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Speaker 1: My own black a droller has gone on overlight I know,

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Speaker 1: Ninth Planet Audio con we're overlanding, you're going over.

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Speaker 2: Listener. This is it our last episode of the season,

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Speaker 2: and so I thought maybe we'd take it back to

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Speaker 2: where it all began. Florence, Kentucky.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess like talking about how everything has changed here.

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Speaker 3: It's like, it is kind of amazing how the only

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Speaker 3: constant here is Jane. It's nice that they have a

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Speaker 3: sidewalk now didn't always. They've put in a lot more medians.

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Speaker 3: I feel like they've really fixed the roads.

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Speaker 2: Florence is where in nineteen fifty four, students at Boone

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Speaker 2: County High School named themselves the Rebels. It's where the

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Speaker 2: water tower on I seventy five reads Florence y'all. It's

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Speaker 2: where the Florence y'all's played baseball. It's where the Florence mall. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: this is going to take us. I think to the mall.

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Speaker 3: You know, want to pay for the gym and you've

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Speaker 3: got gym shoes.

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Speaker 4: There's water on them.

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Speaker 2: Well, the mall is seen better days. It's where land

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Speaker 2: that used to be farms now gives you the opportunity

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Speaker 2: to eat at an Applebee's, a Rafferty's, and a cracker barrel,

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Speaker 2: all without leaving a single block. And Florence is where

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Speaker 2: I grew up. Florence is where I went to high

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Speaker 2: school as one of only a handful of black kids.

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Speaker 2: And Florence is where I first met mister Rebel, the

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Speaker 2: Confederate general that served as the mascot of our school

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Speaker 2: for years. By by what, and yes, Florence is where

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Speaker 2: I left to pursue a career that felt impossible in

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Speaker 2: the suburbs of Cincinnati. But for better and worse, Florence

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Speaker 2: has always been home.

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Speaker 3: The last time I was here, I drove past my

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Speaker 3: old house and the only difference was there were these

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Speaker 3: two like one hundred year old oak trees in the

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Speaker 3: front yard and they just cut them down. It's like, well,

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Speaker 3: there's nothing.

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Speaker 2: It just looks like every house. And so for this season,

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Speaker 2: ender listener, let's go home.

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Speaker 5: I was a leady Rebbel, like.

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Speaker 6: What does that even need? The Boone County Rebels will

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Speaker 6: stay the Boone County Rebels.

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Speaker 2: But the image of it right here in Black and

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Speaker 2: White and Friends.

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Speaker 7: Alien Biggers is a flag or mascot. Anytime you're trying

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Speaker 7: to mess with tradition, you get to be ready for

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Speaker 7: a serious.

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Speaker 2: Background from Ninth's Planet Audio. I'm Akila Hughes and this

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Speaker 2: is Rebel Spirit, Episode twelve erasures. Over the last year

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Speaker 2: and a half we've been working on this podcast, there's

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Speaker 2: one thing we've been told about Florence over and over.

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Speaker 2: It's growing more diverse by the day, in large part

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Speaker 2: by immigrants.

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Speaker 6: About the time that I was getting there, the socioeconomics

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Speaker 6: of the community were starting to change.

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Speaker 8: A higher percentage of the population that was coming in

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Speaker 8: was non white.

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Speaker 2: The school district has just exploded. Everything is just bigger,

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Speaker 2: far more diverse.

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Speaker 9: The Boo County Peewey Football League is funny because it

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Speaker 9: used to be like all these white hillbilly men.

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Speaker 2: Right, yeah, lor It's used to be nothing but white

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Speaker 2: hillbilly's for sure.

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Speaker 9: Yeah, And now it's drastically changing as the players are

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Speaker 9: black or Hispanic, and.

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Speaker 6: Now Boone has the most diversity in the county, right

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Speaker 6: it is. And if you were there, if you see

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Speaker 6: the demographic of.

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Speaker 2: County now it's different.

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Speaker 3: I was like, I can't believe every shade of beige, brown, tan, dark, like.

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Speaker 6: Oh, oh my goodness.

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Speaker 9: Right, the actual people that control this place. They have

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Speaker 9: no clue how different it is on the ground. Now,

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Speaker 9: we are the fourth highest recipient of legal immigration or

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Speaker 9: asylum seekers in the United States, So it's like New York, Texas, California,

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Speaker 9: and then Kentucky. Florence actually has a huge Congolese population.

