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Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,

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Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.

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Speaker 2: Listening past, you can't predict.

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Speaker 1: Anything brought to you by first Light. When I'm hunting,

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Speaker 1: I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds, no compromise,

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Speaker 1: gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts,

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Speaker 1: just gear that works. Check it out at first light

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Speaker 1: dot com. That's f I R S T L I

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Speaker 1: T E dot com. All right, everybody join today? By

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Speaker 1: Right Thompson, four time New York Times best selling author,

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Speaker 1: grew up in the Mississippi Delta. Yes, sir, if you

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Speaker 1: recognize that name, you might know him because uh right.

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Speaker 1: As a senior writer for ESPN dot Com ESPN the

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Speaker 1: magazine worked at all kind of newspapers over the years,

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Speaker 1: covering all aspects of sports. He wrote the book Pappy Land,

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Speaker 1: The Story of Family, Fine Bourbon and the Things That Last.

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Speaker 1: And he wrote The Cost of These Dreams, sports stories

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Speaker 1: and other serious business. He was the editor for a

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Speaker 1: time and the best American sports writing, Oh yeah, man,

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Speaker 1: I had over the years made it into a handful

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Speaker 1: of the best American essays and travel writing and all

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Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Not essays travel writing. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: never never got a nod from the old sports writing.

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Speaker 1: Well that now I know who to blame.

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Speaker 3: You should definitely blame me. That's a tremendous oversight, only

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Speaker 3: because like my favorite sports writing is outdoors writing.

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Speaker 1: You know, I thought they were being prejudiced against this.

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Speaker 3: Well they they probably were, I added in one version

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Speaker 3: of it. It's just like like I only screwed you

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Speaker 3: once got its school someone else.

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Speaker 1: I'm over it now, man, I'm over it.

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Speaker 3: Uh.

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Speaker 1: We're here today to talk about well, we're here today

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Speaker 1: to talk about a book, but particularly like a Let

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Speaker 1: me start over explaining this. First off, here's the book

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Speaker 1: we're here to talk about. It's called The Barn. Now

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Speaker 1: take note of the title. It's called The Barn. The

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Speaker 1: subtitle is the subtitle is the secret history of a

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Speaker 1: murder in Mississippi. When I was a little kid growing up,

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Speaker 1: I was aware of I was aware of the outlines

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Speaker 1: of the murder of Emmett.

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Speaker 3: Till in what year, in nineteen fifty five as a kid.

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Speaker 1: When I at the point when I hit college, I

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Speaker 1: could have told you that Emmett Till was a boy

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Speaker 1: who was murdered in Mississippi for whistling at cat calling

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Speaker 1: something some affront to a white woman.

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Speaker 3: Yep.

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Speaker 1: And he was killed. The killers weren't punished, and his

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Speaker 1: body turned up in in uh what river?

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Speaker 3: A hatchy river?

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Speaker 1: His body I knew his body turned up into river,

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Speaker 1: and I knew it was tied to some piece of

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Speaker 1: heavy equipment.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, to the a cotton gin fan.

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Speaker 1: Yep, I knew that. And this tells that story. But

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Speaker 1: the reason I wanted to have you on and talk

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Speaker 1: to you is I want people to understand that story.

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Speaker 1: But I think that it's fascinating to me. And even

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Speaker 1: when I knew you were working on the book and

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Speaker 1: coming out that you were calling the book the Barn,

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Speaker 1: where in the book you take a very unique way

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Speaker 1: of looking at a patch of ground. And I think

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Speaker 1: that this way of looking at a patch of ground

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Speaker 1: is applicable to people's lives who love nature, who love

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Speaker 1: the outdoors, who like the hunt, and who like the fish, whatever,

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Speaker 1: people who have a close relationship to the land, which

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Speaker 1: is something I encourage. I try to encourage and go

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Speaker 1: and pick a piece of ground right and ask yourself elf,

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Speaker 1: not only like, not only what is the history of

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Speaker 1: this piece of ground. But what are the things that

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Speaker 1: happened that made it be that this piece of ground

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Speaker 1: is now where you find inspiration or whatever? Right, Meaning,

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Speaker 1: if you have some hunting cabin up north that you

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Speaker 1: would or a honey cabin down south whatever the hell

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Speaker 1: where I'm from in Michigan, like everyone's hunting cabin is

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Speaker 1: for whatever reason, is always to the north. Just probably

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Speaker 1: parts of the country where everybody's hunting cabin is east, south,

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Speaker 1: whatever the hell. But for us in the Upper Midwest,

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Speaker 1: every the action is always perceived to be up north. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so you have a hunting cabin up north, and by

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Speaker 1: looking at how you handle this piece of ground, and

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Speaker 1: the barn is on a patch of ground, and m

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Speaker 1: Attill was murdered in a barn. Yep, Bizarrely, I would

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Speaker 1: never have guessed this is true. Bizarrely that barn still

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Speaker 1: sits there today.

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Speaker 3: I mean, and it is. It's a guy's barn. I mean,

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Speaker 3: there are Christmas decorations in it, All of his duck

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Speaker 3: hunting gear is in it. The owner of the barn,

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Speaker 3: who I love and gotten to know really well. You know,

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Speaker 3: he duck hunts every day of duck season. And it's

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Speaker 3: a barn sitting on a piece of land. And I

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Speaker 3: mean you know this well, but it was a uniquely

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Speaker 3: American idea for the Land Ordnance Act of seventeen eighty five,

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Speaker 3: which is Thomas Jefferson, which essentially dropped a grid over

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Speaker 3: America and divided it into townships and ranges. And so

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Speaker 3: the barn is in section two of Township twenty two north,

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Speaker 3: range four west, measured from the Choctaw Meridian. And like,

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Speaker 3: the thing that I thought was important is it's a

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Speaker 3: thirteen hundred year history of this square of land.

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Speaker 1: And that yeah, that is when we get going on this,

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Speaker 1: Like that is one of the things I want to

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Speaker 1: focus on, is this idea that anyone in an America

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Speaker 1: who has an attachment to a place or maybe it's

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Speaker 1: a place where something horrible happened, like in the case

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Speaker 1: of your book, can learn to understand their spot, can

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Speaker 1: like learn to understand their spot in a deep history sense.

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Speaker 1: That's right, Like the culturally transactionally, like what are the

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Speaker 1: things that needed to happen? Who are the people that

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Speaker 1: needed to live? What are the actions that needed to occur?

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Speaker 1: That has it be that your favorite spot?

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Speaker 3: You know?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like why is it there? And why are you there?

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Speaker 3: And how did how did we get here? I mean,

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Speaker 3: like I have this fantasy that we could do the

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Speaker 3: entire country this way like I did one thirty six

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Speaker 3: square mile block. I would love it if people would

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Speaker 3: take their own version of that, whether it's it's like

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Speaker 3: you said, whether something terrible happened here, or whether is

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Speaker 3: this the thirty six square miles where the last cattle

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Speaker 3: drove was in this part of Montana exactly? And now

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Speaker 3: tell me every single human being whoever went in and

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Speaker 3: out of this square of land, and every dollar that

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Speaker 3: went in and out. I mean, one of my favorite

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Speaker 3: parts of this was I felt like, you know, there

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Speaker 3: are long stretches of nature writing in here, because I

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Speaker 3: felt like you had to evoke the world pre civilization,

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Speaker 3: like what was this like before people got here? You know?

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Speaker 3: And the Mississippi Delta was, as you know you've been

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Speaker 3: down there. I mean, it was a vast, almost uninhabitable

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Speaker 3: hardwood swamp until around nineteen hundred and then they started

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Speaker 3: clearing it and building sort of the last generation of

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Speaker 3: cotton plantations there, and so trying to understand how what

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Speaker 3: should have been a swamp became, you know, a man

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Speaker 3: made cotton factory. I mean, I you know nothing about

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Speaker 3: the Mississippi Delta unless you cross the levee where all

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Speaker 3: those hunting camps are. Nothing about the Mississippi Delta has

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Speaker 3: any of its roots in nature. I mean, this is

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Speaker 3: man made land, and I think that's an important thing

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Speaker 3: to talk about.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm struggling like a little bit. The story you

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Speaker 1: tell is so complicated.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, let's.

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Speaker 1: Let's do this, man, if you don't mind it, first off,

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Speaker 1: give a little, give a little. How did you get

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Speaker 1: into sports writing?

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Speaker 3: So it's funny. I wanted to write about music and

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Speaker 3: I was randomly assigned to the sports section at the

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Speaker 3: college newspaper. But I fell in love with it because

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Speaker 3: you know, there's nothing you can't write about through the

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Speaker 3: prism of sports. And there's something incredible about a locker room,

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Speaker 3: because like, these people have nothing in common except they've

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Speaker 3: won some genetic lottery. And so I've always found that

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Speaker 3: to be fascinating. And I'm most interested in tribes and

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Speaker 3: tribalism and how we organize ourselves and how belief systems

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Speaker 3: are handed down from generation to generation, sort of that

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Speaker 3: as the ultimate inheritance. And so much of sports is

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Speaker 3: rooted in sort of how we code our sort of

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Speaker 3: tribal inheritance to hand from generation to generation. And I mean,

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Speaker 3: I think that's also true for hunting and fishing. I mean,

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Speaker 3: the ways in which we pass on the things that

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Speaker 3: are important to us about ourselves that we inherited from

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Speaker 3: our parents or our grandparents, and how do we transfer

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Speaker 3: those to another generation of people. And I feel like

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Speaker 3: hunting and fishing is a huge part of that, you know,

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Speaker 3: in sports like that. You know, I've always been fascinated

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Speaker 3: by the role the games we love play and shaping

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Speaker 3: of our identity. And so I've liked that from the

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Speaker 3: I've liked that forever, you know, and I've liked you know,

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Speaker 3: I started working for ESPN twenty years ago, and it's

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Speaker 3: you know, it's the you know, it's the greatest job

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Speaker 3: in the world because you just get to sort of

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Speaker 3: follow your obsessions. Yeah, you know, so you're still active.

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Speaker 1: You write about sports now, and you're right about everything

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Speaker 1: for like Kentucky derby basketball, football.

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Speaker 3: It's just it's like whatever, Uh, It's it's really lucky

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Speaker 3: because it's just the thing that I'm into at that moment.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I'm doing a thing right now on a

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Speaker 3: tennis star who became a spy, you know, and that's

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Speaker 3: and like it so it's a World War two thriller

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Speaker 3: and so like it's just whatever you're I've been very

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Speaker 3: lucky in that sense to get to follow obsessions. Yeah uh.

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Speaker 1: And I imagine you like to pull a cork too,

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Speaker 1: And that's why you wrote about bourbon.

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Speaker 3: Uh yeah, man, let me tell you the Uh that

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Speaker 3: was when you can still have non reimbursable work expenses

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Speaker 3: written off on your taxes before they close that loophole.

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Speaker 3: Uh uh that was great. I mean, like, you know,

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Speaker 3: I had to write I finally had to turn the

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Speaker 3: book in because I'd already spent all the advance on whiskey.

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Speaker 3: I was like, well, I can't, you know, there is

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Speaker 3: no money to give back. But that was fun man.

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Speaker 1: And and yeah, they were with the tax code stuff.

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Speaker 1: They really screwed writers because they and then now they're

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Speaker 1: handing all that out to people that operate on tip functions. Well,

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Speaker 1: and they screwed writers in the and now they're turnaround

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Speaker 1: and basically given the whole it's in the whole world

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Speaker 1: to tip people. Well, and also are they so much

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Speaker 1: more important than writers?

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Speaker 3: Well, and also in screwing over writers, they really screwed

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Speaker 3: over small business owners because the h you spend money

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Speaker 3: on your small business to like it's an it's an

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Speaker 3: investment in the idea of it in the future. And

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Speaker 3: so when you you know, if I'm doing if I'm

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Speaker 3: trying to build my my business, there are legitimate tax

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Speaker 3: write offs that are really important that you just can't

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Speaker 3: do anymore. And so like there was you know, there

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Speaker 3: are things you there are things you can't go do

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Speaker 3: on a flyer being like you know, I think this

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Speaker 3: is for instance, I think this is a great story.

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Speaker 3: I can't get anybody to bite unless I go spend

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Speaker 3: a little bit of money to go aboard it. And

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Speaker 3: so you know, that whole ecosystem was just eliminated almost overnight.

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Speaker 1: No one wants to hear about that. We'll have to

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Speaker 1: take that offline.

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Speaker 3: No, that's right. But the only writer, by the way,

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Speaker 3: like that. There are eleven people right now who are like, yeah,

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Speaker 3: like leaning in, that's right.

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Speaker 1: They're like that's true. Yeah, uh, next thing I want

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Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, just because we're we're gonna, of course

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Speaker 1: step back and go forward. Of course, layout layout I

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Speaker 1: kind of gave a quick outline of the murder of

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Speaker 1: Mmett Till. Yeah, but like it's is as quickly as comfortable. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: tell the story of the murder of Emmett Till so

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Speaker 1: we can so we can start talking about this barn

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Speaker 1: that's right, like this piece of ground.

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Speaker 3: So, uh, Emmett Till had just turned fourteen years old

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Speaker 3: and he lived in Chicago. Very much a boy I mean,

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Speaker 3: he still liked comic books. Uh, he had just gotten

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Speaker 3: interested in girls. At his fourteenth birthday party, his mother

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Speaker 3: and her friends overheard him and his friends playing spin

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Speaker 3: the bottle, okay, and so like, you know, that's in

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Speaker 3: an age where you still like, you know, I want

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Speaker 3: to kiss a girl, you have a rush own, but

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Speaker 3: also still like comic books. Like that's such a specific

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Speaker 3: moment of boyhood. And he went south to visit his family.

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Speaker 3: He's from Chicago, but they were all sort of Mississippi

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Speaker 3: expats and they were going to take the train down

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Speaker 3: just before the end of summer before schools started, and

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Speaker 3: he was going with his cousin, next door neighbor and

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Speaker 3: best friend. There was a guy named Wheeler Parker and

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Speaker 3: so this was nineteen fifty five. This was the year

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Speaker 3: after Brown v. Board of Education, which is only important

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Speaker 3: because the whole South, that's the Supreme Court case that

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Speaker 3: integrated schools. The whole South just ignored it. So the

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Speaker 3: next year they had to do Brown two. So the

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Speaker 3: Supreme Court had to come in and be like, no, really,

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Speaker 3: we minute, you have to do this. So that whole summer,

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Speaker 3: everybody was waiting on that Supreme Court decision to come out. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 3: there was a governor's election in Mississippi where they were

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Speaker 3: all sort of it was a race to the bottom

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Speaker 3: for these votes, and so their whole campaign was about

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Speaker 3: school segregation. So they these you should get on newspaper

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Speaker 3: com and read these speeches these politicians were giving because

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Speaker 3: they just were saying outlandish stuff, and so it comes South.

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Speaker 3: He doesn't really know any of this is going on.

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Speaker 3: He gets down. You have to understand, he's overweight, he

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Speaker 3: has a stutter. The first day he gets there, he

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Speaker 3: goes out to work because it's they're picking cotton now,

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Speaker 3: and he goes out to work with his cousins and

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Speaker 3: his family, and he makes it about a half day.

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Speaker 3: It's really hot out there, and he gets sent back

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Speaker 3: to the house to help the women and so you know,

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Speaker 3: so this is this thirteen year old just turned fourteen

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Speaker 3: year old boy who is down with his cousins, who

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Speaker 3: is not having a great week. And on that Wednesday,

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Speaker 3: they go to a little store in town to go

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Speaker 3: get like ice cream and sodas and things, and so

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Speaker 3: all the boys drive in and he's in the store

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Speaker 3: for a minute alone. But it's a sq door later,

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Speaker 3: Carolyn Bryant, who was the woman that he whistled at,

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Speaker 3: and her husband and his step brother, his half brother

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Speaker 3: are the ones who killed him. She is in there.

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Speaker 3: She said she made up this outlandish story of all

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Speaker 3: the things he said to her. You know, I've ft

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Speaker 3: white women before. One, everyone on the porch could hear

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Speaker 3: every word being said in the store, and that never happened.

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Speaker 3: And two he had a stutter, he couldn't have said it.

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Speaker 3: And so she comes outside and he you know, I

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Speaker 3: so relate to this, remembering being a fourteen year old boy.

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Speaker 3: I think he's trying to show off for the older kids,

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Speaker 3: and he whistled at her cat call whistle, and he

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Speaker 3: looked around and saw in his cousin's eyes real quick.

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Speaker 1: Over the years, there's been a lot of debate, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: about who said what and how long the exchange.

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Speaker 3: Was, so what actually happened. And a lot of this

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Speaker 3: is well intentioned accidental misinformation because made me tell sort

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Speaker 3: of had a certain version of how she thought her

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00:16:02,480 --> 00:16:06,160
Speaker 3: son's last days went. The last living eyewitnesses a guy

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Speaker 3: named Reverend Wheeler Parker, who I just saw down in

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Speaker 3: Mississippi last weekend, and he was standing next to him

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Speaker 3: when he whistled, and Emmett saw the fear in his

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Speaker 3: cousin's eyes and was like, something's wrong, and so they ran.

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Speaker 3: That was on a Wednesday. The thing you have to

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Speaker 3: understand is it was less than twenty four hours after

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Speaker 3: the election of that governor's race. I was telling you

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Speaker 3: about where these governors had been. These candidates had been

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Speaker 3: saying outlandish stuff. A lot of talk about bayonets, a

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Speaker 3: lot of talk about violence, a lot of talk about

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Speaker 3: defending your way of life. And you know, most of

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Speaker 3: the voters understood they were just politicians chasing votes, but

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Speaker 3: some people heard them and took them serious. And so

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Speaker 3: you know, in Mississippi especially, there's such a direct link

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Speaker 3: between political rhetoric and violence. I mean, it's not an

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Speaker 3: accident that the day after John F. Kennedy gave his

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Speaker 3: famous civil rights speech, Medgar Evers was shot. I mean,

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Speaker 3: those things are, those things are, especially in Mississippi, always

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Speaker 3: really closely related. So he steps down into this cauldron

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Speaker 3: where the population has been whipped up into a frenzy

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Speaker 3: by months of five people trying to prove they are

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Speaker 3: more segregated than anyone else. And so then there's just

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Speaker 3: a kid in the middle of that. You know, being

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Speaker 3: fourteen is about testing boundaries, and the dominant culture of

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Speaker 3: Mississippi was about protecting boundaries.

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Speaker 1: And I mean this is right where you grew up.

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Speaker 3: I mean, my family farm is twenty three miles from

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Speaker 3: the barn, and so and so they go to town.

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Speaker 3: Emtt and his cousins go to Greenwood for Saturday night

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Speaker 3: to go to the movie. They stopped at a plantation

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Speaker 3: on the way home. At a party, both Wheeler and

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Speaker 3: Emmett had their first ever SIPs of alcohol, a little

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Speaker 3: sip of moonshine. They didn't like it, but there that age.

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Speaker 3: Both of them had their first drink. That night, fourteen

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Speaker 3: and sixteen, they rode home. They accidentally hit a dog

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Speaker 3: on the way home, and Emmett was begging them to

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Speaker 3: stop the car and go check on the check on

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Speaker 3: the dog, and it was too dark, and his cousins

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Speaker 3: wouldn't And so they drove home in silence while Emmett

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Speaker 3: quietly cried in the back seat of the car over

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Speaker 3: the dog. They went to bed. Two and a half

330
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Speaker 3: hours later, Roy Bryant and his brother JW. Milem show

331
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Speaker 3: up at the house beating on the door, asking to

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Speaker 3: see that boy in Chicago that did the talking. They

333
00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:36,520
Speaker 3: pointed the gun in Whigler Parker's face. First. He still

334
00:18:36,560 --> 00:18:43,439
Speaker 3: remembers the staring down the barrel of a nineteen eleven

335
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Speaker 3: forty five. He was just like, the barrel's a lot

336
00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:47,600
Speaker 3: wider than you think it's going to be, and like

337
00:18:47,720 --> 00:18:50,160
Speaker 3: he remembered that. He remembered the smell of the whiskey

338
00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:53,200
Speaker 3: on their breaths, on their breath They went and got

339
00:18:53,920 --> 00:18:56,720
Speaker 3: emmet up. He was sleeping with his cousin, Simeon Wright.

340
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Speaker 3: He sime And remembered he died probably ten years ago,

341
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Speaker 3: but Simeon remembered his whole life. How long it took

342
00:19:04,680 --> 00:19:06,680
Speaker 3: him and to get his shoes on. Because he was scared,

343
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Speaker 3: They took him out. They drove him around all night.

344
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Speaker 3: They took him to Roy and j W's brother Leslie's barn.

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Speaker 3: The barn they you know, they tortured him the pistol,

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Speaker 3: whiped him with the forty five, and there was a

347
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Speaker 3: witness named Willie Reid who heard him crying out for

348
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Speaker 3: his mom. And then they killed him and threw his

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Speaker 3: body in the Talahatchie River where he would have stayed.

350
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Speaker 3: You know, I went to the banks one time with

351
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Speaker 3: a member of his family, was Sharon Wright, who's Moses right,

352
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Speaker 3: Moses Wright's niece. Moses Right is Emmatt's uncle. That's whose

353
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Speaker 3: house he was staying in the night he was kidnapped.

354
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Speaker 3: And I'm standing on the banks of the Talahatchie River

355
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Speaker 3: with her, and I just sort was like, what do

356
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:51,720
Speaker 3: you think about when you're here? And she's like, I'm

357
00:19:51,760 --> 00:19:54,480
Speaker 3: just so grateful, and I'm like what, and she's like

358
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Speaker 3: The Talahatchie River in Mississippi is known by black families

359
00:19:58,920 --> 00:20:01,320
Speaker 3: as the Singing River because there were been so many

360
00:20:01,359 --> 00:20:03,640
Speaker 3: dead bodies thrown in it. And she looked at there,

361
00:20:03,720 --> 00:20:05,200
Speaker 3: she looked at me, and he goes he got out

362
00:20:05,240 --> 00:20:08,920
Speaker 3: of the river, and you know, they tried to State

363
00:20:08,960 --> 00:20:11,560
Speaker 3: of Mississippi saw the body and tried to bury it immediately.

364
00:20:11,800 --> 00:20:14,680
Speaker 3: There was a whole doug the East Money Church of

365
00:20:14,720 --> 00:20:17,360
Speaker 3: God in Christ. They had a preacher, they had pallbearers,

366
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Speaker 3: they had the body out there. By the way. The

367
00:20:20,200 --> 00:20:25,240
Speaker 3: embalmer did an incredible job at the Black funeral home.

368
00:20:25,280 --> 00:20:28,560
Speaker 3: His name was Champ Jackson. Champ Jackson's daughter works at

369
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Speaker 3: the Delta Crown Room in the Memphis Airport. She's in there.

370
00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:33,080
Speaker 3: She's in there right now. See her all the time.

371
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Speaker 3: And so they had him out there. They were going

372
00:20:36,480 --> 00:20:38,720
Speaker 3: to bury him. They had a whole doug. And then

373
00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:42,119
Speaker 3: in Chicago, the steel Workers Union went to war for

374
00:20:42,160 --> 00:20:45,720
Speaker 3: him until and so they were so because one of

375
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,399
Speaker 3: the most powerful guys in the steel workers union lived

376
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:51,760
Speaker 3: in their neighborhood and knew him. And so they got

377
00:20:51,800 --> 00:20:53,960
Speaker 3: the mayor of Chicago to get the governor of Illinois

378
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Speaker 3: to get the governor of Mississippi to call the sheriff

379
00:20:56,359 --> 00:21:00,959
Speaker 3: of Lafour County and stop the burial. And so they

380
00:21:00,960 --> 00:21:02,640
Speaker 3: put him on a train and took him to Chicago,

381
00:21:02,800 --> 00:21:06,920
Speaker 3: where his mother insisted on an open casket. And that's

382
00:21:06,920 --> 00:21:11,480
Speaker 3: how we know the story, hm, I mean, it's really

383
00:21:12,600 --> 00:21:14,520
Speaker 3: you know, there when I started doing this book, there

384
00:21:14,520 --> 00:21:17,879
Speaker 3: were probably twelve people left alive who knew him, and

385
00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:20,399
Speaker 3: now they're probably eight. I mean they've been dying in

386
00:21:20,400 --> 00:21:21,520
Speaker 3: front of me. Oh man.

387
00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:23,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you hit it, You hit it right, you

388
00:21:23,440 --> 00:21:25,160
Speaker 1: get to talking to people.

389
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Speaker 3: Yeah. And so what's so interesting is and it sort

390
00:21:27,960 --> 00:21:30,359
Speaker 3: of goes back into the land. And you know, one

391
00:21:30,359 --> 00:21:32,399
Speaker 3: of the reasons I wanted to do the book is

392
00:21:32,760 --> 00:21:35,720
Speaker 3: set as a history of the land, because in Mississippi,

393
00:21:35,760 --> 00:21:38,840
Speaker 3: people lie, but the land does not. The land tells

394
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:43,840
Speaker 3: the story. The land. The history of Mississippi is embedded

395
00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:46,560
Speaker 3: in those courthouse records and who owned what land and

396
00:21:46,600 --> 00:21:50,080
Speaker 3: how it moved. And Emmett Till's family, even though they've

397
00:21:50,080 --> 00:21:55,560
Speaker 3: lived in Chicago for seventy years, feel like Mississippians, Like

398
00:21:55,640 --> 00:21:58,680
Speaker 3: they are definitely people in exile. You know, we grow

399
00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:01,719
Speaker 3: sweet corn on our farm, and they would always want

400
00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:03,320
Speaker 3: me to bring him up sweet corn. You know, they

401
00:22:03,320 --> 00:22:06,520
Speaker 3: want hickory wood from the Mississippi Delta for their smokers.

