality he had that made everyone do this, my maximum cynicism is people like this get all this praise because of the, because they're, they're a racist who looks not racist, you know, like that would be the, like, conspiracy theory thing would be, you know, the reason the Clintons and Biden and whatever, the reason they praise these people is they're kind of racist and they want, they like just celebrating the person who's, "Oh, he's a Southern gentleman." He's a Southern gentleman, which means just he's racist but doesn't say it, you know, and that, that's the super cynical take.

0:37:38 Lydia: Uh-huh. Yeah yeah.

0:38:30 Thomas: I don't know, but I think it's also just, also happen to be the guys that lived forever, you, you know, like Strom Thurmond and Stennis and Bird, like they just were in the Senate for a billion years. And those kinds of people, that's going to be kind of definitionally the kind of person who's really affable and makes connections and does all the stuff that makes people like them interpersonally, you know? And yeah, yeah.

0:38:50 Lydia: Yeah Especially like as a junior senator coming in, you know, know, like, kind of learning from folks who've been there for a long time, yeah.

0:38:59 Thomas: But this is something I came across when I was first looking at like, Like, what is this Stennis Center that everybody keeps talking about? Here is the page from NASA's website. Because what I first did was I looked at the NASA website and I searched Stennis. And if you look at the Stennis center, it has all kinds of like profiles of people. It's got some history. It's Got profiles, but nothing on John Stennis, really. And I was like, that's kind of weird. Nothing on John's Stennis? I'm on a web archived page for NASA website from 2009. 2009. So the 27th of April, 2009, that's the first capture. And it's also the last capture that has this version of the page, which is 2009,

0:39:10 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Oh. Okay. Interesting. Ah.

0:39:41 Thomas: I think is pretty telling once the Bush administration was out. In mind, everything you know about Stennis, and then listen to this. They might as well be talking about fucking Paul Bunyan. This is the John Stennis biography, from the NASA website in 2009. Whatever. "Senator Stennis stood firm for U.S. military superiority and was a staunch supporter of NASA." Basically, "The word statesman is the term that is most associated with this great American, who began his career as a farmer in the gentle hills of Kemper County, Mississippi. From his roots there, he adopted a simple motto early in his political career that became his creed and the foundation for his steadfast devotion to honesty and hard work in every task he undertook," quote, "I will plow a straight furrow right down to the end of the row.

The presidents with whom he served, from Truman to Reagan, recognized his honesty and integrity and all turned to him for help and counsel during difficult times. Every president knew of Senator Stennis' high standing with his colleagues and recognized the influence he carried within the Senate. He always kept his relationships with the presidents in what he believed to be their proper perspective. When asked how many presidents he served under, Stennis replied, 'I did not serve under any president. I served with eight presidents.'" His influence and power, it's that kind of fucking stupid.

0:40:56 Lydia: Wow.

0:40:57 Thomas: Whatever. "His influence and power spanned the 41 years he served in the Senate. The Washington Star wrote, in in 1975, quote, 'Stennis is Mr. Integrity, the embodiment of honor and fairness.'" "In 1982, the Washington Post wrote, 'No one in the Senate questions Stennis's integrity or contribution to that body. Possessor of a tremendous booming voice, a Phi Beta Kappa key, and a universal reputation for fair-mindedness, which has long been one of his dominating features. He is a senator's senator, an advisor to presidents, a man of enormous power and influence.' Three years later, the New York Times said, 'He is the undisputed patriarch of the Senate, a teacher to younger members and conscience to the entire institution.

0:41:07 Lydia: Oh.

0:41:37 Lydia: My God, oh. Wow.

0:41:40 Thomas: He seldom makes national headlines, but he wields considerable influence in the Senate. It. And that influence came from the quality of his personal judgment. Again, it's like they're doing a practical joke of like, hey, this is the guy who tried to prosecute three innocent black men who were beaten into confession. Like what's what's most comically over the top way you praise could him? Stennis's manners were as polished as his ethics. He once interrupted an important Senate hearing in order to guide a late arriving woman spectator to a seat. Woman spectator.

