Speaker 1: The thing I'm really really interested in is the kind
Speaker 1: of way the case was received around the country and
Speaker 1: the world. That's where I want to get to. But
Speaker 1: starting with So, this train that's going to run right
Speaker 1: out there, it's coming from Chattanooga right going where at Nashville, Memphis,
Speaker 1: going to Memphis. Yeah, I'm in a little town in
Speaker 1: northeast Alabama called Scottsborough, sitting in an old African Methodist
Speaker 1: Episcopal church built in eighteen seventy eight by former slaves.
Speaker 1: The church is now a museum and Ben, the daph
Speaker 1: Haffrey and I are talking to the director, Tom Reidy
Speaker 1: about what happened on the Chattanooga to Memphis train at
Speaker 1: the peak of the Great Depression.
Speaker 2: It's nineteen thirty one. People are hoboing all over the
Speaker 2: country and on the morning of March twenty fifth, the
Speaker 2: nine defendants along with two young ladies from Huntsville, along
Speaker 2: with dozens of others. Never we'll never know who else
Speaker 2: was on that train between here and Chattanooga. There was
Speaker 2: an altercation on the train and at Stevenson, which is
Speaker 2: a town about twenty miles from here, six white guys
Speaker 2: were thrown off the train by a group of African Americans.
Speaker 2: This is probably one part of the story. Everybody agrees
Speaker 2: on that the six came off and these other guys
Speaker 2: stayed on. There's a fight, Yeah, there's a fight over space.
Speaker 1: This is Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.
Speaker 2: So these the white guys that got off the train
Speaker 2: went back to the agent at the Stevenson depot and said, hey,
Speaker 2: we just got thrown off this train, which they were
Speaker 2: illegally on right there on ticketed. But and there's all
Speaker 2: these black guys. Of course they didn't call them black guys.
Speaker 2: And oh, by the way, two white women.
Speaker 1: We have white women and young black men together on
Speaker 1: a train. The station master at Stevenson Depot calls ahead
Speaker 1: to the paint Rock station.
Speaker 2: By the time they get to paint Rock, there's anywhere
Speaker 2: from one hundred and one hundred and fifty men, horses,
Speaker 2: ropes waiting for the train.
Speaker 1: Everyone's pulled off the train. The two women say they've
Speaker 1: been raped. The nine young men, some of them just
Speaker 1: kids twelve and thirteen years old, gets shipped directly to Scottsboro,
Speaker 1: which is the county seat. By the time they get there,
Speaker 1: another mob is waiting, and.
Speaker 2: There's this wonderful Atticus Finch moment in the story where
Speaker 2: the sheriff of Scottsboro, Mattwane, comes out with his shotgun
Speaker 2: and says, the first one that tries to cross me
Speaker 2: is going to get their head blown off. And that
Speaker 2: apparently held the crowd back a little.
Speaker 3: Because I guess they believed them, And.
Speaker 2: Two weeks later, on April sixth, and three hours after
Speaker 2: they met their attorney, the trial started.
Speaker 1: Him Malcolm Gladwell, Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about
Speaker 1: things overlooked and misunderstood. This is a ninth episode in
Speaker 1: our series about Hitler's Olympics, The Games behind the Games.
Speaker 1: We've spent the last eight episodes exploring the many rationalizations,
Speaker 1: self justifications, and delusions triggered by the Berlin Olympics. Berlin
Speaker 1: kicked off cognitive dissonance on an international scale. Hitler's wave
Speaker 1: of anti Semitism focused the world's attention on Germany, But
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty one, something happened across the ocean from
Speaker 1: Germany that held the world's attention in the same way
Speaker 1: the Scotsboro Boys trial. In this our series finale, let's
Speaker 1: turn the clock back to nineteen thirty one. The Scottsborough
Speaker 1: trial was a farce. There was no evidence of rape,
Speaker 1: and one of the women would later retract her accusation.
Speaker 1: Neither fact made a difference in nine.
Speaker 4: Negro youths are hurriedly arrested, promptly marched off to Scottsboro
Speaker 4: for trial. Six days later, they are indicted uncharges of assault.
Speaker 4: Seven of them are senanced by Justice John C. Anderson
Speaker 4: to hang by the neck until dead. Subsequent motion for
Speaker 4: a new trial is overruled as the Alabama Supreme Court
Speaker 4: affirms the convictions.
Speaker 1: This kind of thing had been happening in the South
Speaker 1: for years, but something about Scottsboro and the brazenness of
Speaker 1: all white juries saying guilty, guilty, guilty, really touched a nerve.
Speaker 4: Thousands of telegrams bore into Alabama from all over the world,
Speaker 4: asserting that the Negroes had been night a fair trial.
Speaker 4: The case is finally carried to the highest court in
Speaker 4: the land, the Supreme Court of the United States.
Speaker 1: There was public pressure, There were appeals, re trials, landlock.
Speaker 3: Did you go to jump in chout?
Speaker 5: They tell you what's all about.
Speaker 2: Everybody's writing about it. Everybody knows the Discosbrow Voice. People
Speaker 2: were starting to have radios in their house. But it's
Speaker 2: just remarkable how fast the word did spread on.
