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Speaker 1: Cools Media.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that you're

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Speaker 2: currently listening to about our first female senator, technically Rebecca Felton,

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Speaker 2: who we ended part one just did the whole Scarlett o'

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Speaker 2: hara thing standing in the ruins of her the home

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Speaker 2: that she loved. Right. We actually have a little bit

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Speaker 2: more of the war years to talk about here, but

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Speaker 2: we'll we'll, we'll, we'll get through all of that. But first,

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Speaker 2: our guest Samantha McVay. Sam, you want to plug your

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Speaker 2: pluckles up at the top.

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Speaker 3: Yes, I am the host, one of the hosts of

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Speaker 3: Stuff Mom Never Told You, also part of the iHeart Network.

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Speaker 3: We have a book, Stuff I've Never Told You. We

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Speaker 3: have an account on Instagram and Blue Sky. I believe

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Speaker 3: he says mom stuff sweet. Unlike what the title says,

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Speaker 3: we don't talk about moms or mom's stuff.

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Speaker 2: That's good. I just so you know, it's not my

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Speaker 2: strong suit either. So yeah, let's let's let's get into

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Speaker 2: the Civil War. Right. Anyway, The War years initially spared

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Speaker 2: the first Felton plantation, right. It quickly, though, turned out

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Speaker 2: that the flower of Southern manhood was somewhat less suited

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Speaker 2: to warfare than they had anticipated, and so in short

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Speaker 2: order the Feltons were ripping up their fine clothing and

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Speaker 2: carpets to make uniforms in cold weather gear. Eventually they

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Speaker 2: fled ahead of the Union army to a shack near Macon.

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Speaker 2: Re Becca later wrote this of her feelings upon leaving

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Speaker 2: the home that she had built and buried the first

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Speaker 2: of her children at When I reached the gate, I

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Speaker 2: picked up the springs that had been a part of

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Speaker 2: my dead child's fine baby carriage, also the arm of

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Speaker 2: a large parlor mahogany chair that had also been burned.

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Speaker 2: Desolation and destruction everywhere, bitter grinding, poverty, poverty, slaves all

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Speaker 2: gone money also, we certainly paid the price while we

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Speaker 2: were in refugee condition. Right, So very soon she loses

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Speaker 2: almost everything. The slaves aren't actually gone. She leaves behind

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Speaker 2: like fifteen for them to manage her farm and Decatur.

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Speaker 2: But they're not going to have like a lot of

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Speaker 2: people around them past this point for the war years.

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Speaker 2: They're kind of like actually now living like poor people

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Speaker 2: right there there there. Their circumstances changed immediately, right, as

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Speaker 2: did a lot of very wealthy families.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so this reminds me of the scene with Scarlet

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Speaker 3: O'Hara going, I'll never go hungry again.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 2: We haven't had yet that point, but we will, we

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Speaker 2: will soon. So the fact that they moved to make

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Speaker 2: and does not protect them. The war brings disease which

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Speaker 2: hits the Felton family like a machine gun. After the

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Speaker 2: fall of Atlanta, a measles epidemic ravage is the state,

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Speaker 2: and it kills her five year old son and six

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Speaker 2: of the people that she still owned. Not long after

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Speaker 2: their farm was ransacked by Confederate soldiers fleeing their defeat

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Speaker 2: at the hands of General Sherman. Rebecca was enraged. She

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Speaker 2: saw this as evidence of the mass failure of Southern

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Speaker 2: Manhood warriors, who had been so boastful before now looting

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Speaker 2: their own people as they fled in despair. And as

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Speaker 2: this is happening, there's a terrible fear building among elite

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Speaker 2: white women of rape right at the hands of Union soldiers,

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Speaker 2: at the fans of Confederate soldiers, and at the hands

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Speaker 2: of new free or escaped slaves. Right there's a lot

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Speaker 2: of the and these panic are being stalked by the

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Speaker 2: Confederate media, who's saying that like, well, if the lines fail,

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Speaker 2: if the Union gets here, here's what'll happen to all

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Speaker 2: your women. Right, They are being told that too. This

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Speaker 2: isn't just something that they're making up now. Late in

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Speaker 2: the war, Union soldiers occupy and raid Rebecca's making property.

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Speaker 2: And while the Feltons get by without being subjected to

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Speaker 2: any physical harm themselves, not all of the people on

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Speaker 2: the farm are so lucky. If you ask a body

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Speaker 2: of soldiers to occupy an enemy farm or town or whatever,

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Speaker 2: some of them are going to rape the civilians there.

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Speaker 2: No military in history has ever occupied a defeated enemy

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Speaker 2: and avoided this. In fact, US soldiers on bases in

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Speaker 2: Japan today commit rape on locals regularly enough that it

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Speaker 2: is a well known type of news item in Okinawa, right,

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Speaker 2: this happens like every year up there, sometimes more than

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Speaker 2: once a year.

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Speaker 3: In South Korea too.

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Speaker 2: It's yes, South Korea. It's why it's again, be real

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Speaker 2: careful when you put soldiers places, because this happens. This,

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Speaker 2: this is just a side effect. Now, this whole of

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Speaker 2: Southern womanhood recoiled at stories of wealthy plantation ladies being

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Speaker 2: raped by white or black soldiers, with stories true and

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Speaker 2: false of the latter spreading particularly rapidly in late eighteen

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Speaker 2: sixty three as Union soldiers near Cartersville, Confederate propaganda warned

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Speaker 2: civilians about widespread atrocities, particularly those that would surely be

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Speaker 2: committed by black soldiers. Rebecca wrote, the conduct of the

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Speaker 2: enemy has been destitute of that forbearance and magnanimity which

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Speaker 2: civilization and Christianity have introduced. Clothing of women and infants

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Speaker 2: is stripped from their persons. Helpless women have been exposed

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Speaker 2: to the most cruel outrages and to that dishonor, which

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Speaker 2: is infinitely worse than death. That's how she's referring to rape,

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Speaker 2: because it's worse than death. It's like worse than murder,

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Speaker 2: because that's your only valuable asset as a woman.

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Speaker 5: Right.

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Speaker 3: Obviously it's okay when it happens to the enslave, but

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Speaker 3: oh my god, it's not okay women.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is before she'd even had

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Speaker 2: a lot of real contact with enemy soldiers, certainly before

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Speaker 2: her bowerm was plundered, So we can see this as

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Speaker 2: her mostly repeating things other people had told her. And again,

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Speaker 2: when she's actually captured and actually exposed to the Union army.

