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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson

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Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about United States versus

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Speaker 1: Wan kim ARC this week. We stressed that we could

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Speaker 1: not keep up with everything about it as I was

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Speaker 1: researching it. Yeah, in terms of the current events related

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Speaker 1: to this, Yeah, Yeah, it really felt like every single

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Speaker 1: day there was new commentary, new arguments, and new counter arguments.

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Speaker 1: Knew everything. But then in addition to that, just a

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Speaker 1: continual fire hose of stuff also happening. And I think

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Speaker 1: anytime there has been an episode like this one where

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Speaker 1: there has been a specific reason that something felt urgent, uh,

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Speaker 1: it has also felt like there have been fifty other

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Speaker 1: equally urgent things happening simultaneously. There is no way to

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Speaker 1: do all fifty things. And then additionally, in the two

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Speaker 1: weeks that pass ish two weeks approximately the pass between

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Speaker 1: researching and writing the episode and the episode actually coming out,

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Speaker 1: fifty more things are going to happen, and then like

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Speaker 1: exponential escalation of things involving what we were actually talking about. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And it's one of the reasons why it is not

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Speaker 1: that often that I decide to do an episode that's

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Speaker 1: directly related to something that's happening in the news right now. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's building a house on shifting sand. Like completely, there's

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Speaker 1: always going to be some key element that emerges that

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Speaker 1: we didn't include, because yeah, you can't. Yeah. Yeah. While

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Speaker 1: I do not necessarily like the content of old Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court decisions, sometimes I do like reading the old Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court decisions. Sometimes they just they just include interesting things about,

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Speaker 1: you know, the mindset of the time and the justices

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Speaker 1: that we're writing it. This particular one, though the majority

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Speaker 1: opinions synopsis of what was happening previously, it goes on

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Speaker 1: for so long, yeah, so long, and each case that

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Speaker 1: it's talking about previously is maybe only a paragraph long.

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Speaker 1: But I really struggled with it. It It just it

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Speaker 1: felt like it was going on forever, and I was like,

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Speaker 1: I want to get to the part where you're telling

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Speaker 1: me about this case specifically. I understand what you're doing

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Speaker 1: by building up the immense precedent that we are already

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Speaker 1: talking about, but like, can we can we fast forward

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Speaker 1: a lot? I imagine probably right, it's exactly that they

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Speaker 1: know that this is something that not everybody sides with

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Speaker 1: and they want to be able to protect people with

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Speaker 1: just a mass of paperwork and precedent examples. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: it does sometimes make it difficult to actually get through

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Speaker 1: the content of the decision. This was also not a

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Speaker 1: court that was racially progressive in any way, right, and

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Speaker 1: it had other decisions that were really the opposite of

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Speaker 1: this one in terms of talking about the ideas of

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Speaker 1: things like equality. And one of the things that we've

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Speaker 1: talked about before is John Marshall Harland, who became known

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Speaker 1: as the Great Dissenter, writing dissenting opinions some of these

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Speaker 1: previous cases where the court had taken a stance that

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Speaker 1: was just broadly speaking, not in favor of equality, and

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Speaker 1: he had written just a scathing descent of that that

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Speaker 1: picked apart all of it. And then in this case

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Speaker 1: he also dissented. But this discent was the descent of no,

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Speaker 1: this should not be should not be citizens for Chinese people?

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Speaker 1: Obviously not so anyway, I find that interesting about him.

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Speaker 1: I also had a little bit more in this episode

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Speaker 1: originally about Justice Stephen J. Field. A couple of sources

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Speaker 1: that I read framed him as being the only justice

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Speaker 1: that had really expressed any kind of support for the

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Speaker 1: idea of birthright citizenship. I don't actually know how accurate

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Speaker 1: that is, Like it was not a situation where I

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Speaker 1: could go and look up the entire scope of his

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Speaker 1: previous career as a Supreme Court justice. But he was

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Speaker 1: also a justice during some of the other cases that

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Speaker 1: we talked about that did not seem I was like,

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Speaker 1: just it does not seem like there were things that

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Speaker 1: made it read almost like like, yeah, he was the

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Speaker 1: one person who was in charge who was like in

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Speaker 1: favor of birthright citizenship, but he like he had other

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Speaker 1: cases that he had been part of the way. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're definitely not that way. Like he was part of

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Speaker 1: the majority in Plusy versus Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation.

