WEBVTT - S2 – 12: There Is No Death 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:09.680 Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:14.360 The stage was stripped of adornments. Maggie promised that her 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:18.919 act would be as well. Finally, The New York Times 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.079 described the platform as bare and somber, but the crowd 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:25.439 was anything but. They filled the room with noise, all 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.600 of them hissing and shouting before Maggie could even begin. 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:32.800 The press was wild with excitement. They filled the New 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:38.080 York Academy of Music in October when Maggie appeared on stage, 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.240 just as she had so many times since her childhood 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:45.360 in Rochester. A front page illustrated story in that morning's 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.360 issue of The New York World ensured the crowd would 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:52.760 pack the hall. After an opening act that highlighted the 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.840 tricks used to debunk other mediums, Maggie arrived on stage, 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.040 still dark haired in her fifties. She out needed glasses 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.319 to see the words she'd written for herself. Maggie held 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:07.480 the lenses up to her eyes and read off a declaration. 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.679 Everything she had done for spiritualism over the course of 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:16.760 her life was a falsehood. She had already published a 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.520 letter in The New York Herald that called spiritualism, a 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:24.720 curse and a covering for heartless persons and the vilest miscreants, 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:27.920 people who used it to cloak their evil doings. As 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.880 she said, now she was making the same pronouncements in person. 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.880 But it wasn't just statements. Of course, Like so many 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.800 other rooms before, the hall became filled with knocking sounds. 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:44.560 They started around Maggie's feet faintly, then they rose along 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:47.520 the walls and scattered upward, where they rang out from 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:52.120 the ceiling, thundering throughout the room. Here's author Nancy Stewart, 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:57.320 and she and hikes up her skirts and shows how 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:01.840 she makes these sounds their feet with her toes. And 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.280 by now there's a national Association of Spiritualists and so on, 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:10.720 and they are just outraged. What follows is an enormous 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:16.200 controversy that goes on for a long time. A committee 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:19.400 of doctors stepped on stage and solemnly confirmed what she 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:23.440 told them. Maggie made the sounds with her feet. It 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.600 was all a hoax, a fraud, and it was everything 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:31.480 they wanted, an exorcism of Mrs Satan herself and everything 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:36.880 she stood for. The newspapers, crowd doubters and cynics roared 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:41.480 their approval from the rooftops. This was spiritualism defeated. This 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:45.000 was the perpetrators of the nineteenth centuries most infamous fraud 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:49.720 finally dragged into the light around the Fox family acid 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:54.040 rumors had always circulated that Leah, a single mom, saw 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.160 an opportunity to take a simple gag her younger siblings 0:02:57.160 --> 0:02:59.800 were pulling on their parents and turn it into something 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:05.080 which larger a chance to enchant and enthrall audiences. And yes, 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.239 it was also her chance to do more than be 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.600 a part time piano teacher for the daughters of aspiring 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:15.560 middle class families. But did Leah, like Cornelius Vanderbilt throughout 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.440 his own life, see an opportunity and seize it with 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.240 a vengeance? She was like P. T. Barnum, just someone 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.200 who knew how to profit from spectacle when it crossed 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:28.720 her path. For viewers of Maggie's very public confession, at 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.280 least that was the takeaway, But it wasn't so simple. 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:40.120 Here's historian and Browdie. Fraud is a very fraud subject 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.680 in spiritualism, because there are no question that there have 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:49.560 been fraudulent mediums who perpetrated deception on the public and 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:53.040 profited by it, and that there have been gullible people 0:03:53.720 --> 0:04:01.280 who were embarrassed and disserviced by fraudulent mediums. Yeah, now 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:06.840 that is also true of many professions, law and medicine, 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:15.160 for example, Not to mention politics provides opportunities for deception 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:24.279 and double speak and misrepresentation. Does that mean that all 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:34.800 participants in it have those motives and are dishonest? Spiritualist 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:39.080 believers weren't swayed by Maggie's performance, As we've noticed throughout 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:41.880 this season of Unobscured. The Fox Sisters were often put 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:44.480 forward as the mothers of the movement, but they were 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:47.080 far from the only mediums at work in their world, 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.880 and even if their own stage shows were faked, those 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:55.400 hoaxes didn't invalidate centuries of spiritual visions and experiences that 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:58.280 had breathed life into the movement long before the Fox 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:01.599 Sisters were even on the scene. And when it came 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:06.479 to Kate and Maggie, spiritualists pointed to Maggie's history of alcoholism. 