Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool be Booted Cool Stuff. You're
Speaker 2: a weekly reminder that you too can live in the
Speaker 2: swamps and kill slavers. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 2: I guess this week you might have heard of her.
Speaker 2: It's Sophie Lickterman. Hi, Sophie, how are you?
Speaker 3: What if they haven't heard of me.
Speaker 2: Well, then I have done a poor job of Or
Speaker 2: maybe it's the first time you've listened to the show,
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. Yeah, well, in which case, Sophie
Speaker 2: Licktterman is also the producer of this show. And the
Speaker 2: reason that Sophie is the guest is because, as we
Speaker 2: record this, Los Angeles is having a bit of a
Speaker 2: fire problem, and some of that might have had to
Speaker 2: deal with the defunding of the fire department to fund
Speaker 2: the police. But unfortunately, you can't shoot fire. I'm willing
Speaker 2: to bet that a lot of people have tried.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm so sure a lot of people have tried.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really I mean, I grew up in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with fire season. But you know, this
Speaker 1: level of wind that La has experienced, it's just like
Speaker 1: climate change. Is terrifying, and I'm so sorry to the
Speaker 1: people that have lost loved ones in their and their homes.
Speaker 1: We do have a list of mutual aid funds that
Speaker 1: people can donate to, Margaret, do you want to read
Speaker 1: those out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I'll explain the reason that you're the guest
Speaker 2: is that our guest lives in LA and is okay,
Speaker 2: but is busy doing mutual aid, because that's the kind
Speaker 2: of guests we have on But this list of mutual
Speaker 2: aid venmos that people can donate to was vetted by
Speaker 2: Kozon Media's James Stout for the Los Angeles fires of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five at People's Struggle. SFV Supplies and Distribution
Speaker 2: for the San Fernando Valley at Sundays Dash thirteen twelve.
Speaker 2: The you know one three one two. This is they
Speaker 2: deliver supplies to encampments and things like that. K Town
Speaker 2: for All K T O w N F O R
Speaker 2: A l L does emergency supply distribution for the unhoused.
Speaker 1: They're a wonderful mutual aid organization. I can't say enough
Speaker 1: nice things about K Town for All.
Speaker 2: Hell Yeah, J Town Action, J T O W N
Speaker 2: A C T I O N. What you'd expect, well,
Speaker 2: except that it's the letter J, not like J A
Speaker 2: Y or something. J. Town Action does mutual aid to
Speaker 2: unhoused folks in Little Tokyo. Eight and A Street Solidarity
Speaker 2: a E T N A Street Solidarity does direct relief
Speaker 2: for the unhoused in the San Fernando Valley. Dykes are kosher,
Speaker 2: which is an important thing to know. But dikes R
Speaker 2: kosher is d y k E s A R e
Speaker 2: k O s h e R. I think we're also
Speaker 2: going to put this in the show notes, but I'm
Speaker 2: still going to read them out. And they do mostly
Speaker 2: east side and skid row and they have three plus
Speaker 2: drivers doing that work. F T s l A and
Speaker 2: not there's a knockoff f T s l A dash.
Speaker 2: That's not who you're looking for. Ft s l A
Speaker 2: makes meals for firefighters. All Power Books a l l
Speaker 2: PO w R Books is community bookstore that distributes supplies.
Speaker 2: And Seventh Street Collective, which is s e v E
Speaker 2: n t H s T c O L l e
Speaker 2: c t i v E and that is a Long
Speaker 2: Beach emergency response preparation group. And one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that donating directly to mutual aid groups. Is good is
Speaker 2: because the larger organizations, the ones that people from out
Speaker 2: of town know about to donate to, right, I'm not
Speaker 2: even going to necessarily knock them, but they tend to
Speaker 2: rely on actual on the ground mutual aid groups to
Speaker 2: do the sort of final mile problem anyway, And if
Speaker 2: you want to cut out the middleman and support direct
Speaker 2: mutual aid, you're gonna your dollars will go further and
Speaker 2: they'll do it much faster. So you know that is
Speaker 2: I mean, I have a bias towards this, but I
Speaker 2: just like have found that to be true in my
Speaker 2: own limited experience with disaster response. But Sophie, I'm really
Speaker 2: excited about this week's episode. This has been on my
Speaker 2: list since the very beginning. This is like one of
Speaker 2: the cool history stories that made me care about cool
Speaker 2: history because this week we are going to talk about
Speaker 2: one of my favorite topics of all time, Maroon communities.
Speaker 2: And normally I'd be like, have you heard of maroon communities?
Speaker 2: But you've been on the podcast as the producer, and
Speaker 2: I've done numerous episodes about maroon communities. But I'm like curious,
Speaker 2: Like I'm curious, you know, kind of what you come
Speaker 2: into it. Have you heard of the Great Dismal Swamp?
Speaker 1: No? Hell yeah, And obviously you told me the topic beforehand,
Speaker 1: and I like did not look things up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is good because that's the way it's supposed
Speaker 2: to be. I don't know why. I just find the
Speaker 2: format more fun that way.
Speaker 1: It seems like a really good dinner party conversation that
Speaker 1: you're having where you're telling somebody an epic tale and
Speaker 1: they're like reacting to It's that's yeah.
Speaker 2: Totally, totally. It's compared to like the I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to talk shit on other podcasts. Other podcasts are fine.
Speaker 2: I less enjoy when two experts on a subject talk
Speaker 2: about the thing, because then instead of one person representing
Speaker 2: the audience, it's just like listening to two instructors at
Speaker 2: the same time or whatever. Anyway, and that's why we
Speaker 2: use this format now everyone knows, because some of us
Speaker 2: prefer it. So we are not talking about just any
Speaker 2: maroon community this week. We are talking about the granddaddy
Speaker 2: of United States maroon communities. For anyone who doesn't know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about when I say maroon community, Maroons
Speaker 2: are people who have self emancipated from slavery.
Speaker 3: People free societies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, basically just like the shit that when I
Speaker 2: say keeps me up at night, I mean in the
Speaker 2: positive way where it keeps me up at night, because
Speaker 2: I just like read about this shit for fun, and
Speaker 2: like anywhere there's been a community of like three or
Speaker 2: three thousand people trying to live free and succeeding. I
Speaker 2: just fucking love that shit. This one lasted for hundreds
Speaker 2: of years, and when I first heard about this, it
Speaker 2: kind of changed how I understood us history. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it's been on my list since the very beginning of
Speaker 2: planning this show. Tell me, well, it's North Carolina's pride
Speaker 2: and joy. Although Virginia can claim it too. Lesser Virginia
Speaker 2: can claim it too. The Great Dismal Swamp. I have
Speaker 2: only been to the Great Dismal Swamp once I went
Speaker 2: for an Earth First gathering like twenty two years ago.