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Speaker 2: She's never harmed herself, but she is forced to stand

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Speaker 2: by while Union troops rape some of the women that

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Speaker 2: she had previously owned. They do that, right. Now, here's

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Speaker 2: a reality we don't talk about at the end of

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Speaker 2: the Civil War often enough, which is that there were

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Speaker 2: a ton of rapes by Union soldiers. The reality is

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Speaker 2: that the vast majority of the women in the Confederacy

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Speaker 2: who were raped after the war were black. Rich white

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Speaker 2: women still enjoyed higher status than formerly enslaved black women,

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Speaker 2: and even General Sherman made occasional efforts to protect specific

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Speaker 2: Southern ladies he knew and admired. Meanwhile, newly freed black

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Speaker 2: women rarely enjoyed powerful patrons. However, they did take advantage

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Speaker 2: of one benefit that was new to them, the right

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Speaker 2: to press charges against their assailants. Now that doesn't sound

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Speaker 2: like much to modern ears when we're talking about a

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Speaker 2: bunch of women who have been raped by soldiers in

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Speaker 2: a fucking war zone. Necessarily right, Maybe not sound like

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Speaker 2: much consolation. And we all know how flawed the legal

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Speaker 2: system is and how particularly bad it isn't gaining justice

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Speaker 2: today for rape victims. But you have to remember something,

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Speaker 2: which is that prior to emancipation, there was no law

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Speaker 2: at all that said these women had a right to

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Speaker 2: say no. So there is something important in the horror

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Speaker 2: of all of these postwar rapes, because this cannot have

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Speaker 2: been the first time many of those women were raped.

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Speaker 2: Rebecca herself writes about how common it was for white

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Speaker 2: masters to do that, But it was the first time

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Speaker 2: any of these women had the ability to report their

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Speaker 2: rape to someone and actually see the rapist punished. And

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Speaker 2: as is always the case, we must assume that the majority,

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Speaker 2: almost surely the vast majority of such rapes went unreported

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Speaker 2: and thus unpunished. But by this end of the Civil War,

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Speaker 2: more than four hundred Union soldiers had been court martialed

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Speaker 2: after committing sexual crimes. Their victims included both white and

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Speaker 2: black women, and both women and girls, and the youngest

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Speaker 2: was five. I want to quote now, yeah, I want

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Speaker 2: to quote now from an article in the Yearsuropean Journal

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Speaker 2: of American Studies by Susan Barber and Charles Ritter. Procedurally,

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Speaker 2: Union judge advocates the men who prosecuted cases before the

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Speaker 2: court's martial were instructed to follow the law in the

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Speaker 2: state where the crime took place. Since most of the

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Speaker 2: crimes occurred in Southern territory. This meant that black women

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Speaker 2: could be prohibited from bringing sexual assault charges against a

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Speaker 2: white assainblant and barred from testifying against him in court,

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Speaker 2: since this was the law in all Southern states. However,

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Speaker 2: US court martial panels never prevented blacks from testifying against

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Speaker 2: whites or blacks on the basis of race, thus giving

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Speaker 2: black women for the first time a legal voice with

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Speaker 2: which to accuse whitemen of sexual violation. This was an

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Speaker 2: extremely progressive policy to establish, and it was sanctioned at

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Speaker 2: the highest levels of the United States government. And this

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Speaker 2: is another really interesting story that we don't tell enough.

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Speaker 2: In her books Southern Horror, Crystal Finster relates the story

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Speaker 2: of Lieutenant Andrew Smith of the eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry who

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Speaker 2: raped a young black girl. General Benjamin Butler, who read

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Speaker 2: the verdict when he went to court, summarized the case

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Speaker 2: with an admirable degree of rage. A female Negro child

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Speaker 2: quits slavery and comes into the protection of the federal government,

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Speaker 2: and upon first reaching the limits of the federal lines,

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Speaker 2: receives the brutal treatment from an officer himself, a husband

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Speaker 2: and a father, a violation of her person. He sentences

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Speaker 2: Smith to ten years hard labor and said the man

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Speaker 2: was lucky not to be executed. After Macon was captured,

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Speaker 2: the war was over for the Feltons, Rebecca declared, I

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Speaker 2: can run no further. I have nowhere to go. The

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Speaker 2: people she and her husband owned counted for most of

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Speaker 2: her property, and without them, she was nearly broke, with

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Speaker 2: just enough props left in the field to survive the winter.

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Speaker 2: Southern defeat had been so total, so humbling, that Rebecca

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Speaker 2: reacted to it in an undeniably appropriate way by blaming

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Speaker 2: all of the men in her society. And it was

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Speaker 2: totally her fault. Southern women didn't vote. Like say what

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Speaker 2: you will about how morally complicit they are. They didn't

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Speaker 2: have a choice in the secession. Really right, right? She

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Speaker 2: knew all along, she said, she yeah. And the way

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Speaker 2: Rebecca saw it, they'd broken the social contract. I want

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Speaker 2: to quote from a piece in the Smithsonian Magazine by

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Speaker 2: Lauren Maloney. According to his story in Leanne Whites, Felton

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Speaker 2: believed upper class women had kept their end of the

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Speaker 2: antibellum gender bargain by minding their place in society, while

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Speaker 2: their husbands had broken theirs by refusing to compromise on

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Speaker 2: slavery and engineering secession. These men had triggered a series

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Speaker 2: of events that would forever undermine their ability to offer

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Speaker 2: protection to their dependents, rights whites and gender matters, Civil War, reconstruction,

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Speaker 2: and the making of the New South. As a result,

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Speaker 2: elite women were exposed to forces that had long molded

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Speaker 2: the lives of most Southern women, a change in fortune

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Speaker 2: Felton was eager to reverse. And yeah, I think that's

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Speaker 2: a really fascinating way to look at it for her,

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Speaker 2: like running into some of the right ideas for the

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Speaker 2: completely wrong reason.

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Speaker 5: Right. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: In her own book, Feinster points out something I think

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Speaker 2: is worth adding. Southern men, especially the planter elite, Felton argued,

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Speaker 2: had put the profit of slavery before the protection of

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Speaker 2: Southern womanhood, whereas elite white women had held up their

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Speaker 2: int to the bargain to the point of unsexing themselves.

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Speaker 2: Southern manhood had failed miserably. White women all over the

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Speaker 2: South had been left unprotected, and some had even suffered rape.

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Speaker 2: And when she talks about unsexing themselves once the men

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Speaker 2: go away, the women running these plantations start carrying guns

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Speaker 2: and weapons they're not supposed to. They think it's gross

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Speaker 2: that it's uncomfortable to them. They're unsexing themselves. And we

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Speaker 2: did it to help the war effort, and you still

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Speaker 2: couldn't beat the fucking North and you fail. How dare you?

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Speaker 2: And a bunch of us got raped? Right? That is this,

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Speaker 2: this rage is going to is going to like directly

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Speaker 2: fuel a big chunk of the post reconstruction lynching epidemic.

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Speaker 2: This is where a lot of it starts. And a

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Speaker 2: lot of these like rich white women and these men

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Speaker 2: who feel also really angry and furious that themselves for

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Speaker 2: not having been able to stop any of it, and

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Speaker 2: not at themselves. They blame a specific group of people.

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Speaker 2: But a lot of anger is building here and that's

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Speaker 2: really that's going to get led out very soon. Immediately

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Speaker 2: after the South lost and the Civil War ended, a

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Speaker 2: wave of malaria hit Georgia and that it touched the

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Speaker 2: Felton family particularly hard. It killed the last of her

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Speaker 2: five born children, leaving her with only a step daughter

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Speaker 2: and her husband wasty years old. So at age thirty,

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Speaker 2: she has had five children and they have all died.

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Speaker 2: She has lost her houses, call her money. Things are

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Speaker 2: not well.