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Speaker 1: He was part of the majority in Chai Chong Ping

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Speaker 1: versus the United States. We have we have episodes about

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Speaker 1: both of those, and you know that like U PLUSY

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Speaker 1: versus Ferguson establishing that that segregation was constitutional, Like that

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Speaker 1: was also part of I think the same court. Melville

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Speaker 1: Fuller was definitely still the justice. So anyway, that's been

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Speaker 1: one of the things that people have pointed out with

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Speaker 1: this executive order was that, like, this case came before

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Speaker 1: a court that had made a lot of pretty specifically

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Speaker 1: racist interpretations at the Constitution, and even within that context,

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Speaker 1: was like, no, this is saying everyone is a citizen

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Speaker 1: if they're born here, right, including Chinese people even anyway,

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Speaker 1: who probably didn't want to say that, had to acknowledge it.

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Speaker 1: They had to do it. Yeah, not that it would

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Speaker 1: ever be a thing I could do. But every time

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Speaker 1: we talk about the Supreme Court and a decision and dissenters,

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Speaker 1: I just know I could never be a judge on

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court because I couldn't go to work with

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Speaker 1: those people the next day and be cool. I just couldn't.

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Speaker 1: I know who I am. And it's not that I

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Speaker 1: pretend that people that irritate me or make me angry

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Speaker 1: at work don't exist anymore. It's not a good habit,

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Speaker 1: but it's something that I just involuntarily do. So that

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Speaker 1: wouldn't work. Yeah, I think I have. I might have

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Speaker 1: told this story on the podcast before. A friend of

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Speaker 1: mine is a lawyer and we have been friends starting

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Speaker 1: from before he decided to change careers and go to

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Speaker 1: law school. And while he was in law school, there

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Speaker 1: was a case that was happening in the news in

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Speaker 1: which a person's behavior had been odious and awful, and

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Speaker 1: that person is still entitled to competent legal representation. That's

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Speaker 1: sort of how that idea works. Everyone is entitled to

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Speaker 1: competent legal representation, no matter what they have done. My

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Speaker 1: friend spouse, who I'm also friends with, I love them

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Speaker 1: both dearly. They came into the room continuing a conversation

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Speaker 1: on this subject that had started in the car, and

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Speaker 1: it was clear that she was furious, and he was like,

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Speaker 1: this is just how it has to work, and then

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Speaker 1: said that, like, one of the things they learn in

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Speaker 1: law school is that when you if you try to

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Speaker 1: talk about some of this with people who aren't lawyers,

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Speaker 1: it's violently upsetting. Yeah, because you, like, you have to

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Speaker 1: train your brain to work in this way. That's about

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Speaker 1: what the law says and what the Constitution says, and

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Speaker 1: not necessarily like what seems right to you, which is

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Speaker 1: part of part of where I get hung up. I'm like,

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Speaker 1: but that's messed up. Yeah. Yeah, Anyway, I do not

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Speaker 1: have enough grace in my heart for such things. It

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Speaker 1: turns out I get it. Yeah, Yeah, that's why I'm

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Speaker 1: spending a lot of time looking at plants for my

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Speaker 1: mental health. Right now, look at my garden plants. I

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Speaker 1: understand this. I like to take lots of locks. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you do an out in nature thing. I do it

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Speaker 1: bring nature inside things. Yeah. Well, the the reason we

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Speaker 1: haven't done the bring nature inside thing at our house

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Speaker 1: is when we have had when we have tried to

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Speaker 1: have plants, the cats have not used them as litter boxes,

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Speaker 1: but they have liked to just pull things out of pots. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And our house is just not set up in a

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Speaker 1: way that there's like places that plants can go that

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Speaker 1: cats can't access. Yeah. Yeah, So yeah, anyway, plants which

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Speaker 1: you're gonna inform future episodes to st I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: what my next episode is. Of course, there are a

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Speaker 1: million things that feel like are urgent to talk about

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Speaker 1: on the show, But I do not have the fortitude

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Speaker 1: to do urgent things all the time in a climate

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Speaker 1: of a fire hose of horribleness, which is what is

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Speaker 1: going on right now. So one of our episodes this

