WEBVTT - Behind the Scenes Minis: Greetings and Context 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:14.040 of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I am Holly Frye 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:18.079 and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about greeting cards 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.800 this week. We did when you said it, like the 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.479 outline of the episode just said something to the effect of, like, 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:30.040 I'm working through my feelings on greeting cards, and I 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:33.160 thought that meant something very different than what you actually 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.360 talked about on Yeah, in the introduction to the episode, 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:40.199 I thought your feelings about greeting cards was going to 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:44.080 be about I don't know their content, or anytime I 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.239 go to buy one, I can't find one with a 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:49.440 sentiment that I like, so I always wind up getting 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:51.080 blank ones. I thought it was going to be something 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:55.280 along those lines and not what you were actually talking about. Yeah, 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.960 trying to make space in my life. Yeah, it kind 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.080 of did help me make some rules about what stays 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:06.360 and what goes. I also think I might make myself 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:08.160 a rule that they have to get integrated into some 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:10.520 kind of art. They can't just be sitting in a 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.400 drawer somewhere. But that's weird too. One of the things 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:15.720 that really struck me. I didn't mention it. But it 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:18.920 was in that report we talked about the at the 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:23.000 end about the current status of the greeting card industry, 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:27.240 and one of the people from the Greeting Card Association 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.440 made this very good point of like, you can send 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.319 electronic greetings as much as you want, but you can't 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:37.240 in the same way hold like a text from a 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.160 loved one that has passed in your hand, the way 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:42.440 you can a card that they've sent you and like 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.680 keep it as a memento, and like the sentimental value 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:48.440 of them is I think also a part of what's 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:52.640 driving new interest among younger purchasers, which is really interesting. 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:55.400 That has been a factor. And ones that I have 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:59.160 kept that I might not have kept. Other one I 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:05.320 mentioned in that Duke d'orleon poem translation that I translated 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:08.359 part of it because here is why there are a 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:13.200 lot of translations I see of it that translate a 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:18.800 section of it literally. And the way it conveys to 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:24.400 the English ear, the English speaking ear, is not really 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:27.239 in line with what he is saying, and that is 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:31.840 instead of saying I am love sick, it says I 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.320 am sick of love, and that makes it sound more negative. 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:39.280 And I switched it, but I didn't. I'm like, no, 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:41.960 he's obviously like very sad to not be with her. 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:48.480 It makes it sound like he's like down time for it. 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.280 So that's if you go looking for a translation and 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:53.680 you're like, that's not what this says. That's what's going 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:58.760 on there, Yeah, because you would say in French it 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:03.120 would be madame or sick of love, but it's like 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:07.440 sick from love, not tired of it. Here was another 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:10.079 cool thing that I didn't get into and debated about 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.560 getting into that I really really liked about the Egyptian 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:19.960 use of scaubs as a greeting and as a way 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:22.480 to show people you cared about them, Which is that 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:26.919 unlike we talked about the development of greetings in China 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:29.800 and in the US and England, really where it starts 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:32.640 out as something that like rich people are doing and 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:38.760 eventually becomes affordable for everybody else, it appears have always 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:43.280 been something that like, we're used this way across all 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:49.720 of the social and economic strata of that culture, Like 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.240 it was something that was available to everyone as a 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:54.640 means of showing other people that you love them, which 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:59.240 I really really like. Just cool. Okay, I read a 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:05.080 listener mail about figure drawing. Yeah, yeah, and how ballet 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:07.240 dancers are perfect for it, which is a really good idea. 