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Speaker 1: Pushing Hey listeners, it's Khalil and Ben. We'll be back

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Speaker 1: with a new episode next week, but today we want

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Speaker 1: to share a story from another Pushkin podcast called The

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Speaker 1: Last Archive. The show tells stories all about the history

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Speaker 1: of truth in America, and the newest season is hosted

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Speaker 1: by Ben nadof Haffrey Man.

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Speaker 2: That is right, Khalil. This episode starts with Ella Fitzgerald,

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Speaker 2: the famous jazz singer. You and I talked about her

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Speaker 2: earlier in the season her friendship with Marilyn Monroe. But

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Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties, when Ella is a girl, she

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Speaker 2: was sent to a woman's reformatory in upstate New York.

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Speaker 1: At the reformatory, or what's really a kind of prison,

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Speaker 1: a social scientist named Jay L. Moreno showed up. He

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Speaker 1: studied the relationships between the girls and women there to

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Speaker 1: prove his theory of social networks.

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Speaker 2: That theory of social nets that works. It was revolutionary

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Speaker 2: at that time. The way people are connected through friendships

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Speaker 2: and how this affects how they behave had never really

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Speaker 2: been studied in this way before.

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Speaker 1: Yes, but he missed something happening at the same time

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Speaker 1: at this reformatory, something to do with race. And segregation.

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Speaker 2: Come on, you knew he was going to miss that.

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Speaker 2: This episode is amazing. We hope you enjoy it.

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Speaker 3: The last archive, A History of Truth.

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Speaker 4: Ella Fitzgerald never much liked doing interviews, which was too

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Speaker 4: bad because she did them all the time. Here's what

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Speaker 4: she did in Dallas in the nineteen eighties.

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Speaker 5: Ella, welcome back to Dallas.

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Speaker 6: I'm marvelous. Oh thank you, and it's a pleasure to

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Speaker 6: be back here again.

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Speaker 4: From the moment she'd become famous in the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 4: everybody loved her, and from then and right on through

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Speaker 4: to this interview in the nineteen eighties, people wanted to

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Speaker 4: tell her that over and over and over again.

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Speaker 7: You know, Ella, you really are.

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Speaker 8: You're one of the national treasures.

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Speaker 3: Do you realize that?

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Speaker 6: I just realized that a lot of people love me,

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Speaker 6: and I think that's the most important thing.

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Speaker 4: One of the stories, the story really that Fitzgerald always

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Speaker 4: got asked to tell, was the story of how she

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Speaker 4: got famous the amateur Hour at the Apollo Theater in Harlem,

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Speaker 4: when she was supposed to dance but got nervous and

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Speaker 4: started to sing instead. It was the moment everyone realized

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Speaker 4: she had an incredible voice, and it's a good story.

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Speaker 4: So she's about to tell it again. But listen closely

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Speaker 4: to what happens when she does.

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Speaker 6: Ella, As you look back on your life, here was

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Speaker 6: a child from an orphanage and now no, no, somebody

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Speaker 6: wrote that up.

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Speaker 3: Where did they get come by?

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Speaker 6: Hit Well, that was a publicity thing long time ago.

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Speaker 6: But I have family, and I had family been but

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Speaker 6: my mother had died, and I guess that's why they

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Speaker 6: used that. Mind that I was an awful but I

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Speaker 6: had family.

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Speaker 9: At what age were you when your mother died?

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Speaker 6: I was fifteen, about fifteen, because from there we went

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Speaker 6: to the amateur contest.

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Speaker 4: That line about the orphanage. It's not strictly true, but

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Speaker 4: it's not far off either, because Fitzgerald's not mentioning something

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Speaker 4: else that happened right around the same time as that

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Speaker 4: amateur night, A missing chapter in her story that must

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Speaker 4: have been one of the hardest, most formative times of

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Speaker 4: her life, a chapter that has a lot to do

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Speaker 4: with that question about the orphanage. Welcome to Season four

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Speaker 4: of The Last Archive, the show about how we know

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Speaker 4: what we know and why it seems like we don't

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Speaker 4: know anything at all anymore. I've been that this episode

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Speaker 4: is not about Ella Fitzgerald, or not only about Ella Fitzgerald,

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Speaker 4: but it is about the place where she spent that

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Speaker 4: missing time. Because in Fitzgerald's a mission lies an experiment,

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Speaker 4: a social science study that I believe she was a

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Speaker 4: data point in one of the most important, overlooked experiments

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Speaker 4: of the twentieth century. These days, we're all used to

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Speaker 4: thinking of ourselves as part of social networks, chains of

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Speaker 4: influence linking us all together. This episode is about where

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Speaker 4: those ideas came from. Well, come back to Fitzgerald, I promise,

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Speaker 4: but first I want you to meet the experimenter. In

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Speaker 4: the nineteen teens, in Ocean Away in Austria, there was

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Speaker 4: a young and rather mysterious medical student named Jacob Levy Moreno.

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Speaker 6: I was born on the book The Black Seat, and

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Speaker 6: I'll be priveling from one part of the world who

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Speaker 6: to find myself.

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Speaker 4: Moreno was hard to miss. He'd stride around campus in

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Speaker 4: a green peasant's cloak, hatless with a long flowing beard.

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Speaker 4: When he was a baby, or so the story goes,

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Speaker 4: a woman on the street pointed at him and said,

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Speaker 4: the day will come when this boy will become a

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Speaker 4: very great man, people will come from all over the

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Speaker 4: world to see him, and so Jacob Levy Moreno was

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Speaker 4: always invested in his own sense of destiny. In medical school,

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Speaker 4: he worked on the side as a tutor for young children,

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Speaker 4: and this is where the seed of his big experiment

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Speaker 4: was planted, the one that intersected with Ella Fitzgerald. The

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Speaker 4: more he interacted with kids, the more interested he got

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Speaker 4: in their fantasies. He'd walk through the public park and

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Speaker 4: sit on a low hanging branch of a big tree

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Speaker 4: and tell the kid's fairy tales and then watch them

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Speaker 4: play together. What interested Morena about children was how easily

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Speaker 4: they could take on new identities, play pretend, make up stories,

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Speaker 4: believe in the unreal. That spontaneity revealed who they really were,

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Speaker 4: but it also allowed them to recreate themselves together in

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Speaker 4: a group. A spontaneous game of make believe is a

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Speaker 4: kind of magic. How does everyone agree on a new

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Speaker 4: reality together instinctively? Kids do it effortlessly, and he wanted

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Speaker 4: to give that kind of freedom to everybody. So he

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Speaker 4: watched the kids play, told his stories, and started a

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Speaker 4: children's theater to think about groups and spontaneity. But this

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Speaker 4: was in the lead up to the First World War

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Speaker 4: and when it came to make believe came grinding to

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Speaker 4: a hole. Mareno went to work at a refugee.

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Speaker 6: Camp and I was an officer of health in a

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Speaker 6: tan Yen.

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Speaker 9: They were taken away and brought.

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Speaker 4: Into this camp about ten thousand Italians, all presents sol Catholic,

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Speaker 4: and there I saw the community developing from stretch. This

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Speaker 4: fascinated Moreno. Watching these groups form was like trying to

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Speaker 4: figure out how those kids in the park created small communities.

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Speaker 4: Except in the camp there was no spontaneity and joy.

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Speaker 4: There was only pain.

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Speaker 9: Immediately, I began to see attractions and repulsions, and indifferences

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Speaker 9: and jealousies and hate, which hinted the process of integration.

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Speaker 4: As Marino saw it, The problem was the camp administration

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Speaker 4: didn't have a way of thinking of people as both

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Speaker 4: individuals and members of a group at the same time.

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Speaker 4: Social scientists often considered groups as a mass think averages, polls,

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Speaker 4: big static numbers, But Marino knew that the truth about

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Speaker 4: these people lay in their relationships as individuals within groups.

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Speaker 4: The people in the camp weren't just generically in the camp,

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Speaker 4: they were specific individuals in specific housing near specific other people.

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Speaker 4: He wanted to figure out a way to trace that

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Speaker 4: influence a full scientific picture of social reality. He later

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Speaker 4: claimed to have brought his ideas to the government administrators,

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Speaker 4: but they shot him down.

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Speaker 7: It is said, it is impractical.

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Speaker 4: I was, and I was greatly disillusion and so the

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Speaker 4: result was about I began then to study small groups.

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Speaker 4: That's how Mareno got through those hard years of war,

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Speaker 4: working in the camps and using his free time to

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Speaker 4: work on his ideas about groups. When the war was

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Speaker 4: over and Marino had finished his studies and gotten his

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Speaker 4: medical degree, he wanted to go out into the world

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Speaker 4: and explore his ideas about community as a practicing physician.

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Speaker 4: Problem was, these were the years of Freud and the

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Speaker 4: science of the self. You can imagine that classic scene,

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Speaker 4: lying on the couch in a psychoanalyst's office. You're Freudian

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Speaker 4: psychoanalyst asking you about your childhood, your relationship with your mother,

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Speaker 4: asking you about you. In particular, the function of that

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Speaker 4: couch in the office was to shut the rest of

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Speaker 4: the world away. To the group was a separate thing

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Speaker 4: that had almost nothing to do with the individual, and

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Speaker 4: everyone was obsessed with the individual, everyone except Moreno. It

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Speaker 4: really annoyed him. It was as if to this incredibly active,

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Speaker 4: dramatic man, the greatest sin was to lie down on

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Speaker 4: a couch alone and think about your problems. He used

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Speaker 4: to bring it up all the time in speeches to

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Speaker 4: big groups of people.