Speaker 2: I had just gotten out of I don't know why
Speaker 2: I put in this thing about my own experience with it,
Speaker 2: but I did tell us I just got out of
Speaker 2: jail from a protest in DC.
Speaker 4: Because this is a dinner party and we're having a
Speaker 4: really lovely conversation.
Speaker 2: All right, totally, yeah, exactly and basically like after we
Speaker 2: all got out of jail, like they rest like seven
Speaker 2: hundred of us, and when we all got out of jail,
Speaker 2: a bunch of us just like walked into cars pretty
Speaker 2: much and headed down to northeastern North Carolina to go
Speaker 2: sleep in the swamps and talk about how to defend
Speaker 2: them with earth firsters.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I have some good memories from that trip. Like one time,
Speaker 2: one of the forest defenders from the West Coast was
Speaker 2: showing us how to climb trees, and the tree sits
Speaker 2: isn't a good story, is a bad story. And she
Speaker 2: got her breast caught in the descending device because she
Speaker 2: was climbing naked, and she and someone had to climb
Speaker 2: up and rescue her. And that put the fear of
Speaker 2: tree climbing into me.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I thought you were going to say
Speaker 4: there was like a nipple that flew off.
Speaker 3: I was terrible.
Speaker 2: No, no, god, everything they survived this, okay, Yeah, they
Speaker 2: were okay, The breast was okay, they were okay, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: There was like some bruising, but no, it actually was
Speaker 2: all right because they were able to like take the
Speaker 2: weight off of it right away. Yeah, But then they
Speaker 2: were just like stuck.
Speaker 1: I thought you were about to say it was a
Speaker 1: flying nipple story. I had visuals that nobody should have.
Speaker 2: Well we could. I mean I wish I was less honest,
Speaker 2: because that would be a better way to tell the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but your moral magpie.
Speaker 2: I know, I've learned that justice sensitivity is a neuro
Speaker 2: atypical trait, and now I understand why the world is
Speaker 2: the way it is, is that it's an atypical trait.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But also the thing I remember about that trip is
Speaker 2: a gigantic spider, Like I swear it was the size
Speaker 2: of my hand that was inside my tent.
Speaker 3: That's a nope for me, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: I know, I actually decided that I would rather sleep
Speaker 2: outside where if there were any spiders, they weren't stuck
Speaker 2: with me, and so I just like went and curled
Speaker 2: up my sleeping bag by the fire instead. But the
Speaker 2: main thing I remember about the Great Dismal Swamp was
Speaker 2: the story that one of the local organizers told of
Speaker 2: the history of the area of the Maroon communities.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But one thing about the Great Dismal Swamp is that
Speaker 2: I got so excited about it that I forgot to
Speaker 2: do the rest of the intro credits.
Speaker 4: Where we're we're just fucking it up today.
Speaker 2: I know it would have gone terribly if I hadn't
Speaker 2: pause to say that our audio engineers Rory Hi, Rory Hi, Rory,
Speaker 2: and our theme music was written for us by unwoman.
Speaker 2: But the main thing I remember about the Great Dismal
Speaker 2: Swamp was the story that the local organizers told of
Speaker 2: the history of the area, of the maroon communities, the
Speaker 2: folks who are often called swampers, which is a like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to mess with someone who that's their description.
Speaker 2: I don't want that. It's not the prettiest title, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I wouldn't want to mess with a swamper.
Speaker 3: No, definitely not.
Speaker 2: As long as there's been oppression, there have been people
Speaker 2: who have learned that if you just live somewhere that
Speaker 2: is an absolute pain in the ass to build roads in,
Speaker 2: you can avoid that oppression the mountains. You know, it's
Speaker 2: across history. There's like anthropology, but about this the art
Speaker 2: of not being governed that I haven't finished reading yet.
Speaker 2: My dad read it, and my dad read it and
Speaker 2: was like, no, wonder you live in the mountains, But
Speaker 2: if where you live is hard to get in and
Speaker 2: out of. Not even hard to live, but hard to
Speaker 2: get in and out of. You have less government overall.
Speaker 2: So people resisting the creation of nation states have fled
Speaker 2: to the mountains since forever. And it's like, why partisan
Speaker 2: struggle happens in the mountains or whatever. Swamps, Yeah, swamps
Speaker 2: are at least as much of a pain in the
Speaker 2: asses mountains, and they are full of huge spiders and
Speaker 2: you can't build anything there.
Speaker 3: Apparently huge spiders.
Speaker 2: Oh I know, it was probably only really the size
Speaker 2: of my palm, but that is still that's huge. That's
Speaker 2: too big for a spider for us, that's not good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not the spider's fault that I feel that way,
Speaker 2: But it's just I have limits, you know. And it's
Speaker 2: less that it's impossible to live in these places, and
Speaker 2: more like it's impossible to set up state infrastructure and
Speaker 2: methods of control and extract value from there. People live
Speaker 2: in mountains and swamps and shit, and they always have,
Speaker 2: but they're hard to project power into and they're hard
Speaker 2: to economically extract from. I mean, people do it. Don't
Speaker 2: get me wrong. I lived in I live in West Virginia.
Speaker 2: This is one of the most economically extracted from places
Speaker 2: in the country. But the way they do that is
Speaker 2: they literally blow up the mountains. So whenever I research
Speaker 2: a topic for this show, I go through sort of
Speaker 2: an exploding head meme diagram of progressions of the versions
Speaker 2: of this story. There's the clickbait summary that's too pat
Speaker 2: and just too cool and too radical, and everyone is
Speaker 2: perfect politics and everything was great, and then I stumble
Speaker 2: upon the rejection of that story. I usually then on
Speaker 2: top of that find the real story, which is sort
Speaker 2: of usually a synthesis of the two. And that's how
Speaker 2: this story was. I actually ended up back where I started,
Speaker 2: way more than I thought I would. The first story
Speaker 2: I heard about the Great Dismal Swamps was that it
Speaker 2: was a place where for centuries people fleeing enslavement, Indigenous
Speaker 2: people and poor white people lived in harmony, free from
Speaker 2: the rule of law, and waged war on the slave
Speaker 2: society around them. Clearly, I am drawn to this, right,
Speaker 2: that is a perfect story for me. There is nothing
Speaker 2: wrong here, you know. And then I heard a counterpoint,
Speaker 2: which was still describing an amazing place, that the Maroon
Speaker 2: community the Dismal Swamp was there, but it wasn't some
Speaker 2: multi racial paradise. It was just a place where mostly
Speaker 2: black people lived, and it wasn't at war with the
Speaker 2: slave society. It was just trying to keep its head
Speaker 2: down and survive. That was the story that like replaced
Speaker 2: the initial story in my head. This was still this
Speaker 2: is where I was at when I started my research,
Speaker 2: and I was like, well, I'm covering that. That sounds amazing,
Speaker 2: you know. But the thing is it was both of
Speaker 2: these things at different times for different people, over the
Speaker 2: course of hundreds of years, and they absolutely led endless
Speaker 2: raids and wars on slave society out of these swamps.
