BONUS / WORLD Channel Presents: Silence in Sikeston

Hi, this is Dr. Celine Gounder, host of Epidemic. I'm back in your feed today to tell you about a new podcast from KFF Health News called Silence in Sykeston. It tells a story of two Black men killed in the same Missouri town nearly 80 years apart, each by a public health threat of their time. In 1942, Cleo Wright was lynched. In 2020, Denzel Taylor was shot and killed by police. Together, their deaths tell a story about the health effects of racism and violence, from high blood pressure and heart disease to anxiety and PTSD. Join host Cara Anthony as she meets a community wrestling to break the silence around both of these killings and unearths some secrets in her own family in the process. Okay, here's episode 1.

Sykeston sits in the Missouri boot heel. That's the lower corner of the state, With the Mississippi River on one side, Arkansas on the other. Lots of people say it's where the South meets the Midwest. Picture cotton, soybeans, rice. It's hot, green, and flat. If you've ever heard of Sikeston before, it's probably because of this.

They'll throw their hands up, so I'll show you. Hot rope!

Lambert's Cafe, home of the throwed rolls.

Yeah, they'll say, "Hot rolls!" And people will hold their hands up and they'll toss it to you.

The servers walk around with carts and throw these big dinner rolls at diners.

Oh, it's fun. You get to nail people in the head and not get in trouble for it.

There's the rodeo, the Cotton Carnival, but I came to see Rhonda Council.

My name is Rhonda Council. I was born and raised here in Sykeston.

Rhonda is the town's first Black city clerk. She became my guide. I met her when I came here to make a film about the little-known history of racial violence in Sykeston. I'm Kari Anthony. I'm a health reporter. I cover the ways racism, including violence, affects health. Rhonda grew up in the shadow of that violence. In a part of town where nearly everyone was Black. It's called Sunset.

Sunset was a happy place. I remember just being as a kid, we could walk down to the store, we could just go get candy.

There were churches and a school there.

We knew everybody in the community. If we did something wrong, you can best believe Your parents was going to find out about it before you got home.

Back in the day, these were dirt roads. Okay, so we're getting ready to go on a tour of Sunset, which used to be known as the Sunset Addition, right?

Mm-hmm, yes. Mm-hmm.

We got into her car, along with Rhonda's mother and her grandmother, Mabel Cook.

This street was known as the bottom. Everything Black-owned. They had clubs, they had stores, they even had houses that people stayed in. I think it was shotgun houses back then.

Uh-huh.

That's Rhonda's grandmother, Miss Mabel, right there. She was a teenager here in the 1940s. Her memory of the place seems to get stronger with each aha and mm-hmm.

And this was just the place where people went on the weekend to, you know, have a good time and party. And this area was kind of known as the corner because they used to have a club here, and they would gamble a lot down here. They would throw dice. Everything down here on the corner.

That's right. Sure did.

Mm-hmm. You remember the street, Grandma?

Yeah, I'm trying to see where the store used to be. Okay. I think it was close to Smith Chapel, it be or something. Okay.

Rhonda's grandmother, Miss Mabel, was 97 then.

She is a petite lady to me. Thin-framed. I describe her eyes as like grayish-colored eyes, and I don't know if it's because of old age, but I think they're so beautiful. And she has a pretty smile and she's just a fantastic lady.

Ms. Mabel was born in Indianola, Mississippi. When she was 14, her father moved to Sikeston looking for work.

And so she came up here to be with her father, but she said when she came to Sikeston, she said it was an unusual experience because they were not allowed to go to stores. They were not allowed to basically be with the white people. And that's not what she knew down in Mississippi. And in her mind, she couldn't understand why Missouri, why Sikeston was like that in treating Black people that way. And not too long after that, the lynching of Cleo Wright occurred.

It was 1942. While the United States was at war marching to stop fascism, a white mob here went unchecked. And lynched a man named Cleo Wright. The lynching of a Black man in America was not uncommon and often barely documented. But in the case of Cleo Wright, the killing in this small town made national news. The case generated enough attention that the FBI conducted the first federal investigation into a lynching. That investigation ultimately amounted to nothing. Meanwhile, here in Sykeston, the response to the brutal death was mostly silence. 8 decades later, another Black man was killed in Sykeston, this time by police. Local media outlets like KFVS covered it as a crime story.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol says troopers must piece together exactly what led to the shooting death of 22-year-old Denzel Marshall Taylor.

