Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: By the time she had boarded the bus home in
Speaker 1: October of nineteen fifty five, Georgia had already had a
Speaker 1: very long day. Tired from work, she dropped her fare
Speaker 1: in the till and went to go sit in the
Speaker 1: segregated back of the bus. She stopped shorts when the
Speaker 1: bus driver began to yell at her. He ordered her
Speaker 1: not to walk through the white section at the front
Speaker 1: of the bus. She would need to get off and
Speaker 1: re enter at the back of the Busia couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: She was already on the bus, wasn't she, But seeing
Speaker 1: as he wasn't going to budge and deciding that she
Speaker 1: would rather get home than fight with a power tripping driver,
Speaker 1: Georgia sighed and got off the bus. But the moment
Speaker 1: she stepped foot on the sidewalk, the bus sped off
Speaker 1: with her fare still on board, and it wasn't the
Speaker 1: first time the Montgomery, Alabama bus system had discriminated against
Speaker 1: black writers, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. Two
Speaker 1: months later, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give
Speaker 1: up her seat to a white writer, and when Georgia
Speaker 1: Gilmore heard that local leaders were planning a bus boycott,
Speaker 1: she knew she had to be involved. On December fifth
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty five, Georgia watched as the Reverend Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King Junior spoke before a crowd of thousands at
Speaker 1: the Holt Street Baptist Church. He proposed that the black
Speaker 1: community should put together their own form of transportation in protest,
Speaker 1: using donated cars and personal vehicles to ferry black people
Speaker 1: to work in schools across Montgomery. His idea was met
Speaker 1: with thunderous applause, Georgia included, but she was already thinking ahead.
Speaker 1: Even if dozens of community members donated cars, it would
Speaker 1: still cost money to keep up the boycott. Cars needed
Speaker 1: gas and oil, and drivers needed wages. But Georgia had
Speaker 1: just the idea to fund the boycott. She was a
Speaker 1: cook by trade, working for the National Lunch Company, so
Speaker 1: she decided to put her skills to use. She started
Speaker 1: selling food at protest meetings and black owned businesses, showing
Speaker 1: up with baskets full of fried fish, pork chops, sweet
Speaker 1: potato pies, and pound cakes, and soon enough Georgia had
Speaker 1: organized dozens of women across the city to do the same.
Speaker 1: Many black people in Montgomery worked for white families and
Speaker 1: were afraid that being a visible part of the protest
Speaker 1: might cost them their jobs, but cooking and selling food
Speaker 1: was a quiet way to support the cause. Georgia dubbed
Speaker 1: her network the Club from Nowhere. If people asked where
Speaker 1: the food had come from, the cooks could truthfully say
Speaker 1: it came from nowhere. Georgia became a welcome site at
Speaker 1: every weekly boycott meeting, where she would sing and dance
Speaker 1: down the church aisle and report each week's fundraising numbers.
Speaker 1: The Club from Nowhere typically raised the equivalent of fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a week, and Georgia herself probably raised most
Speaker 1: of the money of any person in Montgomery for three
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty one days. Georgia's cooking kept the boycotters
Speaker 1: fed and funded. When Doctor King and other leaders were arrested,
Speaker 1: for conspiring against the bus system's business. In nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: Georgia testified at the trial, telling her story of the
Speaker 1: white bus driver driving off with her fare. The testimony
Speaker 1: made Georgia even more of a celebrity among Montgomery's black community,
Speaker 1: but also made her visible to the white opposition. The
Speaker 1: National Lunch Company fired her shortly after. Now, Georgia was
Speaker 1: a clever and resilient woman, but this was a setback.
Speaker 1: She had six children to feed on top of managing
Speaker 1: the club from nowhere, and she was having trouble finding
Speaker 1: another cooking job. When she brought these concerns to Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King, Junior, he told her he had a solution,
Speaker 1: why not work for yourself. With some capital from doctor King,
Speaker 1: Georgia opened a restaurant in her home from which she
Speaker 1: could continue to feed the revolution. Doctor King began to
Speaker 1: use it as a meeting house, and he brought Robert
Speaker 1: Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson to meet Georgia and
Speaker 1: eat her food. Finally, on November thirteenth of nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court ruled Montgomery's segregated bus lines were unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: A month later, the bus boycott ended for good, Georgia
Speaker 1: Gilmore continued to be a civil rights activist and beloved chef.
Speaker 1: In fact, the day she died on March ninth of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety, she had been up early cooking meals for
Speaker 1: the twenty fifth anniversary celebration of the Selma to Montgomery March.
