WEBVTT - See the Forest 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:03.320 A few years ago, John and I were talking to 0:00:03.400 --> 0:00:07.320 Donald Triplett's brother Oliver about his family's roots at Forest, Mississippi. 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:14.240 Grandfather t. R. Mccravy was born in Tait County, Mississippi, 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.959 in eighteen sixty six, and he grew up on a 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:22.319 farm in really abject poverty, but had a mind for 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.400 banking and was working in a small bank in Sanatobia, 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.680 and there met Major Mill SAPs, who was a big 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:35.200 philanthropist an entrepreneur in Jackson, and they hit it off 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:38.400 real well, even though the major was thirty three years 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.640 older than my granddaddy, and he made a proposition to 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:43.920 him that if he would put up some of his 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.920 money that he had matched in several other business associates 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:53.280 to form a bank in Forest, Mississippi, which my granddaddy 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:57.400 jumped into opportunity, so it was incorporated down here in 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:02.040 March of nineteen hundred. The Cravyes now that is Mary's 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.959 side of the family, and Mary again is Donald Triplet's mother. 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.440 Beamon Triplet Donald's dad, and of course Oliver. His dad 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:12.080 also came from a prominent family. His father served as 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:16.399 the mayor of Forrest from and Beamon Triplet Donald and 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:20.000 Oliver's dad became an immense presence in town. And it 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:22.160 wasn't just that yea law school graduates were hard to 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:25.200 find in small town Mississippi. He was one of those guys. 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:28.440 I never saw a photo of him when he didn't 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:32.959 have a tie, and he had a very Atticus Finch 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:37.360 quality about him. I think that's said Salter. He's a 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.440 journalist and a historian and actually kind of a local 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:45.640 legend himself. Don's father was one of the pillars of 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:51.720 the community, a highly respected, very well educated, well traveled 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:56.200 individual whose counsel outside of a legal representation, but whose 0:01:56.520 --> 0:02:02.160 counsel on many things was He was a longtime Sunday 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.960 school teacher and had a great deal of knowledge of 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:10.200 the Bible, which was respected. Beaman and Mary Triplet had 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.680 money and they had tremendous influence around the town of 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:17.040 Forest for more than fifty years. They were kind of 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:20.560 a fixture in the Scott County Times society pages. They 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.680 held key leadership positions and things like the Rotary Club 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:25.640 and the Girl Scouts and the Garden Club and the 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.480 local Methodist Church, where they also both sang in the choir. 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:33.040 They helped run the pta, the public library and the 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:36.800 town legislative committee. Beamon traveled all around the South as 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:39.920 a delegate for the Mississippi State Bar. He was friendly 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:42.920 with and respected by the mayor and the judges, and 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:45.360 the police, and the local clergy and the publisher of 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:49.320 the local newspaper. Pretty much everybody in town new and 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:55.200 respected Beamon. Triplet. Here's Sid Salter again. In general society 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.799 in America, people remember where they were when Kennedy was 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.440 a Last nighted and nine eleven and all these things. 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:08.040 In this community, one of the flaminal events was when 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:12.800 Mr Bayman was killed in a auto accident, because it 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:15.679 was such a shock and such an impact on the community. 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:18.480 So I think all of that kind of contributed to 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:23.560 the fact that there was a protective failing for Don. 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:28.080 But you know, your father's reputation only gets you so far. 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:31.080 Forest was not actually the scene of much of the 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:34.440 physical violence that Mississippi as a state became infamous for 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.520 during the Civil Rights struggle, you know, the lynchings and 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:40.200 all of that. At the same time, it can't be 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.400 entirely exonerated of its past as a place with separate 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:47.800 water fountains and separate schools and certain assumptions about who 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:52.040 counted and who didn't. And that's interesting because Donald came 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:54.120 of age in an era when there was not a 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:57.040 lot of tolerance for people who were different or who 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.960 were judged to be in some way inferior. Of course, 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:03.080 the most egregious example of that was the Jim Crow 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.200 