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Speaker 3: She is peoples, okay, Oliver, all right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And her husband, you know, goes back to

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Speaker 2: work after the war. She has to get a job

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Speaker 2: after the war, and they slowly struggle to rebuild their lives.

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Speaker 2: And as she is like working and finding ways to

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Speaker 2: make money for the first time and try helping to

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Speaker 2: support her family, she gets angrier and angrier at these

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Speaker 2: planters who had thrown not just their wealth but their children,

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Speaker 2: her children away for nothing. Right. They didn't just throw

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Speaker 2: away the slaves and the money in the houses. They

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Speaker 2: threw away her kids, as she sees it, right, and

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Speaker 2: she's not wrong to see it that way. Despite the

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Speaker 2: dire circumstances, after the war, the Felton slowly but surely

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Speaker 2: began to thrive in the newly Reunited States. In seventeen

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Speaker 2: eighty four, William Felton ran for Congress and was elected

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Speaker 2: as a Democrat. He would be re elected twice. His

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Speaker 2: constituents were the small farmers he called neighbor and his

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Speaker 2: campaign manager was Rebecca Felton. Her hatred of southern elitemen

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Speaker 2: did not into her husband, who had, like her, thought

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Speaker 2: the war a terrible idea and who generally genuinely respected

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Speaker 2: her ideas. Right, that's amazing.

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Speaker 4: She's like, hey, fuck white man, but not my husband.

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Speaker 2: Not on my husband.

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Speaker 3: It's not all men tofie.

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Speaker 2: No, it's not all men. No, because she has a

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Speaker 2: good relationship with her husband, and I think he respects

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Speaker 2: her mind, Like he lets her do stuff, so she

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Speaker 2: keep our opinions. Yeah, he lets her. They become kind

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Speaker 2: of a power couple after this, right, Rebecca and William

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Speaker 2: kind of defy the odds and seems to have been

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Speaker 2: a perfect This might be the most functional relationship we've

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Speaker 2: ever covered on Behind the bastards.

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Speaker 3: They support each other. We love a good supportive couple.

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Speaker 2: They really do. Rebecca travels with her husband to DC

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Speaker 2: and access as secretary. She also writes his speeches for him,

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Speaker 2: and over time she gets to consult and help draft

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Speaker 2: actual legislation, so she's actually helping to write laws because

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Speaker 2: she's her husband's in Congress. She grows more and more

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Speaker 2: confident over these years, and the idea that women ought

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Speaker 2: to be able to have a say in the affair

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Speaker 2: of the nation and her involvement did not go unnoticed.

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Speaker 2: For the Smithsonian Magazine, After William won his third campaign,

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Speaker 2: one newspaper announced, Missus Felton and doctor reappointed? Is it

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Speaker 2: doing that founder of Reddit and Serena Williams thing or whatever?

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, here yeah, mister missus Felton and doctor reelected,

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Speaker 2: Oh I like it. William's opponents attacked his wife's involvement

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Speaker 2: after she appeared in an eighteen seventy six rally, and

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Speaker 2: editor dubbed her attendants a disgusting spectacle. Her promotion of

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Speaker 2: a prison reform bill in eighteen eighty seven caused one

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Speaker 2: legislator to christen her the political She of Georgia, a

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Speaker 2: reference to the sorceress queen who dominates men in h

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Speaker 2: Writer Haggard's eighteen eighty six novel She Musache haunted her

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Speaker 2: even in death. In his nineteen sixty biography of Felton,

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Speaker 2: historian John Talmadge described her as a belligerent feminist, though

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Speaker 2: he admitted he wouldn't dare to write a word about

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Speaker 2: her if she were still living. You gotta respect that.

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Speaker 2: You gotta respect that.

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Speaker 3: That's iconic.

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Speaker 2: I would talk shit if she was still alive.

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Speaker 5: Thought belligerate feminist, hot right, you know what, it's not

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Speaker 5: going to be quite as hot as you're thinking.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, no, no, no, she sucks, she sucks.

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Speaker 2: Parts of it are going to be good parts of it,

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Speaker 2: but being scary. But yeah, she's undeniably got some mojo.

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Speaker 2: So the whole time her husband's in Congress, William was

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Speaker 2: engaging with American politics and culture pretty much the only

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Speaker 2: way a woman could while still maintaining any degree of agency.

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Speaker 2: She wrote, if you wanted to influence the culture, that

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Speaker 2: was your way as a woman in this period of time.

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Speaker 2: You know, fiction, letters in the magazine, articles, whatnot. She

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Speaker 2: puts out hundreds and hundreds of letters to the editor

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Speaker 2: and articles in magazine, and she's she's writing every day

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Speaker 2: columns on the issues of the day and just sending

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Speaker 2: them off. And she attracts a fan base and launches

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Speaker 2: a newspaper with her husband. After loses his fourth re

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Speaker 2: election campaign, Rebecca joins the Women's Christian Temperance Union and

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Speaker 2: starts campaigning on her own for prohibition. She'd made the

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Speaker 2: choice not to become a drinker as a girl, perhaps

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Speaker 2: spurred on by scary memories of drunken Southern men. She

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Speaker 2: saw prohibition, like many did, as a way to protect

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Speaker 2: women and women of all races. Right, Drunkenness is the

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Speaker 2: enemy of women, because all these men are getting hammered

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Speaker 2: at bars and they're coming back and they're beating the

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Speaker 2: shed out of us and doing other terrible things. They're

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Speaker 2: not able to work, they're not able to take care

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Speaker 2: of their families. That's the attitude of a lot of

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Speaker 2: these prohibitionists. And Felton is a prohibitionist because she sees

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Speaker 2: alcohol as harming women. Right.

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Speaker 4: I'm seeing a lot of parallels between this power couple

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Speaker 4: and like meet bell Ron Ron de Santis and his

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Speaker 4: wife Kasy because yeah, because like you know, Casey was

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Speaker 4: such a big part of his campaign and part of

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Speaker 4: his career and she was like an ex journalist.

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Speaker 1: It's really interesting.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you get these power and this is kind

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Speaker 2: of going in the reverse direction where once his political

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Speaker 2: career fades out, Rebecca gets more famous. Actually, right, so

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Speaker 2: she's you know, getting to be an activist. She likes

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Speaker 2: her early activism in favor of prohibition. She enjoys organizing people,

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Speaker 2: she's good at it. So she finds another issue to

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Speaker 2: fight for and decides she's going to become an activist,

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Speaker 2: pushing for reform of George's convict leasing system. Now, thankfully

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Speaker 2: this is not around still, but it existed much longer

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Speaker 2: than it should have. George's convict leasing system was a

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Speaker 2: particularly hideous bit of postwar fuckery by rich whites in

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Speaker 2: order to replace lost slave labor without paying, Georgian's pioneered

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Speaker 2: using prison labor to recreate the good old days. From

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Speaker 2: the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Some Georgians saw the prisoners at

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Speaker 2: the state's penitentiary in Millageville as the solution to their problems,

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Speaker 2: a workforce that could be formally controlled. Georgia leaders were

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Speaker 2: also concerned about costs associated with operating a penitentiary as

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Speaker 2: the prison population increased and included many more African Americans.