I think the killings of Denzell Taylor and Cleo Wright are a public health story. Our film, Silence in Sykeson, is grounded in my reporting about Cleo and Denzell. Part of the record of the community's trauma and silence is captured in the film. This podcast extends that conversation. We're exploring what it means to live with that stress of racism, of violence, And we're going to talk about the toll that it takes on our health as Black Americans, especially as we try to stay safe. In each episode, we'll hear a story from my reporting, then a guest and I will talk about it. The history.

The power of lynching is to terrorize the Black community. And one of the ways the community deals with that terror is the silence of it. And when you don't deal with the wound, It creates all kinds of damage.

And health. It's almost like every time we're silent, it's like a little pinprick. And after so long, those little pinpricks turn up as heart disease, as cancer, as all these other ailments. I'm hoping this journalism and these stories will spark a conversation that you've been meaning to have. This is an invitation. From World Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX, this is Silence in Sykeston, the podcast. Episode 1: Racism Can Make You Sick. Miss Mabel was a witness to the lynching of Cleo Wright. The 25-year-old was about to become a father.

Rhonda's uncle says Cleo was young, handsome, an athlete, and very well known in the community.

That's Harry Howard. He didn't know Cleo. Harry wasn't even born yet, but his uncle knew Cleo.

They were friends. They would shoot pool together and were known to be at the little corner store, the Scotts Grocery.

Harry's family passed down the story of what happened.

So everything I'm reporting is the way it was told by people I trust.

Black families mostly talked about it in whispers.

And that sounds like this is one of those situations where that community would rather just leave this alone and try to move on with the life that you do have instead of losing more life.

That's my friend Eddie Cole. He's a professor of history and education at UCLA. We were in college together at Tennessee State and worked on the school newspaper. I called up Eddie because I wanted to get his take as a historian. What happens when we keep quiet about a story like Cleo's?

Yeah, I'm Eddie Cole, so here we go.

Thousands of Black people were lynched before Cleo Wright was, but this was the first time the feds said Hey, we should go to Sykeston and investigate lynching as a federal crime. This story though, seriously, like, it just disappeared off the face of the map. Like, it's scary to me. So many of the witnesses that I interviewed, they've passed away, Eddie, since we started this journey. And it's frightening to me to think that their stories, that these stories can literally just go away.

Lynching stories disappear but don't disappear, right? So the people who committed the crime, they committed it and went on with their day, which is twisted within itself even to think about that. But on the other side, when you think about Black Americans, there was no need to talk a lot about it, right? Because you talk too much about some things and that same sort of militia justice might come to your front door in the middle of the night, right? Stories like this are known but not recorded.

The hush that surrounded Cleo's story back then was for Black people's safety. But I'm conflicted. Should Cleo's story be off the table? Or could we be missing an opportunity for healing On the phone with Eddie, I could feel this anxiety building up in me. I was almost afraid to bring it up, even though it was the reason why I called.

And I will be honest with you, I think of you the same way I think of my brother, my father. Like, I've almost wanted to protect the Black men in my life from that story. Because I know how hard it is to hear.

It was January 1942. Cleo was accused of assaulting a white woman. A police officer arrested him. There was a fight. Cleo was beaten and shot. Covered in blood, he was eventually taken to jail. White residents of Sykeston mobbed the jail to get to Cleo.

I do want to play a clip for you just so you can hear a little bit, if you are up for that, because it's a lot. How are you feeling about that today?

No, I want to hear. I mean, I got to know more now. You just told me there's a story that just disappeared, but now you're bringing it back to life. So let's play the clip.

All right, let's do it.

They took him out of the jail and drug him from downtown on Center Street through the Black area of Sunset. Obviously, it was a big commotion, and they were saying, "What's going on?" And the man driving the station wagon told them, "Get out of the street," and of course used the N-word.

"There's a lynching coming." Historian Carol Anderson is a professor of African American Studies at Emory University. She takes it from there.

They hook him to the bumper of the car and decide to make an example of him in the Black community. The mob douses his body with 5 gallons of gasoline and set it on fire. People are going, "Oh my God, they are burning a Black man. They are burning a Black man.

They have lynched a Black man." I always need to take a deep breath after hearing that story. So I check in with Eddie. Okay. How you doing? You okay?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm— that was tough.

I've grappled a lot with the question of why. Like, why now? Why this story? Am I crazy for doing this?