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.640 She was already discredited. They said, there was nothing she 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.039 could say now, no lie she could fabricate that could 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:18.720 undo a lifetime of miracles. She was simply pandering to 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.839 the doubters in order to stir up controversy, they said, 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.520 and to put herself in the headlines once again. In fact, 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.000 Leah's husband, Daniel Underhill, soon went to the newspapers to 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.360 make it known that Maggie had betrayed spiritualism out of spite, 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.280 just to put a knife in her sister's back. After all, 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:39.680 Maggie and Leah had been at odds for decades, and 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:43.280 three years earlier, Leah, at this point in her seventies, 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:54.279 had published her own book, The Missing Link in Spiritualism. 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.040 In a lot of ways, Maggie's on stage confession was 0:05:57.080 --> 0:05:59.760 an axe that hacked at the root of Leah's claims. 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:04.120 But could that attack banish everything, including Andrew Jackson Davis's 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:10.160 harmonial philosophy, Cora's trans lectures, Emma's histories, and Sojourner Truth's 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:14.600 lifetime of work and love and power. New Yorkers had 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:18.680 certainly witnessed a disaster, yes, But like so many spectacles 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:22.479 from the world of spiritualism, it seemed that ultimately what 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:26.200 observers took away from it all looked very much like 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:51.360 what they brought in belief this is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:01.880 Cora took the age. She had been doing it her 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:05.360 whole life. After all, it was eight and she had 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:08.960 arrived at the National American Women's Suffrage Convention with an 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.920 official title from an official group. She was now the 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:15.800 head of the fraternal delegation to the Convention from the 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:19.600 National Spiritualist Association, and she was there to celebrate the 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:24.800 fiftieth anniversary of eighteen forty eight for the women's suffrage movement. 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:28.280 It marked fifty years since meeting at Seneca Falls, New York, 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:31.160 and the Declaration of Sentiments that had placed a stake 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.400 in the ground for American women's rights and equality. There 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:36.960 was still so much work to be done before those 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.080 rights would be recognized, but much had changed in those 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:46.480 fifty years. Women had already cast legal ballots in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.360 and Colorado, but it would still be decades before the 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.520 Nineteenth Amendment would be passed into law in nineteen twenty, 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.960 giving women across the nation the right to vote. One 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:00.640 courageous and outrageous woman had even run for presidency, however 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:05.119 unconventional her approach might have been. For Cora, of course, 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.480 also marked fifty years since the fateful events around Rochester. 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:13.080 That decade that followed Maggie's confession of fraud in New 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.800 York had done little to overthrow Cora's worldview or her 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:20.360 place among spiritualists. In fact, the eighteen eighties and eighteen 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:24.160 nineties were a time when spiritualism and Cora's role within it, 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:27.840 took on a more permanent form. She had settled in 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.080 Chicago right around the time when Victoria Woodhall was cutting 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:33.640 ties and leaving for England with a pocket full of 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:38.960 Vanderbilt money. Victoria's reputation as Mrs Satan had threatened COR's livelihood, 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.320 as it did for spiritualist mediums across the nation, but 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.439 I didn't stop Cora from marrying into a widely respected 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.280 Chicago family and taking a paid position as the shepherd 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:53.760 of the city's first society of Spiritualists. In eighteen eighty nine, 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.720 Cora and other Chicago spiritualists formed the Morris Pratt Institute 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:01.400 in Wisconsin, built with the proceeds of a mining company, 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.760 a company that had been guided to valuable mineral deposits 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:09.200 by mediums and their helpful spirits. The Institute would become 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:12.840 a Temple and School for Spiritualists, a place where teachers 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.320 and students could meet together and study the works of 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:20.000 spiritualist theology that mediums like Andrew Jackson Davis, Emma Brittain, 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:24.559 and even Cora herself had delivered to the world. Three 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:29.280 years later, in