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:12.400 Thank you again, kieren So. JC Horseley. John Calcott Horseley, 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:15.640 who designed what is often called the first Christmas card. 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.520 I didn't know until I was looking up information on him, 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:26.800 was sometimes called mister J. Clothes Horseley. Okay, not for 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.640 the reason you might think, because I read that and 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.960 I was like, oh, was he a dandy? No. Apparently 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:35.920 he was a little bit of a Puritan and he 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:39.560 didn't he refused to do life drawing with nudes, okay, 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.480 And as a consequence, like throughout his career, that's one 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:45.800 of the things that gets criticism is like he didn't 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:47.680 really know how the human body works. He's not very 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:50.000 good at proportions on human body because he was like 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:54.719 so worried about seeing somebody without clothes on that he 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.960 would never do a new drawing class or a new 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:01.000 drawing study, which is so fascinating to me. Right, you 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.160 think about all of the great artists in history who 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.880 are known for their understanding of how the human body works. M. M. 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:11.640 Michelangelo pops to mind, of course, and it's because they 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.479 did so many nude studies, like m even a thin 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.279 layer of clothing is gonna change your perception of like 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.520 how the muscles and tendons and everything are connecting to 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.520 one another. And I'm like, hoarsely, oh baby, you could 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.200 have been even better. Yeah, it just made me laugh. 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:31.920 The only other thing I wanted to talk about was 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.520 end of year letters. Oh sure, I can't even get 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:39.600 my act together to send cards. Yeah, I don't know 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.480 how people do it. And yet the people in my 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:45.680 life that do it, I love those letters every year, 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.599 Like they're often super funny, and I'm like, oh, that's 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:51.720 such a great thing. And then I'm like, I know, 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:57.320 I'm sure it would only take a couple hours at most. Yeah, 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.560 but like my brain is so resistant to the idea. 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:06.159 I feel like there's been a year of my adult 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:11.960 life when I sent Christmas cards, not letters, just cards 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:15.800 to a lot of friends and relatives. Yeah. And I 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:21.000 managed to do that once when we bought our house, 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:26.479 I ahead of time of actually buying the house and moving, 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.240 used one of those you know services we can design 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:34.119 your own cards to put together a change of address card, 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.479 and I already had those printed and if I recall correctly, 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:40.840 They also had an addressing service, and so I might 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:45.960 have had them address it for me, largely based on 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:49.279 the address list that I had developed for our wedding, 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:51.760 which was a few years before. Like, I went and 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:54.920 updated that list, and I sent those cards out so 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:58.200 quickly after I moved that a friend of mine said 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:03.320 it made her angry. She because she could not imagine 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.480 having been that on the ball in the middle of 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.400 a move. And that's the only time that I've managed 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:11.960 to be that on the ball. I have much more 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.680 often done things like bought Christmas cards with the intent 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.240 of sending them and not sending them. Oh yeah, still 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.720 in a stillim a thing. Yeah. Once I bought a 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:25.360 variety pack of those love pop pop up cards. Oh 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:27.800 they're beautiful. I love them so much. I think they 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.240 were flowers. It was like twelve months of flowers. And 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:35.080 my intention was that I was gonna send my mom 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.680 a flower card every month. And that's how much I 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.440 didn't have my act together. I didn't get it together 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:43.960 to send a card every month to my mom. And 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.960 then the pandemic started and everything shut down, and I 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.040 was like, I have this dozen cards, and so I 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.680 sent greeting cards to like a lot of friends and 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.440 family that like when everything shut down. And then, because 0:07:57.480 --> 0:07:59.560 it was at that time of the pandemic, when we 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.920 really didn't know what was happening and we didn't know 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:06.480 how it spread and people were washing their groceries and whatever, 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:09.480 I sealed it with a wet paper towel and I 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.880 wrote across the seal, sealed with a wet paper towel. 