402
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:10,520
Speaker 3: They kept trying to plant magnolia trees in their yard

403
00:22:10,560 --> 00:22:14,080
Speaker 3: in Chicago, but they just wouldn't. And so there's a

404
00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:20,679
Speaker 3: real sense of people who were disconnected from the you know,

405
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:23,359
Speaker 3: Moses Right had to leave his farm. There were so

406
00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:26,199
Speaker 3: many death threats. He couldn't harvest his last crop. The

407
00:22:26,240 --> 00:22:29,040
Speaker 3: trial was in September. They were already picking cotton. He

408
00:22:29,119 --> 00:22:31,159
Speaker 3: tried to hang on to get his crop out of

409
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:33,840
Speaker 3: the field and couldn't. He had to give away his dogs.

410
00:22:34,119 --> 00:22:36,480
Speaker 3: There was a newspaper reporter there the day he left,

411
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 3: while he was giving his dogs away, weeping, and so

412
00:22:39,920 --> 00:22:41,920
Speaker 3: like everybody had to leave in the middle of the night.

413
00:22:42,119 --> 00:22:48,040
Speaker 3: Willy Reid, the witness, he had to. He got so

414
00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:50,600
Speaker 3: many death threats that a couple of days after he testified,

415
00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:53,879
Speaker 3: Moses Right and Willy Read were the first black people

416
00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:56,919
Speaker 3: to go into a court in Mississippi and accuse a

417
00:22:56,920 --> 00:22:59,120
Speaker 3: white man of murder. And that was nineteen fifty five.

418
00:22:59,119 --> 00:23:02,480
Speaker 3: That had never happened before. And so Willie Reid had

419
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:04,720
Speaker 3: to walk six miles down a gravel road, down the

420
00:23:04,800 --> 00:23:07,000
Speaker 3: Druda Uval Road, which is the road. The barn is

421
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:09,640
Speaker 3: on the Druda Ruval Road. If you want to sort

422
00:23:09,640 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 3: of play with the idea that like in like that

423
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:14,480
Speaker 3: sort of one hundred years of solitude way the time

424
00:23:14,560 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 3: isn't real. That road was built by Nathan Bedford Forest brother,

425
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:22,159
Speaker 3: so and Nathan Bedford Forrest in the Winner of eighteen

426
00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:25,960
Speaker 3: sixty three and sixty four, marched his cavalry down that

427
00:23:26,080 --> 00:23:29,199
Speaker 3: road past the Doherty Bio. So I think in some

428
00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:31,639
Speaker 3: world where time doesn't exist like we think it does,

429
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:36,560
Speaker 3: those horses in JW. Milem's green and white Chevrolet two

430
00:23:36,560 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 3: tone pickup truck past each other night after night after

431
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:41,960
Speaker 3: night after night. And so Willy Reid walked down that

432
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:47,080
Speaker 3: road past Fanniel lou Hamer's Freedom Farm and it didn't

433
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:49,439
Speaker 3: exist yet, past where it would be, and there was

434
00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:51,480
Speaker 3: a car waiting for him at the intersection of the

435
00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:54,959
Speaker 3: drud Uval Road and Highway eight. And the man driving

436
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 3: that car was Mud Grevers, and it was the sort

437
00:23:57,240 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 3: of first civil rights thing he had ever done. And

438
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 3: Willie Reid moved Chicago, changed his name, and he was

439
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:08,600
Speaker 3: married to Juliet who I know. I just saw her

440
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 3: in Mississippi. Was married to her ten years, maybe before

441
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:15,879
Speaker 3: she knew that he had some other history. So like,

442
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:18,479
Speaker 3: these are people who were forced to leave a place.

443
00:24:18,960 --> 00:24:22,440
Speaker 3: You know, I'm sure it's a coincidence. But Moses Wright

444
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 3: took a job where he cleaned a local theater in Chicago,

445
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:29,719
Speaker 3: and he went to work every night at the exact

446
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 3: same time that the kidnappers had knocked on his door.

447
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 3: And he kept a garden because he's a country boy.

448
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,920
Speaker 3: He hunted and he fished, you know. Wheler Parker told

449
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:42,119
Speaker 3: me about his dad. One time a tornado hit their

450
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:44,480
Speaker 3: house when they still lived in Mississippi, and it ripped

451
00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 3: the roof off the smokehouse and it was in the

452
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:48,120
Speaker 3: middle of the night in the rain, and his dad

453
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:50,960
Speaker 3: had them out there finding bacon and hams and sausages

454
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:52,919
Speaker 3: because it had all been thrown all over the field.

455
00:24:53,080 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 3: And he's like, holy shit, you know, we got to

456
00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:58,320
Speaker 3: go like yeah. And so, you know, these were people who,

457
00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:01,880
Speaker 3: for general like had real rhythms in a country way

458
00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 3: of life. Moses right, like to hunt and liked to fish.

459
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 3: He liked to make his own sausage with that sage

460
00:25:06,800 --> 00:25:11,800
Speaker 3: in it. He liked brains and eggs every morning for breakfast.

461
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:15,880
Speaker 3: And he lived in concert with the land. And then

462
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 3: was just sent to a city to move into a

463
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:23,600
Speaker 3: housing project and they let him. The Illinois Central Railroad

464
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:26,280
Speaker 3: gave him a patch of land and he did this

465
00:25:26,359 --> 00:25:30,679
Speaker 3: incredible garden. They made fake mules out of like wheelburrow wheels,

466
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:34,040
Speaker 3: wheelbarrow wheels, and they went out, and that was the

467
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:36,880
Speaker 3: closest he ever felt to home again is in his garden.

468
00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:39,119
Speaker 3: And another old man who'd sort of been forced to

469
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:43,960
Speaker 3: leave Louisiana did it with him, and that was Fred

470
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:48,080
Speaker 3: Hampton's father, the founder of the Black Panthers. So Emmett

471
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:51,959
Speaker 3: Till's uncle and Fred Hampton's father worked a garden together

472
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:53,040
Speaker 3: in suburban Chicago.

473
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:59,000
Speaker 1: HM. In order for you to start tracking the history

474
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 1: of this piece of ground barn, you had to kind

475
00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:03,159
Speaker 1: of settle, or at least in the book, you go

476
00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 1: through the process of settling where the murder occurred, because

477
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:11,679
Speaker 1: there was like a lot of oh like people like

478
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:13,359
Speaker 1: you think, like how would you lose sight of that?

479
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 1: But there was all these different versions of where it happened,

480
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:18,120
Speaker 1: so that one of the first things in the book

481
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 1: is exploring where was it.

482
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 3: So what's crazy about it is so the killers sold

483
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,479
Speaker 3: their story a confession to a national magazine because they

484
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:33,239
Speaker 3: needed money. And so in the process of doing that,

485
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 3: there were a lot more people at the barn that

486
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:37,880
Speaker 3: night than just two guys. I mean, they were eight

487
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:41,320
Speaker 3: to ten probably, and so most of those people got

488
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 3: away with it. So they had to tell a phony

489
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 3: version of the confession couldn't be real because they were

490
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 3: protected by double but they couldn't. And it was a

491
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 3: family who did it. I mean, it's you know, in

492
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 3: that barn that night. There were three brothers and a

493
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,919
Speaker 3: brother in law, you know, and so this is like,

494
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:06,879
Speaker 3: this is one family killing, like it's very tribal, and

495
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:10,679
Speaker 3: so they had to write everybody else out of the story,

496
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 3: and so they moved everything. And you know, there are

497
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,959
Speaker 3: a lot of history books that quote from the fictitious

498
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:23,119
Speaker 3: account that ran and Look magazine. So you know, Leslie Milam,

499
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 3: who's barnet is Leslie Milam in nineteen seventy three called

500
00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 3: his preacher, Macklin Hubble in Cleveland, Mississippi, who I interviewed

501
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:34,160
Speaker 3: before he died, and said, you know, his wife actually

502
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 3: called the preacher and said, Leslie needs to see you.

503
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 3: Can you come over? And he goes out to this

504
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 3: sort of ranch house on a sun baked dead end

505
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 3: street that dead ends into a cotton field on the

506
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 3: very outskirts of Cleveland, Mississippi, and there's this guy dying

507
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,920
Speaker 3: on the front couch of the room and it's Leslie Milam.

508
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 3: And before he dies, he wants to confess to his

509
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:55,959
Speaker 3: preacher that he was one of the people who killed him,

510
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 3: until and his preacher listens and they pray together, and

511
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:02,840
Speaker 3: the preacher leaves. The preachers so shook that he left

512
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:05,159
Speaker 3: there and drove out to the store and money just

513
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 3: to sort of commune with it. And then Leslie Miham

514
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:09,919
Speaker 3: died before the sun came up. And so like there

515
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 3: were people you know, made till got asked late in life,

516
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 3: how does it feel that these killers got away with

517
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:16,639
Speaker 3: this murder? And she sort of smiled, What do you

518
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 3: mean they got the death penalty? You know, they all

519
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:20,880
Speaker 3: died young, riddled up with cancer.

520
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 1: That's the thing I want to touch on later is

521
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,240
Speaker 1: they got acquitted, but they were cursed.

522
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 3: Man, they were definitely they were definitely cursed.

523
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:30,400
Speaker 1: And like it was kind of like what we talked

524
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:33,840
Speaker 1: about before we started recording. Yeah, it's like oj Simpson,

525
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 1: well just he got acquitted, but he was cursed.

526
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:37,879
Speaker 3: Well, you know, there's a sense of like one of

527
00:28:37,880 --> 00:28:40,840
Speaker 3: the things that you want to do is excavate the

528
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 3: blood and the dirt. You know, Like I've made a

529
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:48,520
Speaker 3: real point to follow, you know, if this is a

530
00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 3: story about memory and erasure. Within eyesight of the barn

531
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 3: there is the Harvard's Peabody Museum started digging, and it's

532
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 3: a Native American city. And the reason it's archeologically interesting,

533
00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:04,080
Speaker 3: and this is, you know, right in township twenty two north,

534
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 3: right where the barn is. The reason it's so interesting

535
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 3: is that a whole civilization rose and fell there, and

536
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:17,560
Speaker 3: in many ways it mirrors the sharecropping civilization that would

537
00:29:17,640 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 3: rise up centuries later in the same place, almost a

538
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:25,239
Speaker 3: thousand years later. But what's interesting to the Harvard and

539
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 3: all the other archaeologists who've been digging on this site

540
00:29:27,760 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 3: for years is there's something there that shouldn't be there.

541
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 3: So there's palisade walls, there's a there battlement architecture, and

542
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 3: there were like loopholes, arrow loopholes within the walls with

543
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 3: like interlocking fields of fire like this, like somebody was

544
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 3: defending themselves here and all of that that's all been erased.

545
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:52,360
Speaker 3: We don't know who was the aggressor, we don't know

546
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 3: who was the defender. We don't know anything about these

547
00:29:56,760 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 3: tribes that live there, other than by the time Ernando

548
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 3: de Soto rolled along, they were all gone. And this

549
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:07,719
Speaker 3: is so on this piece of land, there was a

550
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 3: mono crop culture that where the elites lived on the hills,

551
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:17,640
Speaker 3: on the mound structures inside the gates, and then other

552
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 3: people lived in little cabins sort of out as they

553
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 3: worked the land, and it mirrored so completely the ecosystem

554
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 3: that would rise and fall. I mean, in some ways

555
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty five, in some ways the murder of Emmettil

556
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 3: was the death of sharecropping, because the first mechanized crop

557
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 3: ever planted had been nineteen forty three. You want to

558
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 3: do something fun, you can lay down these timelines of

559
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 3: histories of the research and development, production and then mass

560
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 3: production of cotton pickers and the electric guitar. Because it's

561
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:55,080
Speaker 3: almost month to month. So as the technology is invented,

562
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 3: that is pulling the last people out of the Mississippi

563
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 3: Delta because you don't need because it's become mechanized. On

564
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 3: a parallel track, the technology is being invented for the

565
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:09,040
Speaker 3: music of those people. You could hear an acoustic guitar

566
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 3: ring out across a field or in the country, but

567
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:15,479
Speaker 3: in a dark loud bar, you need electricity, and so

568
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 3: you can watch those things develop in tandem. But anyway,

569
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 3: I mean, it's fascinating to me to understand that there

570
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 3: was on the spot where Emmett Till was killed, there

571
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 3: was an entire civilization that rose and fell, and we

572
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 3: say history is going to remember, but that just isn't true.

573
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 3: I mean, history almost exclusively forgets. And then in that

574
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 3: same square of land you have Docre Farms, which is,

575
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:44,959
Speaker 3: you know, the home and birthplace of both the Delta

576
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 3: Blues and therefore all American music, I mean, all protest

577
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 3: music is rooted there. You know. Charlie Patton, who grew

578
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 3: up I mean almost with an eyesight of the barn,

579
00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 3: was the first real blue Star Paramount Records. In nineteen

580
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 3: twenty nine. He sang first person songs, name checking local cops.

581
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 3: I mean this was I mean, this was protests. This

582
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:09,240
Speaker 3: is ten soldiers and Nixon's coming. This is fuck you,

583
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:11,920
Speaker 3: I won't do what you tell me. This is f

584
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 3: the police, this is you know, it's not an accident

585
00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:19,360
Speaker 3: that Easy's grandparents owned a grocery store sixteen blocks up

586
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 3: Broadway from the house where one of them, at Tills

587
00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 3: Killers lived. I mean, these are, like you know, Sam Cook,

588
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 3: a change is gonna comes from the same little town

589
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 3: in the Missisippi, Delta's Muddy Waters. I'm a man. You know,

590
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:36,360
Speaker 3: Nate Dogg is from that same little town. So every

591
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 3: time you're listening to any g funk, there is a

592
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 3: like direct line back to township twenty to north range

593
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 3: four west. And so you know, you've got Nathan Bedford

594
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 3: Forest family. There, You've got Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farm. There.

595
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,760
Speaker 3: There was a Nazi pow camp in between Drew, Mississippi

596
00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 3: and the barn in the forties where they were bringing

597
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 3: Nazi prisoners to work in the cotton fields. And interesting

598
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 3: that the uh, the local people realized that uh, the

599
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:12,920
Speaker 3: they were helping the Nazis uh soldiers like cheat and

600
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 3: teach them how to like how you way down, like

601
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:17,120
Speaker 3: you know, how to get how to get up on

602
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:20,000
Speaker 3: the people running it. But some of the Nazi soldiers

603
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 3: stayed and married local women and are still there. And uh,

604
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 3: you know they were the Nazi soldiers were treated a

605
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 3: lot better than their sort of the black sharecroppers who

606
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 3: were working alongside of them. But uh, but you know

607
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 3: this was real. I mean, there was a whole universe

608
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 3: in this square of land, and you know it's it

609
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 3: would be interesting if you could we could do this,

610
00:33:43,880 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 3: Like I would love to know the history of the

611
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 3: square of land where men where we're like where we

612
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 3: are sitting right now.

613
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:51,120
Speaker 1: Someone needs to do a project where you track every

614
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:54,600
Speaker 1: like every section all not every section, but every township.

615
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 3: Every town Someone should do a whole the United States

616
00:33:56,960 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 3: township by township, because I would love.

617
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: To know some townships wouldn't have many readers.

618
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 3: Well no, but I mean like going too. Let me

619
00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:06,280
Speaker 3: tell you, I mean like the there's that Frank and

620
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:10,480
Speaker 3: Deborah Popper who are in academics. Oh yeah, the Buffalo Commons,

621
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 3: the Buffalo Commons, right, So I'm way into the Buffalo Commons.

622
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:18,280
Speaker 3: Because if in the this is actually interesting, it speaks

623
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:21,320
Speaker 3: to this. But like if the wellspring of the American

624
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:25,839
Speaker 3: identity is the fact that manifest destiny was achieved. And

625
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,759
Speaker 3: if you look at Frank and Deborah Popper's research, that

626
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:31,399
Speaker 3: many of the places settled in the Mad Rush West

627
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:35,160
Speaker 3: almost immediately started depopulating. So they're vast stretches of the

628
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:38,280
Speaker 3: country now that are technically frontier. And if we didn't

629
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 3: actually settle it, what does that suggest? And one of

630
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 3: the things is a lot of this book is a

631
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 3: mapping and so I've got this great railroad map that

632
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:51,879
Speaker 3: shows around nineteen hundred, and it's the railroads coming up

633
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:58,040
Speaker 3: from the north, south, west, and east, and and you

634
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 3: see them just stop because they haven't connected yet. So

635
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 3: this is twenty years after Frederick Turner's essay. This is

636
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:05,800
Speaker 3: twenty years after this was.

637
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: What Right's referring to is there was a the US

638
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 1: government used to define frontier.

639
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 3: Is a certain number of people per square.

640
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:16,800
Speaker 1: Mind by population density. Yeah, and there was a point

641
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 1: at which the Frontier officially closed in America, Yeah, because

642
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 1: the population density had been met.

643
00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 3: That's right there.

644
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:28,320
Speaker 1: And then there was the observation later that all of

645
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 1: a sudden it went, it went unremarked upon, but all

646
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:35,360
Speaker 1: of a sudden places kind of went back to frontier.

647
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 1: That's right, because people would come out in homestead, these

648
00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:40,520
Speaker 1: forty acre chunks on arid land, but it wouldn't work, Yeah,

649
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 1: and so they leave then, and so technically went back

650
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:44,320
Speaker 1: to frontier.

651
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 3: I mean, and by the way, almost immediately. And so

652
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:49,839
Speaker 3: you know, in nineteen hundred, the Missy Delta, like I said,

653
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:51,760
Speaker 3: was largely uninhabited hardwood Swell.

654
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:53,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to I want you to jump into

655
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:55,239
Speaker 1: that a little bit like, so you were talking about

656
00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:58,920
Speaker 1: Native American history, but kind of explain the Delta as

657
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 1: one of the last great wildernesses.

658
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 3: So the from seventeen fifty somebody listening, who knows more? Whenever,

659
00:36:07,239 --> 00:36:11,920
Speaker 3: from whenever, the spinning jenny was invented until the DuPont

660
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:15,840
Speaker 3: Laboratory in Wimington, Delaware, in nineteen thirty three invented nylon

661
00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:20,759
Speaker 3: and made petroleum the world's most important commodity. From the

662
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 3: spinning genny to nylon, cotton was the world's most important commodity.

663
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 3: I mean the thing that seeds out. No, but no,

664
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 3: the seventeen sixty four it's the thing that starts to

665
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 3: allow mass production, so you can turn one worker into ten.

666
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 3: And what is it? And so it's a wee tool.

667
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:41,399
Speaker 3: It's a weaving situation like a Manchester. You know, it's

668
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 3: not an accident that that during the Civil War in Manchester,

669
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:50,520
Speaker 3: the Irish factory workers were raising money for the newly

670
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 3: freed enslaved people, and the factory owners were flying Confederate

671
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:56,720
Speaker 3: flags above the factories. I mean, it's not an accident.

672
00:36:56,880 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 3: Like Manchester, Mississippi function for a very long time as

673
00:37:01,160 --> 00:37:04,160
Speaker 3: a colony of Manchester and Liverpool in London. But anyway, okay,

674
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 3: so because they were sending cotton, they were sending cotton.

675
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 3: As a side note, it's hilarious in the way that, like,

676
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 3: you know, the entire Civil War was based on the

677
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 3: idea that Europe would force a quick end to the

678
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 3: war because no one would want to make war on

679
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 3: King Cotton was the quote, And it's so funny, like

680
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:25,319
Speaker 3: my family still farms cotton. And the most important thing

681
00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:28,320
Speaker 3: to know when you're trying to sort of loosely predict

682
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 3: what the price of cotton will be is what's the carryover?

683
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 3: Like how many bales of cotton live in the global

684
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:38,080
Speaker 3: sort of textile supply chain, sitting in warehouses that haven't

685
00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:40,800
Speaker 3: been brought into the facilities to be turned into stuff.

686
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:44,719
Speaker 3: And so the largest carryovers in history to date were

687
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 3: eighteen fifty nine and eighteen sixty, which means that no

688
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:52,240
Speaker 3: textile mill in the world needed an ounce of American

689
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:56,560
Speaker 3: cotton until at least November of sixty three, at which point,

690
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:59,879
Speaker 3: so the entire war was based on a completely fall

691
00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:04,719
Speaker 3: economic idea that that the I think they're like the

692
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:07,400
Speaker 3: politicians who caught the car, like they were just out

693
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 3: there saying stuff and so uh, like one economist could

694
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:14,960
Speaker 3: have stopped the whole thing. Just but guys, you're you're

695
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 3: totally flawed, but so meaning.

696
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 1: Like that that, yeah, like this is the cotton market.

697
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 3: Like it was a wrong time to start the war

698
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:25,200
Speaker 3: because they didn't need it was the weakest the South

699
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:28,800
Speaker 3: had ever been, which was it's not an unrelated You

700
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 3: only really start wars when you're weak. You know, it

701
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:34,959
Speaker 3: started when you're strong. But uh, anyway, like the Mississippi

702
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:37,440
Speaker 3: Delta was the center of the cotton economy for a

703
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 3: little while, and then it, you know, it moved around

704
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:41,880
Speaker 3: the world. Like oil, does you know they're finding oil

705
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 3: all over the world. Cotton was like that, and so

706
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:51,000
Speaker 3: it moved from Mississippi Egypt, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Texas. You know,

707
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:54,440
Speaker 3: it's all over the world. And then the last place

708
00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:58,239
Speaker 3: it came back to before King Cotton died forever was

709
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 3: back to the Mississippi Delta. Mississippi Delta was mostly hardwood swamps.

710
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:08,399
Speaker 3: The railroad companies were buying huge swaths of land, and

711
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 3: the great the Northern Woods were running out of wood,

712
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:15,360
Speaker 3: and so those timber companies came down to Mississippi the

713
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:18,320
Speaker 3: big plantation adjacent to the barn was owned by a

714
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,360
Speaker 3: timber company from New York. And so like these timber

715
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 3: companies were coming down. That's why Teddy Roosevelt, that's Teddy Bear.

716
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 3: He had been sure. So Teddy Roosevelt spent the night

717
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 3: in township twenty to north range four west, and he

718
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:34,160
Speaker 3: gave as his gift to the plantation homeowners it's Taylor

719
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 3: and Crate, I think it's right from New York. He

720
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:42,200
Speaker 3: gave them two ginko trees to plant as his housewarming

721
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 3: gift for having him there. And one of those ginko

722
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:47,960
Speaker 3: trees is still alive, and there's a tire swing in it,

723
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:49,799
Speaker 3: and it's out there on the road. You go see it, Yeah,

724
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 3: the tire swing. Yeah. The people who had the house

725
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:54,400
Speaker 3: don't know. It's just behind like a it's not a trailer,

726
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:56,879
Speaker 3: it's like a corrugated ten house. And they have Teddy

727
00:39:56,960 --> 00:39:59,759
Speaker 3: Roosevelt's Ginko tree in the backyard.

728
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 1: And man, the book, yeah.

729
00:40:01,640 --> 00:40:04,319
Speaker 3: That's in there. And so uh and so like the

730
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 3: uh the land that railroad companies, in concert with the

731
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 3: timber companies, they bought all this land, they cleared it

732
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 3: and then.

733
00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:14,080
Speaker 1: To sell lumber, to sell lumber and to ship.

734
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 3: It where and all over like crates and and by

735
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 3: the way, when Mississippi ran out of hardwood, most of

736
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 3: these companies went to Oregon. And there's a reason that

737
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 3: their Mississippi town names in Oregon because it's sort of

738
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 3: you know, like Schlitz Brewing Company bought a timber yard

739
00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:33,200
Speaker 3: so they could make their kegs and so uh anyway

740
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 3: out of hardwood, out of hardwoods, all hardwoods. And so

741
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:38,759
Speaker 3: they were, uh, they were cleared in this land that

742
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:41,920
Speaker 3: the cotton plantations were almost an afterthought, like what are

743
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 3: we going to do with this? They cleared it for

744
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:45,080
Speaker 3: they cleared it for lumber. They're like, what are we

745
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 3: going to do with it? And so you know, they

746
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:50,719
Speaker 3: were selling all of this land and this was cotton's

747
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 3: last gasp.

748
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:55,080
Speaker 1: And uh, I remember you had some statistics about that

749
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 1: land that uh, like the depth of the top soil.

750
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 3: Oh, it in some ways it went it was like

751
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:03,120
Speaker 3: we call that ice cream soil man. In some ways

752
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 3: it went like two hundred feet deep. Yeah, I mean

753
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 3: incredible soil. I mean one of the all that deposition

754
00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:10,080
Speaker 3: from the river.

755
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 1: I remember I remember it being blown away that you

756
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 1: could dig down like that and hit like alluvial soil.

757
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:16,960
Speaker 3: And it goes all the way down, and I mean

758
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 3: it's it's millions of years of floods. I mean one

759
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:25,000
Speaker 3: of the things that you know, millions of years of floods,

760
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:28,120
Speaker 3: all of that, all of those natural processes were just stopped,

761
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:30,799
Speaker 3: and so the land has sort of been decaying. I mean,

762
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 3: the yields are not great in a lot of these places,

763
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:38,320
Speaker 3: and so the price of cotton collapsed. In nineteen nineteen,

764
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 3: the price of cotton was a dollar a pound. I

765
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:45,520
Speaker 3: think today it's sixty six cents, and so maybe sixty eight,

766
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 3: and so it was a dollar a pound.