Nettie Colburn died, she had been the 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:31.760 most prominent medium to ever claim that she'd had the 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:34.760 ear of Abraham Lincoln. When she was laid to rest, 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.640 it was Cora who took the pulpit to preside over 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:43.480 her funeral. The following year, eightee saw an astonishing event 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:47.720 come to Chicago. Along with the World's Columbian Exhibition. Something 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:51.840 new arrived, the World Parliament of Religions, a two week 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:55.280 summit on faith. But while the spiritualists weren't part of 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:59.280 the larger gathering, they were certainly there in spirit. Here's 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:05.800 and Browdie once again in we have the World's Colombian Exhibition, 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:11.080 where we have Americans exposed to many of the religions 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:15.640 of Asia for the first time, and we have Swamy's 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:19.880 and other Asian religious leaders recruited to come to the 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:25.000 United States and teach Americans about their faith. And so 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.559 we have the whole movement of theosophy which is attempting, 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:33.040 attempting to combine the wisdom of the East and make 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:39.240 it accessible to Westerners. And Spiritualism moves in and out 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:44.200 of all of these developments. Because spiritualism is always available, 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.960 you can always talk to the dead and in any movement, 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:50.720 whether you think that wisdom is going to come from 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:56.479 Egypt or from Tibet, or from South America or from Australia, 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:59.600 you can always make contact with the spirit from one 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.640 of those places who can give you wisdom that draws 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:10.080 on those traditions and on esoteric practices from another part 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:14.920 of the world. In fact, spiritualists saw that the reason 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:17.600 they didn't share the stage with their fellow believers was 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.600 that they still had no organization, and that was the 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:25.360 precise agenda of their meeting to form a permanent national association. 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:28.200 They believed it was time for the best interests of 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.440 spiritualists to have a more unified home, and one that 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.640 was more identifiable than a simple network of newspapers passed 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:41.000 between spirit circles in Washington, Boston, and Chicago. By the 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:45.199 end of their meeting, the National Spiritualists Association was born. Now, 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:49.199 they said outside societies could contact them at their headquarters 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:53.240 with requests for information, or you know, with invitations to 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:58.400 important meetings of the world's religions. Wink, wink. The irony 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:02.000 of spiritualists boxing themselves in wasn't lost on those at 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:05.640 the meeting, or on Cora herself. She started her welcome 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.400 address to the convention by noting that in the past, 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.320 asking spiritualists to join an organization was like talking to 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.280 someone who had escaped from prison about going back again. 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.360 All things connected to human life, she once said, have 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:23.520 been organized to death. Cora was probably not the only 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.360 one to remember just how many spiritualists had left their 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.800 churches to join the ranks of science schoers. That had 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:32.079 certainly been true for the Posts who had left the 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.840 Quaker organization behind. It was true of Henri and his 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:40.120 Sir Carmonique, and for Catholics everywhere who wrestled against church authority, 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:43.319 and it was a strong memory for any spiritualist who 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:45.800 had been present for the Ruckus at the Hartford Bible 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:50.560 Convention forty years earlier. Although those numbers were shrinking every day, 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:56.680 Spiritualism had always threatened the priest, politicians, and profiteers who 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.200 benefited from the status quo. It had given spiritual and 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.839 moral authority to people who had been stripped of their rights, 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:06.720 pushed to the margins, and burdened with work, while others 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:10.600 reaped the rewards. The last thing spiritualists wanted to do, 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.719 even in the nineties was to give up on their 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:16.800 labors and returned to a world of the strong crushing 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:19.560 the week. But in the coming decades, Cora and the 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:23.640 Chicago Spiritualists weren't the only ones who saw a spiritualist 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:28.440 future finally taking shape. It just wasn't the future they 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:37.440 had expected. Death was not something to be afraid of. 