Speaker 1: This Reedy was sitting inside the old church as we spoke,
Speaker 1: and behind him there was a poster. It was a
Speaker 1: list of names linked in some way to the public
Speaker 1: campaign to get justice for the Scotsboro Boys. There was I. B. Wells,
Speaker 1: the great African American activist, Jimmy Cagney, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest names in Hollywood, and then Albert Einstein.
Speaker 2: Einstein was in Germany when they arrested, and he in
Speaker 2: the summer of nineteen thirty one wrote a letter with
Speaker 2: a bunch of German scientists to the governor Miller, saying, well,
Speaker 2: they were intellectuals, they called them. So German intellectuals demand
Speaker 2: the release of the Scottsboro Boys because they're innocent.
Speaker 1: And Einstein, I sent is like physicists living in Germany. Right,
Speaker 1: who is somehow so moved by the press accounts of this?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Two years before Hitler became Chancellor, thousands of Germans were
Speaker 1: out in the streets protesting American white supremacy.
Speaker 2: And they had people throwing rocks through the American embassy
Speaker 2: with notes taped onto him. That was just say they
Speaker 2: shall not die.
Speaker 1: And that is why Ben and I were in Scottsborough.
Speaker 3: I remember when you sent me an email with one
Speaker 3: line and it was like, We're going to do an
Speaker 3: episode on Scottsboro. And I was like, why would we
Speaker 3: talk about Scottsborough? And then I realized what year it
Speaker 3: was and what happened the year after?
Speaker 1: Oh right, nineteen thirty two an Olympic year as well,
Speaker 1: and where were those games held? I think you can
Speaker 1: guess where this is headed. In April of venteteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: a real estate developer from California named Billy Garland traveled
Speaker 1: to Rome for the annual meeting of the International Olympic Committee.
Speaker 1: Garland was good friends with Avery Brundage. They were cut
Speaker 1: from the same cloth, men from humble beginnings with outsized ambition,
Speaker 1: dreamers builders. But where Brundage was grim and angry, with
Speaker 1: a chip on his shoulder the size of Lake Michigan,
Speaker 1: Garland was all sunny, optimism and charm. Billy everyone called
Speaker 1: him Billy had life force. Billy grew up poor and
Speaker 1: married money. Billy was the embodiment of Los Angeles, a
Speaker 1: city in the nineteen twenties, half a million strong and
Speaker 1: growing by the day, a city on the verge of stardom.
Speaker 1: Billy watched the sunrise every morning over the San Berardino Mountains,
Speaker 1: but never bothered to look to see if it's said
Speaker 1: at night.
Speaker 6: LA was really controlled and run by a coterie of
Speaker 6: a shadow government comprised of banker's financiers, but really, above
Speaker 6: all the real estate.
Speaker 1: Man Barry Siegel, the author of a wonderful book about
Speaker 1: Billy Garland, Dreamers and Schemers.
Speaker 6: Of which Billy Garland was premier. The prince of the realtors.
Speaker 1: Billy owned huge swaths of downtown Los Angeles. His best
Speaker 1: friend was the publisher of the La Times, the most
Speaker 1: powerful man in the city. His brothers in the shadow
Speaker 1: government kept out of the spotlight.
Speaker 3: Billy.
Speaker 6: Billy was the frontman, a very outgoing personality, making speeches,
Speaker 6: arriving at the railroad station, press conferences, writing columns of
Speaker 6: his own for the La Times, always always promoting, promoting
Speaker 6: the city, promoting the future.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen twenty three, Billy sails to Italy for
Speaker 1: his biggest pitch yet to the International Olympic Committee. The
Speaker 1: IOC was meeting that year in the Old Capitol Building
Speaker 1: across from the Forum, a venue worthy of a group
Speaker 1: obsessed with antiquity. To start the day, the King of
Speaker 1: Italy said a few words. Then the King is opening things,
Speaker 1: and like, here's this guy from I mean, from what
Speaker 1: their perspective must have been, the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, they literally were asking him where Los Angeles is?
Speaker 1: What's his trump card?
Speaker 6: Hollywood? By that time, Hollywood films were widely popular all
Speaker 6: around the world, and that's one of the things he
Speaker 6: was asked at that meeting. Is is La anywhere near Hollywood?
Speaker 6: And Billy was smart enough to say, yes, La is
Speaker 6: a suburb of Hollywood.
Speaker 1: He understood that that glamour, the emerging glamour of the region,
Speaker 1: could play to his advantage. Yes, yeah, I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: back to the IOC though, because the the IOC really
Speaker 1: is it's like every faded aristocrat in Europe is, Yes,
Speaker 1: every fuddy dotty you can find with their wax mustache
Speaker 1: is around the table. And then this like this, this
Speaker 1: this kind of charismatic, wide open, extroverted Californian shows up.
Speaker 1: I just I'm just imagining. It's a fantastic scene.
Speaker 6: I've imagined it too, And I think that's part of
Speaker 6: how he was effected. I mean, he was a breath
Speaker 6: of fresh air. He knew how to talk to them,
Speaker 6: the idea. When he rose to give his talk, his pitch,
Speaker 6: he's pitching America. He's pitching the culture of America, which
Speaker 6: is still which is strange and exotic to them.