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.520 So careful, so careful, and good, I mean in a 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:19.640 good way. Yeah, I am the only time I've ever 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:25.200 been even moderately okay at it. Some years back, we 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:29.600 had a sponsor that printed custom cards, and I had 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:34.200 New Year's cards that had my wonderful and horrible cat, 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:39.839 mister Burns on them. And then this is a little sad, 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:43.960 but mister Burns died kind of early that year, and 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:45.960 I had not sent a lot of the cards and 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:48.280 they are still in a drawer somewhere because I can't 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.920 the don't have it in me to toss them. Yeah again, 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:54.960 maybe they'll become an art project. Maybe we can draw 0:08:55.720 --> 0:08:58.400 something halloweeny on it and make it like ghost mister Burns. 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:03.679 I don't know, we'll do something mister Burn's. Mister Burns, 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.160 this also did kind of inspire me to think about, like, 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:09.480 is there a way I can make the card thing happen? 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.560 Because here's my hold up. I think I would be 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.960 okay with it, except this sounds so cocky made me 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:18.720 when I say it, It's like, how lazy are you? 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.960 Getting to the post office from our house is weird. 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.679 We have a post office that's quite close, less than 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.720 half a mile away, but it's not walkable and it's 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.240 in like a shopping center that getting into and out 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:35.959 of it is a real pain. In the next I 0:09:36.200 --> 0:09:38.240 was like, I want to do that, and then we 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.040 have another one. The next closest one is actually where 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.480 my PO box is, but I don't go there super often. 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:47.120 It's kind of like one of those things where I'm like, oh, yeah, 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.120 I'm having dinner over there, I'll stop by there. I'm 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:52.199 just terrible at going to the post office. That's the 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:57.360 biggest problem. One day, You've suddenly reminded me that I'm 0:09:57.360 --> 0:09:59.880 pretty sure I got an email about my PO box renewal, 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:06.760 and I'm like that, I handle that. I'm on top 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.280 of it. I'm on top. Yeah, I'm not actually on 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:12.959 top of things. Yeah yeah, And then I actually feel 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.679 especially having listened to this and it being inspired by 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:18.480 me trying to clear out my house. There's also part 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:20.480 of me that's like, do I want to dump more 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:25.360 things in other people's lives? What if they don't want cards? Yeah, treachery. 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:27.720 Maybe I'll ask everybody do you want cards? This year? 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:30.000 I don't want to give you things you don't want 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:32.600 to deal with. We have a number of friends that 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:35.920 tend to send either letters or cards, and a lot 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:38.360 of our friends who have kids have been sending like 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.360 little pictures of their kids. And I had done some 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:45.720 tidying and I had discarded like the envelopes things that 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:48.560 came in that the envelopes that the things had come in, 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:52.040 the things that were not actually necessary. So I had 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:57.079 the pictures and the cards, but the pictures had become 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:00.079 separated from the cards. Uh huh. And there was a 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:02.240 moment where Patrick came and looked at a picture of 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.160 a child and was like, who is this? Whose baby 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:11.360 is this? We had to like macked it up figure 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:17.360 out who was Yeah, I'm pretty lucky in that regard. 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:19.400 I'm trying to think through like my good friends that 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:23.080 would send me pictures of their kids, and one couple 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:27.440 in particular, their kids look so much like either one 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:29.640 or the other of them that I could easily go, oh, 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:32.720 I know whose kid that is? Well, and in our defense, 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:36.720 this particular picture did not look as much like the 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.720 other pictures of the child or the child. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:43.480 it happens. For whatever reason, it was just an angle 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:54.600 that didn't look the same. I guess. We talked about 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.600 the Memphis massacre, Yeah, we did. We have several similar 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:03.880 massacres and the archive. We're going to have a related 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.520 Saturday Classic coming up, and several of them are episodes 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:09.920 I wrote. And I got to this point that I 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:14.800 felt like we were telling essentially the same story over 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:21.800 and over, but that it wasn't adding anything new or 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:25.600 additional to what we were talking about. It just sort 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:29.640 of felt like we were revisiting the same trauma repeatedly. 