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.840 For Henri and the Cir Carmonique, death was just what 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:44.040 Andrew Jackson Davis taught it to be, a door into 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.400 a new and more perfect existence. It was the chance 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:50.240 to leave a corrupt world behind and to climb into 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:55.360 a higher, more sublime, more magnificent country. For as long 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:58.559 as their science circles had gathered together, the cir Carmonique 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.240 had held onto the belief that by talking with the spirits, 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.880 they could learn all about that more magnificent country, and 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.600 then they could make this world more like it. In 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.360 his role as a city official and a school board 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:13.960 member on reh had seen the chance to do just that. 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:16.760 But as time went on, it became clear just how 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:22.360 fierce the opposition was. Here's historian Emily Clark. Violence, like 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.680 the Mechanics Institute right, was not alone. In seventy four 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.800 of the Battle of Liberty Place, during which the White League, 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:33.840 a white supremacist organization, takes control of New Orleans and 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:37.080 is like cutting telegraph wires and so that messages can't 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:41.320 get out, they slaughter the At that point, integrated police 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:43.800 kill some people who are just walking by. There's a 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.720 black carpenter who's killed with his own hatchet by White 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:50.160 leaguers who are just like marauding through the city. During 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:55.560 that the spirits of Mechanics Institute riot martyrs appear to 0:14:55.600 --> 0:15:00.400 the Sar Carmenique and encourage them to keep the faith 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:06.880 that their rights will be maintained. Henri did keep the faith, 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:10.560 but he watched pieces of his world fall apart around him. 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.600 Black students were kicked out of New Orleans schools not 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:16.480 long after he was forced off the school board as well. 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:19.480 Efforts to rebuild the South in the image of a 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.640 different world had been abandoned by the political powers of 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:26.320 the federal government. This is a place that is increasingly 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:31.840 becoming more and more dangerous to hold two ideas of equality, 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:37.280 it seems like actually starting in late eighteen Most of 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.200 the seance records for the last two years are mainly 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:46.960 just on re and the following years were tough. One December, 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:50.400 Andre's home was burned to the ground. His seance records 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:54.360 were saved, including the handwritten messages from countless spirits, but 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.920 much of what was precious to Anri was lost to 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:01.160 the flames, and slowly the members of the circle died 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:05.360 or moved on. I think about him sometimes, just sitting 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:07.840 by himself at a table, a table that used to 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:12.160 be full of vibrant conversation about the potential of what 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.280 the spirit spoke of, and now it's just him. I'm 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:20.400 sure the silence records offered some comfort, but in the end, 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:22.960 it's just him, and the records end in November of 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:27.000 eighteen seventy seven, as reconstruction itself comes to a close. 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:33.040 Even as the radical fire burned low in some spiritualist circles, 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.520 the fight for equality continued. The Great Railroad Strike of 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:40.920 eighteen seventy seven inspired working class people across the country. 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.400 Nine years later, forty thou workers in Chicago fought with 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.920 police in another nationwide push for an eight hour work day. 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.560 In one street battle, police killed four strikers. The following day, 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:54.800 a bomb was thrown into a crowd of police as 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:58.280 they marched toward protesters. Eight of the officers were killed 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:02.680 and dozens more were in In response, the police opened 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:06.080 fire on the crowd and each other. Eight of the 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:10.280 city's anarchist organizers were scooped up in the following police raids, 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:13.439 and that's when Cora stepped in, taking up the mantle 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.760 that Victoria had laid aside. Believing in the cause of 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.399 the striking workers, Cora was shocked when she heard that 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:24.120 the arrested anarchists were going to be hanged on circumstantial evidence. 