system that ruled the South during Donald's childhood there and 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.760 well into his adulthood. The whole discussion begs the question 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:14.440 of had Don's family not had the bank if there 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:17.840 had not been the respect for Mr William and Triplet 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.400 that the community had, would Don's life have turned out 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.799 the slime white? So it's also got to be said 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:27.880 that one challenge Donald never faced as a person with 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:33.520 autism was being a black person with autism. Because autism 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:39.640 and race they have their own tangled history. For I 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.880 heard podcasts I'm John Dunbent and I'm Karen Zucker. This 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:49.080 is Autism's First Child, and I heart original podcast episode four. 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:57.599 See the Forest. Forest, Mississippi is located in the middle 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:00.839 of the state. It's about forty five minutes east of Jackson, 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:06.279 the capital. Here's it. Particularly in the forties and fifties, 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:11.719 you had the burgeoning Mississippi poultry industry. The largest cash 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:16.360 crop in Mississippi is poultry and eggs. It gave rise 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:23.160 to one point like five poultry processing companies and vertical integrators, 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:27.479 and so you had this huge segment of people who 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:31.440 worked in the poultry plants, either on the kill line 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:36.279 or in cut up. But it's cold, difficult work, even 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:40.600 with automation. So you had that. You had a clock factory, 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:45.159 sunbeam clock factory here for a portion of that time. 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:48.720 The building later was taken over by Hughes Aircraft and 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:52.920 now Raytheon. But it was a blue collar, pretty heavy 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:57.920 agri business town. But let's back up for a moment 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.440 to talk about how we met. Said so, after we 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.520 confirmed that Donald was the child referred to as case 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:08.000 number one in the early medical literature about autism, we 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.159 reached out to Sid Palter because some of our research 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:13.200 told us that he was a close friend of the family, 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:17.080 and we had a long conversation with him. We asked 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.719 if you'd introduce us to Donald, and said agreed, but 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:25.840 first said something quite revealing. He said, if we hurt 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:29.440 Don in any way, he would make sure we'd pay 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:33.200 for it. And you remember the email he wrote to 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:35.599 us when we said we were going to treat Donald, Well, 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:38.440 I've got it right here. He said, if you are 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.040 not as good as your word, I will use every 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:44.159 means available to me to expose that fact. And I 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.920 will make it my mission in life to discredit what 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:51.520 you're doing. Wow, and Sid wasn't the only person in 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.600 Forest we heard that kind of thing from. Yeah, and 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.720 it came from a kind of love for Donald. Yeah, 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.159 it was a desire to protect him. And yes, it 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.520 was love and it was community white. I came to 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:09.280 Forest in Night three as a very young publisher of 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:14.120 the Scott County Times, the local newspaper. Don was by 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:18.000 that time pretty well ensconced in his role at Bank 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.920 of Forest, and as I came to know the town 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.400 and the townspeople, Don was one of the characters that 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:30.320 I met. Donald made a powerful impression on said he'd 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:35.119 never met anyone quite like him. Well, as a writer, 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:40.120 I think what I see in Don is the absolute 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:47.520 lack of nuance. Don experiences things at face value, and 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:53.000 he doesn't appear to attempt to assign motives or to 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:58.760 judge the depth of one's relationship. He just accepts things 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:01.960 at face value. Both with his contributions to it and 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:07.000 what he receives from others. And that is remarkable quality 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:09.320 because I think all of us go through life, even 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:15.000 with exchanges as benign as an encounter with a store clerk. 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.840 We all go, you know, and we think about am 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.040 I being treated well? Am I not being treated well? 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:25.000 Are they talking down to me? That didn't experience the 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.880 world in that way? Said was just the starting point. 