767
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 1: It was the last It's lower today by forty cents,

768
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 1: even adjusted for ina. No, yeah, not not adjusted, I'm

769
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 1: saying no, No.

770
00:41:56,160 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 3: It's thirty two cents lower than it was in nineteen nineteen.

771
00:41:59,440 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 1: Wow.

772
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 3: And by the way, if you talk to it like

773
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:04,360
Speaker 3: this is going to be the this year is going

774
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:07,240
Speaker 3: to be so catastrophic for farmers. I mean our neighbors

775
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 3: that are going out of business, like people.

776
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:10,640
Speaker 1: The cotton prices being low.

777
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 3: Cotton prices and soybeans, so we grew our farm is cotton, soybeans, rice,

778
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 3: and corn, and China buys all of our soybeans, and

779
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:22,520
Speaker 3: this year they haven't bought a single pod of American

780
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 3: soybeans because of all the terrifying Yeah, all the terrifying

781
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:29,360
Speaker 3: it's just killing American farmers. But anyway, they cleared the

782
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:32,399
Speaker 3: price of cotton collapsed in nineteen twenty three, and then

783
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:35,759
Speaker 3: for ten years they tried to fix it. And then

784
00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty three the Roosevelt administration took over the

785
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 3: American cotton economy, and in some ways the it's yeah,

786
00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 3: Franklin Roosevelt. And so like, here's the thing I'm going

787
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 3: to try to find because like, I think this explains

788
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:55,880
Speaker 3: it's the only thing I ever really read, because I

789
00:42:55,880 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 3: think there's something interesting here about how cotton releon, how

790
00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 3: the cotton economy put Mmett till at the exact place

791
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:09,680
Speaker 3: at the exact wrong time. And so here we go.

792
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 3: I find this right now, No, golhead, I got it.

793
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:15,720
Speaker 3: Here we go. The great Mississippi Delta cotton boom lasted

794
00:43:15,719 --> 00:43:18,839
Speaker 3: twenty years. The suffering and killing and decay that would

795
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:21,080
Speaker 3: follow for the next century were the price of three

796
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:24,240
Speaker 3: great years and a dozen good ones. Those two decades

797
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:27,920
Speaker 3: also marked the peak of the Lost Cause mythology. Consider

798
00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 3: when all these Confederate statues went up around the state,

799
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 3: and consider the history of cotton and the Delta. The

800
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:36,600
Speaker 3: land clearing finished around nineteen hundred, the price of cotton

801
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:39,720
Speaker 3: collapsed for good in nineteen twenty three, and what happened

802
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 3: in between Port Gibson and Aberdeen race statues in nineteen hundred,

803
00:43:43,960 --> 00:43:46,920
Speaker 3: Macon in nineteen oh one, Fayette in nineteen oh four,

804
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 3: Carrollton and Beulah and Okolona in nineteen oh five, Tuplo

805
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 3: and ole Miss in nineteen oh six, Brandon and Oxford

806
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 3: and West Point in nineteen oh seven, Cleveland and Lexington

807
00:43:56,600 --> 00:43:59,320
Speaker 3: and Raymond and duck Hill in nineteen oh eight, Greenville

808
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 3: and Winona and nineteen oh nine, Hattiesburg twice in Grenada

809
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,720
Speaker 3: in nineteen ten, Gulf Port and Kasiesco Equipment and Ripley

810
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 3: in Brooksville and Heidelberg in nineteen eleven, Columbus and Laurel

811
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 3: and Meridian and Philadelphia and Vaiden in nineteen twelve, Greenwood

812
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 3: and Sumner in nineteen thirteen, Greenwood again in nineteen fifteen,

813
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:22,160
Speaker 3: Hazelhurston nineteen seventeen, Louisville and nineteen twenty one. Many of

814
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:25,799
Speaker 3: these were placed quite intentionally on the lawns of local courthouses.

815
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 3: Most of the monuments around the state were built during

816
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:32,200
Speaker 3: the brief but emotionally powerful cotton boom. Not a single

817
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 3: courthouse statue in the state of Mississippi was erected after

818
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty three. Wow, it's all like, the history is

819
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:43,759
Speaker 3: all in. It's in the price of cotton, it's in

820
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:46,800
Speaker 3: the land. I mean, when you look at the equation

821
00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 3: of agriculture even now, you don't control the price of siege.

822
00:44:52,040 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 3: You don't control the price of equipment. You don't control

823
00:44:54,200 --> 00:44:58,319
Speaker 3: the price of chemicals. You don't control the weather, you

824
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 3: don't control the price of water. You don't control how

825
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:03,280
Speaker 3: much water you need. On the other side of the equation,

826
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:05,760
Speaker 3: you can't control how much you're selling it for. Because

827
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:08,440
Speaker 3: you can't control the markets. The only X and the

828
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 3: long variable of an American farm that you have any

829
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 3: control over is labor. And so now you have a

830
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:19,920
Speaker 3: system in Mississippi from nineteen thirty three where the government,

831
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:24,520
Speaker 3: the government is stepping in and taking over the cotton industry.

832
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 3: And if it's you know, they wrote the Agricultural Adjustment

833
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:31,200
Speaker 3: Act of nineteen thirty three, and then they had to

834
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:33,919
Speaker 3: it was declared unconstitutional. They had to do it again

835
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 3: in either thirty six or thirty eight, I forget. But

836
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:38,520
Speaker 3: one of the things about that that was so interesting

837
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 3: is they're trying to figure out, well, what is a

838
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 3: subsidy supposed to do for an American farmer. And the

839
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:47,279
Speaker 3: thing that they settled upon was it used to be

840
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:50,760
Speaker 3: called something called parity payments, and now there's a different structure,

841
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 3: but the fundamental ideas are the same. They wanted people

842
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:58,400
Speaker 3: to be able to live like they were living in

843
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:02,239
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen. And so if it ever feels like Mississippi

844
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 3: is stuck in the past, it's because like statutorily, it

845
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:09,320
Speaker 3: literally is. You know, a lot of the American farm

846
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 3: bills are designed to sort of to sort of recreate

847
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 3: that purchasing power. And you know, the a thing that

848
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:24,200
Speaker 3: happened between say thirty three and fifty five is you

849
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 3: have king Cotton is dying. The as mechanization comes in,

850
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 3: you have to have a significant amount of capital to

851
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 3: be able to buy all this equipment, So it's sort

852
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 3: of changing who could even farm. So you have a

853
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:43,440
Speaker 3: like you have an entire world that is collapsing in

854
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 3: on itself, separate from the Supreme Court decisions and you know,

855
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:51,920
Speaker 3: integrating the schools. I mean, you just have an entire

856
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:57,239
Speaker 3: way of life collapsing in on itself. Prices are spiraling.

857
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,879
Speaker 3: Nineteen fifty four nineteen fifty five were arable crops, and

858
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:06,880
Speaker 3: so what you have is and then you have you know,

859
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 3: black people in Mississippi had no access to the courts,

860
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:12,840
Speaker 3: so there was no way for them to do anything

861
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:16,239
Speaker 3: if their landlord was cheating them. And so you just

862
00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 3: created this situation where people were desperate and almost had

863
00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 3: unchecked power over other human beings. And then m. Mantil

864
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:28,880
Speaker 3: decides to go visit his family on vacation.

865
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: Right before I read your book, I read John Barry,

866
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: Oh the Great Rising Tide, Rising Tide, you know.

867
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 3: And by the way, the nineteen twenty seven the Levy

868
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 3: broke in Scott Mississippi. It broke exactly at where Delta

869
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:53,040
Speaker 3: Pine and Land Plantation is. It was dpl was one

870
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 3: of the first landowners in township twenty two north range

871
00:47:56,120 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 3: four West, which the whole book is about. And uh

872
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 3: it was owned then by the Manchester Fine Doublers and

873
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:08,400
Speaker 3: Spinners Association, which was the world's largest manufacturing conglomerate that

874
00:48:08,520 --> 00:48:11,719
Speaker 3: was buying up Mississippi Delta Plantations to vertically integrate its

875
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 3: supply chain. You know, that company still exists. It's a

876
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,400
Speaker 3: different name, but they make lingerie for Victoria's Secret and

877
00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:20,840
Speaker 3: Marster Spencer. I mean, companies all still exist. That plantation

878
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:23,759
Speaker 3: was later owned by Monsanto and it's now owned by

879
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:27,759
Speaker 3: Bear the aspirin people. Uh huh uh and so but

880
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:31,600
Speaker 3: like where that where the levee broke was at a

881
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 3: plantation that was owned by a Manchester manufacturing conglomerate. Yeah, anyway,

882
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:39,319
Speaker 3: sorry I interrupted you. Oh no, it's a phenomenal book,

883
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:40,839
Speaker 3: Rising Tide. I love that book.

884
00:48:40,920 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna have mom but he canceled last minute

885
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 1: or something happened. Flights, I'm sorry, flights got cancer. It's

886
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:53,320
Speaker 1: fascinating books. It's really good. It introduces a thing about

887
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 1: between that book and your book, and I want you

888
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:59,320
Speaker 1: to explain sharecropping in a minute. Yeah, but uh, it

889
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 1: introduces like introduced me anyways to a weird bit in

890
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:09,719
Speaker 1: American history where from agri from like the history of agriculture.

891
00:49:11,080 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: He explains how there's always been like you just mentioned

892
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:18,359
Speaker 1: there's always been a labor problem, yeah, when it comes

893
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:22,120
Speaker 1: to cotton production. Yeah, agriculture in general, particularly cotton production.

894
00:49:22,200 --> 00:49:26,799
Speaker 1: And he lays out this thing that the labor problem

895
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:30,560
Speaker 1: kind of emerged upon emancipation of the slaves, where for

896
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:33,520
Speaker 1: a while the labor problems you just owned the labor. Yeah,

897
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden they're faced with this

898
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 1: thing that you have to entice, well, you have to

899
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 1: be able to entice willful laborers.

900
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 3: And the thing that's wild is after the war, all

901
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 3: anyone wanted was can I just have forty acres where

902
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,280
Speaker 3: I can protect my family? And so the global capital

903
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 3: markets are freaking out about this. You know, you can

904
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:57,319
Speaker 3: read the minutes of like you know, because like the

905
00:49:57,320 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 3: way we have business conferences now in Las Vegas, they

906
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 3: had those in Brussels in eighteen sixty. I mean they've

907
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:04,319
Speaker 3: been you know, those aren't new. So you can read

908
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:06,680
Speaker 3: the minutes of these like think tank meetings where they're

909
00:50:06,800 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 3: essentially trying to invent sharecropping in real time. Sharecropping was

910
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 3: the compromise between labor and capital because they tried a

911
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:19,319
Speaker 3: couple of different things that didn't work. And so you

912
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:22,799
Speaker 3: can watch the global capital markets. And we go into

913
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 3: this in the book because it's sort of you watch

914
00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 3: the markets coerce people into living in a way that

915
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:32,120
Speaker 3: they didn't want to live, like people wanted. People just

916
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:34,880
Speaker 3: thought of war. People wanted to go You know, I

917
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,359
Speaker 3: love that line from that Dire Strait song, Someday You'll

918
00:50:37,400 --> 00:50:39,799
Speaker 3: return to your valleys and your farms. It makes the

919
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:41,279
Speaker 3: hair stand up on my arm. You know, I love

920
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:44,680
Speaker 3: that because it like it gets it's something so existentially true.

921
00:50:45,040 --> 00:50:47,440
Speaker 3: And people just wanted to go home and live on

922
00:50:47,480 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 3: their land. And there was this brief moment in township

923
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:52,800
Speaker 3: twenty two north range four west, all over the South

924
00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:57,920
Speaker 3: where you had white and black people, You had veterans

925
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 3: of the Confederacy and veterans from the Union an army.

926
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 3: You had people setting up forty acre little homesteads and

927
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:08,640
Speaker 3: trying to sort of make a go of being what

928
00:51:08,680 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson would have called a yeoman farmer. And you

929
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:14,839
Speaker 3: watched those people get just chewed up and spit out

930
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 3: by the global capital markets who had to have these

931
00:51:17,760 --> 00:51:22,960
Speaker 3: lands in large blocks. And so, you know, the people

932
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:26,880
Speaker 3: who just wanted to go hunt and fish and you know,

933
00:51:26,920 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 3: grow a little cotton to have a little cash, but

934
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:33,719
Speaker 3: have big vegetables, with big vegetable gardens, with homegrown tomatoes.

935
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:36,320
Speaker 3: And you know, my dad was a small town lawyer

936
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 3: and he had a client who was a drug dealer

937
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:41,600
Speaker 3: who would pay him in tomatoes, and like it was

938
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:43,640
Speaker 3: the best thing ever man. All summer we'd eat these

939
00:51:43,640 --> 00:51:46,920
Speaker 3: homegrown tomatoes. And you know, our big meal in the

940
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:49,799
Speaker 3: summer was was dinner in the middle of the day,

941
00:51:49,920 --> 00:51:52,840
Speaker 3: and then like supper was always just like leftovers, but

942
00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:55,840
Speaker 3: it's usually like bacon and tomato sandwiches in the summer.

943
00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 3: And so anyway, they just wanted these huge gardens and

944
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 3: to live with their families and and you know, especially

945
00:52:04,200 --> 00:52:08,239
Speaker 3: if you're a formally enslaved person, try to start. You know,

946
00:52:08,880 --> 00:52:12,279
Speaker 3: roots in your own land were like the most precious thing,

947
00:52:12,760 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 3: and you just watch the global capital markets make that impossible.

948
00:52:18,920 --> 00:52:21,879
Speaker 1: I want to finish this point about that. He makes

949
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:25,640
Speaker 1: some rising tide or sing. He explains, is it was

950
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 1: very surprising to me that once you had to you

951
00:52:30,760 --> 00:52:33,799
Speaker 1: have the responsibility of like enticing and holding labor, like

952
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: willful people to get to work. One of the conflicts

953
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 1: that comes up in this area along the Mississippi. He explains,

954
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:45,920
Speaker 1: is it As the ku kox Klan emerges, there are

955
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: agricultural people. There are farmers who are fighting against the clan,

956
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:58,640
Speaker 1: oh saying this argument, stop scaring away all the labor.

957
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:01,439
Speaker 1: Like that's their tape. Their take on it is, if

958
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:04,400
Speaker 1: you are making a hostile for people that want to

959
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,800
Speaker 1: be here and work, you're working against our interests. And

960
00:53:08,239 --> 00:53:11,480
Speaker 1: that was their argument against the clan. No, you covered

961
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 1: so much that same something. It was this weird that

962
00:53:13,080 --> 00:53:14,799
Speaker 1: I happened to read these two books at the same time,

963
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,200
Speaker 1: because I was like, something that never even occurred to me,

964
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:18,920
Speaker 1: is like this huge problem of like how do you

965
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:22,640
Speaker 1: get people to work the land well and farm when

966
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 1: you can't just make them do it well?

967
00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:27,880
Speaker 3: And you know, the thing that's there was a huge

968
00:53:27,920 --> 00:53:34,440
Speaker 3: fight between poor, working class white people and white planners

969
00:53:34,520 --> 00:53:38,600
Speaker 3: and landowners. And so the Delta was seen in large

970
00:53:38,640 --> 00:53:43,319
Speaker 3: part as a safe space from the clan because like

971
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:48,480
Speaker 3: the very paternalistically racist, but like the landowners just weren't

972
00:53:48,520 --> 00:53:49,719
Speaker 3: letting that on their land.

973
00:53:49,960 --> 00:53:51,799
Speaker 1: I mean, they don't want their labor for us to

974
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:52,400
Speaker 1: be terrorized.

975
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 2: No.

976
00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 3: And one of the things that's interesting is the and

977
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:59,560
Speaker 3: even so we'll come back to this, but they used

978
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:03,040
Speaker 3: to send trains down at the Mexican border to bring

979
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:05,759
Speaker 3: up for picking because they didn't have enough people. One

980
00:54:05,760 --> 00:54:08,720
Speaker 3: of the reason the hot tomali is like the stereotypical

981
00:54:08,719 --> 00:54:11,239
Speaker 3: food of the Delta is that it's tomali's made with

982
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:15,440
Speaker 3: Mississippi Delta ingredients. So instead of masa, it's just staple

983
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:19,319
Speaker 3: corn meal and it's pork and like anyway, all over

984
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:23,240
Speaker 3: the Mississippi Delta by hot tomali's. And that's why because

985
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:27,280
Speaker 3: the black sharecroppers were looking at the hot tomali cans

986
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:29,919
Speaker 3: at the end of the road that the folks brought

987
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:31,799
Speaker 3: up to help pick, and we're like, that looks better

988
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:34,000
Speaker 3: than whatever lunch we got, So they started doing that.

989
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 3: But the but to your point about like about John's book,

990
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:42,080
Speaker 3: I mean that they really nail is that, you know,

991
00:54:42,120 --> 00:54:44,520
Speaker 3: the the planners were trying to fight off the clan.

992
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 3: The only spot in the Mississippi Delta, this is wild.

993
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:52,399
Speaker 3: The only spot in the Mississippi Delta where there were

994
00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 3: a big concentration of small, poor white farmers aka like

995
00:54:57,800 --> 00:55:02,440
Speaker 3: prime clan material was right where the barn is. And

996
00:55:02,480 --> 00:55:05,440
Speaker 3: it's because the sunflower plantation that was owned by the

997
00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:07,920
Speaker 3: New York Timber people where Teddy Roosevelt spent the night

998
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:12,440
Speaker 3: was sold as part of the New Deal. It was

999
00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:17,759
Speaker 3: broken up into blocks. And so the Roosevelt administration very

1000
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 3: into sort of progressive era America, very into we're gonna

1001
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,520
Speaker 3: have best practices, We're going to find the best farmers

1002
00:55:24,520 --> 00:55:27,880
Speaker 3: to put on this field these fields, and they're application

1003
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 3: processes about understanding science and all this stuff. And so

1004
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 3: what you had was the Roosevelt administration kicking off all

1005
00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 3: of the black sharecroppers who had worked the sunflower plantation

1006
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 3: who wanted to stay there. So they were fighting to

1007
00:55:42,680 --> 00:55:44,960
Speaker 3: kick these people off and replace them with all white

1008
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 3: farmers from Georgia and Alabama, and the local plantation owners

1009
00:55:51,000 --> 00:55:55,200
Speaker 3: were fighting the Roosevelt administration own behalf of the sharecroppers,

1010
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:59,640
Speaker 3: basically saying these people have been here for generations, like

1011
00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:03,000
Speaker 3: these are great neighbors, Like their churches are here, their

1012
00:56:03,040 --> 00:56:05,839
Speaker 3: cemeteries are here, Like how could you possibly kick these

1013
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:08,280
Speaker 3: people off? So like the other thing that's constantly shaping

1014
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:12,080
Speaker 3: the Mississippi Delta is like the unintended consequences. And so

1015
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 3: it's not an accident that Emmett Till is killed in

1016
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:18,920
Speaker 3: the one square of land where there were lots of poor,

1017
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:21,040
Speaker 3: angry white people. I mean, I don't know if you

1018
00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:24,400
Speaker 3: ever read the Robert Palmer book De Deep Blues, but

1019
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:27,719
Speaker 3: what he's talking about as the price of cotton collapses,

1020
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:30,680
Speaker 3: this is like nineteen twenty nine, nineteen thirty, he says,

1021
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:34,320
Speaker 3: he's talking about the towns growing up in the Delta

1022
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:38,960
Speaker 3: and taking power away from the plantation owners. They attracted

1023
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:41,480
Speaker 3: more and more poor whites from the Hills who brought

1024
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:45,280
Speaker 3: to the Delta's paternalistic social structure an atmosphere of barely

1025
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,680
Speaker 3: repressed violence, a burning need to acquire money and power,

1026
00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:52,239
Speaker 3: and an outspoken racism that neatly suited their purposes. They

1027
00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 3: control most of the newer Delta towns economically and politically.

1028
00:56:55,960 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 3: The balance of power was shifting, and the planter class

1029
00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:02,360
Speaker 3: never knew mare Strong could only watch it shift. The

1030
00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:05,919
Speaker 3: Delta already tense, coiled tighter and tighter. And so that's

1031
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:07,919
Speaker 3: a lot of what John's talking about, is that sort

1032
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:11,399
Speaker 3: of sense of that. You know, Mississippi so often gets

1033
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:13,279
Speaker 3: looked at and people just look at it through the

1034
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:16,040
Speaker 3: prism of race, But that's two dimensional. You always have

1035
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:19,680
Speaker 3: to do race and class because Mississippi there's always been

1036
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:24,440
Speaker 3: in a lot of ways. The black population was caught

1037
00:57:24,480 --> 00:57:27,680
Speaker 3: in the middle of a culture war between two halves

1038
00:57:27,680 --> 00:57:30,560
Speaker 3: of the white population, which made it worse for it.

1039
00:57:30,720 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 3: I mean, like it's a really it's the rock in the.

1040
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:35,600
Speaker 1: Heart's in a battle between rich whites and poor whites.

1041
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 3: Yes, very much so, and very much sort of weaponized

1042
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 3: in that fight, with very little regard to what would

1043
00:57:41,360 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 3: actually be best for these working families. Can you explain.

1044
00:57:46,760 --> 00:57:49,240
Speaker 1: I've always my whole life, I've known the term sharecroppers,

1045
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:53,000
Speaker 1: but it wasn't ntil I read your book and in

1046
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 1: Barry's book kind of as a pair, you know, a

1047
00:57:55,760 --> 00:57:58,000
Speaker 1: little bit I don't unsaid, like what the hell that?

1048
00:57:58,120 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: Like the economics, like like how it came to be

1049
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:03,880
Speaker 1: in like and when you hear the word share crop

1050
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:05,440
Speaker 1: or like what exactly are.

1051
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:10,560
Speaker 3: You talking about? So black people had no virtually no

1052
00:58:10,680 --> 00:58:13,360
Speaker 3: access to credit markets, so the only way you could

1053
00:58:13,400 --> 00:58:16,600
Speaker 3: get out of poverty was with a crop loan. So

1054
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:20,160
Speaker 3: the way this would work, say you owned a thousand acres,

1055
00:58:20,920 --> 00:58:26,320
Speaker 3: Now I can't afford land. So what you will do

1056
00:58:26,640 --> 00:58:30,200
Speaker 3: is you will rent me in my family twenty five

1057
00:58:30,240 --> 00:58:33,160
Speaker 3: acres of that. Okay, you sort of needed a family

1058
00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:35,640
Speaker 3: every twenty five to forty acres. You would rent me

1059
00:58:35,720 --> 00:58:40,160
Speaker 3: that like a large landowner would break parcels off twenty

1060
00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:42,960
Speaker 3: five forty acres and that's I'm and the family gets

1061
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:45,200
Speaker 3: to move there, and you know, it gets to I

1062
00:58:45,200 --> 00:58:48,560
Speaker 3: mean has tokay and so your own houses. And so

1063
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 3: basically what happened is you would give me what's called

1064
00:58:52,680 --> 00:58:57,160
Speaker 3: the furnish, which would be the money I would need

1065
00:58:57,800 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 3: to sort of get going for the year. You would

1066
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:07,520
Speaker 3: provide the seeds, you would provide the equipment mules, I

1067
00:59:07,560 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 3: would farm the land. I would have a charge account

1068
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:15,080
Speaker 3: at the local store. What people don't realize is most

1069
00:59:15,120 --> 00:59:19,200
Speaker 3: of these farmers really made their money charging exorbitant interest

1070
00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:22,680
Speaker 3: rates on the stores they all owned. So the plantation

1071
00:59:22,800 --> 00:59:25,160
Speaker 3: owners were also primarily merchants.

1072
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:28,040
Speaker 1: So me, as a landowner, like I own thousands of acres,

1073
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 1: I have, yeah, I run a store, yeah, where I

1074
00:59:32,120 --> 00:59:34,960
Speaker 1: sell supplies to me that people that them rented.

1075
00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 3: I have to buy from you, and your charge me

1076
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:43,880
Speaker 3: twenty percent interest and so and so you get to

1077
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 3: the end of the year and now you have the

1078
00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:50,320
Speaker 3: right to sell my crop. I can't go sell my crop,

1079
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:52,800
Speaker 3: So I don't know what price you're getting home. Who

1080
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:55,160
Speaker 3: sells the crop? So the land owner sells it.

1081
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:55,960
Speaker 1: So I'm the landowner.

1082
00:59:56,000 --> 00:59:57,240
Speaker 3: You're the share crop. So I plan.

1083
00:59:57,360 --> 00:59:59,000
Speaker 1: I give you the ground, I give you the seed,

1084
00:59:59,120 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 1: I give you a mule, give you a plow. Yes,

1085
01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:03,960
Speaker 1: you do the daily labor. Yes, And then on your

1086
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:06,720
Speaker 1: patch grows your cotton. And then and then and then

1087
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:08,760
Speaker 1: an I go, I will now sell your cotton.

1088
01:00:08,800 --> 01:00:12,439
Speaker 3: And so you own immediately half of my cotton. That's

1089
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:15,360
Speaker 3: the deal. You get half, I get half. You sell it,

1090
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,400
Speaker 3: You keep the money from your half, You take the

1091
01:00:18,440 --> 01:00:21,680
Speaker 3: money from my half. You subtract all of the expenses

1092
01:00:21,720 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 3: over the years, with over the year, with twenty percent interest,

1093
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 3: and if any money has left, you give that to me. Yeah.

1094
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:30,040
Speaker 1: But because I sell it, but since I own half

1095
01:00:30,040 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 1: of it, I'm incentivized to get the best price for it.