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:34.280 Right with this one, my intent had been to have 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:37.920 an episode that was about Francis Thompson, because I thought 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:42.080 there was more information about her than there was Gotcha, 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.200 and I sort of understood that to do the episode, 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:48.360 I would need to talk about the massacre as part 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.640 of the context, and so I was thinking between what 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:53.400 we know about her and the massacre there's probably a 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:58.520 whole episode there. But then I realized that, apart from 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:04.199 her testimony she gave before the House Select Committee, what 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:10.440 we know about her is basically entirely in horrifying, incredibly 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:15.520 disrespectful news articles. If the episode had been about her, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.160 since our show is on Netflix now and we need 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:24.000 some visual things to go on Netflix, we probably would 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:28.800 have needed to use those illustrations of her, which were 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.240 not things like she was not in control of her 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:35.360 own right depiction there, it was something that she was 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:37.880 forced to do. And then these are pictures that were 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:41.400 being printed to make her look bad, And I just 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.920 felt like there was not a way to really focus 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:49.920 the episode on her without having to draw from this 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:55.840 incredibly disrespectful and offensive source material. And I, like we 0:13:55.960 --> 0:14:00.480 have said before, it is incredibly important to acknowledge the 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:04.319 reality that for all of history there have been people 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:10.880 who have lived in whatever way outside of their society 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.959 standards for things like sex and gender. But it's also 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:16.120 really important to do that in a way that doesn't 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:20.120 feel like we are disrespecting the people of the past 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:25.640 or trans people living today. Yeah, and so like, as 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:30.120 I read just a series of awful articles, I was like, 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:33.080 I think the focus here needs to be about the massacre, 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:38.720 because this massacre does have some aspects that don't feel 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:41.840 like we're just repeating the same trauma. When we get 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:44.120 into the part about the influence on things like the 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:48.200 fourteenth Amendment, and then also spend some time talking about 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:50.960 her and what happened to her. That's how we sort 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:54.280 of arrived at the episode that we wound up doing. 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:57.520 A sort of bit of information that I could not 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:00.400 find a good place in the structure of the episode 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:04.040 to include. Is Mary Church Terrell, who was a journalist 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:09.240 and a suffrage advocate, a civil rights activist. Also, she 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:13.800 wrote a memoir that was published in nineteen forty and 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:18.040 she talks about this massacre in that memoir because her 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:21.520 father was there and her father was shot and left 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:25.840 for dead, and in her description of this she refers 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.600 to it as the Irish Riot. And that's something that 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.880 she wrote in nineteen forty, so decades later after it 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:37.800 had happened, which to me was just an illustration of 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:42.920 how tightly it was still connected to the idea of 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:48.080 the Irish community and not former Confederates or the white 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.680 community more broadly, even though at that point it was 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:55.760 not in public memory much anymore beyond people who had 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:58.120 some kind of direct connection to it, like she did 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:03.360 through her father. I marvel and don't marvel at how 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:06.440 quickly this did fall out of public memory. Yeah, And 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:08.960 I wonder because we're watching the same thing happen to 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.360 a lot of things today, right, the difference being that 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:16.240 today were like inundated with a constant, wildflow of information 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:18.760 and news all the time, so it's kind of easy 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:22.560 for your brain to like cycle to the next thing, 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:27.960 whereas with this, you know, presumably there were not as 