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Speaker 2: And it's true. Boone County, largely because of Florence, has

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Speaker 2: the highest immigrant population in all of northern Kentucky. That

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Speaker 2: population includes a recent influx of asylum seekers from the

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Speaker 2: Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia who join a steadily

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Speaker 2: growing number of Mexican, Central and South American immigrants. Drive

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Speaker 2: around Florence and you can see the impact of this

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Speaker 2: population everywhere in churches that offer services in other languages,

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Speaker 2: in new businesses that open up to offer a little

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Speaker 2: bit of home to recent immigrants, and of course you

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Speaker 2: see it in the schools.

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Speaker 4: Our foundational commitment is to encourage and inspire.

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Speaker 2: Our students through education, to become.

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Speaker 6: Contributing citizens of the world.

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Speaker 4: We these core beliefs are central to Boone County schools.

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Speaker 2: Boone County High School is the most diverse school in

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Speaker 2: the county, with nearly forty percent of the school population

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Speaker 2: being non white, a huge change from when I was

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Speaker 2: there twenty years ago. That today there are more than

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Speaker 2: fifty languages spoken among students at Boone County is a

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Speaker 2: point of pride, and it should be. But listener, last episode,

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Speaker 2: we promised you more open records. We'd received nearly four

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Speaker 2: hundred pages of emails from the school district, along with

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Speaker 2: a presentation of possible mascots and team names to finally

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Speaker 2: put the rebel to bed. Option one is just keeping

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Speaker 2: the rebels and making it into a bison. The second

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Speaker 2: option is a bison, and it's the same kind of

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Speaker 2: generic bison logos. But last episode we discovered those records

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Speaker 2: were incomplete ended in August of last year, and so

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Speaker 2: we filed another open records request for the rest and

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Speaker 2: we may not remember then of education in Kentucky history, Well,

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Speaker 2: it was mostly more of the same. It was another

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Speaker 2: few hundred chaotic pages of reproductions of our emails to

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Speaker 2: the school in the district, of angry letters about me,

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Speaker 2: of entirely random and unrelated things that probably someone should

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Speaker 2: have weeded out but didn't like. The certificate of insurance

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Speaker 2: for the company renting the high school cafeteria for a

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Speaker 2: public meeting, but among everything they sent us, the possibility

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Speaker 2: of a new mascot at Boone County High School was

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Speaker 2: almost nowhere to be seen. The momentum we uncovered in

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Speaker 2: the email's last episode of meetings and presentations last spring

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Speaker 2: had clearly died out, but why was unclear. Once again,

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Speaker 2: we tried to reach out to Principal Stacy Black and

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Speaker 2: the new superintendent of Boone County, Jeff Houswald, to find

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Speaker 2: out what it stops the momentum, and once again we

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Speaker 2: heard nothing back. But there was one email in the

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Speaker 2: stack about the mascot from a member of the mascot

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Speaker 2: committee assembled last spring. It was sent to Principal Black

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Speaker 2: on November fifteenth, twenty twenty four.

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Speaker 6: Stacy, I know a few weeks ago you told me

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Speaker 6: to cool my jets, but I can't quite let it go.

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Speaker 6: I know there's a lot of things going on with

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Speaker 6: you and the topic, some pressures, no doubt of which

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Speaker 6: I am not aware. So my impressions at this moment

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Speaker 6: bulls no just no Bisons. I've always felt uneasy about

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Speaker 6: the Bison mascot that carries the Moniker rebel. For me,

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Speaker 6: it's Bison's whole or nothing. Rebels. There seems to be

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Speaker 6: reinvestment this year in rebels across announcements, events, building wide, vibe, apparel,

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Speaker 6: et cetera. So I'm returning at least for the moment

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Speaker 6: to the dog. I've amended this slide from some time ago.

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Speaker 6: Check out my paint three d edits. Honestly, I like

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Speaker 6: the great dog more of a mongrel a metaphor for

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Speaker 6: a diversity more than a pitbull.

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Speaker 2: Thanks the mongrel as a metaphor for diversity, literally and

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Speaker 2: insult for a dog to represent diversity. Seriously, this is

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Speaker 2: a teacher at Boone, someone who interacts with the school's

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Speaker 2: diverse student body every day, and this is someone who

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Speaker 2: thinks he's helping. He even made a PowerPoint of his

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Speaker 2: dog mascot where he made it a point to once

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Speaker 2: again point out that the dogs and I quote uncertain

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Speaker 2: breed represents our diversity. And yes, of course we filed

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Speaker 2: an open records request for his PowerPoint, and yes it's

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Speaker 2: up on our website at rebelspiritpodcast dot com. But listener,

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Speaker 2: after twelve episodes, after a year and a half of reporting,

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Speaker 2: this is what we're up again. This is what the

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Speaker 2: kids at Boone County High School are up against. This

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Speaker 2: is what folks that want to see change in Florence

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Speaker 2: are up against. The mongrel as a metaphor for diversity.