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Speaker 2: In an effort to resolve these issues, officials during reconstruction

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Speaker 2: eighteen sixty seven to seventies approved the leasing of prisoners

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Speaker 2: to private citizens. Of course, and so like this is

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Speaker 2: just slavery with extra steps, right.

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Speaker 3: Right, the still happening today we do this labor that

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Speaker 3: comes from prison.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this was just even more direct where you're just

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Speaker 2: you're just renting them, like you're just getting handed these

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Speaker 2: people who have to work for you, and the old

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Speaker 2: evils reasserted themselves at once. Although it was agreed that

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Speaker 2: the convicts would be treated humanly, reports to then Governor

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Speaker 2: Rufus Bullock indicated that least convicts were being overworked, brutally whipped,

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Speaker 2: and killed. So that's great.

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Speaker 3: So I'm assuming this leads to the chain gang type

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Speaker 3: of narrative this.

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Speaker 2: Yes, chain gangs are a descendant from this. Yes, And

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Speaker 2: the reason why the convict leasing system comes to an

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Speaker 2: end and it gets replaced by the chain gang system

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Speaker 2: has a lot to do with Rebecca Felton. Because this

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Speaker 2: system is such an abomination, Rebecca was correct to battle

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Speaker 2: against it. Felton had once considered slavery justified by God,

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Speaker 2: and she was still a huge racist. So perhaps she

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Speaker 2: fought so hard against this system not because it was

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Speaker 2: right to do so, but because she hated the rich

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Speaker 2: white planters that benefited from it more than anything, even

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Speaker 2: more than she was racist. I kind of wonder that, like,

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Speaker 2: is this it was at all the that this is unjusted?

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Speaker 2: Was it just that like, no, fuck you, guys, but

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Speaker 2: I lost everything. You don't get to sneak your way

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Speaker 2: into having it back back.

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Speaker 3: Dare you start over and do that? Again.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, how dare you fucking try again after all you

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Speaker 2: put my family and I through? Absolutely not.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I maybe I'm not giving Rebecca enough credit here, but

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Speaker 2: I have to kind of wonder how much of the

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Speaker 2: case that was. And you know what else I have

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Speaker 2: to wonder, Samantha, what whether or not the products and

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Speaker 2: services at the support this podcast are involved in human trafficking? Robert,

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Speaker 2: no way to know. And we're back. So Rebecca's becoming

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Speaker 2: a big activist now. She's trying to get rid of

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Speaker 2: this convict leasing system. She galvanized the Women's Christian Temperance

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Speaker 2: Union against this horror, and she whips up support via

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Speaker 2: petitions and articles. She gets thousands of women engaged involved

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Speaker 2: in protesting this, and she applies all of her political

384
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Speaker 2: connections and plays central role in launching a crusade to

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Speaker 2: abolish convict leasing. Now, the end doesn't come rapidly, but

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Speaker 2: as time goes on, a mix of changing economic conditions

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Speaker 2: and relentless media attention by Rebecca and other activists build

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Speaker 2: support for legislation that gets that abolishes convict leasing in

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Speaker 2: nineteen oh eight, and obviously, again, the chain gang system

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Speaker 2: kind of proceeds from this. You know, and there's an

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Speaker 2: argument that they really mostly stopped because it wasn't economically

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Speaker 2: viable anymore. But we'll give Felton like a qualified thumbs

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Speaker 2: up for that piece of activism. Right, it's still the

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Speaker 2: right fight.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, I mean it was helpful, but for why why?

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Speaker 2: And it would also prove to be her last entirely

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Speaker 2: good turn. On August eleventh, eighteen ninety seven, Rebecca gave

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Speaker 2: a speech in Savannah on the struggles poor white women

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Speaker 2: faced on farms. These included rape, she insisted, and pointed

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Speaker 2: out that just last week, three black men had been

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Speaker 2: lynched after being accused of rape. This had become increasingly

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Speaker 2: common after the war as a reaction to the freedom

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Speaker 2: of black men in fears of violation that had rooted

404
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Speaker 2: in the South since the war's end. Rebecca traced lynching

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Speaker 2: back to slavery, and she was right on that, but

406
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Speaker 2: she also saw lynching as justified because she viewed blackmail

407
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Speaker 2: rapists as a plague. Now eighteen ninety two, journalist Ida B.

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Speaker 2: Wells Barnett had published an investigation into lynching called Southern

409
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Speaker 2: Horrors Lynch Law in all its phases. Wells points out

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Speaker 2: that less than a third of lynching victims were ever

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Speaker 2: actually accused of rape. Regardless of what the mob said.

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Speaker 2: Most lynchings were complete farces of justice, often carried on

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Speaker 2: with economic motivations. And this is a long quote from

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Speaker 2: Ida B. Wells, but I think it's really worth reading.

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Speaker 2: And this is her kind of making the case against

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Speaker 2: lynching making any sort of sense. On March ninth, eighteen

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Speaker 2: ninety two, there were lynched in this same city, and

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Speaker 2: she's talking about Memphis. Three of the best specimens of

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Speaker 2: young since the War Afro American manhood. They were peaceful,

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Speaker 2: law abiding citizens and energetic businessmen. They believed the problem

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Speaker 2: was to be solved by aeschewing politics and putting money

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Speaker 2: in the purse. They owned a flourishing grocery business in

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Speaker 2: a thickly populated suburb of Memphis, and a white man

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Speaker 2: named Barrett had won on the opposite corner after a

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Speaker 2: personal difficulty, which Barrett sought by going into the people's

426
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Speaker 2: grocery drawing out a pistol and was thrashed by Calvin McDowell.

427
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Speaker 2: He Barrett threatened to clean them out. These men were

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Speaker 2: a mile beyond the city limits and police protection. Hearing

429
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Speaker 2: that Barrett's crowd was coming back to attack them Saturday night.

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Speaker 2: They mustered forces and prepared to defend themselves against the attack.

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Speaker 2: When Barrett came, he led a posse of officers twelve

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Speaker 2: in number, who afterwards claimed to be hunting a man

433
00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:41,200
Speaker 2: from whom they had a warrant that twelve in citizens

434
00:21:41,240 --> 00:21:43,600
Speaker 2: clothes should think it was necessary to go into the

435
00:21:43,680 --> 00:21:45,560
Speaker 2: night to hunt one man who had never before been

436
00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:47,879
Speaker 2: arrested or made any record as a criminal. Has never

437
00:21:47,960 --> 00:21:50,120
Speaker 2: been explained. When they entered the back door, the young

438
00:21:50,200 --> 00:21:52,520
Speaker 2: men thought the threatened attack was on and fired into them.