Speaker 1: They're there amidst all of this sort of eighteenth century grandeur,
Speaker 1: and the American stands up and says, there's this brand
Speaker 1: new country across the ocean. You guys need to go
Speaker 1: there next. Kind of this kind of yeah.
Speaker 6: It's and that's exactly that's an exact sort of exactly
Speaker 6: how he put it too.
Speaker 1: He says, if the Games are to be truly international
Speaker 1: in character, they must also be held in other parts
Speaker 1: of the universe. The Olympics should come to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: The room is silent, No one says a word. Then
Speaker 1: one delicate stands up and says, so moved, let us
Speaker 1: take our beloved creation to the shores of the Pacific.
Speaker 1: Someone else seconds the motion. It goes to a vote,
Speaker 1: it carries unanimously. The whole group celebrated at the Coronel Palace,
Speaker 1: home to the country's royal family. Billy spotted a bald
Speaker 1: man speaking passionately to a group of onlookers. It was Mussolini,
Speaker 1: the newly installed fascist leader of Italy. Billy wandered over
Speaker 1: shook his hand. The next day, Billy had an audience
Speaker 1: with Pope Pious, the eleventh of the Vatican. Pious said
Speaker 1: how much he believed in the Olympic tradition, and Billy
Speaker 1: kissed his ring. Billy convinces the IOC to bring its
Speaker 1: temple of human idealism to the United States, And just
Speaker 1: as the whole dazzling spectacle is about to launch, nine
Speaker 1: black kids in northern Alabama gets swept up in a
Speaker 1: miscarriage of justice so outrageous that it sparks a wave
Speaker 1: of protest around the world. March is in Germany, South Africa, Cuba,
Speaker 1: and the world finds itself in the same position as
Speaker 1: it would four years later on the eve of the
Speaker 1: Berlin Olympics, contemplating a pure competition in an impure place
Speaker 1: with one difference. No one ever threatened to boycott the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Games.
Speaker 7: That's in the name are the President of the United
Speaker 7: stirty I have proclaim open the Olympic Games of Los
Speaker 7: Angeles celebrating that tenth opiod on the modern area.
Speaker 3: Well, so if the world is upset about Scottsboro in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty one, then why is there not a boycott
Speaker 3: of the LA Games in thirty two?
Speaker 1: I think you know, Well, the obvious reason is the
Speaker 1: nature of American transgressions in civil rights are on the
Speaker 1: surface so different from the nature of Nazi transgressions. American
Speaker 1: transgressions are three hundred years old. They're embedded in the
Speaker 1: kind of culture of the country. And I can't stress
Speaker 1: this enough. They involve black people, and it's just it
Speaker 1: is simply the case and continues to be the case
Speaker 1: in some sense that a transgression against a black person
Speaker 1: is not considered the same as a transgression against a
Speaker 1: white person.
Speaker 3: Part of the difference is that Nazism is a new thing,
Speaker 3: whereas what's happening in Alabama is just not new at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's important is it's because it wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 1: a one off. Right, why does America go up and
Speaker 1: the black community particular gets so up in arms about
Speaker 1: George Floyd because it had happened too many times? Right,
Speaker 1: And Scott's part is kind of like that. There's been
Speaker 1: a steady drumbeat of this kind of stuff coming out
Speaker 1: of the South, and there's you know, the world seizes
Speaker 1: on that because they're like it can't, can't keep doing this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't system malfunction. It was system function. That's a
Speaker 1: lot more kind of a outrageous I don't think you
Speaker 1: could make sense of what happened with the Scottsboro Boys
Speaker 1: unless you take a step back and look at the
Speaker 1: Alabama Constitution. I mean, look at the kind of legal
Speaker 1: infrastructure that was in place in Alabama at the time.
Speaker 1: So why did the LA Games escape moral scrutiny. It's puzzling.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's as simple as the fact that the world
Speaker 1: holds America to a different standard than everyone else. If
Speaker 1: you're a young upstart of a country, you get away
Speaker 1: with more. Or maybe the world cares less about crimes
Speaker 1: against black people than it does about crimes against white people.
Speaker 1: Or maybe the Nazis were in the Olympics so much
Speaker 1: about Nazism that it was really easy to see the
Speaker 1: contradiction between the Games and its host in a way
Speaker 1: that didn't seem as obvious with the LA Olympics. Or
Speaker 1: maybe it's all three, but Scottsborough was not some strange
Speaker 1: outlying event. It touched a raw nerve because people understood
Speaker 1: that it was typical. It was how the South worked.
Speaker 1: Discrimination was baked right into American law. I called up
Speaker 1: a law professor at the University of Alabama, Susan Hammill,
Speaker 1: and the first thing she brought up was Alabama's state
Speaker 1: constitution at the time, which had been rewritten in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh one, with one thing in mind. There was no.
Speaker 8: Doubt as to what the intent was.
Speaker 1: As one delegate said, they were driven by quote, the
Speaker 1: necessity of relieving the black belt of the incubus resting
Speaker 1: on it. Another delegate was more blunt.
Speaker 8: We are here to get rid of the nigger.