Speaker 2: So don't worry if that's what you're here for, there's
Speaker 2: going to be raids. The short version of the story
Speaker 2: is for centuries, people escaping oppression, white, Black and indigenous,
Speaker 2: especially by the end mostly black, moved into the least
Speaker 2: hospitable part of the East Coast and built a multi
Speaker 2: generational community, or rather like dozens of different communities. They
Speaker 2: led raids on nearby plantations and they helped countless people
Speaker 2: escape to freedom. For the most part, they kept their
Speaker 2: heads low rather than doing raids for survival. But there
Speaker 2: was like different communities that had different vibes around this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's step two on the don't mess with us
Speaker 1: checklist is we won't bother you if you don't bother us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And I can only imagine there was
Speaker 2: like some pretty annoying conversations in between these two groups
Speaker 2: where they're like, could you please stop raiding? Whenever you raid,
Speaker 2: they raid back, and people are like, yeah, but I
Speaker 2: want to go kill the guy who owned me, And
Speaker 2: people are like that's fair, valid, but yeah, yeah, both
Speaker 2: sides have a point, you know. Yeah, but we don't
Speaker 2: have a lot of records of what they actually talked
Speaker 2: about internally because well, I'll talk about it they didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And then like even less than basically this
Speaker 2: was like they chose to be in the dark place
Speaker 2: on them be swamps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bad, bad place for things to not disintegrate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Oh yeah, that's probably like endless journals that
Speaker 2: just oh man, that are swamp I know, I want
Speaker 2: to read them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: By the time of the Civil War or during the
Speaker 2: Civil War, they were in a gorilla war against the Confederacy,
Speaker 2: and they put their lives on the line to help
Speaker 2: other people find their freedom again and again because the
Speaker 2: maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp were some of the
Speaker 2: coolest people in American history. The problem is we mostly
Speaker 2: have conjecture. In the past twenty years or so, there
Speaker 2: have been more archaeological expeditions which confirmed a lot of
Speaker 2: what people had been conjecturing, but we still don't really
Speaker 2: know all the details. One abolition is journalist of the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century named Edmund Jackson visited the place and he
Speaker 2: wound up writing, quote, how long this colony has existed,
Speaker 2: what is the amount of its population? What portion of
Speaker 2: the colonists are now fugitives? And what are descendants of fugitives?
Speaker 2: Are questions not easily determined, And we kind of just
Speaker 2: don't have any better answers now than we did then. Well,
Speaker 2: we have slightly better answers now because after the end
Speaker 2: of the Civil War some of the people left, and
Speaker 2: then they talked about what they did. You know, they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I lived in the swamps for four years, or oh
Speaker 2: I grew up there or whatever, you know, but only
Speaker 2: a couple of those stories, fair enough. What they didn't
Speaker 2: have in the swamps was advertisements. I actually don't know
Speaker 2: how they knew what products and services to enjoy. They
Speaker 2: might not even have that's not sure. I do know
Speaker 2: they had products and services because there's archaeological evidence of
Speaker 2: an instrument maker who lived there, which is the coolest
Speaker 2: job ever. There's the guy who just made banjos in
Speaker 2: the swamp for people who are rating slave society amazing.
Speaker 2: So this show is sponsored by di y Banjo's only
Speaker 2: if you promise to attack slavers, but it's also sponsored
Speaker 2: by all of this other stuff. And we're back, We're bad.
Speaker 2: I like Banjo's. One time I was talking to this
Speaker 2: person and I was like, I don't know if you
Speaker 2: remember me, and she was like, of course I remember you, Magpie.
Speaker 2: You taught me how to play banjo. And I looked
Speaker 2: at her. This is a period of my life where
Speaker 2: I drank a lot and I said I knew how
Speaker 2: to play banjo.
Speaker 1: Ah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Because apparently at some point I had learned how to
Speaker 2: play banjo, and then, while drunk at a party, shown
Speaker 2: this person how to play Banjo's amazing. Completely forgotten that
Speaker 2: that happened.
Speaker 3: Good for you, Magpie, Thanks thanks.
Speaker 2: And that's why drinking and your early twenties leads to
Speaker 2: a lot of stories that you can't tell because you
Speaker 2: don't know them anyway. So for most of the people
Speaker 2: living in the swamp, anti maroon laws meant that it
Speaker 2: would be one hundred percent legal for people to just
Speaker 2: outright murder them for like centuries. Basically, like if you
Speaker 2: live in the swamp, someone could just like come by
Speaker 2: and shoot you and get away with it, right, So
Speaker 2: they they kept pretty closed lipped about what they were
Speaker 2: up to. People didn't want to talk much about the
Speaker 2: huge multi century crime they were all committing together. And
Speaker 2: my lord, if you're going to do a good crime,
Speaker 2: it should be multi century bad crimes. You should just
Speaker 2: keep them short.
Speaker 3: That's so funny.
Speaker 2: It's so funny. There are two books that are my
Speaker 2: main sources for this. Both came out in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: I wish I knew what that. Neither one references the other,
Speaker 2: but I'm like, I'm so curious. One is the sort
Speaker 2: of main history book on the subject. It is called
Speaker 2: Dismal Freedom by Jay Brent Morris, and it seems to
Speaker 2: be the main historical book collecting all the evidence that
Speaker 2: we have. It comes out from University of North Carolina Press.