439
00:21:52,720 --> 00:21:54,760
Speaker 2: Three of the officers were wounded, and when the defending

440
00:21:54,800 --> 00:21:56,760
Speaker 2: party found it was of officers of the law upon

441
00:21:56,840 --> 00:21:59,639
Speaker 2: which they had fired, they ceased and got away. Thirty

442
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:02,240
Speaker 2: one men were jailed and thrown in jail as conspirators,

443
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:04,040
Speaker 2: although they were all declared more than once that they

444
00:22:04,119 --> 00:22:07,120
Speaker 2: did not know any they were firing on officers. Excitement

445
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:09,080
Speaker 2: was at a fever beat until the morning papers two

446
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:11,520
Speaker 2: days later announced that the wounded deputy sheriffs were out

447
00:22:11,560 --> 00:22:13,920
Speaker 2: of danger. This hindered, rather than help the plans of

448
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:16,000
Speaker 2: the whites. There was no law on the statute books

449
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:18,760
Speaker 2: which would execute an Afro American for wounding a white man.

450
00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:22,119
Speaker 2: But the unwritten law did three of these men, the president,

451
00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:24,119
Speaker 2: the manager, and clerk of the grocery, the leaders of

452
00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:26,800
Speaker 2: the conspiracy, were secretly taken from jail and lynched in

453
00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:30,080
Speaker 2: a shockingly brutal manner. The negroes are getting too independent,

454
00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 2: they say, we must teach them a lesson, right, and

455
00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:38,480
Speaker 2: that iow wells at pointing out the real motivation for

456
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:41,240
Speaker 2: lynching isn't there's all these crimes that have to be

457
00:22:41,280 --> 00:22:43,680
Speaker 2: stopped when are in danger. No, it's some guy wants

458
00:22:43,800 --> 00:22:46,240
Speaker 2: something a black man has or a black family has,

459
00:22:46,680 --> 00:22:49,760
Speaker 2: and just screaming rape and then murdering them or dragging

460
00:22:49,800 --> 00:22:52,000
Speaker 2: them out of a jail and murdering them way easier

461
00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:55,200
Speaker 2: than anything else, right, by far, the best move to

462
00:22:55,280 --> 00:22:58,440
Speaker 2: go to. You know, That's what this is all about.

463
00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:01,600
Speaker 2: Rebecca Felton doesn't agree with that, though she thinks she

464
00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:03,800
Speaker 2: knows what better than I to be wells, because Rebecca

465
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:08,119
Speaker 2: is terrified constantly of being assaulted, like many women of

466
00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:11,600
Speaker 2: her station, because they've got fucking PTSD, both from being

467
00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:14,400
Speaker 2: assaulted and from having to have armed themselves during the war,

468
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:17,600
Speaker 2: and constantly live in fear of being raped or viotilated. Right,

469
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:20,439
Speaker 2: this is part of why rape worked so well as

470
00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:24,320
Speaker 2: an excuse for lynch mobs. Confederate propaganda had drilled people's

471
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:27,399
Speaker 2: heads full of stories of free black Union soldiers committing

472
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 2: wanton rape in places like Memphis and Macon. No woman

473
00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:32,959
Speaker 2: like Rebecca would doubt a cry of rape aimed at

474
00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:36,040
Speaker 2: a free black man, as that Peace in the Smithsonian

475
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:39,680
Speaker 2: explains it. Felton blamed the lynchings on Democratic politicians who

476
00:23:39,760 --> 00:23:42,199
Speaker 2: plied black men with liquor at the polls, as well

477
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:44,000
Speaker 2: as on the failure of religion and the courts to

478
00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:47,159
Speaker 2: prevent crime and deliver justice. If white men couldn't protect

479
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:50,640
Speaker 2: women's dearest possession from the ravening human beasts, Felton said,

480
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:53,879
Speaker 2: then I say lynch a thousand times a week if necessary.

481
00:23:54,760 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 2: That is the key Rebecca quote. Yep. Because white men

482
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:03,000
Speaker 2: are not protecting us from being raped, and we're mostly

483
00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:05,400
Speaker 2: being raped by white men. We need to have lynch

484
00:24:05,480 --> 00:24:08,440
Speaker 2: mobs go out and kill these people. That's that's where

485
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:11,120
Speaker 2: she lines on, and you can see how her previous

486
00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:12,440
Speaker 2: life led her here.

487
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:15,960
Speaker 3: Right, So is she assuming like she's just ignoring the

488
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 3: fact that a chunk of the PTSD came from white men. Like,

489
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:22,240
Speaker 3: I know, she's mad at them, so she just lashed down.

490
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 2: Everything can go.

491
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:27,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, so she has to lash out in men, right

492
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:31,240
Speaker 3: and against white men, so might as well.

493
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:33,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, do this. She's angry at all of them, but

494
00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:36,280
Speaker 2: only one type of man is going to face lethal

495
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:40,959
Speaker 2: consequences for her anger. So it's cool when Rebecca, she's cool. Oh,

496
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:44,119
Speaker 2: she's so cool with it. Now. When Rebecca had railed

497
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 2: against drunkenness and spousal violence and convict leasing and argued

498
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:49,560
Speaker 2: in favor of the vote for women, she had attracted

499
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,439
Speaker 2: a following. As a pro lynching advocate, she drew an

500
00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:55,680
Speaker 2: even more dedicated following because feeding fear and anger is

501
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,280
Speaker 2: one of the fastest ways to get famous, especially if

502
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 2: the fear you stir is against the subject your society

503
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:01,639
Speaker 2: already despises.

504
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:07,639
Speaker 4: It's just like a pro lynching advocate is such an

505
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 4: insane thing to be.

506
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 2: That is, Yeah, one lynch forever. That's the Rebecca Felton attitude. Yeah,

507
00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 2: so this all comes to a terrible head in eighteen

508
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 2: ninety eight in the port of Wilmington, North Carolina. Wilmington

509
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:26,880
Speaker 2: was one of those communities where after the war, black

510
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:30,280
Speaker 2: people had been enormously successful in creating businesses and jobs

511
00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:34,720
Speaker 2: for themselves. Right, think about Black Wall Street and somewhere

512
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:39,640
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma. Since Wilmington was mostly black and they could

513
00:25:39,720 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 2: vote now, they also started getting elected to local government

514
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 2: and came to dominate it, in fact, which enraged some

515
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,360
Speaker 2: of the white citizens. So most people in this town

516
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 2: are black. They're starting to organize and they're starting to

517
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:53,800
Speaker 2: win election and take over local government because they make

518
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:57,640
Speaker 2: up the majority of people. Now, they are not hostile

519
00:25:57,840 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 2: to the white community, and not all of the white

520
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:02,639
Speaker 2: communities hostile to them. In fact, there's a chunk that

521
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 2: they're organizing with because the black community in Wilmington has

522
00:26:06,040 --> 00:26:08,960
Speaker 2: no beef with their neighbors. In fact, white and black

523
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 2: working class populists in Wilmington had created a new political

524
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:15,639
Speaker 2: movement that they called Fusion. Right, it's one of those fascinating,

525
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 2: really hopeful stories in the post war period that has

526
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 2: a tragic end. But the Fusion movement in Willington is

527
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:23,919
Speaker 2: a really interesting case. And I want to quote from

528
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 2: an article in Humanities, the magazine for the National Endowment

529
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 2: for the Humanities by Jeanine Lattis in twenty twenty five.

530
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:33,440
Speaker 2: Here's how she explains the Fusion movement. White populists and

531
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 2: black and white Republicans formed joint electoral tickets on shared priorities.