0:41:41 Lydia: Wow. Yeah. Wow.

0:42:10 Thomas: I love that too. By the way, this is, somebody wrote this up for the NASA website. This, you know who it could have fucking been?

0:42:15 Lydia: Yeah. Space Karen.

0:42:17 Thomas: It could be. Honestly, could it be?

0:42:18 Lydia: No, I don't. I mean, maybe. Who knows?

0:42:21 Thomas: Who knows? It's that kind of person though.

0:42:22 Lydia: Said 2009? Yeah. I mean, she was working there. So yeah, yeah, I

0:42:23 Thomas: Yeah. Well, yeah, she's old. And it's that type of person who's like, oh, I'm going to write this fucking great write-up for this. I love this. I love And a dirt farmer constituent who visited his Senate office received as much courtesy as a secretary of defense. And also he had a big blue ox that he would ride through town. Both publicly and in private, Senator Stennis projected a character with pride, self-respect, extreme... This is just the NASA... What is this relevant to fucking space at all? Anyway, whatever. He's just amazing. He's the best person ever.

0:42:53 Lydia: That as a side by side with, how he acted in the Kemper trial and, you the badgering of the KemPer trio, asking them the same question over and over and over and again, that he was perfectly fine with these torture confessions that he, you know, just didn't care. Terry just wanted to find black people to pin this murder on, still pursuing the trial again against these people that did not make any sense. Think if you have this side by side, it's pretty stark.

0:43:19 Thomas: Yeah. I love this one. He also knew that education was not the only preparation needed. He once told an interviewer that his mother and father missed a college education because of the war, meaning the Civil War down there, for the last hundred years. Dennis said people lacked for money and lacked for worldly things, but they got plenty of things money can't buy, like good neighbors, good friends, and the ability to lynch black people at what, no.

0:43:42 Lydia: Huh.

0:43:42 Thomas: And the community spirit of sharing with the other fellow, as long as he's white. Yeah. It's like, it's all this stuff is with an asterisk. Every single folksy, oh, we got manas and we got, yeah, as long as, long as people are white. As long as they're white. Want to hear how this, NASA fucking biography from 2009 on the page characterizes this, uh, whole period of time we've talked about? In 1932, John Stennis was, was elected district prosecuting attorney. People throughout the district came to know Stennis as a hardworking prosecutor who stood for what was right and unyielding in the face of adversity.

It, it was during these years in DeKalb that the Stennis children were born, John Hampton and Margaret Jane. Stennis was appointed to fill the seat of a, oh, we're done, we've done. That's all, that's all we got, everybody. If specifically it doesn't mention the part where he prosecuted innocent black men who were, you know, beaten into confession. Not only doesn't mention it, but it's like specifically a hard-working prosecutor who stood for what was right. No, you did the opposite of that. Unyielding in the face of adversity, you know, adversity like black men's innocence, for example. That is unyielding

0:43:47 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:44:48 Thomas: In the face of that. Yeah.

0:44:47 Lydia: And the Supreme Court ruling that that your confessions were inadmissible, yeah, because they were tortured out of people formidable

0:44:50 Thomas: It's so this is like it's just a kid writing about their dad. For the next 10 years, Judge Dennis gained the respect of all, and his reputation spread far beyond the district. When U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo died in office in 1947, Judge Stennis entered the race for his seat. It was a grassroots campaign in which Stennis promised to plow the straight furrow right down to the end of the row. He was elected against a formidable opposition and began as to the junior senator from Mississippi. His reputation for integrity spread. It's just the same buzzwords. Yeah, he's just the best person of all time ever, according to this.

0:45:28 Lydia: Yeah, clearly.

0:45:29 Thomas: I just thought that was really interesting. And I also think it's interesting that the very next capture, the only next capture of this page is from 2010 and it doesn't exist anymore. It just captured a redirect. And so I would like to think that the Obama administration had something to do with it. I I don't know. Like, I just wonder, or maybe it's just in general being like, hey, did you see the page for the fucking Stennis?