Speaker 2: It's more of a history book. The other book is
Speaker 2: called Intimate Direct Democracy by Mediebo Cadale, and it is
Speaker 2: more of a social history. It presents where the Maroons
Speaker 2: of the Swamp stood as practitioners of direct democracy and
Speaker 2: egalitarian social structuring, and like kind of how they tied
Speaker 2: into the larger abolitionist and anti colonial struggle that was
Speaker 2: happening at the time. They're both good. There's this huge
Speaker 2: swamp called the Great Dismal Swamp. It straddles the border
Speaker 2: from North Carolina to Lesser Virginia, sometimes referred to as
Speaker 2: Virginia by people who don't live in West Virginia. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to start a fight between two states, but no
Speaker 2: one else here actually calls regular virgin way. I've decided
Speaker 2: that West Virginia, which is my adopted home and not
Speaker 2: where I am from. So I'm kind of opposer saying this,
Speaker 2: but because it exists because it didn't want to fight
Speaker 2: for the Confederacy, I'm like, well, it's clearly Greater Virginia,
Speaker 2: and so I don't know why Virginia it gets to
Speaker 2: be Regular Virginia and West Virginia has to be West Virginia.
Speaker 2: I think there's West Virginia and then Lesser Virginia. That's
Speaker 2: my theory.
Speaker 3: Hagpie, what the fuck? I know, stop trying to make
Speaker 3: people fight.
Speaker 2: Well, it's particularly bad right now because as I'm recording this,
Speaker 2: people and in Lesser Virginia don't have any running water
Speaker 2: because of an ice storm, or at least in Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 2: And oh I did it. I slipped up in Richmond
Speaker 2: Lesser Virginia. They don't have any running water right now. Wow,
Speaker 2: So sorry about y'all's water situation. Anyway, there's a swamp.
Speaker 2: It crosses between well, at the time it was just Virginia,
Speaker 2: and by at the time it didn't have any name.
Speaker 2: Well whatever, Anyway, I'm gonna cover a lot of history.
Speaker 2: The Carolinas don't even exist at the start of this story.
Speaker 2: Big swamp used to be about two thousand square miles,
Speaker 2: which is a meaningless number to me until I looked
Speaker 2: it up. Do you have any sense of how big
Speaker 2: two thousand square miles is?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I have. That does not compute in my brain. Ever.
Speaker 2: I know if someone could say twelve thousand square miles
Speaker 2: or twelve million square miles and they could be the
Speaker 2: same size, and I would not go, you know, hold.
Speaker 1: On two thousand. It's a Delaware miles. I don't think
Speaker 1: about Delaware ever, no offense.
Speaker 2: Oh right, I'm from well, not there, but close enough.
Speaker 2: It's a it's more than a Rhode Island.
Speaker 3: Wait, I'm looking at a graphic.
Speaker 1: For those other people that don't think about it, it says.
Speaker 3: You know, but it's a terrible graphic. I take it back.
Speaker 3: I don't care about that graphic.
Speaker 2: To comparing it to like a number of dinosaurs something that.
Speaker 3: Just doesn't matter. How big is two thousand square miles.
Speaker 2: That's more than a mosquito could fly at a fortnight.
Speaker 3: That's nothing. None of these things do anything for me.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, Rhode Island is like fifteen hundred, but
Speaker 2: you all have states that are the size of like Europe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, I'm a West Coast galley.
Speaker 1: Los Angeles is five hundred square miles, so you're telling
Speaker 1: me it is four four lays. So that's large and
Speaker 1: in charge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's also wild that LA is a third the
Speaker 2: size of one of the states.
Speaker 1: But anyway, but also like one of the top three
Speaker 1: economies in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it makes sense. These days, there's about a
Speaker 2: thousand square miles left overall of the swamp, but the
Speaker 2: actual portion of it that is like truly the untouched
Speaker 2: and protected swamp, is way smaller than that, because everything
Speaker 2: that happens in the United States is the story of
Speaker 2: the loss of ecosystems. Yep. Originally it ran all the
Speaker 2: way from the Chesapeake Bay up north to the album
Speaker 2: Maral sound in the South, which I clearly probably know
Speaker 2: how to pronounce. I didn't look it up, so I'm
Speaker 2: probably wrong, which is annoying because it's a word that's
Speaker 2: gonna come up again and again, and if you're from
Speaker 2: that area, you're gonna get just like slightly grouch. Here
Speaker 2: with me every time I say album Marley, album Marl,
Speaker 2: album Marl. I'm going with album Marle. See how it goes.
Speaker 2: Not all of the swamp was completely impenetrable, but a
Speaker 2: lot of it was. And like these days, the I've
Speaker 2: read like anecdotal stories whenever people are trying to talk
Speaker 2: about how remote the Dismal Swamp is. Yeah, they say
Speaker 2: that special forces like parachute in the middle of it
Speaker 2: to test their metal against nature. Well that's nice, yeah,
Speaker 2: but they're doing it against the tiny version m so
Speaker 2: they ain't got nothing on an old maroon. It's the
Speaker 2: first place I ever saw intact old growth forest besides
Speaker 2: like an old oak tree here or there or whatever,
Speaker 2: because I am not an West Coast girling. The swamp
Speaker 2: is a wonderful place and people have been fleeing there
Speaker 2: since the very first white people showed up anywhere near it.
Speaker 2: People have been fleeing into this swamp since before English
Speaker 2: people showed up.
Speaker 3: That's wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people have been living near and alongside the swamp
Speaker 2: for a really long ass time. There's archaeological evidence of
Speaker 2: settlement in the area by the early woodlanda culture about
Speaker 2: which little is known. By the sixteenth century, about a
Speaker 2: dozen different peoples lived in the swamp, and these were
Speaker 2: generally smaller tribes, clans, nations that were less prosperous than
Speaker 2: like the Cherokee who lived just west of them. And
Speaker 2: the first white settlement in the area did not last.
Speaker 2: In fact, it sort of presages the rest of the story.