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:31.600 In Forest, we met a community full of people who 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.960 considered Donald a friend. Like Celeste Slay, you can't help 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.680 but like him, love him. He grew up here, he 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:42.800 went to school here. I mean, everybody loved him because 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.920 he was special, because he was different. My wife was 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:50.520 in the hospital twice, two three times. One nurse was 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:54.559 from Sebastopol, Mississippi, about twenty miles from Forest. I mentioned on, 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:58.199 oh we know, we loved on. Another nurse was from Lake, 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.400 miss All we loved on. He's a most famous personage. 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.280 And he said, I've known him all my life and 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:08.800 we're so proud to have him. That is Reverend Brister Ware, 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:11.440 who has known Donald since they were in college together. 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:14.040 Many of the people we met in Forest have known 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:19.080 Donald for decades. Here is c. Leslie again, I don't 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.440 remember not knowing Don. He's always been a member of 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:26.559 the Force Presbyterian Church, and so was I. I remember 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:29.840 when I was little, he always gave the Sunday school report, 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:32.880 and he would tell how many people came to Sunday 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:36.440 school and how many people were in church, and he 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:38.959 would tell how much offering was given it during the 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:43.600 Sunday school hour. So I remember that as a child, 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.320 he was just a permanent picture, you know, he was 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:49.920 just always around. We never thought he was unusual. I 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:53.280 mean we we knew it was a little different for 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.599 a man with autism. Life in a small community in 0:09:56.640 --> 0:10:00.760 Mississippi had a lot of advantages. It was predictable, it 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:05.080 was tranquil, it was safe. Anyone living there could be 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:07.600 confident that one day would be very much like the next. 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:13.880 Everyone knew everyone else. After graduating high school in ninety three, 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:18.040 Donald packed his bags for East Central Community College. The 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.439 school was about forty minutes from Forrest, and Don would 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:24.120 not be the only new student from Forest going there. However, 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.080 remember John Rushing, the teenage football star who looked after 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:32.000 Don in high school. We met him in the last episode. Well, 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:34.480 he was headed to East Central and a football scholarship 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:40.400 hero in his trying to protect him and the most 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:45.440 tripping usually so he called me and was going off Google, 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:50.760 which you already knew, and yes we would I like 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:55.040 to ride up there with the year We glad to. 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:59.760 So he took us up there. At some point you 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:02.000 are specific to say I want you to do this. 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.360 He should I know he will look out for Dawn. 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.800 I ward glad to do it. Don you followed me 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:14.640 around if were We went on camp which hours that 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:18.440 were fine with me, you know me. But Donald got 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.440 along so well at East Central that, in fact, he 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.720 never needed John's help. Donald really threw himself into the 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.880 college experience. He joined a dozen clubs. He found a 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:32.319 whole new community there. Once again, Donald's grades were mediocre 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:35.040 and it took him three years to graduate instead of 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:37.840 the two years it usually takes to finish junior college. 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:42.320 But he thive socially. In fact, we found an old 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:45.480 news clipping from that shows donalds with a handful of 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:49.880 other students the headline class favorites. A few months after 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.520 he got his associate's degree in liberal Arts at the Central, 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:57.920 Donald enrolled at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Donald, as usual, 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.120 moved along at Millsaps College at his own pace. It 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:03.560 took him three years to graduate instead of two, but 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:07.040 he got his diploma, and he went back to Forest, 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.200 moved back into his parents house, and took up residence 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.240 in the same bedroom he grew up in. When we returned, 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:23.440 Donald enters the workforce. It's not totally clear what role 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.040 Donald's family connections might have played in his admissions to 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.880 Millsap's College, since his family was so well connected there. 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:31.960 It is clear, however, that his name had everything to 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.559 do with his getting and keeping a job after he graduated. 