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Speaker 2: But that's not the only challenge. We'll be right back

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Speaker 2: after this break. It's been barely more than a month

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Speaker 2: since Donald Trump became president, and he got right to

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Speaker 2: work destroying what progress has been made in this country.

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Speaker 2: And he started with immigration.

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Speaker 3: There is a report that the incoming Trump administration will

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Speaker 3: begin massive immigration raids next week, and they will start

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Speaker 3: in Chicago.

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Speaker 7: HS secretary conducting raids here in New York last night, Camella,

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Speaker 7: what do we know about how these roundups are being conducted.

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Speaker 2: ICE isn't just conducting its round ups in places like

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Speaker 2: Chicago and New York. Though, that big, diverse influx of

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Speaker 2: immigrants that has begun to transform the face of Florence,

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Speaker 2: well that's made it a target for immigration raids too.

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Speaker 2: Our new fears about immigration raids and whether they may

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Speaker 2: happen in Kentucky communities. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, in

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Speaker 2: the first eleven days of President Donald Trump's administration, one

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Speaker 2: of the region's only immigration detention facilities saw a surge

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Speaker 2: in immigration detainments, that detention facility. It's the Boone County Jail.

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Speaker 2: Boone County voted sixty eight percent for Donald Trump in November.

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Speaker 2: They voted to lock their neighbors up in their own jail.

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Speaker 2: And that's not the only thing voters have done. As

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Speaker 2: we record this episode, Trump and Elon Musk are attempting

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Speaker 2: to dismantle the Department of Education. Guess which state is

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Speaker 2: in the top five for federal funds per student. Yep,

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Speaker 2: it's Kentucky. Looks like that funding might be drying up

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Speaker 2: real soon. And then there's this.

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Speaker 8: My son is in a public school. He takes a

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Speaker 8: class called African American History. If you're running an African

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Speaker 8: American history class, could you perhaps be in violation of

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Speaker 8: this core of this executive order.

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Speaker 7: I'm not quite certain, and I'd like to look into

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Speaker 7: it further and get back to you on that.

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Speaker 2: That's Education Secretary Linda McMahon refusing to answer whether or

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Speaker 2: not teaching black history would violate Trump's executive orders against diversity, equity,

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Speaker 2: and inclusion. Anyone plays in bets. The erasure of history

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Speaker 2: is happening all around us. It's happening across the federal

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Speaker 2: government as offices scramble to enact the president's racist orders

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Speaker 2: by taking down Black History Month posters, removing pronouns from emails,

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Speaker 2: and taking the t out of LGBT. On the National

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Speaker 2: Park Service web page for the Stonewall National Monument, which

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Speaker 2: marks the riot at the Stonewall Inn that was led

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Speaker 2: by Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender black woman, References to

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Speaker 2: transgender and queer people have been removed from the Stonewall

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Speaker 2: National Monument section on the National Park Service website, and

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Speaker 2: it's happening across society as the NFL race to paint

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Speaker 2: over end racism in the end zones before the super

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Speaker 2: as Disney rewrites the content labels that it put before

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Speaker 2: some of its more problematic animated films in twenty twenty,

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Speaker 2: and as Target walked back the diversity commitments it made

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Speaker 2: in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, who

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Speaker 2: at the time the CEO said could have been one

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Speaker 2: of my Target team members. As distressing as it all is,

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Speaker 2: this shouldn't come as a surprise to those of you

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Speaker 2: who have been listening to this podcast for the last

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Speaker 2: six months, because when you move past the mascots and

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Speaker 2: the biscuits. That's really what it's been about, about history

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Speaker 2: and about the erasure of that history. We're backtracking as

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Speaker 2: a society now because we refuse to address how we

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Speaker 2: got here. But it's more than that too. Through all

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Speaker 2: of our reporting, when people push back against changing rebel mascots,

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Speaker 2: it's always about how the white kids would feel. And

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Speaker 2: it's the same thing when Trump and his crew talk

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Speaker 2: about DEI. It's about white feelings. It's about white men

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Speaker 2: suddenly not being the only people in the room and

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Speaker 2: feeling like, well, if I don't have an advantage, then

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Speaker 2: they must have an unfair one. But of course it's

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Speaker 2: not any more unfair than asking why a school with

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Speaker 2: a near majority minority population should still have to run

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Speaker 2: around with a Confederate nickname on their shirts. It's good

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Speaker 2: to ask, We have the right to ask, and we

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Speaker 2: would be better off as a society for having the conversation,

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Speaker 2: for having all of these conversations. But instead we're backsliding

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Speaker 2: because they refuse to have them.