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.920 many huge violent outbreaks going on on the daily being 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:36.480 reported in papers. So I find myself being like, how 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:42.880 much of this was sort of a purposeful and how 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:45.160 much of it? I mean, there's no one there's no 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:47.400 one answer either, right, like how much of it is 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:51.520 people just being like that was so horrific And this 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:57.680 incredibly horrifying reminder of the capacity for human cruelty and 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.040 violence is something that like we almost deal with and 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:06.000 process emotionally or intellectually. So let's put it aside versus 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.840 people just like not caring, Like those are all elements 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:14.440 of the the ways that people I don't even know 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:18.000 if they forget, but they just kind of don't engage 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:24.159 with that information anymore, and I I it's terrifying. Yeah, 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.640 there have been there have been some episodes on other 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:34.119 especially very traumatic incidents, incidents of racist violence, where we 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:38.080 have gotten more into like the how of how it 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:42.040 fell out of public memory. Yeah, and sometimes there's been 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:46.960 an aspect of the incident becoming a taboo among the 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:49.280 people that it happened to, and people not wanting to 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:51.560 talk about it among their family members, not wanting to 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:55.159 talk about it among their descendants, right, not really like 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.040 wanting to revisit that trauma. But then there have also 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:00.000 been times that the focus was a lot more one 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:05.159 intentionally burying the history of what happened, often on the 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:09.920 part of whoever perpetrated the violence. But that's been part 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:12.760 of a lot of these episodes that we have done before. 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.160 Like I grew up in North Carolina, never heard about 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.600 the Wilmington Coup until I was an adult, if I 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:23.520 remember correctly, what our episode about the Tulsa massacre. Similarly, 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:28.199 like the Tulsa massacre kind of was not in the 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:34.320 public consciousness until it was resurrected by historians and activists 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:38.440 and people trying to make sure that it continued to 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:40.600 be part of the history, became re became part of 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:42.840 the history that was talked about, and then with the 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:47.840 Tulsa massacre specifically, like the TV show Watchmen. Ye, it 0:18:47.920 --> 0:18:50.360 was part of that TV show, and like that became 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:53.919 how a lot of people heard about it, And like 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:57.280 I remember when that show was on, seeing a lot 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:00.960 of people on social media discovering for the first time 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:05.280 that that had happened, and not really realizing that it 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:09.159 wasn't just one thing. It was part of this pattern, right, 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:12.680 that has happened over and over and over again all 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:19.320 around the country at points over you know, decades slash centuries. 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:24.399 I really appreciated the fact that there was, you know, 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.119 a conscious effort leading up to the one hundred and 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:30.879 fiftieth anniversary of the Memphis massacre that say, Okay, we 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:33.520 are going to have all of these events, We're going 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.880 to hold a symposium, We're going to like they made 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:40.080 a website and a blog and a lot of stuff 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.119 to just try to like make people aware that this 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:46.640 had happened who might not have been aware of it before. Yeah. 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:00.200 The other thing I couldn't help but think about, which 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.520 might be a weird line to draw between two things. 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:07.920 Is you know, we talked about Francis Thompson and her 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:15.400 horrific treatment, which was in the mid to late eighteen seventies, 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:19.119 right by the time she passed, and then just you know, 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:27.520 forty five years later, you get Gladys being famous as 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:32.520 a person who is bucking gender and sexuality norms, right, 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:36.800 And I'm like, on the one hand, if you're a 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.240 single person living through that, that feels like a very 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:41.399 long time. But in the arc of history, that's a 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:45.359 pretty short time. Branted, there are a lot of other variables, right, 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.440 not the same place, et cetera. But it is kind 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:50.640 of an interesting thing to think about. When we talked 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:55.120 about Gladys's story, Gladys Bentley, I wasn't really thinking about 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:59.320 it in terms of like just a few decades earlier. Yeah, 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:02.639 these things we're still playing out, and the really like 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:08.919 direct ramifications of you know, the ways that particularly people 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:11.040 of color that we're seen as outside of any of 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:14.679 those norms were treated was very different and could be 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.400 much harsher. Granted, we continue to see you know, violence today. 