Speaker 1: Her family instead served the food to the hundreds who
Speaker 1: came to mourn her. Dead or alive. Georgia was still
Speaker 1: feeding the fire. The Korean War was part of the
Speaker 1: larger Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: As such, it contained layers of legitimate disagreement between the
Speaker 1: actual people of Korea, as well as layers of propaganda
Speaker 1: and interference from the larger superpowers on opposite sides. While
Speaker 1: the war ended in a truce in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: that didn't mean the ideological war between the Americans and
Speaker 1: the Soviets had come to an end, not even close.
Speaker 1: Korea was divided into North and South, with the North
Speaker 1: becoming communist and the South becoming a capitalist republic. However,
Speaker 1: the North quickly became a dictatorship with a stagnant economy
Speaker 1: due in part to US embargo, and the South became
Speaker 1: a major military installation for the US to keep tabs
Speaker 1: on the Soviets. And it was amidst this clash between
Speaker 1: Titanic forces that one man sought to carve out a
Speaker 1: life for himself against all odds. No Kumsuk was born
Speaker 1: during the Japanese occupation of Korea, only to grow up
Speaker 1: and see his hometown change hands from Japanese RS rule
Speaker 1: to North Korean dictatorship. His parents always resented the anti
Speaker 1: American propaganda fed to them for decades by both regimes.
Speaker 1: They wanted a chance to make up their own minds.
Speaker 1: As Kumsuk got older, he just wanted to eat. Food
Speaker 1: was scarce under the dictatorship and American embargo. When he
Speaker 1: heard that North Korean Air Force pilots were well fed,
Speaker 1: he enlisted. During the war, he flew over a hundred
Speaker 1: missions and rose to the rank of lieutenant. Kumsuk claims
Speaker 1: that he never actually shot down any enemy planes. He
Speaker 1: says that he made a point to shoot past them. Again,
Speaker 1: he had been raised to not believe everything that he
Speaker 1: heard about Americans and South Koreans. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: it is hard to believe that he was able to
Speaker 1: fly so many missions without ever killing an enemy pilot,
Speaker 1: and that his superiors would never notice this. But if true,
Speaker 1: it only makes his determination more impressive, and it also
Speaker 1: maybe explains why eventually Kumsuk realized that he had to
Speaker 1: flee the country. He couldn't continue to fight for a
Speaker 1: regime he didn't believe in, and he saw no future
Speaker 1: in his destitute homeland, and he knew his chances of
Speaker 1: escaping were pretty slim. In fact, he gave himself a
Speaker 1: twenty percent chance of success, but he was willing to
Speaker 1: take those odds if it meant a better future. He
Speaker 1: was only twenty one, after all. In September of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, Kumsuk took his Soviet built MiG fifteen fighter
Speaker 1: jet off the runway in North Korea under the guise
Speaker 1: of running a mission. Instead, he flew south, boldly crossing
Speaker 1: into enemy territory. He located an American Air Force base,
Speaker 1: skidding to a stop on the runway, nearly colliding with
Speaker 1: a departing jet, but confused personnel scrambled to the site,
Speaker 1: assuming that he was an American pilot. But when they
Speaker 1: got a good look at his plane and watched an
Speaker 1: astonishment as he stepped out of the cockpit, they saw
Speaker 1: him throw a picture of North Korean dictator Kim Ilsung
Speaker 1: to the ground. And if Kumsuk was worried about a
Speaker 1: frosty reception, he shouldn't have been, because as the Americans
Speaker 1: examined his jet, they soon realized that it was a
Speaker 1: MiG fifteen. An American general had recently put a bounty
Speaker 1: on this mone it had a unique engine that made
Speaker 1: it more advanced than American aircraft. Comsuk was awarded one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars or about a million dollars in today's currency.
Speaker 1: With this money, he was able to set up a
Speaker 1: trust and eventually move himself to the United States so
Speaker 1: that he could see for himself what Americans were like.
Speaker 1: Once in the US, he excelled, earning a degree in
Speaker 1: engineering from the University of Delaware. He changed his name
Speaker 1: to Kenneth Rowe, married a fellow Korean immigrant, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two finally became a US citizen. Kenneth eventually
Speaker 1: settled in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he became a professor
Speaker 1: of aerospace engineering. In many ways, it was the American's
Speaker 1: greatest dream, a former Communist citizen defecting, coming to America
Speaker 1: and living his best life. But more than that, it
Speaker 1: was one man taking his destiny into his own hands
Speaker 1: and finding himself a home. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosity. Subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.