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:28.400 She organized an amnesty committee and then set out for Springfield, Illinois, 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:31.119 to confront the governor and asked him to support the 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:35.320 eight hour work day. A massive crowd of people from 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:37.960 across the state had gathered at the state House pleading 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.480 for the men to be saved. One reporter noted that 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:43.359 Cora's lecture was so moving that it left the group 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.960 in tears. More than any other. It was this act 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:51.720 that wrote Cora's name into Chicago's history. In the end, 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.440 though the governor met Cora's please the same way New 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:58.240 York met Victoria, she was turned away. Four of the 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.840 men were hanged, and Cora turned home in mourning, but 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:05.880 also certain of her righteous cause. She later wrote that 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:09.479 the power of money and of human selfishness are doomed, 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:13.720 whether in the individual, or in society, or in corporations, 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:19.320 or in governments, or in crowns or in kingdoms. Perhaps 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:21.600 it would just take longer than the spirits had led 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:24.520 her to believe. But Cora wasn't the only one on 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:28.520 daunted by setbacks, because there were Spiritualists across the country 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:31.119 who had begun to revive that dream of a model 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:34.840 community that had fostered Spiritualist beliefs way back in the 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:38.879 eighteen forties. All of them, we're looking for a place 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:52.520 the finally call home. It was a camp, but only 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:56.480 in name. In fact, the thriving Spiritualist community in western 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:59.200 New York had showed signs of being a permanent settlement 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:02.639 from its early ist years. They would eventually rename their 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.960 town lily Dale. They built their own post office, hotel, store, 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:10.080 and library. They even took on a bold new project. 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.400 They relocated the house where the Fox family had first 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.520 been shocked by the sounds of spirit rappings, and once 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.200 it was safely at home in lily Dale, the structure 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:23.760 turned their community into the destination for spiritualist pilgrimages in 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:28.000 the Northeast. Down in Florida, friends of the lily Dale 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:30.720 community followed spirit voices to a home of their own 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.280 on the Atlantic Coast. Previous meetings in Florida had brought 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:39.159 together as many as one thousand spiritualists, so in the 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:43.040 president of the National Spiritualist Association joined the founders of 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:47.840 lily Dale and many others to open camp meetings in Cassadega, Florida. 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:51.840 As so many spiritualists had done before, they put out 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:56.000 a call for universal brotherhood, welcoming people of any race 0:19:56.160 --> 0:20:00.000 or class who were interested in spiritualism. But when white 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:04.040 Northern leaders welcome their new black neighbors to lectures at Cassadega, 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:08.199 they violated several Jim Crow laws, highlighting the spirit of 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:12.240 liberty that had visited so many seance tables in previous decades. 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:19.480 Here's historian Kathy gutierres the Cassadega community, the Wily Deal community. 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:24.320 These folks understood perhaps the single most important thing about spiritualism, 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:29.840 and that is the vanguard for multiculturalism. I completely think 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:34.240 that Spiritualism's primary contribution is to ethics, and it is 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:37.880 to the dismantling of a duality of heaven and health, 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:43.119 and to the relegating of all of your neighbors who 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:45.960 are not exactly like you to help. There are other 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:50.880 people who didn't actively believe in a hell, the Unitarians, 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:54.119 the universalists, right, everyone was going, you know, to heaven. 0:20:54.520 --> 0:21:00.359 You don't want universalist smith. But as a mainstream, low 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:11.200 splashy movement, spiritualism really was a driving force behind nascent multiculturalism, 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:17.919 and I think that that is its lasting contribution. Even today, 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:21.800 the Cassadega community continues to be a home for Spiritualist practice. 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:25.040 Like Lily Dale in New York. It remains an enduring 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:28.679 testament to the power of the harmonial philosophy and the 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:31.480 deep belief of the generations who had lived and loved 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:35.520 its teachings. But it wasn't just on the East Coast 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:39.679 that spiritualists made more permanent homes. In California, Spiritualist settled 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.919 along the Pacific and form settlements like harmony growth, a 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:46.000 community that's still meeting in a spot first marked by 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:50.399 a simple ten foot platform and a hitching post. In 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:54.240 Santa Barbara County, Spiritualist formed a colony they called Summerland. 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:56.760 It was their own slice of heaven, and it became 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.240 a haven for spiritualist all throughout the West, even more 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:04.240 so when they drilled for oil off the coast, and yes, 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:07.160 you heard that right, by pumping crude oil up from 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.840 the seafloor in eight six, the Summerland Project became the 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:14.320 nation's first offshore oil well. It was one more sign 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:17.720 for those still certain of their spirits guiding them at least, 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:21.280 that they were entering a new age of prosperity. If 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:25.919 only those spirits had been more foresighted. But if there 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:28.840 were some spiritualists who held true to those original goals 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:31.600 of the mid nineteenth century, there were others who had 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:34.679 veered away. They were looking for new revelations in a 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:39.080 different direction. And even as those new offshoots of spiritualism grew, 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:43.159 they watched the influence of the old spiritualism fade and change. 