1096
01:00:32,600 --> 01:00:36,040
Speaker 3: You are, but I don't. I can't check your books,

1097
01:00:36,560 --> 01:00:38,320
Speaker 3: so you might sell it for there's no way you're

1098
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:40,880
Speaker 3: checking my book. No, no, And so like you know, and

1099
01:00:40,920 --> 01:00:43,280
Speaker 3: so like there's a gun there's a gun fight here

1100
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:45,360
Speaker 3: in this book where a guy came home from World

1101
01:00:45,400 --> 01:00:47,640
Speaker 3: War One. It was like, you know, a war like

1102
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:52,800
Speaker 3: a war hero and his boss tried to mess him

1103
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:56,600
Speaker 3: up at settlement time and he just shot him. And

1104
01:00:56,640 --> 01:00:58,640
Speaker 3: you know, because there you had no access to the courts.

1105
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:01,320
Speaker 3: But that's the way it works.

1106
01:01:01,320 --> 01:01:05,440
Speaker 1: So then so then at that you harvest, you harvest.

1107
01:01:05,600 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: I sell, I sell for one hundred dollars. Fifty is yours.

1108
01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:13,080
Speaker 1: And I say to you, okay, you bought thirty bucks

1109
01:01:13,080 --> 01:01:15,880
Speaker 1: worth of stuff at my store. Interest on the thirty

1110
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:18,320
Speaker 1: bucks you bought it, my store puts that fifty or

1111
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:21,280
Speaker 1: forty nine dollars. Here's a dollar, here's a dollar, and

1112
01:01:21,320 --> 01:01:22,360
Speaker 1: that's sharecropper cut.

1113
01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:23,560
Speaker 3: That's exactly what it was.

1114
01:01:23,880 --> 01:01:25,520
Speaker 1: Just like but there was white sharecroppers.

1115
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:30,000
Speaker 3: Was one white sharecroppers all over Okay, and and especially

1116
01:01:30,040 --> 01:01:34,040
Speaker 3: sort of going Alabama, Georgia. No, I mean, sharecropping wasn't

1117
01:01:34,080 --> 01:01:36,800
Speaker 3: a thing that only happened. Sharecropping happened to lots of

1118
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:42,480
Speaker 3: poor people. The only way out of sharecropping was credit markets.

1119
01:01:42,680 --> 01:01:44,120
Speaker 3: But let me I got another sharecroper.

1120
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:46,800
Speaker 1: I love, yeah, I love so like like em at

1121
01:01:46,920 --> 01:01:48,560
Speaker 1: Till's people had been sharecroppers.

1122
01:01:48,640 --> 01:01:52,120
Speaker 3: Yes, what would be what would be.

1123
01:01:52,040 --> 01:01:56,120
Speaker 1: A long time that a that a family would be

1124
01:01:56,200 --> 01:01:59,000
Speaker 1: on a chunk of ground, like could you raise your

1125
01:01:59,120 --> 01:02:00,880
Speaker 1: kids all through them being kids.

1126
01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:03,840
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, no, working that same chunk, A lot of

1127
01:02:03,880 --> 01:02:06,840
Speaker 3: people didn't leave. And another thing that's interesting is there

1128
01:02:06,840 --> 01:02:09,240
Speaker 3: a lot of people who were old who still live

1129
01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:13,760
Speaker 3: on land in the delta that you know, his two

1130
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:16,560
Speaker 3: owners away from whoever the last owner they worked for,

1131
01:02:17,080 --> 01:02:18,880
Speaker 3: and people are still living in the house. I see.

1132
01:02:18,920 --> 01:02:21,200
Speaker 1: So the sharecropper could outlast.

1133
01:02:20,680 --> 01:02:24,480
Speaker 3: The owner many yes, and and so like uh and

1134
01:02:24,560 --> 01:02:27,280
Speaker 3: if you found one, so it will Dockery, who owned

1135
01:02:27,320 --> 01:02:30,680
Speaker 3: Dockery Farms, which is near the barn, had a reputation

1136
01:02:30,760 --> 01:02:34,240
Speaker 3: of being fair with people and so like uh, you

1137
01:02:34,240 --> 01:02:36,960
Speaker 3: know Howl and Wolf worked on Dockery. Uh as a

1138
01:02:37,000 --> 01:02:40,800
Speaker 3: sharecraft Yeah. Pop Staples like Mayvis Staples dad was a

1139
01:02:40,800 --> 01:02:44,360
Speaker 3: sharecropper owned Dockery. Uh. You had Charlie Patton playing there.

1140
01:02:44,640 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 3: Uh the Robert So the crossroads the actual crossroads there man. Yeah,

1141
01:02:49,720 --> 01:02:52,280
Speaker 3: so like that's right, that's Dockery and so.

1142
01:02:52,360 --> 01:02:55,160
Speaker 1: Like right there, I was with my friend, Yeah, she

1143
01:02:55,240 --> 01:02:59,040
Speaker 1: took me there. Yeah, we did all kinds of junk

1144
01:02:59,080 --> 01:03:02,040
Speaker 1: down there the time we were there. You know what's funny

1145
01:03:02,040 --> 01:03:02,840
Speaker 1: about do you mind?

1146
01:03:02,840 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 3: I know that she said?

1147
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:06,520
Speaker 1: The funny little story is I was with my friend

1148
01:03:06,560 --> 01:03:09,960
Speaker 1: ann A Baker. Yeah, I still hang out with And

1149
01:03:11,360 --> 01:03:15,760
Speaker 1: we were in Memphis. She was going to school in Oxford, Mississippi.

1150
01:03:16,480 --> 01:03:18,320
Speaker 1: So like we were in Memphis. Then we were down

1151
01:03:18,360 --> 01:03:21,680
Speaker 1: in Oxford, Mississippi. Then we went to like Clarksdale, so

1152
01:03:21,720 --> 01:03:23,919
Speaker 1: I'm from Clarkstone, yeah, yeah, yeah, So we go there.

1153
01:03:24,560 --> 01:03:29,120
Speaker 1: We went to that bar like Morgan Freeman had a bar. Yeah,

1154
01:03:29,480 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 1: went all around there, went out to that crossroad yep.

1155
01:03:33,320 --> 01:03:34,480
Speaker 1: And I was like, man, I'm gonna get out of

1156
01:03:34,480 --> 01:03:36,200
Speaker 1: the car, you know, and sell sell my soul to

1157
01:03:36,280 --> 01:03:37,520
Speaker 1: the devil, you know. She said, you know, I get

1158
01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:38,439
Speaker 1: out of the car and took off.

1159
01:03:38,440 --> 01:03:40,160
Speaker 3: It's just like a funny moment. But uh.

1160
01:03:41,120 --> 01:03:42,360
Speaker 1: And then we had in our head that we were

1161
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:46,760
Speaker 1: going to go to New Orleans, okay, and we were

1162
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 1: going there and they're like, ah, there's a hurricane coming,

1163
01:03:51,120 --> 01:03:52,640
Speaker 1: we should bail Katrina.

1164
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:54,080
Speaker 3: I'm not kidding, dude.

1165
01:03:54,120 --> 01:03:57,160
Speaker 1: We were like going from Clarksdale to New Orleans and

1166
01:03:57,280 --> 01:03:58,560
Speaker 1: backed out because of.

1167
01:03:58,560 --> 01:04:01,040
Speaker 3: The weather report, which was years ago last week.

1168
01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:03,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, because of the weather report. The one of the

1169
01:04:03,760 --> 01:04:05,160
Speaker 1: things I didn't make it didn't make it there.

1170
01:04:06,480 --> 01:04:09,720
Speaker 3: I love the landscape of the Mississippi Delta, like I

1171
01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 3: love like I love riding the levee. I love being

1172
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:16,400
Speaker 3: on the other side of the levee like my uncle

1173
01:04:16,440 --> 01:04:19,560
Speaker 3: and I liked like ride horses back through the old

1174
01:04:19,600 --> 01:04:22,400
Speaker 3: sort of second growth but cottonwood trees that you could

1175
01:04:22,400 --> 01:04:25,800
Speaker 3: stick your hand into. You know, there's like, uh, there's

1176
01:04:25,800 --> 01:04:29,200
Speaker 3: an abandoned I think Bungie the Grain Company. They have

1177
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:32,160
Speaker 3: an abandoned sort of elevator complex out there where they

1178
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:34,920
Speaker 3: used to load up barges and you could ride horses

1179
01:04:34,960 --> 01:04:38,439
Speaker 3: through there. And it's like post apocalyptic because it's real industrial,

1180
01:04:38,600 --> 01:04:40,200
Speaker 3: but it's just in the middle of the woods, in

1181
01:04:40,240 --> 01:04:44,240
Speaker 3: the middle of nowhere, and you know, I love over there.

1182
01:04:44,280 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 3: I love being on the Mississippi River. I love the

1183
01:04:46,760 --> 01:04:49,000
Speaker 3: idea of you know, I love taking my girls out

1184
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:52,160
Speaker 3: of the Mississippi River. I love, you know, them running

1185
01:04:52,200 --> 01:04:55,360
Speaker 3: up a boat on a sandbar, like the idea that,

1186
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:58,920
Speaker 3: like Mike, that they're growing up in concert with that

1187
01:04:59,040 --> 01:05:02,760
Speaker 3: river and uh, you know, our farm runs up to

1188
01:05:02,800 --> 01:05:07,360
Speaker 3: the levee and like it's interesting because uh, in some

1189
01:05:07,400 --> 01:05:09,720
Speaker 3: ways this is almost like a user's manual for like

1190
01:05:09,760 --> 01:05:13,560
Speaker 3: if you're going to be there, But like I I

1191
01:05:14,480 --> 01:05:17,560
Speaker 3: love that land and so oh it shows man I

1192
01:05:17,840 --> 01:05:20,040
Speaker 3: really it's it's really like I want to be buried

1193
01:05:20,080 --> 01:05:20,320
Speaker 3: in it.

1194
01:05:20,480 --> 01:05:22,400
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that drew me to want

1195
01:05:22,480 --> 01:05:24,000
Speaker 1: to talk to you. And like that I liked about

1196
01:05:24,040 --> 01:05:27,640
Speaker 1: your book. Is I don't I don't not try to

1197
01:05:27,720 --> 01:05:32,440
Speaker 1: end the conversation, just wedge just in there, is it? Uh,

1198
01:05:32,800 --> 01:05:36,040
Speaker 1: you do a thing that's hard to do, which is like,

1199
01:05:36,840 --> 01:05:40,560
Speaker 1: you love where you're brought up, You love the landscape.

1200
01:05:41,080 --> 01:05:44,800
Speaker 1: You know it's history and you have but and you're

1201
01:05:44,840 --> 01:05:46,800
Speaker 1: also willing to point out a lot of stuff you

1202
01:05:46,840 --> 01:05:49,760
Speaker 1: guys got wrong. Well and I got it. It's funny

1203
01:05:49,800 --> 01:05:51,160
Speaker 1: because I don't mean, like this is not just a

1204
01:05:51,160 --> 01:05:54,320
Speaker 1: Mississippi thing, dude. But a couple years ago, I went

1205
01:05:54,360 --> 01:05:56,280
Speaker 1: turkey hunting with a with a new friend of mine

1206
01:05:56,320 --> 01:06:00,840
Speaker 1: Don at his place in Mississippi and walking around with him.

1207
01:06:00,760 --> 01:06:02,919
Speaker 3: Is this Taylor? Taylor's my dear friend.

1208
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:05,959
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, he talks very fondly. He's a good dude,

1209
01:06:06,160 --> 01:06:09,080
Speaker 1: walking around him. Like like when I was a kid,

1210
01:06:09,080 --> 01:06:12,960
Speaker 1: if I said the war, my dad fought World War two,

1211
01:06:13,360 --> 01:06:15,080
Speaker 1: So I was a kid, I said the war, we

1212
01:06:15,120 --> 01:06:17,320
Speaker 1: all meant like, like the war was World War two?

1213
01:06:17,320 --> 01:06:20,400
Speaker 3: That's not what we mean. No, But I mean, I.

1214
01:06:20,360 --> 01:06:22,880
Speaker 1: Was telling Crine ther day, it's not a day goes by.

1215
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:25,760
Speaker 1: He doesn't point to something and be like before the war,

1216
01:06:26,040 --> 01:06:28,200
Speaker 1: after the war, and everybody like he's talking about the

1217
01:06:28,240 --> 01:06:32,480
Speaker 1: Civil War, look like it's like a defining landscape feature.

1218
01:06:32,480 --> 01:06:36,720
Speaker 1: It'd be like that damn something in another the war,

1219
01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:41,560
Speaker 1: well that bridge something war, who owns that land something

1220
01:06:41,640 --> 01:06:44,240
Speaker 1: or other? The war, And it's just not like in

1221
01:06:44,320 --> 01:06:47,120
Speaker 1: the North, it is not a thing that comes up.

1222
01:06:47,160 --> 01:06:49,960
Speaker 3: Well, you know, my my eighth grade American history teacher,

1223
01:06:50,760 --> 01:06:54,120
Speaker 3: shout out, Miss Halcomb called it the Civil War the

1224
01:06:54,120 --> 01:06:56,920
Speaker 3: War of Northern aggression. Yeah, sure, yeah, But like I

1225
01:06:56,920 --> 01:07:00,520
Speaker 3: guess the thing about you know, I love the I

1226
01:07:00,560 --> 01:07:03,080
Speaker 3: love the band the Drive By Truckers. Uh. And I

1227
01:07:03,080 --> 01:07:05,440
Speaker 3: think like Patterson Hood, who writes a lot of their songs,

1228
01:07:06,520 --> 01:07:10,640
Speaker 3: Rights is in Us, writes in a really sophistical, sophisticated

1229
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:12,280
Speaker 3: way about the South and the thing he calls it

1230
01:07:12,320 --> 01:07:15,200
Speaker 3: is like the duality of the Southern thing. And so like,

1231
01:07:15,320 --> 01:07:19,280
Speaker 3: I've really come to believe that the most intrinsic part

1232
01:07:19,440 --> 01:07:22,920
Speaker 3: of having a Southern identity is living at the intersection

1233
01:07:23,000 --> 01:07:25,520
Speaker 3: of the conflict of these things. So if you're somebody

1234
01:07:25,520 --> 01:07:29,920
Speaker 3: who only says we're the worst. This sucks, this all

1235
01:07:30,000 --> 01:07:32,760
Speaker 3: his you know, we're just you know, everybody is descendants

1236
01:07:32,760 --> 01:07:35,760
Speaker 3: of oppressors like like, but like that's boring as shit,

1237
01:07:36,000 --> 01:07:39,200
Speaker 3: and it's also you're missing it. And if you only

1238
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:42,919
Speaker 3: defend it and only say you know, if you try

1239
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:45,760
Speaker 3: to diminish the other stuff, you don't actually live there.

1240
01:07:46,200 --> 01:07:50,440
Speaker 3: Living there means living at the intersection of these two.

1241
01:07:51,240 --> 01:07:55,480
Speaker 3: It Being Southern means being able to hold two opposing

1242
01:07:55,600 --> 01:07:57,600
Speaker 3: ideas in your head at the same time in some

1243
01:07:57,640 --> 01:07:59,760
Speaker 3: parts of both of them be true. And so like

1244
01:07:59,800 --> 01:08:01,840
Speaker 3: when I see people who aren't willing to do that,

1245
01:08:03,120 --> 01:08:05,920
Speaker 3: I just find it odd and you know, I think it,

1246
01:08:07,080 --> 01:08:10,640
Speaker 3: you know, like it's not an accident that so many

1247
01:08:10,680 --> 01:08:18,479
Speaker 3: Southerners were in favor of tariffs, which everyone's grandparent would

1248
01:08:18,520 --> 01:08:21,679
Speaker 3: have known what a tariff does to a commodity market.

1249
01:08:21,880 --> 01:08:24,400
Speaker 3: It's where being Southern used to be about being on

1250
01:08:24,439 --> 01:08:28,240
Speaker 3: the land and living in concert with the seasons and

1251
01:08:28,400 --> 01:08:32,479
Speaker 3: understanding that. And so few people are still connected to

1252
01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:35,439
Speaker 3: the dirt in that way that you have, you know,

1253
01:08:36,040 --> 01:08:38,680
Speaker 3: like you have people out there living in like you know,

1254
01:08:39,000 --> 01:08:44,400
Speaker 3: angry travel ball suburbs who don't remember anything about what

1255
01:08:44,439 --> 01:08:47,439
Speaker 3: it means to farm Who don't remember what it means

1256
01:08:47,479 --> 01:08:50,200
Speaker 3: to live in concert with the seasons? Who don't you know,

1257
01:08:50,560 --> 01:08:53,480
Speaker 3: who don't move out to the deer camp between Thanksgiving

1258
01:08:53,479 --> 01:08:56,040
Speaker 3: and New Year's Eve? You know, you think about you know,

1259
01:08:56,080 --> 01:09:00,760
Speaker 3: my cousin, second generation president of the Mayor Gold Hunting Club.

1260
01:09:00,800 --> 01:09:02,960
Speaker 3: If you ever get an invitation there, it's but they

1261
01:09:02,960 --> 01:09:06,040
Speaker 3: have a day of a communal like dining hall, and

1262
01:09:06,120 --> 01:09:11,679
Speaker 3: so people eat meat like between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve,

1263
01:09:12,280 --> 01:09:14,439
Speaker 3: like farmers move their families out there, and so like

1264
01:09:14,840 --> 01:09:18,160
Speaker 3: I love the parts of Mississippi that are still deeply

1265
01:09:18,240 --> 01:09:21,439
Speaker 3: connected to the rhythms of the land. You know, my

1266
01:09:21,520 --> 01:09:24,599
Speaker 3: uncle Reeves, who has been on our farm every single

1267
01:09:24,640 --> 01:09:26,599
Speaker 3: day since nineteen sixty eight when he took it over,

1268
01:09:28,360 --> 01:09:33,080
Speaker 3: loves you know, it's funny. He managed, he's president of

1269
01:09:33,080 --> 01:09:35,960
Speaker 3: two different big deer clubs. Uh, he hasn't shot a

1270
01:09:36,000 --> 01:09:40,920
Speaker 3: deer since nineteen sixty three and and he he but

1271
01:09:40,960 --> 01:09:44,640
Speaker 3: he likes the he likes the herd management. They got

1272
01:09:44,640 --> 01:09:48,080
Speaker 3: a PhD Fromsissippi State, like working with what they're planning

1273
01:09:48,080 --> 01:09:50,320
Speaker 3: and when, and he loves that. And then you know,

1274
01:09:50,360 --> 01:09:53,240
Speaker 3: we've got three or four duckoles on our farm, and

1275
01:09:53,320 --> 01:09:55,160
Speaker 3: he's out there every single day and a lot of

1276
01:09:55,200 --> 01:09:58,080
Speaker 3: times doesn't take a gun, like it's just calling him in.

1277
01:09:58,439 --> 01:10:00,800
Speaker 3: Just likes to be there and wants to be on

1278
01:10:01,520 --> 01:10:04,200
Speaker 3: not land, wants to be on his land, you know,

1279
01:10:04,280 --> 01:10:07,240
Speaker 3: wants to be buried in his land. And like, that's

1280
01:10:07,320 --> 01:10:10,439
Speaker 3: such an important part to me of what it means

1281
01:10:10,479 --> 01:10:12,719
Speaker 3: to be from Mississippi and to be from the South.

1282
01:10:12,840 --> 01:10:15,519
Speaker 1: That's very funny. I have a dear friend of mine,

1283
01:10:15,600 --> 01:10:19,160
Speaker 1: Clay Nukem, who I work with too. We always laugh

1284
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:23,880
Speaker 1: because he has a lot of Arkansas exceptionalism and Southern

1285
01:10:23,880 --> 01:10:25,160
Speaker 1: exceptional So he'll.

1286
01:10:25,000 --> 01:10:26,920
Speaker 3: He's over at Stuttgart busted some ducks.

1287
01:10:27,000 --> 01:10:30,880
Speaker 1: He'll he'll say, quite freely. He's like, well, in the South,

1288
01:10:31,160 --> 01:10:35,200
Speaker 1: music is very important to us, and I'm like, okay,

1289
01:10:35,400 --> 01:10:38,200
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that it's not. I didn't realize it's

1290
01:10:38,200 --> 01:10:38,759
Speaker 1: not important.

1291
01:10:39,000 --> 01:10:41,719
Speaker 3: Yeah. Wait, sorry, I didn't realize music wasn't I didn't

1292
01:10:41,720 --> 01:10:46,799
Speaker 3: realise music wasn't important in Harlem, music wasn't important San Francisco, Troy, Detroit,

1293
01:10:47,160 --> 01:10:48,320
Speaker 3: this is motown thing.

1294
01:10:49,560 --> 01:10:52,559
Speaker 1: But there is, dude, It's like legitimate, and I want

1295
01:10:52,560 --> 01:10:53,360
Speaker 1: to get back to sharecrowd.

1296
01:10:53,600 --> 01:10:56,360
Speaker 3: Sorry I giggled. I haven't done that in a really

1297
01:10:56,400 --> 01:10:56,840
Speaker 3: long time.

1298
01:10:56,920 --> 01:11:00,240
Speaker 1: Shows you're having a good time. But I have it

1299
01:11:00,280 --> 01:11:04,519
Speaker 1: to him is like he does a lot of interviews

1300
01:11:04,520 --> 01:11:07,719
Speaker 1: with with I mean, his his show was largely about

1301
01:11:07,720 --> 01:11:10,360
Speaker 1: Southern culture. There's a lot of interviews, and like, there's

1302
01:11:10,400 --> 01:11:13,880
Speaker 1: a thing that I got to give them. If you

1303
01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:16,799
Speaker 1: just went and randomly pulled a hundred okay, you randomly

1304
01:11:16,880 --> 01:11:20,559
Speaker 1: pulled a hundred Northerners in a room, and you randomly

1305
01:11:20,600 --> 01:11:25,640
Speaker 1: pulled a hundred Southerners in a room, okay, and you said, like,

1306
01:11:25,960 --> 01:11:29,559
Speaker 1: what way, I want to know what cardinal direction the

1307
01:11:29,640 --> 01:11:34,640
Speaker 1: front door of your house faces. The Southerners are going

1308
01:11:34,760 --> 01:11:38,840
Speaker 1: to kick the ship out of the Northern If you said,

1309
01:11:38,960 --> 01:11:41,080
Speaker 1: I want to know what is the.

1310
01:11:40,640 --> 01:11:42,280
Speaker 3: How could you not know that? Because it's the sun.

1311
01:11:42,560 --> 01:11:44,040
Speaker 3: I'm just okay, it's just a thing.

1312
01:11:44,400 --> 01:11:46,759
Speaker 1: If you took one hundred Southerners and one hundred northerns

1313
01:11:46,800 --> 01:11:49,120
Speaker 1: and you said, if you take a piss in your yard,

1314
01:11:50,080 --> 01:11:53,400
Speaker 1: tell me the route that piss would take as runoff

1315
01:11:53,680 --> 01:11:56,120
Speaker 1: could definitely do that, and what river, what madjeor river

1316
01:11:56,160 --> 01:11:58,080
Speaker 1: would land in the Southerners are going to kick the

1317
01:11:58,080 --> 01:11:58,519
Speaker 1: shit out of.

1318
01:11:58,479 --> 01:11:59,719
Speaker 3: The northerns all fine.

1319
01:11:59,720 --> 01:12:00,600
Speaker 1: I don't know why they have.

1320
01:12:01,160 --> 01:12:06,559
Speaker 3: It's because all they can They just can't. All farming

1321
01:12:07,160 --> 01:12:10,759
Speaker 3: is really is getting water on to land and getting

1322
01:12:10,800 --> 01:12:13,040
Speaker 3: water off of it. Yeah, you know, Like one of

1323
01:12:13,120 --> 01:12:14,880
Speaker 3: my favorite things to do is to drive around our

1324
01:12:14,880 --> 01:12:18,880
Speaker 3: farm with my uncle Raeves because he knows his understanding

1325
01:12:18,960 --> 01:12:21,840
Speaker 3: of the drainage. He's like, well, see that culvert goes

1326
01:12:21,880 --> 01:12:24,000
Speaker 3: into the Bogue Falia which is going to flow into

1327
01:12:24,000 --> 01:12:26,080
Speaker 3: Deer Creek, Like it's unbelievable.

1328
01:12:26,160 --> 01:12:29,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so like Southerners are better at it. There's

1329
01:12:29,160 --> 01:12:33,200
Speaker 1: just something about there's something about the Southern experience that

1330
01:12:33,960 --> 01:12:36,559
Speaker 1: or it's everyone had it, but it got And this

1331
01:12:36,640 --> 01:12:39,240
Speaker 1: is just very general. Like my friend Doug Duran's like

1332
01:12:39,320 --> 01:12:41,439
Speaker 1: dying right now. He's in Wisconsin. He can tell you

1333
01:12:41,479 --> 01:12:42,559
Speaker 1: where every piece He's.

1334
01:12:42,400 --> 01:12:44,120
Speaker 3: The guy where you guys go Deer Honey on the show.

1335
01:12:44,240 --> 01:12:45,640
Speaker 1: He can tell you where every piece of water, and

1336
01:12:45,680 --> 01:12:48,439
Speaker 1: the whole state flows too. So there's exceptions, but I'm

1337
01:12:48,479 --> 01:12:56,360
Speaker 1: saying like, like the knowledge got scrubbed. It's getting scrubbed everywhere. Yeah,

1338
01:12:56,400 --> 01:13:01,360
Speaker 1: the knowledge got scrubbed more in the North Earth. It

1339
01:13:01,439 --> 01:13:03,559
Speaker 1: used to be like it just got scrubbed more in

1340
01:13:03,600 --> 01:13:09,360
Speaker 1: the north. Industrialization came quicker. Whatever suburbia came quicker, it

1341
01:13:09,400 --> 01:13:11,840
Speaker 1: got scrubbed in the north. Fashion out scrubbed the South.