Speaker 1: The fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution bars states from
Speaker 1: denying people the right to vote, So the framers of
Speaker 1: the Alabama Constitution devised a bunch of workarounds. First, a
Speaker 1: poll tax. You had to pay a dollar fifty to vote,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of money back then. Right there,
Speaker 1: you've gotten rid of a lot of sharecroppers. But they
Speaker 1: kept going, adding every obstacle they could think of.
Speaker 8: They had to own property, there were literacy tests, and
Speaker 8: there was the overall discretion of the white voting registrars.
Speaker 8: The voting registrars in terms of who was actually registering folks,
Speaker 8: had a great deal of discretion. If you had a
Speaker 8: white person that kind of met the requirements but also
Speaker 8: maybe didn't, they could get waved through.
Speaker 1: The nineteen oh one Alabama Constitution would end up being
Speaker 1: the longest constitution in the world three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty two words, about eight
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty times longer than the US Constitution.
Speaker 8: When African Americans went to register after the nineteen oh
Speaker 8: one constitution was ratified, they were just turned away.
Speaker 1: In nineteen hundred, there were one hundred and eighty one thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and seventy one African American men of voting age.
Speaker 1: After the constitution, fewer than three thousand of those men
Speaker 1: could vote.
Speaker 8: You know, we did not have a black electorate in
Speaker 8: this state worth speaking of until the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: It gets worse. In nineteen oh two, a black janitor
Speaker 1: named Jackson Giles file suit against the state. Jackson says,
Speaker 1: I meet all the requirements, I can read, I understand
Speaker 1: the constitution, I paid my pull tax, I own property,
Speaker 1: but they still won't let me vote. The case goes
Speaker 1: all the way to the Supreme Court in nineteen oh three, where,
Speaker 1: writing for the majority, the legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest legal minds the Supreme Court has
Speaker 1: ever produced. Rites and I'm not making this up. The defendant,
Speaker 1: mister Jackson, alleges that the state of Alabama has constructed
Speaker 1: a voting system that is in open violation of the
Speaker 1: Constitution of the US. But he is asking to be
Speaker 1: registered to vote under the very same rules that he
Speaker 1: says are an open violation of the Constitution of the
Speaker 1: United States. If we rule in his favor, we are
Speaker 1: complicit in the violation. It's one of the all time
Speaker 1: great Supreme Court catch twenty twos.
Speaker 8: Justice Holmes disingenuously said, Oh, if Jackson Giles wants a remedy,
Speaker 8: he needs to seek his member of Congress to do
Speaker 8: something about it. But Jackson and Giles had been denied
Speaker 8: the right to vote for any member of Congress.
Speaker 1: Mister Giles, if you don't like the system that keeps
Speaker 1: you from voting, then vote to change it.
Speaker 8: The US Supreme Court, like the rest of the country
Speaker 8: just wanted to wash their hands of If I can
Speaker 8: put it this way, the dirty South.
Speaker 1: Now we can understand what happened in Scottsboro. The jury
Speaker 1: pool in Alabama is drawn from the voting pool, and
Speaker 1: since the voters are basically all white, then the juries
Speaker 1: are all white, which means that when nine black kids
Speaker 1: are accused of some bogus crime on the Chattanooga to
Speaker 1: Memphis train, those nine kids are out of luck. All told,
Speaker 1: the Scottsboro boys would end up serving more than one
Speaker 1: hundred years behind bars for something that never happened. And
Speaker 1: in Giles v. Harris, the Supreme Court of the United
Speaker 1: States signs off on the whole range. And so do
Speaker 1: you study that case in at law school in Alabama.
Speaker 8: No, isn't that a shame?
Speaker 1: Scottsboro was an embarrassment, an outrage, exposing the very dark
Speaker 1: heart of the country that was about to host the
Speaker 1: purest of athletic spectacles. If the world shouldn't have gone
Speaker 1: to Berlin in nineteen thirty six for moral reasons, then
Speaker 1: the world shouldn't have gone to Los Angeles in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two either. Where can you go in the lead
Speaker 1: up to the Berlin Games, a group known as the
Speaker 1: Jewish Labor Committee set out to solve the problem of
Speaker 1: what to do about impure places and peer competitions. The
Speaker 1: organizers were the same people who had been up in
Speaker 1: arms over the Scottsboro Boys four years earlier, who helped
Speaker 1: fund their legal defense, who were fighting for the rights
Speaker 1: of working Americans. Their hands were clean. They called their
Speaker 1: games the World Labor Athletic Carnival. It was held in
Speaker 1: New York City on Randall's Island in August of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, overlapping with the last two days of the
Speaker 1: Berlin Olympics. Invitations went out. The carnival will function as
Speaker 1: a show of protest against the iron heel of Nazism.
Speaker 1: New York Mayor Fiorlo LaGuardia signed up to be co chair.
Speaker 1: The Governor of New York agreed to hand out prizes.
Speaker 1: Proceeds from the event will go to supporting the anti
Speaker 1: Nazi movement end eventually to helping Jews escape from Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: The Labour Games represent the first solution to the dilemma
Speaker 1: of the Olympics. Carve out a little corner of ideological purity,
Speaker 1: don't compromise align your political values with the ethic of
Speaker 1: amateur sport. Be an absolutist. Ed Gordon was there. He
Speaker 1: was the winner of the long jump in the night
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two Olympics. George Veroff, the so called jumping Janitor,
Speaker 1: was there too. His gold medal jump beat the winning
Speaker 1: mark in Berlin by a full inch and a half.