0:45:52 Lydia: But, you know, OK. But what bothers me about that is, you know, it's problematic that he is a problematic person, then you change the freaking name and you don't just try and like dust it under a rug and hope that no one goes to web archive.

0:46:07 Thomas: Yeah, there's nothing on it now. Isn't it weird to have in the information about the Stennis Center, there isn't a John Stennis that apparently doesn't even exist. Now I want to play a little bit of audio for us For to one, I found audio of a significant Stennis event here.

0:46:08 Lydia: Yeah yeah okay

0:46:24 Clip: Think I'm leading up to something, I am. Senator Stennis, ladies and gentlemen, it's my honor to announce tonight that as an expression of the nation's gratitude for the public service of the manly honor, tonight, the Navy's next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, CVN-74, will be christened the USS John C. Stennis.

0:46:26 Lydia: Reagan. Oh yeah, yep.

0:46:54 Thomas: Isn't that interesting? It. I watched this whole thing, actually. It was the whole Reagan speech about him, and it's got all the folksy, folksy folk, folk, folksie. And Reagan loved him. Ronald Reagan loved you, then there's something wrong. And then Stennis, by the way, talks for like 15 minutes and you can't even understand a single word he says. He's like a hundred. Reagan, you knownamed the ship after him. He also named obviously the Stennis Center or in one of his last executive actions. I don't know if that's where like he thought the Christmas present he got him wasn't good enough.

You know, it's like shit. Now that I sit here, I just got a stupid ship. I also got you this. You know, that was like, a little bit after this for some reason. And it's not like Stennis had died. I think he retired, maybe, is the event that triggered that. Here's why I was looking around and found a lot of these videos. I wanted to know, Stennis ever mention this? Did anyone, anyone ever ask him, hey, you know, you're just well regarded, and I read a fucking unbelievable puff piece about you on the NASA website or whatever.

Like, do you ever think about, you know, the three black men that you basically tried to kill and somehow miraculously got out of it? Oh, also, were there any other black men that you did kill in that way that we don't know about because they didn't lead to the Supreme Court decision? Were there any others? You, you were in that job. You, while, and like, it's ago, hard, because obviously he died kind of before the internet was really big. Um, can't find anything like I

0:47:06 Lydia: Yeah yeah you

0:48:17 Thomas: Can't, I've searched and searched. It's hard. I don't know how much of that stuff is archived in a way that I could search it, and you know, but I, there's nothing, there's nothing major, there's no, you know, there's no significant time that's pointed to as like, here's where he reconciled for this thing. I I just don't think he gave a shit.

0:48:23 Lydia: Never had, like, a Barbara Walters interview where she, yeah. Yeah. Grilled him on that.

0:48:38 Thomas: Yeah, because nobody cared, I don't think. Like, it's just, again, this wasn't a disqualifying thing. Having been the prosecutor in this horrible racist lynching was not significant enough for anyone to care about it back then. It's really interesting. But you know why? Because he was such good manners and he, you know, and he really cared about the Senate. So, Great guy.

0:48:39 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, just

0:48:56 Thomas: And in the midst of kind of searching for any of that stuff, I came across a couple things too. Um, for one, I forgot about this, but this is just another example of how we think about racism stupidly. In this, there was a, tape that was unearthed not very long ago, like 2019, of Reagan well here, why don't we just listen to it? Um, go ahead and listen to this is Ronald Reagan speaking to somebody. You can guess who? And content content note, everybody, extreme racism.

0:49:15 Lydia: Oh,

0:49:26 Clip: Last night I tell you to watch that thing on television that I, that I did, to see those, these from those African countries, damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes.

0:49:40 Clip: Well, and then they, the tail wags the dog there, doesn't it? Tail wags, the dog.

0:49:45 Lydia: Uncomfortable wearing shoes.

0:49:46 Thomas: Yep. That's Reagan when he was a California governor talking to Richard Nixon, who tape recorded everything that ever happened in his White House because he was a paranoid weirdo. And there I went on this whole thing that I'm obviously not going to talk about much, about like, this was after something happened at the UN. They did something in voting against something that Nixon wanted. And so Nixon is pissed. And Reagan calls him and is like, yeah, those, again, monkeys from African countries, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes, is what he says. And Nixon laughs. And what was actually really interesting is, first off, this didn't fucking come out until 2019. I think what is amazing about our society is this was actually kind of a big deal. Like people, people were like, what? Reagan was a racist. And you're like, yeah, man, duh.