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Speaker 1: week was on Daniel Hale Williams. Technically Daniel Hale Williams

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Speaker 1: the third but I think we only said the third

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Speaker 1: part one time. There are several books about him that

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Speaker 1: are children's books. A couple of them have the name

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Speaker 1: doctor Dan in the title. I only know of one

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Speaker 1: full length biography for adults of him, and that was

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Speaker 1: published by a white woman named Helen Buckler in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty four, using research that had started in the late

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Speaker 1: nineteen forties. So when Buckler was researching this book, there

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Speaker 1: were people still living who had personally known him. The

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Speaker 1: forward of this book is really interesting because it talks

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Speaker 1: about her own experiences of basically crossing a color barrier

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Speaker 1: to learn about him and becoming more aware of her

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Speaker 1: own privilege and her own ignorance while doing all of that.

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Speaker 1: Apparently there were people so surprised that she was doing

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Speaker 1: this research on a black surgeon that they assumed that

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Speaker 1: she was a black person with very fair skin. Oh,

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Speaker 1: how fascinating. Yeah, so like really interesting to me that

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Speaker 1: part of it. So, of course, if you go and

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Speaker 1: you read this book, parts of it are going to

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Speaker 1: seem dated by today's standards in the language and how

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Speaker 1: it talks about things. But like, to me, the fact

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Speaker 1: that she was at a time of intense racial segregation

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Speaker 1: and also backlash to the civil rights movement that she

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Speaker 1: was doing this work. Montague Cobb, William Montague Cobb, who

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Speaker 1: we've also talked about on the show, wrote a couple

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Speaker 1: of different profiles of Daniel Hale Williams. That's one of

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Speaker 1: the things that Cobb did was write profiles of figures

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Speaker 1: from black history, and in one of these he says

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Speaker 1: that Butler had started researching this biography because she was

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Speaker 1: so fascinated with the idea that the first surgeon to

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Speaker 1: do an open heart surgery was black, and then her

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Speaker 1: own research revealed that there were earlier surgeries that he

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Speaker 1: wasn't actually the first one, and that when that happened,

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Speaker 1: her publisher lost interest in it. If that's accurate. She

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Speaker 1: did find another publisher fairly quickly after that, because the

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Speaker 1: book came out originally in nineteen fifty four. And then

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Speaker 1: all of that led me to say we should do

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Speaker 1: a Saturday Classic of William Montague Cobb, because it's been

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Speaker 1: four entire years since that episode came out, and I

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Speaker 1: would have said it was last year. I don't I

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Speaker 1: would have said it was last month. I mean, all

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Speaker 1: the time since twenty twenty has really really blurred together.

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Speaker 1: So anyway, that'll be coming up as a Saturday Classic.

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Speaker 1: I also found Daniel Hale Williams to be kind of

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Speaker 1: an interesting comparison to Vivian Thomas, who we have talked

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Speaker 1: about on the show before Vivian Thomas came along decades

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Speaker 1: later and is kind of an example of how like

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Speaker 1: shifts in the world and segregation. Specifically, because Daniel Haill

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Speaker 1: Williams was born before the Civil War grew up during

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Speaker 1: the Civil War, I have no idea what his experiences

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Speaker 1: of the Civil War years were like, lived through reconstruction.

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Speaker 1: When he went to medical school, it was at a

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Speaker 1: time of escalating racial segregation and escalating violence against black

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Speaker 1: people and black communities in response to basically the reconstruction

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Speaker 1: reconstructions progress. But I think this is what enabled him

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Speaker 1: to go to medical school and start practicing surgery when

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Speaker 1: he did. I didn't really find a tail about whether,

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Speaker 1: like how many other black students there might have been

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Speaker 1: at the school at the same time, what the process

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Speaker 1: was like for him, whether the admissions people were aware

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Speaker 1: of his race or anything like that, right, But it

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Speaker 1: was like he went to school and started working at

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Speaker 1: an era when there was somewhat more integration in Chicago,

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Speaker 1: and then Chicago became increasingly more segregated in the face

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Speaker 1: of like the great migration of black families out of

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Speaker 1: the South, and then Vivian Thomas much later segregation a

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Speaker 1: lot more entrenched, a lot more explicitly spelled out in