Speaker 2: About six hundred or seven hundred Spanish folk showed up
Speaker 2: in fifteen twenty five with one hundred and slaved Africans
Speaker 2: in tow and the trip went badly for the white
Speaker 2: people in that group. From the beginning, their flagship ran
Speaker 2: aground the indigenous interpreters they brought along with them, pieced
Speaker 2: out and took off into the forest, and the settlers
Speaker 2: built a settlement called San Miguel de Gualdape, and they
Speaker 2: had the first known slave re volt in North America,
Speaker 2: pre dating even the English showing up, because all the
Speaker 2: settlers were starving and they were arguing, like, it's funny
Speaker 2: because it it also predates, like, well, I'll get to
Speaker 2: the complicated nature of how the slave trade started in
Speaker 2: North America and like how like sixteen nineteen was the
Speaker 2: first time that like unfree Africans arrived or whatever, and
Speaker 2: so we're sti talking about like one hundred years before that. Cool,
Speaker 2: But all the settlers were starving and they're arguing, like, hey,
Speaker 2: should we go back home? And they started in fighting,
Speaker 2: and the guy who wanted to stay was arrested by
Speaker 2: the people who wanted to leave, and the enslaved people
Speaker 2: were like, the fuck all this. They actually rescued the leader,
Speaker 2: the one who was arrested, set fired to a bunch
Speaker 2: of the buildings, and then fucked off into the woods
Speaker 2: to join the local indigenous people. And that's the end
Speaker 2: of anyone hearing about them. They had a successful slaver
Speaker 2: vault and disappeared to go live in the woods with
Speaker 2: people who liked them.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the that's the true story of the founding
Speaker 2: of America. By fifteen twenty seven, one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: Spanish survivors went back home. It was not a successful settlement.
Speaker 2: In sixteen oh seven, the English people showed up founded Jamestown,
Speaker 2: the first permanent settlement by the English in North America.
Speaker 2: And within two fucking years people were already rebelling. Like
Speaker 2: when there was like only like one hundred people there,
Speaker 2: people were fucking off and running into the woods.
Speaker 3: Incredibly cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they brought a bunch of indentured servants with them.
Speaker 2: About two thirds or three quarters of the people who
Speaker 2: were in the first wave of English settlements were indentured
Speaker 2: servants and legally unfree. This isn't slavery. And people like
Speaker 2: to argue like crazy about that, mostly white people who
Speaker 2: want to feel oppressed. But you don't have to argue
Speaker 2: that indentured servitude to slavery in order to feel oppressed.
Speaker 2: The indentured servants, who were all white at first, they
Speaker 2: were oppressed. It was a fucked up and unfree situation.
Speaker 2: By sixteen oh nine, they started running away and joining
Speaker 2: the Powatans, which is a confederation of indigenous group that
Speaker 2: the English had imediately shown up and murdered and enslaved
Speaker 2: and shit like. Literally, by the end of this first
Speaker 2: century of English settlement, ninety percent of the Powatan population
Speaker 2: is gone and the rest will be scattered. Wow, it
Speaker 2: would be really fun to teach American.
Speaker 1: History because it's just such a It'd be like it
Speaker 1: would have been my dream history teacher.
Speaker 2: I would have had a real hard time sticking to
Speaker 2: the syllabus if it was provided to me by the state,
Speaker 2: because like, I didn't learn that, Like when they first
Speaker 2: showed up, immediately people were like, not a hell with this,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not starving for you rich people, like
Speaker 2: because in sixteen o nine to sixteen ten was the
Speaker 2: starving Time in Jamestown. I probably did learn about this
Speaker 2: in school. I just didn't care because these people didn't
Speaker 2: feel like the protagonists to me. You know, Yeah, people
Speaker 2: were starving to death, thus the name starving Time, and
Speaker 2: they ate dogs and people and it was bad. So
Speaker 2: people were like, well, I could die for you, the
Speaker 2: guy who owns my contract or I could get the
Speaker 2: fuck out of here and go into the woods and
Speaker 2: hang out with these people who are perfectly nice. And
Speaker 2: so they fled, not all of them, but a ton
Speaker 2: of them fled despite being told they would be executed
Speaker 2: if they were caught.
Speaker 1: Do love an or they're like, yeah, I could do
Speaker 1: that thing that sounds really fucking awful, or literally anything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, high risk, high reward, get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2: And also, at some point there's no risk because you're
Speaker 2: just dead either way, you know, right. I was gonna
Speaker 2: write that all these first indentured servants who fled were white,
Speaker 2: because black people weren't transported to the British colonies until
Speaker 2: sixteen nineteen, and the first ones were indentured servants. But
Speaker 2: these folks weren't white yet because whiteness is a social
Speaker 2: category didn't exist in older conceptions of slavery. You could
Speaker 2: enslave people for life if they were a different religion
Speaker 2: than you. If they converted to Christianity, you were supposed
Speaker 2: to set them free. This is obviously not a good system, right,
Speaker 2: but it has a convert to Christianity, get free. Loophole,
Speaker 2: like wasn't going to work for people, specifically the Spanish
Speaker 2: and the Portuguese colonies, the Catholic colonies. By sixteen fifty,
Speaker 2: you have hereditary, lifelong enslavement based on race in the
Speaker 2: Spanish and Portuguese colonies. English people were like, well, that
Speaker 2: sounds good for the economy. Sign us up. That's my
Speaker 2: British accent. I can't do a British accent. And they
Speaker 2: did this when Charles the Second was restorative throne after
Speaker 2: the English Civil War, which you can listen to our
Speaker 2: episode about the Levelers if you want to hear more
Speaker 2: about that, and the king Charles the Second was like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's do the slave trade thing. Sign us up and
Speaker 2: we'll talk more about Charles the Second in a little bit.
Speaker 2: Don't worry. I know you're like, I hope there's more
Speaker 2: Charles the Second in here. Even before that, the English
Speaker 2: settlers were like, you know, it sucks that we go
Speaker 2: through all this work to get these people here and
Speaker 2: like make them work for us without paying them, but
Speaker 2: then we have to let them go at the end
Speaker 2: of it, Like where's the where's the profit in that?
Speaker 2: Besides the prophit I've already gotten out of them, So
Speaker 2: why don't we just come up with loopholes where if
Speaker 2: people do anything we dislike, we extend their contracts. By
Speaker 2: sixteen forty two, you have runaway labor laws, which means
Speaker 2: fugitive slave laws in America are literally older than slavery
Speaker 2: in the colonies. The idea that like, if a worker
Speaker 2: runs away, you're gonna hunt them down and maybe kill
Speaker 2: them is really really baked into this country.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, I fucking hate America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for any strong American patriots, you're not gonna like
Speaker 2: this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pool should ask USA scam ass country.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is a scam country. That's like the core
Speaker 2: of so much of what the stuff that relates to.
Speaker 3: All this scam ass country.
Speaker 2: By the sixteen sixties, you have race based slavery in
Speaker 2: the US going off like crazy, And I want to
Speaker 2: go on a rabbit hole down. The wildest thing I
Speaker 2: learned on the side while researching all of this.
Speaker 4: Like at a dinner party, would you have like a
Speaker 4: side story?
Speaker 3: Oh, this is great side question?