0:49:54 Lydia: Right. Yeah oh my god. Yeah right.

0:50:38 Thomas: Like it's funny, the people for whom this makes some sort of difference because all his policies were worse than this, you know, like everything he did was racist beyond belief. But he never, he never had a tape until now. Any actual recording hoarding of hearing him say something outwardly racist. This was so interesting because the historian who unearthed this became, at some point, took over like the Nixon presidential library. And this tape was actually discovered in 2000, but the racist part was withheld to protect Reagan's privacy.

0:51:08 Lydia: And they sat on it. Wow.

0:51:13 Thomas: Yeah, and then finally, you know, Reagan dies in 2004 and yeah, yeah, yep.

0:51:14 Lydia: Wow, wow. Yeah. No, No, fuck that. That's really I don't swear like very much at all. This makes me very mad. That's insane. That'S insane.

0:51:25 Thomas: And there was a whole thing where this historian actually wrote a lot about this when it came out, because what was interesting is as much as we all know, Nixon was a racist. He was kind of a different kind of racist. So he, this actually, this event was interesting because everything was on tape. Nixon rape. Was upset about this, but he hadn't said anything racist about people from the African nations in the UN who voted this way. He hadn't set anything like racist until this call.

And then once he has this call with Reagan and Reagan says that, Nixon then reiterates that to like everybody he talks to after that. And there's a whole thing. It's kind of interesting. And I I think the only, I bring it up, A, because it's actually just really interesting. And again, if if Reagan is praising you like he was and naming ships after you, you know, could be because he's also a fucking racist. But I also found it interesting because this historian wrote a bit about how like, yeah, this is how racism functions a lot, where when two white people are talking to each other in this way, It's not like Nixon repeated that language as his own. What he did was he said, yeah, you know what Reagan told me? And so it was a way of like making it okay.

0:52:33 Thomas: You. You only repeats it to several different people that day right after this conversation. And it's a really fascinating look into that psychology of a racist, you know, where it's like they know what they're doing is wrong, even in that, whenever the fuck that was, 1960 whatever.

0:52:11 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah

0:52:47 Thomas: They know it's wrong. That's why a Reagan never got caught on any tape besides this one that we know of saying anything like this, though he clearly felt this way. Think about how careful he was his whole life to not, have anything written in a diary or, you know? Like, yeah, yeah.

0:53:02 Lydia: And a lot of public positions and as an actor. Yeah.

0:53:05 Thomas: But also think of how this must be for Black people to live with knowing like, oh, someone can be that two-faced, that their whole lives, they're to that degree and they're so good at hiding it for decades. It's just, there's only one thing and it's because Nixon secretly taped him. That's the only time he was ever caught. But it tells you that they know it's wrong because Nixon, again, he doesn't claim the language. He doesn't say, oh, I think these people are this.

0:53:18 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:53:33 Thomas: He uses this like it's this permission granting where it's like, oh yeah, you know what Reagan said. He said,

0:53:34 Lydia: Exactly. Yeah yeah. He wants to say the joke and the words and all of those things but he doesn't want it to be attributed to him in case.

0:53:45 Thomas: Right. Well, because what, yeah, this plausible deniability, because the person he's talking to, he can let them react, you know, and they can say, wow, that's kind of shitty. Yeah, I know. That guy sucks.

0:53:46 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Can you believe Reagan said that? Yeah.

0:53:55 Thomas: Right. Yeah. And it's so interesting. So interesting. And it actually the guy, the historian wrote about it's like it kind of had a significant impact on Nixon. Nixon canceled all his meetings with any African dignitaries like for the rest. Yeah, like just from this phone call. You hadn't done that after the vote. And then after this phone call, it kind of escalates. It's just an interesting story about racism.