Yeah, I mean, this story is really an entry point to talk about society at large. Imagine the people who like the world that we're in, a world where Black people are oppressed, right? And so not telling stories like what happens in Sykeston is an easier way to just keep the status quo. And what you're doing is pushing back on that and saying, ah, we must remember because The remnants of this period still shape this town today.

On the tour of Sykeston with Rhonda, I see that.

We're going to go in front of the church where Cleo Wright was burned. When we get down here to the right, you'll see Smith's Chapel Church. And wasn't it over here in this way where he got burnt?

Yep.

Okay. From what I hear, it happened right along in this area right here.

It's a small brick church with a steeple on top. The road is paved now, not gravel as before. It all looks so normal. You'd think that kind of violence, so much hate, will leave a mark on the earth. But on the day we visited, there was nothing to see, just the church and the road. Miss Mabel is quiet. I wonder what she's thinking.

I just remember them dragging him. They drove him from the police station out to Sunset Addition. But they took him around all the streets so everybody could see.

Back at Rhonda's home, we talked more about what Miss Mabel remembered.

Did that affect you in any way when you saw that happening?

Yeah, it hurt because I never had seen anything like that. Mm-hmm. And it kind of got me. I was just surprised or something. I don't know. Mm-hmm.

Remember, Miss Mabel had been a child in Mississippi in the '30s, and it wasn't until she moved north to Sykeston that she came face to face with a lynching.

Did it stick in your mind after that for a long time?

Yeah, it did. It did stick because I was wondering why they wanted to do that to him. You know, they could have just taken him and put him in jail or something and not— do all that to them. I just never had seen anything like it. I had heard people talking about it, but I had never seen anything like that.

When it happened, a lot of Black families in Sykeston scattered, fled town to places that felt safer. Mabel's family returned to Mississippi for a week, but when they got back, she says Sykeston went on like nothing had ever happened. Here's Rhonda with Miss Mabel again.

After you all saw the lynching that happened, did you and your friends talk about that?

No, we didn't have no, no, we didn't, we didn't talk about it. My daddy told us not to have nothing to be saying about it.

Oh, because your dad said that.

That's right. He told us not to worry about it and not talk about it. Uh-huh. He said it'll go away if you're not talking about it, you know.

Uh-huh.

So over the years, Did you ever want to get it out? Did you ever want to talk about it?

Yeah, I did want to. Uh-huh. I wanted to. Mm-hmm.

But you just couldn't do it?

No. No. Mm-mm.

Nope.

He didn't want us talking about it. He told us forget it.

Forget it. Don't talk about it. It'll go away. And in a way, it did. No one was charged. No one went to prison. Cleo's name faded from the news. But decades later, Miss Mabel the witness, Rhonda her granddaughter, and me the journalist, we talked about it a lot. We turned the story over and over. And as I listened to Miss Mabel, there was a distance between the almost matter-of-fact way she described the lynching and what I expected her feelings would be. I asked her if she was ever depressed or if she had sleepless nights, anxiety. As a health reporter, I was on the lookout for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. But Ms. Mabel said no. That surprised me and Rhonda, too. If we were to roll back the clock, go in a time machine, it's 1942, all of a sudden you see Cleo Wright's body on the back of a car. How do you—

can you even imagine that?

I could not imagine. And even when talking to her about it, and she has such a vivid memory of it, and you ask her, did it haunt her? And she said no, she— it didn't bother her. But I know deep down inside it had to, because there's no way that you could see something like that, someone dragged through the streets, basically naked, going over rocks and the body just being dragged. I don't know how I could have handled it because that's just very— you just can't treat a human being like that.

That's what's so hard about these stories. And the research shows that seeing that kind of brutal racial violence has health effects. But how do we recognize them? And what happens if we don't? Those are some of the questions I asked Keisha Bentley Edwards.

Oftentimes, people who experience racial trauma are forced to not acknowledge it as such, or they're forced to question whether or not it happened in the first place.

Keisha is an associate professor in medicine at Duke University. She studies structural racism and chronic health conditions and knows a lot about what happens after a lynching.

It's difficult to talk about racism, and part of it is that you're talking about power. Who has it, who doesn't have it. It's not fun to talk about constantly being in a state where someone else can control your life with little recourse.

That's even more complicated in a place like Sykeston.

When you're in a smaller city, there is no way to turn away from the people who were the perpetrators of a race-based crime. And that in and of itself is a trauma, to know that someone has victimized your family member and you still have to say hello, you still have to say good morning, ma'am, and you have to just swallow your trauma in order to make the person who committed that trauma comfortable so that you don't put your own family members at risk.