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Speaker 6: I have lived in Boone County all my life and

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Speaker 6: still live here. The person making the request hasn't lived

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Speaker 6: here for years and probably doesn't have her heart in

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Speaker 6: this county or school she.

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Speaker 2: Wants to change a name, start with a new school,

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Speaker 2: preferably where she lives currently, not where she lived, loved,

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Speaker 2: and lest she.

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Speaker 6: Is not part of our community and is in fact

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Speaker 6: two thousand miles removed from this issue.

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Speaker 2: When I read over the dozens of emails sent to

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Speaker 2: the school district about me, written almost exclusively from alumni

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Speaker 2: from fifty years ago, their overall refrain was that I

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Speaker 2: wasn't from Florence, and so I shouldn't be listened to.

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Speaker 2: So I'll say it again, Florence is my home. And

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Speaker 2: yet here was person after person making me an outsider.

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Speaker 2: When Barack Obama became president in two thousand and eight,

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Speaker 2: Donald Trump made a name for himself by saying that

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Speaker 2: Obama wasn't really from here. Obama, according to Trump, was

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Speaker 2: an outsider.

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Speaker 7: Another political story making news this morning donald Trump's growing

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Speaker 7: poll numbers on a list of possible presidential contenders. Since

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Speaker 7: he first appeared on GMA last month, he's been taking

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Speaker 7: to the airways to continually question President Obama's birth certificate.

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Speaker 1: The birth certificate was produced in twenty eleven. You continued

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Speaker 1: to tell the story and question the president's legitimacy in

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Speaker 1: twenty twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, as recently as January.

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Speaker 7: I want to go on to what.

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump said after he said this is out and everything.

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Speaker 1: He said, we need to look at his grades and

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Speaker 1: see if he was a good enough student to get

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Speaker 1: into Harvard Law School. That's just code for saying he

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Speaker 1: got into law school because he's black. This is an

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Speaker 1: ugly strain of racism that's running through this whole thing.

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Speaker 1: We can hope that that kind of comes to an

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Speaker 1: end too, but we'll.

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Speaker 9: Have to see.

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Speaker 2: Can black people ever be considered insiders in America? Can

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Speaker 2: black people ever be from somewhere? Do we get a say?

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Speaker 2: Of course, we do more. After this quick break, travel

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Speaker 2: just a little ways up I seventy five from Florence

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Speaker 2: through Cincinnati, and you'll reach the town of Lincoln Heights, Ohio.

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Speaker 2: Founded in nineteen twenty three, Lincoln Heights was a haven

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Speaker 2: for black folks moving north following the promise of working

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Speaker 2: Cincinnati's burgeoning factories. The jobs were there, but the housing wasn't,

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Speaker 2: thanks of course, to racism, which saw neighboring communities bar

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Speaker 2: black people from moving in. Finally, developers bought the land nearby,

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Speaker 2: originally called the Cincinnati Industrial Subdivision, and sold it to

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Speaker 2: black people who began to build a home for themselves there.

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Speaker 2: The population grew rapidly quickly into the thousands, and residents

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Speaker 2: tried to incorporate into a real town multiple times over

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Speaker 2: the next two decades. Every attempt was blocked by white

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Speaker 2: voters in the surrounding county. But then in nineteen forty six,

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Speaker 2: Lincoln Heights was incorporated at ten percent of its actual size,

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Speaker 2: and it became the first all black, self governing municipality

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Speaker 2: north of the Mason Dixon line, and for a time

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Speaker 2: was the largest all black city in the entire United States.

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Speaker 2: It was such a big deal that Lincoln Heights first

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Speaker 2: mayor and residents were invited to New York City, where

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Speaker 2: a ticker tape parade was held in their honor for

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Speaker 2: all the reasons you would expect, namely, of course, racism,

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Speaker 2: but also the same plights that have befallen the industrial

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Speaker 2: Midwest over the last few decades. Lincoln Heights has diminished

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Speaker 2: significantly since its heyday, but it's still black and it's

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Speaker 2: still proud, which is why in the wake of Donald

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Speaker 2: Trump's presidency, when literal Nazis showed up on a highway

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Speaker 2: overpass bordering Lincoln Heights while the residents weren't having it.

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Speaker 5: We're back now with a troubling story out of Ohio,

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Speaker 5: where tonight a community is uniting after confronting a group

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Speaker 5: of white supremacists who wave swastika flags on a highway overpass.

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Speaker 2: Community members quickly confronting the group.