0:54:10 Lydia: Wow. Just like empowered him.

0:54:18 Thomas: Yeah. And how That anger, you know, white people kind of enabling each other and getting each other more mad about this stuff. I couldn't resist telling that little story. Now I want to play something that I think perhaps reveals the way that I'll just pose this question. Do you think Stennis changed? Do you think we're just kidding ourselves? And here's audio that was captured from something from some sort of uh Martin Luther King Day breakfast by the way, yeah.

0:54:18 Lydia: Yeah Yeah.

0:54:45 Clip: He put his hand on that table and he rubbed it like it was an adamant object. And he said, you see this table here, Joe? I said, yes sir, Mr. Chairman. He said, this was the flagship of the Confederacy from 1952 to 1968. He said Senator Russell had all of us from the Confederate States meet here every Tuesday for lunch and get -- Johnson's book, Caro's book, Master of the Senate. There's an actual picture of the table with all the people he talked about at that table. He said, and we sat here every Tuesday to plan the demise of the civil rights movement. And he said, it's time, Joe.

0:55:31 Clip: God's truth. It's time, Joe. This table go from the possession of a man who's against civil rights to a man who was for civil rights and I know it sounds corny, but it was pretty moving. As I got up to walk out, he said, one more thing, Joe, and I turned around, remember I used to talk wade with his hand like this all the time, he said, civil rights movement did more to free the white man than the black man. And I looked at him, I said, how's that, Mr. Chairman? He went like, he said, it freed it, my soul. It freed my soul."

0:56:16 Lydia: Okay. Yeah, that's just really obnoxious. I

0:56:20 Thomas: Yeah, like Adding Martin Luthor King like that's that's your go-to is like let me talk about this person who's a fucking racist, but I have no idea how true that is, like, like maybe it could be true, maybe it would be true that Stennis was like, yeah, I freed my soul, I used to be a hateful whatever, but why don't we know that? Like, why is isn't that public? Why wasn't there a book or a speech or a whatever?

0:56:39 Lydia: Yeah. And and I if that were the case, then don't you think his language about the table like that would be a little more? More, I don't know, like, it was just like, it's time for this table to move from a man who was against civil rights to a man that was for civil rights, rather than being like, well, he also could have taken the opportunity to be like, you planning the demise of civil rights around this table, which was a really awful thing to do.

0:56:50 Thomas: Yeah. It's kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah, wouldn't you think it already did that? Yeah, yeah.

0:57:07 Lydia: And I'm glad, I'm Glad we lost, You know.

0:57:08 Thomas: But yeah, we're hearing Biden tell this, you know, I have no fucking idea. I don't know, yeah think if you were, I don't know, a good person, don't you you think this trial would weigh on Stennis? Like, even if you thought, you know, okay, changed, he you know? Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing in 1936, but he lived to 1995. Wouldn't you think there'd be some time in his life where he woke up in a cold sweat remembering like, oh, fuck, what did I do to those three black people and their families? Where are they? Are they okay? Maybe I'm asking too much of people, but like, don't, I just wonder things like that. You know, did he care? Did he give a shit?

0:57:10 Lydia: Yeah. I don't know. I just was rolling my eyes like I don'T buy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:57:45 Lydia: Don't think so. I think it's really easy for like if you're talking redemption story to come out on the other side of, a system and to be like, I was was wrong about the system, rather than face individuals that you may have wronged, that's a person that you have to confront then. And that's a heck of a lot harder when you're talking about redemption.

0:58:06 Thomas: Plus, who knows if he ever thought he did anything wrong, even when he died. He might've thought, well, they were guilty.

0:58:09 Lydia: It probably didn't. Yeah.

0:58:11 Thomas: So it was murders. I don't know what the rules should be of if you have this racist past and, you know, these people are mostly dead, but there's new versions of this every day. People had a questionable past and then a redemption story. I don'T what THE rules are. I don't make the rules. I think that's a lot of what the woke debate can be. You know, the anti-woke fear is that, well, we're going to erase all our history because of blah, blah, blah. I don'T what the rules on that are. I THINK IT'S INTERESTING TO THINK ABOUT, BUT I CAN TELL YOU THIS.