Speaker 2: All right. So, not only was Benjamin Franklin very racist,
Speaker 2: especially in his youth, he goes abolitionist near the end
Speaker 2: of his life, but like he believed that we should
Speaker 2: keep America white. So that are you ready for this?
Speaker 2: So that we could look good to space aliens, sir,
Speaker 2: literal outer space aliens living on Mars and Venus is
Speaker 2: why we should make America white, Sir. I'm gonna read
Speaker 2: you the quote.
Speaker 1: Sir.
Speaker 2: Ben Franklin wrote a piece in seventeen fifty one called
Speaker 2: Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind. In it, he lays
Speaker 2: out the colonial American mindset of race. And I think
Speaker 2: because I actually started reading this piece because I was
Speaker 2: trying to understand the colonial conceptions of racial categories, right yeah,
Speaker 2: because I started talking about how the people who ran
Speaker 2: away were black and tawny, and I was like, what
Speaker 2: the fuck is tawny? Why do why is a new
Speaker 2: racial category being But I'll tell you about tawny. According
Speaker 2: to Ben Franklin quote, the number of purely white people
Speaker 2: in the world is proportionately very small. All of Africa
Speaker 2: is black or tawny. Asia is chiefly tawny, America exclusive
Speaker 2: of newcomers wholly so. And in Europe the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians,
Speaker 2: and Swedes are generally what we call a swarthy complexion,
Speaker 2: as are the Germans. Also, Yeah, that's right, the fucking
Speaker 2: Swedes and Germans aren't white. That's how fucking anyway.
Speaker 3: Crazy.
Speaker 2: The Saxons only accepted who with the English make the
Speaker 2: principal body of white people on the face of the Earth.
Speaker 2: I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we
Speaker 2: are as I may call it scouring our planet by
Speaker 2: clearing America of woods and so making this side of
Speaker 2: our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of
Speaker 2: inhabitants in Mars or Venus, Why should we, in the
Speaker 2: sight of superior beings, darken its people. Why increase the
Speaker 2: suns of Africa by planting them in America, where we
Speaker 2: have so fair an opportunity by excluding all blacks and
Speaker 2: tawnis of increasing the lovely white and red. But perhaps
Speaker 2: I am partial to the complexion of my country, for
Speaker 2: such of partiality is natural to mankind. So like, he's
Speaker 2: doing so many things here.
Speaker 1: Heday, he's all over the place, and just like so
Speaker 1: stupid and like, ah, okay, yeah, what do you go.
Speaker 1: I'm like a bathel if you just threw I know,
Speaker 1: I know, there's so much going on here.
Speaker 3: Ramble so much ramble rmble.
Speaker 2: I love the like, well, everyone's racist for their own race.
Speaker 2: That's not true. You have to teach kids that race
Speaker 2: exists and that they should hate people for looking different,
Speaker 2: you know, correct, correct, And he makes up four races
Speaker 2: and he puts everyone in them from a scale of
Speaker 2: bad to good. Yeah, black, tawny, swarthy, and white. And
Speaker 2: he's saying that English people are whiter than Swedish people
Speaker 2: by complexion, which is just funny.
Speaker 1: Guy's I'm like this guy, Ben Franklin. It's like I
Speaker 1: keep forgetting that it's that it's Ben Franklin and not
Speaker 1: just some random asshole. He's, you know, mister elite asshole,
Speaker 1: mister mister ceo of asshole them.
Speaker 2: I know. And he's like the science man who's on
Speaker 2: our money, right yeah, And so he's developing this race
Speaker 2: science in order to make us more beautiful to aliens.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, like, this has to be a
Speaker 2: literary device, right, and like on some level it is.
Speaker 2: But apparently a lot of the Founding fathers real all
Speaker 2: about that alien thing. I mean, to be fair, like
Speaker 2: it's pretty reasonable to be like, well, those other worlds
Speaker 2: there might be aliens there. I'm not. I'm not mad
Speaker 2: at him for believing it. But you shouldn't do racism
Speaker 2: to look good to aliens, correct, especially if your hypothesis
Speaker 2: is that everyone thinks that the way they look is
Speaker 2: the best. Well, then why would aliens like any of
Speaker 2: us at all? If everyone's racist like you? Anyway?
Speaker 1: America scam mass country. We have an American mass country
Speaker 1: speaking of scams? Is that what you're about to do? No?
Speaker 2: No, All of our products are individually hand vetted by
Speaker 2: no one an algorithm. Here's the ads.
Speaker 1: And rebeca ya.
Speaker 2: But we're not at Ben Franklin Times yet, We're still
Speaker 2: in sixteen ten of Jamestown. I just had to skip
Speaker 2: ahead one hundred years because I got really excited about.
Speaker 1: That guy in the Aliens, like at a dinner party,
Speaker 1: telling a story out of order.
Speaker 2: Just funny because like during the course of my week,
Speaker 2: on an average week, I talked to at least one
Speaker 2: of my friends and excitedly tell them the story. And
Speaker 2: that actually helps me figure out which parts are like
Speaker 2: the exciting parts, you know, the part that I can't
Speaker 2: wait to tell my friend, you know. Absolutely so when
Speaker 2: indentured servants in Virginia were like, I'm good, I don't
Speaker 2: want to be owned by a guy. For another several years,
Speaker 2: they fled south southern coastal Virginia aka near the swamps,
Speaker 2: became the place for people who wanted to actually live free.
Speaker 2: And it was interesting because it was even understood then,
Speaker 2: right because like in America scam propaganda, you get told like,
Speaker 2: live free means exploit other people's labor and become rich,
Speaker 2: because that's what the founding fathers were all about. Sure,
Speaker 2: it was even understood by a lot of people then.
Speaker 2: To live free was not to live.
Speaker 3: Wealthy, to live sustainably.
Speaker 2: If you want to be wealthy, you stay in Plantation Town. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sustainably yeah.
Speaker 2: If you want to live free where people don't tell
Speaker 2: each other what to do and you all just get
Speaker 2: along with each other, you go into what would have
Speaker 2: been called the Indian territories, you go into you know,
Speaker 2: you go outside the colonies. So in order to live free,
Speaker 2: you don't want to have a state at all. So
Speaker 2: there's this whole uncolonized region between English Virginia and Spanish Florida,
Speaker 2: and that's where people white and black went for decades
Speaker 2: before the founding of the Carolinas. Some went into the
Speaker 2: swamps themselves and formed the start of what later became
Speaker 2: the Dismal Swamp Maroon communities. Others more of them settled
Speaker 2: around the area, especially around the Albemarle Sound. You'd think
Speaker 2: I would looked it up during a break, but I didn't.