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Speaker 6: It is it is not by chance that this happened

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Speaker 6: in this community at this.

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Speaker 2: Time, the reverend and dozens of other community members marching

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Speaker 2: to the overpass to show that Haate has no home here. Listener,

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Speaker 2: I had friends contacting me from all over the country

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Speaker 2: to find out more about Cincinnati. After Lincoln Heights' finest chase,

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Speaker 2: the Nazis back into their U haul van. And what

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Speaker 2: can I say other than despite everything, this is where

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Speaker 2: I'm from, and this is why I'll continue to try

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Speaker 2: and make this place better. Because the Nazis don't get

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Speaker 2: to decide who stays and who goes anymore than the

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Speaker 2: aging out population of rebel sympathizers get to decide who

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Speaker 2: is and isn't from Florence and whose histories get to

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Speaker 2: be told. This isn't about a mascot. Not really. This

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Speaker 2: is about place and about who gets to tell stories

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Speaker 2: of that place, about who gets to take up space

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Speaker 2: in that place, about who gets to define the lives

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Speaker 2: we lead in the futures we chart. And so here

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Speaker 2: we are at the end of the season. And yes,

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Speaker 2: as of right now, there's still the Boone County Rebels,

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Speaker 2: but we all know how the Civil War ended, and

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Speaker 2: so if folks want to keep fighting it for a

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Speaker 2: little while longer, that's fine. You're still gonna lose. But also, listener,

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Speaker 2: there's one last thing last fall we were leaked to document.

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Speaker 2: It was a copy of the facts of a letter

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Speaker 2: from March nineteen ninety six. It was from the US

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Speaker 2: Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights to the Boone

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Speaker 2: County School District and.

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Speaker 5: Well dear Superintendent Weddingcap. On October seventeenth, nineteen ninety five,

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Speaker 5: the Office for Civil Rights US Department of Education received

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Speaker 5: a complaint against the Boone County Public Schools. Specifically, the

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Speaker 5: complaint alleged the district allowed schools to display symbols that

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Speaker 5: are negative and create a racially hostile environment to black

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Speaker 5: and Native American students and patrons.

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Speaker 2: Well, how about that. Here in our hands was a

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Speaker 2: letter from thirty years ago in which the federal government

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Speaker 2: says that they received a complaint about the rebels at

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Speaker 2: Boone County High School and how it creates a hostile

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Speaker 2: environment for the black and brown kids there thirty years ago.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 2: The letter went on to explain that because they had

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Speaker 2: insufficient information in the original complaint, that they were not

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Speaker 2: proceeding with an investigation. But still they knew, they knew.

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Speaker 2: You better believe we had questions. Who filed the original complaint?

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Speaker 2: Was there an inciting incident in nineteen ninety five that

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Speaker 2: sparked it? Did the district know? Did anyone know the

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Speaker 2: links we have gone to get those answers? And the

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Speaker 2: absolutely wild paths that journey sent us down. I'm not kidding.

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Speaker 2: Someone died, y'all. Is well a story for another day

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Speaker 2: until then, I'm Aquila Hughes and this has been Rebel Spirit.

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Speaker 2: Rebel Spirit is a production of Ninth Planet Audio in

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Speaker 2: association with iHeart Podcasts. Reporting and writing by me Aquila Hughes.

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Speaker 2: I'm also an executive producer and the host. Produced by

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Speaker 2: Dan Sinker, edited by Josie A.

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Speaker 4: Zahm.

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Speaker 2: Additional Editing on this episode by Jennifer Dean. Music composed

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Speaker 2: by Charlie Sun, Sound design and mixing by Josia zahmb Our.

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Speaker 2: Theme song is All the Things I Couldn't Say, performed

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Speaker 2: by Bussy and The Basse, courtesy of Arts and Crafts Productions, Inc.

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Speaker 2: Our production coordinator is Kyle Hinton. Our clearance coordinator is

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Speaker 2: anasun Andschine. Production accounting by Dill pret Singh. Additional research

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Speaker 2: support from Janas Dillard. Email reads by Nicole Thurman, Frank

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Speaker 2: Garcia Hile, Hal Lovelin, John tynan Am, Jenna Ghosh, and

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Speaker 2: Mason Smith. Executive producers from Ninth Planet Audio are Elizabeth

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Speaker 2: Baquet and Jimmy Miller. We've put the Mongrel Guy's letter

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Speaker 2: and presentation, along with the March nineteen ninety six letter

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Speaker 2: from the US Department of Education Civil Rights Office, up

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Speaker 2: on this episode's page on our website, Rebelspirit podcast dot com.