0:58:11 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:58:39 Thomas: CONTRAST STENNIS WITH ROBERT BIRD, WHO HE JOINED THE KKK, YOU KNOW, IN FUCKING 18-1, WHENEVER THE HELL, YOU KNOW HE'S A MILLION YEARS OLD. And here's how he talked about it. Bird said in 2005, I know now I was wrong. Intolerance has no place in America. I apologized a thousand times and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened. You know, like I don'T know. Again, I DON'T know that that means we should be a big fan of this guy, but at least do the contrast, just looking at that contrast, like, not only is it okay for you to keep asking me about that because it sucked, I'm not mad, I'll keep saying this, I like that part of it where it's like I don't mind apologizing forever about this, I was wrong about this, but then like after that there's other quotes. Bird later called joining the KKK, quote, "the greatest mistake I ever made." Okay, that sounds good. In 1997, he told an interviewer he would encourage young people to become involved in politics but also warned, quote, "be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan, don't

0:59:04 Lydia: I buy that. No.

0:59:17 Lydia: Yeah I don't

0:59:40 Thomas: Get that albatross around your neck. Once Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena." Huh? In his last autobiography, Bird explained that he was a KKK member because he, quote, "was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision, a jejune and immature outlook, seeing only what I wanted to because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions." Don't. So I, on one hand, I was like, oh, that's great. He's saying it's saying it's the the greatest mistake he ever made and he'll apologize forever, and then you hear him talking about it and, like, does he regret just that it was slightly bad for his reputation, is that what he regrets, you know, like, oh, don't join it, not because, you know, it's fucking KKK, don't joint it because once you made that mistake you inhibit your operations in the political arena.

0:59:49 Lydia: Know. God, Yeah.

1:00:24 Thomas: What, anyway, somebody wrote a good article, somebody named Lieutenant Commander Ruben Keith Green, in 2020 wrote about the case for renaming the USS John C. Stennis, and I found this guy interesting, he seems to, like, there's obviously a whole separate universe of black people in the Army, in the Navy, in the military, not only dealing with this but dealing with how many, like, Confederate fucking things, There are ships and bases and blah, blah, blah. And it's just obviously garbage that they have to deal with that. But, there's you a whole movement of people, or at least they're, they're doing their best, and that's not an easy place to be. You know, it's not easy to be a black person in the military trying to say, like, hey, maybe should we not have stuff named after Confederate people that literally fought a war against us? It's weird that we don't do that with anything else. Just that that's weird.

1:00:50 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:01:18 Thomas: But he wrote a really interesting article and in it, he references a book by someone named Elmo Zumwalt, who was like a Navy admiral that was important back, you know, around Nixon times. Stennis told him blacks had come down from the trees a lot later than we did. So it's just that kind of like it really echoed of the Reagan quote where it's like, yeah, you're just you're fucking racist. Yeah, OK, maybe eventually you like pretended to kind of be OK with something like civil rights. Maybe. But like, you're just a fucking racist, man. I don't think you actually changed. And so I think we can end our journey here for now on Stennis. We're done with Stennis! I do have maybe something for a later time. That's a top secret, interesting tie in to some part of our story, not Stennis per se, but some other part of our story. But that's for another day.

1:01:47 Lydia: Yeah yeah. I will begin my letter writing campaign to the federal government about renaming these things, though, because this is just ridiculous. Ridiculous. That's what I'll be kicking off now.

1:02:13 Thomas: Yeah. I the end, I would say just rename the fucking shit. Just rename it. Just do it. It's not, it doesn't matter.

1:02:19 Lydia: Yep, yep. He sucked. Just rename it.

1:02:22 Thomas: The only opposition is, but it already was named that. Okay. Well, who cares? It doesn't matter. And so want to once again. Thank you guys for kind of going with me on this crazy journey. And I just want to say we're going to get back to classic WTW next. Next time on WTD, another classic anti-woke story take a hardcore history break for. I promise. So we'll see you then. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time.

1:02:27 Lydia: Yep.