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Speaker 1: terms of laws and things. And you know, Vivian Thomas

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Speaker 1: also broke a lot of ground with surgery, but not

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Speaker 1: as a as a surgeon, as a surgical technician. So

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Speaker 1: I found those two interesting things to or an interesting

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Speaker 1: comparison to think about with the two of them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is kind of fascinating that we go forward in

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Speaker 1: time but backwards in terms of, yeah, ways to make

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Speaker 1: things happen. I don't want to say opportunity, because it's

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Speaker 1: not so much that as him making a path right right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the like so much progress happened during reconstruction that was

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Speaker 1: then explicitly dismantled. So yeah, I also originally had this

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Speaker 1: in the actual body of the episode, but it just

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Speaker 1: felt like it was a weird aside anywhere in the

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Speaker 1: flow of the narrative that I tried to put it.

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Speaker 1: And that's about Emma Reynolds, who wanted to be a nurse.

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Speaker 1: She'd wanted to be a nurse. Her brother went to

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Speaker 1: Williams about her not being able to train to be

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Speaker 1: a nurse. I think her brother's original thought might have

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Speaker 1: been that Williams might just pull some strings for her.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if he really went into it thinking

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Speaker 1: We're going to start an entire hospital. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: make work for my Emma Reynolds grad Or was accepted

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Speaker 1: into that first class of nursing students. She graduated from

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Speaker 1: the nursing program at Provident Hospital in eighteen ninety three.

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Speaker 1: From there, she went on to Medical College of Chicago,

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Speaker 1: and she earned a medical degree there in eighteen ninety five.

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Speaker 1: So she became the first black woman to graduate from

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Speaker 1: the Medical College of Chicago, which I found also, of course,

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Speaker 1: very interesting. Yes, I wish I had had more like

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Speaker 1: first person accounts of what Daniel Hill Williams' life was like,

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Speaker 1: what his relationship with his mother was like. It really

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Speaker 1: felt like a lot of people were very critical of

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Speaker 1: his mother. But I also felt like I was reading

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Speaker 1: people's judgments and like not reading the facts of what happened.

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Speaker 1: If that makes sense. Yes, And that's actually one of

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Speaker 1: the things in his story that jumps out to me,

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Speaker 1: because this is a thing I am, you know, learned

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Speaker 1: late in life. I don't want to blow anybody's mind,

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Speaker 1: but parents are humans. Oh yeah, yeah, it becomes so easy.

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Speaker 1: I think too, because we kind of set up this

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Speaker 1: like very specific caricature of what it is to be

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Speaker 1: a parent and specifically a mother, and if people don't

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Speaker 1: like fit into what that is for whatever reason, yeah,

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Speaker 1: even if it's completely reasonable and understandable, people get real

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Speaker 1: weird about it and real judging in a minute. And

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Speaker 1: I'm like, this is a black woman at a time

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Speaker 1: when things are starting to go in a really yucky

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Speaker 1: direction in addition to dealing with the loss of her

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Speaker 1: spouse and trying to figure out how to manage her

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Speaker 1: own life in the lives of her kids. Was she

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Speaker 1: a great mom? I don't know, but like I'm I

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Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm in any position to put any

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Speaker 1: judgment on that situation because it's a lot well. And

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Speaker 1: I also think of like the decision that she and

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Speaker 1: her two oldest daughters were gonna go to Illinois and

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Speaker 1: they were gonna learn to to, as I understand it,

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Speaker 1: become hairdressers, right, which was like one of the things

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Speaker 1: that black women could do to support themselves in their families.

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Speaker 1: And could do really well at and so like just

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Speaker 1: the fact of that of like, Okay, I and the

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Speaker 1: two older girls who are old enough to you know,

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Speaker 1: start working, We're gonna go We're gonna learn hair stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, that seems like a reasonable plan to me.

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Speaker 1: It also seems not possible to do that if you

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Speaker 1: also have four other children to care for. So like

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Speaker 1: the fact of having to split up the children does

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Speaker 1: sound horrifying, but also like what other option might there have? Right?