1342
01:13:11,880 --> 01:13:14,759
Speaker 1: So when I look down there, I'm like, like living

1343
01:13:14,840 --> 01:13:20,920
Speaker 1: with living with deep history, living with with landscape, understanding

1344
01:13:20,920 --> 01:13:25,160
Speaker 1: the limitations of land. It just feels more alive in

1345
01:13:25,160 --> 01:13:27,040
Speaker 1: the South. And reading your book, I'm like, this is

1346
01:13:27,600 --> 01:13:29,920
Speaker 1: you know, and looking at your book, I'm like, this

1347
01:13:30,080 --> 01:13:32,200
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that I wish there was

1348
01:13:32,280 --> 01:13:37,240
Speaker 1: more of. Is people being like the history where you live,

1349
01:13:37,280 --> 01:13:40,960
Speaker 1: at what goes on and connecting it to how much

1350
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:43,920
Speaker 1: top soil you got, how much rain you got, what

1351
01:13:44,040 --> 01:13:46,080
Speaker 1: kind of trees grew, were you got, you know, and

1352
01:13:46,160 --> 01:13:48,639
Speaker 1: it is just this story just gives like this story

1353
01:13:48,680 --> 01:13:55,360
Speaker 1: gives this like super dramatic, nationally known travesty a way

1354
01:13:55,400 --> 01:13:58,000
Speaker 1: to go, like, Okay, let's let's do this at a place,

1355
01:13:58,040 --> 01:14:00,360
Speaker 1: but we're gonna do this at a place that changed America.

1356
01:14:00,520 --> 01:14:06,000
Speaker 3: Well, and this idea that like that the that the

1357
01:14:06,160 --> 01:14:10,679
Speaker 3: rainfall and the cotton or soybean yields have a direct

1358
01:14:10,880 --> 01:14:13,080
Speaker 3: impact on violence.

1359
01:14:13,240 --> 01:14:16,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that crops ain't good.

1360
01:14:16,720 --> 01:14:19,600
Speaker 3: No, And like you go back and read narrative like

1361
01:14:19,800 --> 01:14:28,200
Speaker 3: enslaved people's narratives. And they're talking about in eighteen fifty

1362
01:14:28,240 --> 01:14:31,719
Speaker 3: knowing needing to know what the Liverpool price of cotton

1363
01:14:31,920 --> 01:14:34,400
Speaker 3: was because that was going to determine how violent their

1364
01:14:34,520 --> 01:14:37,800
Speaker 3: day was. Like this is the moods of the It's

1365
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:40,800
Speaker 3: been tied to that forever. And I mean, you know

1366
01:14:41,160 --> 01:14:42,960
Speaker 3: the ways in I mean we said this earlier, but

1367
01:14:43,000 --> 01:14:48,360
Speaker 3: the ways in which Mississippi you know, functioned as an

1368
01:14:48,400 --> 01:14:51,040
Speaker 3: extension of man My mother grew up in Shelby, Mississippi,

1369
01:14:51,040 --> 01:14:54,599
Speaker 3: and they got the Manchester Guardian delivered to their house

1370
01:14:55,240 --> 01:14:58,599
Speaker 3: to track cotton, to track to textile industries in cotton

1371
01:14:58,840 --> 01:15:00,960
Speaker 3: because there was no internet, and even though the paper

1372
01:15:01,000 --> 01:15:04,280
Speaker 3: came once a week, it gave her father just a

1373
01:15:04,280 --> 01:15:07,280
Speaker 3: little more info. And so there's always been you know, uh,

1374
01:15:07,360 --> 01:15:11,040
Speaker 3: Yazoo City, Mississippi used to be named Manchester, Mississippi. My

1375
01:15:11,520 --> 01:15:15,200
Speaker 3: uncle Will was the team doctor for Manchester Academy football

1376
01:15:15,200 --> 01:15:18,600
Speaker 3: team forever, and it's named after Manchester, you know, and

1377
01:15:18,640 --> 01:15:22,639
Speaker 3: I mean that tight. Yeah, it was so tied into

1378
01:15:23,160 --> 01:15:25,599
Speaker 3: you know, in New Orleans, all those banks, those are

1379
01:15:25,640 --> 01:15:28,680
Speaker 3: all London banks, New Orleans and New Orleans, Charleston and

1380
01:15:28,720 --> 01:15:34,280
Speaker 3: Savannah were sort of outpost of European capital markets. Yeah uh,

1381
01:15:34,320 --> 01:15:36,760
Speaker 3: And it's just like all of that stuff is fascinating,

1382
01:15:37,160 --> 01:15:39,160
Speaker 3: you know, one of the there are a lot of

1383
01:15:39,200 --> 01:15:41,879
Speaker 3: these histories of America that I feel like are fatally

1384
01:15:41,960 --> 01:15:45,120
Speaker 3: flawed because they stop at the water's edge, as if

1385
01:15:45,200 --> 01:15:49,559
Speaker 3: you know, as if like this, like you can watch

1386
01:15:49,600 --> 01:15:52,280
Speaker 3: capital markets move all of this and one of the

1387
01:15:52,280 --> 01:15:54,880
Speaker 3: heartbreaking things in the book. They're probably five or six

1388
01:15:54,920 --> 01:15:57,720
Speaker 3: different times. The reason I like the Ivory Bill Woodpecker

1389
01:15:57,720 --> 01:16:01,800
Speaker 3: in here is because it represent it's the mystery to me,

1390
01:16:02,040 --> 01:16:05,360
Speaker 3: and it represents the sort of Gabrielle Garcia Marquez, It's

1391
01:16:05,400 --> 01:16:09,559
Speaker 3: raining flowers in Macondo's sort of active imagination of what

1392
01:16:09,640 --> 01:16:13,960
Speaker 3: could have happened. Nine different times this whole thing could

1393
01:16:14,000 --> 01:16:17,280
Speaker 3: have been avoided, and so like rolling through the history

1394
01:16:17,280 --> 01:16:19,400
Speaker 3: of the land, you see over and over times where

1395
01:16:19,920 --> 01:16:23,120
Speaker 3: a decision, like one decision, and none of this would

1396
01:16:23,160 --> 01:16:24,080
Speaker 3: have even ever been there.

1397
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:29,880
Speaker 1: When we finished it, I talked about two things I

1398
01:16:29,880 --> 01:16:31,920
Speaker 1: want to hear about the Ivory Bill Woodpecker. Yeah, I

1399
01:16:31,960 --> 01:16:33,760
Speaker 1: want to hear about the Curse of the Killers. But

1400
01:16:33,800 --> 01:16:35,800
Speaker 1: I want to step right now back to summer we

1401
01:16:35,880 --> 01:16:42,360
Speaker 1: left off. Why like Emmett Tills people. Yeah, his people

1402
01:16:42,360 --> 01:16:44,040
Speaker 1: had been sharecroppers from Mississippi.

1403
01:16:44,120 --> 01:16:44,320
Speaker 3: Yep.

1404
01:16:45,040 --> 01:16:47,679
Speaker 1: Why were they up? Why were they going to Chicago?

1405
01:16:47,840 --> 01:16:50,240
Speaker 1: Like what was going on in the in the economy

1406
01:16:50,280 --> 01:16:53,160
Speaker 1: and on the land that made it that these long

1407
01:16:53,280 --> 01:16:56,760
Speaker 1: time people that had been slaves then they had been

1408
01:16:56,800 --> 01:17:00,599
Speaker 1: sharecroppers they gave up on the South? What was happening?

1409
01:17:00,640 --> 01:17:03,800
Speaker 3: So a couple of things are going on. One, factories

1410
01:17:04,320 --> 01:17:09,920
Speaker 3: are desperate for workers. They're sending northern factories they're sending

1411
01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:12,400
Speaker 3: like labor agents down to the South. God, who are

1412
01:17:12,479 --> 01:17:14,840
Speaker 3: being recruiters, recruiters who are being run out of town

1413
01:17:15,080 --> 01:17:15,799
Speaker 3: by the police.

1414
01:17:16,040 --> 01:17:17,719
Speaker 1: Oh you shit me? Really, there's like a tension.

1415
01:17:17,800 --> 01:17:20,360
Speaker 3: No, no, dude, they were like arresting and running them

1416
01:17:20,360 --> 01:17:22,719
Speaker 3: out of town and like no, it was a huge tension.

1417
01:17:23,160 --> 01:17:24,280
Speaker 1: And they're taking the labor.

1418
01:17:24,320 --> 01:17:30,719
Speaker 3: They're taking the labor there was it had gotten after

1419
01:17:30,760 --> 01:17:34,400
Speaker 3: the price of cotton collapsed. I think an already tense

1420
01:17:34,640 --> 01:17:38,880
Speaker 3: situation like the like the book said, uh coil tighter

1421
01:17:38,920 --> 01:17:41,880
Speaker 3: and tighter. People were looking to leave. There was so

1422
01:17:42,000 --> 01:17:44,760
Speaker 3: much violence, you know, the modern clan was found in

1423
01:17:44,800 --> 01:17:48,400
Speaker 3: like what nineteen twenty two, I think in response to

1424
01:17:48,560 --> 01:17:51,519
Speaker 3: Black soldiers coming home from World War One. You know,

1425
01:17:51,600 --> 01:17:54,439
Speaker 3: there was a whole sort of America first after the

1426
01:17:54,439 --> 01:17:57,280
Speaker 3: horror of going to Europe and fighting this war, and

1427
01:17:57,360 --> 01:18:00,759
Speaker 3: so there just was a real retrenchment in the eighteen twenties,

1428
01:18:01,080 --> 01:18:04,639
Speaker 3: and so you had, you know, there were black veterans

1429
01:18:04,680 --> 01:18:07,400
Speaker 3: being killed all over the South and so like people

1430
01:18:07,439 --> 01:18:10,639
Speaker 3: were trying to get out. And so Maymi Till's father

1431
01:18:11,920 --> 01:18:16,200
Speaker 3: moved in like nineteen twenty three, I think because he

1432
01:18:16,280 --> 01:18:18,880
Speaker 3: was like he didn't feel like he had daughters and

1433
01:18:18,920 --> 01:18:20,920
Speaker 3: he didn't feel like he could protect his daughters, and

1434
01:18:20,960 --> 01:18:22,080
Speaker 3: he was like, we got to get out of here.

1435
01:18:22,120 --> 01:18:26,080
Speaker 1: So it was like moving for safety, twenty two years

1436
01:18:26,120 --> 01:18:26,559
Speaker 1: before his.

1437
01:18:26,520 --> 01:18:28,479
Speaker 3: Boy would be killed. Yes, it was moving for safety,

1438
01:18:28,640 --> 01:18:30,840
Speaker 3: whatever the hell number years, Yes, and it was moving

1439
01:18:30,840 --> 01:18:32,240
Speaker 3: for safety grandson be killed.

1440
01:18:32,280 --> 01:18:32,519
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1441
01:18:32,560 --> 01:18:34,679
Speaker 3: And it was also like, you know, the first mechanized

1442
01:18:34,720 --> 01:18:37,400
Speaker 3: cotton crop in America was nineteen forty three in Clarksdale

1443
01:18:37,560 --> 01:18:40,880
Speaker 3: at Hobson Plantation. I mean that was coming. And so

1444
01:18:41,200 --> 01:18:45,920
Speaker 3: you know, our farm we probably needed in nineteen fifty

1445
01:18:46,040 --> 01:18:49,200
Speaker 3: four hundred families living on it to farm it. We

1446
01:18:49,280 --> 01:18:51,559
Speaker 3: farm it now with I think eighteen people. And that's

1447
01:18:51,560 --> 01:18:54,120
Speaker 3: because the tractors can't turn themselves around. How about we're

1448
01:18:54,160 --> 01:18:56,640
Speaker 3: ten years away from farming it with four people, and

1449
01:18:56,680 --> 01:18:58,439
Speaker 3: so you can just watch sort of the need for

1450
01:18:58,520 --> 01:19:00,479
Speaker 3: all of this labor run out. One of the sort

1451
01:19:00,520 --> 01:19:04,320
Speaker 3: of ironies of the of Emmett Till's murder is that

1452
01:19:04,920 --> 01:19:08,680
Speaker 3: it was very much an effort by a sort of

1453
01:19:08,760 --> 01:19:12,599
Speaker 3: class and race of people to protect what they felt

1454
01:19:12,680 --> 01:19:18,760
Speaker 3: was a world running through their hands. So many families

1455
01:19:18,880 --> 01:19:22,360
Speaker 3: left the Mississippi Delta after nineteen fifty five, Every family

1456
01:19:22,360 --> 01:19:25,200
Speaker 3: who lived in Money, Mississippi, every black family who had

1457
01:19:25,200 --> 01:19:29,639
Speaker 3: a teenage son left, And so the people who couldn't

1458
01:19:30,120 --> 01:19:33,240
Speaker 3: afford the expensive equipment were the only people who were

1459
01:19:33,240 --> 01:19:37,280
Speaker 3: still using sharecroppers. And then the last of the sharecroppers left,

1460
01:19:37,520 --> 01:19:41,280
Speaker 3: and I think by nineteen sixty five there were no

1461
01:19:41,400 --> 01:19:43,360
Speaker 3: sharecroppers left in America, got it.

1462
01:19:43,560 --> 01:19:46,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was the whole opportunity was evaporation.

1463
01:19:46,600 --> 01:19:49,280
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so you also have he arrived at the

1464
01:19:49,400 --> 01:19:53,960
Speaker 3: last gasp of a way of being in the world

1465
01:19:55,439 --> 01:19:56,200
Speaker 3: and didn't know it.

1466
01:19:58,560 --> 01:20:01,680
Speaker 1: You know what kind of uh broke my heart in

1467
01:20:01,720 --> 01:20:06,439
Speaker 1: a weird way, is uh? I always have and and

1468
01:20:06,840 --> 01:20:10,679
Speaker 1: do hold up World War two guys, pedestal. Oh yeah,

1469
01:20:10,880 --> 01:20:14,600
Speaker 1: M Mattill's murders man the World War two guys and

1470
01:20:14,720 --> 01:20:15,880
Speaker 1: it was like a service pistol.

1471
01:20:16,000 --> 01:20:18,559
Speaker 3: Yeah, they beat him to death with his uh, with

1472
01:20:18,680 --> 01:20:24,320
Speaker 3: his ithaca uh forty five and uh yeah.

1473
01:20:24,320 --> 01:20:26,600
Speaker 1: These got like a number of those guys were veterans.

1474
01:20:26,240 --> 01:20:28,519
Speaker 3: Well, and they were all veterans, and I mean one

1475
01:20:28,520 --> 01:20:32,920
Speaker 3: of the guys was a veteran from Pelolu. And then JW.

1476
01:20:33,000 --> 01:20:37,120
Speaker 3: Milem was wounded at the Colmar Pocket. One of the

1477
01:20:37,120 --> 01:20:40,439
Speaker 3: things in the book is so all of the all

1478
01:20:40,479 --> 01:20:44,920
Speaker 3: of his every book ever written about m until has

1479
01:20:45,000 --> 01:20:47,679
Speaker 3: a sort of huge line of mistakes through it. Because

1480
01:20:47,680 --> 01:20:51,559
Speaker 3: there was like a typo in JW. Milem's obituary and

1481
01:20:51,560 --> 01:20:54,519
Speaker 3: it got the number of his unit wrong. So people

1482
01:20:54,560 --> 01:20:56,679
Speaker 3: in these books would be describing the battles he would

1483
01:20:56,680 --> 01:20:58,760
Speaker 3: have been in, but he wasn't there. And so on.

1484
01:20:59,000 --> 01:21:01,439
Speaker 1: One of the does a thing like that. It's so

1485
01:21:01,520 --> 01:21:02,720
Speaker 1: crazy it makes me I don't want to get it.

1486
01:21:02,720 --> 01:21:04,040
Speaker 1: There's a thing like that in the history of the

1487
01:21:04,080 --> 01:21:06,719
Speaker 1: American Buffalo. Yeah, it was a thing that you can't

1488
01:21:06,720 --> 01:21:09,080
Speaker 1: read a book about that subject that doesn't include a

1489
01:21:09,120 --> 01:21:10,160
Speaker 1: thing that never happened.

1490
01:21:10,200 --> 01:21:12,160
Speaker 3: Dude, See this because of a mistake, so it makes

1491
01:21:12,200 --> 01:21:15,479
Speaker 3: it and so so, and it's in every book, so

1492
01:21:15,760 --> 01:21:19,240
Speaker 3: then you'll love this. So I was like, this doesn't.

1493
01:21:19,760 --> 01:21:21,880
Speaker 3: I just didn't believe it. I think, like, if you're

1494
01:21:21,920 --> 01:21:24,519
Speaker 3: going to write something that is like this, you have

1495
01:21:24,560 --> 01:21:26,920
Speaker 3: to there's a reason it's so endnoted. You got to

1496
01:21:26,920 --> 01:21:29,120
Speaker 3: show your work. Yeah, And I was like, so, I'm

1497
01:21:29,120 --> 01:21:33,080
Speaker 3: not taking anything for granted. And so I found I

1498
01:21:33,080 --> 01:21:36,040
Speaker 3: found every obituary that had ever been published that mentioned

1499
01:21:36,439 --> 01:21:38,240
Speaker 3: this unit, because I didn't know it was a typo yet,

1500
01:21:39,120 --> 01:21:41,160
Speaker 3: and so I just believed it. I just so I

1501
01:21:41,200 --> 01:21:45,200
Speaker 3: found every every single obituary that mentioned that. And then

1502
01:21:45,240 --> 01:21:47,519
Speaker 3: I called the eldest son of every one of those

1503
01:21:47,600 --> 01:21:51,519
Speaker 3: dead veterans and said or emailed or called and said, hey,

1504
01:21:51,520 --> 01:21:53,760
Speaker 3: did your dad bring home anything from the war. And

1505
01:21:53,800 --> 01:21:56,280
Speaker 3: this really nice guy outside of Fort Worth, Texas was like,

1506
01:21:56,320 --> 01:21:58,840
Speaker 3: my dad was like the logistics officer for that unit,

1507
01:21:59,080 --> 01:22:01,559
Speaker 3: and he brought home a every single piece of paper.

1508
01:22:01,680 --> 01:22:03,840
Speaker 3: Theyre in my filing cabinet. You want to come see them.

1509
01:22:04,000 --> 01:22:05,400
Speaker 3: So I went and spent a couple of days this

1510
01:22:05,439 --> 01:22:07,880
Speaker 3: guy's house and I went through every piece of paper

1511
01:22:07,880 --> 01:22:10,559
Speaker 3: from this unit and JW. MILEMS name wasn't on any

1512
01:22:10,600 --> 01:22:12,879
Speaker 3: of it, and so then I went to these incredible

1513
01:22:12,880 --> 01:22:15,559
Speaker 3: There's this guy named Eric who works in the archives

1514
01:22:15,560 --> 01:22:18,120
Speaker 3: in Saint Louis. So in the nineteen seventy three there

1515
01:22:18,160 --> 01:22:21,160
Speaker 3: was a terrible fire in Saint Louis at the American Archives,

1516
01:22:21,360 --> 01:22:25,160
Speaker 3: and it burned up almost every single World War Two

1517
01:22:25,880 --> 01:22:30,639
Speaker 3: veterans personnel file. They're all gone. They all burned the

1518
01:22:30,920 --> 01:22:33,559
Speaker 3: unit files with like the morning reports. All of that

1519
01:22:33,800 --> 01:22:37,439
Speaker 3: is still there. So you can recreate someone's service record,

1520
01:22:37,720 --> 01:22:42,479
Speaker 3: but it's unbelievably tedious. And so I eventually recreated his

1521
01:22:42,680 --> 01:22:45,200
Speaker 3: entire service record. And then I went to France and

1522
01:22:45,200 --> 01:22:48,280
Speaker 3: then I walked the battlefields, you know, I like walked

1523
01:22:48,280 --> 01:22:50,720
Speaker 3: through the forest where the foxholes were. Wrote all of

1524
01:22:50,760 --> 01:22:52,439
Speaker 3: this and then cut it all out of the book.

1525
01:22:53,960 --> 01:22:57,439
Speaker 3: So I but I spent a lot of time with JW.

1526
01:22:57,560 --> 01:23:02,920
Speaker 3: Milems you know JW. Miles legitimate. You know, people claimed

1527
01:23:02,920 --> 01:23:05,280
Speaker 3: he will want a silver star. I don't think that's true.

1528
01:23:06,280 --> 01:23:09,120
Speaker 3: But definitely wounded in the coal Maar pocket, like right

1529
01:23:09,160 --> 01:23:13,840
Speaker 3: there on the border between It's like no, it's right

1530
01:23:13,840 --> 01:23:17,280
Speaker 3: on the border between Germany and France. Uh so like

1531
01:23:17,600 --> 01:23:22,960
Speaker 3: uh Strausburg, like when I when I went there, I

1532
01:23:23,000 --> 01:23:25,920
Speaker 3: flew into Stuttgart in Germany and drove across the border

1533
01:23:26,600 --> 01:23:28,200
Speaker 3: as that was the closest airport.

1534
01:23:28,400 --> 01:23:30,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you really track these guys down.

1535
01:23:31,360 --> 01:23:32,879
Speaker 3: I did, you know. And I had a whole pelolu

1536
01:23:32,960 --> 01:23:39,600
Speaker 3: thing on Melvin Gamble, uh and like it's it's just

1537
01:23:41,520 --> 01:23:47,760
Speaker 3: when a legitimate war hero thinks that it is necessary

1538
01:23:47,800 --> 01:23:51,320
Speaker 3: to torture and kill a child to preserve something that

1539
01:23:51,400 --> 01:23:56,760
Speaker 3: he feels is being lost, Like you know, you know,

1540
01:23:56,760 --> 01:24:00,360
Speaker 3: I say in every book talk like, yeah, forces had

1541
01:24:00,400 --> 01:24:01,840
Speaker 3: a lot to do with him until his death, but

1542
01:24:01,920 --> 01:24:04,559
Speaker 3: forces didn't kill him. Everybody in that barn that night

1543
01:24:04,600 --> 01:24:08,360
Speaker 3: had free will. But what's so interesting is you watch

1544
01:24:08,400 --> 01:24:12,559
Speaker 3: these people move across the south. You know, my family

1545
01:24:12,640 --> 01:24:15,280
Speaker 3: sort of moving roughly the same place as generation by

1546
01:24:15,320 --> 01:24:19,360
Speaker 3: generation that the Milems are, like, you know, the Mylem

1547
01:24:19,439 --> 01:24:22,439
Speaker 3: family was married at one point in the DuPont family,

1548
01:24:23,320 --> 01:24:26,919
Speaker 3: you know, And so you watch them generation by generation,

1549
01:24:28,439 --> 01:24:32,400
Speaker 3: poor life spans get shorter, not longer. You were watching

1550
01:24:32,479 --> 01:24:37,000
Speaker 3: a family keep going west to try to try again

1551
01:24:37,080 --> 01:24:41,519
Speaker 3: with the next generation, failing, generation after generation, continuing to

1552
01:24:41,560 --> 01:24:45,759
Speaker 3: move west until there's nowhere left to move west. And

1553
01:24:45,880 --> 01:24:49,240
Speaker 3: so the generation that sort of washed up and there

1554
01:24:49,280 --> 01:24:52,759
Speaker 3: was nowhere left to go, was like JW. And Roy's

1555
01:24:52,920 --> 01:24:55,840
Speaker 3: parents generation, and so they were in the hills. They

1556
01:24:55,880 --> 01:24:58,360
Speaker 3: had their noses pressed up against the glass of the

1557
01:24:58,439 --> 01:25:02,080
Speaker 3: last great gold Rush and the cotton industry, and they

1558
01:25:02,080 --> 01:25:05,600
Speaker 3: didn't get down into the delta until right after it collapsed.

1559
01:25:05,840 --> 01:25:08,320
Speaker 3: And so for generations they've been trying to get into

1560
01:25:08,360 --> 01:25:10,760
Speaker 3: this place where this land was, and they get there

1561
01:25:11,080 --> 01:25:13,559
Speaker 3: and then the promise of it is all gone. And

1562
01:25:14,000 --> 01:25:16,960
Speaker 3: you know, four generations of the mile of mile of

1563
01:25:17,080 --> 01:25:20,920
Speaker 3: men either killed someone violently or were killed violently, and

1564
01:25:20,960 --> 01:25:25,679
Speaker 3: you just watch, You're just watching a family disintegrate. And

1565
01:25:26,400 --> 01:25:33,480
Speaker 3: m Until with his hope and with his young teenage

1566
01:25:33,520 --> 01:25:37,559
Speaker 3: sense of adventure and of boundary stretching and of looking

1567
01:25:37,600 --> 01:25:44,439
Speaker 3: for the line. He uh, you know, he intersected. He

1568
01:25:44,600 --> 01:25:46,439
Speaker 3: was on the way up, and he intersected with a

1569
01:25:46,479 --> 01:25:50,880
Speaker 3: group of people who had been auguring in for generations.

1570
01:25:50,920 --> 01:25:53,080
Speaker 3: And like that has something to do with all of this,

1571
01:25:53,560 --> 01:25:57,120
Speaker 3: you know, I mean it's like, uh, you just forget.