Speaker 1: The women's forty yard dash was won by a member
Speaker 1: of the dressmakers Union, Wanda Oldzuska. Another Oldzuska Mitzi, competed
Speaker 1: with her on the winning relay team. When reporter asked
Speaker 1: Mitzi how she trained, she responded, oh, picketing and throwing
Speaker 1: stones through windows, and nobody came to watch. The stands
Speaker 1: were half empty. Why well. The Games were supposed to
Speaker 1: draw their support from the labor movement, but the Jewish
Speaker 1: Labor Committee was an anti communist socialist group, so some
Speaker 1: communists felt left out and stayed home. Then came a
Speaker 1: second disagreement, this time between the American Socialist Party, the
Speaker 1: Old Guard, and some upstart progressives led by Norman Thomas.
Speaker 1: Let me just read to you from a History of
Speaker 1: the Labor Games by Edward Shapiro. The struggle came to
Speaker 1: a head at the party's annual convention in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six in Cleveland. When the Olguard left, the party took
Speaker 1: the magazine The New Leader with them and created the
Speaker 1: Social Democratic Federation. The New Leader viewed Randall's Island as
Speaker 1: virtually a New York Social Democratic Federation, event copiously discussing
Speaker 1: its progress from its inception in May through the Games
Speaker 1: themselves in August. The pro Norman Thomas Socialist Call, in contrast,
Speaker 1: merely printed a pro forma announcement of the Games. More
Speaker 1: to its liking, was a track in gymnastic demonstration on
Speaker 1: July fourth, nineteen thirty six, in Taberville, Ohio, near Cleveland,
Speaker 1: sponsored by the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America, the Czechoslovak
Speaker 1: Labor Gymnastic Union, the American Workingmen's Socle of New York,
Speaker 1: the Workingmen's Gymnastic Association, and the Workers Sports League of America.
Speaker 1: This is the problem with the pursuit of purity. At
Speaker 1: a certain point, it starts to get absurd because the
Speaker 1: Communists get upset of the Socialists, and then the Socialists
Speaker 1: get upset at each other, and sooner or later, your
Speaker 1: athletic spectacle that was intended to showcase the greatest talent
Speaker 1: in the world is in Taberville, Ohio, under the aegis
Speaker 1: of the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America. I mean, with
Speaker 1: all due respect to the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America.
Speaker 1: Who wants to watch that? So what's the solution? Option two?
Speaker 1: Take that absolutism down a notch. Be willing to compromise.
Speaker 1: Remember Charles Cheryl, the American delegate who fought so hard
Speaker 1: for America to stay in the Berlin Olympics. Just before
Speaker 1: the games, someone sent him a news clipping about the
Speaker 1: killing of a Jewish footballer who had apparently been dragged
Speaker 1: off the field by Nazis in the middle of a match.
Speaker 1: Cheryl wrote back your September twenty three letter about the
Speaker 1: Prague press story of a Jewish football player killed at
Speaker 1: Ratisports Silesia arrived today. If true, it is as bad
Speaker 1: as Negro lynchings in our South. Cheryl had ideals. He
Speaker 1: was perfectly willing to compromise around the edges. Yes, the
Speaker 1: American South is a nasty place, but so what show
Speaker 1: me a country without nasty places. You have to hold
Speaker 1: a pure competition in an impure place, because there aren't
Speaker 1: any pure places. Here's how Cheryl finishes the letter, answering
Speaker 1: your clipping. Let me ask you what you would have
Speaker 1: said if any foreign team had boycotted our Los Angeles
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two games because of our negro lynchings in
Speaker 1: the South. Oh, right, the endless boycott bet And I
Speaker 1: thought about this.
Speaker 3: I think you're right that that probably if you boycott
Speaker 3: thirty six, you also have to boycott thirty two. And
Speaker 3: then you're looking at there is no Olympics in nineteen
Speaker 3: forty because it was planned for Tokyo, and then obviously
Speaker 3: World War II cancels that, and not in forty four either,
Speaker 3: So then that's a huge stretch of time. It's what
Speaker 3: is that it's twenty years, twenty years.
Speaker 1: With the Olympics, twenty eight to forty eight.
Speaker 3: So could the Olympic movement have survived twenty years of
Speaker 3: no Olympics? Probably not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it starts to seem like you can only
Speaker 1: keep the Olympics alive at a cost. After the Berlin Games,
Speaker 1: the Germans put out a report and there's a quote
Speaker 1: on the title page goes like this, sporting and chivalrous
Speaker 1: competition awakens the best human qualities. It does not sever,
Speaker 1: but on the contrary, unites the opponents in mutual understanding
Speaker 1: and reciprocal respect. It also helps to strengthen the bonds
Speaker 1: of peace between the nations. May the Olympic flame therefore
Speaker 1: never be extinguished, Signed Adolf Hitler. That's where you end
Speaker 1: up when you casually mix the purer and impure your
Speaker 1: ideals in the mouth of a monster. Idealism does not
Speaker 1: survive the journey to an impure place. So where does
Speaker 1: all this confusion leave you? Option three? Billy Garland in
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen eighteen, Los Angeles was in a
Speaker 1: rough patch. The war in Europe was taking its toll
Speaker 1: on the economy. The nineteen eighteen flew, which it claimed
Speaker 1: millions of lives around the world, had shut down the
Speaker 1: city streets. Tourism, the great life blood of Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: was at a standstill. Billy Garland and his friends needed
Speaker 1: a plan to get the city back on track. So
Speaker 1: Billy calls a meeting in his office gathers together the
Speaker 1: power brokers.