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Speaker 9: Yes, did people who go on the college for six

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Speaker 9: eight Yes, spending twenty thousand dollars and so forth, and

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Speaker 9: then they come to us.

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Speaker 4: The Moreno had bigger challenges than the fact that nobody

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Speaker 4: was interested in his research. Violence and persecution of Jews

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Speaker 4: was on the rise, and like so many other Jewish intellectuals,

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Speaker 4: Moreno fled Europe, sailing for New York in nineteen twenty five.

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Speaker 4: But New York wasn't the most welcoming place either.

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Speaker 9: This was just after the Congress had passed legislation greatly

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Speaker 9: limiting immigration from Eastern Europe.

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Speaker 4: Jonathan Moreno is a bioethicist and historian at the University Pennsylvania,

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Speaker 4: also Jayale Moreno's son, and.

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Speaker 9: It was especially aimed at Jews and Italians. It was

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Speaker 9: really a very clear effort to keep the white American

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Speaker 9: race as pure as possible by keeping the Jews and

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Speaker 9: Italians out.

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Speaker 4: But Marenos slipped through. He lived in a hotel on

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Speaker 4: the cheap on the Upper West Side and tried to

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Speaker 4: figure out what to do. It was hard, but after

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Speaker 4: a couple of years he began to practice a little

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Speaker 4: as a physician again. He had a small group of accolytes,

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Speaker 4: and one of them married him for a time so

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Speaker 4: he could get citizenship. By this point, he'd started an

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Speaker 4: improv theater at Carnegie Hall as part of a long

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Speaker 4: running goal he had of reforming the theater, but he

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Speaker 4: was probably also thinking through his ideas about how groups

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Speaker 4: worked as he watched the cast perform different kinds of scenes.

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Speaker 4: How spontaneous were they, how quickly did they take on

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Speaker 4: new roles. A hallmark of his philosophy was the idea

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Speaker 4: that acting things out, taking on new roles could help

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Speaker 4: people work out their problems just on the stage, out

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Speaker 4: on a couch. Through the theater, he'd made contact with

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Speaker 4: a psychology graduate student named Helen Hall Jennings, who is

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Speaker 4: as interested in studying groups as he was. Together, they

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Speaker 4: began to work out a method of graphing the relationships

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Speaker 4: between people seeing them as individuals and members in the

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Speaker 4: group at the same time, but to get enough data

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Speaker 4: to test it out. They needed a big experiment, bigger

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Speaker 4: than an improv theater company.

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Speaker 9: He gets his big break when he goes to the

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Speaker 9: American Psychiatric Association meetings in Toronto in nineteen thirty one, where,

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Speaker 9: for some reason, another little immigrant named Abe Brill asks

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Speaker 9: my father to comment on his paper about a psycho

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Speaker 9: analysis of Lincoln.

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Speaker 4: Brill was the president of the American Psychiatric Association. He

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Speaker 4: died in the Wolfreudian, and in a paper called Abraham

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Speaker 4: Lincoln as Humorist, he tore the president apart. He said

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Speaker 4: Lincoln's jokes were so morbid and sexual, the reveal he

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Speaker 4: was a schizoid syntonic personality, whatever that means. For instance,

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Speaker 4: when Lincoln's friend worried that Lincoln would be assassinated, Lincoln said,

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Speaker 4: if they kill me, I can't die another death. As

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Speaker 4: Brill explained to the press, a normal person ought to

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Speaker 4: have said, very well, I will be very careful. This

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Speaker 4: was hot stuff, and for some reason he asked Mareno

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Speaker 4: to respond.

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Speaker 9: And now my dad is really trying to integrate himself

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Speaker 9: successfully with American culture, which you have to do as

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Speaker 9: an immigrant, and so he's a great fan of Lincoln.

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Speaker 9: Of course, it would be.

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Speaker 4: Mareno decided to psychoanalyze Brill in return in front of everybody,

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Speaker 4: to stand up for Lincoln, to humiliate Brill, and to

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Speaker 4: show everyone in the process how ridiculous psychoanalysis was.

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Speaker 9: So he actually turned the tables on Brill. Why would Brill,

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Speaker 9: the little five foot Brill, need to psychoanalyze to take

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Speaker 9: down the great Abraham Lincoln, the six foot four or

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Speaker 9: six foot five Abraham. Well, Brial is furious right.

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Speaker 4: Moreno had put his stake in the ground, and he

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Speaker 4: was the talk of the conference. His reputation was growing

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Speaker 4: all of a sudden. He was a person to pay

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Speaker 4: attention to, So when he gave a presentation on his

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Speaker 4: new way of understanding groups, people were very curious to

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Speaker 4: hear what he had to say. One woman in particular

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Speaker 4: was intrigued. Fanny French Morse. She ran a women's reformatory upstate,

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Speaker 4: the New York State Training School for Girls. She had

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Speaker 4: an idea that it might be the perfect place for

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Speaker 4: Moreno to make his biggest study yet. His fate was

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Speaker 4: on the epswing. But meanwhile, a teenage El FitzGeralds was

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Speaker 4: about to move in the opposite direction, because right around

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Speaker 4: the time of Moreno's big break, her mother got in

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Speaker 4: a serious car accident. We'll be right back. Ella Fitzgerald

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Speaker 4: was born in Virginia in nineteen seventeen. Her family moved

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Speaker 4: to New York in the early nineteen twenties to Yonkers,

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Speaker 4: a few years before jail Moreno immigrated from Austria. As

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Speaker 4: a girl, she loved to dance. She was an excellent

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Speaker 4: student too, but her real education was making the rounds

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Speaker 4: of the dance halls picking up new steps. In nineteen

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Speaker 4: thirty two, though, her life began to fall apart, to

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Speaker 4: fall apart in a way that very soon put her

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Speaker 4: in the path of jail Moreno. That was the year

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Speaker 4: Moreno was finally finding his footing his takedown of Abe Brill,

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Speaker 4: the Lincoln diagnosing psychoanalyst, and made him a minor celebrity.

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Speaker 4: Elaine was opening up for his new ideas about researching groups,

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Speaker 4: which is how he made contact with the progressive reformer

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Speaker 4: Fanny French Morse. She invited him to move out of

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Speaker 4: New York City and up the river to Hudson to

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Speaker 4: become the director of research at the Reformatory, where she

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Speaker 4: was the superintendent the New York State Training School for girls.

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Speaker 4: Moreno headed up to the school. There's a silent film

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Speaker 4: in his archives that was taken a bit later on,

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Speaker 4: so you can see what it was probably like when

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Speaker 4: he arrived. The reformatory was set high up on a

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Speaker 4: ridge in Hudson, New York, an old industrial and whaling town.

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Speaker 4: The campus sprawled across one hundred and twenty five acres,

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Speaker 4: dotted with neat brick cottages, latticework, white trim, blue shutters,

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Speaker 4: clean and tidy. The girls at the training school lived

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Speaker 4: in the cottages, each of which was presided over by

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Speaker 4: a house mother. Moreno would later write that there was

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Speaker 4: a chapel, a hospital, an industrial building, a steam laundry,

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Speaker 4: a store, an administration building, even a farm. It looked

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Speaker 4: well ordered and open, like a boarding school, tucked away

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Speaker 4: in the quiet Hudson Valley, hours from the city. Except

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Speaker 4: it wasn't a boarding school. A reporter once wrote, in

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Speaker 4: only one respect, what a visitor suspect that this was

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Speaker 4: not a junior college of the free world. The girls

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Speaker 4: refer to life as outside. The reformatory is the kind

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Speaker 4: of place that looms in the collective unconscious, like the

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Speaker 4: insane asylum. The woods at the edge of town, the

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Speaker 4: abandoned manor the island prison, the kind of dark gothic

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Speaker 4: corner of the mind where stories gather like in the

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Speaker 4: Spider's web. I think that's because there's an ambiguity to

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Speaker 4: it about the degree to which it's a school or

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Speaker 4: a prison.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I hate to call it a school.

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Speaker 4: Nina Bernstein longtime reporter at Newsday and The New York Times.

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Speaker 4: In the nineties, she began to investigate the history of

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Speaker 4: the New York State Training School for Girls for an

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Speaker 4: amazing book called The Lost Children of Wilder. She's the

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Speaker 4: kind of person who not only goes to the archive,

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Speaker 4: but once she's there, she turns every page.

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Speaker 3: The New York State Training School for Girls actually began

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Speaker 3: as a house of refuge for women in eighteen eighty seven,

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Speaker 3: and it was the first I think it was the

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Speaker 3: first place that women were separately held, and it was

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Speaker 3: seen as a great reform. As I discovered when I

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Speaker 3: looked at the records, this was a place of solitary confinement,

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Speaker 3: very harsh punishments, and minute surveillance of behavior. Were they

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Speaker 3: did they speak in a low voice? Were they too boisterous?