1572
01:25:57,160 --> 01:26:00,679
Speaker 3: Like you know, there's a storage you know in Chicago

1573
01:26:00,800 --> 01:26:03,000
Speaker 3: right now that the Till family has that has him

1574
01:26:03,040 --> 01:26:06,120
Speaker 3: it Tills Toy train in it No kidding. I mean

1575
01:26:06,720 --> 01:26:09,360
Speaker 3: you know, I mean like this was a child who

1576
01:26:09,479 --> 01:26:15,880
Speaker 3: ran into a family that was had been so disillusioned

1577
01:26:16,120 --> 01:26:18,640
Speaker 3: by whatever they had been sold about the possibility of

1578
01:26:18,680 --> 01:26:22,320
Speaker 3: where they lived that it had curdled into something terrible.

1579
01:26:23,360 --> 01:26:26,880
Speaker 1: Krin and I were having a conversation yesterday in preparation

1580
01:26:27,000 --> 01:26:31,200
Speaker 1: for you coming, and somehow, like many conversations I'm in,

1581
01:26:31,360 --> 01:26:32,559
Speaker 1: came around at OJ.

1582
01:26:34,960 --> 01:26:37,840
Speaker 3: Look I got a weird man. I met OJ once

1583
01:26:37,920 --> 01:26:38,479
Speaker 3: and it's a.

1584
01:26:38,439 --> 01:26:42,160
Speaker 1: Great story, quick OJ story. I was not gonna talk

1585
01:26:42,160 --> 01:26:44,120
Speaker 1: about the conversation we were having about you that turned

1586
01:26:44,120 --> 01:26:46,240
Speaker 1: into a conversation about OJ, which I'm going to turn

1587
01:26:46,240 --> 01:26:48,360
Speaker 1: into a conversation about the acquittal ahead.

1588
01:26:48,400 --> 01:26:51,800
Speaker 3: That's perfect. The uh. And then I'm going to riff

1589
01:26:51,800 --> 01:26:53,360
Speaker 3: off of the acquittal and turn it back to OJ.

1590
01:26:54,120 --> 01:26:56,880
Speaker 3: All right, No the uh?

1591
01:26:55,720 --> 01:26:58,120
Speaker 1: Uh you don't know what point I'm gonna make.

1592
01:26:58,200 --> 01:27:02,080
Speaker 3: Did you put LSD in this coffee? The uh? And

1593
01:27:02,200 --> 01:27:06,960
Speaker 3: so uh Uh. I was at a Kentucky derby and uh,

1594
01:27:07,160 --> 01:27:09,679
Speaker 3: I asked, I ran into OJ at a like six

1595
01:27:09,720 --> 01:27:13,639
Speaker 3: am cocktail party and uh because the horses were training,

1596
01:27:14,160 --> 01:27:16,800
Speaker 3: and uh, I asked him who was gonna win? And

1597
01:27:16,840 --> 01:27:20,160
Speaker 3: he said, lawyer, lawyer, Ron because he had he said

1598
01:27:20,160 --> 01:27:23,040
Speaker 3: he had lots of positive experiences with lawyers. And then

1599
01:27:23,240 --> 01:27:27,320
Speaker 3: I obviously went and took a shower, like Jesus Christ. Wow,

1600
01:27:27,400 --> 01:27:29,519
Speaker 3: I was just like, you decapitated somebody. I got to

1601
01:27:29,520 --> 01:27:35,760
Speaker 3: get away from you, man, so allegedly, Yeah, gloves don't

1602
01:27:35,760 --> 01:27:37,200
Speaker 3: fit now, you must have quit.

1603
01:27:38,840 --> 01:27:41,639
Speaker 1: Krin and I were converse about I was telling her

1604
01:27:42,240 --> 01:27:45,040
Speaker 1: she was sweating that she hadn't finished your book, and

1605
01:27:45,080 --> 01:27:47,639
Speaker 1: I'm like, I read the whole damn thing, so we're covered. Anyways,

1606
01:27:47,680 --> 01:27:50,320
Speaker 1: I was explaining to her a little bit about the curse,

1607
01:27:51,320 --> 01:27:54,200
Speaker 1: and I was saying that one of the surprising aspects

1608
01:27:54,560 --> 01:27:56,080
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna bring us around. Oh yeah, and you

1609
01:27:56,080 --> 01:27:59,360
Speaker 1: caught you loose one of the surprising aspects. When these

1610
01:27:59,400 --> 01:28:02,800
Speaker 1: peoples come unity, these murders, you know, they're judged by

1611
01:28:02,800 --> 01:28:06,559
Speaker 1: their peers. They're they're tried in their home area, and

1612
01:28:06,640 --> 01:28:12,040
Speaker 1: the attitude of the jurors is, we're gonna acquit you,

1613
01:28:13,360 --> 01:28:15,200
Speaker 1: but I don't want.

1614
01:28:15,040 --> 01:28:17,320
Speaker 3: Nothing to do with you from here on out, very

1615
01:28:17,400 --> 01:28:17,680
Speaker 3: much so.

1616
01:28:18,200 --> 01:28:27,160
Speaker 1: And with with OJ's jury, they weren't they weren't considering

1617
01:28:27,160 --> 01:28:30,680
Speaker 1: whether he did it or not. You know, it was

1618
01:28:30,720 --> 01:28:34,439
Speaker 1: like it was about the l A p D. Yeah,

1619
01:28:34,960 --> 01:28:37,800
Speaker 1: And it was kind of like, we're gonna let you go,

1620
01:28:38,960 --> 01:28:39,840
Speaker 1: right because.

1621
01:28:39,600 --> 01:28:42,639
Speaker 3: These guys are totally there even though you did it, we.

1622
01:28:42,640 --> 01:28:43,880
Speaker 1: Know you did it, like we know you did it.

1623
01:28:43,880 --> 01:28:45,880
Speaker 1: We're gonna let you go. You're not a good person,

1624
01:28:46,000 --> 01:28:48,720
Speaker 1: but this isn't even about you. This is about at

1625
01:28:48,720 --> 01:28:51,760
Speaker 1: the LAPD. So like you're guilt or not guilt, like

1626
01:28:52,080 --> 01:28:54,760
Speaker 1: you know, that's not that's not what's trial. Here's the ship,

1627
01:28:54,880 --> 01:28:58,120
Speaker 1: but this is not what I'm talking about. Piece of garbage,

1628
01:28:58,479 --> 01:29:01,320
Speaker 1: but this is not what I'm talking about. That that

1629
01:29:01,439 --> 01:29:05,400
Speaker 1: kind of that was so surprising that like the jury,

1630
01:29:05,920 --> 01:29:12,639
Speaker 1: the jurors that acquit them have like tacit acknowledgment you

1631
01:29:12,720 --> 01:29:17,760
Speaker 1: did it and and that's bad, but we're not going

1632
01:29:17,840 --> 01:29:21,719
Speaker 1: to participate in this system somehow or like yeah, maybe

1633
01:29:21,720 --> 01:29:24,559
Speaker 1: you can explain it better, but like they weren't deciding

1634
01:29:24,640 --> 01:29:26,559
Speaker 1: if they did it or not. It was something different.

1635
01:29:26,800 --> 01:29:29,519
Speaker 3: So one of the things that's so interesting is in

1636
01:29:29,600 --> 01:29:33,880
Speaker 3: the the sort of white establishment, uh you know, the

1637
01:29:34,439 --> 01:29:38,880
Speaker 3: defense attorneys who are all very very well educated. You know,

1638
01:29:38,920 --> 01:29:41,759
Speaker 3: a couple of Princeton guys and uh.

1639
01:29:41,720 --> 01:29:44,760
Speaker 1: Chris, is that a Princeton person? Mm, hmm, what you

1640
01:29:44,760 --> 01:29:48,840
Speaker 1: do at Princeton politics? Well mean your whole four year

1641
01:29:48,920 --> 01:29:50,639
Speaker 1: degree here told me.

1642
01:29:50,600 --> 01:29:53,680
Speaker 3: That she likes to say, I would sco Boston.

1643
01:29:55,680 --> 01:29:57,960
Speaker 1: You went to college at Princeton. Maybe I knew that

1644
01:29:58,000 --> 01:29:58,639
Speaker 1: and forgot it.

1645
01:29:59,479 --> 01:30:02,160
Speaker 2: She I don't really talk about it too much.

1646
01:30:02,320 --> 01:30:05,080
Speaker 3: Rich guy over here, what are we gonna do? That's

1647
01:30:05,200 --> 01:30:07,720
Speaker 3: not the case, Jesus Christ.

1648
01:30:07,760 --> 01:30:10,719
Speaker 2: Rich financial aid package?

1649
01:30:10,960 --> 01:30:13,720
Speaker 3: What's your name? Like Van Cockle Horse the fourth? What

1650
01:30:13,840 --> 01:30:17,840
Speaker 3: are you like? Schneider the ninth.

1651
01:30:17,920 --> 01:30:20,360
Speaker 2: My dad's from Brooklyn and my mom is from.

1652
01:30:21,360 --> 01:30:24,000
Speaker 3: So so you don't there's not some big like she

1653
01:30:24,439 --> 01:30:28,000
Speaker 3: inherit the position of okay, I didn't know if there

1654
01:30:28,040 --> 01:30:31,479
Speaker 3: was like a you know, a Schneider Industrial Challenger sitting

1655
01:30:31,479 --> 01:30:33,479
Speaker 3: out here at that at the Jet Center.

1656
01:30:34,000 --> 01:30:36,679
Speaker 2: That Schneider the family.

1657
01:30:38,520 --> 01:30:42,880
Speaker 3: That's no, that's right, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

1658
01:30:43,200 --> 01:30:46,000
Speaker 3: She actually owns all of this. You just don't know it.

1659
01:30:46,360 --> 01:30:50,360
Speaker 3: She really liked you. She's the investor. There's a series

1660
01:30:50,400 --> 01:30:52,479
Speaker 3: of shell companies, so you'll never find out.

1661
01:30:52,920 --> 01:30:56,760
Speaker 1: I think it's coming back to think so. But like

1662
01:30:57,000 --> 01:31:00,439
Speaker 1: the lawyers, her as a lady that makes ear out

1663
01:31:00,439 --> 01:31:02,480
Speaker 1: of the claws and pecker.

1664
01:31:02,200 --> 01:31:03,160
Speaker 3: Bones and whatnot.

1665
01:31:04,080 --> 01:31:07,400
Speaker 1: Where did you guys meet right here but at a

1666
01:31:07,400 --> 01:31:12,840
Speaker 1: different building? Same the uh so.

1667
01:31:13,200 --> 01:31:15,360
Speaker 3: Uh. You know. One of the things that the defense

1668
01:31:15,479 --> 01:31:18,400
Speaker 3: lawyers clearly understood was that they were going to use

1669
01:31:18,439 --> 01:31:20,920
Speaker 3: this case. I mean they talked about this openly, like

1670
01:31:21,040 --> 01:31:22,800
Speaker 3: all their record you can go read now all the

1671
01:31:22,840 --> 01:31:27,080
Speaker 3: stuff they talk openly amongst each other that like, we're

1672
01:31:27,080 --> 01:31:29,920
Speaker 3: going to use this murder as our shocking act of

1673
01:31:30,040 --> 01:31:33,320
Speaker 3: violence to try to maintain some control that because of

1674
01:31:33,360 --> 01:31:36,000
Speaker 3: these court rulings we're losing. So you know, like JW.

1675
01:31:36,360 --> 01:31:40,000
Speaker 1: They wanted to tie it into very segregation.

1676
01:31:40,160 --> 01:31:43,720
Speaker 3: So they shaped the Dude, when you read go read

1677
01:31:43,760 --> 01:31:48,120
Speaker 3: the Look magazine story that's off phony. They make J. W.

1678
01:31:48,280 --> 01:31:51,040
Speaker 3: Milems sound like he's Plato, do you know what I mean,

1679
01:31:51,240 --> 01:31:54,840
Speaker 3: Like like Aristotle, he's the most sophisticated. Like there's a

1680
01:31:54,880 --> 01:31:58,439
Speaker 3: newspaper reporter I won't name, but I'm always convinced this

1681
01:31:58,479 --> 01:32:00,680
Speaker 3: guy makes stories up because every I mean quotes a

1682
01:32:00,680 --> 01:32:02,519
Speaker 3: cab driver. I'm like, dude, I've had a lot of

1683
01:32:02,520 --> 01:32:06,120
Speaker 3: cab drivers. I've never had a cab driver like who

1684
01:32:06,160 --> 01:32:10,120
Speaker 3: says the exact, perfect, eloquent philosophical thing I need at

1685
01:32:10,120 --> 01:32:12,760
Speaker 3: the Like you're that just didn't happen. So, but the

1686
01:32:12,840 --> 01:32:15,920
Speaker 3: lawyers are making up these quotes that are coming out

1687
01:32:15,920 --> 01:32:18,720
Speaker 3: of JW. Milum. And the way you realize it is

1688
01:32:19,000 --> 01:32:21,920
Speaker 3: when you at Ohio State. They have a huge trunch

1689
01:32:22,000 --> 01:32:24,599
Speaker 3: of some of these notes in the law.

1690
01:32:24,720 --> 01:32:27,120
Speaker 1: But I can't move on. Who's the writer. I can't

1691
01:32:27,120 --> 01:32:31,120
Speaker 1: tell you is he alive? Yes, I'll tell you later.

1692
01:32:31,640 --> 01:32:33,479
Speaker 1: There's a funny quote that someone was saying that stand

1693
01:32:33,560 --> 01:32:37,160
Speaker 1: up comedians, Yeah, stand up comedy is mostly acting outraged

1694
01:32:37,240 --> 01:32:40,080
Speaker 1: by something of you said that you made up that

1695
01:32:40,120 --> 01:32:41,360
Speaker 1: a fake friend said.

1696
01:32:42,800 --> 01:32:46,080
Speaker 3: By the way, this, by the way, that's really good,

1697
01:32:46,520 --> 01:32:48,960
Speaker 3: Like there is no stand up without the straw man,

1698
01:32:49,520 --> 01:32:50,240
Speaker 3: Like I gotta.

1699
01:32:50,000 --> 01:32:51,720
Speaker 1: Say that you make up a friend, You make up

1700
01:32:51,720 --> 01:32:53,920
Speaker 1: a thing, he said, and then that thing pisces you

1701
01:32:54,000 --> 01:32:55,320
Speaker 1: off and you talk about that that's.

1702
01:32:55,240 --> 01:32:58,639
Speaker 3: Right, or it's like yeah, or like you know the

1703
01:32:58,640 --> 01:33:02,280
Speaker 3: the Great Louis c k fit about uh, every someone

1704
01:33:02,320 --> 01:33:04,960
Speaker 3: else on the airplane being pissed about the Wi fi.

1705
01:33:05,360 --> 01:33:07,080
Speaker 3: He's given a minute, it's got to go to space.

1706
01:33:07,439 --> 01:33:08,960
Speaker 3: And you're like, when I heard that, I'm like, oh,

1707
01:33:08,960 --> 01:33:12,120
Speaker 3: he's clearly both people in this scenario. He's both the

1708
01:33:12,160 --> 01:33:15,599
Speaker 3: person having a temper tantrum, and also the other version

1709
01:33:15,640 --> 01:33:17,760
Speaker 3: of him who is self aware enough to know that, like,

1710
01:33:18,200 --> 01:33:22,400
Speaker 3: so anyway, the uh uh but maybe no anyway, I

1711
01:33:22,439 --> 01:33:24,120
Speaker 3: love uh.

1712
01:33:24,160 --> 01:33:25,439
Speaker 1: So you're not gonna tell me, the writer.

1713
01:33:25,479 --> 01:33:29,439
Speaker 3: No, and so I filibustered that, and so the uh.

1714
01:33:29,800 --> 01:33:32,320
Speaker 3: But you see things that are coming out of JW.

1715
01:33:32,439 --> 01:33:36,479
Speaker 3: Malm's mouth that are verbatim from notes that the writer

1716
01:33:36,640 --> 01:33:40,400
Speaker 3: took from interviews with the lawyers, and so you you're

1717
01:33:40,479 --> 01:33:44,080
Speaker 3: watching the lawyers shape it. And so one of them,

1718
01:33:44,160 --> 01:33:47,200
Speaker 3: one of the lawyers, said, we need people like JW.

1719
01:33:47,360 --> 01:33:50,280
Speaker 3: Milem to fight our wars and to keep people in line.

1720
01:33:51,439 --> 01:33:55,200
Speaker 3: And so there was very much a sense of like

1721
01:33:55,680 --> 01:33:58,320
Speaker 3: we're gonna it's exactly what you said, like we're gonna

1722
01:33:58,320 --> 01:34:01,440
Speaker 3: circle the wagons. But like these people were totally ostracized.

1723
01:34:01,720 --> 01:34:03,960
Speaker 3: I mean at the end of his life. Uh, which

1724
01:34:04,000 --> 01:34:06,639
Speaker 3: people the murderers, Oh yeah, at the end of Roy Bryance,

1725
01:34:06,720 --> 01:34:06,920
Speaker 3: like the.

1726
01:34:06,960 --> 01:34:10,519
Speaker 1: People that the families that the people that had quit them,

1727
01:34:10,520 --> 01:34:12,120
Speaker 1: like they didn't want them around.

1728
01:34:12,320 --> 01:34:14,519
Speaker 3: No, and they couldn't get crop loans and they couldn't

1729
01:34:14,840 --> 01:34:17,360
Speaker 3: you know. Leslie Malham became a drug dealer and JW.

1730
01:34:17,520 --> 01:34:22,480
Speaker 3: Malham was arrested for food stamp fraud and like that.

1731
01:34:22,320 --> 01:34:25,479
Speaker 1: That was one of the biggest ironies I think is

1732
01:34:25,520 --> 01:34:29,439
Speaker 1: that if you'd asked, if you went and asked people,

1733
01:34:30,160 --> 01:34:35,200
Speaker 1: I'd be like, you know, if you said, like, hey,

1734
01:34:35,240 --> 01:34:39,240
Speaker 1: give me the give me your like prejudice views on

1735
01:34:39,400 --> 01:34:43,080
Speaker 1: what like minorities are up to. Yeah, like oh, food

1736
01:34:43,120 --> 01:34:47,120
Speaker 1: stamp fraud, drug dealing, and the dudes that killed Emmett

1737
01:34:47,120 --> 01:34:50,360
Speaker 1: till Well food stamp fraud, so drug dealing.

1738
01:34:50,479 --> 01:34:53,160
Speaker 3: So I mean, I don't know how it is here,

1739
01:34:53,200 --> 01:34:56,960
Speaker 3: but like, especially in Mississippi, the accusation is always the confession.

1740
01:34:57,720 --> 01:34:59,679
Speaker 3: Like people only get mad at other people.

1741
01:35:00,040 --> 01:35:02,040
Speaker 1: Read that quote and I told that quote my wife

1742
01:35:02,080 --> 01:35:03,640
Speaker 1: and then I had to try to explain it to

1743
01:35:03,680 --> 01:35:05,880
Speaker 1: her because you did a better job explaining that the

1744
01:35:06,000 --> 01:35:07,439
Speaker 1: accusation is the confession.

1745
01:35:07,520 --> 01:35:12,559
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you only ever despise in other people, which

1746
01:35:12,560 --> 01:35:15,080
Speaker 3: you actually despise in yourself. I mean that's just sort

1747
01:35:15,080 --> 01:35:17,760
Speaker 3: of like, I mean, that's almost universally true, and so

1748
01:35:17,960 --> 01:35:21,000
Speaker 3: like you have Yeah, I mean, you know, these guys

1749
01:35:21,000 --> 01:35:25,519
Speaker 3: are bootleggers. They're making whiskey. JW. Milem is one of

1750
01:35:25,560 --> 01:35:31,000
Speaker 3: the main bootleg runners for the sheriff. It was investigating

1751
01:35:31,000 --> 01:35:32,920
Speaker 3: his murder. I mean, there's a whole theory of the

1752
01:35:32,960 --> 01:35:37,639
Speaker 3: case that Sheriff Strider made sure to claim jurisdiction because

1753
01:35:38,240 --> 01:35:41,799
Speaker 3: the body was found in Tallahatchie County, the kidnapping happened

1754
01:35:41,880 --> 01:35:46,920
Speaker 3: in Lafleur County, the murder happened in Sunflower County, and

1755
01:35:47,439 --> 01:35:50,160
Speaker 3: the but the case was tried in Tallahatchie County because

1756
01:35:50,160 --> 01:35:52,800
Speaker 3: it was the most conservative and it's also where the

1757
01:35:52,880 --> 01:35:55,120
Speaker 3: killers were from. A bunch of the members of the

1758
01:35:55,200 --> 01:35:58,760
Speaker 3: jury were like related to them. This is very much

1759
01:35:59,439 --> 01:36:01,519
Speaker 3: this is not a random act of violence. This is

1760
01:36:02,000 --> 01:36:06,200
Speaker 3: one tribe, members of one tribe of people killing a

1761
01:36:06,320 --> 01:36:09,480
Speaker 3: child of another tribe of people to send a message,

1762
01:36:09,680 --> 01:36:14,839
Speaker 3: you know, and like you know and like the grand

1763
01:36:14,880 --> 01:36:18,160
Speaker 3: conspiracy of what. So when when the FBI wanted to

1764
01:36:18,160 --> 01:36:22,519
Speaker 3: reopen the case in two thousand and four three four,

1765
01:36:22,880 --> 01:36:26,000
Speaker 3: they had to exhume the body. And so the reason

1766
01:36:26,000 --> 01:36:29,000
Speaker 3: they had to exhume Mmitt Till's body was because the

1767
01:36:29,160 --> 01:36:32,599
Speaker 3: jury had said that that wasn't Emmett Till that they

1768
01:36:32,600 --> 01:36:35,240
Speaker 3: had pulled out of the river. So what the defenses

1769
01:36:35,360 --> 01:36:39,840
Speaker 3: theory of the case that the jury bought was that

1770
01:36:40,120 --> 01:36:44,799
Speaker 3: the NAACP in cahoots with the Communist Party, had gotten

1771
01:36:44,800 --> 01:36:47,519
Speaker 3: a body out of a morgue, thrown it in the

1772
01:36:47,520 --> 01:36:51,599
Speaker 3: Mississippi in the Tallahatchee River, weighed it down just enough,

1773
01:36:51,880 --> 01:36:54,519
Speaker 3: you know, obviously understanding the deep science of your body

1774
01:36:54,560 --> 01:36:57,720
Speaker 3: releasing decom gases, so they would know exactly how much

1775
01:36:57,760 --> 01:36:59,680
Speaker 3: weight to have so that it would sink but then

1776
01:36:59,720 --> 01:37:02,400
Speaker 3: flow again. You know, somebody really done some work and

1777
01:37:02,439 --> 01:37:06,320
Speaker 3: that this body that and then Mamie Till had said

1778
01:37:06,360 --> 01:37:09,719
Speaker 3: it was her son in exchange for getting a payout

1779
01:37:09,720 --> 01:37:12,360
Speaker 3: of a life insurance policy, and that Emmettil was alive,

1780
01:37:13,040 --> 01:37:16,880
Speaker 3: and that all of this had been done to make

1781
01:37:19,160 --> 01:37:21,759
Speaker 3: to make Mississippi look bad and to help the Communist

1782
01:37:21,760 --> 01:37:24,080
Speaker 3: Party take over America. And that was the case that

1783
01:37:24,120 --> 01:37:26,400
Speaker 3: the jurors made. That was the case the lawyers made,

1784
01:37:26,920 --> 01:37:29,360
Speaker 3: and that was what the jury bought. So they had

1785
01:37:29,400 --> 01:37:31,400
Speaker 3: to exzuom him and do a DNA test to make

1786
01:37:31,439 --> 01:37:34,639
Speaker 3: sure that the body in Burroke Cemetery in Chicago was Mt.

1787
01:37:34,720 --> 01:37:37,120
Speaker 3: Til and I mean and of course it was, and

1788
01:37:37,160 --> 01:37:38,840
Speaker 3: you know, so the and then like I'm gonna find

1789
01:37:38,840 --> 01:37:41,360
Speaker 3: this thing real quick because I like you talk about

1790
01:37:41,720 --> 01:37:45,200
Speaker 3: this is what is being taught about This is from

1791
01:37:45,240 --> 01:37:48,240
Speaker 3: a textbook that's being taught right now in the Mississippi

1792
01:37:48,240 --> 01:37:50,599
Speaker 3: Delta about the Mmettil murder. I mean you talk about

1793
01:37:50,600 --> 01:37:54,400
Speaker 3: the accusation is always a confession only sort of Only

1794
01:37:54,439 --> 01:37:59,320
Speaker 3: a state that has so actively rewritten history to such

1795
01:37:59,320 --> 01:38:02,400
Speaker 3: a degree would be worried that someone else was come

1796
01:38:02,439 --> 01:38:04,439
Speaker 3: along and do it the other way. So, like you know,

1797
01:38:04,439 --> 01:38:09,080
Speaker 3: Mississippi has been banning textbooks forever in rewriting text like

1798
01:38:09,320 --> 01:38:12,360
Speaker 3: my Missippi history textbook stopped before the Civil Rights movement.