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:38.959 Donald's family they had plenty of money. He didn't need 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:41.160 to work, but he took a job at the bank 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:45.080 in nine. That job was part of the life that 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:49.880 Marion Beeman were determined Donald be able to live. He 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.720 just brightens her day. I mean he comes to the 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:56.160 bank every day at two o'clock, you know, makes his round. 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:00.200 He has a special name for everybody, minus Celeste, your 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:07.680 celest He's always called me that Hey Shelby, Welby, Hey, 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:14.000 not the cat Hey, rc hey kh Hey all right, 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:22.720 Hey big Dabby, all right, good to see you too, Hey, 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:30.160 Tricky Nick all right, Hey, Jan with a plan. Alright, 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:34.160 I got somebody famine me this time. He's good at 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:37.760 telling jokes, you know, he makes a little funny remarks. 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:42.280 You say, Hey, selest, I don't care what Denise says 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:46.280 about you. You know, I like you anyway. Hey, Denise Darling, 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:50.680 are you all right? You're all right, Denisia, I don't 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:56.160 care what Jan said about you. Yeah, it had to 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:02.160 be good. This, which Donald's family owned, was part of 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:07.760 the fabric of the community. In nineteen twenty seven, the 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:13.560 greatest natural disaster yet to hit the United States happened 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:19.320 in the Great Flood of seven, and within six months 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.800 one fourth of all the land in Mississippi was sold 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:28.320 for taxes, and so nineteen seven, the stock market crash 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:32.360 in nineteen twenty nine, the beginning of the dust Bowl 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:37.000 in nineteen thirty, all of these economic forces came about. 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:42.479 The bank survived all of that and was an anchor 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:45.800 in the community. I think the combination of the bank 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.840 of the respect that his family had earned went a 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:55.520 long way toward the community realizing that here's this family 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.080 with a great deal of stature in the community who 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:04.560 have a son that's causing them a great deal of struggle, 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:08.520 and you don't keep secrets in small towns. There was 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:13.040 general knowledge that they had gone to Baltimore and had 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:18.200 sought extraordinary help for him, and in the initial stages 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:20.320 it didn't appear to be going very well, and they 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:22.480 were having to make hard decisions, and I think the 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:28.560 community respected that. I actually moved here in December of 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:32.440 nineteen seventy nine, hired by Bill mccravy, who would have 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:37.560 been Don's uncle, that would be Don's mother's brother, and 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.160 actually hired to come in as chief executive officer at 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:45.880 the time just you know, everybody falls in love with 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:50.640 Don almost immediately. He's just such a genuine guy. And 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.160 you know, the longer we were together, the more we 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:57.400 understood each other and relate, And you know, he was 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:00.520 always DT and I was always g W. You know, 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:04.760 that was basically it. That's Gene Walker. He was hired 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:07.680 to run the Bank of Forest and at that time 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:12.840 Don was happing out in bookkeeping, doing statements and collecting 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.520 the mail and those type things. But that was my 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:20.000 first association with Don. Donald's uncle, who of course was 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:23.160 one of the bank's owners, had a special request for 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:29.560 Gene early on. He kind of explained Don's situation, and 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.400 he made the statement to me, Jean, I always will 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:37.320 appreciate you if you'll have a place for Don, and 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:41.800 you know always did. And the customers accepted him, the 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:46.200 community obviously accepted him, and just um he's I have 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.200 always considered him an asset to the bank. So what 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.080 that granted to Donald was a job he could never 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:56.360 be fired from, a job for life. One of Donald's 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:59.000 first jobs was as a teller, and when people came 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.280 into the bank, he'd greet them by their account number. 