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:46.040 If you've been listening to the stories of figures like 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:49.520 Sojourn or Truth, Cora and the Fox Sisters. And you've 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:53.360 been wondering what happened to spiritualism. Well, the answer might 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:58.359 lie closer than we think. Here's historian Molly McGarry. It 0:22:58.400 --> 0:23:01.280 had found its way to theosophy, which does grow. During 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:04.280 that time, spirituals are still meeting in camp meetings in 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:06.800 the you know, in the eighteen eighties and beyond, they're 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:10.720 still doing their work. I think what's true is because 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:15.360 the newspapers become less important and the community becomes more diverse, 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:18.880 and because many historians look at the northeast and don't 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:22.439 look at the west quite as much, that they've missed 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:25.080 a lot of the rebuilding that goes on in the 0:23:25.080 --> 0:23:27.760 eighteen eighties and the kind of experiments that are happening 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:31.040 outside the northeast or the central New York, and that 0:23:31.200 --> 0:23:33.879 that area that had borth the original movement. So I 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:37.600 think that it's less that spiritualism declines. I mean, that 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:39.720 would be one way to see it. But it just 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:42.560 becomes more difficult to see for all sorts of reasons, 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:46.320 and it moves, it moves into different formations, but it doesn't. 0:23:46.320 --> 0:23:50.640 I yes, theosophy was one of the new religious movements 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:54.040 that drew strength from its spiritualist roots but also from 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:58.320 its spiritualist founders. And among the earliest visionaries of theosophy 0:23:58.520 --> 0:24:02.560 was Henry Steele Alcotts, that veteran investigator of frauds who 0:24:02.600 --> 0:24:05.960 turned his mind to spiritualism in the eighteen seventies, and 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:09.520 he was joined by Emma Britton, whose theatrical performances were 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:13.320 surpassed in their power by her histories of spiritualism itself. 0:24:13.880 --> 0:24:18.800 Here's Kathy Gutierres once again. Well, Emma was at the 0:24:18.920 --> 0:24:23.640 initial eighteen seventy two party in New York that founded 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:29.359 the Theosophical Society. And what the Theosophical Society and Madame 0:24:29.400 --> 0:24:37.080 Bolvowski in particular proposed is that spiritualism was this is 0:24:37.119 --> 0:24:41.200 my phrase, and obviously but too exoteric, right, That actual 0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:47.320 occult work requires initiation, it requires adepts, and it requires secrecy. 0:24:47.760 --> 0:24:51.560 So if you could talk to the dead, you were 0:24:51.600 --> 0:24:57.280 approaching something important, but you weren't there yet. So they 0:24:57.320 --> 0:25:03.760 actually set out to create a much more esoteric as 0:25:03.840 --> 0:25:11.440 an actively secret and requiring gradations of initiation that sort 0:25:11.440 --> 0:25:16.080 of spun off of some of the primary principles of spiritualism, 0:25:16.119 --> 0:25:21.560 and it was also unlike spiritualism, which, as we've discussed, 0:25:21.600 --> 0:25:26.320 it's very optimistic in so many ways, theosophy is paranoid. 0:25:26.920 --> 0:25:32.040 It's a massive conspiracy theory. So it has a different trajectory, right. 0:25:32.160 --> 0:25:37.719 It is not progressive or kind or healing. At the 0:25:37.760 --> 0:25:41.920 core of it. It's much more about self transformation. It's 0:25:42.080 --> 0:25:48.000 much more about the secrecy and inner sanctum. In the 0:25:48.000 --> 0:25:52.600 eighteen seventies, Mary Baker Eddies Christian science joined theosophy as 0:25:52.640 --> 0:25:56.119 another religious belief that blossomed in the world that spiritualism 0:25:56.119 --> 0:25:59.159 had made. But it wasn't just new religious movements that 0:25:59.200 --> 0:26:03.440 found their origin in spiritualism. It was science too, especially 0:26:03.520 --> 0:26:07.320 the science of the mind in the eighties. When you 0:26:07.359 --> 0:26:12.520 really see the rise of neurology and psychology as medical disciplines, 0:26:12.640 --> 0:26:17.600 then they start edging into what has traditionally been religion's purview. 0:26:17.880 --> 0:26:22.400 So when you have women speaking in multiple voices than 0:26:22.800 --> 0:26:26.679 traditionally okay, are you a saint, are you a witch? 0:26:27.160 --> 0:26:32.720 Or are you mad? And Nancy Stewart agrees, So it's 0:26:32.720 --> 0:26:36.200 a gateway, if you will, into what we know today 0:26:36.240 --> 0:26:40.439 is a modern psychology and understandings about psychiatric states and 0:26:40.560 --> 0:26:43.760 trance states, and illnesses and and so on. I think 0:26:43.920 --> 0:26:47.119 that's all pretty familiar to people today, but then was 0:26:47.480 --> 0:26:52.760 brand new investigation. In many ways, it's fair to say 0:26:52.800 --> 0:26:55.720 that spiritualism was the bridge from our past to our 0:26:55.720 --> 0:26:58.960 presence even today. If we know where to look, we 0:26:59.000 --> 0:27:02.040 can find its trace is all around us. If we 0:27:02.119 --> 0:27:05.840 listen closely, if we know how to interpret the quiet echoes, 0:27:06.240 --> 0:27:09.159 we can sense its eerie presence in the background of 0:27:09.200 --> 0:27:13.119 our everyday life, like the sounds of knocking on a 0:27:13.160 --> 0:27:21.880 distant door and I'm scaring. The past doesn't always mean 0:27:21.920 --> 0:27:25.639 delivering a simple story. Sometimes it means stripping away the 0:27:25.680 --> 0:27:27.800 simple parts of our past that we think we know 0:27:28.119 --> 0:27:31.360 in order to explore the complexities of what really happened. 0:27:32.720 --> 0:27:34.960 Sometimes that means we come into a chapter of history 0:27:35.119 --> 0:27:37.399 thinking we have all the answers, and then learning that 0:27:37.440 --> 0:27:39.960