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Speaker 3: Did they sit up straight? I mean you know that

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Speaker 3: kind of thing.

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Speaker 4: One of the biggest accomplishments of the progressive era was

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Speaker 4: the shift from trying children in adult courts to juvenile ones.

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Speaker 4: People were especially worried about putting kids in adult prisons

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Speaker 4: or even just leaving them in fast growing cities. The

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Speaker 4: Reformatory was meant to solve for that, but in its

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Speaker 4: first few decades it kept getting made and remade. Marino

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Speaker 4: was brought in as part of one of the most

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Speaker 4: dramatic pushes to reform, an effort to understand how the

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Speaker 4: girls functioned together as a group.

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Speaker 3: I bring this up in part because you have then

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Speaker 3: another reformer, Fanny French Morse.

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Speaker 4: Morse had taken over the Hudson Reform School when it

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Speaker 4: had become basically a prison. When she took over, she

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Speaker 4: made a huge pile on the lawn of all the

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Speaker 4: prison uniforms and the strait jackets and the restraining sheets,

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Speaker 4: and then she lit them on fire. That was Fanny

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Speaker 4: Morse burning it all down to build it again. She'd

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Speaker 4: been born in Maine and widowed young. She'd run reformatories

316
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Speaker 4: all over the place and even worked on the national one.

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Speaker 4: She was glamorous, progressive, imposing at an old job. Her

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Speaker 4: coworkers remembered she had a fancy carriage that she never

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Speaker 4: drove herself. She wore small, rounded glasses, and she had

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Speaker 4: false teeth made of solid gold and painted white, and

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Speaker 4: they locked into her jawbone with a small gold key.

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Speaker 4: That's how I imagine Morse carriage waiting, metal jaw clenched, bonfire

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Speaker 4: glinting off her glasses, and gold old key in her pocket.

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Speaker 4: She was a type the progressive era reformer. If you

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Speaker 4: were an ambitious woman in those days, running a reform

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Speaker 4: school was one of the few clear pathways to real

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Speaker 4: political power, but it was political power at a cost.

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Speaker 3: There was this idea at the time, you know, of

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Speaker 3: the woman is the guardian of the hearth, the angel

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Speaker 3: of the hearth, and the idea was you were going

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Speaker 3: to reprogram these women to be that and that otherwise

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Speaker 3: they were going to have these offspring who would be criminals,

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Speaker 3: and you know, you would essentially be decimating the race.

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Speaker 3: She is a reformer against that eugenics attitude that all

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Speaker 3: these girls are feeble minded, and she introduces art and

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Speaker 3: gardening and so on. There's there are these positive aspects,

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Speaker 3: but they are also these very negative aspects from our

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Speaker 3: person respective.

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Speaker 4: Morse was on a crusade. She moved into a run

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Speaker 4: down old colonial half a mile from the school. It

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Speaker 4: had once been a grand house, but more recently had

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Speaker 4: been used as a brothel. She had the girls from

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Speaker 4: the school fix it up, polished the curved mahogany balustrade,

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Speaker 4: restore the old antiques. She said she believed in giving

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Speaker 4: them an esthetic education, and she held herself up as

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Speaker 4: a model. At Christmas, she'd put a candle lit tree

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Speaker 4: in every room of the first floor and ost dinner

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Speaker 4: parties for her charges. In the summer, they'd come for

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Speaker 4: dinner on the porch. She remade the school in her

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Speaker 4: image too. The guardhouse became a teacher's cottage, and the

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Speaker 4: cottages began to fill up with old antiques that she'd

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Speaker 4: gathered for the girls to fix. She bought one hundred

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Speaker 4: and twenty acre farm for them to work. She got

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Speaker 4: rid of the uniforms and let them shop in town

355
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Speaker 4: with an escort. She was especially proud of her choir,

356
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Speaker 4: and she showed it off at every opportunity. The press

357
00:21:03,036 --> 00:21:07,236
Speaker 4: loved her, the revolutionary woman reforming the reformatory, who had

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Speaker 4: remade the school so entirely that girls were supposedly begging

359
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Speaker 4: to stay, but there were some ugly rumors. A former

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Speaker 4: employee of hers once said, Fanny Frenchmorse went through life

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Speaker 4: making decisions on the basis of what glorified her reputation.

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Speaker 4: She suggested Morse had spent money on cosmetic improvements while

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Speaker 4: her girls went without the essentials. And Morse had another

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Speaker 4: problem too. From her supposedly perfect utopian reformatory, the girls

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Speaker 4: kept running away. That's why she needed Jael Moreno. Why

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Speaker 4: the girls ran away was one of the first things

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Speaker 4: her new director of research was meant to study.

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Speaker 9: So now he has, for the first time a big

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Speaker 9: institution with a completely free hand to exercise his ideas

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Speaker 9: about interpersonal relations and sociometrics.

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Speaker 4: Sociometry was what Moreno called his new science. He assembled

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Speaker 4: a team of research assistants. It seems that he lived

373
00:22:07,036 --> 00:22:09,836
Speaker 4: at the school and entirely closed were of about five

374
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Speaker 4: hundred and five people. Mareno could finally make his map

375
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Speaker 4: of what he began to think of as a social network.

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Speaker 4: The closed world of the school was perfect because there

377
00:22:19,476 --> 00:22:23,436
Speaker 4: were clear boundaries. Nobody got in or out without someone

378
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Speaker 4: knowing about it.

379
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Speaker 9: The idea that you could walk into a community of

380
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Speaker 9: hundreds of kids basically, and staff and all the caretakers

381
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Speaker 9: and so forth, and just look around and see these people.

382
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Speaker 9: That's the visible world, right, But then there's this whole

383
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Speaker 9: invisible world, sort of like when you look at the

384
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Speaker 9: stars and you don't see constellations, you see little points

385
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Speaker 9: of light. So what you know, you need to be

386
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Speaker 9: a great astronomer. And so he saw himself doing that.

387
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Speaker 4: Moreno and his collaborator Jennings were also doing something morally complicated,

388
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Speaker 4: making a study of a vulnerable population who couldn't consent

389
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Speaker 4: to participate. It was true of all the girls at

390
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Speaker 4: the school roles under state control, but it was especially

391
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Speaker 4: true of the black girls. This white scientists studying black people.

392
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Speaker 4: It happened a lot in the progressive era in the

393
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Speaker 4: early nineteen thirties. That same year that Moreno arrived at Hudson,

394
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Speaker 4: the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment began, where hundreds of black men

395
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Speaker 4: with syphilis were told by the government that they were

396
00:23:29,676 --> 00:23:32,836
Speaker 4: being treated, when actually they were just being studied to

397
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Speaker 4: see what happened when syphilis went untreated. Knowledge but at

398
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Speaker 4: a cost of injustice that no one should ever have

399
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Speaker 4: to pay at Hudson. Moreno and Jennings gave the girls

400
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Speaker 4: blank forms on which they could rank their preferences for roommates,

401
00:23:48,036 --> 00:23:50,156
Speaker 4: as well as mark the people they didn't want to

402
00:23:50,196 --> 00:23:54,076
Speaker 4: live with. Moreno called these attractions and rejections, and they

403
00:23:54,076 --> 00:23:58,076
Speaker 4: were meant to show who was connected socially to whom.

404
00:23:58,236 --> 00:24:01,716
Speaker 4: Using the answers, they began to map the cottage communities.

405
00:24:02,356 --> 00:24:05,916
Speaker 4: Maybe the runaways all lived in cottages with higher rejection scores.

406
00:24:06,836 --> 00:24:09,876
Speaker 4: On the map, they drew the attractions as red lines

407
00:24:10,156 --> 00:24:13,276
Speaker 4: and the rejections is black. Until the school filled up

408
00:24:13,316 --> 00:24:15,916
Speaker 4: with all these threads spinning out from hundreds of girls.

409
00:24:16,596 --> 00:24:20,276
Speaker 4: Reading Moreno's extremely long and extremely dense account of this

410
00:24:20,356 --> 00:24:22,916
Speaker 4: work is like taping your eyes open and scanning through

411
00:24:22,916 --> 00:24:27,116
Speaker 4: a thousand lines of computer code, except then these heartbreaking

412
00:24:27,156 --> 00:24:29,396
Speaker 4: stories cut through all the scientific lingo.

413
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Speaker 10: Ge I want in my cottage because I feel towards her,

414
00:24:33,436 --> 00:24:36,796
Speaker 10: like she was my little sister I never had any,

415
00:24:37,036 --> 00:24:39,956
Speaker 10: and I like to take care of her. Mostly, she's

416
00:24:40,036 --> 00:24:42,516
Speaker 10: just a lonesome little child you just have to be

417
00:24:42,556 --> 00:24:43,036
Speaker 10: fond of.

418
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Speaker 4: And then they'd write their reasons for rejecting others.

419
00:24:47,556 --> 00:24:49,996
Speaker 10: It's only because she has a way of edging up

420
00:24:50,036 --> 00:24:52,916
Speaker 10: to you and standing so close when she talks to you.