532
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:40,439
Speaker 2: Black men served on the board of aldermen as city treasurer,

533
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:43,479
Speaker 2: city jailer, and city coroner. Ten of Wilmington's twenty six

534
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 2: police were black. So they're not just because most people

535
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:50,879
Speaker 2: in town are black taking up all of the winning

536
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:55,320
Speaker 2: most of the elections. They built an electoral compromise with

537
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:59,879
Speaker 2: poor whites, and they are getting elected based on shared priorities. Right,

538
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 2: It's it's exactly what politics ought to be, you know.

539
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:07,000
Speaker 3: So did they call it fusion because that's like unchil

540
00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:09,440
Speaker 3: like contemporary word to me, that's interesting.

541
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the term that a lattice uses for and

542
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 2: that's the only term I've heard used for it, So

543
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:15,119
Speaker 2: I have to assume that you can hear some like

544
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:18,280
Speaker 2: writing about it. I think that's just like, yeah, they didn'

545
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 2: wouldn't have meant it in the nuclear sense, obviously, yeah,

546
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:25,159
Speaker 2: oh yeah. And it's a fucking amazing story, right, but obviously,

547
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,359
Speaker 2: because this is a reconstruction era story, we also know

548
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 2: it's going to end badly. And Rebecca's a big part

549
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:33,440
Speaker 2: of why. But the short story is that while things

550
00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 2: are going pretty well for most people there, there's a

551
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,440
Speaker 2: bunch of rich and formally rich white men who were like,

552
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:41,000
Speaker 2: wait a second, I have to listen to a black man. Now,

553
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 2: we don't have all the power. Let's do a coup

554
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:48,320
Speaker 2: atta right, Let's coo this out. So they start practicing

555
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:50,920
Speaker 2: to form mobs with the goal of forcing black officials

556
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 2: out of office and making anyone with any wealth and

557
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 2: power leave in order to break the black communities back

558
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:59,360
Speaker 2: so that they can rule the ashes. They start doing

559
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 2: this in the summer of eighteen ninety eight. The inciting

560
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:05,680
Speaker 2: incident is a speech that Rebecca Felton gives earlier that year,

561
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 2: in which she attacks white men for failing to stop

562
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:12,639
Speaker 2: quote the Black Beast rapist. She expressly argues that lynching

563
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:15,080
Speaker 2: is necessary to protect white women, and it was up

564
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 2: to those failed white men to found their courage and

565
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 2: do it. If it needs lynching to protect women's possession

566
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 2: from the ravening human beasts, then I say lynch, right,

567
00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 2: this is where that comes from. Now her words are reprinted,

568
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:29,920
Speaker 2: as they often were, all over white supremacist newspapers, that

569
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 2: had started popping up in Wilmington. To fight back, Alex Manley,

570
00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 2: the editor of the city's most influential black paper, The

571
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 2: Daily Record, published an article and wrote, the black Beast rapist.

572
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:41,880
Speaker 2: You mean all the white people rape and black women basically,

573
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 2: Like That's a big part of his article is that,

574
00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 2: like you're talking about like rapists, Like y'all like the

575
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 2: rape is coming from one direction here, right, you're the

576
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 2: real rapist. Right. That's kind of Manly's starting point. But

577
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 2: he also addresses Felton directly. Quote A Felton from Georgia

578
00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:59,479
Speaker 2: makes a speech before the Agricultural Society at Tybee, Georgia,

579
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:02,520
Speaker 2: in which the account advocates lynching as an extreme measure.

580
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 2: This woman makes a strong plea for womanhood, and if

581
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 2: the alleged crimes of rape were half so frequent as

582
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 2: has Oftimes reported, her plea would be worthy of consideration.

583
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 2: Missus Felton begins, well, for she admits that education will

584
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 2: better protect the girls on the farm from the assaulter.

585
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 2: This we admit, and it should not be confined to

586
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:20,120
Speaker 2: the white anymore than to the colored girls. The papers

587
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 2: are also filled often with reports of rapes of white

588
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 2: women and subsequent lynchings of the alleged rapists. The editors

589
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:28,440
Speaker 2: pour volumes of aspersions against all Negroes because of the

590
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 2: few who may be guilty. If the papers and speakers

591
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 2: of the other race would condemn the condition of crime

592
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 2: because it is crime, and not try to make it

593
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 2: appear that the Negroes were the only criminals, they would

594
00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 2: find their strongest allies in the intelligent Negros themselves, and

595
00:29:40,360 --> 00:29:42,200
Speaker 2: together the whites and blacks would root out the evil

596
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:46,040
Speaker 2: of both races. So Manly is saying, hey, instead of

597
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:47,760
Speaker 2: just like blaming us for all of this, we know

598
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 2: you're doing the most of the rape of like your women,

599
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 2: what if we all get together as a community to

600
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 2: stop all of the rapists in our mix, you know,

601
00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 2: white and Blackcause rape is just like a problem that

602
00:29:56,720 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 2: we have as a society and we should deal with

603
00:29:58,560 --> 00:29:59,080
Speaker 2: it together.

604
00:29:59,760 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 3: Right.

605
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:05,520
Speaker 2: He's a very reasonable guy. This Manly, this drives people insane.

606
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 2: Among other things, he's just said that, like, hey, it's

607
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 2: fine if white and black people have sex and it's

608
00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 2: not rape. And he's also saying that, like, what if

609
00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:14,520
Speaker 2: we work together to fix this problem that is clearly

610
00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:17,040
Speaker 2: something we both have, That is all so offensive to

611
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 2: these white supremacists.

612
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, he already said all the things to work with.

613
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 2: How dare yeah, how fucking dare you? Yeah? Uh So

614
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 2: this drives people crazy. As Janine Lattis writes, his editorial

615
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,840
Speaker 2: was reprinted throughout the South, further enraging the white elite,

616
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 2: with threats against man and threats against Manley's life poured in.

617
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 2: All that summer, Rebecca Felton continued to beat the drum

618
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 2: about the necessity of lynching to protect white women from

619
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 2: black rapists. She gave speech after speech and wrote her

620
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:47,040
Speaker 2: customary blizzard of articles, contributed to an already feverish pace

621
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:50,400
Speaker 2: of white supremacist press on the same subject. So the

622
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 2: business leaders, the white leaders of Wilmington, had their own paper,

623
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 2: News and Observer, which they used to print a bunch

624
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 2: of white supremacists propaganda. They also started buying up and

625
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 2: hoarding a shitloit of guns. They started making calls to

626
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 2: burn barns. They started bringing in racists from surrounding states,

627
00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 2: particularly a bunch of racists from South Carolina who called

628
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 2: themselves Red Shirts. These guys would pull black men out

629
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 2: of their homes, torture them, threaten to kill them do

630
00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:16,959
Speaker 2: anything they could to stop them from voting, and basically say, hey,

631
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:18,400
Speaker 2: you need to get the fuck out of town if

632
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 2: you want to be safe. On November seventh, at the

633
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 2: county courthouse, Confederate Civil War veteran Alfred Moore Waddell gave

634
00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:28,040
Speaker 2: an incendiary speech. Men, the crisis is upon us. You

635
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:30,440
Speaker 2: must do your duty. The city, country, and state shall

636
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 2: be rid of Negro domination once in forever. You are

637
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:35,680
Speaker 2: the sons of noble ancestry. You are Anglo Saxons. Go

638
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:37,720
Speaker 2: to the polls tomorrow, and if you find a Negro

639
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 2: out voting, tell him to leave the polls, and if

640
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:42,400
Speaker 2: he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks.