1799
01:38:13,960 --> 01:38:16,160
Speaker 3: So this is what is. This is from a textbook,

1800
01:38:16,560 --> 01:38:18,680
Speaker 3: and this is the only thing in the textbook that

1801
01:38:19,160 --> 01:38:21,200
Speaker 3: is about Mt. TIL And this is this is being

1802
01:38:21,200 --> 01:38:25,479
Speaker 3: taught right now. In nineteen fifty five, J. P. Coleman,

1803
01:38:25,520 --> 01:38:28,559
Speaker 3: the Attorney general from Choctaw County, was elected governor of

1804
01:38:28,560 --> 01:38:32,719
Speaker 3: Mississippi and was elected governor in Mississippi's first general election

1805
01:38:32,800 --> 01:38:36,080
Speaker 3: after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Coleman promised

1806
01:38:36,120 --> 01:38:38,479
Speaker 3: to keep the schools segregated. He proved to be a

1807
01:38:38,479 --> 01:38:42,120
Speaker 3: moderating force during a very difficult time. Just after the election,

1808
01:38:42,280 --> 01:38:45,920
Speaker 3: Emmett Till, a young black man from Chicago, allegedly made

1809
01:38:46,200 --> 01:38:48,240
Speaker 3: allegedly made a pass at a white woman in a

1810
01:38:48,280 --> 01:38:51,240
Speaker 3: rural store. Two men kidnapped him, beat him, killed him,

1811
01:38:51,240 --> 01:38:53,879
Speaker 3: and threw his body in the Tallahatchee River. The coverage

1812
01:38:53,880 --> 01:38:56,640
Speaker 3: of the trial, an acquittal of his accused murderers, who

1813
01:38:56,760 --> 01:39:00,000
Speaker 3: later admitted their guilt in an article in a national magazine,

1814
01:39:00,280 --> 01:39:03,680
Speaker 3: painted a poor picture of Mississippi and its white citizens.

1815
01:39:04,160 --> 01:39:09,080
Speaker 3: That's the textbook, m H. And so like, well, what

1816
01:39:09,080 --> 01:39:13,000
Speaker 3: what about that? Like to help me understand? So the

1817
01:39:13,080 --> 01:39:16,479
Speaker 3: thing for me is that the entire murder is still

1818
01:39:16,560 --> 01:39:19,040
Speaker 3: taught in the context of the death of The worst

1819
01:39:19,080 --> 01:39:21,960
Speaker 3: part about a death of a child image, well is

1820
01:39:22,000 --> 01:39:25,639
Speaker 3: that it sure made the sure made the white people look bad.

1821
01:39:26,080 --> 01:39:32,719
Speaker 3: And like, you know, I think like somewhere along the line,

1822
01:39:34,080 --> 01:39:38,680
Speaker 3: learning our history was transformed into sort of relentlessly attacking

1823
01:39:38,840 --> 01:39:41,920
Speaker 3: people with it. And I think, like, you shouldn't be

1824
01:39:42,040 --> 01:39:44,599
Speaker 3: using You shouldn't learn the history of the Mississippi Delta

1825
01:39:44,840 --> 01:39:49,680
Speaker 3: to determine who is currently politically problematic, who should be canceled.

1826
01:39:50,640 --> 01:39:53,320
Speaker 3: You should learn the history just to know it. And

1827
01:39:53,360 --> 01:39:58,920
Speaker 3: so like, I don't feel guilty, Like I don't, I

1828
01:39:58,960 --> 01:40:01,400
Speaker 3: don't have some weird like Southern guilt thing, but I

1829
01:40:01,400 --> 01:40:03,760
Speaker 3: do think it's a combent upon me to know what

1830
01:40:03,880 --> 01:40:06,080
Speaker 3: happened on this land if I'm going to farm it.

1831
01:40:06,600 --> 01:40:09,600
Speaker 3: And you know, and I do think that that it

1832
01:40:09,680 --> 01:40:13,360
Speaker 3: is essential to be able to say this is what

1833
01:40:13,520 --> 01:40:17,400
Speaker 3: happened here, and you know, it's not like you know,

1834
01:40:17,840 --> 01:40:20,160
Speaker 3: we're still on the land. You know, it's not like

1835
01:40:20,200 --> 01:40:24,320
Speaker 3: I haven't I failed to understand how learning the history

1836
01:40:24,320 --> 01:40:27,040
Speaker 3: of this in any way negatively affects me. I mean

1837
01:40:27,080 --> 01:40:28,720
Speaker 3: I've thought about that a lot, because that's so that

1838
01:40:28,800 --> 01:40:30,720
Speaker 3: you know, that conversation is in the air so much,

1839
01:40:31,160 --> 01:40:34,240
Speaker 3: and like, I just failed to understand how teaching this

1840
01:40:34,400 --> 01:40:37,240
Speaker 3: history in a school could do a single thing to

1841
01:40:37,360 --> 01:40:38,920
Speaker 3: me or anyone related to me.

1842
01:40:39,080 --> 01:40:50,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, what kind of opposition to your work have you encountered?

1843
01:40:50,280 --> 01:40:54,800
Speaker 2: Or threats or people trying to undermine it?

1844
01:40:55,160 --> 01:40:58,559
Speaker 3: Are not? Really because you know there is that when

1845
01:40:58,640 --> 01:41:01,599
Speaker 3: I'm from there, and like there's the you know, there's

1846
01:41:01,600 --> 01:41:05,719
Speaker 3: that great I think it's Willie Ray Wiley Ray Hubbard

1847
01:41:05,720 --> 01:41:08,200
Speaker 3: wrote it, But like Robert O'Kane does the sort of

1848
01:41:08,520 --> 01:41:10,680
Speaker 3: version I know he's like I may not wear a

1849
01:41:10,720 --> 01:41:12,680
Speaker 3: stet Son, but I'm willing to bet son that I'm

1850
01:41:12,680 --> 01:41:15,040
Speaker 3: as big a Texan as you are. Like I sort

1851
01:41:15,040 --> 01:41:17,320
Speaker 3: of feel like we've been I've been there from a

1852
01:41:17,360 --> 01:41:19,600
Speaker 3: long We've been there a long time, We're going to

1853
01:41:19,680 --> 01:41:21,360
Speaker 3: be there a long time. I can kind of say

1854
01:41:21,360 --> 01:41:24,080
Speaker 3: whatever the hell I want. There's a sense of also

1855
01:41:24,120 --> 01:41:26,800
Speaker 3: it's just true, and like the people who are from

1856
01:41:26,880 --> 01:41:30,960
Speaker 3: there know it, you know, and and and are much

1857
01:41:31,000 --> 01:41:34,160
Speaker 3: more nuanced about this than our two dimensional politicians would

1858
01:41:34,240 --> 01:41:40,000
Speaker 3: lead you to believe, like, you know, like Mississippi is Mississippi,

1859
01:41:40,040 --> 01:41:47,639
Speaker 3: and Mississippians are complicated and and so there've been very

1860
01:41:47,640 --> 01:41:56,280
Speaker 3: little pushback. And you know, it's interesting because I mean,

1861
01:41:56,360 --> 01:42:01,040
Speaker 3: I love the Mississippi Delta. I didn't know hardly any

1862
01:42:01,080 --> 01:42:04,360
Speaker 3: of this. I certainly didn't understand, you know, Paul the

1863
01:42:04,400 --> 01:42:07,320
Speaker 3: Paul Simon song. That's just it's not the highway through

1864
01:42:07,320 --> 01:42:09,080
Speaker 3: the cradle of the Civil War. But I don't think

1865
01:42:09,120 --> 01:42:11,720
Speaker 3: I knew that until this. I mean, there's there's just

1866
01:42:11,760 --> 01:42:14,880
Speaker 3: a lot about the actual history of the land and

1867
01:42:14,960 --> 01:42:20,160
Speaker 3: the way that both you know, I think Faulkner is

1868
01:42:20,200 --> 01:42:22,679
Speaker 3: so often misunderstood. I think if you go read the Bear,

1869
01:42:22,760 --> 01:42:24,320
Speaker 3: you go read Go Down, Moses, you go down and

1870
01:42:24,320 --> 01:42:27,400
Speaker 3: read as you go read Absolom Absolom, Like I think

1871
01:42:27,479 --> 01:42:30,280
Speaker 3: one of if not the most animating things in all

1872
01:42:30,280 --> 01:42:34,000
Speaker 3: of his work is the bewilderment at the Mississippi Delta,

1873
01:42:34,080 --> 01:42:39,679
Speaker 3: going from uninhabited swamp to a agricultural factory in twenty

1874
01:42:39,680 --> 01:42:41,960
Speaker 3: five years. I mean, it would have taken a thousand

1875
01:42:42,000 --> 01:42:44,920
Speaker 3: years in Bavaria to kill a forest that big. And

1876
01:42:45,000 --> 01:42:49,320
Speaker 3: I think like the idea of civilization as the enemy

1877
01:42:49,360 --> 01:42:54,920
Speaker 3: of nature and how that flows through Faulkner's work. I mean,

1878
01:42:55,200 --> 01:42:57,280
Speaker 3: like when I read The Bear, when I go read

1879
01:42:57,479 --> 01:43:01,360
Speaker 3: like I said, go down Moses or Absolom, like I feel.

1880
01:43:01,720 --> 01:43:04,559
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like Faulkner's read now only through

1881
01:43:04,640 --> 01:43:07,360
Speaker 3: the prism of race, and like, I actually think that's

1882
01:43:07,400 --> 01:43:10,200
Speaker 3: not how you have to read Faukner through the prism

1883
01:43:10,520 --> 01:43:16,000
Speaker 3: of his deep bewilderment at the sort of existential loss

1884
01:43:16,000 --> 01:43:21,000
Speaker 3: and trauma of having that much wilderness just erased, and

1885
01:43:21,040 --> 01:43:24,240
Speaker 3: like what that does to a people, Like I mean,

1886
01:43:24,720 --> 01:43:28,639
Speaker 3: it's not an accident that like nothing about the land

1887
01:43:28,680 --> 01:43:32,800
Speaker 3: where immit Till was killed has anything to do with God,

1888
01:43:33,600 --> 01:43:35,800
Speaker 3: Like this is not this is man made land, this

1889
01:43:35,880 --> 01:43:38,200
Speaker 3: is not none of this bears the fingerprint of the

1890
01:43:38,240 --> 01:43:42,200
Speaker 3: creator God. And yeah, it just has nothing to do

1891
01:43:42,280 --> 01:43:45,280
Speaker 3: with that what And so you know, if you ever

1892
01:43:45,320 --> 01:43:48,559
Speaker 3: go out to that barn and wonder, like God, did

1893
01:43:48,600 --> 01:43:51,080
Speaker 3: God forsake this place? Maybe the answer is yes.

1894
01:43:52,040 --> 01:43:57,759
Speaker 1: History man, Like, I get what you're saying. History's history

1895
01:43:57,800 --> 01:43:59,960
Speaker 1: is so tough and the telling of it's so top.

1896
01:44:02,840 --> 01:44:04,880
Speaker 1: The other day I took my kids. We were in

1897
01:44:04,880 --> 01:44:08,200
Speaker 1: New Mexico for a wedding. Yeah, and I took my

1898
01:44:08,280 --> 01:44:12,800
Speaker 1: kids to Bandolier. Yeah, okay, the sight of old ancestral

1899
01:44:12,840 --> 01:44:16,720
Speaker 1: to Blowing Settlements. There's a big sign. You get up

1900
01:44:16,720 --> 01:44:18,719
Speaker 1: in this high overlook and you can see Los Animals

1901
01:44:18,840 --> 01:44:22,800
Speaker 1: laboratories off to the west. Okay, and there's a sign there,

1902
01:44:23,600 --> 01:44:26,400
Speaker 1: and it's a National Park Service sign, and the sign

1903
01:44:26,760 --> 01:44:33,719
Speaker 1: is about The sign is exclusively about that Puebloan people

1904
01:44:34,760 --> 01:44:39,439
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to go on the Los Alamos land starting

1905
01:44:39,479 --> 01:44:42,400
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three or whatever the hell it was, Okay,

1906
01:44:42,880 --> 01:44:44,960
Speaker 1: and the freedom to go there slas and been restored.

1907
01:44:46,479 --> 01:44:50,280
Speaker 1: I said to my kids, like I called more. I said, man,

1908
01:44:51,120 --> 01:44:53,280
Speaker 1: I want you to understand what this sign is, and

1909
01:44:53,320 --> 01:44:54,880
Speaker 1: I want you to understand what's not here.

1910
01:44:55,080 --> 01:44:58,720
Speaker 3: Well, and I'm like that's crazy. Well, well, would you

1911
01:44:58,800 --> 01:45:01,439
Speaker 3: want to not be on this where we test nuclear weapons.

1912
01:45:01,520 --> 01:45:03,519
Speaker 1: I said, if I was going to write this sign,

1913
01:45:04,840 --> 01:45:06,840
Speaker 1: you call my kids in here and ask. I said,

1914
01:45:06,840 --> 01:45:09,200
Speaker 1: if I was going to write this sign, I would say,

1915
01:45:10,479 --> 01:45:15,600
Speaker 1: and it's worth pointing out the thing they invented on

1916
01:45:15,680 --> 01:45:20,120
Speaker 1: that site over there saved probably two hundred and fifty

1917
01:45:20,200 --> 01:45:22,760
Speaker 1: thousand American lives because we would have had to have

1918
01:45:22,800 --> 01:45:26,519
Speaker 1: invaded the mainland of Japan, you know. And so I'm like,

1919
01:45:26,800 --> 01:45:29,120
Speaker 1: there's just I was. I was like kind of lecturing them,

1920
01:45:29,160 --> 01:45:31,800
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's just always more to the story.

1921
01:45:31,960 --> 01:45:35,040
Speaker 3: And also like if you don't want someone to drop

1922
01:45:35,080 --> 01:45:38,639
Speaker 3: an atomic bomb on you, maybe don't attack them, because

1923
01:45:38,680 --> 01:45:41,040
Speaker 3: like there's a certain degree of don't start shit, won't

1924
01:45:41,080 --> 01:45:42,120
Speaker 3: be no shit, I know.

1925
01:45:42,200 --> 01:45:44,880
Speaker 1: And it's like like once you become like like your

1926
01:45:44,920 --> 01:45:46,960
Speaker 1: point being, once you become aware, like you did, like

1927
01:45:47,080 --> 01:45:51,240
Speaker 1: you got obsessed. Yeah, and you you attempted your book.

1928
01:45:51,479 --> 01:45:56,439
Speaker 1: You attempted your book to do to unravel every little bit.

1929
01:45:56,800 --> 01:45:59,760
Speaker 1: We're trying to like whoa, who's this guy that happened

1930
01:45:59,760 --> 01:46:01,639
Speaker 1: to walk by one day, I'm going to track his

1931
01:46:01,680 --> 01:46:03,080
Speaker 1: family back one hundred years.

1932
01:46:02,960 --> 01:46:07,280
Speaker 3: Well, because you know, there's a sense that like we're

1933
01:46:07,280 --> 01:46:10,559
Speaker 3: trying to turn our descriptions of American history into tweets

1934
01:46:11,080 --> 01:46:16,479
Speaker 3: and like it's too complicated for a sign over you like,

1935
01:46:17,240 --> 01:46:21,559
Speaker 3: you can't do in a sign the interplay between the

1936
01:46:21,600 --> 01:46:25,360
Speaker 3: Pueblo people and the atomic bomb, or like, you know,

1937
01:46:25,880 --> 01:46:28,000
Speaker 3: I got deep into the history. I didn't realize that,

1938
01:46:28,040 --> 01:46:32,800
Speaker 3: like the Choctaw and the Chickasaw, that the Chickasaw were

1939
01:46:33,120 --> 01:46:35,719
Speaker 3: sort of deeply intermarried into the British and the Choctaw

1940
01:46:35,720 --> 01:46:39,560
Speaker 3: were deeply intermarried into the French, and so that the

1941
01:46:40,920 --> 01:46:44,759
Speaker 3: last free band of Natchez Indians in Mississippi was sold

1942
01:46:44,800 --> 01:46:49,120
Speaker 3: into slavery by the Choctaw and the French. And we're

1943
01:46:49,160 --> 01:46:52,000
Speaker 3: sent down to work the plantations in Haiti, and a

1944
01:46:52,040 --> 01:46:56,240
Speaker 3: French military officer there ran into years later, one of

1945
01:46:56,280 --> 01:46:59,400
Speaker 3: those last Natchez chiefs, and he was down in the

1946
01:46:59,439 --> 01:47:02,560
Speaker 3: harbor and whatever the town it's cap Haiti now, I

1947
01:47:02,600 --> 01:47:05,160
Speaker 3: can't remember what the name was then, and it was

1948
01:47:05,240 --> 01:47:06,599
Speaker 3: sort of like what are you doing? And he was

1949
01:47:06,640 --> 01:47:09,680
Speaker 3: just staring longingly up at home, and so like, you know,

1950
01:47:09,680 --> 01:47:13,160
Speaker 3: if you're gonna tell the history of uh, you know,

1951
01:47:14,520 --> 01:47:17,839
Speaker 3: if you're gonna tell the history of the native settlements

1952
01:47:17,840 --> 01:47:21,640
Speaker 3: in the Mississippi Delta, you have to talk about like,

1953
01:47:22,560 --> 01:47:26,719
Speaker 3: you know, tribes were being erased by other tribes. Tribes

1954
01:47:26,720 --> 01:47:29,360
Speaker 3: were being erased by the French. Tribes were being erased

1955
01:47:29,400 --> 01:47:34,600
Speaker 3: by the British. The Choctaw, and the Choctaw and the

1956
01:47:34,960 --> 01:47:39,799
Speaker 3: Chickasaw sort of picked there were a bunch of powers

1957
01:47:39,840 --> 01:47:42,880
Speaker 3: down there, and nobody picked the Us, and so they

1958
01:47:42,920 --> 01:47:45,400
Speaker 3: sort of you know, like you understand like there are

1959
01:47:45,439 --> 01:47:48,759
Speaker 3: these warring factions, and like when you get into the history,

1960
01:47:48,800 --> 01:47:51,439
Speaker 3: it is so complicated. And you know, all of the

1961
01:47:51,439 --> 01:47:56,640
Speaker 3: Indian mounds in Mississippi. I didn't realize this. They elites

1962
01:47:56,680 --> 01:47:58,720
Speaker 3: built their houses on top of them as a way

1963
01:47:58,760 --> 01:48:01,360
Speaker 3: to sort of like symbol luckily, stand on the shoulders

1964
01:48:01,400 --> 01:48:04,200
Speaker 3: of the ancestors. So you know, it's like it's like

1965
01:48:04,240 --> 01:48:06,800
Speaker 3: if your last name is Whitney or something. You know,

1966
01:48:06,920 --> 01:48:09,280
Speaker 3: it's the same kind of idea. And it just occurred

1967
01:48:09,320 --> 01:48:13,160
Speaker 3: to me researching all this history. How little history we

1968
01:48:13,200 --> 01:48:15,519
Speaker 3: actually know. Like I don't like, go back to the

1969
01:48:17,040 --> 01:48:21,439
Speaker 3: native town right there, I don't know, we don't know

1970
01:48:21,439 --> 01:48:24,160
Speaker 3: who the good guys and the bad guys were. You know,

1971
01:48:24,200 --> 01:48:27,400
Speaker 3: we preserve these mound structures, but we don't know what

1972
01:48:27,439 --> 01:48:29,120
Speaker 3: the people who are living in the houses on top

1973
01:48:29,120 --> 01:48:33,000
Speaker 3: of those mounds were doing to those working folks sort

1974
01:48:33,040 --> 01:48:35,880
Speaker 3: of out in the cornfields. And like, so I just

1975
01:48:36,640 --> 01:48:38,760
Speaker 3: I know an incredible amount about the history of this

1976
01:48:38,800 --> 01:48:42,760
Speaker 3: piece of land, but like mostly what I know is

1977
01:48:42,800 --> 01:48:46,360
Speaker 3: like the sheer tonnage of a what I don't know,

1978
01:48:47,000 --> 01:48:49,080
Speaker 3: And some of it I just probably not a good

1979
01:48:49,160 --> 01:48:51,040
Speaker 3: enough reporter to find. But a lot of it is

1980
01:48:51,080 --> 01:48:55,439
Speaker 3: just unknowable. And so I found that to be like

1981
01:48:55,560 --> 01:48:58,400
Speaker 3: I think with history, I don't I don't think we

1982
01:48:58,439 --> 01:49:00,960
Speaker 3: need some like sort of weird jug sign. I just

1983
01:49:00,960 --> 01:49:04,519
Speaker 3: think we need to know everything we can possibly know

1984
01:49:04,720 --> 01:49:08,479
Speaker 3: about a square of land because the truth of it,

1985
01:49:08,479 --> 01:49:11,479
Speaker 3: it's going to be so much more complex than we realize.

1986
01:49:11,720 --> 01:49:14,760
Speaker 3: The truth of it will never fit into sort of

1987
01:49:14,800 --> 01:49:19,639
Speaker 3: one ideological sides version of this. I mean, you know this,

1988
01:49:19,880 --> 01:49:23,000
Speaker 3: the book sort of goes after tenets of a bunch

1989
01:49:23,000 --> 01:49:26,240
Speaker 3: of the truth is not helpful to ideology.

1990
01:49:26,920 --> 01:49:29,000
Speaker 1: You know, A little thing that's hit me reading it.

1991
01:49:29,120 --> 01:49:31,920
Speaker 3: Does that make sense at all? Yeah?

1992
01:49:34,080 --> 01:49:36,400
Speaker 1: I mentioned my friend, my friend Doug Darren, Yeah, who

1993
01:49:36,479 --> 01:49:38,880
Speaker 1: lives like on his family's farm.

1994
01:49:39,240 --> 01:49:41,400
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1995
01:49:40,920 --> 01:49:45,760
Speaker 1: Uh, he lives a very deep history existence where it

1996
01:49:45,800 --> 01:49:50,360
Speaker 1: seems like the past like when you're hanging out with them,

1997
01:49:50,400 --> 01:49:53,639
Speaker 1: it seems like the past is all happening right now.

1998
01:49:54,080 --> 01:49:54,559
Speaker 3: I love that.

1999
01:49:55,479 --> 01:49:58,960
Speaker 1: Do you follow me? Like like every like little true

2000
01:49:59,200 --> 01:50:01,799
Speaker 1: or like trees and what it's all like, it's all

2001
01:50:01,960 --> 01:50:02,920
Speaker 1: it's all compressed.

2002
01:50:02,960 --> 01:50:05,920
Speaker 3: Well. I love the idea that, like the places I

2003
01:50:06,000 --> 01:50:08,400
Speaker 3: like best, or the membrane between the president and the

2004
01:50:08,439 --> 01:50:10,680
Speaker 3: past is so thin you can see through it. And

2005
01:50:10,720 --> 01:50:12,600
Speaker 3: so like, I feel like there's a version of the

2006
01:50:12,640 --> 01:50:17,639
Speaker 3: Mississippi Delta where this is all happening at once. Yep,

2007
01:50:17,720 --> 01:50:21,840
Speaker 3: and it's all happening right now. And you know, Nathan

2008
01:50:21,880 --> 01:50:25,160
Speaker 3: Bedford Forrest Cavalry is walking the same road as JW.

2009
01:50:25,240 --> 01:50:30,880
Speaker 3: Milms driving, as Willie Reid is walking as you know,

2010
01:50:31,320 --> 01:50:34,200
Speaker 3: if you ever listen to Crossroads, Uh go see my

2011
01:50:34,280 --> 01:50:36,519
Speaker 3: friend Willy Brown. Willy Brown lived right by the barn.

2012
01:50:37,360 --> 01:50:39,080
Speaker 3: And so like, like, I think there's a way in

2013
01:50:39,120 --> 01:50:42,400
Speaker 3: which all of this is happening all the time, over

2014
01:50:42,439 --> 01:50:44,680
Speaker 3: and over simultaneously.

2015
01:50:45,040 --> 01:50:48,160
Speaker 1: He there's this thing, Doug, you when you're getting the

2016
01:50:48,200 --> 01:50:51,920
Speaker 1: local tour, there's this thing Doug does it that Like

2017
01:50:51,920 --> 01:50:56,120
Speaker 1: like I was like, has reminiscent of Emmett Till in that.

2018
01:50:57,520 --> 01:51:00,559
Speaker 1: Uh you go buy this farm, and Doug's like, so

2019
01:51:02,479 --> 01:51:06,160
Speaker 1: in the past because in his father's time, some kids

2020
01:51:06,200 --> 01:51:09,320
Speaker 1: stole some gas, Yeah, some egg gas from the farmer.

2021
01:51:10,800 --> 01:51:13,360
Speaker 1: The farmer comes running out, and the kids jump in

2022
01:51:13,360 --> 01:51:15,720
Speaker 1: the car and take off, and the farmer takes a

2023
01:51:15,760 --> 01:51:18,120
Speaker 1: shotgun and shoots one of the kids.

2024
01:51:18,000 --> 01:51:19,560
Speaker 3: Right in the back of the head.

2025
01:51:21,280 --> 01:51:26,800
Speaker 1: High school kids. He gets acquitted. He thought it was

2026
01:51:26,880 --> 01:51:32,360
Speaker 1: bird shot, is their argument. Yeah, he thought bird shot,

2027
01:51:32,640 --> 01:51:34,720
Speaker 1: not buckshot or slug or whatever the hell he killed

2028
01:51:34,720 --> 01:51:35,000
Speaker 1: the kid.

2029
01:51:35,120 --> 01:51:38,320
Speaker 3: The idea that it's a sophisticated hunter doesn't know what's.