421
00:24:53,556 --> 00:24:56,756
Speaker 10: There's something about her that is repulsive to me. I

422
00:24:56,796 --> 00:24:59,116
Speaker 10: felt this way about her even before I found out

423
00:24:59,156 --> 00:25:03,196
Speaker 10: about her having secret meetings most every day with colored girls.

424
00:25:03,876 --> 00:25:06,396
Speaker 10: She doesn't just go with her herself, but she tries

425
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Speaker 10: to get new girls to carry her notes so they'll

426
00:25:08,916 --> 00:25:09,876
Speaker 10: get interesting too.

427
00:25:10,796 --> 00:25:14,716
Speaker 4: Moreno and Jennings traced those connections and rejections between girls

428
00:25:14,716 --> 00:25:18,396
Speaker 4: of different races, but even with an eye towards rearranging

429
00:25:18,396 --> 00:25:21,796
Speaker 4: the community, race was an invisible wall they wouldn't cross.

430
00:25:22,316 --> 00:25:24,516
Speaker 4: If a white girl wanted to live with a black girl,

431
00:25:24,876 --> 00:25:27,276
Speaker 4: that was out of the question. Because there was something

432
00:25:27,276 --> 00:25:29,876
Speaker 4: else that no one mentioned in all the breathless news

433
00:25:29,956 --> 00:25:36,596
Speaker 4: coverage about the Reformed Reformatory. The school was segregated. This

434
00:25:36,756 --> 00:25:39,956
Speaker 4: was controversial even at the time. Just a few months

435
00:25:39,956 --> 00:25:42,516
Speaker 4: before Morse met Moreno and asked him up to Hudson,

436
00:25:42,916 --> 00:25:45,476
Speaker 4: the Attorney General of New York had found out that

437
00:25:45,516 --> 00:25:48,516
Speaker 4: a black girl was denied a spot at Morse's school

438
00:25:48,676 --> 00:25:51,756
Speaker 4: and issued an opinion about the segregation there, saying that

439
00:25:51,796 --> 00:25:55,116
Speaker 4: it should not be permitted because of the possibility of abuse,

440
00:25:55,996 --> 00:26:00,556
Speaker 4: but still Morse believed firmly that the school should stay segregated.

441
00:26:01,516 --> 00:26:03,716
Speaker 4: That was galling to black civil rights leaders.

442
00:26:04,276 --> 00:26:08,596
Speaker 11: They're seeing black kids continued to be subject to the

443
00:26:08,676 --> 00:26:12,916
Speaker 11: horrific treatment that is supposed to be at this point

444
00:26:12,996 --> 00:26:14,676
Speaker 11: reserved only for adults.

445
00:26:15,196 --> 00:26:18,396
Speaker 4: Jeff Ward is a professor of African and African American

446
00:26:18,436 --> 00:26:22,276
Speaker 4: studies at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. I found

447
00:26:22,276 --> 00:26:24,836
Speaker 4: his work through the Prison Public Memory Project, which is

448
00:26:24,876 --> 00:26:28,116
Speaker 4: an amazing website devoted to the legacy of the training school.

449
00:26:28,716 --> 00:26:32,116
Speaker 4: Ward wrote a sweeping history called the Black Child Savers.

450
00:26:32,396 --> 00:26:36,116
Speaker 11: You know they're seeing their kids deny the same prospects

451
00:26:36,116 --> 00:26:40,236
Speaker 11: of self realization that why kids are seemingly having access

452
00:26:40,276 --> 00:26:42,196
Speaker 11: to visa visa rebuilt dat of ideal.

453
00:26:43,236 --> 00:26:45,756
Speaker 4: Morse was trying to keep access to that ideal as

454
00:26:45,796 --> 00:26:49,516
Speaker 4: limited as possible to white girls. That dividing line and

455
00:26:49,556 --> 00:26:53,516
Speaker 4: everything else was observed in Moreno's study. The researchers watched

456
00:26:53,556 --> 00:26:56,476
Speaker 4: the girls talking in pairs while doing laundry, study them

457
00:26:56,476 --> 00:27:00,076
Speaker 4: as they made rugs together. Moreno and Jennings presented the

458
00:27:00,116 --> 00:27:03,036
Speaker 4: research as total, which of course it wasn't couldn't have been,

459
00:27:03,636 --> 00:27:06,916
Speaker 4: but every observation became a number, and those numbers helped

460
00:27:06,956 --> 00:27:10,276
Speaker 4: the researchers draw their lines between the girls, which ones

461
00:27:10,276 --> 00:27:13,556
Speaker 4: were friends, which ones were enemies, and how strongly they

462
00:27:13,596 --> 00:27:14,516
Speaker 4: felt about each other.

463
00:27:15,516 --> 00:27:17,196
Speaker 9: And you could actually put a number on that, you

464
00:27:17,236 --> 00:27:20,156
Speaker 9: could calculate it right, So this was even better. One

465
00:27:20,236 --> 00:27:25,756
Speaker 9: cabin had forty five point seventy three mutual choices and

466
00:27:25,836 --> 00:27:30,916
Speaker 9: another cabin had eighty nine point six five mutual choices. Well,

467
00:27:30,956 --> 00:27:33,156
Speaker 9: what does that really mean. I don't know. It's surely

468
00:27:33,196 --> 00:27:37,676
Speaker 9: false precision. But in terms of the history of ideas,

469
00:27:38,356 --> 00:27:40,116
Speaker 9: that was really a breakthrough.

470
00:27:41,556 --> 00:27:45,156
Speaker 4: Moreno and Jennings were gathering an unprecedented amount of data,

471
00:27:45,636 --> 00:27:48,636
Speaker 4: watching the girls interact and beginning to sort it into

472
00:27:48,676 --> 00:27:52,356
Speaker 4: maps and charts, and that's when the Runaway chain began.

473
00:27:55,076 --> 00:27:58,196
Speaker 4: In the fall of nineteen thirty two, two girls named

474
00:27:58,276 --> 00:28:01,916
Speaker 4: Ruth and Marie ran away from cottage twelve. They were

475
00:28:01,956 --> 00:28:05,756
Speaker 4: both daughters of Italian immigrants. Ruth had once been forced

476
00:28:05,796 --> 00:28:10,716
Speaker 4: into prostitution. Marie's mother said she was incorrigible, and so

477
00:28:10,916 --> 00:28:14,516
Speaker 4: she was sent to Hudson. Moreno and Jennings already knew

478
00:28:14,556 --> 00:28:16,836
Speaker 4: about them because they ranked high on the list of

479
00:28:16,876 --> 00:28:20,516
Speaker 4: girls who were isolated in the community, very few lines

480
00:28:20,636 --> 00:28:24,836
Speaker 4: ran towards them. On Halloween night of that year, there

481
00:28:24,876 --> 00:28:27,756
Speaker 4: was a party, a friend of Ruth and Marie pretended

482
00:28:27,756 --> 00:28:30,756
Speaker 4: to faint, and while the house mother was distracted, they

483
00:28:30,796 --> 00:28:34,756
Speaker 4: slipped away. Then the next night five girls ran away.

484
00:28:35,356 --> 00:28:39,716
Speaker 4: Four days after that another four girls, and then three girls.

485
00:28:40,876 --> 00:28:44,796
Speaker 4: Fourteen girls ran away over a period of fourteen days.

486
00:28:45,676 --> 00:28:50,036
Speaker 4: Why runaways had always been a problem, but only ten

487
00:28:50,076 --> 00:28:53,076
Speaker 4: girls had run away in the seven months before. During

488
00:28:53,076 --> 00:28:56,116
Speaker 4: the same stretch the previous year, only three girls had

489
00:28:56,156 --> 00:28:58,996
Speaker 4: run away. And it wasn't just that these were the

490
00:28:58,996 --> 00:29:02,276
Speaker 4: loneliest girls. There were plenty of other isolated points on

491
00:29:02,356 --> 00:29:05,596
Speaker 4: Moreno and Jennings maps who hadn't run away. And it

492
00:29:05,676 --> 00:29:07,916
Speaker 4: wasn't just that these were the people who ran away,

493
00:29:07,996 --> 00:29:10,516
Speaker 4: because only two of them had ever tried it before.

494
00:29:11,316 --> 00:29:14,436
Speaker 4: It was a mystery. So Mareno and Jennings went to

495
00:29:14,476 --> 00:29:18,196
Speaker 4: Psychological Geography Map three and they began to trace the

496
00:29:18,236 --> 00:29:22,596
Speaker 4: lines connecting the runaways. This is why the mapping was important,

497
00:29:22,716 --> 00:29:26,556
Speaker 4: they said. They'd collected ten thousand pages of data and

498
00:29:26,596 --> 00:29:29,316
Speaker 4: they needed a way to visualize it all. What they

499
00:29:29,396 --> 00:29:32,916
Speaker 4: noticed was that even though Ruth and Marie were lonely kids.

500
00:29:33,276 --> 00:29:35,596
Speaker 4: There was an important line of friendship that ran from

501
00:29:35,636 --> 00:29:37,956
Speaker 4: them to the next girls who ran away, and then

502
00:29:37,996 --> 00:29:41,116
Speaker 4: from those girls to the next and so on. They

503
00:29:41,196 --> 00:29:44,996
Speaker 4: discovered attractions between them all, a pathway of influence that

504
00:29:45,116 --> 00:29:49,516
Speaker 4: ran from Cottage twelve unbroken to Cottage ten. Mareno wrote

505
00:29:49,756 --> 00:29:52,516
Speaker 4: that it was proof that networks exist.