641
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 2: So cool, horrible. Yeah, this is a bad place for

642
00:31:49,640 --> 00:32:03,080
Speaker 2: an ad but here it is we and we're back.

643
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 2: So on election day, red shirted mobs roared through the

644
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 2: town of Wilmington, threatening black men and tossing out ballots,

645
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:16,120
Speaker 2: destroying ballot drops. They also burnt down businesses, including Manly's newspaper.

646
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,840
Speaker 2: They like, burnt that whole newspaper office down, and they

647
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 2: beat and shot and murdered dozens. After the election went

648
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 2: their way, because no other votes were countered, they issued

649
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 2: a white declaration of independence and announced that they would

650
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 2: never be ruled by black men again. And unfortunately, the

651
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:34,960
Speaker 2: Wilmington Coup has a long standing effect. Before the coup,

652
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 2: Wilmington was fifty six percent black. Today it's something like

653
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 2: fifteen percent black. Newspapers referred to it as a black

654
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:46,560
Speaker 2: uprising or riot until the nineteen fifties, and the death

655
00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:49,760
Speaker 2: toll is generally excited between sixty and three hundred. We

656
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 2: will never know for sure, Right, this is a night

657
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 2: the loss of so much wealth and community. It's one

658
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 2: of the things that's still affecting people to this day

659
00:32:57,640 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 2: is the destruction. And this isn't the only town that

660
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 2: gets to destroyed like this by racists.

661
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 4: Sixty and three hundred is such a wide range.

662
00:33:05,680 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, well they're not keep a note of how

663
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 2: many they're killing, right, that's not their business. Yeah. So

664
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 2: Felton herself celebrated the massacre afterwards, telling a journalist the

665
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 2: slanderer manly should be made to fear a reaper's rope

666
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 2: rather than occupy a place in New York skyscrapers. Basically,

667
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:27,120
Speaker 2: that guy shouldn't gotten away. We should have hung him,

668
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 2: you know, if he ever comes down here again. Make

669
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:32,720
Speaker 2: sure you do that. She kept on advocating for lynching

670
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 2: for years, although in time it became grew obvious that

671
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 2: even her lynching didn't do anything to stop white women

672
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 2: from being raped. She never apologized. She just kept advocating

673
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 2: for the vote for white women. In fact, as the

674
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 2: cause of suffrage grew more popular in the early nineteen hundreds,

675
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 2: she argued that white men should support suffrage so that

676
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 2: white women could use their vote to maintain white power

677
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:57,960
Speaker 2: and supremacy. William died her husband in nineteen oh nine,

678
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 2: but Rebecca kept going. By nineteen twenty two, she was

679
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:04,880
Speaker 2: a very old woman and very widely respected in Georgia politics.

680
00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 2: Women had the vote now, and Rebecca started insisting that

681
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,760
Speaker 2: the first female elected leaders were inevitable. If not something

682
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 2: she expected to see. Then nineteen twenty two comes along, right,

683
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 2: and this is going to be like this moment of

684
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:23,359
Speaker 2: kismet for Rebecca. The junior senator from Georgia who's going

685
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:26,840
Speaker 2: to be running in that election gets sick and dies

686
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 2: very suddenly, and the governor, Thomas Hardwick has to appoint

687
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:33,399
Speaker 2: a replacement until there can be an election. And since

688
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 2: Hardwick is going to run in that election. He knows

689
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 2: he needs a political advantage, right. He wants number one,

690
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:42,120
Speaker 2: he wants to appoint someone to that job who won't

691
00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 2: run for governor against him. And he also wants to

692
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:47,839
Speaker 2: get votes from women who can just now vote, right,

693
00:34:47,920 --> 00:34:49,239
Speaker 2: So he's trying to get the female vote. And he

694
00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:52,440
Speaker 2: figures that, like, even if I oppose the nineteenth Amendment,

695
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 2: if I appoint this lady Felton to like a kind

696
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 2: of symbolic position, then that that'll burnish my reputation with

697
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:04,799
Speaker 2: the lady voters. If I make her technically a congresswoman

698
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 2: for like a day, then maybe I'll get the ladies vote. Unfortunately,

699
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:11,320
Speaker 2: the Senate wasn't expected to be in session before the

700
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:16,919
Speaker 2: election that would replace the Felton, and she didn't bother

701
00:35:17,160 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 2: traveling to Washington to take the oath of office. But then, like,

702
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 2: she's not really planning to do anything about this. It

703
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:25,680
Speaker 2: doesn't sound very interesting. But then the President calls for

704
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 2: a special session of Congress to work on a ship's

705
00:35:28,040 --> 00:35:31,399
Speaker 2: subsidy bill, and Hardwick loses his election. So first off,

706
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,800
Speaker 2: he's not really worried about competing against anyone anymore. And

707
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 2: second there's going to be a session through which Rebecca

708
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 2: might actually get a chance to speak. So she starts

709
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 2: lobbying to everyone who listened to her of like, hey,

710
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 2: if you really want to get the ladies vote, if

711
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 2: you really want to show that you're serious about this,

712
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:50,040
Speaker 2: make me a senator for a day. It'll mean something

713
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:51,719
Speaker 2: to all the women out there who know what's going

714
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:56,320
Speaker 2: to happen eventually, right, And she's very good at this,

715
00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:58,320
Speaker 2: she's very good at campaigning. She's very good at like

716
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 2: getting people, you know, to come around to her point

717
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 2: of view on things. There were a lot of objections

718
00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:07,799
Speaker 2: at the time, and according to a newspaper coverage, at

719
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 2: the moment like when this is all happening, if a

720
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 2: single senator had objected to her being given that job

721
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 2: for a day, it would have all failed. And a

722
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:17,399
Speaker 2: bunch of people had said like, yeah, i'll I'll vote

723
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 2: against letting a woman be on the Senate floor. But

724
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 2: when it actually happens, none of them do fuck all

725
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:26,239
Speaker 2: to stop anything, like they're not actually it just says

726
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:29,840
Speaker 2: something there too, And she gets inaugurated as a Senate

727
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 2: gallery and there's just tons of women watching there. There's

728
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,759
Speaker 2: thunderous applause. I'm gonna quote from Smithsonian Magazine discussing this

729
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:40,279
Speaker 2: moment the next morning. Moments before she stepped down, she

730
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:43,320
Speaker 2: addressed her senate colleagues, thanking them for their chivalric welcome

731
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:45,320
Speaker 2: and telling them that though she was just now a

732
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 2: remnant of the old South, she was the happiest woman

733
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:51,240
Speaker 2: in the United States. As Gidlow explains, after the nineteen

734
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:55,080
Speaker 2: Amendment became law, black women were subjected to humiliating literacy tests,