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:07.080 He'd say, Hi, three two one, your balance is four 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.720 d and seventy six dollars. So that job didn't really 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:13.960 turn out that well, but the gift was that Donald 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.800 was allowed to make mistakes until he found the job 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.320 that was the right fit. And that goes a long 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:25.960 way to really accommodating the challenges that a person's disability 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:29.280 might present in the workplace. And being accommodated in the 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:33.840 workplace is still really rare for people on the spectrum, 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:36.120 but Donald shows us how good it can be for 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:40.120 everybody when the effort is made. He did his job 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:43.080 at the bank, he found a whole new community there. 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:47.000 They gave him friendship, and he gave it back. We 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:48.920 talked with a lot of people who were in school 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:51.600 with Donald back in the nineteen thirties and forties and fifties, 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:54.480 all the way through to college, and the thing that 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.680 everybody told us when we would ask stories about Donald, 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:02.360 they would always say, you know, he's kind of a genius. 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:06.160 And that was the idea that really stuck to Donald. 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.440 I think the mistake people mike when they first encounter 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:16.200 Don is that there's some impairment of his intelligence. That's 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:22.359 absolutely not the case. But in conversation, he's going to 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:28.879 come at almost everything from the side. He doesn't discuss feelings, 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:32.040 not gonna be a lot of eye contact. You get 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:38.600 short snippets of very direct, sometimes brutally honest answers. But 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:44.040 it's just how he processes information. We saw this happening 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.440 in a conversation with Donald's one afternoon when Karen asked 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:51.720 him about his father's death. Do you remember remember the 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:56.000 day that your dad was in the car accident? Yeah? Sure, 0:18:56.960 --> 0:19:03.159 that was in How was your m She was all right, 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:08.600 she accepted that tragedy. Do you remember, Don, what your 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.439 dad was like? Yeah, I's right, I remember, I totally was. 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.960 She had white hair, was about five eight. What about 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:22.120 your mom? She was two anchies shorter, two or three 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:27.320 inches shorter. Her hair turn great too, just like Key. 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:37.280 Can you tell me anything else about her? No. One 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:40.680 thing we always wondered about was far Ast being this 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:45.320 really amazing exemplar of acceptance and tolerance during Donald's youth. 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:49.560 Yet at the same time, in race terms, it practiced 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:54.200 Jim Crow segregation. Sid told us a story about that, 0:19:55.800 --> 0:20:00.320 and I guess one story that best illustrates how ason 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:05.760 civil rights transpired here. Probably the most famous African American 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:10.680 citizen of Forest was a blues singer named Alfred Big 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:13.840 Boy Crudup. Just for the record, Big Boy cred Up 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:17.359 recorded under a few different names. His given name was 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:22.880 actually Arthur. There's a marker at that intersection now that 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:29.040 outlines his life. But also very near that marker, Forest 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:35.919 had a really nice city pool, and travelers would invariably 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:40.280 north southeast west they would see that beautiful pool. Probably 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:46.479 the most pronounced demonstration of civil rights strife was the 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:51.119 decision that the city made when Supreme Court decisions began 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:56.960 to steer the use of public accommodations to open use 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:00.800 and fairness to both races. Far Us did what a 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:03.520 number of towns in Mississippi did. They simply got to 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:07.320 back oh and filled in the pool. And so you 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:11.000 went from having this nice pool that they would rather 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:15.119 cover up and not have access to than to integrate 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:19.720 the use of the poop. How do we reconcile again, 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:23.800 going back to Jim earlier, I reconcile, you know, lovely 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:26.520 women that we've interviewed, seeing we were a small spe 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:28.080 of town. We're just nice to each other. That's why 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:30.040 we were nice to Donald. While at the same time 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:34.359 the community had separate drinking counting's what's our way to 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:38.520 drop that? Well, as I say, I grew up, you know, 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:44.720 County Northeast, in Cheby County, which had some real racial atrocities. 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:48.280 But I am of an age that I remember separate 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:52.720 drinking fountains, separate waiting rooms in the doctor's offices. I 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:56.960 remember every my twin sister and I, every white kid 0:21:56.960 --> 0:21:59.600 would be seen by the doctor. Even if you had 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:02.280 a SnO a full and you had an African American 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:06.080 child that was sicker, there was still that pecking order. 