506
00:29:53,516 --> 00:29:57,396
Speaker 9: We're accustomed these days to thinking of social networks in

507
00:29:57,476 --> 00:30:01,196
Speaker 9: terms of epidemiology, right, And I think what he understood

508
00:30:01,476 --> 00:30:05,636
Speaker 9: was that there was an epidemiology to the influences of

509
00:30:05,716 --> 00:30:12,676
Speaker 9: ideas and patterns of ideas and social networks. How did

510
00:30:12,676 --> 00:30:16,556
Speaker 9: the girls stimulate each other to be rebels or to

511
00:30:16,636 --> 00:30:21,036
Speaker 9: be to accept the conditions of the school, which one

512
00:30:21,116 --> 00:30:24,796
Speaker 9: might well argue they shouldn't have accepted. I'd given a

513
00:30:24,836 --> 00:30:27,876
Speaker 9: deeper understanding of what those conditions probably were.

514
00:30:28,716 --> 00:30:32,116
Speaker 4: It was a powerful piece of social science, arguably the

515
00:30:32,156 --> 00:30:34,436
Speaker 4: first time the spread of an idea had been traced

516
00:30:34,476 --> 00:30:38,596
Speaker 4: so closely. Moreno and Jennings used their maps to reorganize

517
00:30:38,596 --> 00:30:42,036
Speaker 4: the cottages, and the runaway numbers began to drop, until

518
00:30:42,116 --> 00:30:46,396
Speaker 4: Mareno claimed they were unprecedentedly low. Morse must have been

519
00:30:46,436 --> 00:30:53,476
Speaker 4: thrilled Moreno had seen the unseen. On April second, nineteen

520
00:30:53,556 --> 00:30:56,356
Speaker 4: thirty three, Morino showed those maps in public for the

521
00:30:56,356 --> 00:30:59,996
Speaker 4: first time at a medical conference at the Waldorf Astoria

522
00:30:59,996 --> 00:31:03,196
Speaker 4: hotel in Manhattan, one hundred miles away from the Reformatory.

523
00:31:03,676 --> 00:31:06,956
Speaker 4: Physicians and journalists peered at the webs of seven thousand

524
00:31:06,996 --> 00:31:10,396
Speaker 4: red and black lines spiraling out from hundreds of little circles,

525
00:31:10,756 --> 00:31:13,916
Speaker 4: some marked as white girls, some marked as black. Together

526
00:31:13,996 --> 00:31:19,076
Speaker 4: comprising the scientists said the entire psychology of the Hudson Reformatory.

527
00:31:19,716 --> 00:31:22,756
Speaker 4: The next day, The New York Times proclaimed emotions mapped

528
00:31:22,796 --> 00:31:26,396
Speaker 4: by new geography. Moreno said that the same kind of

529
00:31:26,396 --> 00:31:30,316
Speaker 4: invisible structure ran through all of society. He claimed the

530
00:31:30,356 --> 00:31:33,476
Speaker 4: study proved there were ten to fifteen million isolated people

531
00:31:33,516 --> 00:31:36,036
Speaker 4: in the country, and he said there were plans now

532
00:31:36,076 --> 00:31:40,236
Speaker 4: to make a complete psychological map of New York City.

533
00:31:41,196 --> 00:31:43,796
Speaker 4: That map never happened, or not as he planned it,

534
00:31:44,316 --> 00:31:46,196
Speaker 4: but the work on the walls of the hotel was

535
00:31:46,236 --> 00:31:49,356
Speaker 4: a forerunner of social network theory, a field that has

536
00:31:49,436 --> 00:31:53,276
Speaker 4: fundamentally shaped the way we think about policy, how ideas

537
00:31:53,276 --> 00:31:56,756
Speaker 4: and culture spread, and the way social media algorithms are built.

538
00:31:57,236 --> 00:32:00,596
Speaker 5: The mere mapping of the networks is transformational. The recognition

539
00:32:00,676 --> 00:32:05,916
Speaker 5: that there are these elaborate you know, skinnes of human interactions,

540
00:32:05,996 --> 00:32:07,996
Speaker 5: you know, like where these people are interconnected.

541
00:32:08,436 --> 00:32:12,116
Speaker 4: That's Nicholas Christaccus. He directs the Human Nature Lab at

542
00:32:12,196 --> 00:32:14,916
Speaker 4: Yale and he's done a number of groundbreaking studies on

543
00:32:14,996 --> 00:32:18,196
Speaker 4: social networks. When we talked, he pulled out an old

544
00:32:18,236 --> 00:32:19,596
Speaker 4: copy of a Moreno map.

545
00:32:20,116 --> 00:32:21,716
Speaker 5: I have to be very delicate here, so it's not

546
00:32:21,716 --> 00:32:25,396
Speaker 5: to rip it. It's a sociometric geography of a community.

547
00:32:25,516 --> 00:32:29,756
Speaker 5: It says this image, it's a very famous image of

548
00:32:30,236 --> 00:32:33,276
Speaker 5: these are girls. Every dot is a girl, and the

549
00:32:33,276 --> 00:32:36,236
Speaker 5: lines between them are friendships. And they're in different dormitories

550
00:32:36,476 --> 00:32:38,156
Speaker 5: in the little circles. And look that you can just

551
00:32:38,196 --> 00:32:42,116
Speaker 5: immediately see that the ties within the dormitories are tighter.

552
00:32:42,276 --> 00:32:45,276
Speaker 5: That's like a really fundamental insight. That's that's so called

553
00:32:45,396 --> 00:32:49,596
Speaker 5: community structure within the within the dormitories. So there's a

554
00:32:49,676 --> 00:32:53,076
Speaker 5: there's a just a tremendous amount of insight in the book.

555
00:32:53,156 --> 00:32:57,916
Speaker 5: No matter the man's you know, manifest a weirdness, and

556
00:32:57,916 --> 00:32:58,756
Speaker 5: and he was weird.

557
00:32:59,596 --> 00:33:02,836
Speaker 4: There was a tremendous amount of insight. But also as

558
00:33:02,916 --> 00:33:07,396
Speaker 4: Christocus and I talked about something missing, those runaway girls

559
00:33:07,476 --> 00:33:10,676
Speaker 4: were Moreno is proof that social networks existed, and that

560
00:33:10,796 --> 00:33:13,756
Speaker 4: was the basis of his new science. But they also

561
00:33:13,836 --> 00:33:16,916
Speaker 4: proved something else. We know what it was now, in

562
00:33:16,956 --> 00:33:20,236
Speaker 4: part because two weeks after that meeting, when Moreno and

563
00:33:20,276 --> 00:33:23,196
Speaker 4: his crew were back studying at Hudson, a new girl

564
00:33:23,236 --> 00:33:26,396
Speaker 4: showed up to the New York State Training School. She

565
00:33:26,516 --> 00:33:29,316
Speaker 4: was entered in the log book they wrote the date

566
00:33:29,756 --> 00:33:34,636
Speaker 4: April eighteenth, a number three nine eighty six, and her name,

567
00:33:35,356 --> 00:33:40,316
Speaker 4: Ella Fitzgerald, And then under a fence they wrote, ungovernable,

568
00:33:42,236 --> 00:33:54,916
Speaker 4: We'll be right back. When Ella Fitzgerald's mom got in

569
00:33:54,916 --> 00:33:58,796
Speaker 4: that car accident, her family life turned upside down. In

570
00:33:58,836 --> 00:34:01,676
Speaker 4: a great upcoming book, the historian Judith Tick writes that

571
00:34:01,716 --> 00:34:04,836
Speaker 4: she survived but was badly hurt. Her job had been

572
00:34:04,836 --> 00:34:07,276
Speaker 4: the family's main source of income, and it was the

573
00:34:07,276 --> 00:34:10,996
Speaker 4: Depression they were in trouble, So Fitzgerald started taking any

574
00:34:11,036 --> 00:34:14,276
Speaker 4: work she could find. At some point she ran numbers,

575
00:34:14,356 --> 00:34:17,276
Speaker 4: and she'd worked at a brothel, keeping a lookout for cops.

576
00:34:17,796 --> 00:34:20,836
Speaker 4: Then one day the police picked her up for truancy

577
00:34:21,236 --> 00:34:23,396
Speaker 4: and brought her before a judge, who sentenced her to

578
00:34:23,436 --> 00:34:26,476
Speaker 4: the training school up in Hudson. They checked her in

579
00:34:26,876 --> 00:34:31,436
Speaker 4: one week before her birthday. Her whole life, she'd avoid

580
00:34:31,436 --> 00:34:34,476
Speaker 4: speaking publicly about her time at the reformatory, and it

581
00:34:34,516 --> 00:34:38,436
Speaker 4: wasn't even public knowledge that she'd been there until Nina Bernstein,

582
00:34:38,796 --> 00:34:42,236
Speaker 4: that investigative reporter from the New York Times, was interviewing

583
00:34:42,276 --> 00:34:43,636
Speaker 4: someone from the school.