Speaker 6: They were meeting there basically to try to figure out
Speaker 6: ways to uh uh promote Los Angeles above all, to
Speaker 6: uh avoid future lulsome business.
Speaker 1: Barry Siegel again.
Speaker 6: And somewhere in that meeting came up the idea of
Speaker 6: bidding for and staging the Olympics as a way to
Speaker 6: put La on the map uh and draw investors.
Speaker 1: The third way to resolve the dilemma of the Olympic
Speaker 1: Games is just to be a realist. You say, whatever,
Speaker 1: let's not complicate things. The games are really useful, and
Speaker 1: if you play our cards right, we can all get rich.
Speaker 1: So Billy got his games here he is announcing.
Speaker 5: Them on the ship. That one happened to arm O
Speaker 5: Faulki be the limit game without a day, the one
Speaker 5: living heritage from those different times.
Speaker 1: Billy didn't write those lines. Believe me, someone at IOC
Speaker 1: headquarters in Switzerland did. But I'm guessing this is the
Speaker 1: part Billy did write.
Speaker 5: Many thousands of visitors to these games will come to
Speaker 5: Los Angeles and California from our thoughts to the globe
Speaker 5: and from every portion of our country. Let me add
Speaker 5: that California recognized her responsibility as hosts. The stranger within
Speaker 5: her gates will be treated to.
Speaker 1: That cordial hospitality and welcome.
Speaker 3: So tradigal of our wonderful state, bring.
Speaker 1: The kids stay at one of my hotels.
Speaker 5: To California, hosts of the world for the sixteen day
Speaker 5: period beginning on July. Period the Witness for Yourself, the
Speaker 5: aldermate and highest manifestations of modern sportsmanship known to mankind.
Speaker 1: Billy builds a magnificent stadium, the Coliseum, just south of downtown.
Speaker 1: He builds the first true athletes village up in Baldwin Hills.
Speaker 1: Billy recruits the two biggest movie stars of the day,
Speaker 1: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, to be his spokespeople. Billy
Speaker 1: creates a spectacle. Billy even makes a profit on the
Speaker 1: Games a million dollars. A few years later, Billy would
Speaker 1: be all in favor of the Olympics in Berlin, but
Speaker 1: not because he'd performed some elaborate political analysis. Please more
Speaker 1: like love the kaiser Af hotel? Can we have one
Speaker 1: in Hollywood? How much do the Nazis look to thirty
Speaker 1: two for kind of inspiration on I mean they take
Speaker 1: that kind of that notion of the Games as a
Speaker 1: spectacle and run with it.
Speaker 6: They were inspired by the thirty two Olympics very much.
Speaker 6: So it was my thirty two Olympics for a model
Speaker 6: model for them. In that way. Billy Garland and his
Speaker 6: game showed them the way.
Speaker 1: There was a point deep into this series where I
Speaker 1: found myself more and more sympathetic to Billy Garland, to
Speaker 1: the guy who just made things work. Ben never went
Speaker 1: that far. We argued about it. I started this whole
Speaker 1: investigation way back when believing that we should have brought
Speaker 1: boycott it in thirty six. Now I'm not sure. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I agree, And now I think I'm glad
Speaker 1: we went. Everyone involved in this debate back then and
Speaker 1: everyone involved in debate like this today. The core of
Speaker 1: all of it is everyone takes sports really really really
Speaker 1: really really really seriously. And I kind of realized halfway
Speaker 1: through that I'm one of those people.
Speaker 3: You're a person who thinks sports really matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't think I was. I was like, I
Speaker 1: thought I was the guy who said, why are we
Speaker 1: spending all this time and attention arguing about, you know,
Speaker 1: running a race against each other? And then I'm like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I am that person who cares passionately
Speaker 1: about the people running out to race each other.
Speaker 3: With your foil me as a person who is just
Speaker 3: sort of like unable to recognize even an Olympic level runner.
Speaker 1: And so, like you know, the question we have to
Speaker 1: ask ourselves is if we want a boycott in thirty six,
Speaker 1: do we really want an Olympics Because the only way
Speaker 1: to have in Olympics is to is to hold your
Speaker 1: nose from time to time. And I realized, oh, actually,
Speaker 1: I think I'm I think I would be willing to
Speaker 1: hold my nose.