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Speaker 1: I think too the judgments of it to me, and

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Speaker 1: I didn't do the research, so you may have insight

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Speaker 1: that shifts this. It seems to decontextualize the fact that

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Speaker 1: that was not all that uncommon a practice in a

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Speaker 1: situation like that, where some catastrophic thing had happened to

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Speaker 1: a family, and often the loss of the primary breadwinner

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Speaker 1: was like, okay, who in the family can help? Where

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Speaker 1: can we put these kids? Often it meant splitting them

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Speaker 1: up among relatives' houses. That wasn't an unusual path, yep.

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Speaker 1: So for her to have that level of scrutiny and

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Speaker 1: kind of be characterized as though she abandoned her kids

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Speaker 1: is unsettling and obviously rooted in the bias of racism.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure, yeah, yeah, that happened to my grandmother's family. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: not at all. Yeah, so uh yeah, I uh. I

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Speaker 1: kind of like I wish I had like more specific detail,

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Speaker 1: because what I've read really felt like people had a

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Speaker 1: lot of judgment of her, and I could not figure

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Speaker 1: out whether those judgments, those judgments were really justified or not.

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Speaker 1: I also went down a rabbit hole while researching this

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Speaker 1: episode of whether a surgery on the pericardium is an

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Speaker 1: open heart surgery, since the heart muscle and the pericardium

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Speaker 1: are two different things, but the pericardium is part of

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Speaker 1: the way the heart functions, and generally the answer seemed

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Speaker 1: to be yes, like the the that surgically, the heart

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Speaker 1: and the pericardium are one organ. They are two parts

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Speaker 1: of the greater whole. Yeah, yeah uh, And I mean,

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Speaker 1: I guess if you're gonna well, actually something. The more

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Speaker 1: of the well actually is that there had been other

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Speaker 1: surgeries on the pericardium before this that he just did

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Speaker 1: not know had happened when he did them right, or

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Speaker 1: when he did the one that he wrote the paper about.

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Speaker 1: There were I think at least two other surgeries to

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Speaker 1: repair someone's pericardium that he did after that, the one

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Speaker 1: that he became most known for. That person lived another

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Speaker 1: something like thirty eight years, and one of his other

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Speaker 1: patients reportedly lived another fifty years. The fact that we

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Speaker 1: didn't have antibiotics at that point also pretty incredible, even

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Speaker 1: with all of the all of the steps that he

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Speaker 1: was taking for for hygiene and antiseptic procedures during the

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Speaker 1: say itself. That's also where it starts to be a

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Speaker 1: little infuriating to see the way that politics led to

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Speaker 1: this person who was incredibly bold as a practicer of

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Speaker 1: medicine medical practitioner in ways it was saving people having

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Speaker 1: him like literally nickeled and dimed in terms of like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, there was a box of envelopes that

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Speaker 1: went missing while you were here, Like, it just seems

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Speaker 1: so petty and stupid and gross. At that point, it

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Speaker 1: also seemed like there was petty infighting at every single

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Speaker 1: medical facility. Yeah, that was part of this, and it

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Speaker 1: just kind of made me think, this explains why there's

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Speaker 1: so many doctor shows full of interpersonal dynamics. I know

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Speaker 1: that that's not really realistic. What's happens on the doctor shows,

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Speaker 1: But it seemed like every single one of them, you know,

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Speaker 1: if it was a facility of any size at all,

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Speaker 1: there were people who hated each other and were trying

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Speaker 1: to undermine each other got them, regardless of the prominence

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Speaker 1: of the hospital or who worked there. In my naive

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Speaker 1: I'm like, shouldn't you be about the greater mission of

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Speaker 1: caring for people's health instead of trying to be the

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Speaker 1: most one or whatever it is you're after, right, But again,

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Speaker 1: that's a very naive way to look at it. Yeah. Anyway, Hey,

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Speaker 1: whatever's happening on your weekend, I hope it is as

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Speaker 1: absolutely as good as possible. We are recording all these

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Speaker 1: at least two weeks ahead of when the weekend is coming,

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Speaker 1: so I have no idea what's happening in the world

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Speaker 1: on this Friday, of our Friday behind the scenes. But

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Speaker 1: we will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. I

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Speaker 1: think the Saturday Classic tomorrow is going to be about

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Speaker 1: William Montague Cobb, and then we'll have something brand new

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Speaker 1: on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app Apple poda casts, or wherever you listen to

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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.