584
00:34:44,276 --> 00:34:47,196
Speaker 3: And at some point in the interview, he tells me

585
00:34:47,876 --> 00:34:52,316
Speaker 3: that there had been an effort to bring back as

586
00:34:52,436 --> 00:34:55,276
Speaker 3: role models for girls. You know, at some time in

587
00:34:55,316 --> 00:34:58,236
Speaker 3: the history of the institution, there had been this effort

588
00:34:58,436 --> 00:35:03,276
Speaker 3: to bring role models back, and that the assistant superintendent,

589
00:35:03,796 --> 00:35:08,636
Speaker 3: Muriel Jenkins, had recounted him know that Fitzgerald wanted nothing

590
00:35:08,636 --> 00:35:09,716
Speaker 3: to do with her the institution.

591
00:35:10,676 --> 00:35:13,036
Speaker 4: This was the first Bernstein heard of it. When we

592
00:35:13,116 --> 00:35:15,556
Speaker 4: talked about it, she got animated, like it was happening

593
00:35:15,596 --> 00:35:16,156
Speaker 4: all over.

594
00:35:16,036 --> 00:35:18,636
Speaker 3: Again, and of course I go, oh, my god.

595
00:35:19,116 --> 00:35:21,196
Speaker 4: Bernstein began to dig I.

596
00:35:21,196 --> 00:35:24,076
Speaker 3: Went back to the local historian and she was able

597
00:35:24,116 --> 00:35:28,556
Speaker 3: to give me several names and numbers of people who

598
00:35:28,556 --> 00:35:34,436
Speaker 3: had worked at the institution, including this woman in her

599
00:35:34,636 --> 00:35:38,716
Speaker 3: late eighties who had taught English, and she had been

600
00:35:38,876 --> 00:35:43,956
Speaker 3: Ella Fitzgerald's teacher, and she talked about what a great

601
00:35:43,996 --> 00:35:48,236
Speaker 3: student she was and what a perfectionist she was, and

602
00:35:48,276 --> 00:35:53,076
Speaker 3: her beautiful penmanship, she said, I can even visualize her handwriting.

603
00:35:54,636 --> 00:35:56,836
Speaker 4: What's interesting to me is I don't think it was

604
00:35:56,876 --> 00:35:59,636
Speaker 4: the stigma that Fitzgerald was avoiding by refusing to talk

605
00:35:59,676 --> 00:36:02,556
Speaker 4: about her time at the training school. She spoke in

606
00:36:02,556 --> 00:36:05,676
Speaker 4: interviews about running numbers and working at the brothel. It

607
00:36:05,796 --> 00:36:09,236
Speaker 4: wasn't that she'd done something illegal. I'm not sure why

608
00:36:09,276 --> 00:36:11,556
Speaker 4: she didn't talk about it, but maybe it was just

609
00:36:11,636 --> 00:36:14,756
Speaker 4: too painful, because on top of all the other indignities

610
00:36:14,796 --> 00:36:18,236
Speaker 4: and abuses of life at a segregated reformatory, there was

611
00:36:18,276 --> 00:36:22,676
Speaker 4: one thing that must have hurt Fitzgerald, especially Morse's all

612
00:36:22,756 --> 00:36:25,276
Speaker 4: white choir wouldn't let her sing with them.

613
00:36:25,956 --> 00:36:29,516
Speaker 3: I interviewed Beulah Crank, who had been a house mother

614
00:36:29,556 --> 00:36:31,956
Speaker 3: in the fifties and sixties, but who had been a

615
00:36:31,996 --> 00:36:35,836
Speaker 3: teenager who grew up in Hudson, and she told me

616
00:36:36,436 --> 00:36:41,596
Speaker 3: she vividly recalled Ella and some other black girls from

617
00:36:41,716 --> 00:36:49,436
Speaker 3: Hudson being invited to sing at her the local ame church,

618
00:36:49,836 --> 00:36:55,716
Speaker 3: and to some extent at least I came away with

619
00:36:55,836 --> 00:36:59,716
Speaker 3: a feeling from Beulah Crank that the church had invited

620
00:36:59,756 --> 00:37:04,396
Speaker 3: these girls to perform in part because they were excluded

621
00:37:04,476 --> 00:37:08,156
Speaker 3: from this white choir. That was a big deal at

622
00:37:08,156 --> 00:37:12,876
Speaker 3: the time that she had never forgotten that she said

623
00:37:13,276 --> 00:37:15,076
Speaker 3: that girl sang her heart out.

624
00:37:15,756 --> 00:37:18,436
Speaker 4: In Marino's study, the race of the girls is noted.

625
00:37:18,476 --> 00:37:21,196
Speaker 4: On some of the maps, you can see the ties

626
00:37:21,236 --> 00:37:25,276
Speaker 4: between black and white cottages. He'd written that though black

627
00:37:25,276 --> 00:37:29,236
Speaker 4: and white students lived separately in educational and social activities,

628
00:37:29,356 --> 00:37:33,556
Speaker 4: they mix freely. But from Fitzgerald's experience, it's clear that

629
00:37:33,556 --> 00:37:37,156
Speaker 4: that wasn't the case. Marino and Jennings had either totally

630
00:37:37,196 --> 00:37:41,036
Speaker 4: missed it or they'd chosen to ignore it based on

631
00:37:41,316 --> 00:37:44,356
Speaker 4: everything they'd observed. I don't think they could possibly have

632
00:37:44,396 --> 00:37:47,716
Speaker 4: missed what was really going on. And it wasn't just

633
00:37:47,796 --> 00:37:51,436
Speaker 4: segregation in the choir. In the basement of those white

634
00:37:51,436 --> 00:37:54,196
Speaker 4: trimmed cottages. There were beatings too.

635
00:37:54,916 --> 00:37:58,276
Speaker 3: You know, this was a system in which the black

636
00:37:58,276 --> 00:38:02,556
Speaker 3: girls were in these black cottages were subjected to corporal

637
00:38:02,596 --> 00:38:07,556
Speaker 3: punishment by men, and you know, so beaten by men.

638
00:38:08,516 --> 00:38:10,836
Speaker 4: It turned out that Fitzgerald had been kept in the

639
00:38:10,836 --> 00:38:14,476
Speaker 4: basement and, in the words of the superintendent Bernstein, spoke

640
00:38:14,516 --> 00:38:19,276
Speaker 4: to all but tortured. This was part of life at

641
00:38:19,276 --> 00:38:23,476
Speaker 4: the New York State Training School. Soon after, an investigation

642
00:38:23,596 --> 00:38:26,156
Speaker 4: of the school revealed the full extent of what girls

643
00:38:26,156 --> 00:38:29,396
Speaker 4: like Fitzgerald were subject to. There was never enough space

644
00:38:29,436 --> 00:38:31,596
Speaker 4: for black girls because they were only allowed in two

645
00:38:31,636 --> 00:38:34,916
Speaker 4: of the many cottages. White girls got to use Moreno's

646
00:38:34,916 --> 00:38:38,476
Speaker 4: sociometric system to choose their roommates, but not black girls

647
00:38:38,596 --> 00:38:40,716
Speaker 4: because there were so few options for where they could

648
00:38:40,716 --> 00:38:43,556
Speaker 4: live in the first place. Black girls were made to

649
00:38:43,596 --> 00:38:46,036
Speaker 4: do all the laundry for the white girls, because that's

650
00:38:46,076 --> 00:38:48,316
Speaker 4: the kind of job Morse thought they could get outside

651
00:38:48,356 --> 00:38:52,276
Speaker 4: the school. All that is why Bernstein hates to call

652
00:38:52,316 --> 00:38:55,996
Speaker 4: it a school, the reason it was always a prison.

653
00:38:59,956 --> 00:39:05,276
Speaker 6: I was fifteen, about fifteen, because from there we went

654
00:39:05,316 --> 00:39:06,476
Speaker 6: to the amateur contest.

655
00:39:07,356 --> 00:39:10,516
Speaker 4: There's no record of when elliphtz Gerald left the training school.

656
00:39:11,556 --> 00:39:13,876
Speaker 4: Based on the vague parole records and the fact that

657
00:39:13,916 --> 00:39:16,916
Speaker 4: she'd been sentenced to a few years. Bernstein thinks she

658
00:39:16,996 --> 00:39:20,796
Speaker 4: ran away, and I think so too. But she was

659
00:39:20,836 --> 00:39:23,996
Speaker 4: at Hudson when Moreno and Jennings were there the year

660
00:39:24,076 --> 00:39:27,236
Speaker 4: before they published their study. So I went back to

661
00:39:27,276 --> 00:39:31,516
Speaker 4: their account that dense text, and I can't know, but

662
00:39:31,596 --> 00:39:34,796
Speaker 4: I think that I found Ella Fitzgerald in it. On

663
00:39:34,916 --> 00:39:37,876
Speaker 4: page one hundred and ten of Moreno's book, he describes

664
00:39:37,916 --> 00:39:40,716
Speaker 4: a group of girls working on restoring a piece of furniture.