Speaker 3: I think though I feel in some ways like the
Speaker 3: less intellectually curious member of this team, because I started
Speaker 3: feeling like we should boycott the nineteen thirty six games,
Speaker 3: and I used to feel like we shouldn't have gone
Speaker 3: thirty six games. So I don't know what I was
Speaker 3: really investigating then having not I guess maybe just like
Speaker 3: to confirm my position. I think if you think sports
Speaker 3: and the Olympics really matter, which admittedly I do love
Speaker 3: the Olympics, but I'm not that person. I think if
Speaker 3: you think sports really, really really matter, then it's even
Speaker 3: more incumbent on you to boycott the nineteen thirty six
Speaker 3: Olympics because the myth that everyone buys into is that
Speaker 3: this is a festival celebrating the best of what makes
Speaker 3: us human. Everybody's going to come together and try their
Speaker 3: hardest and have a defining moment of their life in
Speaker 3: a place with the government that can then caj all
Speaker 3: of that moral authority and beauty and excellence and put
Speaker 3: it in the service of their own project, which is
Speaker 3: the defilement of what it is to be a person,
Speaker 3: like one of the most inhumane things in the twentieth century.
Speaker 3: So if you really think that sports matters that much,
Speaker 3: then I think it's incumbent on you to not lend
Speaker 3: it to that project. And not all in a way,
Speaker 3: this is just a false question, because the IOC one
Speaker 3: hundred percent could have moved the Olympics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I am incredibly skeptical of the idea that
Speaker 1: a boycott of Berlin would have in any way have
Speaker 1: our opposition to Nazism. My guess is the opposite would
Speaker 1: have happened. That we would have said, Okay, we've said,
Speaker 1: we've set our piece, we don't like the man, and
Speaker 1: we're not going to go and participate in these little games.
Speaker 1: And like some strikes me, you could make a completely
Speaker 1: alternate scenario that this allows the Germans to feel like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the rest of the world is like, that's you guys,
Speaker 1: don't like what we're doing, We're just going to go
Speaker 1: off on, you know, be even worse. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm just not I don't buy that premise about I
Speaker 1: never have bought that premise about symbolic acts of protest.
Speaker 3: But don't you think that the record shows that having
Speaker 3: the Olympics in Berlin in thirty six is helpful to
Speaker 3: the Nazis? Like Gerbel says, this is a really big
Speaker 3: breakthrough for US and foreign currency floods into the country.
Speaker 1: They're happy that they got away with it. Yeah, but Ben,
Speaker 1: on the scale of things that were happening in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties that had an effect on the progress of Nazism,
Speaker 1: this is so far down the list.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, But I still feel like the boycott
Speaker 3: makes sense. And I agree it's incredibly low down on
Speaker 3: the list of things that you should do in the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties to combat Nazism, But like, why wouldn't you
Speaker 3: do all the things like it makes sense to do.
Speaker 1: We're not doing any of the other thing. This is
Speaker 1: we're not doing the other things. This is why I
Speaker 1: get so I lose patience with this kind of precious
Speaker 1: view of our moral responsibilities because it misses the point.
Speaker 1: If you spend more than five minutes taking a look
Speaker 1: at the way that Dorothy Thompson does and examining what's
Speaker 1: going on there, you realize this is a deeply evil
Speaker 1: man who we need to do something about, right, something
Speaker 1: real about My point is, what kind of the games
Speaker 1: is not real? It's just I'm sorry. It's a substitute
Speaker 1: for actual behavior.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't need to be a substitute. It's a
Speaker 3: substitute if you take that action in bad faith.
Speaker 1: But I think, I think any kind of useful reading
Speaker 1: of human nature suggests that nine times out of ten,
Speaker 1: symbolic actions discharge our responsibility, they don't turbo charge them.
Speaker 3: I one hundred percent agree with that. However, what is
Speaker 3: the connection between the daily reality that most of us
Speaker 3: live and the systems level action? And the answer can't
Speaker 3: be that there is no connection. That one of these
Speaker 3: things happens in like the ether, and the other one
Speaker 3: happens on the ground, and we can do whatever we
Speaker 3: want on the ground because the thing is in the
Speaker 3: ether is going to take care of itself, like there
Speaker 3: is some obscure bridge between those two levels of existence.
Speaker 3: And it might be that you yourself run for office
Speaker 3: and then try and change things. But like, that isn't
Speaker 3: the only way you can affect these issues, and one
Speaker 3: of the ways, plausibly many boycotts absolute nonsense. A boycott
Speaker 3: of the thirty six games based on what the Olympics
Speaker 3: do for the nazis like that one probably would have
Speaker 3: meant something. There are two sets of morally disingenuous actions,
Speaker 3: one that actually happened and one that were just describing
Speaker 3: that could have happened. And I would just prefer that
Speaker 3: one the one in not going, maybe for like complicated reasons,
Speaker 3: and then hope that it puts the right kind of
Speaker 3: pressure on this sort of ethereal systems level realm which
Speaker 3: is not taking the action it needs to do.
Speaker 1: Ben and I do not agree three options absolutism, soft idealism, realism.
Speaker 1: Are you going to fight, compromise or shrug? Is your
Speaker 1: true north? Dorothy Thompson, Every Brandage or Billy Garland. The
Speaker 1: absolutists end up in Taberville, playing to an empty stadium,
Speaker 1: The quasi idealists end up with Hitler stealing their thunder,
Speaker 1: and the realists give us the games, but with so
Speaker 1: much Coca Cola and memorial t shirts and mixed use
Speaker 1: urban construction that we forget why we wanted the Olympics
Speaker 1: into first place. The last interview Ben and I did
Speaker 1: for this series was in Los Angeles at UCLA with
Speaker 1: Millan Tiff, that wonderful triple jumper who knew Jesse Owens.