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:12.960 So yeah, with a story like that, we find this 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:18.240 seeming anomaly of acceptance and intolerance side by side in 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:21.440 this little community back in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:24.120 And yes, that tells us that things would have been 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:26.960 very different for Donald's growing up there. Instead of being 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:29.200 a white boy with autism, he had been a black 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:32.480 boy with autism. Race has been tangled up with autism 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:36.280 for a long time, and not just in Forest, and 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.119 not just in Mississippi, and not just in the South. 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:43.399 After the break, we'll hear how differently children of color 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:48.320 with autism retreated compared with white children with autism, disparities 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:56.280 which continue today. A lot has changed since Donna was 0:22:56.320 --> 0:22:59.160 a child, but there's no doubt that a black kid 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:02.719 with autism growing up when Donald was young would have 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.480 had nothing like his advantages, especially when it came to 0:23:06.520 --> 0:23:10.080 getting diagnosed in the first place. And let's be very 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:14.040 clear about this, it's not just the South. For black children, 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:18.280 getting diagnosed with autism has always been a challenge. When 0:23:18.359 --> 0:23:21.000 Karen and I started looking at old documentaries about autism 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:23.840 from the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, we noticed that 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:25.879 almost all of the kids in these movies were white. 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:29.800 And that's partly because for a long time psychiatry had 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:34.080 this idea that autistic children were only born to parents 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:37.960 who were highly educated, and that belief was seen to 0:23:38.160 --> 0:23:41.720 rule out the possibility of an autism diagnosis for black 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:44.480 children because their parents didn't have access to higher education. 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:49.800 Total logical fallacy, but it ruled. I think something to 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:52.119 be considered about Donald Triplett is that he's in a 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:56.280 homogeneous space for him, not meaning that black people don't 0:23:56.280 --> 0:23:58.679 exist in the same town, but meaning that his social 0:23:58.680 --> 0:24:01.840 circle was predominantly and he came from a family of 0:24:01.840 --> 0:24:04.760 a certain class, which means that the family had means 0:24:04.800 --> 0:24:10.040 an access and power. That's Stephanie parks. She studies anthropology 0:24:10.080 --> 0:24:13.080 and teaches it to undergraduates. We can never talk about 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:16.639 race without class, and for Donald Triplett, that meant that 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:20.080 his parents were able to shape a group of people 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:24.760 by saying, look at our very wealthy, powerful family, who 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:29.399 is doing whiteness extremely well, and we accept this child 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:33.880 as he's perfectly beautifully made. We were surprised to learn 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:36.679 that she talks about Donald in her lectures using the 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:40.440 stories we've written about him. Stephanie, we want to note 0:24:40.800 --> 0:24:44.320 is African American. Now, a lot of this is personal 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:48.560 for Stephanie, and the story she tells her personal experience 0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:51.480 is how hard it was to get her concerns about 0:24:51.520 --> 0:24:54.000 her son listened to. So we always have to be 0:24:54.040 --> 0:24:57.439 careful about generalizing from any one person's experience. But what 0:24:57.640 --> 0:25:01.879 Stephanie was encountering fit a pattern that held for decades, 0:25:02.520 --> 0:25:05.240 where it was far more difficult for black and Latino 0:25:05.320 --> 0:25:07.840 children in the US to get a diagnosis of autism 0:25:07.840 --> 0:25:11.199 than it was for white children. Very recently, as in 0:25:11.280 --> 0:25:14.879 within the last year, that gap closed dramatically, and eventually 0:25:14.880 --> 0:25:18.280 Stephanie's son, del did get a diagnosis when he was three, 0:25:18.880 --> 0:25:22.080 but she kept going with her work trying to understand 0:25:22.359 --> 0:25:27.439 what's been driving this disparity. My academic work stems directly 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:29.680 from my own experience being a mother of a child 0:25:29.720 --> 0:25:33.400 with autism. I used to sit in our clinic during 0:25:33.440 --> 0:25:37.479 my son's therapies and wonder why we were one of 0:25:37.520 --> 0:25:42.280 the only black families there, and that started a question 0:25:42.440 --> 0:25:46.639 that necessitated answers for me, and that meant taking my 0:25:46.760 --> 0:25:48.879 degree all the way to u c l A To 0:25:48.880 --> 0:25:52.840 get a PhD to answer it. I have always been 0:25:52.880 --> 0:25:55.399 interested in language and how we think about the world, 0:25:55.720 --> 0:26:01.720 but once my child was diagnosed. I started to understand 0:26:01.840 --> 0:26:05.480 that there were things happening in the clinic that seemed 0:26:06.080 --> 0:26:09.880 outside of our cultural norms as Black Americans, and that 0:26:10.480 --> 0:26:12.520 kind of set me on my path to think about 0:26:12.520 --> 0:26:18.000 how do clinics and hospitals function in a way that 0:26:18.160 --> 0:26:23.000 creates health care disparities. Is that about Black Americans cultural 0:26:23.000 --> 0:26:25.639 ideas about medicine, or is that about the way in 0:26:25.680 --> 0:26:30.280 which biomedical clinics themselves work. There's a little bit of 0:26:30.320 --> 0:26:32.760 push and pull. I would say that a lot of 0:26:33.000 --> 0:26:38.920 the healthcare inequity is based on race and racism within biomedicine. 0:26:39.480 --> 0:26:43.320 And when Black American families have experienced this since the 0:26:43.359 --> 0:26:46.960 beginning of our time here on this continent, it also 0:26:47.040 --> 0:26:49.359 means that we have our own ideologies that exist as 0:26:49.400 --> 0:26:52.679