665
00:39:41,396 --> 00:39:44,516
Speaker 4: They worked with varnish and sandpaper to strip the old paint,

666
00:39:44,756 --> 00:39:47,596
Speaker 4: repair it, and paint it again. And in that group

667
00:39:47,956 --> 00:39:51,356
Speaker 4: there's a girl named Ella. Each girl was given a

668
00:39:51,396 --> 00:39:56,716
Speaker 4: two letter code. Moreno gave Ella the code GA. One

669
00:39:56,756 --> 00:40:00,356
Speaker 4: hundred pages later, there's another graph with thirty four red

670
00:40:00,396 --> 00:40:03,396
Speaker 4: circles for white girls and twenty three black ones for

671
00:40:03,476 --> 00:40:07,276
Speaker 4: black In the fourth black circle from the top, you

672
00:40:07,276 --> 00:40:14,356
Speaker 4: can see the letters GA. Moreno published his book in

673
00:40:14,436 --> 00:40:18,396
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty four with the title Who Shall Survive. The

674
00:40:18,436 --> 00:40:23,596
Speaker 4: book was enormously influential, including with the Roosevelt administration. Moreno's

675
00:40:23,596 --> 00:40:26,276
Speaker 4: science was used in the New Deal and also in

676
00:40:26,316 --> 00:40:30,836
Speaker 4: the internment camps. It led to an influential journal called Sociometry,

677
00:40:30,996 --> 00:40:33,956
Speaker 4: in which the principles of social network theory were formulated.

678
00:40:34,396 --> 00:40:36,836
Speaker 4: They published the paper that tested the six degrees of

679
00:40:36,876 --> 00:40:41,356
Speaker 4: separation rule. Social science legends like John Dewey, George Gallup,

680
00:40:41,356 --> 00:40:44,916
Speaker 4: and Margaret Meade were on the editorial staff. A History

681
00:40:44,956 --> 00:40:48,956
Speaker 4: of Social network analysis is dedicated to Moreno and says

682
00:40:48,996 --> 00:40:51,916
Speaker 4: that Without him, there would be no field of social

683
00:40:51,956 --> 00:40:56,236
Speaker 4: network analysis. Moreno had finally founded that field that was

684
00:40:56,276 --> 00:40:58,916
Speaker 4: all about seeing the group and the individual all at once,

685
00:40:59,476 --> 00:41:03,356
Speaker 4: but in the process he missed something crucial about these

686
00:41:03,516 --> 00:41:08,396
Speaker 4: particular individuals, and that same year Marino finally established himself

687
00:41:08,436 --> 00:41:12,516
Speaker 4: with his Hudson's study. Ella Fitzgerald entered a contest at

688
00:41:12,556 --> 00:41:18,076
Speaker 4: the Apollo Theater. When when you first started, you had

689
00:41:18,156 --> 00:41:19,596
Speaker 4: visions of not being a singer.

690
00:41:19,636 --> 00:41:20,636
Speaker 7: You were going to be a dancer.

691
00:41:20,916 --> 00:41:22,036
Speaker 5: Is that right right?

692
00:41:22,236 --> 00:41:24,996
Speaker 9: Tell me, oh, you really want to hear that. Will

693
00:41:26,396 --> 00:41:27,076
Speaker 9: started back in.

694
00:41:27,116 --> 00:41:29,796
Speaker 12: My hometown in Yonkers, and I was.

695
00:41:29,756 --> 00:41:31,876
Speaker 8: What they call the you know.

696
00:41:31,796 --> 00:41:39,236
Speaker 12: The greatest little dancer in Yonkers. And we used to

697
00:41:39,236 --> 00:41:41,996
Speaker 12: go down to the Apollo on amateur night, my girlfriends

698
00:41:41,996 --> 00:41:44,236
Speaker 12: and I and you know, like they always tell you

699
00:41:44,316 --> 00:41:46,916
Speaker 12: if you want to be an amateur, to sign and

700
00:41:46,956 --> 00:41:48,116
Speaker 12: drop your name in the box.

701
00:41:48,396 --> 00:41:50,956
Speaker 6: And being from Youngers, we never thought anybody would send

702
00:41:50,956 --> 00:41:54,876
Speaker 6: a postcard to Youngkers, and uh, the three of us.

703
00:41:54,796 --> 00:41:55,756
Speaker 11: We put our names in.

704
00:41:56,316 --> 00:41:59,436
Speaker 4: She's on stage in the twilight of her career telling

705
00:41:59,476 --> 00:42:03,876
Speaker 4: that story Everybody Loves Again. What nobody knew was when

706
00:42:03,876 --> 00:42:06,316
Speaker 4: she was on the stage at the Apollo. She was

707
00:42:06,436 --> 00:42:08,036
Speaker 4: just out of the training.

708
00:42:07,756 --> 00:42:13,156
Speaker 6: School and I was the one was chosen and I

709
00:42:13,236 --> 00:42:14,316
Speaker 6: made up. You know.

710
00:42:14,356 --> 00:42:15,796
Speaker 11: They say, well, if you don't.

711
00:42:15,476 --> 00:42:19,676
Speaker 6: Go, you're chicken. So we went and believe it or not,

712
00:42:19,836 --> 00:42:22,476
Speaker 6: I was the first amateur that they called. And there

713
00:42:22,476 --> 00:42:26,276
Speaker 6: were two sisters who were the dance and the sisters

714
00:42:26,316 --> 00:42:29,156
Speaker 6: in the world called the Edward Sisters, and they were

715
00:42:29,196 --> 00:42:32,596
Speaker 6: starring at the Pollo and they closed the show with

716
00:42:32,916 --> 00:42:38,076
Speaker 6: out And when I saw those ladies dance, I says,

717
00:42:38,316 --> 00:42:40,716
Speaker 6: no way, I'm going out there and try to dance,

718
00:42:40,756 --> 00:42:44,636
Speaker 6: because they stopped the show. I was the first one

719
00:42:44,756 --> 00:42:48,476
Speaker 6: was called, and when I got out there, somebody haullered

720
00:42:48,476 --> 00:42:48,756
Speaker 6: out in the.

721
00:42:48,756 --> 00:42:50,236
Speaker 9: Audi is what is she going to do?

722
00:42:54,316 --> 00:42:56,796
Speaker 4: Fitzgerald was on stage in front of a theater that

723
00:42:56,836 --> 00:43:01,596
Speaker 4: fits over a thousand people. She was rail thin, wearing

724
00:43:01,636 --> 00:43:03,356
Speaker 4: boots and a tatter dress.

725
00:43:03,756 --> 00:43:07,716
Speaker 6: And my mother had a record of Miss Connie Boswell,

726
00:43:08,156 --> 00:43:10,076
Speaker 6: who I think was one of the greatest singers that

727
00:43:10,156 --> 00:43:14,756
Speaker 6: ever lived. And she used to play Object of My

728
00:43:14,796 --> 00:43:18,556
Speaker 6: Affection and Judy and I got so I had, you know,

729
00:43:18,756 --> 00:43:22,156
Speaker 6: used to sing it. So the man said sing something. Well,

730
00:43:22,196 --> 00:43:26,676
Speaker 6: I tried to sing Judy, and I think miss Connie Bosa,

731
00:43:26,716 --> 00:43:28,756
Speaker 6: because then I tried to sing like her, and I.

732
00:43:28,756 --> 00:43:33,396
Speaker 12: Sang if a voyage ben break the hope of the broom.

733
00:43:33,276 --> 00:43:36,516
Speaker 6: That's Judy, and everybody says, all that girl can sing,

734
00:43:37,396 --> 00:43:40,076
Speaker 6: and the people caught it so much. I sang Object

735
00:43:40,076 --> 00:43:42,676
Speaker 6: of my Affection that was the other side of the record.

736
00:43:44,476 --> 00:43:46,636
Speaker 3: And I won first prize.

737
00:43:47,236 --> 00:43:50,396
Speaker 6: So then that made me feel like, you know, well,

738
00:43:50,876 --> 00:43:52,676
Speaker 6: I wanted to try to be a singer.

739
00:43:54,516 --> 00:43:57,236
Speaker 4: She said that if she hadn't won that contest, she

740
00:43:57,396 --> 00:44:00,916
Speaker 4: probably wouldn't have tried to become a singer. Fitzgerald started

741
00:44:00,916 --> 00:44:04,996
Speaker 4: affronting for a band, Chick Web's Orchestra. Not long after that,

742
00:44:05,516 --> 00:44:08,076
Speaker 4: she had her first big hit, and then she became

743
00:44:08,156 --> 00:44:11,516
Speaker 4: one of the most famous singers of all time. But

744
00:44:11,916 --> 00:44:14,636
Speaker 4: what I kept thinking about is she didn't write the

745
00:44:14,676 --> 00:44:18,356
Speaker 4: song she sang. It's her voice, people love, and her

746
00:44:18,436 --> 00:44:22,316
Speaker 4: voice is something so singular, so beautiful, that all she

747
00:44:22,356 --> 00:44:24,516
Speaker 4: had to do was begin to sing, and everyone in

748
00:44:24,556 --> 00:44:27,836
Speaker 4: that room at the Apollo fell in love. And then

749
00:44:27,836 --> 00:44:31,196
Speaker 4: I thought about Fanny French Morse's all white choir and

750
00:44:31,236 --> 00:44:33,796
Speaker 4: how they couldn't hear her voice because all they could

751
00:44:33,836 --> 00:44:38,396
Speaker 4: see was her skin. That's what segregation does to a mind,

752
00:44:39,156 --> 00:44:46,516
Speaker 4: it's a prison and Ella Fitzgerald escaped in the summer

753
00:44:46,556 --> 00:44:50,236
Speaker 4: of nineteen thirty six, two years after Moreno's study came out.