Speaker 2: This history of this time feels a little bit blurry,
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna I'm not gonna say this next little
Speaker 2: bit with the most confidence, but I referenced everything they
Speaker 2: could right Over the course of the sixteen hundreds people
Speaker 2: fleeing colonial government went to the Albemarle Sound and was
Speaker 2: now North Carolina, the southern end of the Great Dismal Swamp.
Speaker 2: There they formed an independent assembly of people, the albamarl Assembly.
Speaker 2: I told you I was going to say this name
Speaker 2: a lot. And they worked within the Tuscarora Confederacy, which
Speaker 2: was a confederacy of three tribes in the area. And
Speaker 2: they had a culture built on a galitarian values, like
Speaker 2: avoiding the idea of having rich landowners who control everything.
Speaker 2: And they also wanted to avoid racism between white, black,
Speaker 2: and indigenous people, so they had a tri racial setup,
Speaker 2: and that is going to play a huge part in
Speaker 2: everything that is to come and as part of why,
Speaker 2: it's just like, I don't know, it's such a cool story.
Speaker 2: The Anglican Church was largely kept out of the region.
Speaker 2: People practiced and it wasn't a big deal, and you'd
Speaker 2: have like priests or pastors or whatever, but they'd like
Speaker 2: practice in private because the Anglican Church was seen as
Speaker 2: like basically an institute of the state and they didn't
Speaker 2: want that there. Quaker mission Quakers mentioned, sorry, yep, no, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is like actually North Carolina is heavily Quaker at
Speaker 2: this time because they had more religious freedom, especially once
Speaker 2: you actually have a yeah Carolina in a couple of decades.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, so everyone take a drink. Quakers were mentioned,
Speaker 2: and Quaker's found more acceptance there.
Speaker 1: Sick.
Speaker 2: By the sixteen sixties, King Charles the Second, who I
Speaker 2: told you I was going to come back to he
Speaker 2: was ruling in England and he granted Carolinas to a
Speaker 2: bunch of English people, even though it wasn't his to
Speaker 2: give away. Imagine doing that.
Speaker 3: Why do they do that? Yeah, why do they think that's? Okay?
Speaker 4: Just imagine just imagine somebody being you know, let's go
Speaker 4: even like super basic.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go potatoes. It's it's fucking good people to
Speaker 3: close up.
Speaker 1: You have just made a magical, delicious, let's go baked
Speaker 1: potato for one, and you have your fork and you're
Speaker 1: about to take a bite of it.
Speaker 4: And not only do they take your potato, but they
Speaker 4: take your fork and give it to some guy you've
Speaker 4: never met.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, and like and not not a
Speaker 2: hungry guy.
Speaker 4: Not a hungry not not a guy who's hungry, not
Speaker 4: a guy who doesn't have a baked potato or a.
Speaker 5: Fork, a guy who has a lot of potatoes, guy
Speaker 5: who's drowning of potatoes and forks, yeah, and all the fixins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, just like you're like, excuse me, that's
Speaker 2: my potato.
Speaker 4: That's my fucking potato, motherfucker.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then and then.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, was this your potato? Well, now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call it New York potato.
Speaker 2: Or totally we're gonna name it after Sophie. We stole
Speaker 2: your potato.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I took my Sofie potato, and now they're gonna
Speaker 4: call it.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Harry, Well, they might still call it
Speaker 5: a Sophie potato forever, but or your descendants will have
Speaker 5: to fight for to rename Sophie Potato but not actually
Speaker 5: be given back to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, anyway, Uh so yeah Carolina, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: this is a good this is a good side quest
Speaker 2: and uh we're both hungry. I think is also part
Speaker 2: of what's happening. Definitely Carolina now has a government, but
Speaker 2: for decades longer, several generations. The album Marl Assembly continues
Speaker 2: its a galitarian, anti authoritarian ways because power projection is
Speaker 2: a very different, like it's a very different thing to
Speaker 2: be like I'm in charge and then have a way
Speaker 2: to tell people you're in charge and make that happen.
Speaker 2: A lot of anthropology is like literally around the study
Speaker 2: of like, but could the king tell anyone what to do?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Well, I love when I love when some guy that's
Speaker 1: definitely not in charge tries to tell people they're in charge,
Speaker 1: and then someone else who's actually in charge just walks
Speaker 1: in the room and everybody realizes this is that that
Speaker 1: person's in charge. It's one of my favorite scenarios.
Speaker 2: That is the vibe of what's happening in Northern Carolina
Speaker 2: right now. Because okay, because Carolina was the entire region
Speaker 2: between Virginia and Florida is like one big entity, and
Speaker 2: it was. The government was in Charleston, which was far
Speaker 2: to the south of Northern Carolina and like not easy
Speaker 2: to travel. So in Northern Carolina and people are like,
Speaker 2: all right, whatever we're doing. For a couple decades, people
Speaker 2: are just kind of doing whatever they want. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: gains a reputation Northern Carolina as a rogues harbor, which
Speaker 2: is always a good time. If you have a choice
Speaker 2: between living in a rogu's harbor and not living in
Speaker 2: a rogues harbor, you should live in a rogue's harbor.
Speaker 3: So my dog's called my house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The governor of Virginia around this time said, quote,
Speaker 2: as regards our neighbor, North Carolina is and always was
Speaker 2: the sink of America, the refuge of our renegades until
Speaker 2: in better order, it is a danger to us. So
Speaker 2: if you live in North Carolina, you should have some
Speaker 2: pride about that. It was full of quote pirates and
Speaker 2: runaway servants, and it didn't have a government. I mean,
Speaker 2: it did have a government, but not one that was
Speaker 2: good at projecting power. And the Arbor Marlay Assembly is
Speaker 2: doing its thing. And someone complained at the time that quote,
Speaker 2: all sorts of people, even servants, negroes, Aliens, Jews, and
Speaker 2: common sailors were admitted to vote. So hey, the first
Speaker 2: place that black people were able to vote in North
Speaker 2: America probably was the Assembly around the Sound, because you
Speaker 2: had a sort of democratic thing actually happening, unlike whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I'll talk more about the American Revolution later when we
Speaker 2: get to it. And this place was sometimes referred to
Speaker 2: disparagingly as the Quaker Leveler Republic, and that is not
Speaker 2: a bad thing to be at all. And in this
Speaker 2: case levelers for people haven't listened to my episode about
Speaker 2: the Levelers. They're this English radical group that was trying
Speaker 2: to level the difference between the rich and the poor,
Speaker 2: which we need right now. But this place, with the Assembly,
Speaker 2: it was not an outright utopia. There were slavers there
Speaker 2: and there were enslaved people, the substantially fewer than elsewhere.