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:20.159 I don't want to act like it rings fine, but 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:22.639 it is an interesting way that we look at the 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:26.360 ebbs and flows of how things shift forward. We talked 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:29.960 in this episode about like the wave that happens after 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:32.320 that when progress is made and then there's like a 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:37.400 knee job towards a less less fruitful and less tolerant 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:43.240 you know environment. Yeah. I mean my hope always, which 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.119 might be naive, is that like each progressive step forward 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.480 gets us a little farther, but who knows, who knows? 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:52.880 Trying to be hopeful today on in a world where 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:57.560 it's very hard, Yeah, which makes me feel bad for 0:21:57.600 --> 0:21:59.439 the next thing that I wanted to I was going 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.440 to say, which is that one of the things that 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:09.640 struck me about the news reporting around Francis Thompson was 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:14.720 how similar some of it felt to news reporting now, 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:20.760 where newspapers were basically manufacturing the idea that there was 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:27.520 this epidemic sort of of cross dressing black people who 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:33.640 were sexually deviant and like dangerous deviants, Yeah, manufacturing an 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:38.920 emergency over it, which just feels like the same thing 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:44.919 happening today. Oh yeah, how like maybe with fewer slurs 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:53.000 and fewer fewer like intentionally incorrect pronouns, not saying that 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:56.560 people are never called the wrong pronouns in reporting. Obviously 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:58.919 that still happens, but like that was one of the 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:01.679 things that was in a lot of these articles was 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:05.720 like intentionally wrong pronouns and putting the pronouns in a 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:10.440 way that to make it sound deviant. But like we're 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:13.320 still living through a time in which reporting has like 0:23:14.119 --> 0:23:20.919 manufactured made up an emergency about trans people that just 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:26.120 like it's not real. No, I mean, I would say 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:28.400 that the difference, if you want to keep it hopeful, 0:23:29.920 --> 0:23:35.160 is that more people recognize now that that is below knee. Yeah, 0:23:35.200 --> 0:23:38.920 and we'll say so than probably would have during Francis 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:43.439 Thompson's time. Yeah, for sure, that's true, same dance, just 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:47.360 different faces. It's like this is I feel like I'm 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:51.639 reading an article about the need for bathroom laws, but 0:23:51.920 --> 0:23:56.040 it's no story time. Ago. Don't let drag queens read 0:23:56.040 --> 0:23:59.320 books to kids, except you should. You will never have 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:01.800 a more fun day in your life. Those kids will 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:06.639 have a great time. Yeah, I feel so strongly about this. Listen, 0:24:06.680 --> 0:24:08.919 I want a drag queen tosried read to me all 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:11.320 the time and read me anything you want. It's great, 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:13.760 it'll be fun. We'll all have a great time. I 0:24:13.800 --> 0:24:17.080 will tip you. Yeah, love it, love it. You've never 0:24:17.080 --> 0:24:19.960 been to a drag show. Get your to a drag show. 0:24:20.000 --> 0:24:25.040 You'll never have more fun in your life. Joy in abundance, Yeah, 0:24:25.280 --> 0:24:28.840 we all need it. I agree. I agree, we do 0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:32.399 need more joy. We need more joy, just across the 0:24:32.400 --> 0:24:36.800 whole spectrum of everything. Yeah. I'm somehow reminded of like 0:24:37.040 --> 0:24:42.639 having recently watched a live stream of an all trans 0:24:42.840 --> 0:24:49.159 table read of Ocean's eleven. So much fun, love it, 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:52.919 love it anyway, whatever's coming up on your weekend, I 0:24:52.960 --> 0:24:57.560 hope there's joy there, And if you're having trouble finding 0:24:57.600 --> 0:25:00.679 that joy, I hope you have an eye opportunity to 0:25:00.720 --> 0:25:03.600 make a little of it for yourself. And if joy 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:07.080 is not possible, then maybe peace or some kind of 0:25:07.119 --> 0:25:10.680 little treat. And I hope everyone is kind to each other. 0:25:10.880 --> 0:25:13.439 What in my head it made a flow chart that 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:19.000 was like joy piece ice cream. I mean that could work. 0:25:19.160 --> 0:25:21.440 If you can't get to joy, at least get to chill. 0:25:21.480 --> 0:25:23.320 And if you can't get to chill, make yourself a 0:25:23.359 --> 0:25:27.160 dish of ice cream, then get some ice cream. We 0:25:27.480 --> 0:25:31.760 will be back on Monday with a brand new episode, 0:25:32.720 --> 0:25:40.520 and we'll have a Saturday Classic tomorrow. Stuff you Missed 0:25:40.520 --> 0:25:43.720 in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:48.119 podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 0:25:48.160 --> 0:25:50.080 wherever you listen to your favorite shows.