754
00:44:50,436 --> 00:44:54,276
Speaker 4: As Fitzgerald was touring the country, a black doctor named

755
00:44:54,276 --> 00:44:57,196
Speaker 4: Emmy Ross wrote the governor of New York about the

756
00:44:57,196 --> 00:45:00,076
Speaker 4: conditions for black girls at the New York State Training School.

757
00:45:01,076 --> 00:45:04,236
Speaker 4: It led to an investigation. Morris tried to fight it.

758
00:45:04,596 --> 00:45:07,116
Speaker 4: She pressured a black member of her staff to quote

759
00:45:07,516 --> 00:45:11,316
Speaker 4: keep her mouth closed on this. Judges wrote letters to

760
00:45:11,356 --> 00:45:14,356
Speaker 4: the governor claiming that integrating the school would start a

761
00:45:14,436 --> 00:45:18,996
Speaker 4: race war. But still it went ahead, and in the end,

762
00:45:19,236 --> 00:45:22,596
Speaker 4: the investigation led to Fanny Frenchmorse stepping down from the

763
00:45:22,636 --> 00:45:27,196
Speaker 4: school and retiring from public life, and the broader movement

764
00:45:27,236 --> 00:45:30,276
Speaker 4: surrounding it led to an amendment that prohibited the funding

765
00:45:30,316 --> 00:45:32,676
Speaker 4: of a place like the Training School if it discriminated

766
00:45:32,716 --> 00:45:36,596
Speaker 4: by race. It was a groundbreaking piece of legislation, and

767
00:45:36,676 --> 00:45:39,076
Speaker 4: it led to all kinds of other civil rights laws,

768
00:45:39,716 --> 00:45:42,516
Speaker 4: like a big idea working its way through a network.

769
00:45:49,116 --> 00:45:52,556
Speaker 4: Decades later, an interviewer asked Fitzgerald what she'd have been

770
00:45:52,636 --> 00:45:55,956
Speaker 4: if she hadn't become a singer, and she said a teacher,

771
00:45:56,476 --> 00:45:57,356
Speaker 4: I love children.

772
00:45:57,396 --> 00:45:58,596
Speaker 6: I guess put that in.

773
00:46:00,196 --> 00:46:06,596
Speaker 8: I'm a I'm a lapper children. We sent thirteen thousand

774
00:46:06,716 --> 00:46:12,316
Speaker 8: children in South Carolina up and we did Old McDonald

775
00:46:12,476 --> 00:46:15,196
Speaker 8: and you should hear all of them sing in Ei eile.

776
00:46:18,996 --> 00:46:22,196
Speaker 4: This is embarrassing to admit, but I started writing this

777
00:46:22,316 --> 00:46:25,116
Speaker 4: story because I found a bunch of undigitized tapes of

778
00:46:25,156 --> 00:46:28,356
Speaker 4: Morino in his archives doing his therapeutic theater thing, and

779
00:46:28,436 --> 00:46:31,636
Speaker 4: I thought, great, this will be fun and strange. But

780
00:46:31,716 --> 00:46:35,076
Speaker 4: then I learned about social network theory, and then the prison,

781
00:46:35,756 --> 00:46:40,516
Speaker 4: and finally Ella Fitzgerald, and the story rotated on its axis.

782
00:46:41,116 --> 00:46:43,316
Speaker 4: I felt like I walked into that place with a

783
00:46:43,356 --> 00:46:46,556
Speaker 4: set of ideas, and I walked out of it with her.

784
00:46:47,276 --> 00:46:50,396
Speaker 4: I came for the group, and I left with her voice.

785
00:46:51,236 --> 00:46:54,396
Speaker 8: And I've always felt that it takes one person to

786
00:46:54,436 --> 00:46:57,156
Speaker 8: make the other person. We don't do anything more, so.

787
00:46:58,836 --> 00:46:59,836
Speaker 6: I think if.

788
00:47:00,476 --> 00:47:03,876
Speaker 8: We try to help each other. I like the field

789
00:47:03,996 --> 00:47:07,356
Speaker 8: now that a lot of the young people will say, well,

790
00:47:07,876 --> 00:47:09,996
Speaker 8: she did it, I.

791
00:47:09,916 --> 00:47:10,676
Speaker 3: Can do it.

792
00:47:12,756 --> 00:47:15,836
Speaker 8: You're a beautiful person. People are beautiful.

793
00:47:16,356 --> 00:47:21,316
Speaker 9: Thanks Elms, though good to see.

794
00:47:18,956 --> 00:47:23,676
Speaker 4: Any We live our lives in the intersecting webs of

795
00:47:23,716 --> 00:47:26,796
Speaker 4: social networks that Marino saw for better and for worse.

796
00:47:27,716 --> 00:47:30,476
Speaker 4: But the thrust of all that, why any of it

797
00:47:30,516 --> 00:47:34,236
Speaker 4: matters is because it means we owe each other. We're

798
00:47:34,236 --> 00:47:38,876
Speaker 4: not just individuals, we're not only groups. It's like Fitzgerald

799
00:47:38,916 --> 00:47:43,116
Speaker 4: said in that interview, we don't do anything ourselves. And

800
00:47:43,156 --> 00:47:45,756
Speaker 4: it takes one person to make another person.

801
00:47:56,796 --> 00:48:01,876
Speaker 7: There's a saying who says, and love is blind. Still

802
00:48:01,956 --> 00:48:07,796
Speaker 7: we're often to seek and ye shall find. So I'm

803
00:48:07,836 --> 00:48:10,596
Speaker 7: going to seek. Here's a certain letter.

804
00:48:13,236 --> 00:48:14,036
Speaker 10: In bud.

805
00:48:16,076 --> 00:48:19,956
Speaker 4: The Last Archive is written and hosted by Me Ben Nattafhaffrey.

806
00:48:20,476 --> 00:48:23,516
Speaker 4: It's produced by Me and Lucy Sullivan and edited by

807
00:48:23,556 --> 00:48:27,556
Speaker 4: Sophie Crane. Jake Gorsky is our engineer. Fact checking on

808
00:48:27,596 --> 00:48:31,476
Speaker 4: this episode by Arthur Comperts. Our foolproof player is Becca A.

809
00:48:31,636 --> 00:48:31,996
Speaker 5: Lewis.

810
00:48:32,596 --> 00:48:36,476
Speaker 4: Sound design by Jake Gorsky and Lucy Sullivan. Our executive

811
00:48:36,516 --> 00:48:40,156
Speaker 4: producers are Sophie Crane and Jill Lapour, thanks also to

812
00:48:40,236 --> 00:48:45,156
Speaker 4: Julia Barton, Pushkin's executive editor. Original music by Matthias Bossi

813
00:48:45,396 --> 00:48:48,316
Speaker 4: and John Evans of stell Wagon Symphon Met. Many of

814
00:48:48,316 --> 00:48:50,676
Speaker 4: our sound effects are from Harry Jannette Junior. In the

815
00:48:50,716 --> 00:48:54,876
Speaker 4: Star Geanette Foundation. Special thanks to Judith Tick for sharing

816
00:48:54,916 --> 00:48:58,236
Speaker 4: an advanced copy of her upcoming book, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald,

817
00:48:58,476 --> 00:49:02,756
Speaker 4: a biography that overturns many myths about Fitzgerald's life. Thanks

818
00:49:02,756 --> 00:49:07,396
Speaker 4: also to Becky Cooper, will Friedwald, Russa Marajan, Jessica Murphy,

819
00:49:07,636 --> 00:49:11,476
Speaker 4: and the New York State Archives. For a bibliography, further reading,

820
00:49:11,516 --> 00:49:14,236
Speaker 4: and a transcript and teaching guide to this episode, head

821
00:49:14,236 --> 00:49:17,356
Speaker 4: to the Last Archive dot com. The Last Archive is

822
00:49:17,396 --> 00:49:20,516
Speaker 4: a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show,

823
00:49:20,716 --> 00:49:24,556
Speaker 4: consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus, offering bonus content and ad

824
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Speaker 4: free listening across our network for four ninety nine a month.

825
00:49:27,956 --> 00:49:30,956
Speaker 4: Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or

826
00:49:30,996 --> 00:49:33,636
Speaker 4: at pushkin dot fm, and please sign up for our

827
00:49:33,636 --> 00:49:37,796
Speaker 4: newsletter at pushkin dot fm slash Newsletter. To find more

828
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Speaker 4: Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

829
00:49:42,156 --> 00:49:45,276
Speaker 4: wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ben Mattafhaffrey.

830
00:49:47,236 --> 00:49:54,356
Speaker 5: How some one to what.

831
00:49:58,236 --> 00:50:04,196
Speaker 6: O me?

832
00:50:09,156 --> 00:50:11,396
Speaker 2: The boy is Block