735
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:57,239
Speaker 2: made to stand in line until poles closed, and even

736
00:36:57,280 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 2: told that election officials wouldn't register them. The history Attempt

737
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 2: has identified at least one woman in Alabama who is

738
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:06,160
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted for attempting to vote. Black activists like Mary

739
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:09,240
Speaker 2: Church Terrell and Fanny lou Hamer organized to fight voter suppression,

740
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 2: but both loss. Prohibiting voter discrimination on the basis of

741
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:15,520
Speaker 2: race weren't passed until nineteen sixty five. The first black

742
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 2: woman Senator, Carol Moseley Brawn of Illinois, was elected only

743
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:23,160
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two. So Felton gets to have her

744
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 2: great moment and be the first female senator and go

745
00:37:25,680 --> 00:37:27,399
Speaker 2: down in the history books, but it is a long

746
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 2: time before that kind of even that possibility exists for

747
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 2: a black woman, right, but it does come finally In

748
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:38,720
Speaker 2: ninety two, Felton, after her brief period of time in Congress,

749
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 2: goes back to Georgia and dies of pneumonia ninety four

750
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 2: years old, January twenty fourth, nineteen thirty. Yes, ninety four.

751
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 2: This lady never died the long long life.

752
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 3: The floor evil fed into her body. Yeah, she ate

753
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 3: the souls of others obviously, Yeah, yeah, kind kind of

754
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,399
Speaker 3: maybe liked the lynching. She needed those souls to live.

755
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's the first female senator. Rebecca felt,

756
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 2: how are you feeling.

757
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:16,400
Speaker 3: So a wonderful? Like she massacred? She loved a good massacre.

758
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:18,839
Speaker 2: Who she did love a good massacre? Come on, who

759
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 2: doesn't like a good man? I liked as she liked

760
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 2: a bad massacre. I'll say that.

761
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:25,439
Speaker 4: I'm just saying I feel like it was a bad

762
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 4: day for me to wear my Root for Women's shirt

763
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:28,680
Speaker 4: because I'm not.

764
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:32,320
Speaker 2: Not always, not always, nor should you one hundred percent

765
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 2: of the time trust them in politics. Sometimes they're Rebecca Felton.

766
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:40,120
Speaker 3: I mean, we have many, many of women that were

767
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 3: like no, no, no, no, no, no no no no.

768
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 3: How does that just baffling? That she ate the soul.

769
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 4: She gets so many things wrong when foundationally, she had

770
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:57,160
Speaker 4: so many things right.

771
00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:00,040
Speaker 1: That's because she's a very complex.

772
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:03,319
Speaker 2: She's smart and observant enough that she can't not see

773
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 2: who the real fault lies with. Right she knows it's

774
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 2: the white men, and she never disagrees with that. But

775
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:11,439
Speaker 2: once the white men are gone, she also is going

776
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 2: to look and blame at this group of people, particularly

777
00:39:15,239 --> 00:39:18,720
Speaker 2: black men, who are really upsetting the status quo around

778
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:20,920
Speaker 2: her that she values and her own position in it,

779
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 2: you know. And I think kind of that's what's going

780
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:26,400
Speaker 2: on here. And I think also there's just this this

781
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 2: sense of the reason why she's so violently in support

782
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:32,840
Speaker 2: of lynching, as she believes it's someone has to do

783
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 2: something because of how badly the white men failed in

784
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 2: protected these women. Right now, it's my job, I think

785
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:40,520
Speaker 2: is kind of her attitude in general.

786
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:43,279
Speaker 3: I feel like she's like, I have to punish someone men.

787
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:46,720
Speaker 3: It's definitely men. I know that I can't. I can't

788
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 3: do white men because they're too powerful for me. Like so,

789
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:53,240
Speaker 3: as a person who's observed and knows how to gain power,

790
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:56,640
Speaker 3: which we see in like every type of like superhero movie,

791
00:39:57,040 --> 00:40:00,320
Speaker 3: like the evil person has someone underling who kind of

792
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 3: understands this is wrong. But I'd rather be with you

793
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 3: and get some rewards from you than punished with them.

794
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:11,200
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, I think you really pretty much perfectly nailed

795
00:40:11,239 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 2: it there.

796
00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:11,879
Speaker 5: Yeah.

797
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:16,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's just it's so interesting too, because obviously

798
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,359
Speaker 2: the suffragette movement does break down. There is a big

799
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 2: chunk of it that's like I think white women should

800
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 2: be able to vote, and there's a chunk of it

801
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:25,280
Speaker 2: that are like, no, we should, we should all be voting.

802
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:29,520
Speaker 2: And it's interesting that how Felton arrives at supporting the

803
00:40:29,600 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 2: vote in the first place is just because like, well,

804
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 2: we can't trust these white men anymore, right, right, we

805
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 2: got to take this into our own hands to defend

806
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:37,080
Speaker 2: ourselves and our whiteness.

807
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:40,279
Speaker 3: A big chunk of the suffragettes, the leaders were cool

808
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 3: with the black men. Even some of the black men.

809
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 3: She's like, you know what, you can be a token.

810
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:47,959
Speaker 3: Definitely no black women though, definitely no black women.

811
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Well anyway, plug almost to plug.

812
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:58,320
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I love yay, Yes, I all want stuff.

813
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 3: Mom never told you. We also talk about some dark

814
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:02,879
Speaker 3: things in history. To be fair, We've had a whole

815
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 3: episode about ice and how awful that is, and it's

816
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 3: ongoing because you know it's awful, So if you want

817
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:10,359
Speaker 3: to listen to stuff like that, we also talk about

818
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 3: historical things that could be a little more fun or

819
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:14,960
Speaker 3: at least uplifting, because we know it's dark and dim

820
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:15,640
Speaker 3: and oh my god.

821
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:15,879
Speaker 4: Why.

822
00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 3: We also have a book where we talk about a

823
00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 3: lot of things about feminism and intersexual feminisms, over feminisms,

824
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 3: over like all of history. So yeah, you can check

825
00:41:27,640 --> 00:41:30,760
Speaker 3: that out wherever you find books. All the books indited

826
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:31,720
Speaker 3: bookstores are best.

827
00:41:31,520 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 2: Though, check that out, and yeah, check out us next

828
00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 2: week when we'll be back with someone else bad.

829
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 4: And a friend of both our pods.

830
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd has a new audiobook coming out Love It

831
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:44,040
Speaker 1: First prompt AI.

832
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 4: In the Future of Intimacy. It explores AI relationships from

833
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 4: sex and romance to friendship, grief and emotional support, and

834
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 4: what happens when big tech begins to commodify our most

835
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 4: intimate relationships.

836
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 3: So check it out on our show once a month

837
00:41:58,160 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 3: talking about this stuff.

838
00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 4: We love her, Love Bridget excellent, excellent, all right, Everybody, Bae.

839
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 3: Babe.

840
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:12,760
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

841
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

842
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:18,799
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843
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video

844
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 1: episodes a Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix,

845
00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:28,640
Speaker 1: dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me of Netflix.

846
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:31,439
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847
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 1: episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube

848
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: dot com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about

849
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 1: forty percent of you, statistically speaking,