2030
01:51:38,320 --> 01:51:43,160
Speaker 1: Well, that's just like that's just and like it's just

2031
01:51:43,160 --> 01:51:45,880
Speaker 1: funny a way of looking at you know, history, and

2032
01:51:45,920 --> 01:51:47,479
Speaker 1: it has all these same things like like when it

2033
01:51:47,560 --> 01:51:50,040
Speaker 1: was logged and who cleared it. But it's like in

2034
01:51:50,080 --> 01:51:55,400
Speaker 1: his when when you're out with Doug, Yeah, it's like

2035
01:51:55,439 --> 01:51:57,400
Speaker 1: that kid's driving down the road right now, do you

2036
01:51:57,439 --> 01:51:59,200
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying? Well, I love that kind of

2037
01:51:59,240 --> 01:52:01,479
Speaker 1: like I love I like that kind of experience. And

2038
01:52:01,520 --> 01:52:03,360
Speaker 1: that's so much what I got from your book is

2039
01:52:04,120 --> 01:52:08,680
Speaker 1: this way of just like taking chunks of ground and

2040
01:52:08,760 --> 01:52:10,080
Speaker 1: like really getting them.

2041
01:52:10,120 --> 01:52:12,719
Speaker 3: So I made a map of everything that had happened.

2042
01:52:12,760 --> 01:52:15,040
Speaker 3: It's on my phone of everything that had happened in

2043
01:52:15,080 --> 01:52:18,160
Speaker 3: this square of land. It's interesting because the map doesn't

2044
01:52:18,200 --> 01:52:21,880
Speaker 3: show sort of gradiations based on chronology. It's just all there,

2045
01:52:22,280 --> 01:52:24,160
Speaker 3: so you're sort of drive I can drive around and

2046
01:52:24,200 --> 01:52:26,200
Speaker 3: look at the stuff, and it's like and I also

2047
01:52:26,320 --> 01:52:29,160
Speaker 3: made a map just like that of the South side

2048
01:52:29,200 --> 01:52:33,040
Speaker 3: of Chicago and so like and uh, that's where my

2049
01:52:33,120 --> 01:52:36,040
Speaker 3: dad was brought up. Oh yeah, I mean, like it

2050
01:52:36,160 --> 01:52:38,240
Speaker 3: is my firm. But well, first of all, the South

2051
01:52:38,280 --> 01:52:40,799
Speaker 3: side of Chicago is the capital of the Mississippi Delta,

2052
01:52:40,960 --> 01:52:43,440
Speaker 3: like the only professional sports team in the state of Mississippi,

2053
01:52:43,479 --> 01:52:47,120
Speaker 3: or the Chicago White Sox, you know in Chicago until

2054
01:52:47,160 --> 01:52:49,800
Speaker 3: they started dying. Big mississipp high schools would have their

2055
01:52:49,800 --> 01:52:53,320
Speaker 3: reunions in Chicago, like Greenwood High School, Greenville High School.

2056
01:52:53,600 --> 01:52:56,200
Speaker 3: Because so many people had moved Chicago, it was easier

2057
01:52:56,200 --> 01:52:58,519
Speaker 3: for the six people still in Mississippi to go up

2058
01:52:58,560 --> 01:53:01,080
Speaker 3: there than for all four hundred to come back. And

2059
01:53:01,160 --> 01:53:05,439
Speaker 3: so like, you know, Mississippi functioned as a you know

2060
01:53:06,120 --> 01:53:10,800
Speaker 3: Argo Summit, Illinois, where Emmettil's family settled. They all worked

2061
01:53:10,800 --> 01:53:15,000
Speaker 3: at the Argo starch plant. They make argo cornstarch. Oh yeah,

2062
01:53:15,000 --> 01:53:16,800
Speaker 3: they may still make it. Yeah, and they make Cairo

2063
01:53:16,960 --> 01:53:20,400
Speaker 3: syrup and make your pecan pie with and uh. They

2064
01:53:20,400 --> 01:53:22,880
Speaker 3: all lived there, and they called it Little Mississippi, like

2065
01:53:22,880 --> 01:53:26,479
Speaker 3: there were so many Mississippians and so you know, I

2066
01:53:26,479 --> 01:53:28,360
Speaker 3: feel like, I mean, one of the things I love

2067
01:53:28,400 --> 01:53:31,240
Speaker 3: to do is drive people from the Delta around the

2068
01:53:31,280 --> 01:53:34,759
Speaker 3: south side of Chicago, like Hyde Park, sort of south

2069
01:53:35,240 --> 01:53:37,800
Speaker 3: and like, you know, because it's mile after mile after

2070
01:53:37,880 --> 01:53:43,240
Speaker 3: mile after mile of perfectly manicured, middle class bungalows and

2071
01:53:43,280 --> 01:53:45,280
Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, if you drive the Mississippi Delta,

2072
01:53:45,320 --> 01:53:47,439
Speaker 3: it's super decayed. And the Missippi Delta is like it's

2073
01:53:47,439 --> 01:53:49,280
Speaker 3: like Dori and Gray, you know, whereas its sins on

2074
01:53:49,320 --> 01:53:52,639
Speaker 3: the outside and they're just abandoned buildings and collapse cotton

2075
01:53:52,720 --> 01:53:55,439
Speaker 3: gins and feels like a failed experiment, which is at

2076
01:53:55,439 --> 01:53:57,800
Speaker 3: what it was. I mean, the global capital markets came here,

2077
01:53:57,840 --> 01:54:00,160
Speaker 3: stripped out their ten percent, and then moved on and

2078
01:54:00,240 --> 01:54:02,000
Speaker 3: left the rest of us there to clean up the mess.

2079
01:54:02,520 --> 01:54:08,680
Speaker 3: And you get this sense that like that you know

2080
01:54:08,760 --> 01:54:11,560
Speaker 3: that that that all of that money that's on the

2081
01:54:11,600 --> 01:54:14,240
Speaker 3: south side of Chicago should still be in the Mississippi Delta,

2082
01:54:15,000 --> 01:54:16,960
Speaker 3: like all of those like that's what it should look

2083
01:54:17,000 --> 01:54:22,519
Speaker 3: like anyway, I I you know, I don't. Ever my

2084
01:54:22,680 --> 01:54:25,240
Speaker 3: accent gets pegged all the time on the south side

2085
01:54:25,240 --> 01:54:29,519
Speaker 3: of Chicago is from Mississippi. Like can people just hear it?

2086
01:54:29,760 --> 01:54:33,400
Speaker 3: They'll know and like uh. Or if you're in Chicago

2087
01:54:33,640 --> 01:54:35,680
Speaker 3: and you ever have to give your driver's license, either

2088
01:54:35,680 --> 01:54:38,560
Speaker 3: at a hotel or like at a will call, like

2089
01:54:38,640 --> 01:54:41,640
Speaker 3: you if you go to a baseball game, almost inevitably

2090
01:54:41,720 --> 01:54:45,200
Speaker 3: the person working will look at it and see that

2091
01:54:45,200 --> 01:54:47,520
Speaker 3: it's mess to be driver's license and say something that

2092
01:54:47,640 --> 01:54:49,600
Speaker 3: happens to me more in Chicago than it doesn't.

2093
01:54:50,280 --> 01:54:52,680
Speaker 1: I mean like that, you know, there's connections that strong.

2094
01:54:52,800 --> 01:54:54,480
Speaker 3: And then the other thing that's interesting is so many

2095
01:54:54,520 --> 01:54:56,960
Speaker 3: people are retiring back to the South. So in the

2096
01:54:57,000 --> 01:54:59,560
Speaker 3: same way that there are lots of Southern foods in Chicago,

2097
01:55:00,040 --> 01:55:02,640
Speaker 3: they're now like polishes and high Italian beef places in

2098
01:55:02,680 --> 01:55:05,200
Speaker 3: the Mississippi Delta because people are coming back home and

2099
01:55:05,200 --> 01:55:08,680
Speaker 3: they're bringing the food of their old home with them.

2100
01:55:09,080 --> 01:55:11,240
Speaker 1: As a last thing, Yeah, before we wrap up, can

2101
01:55:11,280 --> 01:55:13,640
Speaker 1: you hit me with the what you take on ivory

2102
01:55:13,680 --> 01:55:16,720
Speaker 1: build woodpeckers. We've covered that bird good, all right? So

2103
01:55:17,360 --> 01:55:19,760
Speaker 1: you remember we saw that one. We did, we got

2104
01:55:19,760 --> 01:55:21,800
Speaker 1: to handle one. It's dead.

2105
01:55:22,040 --> 01:55:25,160
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so the look well, one of the things

2106
01:55:25,160 --> 01:55:26,600
Speaker 3: that's crazy is like they.

2107
01:55:26,520 --> 01:55:28,720
Speaker 1: Had a little foot tag on them, all dried out

2108
01:55:28,720 --> 01:55:29,680
Speaker 1: in that drawer, remember that.

2109
01:55:31,520 --> 01:55:34,040
Speaker 3: That's right. So the there's a huge fight, as you know,

2110
01:55:34,160 --> 01:55:38,080
Speaker 3: between the scientist at Cornell and then those folks down

2111
01:55:38,120 --> 01:55:41,720
Speaker 3: in Louisiana, Arkansas, Misissippi who claimed to have seen one.

2112
01:55:41,600 --> 01:55:43,320
Speaker 3: Yeah there's the guy because.

2113
01:55:44,640 --> 01:55:47,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're always what they're looking at is is

2114
01:55:47,480 --> 01:55:48,720
Speaker 1: uh pilliated?

2115
01:55:49,120 --> 01:55:51,320
Speaker 3: Yeah? Wood? And there's that's the argument. And then there's

2116
01:55:51,320 --> 01:55:53,920
Speaker 3: a double like there's a there there, there's the double knock.

2117
01:55:54,040 --> 01:55:56,760
Speaker 3: Is that the there's something about the call that's specific to

2118
01:55:56,800 --> 01:55:59,760
Speaker 3: the Ivory build versus the affiliated woodpecker. Anyway, I went

2119
01:55:59,800 --> 01:56:03,280
Speaker 3: out for a couple of days in the swamps. It's

2120
01:56:03,320 --> 01:56:11,000
Speaker 3: all around the Stennis Space Station. And what's interesting is that, Pa.

2121
01:56:11,280 --> 01:56:13,400
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't do what just to recap people.

2122
01:56:13,840 --> 01:56:16,080
Speaker 1: There's a bird. The Ivy built woodpecker went extinct in

2123
01:56:16,120 --> 01:56:16,600
Speaker 1: the fifties.

2124
01:56:16,720 --> 01:56:17,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, well and.

2125
01:56:17,800 --> 01:56:19,960
Speaker 1: All that they knew where the last one was and

2126
01:56:20,040 --> 01:56:21,840
Speaker 1: it was in a nest and they cut its treet down.

2127
01:56:21,880 --> 01:56:25,440
Speaker 3: Here we go. In April nineteen forty four, a human

2128
01:56:25,480 --> 01:56:28,800
Speaker 3: being made the last confirmed sighting of an ivory bill woodpecker.

2129
01:56:29,120 --> 01:56:32,080
Speaker 3: The fight to save them had failed. The last large

2130
01:56:32,120 --> 01:56:35,000
Speaker 3: hardwood patch in the Lower Mississippi Valley was eighty thousand

2131
01:56:35,080 --> 01:56:38,320
Speaker 3: acres in Louisiana called the Singer Tract, named after the

2132
01:56:38,360 --> 01:56:41,960
Speaker 3: sewing machine company that owned it. There were four nests

2133
01:56:41,960 --> 01:56:45,560
Speaker 3: in John's Bio and a confirmed roost tree in max Bio.

2134
01:56:46,360 --> 01:56:48,440
Speaker 3: The company leased the land to the state as a

2135
01:56:48,520 --> 01:56:51,080
Speaker 3: hunting refuge, but sold the timber rights to a big

2136
01:56:51,160 --> 01:56:54,520
Speaker 3: lumber firm out of Chicago. When the war began, Chicago

2137
01:56:54,600 --> 01:56:57,160
Speaker 3: Mill and Lumber World War one or World War two,

2138
01:56:57,200 --> 01:57:00,000
Speaker 3: I mean signed a contract with the military to deliver wood.

2139
01:57:00,440 --> 01:57:04,080
Speaker 3: It began cutting immediately. The National Autobund Society went to

2140
01:57:04,120 --> 01:57:07,440
Speaker 3: work to save the woodpecker habitat, lining up state and

2141
01:57:07,520 --> 01:57:10,560
Speaker 3: national support, even getting the War Department to agree to

2142
01:57:10,600 --> 01:57:13,880
Speaker 3: accept less wood in exchange for saving the bird. The

2143
01:57:13,960 --> 01:57:17,400
Speaker 3: company cut it all down anyway. The company executive, who

2144
01:57:17,440 --> 01:57:20,200
Speaker 3: answered all of these pleas, responded by saying, we are

2145
01:57:20,280 --> 01:57:22,960
Speaker 3: just money grubbers. We are not concerned as our u

2146
01:57:23,040 --> 01:57:27,440
Speaker 3: folk with ethical considerations. So many animals had vanished from

2147
01:57:27,480 --> 01:57:30,560
Speaker 3: these river hardwood swamps. The red wolf, the cougar, the

2148
01:57:30,600 --> 01:57:33,320
Speaker 3: Carolina parakeet, and now the saws had come for the

2149
01:57:33,920 --> 01:57:38,000
Speaker 3: Lord god bird itself, the ivory built woodpecker. The wood

2150
01:57:38,040 --> 01:57:41,640
Speaker 3: got turned into military packing crates and plywood gasoline tanks

2151
01:57:41,640 --> 01:57:44,880
Speaker 3: for fighter planes. The Autobund Society sent a researcher back

2152
01:57:44,920 --> 01:57:47,839
Speaker 3: into the vanishing forest to see if any birds remained.

2153
01:57:48,160 --> 01:57:51,240
Speaker 3: He found one. The researcher told a colleague, who was

2154
01:57:51,240 --> 01:57:53,560
Speaker 3: also an artist, that if he ever wanted to draw

2155
01:57:53,600 --> 01:57:56,160
Speaker 3: an ivory bill from a living bird, the time was now.

2156
01:57:56,760 --> 01:57:59,919
Speaker 3: Don Eckleberry, just twenty three, went south to the swamps.

2157
01:58:00,240 --> 01:58:03,480
Speaker 3: He searched and followed, and looked for specific nests and trees.

2158
01:58:03,880 --> 01:58:06,560
Speaker 3: Walking through a swamp while looking up his a learned skill,

2159
01:58:07,000 --> 01:58:10,600
Speaker 3: one evening around dusk, his barred owl sang in anticipation

2160
01:58:10,680 --> 01:58:14,480
Speaker 3: of a nighttime kill. Eckleberry and his traveling companions heard

2161
01:58:14,520 --> 01:58:18,560
Speaker 3: the double knock. They silently waited. Thirteen minutes later, the

2162
01:58:18,600 --> 01:58:21,800
Speaker 3: bird swooped through the clearing, flying above the broken tree

2163
01:58:21,800 --> 01:58:25,680
Speaker 3: corpses left by the lumberman. Eckleberry notated the details in

2164
01:58:25,720 --> 01:58:28,840
Speaker 3: his journal. He stared at the last known ivory bill woodpecker,

2165
01:58:29,040 --> 01:58:33,400
Speaker 3: and would never forget its face, hysterical pale eyes, he wrote,

2166
01:58:34,560 --> 01:58:37,520
Speaker 3: And so also the lumber. The family that cut down

2167
01:58:37,520 --> 01:58:42,240
Speaker 3: those forests is the family that founded and nurtured and

2168
01:58:42,320 --> 01:58:45,760
Speaker 3: invented aspen. So like people who love their wilderness don't

2169
01:58:45,760 --> 01:58:48,240
Speaker 3: give a shit about yours. Huh you know what I mean?

2170
01:58:48,320 --> 01:58:51,440
Speaker 3: Oh shit, yeah, and like uh oh man really yeah,

2171
01:58:51,480 --> 01:58:54,200
Speaker 3: and so like it's infuriating me, Like you come down,

2172
01:58:54,360 --> 01:58:57,120
Speaker 3: you're gonna cut down my wilderness and then go somewhere

2173
01:58:57,160 --> 01:58:59,960
Speaker 3: else and preserve wilderness and act like your vacation spot.

2174
01:59:00,040 --> 01:59:03,720
Speaker 3: That's right, And that's a hearty fuck you to them. Sorry,

2175
01:59:03,720 --> 01:59:08,120
Speaker 3: Phil oh good. I don't do the TV. It's just

2176
01:59:08,200 --> 01:59:10,080
Speaker 3: somebody else's past, you know, trying to look out for them.

2177
01:59:11,400 --> 01:59:12,000
Speaker 3: That's fine.

2178
01:59:12,360 --> 01:59:14,920
Speaker 1: I called Clayven beeps out when someone says, like, gosh,

2179
01:59:15,000 --> 01:59:16,000
Speaker 1: durn clail beep.

2180
01:59:16,720 --> 01:59:18,480
Speaker 3: He's so opposed. You would be really funny if you

2181
01:59:18,560 --> 01:59:21,200
Speaker 3: beeped out stuff that wasn't cursing and make it look

2182
01:59:21,280 --> 01:59:22,320
Speaker 3: like somebody.

2183
01:59:21,960 --> 01:59:23,800
Speaker 1: Is just yeah, that'd be a great trick to do

2184
01:59:23,840 --> 01:59:26,360
Speaker 1: on somebody. Yeah, just his mom be like.

2185
01:59:26,360 --> 01:59:28,840
Speaker 3: You should be shamed yourself, My mom, is always like, uh,

2186
01:59:29,040 --> 01:59:31,520
Speaker 3: because my mom listens to all of these and she's

2187
01:59:31,520 --> 01:59:33,240
Speaker 3: always you need to leave the locker room. Talk in

2188
01:59:33,280 --> 01:59:34,080
Speaker 3: the locker room.

2189
01:59:34,440 --> 01:59:36,600
Speaker 1: So do you think there's still if you build Woodpecker's

2190
01:59:36,600 --> 01:59:40,120
Speaker 1: around if you had to guess, And I'm talking the

2191
01:59:40,240 --> 01:59:42,440
Speaker 1: kind of guests where there's a gun to.

2192
01:59:42,400 --> 01:59:43,960
Speaker 3: Your head, gun to my hat. Gun.

2193
01:59:44,040 --> 01:59:46,360
Speaker 1: There's here's why I like the latest kind of thing out.

2194
01:59:46,840 --> 01:59:51,720
Speaker 1: There's an omniscient being that knows all truth. This omniscient

2195
01:59:51,800 --> 01:59:55,680
Speaker 1: being has a pistol. Yep, it says, I know the

2196
01:59:55,720 --> 02:00:00,120
Speaker 1: omniscient being. I know if there are are not, I'm

2197
02:00:00,160 --> 02:00:03,000
Speaker 1: going to ask you the question. If you get it right,

2198
02:00:03,680 --> 02:00:06,000
Speaker 1: you live, If you get it wrong.

2199
02:00:06,080 --> 02:00:08,440
Speaker 3: You die. Okay, this is a fun game. And then

2200
02:00:08,480 --> 02:00:09,960
Speaker 3: I go, what's that line from the West Wing? If

2201
02:00:09,960 --> 02:00:11,840
Speaker 3: the oscars were like that, I'd watch.

2202
02:00:12,240 --> 02:00:14,800
Speaker 1: And I say to you. Then I say to you then,

2203
02:00:14,840 --> 02:00:17,160
Speaker 1: So there's no being cute, there's no being like what

2204
02:00:17,200 --> 02:00:19,640
Speaker 1: you wish was true. There's no being cute, there's no

2205
02:00:19,680 --> 02:00:22,600
Speaker 1: Devil's advocate. It's just pure.

2206
02:00:22,920 --> 02:00:24,400
Speaker 3: You live or die. Here's what I think.

2207
02:00:24,440 --> 02:00:26,360
Speaker 1: And I say, are there I you Bill Woodpecker's alive

2208
02:00:26,440 --> 02:00:29,040
Speaker 1: right now? My answer is no, right with the gun to.

2209
02:00:29,040 --> 02:00:32,160
Speaker 3: My head, all right, So I will say this. My

2210
02:00:32,240 --> 02:00:36,080
Speaker 3: answer is not going to be no, although I am

2211
02:00:36,160 --> 02:00:40,800
Speaker 3: hesitant to offer a wilderness hot take in the corporate

2212
02:00:40,840 --> 02:00:43,880
Speaker 3: headquarters of meat Eater with mister meat Eater, so I

2213
02:00:44,320 --> 02:00:47,120
Speaker 3: don't want. I feel like you probably know more about

2214
02:00:47,160 --> 02:00:50,880
Speaker 3: this than I do. I say that I think there

2215
02:00:51,800 --> 02:00:57,680
Speaker 3: is because no, man, here's why, and here's why. No no,

2216
02:00:57,680 --> 02:00:58,480
Speaker 3: no no, And now.

2217
02:00:58,440 --> 02:01:00,320
Speaker 1: The omniscient being is like, geez, maybe I'm no.

2218
02:01:00,400 --> 02:01:02,840
Speaker 3: So here the here are the two reasons that I that.

2219
02:01:03,680 --> 02:01:07,400
Speaker 3: Here's why I think that. I think One, I think

2220
02:01:07,480 --> 02:01:13,960
Speaker 3: that there is a tremendous desire from sort of the

2221
02:01:14,120 --> 02:01:17,560
Speaker 3: ornithology establishment for it to not be true. And so

2222
02:01:17,760 --> 02:01:20,800
Speaker 3: something about the argument against it feels a little bit

2223
02:01:20,840 --> 02:01:23,160
Speaker 3: to me like the Lady Duth protest too much. There's

2224
02:01:23,160 --> 02:01:26,120
Speaker 3: something about how aggressive there being that makes me think

2225
02:01:26,160 --> 02:01:29,440
Speaker 3: that they're operating from a place of weakness, not confidence.

2226
02:01:29,920 --> 02:01:32,240
Speaker 3: And then and then the other thing I think is

2227
02:01:32,280 --> 02:01:38,080
Speaker 3: that I think you know, I love to watch your show,

2228
02:01:39,000 --> 02:01:41,880
Speaker 3: and one of the reasons is because I like to

2229
02:01:41,880 --> 02:01:46,960
Speaker 3: watch you guys move through a universe the scale of

2230
02:01:47,000 --> 02:01:50,840
Speaker 3: which is so unimaginable to me. Like we're sort of

2231
02:01:50,840 --> 02:01:55,520
Speaker 3: glassing over three valleys and just thinking, like we don't

2232
02:01:55,920 --> 02:01:59,400
Speaker 3: there's so much we don't know about what goes on

2233
02:01:59,480 --> 02:02:03,120
Speaker 3: in the wildern that like I tend to think that

2234
02:02:03,320 --> 02:02:09,040
Speaker 3: like whatever we think we know, I feel like will

2235
02:02:09,040 --> 02:02:14,560
Speaker 3: be proven wrong. I just think they're mysteries that you know,

2236
02:02:14,600 --> 02:02:17,520
Speaker 3: And maybe I'm just romanticizing the idea of wilderness, but like,

2237
02:02:17,840 --> 02:02:21,480
Speaker 3: I just think they are secrets, and they're mysteries that,

2238
02:02:24,040 --> 02:02:28,560
Speaker 3: like the deep ocean, remain unknown and almost unimaginable, and

2239
02:02:28,600 --> 02:02:31,280
Speaker 3: they're sort of wondering surprise. That would be my argument.

2240
02:02:31,640 --> 02:02:35,520
Speaker 1: Great, I'm gonna holster my pistol. Well I'm not the

2241
02:02:35,520 --> 02:02:36,240
Speaker 1: omniscient being.

2242
02:02:36,680 --> 02:02:38,240
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I was about saying, By the way, the

2243
02:02:38,320 --> 02:02:41,200
Speaker 3: moment you fake shot me was the moment you actually

2244
02:02:41,280 --> 02:02:45,080
Speaker 3: you're inner narcissism revealed that, like in this story, you're

2245
02:02:45,120 --> 02:02:48,240
Speaker 3: the omniscient being. So I'm glad. I'm like, I'm like

2246
02:02:48,280 --> 02:02:51,040
Speaker 3: wait a minute. I'm like wait a minute. I'm like

2247
02:02:51,400 --> 02:02:53,760
Speaker 3: you he just shot Oh shit, Steven.

2248
02:02:53,440 --> 02:02:56,520
Speaker 1: Is I know I somehow got I somehow got into

2249
02:02:56,560 --> 02:02:59,280
Speaker 1: the role. I didn't want the role, but there I was.

2250
02:02:59,640 --> 02:03:02,520
Speaker 3: If thanks gentlemen, if nominated I will know that's right.

2251
02:03:04,320 --> 02:03:06,760
Speaker 1: Get your brain if you want to stretch your brain out,

2252
02:03:06,840 --> 02:03:12,440
Speaker 1: real good, like a real good brain stretching. Pick up

2253
02:03:12,480 --> 02:03:16,280
Speaker 1: the Barn. The Secret history of a murder in Mississippi

2254
02:03:18,640 --> 02:03:21,400
Speaker 1: by a man who was born and raised twenty miles

2255
02:03:21,440 --> 02:03:26,280
Speaker 1: down the road from that murder. It's a landscape history.

2256
02:03:26,360 --> 02:03:32,880
Speaker 1: It's American culture, it's politics, it's agriculture. It's everything, man,

2257
02:03:32,960 --> 02:03:39,560
Speaker 1: it's everything. It's the whole everything, squeezed beautifully and elegantly

2258
02:03:40,000 --> 02:03:42,680
Speaker 1: into a single book. Right, Thompson, thank you very much

2259
02:03:42,680 --> 02:03:44,560
Speaker 1: for coming on, man, man, thanks so much for having

2260
02:03:44,600 --> 02:04:12,880
Speaker 1: me appreciate it. Thanks