Keisha says part of the stress comes from being Black and always being aware, alert, that the everyday ways you move through the world can be perceived as a threat to other people.

Your life as a Black person is precarious, and I think that is what's so hard about lynchings and these types of racist incidents is that so much of it is about I turned left when I could have turned right. You know, if I had just turned right or if I had stayed at home for another 10 minutes, this wouldn't have happened.

That's as true today as it was when Cleo Wright was alive.

So you don't have to know the history of lynching to be affected by it. And so if you want to dismantle the legacy of the histories, you actually have to know it. So that you can address it and actually have some type of reconciliation and to move forward.

I don't know how you move on from something like the lynching of Cleo Wright, but breaking the silence is a step. And at 97, Miss Mabel did just that. She spoke to me. She trusted me enough to talk about it. Afterward, she said she felt lighter.

That's right. Mm-hmm. So it made me feel much better after getting it out.

A couple years after we took the tour of Sykeston together, Miss Mabel died. When they lowered her casket into the ground, Miss Mabel's family played a hymn she loved. It was a song she had sung for me the day she invited me to visit her church. We sat in the pews. It was the middle of the week, but she was in her Sunday best. As we talked about Cleo Wright and Miss Mabel's life in Sykeston, she told me she came back to that hymn over and over.

Glory, glory, that's what it was. Glory, glory, hallelujah, since I laid my <LYRICS>Burn it down, glory, glory, hallelujah.</LYRICS> I grew up singing that song.

But before that moment, it was just another hymn in church. When Miss Mabel sang it, it became something else. It sounded more like an anthem, a call to acknowledge what we've been carrying with us in our bodies and minds, and to know it's possible to talk about it. And maybe feel lighter.

<LYRICS>Since I laid my burden down, everywhere I'll go higher and higher since I laid my burden down.</LYRICS> Racism is heavy, and it's making Black people sick.

Hives, high blood pressure, heart disease, inflammation, and struggles with mental health. To lay those burdens down, we have to name them first. That's what I want this series to be: a podcast about finding the words to say the things that go unsaid. Across 4 episodes, we're exploring the silence around violence and racism. And maybe we'll get some redemption too. I'm glad you're here. There's a lot more to talk about. Next time on Silence in Sykeston, the podcast, meet my Aunt Bee and hear about our family's hidden history.

I told you what the 3 Rs of history are, right?

No, tell me.

So the 3 Rs of history are you have to recognize something in order to repair it, in order to have days of redemption. So recognize, repair, redeem. And that's what we're doing.

How deep is that?

That's what we're doing.

Wow.

Yeah. Thanks for listening to Silence in Sykeston. Next, go watch the documentary. It's a joint production from Retro Report and KFF Health News. Presented in partnership with WORLD. Subscribe to WORLD Channel on YouTube. That's where you can find the film Silence in Sykeston, a Local, USA special. This podcast is a co-production of WORLD Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX. It was produced with support from PRX and made possible in part by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The audio series was reported and hosted by me, Cara Anthony. Zach Dyer and Taylor Cooke are the producers. Editing by Simone Poprell. Tanya English is the managing editor of the podcast. Sound design, mixing, and original music by Lonnie Rowe. Podcast art design by Colin Mahoney and Tanya Castro-Danais. Una Zinda was the lead on the landing page design. Julio Ricardo Varela consulted on the script. Sending a shout out to my vocal coach, Vicki Merrick, for helping me tap into my voice. Music in this episode is from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Additional audio from KFVS News in Sikeston, Missouri. Some of the audio you'll hear across the podcast is also in the film. For that, special thanks to Adam Zletz, Matt Gedemeyer, Roger Herr, and Philip Jalen, who worked with us and colleagues from Retro Report. Keira Darden is executive producer at Retro Report. I was a producer on the film. Joe Rosenbaum directed the documentary. Keetia Weir is national editor at KFF Health News. WORLD Channel's editor-in-chief and executive producer is Chris Hastings. If Silence in Sykeston has been meaningful to you, help us get the word out. Write a review or give us a quick rating on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, or wherever you listen to this podcast. It shows the powers that be that this is the kind of journalism you want. Thank you. It makes a difference. Oh yeah, and tell your friends in real life too.

That was episode 1 of Silence in Sykeston. Now go and listen to the rest of the series. All episodes are out now. You can find them by searching World Channel Presents: Silence in Sykeston on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.