Speaker 2: One historian I read talked about how it managed to
Speaker 2: stay oddly egalitarian despite some people owning each other, like
Speaker 2: wasn't trying to be like and it's totally fine now, right,
Speaker 2: but there just like was a difference between plantation culture
Speaker 2: and like the comparison it used I think they talked
Speaker 2: about being like on both ends of the saw cutting.
Speaker 2: You know, it was like old timey saws where you
Speaker 2: cut down a tree with like a two person saw.
Speaker 2: You know, you're going to be like everyone's equal when
Speaker 2: you're holding the saw. It's the kind of vibe that
Speaker 2: they claimed again, it's slavery, it's bad, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They also, despite allowing that, they had this policy of
Speaker 2: allowing runaways, including runaway and slave people to come and
Speaker 2: stay there and be unharrassed. So even though some people
Speaker 2: weren't free there, other people were harbored as fugitives from
Speaker 2: It seems messy, that's what it seems like. It seems messy.
Speaker 2: And then like debtors, they pass this law that when
Speaker 2: you show up your debt is a racer, like we're
Speaker 2: not gonna no one can come and get you for
Speaker 2: your debt. And I was a little bit like, well,
Speaker 2: what's that about. Is it like, oh, you went bankrupt.
Speaker 2: I think that's a reference to indentured servitude because that's
Speaker 2: your death.
Speaker 1: Oh okay that that yeah, yeah, that seems logical.
Speaker 2: And the radical vibe of the area started to ebb.
Speaker 2: By sixteen ninety or so, what.
Speaker 1: An excellent sentence you wrote there. The radical vibe of
Speaker 1: the area started to ed by sixteen ninety or so,
Speaker 1: just like, what a great sentence, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Feel like people.
Speaker 1: Don't realize how hard it is to like write about
Speaker 1: history and make it sound like uniquely your own. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like the radical vibe of the area started to ebb
Speaker 1: by sixteen ninety or so.
Speaker 2: So Magpie and writing a script where you know you're
Speaker 2: going to read it aloud and you want it to
Speaker 2: sound natural when you read it aloud. It is like
Speaker 2: a had to compliment that I refuse to go back
Speaker 2: and listen to my first episodes.
Speaker 3: They don't exist. What do you mean?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what I want? Yeah, although some of them
Speaker 2: are good, but yeah, yeah. But by sixteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: an Anglican deputy governor declared the Church of England is
Speaker 2: the official state religion of the Carolinas and made everyone
Speaker 2: pay a tax to support the church. Worse than that,
Speaker 2: he came up with a way to drive the Quakers
Speaker 2: out of office because they did this thing where they
Speaker 2: decided that all officials needed to swear an oath to
Speaker 2: the new Queen Anne of England and Quakers are forbidden
Speaker 2: by the religion from swearing oaths. And the reason is
Speaker 2: kind of cool. Quakers are already forbidden to lie, So
Speaker 2: you can't swear an oath saying you're telling the truth
Speaker 2: because that implies you ever lie, so like you're always
Speaker 2: telling the truth. Therefore you can't swear an oath.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So all of the Quakers were kicked out of office
Speaker 2: in the Carolinas, and you get this tiny uprising called
Speaker 2: Carry's Rebellion, where the people being ousted from power tried
Speaker 2: really hard not to be ousted from power, and the
Speaker 2: Royal Navy intervened. I had this whole thing where I
Speaker 2: was like writing in paragraphs and paragraphs about this, but
Speaker 2: then I was like, Okay, Kerrie's Rebellion is absolutely a
Speaker 2: side quest here. And the Royal Navy intervened, and the
Speaker 2: Quaker leveler Republic fell, and the people who'd been living
Speaker 2: for generations in this anti authoritarian, anti racist settlement, some
Speaker 2: of them fled into the less settled interior of the state,
Speaker 2: but others fled into the great dismal Swamp, and they
Speaker 2: probably weren't alone there even already. Certainly they were about
Speaker 2: to not be alone there at all. Because a ton
Speaker 2: more people are going to come and they're going to
Speaker 2: lead gorilla wars against slavery for centuries. But we're not
Speaker 2: going to talk about it today. We're going to talk
Speaker 2: about it on Wednesday. But first, well, how are we feeling?
Speaker 2: I guess we haven't really gotten to the maroons yet.
Speaker 2: We've just gotten to some people.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a context episode. It's great.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot I still do that. Yep.
Speaker 3: Fuck Ben Franklin, I'm having a good time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, anything you want to plug here at the
Speaker 2: end of the first episode.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. I mean the organizations we plugged
Speaker 1: at the top and then yeah, uh, you know, just
Speaker 1: follow all the cool Zone Media shows at cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media on Blue Sky, Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'll say, if you're looking at all this
Speaker 2: stuff happening elsewhere, maybe you don't live in Texas or
Speaker 2: Richmond or LA right now, but you're looking and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's going to eventually happen where I'm at, or maybe
Speaker 2: it already has, or maybe you do live in one
Speaker 2: of those places. There's never a wrong time to start
Speaker 2: getting prepared. And I think that I guess This is
Speaker 2: a plug for my other podcast, Live Like the World
Speaker 2: Is Dying, in which I talk alongside other co hosts
Speaker 2: about preparedness and how it's not just like a right
Speaker 2: wing people and bunkers thing, but it's not as intimidating
Speaker 2: as you think it is. To get started. Really at
Speaker 2: the very beginning, preparedness looks like try and have about
Speaker 2: three days where the food, water, and power for like
Speaker 2: cell phones, you know, like battery banks or whatever, like
Speaker 2: little tiny ones in your house, plus a go bag
Speaker 2: ready to go in case of emergencies. That's the that's
Speaker 2: the start, you know, and that'll get you through a lot.
Speaker 2: And by being individually prepared, you are in a better
Speaker 2: position to help the communities around you. So that's that's
Speaker 2: what I'll say here at the end of this episode.
Speaker 2: And if you're living through a hard time, good luck,
Speaker 2: and I hope we're all able to take care of
Speaker 2: each other and support mutual aid and see you Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media and more podcasts and cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Visit our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 3: You get your podcasts,