Speaker 1: It was hot, one of those hazy Los Angeles mornings.
Speaker 1: A helicopter was hovering somewhere overhead. We were standing on
Speaker 1: the track at Drake Stadium, right by the long jump pit.
Speaker 1: They were a handful of athletes milling about, and then
Speaker 1: a young woman came running past us. She was doing
Speaker 1: two hundred meter intervals halfway around the track, hard with
Speaker 1: a jog recovery, around and around and around, and she
Speaker 1: was magical. Ben's not a track and field obsessive like
Speaker 1: I am. I wanted Ben to see what I was seeing.
Speaker 1: I want to see where how beautiful runners are. I
Speaker 1: don't know see she's gonna run for us, but you
Speaker 1: see her sprinting, it's just like it's just like unlike
Speaker 1: any running you. I don't know who she is, but
Speaker 1: she's a real runner. If she washed, her run just
Speaker 1: a gorgeous and she was flying. Most people have seen
Speaker 1: runners at high school track meets, or maybe world class
Speaker 1: athletes on television. But to really appreciate this kind of performance,
Speaker 1: you have to witness it in real life up close,
Speaker 1: like we were at eye level five feet away. Then
Speaker 1: you can see the full beauty of what a human
Speaker 1: being can do, propelling themselves with such elegance and effortlessness.
Speaker 1: Just the tap tap tap of their shoes landing lightly
Speaker 1: on the track, you can just tell what someone's I
Speaker 1: don't know who she is. Then Milan Tiff said, that's
Speaker 1: Sidney MacLaughlin. Sidney McLaughlin, Sydney McLaughlin, Lavroney, two time Olympic
Speaker 1: gold medalists in the forumder Beater hurdles, the world record holder,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest sprinters in history. We walked towards her.
Speaker 1: I felt the way an art student would feel if
Speaker 1: they randomly ran into Picasso on the street. No, that's
Speaker 1: not quite right. I felt the way an art student
Speaker 1: would feel if they stumbled across some amazing painting at
Speaker 1: a garage sale, stared at it in awe and then
Speaker 1: realized it's a Picasso. We were standing right next to her,
Speaker 1: so I started to whisper, to try and play a
Speaker 1: cool as soon as I thought she was much taller.
Speaker 1: She's one of the greatest female athletes. I was like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't believe I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't ever occurred to me that it was full.
Speaker 1: Ben and I had spent months trying to solve the
Speaker 1: moral puzzle presented by the Berlin Olympics, trying to see
Speaker 1: clearly through the fog of nineteen thirty six, first should
Speaker 1: we go? And then, more importantly, if you have ideals,
Speaker 1: how do you hold onto them in an ugly, messy world?
Speaker 1: And that day at the UCLA track, by some miraculous
Speaker 1: twist of fate, we got a glimpse of the Sublime
Speaker 1: gliding past us, clear as day, close enough to touch,
Speaker 1: showing us the way. We will have many more arguments
Speaker 1: in the future, just as we had in nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 1: We continued to live in a very impure place, and
Speaker 1: we should have those arguments. That's our job to engage
Speaker 1: with what is difficult, to try and pick a safe
Speaker 1: path through the minefield. But the epiphany I had as
Speaker 1: Sidney McLaughlin swept past us is that we need to
Speaker 1: be clear about what we're arguing. For Charles Cheryl was
Speaker 1: protecting some archaic notion of amateurism. Avery Brundage was furthering
Speaker 1: his own ambitions. Jesse Owens was navigating the impossible complexity
Speaker 1: of life as a black man. Billy Garland just wanted
Speaker 1: to build stuff. Altogether, they loaded up the Olympic movement
Speaker 1: and with so much excess baggage that it's a miracle
Speaker 1: that didn't sing and we don't need any of it.
Speaker 1: It's just getting in the way. The pure place that
Speaker 1: everyone was looking for is not a country or a city.
Speaker 1: It's a feeling. It's the awe that comes from watching
Speaker 1: someone perform an athletic feat better and faster than anyone else.
Speaker 3: What's the right to the line? Sidney MacLaughlin is bringing
Speaker 3: it to the La La. Muhammed Mohammad's trying to hold
Speaker 3: on McLoughlin on the inside to the line. That's gonna
Speaker 3: be Sidney's time again. That's a long record again.
Speaker 8: My Cloughlin.
Speaker 1: Orisionist History is produced by Benda daf Haffrey, Tolly Emmlin
Speaker 1: and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Arthur Gomberts and Jail Goldfine. Original scoring by
Speaker 1: Luis Kara, Mastering by Sarah Bruger and Jake Krsky, Engineering
Speaker 1: by Nina Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Karen Schakerji. Additional thanks to Michael Yushinsky,
Speaker 1: Meredith Rawlins, Michael Specter and Michael Linton at Pushkin. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jake Flanagan, Owen Miller, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey,
Speaker 1: Jordan McMillan, Nicole opten Bosch and Brian Schrebnick, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Kerry Brody and Greta Come. I'm Malcolm Glapnow